January 18, 2007 – 12:08 am
A grim story in today’s New York Times begins as follows:
The United Nations reported Tuesday that more than 34,000 Iraqis were killed in violence last year, a figure that represents the first comprehensive annual count of civilian deaths and a vivid measure of the failure of the Iraqi government and American military to provide security.
This is indeed a sickening tally of human misery. And to be sure, the Iraqi army and police have been, by all accounts, at best useless, and at worst, have themselves been agents of grisly violence. It is also quite clear by now that the US management of postwar Iraq — attempted, as Tom Friedman put it, “with our pinky” — was vastly inadequate.
January 16, 2007 – 11:14 pm
The musical community suffered an irreplaceable loss this weekend: saxophonist Michael Brecker has died at the age of 57. He had been fighting leukemia for years, and finally lost the battle.
January 15, 2007 – 10:49 pm
Readers will probably be familiar with one Deepak Chopra, who has made a handsome pile over the years by peddling pseudo-scientific New Age pablum to legions of credulous and uncritical admirers. Now, in an item at the Huffington Post, he swivels his intellectual popguns to bear upon Richard Dawkins’s book The God Delusion, and does about as little damage as you might expect. If you enjoy seeing intellectual justice in action, visit the website eclexys, where blogger “gordsellar” gives Chopra’s gormless review, which is a basinful of the purest hogwash, the fisking it deserves, in a post entitled Deepak Chopra: Who Is This Idiot?
Thank you Kevin Kim for linking to this post, which I might otherwise have missed.
January 15, 2007 – 12:34 am
We are home once again – just the two of us, having safely ensconced our son in his new home in the halls of academe. Thanks to those of you who have emailed in response to the previous post; the immediate connection with a community of friends is one of the most rewarding aspects of maintaining this website.
January 13, 2007 – 11:57 pm
We are in Wellfleet this evening, having arrived late last night on an important mission. No, I’m not talking about plucking oysters from the bay, though this afternoon did find me splashing about at low tide as usual. This weekend, however, the task at hand is to take our son Nick off to college. He was accepted as a midterm admission at a well-known university in the Boston area, and the moment is at hand; we drop him off tomorrow.
January 11, 2007 – 11:57 pm
However dreary your day, or stifling your job, just be glad you don’t live in Mogadishu, Somalia. This article from today’s New York Times, by Reporter Jeffrey Gettleman, gives us a glimpse of one of the most wretched places on Earth.
It is easy enough to sit back at aloof and luxurious remove and fling curmudgeonly barbs at the preening popinjays and benighted saps that bray and caper upon the stage, but when one thinks of the intractable misery in this world, the inexhaustible capacity people have for making other people suffer horribly for no particular reason, and the fact that, for most people who have ever lived, their lot has been little but misery, hunger, anguish, and death, it really isn’t funny at all.
January 11, 2007 – 12:37 am
Readers visiting waka waka waka this evening confident that yesterday’s service interruption must have been due to the gestation of a particularly expansive discursion upon some fascinating topic or other are, I’m sorry to report, mistaken. While there is, as always, no shortage of topics, events, and cultural foibles about which an essayist might comment, I am, tonight, unequal to the task, and must refrain.
January 9, 2007 – 1:34 am
In discourse these days, whether about politics, religion, philosophy, or any of the other topics that seem so effectively to get everybody’s knickers in a twist, we will all have observed by now that some people have what is known as a “short fuse”. I’ve been noticing more and more that quite a few folks go one better, and operate on what might be thought of, if we are willing to test the metaphor’s tensile strength, as a proximity fuse: they detonate at the expression of any thought that even reminds them of whatever it is that they are crusading against.
Such minds are like eels lurking in the coral, snapping at whatever shiny object paddles by. I suppose other eels find them attractive, but to swimmers they are merely a nuisance.
January 8, 2007 – 12:53 am
I must say, at the risk of sounding Grinchy once again, that I am not at all sorry that the holidays are over. The garish displays are coming down. The tourists crowd the city less densely, and the reduced incidence of pastel pink and primary-colored polyester outerwear stretched over ample midsections allows Gotham’s naturally dingy palette to return to the fore. Gone are the gift-laden shoppers who turned the subways into freight trains; gone as well is the bloody “Carol of the Bells” that blared from every loudspeaker. The hawking of rubbish to the besotted is much abated, and fools are once again being separated from their money at the normal workaday pace. For those of us for whom gift-shopping is a baffling mystery, the anguish of the annual Deadline has passed, and we are delivered, for better or worse, for another year. No more obligatory holiday parties, corporate gift drives, and salvos of greeting cards (actully we utterly dropped the ball on that last item this year; apologies to all).
No, that’s all behind us now. Nothing lies ahead but grim and slushy Winter, and the resumption of life’s dreary toil. Snows will fall, and blacken on the city streets, as we trudge to our daily servitude through the bleak and cheerless months to come. The distant memory of the summer’s fetid heat will seem an otherworldly illusion as the Boreal winds howl down Broadway straight from Baffin Bay, and the ancient questions, set aside during the recent Saturnalian euphoria, will gnaw us once again with renewed vigor.
Yippee! My time of year.
January 6, 2007 – 5:00 pm
The NFL playoffs are beginning, and with both of our local franchises having made it into the postseason tournament, the media hereabouts are brimming with informative coverage of the impending contests.
The best part, for the seeker of wisdom, is the commentary by the players and coaches themselves, in which they offer the lay audience a glimpse of the arcane inner workings of the game, and share with us the expertise that they bring to bear as they gird their loins for the struggle ahead.
January 5, 2007 – 11:34 pm
This is making the rounds, apparently, but I wouldn’t want you to miss it.
January 4, 2007 – 7:14 pm
Richard Dawkins, who seems to be everywhere lately (he’s even been spotted recently in a small town in Colorado), has an Op-Ed piece in today’s Los Angeles Times in which he laments the execution of Saddam Hussein, for some of the same reasons that I brought up in this recent post.
January 4, 2007 – 12:39 am
As I’ve mentioned recently, there is always something at Edge.org to engage the curious mind. One of the more interesting features of the website is the annual World Question project, which consists of asking a diverse collection of thinkers some simple but provocative question, and presenting their responses.
January 2, 2007 – 10:37 pm
In today’s New York Times we see, in response to an article about the difficulties faced by working diabetics and their employers, the following letter (it’s number six in the linked collection):
To the Editor:
Thank you for your article. But you do a disservice to all those with diabetes by referring to them as “diabetics.†We are not our diseases; we are individuals with lives and families. Such a reference is demeaning and promotes just the discrimination you were reporting.
Susan Lesburg
Boston, Dec. 26, 2006
We are all aware, of course, that diabetes is merely a disease, and that those who suffer from it possess other attributes as well. In the article under discussion, however, the individuals chosen for consideration were selected precisely because of the salient characteristic they share — namely, that they do indeed suffer from this cruel affliction — and the term “diabetic” summarizes this distinction with precision and economy. The use of the term in such a context should not be seen by diabetics as diminishing their humanity — which, as nobody should have any reason to doubt, is surely as dignified and multifaceted as anyone else’s — and to eschew its use in favor of some euphemistic monstrosity such as “the pancreatically challenged” would serve only to draw another pint from a language and culture that are already well on their way to becoming quite utterly bloodless.
I have seen firsthand the suffering diabetes can cause, and certainly mean no disrespect to its victims. But Ms. Lesburg might do well to read this post, by the noted curmudgeon Deogolwulf.
January 2, 2007 – 2:13 am
Dr. William Vallicella, in a discussion at Maverick Philosopher about whether religion is simply a quest for comfort, asked me the following question:
Can an atheist be moral? Yes, of course, in one sense, and indeed more moral than some theists. But the more interesting question would be whether an atheist would have an objective basis for an objective morality. In other words, even if it is true that many atheists are morally superior to many theists relative to some agreed-upon standard of behavior, would these atheists be justified in making the moral judgments they do if there is no God? Perhaps, but the answer to this is not obvious, whereas the answer to the first question is obvious.
While there are those who have tried to devise such a scheme, I think their efforts are misplaced; I will not try to establish an “objective morality” here, because I see no need for one.
January 1, 2007 – 12:40 am
Well, we are back in New York, after a restful interval in Cape Cod. The weather was cold and damp, and the outer Cape largely deserted, but it was nevertheless balm to the soul to be out there. I scooped up a few dozen oysters, of course, despite temperatures just above freezing, a leaden sky, and a chilling wind and drizzle.
December 30, 2006 – 12:43 am
Well, it appears that moments after my previous post, news of the monster Saddam’s execution hit the airwaves. It should be a lively day in Iraq.
December 29, 2006 – 10:20 pm
It appears, in case you have not heard, that the ruthless tyrant Saddam Hussein — under whose monstrous and sanguinary reign hundreds of thousand were tortured and killed, including entire villages upon which he unleashed chemical weapons — is to be hanged within the next few days. At the risk of startling my friends on both the left and the right, I must say that I rather wish he weren’t.
December 29, 2006 – 12:28 am
We are in Wellfleet tonight, after a long day on the road. It’s mighty quiet out here, as you would imagine — which is just what the doctor ordered, here in the final days of a difficult and sorrowful year. Reading, rest, and quiet reflection top the agenda (and perhaps scooping an oyster or two out of the bay), so do forgive me if waka waka waka operates on a reduced schedule for the next few days.
December 27, 2006 – 10:46 pm
Yesterday evening, having spent more than a week unable to work out as usual due to back trouble, and feeling, consequently, a little in need of some exercise, I decided to walk for while before getting on the subway to go home. My office is on Park Avenue just south of Grand Central Station, and I thought I might stroll down as far as Union Square, or perhaps even Houston Street. It being an unusually mild evening, however, I decided to press on, and wound up walking the whole way back to Park Slope: a distance of about 7.62 miles, according to Google Earth.
December 27, 2006 – 12:51 am
We must note with sorrow the death of James Brown, progenitor of an entire species of music, an awful lot of which has been running through my head, and through my speakers, these past couple of days. He was no saint, especially if you happened to be married to him, but the man invented funk, and we mourn him.
December 26, 2006 – 1:53 pm
The front page of today’s New York Times featured an account of heinous abuse of prisoners at a jailhouse in Basra, Iraq. The suffering captives were delivered from their abusers by a British-led military operation that culminated, after the building’s evacuation, in its destruction. The suffering inflicted was truly awful, according to the report:
More than 100 men were crowded into a single cell, 30 feet by 40 feet, he said, with two open toilets, two sinks and just a few blankets spread over the concrete floor.
A significant number showed signs of torture. Some had crushed hands and feet, [a British military spokesman] said, while others had cigarette and electrical burns and a significant number had gunshot wounds to their legs and knees.
The responsible parties were not U.S. soldiers or other infidels, Iraqi police.
I await, with hand cupped to ear, the incendiary storm of outrage from the Islamic world that Muslim prisoners might be abused in this way.
December 25, 2006 – 12:55 am
To all of you, Merry Christmas!
December 23, 2006 – 11:51 pm
Having spent a couple of years working at the tragically self-immolated “prospective Web search” company PubSub, where we were among the first to gather comprehensive real-time statistics about blogs, I occasionally poke around a bit myself to see who is linking to whom — and in particular, to me. In a visit to Technorati a few minutes ago, I saw that I had been linked to, back on December 2nd, by a writer named “Sini”, at a blog called Jusiper. Here is the text of the post, in its entirety:
I suppose this is the adult version of fratboys who party to “Trenchtown Rock”: a Republican, warloving Fela fan.
Presumably the best time to do a line is right after they kill Fela’s mama.
I don’t know anything about “fratboys” who particularly enjoy Jamaican music; presumably there are some, as appreciation of good music transcends political allegiances. I do feel rather misunderstood, however.
December 23, 2006 – 1:40 am
We note with interest the passing of Sapurmurat Niyazov, supreme ruler of Turkmenistan. I’ve had my eye on him for a while; he established total control of that Central Asian country upon the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and was the object of a textbook personality cult, right down to writing the textbooks.
December 22, 2006 – 12:58 am
Readers will have noticed that I have been posting a little more often lately about the “science vs. religion” debate, and that I have perhaps seemed rather more on the side of the skeptics than the believers. Well they’re right, and in private correspondence I have taken, lately, an even more partial view. I think I am going to have to come right out and be a bit of a Grinch about the whole business, even though Christmas is right around the corner.
December 20, 2006 – 11:05 pm
You may already have run across this item, but it appears that a Japanese man recently survived a three-week exposure to the elements, without food or water, by doing something that primates aren’t usually thought to be capable of: hibernation.
December 20, 2006 – 3:01 am
To kick off the holiday festivities, my mother-in-law, ancient of days, has, for what seems like the fortieth or fiftieth time, fallen and broken her leg, and is once again in hospital. Service at waka waka waka may be light for a few days as we cope.
December 18, 2006 – 10:33 pm
It might seem odd, given my background as a recording engineer, but I don’t own an iPod or similar device. I admire their sleek and efficient design, and the sound quality is acceptable, but I haven’t got one.
December 17, 2006 – 4:13 pm
Friday’s post (sorry for yesterday’s service interruption; I had a very long day of recording and mixing) mentioned the “Beyond Belief” convention sponsored by Edge.org, and alerted readers to the availability of streaming video feeds of the presentations. I’ve been watching them as time permits, and the discussions, if not exactly balanced — the speakers generally regard the influence of religion on society as something that we ought be outgrowing sometime around now — are calm, thoughtful, and considerate of the centrality of religion in many people’s lives.
December 15, 2006 – 11:51 pm
I’ve mentioned Edge.org previously; it is one of my favorite spots on the Web. The site’s purpose is to provide a forum where scientists, philosophers, and other thinking types can discuss topics at the intersection of science, technology, and culture, and it attracts some of the world’s brightest minds.
December 14, 2006 – 6:31 pm
I call the attention of readers to two recent posts on the subject of “equality”. The first is by Dr. William Vallicella, the Maverick Philosopher; the second is by the inimitable Deogolwulf, writing at his website The Joy of Curmudgeonry. Both make the same excellent point, which I shall reiterate here.
December 13, 2006 – 11:11 pm
One does not usually think of two-wheeled vehicles as being particularly well-suited to transporting cargo, but where there’s a will there’s a way. From my co-worker Jay Chang comes an amusing collection of photographs from Vietnam, showing what can be done when need impels.
December 12, 2006 – 1:42 pm
In yesterday’s post we noted the difficulty people naturally have in grasping the immensity of the timeframe at which evolution occurs. But despite the zoomed-in view our fleeting lifespans impose upon us, we can still detect the occasional tick of the evolutionary clock. Just such an observation has recently been made regarding the genetic trait known as lactose tolerance.
December 11, 2006 – 10:38 pm
I often wonder why some people are so resistant to Darwinism. The idea, once grasped, would seem to have everything going for it: it is elegant and simple, but despite its simplicity has amazing depth and explanatory power. It has been abundantly confirmed, by a diverse yet mutually supporting body of evidence, and provides a sturdy framework for our understanding of all life on Earth.
Nevertheless, the fact of Darwinian evolution is flatly rejected by a majority (!) of Americans. One obvious reason for this is the pernicious persistence of fundamentalist Biblical literalism in our country, with its irrational insistence upon the Old Testament creation myth. But the acceptance of such folklore as fact is abetted by another, quite natural difficulty: people have, generally, absolutely no concept of deep time.
December 10, 2006 – 5:51 pm
Once again, the chess World Champion has played a match against a computer, and lost. This time the victor was Deep Fritz 10, and the victim was the 31-year-old Russian Vladimir Kramnik.
December 10, 2006 – 2:45 pm
Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet has died in Santiago at the age of 91.
It’s supposed to get up to around 86° in Santiago today, but it will be even warmer where he’s going.
December 9, 2006 – 10:00 pm
As I have mentioned before, my house in Brooklyn is just a few paces away from Prospect Park, a lovely, rolling expanse of forest, lake, and greensward landscaped by the great Frederick Law Olmstead.
December 9, 2006 – 1:51 am
I receive a number of daily newsletters. Among them is one from Physorg.com, a website that serves as a clearinghouse for news on various scientific fronts. The stories are generally brief, rarely very technical, and their purpose is simply to alert the reader to the fact that that some new development or other has occurred in the field at hand; the curious reader may then, having been given the scent, follow it to its source on his own initiative. The whole thing is usually very professionally done, and is an excellent way to keep abreast of current events in science and technology.
Imagine my disappointment, then, to observe that Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, the utter incomprehension of which we may sadly take as a “given” among its many detractors in religious circles, is also a source of confusion, even at the broadest and most superficial level, to the editors of the Physorg newsletter. I refer to the following headline, found atop a story in yesterday’s issue:
Do galaxies follow Darwinian evolution?
What is it that bothers me so? Read on.
December 8, 2006 – 12:22 am
It’s been an awfully busy week both day and night — I’ve had scant opportunity to write, and probably won’t get much of a break until the weekend. So for today, we will simply comment briefly on two items drawn from today’s issue of Gotham’s paper of record.
December 5, 2006 – 4:19 pm
Poking around at Mangan’s Miscellany a moment ago, I saw that Dennis had linked to a blog maintained by Wheel of Fortune host Pat Sajak. I dropped by for a visit, and Mr Sajak’s musings are whimsical, thoughtful and articulate. It is gratifying to see solid evidence of a Hollywood celebrity with a rational mind. Onto the sidebar it goes.
December 4, 2006 – 1:23 pm
If you haven’t noticed, there are a growing number of scientists, authors, and other thinking sorts who have decided to stand up in public and question the enormous influence that religion still exerts in 21st-century affairs. Daniel Dennett, Steven Pinker, and, of course, Richard Dawkins are leading the charge, but others are growing bolder as well, and are adding their intelligent and articulate voices to the gathering chorus. One of these is Natalie Angier, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for her science writing at the New York Times, and author of several outstanding books.
December 3, 2006 – 12:49 am
The gist of the essay is that the current administration, rather than being incompetent, or overweening, or imperialistic, or all three, is in fact a gang of Nazis, and we’d better wise up. The author, aghast at our complacency, seeks to rouse us from our stupor by pointing out – breaking news! – that the Germany of the 1930’s became utterly evil, in large extent, of its own volition, and suggests that the same is happening here.
December 2, 2006 – 12:16 am
In a characteristically pointed essay, Steven Pinker comments on Harvard’s forthcoming Report of the Committee on General Education. While he is generally laudatory, he has “two reservations”: first, about the characterization of the place of science in a general eduaction, and second, about the “Reason and Faith” requirement in the core curriculum.
November 30, 2006 – 3:18 pm
Political disagreements, such as those that have been taking place lately in comment threads here at waka waka wakaexhibit a property not unlike that ascribed astrophysicists to the hypothetical “dark energy” that is thought to permeate the cosmos: they exert a mysterious repulsive force.
November 30, 2006 – 12:41 am
You may have heard of the Antikythera Mechanism: a mysterious clockwork device, over two thousand years old, that was found in a Mediterranean shipwreck in 1902. Archaeologists have puzzled over it ever since its discovery, and the atavistic doohickey has meanwhile fueled many an Atlantean’s febrile imaginings. Now, a team of researchers have announced that they have determined exactly what the Mechanism does, but the mystery of how such a thing came to exist at all in 80 B.C. has only deepened.
November 29, 2006 – 1:59 pm
In “Losing the Enlightenment”, a speech given at a recent dinner honoring Winston Churchill, and reprinted as an OP-Ed piece in today’s Wall Street Journal, Victor Davis Hanson argues that the West is suffering from a “loss of confidence of the spirit”.
November 28, 2006 – 11:43 pm
I don’t do a lot of recording these days; the music industry having gone through rough times in the 1990’s, I took up software engineering, and now make my living writing code. I still do two or three albums a year, though, and I am occasionally reminded of one of the other reasons I was inclined to switch careers: the hours can be grueling. Yesterday’s session at Avatar — a new album for my old friend, the guitarist Steve Khan — started at ten a.m., and when I left sometime after one in the morning, Steve was still wrapping up a few loose ends in Pro Tools with our assistant, Brian Montgomery.
November 28, 2006 – 8:26 pm
Upon hearing someone use the expression “sang-froid” the other day, I was reminded of an old joke:
November 28, 2006 – 12:19 am
A long day of recording today, at New York’s Avatar Studios with my old pal Steve Khan. We’re in Studio ‘C’, working on Steve’s latest effort, with trumpeter Randy Brecker and percussionists Marc Quiñones and Bobby Allende. It’s getting late, and it doesn’t look like we’re leaving anytime soon, which of course leaves me scant opportunity for lengthy bloviation.
As always, however, I hate to send visitors away empty-handed, so here is an excellent post by Scott Carson on moral responsibility and the “false cause” fallacy.