Looking Ahead

January 17, 2006 – 9:41 pm

In yesterday’s post I promised to write an item explaining the difference between “retrospective” Web search, which is what conventional search engines like Google do, and “prospective search”, which is a new and complementary paradigm exemplified by services such as PubSub. As I began, though, it dawned on me that I had already written such a post back in August, on the PubSub house blog, Sandbox. So for those who are interested, here it is.

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By Malcolm | Posted in Technology | Comments (1)

The Structure of Things To Come

January 16, 2006 – 10:37 pm

There’s something new and important you bloggers should all know about: Structured Blogging. Here’s what it is, and why it’s good.

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By Malcolm | Posted in Technology | Comments (0)

Your Attention, Please

January 15, 2006 – 9:14 pm

One of the things that people like to do is “boil down” the staggering complexity of the world into comprehensive rules and principles. Surprisingly, the world often cooperates by revealing itself to be, in fact, a rather orderly place that does indeed seem to behave according to laws that are simple enough for us to ferret out.

Some of the rules we have worked out are abstruse, detailed and complicated, yet have held up well under critical examination – quantum mechanics and general relativity come to mind – while others are vague generalities like “there’s a sucker born every minute” and “faint heart ne’er won fair lady”. Some are obviously wrong, like “a watched pot never boils” (try this one yourself), and “the best things in life are free” (not all payment is in the form of money!), or my pet peeve, “everything happens for a reason.”

Sometimes we pick one thing and make it a central organizing principle. My friend Bob Wyman, for example, has worked out a plausible system of ethics entirely based upon the idea of resisting entropy. Another friend, songwriter Larry McNally, has written that “Love is everything – everything else is nothing.” He’s not the first to make the suggestion, but it makes a good song.

Well, I’m not immune to this temptation either, and sometimes I think that the fundamental currency in human affairs – the fungible coin in which the business of mankind is transacted – is attention.

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By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Inner Work, Pretty Good Posts | Comments (6)

Thin Skins

January 14, 2006 – 6:17 pm

Today the Washington Redskins are visiting the Seattle Seahawks for an NFL playoff game. The contest has been attended with the usual hype, but the sportswriters covering the game for the Seattle Times have faced a peculiar challenge – the paper has decided not to allow them to use the name “Redskins” more than once in their stories. The difficulty is compounded by the fact that the only other obvious token by which to refer to the team is the name of their hometown, Washington, which happens also to be the the home state of the home team.

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By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Pretty Good Posts | Comments (6)

OK, That Was Fun

January 13, 2006 – 10:05 pm

All right, maybe pondering arcane numerical sequences, even the really unusual and interesting ones, isn’t exactly everybody’s idea of a rollicking good time. If you would like an explanation of the one I offered in the previous post, click here.

And for a final – I promise! – note on this topic, here is a really nifty website, where such sequences are studied, catalogued, and explained, and where you can enter a sequence and look up the underlying rule.

By Malcolm | Posted in Mind and Brain, Reason and Philosophy | Comments (1)

You’re Not Trying

January 12, 2006 – 11:56 pm

I few days back I inked a post about Douglas Hofstadter’s fascinating book GÁ¶del, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, in which I showed a little item from the chapter Figure and Ground, which is about recursively enumerable systems. The tidbit I offered was a most unusual number series. Here it is again, for those of you who didn’t see it the first time around, or who just passed it by without really thinking about it:

1   3   7   12   18   26   35   45   56   69 …

I admit it takes a minute or two to make sense of it, but it is worth the effort. It is wonderfully strange, and is typical of the little jewels that are everywhere in that amazing book.

And don’t worry, I am not going to make a habit of posting retreads.

By Malcolm | Posted in Mind and Brain, Reason and Philosophy | Comments (14)

Mind Over Matter, Part II

January 11, 2006 – 11:16 pm

A frequent topic in here, and in some of the blogs I’m fond of visiting, is the mystery of consciousness. How is it that “mere” matter can become self-aware? Can matter be the engine of consciousness at all, or does it merely serve as a temporary and intermittent host?

There seem to be three avenues by which people approach this mystery – philosophy, science, and mysticism. I have the intuitive conviction that they will, ultimately, give consistent answers – in other words, that they are all three digging toward the same hidden truth, although from different directions, and with different tools. My wish is to try to follow the progress on all three fronts, and to participate actively where I can.

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By Malcolm | Posted in Pretty Good Posts, Mind and Brain, Reason and Philosophy, Inner Work, Science | Comments (13)

The Death of Each Day’s Life

January 10, 2006 – 10:36 pm

If you have an interest in science (readers may by now have guessed that I do), may I recommend that you subscribe to the daily email newsletter published by PhysOrg.com. It’s a quick read – just headlines with links – and there is always something interesting. Today’s number, though, was a tad dispiriting.

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By Malcolm | Posted in Science, Marginalia | Comments (1)

Never a Moment’s Peace

January 10, 2006 – 12:40 am

In case you were wondering why your dishes were rattling, it turns out that the Milky Way is “flapping in the breeze”. Apparently the Magellanic Clouds, who I always knew were up to no good, have grabbed our galaxy by the dark matter, and are generally making a nuisance of themselves.

Learn more here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Science, Marginalia | Comments (1)

The Cause Of, and Solution To,
All of Life’s Problems

January 8, 2006 – 12:48 pm

Here’s an excellent sentence – a coruscating little gem of pith and understatement – from Wikipedia’s entry Alcoholic Beverage:

People under the influence of alcohol sometimes find themselves in dangerous or compromising situations where they would not be had they remained sober.

Now that’s good writing. Just think of the ocean of individual human experiences captured in those twenty-three words.

Can’t imagine what put that in my mind this morning, but there it is.

By Malcolm | Posted in Marginalia | Comments (2)

Miller Time

January 7, 2006 – 9:37 pm

Tonight, I must confess, I am suffused with a mellow glow of self-satisfaction. Let me explain:

I have described, in an earlier post, my interest in southern Chinese kung fu. I began in 1976, at the age of 19, to study the Lam Sai Wing Hung Gar system under the tutelage of the formidable William Chung, and was awarded a black belt in 1982 or so. But due to various circumstances, which are beyond the scope of this post, I was forced to withdraw from my study with him a few years later, and spent the next nine years practicing on my own, teaching a bit, and attending to life’s other clamant demands, which included establishing both a career and a family. By 1993, however, I was yearning to refocus my martial-arts studies under the guidance of a qualified master, and was lucky enough to meet, in my own neighborhood of Park Slope, Brooklyn, one Peter Berman, a Hung-style expert who had learned the Tang Fung Hung Ga system under the renowned master Frank Yee, and I began to reapply myself to the demands of this fierce fighting style. Although the two systems are very similar – Lam Sai Wing and Tang Fung were “training brothers” under the legendary Wong Fei Hung, a century or so ago – they have diverged a bit, and I began with Sifu Berman “from scratch”. My progress was slowed by the many demands placed on my time by work and family, as well as by several nasty orthopedic injuries, and by the difficulty of the style itself. But my previous training was a great help, and I made my way slowly through the system’s lengthy and complex empty-hand and weapons forms.

Today, at age 49, after more than twelve years with Sifu Berman, and with knees creaking, I completed my final test – the Ng Lung Ba Gwa Cheung Spear Form – and attained the rank of Jo Gow, my second black belt, twenty-five years after the first.

By Malcolm | Posted in Martial Arts | Comments (3)

The Ravel’d Sleave

January 6, 2006 – 11:27 pm

I never get enough sleep. I get up between 7:30 and 8:30 a.m., get to PubSub’s Lower Manhattan nerve center at about 10, toil at the “bleeding edge” of Internet technology until 7 p.m. or so, then head home.

There are things to do in the evening. Dinner must be prepared and consumed. Often I will train a bit, and one night a week I teach class. There are books clamoring for my attention. My guitar, a winsome Taylor 310, beckons. There are chess games at RedHotPawn to which attention must be paid. Of course, as a husband and father, I spend time with Nina and Nick (and ChloÁ«, when she is home from college). Most of the time there are other lingering details: mail and telephone calls to answer, or little chores to do. Then there are blogs to be read, upon which perhaps to leave pithy and thought-provoking comments. Finally, I must confect the day’s post for waka waka waka.

The result of all of this is that I never seem to retire before 1:30 or 2 a.m., which means that I am usually getting six hours of sleep at best, and often less. I don’t like that at all; I know I’d be sharper if I slept more. But given all these worthwhile and productive occupations, what am I going to throw overboard? The world is just too interesting, and life is too short as it is.

I’ll just have to comfort myself with the old proverb:

“Six hours’ sleep for a man, seven for a woman, and eight for a fool.”

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (7)

Chaff

January 5, 2006 – 11:59 pm

I’m just too worn out tonight to do any writing, so I will offer some entertaining fluff for my legions of readers: two links from my friend Eugene Jen over at the PubSub command center.

First, an amusing little diversion. Can you work out the simple trick?

Next, some perplexing scientific questions.

By Malcolm | Posted in Marginalia | Comments (4)

Remembering the Fallen

January 4, 2006 – 11:16 pm

I found a note in the mail the other day announcing the demise of yet another outstanding recording studio. This time the decedent was O’Henry Studios (this link might not be good for long, so click it now), in North Hollywood, California. It was one of my favorites, and one of the best.

When I started out in the recording business, back in the late 70’s, things were very different. There were no desktop PCs with digital audio software, there was no MIDI, no samplers, no digital reverbs – pretty much no digital anything. When people wanted to make a record, they had to go to a studio, and they actually had to play musical instruments. In order for the sound to make it onto the tape (yes, we used 2″ 24-track analog tape back then), the services of an engineer were required. That was my job. I worked at a studio called Power Station, on West 53rd Street in Manhattan, where I worked my way up through the ranks to become a staff engineer.

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By Malcolm | Posted in Music and Recording | Comments (1)

Beyond Words

January 3, 2006 – 11:09 pm

Do you have a recording of Chopin’s Preludes? I listened to them today for the first time in quite a while. They are an odd collection, not preludes to anything really, despite the name, but each a unique meditation. About them, Liszt said:

“Chopin’s Preludes are compositions of an order entirely apart. They are not only, as the title might make one think, pieces destined to be played in the guise of introductions to other pieces; they are poetic preludes, analogous to those of a great contemporary poet, who cradles the soul in golden dreams, and elevates it to the regions of the ideal.”

and Schumann:

“I would term the Preludes strange. They are sketches, beginnings of Etudes, or, so to speak, ruins, individual eagle pinions, all disorder and wild confusions.”

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By Malcolm | Posted in Music and Recording | Comments (1)

Theological Semolina

January 2, 2006 – 11:55 pm

It suddenly dawned on me this evening that I had not yet written a post formally introducing my readers to The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The world first learned of the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s role in the creation of all that is when one Bobby Henderson, a “concerned citizen”, wrote an open letter to the Kansas School Board in which he explained that humans received the spark of life from His Noodly Appendage, and described the teachings of Spaghetti Monsterism. Mr. Henderson quite reasonably requests that the Pastafarian account of the origin of life be taught alongside Intelligent Design and Darwinism:

One third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence.

In his letter he also insists that the correct presentation is essential:

Furthermore, it is disrespectful to teach our beliefs without wearing His chosen outfit, which of course is full pirate regalia. I cannot stress the importance of this enough, and unfortunately cannot describe in detail why this must be done as I fear this letter is already becoming too long. The concise explanation is that He becomes angry if we don’t.

In addition to the revealed Truth (which includes scientific evidence that “global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s”), the site also offers some nifty merchandise, and even a festive holiday card. Don’t wait another minute.

By Malcolm | Posted in Darwin and Biology, Society and Culture | Comments (15)

Figure and Ground

January 1, 2006 – 11:32 pm

One of my favorite books is the astonishingly imaginative Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas R. Hofstadter. This Pulitzer-Prize-winning book, published in 1979, is an extended meditation upon the underlying connections between the work of the three men mentioned in the title – Johann Sebastian Bach (who needs no introduction), the Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher, and mathematician Kurt Gödel. Hofstadter, who inherited the prestigious editorship of Scientific American’s Mathematical Games column from the incomparable Martin Gardner, has described his inspiration for the project:

“I realized that to me, Gödel and Escher and Bach were only shadows cast in different directions by some central solid essence. I tried to reconstruct the central object, and came up with this book.”

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By Malcolm | Posted in Mind and Brain, Reason and Philosophy, Books | Comments (8)

Happy New Year!

December 31, 2005 – 11:04 pm

waka waka waka wishes all of you happiness, good health, and good luck in 2006.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (5)

Ebony Moon

December 30, 2005 – 11:31 pm

The new Moon of December 31st will be the second one this month; the first having been on December 1st. When two full Moons occur in the same calendar month, it’s called a “Blue Moon”, but till now there has been no name for this inverse phenomenon. The folks at Spaceweather.com asked for suggestions for their readers, and the winner was “Ebony Moon”. Like Blue Moons, Ebony Moons happen about once every two-and-a-half years. The next one will be in August of 2008.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (2)

Jetsam

December 30, 2005 – 12:43 am

As I was walking home from the kwoon this evening, having spent a pleasant few hours first enlightening my students as to the subtleties of the “crane’s wing”, and later practicing the Ng Lung Ba Gwa Cheung, I noticed some books lying in the street, about to be ruined by the rain. I took a closer look, and what I found was the Sixth Edition of Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, a fabulous resource published in 1975, and what appears to be a first-edition hardcover copy of Lewis Copeland’s The World’s Great Speeches (from Pericles to Roosevelt), published in 1942.

How can anyone just throw such treasures overboard? Onto the shelf they go.

By Malcolm | Posted in Books | Comments (1)

Seeker

December 29, 2005 – 12:17 am

Mullah Nasrudin was on his hands and knees in the street. A friend saw him, and came over to ask what he was up to.

“Mullah! What are you doing?”

“I’ve lost my key.”

“Well, where did you last see it?”

“In my study.”

“So why are you looking for it out here in the street?”

“Because the light’s better here, of course!”

By Malcolm | Posted in Inner Work | Comments (1)

Pentimento

December 28, 2005 – 12:24 am

Educational and psychological theories of the mid-20th century saw the human brain as an infinitely flexible learning machine, with no “factory presets”. But the picture that is now emerging of our mental apparatus is of a suite of prewired cognitive modules, located in various areas of the brain, each of which has been shaped by natural selection for some useful task. These modules provide us with a common a priori framework for organizing our model of the world, and each module contributes an intuitive description of some aspect of our environment.

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By Malcolm | Posted in Mind and Brain, Darwin and Biology, Society and Culture | Comments (19)

Arms and the Mind

December 27, 2005 – 1:46 am

“Just as a monkey roaming through the forest grabs hold of one branch, lets that go and grabs another, then lets that go and grabs still another, so too that which is called ”˜mind’ and ”˜mentality’ and ”˜consciousness’ arises as one thing and ceases as another by day and by night.’

(Connected Discourses of the Buddha, p. 595)

By Malcolm | Posted in Mind and Brain, Reason and Philosophy, Inner Work | Comments (3)

Merry Christmas

December 25, 2005 – 12:18 am

To all of you. May your homes be havens of peace and love, may you grow in wisdom and understanding, and may fortune smile upon you in 2006.

-Malcolm

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (1)

Logic and Faith III: Havlicek Steals the Ball

December 24, 2005 – 4:02 pm

There are many in the scientific community, including some of its most prominent spokespersons, who seem to have embraced a rather militant form of atheism. Richard Dawkins seems to be the most visible just now, but there are many others.

I used to be a strongly committed atheist myself, but my viewpoint has softened, and I would categorize myself now as a curious agnostic. One of the reasons that I abandoned the atheist position is the simple fact that reason itself is silent on the question of God’s existence. Efforts have been made to put faith in God onto a solid naturalist or philosophical foundation, but the fact remains that there is still no way to compel either belief in or denial of the existence of God.

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By Malcolm | Posted in Darwin and Biology, Society and Culture, Reason and Philosophy, Science | Comments (23)

Arms and The Man

December 23, 2005 – 11:55 pm

One of the things that people who dislike George Bush often mention as something that particularly bothers them is what they call his “swagger”. I too have found myself vaguely irritated by his carriage, without realizing what it was that bothered me. I’ve now put my finger on it.

I’ve noticed in the past that both hypertrophic bodybuilders and the grossly obese share a postural trait – the arms, when hanging at one’s sides, not being able to lie closely against the body, are pushed out and forward, which rotates the hands so that the palms, instead of being turned toward each other, face straight backward. This is also how gorillas and troglodytes are always drawn, knuckles dragging on the ground. If you look at most men of normal girth you will see the hands hanging with the palms facing the body, more or less, but when George Bush walks his palms face generally aft. It has a marked, if subliminal, visual effect.

Not having heard anybody point this out before, I thought I’d better mention it here.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (5)

Actual Science

December 22, 2005 – 11:59 pm

Science, the official organ of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has published its Top Ten list of scientific breakthroughs for 2005. The winners are:

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By Malcolm | Posted in General, Science | Comments (1)

Sick Transit

December 22, 2005 – 12:41 am

This transit strike has the city clenched and writhing like a spider stuck by a pin. Businesses are withering, traffic is packed solid from river to river, and municipal and union officials are locked in a snarling impasse, while Gotham’s hapless and frozen workforce staggers to and fro across the city’s bridges in their hundreds of thousands. And all of this four days before Christmas.

New York is rightly renowned for taking such things in stride, but this one is going to get old in a hurry.

By Malcolm | Posted in General, Politics | Comments (7)

Box of Chocolates

December 22, 2005 – 12:26 am

One of my favorite left-clicks in all of cyberspace is WikiPedia’s Random Article link. Here’s a typical sequence:

Hagop Hagopian
1636 in literature
Mutawintji National Park
Pindall, Arkansas
United States Chess Federation
Anita King
Historicity of Jesus

You never know what you’re going to get.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (1)

Checking ID

December 20, 2005 – 10:12 pm

The campaign by Biblical literalists to have their mythology masquerade as science in the public schools has been dealt another setback. In a welcome and much-needed decision, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones has struck down the Dover Township, PA school board’s attempt to smuggle “Intelligent Design” into the biology curriculum.

You can read the judge’s opinion here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Darwin and Biology, Society and Culture, Politics | Comments (2)

Derailed

December 20, 2005 – 12:43 pm

Well, the bus-and-subway strike is on. New York depends on mass transit more than any other city in the country, and this is going to be very bad indeed, especially given the timing.

The strike might last a while, as the two sides – the government and the Transport Worker’s Union – seem unable to do anything more constructive than to huff and puff and wag their fingers at one another. And as usual the ones who will suffer the most are the blameless working folks, into whose faces the weather always blows, regardless of which direction the wind comes from.

By Malcolm | Posted in General, Politics | Comments (1)

Birds of a Feather

December 20, 2005 – 1:08 am

From Hans Zinsser’s scholarly and delightful book Rats, Lice, and History: Being a Study in Biography, Which, After Twelve Preliminary Chapters Indispensable for the Preparation of the Lay Reader, Deals With the Life History of Typhus Fever comes the following:

More than any other species of animal, the rat and mouse have become dependent on man, and in doing so they have developed characteristics which are amazingly human. In the first place, like man, the rat has become practically omnivorous. It eats anything that lets it and – like man – devours its own kind, under stress. It breeds in all seasons and – again like man – it is most amorous in the springtime. It hybridizes easily, and, judging by the strained relationship between the black and the brown rat, develops social or racial prejudices against this practice. The sex proportions are like those among us. Inbreeding takes place readily. The males are larger, the females fatter. It adapts itself to all types of climates. It makes ferocious war upon its own kind, but has not, as yet, become nationalized. So far it has still stuck to tribal wars – like man before nations were invented. If it continues to ape man as heretofore we may, in a few centuries, have French rats eating German ones, or Nazi rats attacking Communist or Jewish rats; however, such a degree of civilization is probably not within the capabilities of any mere animal.

The book is lighthearted, erudite, and without question the best book about vermin and pestilence you have ever read.

By Malcolm | Posted in Books, Pretty Good Posts | Comments (1)

The enemy is the gramophone mind

December 19, 2005 – 11:05 pm

I expect that most of you have read George Orwell’s Animal Farm, but you may not have seen the preface that he wrote for a Ukrainian edition. The preface was censored in England, and was not added to most English translations. I certainly hadn’t seen it before my friend Duncan Werner sent me a link to it today.

Orwell’s prolegomenon talks about self-imposed literary censorship in midcentury England regarding the USSR and Josef Stalin, who was greatly admired by the intellectual Left.

The English intelligentsia, or a great part of it, had developed a nationalistic loyalty towards the USSR, and in their hearts they felt that to cast any doubt on the wisdom of Stalin was a kind of blasphemy. Events in Russia and events elsewhere were to be judged by different standards. The endless executions in the purges of 1936-8 were applauded by life-long opponents of capital punishment, and it was considered equally proper to publicize famines when they happened in India and to conceal them when they happened in the Ukraine.

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By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Politics | Comments (1)

Bad, Bad, Bad

December 18, 2005 – 5:34 pm

President Bush yesterday owned up to having authorized the N.S.A. to monitor the private communications of US citizens without the need to obtain a court order. I realize we are at war, but this is wrong, and I am angry about it. I am annoyed not only because it is exactly the sort of thing that goes on in the Orwellian police states we are supposed to be setting ourselves in opposition to, but also because I have at considerable social cost defended the Bush administration’s foreign policy for years now, while he can’t even manage to keep up his end of the bargain by not appearing at every opportunity to be exactly the conniving and hubristic autocrat his more hysterical opponents have always made him out to be.

Obviously his political foes will seize hungrily upon this. I think it is going to be a very serious problem for him, and rightly so.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (4)

When Transit Strikes

December 16, 2005 – 12:28 am

As I write, Gotham is on the edge of its seat. We are waiting to see if the transit workers, whose contract expired twenty-eight minutes ago, are going to walk out. If they do, it will be disruptive, to say the least. Estimates of the cost to the city’s economy start, I believe, at around four hundred million dollars a day. It also couldn’t come at a worse time for the city’s merchants, some of whom make their entire annual profit during the Yuletide purchasing spasm.

I am not working on any recording projects at the moment, so there are no studios for me to get to, and in my capacity as a software developer for PubSub I won’t be adversely affected – it is as easy for me to spawn bugs at home as it is in our Financial District command center, thanks to the miracle of Open VPN. But many will be deprived of their livelihood, and our colossal engine of commerce, the very heartbeat of capitalism itself, will certainly sputter, if not stall.

I wonder about something, though. There are seven hundred twenty-two miles of subway in the city, and God knows how many miles of bus routes; at any given moment the trains and buses can be at any point on their respective lines. Presumably the operators and conductors themselves get to work by train or bus; if the strike is called, and the wheels must stop rolling, where do they leave the vehicles, and how do they get home? It’s awfully nasty out tonight.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (8)

“Rarely Pure and Never Simple”

December 15, 2005 – 10:20 am

I ran across this, from Peggy Noonan, in this morning’s WSJ newsletter:

Howard Dean, that human helium balloon ever resistant to the gravity of mature judgment, said of the administration that they lied us into war. He left no doubt that he meant they did it deliberately and cynically. But there seems to me a thing that is blindingly obvious, and yet I’ve never seen it remarked upon. It is that an administration that would coldly lie us into Iraq is an administration that would lie about what was found there. And yet the soldiers, searchers and investigators who looked high and low throughout Iraq made it clear they had found nothing, an outcome the administration did not dispute and came to admit. But an administration that would lie about reasons would lie about results, wouldn’t it? Or try to? Yet they were candid.

Wouldn’t it be good if our serious journalists and historians looked into what happened to weapons that Saddam once used and once had? He abused weapons inspectors who came looking, acting like a man who had a great deal to hide. And wouldn’t it be good for our serious journalists and historians to look into exactly how it is that faulty intelligence, of such a crucial nature and at such a crucial moment, came to America and Britain? It is still amazing. Oh, for journalists and historians who would look only for truth and not merely for data that justify their politics and ideology.

As long as I am exposing myself to the scorn of my more dovish friends anyway, I thought I might as well share this item. I don’t always enjoy Ms. Noonan; she is unquestionably an excellent writer, but manages sometimes to combine her natural haughtiness with an affected folksiness in a way that I find irritating. But she makes an excellent point here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (1)

Podhoretz On Iraq

December 13, 2005 – 11:41 pm

Norman Podhoretz, one of the most articulate representatives of the “neoconservative” school of political thought, had an excellent article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. In it he likens the “panic” among the Left regarding our efforts in Iraq to the “sunshine patriots” of the Revolutionary War. The term refers to those who began to question and undermine the wisdom of the venture after it became apparent that it might actually be a long and arduous struggle.

Read More »

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (1)

Deep Blue

December 13, 2005 – 11:12 pm

I live in one of the “bluest” neighborhoods of one of the bluest cities in the nation, the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. It is a lovely place, with splendid Victorian architecture, and it adjoins one of the world’s great city parks, Prospect Park, which is right at the end of my block. We have a fascinating, complex mix of educated and creative people here. The neighborhood prides itself on tolerance and inclusion.

But the fact of the matter is that you are only tolerated and included if you consider it axiomatic that any reasonable person:

a) opposed (and still conspicuously opposes, ad nauseam) the war in Iraq;
b) believes that George Bush is a literal incarnation of absolute evil;
c) agrees that any idea supported by the Republican party is by definition not just wrong, but malicious;
d) considers John Kerry’s loss in the 2004 election to be not only the work of criminal sabotage, but also the greatest catastrophe to befall civilization since the sack of Rome;
e) regards any unwelcome developments in the world (terrorism, global warming, or even, mind-bogglingly, last year’s tsunami) to be the result of malevolent US government policies…

… and on and on. An infinite, humorless cataract of sanctimonious and dogmatic loathing.

Although I am really neither of the Left nor the Right, but rather am “all over the map” on an issue-by-issue basis, I’ve pretty much just learned to keep my opinions to myself, as there is simply no profit in doing otherwise.

Apart from that, though, what a nice place to live! Concerts in the summer, no crime to speak of, lots of good food, convenient subways…

It’s been a good place to raise two children, too. Just mind what you say.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (12)

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

December 13, 2005 – 12:19 am

I love the English language. I love its immense vocabulary, largest of them all. I love its rich history of assimilation, which began with multiple invasions of the scepter’d isle itself, continued with the Earth-girdling expansion of the Empire, and which, with English now the international language of science and commerce, still shows no sign of abatement.

It is a tricky, idiosyncratic tongue, full of broken rules and irregular spellings, in which a single string of letters can take a bewildering variety of pronunciations (consider cough, though, through, plough, and rough). But from the pen or tongue of a master – one such as Shakespeare, Churchill, Joyce, Nabokov, Perelman, Tennyson, Austen, Twain, Wodehouse, Dickens, Pope, Swift, Shelley – the English language can lilt, command, evoke, arouse, describe, amuse, exalt, gladden, inform, seduce, provoke, abash, and delight with incomparable beauty, power and nuance.

But the icing on the cake is Cockney rhyming slang.

Read More »

By Malcolm | Posted in Language, Pretty Good Posts | Comments (0)

Personality

December 11, 2005 – 9:39 pm

Here in the Western world, we tend to lionize those with the “big” personalities – the people who, brimming with confidence and untrammeled by self-doubt, bask in the glow of public attention as they go about their important business. They are the envy of all, and serve as models for the aspiring. Even the word “lionize” is telling – we admire the lion for his fierceness, courage, and power, but most of all for his dominance. The lion gets what he wants. Should we, then, be lions too, if we intend to get what we want? The answer is not so simple: it all depends on what we want.

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By Malcolm | Posted in Inner Work, Pretty Good Posts | Comments (5)

Wanted:

December 11, 2005 – 12:05 am

I’ve been distracted by worldly matters for a day or two, so all I have to offer tonight is yet another of those parasitic posts in which I merely present a link to some interesting spot on the Web. Rest assured that some tasty confections are on the stove.

Today’s referent is the indispensible Dead or Alive. Just go take a look. No further explanation necessary.

By Malcolm | Posted in General, Society and Culture | Comments (1)

Oral Gratification

December 9, 2005 – 12:32 am

Found this recently:

An Illustrated Glossary of Rhetorical Terms

It’s all there, from “accumulation” (figure wherein a rhetor gathers scattered points and lists them together) to “zeugma” (use of a word to modify or govern two or more words although its use is grammatically or logically correct with only one). Here are some other goodies:

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By Malcolm | Posted in Language | Comments (1)

Please Don’t Spoil My Day,
I’m Miles Away

December 7, 2005 – 11:45 pm

A common idea in esoteric teachings is the notion that we live our lives too mechanically, that we are in fact in a kind of waking sleep. The notion seems silly at first. Of course we aren’t asleep! Sleep is what we do at night in our beds. During our busy, productive days we are conscious, we are active, we are engaged. But consciousness is a tricky business, and one of its sneakier properties is that it can’t see its own edges. To put that another way, it takes consciousness to be aware of consciousness, and that means that unconsciousness cannot be aware of itself.

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By Malcolm | Posted in Reason and Philosophy, Inner Work, Pretty Good Posts, Mind and Brain | Comments (9)

Fried Rice

December 7, 2005 – 10:47 am

Our Secretary of State is feeling the heat over in Europe, where many a garment is being rent over our use of “secret” places of detention. I certainly agree that we must avoid violating the very principles we stand for in order to defend them, but there is a moral calculus involved that is not as simple as our disingenuous “allies” would have us think they think. Charles Krauthammer makes a cogent analysis of the question here.

The supercilious attitude of our Continental chums, who would undoubtedly be complaining, if not in German, then in Russian, were it not for previous American foreign-policy positions, is also examined in an editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal. A brief excerpt:

One of Europe’s moral conceits is to fret constantly about the looming outbreak of fascism in America, even though it is on the Continent itself where the dictators seem to pop up every couple of decades. Then Europe dials 9-11, and Washington dutifully rides to the rescue. The last time was just a few years ago, as U.S. firepower stopped Slobodan Milosevic, who had bedeviled Europe for years.


Recommended reading.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (0)

Down to Earth

December 6, 2005 – 10:37 pm

My friend Duncan Werner has sent me a link to a brief but outstandingly informative article that I would like to share with you all. It offers a great deal of helpful, practical advice about what to do should you find yourself unexpectedly free-falling from the stratosphere. Not only is the essay chock-full of encouraging tips and pointers, it’s a nice bit of writing, too. Here is how the author, one David Carkeet, sets up the situation:

Let’s say your jet blows apart at 35,000 feet. You exit the aircraft, and you begin to descend independently. Now what?


What, indeed? You or I would probably be pretty glum at this point, but this is nothing we can’t handle, the author reassures us:

Sure, you’ll take a few hits, and I’m not saying there won’t be some sweaty flashbacks later on, but you’ll make it. You’ll sit up in your hospital bed and meet the press. Refreshingly, you will keep God out of your public comments, knowing that it’s unfair to sing His praises when all of your dead fellow-passengers have no platform from which to offer an alternative view.


I recommend that all of you drop what you’re doing and read this item at once. (Unless, of course, you were about to spend some more time poking around in here. Do that first.) If you don’t read it now, you’re sure to forget, and sometime later, plummeting through the azure void, with your laptop hibernating happily back in the overhead compartment, you’re really going to kick yourself. Just remember:

The perfectly tiered Norfolk Island pine is a natural safety net, so if you’re near New Zealand, you’re in luck, pilgrim.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (2)

Fetchez la Vache

December 6, 2005 – 1:00 am

Here is an interesting item from the 1010 WINS website. The headline reads:

Jogging Song Offends Relatives of Inmates

According to the story,

More than 50 recruits and their trainers jogged in formation past the jail last week singing: “Jailbirds, jailbirds, look and see. You’re locked up and we’re free.”

Relatives, who were in the jail parking lot, say they were shocked.

I agree that the doggerel in question scans poorly, but I hardly consider myself shocked. After all, if these recruits had the lyrical skill to be successful poets, they wouldn’t have to be out there jogging in the first place.

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By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (1)

You Still Here?

December 6, 2005 – 12:41 am

What’s that breeze? Oh. John Kerry is at it again. The lugubrious, thatch-crowned Ent, whom readers may recall bloviating on all sides of every issue during last year’s depressing presidential campaign, was on “Face the Nation” yesterday, accusing US soldiers of “terrorizing” ordinary Iraqis, and “breaking sort of the customs of the–of–the historical customs, religious customs.”

Mr. Kerry has been roundly lambasted in the blogosphere already, so I won’t pile on. I shall instead refer the reader to James Taranto’s mention of it in today’s Best of the Web.

I am really neither conservative nor liberal politically, but am, instead, all over the map on an issue-by-issue basis. Nevertheless I always enjoy, and highly recommend, James Taranto’s daily newsletter. Mr. Taranto takes a strongly conservative stance, but has a light touch and, above all, a sense of humor, which is a nice afternoon break from the Left’s ceaseless cataract of sanctimony and “outrage”. I can’t link directly to the subscription form, but you can go the the Best of the Web homepage and find it from there.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (0)

Selection Pressure

December 4, 2005 – 8:09 pm

There is a heartening item in today’s New York Times: the creation myth known as Intelligent Design is having a tough time taking root. The ID movement’s complete and unsurprising lack of any scientific agenda is apparently beginning to catch up with it.

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By Malcolm | Posted in Darwin and Biology, Society and Culture | Comments (5)

Waking Up is Hard to Do

December 4, 2005 – 2:25 pm

There are some new and interesting threads unwinding over at Bill Vallicella’s website, the Maverick Philosopher. Currently under examination are “mystical” teachings, in particular Buddhism. But in particular there was one little post, seemingly unrelated, that caught my eye. In this brief piece Bill presents a lamentably problematic question: should we think for ourselves?

The problem is that if we do, we are unlikely to find and correct our errors. But unquestioning submission to authority is an obvious mistake also, as witness the horrors of Nazism. What to do?

I think that the esoteric traditions have something to say about this question.

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By Malcolm | Posted in Inner Work | Comments (6)

Chess!

December 3, 2005 – 12:23 am

I love chess. I’ve been playing since I was just a little boy. I’m no master, nor will I be, but I can play a decent game, and every now and then I have played an excellent one.

Chess is one of those rare examples of something that is just right. It seems to me sometimes that there are certain human creations that resonate, somehow, as if they were positioned precisely in some sort of cosmic “sweet spot”. The adagio cantabile from Beethoven’s Sonata Pathetique. Michaelangelo’s David. My friend David Wolfert’s vintage Stratocaster. Baseball. Steak for Two at Peter Luger’s.

I could go on for a while with those, but you get the point.

Chess seems perfectly tuned. Eight squares by eight. Add a rank or a file, and you ruin the sweet symmetry. Add both, and the resulting combinatorial explosion would turn a comprehensible microcosm into merely another confusing problem to solve. The transcendent beauty of the eight-by-eight arena in which chess is played is that it somehow boils down all of the essential aspects of human struggle into a model that we can fit in our minds all at once. At ten by ten, it just hasn’t been boiled enough.

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By Malcolm | Posted in Chess, Pretty Good Posts | Comments (3)