There was a heartening item on the Washington Post’s editorial page a couple of days ago, describing a conversation between Barack Obama and the Iraqi foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari. Mr. Obama, who prior to becoming the presumptive nominee made an effective play for the left wing of the Democratic base by declaring his support for a forced withdrawal from Iraq, now seems, with the general election as his focus, to be making a laudable and pragmatic move toward the center, and is taking into account the genuine progress that has been made in Iraq in recent months. While he has not yet publicly reversed his position on a timed U.S. pullout, he is planning to visit Iraq soon, and I imagine that a man of his intelligence and subtlety of mind (how refreshing!) can be trusted not to let ideology trump wise counsel.
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Commenting on domestic politics has been such hard work lately — who’d have thought that people had such strong opinions? — that tonight we turn our attention to faraway Africa, where, they tell us, Zimbabwean pooh-bah Robert Mugabe has shown a rather mulish reluctance to abide by the results of recent elections. In a gracious gesture, however, he has now made it clear that he will gladly hand over the key to the executive washroom just as soon as a certain regional power, which has hitherto shown no interest whatsoever in the welfare of this bludgeoned nation, takes a more active role in the political process.
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Being rather worn out tonight, I shall refrain from posting another political screed; I also have a busy day at work tomorrow, and shall have no time for responding to the inevitable reactionary hagiographies of whatever Progressivist huckster I might have chosen to poniard. I do feel the need, however, to take a moment to explain once again that my political views, despite whatever some of you might think, are all over the map on an issue-by-issue basis, and that for every smug and patronizing trust-us-we-know-whats-good-for-you Wilsonian statist windbag on the Left, there is some folksy, Bible-thumping, creationist intellectual midget on the Right that bothers me every bit as much. Really, I can’t stand any of them.
So for tonight, something completely different: some very engaging reading — and plenty of it — from the prodigious Eliazar Yudkowsky. I won’t even categorize it; just go and have a look.
It is hard to imagine that anyone has had a more difficult spiritual path than Al Gore. The struggle against personality is central to all esoteric systems of inner work, and life has placed obstacles in his path at every turn: a privileged boyhood in a powerful political family, an Ivy League education, election to both the House and the Senate — followed by two terms as Vice President of the United States, and a photo finish for the White House. And if losing the Presidency to a fellow like George Bush caused him any doubts as to his own natural superiority, they were soon put to rest by his being awarded both an Oscar and the Nobel Prize (helped along, no doubt, by the effect of the Bush victory on the political climate in Hollywood and Stockholm). Small wonder, then, that he is such a smug, self-righteous windbag, as was recently in evidence in Chicago as he bestowed, with grandiloquent and orotund bombast, his coveted Endorsement upon Mr. Obama — a performance in which he apparently set aside environmental concerns for the moment, oblivious as he was to the enormous volumes of greenhouse gas he released in the process.
Anyway, the man really can’t help himself, I suppose, given the challenges he’s had to face; it’s fair to say that any of the rest of us, given similar circumstances, might have become overbearing prigs as well. So in the interest of giving the man a leg up, inner-development-wise, here’s a recently published item that might help him to take himself down a peg.
From reader JK comes a link to an article about a growing tension in the Persian Gulf. No, it isn’t between the Sunnis and the Shi’a, or between US diplomats and the Iraqi parliament, but between Islamic fundamentalists and those in the region who, having attracted enormous foreign investment, and having used it to build some of the most dynamic and opulent financial centers in the world, are also beginning to develop a taste for another Western export: freedom.
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We’re back in Gotham after a splendid visit to San Francisco (and a long break from blogging). The cool and breezy weather was a delightful respite for a thermophobe like me, and each day the lovely Nina and I walked for miles, hammering in pitons as needed, and rappelling down the steeper blocks.
One of the highlights of the trip was a dinner in Berkeley on Saturday at Alice Waters’ celebrated restaurant Chez Panisse. I don’t often discuss food in these pages — in fact I can’t recall ever having done so before — but this was too remarkable a meal to pass over in silence.
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We’re off duty for the next couple of days: the lovely Nina and I are enjoying a brief visit to San Francisco (look below the fold for a view of Nob Hill, with fog rolling in, as seen from the 12th floor of the Mark Hopkins Hotel).
But I did want to take time out from our romantic interlude to join the chorus lamenting the startling death of Tim Russert, whose keen mind and extraordinary gifts will be missed by all. He was one of the greatest journalists, interviewers, and political analysts of my lifetime, and I am shocked by his untimely death.
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Off to the West Coast for a few days.
The nation of Indonesia is often cited as an exemplar of a “moderate” Islamic society (though of course it has had its share of Muslim extremism and terror). It is far from a being a tolerant, pluralistic society along Western lines, however; though one is “free” to worship, only five religions are on the list of government-approved options: Islam, Catholic and Protestant Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism. (It is no surprise, of course, that Judaism is not on the menu.)
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It is far too hot to write, or even think cogently. New York’s infrastructure is collapsing under the strain: the power grid is failing, and subway service is becoming chaotic as outdoor sections of track begin to buckle in the heat. Broken-down vehicles are clogging the streets and highways, and after waiting to cross Madison Avenue at lunchtime today I noticed that I had actually left footprints in the asphalt. It even seemed at times this afternoon that some of the buildings themselves were sagging, but I might simply have been hallucinating as my vital organs shut down.
…what’s that you say? “How hot is it?”
It’s so hot that I saw a dog chasing a cat, and they were walking.
So for tonight, just a fascinating little news item about evolution at work in the laboratory: further confirmation for this greatest of all human insights, as if any were needed. Here.
It is hard to write at the moment; all of us here in Gotham have been reduced to shambling, gibbering zombies by recent meteorological events. Just a few days ago — though it might as well have been decades, so utterly has the recent catastrophe effaced any lucid memory of happier times — all seemed roughly normal, or at least as “normal” as life can ever be here in this enormous and hyperkinetic city, the crossroads of the world. But some time in the early morning hours of Saturday, June 7th, it all came to a sudden and startling end, as tragic and precipitous as a carload of promgoers swerving into a tree. The Hell-mouth is open.
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From my friend Jess Kaplan comes a little news item that doesn’t amount to much, really, in these tempestuous times, but which made a nice break from the customary media diet of catastrophe, vice, and woe. It’s about a little lost lighthouse.
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I haven’t commented lately on the presidential race, but I’m certainly pleased that Mrs. Clinton, who gives me the shuddering fantods, appears finally to have been knocked out. Short of some gruesome work with an oaken stake and a wooden mallet we can’t be sure, however, and yesterday Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto, who has a clearheaded appreciation of what sort of politicians the Clintons really are, gave us his thoughts in his Best of the Web newsletter about what sort of calculations the former First Couple might be making as they retreat to their Westchester lair to lick their wounds and plot their next sally.
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In yesterday’s post we looked at the possibility of an impending “Singularity”, a convergence of various accelerating lines of progress in a number of technical and scientific fields that futurist Ray Kurzweil thinks will be an unparalleled historical disruption. When a sort of critical mass is reached, Kurzweil suggests, the result will be a colossal explosion of technology and artificial intelligence that will radically alter nearly every aspect of human existence.
Meanwhile, however, as reported in yesterday’s Times, fundamental physicists and cosmologists, far from readying the champagne, are confronting what might be called a “Kuhnian crisis“: recent observations of the universe at the largest scales have presented them with data for which no existing theoretical model can account.
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In today’s New York Times is yet another mention of a notion that seems to be attracting a lot of attention lately: Ray Kurzweil’s idea of an impending technological “Singularity”.
The concept is simple enough: if we look at the history of the world, we see a consistently accelerating rate of progress — first biological, and then technological — which, if extrapolated into the future, predicts that something extraordinary is about to happen.
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Well, we’re back. Our latest “Service Notice” post generated a reasonable question from reader Charles L., namely: why do I bother announcing that I won’t be posting? After all, it’s not as if the trains won’t be running, or the beer will stop flowing, and I realize it must seem a bit presumptuous to imagine that anyone would even care. But as I said to Charles, having established a pattern of daily blogging, I see missing a post as a lapse of discipline, and I suppose I feel obligated to own up to it.
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Sorry – between work, travel, and social obligations, there’ll be nothing new here until Sunday or Monday, most likely. Apologies as always.
This entry is part 7 of 15 in the series
Free WillSorry not to have posted anything yesterday; I spent many hours on the road, as well as selling several to my employer.
Today also my muse appears to be silent, as happens from time to time — so, looking ahead to resuming our musings on free will, I will simply offer a couple of provocative thoughts about causation and possibility, lifted from Daniel Dennett’s book Freedom Evolves. I’ll just plunk them on the page, for now; they will provide useful material for subsequent conversations, I think.
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With a hat tip to our friend Jess, here is a link to a post at the science blog Gene Expression that reports a result which, if true, is hardly a surprise.
After months of training and preparation, our friend Kevin Kim is now beginning his transcontinental walk, whose theme is interreligious dialogue. He’ll be starting his journey in British Columbia, and heading east. We can follow his progress at his website, Kevin’s Walk.
This should be interesting.
Good work by Horace Jeffery Hodges at his website, The Gypsy Scholar. See here, and here.
So caught up was I in holiday-weekend bacchanalia that I almost neglected to note that the Phoenix Mars Lander made a successful descent in the Red Planet’s north polar region yesterday.
“For the first time in 32 years, and only the third time in history, a JPL team has carried out a soft landing on Mars,” [NASA adminstrator Michael] Griffin said. “I couldn’t be happier to be here to witness this incredible achievement.”
There is water just beneath the surface in Mars’s polar areas, and this mission’s purpose is to have a look, with particular interest in the possibility of finding signs of biological activity. You can read the story here, and visit the mission website here.
We’ve had plenty of chat in in here lately about the political Left and Right, and what the words mean. I recently induced, with mischief aforethought, a conniption or two merely by mentioning that I was reading a book that argues (and persuasively, I might add) that Fascism was a phenomenon of the political Left; for many folks of my acquaintance the political markers “Left” and “Right” appear to be nothing more than synonyms for “good” and “evil”, respectively. There are many others, of course, for whom the polarity is reversed, but what never seems to be lacking is the polarization itself.
Here’s an online political quiz that locates you on the two-dimensional Nolan chart. It only takes a minute or so. Where do you stand? (Leaving aside the obvious disclaimers about boiling down such complexities to a one-minute quiz, I appear to be a “Left-leaning Libertarian.”)
A couple of days ago I linked to Steven Pinker’s discussion of the recent report by the President’s Council on Bioethics, and mentioned that one of the contributors, surprisingly given the overall makeup of the Council, was the irreligious and materialist philosopher Daniel Dennett. In his essay, he is in fine, feisty form.
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Can anybody explain to me why there is such a flap about Hillary Clinton’s mention of the RFK assassination? It makes no sense to me whatsoever, even taking into consideration that taking offense is the new national pastime. I’m no fan of Mrs. Clinton, but this seems ridiculous.
Having posted some video clips of Kwong Sai Jook Lum Praying Mantis master Gin Foon Mark a couple of weeks ago, it seems only fair that I do the same for the system I’m involved with these days, Tang Fung Hung Ga. Here, then, is a video (forgive the odd camera angle) of our own Si-gung, master Frank Yee, demonstrating a medley of techniques, drills, and snippets of forms (the sequence opens with the beginning of our Five Animals Five Elements form). Above all, he is demonstrating the “internal power” that practitioners develop after many years of training.
Master Yee is the “real deal”; I think you’ll see what I mean.
Steven Pinker, writing in The New Republic, takes aim at The President’s Council on Bioethics for mulish opposition, on largely theological grounds, to a variety of promising medical and scientific efforts.
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Well, perhaps “nothing here until Friday at the soonest” was overly pessimistic; I’ll squeeze in one brief item. Following on our post about the pros and cons of conversing with one’s enemies, here is a relevant item from the opinion page of today’s Times, about JFK’s unwisdom in agreeing to the Vienna summit of 1961, a decision that arguably led to the Berlin Wall, and the Cuban missile crisis.
Due to a particularly grueling schedule Wednesday and Thursday, we’ll have nothing here, I’m afraid, until Friday at the soonest. I realize this has been happening more often of late, but there it is. At least there’s still no talk of a rate increase.
If you’ve been paying any attention at all, you know that the word of the week is “appeasement”. President Bush popped it up in an address to the Knesset, and Barack Obama, waving off his teammates, managed to get himself under it and make the catch. And now Pat Buchanan, who is clearly off his meds, is hollering imprecations from the bleachers.
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A couple of weeks ago my old friend Carl Sturken, with whom I’ve been knocking about since fifth grade, called me up to ask if I felt like joining in a pickup band to play at a 35th reunion for the Princeton Day School class of 1973. (I’m not an official member of the class, really, because I only went to school there from 5th to 8th grade, but I knew it would be a hoot, as well as an interesting case study in the various ways that time can ravage the human form.) Carl had called at a propitious moment, because I had just taken up playing the drums again a month earlier, after a thirty-year layoff: I had left them behind in 1978 when I moved into a tiny apartment in the city upon being offered a job at the Power Station.
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It’s been a hectic weekend, and there’s been no time for writing. Fortunately, our West Coast correspondent Jess Kaplan has sent along two items of interest.
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We’ll most likely be off the air until Sunday or Monday. Apologies to all.
This will be of zero interest to any of you, but in my little corner of Gotham the corks are popping. Here’s why.
From our old friend Dave Pauley comes a link to some extraordinary photos of the Chaitén volcanic eruption in Chile. As Dave points out in his note to me, a local villager could understandably think there were more than “merely” natural forces at work here. Have a look.
If you haven’t heard, embattled Microsoft has now taken aim at Google Sky with its new application, the World Wide Telescope. Have a look here.
With a hat tip to our occasional commenter Addofio, here is the work of a most remarkable artist. Go have a look.
For those of you who don’t know, our friend Kevin Kim has a new website, created for the purpose of chronicling his upcoming transcontinental walk — a trek whose purpose is to explore the many parallel currents of religion in America, and if possible to help build bridges between them. The walk itself won’t get going for a few weeks yet, but you can’t keep a good blogger down, and Kevin has been posting as regularly as ever. Kevin himself is one of the more unusual religious figures I know: a trained theologian and an elder of the Presbyterian church, he’s also a non-theist.
Today he offers an interesting rumination on the Vatican’s position on Christianity for extraterrestrials; it’s well worth a look.
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From Jess Kaplan comes this story about the disaster unfolding in Lebanon. Hezbollah, and by proxy Iran, now owns this tormented land.
We’ll carry on with our meditations on free will shortly, but for tonight — it’s been a very busy weekend, with no time for writing — we have, for those of you with an interest in such things, some videos of the great Southern Praying Mantis master Gin Foon Mark, taken during his recent visit to Rome. (I’ve mentioned Master Mark before, here and here; he was the sifu of my first kung fu master, William Chung.) The videos are here, and if you’d like to see some other footage of the great man in action, there are quite a few on YouTube – including this one, which looks like it dates back to the 1970’s.
One of the main reasons that the USA, despite its ethnic diversity, has held itself together as well as it has (well, aside from that little scuffle back in the mid-1800’s) is that we all speak the same English language. But that’s only in the most general sense; American English takes a lush and delightful profusion of regional forms, and nowhere is this more evident to a flinty old Yankee like me than in the folksy and playful argot of the South.
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This entry is part 6 of 15 in the series
Free WillOne of the most worrisome aspects of determinism, in many people’s minds, is that it means that our deliberation — all our agonizing about the choices we must make in our lives — is a sham. In Daniel Dennett’s book Elbow Room, which I think is one of the best expositions of the “compatibilist” view of free will that I am attempting to defend in this series of posts (and which I have drawn upon liberally all along), he offers three common opinions (pp. 102-103) about this problem. I will paraphrase and summarize them here.
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Once again the despicable military junta that holds the nation of Burma hostage has forced the world to examine the presumptive “right” of inviolable national sovereignty. A horrifying natural cataclysm has just sheared away tens of thousands of its captive and wretched citizens, and laid its principal city to waste, while hundreds of thousands more — having already been reduced to ignominious poverty by their long years of thralldom to a brutal and criminally incompetent tyranny — now face the certain prospect of lethal famine and pestilence. The civilized peoples of the world stand at their gates, seeking nothing more than to help a ruined and prostrate country bind its wounds, feed its hungry, clear its rubble, and bury its dead. But, jackals that they are, Burma’s captors greet their visitors with a feral and desperate snarl, caring only to defend their kill.
That in the 21st century the world still permits entire nations to be kidnapped and enslaved in this way should shame us all.
For those of you who have been following this somewhat distasteful presidential-election business, here’s Robert Novak’s take on where matters stand in the wake of Barack Obama’s strong showing yesterday.
Before I forget, here is another item on the subject of improving the memory: it’s just one of those breezy little magazine-style top-ten lists, but some of the items merit a closer look.
My daughter ChloÁ« has sent along a link to an article about Piotr Wozniak, the inventor of SuperMemo, a software application that uses some neglected facts about the workings of human memory to help users retain more of what they learn. The system is designed to remind users at specific intervals of items they have studied; the spacing of these reminders is carefully tuned to occur just as the material would normally be about to be forgotten. Wozniak has dedicated himself with single-minded zeal to applying this system to himself; it appears to be effective, but is clearly not for everybody.
It’s an interesting story; you can read it here.
We learn from today’s New York Times that the new Grand Poo-bah of Turkmenistan, the fabulously yclept Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, has begun dismantling in earnest the splendiferous personality cult of his predecessor, Saparmurat Niyazov, a.k.a Turkmenbashi. Mr. Niyazov’s image and idisosyncratic worldview had permeated every corner of Turkmen life during his reign, but no symbol of his absolute ascendancy loomed larger than his gold-plated effigy atop the Neutrality Arch, about which we scribbled a brief post (with photo) on the occasion of his death in December of 2006. The Arch in question, actually a three-legged tower, is the largest building in the capital city of Ashgabat, and the golden statue of Turkmenbashi at its apex was engineered so as to rotate one full circle each day, in order to keep our man facing always toward the Sun.
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Sam Harris, in a recent article, weighs in on the response to Dutch politician Geert Wilders’ anti-Islamic movie Fitna, which appears to be unavailable online at the moment.
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This entry is part 5 of 15 in the series
Free WillJeffery Hodges left a comment on our last post about free will (and I do apologize for approaching the subject so circumspectly, over a period of weeks) in which he asked if I was making a distinction between causes and reasons. This is an important question — and indeed I am.
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This entry is part 4 of 15 in the series
Free WillWe’ve been brooding lately on the subject of free will and determinism. For tonight, just a few brief remarks; more to come shortly.
Everybody wants free will, of course, but the notion itself is one of those things that look clear enough from a distance, but get harder to make out the closer you look. What is a “free” choice, anyway? Apparently the key notion is that not have been caused. Is this really what we want? Let’s say I am presented with a choice to make: say, whether to put my paycheck in the bank or buy some crack.
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