Rethink.

Yeah, I haven’t done one of these in a while. A long while. I really need to make sure I don’t just share stuff on facebook and on tumblr, but put it here too. This is the one place I can comment at some length.

• Peter Richmond writes beautiful prose about devastating subjects: Tommy Lasorda’s son, acceptance, and dying of AIDS; Rae Carruth’s childish and deadly misogyny. I feel like I should read everything he writes, as I’ll get a lot smarter and a lot more sensitive. Wondering this about his latest project: what if a basketball coach sought truth and made those around him better? Would that count as being a philosopher? In a way, obviously not. And in another way…
• Another thing Deadspin had recently which was pure gold – this article on how the Oakland A’s made themselves very competitive this last season at low cost. Advanced statistics and metrics are rejected by those who don’t want to understand how things work. They don’t want to see more; they just want storylines based on “heart” and “swagger.” They want everything to have a moral. Which is how we end up with idiotic stories about Riley Cooper’s “redemption” (i.e. he’s having a good year at receiver, so that must mean he’s a role model now).
• This article on what it’s like to live on food stamps will chill you to the bone.
• It was tough for me to understand the race trolling which occurs when someone declares that Santa and Jesus are white. At first, I thought this was a nod to “hey, this is how we portray things, so shut up.” It is that, but pro-wrestling, of all things, saw the racial subtext very well. Doesn’t Christmas create a culture of dependency? Shouldn’t kids work for gifts?
• Two carols. “I saw three ships” is a short but really elegant, interesting listen: “I saw three ships,” “O Holy Night”
• Finally, Carey Pietsch’s short comic “Connection Lost” nails something afflicting generations post-Internet. We grow up with people we increasingly take for granted, because we have to.

Lots worth reading. Let’s get started:

• A little old, but “Everything you need to know about gov’t shutdown.” Also: this is a nice parody of what’s happening in DC. Weigel’s got a lot of good stuff, including this incredibly sad piece about how unless it absolutely has to be done (and even then, there’s a lot of people who don’t understand the danger of “not paying bills”), there is no room for “regular order” in Congress. His “Shutdown Diary” is a briefer version of the same case, one I tend to agree with: this is “democracy off the rails.” I’m not going to give you any pro-shutdown links, because I think for the most part they’re fantastically stupid. However, NRO’s Robert Costa is doing some solid reporting on House R’s and you can learn a lot from his twitter.
• Kiera Feldman, who writes for The Nation, does some amazing, challenging reporting. From a while ago: this story of abuse at a megachurch is sickening on so many levels. The story that’s on my mind is one about settlers in illegal Israeli settlements. To say it is a complex issue and that a lot more has to be done for peace would be the epitome of understatements.
• I take this to be more about certain communities than any particular one: “My children will never reject me,” I remember saying. They adored me. Later I discovered it was more complicated than that.
• Elliott Holt has a moving and powerful essay about her mother’s death and neighbors in the nytimes.
• If you want something completely different, you can watch Svetlana Chmakova draw a dragon for 12 minutes or so.
• Lute music!

If you’ve been reading “The Archaeology of the Soul,” you’ll notice my last two entries have been quite heavily influenced by it. Usually I come across an idea about metaphor or theme in a book that requires some modification when brought to another work. The ideas I’ve encountered from Benardete recently have a directness and power impossible to avoid. I’m seeing them in nearly everything I read to an unprecedented degree.

• If you haven’t seen Leigh Lahav’s “Fangirls” cartoon yet, you’re missing out.
• Weigel points to this argument by one Brian Walsh that a number of conservative groups are only after money, nothing more. 99% of the “he’s a RINO he’s not conservative” stuff are scams, truly indistinguishable from e-mail spam. I wonder if for a time the Democratic party was going through the same thing, that a good portion of the base was throwing money at con-artists pretending to be activists.
• In “things to make you sick” news: “In December 2009, a Wyoming woman was raped with a knife sharpener in her home after an ex-boyfriend assumed her identity and posted a Craigslist ad that read, “Need an aggressive man with no concern or regard for women.” Her ex and the man who raped her are both serving long prison sentences.”
• Paul Theroux: “My nephew Justin is an actor, and he didn’t get a lot of encouragement. Everyone needs encouragement. I think you need someone to say, at some stage, particularly someone not in your family, “I read you” or “I saw you onstage”—whatever it is. “Good going. You’ve got it.”
• Julia Lezhneva sings the “Alleluia” from Mozart’s “Exultate Jubilate”

Writing. A lot. Some things that should be of interest:

• Via LGF, one of the best things I’ve read on Syria. Tom Nichols: “…the use of chemical weapons in this way and on this scale against civilians would trigger a response from the United States no matter who’s in office.” Also: Slate has a report on how the President decided that Assad did use the weapons. There’s plenty of good anti-war links out there, too, but I think I’d better link to what has become an extreme minority opinion at the moment.
• On reddit, there’s a little discussion about Leo Strauss. Redditor “pyth” did a great job of talking about the issue in the comments and because of him, I took a look at the Zuckert’s “The Truth about Leo Strauss” book. I recommend it: the introduction alone is an excellent study of how conspiracy theory and rumors can become a mainstream narrative. Of interest, though, might be my comment on the whole of the thread.
• Shared Walter Kirn’s ultimately hopeful essay about the Ivy League drug scene with many of you, but here it is just in case.
• Russell Jacoby’s rant about professors being a bit “careerist” strikes a nerve.
• “An analysis by the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research found that more than a quarter of fast-food workers have kids to feed. But when McDonald’s launched a budgeting website in July to help its employees budget with their current wages, critics sneered that even McDonald’s was admitting its workers couldn’t survive on what they were being paid. The “sample budget” provided included a second job, no money for kids, no money for heat and $20 a month for health insurance.”
• And one of the most beautiful recordings I’ve come across recently. Yo-Yo Ma and Ton Koopman perform Bach’s Air

Some very good links, but it’s all really depressing. I hope to have some good news for us all soon:

• Matt Taibbi makes a powerful case that the federal government is getting a nice bit of profit from student loans. Or to put it another way: the gov’t is making a quick and obviously unsustainable buck from allowing entire generations to be completely swamped with debt. The passage that I’m probably going to be dumping on facebook and elsewhere: Another debtor, a 38-year-old attorney who suffered a pulmonary embolism and went into default as a result, is now more than $100,000 in debt. Bedridden and fully disabled, he accepts he will likely be in debt until his death. He asked that his name be withheld because he doesn’t want to incur the wrath of the government by disclosing the awful punch line to his story: After he qualified for federal disability payments in 2009, the Department of Education quickly began garnishing $170 a month from his disability check.
• Garance Franke-Ruta visits the RNC’s Summer Meeting to find out how the GOP is going to get more women voting for them.
• The Surprising Truth about Government Fraud – I’ll add this: if you’re in the position of giving out money, you can’t really worry about fraud first. You should be worried about being blamed if the money doesn’t ever get out of your hands. A friend the other day was talking about how the food stamp people will ask you if there’s anyone pregnant in your household before they ask anything else, even your name. As horrific as the government is with regards to the student loan crisis, that’s probably the exact right question when it comes to benefits.
• Karl Richter plays an amazing harpsichord solo in Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto 5

Sorry for the lack of updates. Thinking a lot about dissertation chapters and writing slowly. Irritated at myself for not getting more done.

• The Ghost Rapes of Bolivia (h/t Amanda Ball): a lot of you saw this on facebook and responded appropriately. It is a necessary read, but will make you sick to your stomach.
• Freeman Dyson on Robert Oppenheimer: When you wonder about the problem of Socrates, you don’t just wonder about the threat he poses to the city. You also wonder about what are and are not rational questions. Is asking what is justice rational? Is political prudence reasonable? How do these things link or not link with the quest for scientific truth? There’s a bit of “he sucked at math” physicist snark in Dyson’s write-up, but that larger problem seems to be there too.
• The Attorney General, Eric Holder, does a very good thing (h/t Weigel). I should note I don’t quite agree with the commentary I linked to; I am not worried about rule of law because the Executive is slack in enforcing some laws. I’m almost always more worried about the legislative branch doing something dumb and populist and, I dunno, condemning a whole generation of Americans to prison because of carelessness. I think these matters are those of degree.
• Speaking of political prudence, let’s not forget that emotional manipulation and bullying can… um… get one pretty far
• With thanks to Ricky McAlister – I’ll be buying this Kafka-come-to-life game shortly: “Papers, Please”

“Can Diamond Dallas Page Save Wrestling’s Walking Dead?” – the best way to introduce this story is through this statement from V.S. Pritchett that has been turning over and over again in my mind recently:

As Huck Finn and old Jim drift down the Mississippi from one horrifying little town to the next and hear the voices of men quietly swearing at each other across the waters; as they pass the time of day with scroungers, rogues, murderers, the lonely women, the frothing revivalists, the maundering boatmen and fantastic drunks of the river towns, we see the human wastage that is left in the wake of a great effort of the human will, the hopes frustrated, the idealism which has been whittled down to eccentricity and craft. These people are the price paid for building a new country.

• Kanye Quest 3030 (h/t Ricky McAlister) is a short, free RPG (download). Highly recommended – lots of jokes about rap and game mechanics are put together well (note what Tupac doesn’t have).
• Still reading this thing on “Groundswell” (h/t LGF; Weigel’s take I’m inclined to agree with). I’m put off by the sinister tones of the piece – okay, some conservatives are really into messaging and coordination. Fine. What bugs me is the larger question of what the future of conservatism is. It seems to me only a few voices are joining in unison to drown a number of others out.  That the power of populist rage is being wildly overestimated as 1) good for America and 2) something that can win elections. (North Carolina is not a future any party should wish for. Wait until the backlash.)
• So you’re really angry that the gun you’ve been using to kill everyone in online video game play has been weakened because of balance issues. This means you send death threats to the developers, right? (h/t Ricky McAlister & Emory Rowland) More on gaming coming soon, very soon.

Edited two posts. Think this commentary on Eliza Griswold’s “Modern City” is much, much clearer. It’s still pretty difficult; I’m trying to get at the problem of how human perspective is some kind of appropriation. Think “Skyrim and Political Philosophy” will fly and if there’s something that’s just way too unclear there, let me know – I think the recent edits made one of the more obscure passages a lot better.

Of interest:

• “The US is willing to release the five prisoners without the condition that the Taliban denounce al Qaeda. The Taliban have refused to denounce al Qaeda or even sever ties with the group since the US invasion of Afghanistan in the fall of 2001.”
• This breakdown of Chris Bosh’s defense in Game 7 is a really good read. Seemed like he was in position to challenge multiple attempts to score on a lot of plays. Also, see Tim Donaghy’s breakdown of the ref’s calls in Game 7. And, um, this.
• Every day I learn more respect for what journalists do. Here’s Weigel’s recollection of Michael Hastings.
• Stephen Colbert’s tribute to his late mother needs no comment.

• I live in a country that wants to negotiate with the Taliban.  (primary source here, if you need it) – Well, at least Superman stands for something. -
• In Pakistan, a female suicide bomber blew herself up on a bus carrying other female students. Then the same group that blew up the bus attacked the hospital where the wounded were taken.
• “Since the mid-1970s, the state has executed 77 people. Florida has also exonerated 24 people who’ve been sentenced to die—the most of any state. In other words, for every three inmates executed, one is set free.” Take a guess which state is trying to expedite executions, even though it has more than likely murdered one of its own falsely?
• Claire Berlinski’s account of what happened at Taksim Square in Turkey is a must-read.
• Many thanks to Ricky McAlister for recommending “Hemlock,” which is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever read. It’s a webcomic about an 800 year old witch in a pretty dysfunctional marriage. It has a tenderness and dare I say grace of its own; the end of the first chapter was moving. You should read about the author and note how old she probably is. Tonight I’ll talk with Mom and we’ll probably reach the conclusion that nothing will ever change in our crazy world. Part of me thinks we really need to take a chance and let some younger people start leading, right here, right now (and I don’t mean me. I’m too old). It’s really amazing what they can see, especially in light of our blinding ourselves with excuses.

Two graduation speeches of note. First one I’d like to which I’d like to call your attention is this gem by Ben Bernanke; the quote about meritocracy has gone viral, but is worth repeating in full:

We have been taught that meritocratic institutions and societies are fair. Putting aside the reality that no system, including our own, is really entirely meritocratic, meritocracies may be fairer and more efficient than some alternatives. But fair in an absolute sense? Think about it. A meritocracy is a system in which the people who are the luckiest in their health and genetic endowment; luckiest in terms of family support, encouragement, and, probably, income; luckiest in their educational and career opportunities; and luckiest in so many other ways difficult to enumerate — these are the folks who reap the largest rewards. The only way for even a putative meritocracy to hope to pass ethical muster, to be considered fair, is if those who are the luckiest in all of those respects also have the greatest responsibility to work hard, to contribute to the betterment of the world, and to share their luck with others.

The other, by Jonathan Safran Foer, makes a point I’m well aware of and do not speak about enough. We are experts at using technology to keep others at a distance.

A few other things:

• Sviatoslav Richter plays Bach’s Well Tempered Clavichord, First Part, No.2 in C Minor BWV 847
• Svetlana Chmakova’s Sherlock Holmes fan girl comic is a lot of fun. You’ll have to look at the right side of the page to navigate it in order, I think.
• Been enjoying Mike Prada’s basketball analysis greatly. I’m still a big fan of Charley Rosen’s, though I disagree with his prediction of San Antonio winning the series. As awesome as Game 1 was, I think I saw that the Spurs offense really depends on how well they know a defense. Change up your defense and they’ll start showing hesitation that can be exploited. True for any team, but maybe more true of the Spurs given the brand of basketball they play. I also think Rosen is forgetting how good a coach Spoelstra is. He’s not overmatched in the least. His adjustments are simpler and he has created a devastating defense despite a lack of powerful bigs. In any case, here’s Prada dissecting a certain block very, very well.