For as long as I can remember, I have harbored this fantasy that when I die, there will be some benevolent being or beings who will answer all of my questions about the mysteries of life and the universe. I never remember caring much for other purported aspects of "Heaven", like good food or clouds or temperate weather etc. I want(ed) answers!
As my good friend Fred* pointed out, it would be like the bonus features at the end of the DVD of your life.
So, though I am now nearly certain that I will never get this wish for answers fulfilled, I would like to begin recording the questions I would ask here. Feel free to add yours in a comment.
+ What the hell was going on before the Big Bang?
+ Is ESP bullshit?
+ How many native people lived in the Americas before white people and their diseases killed most of them?
+ What's the deal with the Voynich Manuscript?
*Not his real name.
30 May 2008
22 April 2008
Donate The Rebate!
As I'm sure those American readers out there are well aware, our federal government will be sending out rebate checks to most taxpayers this May in an effort to stimulate our faltering economy. Given the ballooning federal deficit and many challenges facing our country currently, I feel this rebate is recklessly ill-advised. To boot, many economists predict it will have almost no effect on the economy whatsoever.
Thus, I intend to donate my rebate to organizations doing the work I wish my federal tax dollars were doing. I encourage you not only to do the same, but also to take that further scary step of urging those around you to do it too! Crazy, I know.
Thus, I intend to donate my rebate to organizations doing the work I wish my federal tax dollars were doing. I encourage you not only to do the same, but also to take that further scary step of urging those around you to do it too! Crazy, I know.
09 February 2008
2008 US Presidential Election, Vol. 3: Space Nixon
Anyone else think Republican candidate Mike Huckabee looks like a cross between Kevin Spacey and Richard Nixon?
06 February 2008
2008 US Presidential Election, Vol. 2: What Makes A Good President and the Vulnerability Of Hope
I just read an article in the New Yorker about the role of charisma in making a good leader called The Choice: The Clinton-Obama battle reveals two very different ideas of the Presidency. The article contrasts Clinton as capable of navigating the government's beauracracy toward incremental (but lasting?) change and Obama as a transformational idealist capable of bringing disparate groups together around common interests (I'm paraphrasing, possibly ham-fistedly). I am willing to buy into these characterizations somewhat, but was left wondering which type of person would make the better president.
So I started trawling the internet for articles by presidential historians (PHs) about what sort of president is the best sort of presdient. It seems that most PHs consider the best presidents in US history to be George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. To quote a Rolling Stone article by a PH (about why Bush may go down in history as one of the worst presidents ever):
"These were the men who guided the nation through what historians consider its greatest crises: the founding era after the ratification of the Constitution, the Civil War, and the Great Depression and Second World War. Presented with arduous, at times seemingly impossible circumstances, they rallied the nation, governed brilliantly and left the republic more secure than when they entered office."
(As a sidenote, by contrast: "Calamitous presidents, faced with enormous difficulties -- Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Hoover and now Bush -- have divided the nation, governed erratically and left the nation worse off. In each case, different factors contributed to the failure: disastrous domestic policies, foreign-policy blunders and military setbacks, executive misconduct, crises of credibility and public trust.")
Randy Allgaier, in a very thoughtful post on his "unabashedly liberal" blog The Alligator, calls this ideal person The Transformational President, and comes to the conclusion that Barack Obama has the potential to be just such a president.
I voted for Obama yesterday in the Democractic Primary process for similar reasons to what Allgaier outlines in the above blogpost. (I'm not a registered Democrat, but my state has open primaries, so I went for it.) Since then, however, I've been having a bit of a crisis of conscience. It's taken me a day or so to figure out what was brewing, but I think a big part of it is this: In the furor over Obama, I have somehow let down my very cynical guard toward politicians, and now that I have, the prospect of disappointment is making me feel very vulnerable. What follows feels very much like a confession, given how totally naive I think it is to let oneself become enamored of politicians or to let oneself look for transformation in the political process.
First, I will be bitterly disappointed if Obama does not achieve the nomination. Second, if he does, I will be bitterly disappointed if he does not win the national election. Third, I will be bitterly disappointed if he wins and governs badly, becomes embroiled in the typical political scandals, panders to this and that special interest, ignores issues I find to be of near-crisis-level importance currently (climate change, our disastrous pre-emptive foreign policy, education primarily).
Yes, to dare to dream of a transformational leader feels very good, but the cynic in me feels incredibly vulnerable now, considering what recent history tells us about politics in this country.
So I started trawling the internet for articles by presidential historians (PHs) about what sort of president is the best sort of presdient. It seems that most PHs consider the best presidents in US history to be George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. To quote a Rolling Stone article by a PH (about why Bush may go down in history as one of the worst presidents ever):
"These were the men who guided the nation through what historians consider its greatest crises: the founding era after the ratification of the Constitution, the Civil War, and the Great Depression and Second World War. Presented with arduous, at times seemingly impossible circumstances, they rallied the nation, governed brilliantly and left the republic more secure than when they entered office."
(As a sidenote, by contrast: "Calamitous presidents, faced with enormous difficulties -- Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Hoover and now Bush -- have divided the nation, governed erratically and left the nation worse off. In each case, different factors contributed to the failure: disastrous domestic policies, foreign-policy blunders and military setbacks, executive misconduct, crises of credibility and public trust.")
Randy Allgaier, in a very thoughtful post on his "unabashedly liberal" blog The Alligator, calls this ideal person The Transformational President, and comes to the conclusion that Barack Obama has the potential to be just such a president.
I voted for Obama yesterday in the Democractic Primary process for similar reasons to what Allgaier outlines in the above blogpost. (I'm not a registered Democrat, but my state has open primaries, so I went for it.) Since then, however, I've been having a bit of a crisis of conscience. It's taken me a day or so to figure out what was brewing, but I think a big part of it is this: In the furor over Obama, I have somehow let down my very cynical guard toward politicians, and now that I have, the prospect of disappointment is making me feel very vulnerable. What follows feels very much like a confession, given how totally naive I think it is to let oneself become enamored of politicians or to let oneself look for transformation in the political process.
First, I will be bitterly disappointed if Obama does not achieve the nomination. Second, if he does, I will be bitterly disappointed if he does not win the national election. Third, I will be bitterly disappointed if he wins and governs badly, becomes embroiled in the typical political scandals, panders to this and that special interest, ignores issues I find to be of near-crisis-level importance currently (climate change, our disastrous pre-emptive foreign policy, education primarily).
Yes, to dare to dream of a transformational leader feels very good, but the cynic in me feels incredibly vulnerable now, considering what recent history tells us about politics in this country.
17 January 2008
The Graphological Implications of Rampant Computer Use
Here's something I've been thinking about off and on since about 1999. It was at that time, when I was working at the Strand Bookstore, that I acquired a copy of Your Handwriting Can Change Your Life by Vimala Rodgers.
Yes, handwriting analysis, or graphology, may well be the worst kind of pseudo-science (though certainly trumped by astrology and phrenology); however, I do find it an interesting construct when considered as a metaphorical extension of Freud's "superego" (Not his actual superego! His idea of it. (Furthermore, don't jump to the conclusion that I habitually turn to Freud for useful commentary on human emotional structures. It's an occasional turning, to be sure.)). In handwriting, we find one of the clearest and most cross-culturally consistent expressions of self-as-social-arbiter. Diaries aside, when one writes something, one intends for it to be legible; one is seeking to be understood, to communicate.
Given the psychic and cultural position of handwriting, what does it mean for (probably mostly Western) humanity that we are now transitioning away from handwriting entirely now, toward typing?
I hypothesize that this trend augurs a (possibly very scary) split between the self and its connection to the social world that surrounds it. How much more two-dimensional are our written communications now that they occur almost exclusively via typed text?
Perhaps other forms of expression will pick up the slack, or maybe the importance of our actual prose will come to dominate in a way that is equally expressive. Barring such creative work-arounds, though, I worry for each of our bridges between ego and superego.
Yes, handwriting analysis, or graphology, may well be the worst kind of pseudo-science (though certainly trumped by astrology and phrenology); however, I do find it an interesting construct when considered as a metaphorical extension of Freud's "superego" (Not his actual superego! His idea of it. (Furthermore, don't jump to the conclusion that I habitually turn to Freud for useful commentary on human emotional structures. It's an occasional turning, to be sure.)). In handwriting, we find one of the clearest and most cross-culturally consistent expressions of self-as-social-arbiter. Diaries aside, when one writes something, one intends for it to be legible; one is seeking to be understood, to communicate.
Given the psychic and cultural position of handwriting, what does it mean for (probably mostly Western) humanity that we are now transitioning away from handwriting entirely now, toward typing?
I hypothesize that this trend augurs a (possibly very scary) split between the self and its connection to the social world that surrounds it. How much more two-dimensional are our written communications now that they occur almost exclusively via typed text?
Perhaps other forms of expression will pick up the slack, or maybe the importance of our actual prose will come to dominate in a way that is equally expressive. Barring such creative work-arounds, though, I worry for each of our bridges between ego and superego.
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