RANDOM SONGS FROM MY MP3 LIST: The "mediocre songs from my computer are better than the best of the cds she owns!" edition:

"Near Wild Heaven" -R.E.M., Out of Time
"Madeline" -Yo La Tengo, ...and then nothing turned itself inside out
"Badge" -Cream
"H.C.Q. Strut" -Django Reinhardt
"Babylon" -New York Dolls, Rock and Roll

pacegirldreams: my aunt and uncle are adopting a baby girl from china and they just got pictures of her for the first time and finalized their travel dates so they were passing around cigars
notbyrondorgan: I do enjoy the occasion cigar myself
notbyrondorgan: excellent
notbyrondorgan: yay for them
spacegirldreams: they're so incredibly happy. it's very very cute
spacegirldreams: and the baby is adorable
notbyrondorgan: excellent
notbyrondorgan: better than a baby that looks like Khrushchev
spacegirldreams: well... she looks a little like khruschev actually (in one of the pictures she's banging a toy on a table in front of her)
notbyrondorgan: hehehehehehe
spacegirldreams: but like "kruschev in a cute way" says my aunt
notbyrondorgan: it's so great that we're nerds and can understand that reference

SOUND FAMILIAR?

"...transformed the slumbering majorities behind all parties into one great unorganized, structureless mass of frustrated individuals who had nothing in common except their vague apprehension that the hopes of party members were doomed, that, consequently, the most respected, articulate and representitive members of the community were fools and that all the powers that be were not so much evil as they were stupid and fraudulent."

-Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

LINK: Been to MadPony lately? Why not?

LINK: Tacitus has some interesting thoughts on Democrats:

"There's a fundamental disconnect between the popular Dem image of the President as a malapropism-prone bungler, and the fact that he continually wallops them time and again. From his mysterious ability to get their legislators to vote for a war they all deeply oppose, to precedent-shattering midterm victories, to a remarkable invulnerability to sustained criticism over very real policy flaws, ordinary partisan annoyance at these defeats is amplified a thousandfold by a nagging sense that, hey, we're getting shown up by a moron. And so derisive mythos comes back to bite 'em in the rear; good, and well-deserved. It also makes for some interesting reading whenever the President does something that, in ordinary times, would simply be accepted as a good and laudable thing. Visiting troops at war on Thanksgiving, for example."

LINK: A good debunking of all that "pristine wilderness" crap

HOWARD DEAN MIGHT BE DOING WELL WITH THAT WHOLE INTERNET THING: but he's no... oh, read about it...

LINK: Good NYT story on the iPod. I want one I want one I want one!

Too bad I asked for the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary for Christmas

ALSO: Dara, I was "where are they now"-ing you, and I came up with a paper that starts thusly. Yours?

"Discourse analysis is part of the study of how humans use language; it is a method for examining how we make sense of written and spoken language. Unlike other areas of linguistics, which are often focused on morphology, grammar, and syntax—smaller units of language—discourse analysis is concerned with "how it is that language-users interpret what other language-users intend to convey" (Yule 139)..."

It mentions Grice later on, whom you mentioned to me a few months ago. Just curious to see.

UPDATE: If you don't believe me, you can do the Google search yourself

UPDATE x2: I don't mean to freak you out or anything, but it appears that there's someone on the other side of the country with your name doing exactly what you're interested in. Frrrrrrrrrrrrrreaky.

AMUSING MISCELLANY: I did a short game of "where are they now?" with my high-school friends (mostly). My results:

A poem by Ryan Richards

Jason Bales still has a band. I find it amusing that I'm vaguely but not specifically mentioned in his bio. Allow me to Fisk:

"He concentrated on guitar by himself until the fall of ninth grade, when his friend Eric started playing the drums. They got together and made some progressively less obnoxious racket over the course of high school."

I was there. The only reason it got less obnoxious is because he switched from electric to acoustic guitar.

"Twelve different lineups of their band came and went, but through it all the core was always Jason's axe and Eric's skins."

I was there, again, for most of those lineups. Most of the people who left did so for what we might politely term "creative differences" with Jason. Andy Nicholson and I used to occasionally stop playing in the middle of songs to see if Jason and Eric notice. They never did.

"The best of these incarnations was called Captain Obvious."

Actually, the best was Eric, Jason, Andy (with the guitar tuned to three different notes, which did not make a chord), me on bass, and Aaron Adams. But different people might have different opinions on that one.

"Captain Obvious was the last incarnation, and the only one to play a gig that was not in a band member's basement."

When he's right, he's right.

I VERY MUCH AGREE WITH ALL THE FOLLOWING:

The text of the Hungarian Ambassador's recent speech at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame includes some very admirable sentiments, my favorites of which I note here:

"We used to listen to this stuff at night and as we listened to this radio, as we listened to Radio Luxemburg, we were suddenly out of our bodies and our soul was part of the free world."

"Try, if you haven't tried it, the excitement of strumming a Stratocaster. I think that's the closest you can get to heaven before you really get there."

LINK: Harrowingly brilliant takedown of modern literature:

"My hatred of contemporary literature has reached such a fever pitch that I am willing to be clownish in my depiction of it--to spew obscenities in ostensibly literary contexts or to chop books to bits with a hatchet in the pages of respectable journals. I am less and less capable of intellectual engagement with contemporary fiction because I feel like I've been had when I do so: the very process of literary analysis legitimizes a body of work that I feel is unworthy of such attention. My generation has inherited a tradition that has grown increasingly esoteric and exclusionary, falsely intellectual and alienating to the mass of readers, and just as falsely comforting to those in the club. In place of centuries of straightforward class discrimination, the twentieth century invented an elitist rhetoric intelligible to only the most diligent and educated of readers--a club that didn't exclude anyone per se, but made you work very, very hard to join. In the process we lost not just the eye but the respect of the reading public, a respect that every generation since the advent of modernism has strived for unsuccessfully, trying to entice readers back into the fold with delicately carved morsels of rotting flesh they try to pass off as prime rib. "

LINK: I thought Bush's visit to Baghdad was the right mix of good policy and good politics. I'm not the only one.

LINK: Mark Steyn on what needs to happen next in foreign policy. Great quote:

"The point is, any answer will do, as in the end they’ll all have to be whacked."
-On which terrorist group should be held responsible for the Turkey bombings

The guilty undertaker sighs
the lonesome organ grinder cries
the silver saxophones say I should refuse you
the cracked bells and washed-up horns
blow into my face with scorn
but it's not that way, I wasn't born to lose you

PREDICTION: It will take me 10 hours to get to Chicago

UPDATE: Good news! It only took me 8. For a five hour trip. I'm never going anywhere for Thanksgiving again.

WHY DO SMOKE DETECTORS CHIRP INTERMITTENTLY WHEN THEY'RE RUNNING LOW ON BATTERY POWER?

Why did I not realize I had one in my bedroom until five minutes ago?

Precious sleep...

LINK: Interesting article on the phenomenon R.E.M. used to be. I jumped on the bandwagon at the last possible moment to do so before they began selling out on their principles (this would be '93, I believe).

I always found it interesting that R.E.M. has something in the neighborhood of 30 songs they had written before they had a record deal that never got recorded (even Becky has probably never heard "Bodycount," "Permanent Vacation," or my personal favorites of the old tracks, "Narrator" and "Wait!"). Somewhere around when Peter Buck and Michael Stipe wrote "Gardening at Night" (whilst sitting on a mattress in front of the converted church they lived in during college), they set about self-mythologizing to an extent you'd never believe (Peter Buck often attempted to claim that he wasn't very skilled as a guitar player. Speaking as one myself, I feel free to pronounce that claim utter bullshit).

And then 1995 rolls around, and they're doing big goofy tours again, firing their longtime manager, making megadeals, continuing on without one of their original members, and generally doing everything humanly possible to violate the good memories their fans still might have regarding them. Time was, Michael Stipe was something like the definitive word in American cool (I still have a notebook that consists entirely of things he referenced that I went out and read, listened to, etc... and he was right about what was good about 90% of the time); now he's just your embarrassing uncle with the bad toupee whom everyone is to nice to say anything to.

As Peter Buck once said, "R.E.M. is part lies, part heart, part truth, and part garbage." Amen to that.

LINK: I hold my ground reasonably well in this discussion on danieldrezner.com.

OH, THAT'S THE DEMOCRACY PART: Glenn Reynolds

"BUSH'S BUDGET: David Bernstein writes:

"Compassionate conservatism" seems to have turned out to be a replay of the Nixon strategy of buying off every conceivable interest group that is capable of being bought off by a Republican admnistration, while using social issues and conservative rhetoric to appease the Republican masses. Nixon, at least, had the excuse of governing in an era when liberalism was at its apex, and with the constraints imposed by the other two branches of government, dominated by liberal Democrats. What is George Bush's excuse?

The excuse, I think, is that this worked for Nixon -- who was reelected in a landslide and left office for, um, non-budgetary reasons. And the reason that it worked is that, in some sense, this is what voters want, however unfortunate that may be."

Shame on the American people for getting what they want out of government! Don't they know that libertarians know what's best for them?

QUOTE: from Dan Drezner's comments, on my comment (which is the same as three posts down):

"I want to thank Nicholas, for making me feel less cynical as he appears to have the market cornered. What Dan and other commentators here have described is the current run on the bank syndrome afflicting both major parties at the exact same time here in Washington. Hasn't it ever thus been so, world-weary Nicholas asks? Indeed not."

Wow... market cornered on cynicism... 'world weary...' and I'm not even 22. Go me!

QUOTE: From Matthew Ygelsias:

"Any compromise with Greenery is unacceptable, no matter what the office is or who the opponent is. The Greens give no quarter to the Democrats, and no self-respecting Democrat should be associating himself with them, even in a "nonpartisan" election."

LINK: I just went trolling through Brad DeLong's blog, and came across this, which got the "ain't that the truth" snicker.

WELL: It seems like a whole lot of people are getting worked up over a pretty standard outcome for our political system.

I'm not a libertarian, so maybe that's why I don't see this as a problem; even if it is a problem, it seems obvious that this is a structural flaw built into our political system, and nothing is likely to change it. Parties get elected into power on the basis of receiving votes from people, many of whom are affiliated with certain groups (or work for certain companies) that have an economic interest in seeing certain changes in law go their way. The party that is in a position to do so always tries to pay off it's supporters, and expand their base of support, especially when there's minimal risk involved.

And what's the risk here, really, for the Republicans? There are essentially only two bad things that even possibly could happen:

1. Democrats will try and accuse them of selling out to interest groups-- at which point Republicans need only assert that their "sell-out" created the much sought-after prescription-drug benefit (or, at worst, they can say that the Democrats would only do something similar if they were in power...which is true, as Pejman's post demonstrates)

2. Libertarians like Dan, Andrew, Pejman and Tyler Cowen will all decide not to vote for Republican candidates... except this will never happen. At worst, they'll stay home (but given their dedication to politics, that outcome is unlikely); if a particular Republican candidate is running close to a Democrat, they will probably go out and vote for said candidate, even if they have to find other reasons to do so.

So, you know, good show Republican Party!

CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? Andrew Sullivan says:

"The GOP has now no crediibility as a party of fiscal discipline or small government. It's just another tool of special interests - as beholden to them as the Dems are to theirs*."

Shocking, isn't it, that a bill which is in the interest of a portion of the voting public is against the interests of another part of the voting public. Can you believe the gall of the Republicans--and the Democrats, for that matter--knowingly playing partisan politics so they can pass bills to help people who are generally ideologically aligned with them. For shame.

Next, you'll be telling me that the major parties target certain blocs of swing voters and try to woo them with policy. What is democracy coming to? Where are the philosopher-kings who can rule justly, ignoring everyone's interests equally?

*and here I thought the Republicans were the party of financial growth through short-term applications of money to appropriate sectors of the economy, whereas Democrats were the party of financial growth through a long-term strengthening of institutions that create conducive social conditions for future growth. But what do I know?

LINK: Our Girl In Chicago does her own list of art/artists she doesn't particularly care for (apropos this, which has an interesting discussion in the comments section). I'll take a stab at a list. I don't get:

writers: Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, Ezra Pound (making an exception for "A Pact"), Leo Tolstoy in his novels (short stories and letter are an exception), Walt Whitman, Marcel Proust, Jack Kerouac (and all the Beat "writers")

Painters? Monet, Raphael (have me tell you the story about when I laughed at a Raphael I was probably not supposed to be laughing at), Reubens, everything in the 20th century that's not Picasso, Jackson Pollock or Willem de Kooning.

Movies? I thought The Matrix was the embodiment of the dumb kids in philosophy 202 who didn't really get what philosophy was about. Otherwise, it was overly violent and short on plot. Reading the TwoBlowhards discussion, I'll throw in Godfather II, which is a pretty good movie that's ruined by all those flashbacks, but even the good part mostly is just stealing the good bits from the first one.

I'll throw in an extra category, since I'm a Theory guy: thinkers I respect but could totally do without: Hegel, George Berkeley, Thomas Aquinas, Alexis de Tocqueville (it's my professional mission in life to see that no undergraduate ever has to read him again)

WELL: It's been a Dylan-y sort of day in Ann Arbor... figures, since I couldn't speak at all for most of the day, that I chose someone who has enough words for the both of us.

Today, especially, Nashville Skyline--in which Bob Dylan sings like a normal human being(!)

QUESTION OF THE WEEK: feel free to have your say:

Will President Bush be re-elected in 2004?

You may find this map of the distribution of electoral votes in 2000 and this chart of the distribution of electoral votes in 2004 to be helpful.

UPDATE: As Becky's requested, you can view a reasonably up-to-date listing of which candidates have raised how much money here.

LINK & QUOTE: I found this David Brooks column to be especially compelling. To wit:

"Anybody who has several sexual partners in a year is committing spiritual suicide. He or she is ripping the veil from all that is private and delicate in oneself, and pulverizing it in an assembly line of selfish sensations.

But marriage is the opposite. Marriage joins two people in a sacred bond. It demands that they make an exclusive commitment to each other and thereby takes two discrete individuals and turns them into kin.

Few of us work as hard at the vocation of marriage as we should. But marriage makes us better than we deserve to be. Even in the chores of daily life, married couples find themselves, over the years, coming closer together, fusing into one flesh. Married people who remain committed to each other find that they reorganize and deepen each other's lives. They may eventually come to the point when they can say to each other: "Love you? I am you."..."

and also:

"But in fact we are not animals whose lives are bounded by our flesh..."

Which is to say that I'm fairly well convinced now on this gay marriage thing. It's not unlike the abortion question, where I have some particular feelings on the issue involved, but I see the larger social benefit of keeping the option open. David Brooks is just... so... exactly on. I still have all my reservations about doing this through the courts and not the legislature (some of you have heard me explain why Roe v Wade needs to be overturned to get some semblance of sanity back into that debate, and I find the finding of law in the case to be somewhat suspect (though my oppostion to the kin of Griswold is well known)), but, well, I guess I don't really have any other objection.

HAIL TO THE VICTORS!

LET'S ROCK AND ROLL THIS HOOTCHIE COO:

you'll notice I now have comments on the bottom of each post, as per Dara's request. I figure that, in addition to commenting on my regular posts, I'll put a special Question of the Week up each Sunday, probably vaguely political in character. Post! Re-post! Tell your friends! It'll be crazy...

Also note the new name, derived from the one of Kierkegaard's psuedonyms that tends to accord most closely to my own views (he wrote The Sickness Unto Death as Anti-Climacus)

COLOR ME IMPRESSED: David got half the score right. Good work!

Wild keg parties on the south side of campus for everyone!!!

RANDOM SONGS FROM MY MP3 LIST:

"Everyword Means No" -Let's Active (featuring Mitch Easter, who produced the first two R.E.M. albums)
"Born for Me" -Paul Westerberg, Nick Hornby's Songbook
"Three Is a Magic Number" -Blind Melon, School House Rock Rocks!

and also:
"London Calling" -The Clash, London Calling ("phony Beatlemania has bitten the dust..." damn straight)
"Most Likely You'll Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine" -Bob Dylan, Blonde on Blonde (I once wrote a song that was a parody of Bob Dylan songs with overly lengthy titles (see also: "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again"), which I called "Stuck Outside a Train Station a Week from Next Tuesday with a Swampland Heartache." I'll play it for you sometime, if you like)
"Distopian Dream Girl" -Built to Spill (from the mix cd Becky made for me sophomore year)

don't forget:
"Wooden Ships" -Crosby, Stills and Nash, Crosby Stills and Nash
"Graveyard Shift" -Uncle Tupelo, No Depression
"Raw Power" -Iggy and the Stooges, Raw Power

SNAPS FOR: Becky, who will be hugging trees professionally for the League of Conservation Voters.

LINK: as Woody Allen once said, "pithy, yet degenerate"

LET'S NOT PRETEND LIKE WE CARE ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE:

"One of the best things about Big Ten football is the trophies. Purdue and Indiana play Saturday for the Old Oaken Bucket. Minnesota won Paul Bunyan's Axe from Wisconsin, but lost the Little Brown Jug to Michigan.


The Ohio State-Michigan game has a trophy, too. It's called the Big Ten Championship..."

LINK: Here's an interesting parlor game for you.

QUOTE: A nice evenheaded statement of priorities from Diotima, which I find totally unobjectionable, and I note mostly because you'll never hear someone on the left talking this much sense:

"If we on the Right want our elected officials to be more true to conservative ideals, complaining and proclaiming our votes now up for grabs aren't going to accomplish that. We have to focus on making the enactment of our policy preferences the politically expedient thing to do. We are far more likely to have a president who supports conservative policies by convincing the people to demand those policies than by merely electing someone who talks like a conservative or who has acted like a conservative in the past."

HAHA: Very amusing story from madpony involving Liz Phair...

WELL: I think it'd be interesting sometime to see various college-age bloggers put together a list of interesting opening lines from lectures they've heard. I had one such instance today, in my Marxism and the Soviet Experiment class with Neil Harding (who wrote, among other things, the monumental Lenin's Political Thought). In reference to the fact that we were going to spend the second half of class discussing possible paper topics, thus truncating the lecture, he said:

"I don't wish I had more time to discuss Brezhnev. I wish I had less time to discuss him."

I thought that was pretty good.

OH: And I've blogrolled a few new people today. Who they are:

Michael J Totten-- fellow angry-lefter, I do believe

evenagelical outpost-- quite amusing, with occasional asides into what makes evangelicals tick that reminds me of my good old days in MEFC (and I mean that without the irony)

plainsman-- general goodness, though he has one of those... uh... job things... which makes the frequency of posting a little light

Yale Diva-- because I approve of fabulousness in all of its iterations. And Elle Woods references. And smirky right-wing politics.

(just in case you're curious, Plainsman and evangelical outpost both scored close to me on the political compass test)

QUESTION: Does anyone find themselves wishing that the Supreme Court had denied cert to Griswold v. Connecticut? Even if you agree with the decisions being made by SCOTUS and elsewhere (and I do, with some reservations, for the most part), I'm very uncomfortable with the position taken by most justices that they get the right to determine legislative intent (i.e., "what this statement in this particular law/the state constitution/etc really means is..."). Nothing good can come of that.

QUOTE: Matthew Yglesias:

"Like all single people, the one thing my previous relationships have all had in common is failure, so I clearly don't really know what I'm doing."

HEH: Dan Drezner:

"Quote of the day

From Andrew Sullivan:

So we have to pick between a budget-busting, free-spending, entitlement-expanding Republican and a Democrat opposed to many critical aspects of a free and dynamic economy. We're stuck between a reckless liberal and a regulatory liberal. It's the 1970s all over again - and too depressing for words.

Sigh."

This does complicate the below just a bit, but there's a way of getting out of that problem, which I'll write about when I don't have to make changes to my writing sample to get it to one of my letter of recommendation people in, oh, an hour.

ARE THE DEMOCRATS A PERMANENT MINORITY PARTY*?

*(For the next 20-30 years, anyway)

My inclination is to say yes. If you accept a realist theory of democracy (and who doesn't? Well, Democrats don't, but I'll get to that in a second), you believe that voters are organized by elites based on paticular interests they have. And what's important about these interests, as opposed to voters' preferences, is that it is through them that people get paid off by political parties. That is, businessmen get paid off through the Republican Party when laws or regulations take effect that are generally good for business, the same happens with teachers' unions when Democrats are in power.

The real problem that Democrats have is that the economic interests of people have shifted away from positions that would naturally benefit Democrats. To put this somewhat bluntly: I'll be going to grad school, and getting a professorship somewhere, and will presumably meet and marry a woman who will be a similarly career-minded professional. So we'll not be rich, exactly, but we'll be upper-middle-class or so. So why is a tax cut a bad thing for me? If we accept game theory as at least a reasonably accurate model of how people make political decisions, don't most Democratic proposals ask me to put off an obvious current benefit for me in favor of a potential future benefit, only a very small portion of which will accrue to me?

Of course, you may well rejoinder, was this not how American politics was lined up for the period 1932-1968, give or take? People readily gave up current benefits for themselves in favor of general goods delivered at a later time, sometimes not at all (the tax money that went into rural electrification, for example, probably never benefitted most of the people who had paid for it). I think at least part of the answer has to do with the shift econimically within America from an industrial to a service economy, which reduces the impetus for certain types of social-good legislation (no office, no matter how bad, will compare to a early 1900s factory in terms of safety), as well as the general increase in education, which makes job skills more portable from job to job. Internationally, I think it's pretty much a fact that the world economy is remarkably stronger than it was even 50 years ago.

What does this mean? People, generally speaking, can do better for themselves economically on their own, and therefore, the tradeoffs between me-now and everyone-later look less appealing. Why is this a problem for the Democrats? Because they fail to realize this. Most Democrats will say something like, "people would be for program x if only they understood what was best for them." But politics doesn't work that way--it's not what people's preferences are (Democrats aren't even arguing this--they're talking about what people's preferences should be), it's where their interests are. People vote, in most instances, where their payoffs come from, and in most instances, those payoffs come from Republicans.

Democrats are in trouble, electorally, until they figure out how to stop trying to tell people what they should want done as public policy, and start doing things people actually do want. The problem here is that payoffs can only happen on a sufficiently large level when your party is in power. The Republicans have a lock on the House, Senate and White House at the moment, which means something else is going to have to dislodge them from power (of sufficiently large import to override people's calculations of their interests). But no such issue or issues seem to be on the horizon. Thus, I think it's gonna be a long, cold winter for Democrats.

Disagree? E-mail me, and I'll post any comments, with rejoinders.

LINK: Ah, the hypocrisy of the ACLU: every amendment in the Bill of Rights should be interpreted as expansively as possible, except...

LINK: Interesting news of a budding Anglo-Polish alliance in the EU, which is good news for the US.

LINK: There's an interesting debate over gay marriage going on over at TNR. I'm fairly agnostic on the subject, but it looks like it should be interesting.

KEY NUMBERS: 51

-How many books I have from the library, at the moment.

RANDOM SONGS FROM MY MP3 LIST:

"Pearly*" -Radiohead, Airbag/How Am I Driving? EP
"Settled Down Like Rain" -The Jayhawks, Hollywood Town Hall
"Jesus etc" -Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
"Live Forever" -Oasis, Definitely Maybe
"Bombs over Baghdad" -OutKast, Stankonia
"The Thrill of It All" -Roxy Music, Country Life

WELL: Apropos two horrid lists of the top 10 albums ever, Rolling Stone's and a guy from Crooked Timber.

I submit my own, in no particular order:

Exile on Main Street, The Rolling Stones
Everything they did from 1963-1972 was genius (excepting Their Satanic Majesties' Request), and this was the pinnacle. Best double album ever.

The Queen Is Dead, The Smiths
The Annibale Carracci of britpop at their most florid and sublime.

Horses, Patti Smith
I don't personally believe that rock and roll can ever qualify as art, but if you were to make that argument, this would be a fine place to start.

Axis: Bold as Love, Jimi Hendrix Experience
"Castles Made of Sand," "Spanish Castle Magic," no portentious extended guitar solos, no 15-minute songs. Just three guys playing the weirdest pop songs you've ever heard.

Loaded, Velvet Underground
There's a bit of dialogue in Buffy the Vampire Slayer that goes like this:
Oz [looking through Giles' records]: Wow. Either I'm moving in with you, or you're letting me borrow your albums.
Giles: I think saving the world from immanent danger is more important than any record.
Oz: Even this one? [holds up Loaded]
Giles: [long pause] Well, a case could be made, I guess...

Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen
The ultimate album for driving around the highways of metro Detroit at night (sorry The Roots Come Alive)

The Joshua Tree, U2
Not a note to be changed, front to back.

Automatic for the People, R.E.M.
My heart is forever with their earlier work, but if you don't like this, you don't have ears.

Nevermind, Nirvana
If you think that it was all about the hype, and the album wasn't really that good, go take another listen.

The Bends, Radiohead
As quoth Rolling Stone: "U2 would've sold crack to nuns to make this record."

RANDOM SONGS FROM MY MP3 LIST: "Free at Last!" edition:

"Walkin' With Jesus," -Spaceman 3
"Straight No Chaser" -Thelonious Monk (sounds a bit like "Epistrophy" to me...)
"The Shining" -Badly Drawn Boy, The Hour of the Bewilderbeast

LINK: Jiminy jillickers, Radioactive Man! Wow. That's all I have to say. Too bad it's on the other side of the country (that is, the boring side).

LINK: Check out Yale Diva. Good stuff. Blogrolling immanent.

PRESENTATION IS DONE: I was a bit of a fast-talker (God help the people who tried to follow me), but otherwise, I think all went okay. Lots of good discussion on the heirarchy of authority, the problem of heresy, and the concept of the allegorical image as a formal nullity.

Just in case you're curious what the presentation was actually on, I used Theodulf of Orleans' Libri Carolini as a basis to examine the views of Augustine on the image. Some Latin skills may have been used.

Now I have four and a half hours off (through Gilmore Girls tonight), then onto my papers on Lenin at Finland Station and the validity of the claim that the Soviet Union embodied a higher form of democracy. Fun!

RANDOM SONGS FROM MY MP3 LIST: The huge presentation edition!

"Torn and Frayed" -Rolling Stones, Exile on Main Street
"Little Babies" -Sleater-Kinney, Dig Me Out
"Sugarcube" -Yo La Tengo, I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One

IT COULD ALWAYS BE WORSE:

this morning's away message:

"why do I not have hot water?"

I said, assuming not having a shower in the morning was pretty bad (it has been). But now, of course, I have no water at all. Presumably this means they're fixing it. Presumably.

UPDATE: Water back. Still no heat.

UPDATE TO UPDATE: Called Bartonbrook, found out that our building needs a new water heater. Should be fixed in "a couple of hours."

RANDOM SONGS FROM MY MP3 COLLECTION: A little something to compensate for light blog posting, as the Augustine presentation is taking up all my free time:

"I Am One" -Smashing Pumpkins, Gish
"911 Is a Joke" -Public Enemy, Fear of a Black Planet
"Trippin' On a Hole in a Paper Heart" -Stone Temple Pilots, Tiny Music
"Monday Morning" -Pulp, Different Class
"Pleasant Valley Sunday" -The Monkees (written by Carol King)

but seriously:

"Purple Rain" -Prince, Purple Rain
"Jeepster" -T. Rex, Electric Warrior
"Gimme Danger" -Iggy and the Stooges, Raw Power

no, I mean it this time:

"Just My Imagination" -Smokey Robinson and the Miracles
"Help Save the Youth of America" -Billy Bragg, Talking with the Taxman About Poetry

the inconceivable simultaneous oneness and difference of reality (somewhere, Ryan Richards thinks this is funny):

"Time Waits for No One" -The Rolling Stones, It's Only Rock and Roll (one of their ridiculously good mid-70s singles, along with "Sway" from Sticky Fingers and "Memory Motel" from Black and Blue... they were so good when they had Mick Taylor...)

QUOTE:

"God permits all these things through his righteous government of all things, in order that he may distribute to them the kinds of bondage or the kinds of freedom that are proportioned to their own desires and choices. And if they gain something for their own evil desires when they call upon the most high God, that is a punishment and not a kindness."

-Augustine, De diversis quaestionibus 79

QUOTE:

"No, they should learn, without any pride, what has to be learned from a human teacher; and those responsible for teaching others should pass on, without pride or jealousy, the knowledge they have received."

-Augustine, De doctrina christiana 11

LINK: Hilarious--and surprising--story on Keith Richards:

"There may be more right-on or pristinely hip rock stars, but the ‘Human Riff’ represents something that we all revere: the good egg. He’s fanatically loyal not only to his mum but also to his various exes, none of whom has a bad word to say about him. He wrote the haunting ballad ‘Ruby Tuesday’ for one former girlfriend, and frequently protests his love for Anita Pallenberg (his partner from 1967 to 1980) in print. Tom Keylock remembers that he snapped at his own wife once while on the phone at Redlands. ‘Keith overheard me and I got a bollocking — it was all about “she’s your lady” and “show some respect”. I admired him for that.’ "

and also:

"Years later in Jamaica, Mick Jagger would challenge Richards — then in his ‘elegantly wasted’ phase — to a game of tennis. Sir Mick appeared for the contest dressed for Wimbledon; his opponent sported ragged jeans and kept a butt end clamped to his lip throughout. Keith won the match 6–1."

I always knew I liked the man for a reason.

Next week is going to be crazy

QUOTE: Eugene Volokh:

"Caesar: The Lilly's Gourmet Caesar dressing that I bought a few days ago says this on its label:

Caesar. The name conjures up images of Homeric heroes and Roman kings and emperors.

Yeah -- among those who don't know their history . . . ."

LINKS: re: this and especially this:

" Those who are not gays are not necessarily glum; they're straight. Those who are not brights are not necessarily dim. They might like to choose a name for themselves."

I suggest we begin calling ourselves 'brighters.' We wouldn't be saying, of course, that we were smarter than atheists because we realize that there actually is a God, we'd merely be expressing our conviction on how gee-golly-gosh good we are.

Or we could just stick to "atheist" and "theist." Either way.

ALL-TIME-DESERT-ISLAND-TOP-FIVE: Songs to listen to prior to attending a friend's shindig:

5. "Run Run Run" -The Velvet Underground
4. "Rock and Roll Star" -Oasis (as one Mojo reader once put it: "I swear you walk differently after hearing this one")
3. "Rebel Rebel" -David Bowie
2. Whatever the latest OutKast single is
1. "Lust for Life" -Iggy Pop

THIS IS JUST SORT OF AMUSING:

"ctowns87: hi nick i cant reay tak my keybard is brken because i sied cke n it but i did want t say hi and i wi tak t yu sn when it is fixed r i have a new ne"

THIS MAKES FUN OF ITSELF: no fuss, no muss!

"Nostalgia
Will Baude at 02:12 PM
Some inexplicable chain of websurfing this evening led me to think about one of the best T.V. shows ever, which I sorely miss-- MacGyver. Do any readers know if dvds, videos, etc. of old MacGyver episdoes are for sale anywhere, or if old episodes can be downloaded anywhere?"

COMPACT RANDOM SONGS FROM MY MP3 LIST: As I have work to get to:

"Arizona Skies" -Los Lobos, Kiko
"Satellite" -Luscious Jackson, In Search of... Manny
"We've Been Had" -Uncle Tupelo, Anodyne

alternatively:

"Gotta Keep Movin'" -MC5, High Time
"Can't Get There From Here" -R.E.M., Fables of the Reconstruction
"Please Please Please" -James Brown

AN ANALOGY: Which comes to mind based on the following:

"I tend to think that most things are generally done better when done thoughtfully, and marriage is no exception."

I don't wish to dissent from this line: everything is better when done thoughtfully (I wouldn't be a philosophy major if I thought otherwise). However, the thoughtful has to intersect with the practical. To refer to my field of political science, we can all generally agree that people would do best to rationally consider their interests, and to weight them accordingly. There exists some evidence to support the thesis that this is how people decide--but people don't always do this. A good theory of voting (and democracy) therefore is one which can explain how people decide, but also push them towards making more rational analyses than they currently make.

Similarly, when it comes to marriage, a good theory (it seems to me) has to balance an explanation of the way people do decide to get married with the way people ought to decide to get married.

Extra note, for the benefit of anyone who may be reading: I don't mean to suggest that trying to find a "third way," as it were, is entirely without merit; rather, it's because I see a great deal of merit in trying to bring some rationality into the idea of marriage (here being an example of a lot of people saying things which wouldn't stand up under harsher scrutiny, I think) that I think the ideas involved have to be tested out to the farthest.

WEIRDNESS:

I got addressed as the following in a response e-mail I just received:

"Mr. Troester"

Perhaps this just seems weird to me because I got this from someone who is my age--although, truth be told, I have a lot of respect for people who default to whatever honorifics are appropriate when none are specifically asked for. Nice to know, in any event, that attempting to be formally polite has not gone out the window.

WHEN I WAS SITTING IN SWEETWATERS EARLIER TODAY: Marking up for my presentation on Augustine and the image, I was reading a number of his writings with an eye to his epistemology, and it occurs to me that he has a certain formulation:

there are two types of things we can 'know:' things immediately present to us via sense experience, and the direct contents of our own mental processes.

there are a number of other facts which are present to us neither as immediate physical facts nor our own states of being (his example is that ancient Rome existed, though none of us have ever seen it), which we simply have to 'believe,' that is, accept as true even though it cannot meet the threshold for 'knowing.'

Why is this interesting? Because sometime in the late 4th Century, a pretty smart guy presaged the entire course of metaphysics and epistemology between Descartes and Kant... it's all there. Frightening.

Sort of makes you think analytic philosophy is missing something relatively important by abandoning the study of all of those 'medieval' Christian thinkers.

LINK: Hilarious

LINK: Becky will find this map of fund-raising in America to be very interesting.

NOW: I don't mean to imply that R.E.M. have turned into publicity whores who will do anything for a little exposure, but their 'latest' song (actually an outtake from Lifes Rich Pageant, which they decided not to put on the album because it was, as you may have noticed, not really a complete idea for a song--it eventually ended up as the far superior "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)") has been on Smallville and Scrubs, hardly bastions of supercoolness.

How do I know they've been on these shows? I, uh, have a friend who watches them...

QUOTE: Terry Teachout makes some sense on why NPR shouldn't get government money to essentially repeat what for-profit stations produce:

"The difference between us—as I understand it, and I may be misinterpreting Greg—is that I don’t start from the assumption that National Public Radio has an a priori obligation to exist, and thus should ensure its survival by any means necessary, even if that means scrapping musical and other cultural programming in favor of Car Talk. NPR is not a profit-making corporation. It is, or claims to be, a "public" entity, and it is subsidized in part by public monies and in-kind equivalents. Public entities exist to serve the public—but not in the same way as commercial corporations. The whole point of subsidizing a radio network is to ensure that it will do things that commercial broadcasters won’t do. In fact, there’s no other point to NPR.

Sir John Reith, the man who for all intents and purposes started the BBC, used to say that its job was to give the public "something a bit better than what it thinks it wants." (I’m quoting from memory, but that’s fairly close to what he said.) In the case of the BBC—and, once upon a not-so-distant time, NPR and PBS—that meant a significant presence for the fine arts. Now it doesn’t. But in the absence of such programming, how can NPR and PBS justify their public subsidies? I like Car Talk, but in what possible way can it be said to constitute a kind of programming not otherwise available through non-subsidized broadcast outlets?"

QUOTE: Not that my vote will matter (see below): Byron York notes the following on NRO:

"In Minnesota, for example, Democrats used to enjoy a 31-26 advantage in party identification. Now, it's 31-28 in favor of Republicans. In 2000, Bush lost the state by about 58,000 votes out of 2.4 million cast.

Next time around, with more Republicans, he might do better.

In Michigan, Democrats used to enjoy a 33-26 advantage. Now it's 31-29 in favor of Republicans. In 2000, Bush lost the state by about 217,000 votes out of 4.2 million cast.

In Iowa, Democrats used to enjoy a 32-27 advantage. Now, it's 34-27 in favor of the Republicans. In 2000, Bush lost the state by about 4,000 votes out of 1.3 million cast.

In Wisconsin, Democrats used to enjoy a 33-29 advantage. Now, it's 30-29 in favor of the Republicans. In 2000, Bush lost by about 6,000 votes out of 2.6 million cast.

Those are the states that have turned over. In some other states that Bush lost narrowly, Democrats maintain their edge — just less so.

For example, in New Mexico, Democrats used to enjoy a 40-30 advantage. Now, it's 39-35. In 2000, Bush lost by just 366 votes.

And in the most important swing state of all in 2000, Florida, Democrats used to enjoy a 38-33 advantage. Now, it's 37-36 in favor of Republicans. That means Bush might be able to build on his 537-vote landslide."

I've come to the conclusion that the 2004 election will come down to three states: Michigan, Pennsylvania and New York. If Bush can win any of those states, he'll win, because he will likely win in Florida, and no Democratic candidate can pull enough electoral votes to overcome the hurdle another 20+ electoral vote state loss would create. Democrats have to run the table to have a chance.

QUOTE: OxBlogger David Adesnik sees a little trouble on the Iraq horizon:

"According to the WaPo,

Th[is] decision represents a major shift in U.S. political strategy. Mirroring the U.S. military strategy of "Iraqification," Washington now wants to hand over as much responsibility for the political process as is feasible, as fast as it is feasible.

When you read something like that, your gut says that the Administration is getting ready to cut and run. I don't believe that just yet, but the prospect is going to gnaw at me."

And, presto, we've just opened the possibility to a situation in which I would not vote for Bush next year.

LINK: This is freakin' hilarious (note: makes more sense if you've read this :

"Unspecified Act Alleged

Two unnamed persons have allegedly done something. We cannot tell you who they are, but their pictures have been used to illustrate an unrelated article somewhere on this page. Can you find them?

Websites Named

Today we print the internet addresses of some very interesting websites where people speak freely on a number of issues. Have a look, then come back and reread the story on the previous page. It will suddenly make a lot more sense.

Unspecified Act Denied

A person who cannot be named for legal reasons has secretly denied participating in an alleged act that cannot be described for legal reasons. But you know who we mean.

Prince Charles Wears Sunglasses, Walks About, Chats To Strangers

If you don't know why this is interesting, then you need to go back to that website again. See?"

etc etc

LET THE WAR BEGIN: The Democratic Party of Clinton v. the Democratic Party of Dean. As Morrissey once sang, "come, come, armageddon, come!"

"As National Journal noted in a detailed look at what it called "Hillary Inc.," the senator's network of fund-raising organizations "has begun to assume a quasi-party status." And some of the best Clinton talent is heavily invested in non-Dean campaigns, especially Joe Lieberman's (Mandy Grunwald and Mark Penn), John Edwards's (Bruce Reed), and Wesley Clark's (Bruce Lindsey, Eli Segal, and Mickey Kantor). "

So those of you who think, as I do, that the Democratic Party is going to split up in the next couple of election cycles, this is a good sign of what's to come. I'd vote for a Hillary-led DLC-style Third Way-Democrat Party, of course, and I've expressed my desire to vote for literally any candidate over Howard Dean (even the Natural Law party guy, or the Tortskyists, or whatever). So that'd work out nicely for me.

QUOTE: Gregg Easterbrook points out a potential problem with Howard Dean's donors:

"But having catered to the well-off, mainly on tax policy, Bush is relatively free to do as he wishes on other issues, assured that his campaign treasure chest will be full. This is, in campaign-finance terms, the One Big Sell-Out theory. Supposedly, Senator Robert Kerr of Oklahoma once said that the fact that he was totally sold out to and financed by the Kerr-McGee Corporation left him free to vote his conscience on everything else.

To draw lots and lots of small contributions, on the other hand, won't Dean have to promise everything to everybody?"

RANDOM SONGS FROM MY MP3 LIST:

"Eight Miles High" -The Byrds, 5D (which is actually a really great album all the way through, including the definitive version of "Hey Joe")
"Home of the Brave" -Spiritualized, Live From Royal Albert Hall
"Australia" -The Kinks, Arthur, or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire
"Everyday is Like Sunday" -Morrissey (in which he wishes nuclear winter on the whole of the English seaside; possibly the only non-crap song of his solo career"

scratch the last two, and add:

"Dig Me Out" -Sleater-Kinney, Dig Me Out
"Sonnet" -The Verve, Urban Hymns

and also:
"One Time One Night In America" -Los Lobos

VILE

INCIDENTALLY: I have a new favorite part of the university: the slide room in Tappan Hall.

Want an in situ picture of a 9th Century apse mosaic? Would you like the lighter or darker version?

Want to get a slide of that neat bit of statuary you saw at the Cleveland Museum of Art, but you can't remember the name of the piece? Just go to the drawer marked 'Cleveland' and find it!

Even better, of course, was being in there with my professor, who just bounded around the room finding good slides for me (to wit: Me: "I need an image of a saint..." Prof. Sears [runs around for a second, then comes back]: "Here's a St. Elutherius... will this do? I also have a nice St. Roche here...").

BUT: to actually try and answer the question seriously:

like the people Diotima quotes, I have my own little informal list of personal qualities I'm looking for, which intentionally rangge from the sublime to the ridiculous, and always run something like the following:

1. Conversational ability
2. Intelligence (broadly defined)
3. Attractiveness (let's not kid ourselves, people)
4. Emotional maturity
5. Career-mindedness (that is, looking for something besides the MRS degree)
6. Must like or be able to pretend to like "Hotter Than Mojave in My Heart" by Iris DeMent
7. Must be okay with the fact that virtually all my friends are women

and, of course, there are the two big ones that function as deal-breakers, but are generally unspoken: religion and politics; for talking about marriage specifically, I'd add on having a church wedding and having children (at some point).

But to return to SB's question, as to whether the sort-of-accidental way people decide they want to marry each other is an acceptible system, I think it's reasonable to say, with Kierkegaard (albeit in a different context), that any list of things is really just "quantitative steps to a qualitative leap." That is, it strikes me as entirely possible that someone who fufills all of these requirements is someone I'd have no interest in marrying, and that someone who didn't really meet the requirements here. Ultimately, filling out the list isn't enough--there has to be something more. So I feel that it's probably just a fact structurally built into any attempt to say how people ought to choose a marriage partner that it's bound to fall short of complete explanatory power.

This is just what I think, anyway... let me know what you think.

OH, SURE; my views get dismissed because I actually answered the question asked*:

"Reader NT wrote "...the decision often appears to come as if from nowhere because no one pays any attention to the little bits and pieces of it that accumulate over time." I think that's very possibly the way it works for a lot of people, but is it the way it ought to?"

the original question, just in case you're curious:

"The conversation I've been having most often recently, it seems, has moved from the discussion of what marriage is for (which I will have more to say about eventually, never fear), to the question of how one knows when to marry and/or whom to marry? How on earth do you suddenly look at a person and decide, "I am going to marry you"?"



*this would be an example of "my tendency to use intensifiers and qualifiers quite liberally,' and generally for sarcastic but not serious ends, for those of you who don't know me personally and thus wouldn't automatically get not to take me seriously.

LINK: Interesting legal-y stuff from Jacob T Levy

LINK: A little perspective on the current Iraq mess.

Also, look at some interesting arguments from Josh Chafetz (look ma! I found the permalinks!):

"Attacks like today's, atrocious as they are, don't change that dynamic. And it's heartening to see PM Berlusconi respond that, "No intimidation will budge us from our willingness to help that country rise up again and rebuild itself with self-government, security and freedom."

Second, while it would probably be a good idea to internationalize the peacekeeping force if we had that option -- I don't believe we do, but that's another matter -- I think attacks like today's put the lie to the idea that these attacks might cease if only there were an international force in Iraq. (Lest I be accused of tilting at strawmen, Messrs. Dalyell and Corbyn both made versions of this argument at the Oxford Union debate.) The recent attacks have been against international targets -- the Red Cross, the UN, and now Italian military police.

The people carrying out these attacks -- whether they're Saddam loyalists, al Qaeda members, some other group, or some mixture of the above -- want to force a withdrawl of all international troops. And they want to do it, not because they want to see Iraq run by Iraqis, but because they want to see Iraq run by themselves. But Iraqis really do want a liberal democracy. And as long as they want that, and as long as we have the political will to stay in Iraq until the job is done, then the people carrying out atrocities like these will be defeated.

I've been accused of thinking that "everything will be fine if we keep on doing what we're doing" in Iraq. I admit, that's not too far from the truth. As I said, I'm hesitantly coming around to the idea that we should have more troops there, and if the Administration tries to rush the handover of political power or military guard duties, I will not be at all happy. But it has to be a long-term strategy, and it has to involve the political will to accept that there will be a number of days like today before the guerilla war is over. "

HINT: If vaguely creepy-evil types on NRO think you've done something good for democracy, you should be very, very wary.

QUOTE: From this in TNR:

"There is something truly universal about a corpse," my colleague Leon Wieseltier wrote in these pages upon the museum's opening. "Anybody who looks at these images of corpses and sees only images of Jews has a grave moral problem."

LINKS: Evangelical Outpost is looking for some bloggers who want more recognition. Also look here. NOTE: Monkeys may be involved.

LINK: One of the finest young minds on the left, ladies and gentlemen... stand in awe of the erudition

RANDOM SONGS FROM MY MP3 LIST:

"Funky Days Are Back Again" -Cornershop, When I Was Born for the VIIth Time (possibly the only pop song to ever have mentioned the Gurkhas)
"Hot Rock" -Sleater-Kinney, The Hot Rock
"Interiors" -Manic Street Preachers, Everything Must Go

strike the last two, and add:

"I Plan to Stay a Believer" -Curtis Mayfield
"Ain't That Enough" -Teenage Fanclub, Songs from Northern Britain

and also:
"Looking for a Way Out" -Uncle Tupelo, Still Feel Gone

WHEN I WAS A KID: we called these 'filibusters'

also, this is amusing:

"Because Senate rules require agreement from both sides to quickly confirm a nominee, the GOP cannot force a confirmation vote as long as a Democrat is present on the floor to object.

But if they fall asleep or stop paying attention, Santorum said the GOP will immediately confirm the nominees.

In turn, Daschle said if Republicans stop paying attention, they would immediately pass Democratic legislation like a bill to raise the minimum wage or one to create a tax credit to stimulate creation of manufacturing jobs."

Yes, that's right, the US Senate-- or was it the playground at my elementary school? So hard to keep that straight...

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY:

"You keep all your smart modern writers
Give me William Shakespeare
You keep all your smart modern painters
I'll take Rembrandt, Titian, Da Vinci and Gainsborough"

-The Kinks, "20th Century Man," Muswell Hillbillies

ONLY IN ANN ARBOR: This just happened on the street:

VOICE: Hey Nick!
NICK: [turns around, sees some joker waving from a car]
JOKER: [keeps on waving]
NICK: [realizes that it's Keith]
KEITH: [whilst driving by]: Me love you long time!

RANDOM SONGS FROM MY MP3 LIST:

"The Eternal" -Joy Division, Closer
"Girls! Girls! Girls!" -Liz Phair, Exile In Guyville
"Contact" -Phish, Junta ("I woke up one morning in November and I realized that I loved you...")

strike the last two, and replace with:

"Piss Factory" -Patti Smith, double A-side with "Hey Joe" ("but I have something to hide here called desire...")
"La Di Da Di" -Slick Rick w/ Doug E. Fresh (inspiration for Notorious B.I.G.'s "Hypnotize," namechecked in the Roots' "Mellow My Man")

and also:
"Walk, Don't Run" -The Ventures

LINK: Read the last letter here and do your best not to cry. Fair warning, though: resistance is futile.

QUOTE: Good recommendation for NPR on what to do with all their newfound money:

"Bring back music and culture programming. NPR's news reports are thoughtful and compelling. Its talk shows are topical and a nice way to bring listeners into conversations. And "Car Talk" is great entertainment. But occasionally all this talk is wearying. Balance could be provided by music shows and radio documentaries.

What's going on outside the often overwhelmingly adolescent world of popular music? Who are the up-and-comers in jazz and classical music? NPR should take more time and programming space to offer answers. And whether radio documentaries are made in-house or by independent producers, documentaries transport listeners around the country and the world or back into history. And their fascinating use of sound gives the mind's eye creative work to do."

LINK: Things I always like reading:

1. Stories about how the Red Sox are falling apart
2. Nasty stories about Howard Dean
3. People making fun of McSweeny's. Go! Read!

HEY ANN ARBOR KIDS: go patronize FCB in Nickels Arcade... $1.59 gets you your choice of 24 flavors of Slurpee or various and sundry other hot drinks. Worth every penny.

LINK: Just took this really good quiz on which school of economics you belong to, and, somewhat surprisingly, got a 53, which makes me more or less a follower of the Chicago school. Interesting.

SIMILIE OF THE WEEK:

"That's like busting into a fraternity party with beer-sniffing dogs and not finding a keg."

RANDOM SONGS THAT COME UP ON MY MP3 LIST:

"Mother's Daughter" -Santana, Abraxas
"Ether" -Gang of Four, Entertainment!
"I'm Always In Love" -Wilco, Summerteeth

ooh... strike the last two, and add:

"Mercy Mercy" -Rolling Stones, Out of Our Heads
"Small Black Flowers That Grow in the Sky" -Manic Street Preachers, Everything Must Go

and also:

"Cocaine Socialism" -Pulp, "Like A Friend" single b-side

LINK: Howard Dean, meet the article that will be written about you several hundred times in the next few months:

"Even then, eight months ago, it was already one of the salient and most striking characteristics of the Dean campaign: The coruscating disdain he habitually expresses, not just for particular ideas he opposes or for the particular people who may fairly be associated with those ideas, but for whole, big chunks of the American population--to which Dean just as habitually ascribes an ill spirit of the deepest and darkest variety."

INTERESTING: new philosophical concept to add to your lexicon:

TV Solipsism: when you believe that what you see is all there really is.

From The Observer

LINK: Now this is what international relations should be about.

LINK: Excellent new blog by an Iraqi... show him some love, people.

WELL DAVID: If you ever bothered to do some research before you posted, you'd know that Assprat Pretentia is a blog specifically dedicated to trying to make fun of Crescat Sententia; similarly, your blog is more-or-less dedicated to trying to make fun of me.

Incidentally, and I ask this just because I'm curious, what specifically was it that I did that got me arch-nemesis status?

AN IDEA: provided by this statement by Howard Dean:

"We ask 2 million Americans to give us $100," Dean said. "We believe 2 million Americans will borrow $100 simply for the pleasure of sending this president back to Crawford, Texas."

Since we all know George W Bush is a whore for money (aren't all Republicans?) and since Karl Rove really runs the show (or is it Dick Cheney? or is it the neoconservative cabal?) and can find someone to run against Dean, and since Dean supporters apparently care more about not having Bush be president than they do about, you know, doing good stuff for the country, why not make Dubya an offer he, as a businessman, would never refuse? Take $25 out of all those $100 checks Dean supporters give, and offer Bush a cash buyout of the remainder of his time as President. Dean would still have $150 million to use in the primaries, Bush would get $50 million free and clear, and Dean supporters would get what they apparently want. It's a win-win-win situation!

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Renier Rilke:

"And about emotions: all emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up; the emotion is impure which seizes only one side of your being and so distorts you. Everything that you can think in the face of your childhood, is right. Everything that makes you more of you than you heretofore have been in your best hours, is right. Every heightening is good if it is in your whole blood, if it is not intoxication, not turbidity, but joy which one can see clear to the bottom. Do you understand what I mean?"

FILE UNDER: Roost, Chickens Coming Home to

SO: I got this via e-mail, and I'm intrigued at how the substance of it could come from either the left or right:

"PROTEST "CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM"

***********************************
Without economic freedom, political
freedoms will not long survive.

Join us Monday night to show people
the abuses of the new campaign finance
laws.

THIS Monday, Nov. 10
6:30 PM outside the Law Library."

LINK: Any top-100 novels of all time list which does not include War and Peace (side note, which I repeat only because the night I read War and Peace was undoubtably the worst thusfar in my undergrad career*, which I feel qualifies me to complain about it endlessly: as Lewis Black once said vis-a-vis the tax code, "if I wanted to read 6000 pages of unreadable dreck, I'd read War and Peace four times." Funny because it's true, don't you know), even if the list relies overly on 20th-century literature. Nobody's perfect, I guess.

PLUS: no more paragraph-sentences for awhile, I promise.



*I actually didn't read all of War and Peace in one night, just the middle 900 pages or so.

Wow

LINK: Amusing story for those of you thinking about law school

SOMETHING PLEASANT FOR YOUR SATURDAY EVENING: Terry Teachout:

"The world is full of lovely people who like nothing better than sharing their pleasures, and this kind gentleman (who now reads "About Last Night" regularly) ranks high among them."

from this blog posting about this article. Is it just me, or do you want to hug this guy sometimes, he manages to say just the right thing about whatever he's writing on?

FOR THOSE: who occasionally wonder whether or not I'm a Republican, I generally accept three things to be true statements about economics and government policy:

1. Free trade is the only path to global economic development
2. Unions are a necessary countervailing force in free market systems
3. The larger your income, the more disproportionately you should be expected to give back to your community, nation, etc.

LINK: Sometimes I see an article like this, and I think, "you really need three pages to explain why no one wants Ralph Nader to run in 2004?" It reminds me of Lenin's Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, which begins with a ten-page analysis of why Kautsky is wrong, then continues on for another hundred pages or so for no apparent reason.

HAHA: nothing like a laugh at Howard Dean's expense:

"So Dean's plan is to get poor Southern whites to vote their economic interests rather than their cultural predilections. How simple! Why hasn't somebody else thought of that idea? Oh wait, that's right: Everybody has thought of that idea."

NOW THAT'S CLASSY: Pedro Martinez finally decided to shift the blame for losing Game 7 of the ALCS to the guy who's no longer around to defend himself.

IT'S JUST BEEN THAT KIND OF NIGHT:

it's been nothing but Mingus Ah Um, especially, "Better Git Hit in Your Soul"

NOTE TO SELF: Look at this later

QUOTE FOR THE DAY: You-know-who:

"We believe that liberty is the design of nature. We believe that liberty is the direction of history. We believe that human fulfillment and excellence come in the responsible exercise of liberty. And we believe that freedom, the freedom we prize, is not for us alone. It is the right and the capacity of all mankind."

SWEET MOTHER MCCREE: I would be disinclined to post about this except that it both confirms a stereotype about Ann Arbor and was a big topic of conversation at work this morning:

"In other cities, City Council Member Wendy Woods' question, "What is considered human companionship for a fish?" may have seemed a bit strange.

But in Ann Arbor on Thursday night, it was part of an ongoing debate about proposed animal handling laws that were postponed until the Dec. 15 meeting.

As the council voted to postpone a vote 9-2, Democrat Council Member Heidi Herrell broke down and cried..."

OH: And be sure to check out my own personal Assprat Pretentia

WHO AM I?: No doubt there's no-one reading me anymore, aside from my five regulars, now that I've been tarred forever by a merciless Crescatter (note: it's generally best assumed that if I could be speaking in hyperbole, I probably am). But if anyone's curious, I'm a senior at a certain midwestern public university which has a reputation for being decent in my chosen fields: political science (#2 overall) and philosophy (I haven't checked the Philosophical Gourmet recently, but we tend to be top 5).

Politically, I tend toward the "vital center" or "mushy middle," depending on which friends of mine you believe. I've been variously described as a Stalinist, Marxist, fascist, revolutionary, Republican and fundamentalist, and all of them were (more or less) accurate accusations, except for the fascist one, which translated more or less to "my politics and yours are different, therefore you must be the embodiment of all evil on the planet earth."

I tend not to write about the things that interest me in a more scholarly way (I've gone toe-to-toe with friends over Montesquieu's connection between political and human bondage, the political consequences of the Exodus story and how realist theories of democracy might be made to be a little less value-neutral), but sort of general things I find to be interesting, more-or-less in politics and culture.

And if you feel like complaining about my godawful choice of blog template (I picked it specifically because of its unhipness), the horrible, horrible name I picked for my blog (I've been too lazy to change it to something else), or any other topic you like (such as my tendency to use intensifiers and qualifiers quite liberally), email me at ntroeste@umich.edu

WELL: Apparently I've picked up at least one new reader. I stand corrected. Horribly, horribly corrected.

SHEER BRILLIANCE:

"If you get simple beauty and nought else,
You get about the best thing God invents:
That's somewhat: and you'll find the soul you have missed,
Within yourself, when you return him thanks."
-Robert Browning, Fra Lippo Lippi

AND: the top poem here is still probably my favorite poem ever.

WHY BRITISH BANDS ARE BETTER THAN AMERICAN ONES: American bands write stupid one-off songs of no consequence whatsoever; British bands, e.g., steal from William Blake

LINK: For those of you unfamiliar with the Feiler Faster Thesis, which is pretty much the standard operating assumption in electoral politics nowadays, here's the original formulation of it.

LINK: Let's hear it for hot French non-socialists!

(Note: I haven't seen a picture of her yet, but the buzz is that she's quite easy on the eyes--just reserving my right to change my mind when I see the picture of her with the third eye and snakes growing out of her head)

LINK: WindsofChange follows the debate spoken about somewhat below. Interesting.

QUOTE: I'm very pissed that OxBlog thinks they're too good to have permalinks. I do, however, like this line of thinking:

"So, when Election Day 2004 rolls around, who will I vote for? Answer: I don't know. But what if things stay as they are now, with the Democratic candidates half-heartedly promising to rebuild Iraq while the Bush Administration says all the right things but only does half of them? And what if 20-30 soldiers a month are still falling prey to hostile fire while there is no clear progress toward the drawing up of an effective constitution?

Even then, I would find myself closer to the President's side. He has invested so much of his credibility in this issue that I think it will be all but impossible for him to declare victory and retreat, perhaps in concert with the United Nations. And part of me really believes that he is personally committed to seeing Iraq become democratic.

In my heart, I'm still hoping that the Democrats can put up a credible national security candidate. But Lieberman is a long shot. Gephardt seems solid on this front, but is a long shot as well. If Clark gets things together, perhaps it could be him. But in the end, I see myself forced into a situation where I may have to sacrifice my preferences on the domestic policy in order to ensure a responsible US approach to foreign affairs."

The rest is good, too.

PEOPLE LIKE ME, II: This bloke and this one both scored quite close to me on said politics test. I can sort of see our political resemblance, but, well, judge for yourself.

PEOPLE LIKE ME: apparently, my quadrant of the political world is a very lonely one, at least in the blogosphere. Consider:

"But now behold! Sometime in the last couple of days, Tim Lambert has plotted all of those who have reported their scores on the Political Compass quiz on a single graph. And what does the result show, in all its schematic glory? That I was right: as The Plainsman puts it in his analysis (scroll down a little bit), what we have are plenty of "vanilla liberals," lots of "right libertarians" and "vanilla conservatives," a few "centrists" and "leftists," a couple of serious "right-wingers," and only "a small dotting of populists/paleoconservatives/theocons," with next to nobody occupying the upper-left hand quadrant. Actually, The Plainsman thought he was the only one there, but has since corrected himself, which is right...because I'm out there too. In fact, I'm way out there; I'm the single most isolated blogger on that graph, with no one within two data points of me in any direction. So much for believing in both social justice and civic morality! (I wonder where communitarian godfather Amitai Etzioni would land on this graph?) While I certainly wouldn't call myself either a paleocon or a theocon, the fact that such conservatives are willing to acknowledge the necessity of--as I put it in a thread on conservatism on John Holbo's site a while back--"follow[ing] through on their cultural beliefs to a demand for stability and equity in the fabric of the economic order" leads me to have a certain amount of sympathy for them. In an earlier post (again, scroll down), The Plainsman describes himself as a "moderate communitarian conservative," a man with a "slight tilt toward economic interventionism and social cohesion." He is absolutely right to insist that such a position is anything but "authoritarian." Unfortunately, I'm not sure how much difference his and my arguments will make. The Plainsman and I might not actually agree with each other that much on particular political matters (class-based politics? religious establishment? environmentalism? the war in Iraq?), but one thing is certain: if quizzes like these, with all their faults, fairly accurately reflect or reveal the overwhelming liberal individualist ethos which shapes the modern world--and I'm afraid that they do--then communitarians like he and I are going to have a pretty lonely time of it, for perhaps a pretty long time."

LINK: Volokh Conspirator defends my problems with polls, at least a little bit.

QUOTE: For Dara, from The Evangelical Outpost:

"For you heathens unfamiliar with Luther, he started the Protestant Reformation which, among other things, is the reason you can’t swing a dead cat in Texas without hitting a Baptist."

LINK: I could name 11 off the top of my head, which, apparently, puts me in the top 1% of Americans

FOR BECKY: Who's getting a lot of links these last few days... hmm... anyway, this is supposed to be good, and cheap as well (and approved of by a NYT panel, no less)

LINK: World's Shortest Politics Quiz. You'll be surprised to hear I was a centrist.

GOOD NEWS FOR BECKY

LINK: Religious terrorism of another variety... I remember how close we were to bulding an effigy for Guy Fawkes Day my freshman year, and then going out to the Arb and burning it... we were such crazy kids

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I FINALLY GET A DAY OFF: Well, a day where I only spend a couple of hours doing reading: blogtasia!

SO: The Democrats got shellacked in Mississippi and Kentucky, and will have the same happen in a week or two in Louisiana. Florida will almost certainly go Republican in 2004 on the basis of Jeb Bush's re-election in 2002 and the open Senate seat, which will drive GOP voters to the polls. The Republicans seem to have perfected their own 72-hour strategy, neutralizing the advantage Democrats used to have in getting out the vote. And McCain-Feingold, if it's upheld by the Supreme Court, promises to give Republicans a huge hard money advantage over Democrats. With this in mind, I ask the following question, inviting you all to chime in as you like:

Have we entered a new period of GOP electoral dominance?

INTERESTING INFO: Becky made a big to-do yesterday about the poll that shows that 44% of voters would vote against President Bush no matter who was running. Best of the Web notes another interesting feature of the poll:

"But then the poll pits Bush against the five major Democratic candidates, and not only does Bush beat each one handily, but not one of them manages even the 44% of those polled--and remember, this is the same poll--who said they would definitely vote against Bush. Bush beats Dick Gephardt 48% to 43%, John Kerry 48% to 42%, Howard Dean 49% to 41%, Joe Lieberman 52% to 41%, and Wesley Clark 55% to 36%.

Maybe the Dems should give up on the nominating process altogether and just run slates of uncommitted electors next November."

Which, you know, isn't really such a bad idea.

HAHA: this is HILARIOUS

DO: note the now-small but soon-to-grow blogroll in the lower left-hand corner. Thanks.

A RUSH AND A PUSH: David Brooks swings for the fences, and by and large makes it. The beginning:

"Um Haydar was a 25-year-old Iraqi woman whose husband displeased Saddam Hussein's government. After he fled the country in 2000, some members of the Fedayeen Saddam grabbed her from her home and brought her out on the street. There, in front of her children and mother-in-law, two men grabbed her arms while another pulled her head back and beheaded her. Baath Party officials watched the murder, put her head in a plastic bag and took away her children.

Try to put yourself in the mind of the killer, or of the guy with the plastic bag. You are part of Saddam's vast apparatus of rape squads, torture teams and mass-grave fillers. Every time you walk down the street, people tremble in fear. Everything else in society is arbitrary, but you are absolute. When you kill, your craving for power and significance is sated. You are infused with the joy of domination.

These are the people we are still fighting in Iraq. These are the people who blow up Red Cross headquarters and U.N. buildings and fight against democracy and freedom. They are the scum of the earth. And they are being joined in their lairs by the flotsam and jetsam of the terrorist world. "

LINK: More trouble brewing, I think, over the possible consequences of the Hell coin-flip question, also from our good friends at Crescat Sententia.

LINK: The most complete article I've seen thusfar on the current crisis in Russia

LINK: Larry Miller on a very personal example of how conservatives aren't fundamentally opposed to unions.

THE ESSENCE OF MY CONSERVATISM:

So let's say I'm in the Grad Library, doing research for my paper on Augustine's aesthetics (4A North, my favorite part of the Grad). I come across two books on the topic, one published by Oxford University Press, the other by some no-name publishing company. Is one of those probably going to be a better source for me?

Similarly, let's say I've jaunted over to 5S to do some research for my paper on Lenin's return to the Finland Station, and I find another two books that might be good, one by an eminent Sovietologist who holds a professorship at Harvard, with many similar publications to her name, and the other by a guy who, so far as I can tell, has no academic credentials worth mentioning. Is one of those books probably going to be a better source for me?

Let's say I go to write my final paper for Marxism-Leninism, and decide that instead of reading about a dozen books on my topic, as I have the last two times, I'm only going to read one book, since I think I can anticipate the arguments my professor will want to see pretty well. Is my paper probably going to be better or worse than the two I wrote before?

BEST INSULT EVER:

"As for us, we were never concerned with the Kantian-priestly and vegetarian-Quaker prattle about the 'sacredness of human life.'"
-Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism

LINK: The good folks over at Crescat Sententia have been going apeshit over this post by the wonderful Sara Butler. I invite all of you to go apeshit over it as well (I happen to agree with it totally, but that's me)

UPDATE: People are indeed going apeshit. Check out the debate here, and throw in your two cents.

HOW YOU LIKE THEM APPLES? From OxBlog:

"TWO INTERESTING DEVELOPMENTS TODAY MUST BE MAKING THE GOP VERY HAPPY. First, the Democratic mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, endorsed Republican gubernatorial canddiate Bobby Jindal. Nagin was the last major political figure in the state to issue an endorsement, and both Jindal and his Democratic opponent, Kathleen Blanco, wanted it badly. The race will be close. (Louisiana's election is on November 15.)

Also, Bob Graham has apparently decided that he won't run for reelection. When he dropped out of the presidential contest, it was seen as a blow to the GOP, which thought it could pick up his seat if he didn't run for reelection, but not if he did. Now that seat again appears very much in play.

Finally, tomorrow brings gubernatorial elections in Mississippi and Kentucky. Polls show the Republican candidates with a slight edge in both races. Democrat John Street looks set to keep the Philadelphia mayorship."

I'M EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVIL:

notbyrondorgan: I'm really just laying the groundwork for future I-told-you-sos

HAHA, CON'T: Also from The Nation:

"The Aiken Solution Lives!
William Greider | The recent Senate roll call was a decisive rebuke to our warrior President and one that will be understood eventually as having pivotal meaning."

--In what alternate reality is getting 12 votes out of 100 a "decisive rebuke" of anything? Perhaps in the same one that considers the Red Sox to be rivals to the Yankees.

HAHA: Found this in The Nation:

"Refusing to Write the Blank Check
House Democrats, a dozen senators reject Bush's $87 billion demand for Iraq war."

Isn't a request for any money at all definitionally not a blank check? Just curious.

RANDOM FOOTBALL NOTES:

* Now that it's no longer tempting fate, I just want to say that I had the best impromptu costume for yesterday's Halloween shindig-- I smeared flour all over my nose and went as Jeff Smoker.
* And that's Michigan for you: snatching victory from the jaws of defeat from the jaws of victory.

VICIOUS: You hit me with a flower