SATURDAY EVENING POST: Possibly going out later, but I've been informed that it's been awhile since I last posted. Various and sundry:

Now that Georgetown's out, I officially no longer care about college basketball until next winter. This means Ohio State will win.

Spent a large portion of the week working through Grotius' arguments on slavery. In particular, his recognizing the basis of slavery in a law of general custom and the practice of reason-giving rather than natural law looks to me like it could point the way for contemporary philosophy of international law trying to deal with the problem of contrary practice. But this is most likely to end up in a paper or the dissertation. I originally had assumed the importance of the move was just a 'Grotian' argument, rather than what Grotius himself had argued, but a passage in De veritate (explaining the widespread practice of morally culpable acts) makes me think it may be there intentionally. More to come, as I say.

I recognize that the following will now forever be the counterpart to 'you used to hate Uncle Tupelo' when arguing with Becky, but: Pavement? kind of really good.

Also, YouTubery: Blur, "Tender", now the best song I've heard recently (replacing "Autograph" by The Tears). As an Oasis fan, I used to have rules about liking Blur too much (read: at all). But I am mellowing in my old age, and find Blur's pretention reassuring (it also helps that depressed Damon Albarn is less annoying than the younger, manic version). Listening to the song today, I realized that the gospel-choir part is a voice in Damon Albarn's head: "c'mon c'mon c'mon, get through it." Given that the song is about breaking up, and trying to put yourself back together again, it's a perfectly observed detail. What more can you ask?

I'M ACTUALLY SORT OF SURPRISED THIS HASN'T HAPPENED BEFORE:

Note to self:

Given that the book you're framing your dissertation around is in excess of 1500 pages, when you come across a part of Grotius that seems particularly interesting (especially when 'interesting' means 'that's about the last source I'd expect him to go to in making this argument'), it's helpful to make a note of exactly where that interesting bit of argumentation happens, because when you go to look for it later, it will not be in any of the three chapters that deal extensively on the subject at hand, but buried in the middle of another chapter entirely.

HOYA SAXA

That is all.

A NOTE ON SOMETHING THAT CAME UP IN CLASS TODAY:

One of the things that fascinates me about the classroom experience is the set of opinions or attitudes that students take up when first approaching new material (or approaching it in a different way). I've been through several iterations of just war theory being explained, and the observation I've made is that one opinion predominates, at first: if a war is just, then it's acceptable to use whatever means necessary to win it.* My best guess as to why this opinion appears as much as I've seen it is that when thinking about just war, the case everyone goes to is World War II. The evil there is sufficiently bad that a lot of acts that may not be licit in even the general run of things are at least okay (even Michael Walzer takes this position for some parts of the war). Thus from the case comes the rule. It's the job of the teacher to set out the reasons to follow ius in bello restrictions--they're not alien considerations, but more work has to be done to give students the full conceptual apparatus.

Today's interesting variant on this was a confimation of everything Jeremy Waldron writes in Law and Disagreement. In the context of discussing possible solutions (constitutionally and policy-wise) to the abortion issue, there was a strong sentiment that abortion is exactly the sort of thing you don't want legislated. The reasons given are the ones Waldron identifies as the common elements of skepticism about legislation: legislation is done by politicians (and politicians are influenced by interest groups, or not wanting to appear to adopt particular opinions), it's subjective in a really bad way, it assumes that it matters what the broader public wants when rights are in question.

I'm not entirely sure what to make of this fact (among other things, I haven't seen it repeated in other contexts, as with the just war stuff), but it seems interesting and in need of explanation to me.

*If given a quick push back on this, they tend to move to a position of: "if a war is just, then it's acceptable to use whatever means so long as the other side has used them first."

SATURDAY EVENING POST: More and more I realize the truth of the following: you better love your dissertation topic, because you're going to be spending a lot of time on it.

And a mix cd for those who have a lot of patience:

1. Halleluwah - Can (18:28)
2. Hung Over as the Oven in Maida Vale - Godspeed You Black Emperor! (18:51)
3. Marquee Moon - Television (live in Portland; 16:57) (Rob Sheffield's position on fluxblog aside, it doesn't really "build and build." "Marquee Moon" has a compositional structure not unlike "Flamenco Sketches" (on Kind of Blue)--the song moves from one part to the next when the soloist feels like it. But Tom Verlaine is an excellent guitarist, so the technical aspects of the performance are always less noticeable than the emotional ones).
4. Night Falls on Hoboken - Yo La Tengo (17:41)

A QUICK NOTE ON 'SELLING OUT': Since they just played my all-time favorite song by The Jam on a Cadillac commercial.*

It used to be the case that there were all sorts of things you could do to sell out, by writing more easily accessible music (The Brian Jonestown Massacre accuses the Dandy Warhols of this in Dig!), by changing image or sound, or, in particular, by licensing your music for a commercial. I recall, if somewhat vaguely, that R.E.M. turned down a large amount of money to have "It's the End of the World As We Know It" used by Microsoft to promote Windows 95 (they used the Stones instead, who, having been closer to the Tin Pan Alley/Brill Building ethic, never really considered selling out to be much of an issue).**

But obviously, that's not really the case anymore. You can accuse bands of selling out, but it doesn't mean all that much these days. It does apply retroactively, in some cases (as much as everyone loved the Pixies, it's hard to see what their reunion tour was about except making a pile of cash for all involved), but in general, that set of interpretive attitudes doesn't apply.

*That'd be "Start"

**and in part, that's a function of necessity because the Stones don't control the rights to a significant part of their back catalogue (everything before 1971 or so)

SO: I've been on an upswing in terms of music as of late, which means both buying lots of music and making a ton of mix cds. Becky and I have debated this before, but whatever gets lost in the making of cds (the planning and intentionality, mostly) is gained back in "I had this song in my head this morning, so I'll make a cd with it and some other stuff for myself." This does tend to mean that I look back on some of them and wonder what I was thinking: was I really ever at a point in my life where I needed to hear five Bob Dylan songs from different albums in a row?* So it has been surprising to me that one I made in mid-December for the drive up to Pennsylvania (and ended up playing over and over for most of the trip) still sounds good to me:

All Hands on the Bad One:

1. "You're No Rock and Roll Fun" -Sleater-Kinney
2. "Stella Was a Diver and She Was Always Down" -Interpol
3. "Private Idaho" -B-52s
4. "Sabotage" -Beastie Boys
5. "The New Pollution" -Beck
6. "You Just Know" -Bernard Butler (sometimes, the best thing you can do with a mix cd is just stick to alphabetical order)
7. "Yeah Yeah" -Blackrock
8. "Take Me Out" -Franz Ferdinand
9. "Everybody's Happy Nowadays" -Buzzcocks
10. "Heroes" -David Bowie
11. "Good Shit" -Cornershop
12. "Out On the Tiles" -Led Zeppelin
13. "Been Caught Stealing" -Jane's Addiction
14. "Basket Case" -Green Day (look, I still hate Green Day, but nothing makes me think '7th grade' more than this song)
15. "Since I Left You" -The Avalanches
16. "Unforgiven" -The Go-Gos
17. "Been It" -The Cardigans
18. "Tainted Love" -Gloria Jones
19. "The Double Life" -Rainer Maria
20. "Free Money" -Patti Smith

*yes

OH: For those who can see my NCAA picks on facebook, you should know that I chose them by following Alyson Hannigan's on cbs.com , and only overruled them when they seemed obviously wrong. Also, she had three #1s in the Final Four, which we all know never happens.

QUOTE FOR THE oh, I don't know, WEEK? By far the best simile I've encountered in a long time:

"I was still serfing away at grad school. My friends and I assumed that we would soon be tenured professors, which is an excellent life goal--it's like planning to be Cher. You think, I'm going to wear white beads and fringed gowns, and sing 'Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves' on the way to work every morning, and then one day, I'm going to get a call saying, 'Congratulations! You're Cher! Can you make it to Vegas by showtime?'"

-Rob Sheffield, Love is a Mixtape

LINK: I have seen the future, and it's un deux trois

A RUSH AND PUSH: and I'm almost done with the list from two posts down (teaching tomorrow, and some grading to do (but a week or so to do it)). Updated the blogroll a bit, to drop a couple of moribund things (I can't help but think Luc would be amused that his old blog now links to a debt consolidation page), change around Camille's blog address, and add the always-entertaining Profgrrrrl. Back... oh, let's say next week.

OH MY GOODNESS: Brilliant