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| Ben A. |
Ben H. |
Doug |
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Thugs Nabbed in Babe Slay
They caught the Lower East Side mugger, who had been seen (if only from behind) on a security camera. Score another one for the panopticon.
[Doug: 1/31/05 23:52] |
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Times Rants
The decline of the Arts and Leisure section into a kind of Entertainment Weekly dolled-up with SAT Words is another pernicious development that can be laid at the feet of the self-important, incompetent douchebag Howell Raines. Though the Times galling content seems like a conspiracy, one must appreciate what a thoroughly dysfunctional place it is. A bunch of Crimson ed types who never grew out of the petulant geekiness and political viciousness of the college paper. I did not realize the full extent of the problem until I read Seth Mnookin's book on the reign of Raines.
[Ben H.: 1/31/05 10:48] |
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Consolidated NY Times Rants
Of us three, I'm probably the most in tune with the overall NY Times ethos, but even I'm starting to find it intolerable. This weekend's complaints: (1) Frank Rich. My first French blog post complained about a Le Monde reporter on the "culture" beat, who phoned in some thoughtless anti-American drivel on the topic of American opposition to some Unesco thing. I said there that while the Times has cretinous Bush-bashers (e.g. Dowd) at least they're segregated off as "opinion", whereas the Le Monde author in question seemed to be in a straight news section. But the truth is that the Times does the same sort of thing with Frank Rich, whose tiresome "arts" column every Sunday always degenerates into begins, centers, and ends on anti-Republican jawing. This time he mentions in the second paragraph the two "battles for our nouveau Tet, Falluja." First, Tet is a holiday, not a city. Second, the Tet offensive was a campaign by our enemies, not by us. The attitude of Rich, Dowd, and company, that their sloppiness is forgivable because of their right-thinking fervor, is, like I said, tiresome. (2) Sticking with the Arts & Leisure section, I was remarking a month or two ago that I felt like a philistine for consistently ignoring this section. When I was in college, it was the first section I'd reach for. I said this to a composer friend of mine, and he told me the fault wasn't mine. The section has totally veered, he said, from live performing arts with a highbrow slant, to TV, movies, and pop music. Ever since then I've been verifying his statement. Today the front page has three stories -- web TV, Hollywood personalities, Frank Rich. No thanks. (3) The book review. There's this book by some English professor claiming to have found a new fundamental psychological dynamic in human history, a successor to the Oepidal complex, namely women's urge to have sex with their fathers. (Today's English departments: Enough said.) Anyway, who does the Times pick to give an impartial critique of this new theory? Why, the author of The Kiss, that I-slept-with-my-father memoir that was the succès de scandale a few seasons ago. It almosts make me wish the Times had kept its Arts and Ideas ghetto for this kind of cutting-edge humanities work.
[Doug: 1/30/05 15:09] |
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In Iraq, turnout percentage may exceed body count
That has to count as some kind of victory.
[Doug: 1/30/05 10:32] |
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At least the suspicious characters didn't try to mug you. Presumably you heard about the mugging/murder on the Lower East Side this week. Can there be such a thing as a NYC crime rate that's too low? I mean, armed robbery in Manhattan below 110th St. is so rare now that the very idea can apparently seem absurd, even when it's staring you in the face. The girl who was killed apparently stood up to the muggers and said, "What are you going to do, shoot us?"
[Doug: 1/29/05 17:59] |
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Saturday Afternoon Crooklyn Fun
I was at my desk at home, getting a little work done this afternoon, when, for no particular reason, I went to the window. To my surprise, I saw in my lot a trio of New York's Finest reconnoitring with guns drawn. It turns out that it was something of a false alarm, but an unpleasant sight nonetheless. One of my idiot parking tenants seems to have left the gate open and his car loaded with stuff. Apparently, he is moving today. The moving truck driver saw a couple of suspicious-looking characters wander into the lot and start examining the car. They promptly moved on, but not before the driver called the police. This particular parking tenants has proven rather troublesome and I welcome the justification to get rid of him.
[Ben H.: 1/29/05 15:41] |
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I've caught a cold, which makes two this winter -- that's what defines a "bad" winter in my book. The cold and snow would be tolerable without the sore throat and energylessness.
[Doug: 1/28/05 15:49] |
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Narwhal Horn Supplies Uncovered
The MTA has revised its timetable for restoring A and C service from 5 years to 9 months. In related news, the MTA has opened a weather forecasting branch. Their inaugural call: temperatures between 10F and 60F, with 90% chance of snow between 1/4 inch and 2 feet.
[Ben H.: 1/26/05 10:16] |
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NYC Subway Signals
Ben, it isn't just that the relays are made out of narwhal horn. The horn must come from unionized narwhals, with appropriate set-asides for qualifying minority and female narwhals. Since female narwhals typically do not have tusks, this requirement could slow progress substantially.
It has been noted that the original IND subway lines took less than five years to build. However, before we scourge the MTA for claiming a similar period to rebuild switching infrastructure along one line, we should consider the complexity of the subway's nearly century-old block-stop electromechanical switching equipment. You can get a taste of it here. Almost as bad as the wiring behind my stereo system. Apparently, only one or two companies in the world has the ability to fabricate these obsolete components. I wonder if one reason for the long repair time is that the MTA will take this opportunity to install state-of-the-art computerized switching along the line. At present, the Authority has only experimented with this new-fangled technology on the L-line.
[Ben H.: 1/25/05 08:42] |
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Amazing. I want to hear more about the the "hard to replace relay switches" that require five years to reconstruct. What are they made of, Narwhale horns? In the age of CAD/CAM manufacture, five years should suffice to rebuild a cathedral.
[Ben A.: 1/25/05 00:04] |
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A-Train, Extended Version Remix
NY Subway's C-train is out of commission and A-train drastically reduced due to a track fire. Now, hailing from the region, disruptions related to underground combustion are not completely unfamiliar to me. However, the news that as a result the A and C would not return to normal service for three to five years should flabbergast even the most jaded exponent of New York suffering-blase. Five years? In some parts of the world, whole subway systems go from drawing board to ribbon-cutting in less time than that.
Apparently, a homeless man managed to bring a shopping-cart full of firewood into the tunnel and set it alight near a crucial signal-relay room. Glad to see that Homeland Security money is making a difference. Geez, it's a good thing that no fanatical and devious Islamic terrorists fervently plot the destruction of New York! Because if a disturbed bum could take the 8th Avenue line down for half a decade with an afternoon's work, there's no telling what Al-Qaeda could accomplish!
Think of the property value that just got vaporized. All those West Harlem townhouse-flippers are going to have to think of a better come-on than "close to subway, minutes to midtown!" I read somewhere that 500K people per day take these lines. On the assumption that each passenger loses 30 minutes per work day, commuters will face an additional 300 million man-hours of travel during the 5-year disruption. If you make the further assumption that the average Manhattan subway commuter's labor-leisure trade off is probably somewhere around $30/hr, we're talking $9bio (undiscounted) in lost utility. Pretty nice for one afternoon's work by a homeless guy!
[Ben H.: 1/24/05 19:45] |
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Musical Mockery
Few people on the web know less about rock music than I. Nonetheless I have an observation about songs that mock entire rock subgenres. The most obvious way to do this is via parody, and the best example I know is the Dead Milkmen's "Instant Club Hit", which singlehandedly destroyed 1980s Eurotrash dance music. You will recall its mercilessly cheesy drum-machine beat and its classic lines. It is perfect in its own obvious way.
I just came across another genre-mocking song that's perfect in a more subtle way. For a long time I assumed I'd lost my old copy of the Ben Folds Five's first CD. The other day I was flipping through our CD album (we throw out the jewel cases) and it occurred to me that this one disk with a picture of a piano on it but no writing might be it. It was. Listening to the track "Underground", I was amazed to realize that it mocks the alternative punk/metal scene mercilessly without even gesturing toward their musical style. They don't switch into a minor key, the bass doesn't start beating out power chords, the vocals don't ever switch into satanic shouting. It takes a lot of confidence to deny oneself these easy tactics, and they pull it off.
[Doug: 1/24/05 00:07] |
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The Long-Threatened French Blog Is Online
The name, East Village Blog, is on the lame side, but should serve to distinguish it from the indigenous blogs on Le Monde's site. No promises on posting frequency. Probably will end up being a low-frequency, semi-literate, smartertimes.com for Le Monde.
[Doug: 1/23/05 23:28] |
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Speaking of Cruel Gods...
Let the purveyors of consolatory theodicy know I'm looking for an explanation for why their particular numinous being(s) have decided to freeze my nuts off and bury me in snow.
Like Ben, I am not in the business of providing Jewish Theological Solutions, but one reason why the justification of the existence of evil could take on a greater importance in Christianity occurs to me. Religions fall somewhere along a spectrum from organic "peoplehood" sects to whole-cloth philosophies. Judaism, to me, has always seemed to me grounded as a set of bylaws for a very old tribe. You know: who's in and who's not, where the tribe came from, basic criminal code, sanitary rules, dietary rules, labor rules (what's the Sabbath but a more expansive version of the French 35-hour workweek). Christianity, on the other hand, sits on the other end of the spectrum. As such, philosophical contradictions like the existence of evil loom larger.
[Ben H.: 1/22/05 11:13] |
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Inauguration Bloviation
Would anything have been lost if he'd just borrowed Kang's (Kodos'?) stump speech: "My fellow Americans, we must go forwards, not backwards. Upwards, not forwards. And always twirling -- twirling -- twirling towards freedom!"
[Doug: 1/21/05 13:08] |
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I Got Your Theodicy…
Right here
James Lileks: The King
And again, I return to the Kirk Doctrine, expressed in the Star Trek episode “The Conscience of the King.” He has passed judgment on a suspected tyrant, and the dictator’s daughter asks “who are you to judge?”
Who do I have to be? Kirk snaps.
Dictated But Not Read: The Movie
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Wes Bentley (news) has signed on to play the bad guy opposite Nicolas Cage (news) in the Marvel Comics adaptation "Ghost Rider."
The Columbia project stars Cage in the title role. He plays a former motorcycle stuntman who agrees to let his body become host to a vengeful spirit, Ghost Rider, a bike-riding demon, to secure the safety of his true love. Bentley will play Black Heart. Mark Steven Johnson ("Daredevil") is directing.
[Ben A.: 1/21/05 12:53] |
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Right. The problem (a least for many theists) arises from the notion that we're supposed to obey God's commands. This doesn't mix well with a "beyond human intellect" response to the problem of evil.
[Ben A.: 1/18/05 16:26] |
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I'd accept that we humans have no standing to claim that God can be evil, on the condition that we also renounce our claim that he can be good.
This would amount to an analytic-philosophy "category error" argument, or to a Buddhist "true reality cannot be expressed in words" argument. Of course, the majority of believers would be unhappy with this, as it clashes with their desire to have a totally benevolent "nanny deity". Probably there is natural divergent evolution of any religion that gets popular enough, into an exoteric branch that boils down to "It's all good", and an esoteric branch that boils down to "It's all beyond our intellect."
[Doug: 1/18/05 13:04] |
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I Only Am Escaped Alone to Tell Thee
I fear that I am a poor vender of integrated Jewish Theology solutions™. What can I say by way of answer to your very interesting question, Doug? I don’t know if any Jewish theologian interpreted Job to suggest that God is not completely good, but it’s a fair baseline assumption about Judaism that any conceivable interpretation of Torah has been advocated by at least one learned sage. Nonetheless, the overall thrust of the Tradition holds that the Lord of Hosts is good all the way down. The book of Job itself offers an unstinting denial of man’s standing to pose the question of Evil. You question the righteousness of the Lord, but can you draw up Leviathan with a hook? Didn’t think so! This response is viewed by many as unsatisfying.
Addendum: The book of Job also contains the first known description of analytic philosophy: “I have heard many such things: miserable comforters are ye all. Shall vain words have an end?”
Addendum 2: You are also, Doug, right on about the “Seven Habits.” It’s hard for snobs like me to take seriously a person who recommends that families draw up their own mission statement, We should take Steve Covey seriously, however, because if we did what he said our lives would be better.
[Ben A.: 1/18/05 03:39] |
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Proximate Causes of Previous Post
(a) Went to a wine-tasting party last night. One really far-gone snob was in attendance.
(b) Dao and I made chicken marengo with tarragon. I thought tarragon was integral to the dish, but it turns out that our New York Cookbook recipe is nonstandard. I guess purists would contend that, having been invented by Napoleon's chef out of very few ingredients, the dish is about minimalist charm. Still, it should have tarragon. The New York Cookbook version is easy and there are few recipes whose ass it does not kick.
[Doug: 1/16/05 12:24] |
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Lazy Dyad Example #2951: Unpretentious vs. Pretentious
I bet we've all met someone like this: smart, ambitious, vain, constantly criticizing the poor taste of others (esp. far-off red-state dwellers), constantly pointing out that his choices of vodka or footwear mark him as a good ("cultured") person.
And someone like this: smart, unambitious, at least mildly slovenly, always sneaker-shod and t-shirt-clad, eating little besides cereal and hamburgers and oreos, always ready to declare the most fleeting mention of wine or cheese as a sign of snobbery which he himself is good ("unpretentious") enough not to have.
These two classes are co-dependent; each gives the other an easy, trivial way to feel that it's fighting the good fight.
(Aside: There are art and music and literature snobs, too, but they can no longer be lumped in with "general" snobs, because there is no background low-to-high scale in these domains left to point to (even to criticize). Such people are subculture snobs. To repeat one of my stock observations, the only remaining domain in which all cultured people are supposed to have skills of discrimination and production is gastronomy. Probably this means that we're barbarous. Not that there aren't many more direct proofs of this.)
[Addendum: Someone pointed out to me that we're all still supposed to have opinions on movies. Hence my qualifier "of discrimination and production". If we ever get to the point where we all have our screenplays, further revision will be necessary.]
[Doug: 1/16/05 12:02] |
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Inner Jihad
Not just any good religion, but any good philosophy, must emphasize inner struggle over outer struggle. ("Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" happens to do so, incidentally: "Private victories precede public victories!" I've sometimes considered translating "Seven Habits", whose advice is sound but whose style borders on self-parodic, into decent English. How's that for building a bridge to the red states?) I have a follow-up question on theodicy. The concept of God shared by most American Christians -- all-powerful, all-knowing, all good -- is proved wrong daily, if not always so spectacularly as in the tsunami case. Is it correct to say that the standard Jewish conception of God avoids this disproof by denying that God is all good? I mean, Christians can look at Job and say, or least hint, that it's a story of God 1.0, and we've moved on to God 2.0. You can't do this if all you've got is the Old Testament. Do any serious Jewish theologians come out and say, "God is not entirely good?" As for those who maintain the all-good God, are they more up-front than Christians about their nonstandard use of "good" that is compatible with "causing suffering"?
[Doug: 1/16/05 11:33] |
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Totalizing Theory Contest
On Maureen Dowd being the most emailed article, I incline to Plato’s explanation that most everyone is a fucktard. It possesses the virtue of parsimony, at least. As to why everyone is a fucktard? Lazy dyadology seems as good an explanation as any.
So here, if I may preach at ya, we see another signal virtue of monotheism: it localizes dualism in you. When the struggle between the good and evil principles occurs in the soul, the fight cannot be waged too fiercely. External dualism, by contrast, quickly debases into the lazy manichaeism that characterizes the Times, conservative Times playa-haters, politics and Hollywood. On further review maybe this is more of a theoretical virtue of monotheism – although I hear “inner jihad” is the coming thing.
[Ben A.: 1/14/05 01:03] |
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I wasn't going to provide examples of the Lazy Dyad Theory, but here's one that just caught my eye. You know how the New York Times drives us nuts because (or at least when) it gets so permeated with the smug unthinking self-regarding limousine-liberal ethos that you can smell the organic truffle oil? And you know how you, or at least I, get aggravated in a similar way be Le Monde? Well, sometimes these papers make me think "The editors ought to fire anyone within five degrees of separation of Maureen Dowd and stick to hard news and high culture." Dao happens to work directly for the number two or three strategist for Le Monde, so I even have the opportunity to voice this. But then I take a look at the "most e-mailed" or "most recommended" stories lists. What prompted me to write this is that Maureen Dowd's searching think-piece "Men Just Want Mommy" tops the Times list. Recently the top Le Monde article was a ridiculous editorial accusing Hollywood of waging war against global cultural diversity. The fact is that people don't want to hear carefully-reasoned searches for the golden mean. They want to hear their opinions echoed back to them loudly and with extra sarcasm.
[Doug: 1/14/05 00:17] |
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The Lazy Dyad Theory
Well, we've been at this blog thing for, what, a few years now, and I think it's high time we arrived at a totalizing theory of human life. My entry is the lazy dyad theory.
Most of us need to feel that we are serving good and fighting evil. It all just seems kind of pointless otherwise. But good and evil in general are just airy abstracta; we need particular goods and evils. Say we pick a good that humans in general are overwhelmingly inclined to approve, like universal education. We will probably win everyone over and then need another good to champion. And if we fight against something like fascism, which everyone is inclined to hate except in certain anomolous situations, we again probably win and need a replacement bugbear. We soon run out of these obvious winners and losers. They're unstable. Stable evils are those that lie on the end of a continuum, not opposite a good, but opposite another evil, as in those Nicomachean Ethics examples. In the middle are, e.g. Clinton Democrats. People to the right justly criticize those to the left, but they do it too vociferously, because hey, it feels good. Then the people on the left lash out in response, having less need to reason carefully because the right has overreached in its arguments, and feeling less need to reason carefully because it feels insulted. The right should (normatively speaking) then say, whoaaaa, hold on, let's get back to zeroing on the golden mean. But being lazy, being naturally inclined to seek a situation where their good-serving and evil-fighting energies can flow out freely, they just let loose on those treasonous tree-hugging terrorist-loving fairies.
[Doug: 1/13/05 23:59] |
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Whiny Alumni Activists Get What They Wish For
Bloomberg news reports today among its top stories that Jack Meyer will step down as head of Harvard Management Company, the in-house manager of the University's endowment. Meyer is taking with him a handful of the group's portfolio management stars; like the few top HMC defectors of the past years, Meyer & Co are starting their own firm.
For years, the Crimson and groups of lefty alums have railed against the huge bonuses paid to HMC's managers. However, given the endowment's performance (10-year average annual return of nearly 16%, compared to the average endowment figure of around 10%) the bonuses don't amount to much. Compared to hedge fund managers on the outside who turned in comparable performance, Meyer has been ridiculously underpaid, while some of the other managers have been merely signficantly underpaid. Nonetheless, in response to the outcry last year, Harvard imposed a cap on HMC bonuses. The result: mass defection.
The irony is that Harvard will likely wind up placing capital with Meyer's new fund. If not, the money will go to a similar type of manager with a similar payout. Harvard will have to swallow a much less favorable compensation arrangement. However, with the managers on the outside, the cost of compensation will not be disclosed. It will only turn up in lower net returns to the endowment. And the hippie-dippies know so little that they will probably miss this entirely. When assailing HMC, they have pointed to Yale's endowment, which disclosed only miniscule compensation payments. I happen to know a few hedge fund managers that run Yale money -- they get paid way more than they would for comparable performance at HMC. Yale just gets lower returns as the outside managers keep 20% of the profits.
[Ben H.: 1/11/05 17:47] |
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Ben A. |
Ben H. |
Doug |
Earlier |