Joy

I've just finished reading Joshua Landy's Philosophy as Fiction: Self, Deception, and Knowledge in Proust. It is the best thinking (and writing) on In Search of Lost Time I have read so far. Landy writes in a lucid prose with an analytic flair that is both a joy to read and relatively easy to understand. If any are interested in a novel and compelling view of what the Recherche is 'about', this is by far the best place to start, perhaps even better than the Recherche itself.

I'm now about to start Leo Bersani's Marcel Proust: The Fictions of Life and Art, but before I get there, I am taking a break to read parts of Samuel Brittan's Against the Flow. Brittan is a columnist for the Financial Times where he writes mostly on economics and politics. The book is a collection of his columns, essays and lectures. It will soon become a gift for a good friend of mine, as it was originally intended, but, not wanting to give her an unknown book on speculation, I am reading it first. I was initially drawn to the book by a review by The Economist, who wrote that "this book is so good that rivals in the field will, like this reviewer, put it down not knowing whether to feel inspiration or despair" ("Peerless Commentary" March 3rd 2005). Alas, the book is not, so far, that good. Some of the articles have been excellent indeed, those on economics in particular, but others, especially those focused on a political issues of a particular historical moment, are rather less enlightening. That said, I am inclined to agree with The Economist's closing hortative, "Against the Flow is the work of a remarkable journalist, a scholar and a profound thinker. Read it."

Old Witty

I've often wondered what Wittgenstein believed babies thought about before developing language. If I understand his views correctly (I've never read any of his writings), he would be required to claim that a baby's mind, to the extent that it lacks language, is a vacuous hole. This seems unlikely.

Self?

"As far as any intelligent being can repeat the idea of any past action with the same consciousness it had of it at first, and with the same consciousness it has of any present action; so far it is the same personal self." (John Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689: 303; cf. Joshua Landy, Philsophy as Fiction,2004: 216n25)

“Involuntary memory indicates the existence of, and affords access to, a unique and diachronically stable self.” In Landy’s view, involuntary memory is Proust’s response to Hume’s contenstion that the self is just a fictitious creation, that though we have “a type of effective identity, as a ‘chain of causes and effects’ (Hume 262),” (113) we possess no “inner coherence, no common element shared amongst the various impressions that make up the mind. 'The identity, which we ascribe to the mind of man, is only a fictitious one,' Hume writes (259); it is 'nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux' (252); 'there is properly not simplicity in it at one time, not identity in different' (253). Hence 'when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other...I can never catch myself...without perception...When perceptions are remov'd for any time, as by sound sleep; so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist' (252)." (Landy: 113)

Landy argues that “Proust would doubtless agree with Ricoeur (128) that Hume, whether wittingly or unwittingly, is in the above passage presupposing the very entity whose existence he denies. For if there is no me to be found, who is the I that is “always” looking for it? There must surely be a secret site of constancy after all in the “mind of man,” a part of ourself which can never be seen since it is always doing the seeing, something through which, and never at which, we stare. ‘Throughout the whole course of one’s life,’ Marcel confirms, ‘one’s egoism sees before it all the time the objects that are of concern to the self, but never takes in that ‘I’ itself which is perpetually observing them’ (F 628).” (113)

Does the terminology “secret site of constancy” not strike Landy as even a little silly? Does he not recognize the ridiculousness of predicating an ontological argument on the particular structures and divisions of a language? The subject-object divide that Landy argues assumes is necessary aspect of the faculty of sight may very well be an artifact of our way of speaking about things. Landy's argument based on disctinctions between the prepositions through and at is equally shaky.

Despite this, I should say that Landy's book is mostly brilliant and is amongst the best I've read on Proust.

Merry Christmas & Happy Hanukkah

I've spent a lovely day with my family and it is now a little after two in the morning. Boxing day has probably already begun in the online world. I've been passing the time looking at old Jon Stewart clips. Christmas this year has made me think of the friends and family who I miss and I've been less than cheerful through parts of today. To alleviate my woes I began by searching for Stewart's second appearance on the now deceased Crossfire. Freakin' hilarious and fuckin' brilliant. Classic Jon Stewart. After watching some clips from the Daily Show various links ended up leading me to an interview with Sister Joan Chittister on Bill Moyers. (The link is a 15 min audio file but it is well worth a listen. There's also a transcript.) Sister Joan might be accused of being a little less than pragmatic, of proposing unattainable ideals in a world of bitter compromises, but her message is clear and it is largely true. If ever you'd forgotten what Christianity is about, what spiritual contemplation, belief and practice were about, go listen to this interview, or go read some of her columns (eg. on the stupidity of recent brouhaha over the displacement of "Christmas" by "Holiday" in some public and government contexts). I'm serious. I cried (briefly) while listening to the Moyers interview. Beyond her touching messages about world peace, and her pleas for the poor, Sister Joan also has what I think to be an excellent understanding of Catholicism. Coming from a buddhist who was partly raised by an an ex-Catholic priest, one might take this endorsement with some skepticism, but I will support it with the following quotes. It's too late (I'm too lazy) to write about what disagreements I have with sections I'm about to quote, and they are beside the point. In particular, in addition to Sister Joan's perceptive views on Christian morality in contemporary America, I want to point to a little snippet of some of her theology: "Scripture is not a driving test. Scripture is a challenge to the heart and this moment. [...] we don't believe it's frozen in time."

---
MOYERS: Dobson, Falwell, Robertson and a lot of secular pundits and columnists are saying that this election was decided by moral issues. Do you think moral issues were that decisive in this campaign?

CHITTISTER: Well, I don't believe… I'm not exactly sure that they were as decisive in the end. And I'm not sure that there's any way we can measure that. But even if I say, "Yes, they were," the fact of the matter is that they are some moral issues, they're not all moral issues.

The fact of the matter is that they're all in contention with something else which is also a moral value and also equally important unless you put it completely out of your mind or your heart. For instance, let's look at the abortion question. I'm opposed to abortion.

But I do not believe that just because you're opposed to abortion that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking. If all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed and why would I think that you don't? Because you don't want any tax money to go there. That's not pro-life. That's pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.

---

MOYERS: Do you have anything in common with the Religious Right?

CHITTISTER: I have Jesus in common. That's enough for me provided that we're all allowed to talk about and to hold in our hearts that aspect of the Christ life that we really believe must be raised at this time.

MOYERS: And what are those? What are the moral issues that you would like to see us pursuing as a people, as a country right now?

CHITTISTER: Well, I believe we got the cue on the mountain. I think…

MOYERS: The sermon on the mount?

CHITTISTER: I do. I do. The Beatitudes, as far as I'm concerned are the most overlooked and underdeveloped aspect of Christian scripture.

MOYERS: Well, for all the people who are watching who don't know what the Beatitudes are, what are you talking about?

CHITTISTER: Well…

MOYERS: The sermon on the mount.

CHITTISTER: The sermon on the mount, Jesus gets up, faces a crowd who's saying to him, "What are we do now?"

And he said, "Remember the poor. Keep the poor as your criteria." We have 1 out of every 318 people on this planet this morning, Bill, are refugees. They're following garbage cans in the back of restaurants around the world. They're following the resources that we took from their countries that are now jobs in somebody else's country.

MOYERS: Blessed are the poor?

CHITTISTER: The poor, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice. We've got somehow or other to recognize that when we go into a country and pay a little kid 20 cents an hour for a 70 hour week to make our shoes and our jeans, we have to ask ourselves how is it that we can export our industry but we can't export our Fair Labor Standard Act.

MOYERS: So, blessed are those who seek justice?

CHITTISTER: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice. Blessed are those who mourn. Remember those who are in grief, those mothers with dry breasts in Africa right now are mothers. And we're pro-life? Where are we?

Where are we in Darfur? Why do we have an army in Iraq for killing other mothers when with the power of this country, if this is going to be a moral country. Blessed are the peacemakers, the peacemakers, not the war mongers who are simply planting seeds of war for the next generation. That's our criteria. The Beatitudes must be our criteria.

MOYERS: See, this is the issue. People read scripture and reach different conclusions.

CHITTISTER: That's what scripture's supposed to do. Scripture is not a driving test. Scripture is a challenge to the heart and this moment. Scripture is the whole scripture. But we don't believe it's frozen in time.

MOYERS: Why are you a Christian?

CHITTISTER: Well, because of the Jesus story is my story. There's nothing else that really touches my heart or my spirit the way Jesus does. There isn't any other answer for me. There's no question about that.

MOYERS: Why are you a Catholic? I mean, the Catholic Church is still a paternalistic hierarchy. You're never going to be a Bishop, because doctrine forbids it. Your own Pope says, "Never." So why do you remain a Catholic?

CHITTISTER: Well, we've said "never" to a lot of things. We're very good at never, and then we say 400 years later, "as we have always taught." I'm a Catholic because I believe that the church is a treasure house of the Christian tradition.

---

Merry Christmas.

ps My admiration for Sister Joan, for the work she does, and for her type of Catholicism and Christianity more generally, should not be interpreted as implying some sort of new age equivocal approach to religious practice on my part. I am still a buddhist. I continue to be a buddhist because I think it is for me a more effective means of achieving what I want, namely an open and knowing mind, free from the discursive habbits of ego.

"It is true that the poorest countries often face the biggest obstacles to reaping the gains from trade and that economists' models often assume these obstacles away. Many rely on tariffs as a source of government revenue. Weak infrastructure and underdeveloped credit markets can make economic restructuring difficult. These problems underline why trade liberalisation is no substitute for either more domestic reform or foreign aid. They also suggest that some of the poorest countries need more time to open their markets than others. Unfortunately, the Doha negotiators are taking that logic much too far. And the losers will be the world's poor."

So writes The Economist in a recent article ("Weighed in the balance" Dec.8 2005) on the state of the WTO's Doha trade round. The article is worth a read, and as far as trade policy is concerned, much of it is pretty convincing. But their admission that free trade may not make the world's poorest people richer is relegated to a little coda at the end, "weak infrastructure and underdeveloped credit markets can make economic restructuring difficult." Indeed they do. And this points to what is probably the greatest barrier to prosperity for the world's poor: bad governance. How exactly we hope to change this is not clear in the least. I'm not even sure that it is entirely desirable that we change it. Effective governance that helps to create and guide the infrastructure (broadly speaking, ie. not just physical) and identity of a nation must include a significant degree of sovereignity. What to do, what to do?

Matt Cameron is God

(so for that matter is Dana Carrey [Tool]) I'm ?????? as I work a two hour shift at the paradox this afternoon. I worked a catering gig last night and came home to a dinner party at the French house. ?????? we discussed French and English slang. Unfortunately, ?????? the slang I learnt. Somehow, our slang discussion devolved into a very long-winded ?????? and needlessly complicated debate about whether an idea that is "broad" could also be "deep". I was doing something in the kitchen through most of it, what I don't remember, but kept poking my head around the corner to interject when I felt particular statements to be excessively ridiculous.

Somehow I got off track. I started this post really just to remind everyone of the greatness of Matt Cameron. I was listnening to Soundgarden's "Fell on Black Days" and was reminded of the man's genius. His drumming is an integral part of the song. Anyways, that's really all I have to say.

Linguistic differences and a united EU

Though the countries of the European Union aspire (in varying degrees) to some sort of political and economic union, there remain many barriers to integration. The most intransigent of these are cultural. France likes its farmers and would have the rest of Europe pay to subsidize them. The French like good food and pretty countrysides, and don't much care for farmers in developing countries. Britain, not having many farms itself, refuses to pay for such handouts and continues to demand the partial refund of its dues it has enjoyed since Margaret Thatcher declared the nation too poor to pay so much money and get so little back (at the time this was true). The Italian elite would prefer to run their country as a fiefdom and are annoyed when EU member states criticize their roughshod approach to governance. Such examples could fill many pages, but there are also more mundane problems to European intergration. Chief among these is the diversity of languages spoken in the EU. At present, there are eleven official languages, and consequently the EU Commision employs a rather large number of translators, some 1200 who tranlate over one million documents each year. I came across the following article recently, and it seems that they have finally decided to simplify things.

------

European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be
the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was
the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English
spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in
plan that would become known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make
the sivil servants jump with joy.

The had "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up
konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the
troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like
fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to
reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always
ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is
disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with
"z" and "w" with "v".

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou"
and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu
understnd ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze
forst plas.

If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl

------

I don't know where this came from originally. I received it via email from a friend and rather enjoyed it. I thought you all might as well.

The Art of Football

" 'Thinking man's football' is a bit like 'classy stripper': if the adjective modifies the noun too energetically, it undermines the nature of the thing."

Even if you're not much into football, the article "Coach Leach Goes Deep, Very Deep" by Michael Lewis on Mike Leach and his unorthodox coaching of Texas Tech is a fascinating read. Under Leach, the mid-level Raiders have had some outstanding runs the past few years, and their success this year has earned them a place in the Cotton Bowl against Alabama. It's a lenghty article, but it's well-written and certainly worth the time. Head over to NY Times online.

On Academia and Cymbeline

"We have, nevertheless, the consolation of knowing that years of minute scholarly research have marshalled a body of minor evidence and hypothesis into a pattern imperfect in detail but seemingly reliable in its general outline." J.M Nosworthy, writing in the introduction to the Arden edition of 1955 about the difficulties of placing Cymbeline in relation to Shakespeare's other plays, and thus, more generally, to his age.

More on taxes

I promised I would come back to why progressive taxation is good. Specifically, I claimed in my last post that progressive taxes probably do not, in practice, reduce the incentive to work. Those who belive that they do say that as taxes increase the relative value of leisure also increases, and thus individuals will increasingly choose leisure over work. This is called the subsitution effect. Against this, there is also an income effect that says that as individuals face an increasing tax burden, they will work harder to maintain the same wage (or even to attain a higher one). No one is really sure which of these two predominates, many imagine that they come close to cancelling one another. If we imagine a theorectical extreme of 100% taxation, it is (mostly) clear that rational individuals would choose leisure instead of work. (Keep in mind that this is not 100% taxation of all income earned, but only of income earned above a certain amount, say 1 million dollars). Opponents of progressive taxation also claim that if marginal tax rates are set too high, then total tax revenues will actually fall. If we return to the example of a 100% tax, and assume that it produces no tax revenue because individuals choose not to work, and then add another point of zero tax revenue at 0% taxation, and then imagine (concoct) a line between the two, we have what is called the Laffer curve. Laffer argued that somewhere on this line there is a point, call it t*, at which tax revenues are maximised. However, it is difficult to discern where this point is, and so rather impossible to say what effect increasing taxes will have. The central difficulty is in determining the elasticity of work with respect to taxation.

This sort of economics has been variously referred to as supply-side economics, Reaganomics, Chicago-school economics, voodoo economics, and "that trickle-down bullshit." It was tried by Reagan, but without the fiscal discipline that would have been the true test of supply-side theories. During Reagan's years, the US deficit reached strastospheric levels, thanks both to Reagan's fear of communism and penchant for science fiction, and also his inability to cut spending on social programs (the Dems controlled the House) as he would have liked. It's thus difficult to say whether the economic expansion that occured during the latter part of his presidency was created by the tax cuts. Since Keynes, many economists have argued that governments should spend their way out of recessions (Keynes called this 'priming the pump'). Supply-siders have also gotten themselves elected in our own home of British Columbia. Again, though BC has enjoyed outlandishly good growth the past few years, there are a host of contributing factors, many of which are more important than Gordo's tax cuts. (I must admit that my knowledge of BC's economy has waned significantly since I moved away. All of my pronouncements on it, though I believe them to be correct, should be checked in available literature before being taken as fact.)

But back to Federal taxes in Canada. Reaching back into my memory from when I took a Public Economics course, I believe that some respectable studies have pegged the peak of the Laffer curve at somewhere betwen sixty and seventy percent. So how about this for a mostly unresearched suggestion: add another marginal tax bracket of 65% for income above $500,000. The income threshold could be raised, or lowered, and it might be desireable to split the jump from 46.5% to 65% into two jumps.

One last thing: because few things are more corrosive to democratic society than dynastic succession, we should bring back the inheritance tax. Inheritance over a million should be heavily taxed. I'm inclined to assess taxes on the inheritor in the case of immediate children (the inheritance received by a child above 1 million is heavily taxed, say 50% or more), and on the estate in other cases. The threshold for taxation, like tax bracket cut-offs, should either be linked to inflation, or re-assessed every few years.

"The man who dies rich thus dies disgraced." – Andrew Carnegie

Progressive taxation is better

There seems to be a pattern forming. Once again, I agree with the Conservatives—at least in part. Harper has pledged do reduce the GST by 1% next year and a further 1% within five years. As he claims, this will benefit all Canadians. In response, the Liberals have said that reductions in the GST favour the rich. Finance Minister Ralp Goodal was quoted by the CBC as saying that "the biggest savings will go to the biggest spenders." While true, this is misleading. As a proportion of income, sales taxes disproportionately affect the poor. They are amongst the most regressive forms of taxation. The Liberals recognized this in 1993 when they promised to eliminate the GST. Their fabled "Red Book" described the GST as "unfair, regressive [and] stupid." (Quoted from cbc.ca). Speaking about the GST in 1994, Chretien proclaimed "we hate it and we will kill it." (cbc.ca) Though the GST rebate does make the GST less regressive, it is not an ideal solution. In order to claim the rebate a tax return must be filed and an additional GST rebate claim made. This is an unecessary complication and it also reduces the transparency of the tax system. Tax regimes should always strive for simplicity. We would do better to rid ourselves of the GST entirely.

Though I disagree with the Liberals support of the GST, I do agree with some of their proposed tax reforms. They have pledged to increase the personal exemption from its present $8,148 to $10,000 by 2009. This is an excellent idea. Though poverty is difficult to estimate, this should push the personal exemption above the poverty line, making life much easier for the poorest Canadians. In addition, the Liberals plan to reduce the three lowest marginal tax rates by 1% and to raise the threshold at which the highest tax rate (46.5%) kicks in to $200,000. Setting marginal tax rates, and deciding on the number of brackets is never easy. Though I am generally in favour of taxing the rich, I also recognize that excessive taxation may adverserly affect economic prosperity. There are many arguments on both sides. To my mind, redistribution of wealth is supported by utilitarian principles (dimishing marginal returns of the utility gained by increasing income), by egalitarian principles of equality of opportunity (eg. we should tax the rich to provide social services so as to ensure that poor kids have a more equal chance of success), and by indirect benefits to society (eg. less crime). On the other side, the most frequently cited arguments are (1) that progressive income taxes reduce savings, which then reduces investment, thus reducing growth, and therefore depriving all of society of a greater economic prosperity that might have been, and (2) that progressive income taxes reduce the incentive to work. The first argument has some merit, but the second probably does not obtain (except in theoretical extremes). More on this later, but I need to go and have a beer.

Yahoo!

Sometimes the end does arrive. My first chapter is finished. Three copies now rest happily in the Division of Lit & Lang Secretary's office. I've just returned from Dick's Drive In and don't plan on eating again until tomorrow. One swiss, avocado and bacon burger, an order of garlic fries, and a vanilla shake have left me with an appetite for coffee and nothing else. I just finished the first of the many double espressos I will drink this evening. Though my first chapter is done, I still have a paper to write on King Lear. I've mentioned it before, I know, but it's still not written. I've now read some thirty or so articles and book chapters. I'll start with an outline of the play's major issues. This is the what the play is 'about' section. I'll then do two brief overviews of the lit on competing interpretations of the play, and follow that with my own, hopefully concluding with an explantion of how my interpretation answers the questions raised in the initial what the play is 'about' section. This is only slightly less vague than my own outline, which means I really need to get back to work.

Hope you're all well. See (most of) you soon.

Love Ev

Oh My

Sometimes you just can't work anyomore. I got my first migraine this morning, or at least something phenomenologically (my apologies) similar. It was rather frightening at the time. I could see, but I couldn't. Looking at my computer screen, I could see the words but I couldn't really make them out. My ability to process contrast seemed to be impeded. Straining my eyes really hard, I could still read, but the effort was so great that I could concentrate on nothing else. Couldn't think about what I was reading, certainly couldn't write my thesis. I tried reading a book instead, but it was no better. I got up to look at my eyes in the in the mirror and noticed that my peripheral vision seemed to be quivering, and it was cut off on either side, perhaps by as much as a third. Fortunately, I took a break and everything seems to have returned to normal. Even after my eyes improved, I was still a little concerned. I still didn't really no what had happened. I had an inkling that the culprit was some combination of lack of sleep and moderate drinking last night (two mixed drinks and three pints of beer), but I wasn't really sure. Two people have since comfirmed my suspicions, and one suggested that it may have been a migraine.

I'm going to go to bed early this evening, and hopefully this won't happen again.

Oh my god

Great new music. Well, new to me. I finally got my hands on "Reasonable Doubt", and I also have a copy of Cinematic Orchestra's "Man with a Movie Camera". Rounded out my acquisitions with some Johnny Cash, Coltrane, Adderley, Parker and Ellington. Thesis is going well. Shakespeare paper hasn't started going yet.

See ya all soon.

Love Ev

I laugh and write my thesis

"Hitherto lost in conceptuality, the unclothed viewer sees the naked world." I've not decided if this is ingenious or stupid. I admit, out of context, it is just plain silly, but within the paragrah I wrote, I can't decide.

hrrr...thesis...hrrr

I've almost reached my limit. I should really be in bed as I have a thesis meeting in a little more than seven hours. But I must write more, which means I must not write this. Hrrrrr.. Going well though. I've got almost fifteen pages of a first chapter that will end up being a little over twenty pages.

Silly Quiz for procrastination. I am mystified by my mind and friends/family score

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	7.3
Mind:	6.6
Body:	7.3
Spirit:	9.1
Friends/Family:	5.6
Love:	4.3
Finance:	5.8
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

Help

I need some help from all of you. Among the many traditions at Reed, most of which are wonderfully silly, there is one that involves placing a "random" word somewhere in one's thesis. Any senior who desires may enter, and the cost of entry is rather simple: suggest a word or phrase that some other poor soul will have to place in their thesis. As the little notice on my desk says, "past examples include such gems as 'hexagonal democracy', 'retrocombobulation', 'electrodentistry', and 'escape to Madagascar'. I am enlisting all of you help me come up with an appropriately silly word or phrase. This could even be a competition of sorts. I promise to take the winner, as judged by me, out for drinks. To be eligible for this prize, there must be a previous acquaintance between us. I reserve the right to decide that I like my own ideas better. Post them as comments, or send me an email.

My ideas so far:

'dialectical swiss cheese'
'lords of materialism'

thoughts on procrastination and contextual effects

Though this post may belie its own claim, I've discovered that moving to a new work location can have wonderful effects on my ability to stay focused. I'm now sitting in a different part of the library and a working spirit has been coming more easily. (It would be better if I used the passive voice less). It seems I've developed a sense of revulsion to my thesis desk, where I spend almost as much time as I do in bed. Back to Lear.

procratination

Sometimes I wonder if I should have been an economics major. I spend altogether too much time reading, thinking and writing about politics and economics. I've just spent almost three hours researching past and projected future levels of oil production and consumption. I was curious to know if we were going to face an oil crunch anytime soon, and if so, how dire the effects would be. People have been projecting an oil 'peak' for a long-time now. The term was first coined by Marion King Hubbert in 1956. At the time he was a geologist working for Shell oil. He got the peak of continental US production right. Similar predictions for world production (1989, 1995, 2000), mostly by an institute lead by Colin Campbell, also a former geologist for the oil industry, have all proved wrong. Uphased, Mr. Campbell continues in his attempts to predict the peak. Most recently, he's pegged it at 2010. What all this means is another question. When Hubbert first presented his peak theory, he also argued that the oil production curve has a particular shape. Critically, it slopes steeply downward on the far-side. This is perhaps the more important question as it greatly affects what we think the effects of the peak will be. Some envision a global economic and social crisis. Others think the peak is farther off, and some also believe that the drop on the far-side won't be so bad.

Anyhow, I'm procrastinating again, and now I really need to get back to work.

Sometimes I agree with the Conservatives (sort of)

CBC online has a story today about a proposal from the Agricultural Institute of Canada that the GST be assessed on food, and the money given to farmers as a subsidy. This is stupid. The article quotes MP David Anderson (C-Sask), "do we need to increase taxes further? If this government was serious about supporting agriculture, it seems to have a fairly healthy surplus." I agree with him in part. Though I am not opposed to income taxes, I generally frown on sales taxes, especially when they are applied to essential items like food. Adding a 7% tax to food would only hurt the poor people of Canada, and there are much better ways of subsidising the farm industry, if that is what we want to do. To my surprise, Anderson, in pointing to the government's surplus, seems to be suggesting my favourite, just give them money directly from government coffers. It need not be tied to any particular source of (government) income. We could then, for example, divert money received from taxing the wealthiest Canadians to paying farmers to produce food at a cost above market price. This of course raises the other pertinent question, should we subsidise them at all? I don't know. One might view the food supply as in part an issue of national security. We might not want to become too dependent on other countries for our food. Even if we disagree with that, we might think that, at the very least, the current generation of farmers needs some sort of safety net.

Anyways, back to work.

Academic Joy

I'm reading what has so far proved to be a great book, Of Philosophers and Kings: Political Philosophy in Shakespeare's Macbeth and King Lear. The author, Leon Harold Craig, is of a decidedly different generation. He eschews contemporary critical approaches (historicist, postmodern) in favour of a good old reading of the text. His thesis is that Shakespeare was an emminently intelligent philosopher, and that much of his wisdom is contained in his plays. I should note that when Craig uses the word "philosophy" (or "philosophical") he is much less concerned with a particular set of ideas than he is with a particular approach to life, and to the way we think about life. The philosopher for him is someone who likes to think about things, always hoping to understand them better, and who delights in inspiring this sort of approach in others. The other inspiration for this post was that I've realized I have a great deal of work to do a some point, some point after Reed. There is a lot of post-modern thought (I intentionally do not employ the term postmodernism) with which I agree, at least in part. There is also a lot of stuff anathema to post-modern thinking with which I also agree. It is perhaps possible that I've selectively agreed with things in such a way that I am not myself in contradiction. But I have my doubts. At some point, I am going to have to sort this all out. It is an endeavour that excites me greatly, but it make take a while. I have an inkling that there is something of an answer in the buddhist distinction between absolute and relative reality. "Relative" here does not have all the same implications that it would in a post-modernist text. (Again, I employ 'post-modernist' intentionally, this time as a sort of little intellectual jab.) Simply because relative reality is not absolute does not mean it is not to be respected. Indeed, you ignore its constraints at your peril (physically, socially, emotionally,...).

Anyways, back to Lear.

Things we thought all along

The NY Times, that bastion of liberalism, has an article today detailing the still classified research of historian Robert J. Hayok, in which he concludes that the crucial Tonkin Gulf episode was a sham. For those who've forgotten grade 12 history, the Tonkin Gulf episode consisted of an alleged attack by a (North) Vietnamese destroyer (gunboat?, paddlewheel?) on an American ship on August 4th 1964, two days after a previous clash. This was believed to be a clear sign of 'escalation' on the part of the Vietnamese, and President Johnson cited the attack as justification for his request to Congress for authorization of "broad military action in Vietnam." In a recent interview, the then Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, says, according to the Times, "that the intelligence reports [...] played a decisive role in the war's expansion. Historians have long suspected that the incident didn't really happen, but none before Mr Hayok has had access to the N.S.A (National Security Agency, aka the really creepy spooks) archives. The Times reports that he reached his conclusion based on the differences between official N.S.A. reports and intercepts from N.S.A. listening posts in South Vietnam and the Philippines. It appears that mid-level N.S.A. operatives mistranslated the intercepts, and though they soon noticed their errors, they then systematically mistranslated the intercepts to cover up their initial mistakes. Hayok further concludes that it is doubful that any high-level folks at the N.S.A, or in other parts of government (the White House) new about the mistake and subsequent coverup. Johnson is reported to have had doubts about the episode from the get go, but alas. Hayok's research, entitled "Spartans in Darkness", was 'published' in an internal NSA 'journal' about five years ago. The Times reports that the agency was planning to release the report until it became evident that some of the intelligence justifying the invasion of Iraq had been falsified. No one, except us pussy-footed, pansie-assed liberal blow-hards, wants to have that sort of déja-vu. We need unity in the face of adversity; ignorance in the face of propaganda.

According to the times, the N.S.A is planning to release the report, and to also declassify the pertinent primary evidence, in the near future. This will be interesting to see. One has to wonder about the bias of a historian employed by the N.S.A, but I know nothing about Hayok's other work. Further, I imagine that the US Armed Forces and some of the associated intelligence services are probably quite interested in internal criticism, at least within certain constraints. It can only make them stronger. As much as us liberal softies like to joke about the boys and their toys, the US officer corps is actually a very smart bunch on the whole.

evenin' ramblings

So I'm sort of exhausted (yes, again), and though I may be able to embark on grand adventures of literary meaning in such states, it is the not the most conducive to analytical, scientific thinking. Yes, this does say something dissapointing about the interpretation of literature. But it is also beautiful. As is my habit, I opened up a number of articles from The Economist to occupy my mind while it loosens up and returns to sobriety. Unexpectedly, I was attracted by a headline for one of the monthly summaries of what's in the business journals. A reborn version of the European Business Forum is hoping to challengen the Harvard Business Review's preeminent position at the top of the pack. The Economist is however roundly dismissive of their aspirations:

On the evidence of this issue, [the European Business Forum] has some way to go. Teased though it sometimes is for its use of “management-speak”, the mostly eloquent HBR would never start an article thus: “One of the more interesting things about life is, precisely, things. Things bring people together.”

Now this is really neither here nor there. It was not what inspired me to write this post. It was the next summary, of an article from the Havard Business Review, that piqued my interest. The article itself is but a summary, or an excerpt, of the findings of a book published by the HBR. Let's start with the title of the book: "Results: Keep What’s Good, Fix What’s Wrong and Unlock Great Performance". Now, granted this is just the title, but is this not a bit question begging? Anyways, the article looks at one of seven types of corporate organisation (why not six? why not eight?), which the authors have named 'passive-aggresive'. The Economist summarizes:

The “passive-aggressive” type they describe in the HBR article is one that is easy to recognise. Generally free of conflict and quick to achieve consensus, firms with such an organisational structure are extremely reluctant to implement changes. One key symptom of a passive-aggressive organisation is a poorly-designed incentive scheme that fails to differentiate between good and merely adequate performers. With no way of telling who gets rewarded for what, “rituals and routines, even modes of dress, become fetishized, as though they contain the secret to the firm’s past successes.”

Having described the passive-aggressive organisation, the authors admit that rehabilitating one is “uniquely difficult”, if only becomes [sic] everything appears to be functioning smoothly. Bringing in an outsider to lead can help; unfortunately, an outsider who moves too quickly to change things might provoke more of the passive-aggressive resistance he is there to undermine.

The next summary is of an article on the correlation, or lack therof, between spending on R&D and success:

A new study by a group of consultants at Booz Allen Hamilton’s New York office has come up with the disturbing finding that “there is no relationship between R&D spending and the primary measures of economic or corporate success”. It’s not how much you spend that matters, say the authors in what they claim is “the most comprehensive effort to date to assess the influence of R&D on corporate performance,” it’s the way that you spend it.

[...]

So is it time to cut the R&D budget? For some, maybe. But not by too much. The authors found that the bottom 10% of their sample performed worse than the rest. Their advice? “Avoid being either a top or a bottom spender” on R&D, unless there is a clear and compelling reason for it.


Now, let's look at what we've learned from these two articles. Oh, wait, the next one, "Strategy and the Fat Smoker" is even better (I swear, I'm not making this stuff up).

David Maister, a former Harvard Business School professor and a leading expert on the management of professional-service firms, has an article forthcoming on his website (a related video presentation is already available) in which he compares strategy formulation to dieting—“the lesson of strategy is simple. You are either seriously in the programme, really living what you have chosen, or you are wasting your time.” As it is for Weight Watchers, “the essential question [of strategy] is which of our habits are we really prepared to change, permanently and forever?”

Mr Maister’s argument is that the secret of successful strategy lies not in theoretical analysis, nor in technique; it lies in resolve, in determination, in adopting “a managerial style of insistent patience”. Introducing strategic change is like recovering from alcoholism—“first make a lifetime commitment, then take it one day at a time.” First have the vision, the ideology; then have the patience.

Mr Maister, a self-confessed one-pack a day smoker for 37 years, gave up this year and lost 30 pounds in weight. “If I can become a fit, non-smoking exerciser,” he writes, “there’s truly no limit.”

As I can't resist, we're going to have to wade through the banalities of two more summaries. This first summary is nicely titled, "Balance is Better".

“Spreading Yourself Too Thin: the Atkins Diet and Other Fads”
The bankruptcy in July of the company founded by the late Robert Atkins, promoter of the low-carb diet and bad breath, has prompted Wharton School professors Marshall Fisher and Barbara Kahn to ponder on the nature of fadswonder products, such as Pet Rocks and bell-bottom jeans, whose meteoric rise is exceeded only by their meteoric fall. But does it have to be so? No, says Ms Kahn, some fads “have legs of their own, get accepted and become widespread”.

But most geet routed by the competition that sooner or later enters their market space. Atkins Nutritionals had to fight off “a stampede of major food manufacturers who produced thousands of low-carb products”. If they did not succeed, they could abandon them and revert to their old range of products with little loss. That option was not available to Atkins, which remained a “one-trick-pony” throughout its life.


And the last one: "Worth Remembering" from the MIT Sloan Management Review, “Managing Organisational Forgetting”. The Economist writes:

If any publication can stand comparison with the Harvard Business Review (HBR) it is the MIT Sloan Management Review. As the HBR awards a prize to the best article that a panel of outside judges decides it has published in the past year (the McKinsey prize), so the MIT Sloan Management Review awards the Richard Beckhard Memorial Prize to the authors of its best article. Named after a professor of organisational development at the school, the prize has just been awarded to an article published in the Winter 2004 issue. Written by three academics, from Canada, Spain and the UK, it argued that companies need to take “a selective, discriminating and active approach to acquiring and utilising knowledge”—ie, they must forget some things at the same time as they learn and remember others. The authors say that companies hang on to knowledge that can often be producing “dysfunctional outcomes”. Their advice? Forget it.


Now, what have we learned:

1) Pop-culture psychology has nothing interesting to tell us about how to run a company. In somewhat the same way as pop-psychology, any attempt to make its conclusions generally applicable has the result of making them either wrong or uninterestingly obvious.

2) Spend you money wisely.

3) Discipline, in terms of clarity of focus and persistence in application, lies at the heart of any attempt to effect lasting change.

4) Diversify. Have a core-business that is not subject to the whims of human frailty. Exercise some common sense.

5) Not everything you know is useful. One might wonder if the authors of that article didn't feel the slightest sense of irony as they penned their prize winning opus.

I realise now that if I was willing to whore myself out to the production of business "knowledge" (if ever there was time to put a word in quotation marks, this is it), I could have a rather lucrative career. Most of their grand insights are simply platitudes disguised in metaphors or analogies. The few that aren't so easily dismissed tend to "prove" the obvious. In real science, proving the obvious is often rather difficult, and is an admirable and important part of human progress. However Economics is not science. Business "analysis" is rarely Economics, it is in fact about as close to science as pop-psychology is to physics.

Evening thoughts while sobering up

“THE ideas of economists and political philosophers...are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.” —John Maynard Keynes
(cited by The Economist in their obituary of Arthur Sheldon; October 20th, 2005)

Thesis and Booze

Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Coleridge...many poets and writers, perhaps Proust as well, have thought drunkeness, or other states of insobriety, a catalyst of creative endeavour. As I think literary criticism is little more than an attempt to tell a good story, I am hopeful that my current mild inebriation will produce thesis musings of great depth and grandeur. Though I'd settle for coherent and pointed. In fact, I aspire to coherent and pointed. The best literary criticism often tells the tale of the obvious. Reading it, we feel astounded to have missed what now seems so apparent. This is of course the sign of a good yarn, of a particular facility for weaving the threads together. Out of this comes a clear picture, no longer mere interwoven strands, but a set of relationships that jump forth into our imagination with a visual clarity that makes them self-evident. How we could have missed it we are no longer sure. The logic, the motivation and the ramifications are all now clear. The critic's tale has bowled us over like a monster truck over trycicles.

Almost there [Vancouver in less thatn 48hrs !!!]

I'm writing an annotated bibliography for my King Lear paper. Once again, I am dismayed by all the crap I have to wade through. If I thought it would make the articles more interesting, I'd bang my head on the brick wall to my left. These are the sort of irrational suppositions and correlations that the dead weight of academia unleashes.

Ev

drivel

"drivel" in French is "radotage" (n.m.)

I'm quite pleased.

I Love School

While reading the introduction to Julius Caesar (Arden), I came across a word entirely foreign to me, "hendiadys".

From the OED:A figure of speech in which a single complex idea is expressed by two words connected by a conjunction; e.g. by two substantives with and instead of an adjective and substantive.

1586 A. DAY Eng. Secretary II. (1625) 83 Hendiadis, when one thing of it selfe intire, is diversly laid open, as to say, On iron and bit he champt, for on the iron bit he champt. 1589 PUTTENHAM Eng. Poesie III. xvi. (Arb.) 188 Another manner of speach when ye will seeme to make two of one..which therefore we call the figure of Twynnes, the Greekes Endiadis.

I love learning new things.

The biggest problem with "Globalisation"

A global market for labour.

In a recent article ("Be My Guest"; Oct. 6th 2005), The Economist writes:

Labour is globalisation's missing link. The flow of workers across borders is heavily impeded, leaving the global market for labour far more distorted than those for capital and commodities. The world price of capital may be set in America, and that of oil set in Saudi Arabia. But there is no such thing as a world price of labour. Wages can differ by a factor of ten or more depending only on the passport of the wage-earner, according to Dani Rodrik, an economist at Harvard.


Can we really imagine what a global market for labour would look like? I think I can, and it is stupid. I'm not ready to do away with nation states and their semi-closed borders. I do think that immigration policies should be loosened, but I'm not about to argue that anyone should be able to work and live anywhere, and get up and move somewhere else as they please. (Not yet at least.) I should say, this is not what The Economist is suggesting. The article goes on to discuss the issues surrounding temporary migration, but the central inequity of globalization remains: companies may be able pick labourers as they see fit, and investors deploy their capital as they choose, but labourers are mostly stuck with whatever options are available at home. Now, I'm being entirely too simplistic. Labour is necessarily localized, and though workers may move, their scope for doing so is understandably more limited than that of capital. Companies, on the other hand, lie somewhere in between. The tendency of late has been for them to become more international, with accordingly fewer ties to any locality or nationality. Though I think this has often been good, it is worth thinking about.

Good Morning

It's no wonder we believe in our own existence. We can hold someone's hand, talk to them, listen and respond. And yet I'm not sure I can point to anything beyond the physical extention and duration of a corporeal object. To be entirely clear: I'm not really concerned with rather or not we exist in a physical sense, but with to what extent, and in what way we exist as the person we experience ourselves to be. When emotions manifest with an undeniable physicality, it seems quite clear that that subjective sense of I exists. Sometimes, it just seems that "these feelings won't go away", and we feel utterly convinced that we exist, painful as our existence may be. I sometimes wonder about why it is that I feel more certain of my existence, more conscious of it, when I am sad than when I am happy.

What sort of extention and duration does our consciousness have? For the moment, let's conceive of consciousness as simply the capacity to be aware of oneself and the surrounding world. Our awareness off the physical world must of course be restricted by the extent to which we have sense-datum of it . If one prefers not to divide perception into the perceptual act and the mental objects created, that's just fine. I'm happy to simply say that our awareness of the physical world is restricted by our capacity to sense it. This is an obvious constraint, but I want to be clear that I'm not interested in entertaining any notions of psychic revelation.

So we have a physical body with clear duration and extension and we have awareness. I don't really care whether we believe our awareness to have extension or not. I don't hope to solve the mind-body problem, and as far as my interest extends at present, it doesn't matter whether awareness is a physical "organ" of our mind, or some sort of psychic capacity without a clear physicality (emergent or not—though I have hard time conceiving how it could be anything but emergent if it's not inherently physical). I am being a little disingenuous here: part of my concern does in fact directly pertain to the mind-body problem. I am creating a distinction between consciousness and awareness to examine to different facets of human experience that I think are often erroneously lumped together. The first, that I am calling awareness is simply our capacity to be conscious of observing the world and ourselves. (I can tell that this terminolgy is already horribly ill-conceived, but for now I'm going to go with it and editing will come later.) I don't much care whether or not awareness has extension. Its duration on the other hand is very important.

umm yeah. I need to do some work, so this it to be continued.

Oh, and Sufjan Stevens rocks my world (sad as it it).

comfort

I've surrounded myself with an intellectual comfort. I have a wall of books—over fifty for my thesis alone—that fill the lower shelf of my cubicle, an imposing presence across the entire field of my vision as I sit, eyes moving back and forth from book to screen, attempting to write about painting and Proust.

Death comes quickly

This wasn't what I had intended to write about, but as my fingers began typing, it was what came out. We all have granparents, aunts and uncles, and other elderly friends of the family. I recently found out that someone close to my family has died. I'd been planning on writing her a letter, in response to one that she had sent me, for the last month. Planning, meaning to...I never did get to it...

So yeah, don't let this happen to you.

Coming back to what I meant to write about. As I mentioned in a recent post, acamedics often embark on seemingly pointless quests in search of answers to the most meaningless of questions. A case in point: many critics have spent a great deal of time attempting to decide which, if any, of the yellow patches in Vermeer's View of Delft is the fabled "petit pan de mur jaune" ("little section of yellow wall") that is mentioned three times in A La recherche du temps perdu. If you follow the second link, you'll see a rendition of the painting (I say "rendition" because I have no idea what sort of saturation, contrast, etc., the painting actually has) where to my eyes, it is eminently clear which patch of yellow is the "petit pan de mur jaune" (the one labeled "A" in the first link). And yet, I don't care.

Further thoughts on music

I'm working at the Paradox, meticulously cleaning the espresso machine and listening to the melancholy music that has been my mood of late. A couple minutes ago, while listening to Led Zepplin's "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You", I had some more thoughts on my previous musings on music and lyrics. I've been listening to this song a fair bit lately as it has often been in accord with the way I've been feeling. However, as I was listening to it this evening, and paying attention to the lyrics in a way I normally would not, I realised something. The semantic content of the lyrics in no way express what I feel. And yet there is a similarity between the feeling that is expressed and what I feel. Anyways, I need to get back to work.

Ev

I just almost passed out from an emotional attack. Well, that's sort of what it felt like. I don't want to go into details, what really interests me is the intense physical manifestation of my emotions. Certainly, I usually feel some sort of physical sense of what I'm feeling, as is probably true of all of us. That that is true is obvious in the way we talk about emotions—we feel them. But usually, I find that, even if my feelings are strong, I am still able to maintain some rational control. It's not that I can give up my sadness on a whim (nor do I think I would want to), but that, even when I feel very sad (or angry, etc.) there is most always a sort of conscious observer in my head. If any of you have ever seen Franciso Goya's etching El sueno de la razon produce monstruous (The sleep/dream of reason produces monsters) [small ; big], the lynx (in the bottom right hand corner of the picture) reminds me very much of this sense of a conscious observer, somewhat separated from the principal flow of events. Today, I had a brief experience of losing that. I was still somewhat aware of myself as thinking subject, so I won't say I lost it entirely, but what little sense of the perspective of the observer that remained had no bearing on how I saw the world. Or more accurately, how the world manifested for me at that moment. It was an experience of rapture, but it ended as soon as I realised that the outside world (real) was not in fact how I had briefly believed it to be.

Prout's favourite colour?

Academics are capable of such drivel. I doubt many disciplines are spared this blight, but sometimes, okay often, I feel that the study of literature and of culture (commonly called anthropology–or, How I learned to scientivise my racism and stop worrying about colonialism) are the standout, cancerous growths. Their constant self-reflection, their collapsing of the centre—because it has no "structure"—their pedantic, meandering descriptions of the minutiae of some topic for which the world has no concern, and which, even if they tried, they would not succeed in establishing any meaningful resonances with real situations, all these, and more, annoy me. (I'm not dismissing all such academic investigations out of hand. I am not, as of yet, a marxist literary critic. I do think it is alright, and indeed often very helpful to spend time looking at grand themes, or internal structures, with little or no immediate regard for how they relate to the "outside world". Though I agree that art is usually a product, a good to be consumed, I also continue to believe in its transcendental qualities.)

So it was not without some humour today that I stumbled across a paper on Proust's favourite colour. As I skimmed the introduction, I felt a vague sense of increasing horror. I had visions of the intertextualities between childhood games of "what's your favourite colour" and Proust's own instantiations of his favourite colour coming to the fore, of the recovery of the underlying uncertainty in the text, and of the praxis of transformation as subtle shifts in the visual undercurrents rose to become an active hermeneutic that was itself constitutive of subjectivity. It was not that bad. But it was not much better. Most of the article was simply a description of the places one finds this particular colour in the Recherche.

I don't mean to say that I think all academics are awash in indulgent intellectual flings of premature ejaculation, without regard for the groundwork of foreplay, or the immense satisfaction and depth of sustained endeavour. There are many who make me smile, many who I feel have augmented human knowledge for the better, many who, in reading, bring a joy of both complexity and simplicity. Among many others, I highly recommend Stanley Cavell, Northrop Frye, Judith Butler, Paul de Man, William Empson, Edward Said and Raymond Williams.

(Um, yeah. I should, like, go back to work or somethin'. That stuff I said about anthropology, only half true, I think...I don't really know that much about anthropology)

Choking aspiration

So I have to write a paper for my Shakespeare class. The course title, "Shakespeare and Politics", must in some way guide my choice of topic. I spent all weekend working, trying to devise some sort of coherent, interesting and manageable course of attack. Early on, I decided on King Lear as my play of choice. This was perhaps my first mistake. Shakespeare's tragedies are beastly behemoths of signification, and they don't come any more complex than Hamlet and Lear. So why you ask, didn't I just write on the politics of As You Like It, or the interplay between theatricality and truth as Prince Hal develops from delinquent youth to stately young king (Henry IV I)? Well, I like to make things difficult. Difficulty is rarely far behind when the question at stake is interesting, and, to be honest, I like the challenge.

And now for the topic: What sort of ideology is at play in the conception of nature and of what is natural in King Lear. These two are not always the same, and when they diverge it is always political. How is “nature” contravened, how is it edified, and what are the resonances with contemporary concerns of Jacobean England?

This isn't quite as clear and pointed as I'd like it, but I've no more time to work on it until tomorrow.

Thoughts from Senior Symposium

These are some things I wrote on the back pages of Susan Sontag's "Regarding the Pain of Others" while discussing it last night.

The sublime is just a concept invented by western intellectuals in an attempt to escape their overwhelming edification of themselves.

----

Images of violence set people apart. They reaffirm group boundaries as we identify with either the perpetrator or the victim (or as not being a part of the situation at all, as in, that's happening over there). Whereas erotic (not pornographic) and romantic images tend towards and opposite effect of bringing people together, of softening the divides between different groups. Perhaps this points to part of the popularity, and institutional approval, of violent imagery in our society.

---

This next one is an almost verbatim quote from a prof:

"Aphorisms are mental laxatives. They're like a piece of chocolate x-lax. They contain some element with which one feels compelled to agree, and another with which one cannot but disagree."

"In 1820, for example, 70% of American workers were in agriculture; today 2% are. If all those workers had remained tilling the land, America would now be a lot poorer." (The Economist. "The Great Jobs Switch". Sept. 29th 2005).

I liked this point for the perspective that it gives to contemporary debates about the merits of outsourcing (I know that I've said I wouldn't use that word in this context, but I've succumbed to the force of popularity). Would the opponents of outsourcing really have us maintain the status quo indefinitely? Would they prefer that we all return to some sort idyllic community of farmers? Though there are certainly some who would answer in the affirmative to the latter question—and we have term for them, "hippies"—I'm quite happy to not be living in an agrarian society, dream as I might about someday owning a vineyard.

morning

Apparently, I wrote that last post today. Blogger clearly does not understand the proper meaning of night and day, of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Days do not change until I've slept. I'm a little hungover this morning, but I've work to do so back to work I go.

evening

Someone came home crying this evening. I wasn't sure what to do. I do realise it till I heard them break out in sobs in their room. Sometimes, I just want to be alone and cry. Crying alone. And yet, I was tempedt to go and offer a should, or some bourbon.

Anyways, the person I though was crying just came down in her cute underwear and appeared not to have been crying, though I'm a little to drunk to tell from far away, especially without my glasses. We exchanged a few normal words, but I'm pretty sure it was her.

So now I'm outside. Listening to Honig on my ibook and typing this. Enjoting the cool evening air, without a care for my typos.

For the first time, I did lest than I was supposed to the paradox. oh my, was I tipsy. Counting one dollar bills has nevenr been so hard.

Jelly joe is on now so it's time to say goodnight to y'all. it's time to embrace the aching corner of my heart.

I hope you're well.

love ev

On Punctuation

"If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be a homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts. But do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college." - Kurt Vonnegut

Things to say when you're feeling miffed

"Go shake your ears"
(Maria to Malvolio in Twelfth Night)

To give it a little more ummphh, one might add a contempoarary edge, such as "go shake your fucking ears". Then, at least, it would be undeniably clear that it was meant as an insult, even if the recipient did not understand that you were calling them an ass (donkey).

"Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo" from one of Catallus' "love poems"

variously translated as:

"Bugger off and get stuffed"

"I'll bugger you and fuck you in the mouth"

"I will assrape you and make you blow me"

Two of these translations are (I think) thanks two a couple of reedies over on a reed journal.

Be warned, the rest of the poem is rather homophobic. I pass it on only because it is in Latin, which, of course, makes it cool in a nerdy sort of way. Next time I will post some of Louise Labé's poetry.

On not working

I really don't feel like working. So instead I am writing this. The small window to my left, open just a crack because it doesn't open any more, lets in a faint cool breeze. The crisp evening air keeps me from nodding off, but the sounds of evening rush hour interrupt my thinking. Thinking hasn't been going too well today, though I don't mean that in an academic sense. I've already accomplished my most important task for the week. My thesis topic is now formulated as a question, "How does art manage to escape the metonymic contingencies of place and time and instead exist as a metaphoric unity?" Remember that this is art as represented in Proust's In Search of Lost Time, specifically in the first two books, Swann's Way and In the Shadow of Young Girls, and in the last book, Time refound (regained). Notice that my project has both expanded and become more specific (though I now have a question, I also have one more book to write about). I fear that this may become the pattern of my thesis. Moments of insight will be followed by flooding questions and uncertainties, and my feeling like I'm surrounded by an abyss of incommensurably expansive jest. Yes, a noun without a place, or an undeclined verb, things don't quite fit together, and yet they do in the reading.

My heart's been heavy today, but I see no reason for it to be so. This is why I said thinking wasn't going so well today. Reason has brought me no solace and I've no time for murky self-reflection. My sorrow hangs heavy in my chest and I've not found a cause to ground it.

In more cheerful news, I've developed rough ideas for a three volume magnum opus, but they shall remain secret until I've completed the first draft, or at least just for now.

A question for thought: Can protest be productive without an alternative in mind?

Afternoon thoughts

It's Sunday afternoon and I've just finished Jboard training. I'm about to head to the gym, but before doing so I thought I'd mention that y'all should really check out Yonderboi, and in particular his debut album "Shallow and Profound". I imagine that it was Jedd who introduced his music to me, probably when I was up in Vancouver in June, but I'd not given the album a thorough listen until yesterday. The title is disarmingly apt. Some tracks waffle along in superficial exchanges of electronic call and answer, creating enjoyable mood music and little else. However Yonderboi is at his best when he's slowed down, finding more complexity in his samples, and allowing himself the time to weave them together and play them off of each other. There are at least two outstanding tracks on the album, maybe three, and many others have the potential to develop with further listening. Really, the most interesting aspect of the music is how it successfully alternates between the shallow and profound, between the superficially entertaining, and the genuinely emotive.

Free Beer

Not here, I mean this is after all an address in the cyber néant, and even if my prose may give it a certain je ne sais quoi sense of presence, I don't see beer oozing out of your keyboards and seeping through your fingers any time soon. At least not because of me. And no, this isn't in these here United States of America, nor even over yonder in Canada. Alas, most all of North America is a tad too puritanical to give away booze. No, you must make your way to Germany, and go see Bayern Munich play, and then cheer agains them till they lose. As reported on the Guardian Online today, Bitburger, a german brewery based in Munich, has promised to give away 10,000 L of beer to the supporters of the first team to beat Bayern. Bayern has won each of their last 15 games, six this season plus the nine ending last season. So who wants to go watch some football in Germany?

On Description (by me and Hamon)

This is an excerpt of some musings I wrote the other night before I set out to read Philippe Hamon's book Du Descriptif (Of the Descriptive)

On Description

First, my own thoughts (as they ramble, babbling through my head);

To describe is to attribute qualities to something, it is to make it (that something) an object of thought and a subject of discourse, and in doing so, to differentiate it from other things—to make it no longer some thing, but a particular thing, distinguished as an individual entity, or, as part of a larger group that is different from other groups . Above all, description is expansive in nature. It enlarges the footprint that a particular entity occupies in our imagination. To a character in a novel, it may bestow certain qualities whilst depriving others, and similarly, when describing a friend, we are attempting to create a picture of that person and communicate it to someone else. The colloquial phrase, “can you give me a picture of it,” hints at part of what is at stake: we are not simply supplying a list of attributes and expecting that to suffice, but instead, we also supply or assume a coherency as all of the attributes are bound by the context of being applied to a particular person or thing (or idea). A good description should bring its object to life, therein making it a subject. To describe then is often already to assume existence, either as an existing object with duration and extension, or as an imagined possibility, that nonetheless has some sort of coherence. We should be careful to not always assume this to be the case. Indeed, many modern novelists have employed descriptions in ways that directly challenge our attemps at coherency [this needs thought in particular needs work]. By "coherency" in the last sentence I mean an a priori belief in things existing as they are in a manner (roughly) synonymous with things as we perceive and understand them. [This las sentence need flushing out to be sensible]

As a particular category in literature, description has traditionally been opposed to narrative (advances in the story). In this view, description is that which does not advance the plot, and was thus sometimes seen as superfluous. Characters’ actions comprised the story, and depictions of their demeanor or physique, or of the place they inhabited, were taken to be exterior to the story. If we limit a story and its importance to what might be conveyed by the simplest of point form fabulas, this could seem almost correct. However, even in the choice of verbs with which the action is represented, there is a process of differentiation. At its basis, description is the creation of difference, without which a particular thing could not be perceived to exist.


Now on to Hamon’s introduction (“Du Descriptif”, 1993):

“The essence of description (“du descriptif”), if there must (“devait”) be one, its effect, would be in one effort: an effort to resist the constraigning linearity of the text,…” p.5

This is surely one of the effects, and perhaps principal uses, of description, and it suggests the traditional notion of the descriptive as separate from the plot driven (actions and events), but it ignores the many ways in which description can appear within a linear progression. For example, take the sentence, “Natas overheard Chris talking on the phone”. Depending on the reader’s familiarity with “Natas”, it may carry very little or a great deal of meaning as the subject of the sentence. If we are partway through the story, then all our acquaintance with Natas thus far has the potential to affect our understanding of this sentence. The reader may also recognize “Natas” as being “Satan” spelled backwards, and then wonder if the author meant to ascribe to Natas some sort of satanic sense of being. Next, we might imagine that the author had simply written “heard” instead of “overheard”, or perhaps “listened to” or “eavesdropped on”. Each of these verbs carries different connotations, and thus differs in the way it describes the action undertaken by Natas. Again, the proper name “Chris” may invoke particular associations, which is just to say that even the choice of a proper name can be an aspect of description. To take an example from literature, the character “Bottom” from Réjean Ducharme’s Dévadé has a name that umistakably conveys two aspects of the character’s life, which are also themes of the novel (Bottom’s name is important both for its being in English in an otherwise mostly French novel written by a francophone Canadian, and for the actual meaning of the English word). We might also substitute different verbs for “talking”—yelling, screaming, whispering, chatting—many come to mind, but the point is that in choosing a word we make a choice amongst many other possibilities, and if we accept Saussure’s idea of diffentially established meaning [cite, syntagmatic v. paradygmatic axis, or Jakobson’s metonymy v. metaphor], which I do, then we will agree that even word choice involves a process of differentiation, which is then mirrored (though not precisely, more to say on this, though it may not be relevant) by the reader while deciphering the text.

evening thoughts (from Ludwig Wittgenstein)

Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses. (Philosophical Investigationsp.80 or so I think)

So I knew that one day I would eat these words, "Proust is better than sex". It's now about six months later and I find myself reading Proust again. Who knew that a brief two week fling would turn into what is sure to become a year long obession. Our courtship has only just begun, but already I wish I were...well...not having sex, but drinking, yes drinking would be better. In fact, that's what I'll be doing in about an hour and a half, but for now, I am thinking about my new mate, discovering those parts I adore (the ways in which Marcel's dreams and memories unfold into his reality), and also those that I hate (probably the corpus of "theories of description" with which I'll have to come to terms). Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy literary theory, and it will probably constitute the bulk of my first chapter, but I just don't know how many different times I'm willing to read the same goddamn thing (So much literary theory is just a repackaging of things that have come before, and it seems that few are willing to properly admit and reference their intellectual debts, though perhaps they are simply unaware.)

in the reading

"Not even Shakespeare can write well without a proper subject. It is a vain endeavour for the most skilful hand to cultivate barrenness, or to paint upon vacuity."
—Dr. Johnson - from "Johnson on Shakespeare, p.556 (quoted by Norman Rabkin, "Rabbits, Ducks, and Henry V," Shakespeare Quarterly 28 (1977): 279-96.)

Sometimes the correct course in life is clear, and yet it can be the most difficult path to choose. Though the path may indeed be the goal, it is difficult to understand without a view of the end.

Smiling, with tears in my eyes, and nothing really to say, I sit here wishing I could talk to you. There are many possible referents for that "you". Chances are, if you're reading, it probably includes you (unless you got here by pressing that annoying "next blog" button).

Anyways, as I said, I don't really have much to say, but I think I'll continue rambling on, hoping that something will come up, or at least that I'll feel soothed at the end.

Oh yes, anyone have any good alternatives to capitalism? I've become something of a fan over the last few years, but I still long for a utopic world of rainbows and pots of gold for all.

more on last night

While eating breakfast this morning (soft boiled eggs and toast), I thought of some problems with regard to what I wrote last night. The obvious case: lyrics. I don't tend to listen to lyrics, so they hadn's initially occured to me. It's not that I don't listen to vocals, but I listen to them principally as part of the instrumentation. That's part of why I hate most Pop music. The vocals are usually so far forward that the mix is unbalanced (not to mention the overall suckiness part). But I digress. So clearly I am forced to admit that music does communicate. Now, I have a hairbrained idea for maintaining my own intuitions about music, but it requires an elaboration of the essence of good poetry, and then, seperately, of the relationship between vocals/lyrics and the rest of the mix. As for the former (the poetry part), I actually have some ideas. They'd be intellectually indefensible (in a western sense), as they rest on a phenomenological understanding of poetry and its effects, but they make sense if you're willing to accept an appeal to personal and shared experience. As for the latter part, I've no idea and am entirely out of my league.

I'm going to go have drink.

Cheers!

Love Ev

And it was said again. _—{ t h oughts o n musi c }—_

For what is the world in which live, without all this discourse? A whole lotta something. I've just given myself the gift of music and it is good. A salve for my wounds, it mysteriously sutures my heart without me understanding why. And that is precisely the seat of its power. Between me and music, between music and I—it matters really not, and therein lies the point—there is something special. It's not that music transcends language, as I don't think it right to say that music communicates. No, it's that music manages to be evocative without entering into that subject/object relationship that so defines discourse. Listening to music I know (there's always an exception), it feels as though it were a part of me. At least that would be an easy way of putting it. To be more precise, I think we listen to music to transform—whether that be to diminish, accentuate, or alter—our sense of self. Not in any permanent way, simply for the duration of our listening experience.

In more mundane news, I've partly unpacked and cleaned my room, and as you may have guessed, I've finally hooked up my stereo. Classes are going well. Shakespeare and Pascal (and even Descartes, for whom I've grown rather found) are incredibly interesting. I have a thesis topic and an advisor and I am very excited about both. My topic is "Description and Subjectivity in Proust", or some such exploration of Proust and subjectivity. I am as excited to have picked Proust as I am to have relinquished the chains of the French New Novel. That might have been a disaster as I'm not sure I could really have put up with much more of their discombobulated prose.

I hope all is well in your worlds far and near. I expect these lines are the begining of a more frequent presence here.

Ev

Life begins anew

We've settled into our new house. Communal living is mostly going well. We all get along, and generally have a lot of fun together. I even have housemates who like to keep the place clean. I really couldn't ask for much more. My honey is off earning the bacon and I've become the house husband. I clean, I cook, I wash and fold, though perhaps not for much longer. Tomorrow I'm heading off in search of a job. I'll go on foot, door to door, or at least to those doors bearing the sign of welcome, "now hiring". Though I certainly have my preferences—I'd love to work at a wine store—I'm more particular about when I work and how often.

I don't know how much longer this blogging thing will continue, nor am I entirely clear what it is. I've been away for awhile, first due to school, and then because of travels. I do like keeping my friends updated, but I fear that at times I devolve into heaps of grandstading twaddle. I reread a few (relatively) recent posts and was shocked by the style: an annoying tone and unnecessarily recondite diction do not make for happy reading.

By the way: I'm drinking a glass of the Liberty Ale by Anchorage Brewing. Beautiful. I mentioned it in a previous post and am delighted to recommend it again. In related events, I'll be hosting the 1st crappy beer tasting at my house. Not all the beers will be crappy. As I look at it, a beer (or a wine) should be held to the standard to which it pretends. I'm not saying that absolute rakings aren't possible but simply that I've no need to taste a glass of Liberty Ale next a can of MGD; to do so would seem to miss the point to me. Instead, I will taste three types of beer. First, there are those that are commonly thought of as tasteless at best and nearly undrinkable swill at worst. In this category I include my own favourite Pabst, Hamms, Natty Ice, High-Life, Coors, Budweiser, Molson (it's available down here), and perhaps a few others. It's possible that I'm being a bit unfair to Budweiser, perhaps to MGD as well, one might include them in the next category along with Corona, and I'm not sure what else. These are beers that command a premium over the lower rungs, and that are mostly consumed in bottle, at least among those I hand out with. In the last category are those beers that many regard as premium, though perhaps only because they're all imports. Heineken, Stella, Beck's, and perhaps some Czechvar will round out the tasting.

I'll post the results sometime next week.

taking a break

This should provides plenty of entertainment as you sit in front of your computer with Word in the background, your paper still unwritten.

I'm presently listening to a debate between the The Economist and The Nation. The topic is globalization and both sides are making the arguments you'd expect. Thus far, I'd say The Economist is kicking ass in an English way, but I expected nothing different. I tend not to read The Nation, though curiosity does lead me to peruse its website every few weeks. I'm rarely impressed by the content, and when it's presented in printed form, The Nation is an even greater bore. Its aesthetic falls somewhere between Wired magazine and a locally available weekly (such as The Georgia Straight or The Portland Mercury). This is to say that I don't like the way it looks. Perhaps not the best criteria on which to judge a newspaper, but considering how much I read the news, I don't think it unimportant. That The Nation has been around since the mid-nineteenth century should be only a further embarassment to its editors. If they were to hire a new layout department, and rid themselves of their tiresomely colloquial tone (perhaps the most pernicious trend in journalism over the last decade), I'd certainly read their pages more often. Until then, The Guardian and Le Monde will remain my preffered sources of left-leaning news coverage. Anyway, I'm off to bed and so all I'm going to say about the debate is that it's worth a listen:

What's Good for Wall Street is Good for America

and I also came across this debate between Naomi Klein and a business writer for The Economist (though I've not yet listened to it):

No Logo vs. Pro Logo

Just put some bacon the pan and put The Tipping Point on. I'm not sure how the first cut is going to grow on me. I like it less this time than previously. We'll see.

You may see some crazed and insane late night posting this weekend. I'm starting (and hopefully finishing) my qual this weekend. Back to the bacon. Hope everyone is well.

Ev

glassy shimmer, the surface of my bourbon,
ice cube floats amongst the oily swirls;
Harsh gentle river down my throat
soothing warmth, aromas of pear, coffee and persimmon;
the marvels of man passing through my hand—hands,
glasses raised with a friend, a long night on the back porch,
it's cold out here, the sky is dark and we are shivering,
commotion inside, thoughts escape and smiles are exchanged,
another glass, the laughter swells;

Prologue

to what? more of the same. A few nights ago, I began a post entitled "Thoughts while sipping bourbon". Surprisingly, I had a great deal to say, and though I continued tapping away during my shift the next day, it still isn't finished. Until then, I have "More thoughts while sipping bourbon", though all of you have yet to see previous thoughts, hence the title "prologue", though I think I prefer "Prelude". I'm listening to Soul One, a rather unfortunate name for a song I very much like. I've mentioned it before, in post about rediscovering old music. So, here I am listening to anguished music (the best kind) and sipping bourbon. I should be studying the Kinetic Molecular Theory, but my head is exhausted from the expedition I undertook last night. Last week, being the keener nerd that I am—and perhaps a little presumptious—I stupidly volunteered to explicate Paul de Man's musings on Reading (Proust) to my class. Yesterday arrived, and I still hadn't read the article. Today arrived and I'd read it twice, taken copious notes, but slept little. The presentation went well, perhaps very well, though I'm not sure how much was understood. I decided to follow de Man and attempted to insist on meaning's indecidability in a performative manner somewhat similiar to his. I toned it down, I don't think I was convoluted, but then I knew what I was talking about, I think. Others may not have. They were probably left in an aporia similar to that de Man describes the reader as in when faced with one of Proust's logically incoherent metaphors, or not. They may have simply felt confused. I, on the other hand, had a wondrous moment of revelation this morning, very much like the moment where "life" becomes writing, which occurs in a process similar to reading and critical understanding. You see? Not so much, eh? Well, perhaps when I don't have other things I need to rush off to, I will attempt a proper set of musings on de Man. Look for Thoughts while sipping ether.

There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge.
— HST

[somehow, R.I.P. just doesn't seem to fit]

I must be off. Hope you all are well.

Evening thoughts while sipping bourbon

It's a rare moment when I find that some of my disparate but related thoughts come together into a coherent understanding of an idea or aspect of life. I've been reading articles on the relationship between images and text. The first was a chapter from Roland Barthe's Image-Music-Text, and the second, which I've only just begun, a chapter from Norman Bryson's Word and Image: French Painting of the Ancien Regime. Bryson's subject is religious images and the way in which they are determined by the words to which they refer. At least for the moment (as I haven't finished the article), he asserts that religious images lack independance. I'm not sure that any image really ever has independance, but I know what he's getting at and there's no need to nit pick, not yet at least. But all of this is only of tangential relation to what I started off writing about. While reading Bryson's article, at some point after the first paragraph, I drifted off into thought.

My thoughts jumped back to about seven years ago when I was sixteen. I have a very distinct recollection of a conversation in a kitchen with a man about thirty-five years my senior. It was not so much a conversation as it was an exchange of information and opinion—there was no rapport established. Somehow old man came to know that I was buddhist (I may have mentioned it, though I'm not sure) and he responded something like this, "You know, when I was in Laos (or Vietnam, or...insert some south east Asian country), I encountered a lot of buddhist monks. They weren't very good people. I remember they used to just show up at people's houses and expect to be fed. The people hardly had enough to eat themselves, and the monks would just sort of extort food out of them by a tacit appeal to religious duty." I've made the remarks more explicit. For example, I don't think old man actually said "they weren't very good people", but I'm quite sure that's what was being communicated. I don't recall how I responded (I think I said little at all), but I've been thinking about it ever since, albeit not very often. Yes, I have been carrying this with me for seven years, but I've done so with good reason. Ill-conceived though it may have been, the criticism was not unfounded. At the level of denotation, it was perfectly valid, but it's connotation that buddhism is bankrupt and its followers silly was not, and it struck not only at my own beliefs—which were but nascent at the time—but at my family as well. Now, my own beliefs are a fickle thing. I will proclaim non-attachment, but in truth, I frequently experience an attack on my beliefs as on attack on me, because—understanding "beliefs" in the broadest possible sense—I am nothing other than the aggregate of my beliefs . "I" is simply the signifier to which the group of signs (or signifieds, depending how you want to think about this) that make up "me" is attached. Now I really can't remember what I was going to write about. Oh yeah, so, what have I finally, after seven years, decided might be the proper response?

People are not saved by religion, but by religious practice. Why, because at the heart of most religious practice (of all that I am aware) is some kind of discipline. Religious belief is important because it is what makes the practice of this disicpline enjoyable. Without belief, the practices of religion are simply an empty set of rules (which they may be anyways, but that's a different discussion), an orthodoxy that is as foreign and perhaps non-sensical as it is old. But religious practice—or discipline—coupled with genuine belief engenders a generally happy and productive life. Simple really, but important. It is really the discipline part that I think important. Because if the decline of the American empire is anything, it is the decline of discipline (I sound remarkably like Cato here). I'm going to keep talking about this, because, well, I will.

Some may remember a post I made a long while back about an essay competition for which entrants were to compose a piece on the "Power of Purpose". I ridiculed the idea at the time. The slogan still brings to mind one of my father's favourite responses, "gag me with a spoon". But it has a kernel of truth, which is to say it came out of a genuine insight into the nature of human experience. The power of purpose is precisely the power of discipline [at least in my world]. Purpose is nothing other than a clear understanding of and belief in what one is doing [I'm not sure about the belief part]. Maintaining this view, and the actions it requires (the hypothetical imperatives), is discipline. In this sense, discipline need not be religious. One could find such an approach to life and human experience in other ways. Science is an obvious example. Really, any sort of analytic self-reflexion that yields a sense of ideals, standards, beliefs, what have you, is probably what's important.

So why did this take me seven years? Well, it took me a long time to realise the discipline part. I could have said the part about religious practice seven years ago, but it wouldn't have meant all that much. I had yet to grasp the ngedong (tib. for, roughly "meaning beyond words" or "ultimate wisdom") of religious practice. I'm not saying I fully understand it now, but I've some inkling of insight that wasn't there before.

One last thought: "On belief" Strickly speaking, at an absolute level (as opposed relative) a buddhist of my type (some buddhists believe in mind, and I assume there are others who believe in other things) does not believe in anything, precisely because to believe is to make that thingexist, to enter into an artificial subject/object relationship. I'm inclined to say that belief is a useful tool, but ultimately empty....now I'm feeling confused again.