I will be teaching a course this fall that I’ve taught before, Contemporary Civilization, which is a greatest hits of western moral and political philosophy. I usually like to show some films if I can, both because the students enjoy it and because the films can help make the issues we discuss feel more contemporary. But I always have a harder time picking films for the fall half of the course (ancient to early modern) than for the spring (modern), which is why I need your help and suggestions.
The reading list includes: The Bible, The Qur’an, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Epicurus, Augustine, Averroës, Aquinas, Maimonides, Luther, Calvin, More, Galileo, Newton, Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, and Voltaire. And here are some of the main themes we discuss:
As you can see, all pretty light questions.
I have a few ideas already. Ikiru for the discussion on what makes life good/happy. Possibly The Mission or A Man for all Seasons for discussions about religion, though the first I saw a very long time ago and the second I’ve never seen, so I’m not sure how good these films are. And maybe The Lord of the Flies for discussing Hobbes, Locke, and the state of nature, but there are several versions of this and I don’t know which is best. I most need films about religion, science, and the way communities/states ideally do (or do not) function.
Anyone? Anyone?
| Philosophy | Academics |
"Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare."
| Proverbs | Japan |
A while ago, I humbly suggested that the data from electoral-vote.com could be better represented proportionally. Well I tracked down the writer of that Java applet, and he took me up on the suggestion and modified it to break down the vote by strength of support in each state. You still need to enter the data from one to the other, but it's a heck of a lot easier than Photoshopping it state by state. Good job, Mike! I've put the two of them in touch with each other, let's see if they can make some maps!
| Maps | Tufte Alert |
Sorry to get all Heloise on ya, but ever since I got married and generously gifted, I've been a bit obsessed with trying to reduce our current volume of possessions to fit our nonexpandable apartment. And now here's a new thing I can do with the old "gently used" stuff: Donate it to a giant tag sale in Central Park to benefit the New York City public schools. As a veteran of many a stoopsale, I have a hard time believing this will really be profitable. But the prospect of seeing all of New York's castoffs in one place (Rumsey Playfield) fills me with creepy curiosity. And anyway: They'll take my stuff off my hands, it's a good local cause and they're not the Salvation Army. So I'm in.
"The difference between a regular brick and a smart brick is a compartment on one side of the smart brick. Inside, researchers have stuffed advanced wireless electronics - sensors, signal processors, a wireless communication link, and a battery, all packaged in one compact unit."
|
Grant engages in fieldwork in ... his own fridge to demonstrate the kinds of blogs that anthropologists would find useful texts.
| Academics |
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Alan Keyes said Monday that women who choose to undergo abortions and the physicians who perform the procedure are essentially terrorists because "the evil is the same."The remarks came as Keyes was explaining why three months ago he said that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were a "warning" from God to "wake up" and stop "the evil" of abortion.
| Keyes |
Every once in a while, I read a piece about the future of technology that makes the hairs on the back of my head stand up. Something that really is visionary, that changes the way I think about the future. I think Paul Ford's semantic web article was the last to do that. Until I read Bruce Sterling's speech "When Blobjects Rule the Earth".
| Gadgets | History |
OK, it looks like we're good to go on the free iPod! The players are: me, Andrea, Ennis, Jimpy, Emily, and Dot.
First question: Dot, are you serious about bowing out? Because you could give that iPod to someone, or sell it on eBay, or whatever.
Second question: how should we pick a winner? If we were all in the same room, I'd just throw a die, but we need an online way to make a random choice. I'm open to suggestions.
| MP3 |
I recently re-watched Brazil -- still one of my favorite movies. Now, more than ever, it's a guide to modern life. So I wasn't surprised to read that Canada's police chiefs propose a surcharge of about 25 cents on monthly telephone and Internet bills to cover the cost of tapping into the communications of terrorists and other criminals. It's only a quarter of a loon to pay to have your own phone tapped, to be sure, but doesn't it sound like Brazil's Ministry of Information?
"I understand this concern on behalf of the taxpayers. People want value for money. That's why we always insist on the principal of Information Retrieval charges. It's absolutely right and fair that those found guilty should pay for their periods of detention and the Information Retrieval procedures used in their interrogations."
Incidentally, the DVD includes some scenes I'd never seen before (from the "European version"), including one where Sam, before his interrogation, is told about the various credit options he can take in order to pay for his own torture.
| Telecom | Wiretaps | Canada | Surveillance Society | War on Terror |
Thanks to LmdH for the link.
|
Taken at Columbia Business School, graduation 2004.
| New York City |
| Afghanistan |
... and the Brits have this. Frank N Furter or Dana Scully? Dr. Who, Dr. Strangelove, or Dr. Evil? It's a pretty low-impact poll (results to come later), but it's fun to see the advocates making their cases for the UK's "favorite boffin."
| Weird Science | BBC |
"So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you. . . . I truly am not that concerned about him."
"Terror is bigger than one person. And he's just -- he's a person who's now been marginalized. His network is -- his host government has been destroyed"
"With the possible exception of one photograph—which had either been updated or merely accessed last January—the files were at least three years old. They clearly predated the atrocities on September 11th 2001. They also contained no information that was not, in one form or another, already publicly available...
It is notable that Britain, which was apparently also subject to a specific threat, imposed no additional security precautions. And the European Union's head of counter-terrorism, Gijs de Vries, reportedly remained on holiday...
The discovery of a mothballed plot, however detailed, should not necessarily suggest so. Even before al-Qaeda's leaders suffered the disruption of being turfed out of Afghanistan in 2001, they commissioned and rejected numerous such studies. Or as Brian Jenkins of Rand Corporation puts it, "if we had every terrorist plan, we'd have more scripts than Warner Brothers."
|
I just read about Mike Wallace's arrest. It certainly appears that he was cuffed and arrested just for asking cops questions:
"He became overly assertive and was reported to be disrespectful to the inspectors," Fromberg said. "He was asked three times to step away from the vehicle and cease interfering. At one point Mr. Wallace appeared to lunge toward one of the two inspectors. The other inspector became concerned with his partner's safety and at that point cuffed Mr. Wallace."But Luigi Militello, owner of Luke's, said that when Wallace, a regular at his restaurant, stepped outside to talk to the inspectors one of them told Wallace, "Don't give me any lip."
Ernesto Cavalli, owner of Due, a restaurant next door, backed up Militello's account, adding that Wallace replied, "I'm not giving any lip."
"He kind of stepped back and asked, 'I would like to know what happened,'" Cavalli said. "The TLC officer grabbed his shirt and pushed him very strongly against the car and handcuffed him." Cavalli said the inspector then turned to the crowd and said, "Anybody else?"
[from the Chicago Trib, subscription necessary]
Now, who knows if Cavalli is telling the truth; as a restauranteur he has an interest in getting publicity and kissing up to famous people. Wingnuts from the right have used Wallace's arrest to argue that he is depressed, angry, and emotionally volatile.
Still, the TLC seems to be backing away from its initial story:
The New York Post quoted a spokesman for the commission, Allan J. Fromberg, as saying that Mr. Wallace "was observed to be overly assertive" and "lunged" at the inspectors - comments Mr. Fromberg backed away from yesterday after the commission began investigating the incident. [NYT]
This story comes at a time when there are also reports of security guards cracking down on people who read D&D books with lurid covers on ferries, in order to increase RNC related security, and california security officials say that "you can almost argue that a protest against that [the war in Iraq] is a terrorist act."
If Wallace is getting treated this way, can you imagine what happens to taxi drivers? I suggest that Wallace do a "Brown like me" segment, where he goes undercover as a cabbie, with brown skin, facial hair, and an accent. As for the rest of the Upper East Side, time to practice your Steppin Fetchit acts for the fuzz, it looks like "Don't you know who I am?" wont cut it any more. Next stop, little old ladies wearing mink and walking yappy dogs, followed by Republican outrage.
Thanks to Liz for the link to the D&D / Ferry story.
| Civil Liberties |
I was in my local mega grocery store out here, when I noticed a sign that referred to customers as ... guests. WTF? Should I call ahead next time I go grocery shopping? Ask them if I've come at a good time (I feel like I should ask some of the cashiers that anyway, given how slowly they appear at their registers, when I, a customer am waiting). I wish I remembered the whole phrase, it was about making sure the customer had all of their bags, but I don't remember how the author dealt with the famous third person neutral problem. Is the customer a him or a them? I'll have to let you know ...
p.s. as long as I'm a guest, I think next time I'll go to Walmart. I hear the Walton kids throw bitchin' parties.
p.p.s. This is just another reason why I miss NYC. At Fairway the cashiers don't make small talk, but they get you out the door in around 1/3rd the time that the cashiers here to. Forget about "courtesy" training your staff at a megastore, competency train them instead.
So goes a true Jewish curse, according to the bad old joke. And so you have Williamsburg Hasidim praying against the artists. I'll say one thing for them: this is the rare band of culture warriors whose fanatical prudery is in perfect alignment with their economic interests. In the 'burg, artistic ferment really does menace the g-dly--or at least, their once-low rents. (via harpers.org)
| Williamsburg | Brooklyn | New York City |
You may recall from our previous conversations on Tax Policy there was much discussion on Bush's tax cuts, the fairness and efficacy thereof, etc. One point that was argued over repeatedly was Bush's claim that his tax cut plan would promote job creation. I can't put it better than this report does:
The Bush Administration called the tax cut package, which was passed in May 2003 and took effect in July 2003, its "Jobs and Growth Plan." The president's economics staff, the Council of Economic Advisers (see background documents), projected that the plan would result in the creation of 5.5 million jobs by the end of 2004—306,000 new jobs each month starting in July 2003. The CEA projected that the economy would generate 228,000 jobs a month without a tax cut and 306,000 jobs a month with the tax cut. Thus, it projected that 3,978,000 jobs would be created over the last 13 months. In reality, since the tax cuts took effect, there are 2,565,000 fewer jobs than the administration projected would be created by enactment of its tax cuts. As can be seen in the chart below, job creation failed to meet the administration's projections in 11 of the past 13 months.Note that the chart doesn't show job losses -- it shows how far off the mark job creation has been versus the official estimate, with the tax cut's effects. If my calculations are correct, the tax cuts were supposed to create an additional 1m jobs over the past 13 months, above the "natural" job growth of 2.9m. Instead we've had total job creation of 1.4m in that period.
Clearly, in the short run, the tax plan has been a miserable failure. You might argue that they'll pay off in the long run, but it was Bush who said they'd create jobs now. And, as John Maynard Keynes pithily observed, in the long run, we are all dead.
| George W. Bush |
OK, so here's the deal. A company called Gratis Network is offering free iPods to people who sign up for one of about ten free offers. The catch? You have to get five friends to sign up for offers, too. If they get five of their friends to sign up, then they can also get a free iPod.
Yes, it's a pyramid scheme. And, like most pyramid schemes, the people at the top generally make out, while the people at the bottom get screwed. For me to get an iPod, I have to get 5 people to play along. But each of those people have to get 5 people to play, meaning 31 of us have to play along. Then they have to get 125 people to participate... pretty soon, our social network of people runs out.
But we're going to turn that on its head. If you play along, you'll have a 16.7% chance of getting a free 20 Gb iPod!
Here's what we'll do: instead of me getting an iPod, and 5 of you duped into perpetuating the pyramid, we're going to get one iPod for the 6 of us, and draw lots to see who keeps it.
1. Read about the offer at Free iPod Guide to convince yourself this isn't a scam. If you're interested, there's an economic analysis here.
2. Go to the Free iPod site using this referral link. Ignore all the optional surveys. Do not put in anyone else's email addresses in the "Refer a Friend" section.
3. Sign up for one of the offers. (I signed up for the "Real Rhapsody" offer -- it's a 14-day free trial, which I will cancel once I get credit for signing up.)
4. Leave a comment below, telling me that you've done #2 and #3.
Once we hit 5 people, we will close the thread, wait for everything to verify, and then have a drawing to see who gets the iPod.
So, who's in?
| MP3 |
In the time I really don't have (I should be living like a monk right now, with no internet access at all), I've joined another hive collective blog (can I be assimilated twice?). It's called Sepia Mutiny**, and it's a brown / desi Boing Boing type of blog. It's got some reblogging, some pointers to interesting stories, and some original content.
It got its start, ironically, because I was being a lazy blogger. This crossed by desk, it's a "parody" by the Michigan GOP, where they rewrite their own site in Punjabi (well, not really) to make an argument about Democratic hypocracy on outsourcing. I passed it on to Manish and Anna, who promptly blogged it. This incident then gave rise to a proposal for a central site for a broader range of similar matters that travel more by email than by blog ... and Sepia Mutiny was born. Take a look, there's a variety of different voices and thus far, it's a proper masala.
Continue reading "We refuse to file your taxes*!" » | Brown Culture |
There is a magic shirt that adds 200+ lbs to your bench press. So if I wore it, could I bench 200 lbs? Unfortunately no. It seems to add 200 lbs to your press if you already bench 700+ lbs barechested. Still, I find it fascinating that we're closing in on an 1,000 bench press soon, and this is due more to textile science than biological science. Furthermore, the effect of new clothing is changing a number of olympic sports, further widening the gap between rich and poor nations. (Take that you pesky Kenyan Marathoners)
Of course, pretty soon we'll be able to manipulate our own genes, as gene doping is poised to change our bodies forever. (That's a great article and deserves an entry of its own, so read it). One day we might all look like the german kid with no myostatin (which would require a new change in the textile industry, suits which work with muscle shirts).
| Clothing | Olympics | Science | Genes | Ubermenschen |
Snoblog on the Temporal Imperialism of Restoration Hardware:
The philosophy of Restoration Hardware and others with similar tactics is to provide things that are “pleasantly familiar.” But I don’t find these things pleasantly familiar after all. They are creepily familiar. They are only familiar because they are supposed to be familiar--as if there was some Jungian Collective Unconsciousness Catalog. These companies are profiting from our anxieties about the future by marketing to our longing for the past, any past, as long as it’s pleasant. To this end, historians would best be avoided. They keep reminding us just how bad the past was, or how different it was from what we desperately want to believe. What the marketers understand is our desire to find a good place in history, but they can’t provide that place bespoke for each of us. Madeleines and tuna melts won’t work because these are highly individualized triggers of lost time. Nostalgia now is generalized, stretched-out, and commodified for mass-market potential. Mass-past, as it were.Plundering the Other for treasure is one of the oldest stories of commerce. Merchants have long set off to bring us the rewards of our global imperial project: printed cloth from India, bamboo settees from China, tea-sets from Malaysia, ready-made ethnic art from Africa, and deck chairs from the Dominican Republic. A new phalanx of merchant princes, however, has embarked on a mission of Temporal Imperialism looting the the past for artifacts which are manufactured to engender within us a feeling of so-called pleasant familiarity. Instant nostalgia. McSentiment. We don’t even have to work up for ourselves a taste for madeleines because these products are carefully "pre-selected" to tap into some image of the past we supposedly all share.
| Shopping |
Found on Kerim's Wiki, this Electoral Vote Predictor maps out the latest poll data, state by state. You can see the raw state data here, and this total electoral graph is pretty informative as well.
If I were Tufte, though, I'd want to look at the map proportionally by the number of electoral votes. Fortunately there's a Java-powered map that does exactly that. Using that, I quickly created this (click for full strength):
But this ends up losing information; namely, how close the race is in each state. That requires a bit of photoshopping to accomplish:
Looking at this, it doesn't appear as close as a quick glance at the initial map would indicate. Comments?
[Update: I've corresponded with the guy behind electoral-vote.com, and he'd be interested in featuring this on his site. But it would require re-jiggering the Java app that generates the map. Source code here. Does anyone know enough Java to take this on?]
| Maps | Tufte Alert |
The NID will coordinate the information that DHS coordinates that IAIP coordinates that NIPC coordinates from the FBI, CIA, DIA and NSA. Adam Felber explains the new Intelligence post for you.
| CIA | Military | Intelligence |
Some very cool sheet music covers from 1850 - 1920. Oh, and the music too, for those of us who are not merely obsessed with typography. Warning: contains racist content.
| History | WWI | Advertising |
Well, the paper kind, anyway. Check out Rev. Dodgson's 1855-72 scrapbook, now online.
|
You guys should check out the File Sharing Experiment, which aims to catalog the phenomenon we've been telling you about since Ye Olde Days of Napster 1.0: People actually buy stuff after they've sampled an MP3 via P2P. So far, $309,309.84 has been recorded as spent on music, movies, and software after sampling.
So, what have you bought thanks to P2P? Or heck, even mix tapes.
| P2P | MP3 | RIAA |
Well, now you know. You can rest easy. Thanks to Bud for the link.
| German | Spanish |
So we're driving back from my Mom's place in Pennsylvania last weekend, when we hit the usual 20-30 minute delay at the Holland Tunnel. It's quite a nice view of Manhattan, actually, so sitting on the overpass didn't seem so bad to us. Some fellow drivers did not share our sentiment, and car after car passed us on the shoulder. Being the law-abiding citizens we are, we did what the rest in line did: grimace at the scofflaw budgers, and think "I hope they get a ticket for that."
In addition to the skyline, I also had a fine view of the minivan in front of me. I noticed a green bumper sticker on it that said: "work for justice", and then something in Arabic. Then the minivan peeled out into the shoulder too. I guess working for justice means taking shortcuts? "I hope they get a ticket for that," the Reptilian Driver Brain said.
The requisite 20 minutes later, we were off the ramp. Indeed the Minivan of Justice had received a ticket. It was also surrounded by about five police cars. "Well. Sucks to be you," said the Reptilian Driver Brain. "But -- I didn't mean sent to Gitmo" protested the Resident Liberal Brain.
So, lesson of the day -- when the alert is burnt orange, work for justice, but stay in line.
| Security | Cars |
Rev. Moon's submarines, sold to Kim Jong-Il, empower a nuke threat to the West Coast
ishbadiddle: how the hell did Rev. Moon get submarines, anyway?
thudfactor: *shrug*
thudfactor: damnedest thing I ever heard
ishbadiddle: i hear Falwell is going to sell F-16s to Uzbekistan
thudfactor: would not surprise me any more
thudfactor: perhaps Haliburton can sell some stingers to Al Qaeda.
ishbadiddle: Martha Stewart sold a "mix your own Sarin" how-to book to The Shining Path!
| Military | Rev. Moon | Submarines | Nuclear Proliferation |
Pretty cool -- free mix tape! Neato interface! Do you think this helps them sell more cars? Do you care?
| Cars |
Not the Camus novel, but the Nazi Noir movie by Orson Welles. Welles plays a Nazi War Criminal, escaped to America; Edward G. Robinson chews on a cigar and scenery as he tracks him down. Good, but not great. And I still think Dr. Szell could out-villain Welles' Franz Kindler any day. But evidently this was the first post-WWII film that showed concentration camp footage.
| Nazis |
Bloody brilliant. One of the funniest series on TV, ever. (And thankfully, they knew when to end it.) Ricky Gervais plays the appalling David Brent, office manager, whose clueless egotism is so vast you're not sure whether to laugh hysterically or cringe with mortification.
Found this article on the robot filter: Alan Keyes - Senator of (enter state name here). That's right, after Jack "I Want to Have Sex With My Own Wife" Ryan dropped out, the GOP can't find anyone to run against Barack Obama.
So they've picked Alan Keyes. Of Maryland.
Two things about this strike me, one mentioned in the article, one (strangely) not.
Oops! Darn that Lexis/Nexis. Oh, well.
Ugh.
[Update: The other potential GOP nominee, Andrea Barthwell, is also black. But it doesn't look she's going to get the Log Cabin vote. Thanks to Thudfactor for the update.]
[2nd Update: Of course Barack will win -- he's the Anti-Christ! Via Waxy]
| Alan Keyes | GOP | Race & Ethnicity | Illinois