narrative validity

Let a thousand narratives bloom. But which side are you on?

cognitive surplus

The up-side of Internet overload: Clay Shirky applauds creative, cooperative, constructive public uses of  "dead time" not available to people in the pre-digital age. "Free cultures get what they celebrate," Shirky quotes Dean Kamen. That might be good news, if we can get over the infantile and inexplicable fascination with LOLcats and the like and really celebrate things that make a constructive civic difference. Time only will tell if it's Shirky's or Nick Carr's future, or something else entirely.

What you do with cats on your own time is still, of course, your own business. Up to a point.

Beat LA

This is not "important," nor is it of global interest even by FIFA standards. But, it's part of my personal narrative... I am the kind of person who cares about this kind of thing, for better or worse (and so is Roger Angell):

That was a terrific Yankee rally last night in Chavez Ravine. I don't bleed Dodger Blue after all, last Fall's short-lived experiment in transferred allegiances (when I went out and bought an LA cap after they whupped my Redbirds) notwithstanding. Too bad it spoiled the family reunion for Joe Torre, though, who I (like Roger) recall from an earlier time and a different uniform.

a toast

To tenure. Cheers!

Bruce Wilshire

Bruce Wilshire's book on addiction, obsession, compulsion... Wild Hunger: The Primal Roots of Modern Addiction. "These days our relation to wilderness is strained and ambiguous," a rediscovery of native roots is overdue.


Bruce's other "primal roots" book on American philosophy is very good, too, and will be useful when we do the Native Wisdom component of Environmental Ethics next Spring.

irresistible

Addiction has a bad name, and usually deserves it. Sometimes it can be channeled in positive ways. Probably not, though, in Robert Palmer's "Simply Irresistible" story, or Joel Fleischman's. (Did you know he was multi-lingual?) I mention them here self-indulgently, and in an attempt to discharge the memetic loop of that song in my brain triggered by thoughts on this topic. The song is  just fun, and the video just went up on YouTube in time to echo my obsession.

Another example of irresistible, bio-chemical compulsion: the Star Trek crew's addiction to a game, secretly and sinisterly a weapon. Is this what gets people lining up for iPhones et al? Hope not.

carriers

I've fallen behind my stack of New Yorkers.


Yesterday I caught up with Rebecca Mead's Talk of the Town defense of liberal education in the June 7 issue. She notes that politicians, including the bright ones (like the President), tend to speak of education in strictly economic and vocational terms, i.e., in terms of jobs jobs jobs. They tend not to stump for education's value in enriching the quality of life. Then, she offers this example:

Consider Stephen Law, a professor of philosophy at the University of London, who started his working life delivering mail for the British postal service, began reading works of philosophy in his spare time, decided that he’d like to know more, and went on to study the discipline at City University, in London, and at Oxford University....

Stephen Law is an excellent philosopher, and his War for Children's Minds is an impassioned defense of childhood. 


Mead concludes that we really don't need more accountants and numbers-crunchers and bean-counters and cubicle-dwellers. (That's not exactly what she says, but it's my takeaway.) 


More thinkers, on the other hand, would be good. For "pragmatic" here, read "conventionally employable."

An argument might be made in favor of a student’s pursuing an education that is less, rather than more, pragmatic. (More theology, less accounting.) That way, regardless of each graduate’s ultimate path, all might be qualified to be carriers of arts and letters, of which the nation can never have too many.

Some of our best thinkers-- besides Steve Law, John Prine (That's the way that  the world goes round.. at the LoC) comes straight to mind-- were carriers too. We need both.

Bums

Thinking about fathers and sons and daughters and passionate fandom reminds me of one of the great baseball memoirs, by historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. She grew up in Brooklyn in the '40s and '50s following Jackie Robinson and 'dem Bums, before they moved to southern California and broke her heart.

There were no vuvuzellas in Flatbush back then, just the Sym-PHONY and Red Barber and lots of good-natured partisan wordplay in the stands. It's a game whose meaning takes explicit and constant symbolic form, until something unspeakably amazing (Jackie stole home!) transcends all notation. The lesson: write stuff down when you can, but don't let that interfere with your experience.

Our girls know how to keep score too, of course.

Solar

Happy Solstice, Happy Summer, and Happy Birthday to the novelist whose latest I've just begun: Ian McEwan, Solar.

bricks in the wall

In The Next Fifty Years, computer scientist Roger Schank shares his vision of a time when there will be no need, apparently, for tenured humanities professors. I'm sure he's wrong about that.

But bring on the talking walls, why not? Just remember: being informative is not at all the same as being wise.

It's urgent for us to wonder right now, though, as the drumbeat for "distance education" and virtual classrooms-- cheaper in so many ways-- grows ever louder: in a half-century, will our institutions of higher learning still recognize or defend that distinction?