The Bourgeois Burglars

On Pondering a Variant from Vindobonensis

2010-01-16T14:10:00.000-08:00

My mind moves slowly,
as slow as the incoming clouds,
slightly faster than adagietto
though I hope to think
thoughts less vaporous
and more Viennese.

Tigers Update

2009-08-26T19:48:00.000-07:00

I coined a nickname for the most recent Tiger, Aubrey Huff. It's "Half-Swing." I dubbed him this after watching last night's game in which he struck out three times on check swings. Half-Swing Huff.

It was nice to take two of three from the Angels in Anaheim. Not easy to do.

Fernando Rodney is only a little less roller coaster than Todd "Roller Coaster" Jones. I know because I haven't had to dip into my stash of antacids as much this season.

Stargazing

2009-08-19T20:07:00.000-07:00

More sickening than vomit stench that's

slowly rubbed from carpet fiber;

Giant swathe of old black shirt now faded

by ten thousand washings;

Blacktop over-pressed and rolled into a

varied line of potholes,

As one piece, one smell, one color with the

City dirt

I'm sweeping from

My patio onto the gaps of

City concrete open for the

City trees to grow the

City leaves of dirt to

City sky that dirties now

my breath

until

I wheeze.

I hate it less for what it is

Than for my role in making it--

This scape-less glowing rot--

And more for what it hides from me:

Clear voids of death dark black.

Quotable Leyland

2009-05-16T21:19:00.001-07:00

Manager Jim Leyland on the reason Ryan Raburn has been hitting better of late:

"I told him that I was taking away his entrance music if he didn't start hitting. That's why he started hitting."

Standing Tall in the Corner

2009-04-29T13:20:00.001-07:00

My favorite thing to peruse during the baseball season is the mlb.com overall standings board. I would get into Baseball Prospectus but I already have enough black-hole-time-absorption machines in operation. The regular standings have just enough to keep me occupied for about 5 minutes, and then I can move on, satisfied.

Today's contemplation: Runs Scored and Runs Scored Againts. Now, the teams I root for: MN Twins (Land of My Heritage) in the AL and LA Dodgers (Land of My Birth) in the NL are a giving me very different feelings in my tummy.

The Dodgers have been on a tear. Everything is right. Manny Ramirez is "being Manny" to the tune of beating the living crud out of the ball (Boston, we thank thee). The young starters are doing things that make me giddy. And is all of the exuberance something we can continue to count on or should we trap our happiness in a jar and look at it longingly in July? Apparently, contrary to this man's existence, plan on repeated euphoria Dodgertown: our Runs Scored: 119; Runs Allowed: 82; Expected Win-Loss Record: 14-7. Actual Win-Loss Record: 14-7.

On the other hand, the Minnesota Twins. Now, the Twins have been having a lot of problems. Their All Star, 2X Batting Champ Catcher has been out, coming back Friday against the Royals {anticipatory giggling}. The rotation, also young, has been garbage except for the #5 pitcher; this can be expected to get better. So, we have accumulated these numbers: RS: 85; RA: 113 which should give us the diametric opposite of Dodger-lation: an 8-13 record. What have we actually managed to do? 10-11, with a chance at .500 against Scott Kazmir tonight (not likely, I know, but why can't the good times roll?). The culprit? Being 4-0 in 1-run games. {guilty chuckle}. The Twins hereby thank the world for allowing them to miraculously and inexplicably not trash their season already, and hope you will not mind when we go on another ridiculous run in August-September to steal the division from some much more "expected" (i.e., deserving) winner.

Next Year, We Can't Miss This

2009-04-26T21:44:00.000-07:00

Why didn't I find out about the annual Grilled Cheese Invitational, which is held in L.A., until too late? Probably because God is looking out for my cholesterol levels. But next year . . . .

Snow Today

2009-04-25T13:23:00.000-07:00

White felt flakes
feather the floor
with faerie down;
shimmering swirl of
moon mutes townly
murmur and hum;
tongue gone numb lungs
gasp in gaseous
iceblurred
parachuting prisms.

Art's dream is Nature's wish
and every sense knows
the promise that
if left long enough
in the blanketing first fall
still silence.

Normandy

2009-04-17T12:29:00.000-07:00

When I visit Minnesota
I love driving through the corn
and watching it go by.
Centuries of sweat and science,
laid down rows of perfect stalks,
all the way to Grandma.
Three new paths in three directions
open up and flow on, by
appearing disappear
in the fields of Minnesota.

In the sand on Omaha
Edmund picks up rocks and shells.
He interrupts the work of time
and like the Angel of the Age
his method is a mystery:
some he throws into the surf
where they will wash away;
others cast on higher ground
await a latter day.

In the field above the sands
perfect rows of perfect crosses
open up in three directions:
every step makes three new paths
appear and disappear
in a field full of a nation.

Lucy pressed her tiny fingers
on a grave engraved:
William Adler
MN
1945
a sudden shiver
shook her fingers
Daddy let's get out of here
she turned and marched away.

Mary Sue stood by her Dad,
she talked about the men who died.
And though I could not talk with her
I held her
while I cried.

Classic Rodney? Let's Hope So.

2009-04-11T12:45:00.000-07:00

The Tigers were up 4-3 against the Rangers this afternoon in the top of the ninth.

Last year in this situation Jones would have made an appearance, and we would have broken out the antacids. This year, Jones is retired (in peace, we hope), and Fernando Rodney is our man. What did Rodney do today? Struck out the side in the top of the ninth. That's not the Jones spirit, but it's one we can live with.

On Untitled #62

2009-04-06T02:08:00.000-07:00

Spring grass
brings a softened life
to the checkerboard
greygranite steppe.
But only
careful conditions:
air; soil; water; sun;
photosynthesis,
unveil the slowly creeping miracle.

Whereas
Living Beauty
breaking through the
dividing line
with an exuberant plop and a whorl
of pinkshirt goldenhair in one
eternal moment
so animates a block of
chickenwire chairs,
that they uprise to
hold her dancelaughing.

Let the Record Show

2009-04-05T15:57:00.000-07:00

... that Jim Caple's attempt at prescience is the only one that would not result in a November stoning were we to apply Old Testament prophecy standards to 2009 Major League Baseball Pre-Season predictions.

Therein: 13 out of 21 "experts" (variously defined) have the MN Twins getting to the playoffs; only 2 predict the Tigers to assert themselves (though the Tigers did snag the "Dark Horse" pick from Rob Neyer and Jason Stark, who are more "expert" than most). In fairness will I have to spot the Burglar some good odds this year?

On the eve of the real beginning of baseball: may injuries not be the bane of destiny!

Lines Meet: Porte de Pantin

2009-03-27T00:41:00.000-07:00

She
learned to skate di
ag
on
als
around the empty fountain.
He
walking backwards lovingly
laughing held her hand.

Later in life they will
both be
proud of
the time
in which
I ordered an espresso.

Je aime le matérialisme

2009-03-02T22:56:00.000-08:00

This may ring a bell with Burglar more than me since he has direct experience with freshman philosophy students who have "figured it out" after three lectures, but I couldn't help but giggle at this.

The part to which I refer is the very end, where we are treated to the following.

"Really, the weather, it's not an important aspect for driving or protesting ... it's a simple material state, I think. So, people come out in the snow or in the summer, it really doesn't matter to them because they have a message they want to present to the congressmen and senators and they're gonna do it despite whatever happens."

Question: what do the protesters think about the significance or lack thereof of the simple material state of the globe?

Stat Challenge

2009-03-01T12:26:00.000-08:00

Did everyone notice? Baseball started. Now I can finally procrastinate again.

In memory of losing FireJoeMorgan over the winter, here's a baseball-announcing puzzle.

Sunday, March 1st, bottom of the ninth, Twins-RedSox, two out, two on, Twins down by one. One Dustin Martin steps up to the plate. Since it's Spring Training and there are often whole games where I hardly know who anyone is, I wait with great anticipation for that ever helpful stat box to pop up. Here's what it said:

1-1; AVG: .750; RBI: 1; OBP: .667.

Is there any scenario in which this is possible? Ready ... go!

Oh, and lest our favorite label meet its end, the aptly surnamed Red Sox closer of the day, Hunter Jones, was slinging a textbook Classic Jones.

Tolkien My Mind

2009-02-15T10:41:00.000-08:00

Since Tolkien is appearing all over this blog we might as well keep up the trend.

An interesting article by Courtney M. Booker tries to explain the progression from the publication of the Lord of the Rings in 1968 to the release of The Fellowship of the Ring in 2001. The central issue being why those who read the book in the 1970s and those born post 1990 had such different reactions to Peter Jackson’s visuals. Not necessarily: “I didn’t like it” vs. “I did,” but more “That is not at all how I pictured it” vs. “That’s perfect!”
To summarize and simplify, his progression goes: Lord of the Rings -> United States -> Fantasy Literature -> Role Playing Games (esp. Dungeons and Dragons) -> RPGs into Computer Games -> The Personal Computer -> Graphics Oriented Computer Games -> RPGs lost much of their “personalized” and “plot” aspects in favour of large-scale CGI effects -> Peter Jackson welds the new fantasy computer game look back onto the Lord of the Rings plot and characters. “The Fellowship of the Ring … can largely be reduced to a host of dramatic helicopter and swooping bird’s-eye-view shots of landscape, and a linear sequence of frantic hack-and-slash video-game scenarios … his interpretation moves through a series of scenarios in much the same fashion that computer games are structured. There is little time for character development or interaction; instead, stunning visuals and special effects are relied upon to breathe life into a fantasy realm encountered largely apace.”

I think his best example (for which Booker quotes B. Rosebury) of this is the scene in the mines of Moria, when the fellowship is nearly trapped by hosts of orcs. The scene is a page in the original book: over five minutes in the movie. “In the film … its theme seems to be: how very, very difficult it is to kill a cave troll. … [in the book] its focal point is the ominous fact that the orc-chieftain has selected Frodo for his spear-thrust.”

All of this I find interesting, and can agree with for the most part. However, Booker’s second major point, which he starts the essay with and concludes with (and so which seems to be his main axe to grind)—even though he spends almost no time in the body of the essay specifically arguing the point—is that (and this is a little hard to follow) Tolkien presents a “Medieval” world (or at the very least, that is how basically everyone reads him); there is no “religion” in that medieval world; one problem with present conceptions of the medieval world is that we don’t get and so ignore how religion fits into the medieval thought world; when we “role play” a medieval character or present him in a movie, or imagine him/her in a book, we assume the medieval character thinks in a crisis like we do (obviously a huge generalization here): with “logic and violence” (his terms); this is incorrect.

I’m going to let his final points alone, mainly because I find it too problematic to even begin talking about.

However, the premise that Tolkien’s world is “not medieval” because there is no overt religion, to my mind presents one of the problems representative of Medieval Academics. They don't get it either, even though they know they should. For starters, Tolkien was himself a professional academic “medievalist,” and as a literature-linguistics person I would argue more closely attuned to the intricacies of a “medieval thought-world” than 99% of historians. Secondly, any of his biographies point out that his interest in the medieval period and texts started at a very young age: if anyone in the modern world had their mind formed by medieval texts; if anyone could actually claim to possess a medieval mind in a modern age, it was Tolkien. Finally, for a medievalist, what should stand out to Booker is a medieval epic (which the Lord of the Rings, given its author and the way he created the text, is) doesn’t talk about religion as such. Where is religion and God in the Arthurian tales? Ever read Gawain and the Green Knight? About the only “religious” thing there is the setting of the Pentecost feast. Even in Spencer (who is a bit late), “religion” is present much more in allegory than in explicit plot sequences. How about that dramatic communion scene in Song of Roland?

Religion is so much a part of the backdrop that you don’t even need to say anything: it is just there, it is assumed. This is a point completely missed by those who continue to read medieval mystical texts as though they could also be Buddhist: if you’re careful, you realize it just doesn’t work. All of their apparent “loosey-gooseyness” assumes that the loosey-goosey experiential path to the Divine is at the same time taking place within, not apart from, the religious structure and thought of the Universal Church. It is a part of the church, not an alternative to it.

What is actually really interesting about the Lord of the Rings in modern (especially American) culture is the generation that Booker failed to talk about: those of us who were born from 1970 to 1985 or so, and grew up largely without larger-than-life computer games, but were formed by an early reading of the Lord of the Rings. We have the same claim to have intimately experienced that world as kids right now will have on Harry Potter: when you encounter books like that in your middle school and elementary years, they are going to fundamentally impact your imaginitive world for the rest of your life. One of the oddest things about my generation seems to be the movement (which I am a part of) to more “medieval” forms of Christianity: the high-church traditions of the Church of England, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox where the Christian life, where ‘religion’, becomes a rhythmic part of life in the way that it becomes a part of everyday life down to the way one behaves at card playing … so that an outsider may not at first realize that they are being immersed into a deeply Christian universe until it is too late, and they find themselves on their knees kissing the chalice …

Ents in Isengard

2009-01-24T01:09:00.000-08:00

I feel somewhat apologetic for it, but I cannot help, at a certain level, feeling somewhat relieved -- yes, that is what I said -- at the economic crisis. Am I a jerk? Probably. Yes, I know how bad it will be for so many things that I like, and for so many people's real lives and real livelihoods: including those of us who have invested our all in the academic profession, which unfortunately is a surplus industry. Just this morning the Cambridge Crier announced that Cambridge University Press is cutting half -- half -- of its staff. That is not fun times for anyone's family. But we have been living in a bubble world where the face of the earth has become a video game; and eventually things had to break. And yes, there is that grim delight in destroying rot that Treebeard sings out so perfectly somberly in Isengard.

Michael Lewis says:
In the two decades since [the late 1980s], I had been waiting for the end of Wall Street. The outrageous bonuses, the slender returns to shareholders, the never-ending scandals, the bursting of the internet bubble, the crisis following the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management: Over and over again, the big Wall Street investment banks would be, in some narrow way, discredited. Yet they just kept on growing, along with the sums of money that they doled out to 26-year-olds to perform tasks of no obvious social utility. The rebellion by American youth against the money culture never happened. Why bother to overturn your parents’ world when you can buy it, slice it up into tranches, and sell off the pieces?

At least one other person agrees with me:

When I hear the stock market has fallen,
I say, "Long live gravity! Long live
stupidity, error, and greed in the palaces
of fantasy capitalism!" I think
an economy should be based on thrift,
on taking care of things, not on theft,
usury, seduction, waste, and ruin.
(W. Berry from Some Further Words)

I would be very bad at it for quite awhile, but I've always sort of wanted to be forced into trying farming ...

Father Brown : Chesterton :: Socrates : Plato?

2008-12-17T02:38:00.000-08:00

I just read a G.K. Chesterton Father Brown collection for the first time: The Innocence of Father Brown. I was anticipating enjoying it, but I didn't. I mean, they were entertaining enough to keep me occupied for most of a sick day drifting in and out of consciousness, but really I was disappointed.

From a plot perspective, there is a crisis in fiction's requisite suspension of belief: the stories simply cannot all be true. For example, the initially thief, later comrade to Fr. Brown, Flambeau, shows up as the crook in way too many for it to be surprising that Fr. Brown figured him out ... again (Did you not recognize him? What is going on here?). For an innocuous country priest, he shows up in way too many random locations (unless he is really an absentee bishop); his own village is frustratingly undefined and between the stories there are just too many odd people, rich and suspect types around to be likely.

From a character perspective, Fr. Brown is a bit flat and frankly just a little bit annoying probably because he is not amusing (or rarely so); he's just a little bit too 'intuitive' for me: in quotations because often intuitive turns out to be "oh yes, I also happened to read the will which says X, which is the answer." Hmmm, very clever of you, Fr. Brown. He (both Fr. Brown and Chesterton) also plays all of his cards close to his chest -- usually in mysteries you expect to have to guess just one or maybe two random pieces of information to get the game.

So, Fr. Brown is more in the Sherlock Holmes type of loner genius, but he doesn't have any problems and he doesn't have a mysterious past, he's just apparently heard the detailed (meaning exactly how I did it) confessions of every type of criminal, and he is pure, and very philosophic (also kind of obnoxious to me).

In other words, the books are a bit tedious because they present Chesterton's almost apologetic for his take on the Catholic worldview versus the rest. He seems to have been more interested in making points about priests (being "cloistered and pious" doesn't mean they don't know the ways of the world; in fact they know the ways of man more intimately than anyone else because that is their "profession"), in general the Catholic Church's teachings (confession of sins is simultaneously both freedom and a sufficient penance; Catholicism is the worldview of reason; the fundamental thing that must be seen about mankind is that we must look inside and admit that everything is not alright, the church's approach to sin and sinners - confession - gets many more and better results than that of society, etc.), skewering various groups in society for their incompetence, destructiveness, insufficience (socialists, new pagans, English evangelicals, teetotallers, calvinists, etc.), or making a sort of broad moralizing point: as man lives in sin his sins get smaller and smaller (meaning I think more and more personal), and meaner and meaner (meaning more and more vicious).

Through each of his stories he gets across fairly bluntly a related point on one or several of these. Now, I grant this is a point I usually find interesting and most always agree with. What I object to is use of the genre, which caught me by surprise. Perhaps if I pick up a Father Brown collection again, my approach would be to try to read them as Platonic dialogues. The plot is not exactly an accidental happenstance to the philosophy therein, but it is definitely subservient to the point being made, though in the best dialogues the plot is itself also that point. It is as though Chesterton formulated a moral truth to himself and thought, 'now how can I get a Fr. Brown case to exemplify this?' Thus, in their own way these tales are enjoyable, but don't expect the literary delights of Dorothy Sayers.

Sunlit Silence

2008-11-29T01:26:00.000-08:00

I like to classify poets in my own mind in a couple of ways; or rather, there a few major categories of things that I think poets do, and some do some categories better than others: the best poets in their best poems strike a perfect balance. One set of my categories is "idea" and "music". George Herbert was such a fantastic poet he usually was musical, but I think his poems are more driven by thought/idea. T.S. Eliot is the same; but for both, their best poems cannot be understood without reading them as music, without sounding them. Gerard Manley Hopkins was the paradigm "music" poet -- in many of his poems, I have no idea what he is saying, but I will read them again and again just to hear the birds singing. Another set of categories are the senses -- poets usually focus on a couple of the senses when they create a scene; again with Eliot as an example, I think he focuses on sound and movement, less so on smell and textures, little on sight.

Wendell Berry is one of the easiest to categorize, I think: in my categories he is an "idea" poet and a "sight" poet. Thus at his best he is a good but not great poet; at his worst he is an essayist pressing "enter" every couple words and after a handful of poems you feel as though you've read several philosophy essays, and you can see a lot of birds and trees, but can't hear or smell or feel them very well. For instance what if his poem (left) were just lightly edited with an eye (haha) to its sound (yes, I am making criminal presumptions, but the sound of the last line as he wrote it criminally offends the injunction therein and if he did that intentionally then he is too clever by half and that proves my point anyway):

... Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

Accept what comes from silence.
[delete]
Of the little words that come
from the silence, like a prayer
prayed back to one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence whence it came.
~from Further Words, "How to be a poet (to remind myself)"

On the other hand, here are some of his poems I have been enjoying, in order of increasing excellence.

"The Future."
For God's sake, be done
with this jabber of "a better world."
What blasphemy! No "futuristic"
twit or child thereof ever
in embodied light will see
a better world than this, though they
foretell inevitably a worse.
Do something! Go cut the weeds
beside the oblivious road. Pick up
the cans and bottles, old tires,
and dead predictions. No future
can be stuffed into this presence
except by being dead. The day is
clear and bright, and overhead
the sun not yet half finished
with his daily praise.
~In a Country Once Forested
{See? Some good lines, but mostly the essayist who presses enter a lot}

"II."
When we convene again
to understand the world,
the first speaker will again
point silently out the window
at the hillside in its season,
sunlit, under the snow,
and we will nod silently,
and silently stand and go.
~ Sabbaths 2000
{Now, there is some "sound" here, but mostly this is the marriage of vision and idea with the emphasis still on idea; the next with a more balanced role for vision}

"III."
As timely as a river
God's timeless life passes
{though "passes ... passes ... past", I would
prefer "flows ... flows ... through"}
Into this world. It passes
Through bodies, giving life,
And past them, giving death.
The secret fish leaps up
Into the light and is
Again darkened. The sun
Comes from the dark, it lights
The always passing river,
Shines on the great-branched tree,
And goes. Longing and dark,
We are completely filled
With breath of love, in us
Forever incomplete.
~Sabbaths 2000

And finally, Wendell Berry at his very best (which is very good):

"VI. (for Jonathan Williams)"
The yellow-throated warbler, the highest remotest voice
of this place, sings in the tops of the tallest sycamores,
but one day he came twice to the railing of my porch
where I sat at work above the river. He was too close
to see with binoculars. Only the naked eye could take him in,
a bird more beautiful than himself killed and preserved
by the most skilled taxedermist, more beautiful
than any human mind, so small and inexact,
could hope ever to remember. My mind became
beautiful by the sight of him. He had the beauty only
of himself alive in the only moment of his life.
He had upon him like a light the whole
beauty of the living world that never dies.

Irony Alert

2008-11-23T20:42:00.001-08:00

"Pope Clarifies Luther's Idea of Justification."

I'm sure Luther appreciates the help.

Panic! Averted.

2008-10-30T21:25:00.000-07:00

The title of the article that caused my panic: "Jones Returning as Tigers' 'Pen Coach."

What! How could they bring back Todd Jones to coach their bullpen! Our bullpen is ruined.

Wait. Did that say "Jeff Jones"? Okay.

Only Slightly Disappointed

2008-09-14T20:53:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading a book of poems. The poems in the book were not what I expected them to be. I suppose that if a Pottery Barn catalog were converted into a book of poems, the result would be something quite like the book of poems I just finished reading.

I have no idea

2008-09-05T10:19:00.000-07:00

The following quote was written about a particular candidate in the upcoming presidential election. I am keeping the author and the candidate in question (if you really want to know, you could google a phrase) to illustrate the point that this comment could be said about any person and their support of any candidate, anywhere. We can only hope that, when the author of this comment read his own article in the paper the day after writing it, in a flash the irony struck him and he chuckled at himself.

This is one of the many points at which narcissism becomes indistinguishable from masochism. Let me put it plainly: If you want someone just like you to be president of the United States, or even vice president, you deserve whatever dysfunctional society you get. You deserve to be poor, to see the environment despoiled, to watch your children receive a fourth-rate education and to suffer as this country wages -- and loses -- both necessary and unnecessary wars.

It is cool that I get to determine the society I will live in based on the simple tell-all inclination of whether I want someone "just like me" to be president or not.

I think, if we were to take the author seriously the choices before all of us are:
1. Live a reprehensible life and wish for someone morally upstanding to take over my government for me because I am busy choosing to be despicable.
2. Live a morally upstanding life and wish for someone who is a moral turd to take over society simply so that I will not deserve the hell that I will thereafter live in.

Further suggestions from the floor are welcome.

C-c-c-c-coffee

2008-08-06T21:35:00.001-07:00

Sometimes what you keep hoping is true, really is.

Jane E. Brody is our heroine.

Reading Lakatos and Plato's "Timeaus" in the Afternoon after Babysitting in the Morning

2008-08-01T11:14:00.000-07:00

Insight may be nothing more than guessing --
modestly, courageously -- but still some
questions answer themselves as if divined.
For example,
"Why should we notice the little girl
whose budding humanity -- in full
bloom already -- makes it difficult
to put the cap back on the
juice and easy to love the
cosmos in its all-fangled beauty?"

End of an Era (a.k.a., Sales of Antacids Will Now Be Falling Off)

2008-07-27T17:48:00.000-07:00

No more Jones. It was fun (or something) while it lasted.

The new closer is Fernando Rodney.

Big Talk

2008-06-30T21:02:00.001-07:00

In the previous post, I brashly claimed that the Tigers would sweep the Twins in the upcoming series. Well, so far I don't have to eat my words. Tigers take the first game 5-4. What's better: Jones did not make a relief (sic) appearance. Zumaya pitched in the eighth and ninth innings. That saved me a couple antacid tablets.

When You're Not Playing Very Well . . .

2008-06-22T21:29:00.000-07:00

. . . maybe what you need is a good fifteen-game swing through the National League.

The Tigers have gone 7-2 against the NL and now have the Twins in their sights. (Twins are are 1.5 games back of the White Sox; Tigers are 5 games back.)

There's still six more (!) games to go against the NL: Three against St. Louis and three against Colorado, all in Detroit.

Who knows whether the Tigers can keep the same level of play against AL teams. Maybe their current play is like beating up on the practice team and then getting clobbered in the real game.

UPDATE: The Tigers just polished off the Rockies to make their record on this interleague swing 12-3. Next up: A three game sweep of the Twins.

Maybe It's Time to Switch Verbs

2008-06-20T15:35:00.000-07:00

From the ESPNSoccernet report on the Euro 2008 game between Turkey and Croatia:

Victory came at a cost as Tuncay Sanli, Arda Turan and Emre Asik will be banned for the semi-final after picking up yellow cards. Nihat Kahveci also appeared to pick up a groin strain.

"Picking up" yellow cards. Maybe that works. But really, Kahveci picked up a groin strain? "Hey, what's this here? Should I pick it up? [Picks it up.] Oh, that wasn't such a good idea."

Tigers Update

2008-06-15T12:08:00.000-07:00

In general, I don't like interleague play. One reason is that the Tigers do not have a natural National League rival. I can understand the draw of Yankees-Mets, Dodgers-Angels, or even Marlins-(Devil) Rays. But the closest NL rival the Tigers have is the Reds. Not too awe inspiring.

But this time around the Tigers are playing teams from the NL West. They've been manhandling the Dodgers at Comerica (the benefit of this matchup is that I can catch the games on local radio and television), and then they come out west for games against the Giants and Padres. I'm trying to finagle a way to San Diego to watch one of the games. I've heard great things about Petco Park, but I wouldn't usually be interested in driving down there to see a random game. But the Tigers' series there changes the formula. We'll see what happens.

Before the season opened, I said the Tigers would either win it all or end up somewhere around third place. They've been playing really good baseball of late -- the kind that everyone expected them to play at the beginning of the season -- but will it be too little, too late? Currently, they are eight games back of the White Sox. Having seen the Tigers' play of late, I think they'll make up some ground and end the season over .500. But whether they catch the White Sox is mostly up to the White Sox. If the White Sox crash and burn, and if the Tigers' pitching holds up (which is a medium- to big-sized "if"), and if the Tigers' bats stay moderately hot (i.e., score an average of five runs a game), then they have a shot at least at the wild card (we also need the (Devil) Rays to peter out for the wild-card race).

In short, the hole the Tigers dug for themselves up to this point is too big for them to climb out of without help from other teams. Their destiny is not in their own hands.

P.S. Happy Father's Day, dad!

What Saw the Myrrh-Bearing Women

2008-05-26T13:05:00.000-07:00

One, two,
three trees,
lamppost,
four trees;
or from the north-east (if I am facing north):
lamppost,
one, two,
three, and
the fourth tree
finds itself nearest and in the south-west
for they all five (including the adoptive tree) make an ex.

But
all of this order and re-order
is only happening because
of the chance fact that
I tried to relax but
having sat down in the cafe
I fled before the
horrors they played for music.

So I fled
to this spot
in the quad
by the trees
and I sat
in this spot
window wide
to the breeze.

Though it was not, to be correct, even a spot
-- any more than any other location is a spot
at which to sit and view the trees,
beauty, and order --
until I pulled up a chair,
angled it,
and glanced
to my west.

One tree
caught my eye,
three nearly straight
nearly parallel trunks
reaching thirty feet skywards
before finally acquiescing to the foliage
while at fifteen feet
smaller branches -- half the diameter --
stretch out at forty-five degree angles.

Oddly proportionate.

And then I noticed the rather fine lamppost to the east,
and then a single-trunked tree to the west -- a vee --
and then the two nearest trees -- an ex.
A perfect proportionate paradigm:
ordered
and natural
structured
and crafted
created
by my mind
(or really the gardener's, I suppose,
though don't we all have an impulse
and some right to claim description
as some part of creation).

When I move from this spot
the order will disappear
and not one passerby will notice this perfect set
especially if I return my chair
to its place,
and thus remove the designation spot
from this place.

Still, the trees will please because of their foliage
and their adequate spacing.
But I will know
and the gardener knows
and the order will remain
in our memory
and the roots
and the trunks
of the trees
and in the block of concrete, wire, and metal
of the rather finely-wrought
lamppost.

Fill in the Blankety-Blank-Blank

2008-05-20T19:45:00.000-07:00

From Jim Leyland, on the current Tigers situation (i.e., last place). MLB.com provides the brackets. There are so many it's comical:

"I don't give a [care] what [effect] it has," he said. "When people start making weak excuses in the newspaper, diversionary tactics and [stuff], that rubs me wrong. I don't give a [care] what effect it has. It can't have a bad effect, because we've been as [bad] as you can be. So it can't hurt. I'm not looking for problems here, but I'm a man. I look in the mirror. When I'm [bad], I'm [bad]. And there's a few [players] in that clubhouse right now that are [bad] too. And they need to look in that mirror. Don't look at mine, look at theirs. And don't look at the guy next to them. Look in the mirror yourself. Don't be pointing fingers over here and why we're not doing well. That's all weak [stuff]. Grilli's [stuff], some of that other [stuff] I read in the paper today, that's weak [stuff]. Weak."

Displaced Book Ends

2008-05-07T14:49:00.000-07:00

There is the same amount
of shelf space
in the Graduate Reserves Room
of Doe Library
devoted to works on and works
of Carl Sandburg
as there is to the whole span
of Byzantine History.
In such moments I
often feel futility
as though, on page twenty-seven,
I already know the end
of a very long book.

A Good Sports Day in Detroit

2008-05-01T22:15:00.000-07:00

The Pistons beat Philadelphia to advance to the next round of the playoffs.

The Red Wings complete their sweep of the Avalanche and move on to the conference finals.

The Tigers complete a three-game sweep of the Yankees.

And since it's the NFL off season, the Lions are unable to mess things up.

An Ideal Situation, Sort Of

2008-04-30T11:28:00.000-07:00

This article highlights the fact that Jones (!) has not had many save opportunities this season. The reason? The Tigers (so far) either blow out the opposition or get blown out by them.

This is an ideal situation for the Tigers and Jones. He's not a high-priced guy, and (despite what the overly casual reader of this blog might conclude) I think he's a fairly good closer. (Note that "fairly good" does not mean "good for one's acid reflux problems.") The trouble will be in those few, important one-run games where the Tigers have to rely on Jones to close the door.

Last night's save against the Yankees exemplifies the current Tigers-Jones relationship. Jones comes on in the ninth. Tigers up by three runs. He walks Matsui, moves him to second on a wild pitch, and then allows him to score by giving up a hit to Giambi. He then gets two ground outs and a strikeout. A Classic Jones if ever there was one. But note that the Classic Jones is less anxiety-inducing this year because the Tigers score more runs. And that's a good thing, sort of.

Of course, who wouldn't want someone like Papelbon in the 'pen instead?

P.S. Is Curtis Granderson amazing? I say yes.

Eye Exam: Timaeus 28a-b

2008-04-29T20:35:00.000-07:00

The most difficult test of vision
Is to see that which cannot be seen.
I tell you, and so too will St. Paul,
To look -- There! -- for the unseen thing, which
is not the clear water only seen
through nor the aim of the basilisk
stare now fixed by time’s moving image.

“Tell me:
Better one, two, about the same?
Better three, four, about the same?
Now look at that and tell me what you see.”

“T, O, K, A, T, A, T, A, U, T, A, E, CH, O, N.”

Beautifully done.

Frank Sinatra, Rationalist

2008-04-25T13:37:00.000-07:00

Define "rationalist" as one who thinks that the truth of the matter is best arrived at through the use of reason rather than by empirical means.

For example, Plato says that by the mind alone is truth seen (Republic 527e) and that when one tries to distinguish, say, what is big from what is little, "the intellect [is] compelled to see big and little, too, not mixed up together but distinguished, doing the opposite of what sight did" (524c).

Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz stand in this tradition, too. (Probably many others as well: Aristotle, Aquinas, Husserl.)

So does Frank Sinatra. Proof text: "Why not use your mentality, step up, wake up to reality?"

Actually, Cole Porter is the rationalist since he wrote the lyrics. But why not suppose that Frank's cover of the song entails endorsement of its epistemology?

Awesome, Awesomer, Awesomest

2008-04-21T00:12:00.000-07:00

Q: You know what's awesome?
A: That the full Greek text of Proclus's commentary on Plato's Timaeus is available online at Google Books.

Q: You know what would be awesomer?
A: If I could read it faster than ten lines per hour.

Q: You know what would be awesomest?
A: If the anonymous commentary on Plato's Theaetetus were also available online.

Brahms on Christian Comfort

2008-04-20T19:49:00.000-07:00

The first paragraph of the liner notes says Johannes Brahms’s A German Requiem “may be the most comforting, humane requiem ever written.” What exactly is meant by “humane” is beyond the bounds of inquiry, but “comforting” is certainely borne out by the text. The central, and most moderately paced sections invoke the promise of comfort explicitly: IV. Mäßig bewegt: “Wohl denen, die in deinem Hause wohnen; die loben dich immerdar!” (Well-being to those who dwell in your house; who praise you forever!) and V. Langsam: “Ich will euch trösten, wie einen seine Mutter tröstet.” (I will comfort you, as one’s mother comforts him.)

Identifying the theme, however, is less then half the battle. To say Brahms’s piece is a study in, or a presentation of, comfort begs the question: what does he mean, exactly, by comfort? I will modify this question and ask, what does Brahms have to say to us about Christian Comfort?

The Requiem opens with a text (the texts for the Requiem are all selections from the German Bible) from the Beatitudes: “Selig sind die da Lied tragen; denn sie sollen getröstet werden.” (Blest are those who bear grief, for they shall be comforted.—Matthew 5.4) It is interesting that Brahms begins a requiem with the focus on those who have gathered, on the still-living: you here, you are blessed; because you grieve (for the dead), you will be comforted. In other words, you who have come here, rejoice for you will go back in joy (“kommen mit Freuden”). Fantastic. Thank you Herr Brahms, and I genuinely look forward to a 90 minute exercise that will turn wailing in the streets into armchairs and hot cocoa.

Brahms, however, is not a sentimentalist and hot cocoa does not make an appearance, which is a relief for anyone who was hoping for real life comfort that does not run away from dealing with very real death. The introductory passage above is gramatically parallel to the first and last clauses of the work’s final piece (VII. Feierlich): “Selig sind die Toten, die in dem Herren sterben, von nun an. ‘Ja,’ der Geist spricht, ‘daß sie ruhen von ihrer Arbeit; denn ihre Werke folgen ihnen nach.’” (Blessed are the dead … for their works follow after them.) This seems anything but comforting, and instead somewhat haunting for we who have now been forced to think of dying ourselves. Most of us, I believe, would rather our works not follow us into the afterlife, or at least that we would be able to chose the few works that tag along. We are now both a bit pensive about our own impending death, and still agrieved for our friend’s.

The complete text of the final stanza offers a bit more on how Brahms desires to explain comfort: “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. ‘Yes,’ the Spirit spake, ‘that they rest from their labor; for their works follow after them.’” Thus, the beginning and end stanzas together offer:
To the Living: Those grieving will be blessed (thanks to their grieving) with comfort.
To the Dead: Those dead in the Lord will gain (thanks to their works) rest.

This final stanza is taken from the Apocalypse of John, chapter 14 where the Lamb and the one hundred and forty four thousand redeemed pure ones are revealed, three angels proclaim, in succession, God’s coming judgment, the fall of Babylon, and the punishment coming for those who enslaved themselves to her. The subsequent verse (14.12) restates two ideas already mentioned in chapters 12 and 13: “Here is the perseverance of the saints (13.10b); here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus (12.17b).” Previously these phrases had referred to the saints martyred by the Beast; now they refer to those same saints who are rendered the pure ones in light of God’s judgment. The point: remember those who were persecuted and killed? Here they are, the ones not tortured but blessed in the end. This is the context of the Requiem’s conclusion, which I will give once more: “Then I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, ‘Write: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.’ ‘Yes’ says the Spirit, ‘that they may rest from their labors for their works follow them.’”

By paralleling these passages (and there are also musical parallels, so it is clear on multiple levels that they are meant to be understood in conjunction), Brahms has emphasized the eschatological context of Matthew’s Beatitudes. I believe that the Beatitudes quite clearly have an eschatological context all on their own, but a parallel with the Apocalypse makes that even more clear. We living will be comforted. But this Christian Comfort that Brahms explicates has an eschatological timeframe: we are to be comforted in Christ’s kingdom, not—at least not fully—at this instant. If the comfort is to come when we dead in Christ shall rise, then we must look at the description of that final time for an explanation of how our grieving will bring about comfort in Christ. In summary, Brahms presents Apocalpyse 14.13 as an explanatory gloss on the promise in Matthew 5.14, probably the most natural passage for a Christian to turn to for comfort, but one that needs explaining.

To expand a bit further, I believe Brahms to be saying several things. The grieving in the Beatitudes is not just any grieving: it is grieving as a labor, a work unto Christ because that is the context of the explanatory gloss of Apocalypse 14.12-13. Even more specifically, one could argue an interpretation that it is grieving for those who are actually martyrs, though I think Brahms intended the idea more for Christians generally. Therefore, the grieving that we do now, for the sake of Christ and in Christ, for anyone who has died, will be one of those very works that follows us through that great and final judgment, and which helps to bring about our heavenly rest: when we possess that final and true comfort. Or, in Brahms’s text: “Sehet mich an: ich habe eine kleine Zeit Mühe und Arbeit gehabt, und habe großen Trost funden.” (Look at me: I have had toil and labor for a little time, and have found great comfort. Ecclesiasticus 51.27)

Christian Comfort, then, is an obedience to Christ here and now that is motivated by an eschatological expectation that our labor is not in vain. Brahms offers that we can take comfort in the knowledge of this relationship, but that the true comfort that is promised in the Beatitudes comes only when we have followed those we mourn into the hereafter, having faithfully obeyed the commands and will of Christ. This idea sends us back once more to the Sermon on the Mount: “Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophseied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’ Therefore, whoever hears these sayings of Mine and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock …” (Matthew 7.21-24). Christian, take the promise of comfort in grief, says Johannes Brahms, but know that Christian Comfort is a first of all a command; though a command with a promise.

Aptronym

2008-04-16T21:43:00.000-07:00

Dr. Gilleland tells us that an aptronym is a "name that suits the nature or occupation of the bearer." I've also seen some good aptronyms at the maverick philosopher's blog.

Now I add my own, from a paper to appear in an upcoming issue of The Philosophical Quarterly, titled "Fixing Perceptual Belief," by Gerald Vision. (I note that the maverick philosopher lists Vision on his list, too, but sans clever title.)

When You Have the Worst Record in Baseball, Maybe What You Need Is a Homestand against the Twins

2008-04-14T22:48:00.000-07:00

Sorry Thorgerson, but I couldn't resist.

Tigers win for the third time (!) this season: 11-9 against the Twins.

I missed the game, but this sounds familiar:

Todd Jones almost needed the two-run cushion his teammates gave him, putting two on with two outs before earning his second save. It was the 303rd save of his career to pull into a tie with Doug Jones for 19th on the career list.

UPDATE: Game 2 goes to the Tigers, too. A two-game winning streak! Note also that there appears to have been a classic Jones moment in the ninth: Jones came on with a two-run lead, gave up a triple, got a ground out, gave up an RBI single (to former Tiger Craig Monroe), got a fly out and a strike out.

Five (or Six) by Lewis

2008-04-13T19:29:00.000-07:00

John Mark Reynolds has listed the five books by C. S. Lewis that influenced him the most. For what it's worth, here's mine, in order of most influence to least.

(1) The Abolition of Man
Education is always in some way (even a fundamental way) an education of values. The educator cannot escape this fact. Better to own up to it and make the conscious decision for objectivity than to ignore it and be a functional subjectivist.

(2) The Screwtape Letters
The book of Lewis that almost everyone reads first is the one I read last. Still, I was left at the end with a sense of awe at Lewis's ability to describe the human condition in all its twists and turns. And, of course, many parts of it felt like they were written with me in mind.

(3) "Christianity and Culture"
An essay not a book, but nonetheless it has a pithy warning that needs to be kept in mind: "culture is not everyone's read into Jerusalem, and for some it is a road out."

(4) That Hideous Strength
There is so much to think and feel about in this book that it usually overwhelms me when I read it. And when it doesn't overwhelm me, it almost does.

(5) An Experiment in Criticism
For someone who likes to make fine judgments, this book reminded me that for all practical purposes the distinction to make in literature is that between great and everything else.

(6) The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
One word: jollification.

In My Opinion: Timaeus 27d-28a

2008-04-12T16:21:00.000-07:00

The bloom of what in every way is and the
almost flash of what comes to be must
always be the most different, must almost

come to be in all ways different.
The flash, born to be seen by the eyes alone;
the bloom, unbegotten, is unseen.

Menexenus

2008-04-10T21:54:00.000-07:00

John Mark Reynolds writes (way down at the end of his post):

I will admit I can get little or nothing out of Menexenus other than Plato making the point that statesmen often make horrifically tedious speeches in the name of patriotism. This is true, but one doubts Plato’s genius was need to demonstrate it.

Hmm. I would have thought the point of the Menexenus is that Socrates can ape the speeches of the politician spectacularly well. And one point of doing it "spectacularly" is that the philosopher does it in such a way that the politician doesn't know he's being mocked; he thinks the philosopher is doing a dull impression of the politician. What he doesn't realize is that the philosopher is giving an accurate impression of the politician, which the politician takes to be dull. The dullness of the politician is due to his neglect of two things: justice and the divine. (Collins and Stauffer make this point in their introduction to their translation of the dialogue.)

Whether this amounts to more than what Reynolds has noticed is an open question.

0-5, and Now This

2008-04-05T23:04:00.000-07:00

This will only make sense if you are both a baseball fan and an "Office" fan.

Over at Bugs and Cranks, someone put together a list comparing MLB teams and "Office" characters. There's some funny points, but the painful bit is that Tigers = Andy Bernard. Andy!? Oh, man, that's not a good sign.

Dear Tigers,

2008-04-03T22:54:00.000-07:00

In case you hadn't noticed, you just got swept by the Royals, and your potent offense scored a grand total of five runs during the series. Also, Granderson, Sheffield, and Cabrera are already hurt.

Sincerely,
The Pessimist

Pessimism or Reality Check?

2008-03-30T19:23:00.001-07:00

I figured it was time to make my prediction for the Tigers this year. I admit to being of two minds.

On the one hand, I agree with the experts at ESPN who have picked the Tigers to win the whole kit and kaboodle.

On the other hand, I can't ignore the adage that good pitching beats good hitting every time. And consideration of said adage leads me to think that the Tigers will finish in third place in the AL Central and completely miss the playoffs.

Why so pessimistic you ask? Think about all the things that need to go right with the pitching. Whom do we know besides Verlander who can pitch reliably? No one. Sure, it's possible that Rogers and Robertson could have a year like they had in 2006, Willis could turn his numbers around from his last few seasons, Bonderman could recover from whatever was wrong with him at the end of last season, Zumaya could be back on the team by the All-Star break (haven't we heard that before, though?), and Jones ekes out forty saves by getting hitters to ground- and pop-out.

But it's equally likely that Rogers is over the hill, Robertson has another ho-hum season, Willis continues his slide, Bonderman doesn't recover from what ails him, Zumaya doesn't return until mid-August, and Jones blows just as many saves as he makes good on.

My point is that that's a lot of ifs on the pitching side of things.

The worst case is that my pessimism turns out to be well-founded and that results in the removal of Leyland and Dombrowski because they did so poorly with a team that "should have won it all."

A Book

2008-03-29T22:04:00.000-07:00

I'm reading Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom by David Bradshaw. I'm only a few pages in, but these sentences made me chuckle:

It is only by seeing both the eastern and western traditions as developments out of a shared heritage in classical metaphysics that they can be properly understood. Doing so also has the benefit of shifting the focus of comparison from questions of dogma and ecclesiology to questions of fundamental metaphysics. (p. xii)

I chuckled at his statement that our understanding of what divides the traditions will be benefited by a shift to "questions of fundamental metaphysics." It's not that I think what he says is false, just that I don't see how fundamental metaphysical questions are any more tractable than those of dogma and ecclesiology.

Menu: Timaeus 27a-b

2008-03-29T21:25:00.000-07:00

For the first course:
a mix of
opinions
on the cosmos,
humankind,
and everything
else, prepared
by our best
gastronomer.

The second course
(eaten first),
is an ideal
blend of justice
and the good
on a Bed of
education.

The third course,
which can't be
finished, makes
men of us all.

Don't forget
to say grace.

In Which on Reading a Passage from the Republic I Get Teary-eyed

2008-03-28T15:07:00.001-07:00

The passage in question is 608d. Here is Bloom's translation:

"Haven't you perceived," I said, "that our soul is immortal and is never destroyed?"

And he looked me in the face with wonder and said, "No, by Zeus, I haven't. Can you say that?"

Atlantis: Timaeus 20c–26e

2008-03-23T20:43:00.000-07:00

Truth is strange, not just stranger than fiction,
But a good story is a goodly store
Of truth when heard from a friend of a friend.
A good story—beginning, middle, end—
Makes philosophers kings, but no rhetor
Here looks so good and speaks with a diction
Sufficient to get around the truth of
The matter: Only in the olden days
Were men so good with laws to make stories
Out of them. One of Numenor’s glories,
So the myth goes, taught that he who obeys
Pleases the gods and those whom the gods love.

How Not to Start a Party: Timaeus 17a–20c

2008-03-16T23:20:00.000-07:00

When one of us misses the feast, the others must pick up the slack in proportion and fill in what’s now left out. When one of us happens to miss, I’m sure the guest host says to himself, “Well, now, this is awkward.” And the reputable etiquette guides all counsel never to count on proportions turning out the way we know they should. But how one could know all this at the beginning, is not easy for two or three to say.

“Did you all remember your assignments?” is not what I want to hear at a party. And then, afterward, my friend asks, “What kind of party was it, anyway?” But there I was, the life of it. If I were someone else, I’d want to shoot myself for that.

When the conversation turns to politics: We all know what the etiquette guides say about that (even the disreputable ones agree): “Subtly turn the conversation to something more suitable.” Are there any good movies you’d like to see? A war movie? My, I didn’t think you were into those sorts of things.

(Take my advice: A languishing party, like a sleeping tiger at the zoo—not the sort of thing to engender much enthusiasm. Best at that point to start drinking or leave. Whatever happens next, won’t be worth remembering.)

An Occasional Series

2008-03-16T23:16:00.000-07:00

I'm going to start an occasional series of poems inspired by Plato's Timaeus. The first entry follows. (Caveat lector: No one said it will be good poetry.)

Jones Watch 2008

2008-03-15T12:01:00.000-07:00

This doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

The Tigers closer pitched a perfect inning against a major league club for the first time this spring Thursday, lowering his ERA from 24.55 to 19.29.
. . . .
In his one inning against the Braves, he got two pop outs and a ground out.

Let's see: two pop outs and a ground out. That's exactly what I want in a closer. Strike outs? Overrated.

Backwards

2008-03-10T22:13:00.000-07:00

In his (in)famous article, "The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits," Milton Friedman argues that businesses are not the sort of thing that can have responsibilities. Only people, says Friedman, have responsibilities.

But why not say that he's got it backwards? One should reason that since people have responsibilities and since businesses are (at least partially) composed of people that businesses have responsibilities, too.

Or at the very least, Friedman should give us an argument that the reasoning should run in the direction he says it does and not the other way around. But he doesn't.

A Post! A Very Palpable Post!

2008-03-06T11:59:00.000-08:00

Now that spring training is under way, there's something to live for again.

Anyway, the Tigers held a charity auction in which the winner gets to sit in the dugout with Tigers manager Jim Leyland during a spring training game and make managerial decisions. The winner, one Steve Nagengast, said he didn't think he knew enough about baseball to make it as a big-league manager. Leyland replied that Nagengast shouldn't be too hard on himself since the media think anyone can do the job. The kicker:

Leyland, a longtime smoker, then added he'd probably have Nagengast chain-smoking by the third inning. "If you want to be the real Jim Leyland," Leyland said, "you better bring a carton of Marlboros."

Cover the children's ears lest they start puffing away trying to be the real Jim Leyland! I'm sure Leyland got a call from the commissioner's office for that comment.

But we can have some fun with this formula: "If you want to be the real _________, you better bring _________."

I'll go first with an obvious one: If you want to be the real Roger Clemens, you better bring a good supply of needles.

Books

2008-03-05T21:23:00.000-08:00

Kelly tagged me.

(1) One book that changed your life. Plato's Timaeus
(2) One book that you have read more than once. Plato's Timaeus
(3) One book you would want on a desert island (besides the Bible). Plato's Timaeus
(4) Two books that made you laugh. Plato's Timaeus and Ion
(5) One book that made you cry. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
(6) One book you wish you'd written. Plato's Timaeus
(7) One book you wish had never been written. Aristotle's Physics
(8) Two books you are currently reading. Plato's Republic, Richard Swinburne's The Coherence of Theism
(9) One book you've been meaning to read. Plato's Laws

***For the 1-2-3 meme, the directions are:
(1) Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
(2) Open the book to page 123.
(3) Find the fifth sentence.
(4) Post the next three sentences.
(5) Tag five people.

The nearest book is Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. It's a bilingual edition, so I'll give you the English version of the requested sentences on page 123 (trans. G.E.M. Anscombe):

There is a related case (though perhaps it will not seem so) when, for example, we (Germans) are surprised that in French the predicative adjective agrees with the substantive in gender, and when we explain it to ourselves by saying: they mean: "the man is a good one."

I won't tag anyone, but I'll ask whether anyone sees the Timaeus joke in the rules for the 1-2-3 meme.

Marital Harmony

2008-03-05T20:33:00.000-08:00

These tend to make me tired a couple questions in, but I haven't done one in a long time, and have been commanded to complete the task.

1) One book that changed your life.
The Philokalia, Volume II, especially the writings by Maximos the Confessor, and especially the 400 texts on Love. "Just as the thought of fire does not warm the body, so faith without love does not actualize the light of spiritual knowledge in the soul."
2) One book that you have read more than once.
The highest number of re-reads goes to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings which I've read at least a half dozen times, perhaps more.
3) One book you would want on a desert island.
They asked me this in my undergrad entrance interview, and I will use the same strategy: I will assume I will eventually get off the desert island, so what book would keep me really really interested for a really really long time that I currently want to reread? St. Augustine's City of God. After a couple years of that I will stop waiting and build a raft.
4) Two books that made you laugh.
A) Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey-Maturin series. I'm on the eleventh, and have laughed out loud at least once during every book.
B) Little Bear Goes to the Moon by Maurice Sendak.
5) One book that made you cry.
I have never cried over a book. I am a barbarian.
6) One book you wish you'd written.
My dissertation. Or I would actually exchange that labour for the rights to The Elements of Style. William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White, (which is straight poetry and wit).
7) One book you wish had never been written.
A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. by Kate L. Turabian. Bureaucracy in the Academy: it strangles me.
8) Two books you are currently reading.
The Magic World. E. Nesbit (Because the World is Magic)
The Historian's Craft. Marc Bloch (Because History is writing about how Magic happened)
9) One book you've been meaning to read.
After Virtue. Alasdair MacIntyre. (Because I want to talk about virtue again).
10) The 1-2-3 meme game: 1) Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).2) Open the book to page 123.3) Find the fifth sentence.4) Post the next three sentences.
"After a few centuries of having been cobbled together with such rules, the structure of Roman law had taken on the look of a house to which every generation of occupants added rooms without ever looking at the place from the outside; hallways that didn't connect with one another, stairways going nowhere. The confusion engendreed by two emperors legislating only in the part of the empire in which they reigned simply accelerated the process. Even without an overarching dream of reunion with the west, the empire urgently needed a new code."
William Rosen. Justinian's Flea. (New York, 2003). p. 123.

Oh my. Now, I'm going to go take a stairway to nowhere, where I will deposit Mr. Rosen alongside of Ms. Turabian.

Odyssey 9.1-28

2008-02-21T22:49:00.001-08:00

And so, responding,
the shrewd Odysseus declared:

“Ruling Alkinoe, renowned
among all peoples:
Truly
the hearing of this beautiful song just now
from this degree of bard,
who, here just now, is the sort of bard
in voice, like to the gods.
For
I deny,
indeed I do,
that there is any
end at all that is more
pleasing than when quite
all the crowd possess full mirth
– banqueters sat row by row within the hall attend the bard and
tables are full of meat and bread and
cupbearers carry mead drawn from the bowl and
pour it in the cups – this
is seen to be the best,
in my mind,
the very best thing.

But you are zealous for my woes,
to hear my miserable woes so that
I lamenting,
may, grieving groan yet more;
what then shall I narrate first and what thing recount last?
since many are the woes the gods of heaven gave to me.
Then first I shall explain my name,
that you may know it too;
and some time hereafter
when I have fled
the dread destruction day,
I may be a host to you
...
... though I,
far from
this banquet hall,
I dwell.

I am Odyesseus
Son of Laertes
and by my wiles
I have become of interest
to all men:
even
heaven
does my fame reach.

I dwell
on Ithaca,
blessed by light:
for on it is famed mount Neritum, foliage always swaying;
for all around lie many islands close by one another:
Doulikion, Samae, and the wooded Zakynthos;
for by dusk
it lies low
far off in the sea;
for by dawn
and by day
the others far from it;

I dwell
on Ithaca
that rugged isle,
but goodly guard of youths;
indeed I cannot know another
sweeter than my native land.

EDIT: I was corrected on my understanding of lines 17-18: "... and sometime hereafter ..."

Odyssey 1.1-21

2008-02-16T11:22:00.000-08:00

Sing for me the man,
my Muse,
that ever-shifting man,
that man who wandered great and far
once holy city Troy
he sacked,
that man.

For he, that ever-shifting man,
he saw the cities of many men,
and he knew many a mind;
and he suffered much upon the sea,
and in his heart, great pain;

that man he strove
both for his soul
and for his men's return;
so he suffered much upon the sea,
and in his heart, great pain.

For even when his men were saved,
by him, that striving man,
then by their own
they were wrecked,
by their wickedness, theirs,
those blithering infantile men:
they were delighted at
the cows
of Helios
Hyperion divine;
so from them he duly seized
their homecoming day.

So
of these
men and deeds
start from where you will,
goddess, daughter god of Zeus,
to us as well,
speak ...

...

When
many others,
all had from ruin fled, they
were home.

Indeed they fled
the utter
ruin,
war,
and sea.

That man alone,
for sure he yearned
for homecoming
and wife;

But Kalypso,
mistress nymph,
glorious of goddesses,
that man alone
she held in hollow caves,
desiring him
to be her mate.

'Til just when
a year had passed,
when seasons had spun round,
the gods, they wove into his fate
the return to home, to Ithaca
--nor even then,
with his beloved ones,
would he escape the strife--
for they pitied,
the gods, yes quite all the gods,
except for Poseidon;

Poseidon remained constantly,
the enemy to the return
to the land once his own,
of that man,
Odysseus.

Small Market Baseball

2008-02-07T19:57:00.000-08:00

I believe the Tigers actually had the biggest trade of the offseason in acquiring Miguel Cabrera (3B) and Dontrelle Willis (SP) from the Florida Marlins during Baseball's Winter Meetings, but the Minnesota Twins certainely generated the most sustained press while all of baseball fandom speculated where Johan Santana (the active pitcher with the most consistently astounding flame throwing excellence) would be traded. Red Sox, Yankees, and Mets were the frequently cited destinations.

Long (and it was long) story short: Johan finally went to the New York .... Mets -- the fact that he did not go to either the Red Sox or Yankees being the current best argument for the existence of God. A number of Twins-supporting media types have taken the opportunity to bemoan the fact of this impending deal (see here or here): why do "small market" teams like Minnesota always have to lose people like that? Why can't those owners open those deep pockets (the Twins owners, the Pohlad family, are the richest sole owners in all of baseball) and buy out a superstar or two? Just once, pretty pretty please.

I, for one, am actually glad they didn't. Yes, that's right, for the price he was asking, I'd rather see the perennial Cy Young favorite walk in exchange for a handful of blue chip prospects than guarantee him $20+ million for six years. My reasons:

1) No matter how good a ball player one is, there is no one who can predict the trajectory of a major league career. Some incredible players have bottomed out when they hit 30. There are a million things that can go wrong for a pitcher -- even if we are talking about Cy Young himself, do you really want to bet 10-20% of the payroll on everything going right for half a decade?

2) Prospects are really fun to watch. Not a whole team of them, mind you (see Royals, Kansas City or Devil Rays, Tampa Bay) but having a team with 2-4 (depending on position) truly promising rookie players is great fun. Is there more true joy when someone hits their first major league home run or their 756th? Watching a rookie sprint around the bases and forgetting to touch second because he is so thrilled out of his mind (yes I have seen that) is worth the price of admission ten times over.

3) It's always more fun to be the underdog.
3a) How often does your team need to win a championship for you to feel there is some hope in rooting for them? (I apologize to Cubs fans throughout the world.) The Twins won it all in '87 and '91. That was a pretty exciting stretch that I was lucky enough to be aware of my innate Twins-fandom for. The 1991 World Series often won (until ALCS 2004) and is still always in the top three of best-playoff-series-ever votes. We got to the playoffs (though were often crushed) a lot in the last five years. That is pretty fun. There are a lot of fans of a lot of teams who have been nowhere near that in the last twenty years. I could see the Twins miss the playoffs for the next three years (no jinx, please!) and still be a very happy and hopeful fan.
3b) It is NOT fun to be the favorite, and it is even less fun to be a 'dynasty'. Why? Do you know any Patriots fans? The primary emotion going into the game-which-everyone-already-expects-you-to-win is nervousness; you are not allowed to "just be happy to be there"; you can't really just go out and play really hard and possibly be a little too crazy but that often seems to work out anyway; and the smile at the end (if you win) is relief, not surprised joy: it all feels pre-programmed and stale, and like a "really historic statistic". Basically: boring. (An aside: wouldn't the best thing for Red Sox baseball fandom right now be if they didn't win a World Series for 10-12 years and then ripped off another one? or two? With this core group of players, every additional World Series now starts to feel ... dare I say it? ... Yankee-ish).

In short, I think it all amounts to keeping the real ability to hope as the dominant feature of rooting for a sports team. We have a chance, it might happen, it very well could not, but there's a real chance. And that is really, really fun. If the Twins have to see people like Torii Hunter and Johan Santana leave after five to eight years of young stardom in order to keep that alive, so be it; and I'm perfectly happy for Mr. Pohlad to keep on being the richest owner in baseball. I just hope he has something to hope for too.

A Nice Description of the Difficulties of Interpreting Plato Correctly

2008-02-05T17:45:00.000-08:00

The interpretive problem emphasized here is the tension between demands for systematic meaning and the unresolved variety of Plato's thought. This opposition is invited by hints of unity on the one hand and by diverse manifestations of the philosophy--apparent contradictions and seeming gaps--on the other. The latter are aggravated by the indirections of the dialogue form, by exposition through differing speakers, and by electing variously mythic, dramatic, logistic, and poetic modes of presentation.

From William Sacksteder's review of E. N. Tiegerstedt's Interpreting Plato, a book I discussed back in the day.

Please Show Some Respect and/or Restraint

2007-12-10T19:26:00.001-08:00

I keep reading stories about the fact that "Led Zeppelin" played a show last night. People debate whether "Led Zeppelin" still have it or not. There is speculation about whether "Led Zeppelin" will go on tour again.

Excuse me? People, look: Unless John Bonham has come back from the dead to play drums, there is no Led Zeppelin, only "Led Zeppelin." So please stop talking about how great the latest Led Zeppelin show was. No John Bonham = no Led Zeppelin. Do I make myself clear?

In Which on Rereading Plantinga's Warranted Christian Belief I Find a Description of Myself

2007-12-01T10:49:00.000-08:00

From a passage by Alvin Plantinga on the difference between true belief and knowledge:

To see what warrant is, note that not all true beliefs constitute knowledge. You are an ardent Detroit Tigers fan; out of sheer bravado and misplaced loyalty, you believe that they will win the pennant, despite the fact that last year they finished last and during the off season dealt away their best pitcher. As it happens, the Tigers unaccountably do win the pennant, by virtue of an improbably series of amazing flukes. Your belief that they will, obviously, wasn't knowledge; it was more like an incredible lucky guess. (WCB, xi)

WCB was published in 2000, probably written in 1999, and the reference to the Tigers coming in last in the previous season (1998) fits with their 65-97 record and fifth-place AL Central finish that year.

Or, it's possible the passage refers to the god-awful 1996 season (Tigers finish last in everything with a 53-109 record but don't hit the bottom reached by the 2003 team: 43-119). This means that the pitching trade Plantinga refers to could be the one that sent then-closer Gregg Olson to the Astros and brought, you guessed it, Jones (!) to the Tigers.

Needless to say, the Tigers didn't win the pennant in either 1999 or 1997.

The Curse of Barry Bonds

2007-11-20T12:33:00.000-08:00

John Mark Reynolds pens (types?) an encomium on Brett Farve and the tremendous season the Packers are having. I think what he says is true.

I also cannot help (literally) thinking, "How is Farve able to excel at this point in his career? Is he taking any drugs?"

This suspicion that taints our enjoyment of athletic performance is the curse of Barry Bonds and all athletes who have taken performance-enhancing drugs to extend their productive careers. It isn't only that Bonds harmed himself and broke the rules; the problem is also that his actions continue to make us suspicious, and such suspicion impinges upon my enjoyment of the performance.

Perhaps we should have been more suspicious of outstanding late-career performances in years past. That's not the main point. The main point is that now we are suspicious even in cases where we don't need to be. I think Farve's season is one of those cases. You cannot even avoid suspicion by saying that Farve is an all around good guy who wouldn't take performance-enhancing substances. These days that rings hollow; the sports pages are littered with stories of all around good guys and girls who have been found out.

This is like public preoccupation -- or at least the media's preoccupation -- with homosexuality. As Sheldon Vanauken pointed out, regardless of whether male homosex is right or wrong, one effect of it is to undermine our confidence in genuine male friendship. Today, it's difficult for people to think about a particular male friendship without also suspecting an aspect of homosexuality -- and if we do not suspect, I think that at least the idea intrudes where it should not. For inasmuch as nonsexual friendship is a good, and inasmuch as public preoccupation with homosexuality makes us liable to widespread suspicion about the genuineness of nonsexual friendship, and (almost finished here) inasmuch as suspicion about genuine nonsexual friendship undermines the enjoyment and stability of that friendship (both in particular and in general), to that extent I think public preoccupation with homosexuality is not obviously a good thing.

The Gambler's Coming Back, Too

2007-11-17T10:48:00.000-08:00

Since Kenny Rogers just signed with the Tigers, they might win the World Series next year, but after that, Jones (!) and Rogers will head to the nursing home.

Another question: Is Scott Boras, Superagent, becoming persona non grata? First A-Rod negotiates without him; then Rogers fires him.

Seven Million Dollar Man

2007-11-14T11:31:00.000-08:00

Well, like it or not, and I still can't decide, Jones is back. He's the Seven Million Dollar Man. Is this what Dave Dombrowski sounded like in the meeting when they decided to resign Jones?

Todd Jones, "relief" pitcher. A career barely alive. Gentleman, we can rebuild him, and by "rebuild" I mean "keep him around until Zumaya recovers from surgery." We have the technology, and by "technology" I mean "tubs of BenGay ointment." We have the capability to build the world's first "relief" pitcher, and by "'relief' pitcher' I mean someone who will give our fans ulcers. Todd Jones will be that man. (Note that that's NOT to say that Todd Jones will be THE man.) Better than he was before, by which I mean that he's been watching videos on how to throw a curveball. Better. Stronger. Faster (you know, his fastball will now exceed 85 mph).

Shoot me now.

A Fourth

2007-11-01T22:46:00.000-07:00

A fourth point about the Tigers:

(4) Joel Zumaya will be out until at least the middle of next season. He hurt his throwing shoulder preparing to evacuate his Southern California home during the recent fires. This makes the Tigers' bullpen decisions even tougher, especially if Jones (!) leaves. Whoever started that wildfire has now incurred the wrath of Tigers fans everywhere. Also, whoever started that wildfire was a moron, an evil moron. (Unless it was started by natural causes, in which case one could argue that God caused the wildfire, and I gather it's not usually good for one's health to accuse God of being an evil moron.)

Tigers Update

2007-10-31T09:39:00.000-07:00

Three things of note for the Tigers.

(1) As most people know, Detroit signed Renteria from Atlanta because Guillen moved from short to first after Casey was let go.

(2) Jones (!) files for free agency. On the one hand, I won't be sad if Jones goes somewhere else. On the other hand, what will I blog about if he does?

(3) Schilling lists Detroit as one of the teams he's willing to sign with if the Sox don't want him back. Schilling would be a good one-year replacement for Kenny Rogers if he decides to retire. (As of this posting, Rogers had not made a decision about that.)

We now return to the regular (but not necessarily scheduled) blog silence.

Not All Evolutionistary Athiests Like Dawkins Either

2007-09-29T08:27:00.001-07:00

A friend recently sent me a really interesting article by Jonathan Haidt of the University of Virginia, Moral Psycology and the Misunderstanding of Religion.

Not being a social psychologist, and so approaching Haidt with little to no baggage, I've found his ideas to be quite interesting, and the points he is currently trying to win in the public forum to be somewhat alligned with my own.

In this article one of his goals is to take people like Richard Dawkins out of the current debate on how morality and religion fit/don't fit into evolutionary theory. I'd rather talk with Haidt than Dawkins. With Dawkins, you are forced into proving religion isn't a gene mutation gone bad, which is certainely possible to do, but you really end up debating his premises, and when you win you've accomplished nothing productive. With Haidt--whose premise is: secular western liberals have only two moral categories, whereas conservatives and basically the rest of human society circa all time have at least five--you can argue over the conclusion: whether or not secular liberals are therefore the pinnacle of evolutionary development, or are they the evolutionary blip. This is a conversation that I do want to have. Thus, the end of this NYT article, you have Haidt basically saying "if secular liberals take over our society we're in real trouble." (Obviously he also thinks the opposite is true.) Note also, that in Haidt's own article, he is using his system to point out that Dawkins and friends are using non-scientific, not exclusively "scientific" thinking systems, to point out problems with religion, but rather are relying on the other three moral categories Haidt identifies as traditional/conservative intuition. Very clever, funny and true.

Another interesting idea Haidt has: change the categories on the debate about the role of that "gut reaction" in moral thinking. For instance, the old survey where people are confronted with two piles of laundry and have to make an instant decision about which they prefer and are "proven" to use emotive reactions over reason/cognition, is shown to be falsely construed. With Haidt's categories he gets to say, because moral cognition encompasses more than reasoned altruism and fairness, its still moral thinking to have a gut reaction to people having sex in the middle of the street and to base your decision upon that reaction--he is putting moral impulses like that in the realm of "intuition" and so saying, look, they are reasonable too.

He also has the sense to pick his head out of the petri dish and make broad, reasonable suggestions based on general, common sense observations to his fellow evolutionary athiests such as this:

"Atheists may have many other virtues, but on one of the least controversial and most objective measures of moral behavior -- giving time, money and blood to help strangers in need -- religious people appear to be morally superior to secular folk."

As well as this:

"... surveys have long shown that religious believers in the United States are happier, healthier, longer-lived, and more generous to charity and to each other than are secular people. Most of these effects have been documented in Europe too. If you believe that morality is about happiness and suffering, then I think you are obligated to take a close look at the way religious people actually live and ask what they are doing right."

I'm not going to be sending Haidt donations or anything, but I think he's trying to change the conversation in really interesting ways, I appreciate his fairness and level headedness, and I hope he becomes widely accepted enough to be an important part of the public debate on religion for a while.

A Wind in the Door takes L'Engle

2007-09-08T19:56:00.000-07:00

The genius of Madeleine L'Engle's Time series was the combination of the most homely and ordinary things with something totally unlooked for, fascinating, unsettling, and somewhat wierd. The illustrative image is Mrs. Murry interrupting experiments to cook spaghetti for Meg and Charles Wallace and the Twins over the bunson burner and discuss school as every mom and kid do; or, well, the first line of A Wind in the Door: "There are dragons in the twins' vegetable garden," who actually turn out to be much more than dragons.

What perhaps does not get said often enough about her, and many other remarkable 'children's authors', is that she wrote very, very well. I refer you to Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, 16. Use definite, specific, concrete language. "... the surest way to arouse and hold the reader's attention is by being specific, definite, and concrete. ... the significant details are given, and with such accuracy and vigor that readers, in imagination, can project themselves into the scene."

"... It was a still, chill pre-dawn. The grass was white with spider web tracings of dew and light frost. A thin vapor moved delicately across the lawn. The mountains were curtained by ground fog, although in the sky she could see stars." (Square Fish, 2007 reprint, Wind,p. 85).

The mountains were curtained by ground fog ... a perfect, memorable phrase of a vision that someone like me would have obscured with "... were so covered in fog it was as though they were draped in heavy curtains." [1]

L'Engle pushes a deep theology of love and mercy in a scientific mysticism, to a degree that I would not quite personally endorse, but it equipped her to embed piercing Christian truths in the midst of fantastic stories. Meg's challenge in Wind is to look at Mr. Jenkins (her principal) and name the true him simply based on her ability to know, and thus love, the real Mr. Jenkins. In the six months since I read the story, these scenes have stuck with me as I try to know and name those around me, especially those who are not exactly my favorite friends. Who are they, really; and how does Christ know them? Because knowing, naming someone is loving them sacrificially, for who they are -- its Christ on the cross saying, "... they know not ...". See, you know she gets it when every time you look up you see Jesus.

I say "she gets" in the present because despite the immediate loss, I trust that Madeleine L'Engle is singing the eternal song in company with the Cherubim, her feathered dragons.

[1] "One time a woman handed me a story she had written about her rather interesting childhood, a kid's story. I read it and said, "It's very interesting. But now I'd like you to rewrite it-only not for children this time. Write it for the people here in this group." She gave it to me the next morning. I told her, "That's how you write for children-not the way you first handed it to me." People think they need to write differently when they write for children. But they don't." (http://www.leaderu.com/marshill/mhr04/lengle1.html)

Sign of the Times

2007-09-03T10:18:00.000-07:00

August. That month in which the baseballwheat is separated from the baseballchaff, leaving a few interesting teams that could-just-get-it-together-in-time (see: Tigers, Detroit).

The Other Favorite AL Central Team of the Bourgeois Burglars (see: Twins, Minnesota) has both less hope to pull it together (at 69-68), and less to pull together anyway. This is, in general, ok with yours truly. The Twins have made it to the playoffs four of the last six years (counting this one), and though they always seem to get derailed by America's Favorite Team (The Yankees), the Kansas City Royals are a good reminder of how sweet it is to root for a perennial competitor.

On the other hand, it is hard to let go of that playoff rush, once experienced. You know its truly over when your team's website offers video highlights titled, not: "Stunning late inning comeback lifts Twins over reeling Yankees" or "Santana dominates Angels, striking out 15" but rather: "The Twins use small ball to get a run home Sunday Afternoon." Note, that we were playing the Kansas City Royals.

A couple weeks after the all star break, ESPN.com's resident stathead, Rob Neyer, commented on how high he had ranked the Twins and how lowly they have performed (can't find the link) saying: "I did not conceive of how poorly their lineup would be managed." This was not Neyer coping out, it is something that Twins fans have been whining about increasingly all season long. The banner player for this phenomenon has been Nick Punto, the banner incident his multiple pop-up bunt attempts.

For documentary evidence of how pathetic a season Mr. Punto has had (and I wish him no ill, he is by all reports a fine, well-liked, hard working fellow ... just not a good major league infielder) the statistically WORST SEASON of all major league batters. The best measure of his performance is the new-fangled (not really) stat VORP (Value Over Replacement Player). The very basic definition of VORP explains that this is a calculation of "the number of runs contributed beyond what a replacement-level player at the same position would contribute if given the same percentage of team plate appearances. VORP scores do not consider the quality of a player's defense." Alex Rodriquez leads all major league batters with something ridiculous like an 82. Tori Hunter leads all Twins with a very respectable 39.2.

Mr. Punto, with his 128 games played and 467 plate appearances, leads all major leaguers with the line of -26.3. That means that Mr. Punto has taken away over 26 runs on the season that an absolutely league-average replacement level guy would not (see Jose Valentin, 2b, NY Mets). Punto is famed for his defense (which is, admittedly, very good and sometimes incredibly spectacular), but despite what Kelly Theiser argues in this article, even if you are Ozzie Smith you can't make up that many offensive miscues and bat .199. Seriously. Mr. Gardenhire, please stop putting Mr. Punto in the lineup.

In short, see you next season. Over the next month, Twins fans will enjoy previews of the incredible pitching rotation that is shaping up for next year, wring their hands at the idea of who will replace Hunter in CF now that he seems to be planning on hitting the big time free agent market, and hope God drops a decent Third Baseman into our laps.

Oh, and Go Tigers (Do you want to borrow a closer? We apparently have two, again, despite what this says).

The Classic Jones Gone Bad

2007-09-02T16:17:00.000-07:00

Bottom of the ninth, Tigers up 7-5 against Oakland, at Oakland. They could pull even with Seattle in the wild-card race if they win; and they'd be 4.5 back from Cleveland in the AL Central. Note that Brandon Inge stranded a runner on third in the top of the ninth.

Scutaro:
Strike, foul, foul, foul, line drive to right.

Suzuki:
Ball, foul, homerun.

Game tied, 7-7. This is a Classic Jones gone bad.

Stewart:
Strike, strike, foul, single to center.

Swisher:
Ball, ball, foul, ball, ball, walk.

Cust:
Ball, ball (Wild pitch! Runners go to second and third!), ball, ball, intentional walk.

Note that the bases are, how you say, loaded, and that there are no outs.

Piazza (the clean up hitter):
Strike, ground ball to short, double play (short to home to first).

Two outs, men on second and third.

Johnson:
Strike, ball, ball, ball, fly out to center.

Blah, blah, blah, Tigers lose in ten innings. Read this on Jones. Review the classic Jones criteria for homework.

Where is America?

2007-08-22T17:09:00.000-07:00

As a foreign-raised American I am constantly perplexed by the different images of "What is America" that people propose and use as premises for heated debate. For instance, Rural America is that ideal where an overalled straw chewing farmer is sitting atop a John Deere tractor; Melting Pot America whose characteristic image is a black and white photo of a little Polish woman at Ellis Island; Hollywood America where good guys always win with glitz, glamour, and a good line (even if the 'good guys' are increasingly adulterous toadies); America the Brand Name where we are Starbucks and McDonalds; America the Fanatical where we are a crazed Red Sox/Raider/Lakers Nation; America the Chosen Land where a democratic republic and/or protestant Christianity and/or the Right to Self Determination are God's gift to the earth; and on and on. Which are we?

It is interesting to see the relationship between an American's core conception and how it informs political (as well as economic, religious, social, etc.) views: I live around a lot of Melting Pot Americans who believe America is about doing Yoga, lunch at PF Chang's, dancing at local Pow-Wow, sipping an afternoon cappuccino, attending public lecture on Post-Colonial Post-Structural interpretations of Melkite chronicles in Syriac and then heading to a local Taqueria with live Mariachi. These tend to unilaterally oppose the Rural-Americites on principle (I cannot count the number of times I have overheard comments dripping with hate about "Bush Country"). If you think "America" is really about being a multicultural melting pot of hip-ness, an area of racial hegemony (which of course means white folk) is simply not really American.

So, I was intrigued by an article in this week's Economist about Cerritos, CA (Los Angeles County):

... Such single mindedness [referencing a 96% approval of the state of City-run public services] is particularly striking given the city's diversity. In 1980 whites comprised more than half of the population. These days Asians do (and a very diverse lot they are, too -- see chart below). ... Yet the newcomers have not formed ghettos. The last census showed that whites and Asians were more intermixed in Cerritos than in all but 16 other American cities. Whites were even more mized up with blacks and Hispanics.

So, granted this is not by any means a perfect cross section of American races -- but overall (factoring issues other than race) its a pretty good representation of Suburban America; which is a lot of America. Does Suburbia have a popular culture image? If anything it is either malls and parking lots or inexplicable Columbine-violence and Rage-Against-the Machine disconnectedness. Peaceful, truly international, racial integration in a middle class suburban city; but it runs car dealerships and voted for George W. Bush; but it roots for the Dodgers.

Perhaps the fact that there is no easy stereotype for these, the-most-of-us, no easy free-throw to buy political capital, no defining image that captures the media life of this demographic, is proof of the fact that this is where the most of America is living, apparently unconcerned with its lack of profile, and probably laughing along with the Economist's ironic summation: "bland, car-oriented and suburban". America, know thyself.

Another Jones Relief [sic] Appearance

2007-08-14T19:41:00.000-07:00

I haven't live-blogged Jones (!) in a while, but tonight against the Indians the perfect situation for a classic Jones is in place. The Tigers are tied for first with Cleveland; the game is in Cleveland. After scoring four runs in the top of the tenth inning, Jones comes on with a four-run lead. The score is 6-2. (Having a lead of more than one run is crucial for ensuring the possibility of classic Jones.)

Jason Michaels:
Strike
Ball
Strike
Ball
Single

Michaels goes to second on a wild pitch.

Casey Blake:
Strike
Ball
Strike
Ball
Ball
Foul
Ball
Walk

NB: Runners on first and second, no outs. Looking good for a classic Jones.

Grady Sizemore:
Ball
Grounds out to first.

NB: Runners advance to second and third, one out.

Victor Martinez (clean-up hitter):
Strike
Strike
Foul
Ball
Strike
Strikeout!

Travis Hafner:
Ball
Grounds out to short.

Game over. Tigers win and are now in first place by one game.

Let's recap the necessary and sufficient conditions for a classic Jones.

1. Jones must come on with more than a one-run lead so that he can give up at least one run.
2. Jones must get runners on the bases early from a fluke hit or error.
3. Jones must face one of the other team's top hitters.
4. Jones must benefit from a solid defensive play.
5. Jones must give up a run (often in exchange for an out or two).
6. Jones must let the other team hit into the final out; the motive here seems to be to avoid striking anyone out.

This game meets half of the first condition. Jones comes on with more than a one-run lead, but doesn't give up any runs.
The second condition is met, I think, by the wild pitch. Though Michaels didn't reach base on this error, he did get into scoring position because of it.
The third condition is obviously met since Jones faced the first five batters in the lineup.
The fourth condition was met by the solid infield play.
The fifth condition was not met.
The sixth condition was.

All in all, this almost warrants the label "classic Jones," but not quite.

I close this with a proclamation from MKR Mouse on Jones; let's call it Ave Jonesum: "Hail Todd Jones. May your skills in a brilliant career of comedy never diminish, and may you never come to my team. Amen."

Next Two Weeks Are Make-Or-Break for Tigers

2007-08-12T21:00:00.000-07:00

In the next two weeks, the Tigers play five games (three at home) against second-place Cleveland and eight (!) (four at home) games against the Yankees. What a tough spell. Here's hoping the Tigers can put the hurt on the Yanks and give cheer to worried Sox fans everywhere.

Zumaya and Miller might return to the pitching staff as early as next Tuesday. The Gambler should return shortly, too. All good news.

Also, I hear things about this game called "professional football" (not sure if I'm spelling that right) starting up again soon. I'm sure we could do without that.

And now, we return to our regularly scheduled reading of Boring Articles on Aristotle . . . .

"We'd Like to Thank the Minnesota Twins . . ."

2007-08-05T14:45:00.000-07:00

That's how the Tigers should begin their celebration when they win the AL Central. When you lose nine of your last ten games, you should be more than a half game back of the division leaders. But the Twins have been keeping the Indians in check by winning a number of one-run games.

Here's hoping the Leyland magic will kick in soon, or it could be the Twins at the end of the year saying, "We'd like to thank the Tigers for tanking royally in the second half of the season."

What Color Goes Best with "Overpaid"?

2007-08-03T19:16:00.000-07:00

Detroit Tiger Neifi "Paintjob" Perez has tested positive for an illegal stimulant for a third time this season. Perez's stats for the season: .172 batting average, one homerun, 64 RBIs. Not sure what could stimulate that kind of performance.

Perez earned the nickname "Paintjob" from some fans because the Tigers could have used the money they spent on his contract ($2.5 million) to repaint Comerica Park. Since Perez has now forfeited almost half of his salary, maybe we could get that paintjob after all.

Tigers Get Destroyed in SoCal

2007-07-29T22:29:00.000-07:00

Went to see the Tigers and Angels game tonight. I thought that since they'd gotten clobbered the first two games, and since Bonderman was pitching, that they'd probably pull this one out. Wrong. They got clobbered again (13-4), and in the worst way. The game was over by the second inning and completely out of reach by the third inning. Bonderman lasted only two and one-third innings. Then Leyland, understandably, pulled Ordonez, Guillen, and Polanco from the game. So essentially I watched the subs play six innings. I did get to see Jones (!) pitch an inning. Not a classic Jones situation, but always fun to watch him work.

The game started at 5:00, which is now my favorite start time for baseball games. It's not too hot, and you're out of the stadium by 8:30.

Thoughts on a Moral Issue in Harry Potter

2007-07-27T20:25:00.000-07:00

I posted a response to one of the many questions asked by John Granger on his website. Since it's got spoilers for book 7 (and book 6, too), I'll just post the link to my comment. Follow the link only if you've finished book 7 or you don't care about finding out what happens at the end of book 7.

UPDATE: I've added another comment to the discussion.

Movies: Love, Emotions and The Honorable Thing

2007-07-10T22:08:00.000-07:00

In which I have difficulty handling the Dynamic Between Cinematography and Script in a film as good as Casablanca (1942)

I’m not going to pretend that I have anything really innovative to say about this classic film of classic films, so I am going to dialogue with one of the dozens of useful reviews available online, this one by James Berardinelli )—the comments in his review represent what I found to be pretty standard views on the film (Berardinelli in red).

Being impressionable, I was absolutely floored by the cinematic craft in this film (see this image ) Best Years was clever and meaningful and thoughtful, Casablanca is rapturous and breathtaking, and especially so in black and white. Thus:

… while it's fascinating to examine and dissect all that went into the making of Casablanca, the greatest pleasure anyone can derive from this movie comes through simply watching it. …

and therein lies the problem … or rather the lesson I learned about film: these pleasures are a part, not all, of the story being told. The famous romantic triangle in the film involves Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, who had an affair in Paris when Bergman believed her husband, portrayed by Paul Henreid, was dead. Bergman leaves Bogart (without explaining) on a train platform in the rain with a penned note slowly washing away when she discovers Henreid’s character is still alive, until they all accidentally meet in Casablanca (French N. Africa) …

… When the two see each other, sparks fly, and memories of an enchanted time in Paris come flooding back. Bogart and Bergman. When anyone mentions Casablanca, these are the two names that come to mind. The actors are both so perfectly cast, and create such a palpable level of romantic tension, that it's impossible to envision anyone else in their parts (and inconceivable to consider that they possibly weren't the producer's first choices). Bogart is at his best here as the tough cynic who hides a broken heart beneath a fractured layer of sarcasm. Ilsa's [Bergman’s] arrival in Casablanca rips open the fissures in Rick's [Bogart’s] shield, revealing a complex personality that demands Bogart's full range of acting. As Ilsa, Bergman lights up the screen. What man in the audience wouldn't give up everything to run away with her?

Visually, emotionally, the movie drew me into the love relationship between these two. The strength of that portrayal is what continues to draw viewers, and what everyone walks away with. But as the movie finished I was completely caught off guard: what was the script trying to say about them? What is love and what does it mean in this story?

… Less known is Paul Henreid, a romantic lead who was on loan to Warner Brothers for this project. Most viewers know Henreid as "the other guy" in the romantic triangle, and, while his performance isn't on the same level as that of his better-known co-stars, Henreid nevertheless does a respectable job. …

At the very end of the movie, and it’s seventy years old, so I’m not apologizing for spoilers, when Rick/Bogart must decide whether he and Ilsa/Bergman go, or she goes with her husband Laszlo/Henreid (there are only two visas out of Casablanca), he decides against what his heart wants:

—“ Inside of us, we both know you belong with Victor. You’re part of his work, the thing that keeps him going. If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not with him, you’ll regret it … ”
— “No.”
— “… Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life …”.

Bogart does not offer these words ironically, as though he’s trying to convince himself of something he doesn’t believe. We’re supposed to take this as a real, true answer, as the resolution of the plot.

… The themes of valor, sacrifice, and heroism still ring true. …

Yes. But, wasn’t the movie about romantic, overcome those social stipulations and free yourself to commitment, free, passionate love? Or at least, that was what my emotions, directed by the cinematography, were telling me!

I submit that the script, the story, is about Rick/Bogart and Ilsa/Bergman not really loving each other in a way that’s going to “amount to a hill of beans”—to misquote a line—anywhere but in Paris as the Germans march in, and in Casablanca. (Reading through the script later, the importance of the role of Sam the Entertainer stuck out—he’s the only one besides the lovers who understands their relationship at all and he refuses the play that song again because he knows the kind of person Bogart becomes around Bergman is bad for him).

Rick and Ilsa are the defining cinematic portrayal of love. Why? Well, they had that fling … and they have a song … and it was raining in the train station … and she gets all fuzzy whenever he looks at her—I’m not being sarcastic, those are the film techniques that worked on me emotionally, and to an extent they work that way in real life, too. However, when Ilsa asks Rick to think it through for the both of them, he concludes that she has to go with her husband because they love each other in the sort of way that will make someone ditch their Parisian fling on a train station in Paris to go nurse “the other guy” (aka, the husband) who is making her life painful when she could let him bleed to death in a box car and no one would know; how many people care that that is an amazing story, an amazing love?

Rick realizes he and Ilsa have what will last … in Paris and in Casablanca; Ilsa and her husband Laszlo have what will last them for the rest of life, because love—real love—is about sacrifice, not what Rick and Ilsa had in Paris. The script memorializes this in the line: “We’ll always have Paris,” to which in the end I (and I think this was intended) responded, “{Sigh}Yes, Rick, you poor sap, and that’s all you’ll have—that and that song you guys have to keep playing—and it kills us all, but it’s true.”

… the existence of two scripts for the last day of shooting (one version had the ending as filmed; the other, unproduced version kept Rick and Ilsa together) … .

So, they really did, very intentionally, make the choice and I’m not making this up. But, the adulterous relationship is so alluring[1], the characters so compelling, the visual eye candy so enrapturing that it takes a monumental effort to see past all of that and hear what is really being said. To illustrate the point:

If Casablanca was made in today's climate, Rick and Ilsa would escape on the plane after avoiding a hail of gunfire (Rick would probably be doing the two-fisted gun thing that John Woo loves). There would be no beautiful friendship between Louis and Rick. Who knows what would have happened to Victor Laszlo, but he wouldn't have gotten the girl. One of the things that makes Casablanca unique is that it stays true to itself without giving in to commonly held perceptions of crowd-pleasing tactics. [2]

Recalling again Mr. Berardinelli’s comment: “What man in the audience wouldn’t give up everything to run away with her?”

If the cinematic craft entices everyone (or at least the men) to think that, but then in the end Bogart doesn’t run away with her … you get a very powerful demonstration of Bogart’s character that is really difficult for the audience to process – if the audience is visual-ated into really wanting Bogart to run away with Bergman, are they able to be emotional-ated into coming away with great respect and admiration for Bogart’s character and a desire to emulate him, or a suppressed determination to run away with said girl should said opportunity ever present itself?

Other questions: is this a timeless question for the cinematic craft, or a question for the present trends among moviegoers? can cinematic craft, which works us up with so much emotional energy, effectively support the point of a story like Casablanca or is the conflict I am sensing one that has been conditioned in people of my generation because of what we have been led to expect from cinematic love?

Casablanca tells a love story that is truly joyful, though painfully so, where the characters all find a real love—interesting the real-life power of a heterosexual male friendship—and the sort of love that keeps families and marriages going. The danger of the medium is exactly that, as Berardinelli put it, Laszlo-The Husband is known to viewers as “that other guy” because the medium overwhelms the attention and emotions of the viewer. So, not unlike real-life flings, the moviegoer’s senses are so bombarded, the mind so intoxicated, it is no easy task to understand what the story (our conscience) is telling us: to walk away because that kind of love won’t last. Really they don’t, and shouldn’t be thought to, amount to more than a hill of beans, but you’ve got to think to realize it.

Links:
Online transcription of the Script

[1] Managed without showing us how they like to have sex and therefore more alluring and romantic.
[2] Though, I think this “now vs. then” thing can, and often is, overdone. For instance, we also recently watched Gene Kelly in American in Paris (also in the top 100 movies) portray exactly this sort of romantic-fling-conquers-all ideal. Really, its Gershwin’s music that makes the movie.

Tag, I'm It

2007-07-07T23:41:00.000-07:00

Matt tagged me with this meme.

1. Let others know who tagged you.
2. Players post 8 random facts about themselves.
3. Those who are tagged should post these rules with their 8 facts.
4. Players should tag 8 other people and notify them they have been tagged.

I don't like tagging others, so I'll ignore number 4. Here are random facts about me:

1. I was part of the first team in my high school's history to win the state championship in basketball. (My team isn't listed on this chart, but we won the Division 1 title in 1993-94.) The final game was a bit anticlimatic; we won by thirty points. (It was a combination of a diamond-and-one half-court press, the flex offense, and a two-three match-up zone defense. We also milked the clock like crazy, making the other team play defense for long stretches of time. Do I sound like I'm reliving the glory days?)

2. I am a firm believer in the use of the serial comma.

3. When I worked at Borders Books and Music during grad school, I read the stories for children's storytime on Saturdays. My favorite stories to read were Where the Wild Things Are and Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. Also, T. S. Eliot's poems about cats did not go over so well with the kiddies.

4. My cat, Mimo, is named after an outdoor cafe in uptown Whittier.

5. My favorite band is the Jayhawks. My favorite album is Sound of Lies. My favorite song on that album is "Haywire."

6. Growing up, I had subscriptions to Odyssey and Boys' Life magazines.

7. I once talked with Jonathan Lear for twenty minutes about original sin.

8. I remember watching the sixth game of the 1988 NBA championship in a hotel in Toronto with my family. We were on vacation. I remember lying on the waterbed, eating cheese puffs, and watching Isiah play his heart out with a bum ankle.

Why Care About Rome's Fall, Part I

2007-06-29T15:59:00.000-07:00

In a vague and ranty comment on a previous post by Burglar I made the following comment:

This is slightly off topic, but I seem to remember reading about some other civilization that saw itself as "a continuation of the Roman Empire with no discernable breaking-off-point in administration, political theory, judicial practice, ruling imperium, economics or culture" and even went so far as to keep calling themselves "Romans" all the way up to the, oh, mid-1400s or something like that ... but darned if I can't remember what we call those guys. Maybe it was the "Dark Empire" or something like that.

The point, as was pointed out, was somewhat overly-obscured in my attempt to be facetious (I'll keep working up to my career as a satirist), but nonetheless one that is important not only for historians, but for those who read the “canon” of Western Great books and care about the story of Western Culture in general—and I hope that covers a large percentage of the avid readership of this blog. On the one hand, the story of Rome’s fall will always be important because of the continuous power of the idea in the life and thought of the West—one can think of Augustine’s City of God (c.413-426) and Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (c. 1776-88) as landmarks on each end of the development and use of the story.

On the other hand, scholars who work on the Byzantine Empire and Late Antiquity have done much work in the last decades (Peter Brown, currently at Princeton, is still the most important person to read on this topic and is quite readable) to show that however powerful and influential this story of the Fall of Rome, as far as understanding the life and times, and especially the political and economic structures, and the worldview and culture of citizens of the Roman Empire around the Mediterranean in the 5th and 6th centuries, it is downright false, and at best unhelpful when presented alone and as fact: my own stance is that it is helpful—necessary!—to present the truths present in each of the stories(Rome fell vs. Rome continued), but all of that is for another post.[1]

Today I came across a paragraph by a well-known Patristics scholar at Univ. of Durham, Andrew Louth, that succinctly and cogently explains the view that has come to be accepted by most scholars, and that should be read at least twice at breakfast each day until it is internalized:

The beginning of the [sixth] century saw Anastasius (491-518) on the imperial throne, ruling an empire that was still thought of as essentially the Roman Empire, coextensive with the world of the Mediterranean, however unrealistic such a view seems to modern historians, who have the benefit of hindsight. Although Anastasius ruled from Constantinople, ‘New Rome,’ over what we call the ‘Eastern Empire’, the Western Empire having been carved up into the ‘barbarian kingdoms’, this perspective is ours, not theirs. Through the conferring of titles in the gift of the emperor, and the purchasing of alliances with the wealth of the Empire—wealth that was to dwarf the monetary resources of the West for centuries to come—the barbarian kings could be regarded as client kings, each acknowledging the suzerainty of the emperor in New Rome, and indeed the barbarian kings were frequently happy to regard themselves in this light. The discontinuation of the series of emperors in the West, with the deposition of Romulus Augstulus in 476, was regarded by very few contemporaries as a significant event: the notion that East and West should each have its own emperor was barely of a century’s standing, and the reality of barbarian military power in the West, manipulated from Constantinople, continued, unaffected by the loss of an ‘emperor’ based in the West.[2]

[1] Note that just about every Medieval survey course you will find starts in 476 with “The Fall of the Roman Empire”. It's not that there aren’t respectable books published by very restectable institutions that still argue for the "old view"—see Bryan Ward-Perkins’ The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (2006) ); they just happen to be flat wrong. The caricature of the prevailing view cited in Ward-Perkins’ synopsis, that “there [was] no crisis at all, but simply a peaceful blending of barbarians into Roman culture, an essentially positive transformation” is a straw man argument which no one is saying. Look for a (brief and mostly rant-free, I promise!) review of this book later in the summer in which I will try to focus on why the current orthodoxy is important to get across to anyone who reads from or teaches the Canon of Great Books.
[2] New Cambridge Medieval History v. I: 500-700, p. 93

A "Post" While on Vacation

2007-06-29T14:43:00.000-07:00

From St. Augustine, The City of God, book 11, chapter 25 (trans. Dyson):

. . . the philosophers have wished to divide their discipline into three parts (or, rather, were enabled to see that there is such a threefold division; for they did not invent it, but only discovered it): of which one part is called physical, another logical and the third ethical. . . .

. . . . Plato, however, is said to have been the first to discover and recommend this division, and he saw that only God could be the author of nature, the giver of intelligence and the inspirer of the love by which life is made good and blessed. Also, it is certain that, though opinions differ as to the nature of things, and the method of investigating truth, and the good to which we ough to refer all that we do, it is to these three great and general questions that all the efforts of the philosophers are devoted. Thus, though there is much disagreement as to which view each man ought to take in respect of any of these questions, no one doubts that nature has some cause, science some method, and life some purpose.

(Don't) Dare to be Indifferent

2007-06-27T13:31:00.000-07:00

Sometime in my teens I developed the now well-established habit of reading several books at once. One of the current reasons for this practice is that many of the books I read professionally are the sort that you either skim in an afternoon to get the jist, or are so dry they need to be spread over several days and interrupted with things that are wild and open and free (Aubrey/Maturin is a frequent refuge) to prevent dry rot of the mind.

Another is that reading several (good) books at the same time allows for interesting connections, and sometimes ideas arise from one book that help to explain something from another, however unrelated they may seem.

Today’s example: George MacDonald’s Lilith (1895) and Philip E. Johnson’s The Wedge of Truth (2000).

Johnson’s book is sort of a summary of “where we are at, what we are about, and why we will win” of the Wedge movement. If you are unfamiliar with what this is, Google search and you will find lots of interesting and important things to read. I will do a post of Johnson’s book on its own later this summer. For now, I simply want to point out how Johnson helped to explicate MacDonald’s project.

One of the first things you will find out if you read anything about MacDonald—everyone seems required to make it part of their opening salvo, so why should I break the trend?—is that he was all but forced out of his Congregationalist pastorate in 1853 because he was accused of positing that “with the heathen the time of trial does not cease at their death”—ie., that people can come to salvation in Christ even after they have died.

This view is certainely prevalent in MacDonald’s fantasies, especially because in these texts it is often impossible to tell whether or not MacDonald’s characters have physically died—as we know and understand death—or not. MacDonald believed we were presented with the opportunity to spiritually die all the time, and that these were the meaningful deaths because out of them would come real, true, life. Physical death was only significant insofar as it aided and pointed to a spiritual death and rebirth.

Lilith is entitled for the woman, Lilith who, as queen of a city, has set herself up to oppose Adam (yes, that Adam) who is also Christ, who also happens to be her father (don’t try to figure it out, just go with the flow). She is not quite Satan, but at least an anti-Christ in the sense of being totally and completely opposed to Christ/Adam and devoted to stopping any and all from finding Christ/Adam and doing what he wants for them. Despite all the weird evil nastiness in the book, including Lilith herself who is the queen of Nasty and Evil, they all (!SPOILERS FROM HERE ON!) are led to salvation in the end.

All, that is, except one group of people, and this is what is missed by the people who quote the doctrinal opposition to MacDonald and then move on. They are the “giants,” and are the children who stopped being children. Lona (Queen of the Little Ones—read: “childlike souls”) explains this to Mr. Vane (“a person who is readily changeable or fickle”, the protagonist of the work) in Chapter 13:

“The giants were not made always. … If a Little One doesn’t care, he grows greedy, and then lazy, and then big, and then stupid, and then bad. The dull creatures don’t know that they come from us. Very few of them believe we are anywhere. They say Nonesense!—Look at little Blunty: he is eating one of their apples! He will be the next! Oh! oh! he will soon be big and bad and ugly, and not know it!”

And a bit later …

“The giants have lost themselves … and that is why they never smile. I wonder whether they are not glad because they are bad, or bad because they are not glad. But they can’t be glad when they have no babies! I wonder what bad means, good giant!”

Now, to make the next point I’m going to have to interpret the text a bit, but I trust the reader will allow it, and in any case, I am pretty confident that this is right because it fits (my reasoning for those who have read the text is below).[1] At the end of the text, MacDonald is describing the world reborn in that last and triumphant day. As I stated above, Lilith and practically everyone are (being) saved except …

“We came to the fearful hollow where once had wallowed the monsters of the earth. It was indeed, as I had beheld it in my dream, a lovely lake. I gazed into its pellucid depths. A whirlpool had swept out the soil in which the abortions burrowed, and at the bottom lay visible the whole horrid brood: a dim greenish light pervaded the crystalline water, and revealed every hideous form beneath it. Coiled in spires, folded in layers, knotted on themselves, or “extended long and large,” they weltered on motionless heaps—shapes more fantastic in goulish, blasting dismay, than ever wine-sodden brain of exhausted poet fevered into misbeing … every head the wicked flower that, bursting from an abominable stalk, perfected its evil significance.

“Not one of them moved as we passed. But they were not dead. So long as exist men and women of unwholesome mind, that lake will still be peopled with loathsomenesses.” (Chapter 45)

For MacDonald, even those totally opposed to Christ can, and will, be saved (ie., Lilith). Perhaps because their very stance of opposition to him necessitates that he exists. There are, in his fantasy, however, those who cannot be saved, who have turned off the light, who follow the path of greediness to badness. The path of selfishness to the place of indifference. In the fantastic imagination of MacDonald, indifference is the chief, the unforgivable, damnable sin.[2]

The question that arose for me is: what sort of emphases in Christian salvation led to this view of the world and of Christ’s work? Why, now that we know MacDonald does believe in certain souls really truly damning themselves, is indifference that unforgivable sin? Enter Johnson (emphasis mine of course) [3]:

“… to distinguish between theoretical and practical problems of Christian theology. At the theoretical level, for example, there is the perennial question of whether the existence of evil and suffering can be reconciled with God’s goodness and omnipotence. At the practical level, the Christian traveler wants to know how to overcome evil and bring goodness out of it. … Christian travelers, knowing the reality of sin from within, want rather to know how they can be saved from it.”

MacDonald is writing for a ‘practical’ Christian, the Christian on the path. Non-Christians, Liliths, may be on the wrong path, but they are really on an anti-path which, once they are shown what is what, can be led along that correct path. The point is that they are trying to go somewhere.

MacDonald writes as a traveler, to fellow travelers. Those who are excluded from this audience are those who would rather sit at home in front of the telly and not be bothered at all. And in this context, I think I have to agree with MacDonald that for the Christian traveler with practical concerns it really doesn’t matter when, “with the heathen, their time of trial ceases” so much as it matters how we journey and what we try to say to them, and what we make of our own state of sin, for in the end, God is the singular righteous judge. It ain’t gonna make Aquinas happy, but it may be a bit more helpful day-to-day; a bit more capable of showing what are the effects of sin and why to turn from it, and how to die to self.

So, write it on your inside cover when you next sit down to read MacDonald: “A practical Christian on how to overcome evil, bring goodness out of it, and be saved.” Thanks, Uncle Phil.

Relevant Links:
The Golden Key Website
A brief and cursory summary of George MacDonald’s emphases in his understanding of salvation
Lilith notes by his son and also biographer, Greville (interesting in method of composition—understanding what MacDonald wanted his texts to do to/for the reader)
Questions while reading Lilith (I found some, not all, of these to be helpful)
An essay by Robert Trexler on MacDonald that makes the argument that since CS Lewis redirected people'e attention to him, MacDonald has almost always been read through the lens of the effect he had on Lewis (ironic, then, the pamphlet in which it appears!); also some helpful thoughts on other works about MacDonald; this CSL Society issue also includes a bibliography of GM and images of places he lived.

[1] The argument is that the first valley through which Vane passes parallels the second. In the first you have Mara and her cats, who ward off the ghoulish spirits; in the second you have Lona and her Little Ones, who fight against the Giants. The evidence for their overlap is in the passage about to be cited where MacDonald goes directly from describing the ghouls in the lake to describing the same sort of people—unwholesomenesses—that the Giants are said to have become.
[2] I’m not trying to offer Biblical defense for his theology, but the idea immediately made me think of Revelation 3:15-20 (to Laodicea, last of the seven):
“I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent. Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.”
[3] Who actually is playing with an analogy from J.I. Packer, see page 143-145 of Wedge.

Is That Legal?

2007-06-22T14:08:00.000-07:00

Tigers trade pitcher Mike Maroth to the Cardinals. While this answers some questions about who's going to be in the starting rotation now that the Gambler is back (tonight!), the thought of trading a good pitcher to the team that beat you in the World Series is weird.

Also, the Cards GM had this to say about Maroth: "He is an established starter who is going to provide us with innings and help take pressure off of our bullpen. We think the change in leagues will also benefit Mike."

What's that last sentence mean? Two options: (1) Maroth is a good hitter and will now get the chance to swing the bat -- not likely. (2) The hitters in the NL are crappy -- more likely.

When Achilles Becomes a Soda Jerk

2007-06-21T13:27:00.000-07:00

(And then becomes a Real American Hero)

Taking the cue from the incomparable Bourgwife, my wife and I have signed up for a netflix plan and are now faithfully viewing our way through the America’s Top 100 Movies list, attempting to learn how to watch and what to watch for along the way.

I won’t really try to write real reviews or plot summaries—taking my cue from Burglar, I will provide links to people who know how to do that at the end of the post, if you’re unfamiliar with the film perhaps go there first—rather, the focus will be on notes towards film literacy (being able to “read” the film-making techniques correctly) with some forays into meaning and message. I also would like to apologize now for being rambly: I don't really know what I'm doing so it takes me a while to say something.

Take One: The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

Film vocab I learned: “Deep Focus Photography”—allowing the director to have the main subject(s) in the foreground, and important action in the background that is still clearly visible [example: when Dana Andrews and Teresa Wright chat at the Drug Store with the owner, on the second floor and far behind them, visibly keeping watch]. “Long takes”—just what it appears to mean, allows the viewer to become intimate with the story as we occupy a stationary observation point. Employed to an extreme in Hitchcock’s Rope to prolong the suspense of fear. “One-camera setup”—going with long takes, the camera can move, but here the director only sets-up-one-camera, taking away the possibility of cutting in for a close face shot, etc.. The cinematographer for this film is Gregg Toland of Citizen Kane fame.

There are a lot of really memorable takes in this film. Director William Wyler (important/famous in the post WWII era) begins this movie on servicemen returning home after the war with the arrivals gate of an airport terminal; the camera is at an angle to the gate; Fred Derry (Dana Andrews) comes out and walks towards camera, at an angle to everyone else (civilians) and the foot traffic patterns in the terminal; walks up to the ticket counter and the airforce captain can’t get a plane ticket home while a plump businessman walks up, slaps down a wad of cash and gets his overweight baggage on board. Function: set up the plot for the arrival home; Message: the servicemen don’t fit, they are at odds with this society, and everything that held their world together in the army means nothing anymore. Emotion: disjointedness (is that an emotion word?).

There are many memorable camera shots: the three male leads flying home in the nose of a bomber, looking out at acres of junked airplanes (“... wish we’d had those in ‘42!”) [note: deep-focus photography]; taxi ride home looking at Boone City through the front window, with the shell-shocked servicemen in the rearview mirror; Dana Andrews finally finding himself while wandering amidst the carcasses of his formerly glorious war stallions (bombers), Fred Derry (Andrews) and Sgt. Stephenson staring at each other in a booth at Butch's Bar while they discuss whether or not Derry is in love with Stephenson's daughter, and what to do about it. There is a moment at the end of the film, however, where Wyler shoots the wedding of one of the men, and he tries to visually wrap up the film just a little bit too quaintly. Every one of the leads is fit into the same shot, all in different physical spaces—quite a technical feat. It is worth pausing the film here and noticing all of the spatial relations and lines of sight, etc., because they are all meaningfully thought out (trying to explain them here, however, would take about a page and I don’t feel like photoshopping a screen shot). However, this is just a little too heady, and for my price of admission, Wyler is getting a little too wrapped up in making it all carry the right meaning and no one stopping him to say, “Wait, Will, it just looks weird now.”

The acting is incredible, as one can expect from anything on this list. One blemish: the first time through, young Rob Stephenson (Michael Hall) really annoyed me because he was extremely awkward. The second time through I decided he was affecting that, and it makes sense to do so (the son and the father don’t understand one another: again the effects of the war, and tantamount to a prophecy from Wyler about the baby boomer generation and post-Korea views of War in America) but Hall went just a little overboard so that it’s one of those moments where the viewer is squirming in his seat – anytime there is a hiccup in suspension of belief someone messed up. On the opposite end, a performance for the ages was given by first-timer Harold Russell (read about it below). Hoagy Carmichael gave the best delivery of the best line in the movie, and Al Stephenson was hilarious on multiple occassions.

One of the most fascinating portrayals for me was of a Stephenson family discussion in the parent’s bedroom [note the setting and use of mirrors], where the adult daughter (Teresa Wright) confesses her desire and intention to “break up that marriage [Dana Andrews and Virginia Mayo]” and commit adultery with Fred. Her father rebukes her (which she accepts!!), and then confronts her desired Fred [D. Andrews] later. But this genuine, believable dramatic depiction, completely void of any shred of irony, of a family that has such conversations—and children who do not regret them but want and need them—floored me. Take that, Foucault.

Message. Overall, Wyler and Producer Samuel Goldwyn do an extremely convincing portrayal of the difficulties and emotional struggles of men who return from war and those who love them; this alone, however, could not have held an audience happily captive for three hours (and you are held a willing captive!). Best Years also presents how the three men came to understand themselves, what they learned from the war, and what they and that knowledge are good for back Home. The solutions are not easy (Virginia Mayo’s “Just get over it, will ya?!” is rejected as a solution, as is Harold Russel’s inclination to brood and internalize, or the anonymous Peace-Monger’s rejection of the reasons for going to war in the first place and blame of the government), but point is that real solutions are there, and they are attainable, and ultimately fulfilling. These are all better men for having come back from war and learning to accept themselves and those around them.

Next time: a shorter post.

Related Links:
On Visuals.
On W. Wyler and G. Toland.
On Harold Russell
On the film’s place in American Film-making (brief)
A Contemporary NYT Review of Nov 22, 1946

On What Can Be Beautiful

2007-06-21T09:12:00.001-07:00

Aristotle, in Poetics, says, "the beautiful is in both the magnitude and the arrangement. Wherefore neither the very small should become a beautiful animal (for since the vision [of it] occurs in a nearly unfelt extent of time it is confused) nor should the very large (for the vision [of it] does not happen all at the same time, but the single and whole thing is gone from the vision of those who see it, if, for example, the animal should be a thousand stades long)" (1450b35ff, Thorgerson trans.).

In Plato's Timaeus, Timaeus says that the cosmos is beautiful: it is the "most beautiful of things born" (29a); the god "joined together the all so that he had fashioned a work that would be most beautiful and best in accordance with nature" (30b); and "the god wanted to make it as similar as possible to the most beautiful of things grasped by the intellect" (30d-31a).

Now I take it that the cosmos counts as a very large object. So is Aristotle disagreeing with Plato/Timaeus on this matter?

But there's more. Timaeus says that the four elements (fire, air, water, earth) are "preeminent in beauty" (53e). Naturally, these elements are very, very small (though not the smallest of things). So now Plato/Timaeus seems to also be disagreeing with Aristotle about the possibility that small things can be beautiful.

I'll look in Aristotle's De Caelo to see if he makes similar comments about the universe.

But now I wonder who's right? We might say that pace Aristotle, microorganisms are beautiful. But our saying this depends upon looking at them through a microscope, by which a larger image of the organism appears to us. So is the microorganism beautiful, or just its larger image?

Similarly for the universe. We often say that the universe is beautiful. But don't we just mean that an image (usually a picture) of some region of the universe is beautiful?

Plato's way out: Defend the position that what is most beautiful is not visible.

Tempting Fate

2007-06-19T22:18:00.000-07:00

Here I tempt the Fates by saying that the Tigers beat the Nationals 15-1 tonight, and had Jones come on in "relief," not even he could have made it interesting.

In related news, I hope today is the beginning of the end for those pretenders in Cleveland. The Tigers are tied with the Tribe for first in the uber-tough AL Central.

Disciple of Jones?

2007-06-19T20:48:00.000-07:00

Twins fans hope not. But on last Sunday night, Joe Nathan, Twins closer extroardinaire, did his own very creative impersonation; and, perhaps hoping to make up what was left out of the most recent instance of Classic Jones and emphasized, in a way previously thought impossible at the Major League Level, Classic Jones criteria #2:

1. Jones must come on with more than a one-run lead so that he can give up at least one run.
2. Jones must get runners on the bases early from a fluke hit or error.
3. Jones must face one of the other team's top hitters.
4. Jones must benefit from a solid defensive play.
5. Jones must give up a run (often in exchange for an out or two).
6. Jones must let the other team hit into the final out; the motive here seems to be to avoid striking anyone out.

This was not just any old Jonesy-flukey play: this was a play you quite literally cannot see in any other major league baseball stadium (highlight link under "multimedia"), and probably never will again in the Metrodome ... ever ... again (so we pray).

Top of the ninth inning. The Twins have been slowly blowing a 9-2 lead over the Milwaukee Brewers, and it is now 9-7. Enter Todd Jones with a Joe Nathan mask on.

Batter 1: Prince Fielder steps up, and on a 1-1 count, hits a routine fly ball to center. The substitute center fielder, Lew Ford (Torii Hunter had left the game with a hand bruise), loses the ball in the teflon grey of the indoor stadium's roof. He decides to run around aimlessly looking up. The ball lands about ten feet from where he had started, bounces once, and dies in the synthetic grass. All 6 ft., 260 lbs. of Prince Fielder ... well, he makes it around the bases in time. For a lack of adequate verbage, I give you the Twins' announcers (Dick Such and Bert Blyleven), shell-shocked comments:

"He won't be able to catch his breath until tomorrow."

"He ran the bases like he was on roller skates ... but he got there."

Minnesota still up 9-8

But, no! What is that you say? The Classic Jones theme must continue to develop?

This single play was so incredible, Nathan developed a visible twitch, and continued to throw Jones-esque warm up pitches, just to get things really heated up:

Batter 2: Hall hits a pathetic ground ball bleeder through the right side of the infield.
Batter 3: Estrada liner base hit to right. Runners on 1st and 2nd.
Batter 4: Jenkins base hit to center.

At this point we have: bases loaded for Milwaukee, none out; Nathan 16 pitches thrown. Then, Nathan begins the Classic Jones wind-down.

Batter 5: Graffanino: Strike Out. One out.
Batter 6: Counsel: Short sac fly to center, two out. Hall Scores: Game tied, 9-9. Batter 7: Hart (already had 2 home runs in the game); the count goes to 1-2, the Brewers double steal: Runners at second and third; Hart then strikes out swinging. Inning Over.

So, to sum up the pitching performance ala Jones: Criteria 1 and 2 clearly met. Criteria 3: well, Nathan faced pretty much the whole lineup. 4: no. 5: yes. 6: no. Here, Nathan has difficulty completing the Classic Jones in #'s 4 and 6 because of his propensity to strike batters out, and so does not need the solid defensive play, and is not able to induce a hit-into-final-out. We now realize it cannot be Jones in a Nathan mask, but perhaps Nathan was temporarily hypnotized by the idea of the Classic Jones by watching recent Tiger highlights over and over and over on his cell phone. We can only speculate.

To finish the story, the Twins' reigning AL MVP, Justin Morneau comes up first in the bottom of the ninth, and on the second pitch, parks it in the right field bleachers (see highlight at Morneau's link under "multimedia"), and walks off, 10-9. Twins fans everywhere exchange emails with their Tigers fan friends in commiseration.

Dick Such:"The Twins snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. What might have been the most gripping loss of this season, and they end up on top anyway."

The essence of Classic Jones.

Poetics 1450a

2007-06-19T19:54:00.000-07:00

And it is an imitation of action, and especially because of this, of the men acting.

Third, the “thought”.

And this is the ability to say suitable and appropriate things, which indeed, in the case of words [1], is the work of the politician and rhetorician. For the ancients crafted people [2] who spoke politically and moderns, rhetorically. And “character” [3] is the sort of thing which clarifies choice, the sort [of choice] in which a person is not clear whether he choose or flee; wherefore those speeches do not have “character” in which there is nothing at all which the speaker chooses or flees. But “thought” is in those [speeches] that declare how something is or is not, or what it is generally considered [to be].

And fourth, of the things under “language”, is diction. As was said previously, I mean “diction” to be expression through language which, in the case of meter and the case of prose, has the same capability.

And of the remaining matters, song craft is the greatest of the ornamentations[4]; but the persuasive visual element is most unskillful and the least natural to the poetic craft, for tragedy is powerful even without the assembly and the actors, and moreover the skill of the fabricator (or 'costumier') is more authoritative as regards creating of the visuals than the skill of the poetic-crafters.[5]

7. These things having been defined then, after these matters, let us say what sort of arrangement is necessary for the arrangement of the actions, since this is the first and most important element of tragedy.

And it was laid down by us that tragedy is an imitation of a whole and complete action possessing some magnitude; for something is whole and has not magnitude.

And, something whole possesses a beginning, middle and end: and the beginning is that which is not by necessity after something else, after this some other thing comes to be or to become; and the end is that other sort of thing which comes to be after something else either by necessity or as in the majority [of the time], and after this there is nothing else; and the middle is that thing which is after another thing and after it [there are] other things.

It is necessary for the stories to be well arranged, neither happening to begin from wherever nor chancing to end at whatever point, but to express the forms that have been discussed.

Moreover since the beautiful—in respect to both an animal and whatever sort of deed which came together from some [causes]—it is not only necessary to have the arranged things [6], but also the magnanimity possessed not by chance occurance; for the beautiful is in both the magnanimity and the arrangement. Wherefor neither the very small should become a beautiful animal (for since the vision [of it] occurs in a nearly unfelt extent of time it is confused) nor should the very large (for the vision [of it] does not happen all at the same time, but the single and whole thing is gone from the vision of those who see it[7] if for example the animal should be a thousand stades long).

[1] epi (LSJ, A.I.2.f: “in the case of” or A.III.4: “in respect of,” “concerning”) twn logwn
[2] I think this means people in the plays – ie., the “doing” or “acting” men of the first sentence. [3] The LSJ definition of “ηθος” for Aristotle is dramatis persona, so “character” in the sense of drama.
[4] One translation says “enrichments”. The root of the word is the idea of sweetening something.
[5] Ar. is making a negative rhetorical argument: the costumier (for instance) has more say over the visual elements of the play than does the writer of the tragedy, so how can something that our hero, the guy who “synthesizes the plot elements,” has no control over be an essential part of tragedy?
[6] I understand this to mean, essentially, “fate” or “destiny” which Ar. validates in the next phrase—he is contrasting the things that must necessarily happen to someone, and the things that they make happen by their “magnamity” in action.
[7] Making use of the possessive dative; not sure this is correct.

One Way to Learn Greek

2007-06-19T09:04:00.000-07:00

The learned Dr. Gilleland informs us of one way to learn Greek. Also be sure to follow the link on "Portrait of a Greek Teacher."

Yet Another Classic Jones!

2007-06-18T19:02:00.000-07:00

I commented in a recent post (on a game against the Phillies), "Jones appeared again tonight, but with a four-run lead. And not even he could make that interesting."

How wrong I was. Todd Jones's outing tonight against the Nationals had so many classic Jones moments, but the clincher was the fact that he came in with a four-run lead and did in fact make it interesting. Let's review the criteria for a classic Jones:

1. Jones must come on with more than a one-run lead so that he can give up at least one run.
2. Jones must get runners on the bases early from a fluke hit or error.
3. Jones must face one of the other team's top hitters.
4. Jones must benefit from a solid defensive play.
5. Jones must give up a run (often in exchange for an out or two).
6. Jones must let the other team hit into the final out; the motive here seems to be to avoid striking anyone out.

I'll spare you the details of the game, but tonight's "relief" appearance met the first, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth criteria. Note that the fact that Jones failed to meet the second criteria is not comforting, since the Nationals didn't score on a fluke; instead they pounded the crap out of Jones: they hit a few singles, a double, and a triple. Note also that Jones did get one strikeout, but the last hitter grounded out.

But the fact is that Jones managed to give up three (!) runs in the ninth inning before even recording an out. And I think that makes up for missing the second criteria.

On one hand, watching the Nationals' fans getting excited about their chance at a comeback amused me. Don't they know a classic Jones when they see one? Apparently not. I pitied the fools.

On the other hand, the line between a classic Jones and a classic Jones blowing up in your face is very fine, and one is never (repeat, never) convinced that Jones won't actually choke (as he did against the Indians on June 1).

If the Tigers make the playoffs, and Jones is still their "closer," please just shoot me.

On the good news front, set your VCRs for Kenny Rogers's first start this Friday.

Poetics 1450a

2007-06-16T20:38:00.000-07:00

For by story I mean this: the synthesis (putting-together) of the actions; and by characters I mean that according to which we say the ones acting are of a certain sort, and by thought I mean that in which, while speaking, they demonstrate something or declare their opinion. Necessarily, therefore, there are six parts of all tragedy, according to which tragedy is of a certain sort. And these are story, characters, thought, appearances, diction, and poetic song. For two parts are those which they imitate [1], one part is how they imitate, and three parts are what they imitate; and there is nothing in addition to these. By these, therefore, not a few have been used to say that [something is a tragedy] by these forms.[2] For even appearance has all [of tragedy] [3], and in a similar way, character, story, diction, song, and thought.

But the greatest of these is the synthesis (putting-together) of the actions. For tragedy is an imitation not of human beings but of actions and of life.[4] Both happiness and wretchedness are in action and the goal is some action, not a quality. On the one hand, they [human beings?] are of a certain sort according to their characters, but actions [are of a certain sort] according to happiness or the opposite. So they do not act so as to imitate the characters, but they include characters on account of the actions. So as the actions and the story are the goal (telos) of tragedy, the goal is the greatest of all of them. Moreover, without action tragedy could never come to be, but without characters it could come to be. For the tragedies of most of the latest poets are without characters, and generally many poets are such as this: like the painter Zeuxis is to Polygnotus. For Polygnotus is a good painter of character, but the paintings of Zeuxis do not have character. Yet if someone lines up a row of declarations about character, having made them well concerning speech and thought, he does not make that which was the function of the tragedy, but a tragedy, having supplied these things, is lacking less than one having both a story and a synthesis (putting-together) of actions. In addition to these, the greatest thing of tragedy is the parts of the story that lead the soul: reversal and recognition.[5] A sign of this is that those who attempt to make poetry are first able, like nearly all the first poets, to accurately put together the speech and the characters more than the actions. Story, therefore, is the ruling principle and like the soul of tragedy, and the characters are second. (And it is pretty much the same with painting, for if someone smears on the most beautiful colors in heaps it would not give as much pleasure as an outline of an image in black and white.)

[1] I'm not sure what the 3rd plural "they" is referring to.
[2] The text of this sentence is, to use a scholarly phrase, all jacked up (from the Latin, allus jactus upus). The basic sense seems to be that sometimes tragedy is identified with a particular one of its six parts.
[3] This phrase = a.j.u.
[4] Christ's text includes an extra kakodaimonias ("wretchedness") after biou ("life"). A variant excises it. I followed the variant because I wouldn't know what to do with an extra kakodaimonias.
[5] From LSJ, peripeteia = "sudden reversal of circumstances on which the plot in a Tragedy hinges, such as Oedipus' discovery of his parentage"; this passage from Poetics is cited. And anagnwrisis = "recognition," again a technical term in tragedy, and the Poetics is cited (1452a29 and 1454b19).

Good to See

2007-06-15T19:31:00.001-07:00

You know what's annoying? At the end of a televised baseball game, when the announcers are describing the best defensive or offensive plays of the game, it's annoying when they ascribe the best play of the game to someone on their team even when there was an obviously better play made by an opposing player. That's annoying.

To watch the Tigers-Phillies game on MLB.com tonight, I had to watch the feed from Philadelphia. At the end of the game the Phillies announcers gave the best defensive play of the game to Tigers second-baseman, Placido Polanco, for a crazy-good play to throw someone out at first. And then they awarded player of the game to Ivan Rodriguez.

I appreciated the lack of bias. I thought people should know.

Jones appeared again tonight, but with a four-run lead. And not even he could make that interesting.

And now I must finish my Aristotle translation I was "working on" while watching the game.

Husserl on Science

2007-06-14T22:13:00.001-07:00

I read recently of a man who enjoyed philosophy until he discovered that every philosophical "truth" was debatable. So he ditched philosophy for science because he thought the scientific method provided the best way of discovering truth. (I suppose science is so good nowadays that its truths aren't even debatable?)

Evidently, this gentleman is not a student of the works of Husserl, who says in The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology:

[Galileo's idea was] remarkable because the hypothesis, in spite of the verification, continues to be and is always a hypothesis; its verification . . . is an endless course of verification. (p. 42)

And later Husserl says,

In geometrical and natural-scientific mathematization . . . we measure the life-world -- the world constantly given to us as actual in our concrete world-life -- for a well-fitting garb of ideas, that of the so-called objectively scientific truths. . . . Mathematics and mathematical science . . . represents the life-world, dresses it up as "objectively actual and true" nature. It is through the garb of ideas that we take for true being what is actually a method . . . . (p. 51)

So, the "obvious" certainty that science holds to is illusory; recalling the opening points about philosophy's alleged ignorance, I say with Husserl that science cannot provide solid answers without first changing the questions. In Husserl's terms, natural science is a method masquerading as something that itself really is true. But how could a method be true? It certainly is an impressive method, but its great impression does not change its nature. More on this later.

Poetics 1449b

2007-06-14T13:37:00.000-07:00

For the archon[1] also allowed the comedian a chorus at some late date but they were volunteers. And writers mention crafters (poets) of it (comedy) at the point when this (comedy) already possessed some forms, [2] but who assigned it masks or prologues or a number of actors and any element it has [3] is unknown.

But crafting stories [4] in the beginning came from Sicily, and of those in Athens Krates became the first one who left off the iambic form wholly to craft speeches and stories.

Epic poetry is consistent with tragedy up to the point that it was an imitation by speech with meter of men of substance [5]; but they differ in this respect: by (epic) having the single meter and being narrative, and, morever, in regards to length: on the one hand tragedy especially because it attempts to be under the period of one day or to exceed it just a bit, but epic poetry is without boundary in time and in this respect it differs though at first this was done [6] similarly in tragedies and epics. But in regards to the sections, some of these are (similar) and some particular to tragedy.

Because whoever knows about weighty or trivial tragedy also knows about epics, for the things which epic poetry has belong to tragedy; but the things which tragedy has are not all in epic poetry.

6. We will speak about the mimetic art in hexameter and about the comedic art later.

But concerning tragedy, examining it from the things said so far let us speak about what became the extent of its essence: tragedy, then, is an imitation: of a virtuous action possessing magnanimity in its completion; by means of language sweetened seperately by each of the forms in the parts; and of the men accomplishing the thing, effecting the dissolution of such experiences [7] not through narative (but) through mercy and pity.

With respect to “sweetened language” I mean (language) that has rhythm and harmony and tune; by “the forms separately” I mean that only some things are effected through meter and again other things through song.

And since those men who act craft the imitation, first then, by necessity, some part of tragedy [8] would be the beauty of appearance, then poetic song and diction; for by means of these they craft the imitation.

With respect to “diction” I mean the arrangement of metres, and with respect to “poetic song” the whole apparent sense which it has.

But when the imitation is of an action, and is acted by some people acting, who necessarily are some certain sorts (of people) according to both character and thought—for we say that through these things actions are whatever sorts that they are, and it is by nature that [9] the two causes of actions are thought and character, and people all both hit and miss the mark in respect to these things—indeed the story is the imitation of the action.

[[Note to Burglar: I went past my allotted section but could not find a decent breaking off point—editing of the post is welcome]]

[1] Archon (Plural: Archontes) from the OCD: “In Athens by the 6^th century there were nine annually appointed archons … in the bth century BC the archons and in particular the one entitled archon were the most important officials of the Athenian state … in the later 5^th and 4^th century BC the archons’ duties were particularly religious and judicial … the archon was responsible for a number of religious festivals …”
[2] An awkward sentence to translate literally: the meaning is that by the time we hear about comedians the comedic form already had its basic elements.
[3] Greek is the idiom: “hosa toiouta”
[4] Staying consistent with Burglar: the Greek word is “mythos” ie., myth, which is a problematic concept to translate into English.
[5] mechri + gen = measure or degree: “in so far as; up to the point that”; end of sentence the text has been significantly disputed, I followed R. Kassel, Oxford, 1965: “mechri men tou meta metrou logwi mimesis” because it was the only rendition that made sense to me—which does not necessarily imply it is the correct rendition! Also, I think I have translated “spoudaios” differently every time: here “men of substance” a few sentences down “weighty tragedy”.
[6] poeiw
[7] katharsis twn toioutwn pathematwn. Because Aristotle’s “catharsis” is one of the few ideas from the Classical period that you can mention at a party and not get sent home early, in addition to the above context I offer the reader a summarized dictionary entry for the word:

καθαρσις
I. cleansing from guilt or defilement, purification [sense used in Christian texts]; cleansing of the universe by fire, [Zeno and Chrysippus]; cleansing of food by or before cooking.
II. clarification [Epicurus]
III. Medical: clearing off of morbid humours, etc., evacuation, whether natural or by the use of medicines [cf. Galen.17(2).358]; purification of the menses in women, [Hp.Aph.5.60]. Aristotle’s use is understood under this category:
a. τραγῳδία . . δι᾽ ἐλέου καὶ φόβου περαίνουσα τὴν τῶν τοιούτων παθημάτων καθαρ. Aristotle, Poetics1449b28; see also Politics 1341b38.
IV. pruning of trees.
V. winnowing of grain.
VI. clearing of land.

[8] I understand Aristotle to be still discussing tragedy’s essence.
[9] LSJ: phuw: B.II.1: “the pf. and aor. 2 take a pres. sense, to be so and so by nature”

Poetics 1449a

2007-06-12T23:10:00.000-07:00

So when tragedy and comedy appeared side by side, each starting toward the poesis appropriate according to nature, there came to be some making comedies instead of iambs and others directing tragedies instead of epics, because the forms of these were greater and more honored than the forms of those.

Now to examine whether tragedy is already, with respect to its forms, adequate or not, judging it both by itself and with respect to the audience, is another account. But apart from this then, having come to be from an extemporaneous beginning (both itself and comedy, one from those who lead in dithyrambs and the other from those in phallic songs, which even now in many of the cities continue as customary practice), it increased little by little as the leaders moved forward in as much as came to be apparent to them, and after suffering many changes tragedy stopped when it realized its own nature. And Aeschylus was the first to bring the number of actors from one to two, lessen the chorus, and allow the speech to take the leading role; then Sophocles brought the number of actors to three and allowed scene painting. Still, because it [tragedy] came from satyric drama -- that is, the large from the small stories, and the spoken word from the ridiculous way of speaking -- it has only lately assumed its worthy status. And the meter became iambic from tetrameter. For at first they used tetrameter because the poesis was satyric and suited to dancing, but after the way of speaking came to be, nature herself found the appropriate meter -- iambic is the best of meters for speaking. And a sign of this is that we speak mostly iambs in discussion with one another, but hexameters infrequently and when departing from the settled order of speech. Further, the episodes increased.[1] And so for each of the other things said to have been organized, let them have been spoken of by us, for it would be rather difficult to go through each one.[2]

5. But, as we said, comedy is an imitation of mere trivialities, not however with respect to all vice, but the ridiculous is a proper part of the shameful[3]. For the ridiculous is a sort of mistake and disgrace that is painless and not destructive, such as the ridiculous mask[4]: something ugly and distorted without pain. So the alterations of tragedy and how it came to be have not gone unnoticed, but comedy, because from the beginning it was not serious, went unnoticed.

[1] I'm really not sure what this sentence refers to.
[2] Ignore this footnote.
[3] "shameful" = aiscrhos, which is the same word translated as "ugly" in the next sentence; there's also been some attempt at interpolation in this sentence, which I ignored.
[4] "persona" = prwsopon, which usually means face or visage, but "mask" is the translation actually given in LSJ, s.v., prwsopon, III.

In perpetuam memoriam

2007-06-12T11:39:00.000-07:00

I cannot say I knew Father Michael well in the sense that I spent any great amount of time with him or knew many of the details of his life; yet the combination of his gentlemanly grace—they say truly good manners puts everyone at ease—the intentionality with which he entered every conversation, and the solemn joy in Christ which infused his behavior, made his impact upon my life disproportionately great. I offer these thoughts as a remembrance of what impact the sort of life he lived can have even for those upon the fringes of intimacy.

I was to be chrismated into the Orthodox Church by Father Michael just after returning from a year abroad at Oxford. I remember driving to his home for a final catechumen interview and wondering whether I had learned what this brilliant man expected about the history and doctrines of the Church. I was greeted by a grinning Fr. Michael at the door, ushered into his plush living room, and offered a taste of Old Sack cream sherry along with a knowing wink from my Oxford educated priest: “It’s the standard drink at Oxford, as I’m sure you know by now.” I sunk into an overstuffed armchair and spent over an hour with Fr. Michael during which the ‘interview with the priest’ was transformed into a lively and engaging discussion of Christ and the Church with someone who truly enjoyed my presence.

It was Fr. Michael’s true belief in the fact that all men are created in the image of God that allowed him to genuinely express this intentionality in all his relationships and conversations; perhaps this belief is what made him such a remarkable man, as despite his attainment of the height of Academic honor, he would never accept that anything but a Christian understanding of the world and of Life could properly explain anything. Fr. Michael once told me of an exchange he had with a sociologist from Biola University who was working on an article about why so many evangelical college students were pursuing deeply traditional expressions of Christianity in Catholicism, Anglicanism, and Eastern Orthodoxy.
“Do you mind if I talk to some of your church members about why they have decided to become Orthodox?”
“What will you do when they tell you that they became Orthodox because they were led by the Holy Spirit?”
“Well, that’s fine, but I can’t very well analyze that information scientifically.”
“Then I don’t want you to interview my parishoners, because that is what they will tell you, because it is the truth.”
This insistence that what we were doing at church was real-world life-changing stuff made watching Fr. Michael enact the rites of Orthodox worship all the more meaningful—you knew that he was invested in these actions and prayers body, heart, and mind.

My first Holy Week was at Fr. Michael’s western-rite parish, and I had my eyes open that much wider because everything was new; my whole body and all my senses were being continuously activated in reverent worship for the first time in my life. On Holy Thursday, the night of the Last Supper and Christ’s betrayal, the service called for four church members to come up to the sanctuary, remove their shoes, and have their feet washed and dried by the clergy to recall Christ’s act of love for his disciples. I, an attendee for four months, was asked by the ushers to go forward and allow Fr. Michael to bathe me. The revulsion one experiences at such an inversion of social convention was arresting; but then Fr. Michael emerged from the sacristy. Despite the processional speed with which everyone was moving, his posture communicated a state of joyful excitement; he knelt down and with a glance that somehow communicated “Thank you,” he imitated Christ. The next day when Fr. Michael led the church in making prostrations before the image of Christ on the Cross I could not hold back the tears as I knew something of what it meant to be a disciple. It was at that moment that I became Orthodox.

Though I had to move my family away from St. Michael Church and Fr. Michael during the last years of his life, grace allowed me to spend some hours with him just before he passed away. I sat with him while he slept and repeated Psalm 4, “…But know that the LORD hath set apart him that is godly for himself … commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still … offer the sacrifices of righteousness, and put your trust in God … I will both lay me down in peace and sleep: for only thou, O Lord, makest me dwell in safety.” Fr. Michael entered into and out of the disoriented consciousness that marked his last days—Deacon, has everything been changed?—and with a moan lifted up a shaky hand. I sat and held his hand for what seemed like a timeless eternity and hoped that Fr. Michael understood that I was saying Thank You.

Father, have mercy upon the soul of thy servant Michael, for he loved You, and he showed us your Son.

Poetics 1448b

2007-06-11T14:49:00.000-07:00

Let these be the matters stated concerning the differences both of the number and some (of the means?) of imitation.

4. Some two causes, and these natural ones, seem to have given birth to poetics.[1]

For both imitating is natural [2] to men from childhood--they differ from the other animals in that [man] is the greatest imitator and he crafts his first acquisitions of knowledge [3] through imitation--and also all men delight in imitations.

And the proof of this is what happens in the event: for we enjoy seeing especially accurate likenesses of things which we observe with discomfort, for example the transformations of the most dishonourable beasts and corpses.[4] And the cause is this: because to learn is supremely enjoyable not only for lovers of wisdom but is so for others in the same way though they share in this for a short time. For because of this those who view the images enjoy them, because it happens that those who observe learn and conclude what each [is]—i.e., this is that. When someone happens not to have previously seen [the object], the imitation does not indeed craft the enjoyment but [it is] through the workmanship or the color [5] or some other such cause.

And since there is in us, according to nature, the imitation of both harmony and rhythm (for it is clear that meters are parts of rhythms) men developed from the beginning [stage], specifically in respect to these things, and progressing little by little, they produced the poetic work from their experimentations[6]; for the more distinguished [poets] imitated excellent deeds and the deeds of those sorts of men, while those of a poorer rate the deeds of petty men [7] at first crafting censorious works, just as the others [crafted] praises and encomia.

While we can mention this sort of poetic work of not one of those prior to Homer, though it is likely there were many, after Homer (for example his Margites and other such sorts of poetical works) there are those beginning with whom the connected iambic meter came—on account of which it is now called “iambic”, because in this meter they “iambicized” (lampooned) each other. Some of the ancients also originated heroic meters and some iambics; and just as Homer was ‘the poet’ in respect to the most weighty matters (because he crafted well but also because he crafted dramatic imitations) so thus he was also the first one who displayed the dramatic poetic forms of comedy, not satirically but humorously; for the Margites has an analogy: as the Iliad and the Odyssey are to tragedies, so is this work to comedies.

[1] “poetics” for the abstract noun “poetikh” as that seems to be general enough to insinuate more than English poesy.
[2] the adjective is a compound (literally “with nature”) that also means, “innate, inborn, inbred.”
[3] Yes this is awkward -- here again I could be accused of overtranslation as “acquisitions of knowledge” is simply one word that is often translated simply as “education” or “lessons” and who “crafts an acquisition”? However, the verb is in the middle voice and I wanted to get across the idea that men ‘make the lessons’ for (or ‘teach’) themselves; simply saying ‘educate’ or ‘learn’ here implies for us a classroom, pedagogical setting, whereas Aristotle is speaking of the nature of man: on his own he is an ‘imitator’ from the first, this is how he learns, and he does it by that same crafting (poiew—the verb that this whole treatise is on) that he uses to make poetical works.
[4] The point is clear, but I really don’t know what this means. Does he mean snake molting and the rotting of corpses?
[5] “superficial appearance”
[6] could also be “impromptus” which resonates with the mention of “rhythm” and “harmony” above, but that English word is understood too exclusively musically, for Ar. clearly understands poetry in general (playwriting verse, etc.) as well as instrument-craft.
[7] here the contrast in the deeds is phaulos and kalos instead of phaulos with spoudaios as above (1448a, section 2, see Burglar’s note #1). If there are objections an aristocratic tone I refer the reader to the Politics.

Never Miss an Opportunity to Slag Those Dumb Medievals

2007-06-08T18:45:00.000-07:00

In the ongoing record of medieval-bashing, I add Exhibit #753, from the otherwise stellar book, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap--And Others Don't, by Jim Collins. In this passage, Collins is trying to explain why he didn't want his research team to concern itself with analyzing the leadership of companies that went from good to great:

To use an analogy, the "Leadership is the answer to everything" perspective is the modern equivalent of the "God is the answer to everything" perspective that held back our scientific understanding of the physical world in the Dark Ages. In the 1500s, people ascribed all events they didn't understand to God. Why did the crops fail? God did it. Why did we have an earthquake? God did it. What holds the planets in place? God. But with the Enlightenment, we began the search for a more scientific understanding -- physics, chemistry, biology, and so forth. Not that we became atheists, but we gained a deeper understanding about how the universe ticks.

Similarly, every time we attribute everything to "Leadership," we're no different from people in the 1500s. We're simply admitting our ignorance. Not that we should become leadership atheists (leadership does matter), but every time we throw our hands up in frustration -- reverting back to "Well, the answer must be Leadership!" -- we prevent ourselves from gaining deeper, more scientific understanding about what makes great companies tick.

How many things are wrong with this passage? Oh, a lot.

(1) The Dark Ages: specifically the time without an emperor of either Roman or Holy Roman character, so 476-800; more generally, it could refer to 500-1000. Collins refers to the 1500s.

(2) So let's take Collins up on the 1500s. Some scientific things done in the 1500s: invention of the watch, Copernicus posits heliocentrism, Paracelsus publishes the first manual of surgery, Olaus Magnus produced a map of the world, Michael Servetus discovers the pulmonary circulation of the blood, etc., etc., etc.

(3) But maybe Collins didn't mean the 1500s (though he mentions it specifically twice). Maybe he meant the genuine Dark Ages. Now just consider this claim: "In the [Dark Ages], people ascribed all events they didn't understand to God." Really? That's just an enormous claim to make. Also, maybe the Dark Ages didn't produce any good "science" because there was no civilization. Why wasn't there civilization? Barbarians. Why were there barbarians? No more Roman empire. Why no Roman empire? A long story, but St. Augustine's answer was, "Don't blame the Christians for your stupid mistakes" (see City of God). So if I have to attribute a main cause to lack of scientific progress in the Dark Ages, I'm going with "Lack of civilization" not a preternatural desire on the part of everyone to say "God did it."

(4) The claim that assuming "God did it" holds back "science." Notice the complete absence of evidence. But that's the point of this whole example: "Isn't it obvious that saying 'God did it' holds back science? I mean, look what happened in the Dark Ages?" And though we don't have to be "atheists," according to Collins, our scientific understanding of the world is hindered by a certain belief in God. Question: Which matters more, scientific understanding or knowledge of God? Of course, you say, a false dichotomy. True! But when push comes to shove, if Collins is right about belief in God (in certain contexts) holding back science, then one will have to choose.

(5) There's a certain tension in the passage. Collins says that the Dark Agers said God did everything they didn't understand. In the Leadership (note the consistent capital letter) analogy, he says that "every time we throw our hands up in frustration -- reverting back to . . . ." But Collins's characterization of the Dark Ages is that people weren't throwing up their hands in frustration; they were gladly throwing up their hands, inviting the God explanation.

(6) I suppose the worst thing about this passage is that it was actually printed. And by that I mean that it had to pass through the hands of a number readers and professional editors; I'd guess at least ten for a publisher the size of HarperCollins. And no one thought to say, "You know, your analogy about God and Leadership depends on a caricature of belief in God."

(7) A large claim of my own. One reason the science of the Enlightenment exploded was because of the background assumption that the universe is orderly, which itself depends on the existence of God. (Not until Darwin (1800s) do we get a real challenge to that assumption.)

Leaving the abuse of the Dark Ages, a comment on another assumption, namely, that there can be and should be scientific understanding of "what makes companies tick." I suppose that assumption depends on what is meant by "scientific." There is no doubt that Collins and his team did an immense amount of research for his book. But here's a claim: Everything Collins says in his book can be derived from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. His points about ego, friendship, hard work, common sense, character, all of it.

Question: Is Collins's understanding of what makes companies tick "deeper" than Aristotle's?