A quote -- appropriate for a Sunday -- from Chapter 0ne. This chapter is titled "Tommy," because the real first name of the man history knows as "Woodrow Wilson" was in fact "Thomas." He started using his middle name as a first name only while in law school.
Anyway, here's the quote with which I want to leave you today:
"Still, Tommy Wilson's upbringing in one of the most liberal and sophisticated religious and intellectual environments in America at that time gave him familiarity with the basic concepts of Protestant thought, Lutheran as well as Calvinist. He believed that Christians were instruments of God's wil and must fulfill their predestined part, but his upbringing among learned Presbyterians stood in stark contrast to evangelicals who stressed emotional commitment and personal salvation. Attitudes and approaches borrowed from evangelical Protestantism had spawned the pre-Civil War moral reform movements, such as the temperance and anti-slavery crusades. These attitudes would flourish again in such varied incarnations as the Protestant Social Gospel, anti-liquor and anti-vice crusades, and an overall evangelical style of political reform. Yet despite a deep religous faith and a look and manner that would later strike some observers as preacherish, the man Tommy Wilson grew up to be would not adopt those approaches. It was not this preacher's-son-turned-president but rather his greatest rival, himself a religious skeptic, who would call their office a 'bully pulpit.' Wilson did not call the presidency by that name, nor did he think about it and politics that way, largely because his religious upbringing had inoculated him against such notions."
07 February 2010
06 February 2010
Idiosyncrasy and History, Conclusion
My narrative yesterday brought us, with Henry's help, to a conflict in the way of looking at history. Tolstoy and Spencer are on one side of this conflict. Carlyle and James are on the other. Henry and I both, I would say, fall into the broad middle.
The issue is: how important (if at all) are the individual characteristics, the idiosyncrasies if you will, of the handful of people in a society who occupy its most august positions in social, political, or military hierarchies? Do the specific facts about "great men" (or let us say pooh-bahs) matter at all? Spencer and Tolstoy would both answer "no," in the sense and for the reasons I sought to explain yesterday. Carlyle responded, in effect, that hardly anything else matters! You wish a link? -- 'tis done.
Spencer responded to Carlyle, on behalf of his own conception of history as moving according to grand forces that entail whole populations. Spencer thought that the Carlylean conception was only "theocracy once removed," and has to be abandoned if out aspirations are scientific. James, in turn, responded to Spencer. And here we emerge into material new for this day.
James begins his discussion with a man who slips on the ice of a porch and cracks his skull. We might, to make the hypothesis interesting, suppose that several months before he had dined at a table as one of thirteen. "There are no accidents," we might say. "The whole history of the world converged to produce that slip. If anything had been left out, the slip would not have occurred just there and then. To say it would is to deny the relations of cause and effect throughout the universe. The real cause of the death was not the slip, but the conditions which engendered the slip, -- and among them his having sat at a table, six months previous, one among thirteen. That is truly the reason why he died within the year."
From the viewpoint of a hypothetical omniscient investigator, there may be truth in this. All things everywhere may impact all other things in infinite lines of convergence, and a divine intelligence could see a line of convergence between the banquet of thirteen and the fatal flaw. But we, as humans, have to proceed with greater particularity, or else we'll neglect to put ashes on the ice on that porch, or "some other poor fellow, who never dined out in his life, may slip on it in coming to the door, and fall and break his head too."
There are different cycles of operation in nature -- some macrocosmic, some microcosmic. They proceed relatively independent of one another, and for the secular purposes of human beings on most occasions we can and should treat them as independent. This, James says, was one of the great insights of Charles Darwin. Here he was using Darwin against Spencer -- two names more often bracketed in his day than distinguished. Darwin's key insight was that the variation in the form of an organism from one generation to the next may be the result of "internal molecular accidents, of which we know nothing," as James put it. The finch on one island may get a wider beak than the finch on the nearby island for natural molecular reasons, "accidental variations." The process of natural selection is separate from that. The environment selects some beaks as suitable, rejects others into the trash bin of extinction.
Napoleon, then, may well be the ice on the porch. Or, put differently, Napoleon may be the "internal molecular accidents" within a finch. The Big Picture -- the analog to Natural Selection -- comes into play only after that particular finch with that particular beak comes on the scene. Will the conditions of a particular Pacific island support that finch and allow it to thrive? Would the conditions of post-revolutionary France and for that matter the rest of Europe at the time support a particular short-statured Corsican and allow him to thrive?
It is not "theocracy" to entertain the suspicion that (a) Napoleon too harbored internal molecular accidents, which affected the decisions he made in particular circumstances, and (b) the environment allowed him to thrive to a degree than made those decisions of great importance. And if (a) and (b) are both the case, then it is clearly possible -- nay, plausible -- that if Napoleon had not been born for whatever reason, the other strong man who would have shown up in his place in the history books would not have made all the same decisions -- would have had different "internal molecular accidents," -- and these would have mattered to history.
So, yes, it seems that the idiosyncrasies of the pooh-bahs have been vindicated as a general historical cause.
It does not follow that we should revert entirely to Carlyle and hero worship. James wrote that the differences between the past and the present are due to "the Grants and the Bismarcks, the Joneses and the Smiths."
By "Grant," there, James was of course referring to a General, without whose idiosyncrasies the United States may have fractured into its constituent parts. By "Bismarck" he referred to the "Iron Chancellor" of Germany. But he then used the terms "the Joneses and the Smiths" to indicate that history is more complicated an affair than we can ever grasp if our focus remains always upon the poohbahs.
The issue is: how important (if at all) are the individual characteristics, the idiosyncrasies if you will, of the handful of people in a society who occupy its most august positions in social, political, or military hierarchies? Do the specific facts about "great men" (or let us say pooh-bahs) matter at all? Spencer and Tolstoy would both answer "no," in the sense and for the reasons I sought to explain yesterday. Carlyle responded, in effect, that hardly anything else matters! You wish a link? -- 'tis done.
Spencer responded to Carlyle, on behalf of his own conception of history as moving according to grand forces that entail whole populations. Spencer thought that the Carlylean conception was only "theocracy once removed," and has to be abandoned if out aspirations are scientific. James, in turn, responded to Spencer. And here we emerge into material new for this day.
James begins his discussion with a man who slips on the ice of a porch and cracks his skull. We might, to make the hypothesis interesting, suppose that several months before he had dined at a table as one of thirteen. "There are no accidents," we might say. "The whole history of the world converged to produce that slip. If anything had been left out, the slip would not have occurred just there and then. To say it would is to deny the relations of cause and effect throughout the universe. The real cause of the death was not the slip, but the conditions which engendered the slip, -- and among them his having sat at a table, six months previous, one among thirteen. That is truly the reason why he died within the year."
From the viewpoint of a hypothetical omniscient investigator, there may be truth in this. All things everywhere may impact all other things in infinite lines of convergence, and a divine intelligence could see a line of convergence between the banquet of thirteen and the fatal flaw. But we, as humans, have to proceed with greater particularity, or else we'll neglect to put ashes on the ice on that porch, or "some other poor fellow, who never dined out in his life, may slip on it in coming to the door, and fall and break his head too."
There are different cycles of operation in nature -- some macrocosmic, some microcosmic. They proceed relatively independent of one another, and for the secular purposes of human beings on most occasions we can and should treat them as independent. This, James says, was one of the great insights of Charles Darwin. Here he was using Darwin against Spencer -- two names more often bracketed in his day than distinguished. Darwin's key insight was that the variation in the form of an organism from one generation to the next may be the result of "internal molecular accidents, of which we know nothing," as James put it. The finch on one island may get a wider beak than the finch on the nearby island for natural molecular reasons, "accidental variations." The process of natural selection is separate from that. The environment selects some beaks as suitable, rejects others into the trash bin of extinction.
Napoleon, then, may well be the ice on the porch. Or, put differently, Napoleon may be the "internal molecular accidents" within a finch. The Big Picture -- the analog to Natural Selection -- comes into play only after that particular finch with that particular beak comes on the scene. Will the conditions of a particular Pacific island support that finch and allow it to thrive? Would the conditions of post-revolutionary France and for that matter the rest of Europe at the time support a particular short-statured Corsican and allow him to thrive?
It is not "theocracy" to entertain the suspicion that (a) Napoleon too harbored internal molecular accidents, which affected the decisions he made in particular circumstances, and (b) the environment allowed him to thrive to a degree than made those decisions of great importance. And if (a) and (b) are both the case, then it is clearly possible -- nay, plausible -- that if Napoleon had not been born for whatever reason, the other strong man who would have shown up in his place in the history books would not have made all the same decisions -- would have had different "internal molecular accidents," -- and these would have mattered to history.
So, yes, it seems that the idiosyncrasies of the pooh-bahs have been vindicated as a general historical cause.
It does not follow that we should revert entirely to Carlyle and hero worship. James wrote that the differences between the past and the present are due to "the Grants and the Bismarcks, the Joneses and the Smiths."
By "Grant," there, James was of course referring to a General, without whose idiosyncrasies the United States may have fractured into its constituent parts. By "Bismarck" he referred to the "Iron Chancellor" of Germany. But he then used the terms "the Joneses and the Smiths" to indicate that history is more complicated an affair than we can ever grasp if our focus remains always upon the poohbahs.
05 February 2010
Idiosyncrasy and History, Part One
Henry and I have been having a neat discussion in the comments section to my entry Sunday on "The Invention of Lying," last autumn's Rick Gervais movie. I think it is worth bringing that discussion out of that thread, into the open, because we have reached a point of close contact with the original animating purpose of this blog -- refreshing the pragmatic philosophy of William James.
We moved from the question of the consequences of lying in politics to the issue of individual idiosyncrasies and their broad consequences for history. Said Henry in pertinent part:
Suppose that Napoleon's mother had induced Napoleon's father to marry her by lying that she was pregnant. Later, after the marriage, Napoleon was conceived. If she hadn't lied, then she might never have slept with Napoleon's father, and Napoleon would never have existed. According to Tolstoy in War and Peace, however, this wouldn't have mattered, because someone else would have played Napoleon's role, as the causes of history are too complex to depend upon one person's actions.
I said in reply that someone else would likely have played Napoleon's role in a general way -- the role of the man-on-a-horse who often takes over a revolutionary situation when the fervor of the crowds has waned. Someone would have gotten on the horse had Nappy never been borne. But this allows for the possibility that Napoleon had individual idiosyncrasies that made it important that he filled this role.
Napoleon sought to subdue Haiti, sending an army there in 1801. He lost that army, and this loss had enormous consequences beyond Hispaniola. Napoleon's desperate need for money after the loss in Haiti, for example, forced him to sell Louisiana to raise cash. And -- since Henry adduced Tolstoy -- the loss of the army in Haiti may have reduced the number of troops available with which to strike eastward into Russia years later. Might some other post-revolutionary strongman have produced a very different history by deciding against a Haitian expedition?
To this, Henry responded on behalf of Lev Tolstoy: Napoleon presumably did not decide to fight a war in Haiti on a whim; rather, that decision had multiple causes, not all of which was Napoleon necessarily aware. Therefore, Tolstoy might say that Napoleon was a puppet of these causes, as would any alternative leader of France have been at the time.
Tolstoy might indeed say that, so let us consider it. Is it plausible to consider that any possible leader of the French state in 1801 would have been the puppet of the same causes, and so would have necessarily sent an army to Haiti? Is it plausible, then, to entirely eliminate from history the idiosyncrasies of heads of state, generals, and other such pooh-bahs?
Let me acknowledge one aspect of Tolstoy's point. A lot of interesting history has little or nothing to do with heads of state, generals, and other pooh-bahs. Historians can and do discuss, for example, education and literacy in the provinces far from Paris in the early 19th century. In a book on that subject, some now-obscure schoolteacher may play a much bigger role than the Emperor. Insofar as Tolstoy in his observations about history was pointing aware from exclusive concern with the pooh-bahs, he was doing something healthy.
But humans are still going to wonder: do individual idiosyncrasies at the top of the social/political hierarchy have consequences? And if Tolstoy was saying they don't, Tolstoy's position was wildly implausible.
William James wrote about exactly this subject. For James, the paradigm of the deterministic view of history was not Tolstoy but Herbert Spencer. And Spencer (who himself was targeting Carlyle -- it is always convenient in writing of abstract matters to have a concrete target in view) wrote as follows against the significance of "great men."
"If, not stopping at the explanation of social progress as due to the great man, we go back a step, and ask, Whence comes the great man? we find that the theory breaks down completely. The question has two conceivable answers: his origin is supernatural, or it is natural. Is his origin supernatural? Then he is a deputy god, and we have theocracy once removed -- or, rather, not removed at all....Is this an unacceptable solution? The origin of the great man is natural; and immediately this is recognized, he must be classed with all other phenomena in the society that gave him birth as a product of its antecedents. Along with the whole generation of which he forms a minute part, along with its institutions, language, knowledge, manners, andits multitudinous arts and appliances, he is a resultant...."
I think that Spencer is on the Tolstoyan wavelength here and I note that James finds this unpersuasive, as a way of banishing the "great men" or their idiosyncrasies. But this post is already a good deal longer than is my norm, so I think I will make you wait for tomorrow for more.
We moved from the question of the consequences of lying in politics to the issue of individual idiosyncrasies and their broad consequences for history. Said Henry in pertinent part:
Suppose that Napoleon's mother had induced Napoleon's father to marry her by lying that she was pregnant. Later, after the marriage, Napoleon was conceived. If she hadn't lied, then she might never have slept with Napoleon's father, and Napoleon would never have existed. According to Tolstoy in War and Peace, however, this wouldn't have mattered, because someone else would have played Napoleon's role, as the causes of history are too complex to depend upon one person's actions.
I said in reply that someone else would likely have played Napoleon's role in a general way -- the role of the man-on-a-horse who often takes over a revolutionary situation when the fervor of the crowds has waned. Someone would have gotten on the horse had Nappy never been borne. But this allows for the possibility that Napoleon had individual idiosyncrasies that made it important that he filled this role.
Napoleon sought to subdue Haiti, sending an army there in 1801. He lost that army, and this loss had enormous consequences beyond Hispaniola. Napoleon's desperate need for money after the loss in Haiti, for example, forced him to sell Louisiana to raise cash. And -- since Henry adduced Tolstoy -- the loss of the army in Haiti may have reduced the number of troops available with which to strike eastward into Russia years later. Might some other post-revolutionary strongman have produced a very different history by deciding against a Haitian expedition?
To this, Henry responded on behalf of Lev Tolstoy: Napoleon presumably did not decide to fight a war in Haiti on a whim; rather, that decision had multiple causes, not all of which was Napoleon necessarily aware. Therefore, Tolstoy might say that Napoleon was a puppet of these causes, as would any alternative leader of France have been at the time.
Tolstoy might indeed say that, so let us consider it. Is it plausible to consider that any possible leader of the French state in 1801 would have been the puppet of the same causes, and so would have necessarily sent an army to Haiti? Is it plausible, then, to entirely eliminate from history the idiosyncrasies of heads of state, generals, and other such pooh-bahs?
Let me acknowledge one aspect of Tolstoy's point. A lot of interesting history has little or nothing to do with heads of state, generals, and other pooh-bahs. Historians can and do discuss, for example, education and literacy in the provinces far from Paris in the early 19th century. In a book on that subject, some now-obscure schoolteacher may play a much bigger role than the Emperor. Insofar as Tolstoy in his observations about history was pointing aware from exclusive concern with the pooh-bahs, he was doing something healthy.
But humans are still going to wonder: do individual idiosyncrasies at the top of the social/political hierarchy have consequences? And if Tolstoy was saying they don't, Tolstoy's position was wildly implausible.
William James wrote about exactly this subject. For James, the paradigm of the deterministic view of history was not Tolstoy but Herbert Spencer. And Spencer (who himself was targeting Carlyle -- it is always convenient in writing of abstract matters to have a concrete target in view) wrote as follows against the significance of "great men."
"If, not stopping at the explanation of social progress as due to the great man, we go back a step, and ask, Whence comes the great man? we find that the theory breaks down completely. The question has two conceivable answers: his origin is supernatural, or it is natural. Is his origin supernatural? Then he is a deputy god, and we have theocracy once removed -- or, rather, not removed at all....Is this an unacceptable solution? The origin of the great man is natural; and immediately this is recognized, he must be classed with all other phenomena in the society that gave him birth as a product of its antecedents. Along with the whole generation of which he forms a minute part, along with its institutions, language, knowledge, manners, andits multitudinous arts and appliances, he is a resultant...."
I think that Spencer is on the Tolstoyan wavelength here and I note that James finds this unpersuasive, as a way of banishing the "great men" or their idiosyncrasies. But this post is already a good deal longer than is my norm, so I think I will make you wait for tomorrow for more.
04 February 2010
Three riddles
Question: What do you call someone who dreams that he writes popular fantasy novels?
Answer: Tolkien-in-his-sleep.
Question: Why are horseshoe nails always dizzy?
Answer: They walk on their head all day.
Question: What do you say if a talking lion tells you that he and his family will be migrating in the late summer?
Answer: "So its true? The pride goeth before the fall!"
Answer: Tolkien-in-his-sleep.
Question: Why are horseshoe nails always dizzy?
Answer: They walk on their head all day.
Question: What do you say if a talking lion tells you that he and his family will be migrating in the late summer?
Answer: "So its true? The pride goeth before the fall!"
31 January 2010
The Invention of Lying
I finally saw the recent Rick Gervais movie, "The Invention of Lying," on Friday evening.
Here's a link to the wikipedia article, though let this be a 'spoiler' warning before you click it.
Anyway, the movie is very funny. It is also gutsy, because it is an implicit philosophical argument of a sort that would be extremely unpopular in the U.S. were it a tad more explicit. The movie protrays a society much like the contemporary northeastern US within an alternative universe in which humans have never lied, never created any fiction for that matter, and don't even have words to explain the possibility of doing so. Their movies are filmed lectures about dramatic events from the past, and indeed we catch a quick reference to an upcoming film that will be called "The Invention of the Fork."
The protagonist of "The Invention of Lying" evidently has some neurological quirk that makes him different from everybody else, in that he can "say something that isn't," as he puts it at one point, trying to explain it to a friend.
That protagonist, Mark Bellison, played by Gervais, is surprised to discover this difference about himself, and for the most part he uses it benignly. He does con a bank out of some money -- but that is presented as due to desperate circumstances. Later he helps a homeless man, and offers his mother consolation on her deathbed.
Here we get to the crux of the matter. There is no evidence in this film that any sort of religion existed prior to the "invention of lying." His dying mother is expressing the predominant view of this alternate world's human species when she tells him how frightened she is at the imminent prospect of entering "a giant everything of nothingness." Gervais makes her final moments comfortable by telling her that she is going to a wonderful place where all the people she has loved and lost over her lifetime are waiting for her -- a place without pain or want.
It is important to the philosophical weight of this movie that the reason that he starts telling stories about the nice place we all go to after death is a benevolent one, told by a guy with whom we can't help but sympathize. Yet it is still a lie. And one with unexpected consequences.
Unbeknownst to Mark Bellison, the doctor and a handful of hospital staffers are behind him, listening to this conversation. They hear all these things about the life after this one, and since there is no concept of "saying what isn't" in their world, they believe it. They want to tell people this wonderful news. Word spreads, and soon the protagonist is a prophet. Everybody wants to know more.
One incidental oddity that struck me is that their world has a history to it very much like our own. From various references one gathers that there was a "black plague" that took place in the 14th century, and that the use of terms such as "14th century" or "1st century" for that matter, mean pretty much to them what they mean to us. But why, in a world without religion, would the "1st century" be called that? Why would a count have begun then?
Another less-incidental oddity (it may be considered part of the film's message) is that the ability to lie is connected to an ability to consider the subjective aspect of other people. Mark and his love interest (Anna, played by Jennifer Garner) have an idyllic moment in a public park, which turns into his effort to explain to her that people are not solely what they seem -- that, for example, the overweight fellow lying on the grass to their left may not be the lazy loser he seems, but may be "the world's greatest poet," who gets his inspiration in this way.
Over time, Anna grasps the seeing-beyond-the-surface part of Marks' message, although she never does really grasp the 'lying' thing. So: are those two memes closely connected, or not?
There's something else that sticks with me. At some point soon after his first lie, Mark decides to help a homeless man -- a guy who has been sitting on the street with a sign that says, "I don't understand why I'm in the street and you have homes." This fellow is played by Michael Patrick Gough according to imdb. Mark takes him into the bank, says something to the clerk (we can't overhear this bit) and the clerk hands the homeless guy a large chunk of money.
Leter, we see a homeless man again. The shot comes and goes so quickly that I'm not sure whether it was the same guy, and/or the same sign (though another wordy sign was involved). What is the message there? That lying doesn't realy solve social problems? Or does this imply also that money doesn't really solve social probelms, and that even if the money had been given honestly the original homeless guy may have difficulties, such as an expensive addiction, that would have put him back on the street anyway?
Here's a link to the wikipedia article, though let this be a 'spoiler' warning before you click it.
Anyway, the movie is very funny. It is also gutsy, because it is an implicit philosophical argument of a sort that would be extremely unpopular in the U.S. were it a tad more explicit. The movie protrays a society much like the contemporary northeastern US within an alternative universe in which humans have never lied, never created any fiction for that matter, and don't even have words to explain the possibility of doing so. Their movies are filmed lectures about dramatic events from the past, and indeed we catch a quick reference to an upcoming film that will be called "The Invention of the Fork."
The protagonist of "The Invention of Lying" evidently has some neurological quirk that makes him different from everybody else, in that he can "say something that isn't," as he puts it at one point, trying to explain it to a friend.
That protagonist, Mark Bellison, played by Gervais, is surprised to discover this difference about himself, and for the most part he uses it benignly. He does con a bank out of some money -- but that is presented as due to desperate circumstances. Later he helps a homeless man, and offers his mother consolation on her deathbed.
Here we get to the crux of the matter. There is no evidence in this film that any sort of religion existed prior to the "invention of lying." His dying mother is expressing the predominant view of this alternate world's human species when she tells him how frightened she is at the imminent prospect of entering "a giant everything of nothingness." Gervais makes her final moments comfortable by telling her that she is going to a wonderful place where all the people she has loved and lost over her lifetime are waiting for her -- a place without pain or want.
It is important to the philosophical weight of this movie that the reason that he starts telling stories about the nice place we all go to after death is a benevolent one, told by a guy with whom we can't help but sympathize. Yet it is still a lie. And one with unexpected consequences.
Unbeknownst to Mark Bellison, the doctor and a handful of hospital staffers are behind him, listening to this conversation. They hear all these things about the life after this one, and since there is no concept of "saying what isn't" in their world, they believe it. They want to tell people this wonderful news. Word spreads, and soon the protagonist is a prophet. Everybody wants to know more.
One incidental oddity that struck me is that their world has a history to it very much like our own. From various references one gathers that there was a "black plague" that took place in the 14th century, and that the use of terms such as "14th century" or "1st century" for that matter, mean pretty much to them what they mean to us. But why, in a world without religion, would the "1st century" be called that? Why would a count have begun then?
Another less-incidental oddity (it may be considered part of the film's message) is that the ability to lie is connected to an ability to consider the subjective aspect of other people. Mark and his love interest (Anna, played by Jennifer Garner) have an idyllic moment in a public park, which turns into his effort to explain to her that people are not solely what they seem -- that, for example, the overweight fellow lying on the grass to their left may not be the lazy loser he seems, but may be "the world's greatest poet," who gets his inspiration in this way.
Over time, Anna grasps the seeing-beyond-the-surface part of Marks' message, although she never does really grasp the 'lying' thing. So: are those two memes closely connected, or not?
There's something else that sticks with me. At some point soon after his first lie, Mark decides to help a homeless man -- a guy who has been sitting on the street with a sign that says, "I don't understand why I'm in the street and you have homes." This fellow is played by Michael Patrick Gough according to imdb. Mark takes him into the bank, says something to the clerk (we can't overhear this bit) and the clerk hands the homeless guy a large chunk of money.
Leter, we see a homeless man again. The shot comes and goes so quickly that I'm not sure whether it was the same guy, and/or the same sign (though another wordy sign was involved). What is the message there? That lying doesn't realy solve social problems? Or does this imply also that money doesn't really solve social probelms, and that even if the money had been given honestly the original homeless guy may have difficulties, such as an expensive addiction, that would have put him back on the street anyway?
30 January 2010
Annual Dilbert post
Scott Adams, the cartoonist who created Dilbert, likes to say that there are only nine news stories, constantly re-written.
Every once in awhile I like to check the newspaper with his list in mind, to see if he is right. I'll start with his wording unmodified by examples.
1. EXTREME WEATHER BATTERS SOMEPLACE
2. IDIOTS KILL INNOCENT PEOPLE
3. POLITICIAN DOES SOMETHING ILLEGAL
4. PRIMATE ATTEMPTS INAPPROPRIATE SEX
5. EXPERTS WARN OF FINANCIAL CALAMITY
6. BIG COMPANY BUYS ANOTHER BIG COMPANY
7. FAMOUS PERSON DOES SOMETHING INTERESTING
8. A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY MIGHT BE USEFUL IN TEN YEARS
9. GOVERNMENT FAILS TO ACHIEVE A GOAL
Does that break-down hold up for the news of the past week or so?
1. The extreme weather story check.
2. Idiots kill innocent people? Always too easy.
But to give this category some variety, let us mention that such an idiot -- of the cult-member genre of idiocy -- has just been recommended for parole, after a long and well-deserved imprisonment.
3. Politician does something illegal.
Let's give a shout-out to the far East this time for this one.
4. Primate attempts inappropriate sex.
Scott Ritter is one of the primates in question, thereby he gets a recycling of those fifteen minutes of fame he must have thought had passed already.
5. Experts warn of financial calamity.
Weimare-Republic or Zimbabwe-style Hyperinflation is the subject of some of the more recent warnings with some spinning a theory that a bad case of same will breakout in Japan and spread to the US.
6. Big Company Buys Another Big Company
Even those who never visit the business section of the paper know that Kraft has reached agreement with an at-first coy Cadbury, and that not everyone is happy about this.
7. Famous Person Does Something Interesting.
J.D. Salinger has passed away, which is not "interesting" as a fresh disclosure of the fact of human mortality, but is of some interest as the possible signal for the release of writings that the famously reclusive Salinger may have been socking away in a safe over the last few decades.
8. A scientific discovery might be useful in ten years.
Here's the latest gee-whiz stuff about controlled fusion research.
9. Government fails to achieve a goal.
Like the goal of ... oh ... capturing Bin Laden? could that be an example of an unachieved goal?
Yes, Scott, I see your point.
Every once in awhile I like to check the newspaper with his list in mind, to see if he is right. I'll start with his wording unmodified by examples.
1. EXTREME WEATHER BATTERS SOMEPLACE
2. IDIOTS KILL INNOCENT PEOPLE
3. POLITICIAN DOES SOMETHING ILLEGAL
4. PRIMATE ATTEMPTS INAPPROPRIATE SEX
5. EXPERTS WARN OF FINANCIAL CALAMITY
6. BIG COMPANY BUYS ANOTHER BIG COMPANY
7. FAMOUS PERSON DOES SOMETHING INTERESTING
8. A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY MIGHT BE USEFUL IN TEN YEARS
9. GOVERNMENT FAILS TO ACHIEVE A GOAL
Does that break-down hold up for the news of the past week or so?
1. The extreme weather story check.
2. Idiots kill innocent people? Always too easy.
But to give this category some variety, let us mention that such an idiot -- of the cult-member genre of idiocy -- has just been recommended for parole, after a long and well-deserved imprisonment.
3. Politician does something illegal.
Let's give a shout-out to the far East this time for this one.
4. Primate attempts inappropriate sex.
Scott Ritter is one of the primates in question, thereby he gets a recycling of those fifteen minutes of fame he must have thought had passed already.
5. Experts warn of financial calamity.
Weimare-Republic or Zimbabwe-style Hyperinflation is the subject of some of the more recent warnings with some spinning a theory that a bad case of same will breakout in Japan and spread to the US.
6. Big Company Buys Another Big Company
Even those who never visit the business section of the paper know that Kraft has reached agreement with an at-first coy Cadbury, and that not everyone is happy about this.
7. Famous Person Does Something Interesting.
J.D. Salinger has passed away, which is not "interesting" as a fresh disclosure of the fact of human mortality, but is of some interest as the possible signal for the release of writings that the famously reclusive Salinger may have been socking away in a safe over the last few decades.
8. A scientific discovery might be useful in ten years.
Here's the latest gee-whiz stuff about controlled fusion research.
9. Government fails to achieve a goal.
Like the goal of ... oh ... capturing Bin Laden? could that be an example of an unachieved goal?
Yes, Scott, I see your point.
29 January 2010
Ellie Light: Who Cares?
There seems to be a new meme in the blogosphere. The search for Ellie Light. No, I'm not going to link you to examples because I don't want to encourage them.
But just so you know, "Ellie Light" is a name or pseudonym, under which a lot of pro-Obama letters-to-the-editor have run in newspapers around the country. Some folks with nothing better to do are in an uproar, and interogating the name "Ellie Light" for clues as to whom this person really is.
Ellie could stand for Helen? But, wait ... it could also stand for Eleanor! "Light" suggests that the real surname might be "Power" or "Powers" since you need the power to keep your lights on.
And if you play the record backwards, it says, "I buried Paul." Okay, I'm old. I actually remember those theories.
Jeez.
But just so you know, "Ellie Light" is a name or pseudonym, under which a lot of pro-Obama letters-to-the-editor have run in newspapers around the country. Some folks with nothing better to do are in an uproar, and interogating the name "Ellie Light" for clues as to whom this person really is.
Ellie could stand for Helen? But, wait ... it could also stand for Eleanor! "Light" suggests that the real surname might be "Power" or "Powers" since you need the power to keep your lights on.
And if you play the record backwards, it says, "I buried Paul." Okay, I'm old. I actually remember those theories.
Jeez.
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