William James on Aesthetics

"I remember seeing an English couple sit for more than an hour on a piercing February day in the Academy at Venice before the celebrated 'Assumption' of Titian; and when I, after being chased from room to room by the cold, concluded to get into the sunshine as fast as possible and let the pictures go, but before leaving drew reverently near to them to learn with what superior forms of susceptibility they might be endowed, all I overheard was the woman's voice murmuring: 'What a depracatory expression her face wears!  What self-abnegation!  How unworthy she feels of the honor she is receiving!"  Their honest hearts had been kept warm all the time by a glow of spurious sentiment that would have fairly made old Titian sick."

Philosophy After Aristotle

On June 11th I quoted a passage from a book by philosopher Shadworth Hodgson, TIME AND SPACE (1865). 

Here's a later passage from the same book discussing Greek philosophy after Aristotle: 

"Here the progress of speculative metaphysic was checked for many centuries.  Until Descartes, no one arose capable of carrying on the deveopment of metaphysic from the point where Aristotle left it, or proceeding to the separation of ontology from metaphysic, and educing reflection out of direct understanding."

By "the separation of ontology from metaphysic" Hodgson means roughly the separation of the question "how did the world come to be as it is?" from the question "how is it?"  A little bit later he writes, "The remaining schools of philosophy in Greece were all schools of practical philosophy, Stoic, Epicurean, Cynic, Cyrenaic, the Academies, and the Sceptics; they were not exclusively indeed but primarily and predominantly practical; speculative knowledge was not their chief purpose...."

Bradman and Sachin

Amidst some random surfing (yes, it is random when I do it) I encountered some efforts at humor about cricket.  A sport I know absolutely nothing about.  Several of the jokes involved people named Bradman and/or Sachin. 

Sachin turns out to be an Indian cricketer, full name Sachin Tendulkar, described somewhere as "the first and the only player in Test Cricket history to score fifty centuries, and the first to score fifty centuries in all international cricket combined."  Don't ask me for an explanation of that.

Bradman?  Sir Donald, if you please.  He passed away in 2001, but he was an Australian legend.  The Aussies think he was the greatest cricketer ever.  At his height, in 1931, a London paper said, "It is almost time to request a legal limit on the number of runs Bradman should be allowed to make."

And he wasn't even named Bruce.

If you have an Aussie and an Indian in the same room, and you want to get a lively conversation underway, ask them whether Sachin is greater than Bradman.  There is at least one facebook page devoted to that question.

Anyway, here is one of the corny jokes arising out of this intergenerational/international comparison.  

Sachin one day said:  "God has sent me to teach the world how to play cricket."

Bradman replied: "That's a mistake.  I didn't send anyone!"

Microfinance

Felix Salmon posted a blog entry recently about his conversation with Muhammad Yunus. 

Salmon is generally skeptical about efforts to bring microfinance to the US via Grameen America, but he does seem to have been personally impressed by the flagbearer.

He was pleased that Yunis found the emphasize on the poorest of borrowers, and on microfinance as a pseudo-charity, to be "undignified."  This is the approach associated with Kiva, and you can read about it here.

After all, the beneficiary of microfinance is someone whois paying interest.  Yunus asked rhetorically:
"Why should you advertise her as someone who’s deserving of donations? It’s an undignified way of doing it. She’s running a business. Respect her as a client. As somebody who’s paying full cost.” 

Here's a coupling of Kiva and Gameen by a Seattle columnist a coiuple of years ago. Click

Of course, a business can cut costs if it can get people to volunteer their hours.

As Alicia Quinn has written: "This is a mutually beneficial relationship; organizations receive labor at little to no cost and volunteers fulfill their desire to give back. However, there are farther-reaching impacts of volunteers on microfinance organizations."

I'm afraid that's the sort of hippie-dippie language that gets my own dander up.   If they are a sustainable capitalist endeavor, as Yunus for one certainly believes, they should be able to pay the market rate for the labor they require.

The State, Its Revenue, and Its Enemies

Let me think this through in simple terms, fitting for a simple guy like me.

I have a credit card that has a $6,000 credit limit. I go along happily spending for awhile until one day I find that I've hit the limit, and stores/bars/vending machines are spitting my card back out at me.

So I scrape together $1,000, pay it, and now I'm below the limit again. I can go back to using my plastic and (bonus), the credit card company, happy to have received the $1,000 payment, increases my limit to $10,000.

Something like that has been the history of the US legislatively imposed Treasury debt limit, and various increases thereof.

What do I do for a living? I sell widgets, let us suppose.  I work on commission, so the more widgets I sell, the more money I get. [Okay, this part doesn't seem at first blush to fit the analogy, but it will in time. Work with me here.] The problem is, how to raise that $1,000 quick so I can (a) render my card limit immediately irrelevant and (b) likely get it raised into the bargain?

Along comes someone named Lancelot Giggler who tells me that I could sell a lot more widgets if I charged less as a commission.   Perhaps I could offer some portion of my commission as a rebate to buyers.   Enough new buyers will mean a higher total income, means I pay the credit card company.

Now, let's imagine that there are a variety of different opinions about the social value of Faille and the widgets he sells. There is a faction who believes that if I died, or (let's be less bloodthirsty here) if I lost a lot of weight because of a starvation diet, and wasn't able to sell widgets any more, then the world would be better off, because the social net value of widget salesmen, or of chubby ones anyway, is negative.

So we have Lancelot Giggler on the one hand and we have the Faille Starvers on the other.

This is where I get confused. Aren't Giggler and the Starvers taking up quite contrary positions? If Giggler is telling the truth about the effects of commissions cuts on my sales, then he is describing a way in which I can make more sales and remain chubby and prosperous. If the Starvers believe him, they'll want to dissuade or prevent me from doing that.

Right?

More About Lucy and Desi

Back in September, I wrote a post here I called "Thoughts About Labor Unions."

Among the thoughts I shared at the time was one about the origin of "I Love Lucy," and a story indicating that those negotiations might be considered an example of collective bargaining in a microcosm.  I know more about that story now then I did in September, so I'd like to fill that in a bit.

I wrote in Septrember that when a certain CBS bigwig saw the pilot, his first reaction was: "Keep the redhead, but ditch the Cuban."

Actually, that line didn't come from any CBS exec, but from a consultant to whom CBS had turned.

Television was new in 1951, and nobody really understood what would work in this strange medium and what wouldn't.  The executives should be given credit for "knowing that they didn't know," the Socratic virtue.  They had all acquired their prominence within a radio-based corporation, after all.

Who was the consultant?  Turns out it was one-half of the phenomenal Broadway team that was re-making the whole idea of a musical at around this time:  it was lyricist Oscar Hammerstein.   I can imagine the thinkig of the network bigwigs as they called him in.  Oscar knows theatre.  Theatre is a visual medium.  This new box is visual, too.  Must be pretty much the same.  (It isn't, but I'll leave that aside for now.)

What I really want to set straight is this:  In September, when I didn't know who I was talking about, I wrote: Maybe the CBS exec was worried about the public acceptance of some televised "miscegenation," as they called such things back then.

Knowing that it was Oscar Hammerstein, the author to the lyrics to "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught" and the other songs in "South Pacific," a musical with a mixed-race marriage at its heart, I have to apologize for that.  I was way wrong.  

Just to atone to his spirit, here are those lyrics:

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!

News Corp Empire

It all appears to be imploding.  It begins to have the feel of Egypt in the final days of the Mubarak regime.

I'll just provide you with some links in case you, dear reader, aren't  up on all this and want the materials for a quick catch-up.

On June 23, an Old Bailey jury found  Levi Bellfield guilty of the murder of Milly Dowler nine years ago.  Never mind about the particulars now -- the verdict re-opened old wounds at News Corp., wounds its rivals were in a position to exploit.

Here's what The Guardian had to say on July 4, about Milly Dowler, and the hacking of her voice mail: click.

Miss Dowler's disappearance goes back to 2002.  For a bomb that went off after ticking quietly for nine years, this one made quite a mess.

Then on July 6, reports appeared that the particular Murdochian property involved in the Dowler matter, the News of the World, had also hacked  the phones of thr families of victims of the July 7, 2005 London terrorist attacks. 

For perspective, it has long been understood that the tabloid press in the UK will do anything for a scoop on the Royal family or wealthy celebrities.  A lot that would have been winked at in such a context was exciting outrage now that ordinary folks were the victims.

Murdoch decided he had to throw someone or something under the proverbial bus.  It was the "News of the World" (NotW hereafter) itself -- he closed that paper, one which had been around since 1843, on July 10 of this year, assigning 200 working people to unemployment.

But who had been the relevant underling?  Rebekah Brooks was the editor of NotW from 2000 to 2003, the perod of Milly Dowler's death.  She had since become a crucial lieutenant to Rupert Murdoch.  Murdoch initially gave every indication that he would stand staunchly by his woman. 
But the heat became too much for him.  On July 14th, a large investor in News Corp., Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, demanded her resignation, and on the 15th, she complied.  Things have gotten even worse for our Ms Brooks.  She was thereafter arrested.

Further, this has also become a scandal about corruption at Scotland Yard.  Years ago, Brooks admited to parliament that under her leadership, the NotW paid police officers for information -- an admission causing consequences both for her organization and for theirs just now.

And there is a mysterious death to throw into the mix.  The sort of death that may have absolutely nothing to do with the rest of this, but that will keep conspiracy theorists intrigued.

For another spiking of the weirdness factor, there was the attempt to push a "pie" into Murdoch's face while he testified before Parliament, an attempt warded off by Murdoch's Chinese tigress of a wife, Wendi.  Look at the YouTube.  Wendi is sitting behind her husband. She's wearing the salmon-colored jacket.  She's a former volleyball player, and she certainly appears to be spiking the attacker's head. 

The above links will give you, roughly speaking, this story thus far.  Perhaps with the addition of one or two points from here.

Conclusion: the vollyball move won't save the empire, which is troubled by internal rot, not just external idiots with pseudo-pies.