Dumbing Us Down

Video, via Digg. Problems with education in America. Produced by high school students, but fairly well done. Why we should pay teachers more (among other things).

Update

All the time I spent following Project Chanology on the internet caught up with over the past couple days and I was scrambling to complete various things until last night, when I finally pushed to the end of Aristotle's Politics and went with some friends to a seedy celebration known as "jazz night." It was creepy at first--a house full of silent, sullen 20-somethings sunk into chairs and sipping malt liquor. El Topo was playing on the TV, which was a plus, but not the kind that makes you feel at ease. The music, however, once it started, was excellent. I was sad to rush through the last bits of Aristotle like that because they were about music as well, but we needed to get out.

Now it's 7:41 AM and I have Calculus II in a few minutes. Possible future topics: the beauty of the integral, Obama, my favorite scientology videos, my last favorite object... Let me know if any of those strike your fancy.

...

Hackers vs. Scientology

"Knowledge is free.
We are Anonymous.
We are Legion.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
Expect us."

Student responses to Nabokov's Pale Fire

Recently I reread Nabokov's Pale Fire for my contemporary novel class. Students were required to post responses to the novel on an online discussion board. Nabokov is my favorite author, so I was more than a little excited to read what my classmates had to say. I thought that some of the responses were particularly interesting, and I've decided to share excerpts of them here.

"Overall, this book was very difficult for me. I kept losing interest in the story because Kinbote’s commentary on the poem was completely wrong in my opinion. I felt frustrated at him for never being able to explain the poem as I saw it. I was quite surprised though in the very end (pg. 296) when Kinbote said he saw no mention of his beloved Zembla, which caught me off guard because he still interpreted the whole poem to be talking about his country."

"First of all, I don't like flashbacks. Never have. I like for my plots to move forward with as little time spent looking in the rear view mirror as possible. I read Disgrace in practically one sitting because I NEEDED to know what was going to happen next. In Pale Fire, there was no urgency. Nobody seemed to be in any immediate danger as evidenced by the fact that the protagonist was writing annotations. If there is a less suspenseful way to spend your time, I haven't heard it. [...] The other thing that I could not really get into was the whole Zembla storyline."

"The commentary, which was supposed to, I thought, break down and explain certain parts of the actual poem did the exact opposite for me; it only confused me more."

"Kinbote sexuality is certainly a major theme. His descriptions of Shade seem romantic in nature. "

"I understand the significance of what Nabakov is doing by writing commentary about a poem written by his best friend, Shade. After all Nabakov and Shade shared many stories about Zembla and the kings together, which Nabakov beleives to be highly influential in Shade's poetry. However I think the poems would have been more effective without the commentary. Shade's commentary is extremely drawn out, and flat out boring, which takes away from elements of the poem when I try to revert back to it."

"Was Shade a love interest of Charles?"

"I felt that the commentary did not meet the intended goal of helping to explain the poem, but rather took me to a world of falsehoods, a world of imaginary kingdoms and characters. While that sounds enjoyable, I did not find it so. [...] I hope that the other novels that we read this semester will not lead into a world unlike what is initially presented."

"It was truly a great book."

"Kinbote's not even very likeable; he stalks Shade while he's trying to write, doing anything he can to get a look at Shade's unfinished poem. I don't know how Shade put up with him. I hardly could."

"Kinbote didn't respect the poem nor Nabokov enough to give a commentary that would allow readers, for centuries, to appreciate the complexity of the written word, while still giving it simplicity and understanding. The poem's nine-hundred-ninety-nine line poem may be twenty pages, at most, but the commentary is somewhere between two-fifty and three hundred, yet says nothing as sincere and worthwhile as the nine-hundred-ninety-nine."

"Confused and frustrated while reading Pale Fire, I had to latch on to what little clarity I found. A passage of clarity for me was the passage about line 493: “she took her poor young life.” The explanation on the ‘proper’ modes of suicide and the consequences of attempting (and accomplishing) one’s goal of ending one’s life was strangely clear and poignant. It merges you with God, yet in many religious circles, it is the ultimate unforgivable sin. It’s ultimately a bit frightening when you find yourself re-reading this passage and convincing yourself that yes, it’s all true. You have felt this way and if it’s going to happen to anyone, they should read the “guidelines” that this book provides."

Objects (5/6)

This object I've decided not to photograph. It's book that was given to me under special circumstances; out of everything I own, I value it the most. I deem it more than a piece of media because of the various memories I associate with it, the unlikelihood of my ever finding a similar edition, and its content. Unlike many of the other objects I've listed, the book's value does not lie in its immediate aesthetic or functional appeal (though I do like having it near), but in the fact that it symbolizes a certain set of values and purposes that I find integral to my identity. These things would remain even if the book were gone, but I feel that locating them materially can be a positive thing--of course, one must prepare oneself for loss, accidental or inevitable, but this extends to all things.

Sorry for not posting

Classes started with a b-a-n-g bang, or if not a bang, a reasonably percussive pop. Reading done for various classes after week I: Titus Andronicus, Pale Fire, Aristotle's Poetics and two chapters of the Politics, various parts of Saussure (for the second time), various things in French, various things on tea, and cetera. I'll finish the Objects, I will. I'll do one right now. This blog isn't dead, it's just breathing funny.

Objects (4/6)

These gloves are (unfortunately) the only handmade items on my list (except perhaps for my teapot, whose exact method of manufacture eludes me). They also happen to have been tailored for me specifically. Because of this, and because of their impeccable craftsmanship, they exemplify the economic, philosophical, and psychological principles that I believe we should look for in every object. I had not worn gloves for a long time before this winter, and I forgot how completely effective they are at keeping one's hands warm in cold weather. For some reason, I would look at knitted gloves and have some vague idea about the cold wind blowing through the holes in the knit--indeed, this is not the case at all, and these gloves kept my hands warm even while riding my bike. Their most distinctive feature is of course the openings for the first three fingers on the right glove. According to the pattern that Gloria used, this innovation originally served so that the pattern maker's husband could smoke cigars. Having those fingers exposed, however, turns out to be useful for any number of things, and even as a non-smoker I find the tradeoff between finger temperature and utility to be favorable. As you can see in the photo below, my cat Halloween also really likes them. She enjoys it when I pet her in them, and I appreciate the protection they afford when she decides to bite.

Fast Fast/ Guitar Hero

Today was the first time I rode my new bike in Greensboro. It was exciting. I rode up and down Spring Garden street, and through some neighborhoods. I know that there are parks to be found further out, but I'm not completely used to riding in traffic yet. The cars really whoosh by. Whoosh! Bang! I know three girls who have been hit by cars on bikes, maybe more. They're really tough, these girls. Amazons! They still ride their bikes with passion.

Guitar Hero is a popular game. It seems to have maintained its choke hold on college-age boys since last semester. It never looks fun to me, though if I played it I'd probably change my mind. I did watch that video that was posted on Digg of a small child beating the hardest level, and I knew enough about it to be impressed. I wonder if he could have been a child prodigy at anything else. I wonder if potential chess prodigies walked among the Native Americans, and if so, were there similar Native American games that they excelled at? They say that everyone is good at something, which is obviously a lie, but I wonder how many people are great at things but never get the chance to do them. Maybe I'd be great at making cheese.

Revenant

My first full day back in Greensboro for the spring semester. Classes start next monday. I had to spend most of the day going to required meetings, but I did have enough time to unpack. I also put a photo of myself on my Blogger profile in the hope that people who stumble here will admire my lush beard, my piercing eyes, and be properly motivated to make this a regular read. This plan is surely foolproof.

In the lull between classes and break, I've decided to slip in a book that is neither required reading for the curricula devised by my professors nor for the one I have imposed upon myself. It is Darwinia by Robert Charles Wilson, and it is pure enjoyment. I'm a little less than halfway through. The speculative aspect is not particularly original, but that's hard to do. It is pulled off well, however, and the prose is some of the best I've read in science-fiction. I feel like Wilson's knack for description would take him far in literary fiction.

I do plan on finishing the Object posts. I have the photos ready for the next one, so its just a matter of typing it up.

Today

Today I watched Fargo with my mom. Then we had corned beef and cabbage for dinner. It was nice.

I go back to Greensboro tomorrow.

Objects (3/6)

This is my silver iPod Nano, 2G. I realize that there's a certain irony in me posting about my iPod, the very symbol of Western materialism, in a criticism of this ideology. Yet if these posts are to serve as an honest personal document, I have to be honest about the fact that at this point in my life, despite whatever my ideals may be, an assesment of my favorite objects shows that all but one have been mass produced. Whatever relationships I may have developed with them, they were commodities first. And yet with the object for which this is most apparent, I think that the potential to transcend commodity fetishism is also very clear. What I mean is that even though one can't think about an iPod without being aware of the brand's commercial success, neither can one look at the object itself without admiring its design. It is remarkably well built. The main body of my iPod appears to be a single continuous piece of aluminum with no seams visible. There are no pieces that stick out, no parts that look like an afterthought. If it weren't for the unforunate realities of contemporary battery technology, there would be no hint of that ugly specter hanging over all consumer electronics: planned obsolescence. My earplugs have worn down, but this is because of heavy use rather than design error. They are missing the grey rubber lining that I initially thought was for comfort, but now realize was responsible for keeping them snug in my ears. I'll get new earplugs eventually, but I don't look forward to the day when I'll have to replace the iPod itself. Even after the technology has long been surpassed by other models, the aesthetics of its design (both the physical components and the user interface) will exemplify the best that the union of art, science, and industry had to offer at the beginning of the 21st century. I like the fact that one gets to name one's iPod, and I hope that there will be more features like that in future models. The software on the iPod should be at least as customizable as one's desktop. I also hope that as computing devices converge and minituarize (eventually it will be all contact lenses and implants) the architects of our technological world will keep in mind the importance of design, and thus continue the trend that Apple started--the creation of electronic devices that have the potential to be meaningful objects in and of themselves, and not simply tools with human beings tacked on.

Obama won Iowa

While he's not my first choice, neither is he my last. Also coming out on top for the Republicans was Mike Huckabee. I'll never be able to think of Huckabee without recalling the time that Christopher Hitchens called him a "smirking hick." I don't always agree with Hitchens (in this case I do), but he's always a pleasure to read.

Objects (2/6)

This is my green teapot. Those of you who know me know that I'm interested in tea. In my opinion, a night without tea, coffee, or beer is lacking--though I never mix them. However, it's not the taste of tea that appeals to me. I enjoy the process of making it more than I do drinking it. Filling the kettle with water, measuring out the tea leaves, and watching the vapor rise from the pot and cup are tremendously relaxing activites. It's important to be familiar with the teapot and cups that you use to prepare tea because you need to know how much they hold in relation to one another, and how to tell the temperature of the liquid by touching them. It's also important that the aesthetic qualities of the objects contribute to making the preparation of tea an enjoyable experience. If I were to get another teapot, I would have to re-learn all these things. I enjoy the sense of familiarity that I've developed with this teapot, and if I were the type of person to give inanimate objects names, I would call it Lars. I'm not, though.

Objects (1/6)

(This is part of the larger post below entitled "Objects")

So here are my favorite objects. There are in no particular order. I've chosen six of them. I'll update with better photos if I ever take any.

This is my red jacket. Many of you have seen me wearing it. I like it because it goes with just about everything I own. It has also accompanied me everywhere important I've been in the last several years. When it's not on me, I usually keep it draped over the back of my computer chair at school. It's the only piece of clothing I own that gets this privilege--the rest get put away or thrown on the floor. Unfortunately, I've had this jacket for a few years now, longer than everything else on this list, and it's starting to wear away. You can see this the most on its sleeves. Because of this, I feel kind of like a hobo when I wear it. I don't want to give it up just because of that, nonetheless, I feel like I'll have to retire it soon. Gloria offered to make something else out of it, but I don't think that would be a good idea. I'd like to save it as it is, maybe take it out to wear only on special occasions. Or at least keep it as as a souvenir of my years in college.

Objects (essay)

We are spirits in the material world
(Are spirits in the material world
Are spirits in the material world
Are spirits in the material world)

--The Police

1: Intro

I'm pretty sure that when Sting wrote the above, he wasn't thinking about the connections we form with everyday objects that go beyond the expectations and requirements of living in a consumer culture. His critique of such a culture is even more pertinent today than when the song was released in 1981, and it will continue to be so until the foundations of our society are radically altered. Nonetheless, I think that there is something reactionary in most of the discourses that work to advance such critiques, from environmentally aware left-leaning political platforms to self-reliance praising libertarians and the doctrines of temporal insubstantiality preached by most religions. Nietzsche took these religions to task for being "despisers of the body," but did not go so far as to write an extended defense of objects. This post won't fill that gap, however, I hope it will help us to think more carefully about the objects in your life. As I see it, transcending our material culture is not a matter of embracing some intangible spirituality practicing extreme self-denial; it hinges instead upon developing more fulfilling relationships with those objects that can substantially improve our life, and refusing to be consumers of those that can't.

Now that you've waded through all that, I should say as soon as possible (so you can skip to the pictures if you want) that the original intention behind this post was to simply make a short list of my favorite objects with pictures and descriptions of each. In that sense, this is a personal document, not a philosophical one. But I hope that by contextualizing this list, I'll make it more meaningful for you, the reader. The idea for something like this has been with me ever since I saw a book called Evocative Objects: Things We Think With on Amazon. I had been thinking about objects since long before then, but it took seeing a book-length philosophical medition on them to make me consider writing something of my own. I haven't read Evocative Objects yet, though I plan on doing so at some point in the future. Maybe it will change some of the thoughts that I set down here.

There is one more idea that I'd like to set down before continuing: the way in which objects contribute to our identity. Identity can mean both our own self-image, and the image that others have of us. Objects do not serve only to enhance our lives in specific material ways; they may also contribute to our ideas about ourselves, whether or not we realize it. Certainly they contribute to the ideas that others have about us. Things evoke emotions, and by associating things with people we complicate our emotional perception of both thing and person. On a purely personal level, they tie us to the places we live, the people we know, and the things that we do. In the story "Man-Eating Cats" by Haruki Murakami, the narrator suffers a crisis after leaving behind all of his posessions to run away with a mistress:

As we were flying over Egypt, I was suddenly gripped by a terrible fear that someone else had taken my bag by mistake. There had to be tens of thousands of identical blue Samsonite bags in the world. Maybe I'd get to Greece, open up the suitcase, and find it stuffed with someone else's posessions. A severe anxiety attack swept over me. If the suitcase got lost, there would be nothing left to link me to my old life--just Izumi. I suddenly felt as if I had vanished.

2: Criteria

What constitutes an object? It's a harder notion to pin down than I originally thought. I think that one can safely rule out living things--hence the phrase "inanimate objects"--but it seems to me that plants are a gray area. They look like objects, but this is only because humans percieve time at a certain rate. To rocks, the blooming and dying of plants must seem just as ephemeral as a fireworks display does to us. And then there are objects that are animate, but not living. Animate in the sense that they move under their own power; robots, for example. For the purposes of my list, I'm going to rule out all living things (plants included) and robots. Anything that moves without being made to. To me there is something distinctly un-objectlike about them, though you may see things differently.

I would also like to rule out media objects. I say "like to" but the truth is (you'll see below) that I can't, not completely. Media objects convey sensory information, but this information is stored in an abstract form. The "point" of them is not not their form, but the data. Of course, before computers, some formal considerations were obligatory. CD booklets or record sleeves would be the most obvious examples. Those are now secondary, and will probably disappear in the next several years. Yet there are cases when media objects take on object-like qualities. Here are three cases that I think apply, the third of which is important for my list:

1. Music as object: I'm referring here specifically to recorded music. Certain compositions lend themselves to being played as background music, either to create ambience or to accompany a certain activity. I'm thinking of something like Getz/ Gilberto, Brian Eno's Ambient 1, or even (this might be pushing it) Massive Attack's Mezzanine. These recordings are fine on their own, but to me they really seem to shine when part of something else. And it is this combination of music and a physical environment/ activity that makes the object-like.

2. Film as object: Andy Warhol thought that we would project films onto walls like paintings, and that they would become part of the room (in much the same way I talk about music above). His early experiment with this was Sleep, a five hour film of a man sleeping. Of course that's asinine if you expect people to watch it like we watch movies today, but I think his film-as-painting idea has some merit. Screen savers (wasteful as they are) essentially embody this concept.

While I'm on the subject of images, I realize that I haven't mentioned static images like paintings or photographs... a pretty serious omission. I think that these can pass as objects, since the information they encode isn't in an abstract form--it's in the object (the paint, the photo-chemicals) itself. So although these are media objects as well, they are also object objects.

3. Books as objects: Obviously the information stored in books is not as abstract as that in CDs, DVDs, or magnetic tapes. Furthermore, the experience of a book more tied to the physical object of the book itself--what it feels like, looks like, even smells like. One can write in a book if one wishes, or even re-bind an old book. Finally, there are publishers (McSweeneys and Chin Music Press are two you should know about) that specialize in creating books that are pleasing objects, rather than just collections of pages. Then there are the reasons for which I included a book in my list which I will discuss...

3: The List

I decided to make the list a series of separate posts. See above.

4: The Future

Although I deliberately excluded objects from my list that exist only as digital information, it doesn't seem too early to discuss the possbility that in the future, the majority of the objects that we interact with will be virtual. There are already a multitude of virtual objects with monetary value (items in MMORPGs or anything in SecondLife), and despite the fact that not seeing objects in terms of their monetary value is part of what I'm trying to encourage (Marx called this habit commodity fetishism), it may be a precursor of other things to come. There is also the question of software-as-objects--most apparent in applications like desktop Post-it notes--but I'll save that for another discussion. Today we are still firmly entrenched in our material world, and until computers are able to simulate all forms of sensory information in a completely realistic manner, material objects will have their place. This also means that the things buy, keep, and use will be subject to obsolescence and decay. As I draw this object lesson to a close, I'd like to point you to the Wikipedia article on the Japanese aesthetic system known as "wabi-sabi." Appreciating our objects even as they age requires an aesthetic sensibility that our cutlure does not readily provide; in Japan, philosophers and poets developed a tradition of seeing beauty in that which is imperfect, old, or fleeting that goes back several hundred years. Those of you who will be taking my tea course this spring will hear more about this then.

5: Conclusion

If you've made it this far, then I encourage you to take a few moments when you get the chance and think about what objects mean the most to you. Where did you get them? Why do you like them? Do you see a place for them in your future? If you make a list, let me know; I'd like to read it.

January 1

I suppose that New Years day is one of the quietest days of the year. In America, at least. Most things are is closed, but there aren't any special traditions to take part in. Sure, there might be family rituals, and if I remember correctly they have some traditions in France, Spain, places like that... for us, it's the day to take down our Christmas tree. I figure that for most people around my age it's first and foremost the morning after a party. Which is fine. Days this quiet are hard to come by.

Of course, most days in Newton are about this quiet throughout the year. I'll be happy to get back into Greensboro, at least until I get tired of it too. It's not like Newton has nothing to offer: I like my neighborhood, the weather here, the cats. I like the huge oak tree that grows in our front yard. It used to lose a huge limb every winter during the ice storms and once one crushed our neighbor's car. I was sure that one year the last of its limbs would drop away, and we'd have to cut it down. But there haven't been any ice storms the last couple winters. Maybe it will be around for a while. I'm 99% sure that the tree doesn't mind staying in our front yard, not going anywhere, just letting the neighborhood birds crawl all around its shoulders and hair. It's different for me. Not being under any kind of pressure makes me feel like I'm wasting away a little bit. There's a sense of helplessness about being in my house and not having anywhere to go. If I can't do useful work, I at least want to be out, making interesting memories or trying something new. Making pottery or something. Maybe that's all available to me, and I've just grown too helpless to see it. Maybe not. It's silly because I'm always so eager to go back home at the end of the semester. I thought I'd go home and bake a lot of bread in our cozy kitchen, with the fire going in the other room. I haven't baked any bread yet, but I still might try... I go back to Greensboro in less than a week now, anyway.

It's funny: I realized that I always start blogs and things like that during December, when I'm locked away at home. I suppose that a pile of books, a blanket, and a grilled cheese sandwich aren't enough to keep me completely satisfied after all. Not to say that they aren't nice. Nice enough that I'll miss them when I go back.