26 May 2010
18 April 2010
15 April 2010
Taking Off Our Clothes
TAKING OFF OUR CLOTHES
—Scott Cairns
Let's pretend for now that there is
no such thing as metaphor; you know,
waking up will just be waking up,
darkness will no longer have to be
anything but dark; this could all
be happening in Kansas. We could lie back
in a simple bed that is a mattress
on the corner of a floor. We'd have nice
blue sheets and a wool blanket for later.
I could be the man and you could be the woman.
We'd talk about real things; casually and
easily taking off our clothers. We would be
naked and would hold onto each other
a long time, talking, saying
things that would make us
grin. We'd laugh off and on,
all the time unconcerned with things
like breath, or salty skin, or the way
our gums show when we really smile big.
After a little while,
I'd get you a glass of water.
—Scott Cairns
Let's pretend for now that there is
no such thing as metaphor; you know,
waking up will just be waking up,
darkness will no longer have to be
anything but dark; this could all
be happening in Kansas. We could lie back
in a simple bed that is a mattress
on the corner of a floor. We'd have nice
blue sheets and a wool blanket for later.
I could be the man and you could be the woman.
We'd talk about real things; casually and
easily taking off our clothers. We would be
naked and would hold onto each other
a long time, talking, saying
things that would make us
grin. We'd laugh off and on,
all the time unconcerned with things
like breath, or salty skin, or the way
our gums show when we really smile big.
After a little while,
I'd get you a glass of water.
09 April 2010
24 March 2010
| Beyond the Diagnosis: Cornerstone & Gilead Sciences |  |  |
| Cornerstone Theater Company is partnering with Gilead Sciences to produce a collection of original short plays exploring how urban communities are living and dealing with HIV/AIDS. The plays: Page Leong's In a Word , Sigrid Gilmer's Head Trip and The Brothers , and Peter Howard's Long Term are presented as staged readings in cities across the country in an evening of performance and conversation titled: BEYOND THE DIAGNOSIS: Real stories of those who are living and thriving in the most serious epidemic of our time  Beyond the Diagnosis has been presented in major cities across the country including Los Angeles, Houston, Detroit, Baltimore, Ft. Lauderdale, Jackson, Atlanta, Washington, D.C. and New York. With each location Cornerstone and Gilead bring this program to, the short plays are created in collaboration with that city's HIV-positive residents. This collection of plays reflect the passions and challenges faced every day by the people living with HIV/AIDS in that particular city and the health professionals who treat them. These plays share real stories of patients, family members, healthcare providers, case managers and social workers dealing with HIV treatment in cities all across the country. Each performance features a combination of professional actors as well as community participants from those who are directly affected by HIV/AIDS in their city. For more information on Beyond the Diagnosis, contact news@cornerstonetheater.org . HOW WAS THIS PROGRAM BORN? In early 2007, Deborah Wafer of Gilead Sciences approached Cornerstone with the germ of an idea, a potential partnership between the two companies with a focus on HIV treatment. Specifically, she inquired about using Cornerstone’s methodology to help further their goals of improving communication between HIV/AIDS patients and their healthcare providers. Some initital questions: How might a large corporation and a smallish non-profit collaborate effectively in a way that goes beyond traditional notions of sponsorship or philanthropy? How can we create a program in which corporate and non-profit missions are being met simultaneously? We came up with a proposal to develop three short play scripts based on story circles in Los Angeles with members of the HIV/AIDS treatment community. We approached our story circles with a number of questions including open and honest communication between patients and their healthcare providers. What factors support that kind of relationship? What obstacles come up that prevent patients for advocating themselves for better care? In addition to the performances of these short plays, there are facilitated conversations with the audience about some of the questions and ideas that the plays bring up. Cornerstone has heard stories of growth, triumph, and health in the face of HIV/AIDS in conversations all over the country and we look forward to continuing our onging relationship with Gilead and bringing open and honest conversations about HIV treatment to the forefront of the discourse. |
Harris Interactive I Newsroom I Harris Polls
Harris Interactive I Newsroom I Harris Polls
| Mar 24, 2010 |
| "Wingnuts" and President Obama |
A socialist? A Muslim? Anti-American? The Anti-Christ? Large minorities of Americans hold some remarkable opinions A new book, Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe Is Hijacking America by John Avlon describes the large numbers of Americans who hold extreme views of President Obama. This Harris Poll seeks to measure how many people are involved. It finds that 40% of adults believe he is a socialist. More than 30% think he wants to take away Americans' right to own guns and that he is a Muslim. More than 25% believe he wants to turn over the sovereignty of the United States to a world government, has done many things that are unconstitutional, that he resents America's heritage, and that he does what Wall Street tells him to do. More than 20% believe he was not born in the United States, that he is "the domestic enemy the U.S. Constitution speaks of," that he is racist and anti-American, and that he "wants to use an economic collapse or terrorist attack as an excuse to take dictatorial powers." Fully 20% think he is "doing many of the things that Hitler did," while 14% believe "he may be the anti-Christ" and 13% think "he wants the terrorists to win." These are some of the results of The Harris Poll of 2,320 adults surveyed online between March 1 and 8, 2010 by Harris Interactive. The actual percentages of adults who believe these things are true are as follows:
What Republicans, Democrats and Independents think There are – no surprise here – huge differences between what Republicans and Democrats believe. Majorities of Republicans believe that President Obama:
Also large numbers of Republicans also believe that President Obama:
Even more remarkable perhaps, fully 24% of Republicans believe that "he may be the Anti-Christ" and 22% believe "he wants the terrorists to win." While few Democrats believe any of these things, the proportions of Independents who do so are close to the national averages. One big surprise is that many more Republicans (40%) than Democrats (15%) believe the president does what Wall Street and the bankers tell him to do. Differences by education These replies are also strongly correlated with education. The less education people have had the more likely they are to believe all of these statements. Consider these differences between those with no college education and those with post-graduate education:
After reviewing these findings, John Avlon comments, "These new numbers are shocking but not surprising – they detail the extent to which Wingnuts are hijacking our politics. This poll should be a wake-up call to all Americans about the real costs of using fear and hate to pump up hyper-partisanship. We are playing with dynamite by demonizing our president and dividing our country in the process. Americans need to remember the perspective that Wingnuts always forget – patriotism is more important than partisanship." So what? So what indeed! These responses recall a favorite saying of our founder Lou Harris that "when you don't want to publish a poll finding you dislike, you should get out of the business." The very large numbers of people who believe all these things of President Obama help to explain the size and strength of the Tea Party Movement, a topic that will be addressed in another Harris Poll in a few days time. |
20 March 2010
"Justice demands only what is fair for me and you, and has deep in its origins the mistrust that you..."
"Justice demands only what is fair for me and you, and has deep in its origins the mistrust that you...":
“Justice demands only what is fair for me and you, and has deep in its origins the mistrust that you might be getting something more in the bargain than I am likely to be getting. Justice, then, is a standard of potential enemies, an even division of booty in which both sides are apt to view each other dimly and even with underlying hostility. Friendship, on the other hand, includes the willingness to get less than one deserves for the sake of another for whom one cares. The ultimate friendship –fittingly worth noting at the beginning of Lent – is that friendship of God to Man, and of Jesus to his fellow humans, who surely got less than he deserved and gave more than any godhead has ever been expected to offer to an inferior creature. As we pray every Sunday before receiving the body of Christ, ‘Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word, and I shall be healed.’ We pray not for justice from God – for surely we would all burn eternally in Hell if justice was the measure – but for mercy, for love.”
- What I Saw in America: Friendship and Politics"
“Justice demands only what is fair for me and you, and has deep in its origins the mistrust that you might be getting something more in the bargain than I am likely to be getting. Justice, then, is a standard of potential enemies, an even division of booty in which both sides are apt to view each other dimly and even with underlying hostility. Friendship, on the other hand, includes the willingness to get less than one deserves for the sake of another for whom one cares. The ultimate friendship –fittingly worth noting at the beginning of Lent – is that friendship of God to Man, and of Jesus to his fellow humans, who surely got less than he deserved and gave more than any godhead has ever been expected to offer to an inferior creature. As we pray every Sunday before receiving the body of Christ, ‘Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word, and I shall be healed.’ We pray not for justice from God – for surely we would all burn eternally in Hell if justice was the measure – but for mercy, for love.”
- What I Saw in America: Friendship and Politics"
"If we realize this, then we may understand what Easter is and why it needs and presupposes Lent. For..."
"If we realize this, then we may understand what Easter is and why it needs and presupposes Lent. For...":
“If we realize this, then we may understand what Easter is and why it needs and presupposes Lent. For we may then understand that the liturgical traditions of the Church, all its cycles and services, exist, first of all, in order to help us recover the vision and the taste of that new life which we so easily lose and betray, so that we may repent and return to it. … And yet the ‘old’ life, that of sin and pettiness, is not easily overcome and changed. The Gospel expects and requires from man an effort of which, in his present state, he is virtually incapable. … This is where Great Lent comes in. This is the help extended to us by the Church, the school of repentance which alone will make it possible to receive Easter not as mere permission to eat, to drink, and to relax, but indeed as the end of the ‘old’ in us, as our entrance into the ‘new.’ … For each year Lent and Easter are, once again, the rediscovery and the recovery by us of what we were made through our own baptismal death and resurrection.”
- Fr. Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent"
“If we realize this, then we may understand what Easter is and why it needs and presupposes Lent. For we may then understand that the liturgical traditions of the Church, all its cycles and services, exist, first of all, in order to help us recover the vision and the taste of that new life which we so easily lose and betray, so that we may repent and return to it. … And yet the ‘old’ life, that of sin and pettiness, is not easily overcome and changed. The Gospel expects and requires from man an effort of which, in his present state, he is virtually incapable. … This is where Great Lent comes in. This is the help extended to us by the Church, the school of repentance which alone will make it possible to receive Easter not as mere permission to eat, to drink, and to relax, but indeed as the end of the ‘old’ in us, as our entrance into the ‘new.’ … For each year Lent and Easter are, once again, the rediscovery and the recovery by us of what we were made through our own baptismal death and resurrection.”
- Fr. Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent"
chocolate soufflé cupcakes with mint cream
chocolate soufflé cupcakes with mint cream: "
I’m clearly some sort of grinch, because when I think of flourless chocolate cakes I imagine giant discs of truffle so dense and overly rich that even a sliver of somehow feels excessive, the kind of throwaway dessert restaurants bust out when they’ve got no better ideas. “Add a couple out-of-season, eerily red raspberries and a tuft of whipped cream from a can and it will, without fail, sell,” I imagine sinister managers instructing kitchen staff. Like I said, I’m a total pill.
I’m clearly some sort of grinch, because when I think of flourless chocolate cakes I imagine giant discs of truffle so dense and overly rich that even a sliver of somehow feels excessive, the kind of throwaway dessert restaurants bust out when they’ve got no better ideas. “Add a couple out-of-season, eerily red raspberries and a tuft of whipped cream from a can and it will, without fail, sell,” I imagine sinister managers instructing kitchen staff. Like I said, I’m a total pill.
However, when the same flourless chocolate cake is treated like a soufflé — eggs separated, yolks beaten until ribbony and whites whipped until weightless, then gently folded in — and then placed anywhere in my proximity, all bets are off. Because what it does is magical; what was once weighted is lifted off the plate. The top puffs and shatters a little, like a meringue, a meringue with butter. It manages to be both the lightest, barely-there wisp of cake and the most unabashedly rich chocolate fix. Yes, at once.
... Read the rest of chocolate soufflé cupcakes with mint cream on smittenkitchen.com
© smitten kitchen 2006-2009. |
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Crockpot Soapmaking
Crockpot Soapmaking:
by Lynn at Viggies Veggies
I'd been planning on waiting to learn to make soap for a while yet, because I'd heard it made to sound so expensive and complicated. But my net.friend Dilli recently tested out a crockpot soap recipe she found that demystified the process for me. It's pretty well fool proof. And while talking to her about it, I realized I didn't need any special supplies or equipment."
by Lynn at Viggies Veggies
I'd been planning on waiting to learn to make soap for a while yet, because I'd heard it made to sound so expensive and complicated. But my net.friend Dilli recently tested out a crockpot soap recipe she found that demystified the process for me. It's pretty well fool proof. And while talking to her about it, I realized I didn't need any special supplies or equipment."
"Dr. King once said that the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice. It bends..."
"Dr. King once said that the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice. It bends...": "“Dr. King once said that the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice. It bends towards justice, but here is the thing: it does not bend on its own. It bends because each of us in our own ways put our hand on that arc and we bend it in the direction of justice….”
- Barack Obama (via azspot)"
- Barack Obama (via azspot)"
"Since the world began, we have gone about our work quietly, resisting the urge to generalize,..."
"Since the world began, we have gone about our work quietly, resisting the urge to generalize,..."
"Since the world began, we have gone about our work quietly, resisting the urge to generalize, valuing the individual over the group, the actual over the conceptual, the inherent sweetness of the present moment over the theoretically peaceful future to be obtained via murder. Many of us have trouble sleeping and lie awake at night, worrying about something catastrophic befalling someone we love. We rise in the morning with no plans to convert anyone via beating, humiliation, or invasion. To tell the truth, we are tired. We work. We would just like some peace and quiet. When wrong, we think about it awhile, then apologize. We stand under awnings during urban thunderstorms, moved to thoughtfulness by the troubled, umbrella-tinged faces rushing by. In moments of crisis, we pat one another awkwardly on the back, mumbling shy truisms. Rushing to an appointment, remembering a friend who has passed away, our eyes well with tears and we think: Well, my God, he could be a pain, but still I’m lucky to have known him.”
- Manifesto: People Reluctant to Kill for an Abstraction, George Saunders"
via Luke's Commonplace Book
"Since the world began, we have gone about our work quietly, resisting the urge to generalize, valuing the individual over the group, the actual over the conceptual, the inherent sweetness of the present moment over the theoretically peaceful future to be obtained via murder. Many of us have trouble sleeping and lie awake at night, worrying about something catastrophic befalling someone we love. We rise in the morning with no plans to convert anyone via beating, humiliation, or invasion. To tell the truth, we are tired. We work. We would just like some peace and quiet. When wrong, we think about it awhile, then apologize. We stand under awnings during urban thunderstorms, moved to thoughtfulness by the troubled, umbrella-tinged faces rushing by. In moments of crisis, we pat one another awkwardly on the back, mumbling shy truisms. Rushing to an appointment, remembering a friend who has passed away, our eyes well with tears and we think: Well, my God, he could be a pain, but still I’m lucky to have known him.”
- Manifesto: People Reluctant to Kill for an Abstraction, George Saunders"
via Luke's Commonplace Book
Hospitality with a Purpose
Hospitality with a Purpose: "
via Conor Friedersdorf
This is a lovely passage:
We wanted our children to grow up in a kind of extended family, or at least with an abundance of “significant others.” A house full of people; a crowded table ranging across the generations; four-hand music at the piano; nonstop conversation and cooking; baseball games and swimming in the afternoon; long walks after dinner; a poker game or Diplomacy or charades in the evening, all these activities mixing adults and children–that was our idea of a well-ordered household and more specifically of a well-ordered education. We had no great confidence in the schools; we knew that if our children were to acquire any of the things we set store by–joy in learning, eagerness for experience, the capacity for love and friendship–they would have to learn the better part of it at home. For that very reason, however, home was not to be thought of simply as the “nuclear family.” Its hospitality would have to extend far and wide, stretching its emotional resources to the limit.Hat Tip Front Porch Republic.
via Conor Friedersdorf
On Sourdough Starters
On Sourdough Starters: by KateLiving The Frugal Life
I got interested in bread baking as part of a frugality kick about two and half years ago. It wasn't really that much of a departure for me, as I trained professionally as a chef and am pretty comfortable knocking around a home kitchen. But I never expected to get to the point where all the bread we eat is made at home, by me.I save a considerable amount of money by"
I got interested in bread baking as part of a frugality kick about two and half years ago. It wasn't really that much of a departure for me, as I trained professionally as a chef and am pretty comfortable knocking around a home kitchen. But I never expected to get to the point where all the bread we eat is made at home, by me.I save a considerable amount of money by"
The Socialism Implicit in the Social Cost of Carbon
The Socialism Implicit in the Social Cost of Carbon:
Burning fossil fuels creates so-called “external costs” because it contributes to ongoing climate change. This is a fancy way of saying that when I burn such fuels, other people become worse off than they would be otherwise, because I have increased the odds that they will suffer damages from anthropogenic global warming (AGW). This both seems unfair, and means that we will burn more fossil fuels than would seem to be socially optimal. It seems obvious to many people that we should therefore tax fossil fuels in order to prevent this. This is termed a Pigovian tax, and is sometimes referred to as “internalizing the externality”, or taxing fossil fuels to reflect the “social cost of carbon”.
It’s not so obvious to me that this is good idea. To implement it would be little more than a re-labeling of the kind of comprehensive planning that Hayek attacked sixty years ago.
Over at the Daily Dish I try to explain why.
Jim Manzi
Burning fossil fuels creates so-called “external costs” because it contributes to ongoing climate change. This is a fancy way of saying that when I burn such fuels, other people become worse off than they would be otherwise, because I have increased the odds that they will suffer damages from anthropogenic global warming (AGW). This both seems unfair, and means that we will burn more fossil fuels than would seem to be socially optimal. It seems obvious to many people that we should therefore tax fossil fuels in order to prevent this. This is termed a Pigovian tax, and is sometimes referred to as “internalizing the externality”, or taxing fossil fuels to reflect the “social cost of carbon”.
It’s not so obvious to me that this is good idea. To implement it would be little more than a re-labeling of the kind of comprehensive planning that Hayek attacked sixty years ago.
Over at the Daily Dish I try to explain why.
Jim Manzi
a DFW quote, via Kottke
a DFW quote, via Kottke:
"a DFW quote, via Kottke:
"a DFW quote, via Kottke:
“The really important kind of freedom,’ said Wallace, ‘involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom… The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.’”
via Luke's Commonplace Book
My Cloth Revolution
My Cloth Revolution:
Over the past year and a half, I have been a Cloth Revolutionary at my house. Little by little, disposable paper items are disappearing from our landscape, only to be replaced by colourful, reusable Cloth replacements.The first step in our Cloth Revolution was the switch to cloth diapers. We did this when our daughter was 11 months old, after visiting with"
Over the past year and a half, I have been a Cloth Revolutionary at my house. Little by little, disposable paper items are disappearing from our landscape, only to be replaced by colourful, reusable Cloth replacements.The first step in our Cloth Revolution was the switch to cloth diapers. We did this when our daughter was 11 months old, after visiting with"
Great Debate
So last year John McWhorter and Alan Jacobs had it out over Shakespeare.
Will Shakespeare's Come and Gone: Does the Bard's Poetry Reach Us Like August Wilson's? Come On--Really?:
lay off, McWhorter:
Reform It Altogether:
Will Shakespeare's Come and Gone: Does the Bard's Poetry Reach Us Like August Wilson's? Come On--Really?:
lay off, McWhorter:
Reform It Altogether:
Are Democracy and Capitalism Compatible?
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Probably the living thinker (and doer) whom I admire the most (after Reihan!) is Peter Thiel. Of course, Thiel is most famous for co-founding PayPal and now being a very successful investor with a winning hedge fund and venture capital firm.
As a wantpreneur and financial amateur, I obviously admire his business record, but Thiel (a philosophy student in college) is also a tremendously smart “big issues” thinker. (By the way, why doesn’t he have a blog!)
I even read his (slightly juvenile but, like everything Thiel touches, brilliant) book The Diversity Myth. When I saw a video of him mentioning and commenting on the old French classic The American Challenge I was positively giddy with excitement. His talks on the financial crisis over at BigThink is one of the most illuminating takes on the financial crisis out there.
Most recently, Thiel, a hardcore libertarian, has a post up at Cato Unbound (also one of my very favorite locales on these interwebs) arguing basically two things:
I should say at the outset that I’m no enemy, quite on the contrary, of “far out” ideas. After all, I favor the abolition of prisons, schools, museums and retirement, I believe Nairobi should be a bigger startup hub than Silicon Valley a generation from now and, like Thiel, I like to think there’s a chance I’ll live to 3,000. But I’m afraid I will have very conventional objections to Thiel here.
The question of the compatibility between democracy and capitalism I think is a real one, but can also be overstated (I do think there’s a problem with the compatibility between libertarianism and democracy, but that’s another fight for another day).
I’m afraid that the only way I can make my point is through the old, tired trope that democracy is the worst regime at the exception of all others. Yes, democracy lends itself to boneheaded redistribution, and ham-fisted government interventions into the economy. But authoritarian regimes don’t? Even personal freedoms aside, even the most capitalist-friendly regimes are actually not so capitalist.
If you look at China, there are large amounts of unleashed capitalist fury, so to speak, but it is always within a government-managed system. A French businessman living in China compared Chinese-style capitalism to L’Oréal: you have several business units competing with each other, but at the end of the day, they’re all part of the same P&L. The fate of Huang Guangyu, once China’s richest man and now disappeared, should give pause to authoritarian-attracted libertarians. Mirabeau once famously described Prussia as “an army with a state” as opposed to a state with an army, but I’m not sure how he would describe China’s endlessly blurred mash of army, Party and business.
Singapore probably has the smartest, leanest, business-friendly policy environment, much admired by this proponent of “small, smart government,” which is obviously made possible by the city-state’s scrupulously refined form of (not so) soft authoritarianism. But the Singaporean state also owns all of the real estate in the country and is a fan of industrial policy, whose more nasty effects are softened by the country’s very smart and nimble policymakers but should, again, dampen libertarian enthusiasm for technocratic government. A business professor and Asia expert used to tell us about Singapore’s response to the lack of the kind of open innovation and risk-taking we see in the US: a massive publicity campaign involving posters with the word “THINK.” The government orders you to think for yourself! Ahem.
Conservatives frequently deride the European Union as an undemocratic technocratic pseudo-super state, but the reality is much more complex. It’s true that we have to thank the EU’s “undemocratic” elites for the (relative) liberalization of Europe in the past decades, without which we would be even further behind. But in reality, bodies like the EU commission are actually very democratically accountable — to EU governments’ elected leaders, who rely on them to make the tough decisions and then act as a political lightning rod.
Megan McArdle is very happy that Ben Bernanke, unelected and unaccountable, has a bigger role in the response to the financial crisis than Maxine Waters, and is only able to take the dramatic steps he is precisely because he is unaccountable, and so am I. But — and I realize this is a cliché, but an unescapable one — even if you have the smartest technocrats running the country today, what about their successors, and their successors’ successors? The historical record of unelected governments in this regard is not very good.
Democracy is not so much about electing people as having a process and a system of checks and balances that ensures that basic rights are protected.
No democratic country is as pro-free market as Thiel, or myself, would like, but I would wager that no authoritarian regime is better than the democratic alternatives on that score, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, I would wager that even though no democratic country is as pro-free market as is advisable, they are still headed (slowly, so slowly) in the right direction. Even after the financial crisis, the political consensus is still much more pro-free market than it was 40 years ago. Politics is messy, it moves slowly, in fits and starts, with one step forward and two steps back, and there are real problems with financial regulation only happening in the aftermath of crises, but I still like it better than the alternatives.
As far as potential libertarian escapes are concerned, I’m afraid I also have to be (mostly) bearish.
Thiel mentions three possible avenues: cyberspace, outer space and seasteading.
I actually agree with Thiel on cyberspace:
As for outer space, Thiel believes that
Humbug!, I say. Nation states already compete for citizens, and yet we still have Zimbabwes and North Koreas. I would argue that this competition has already produced countries that are much more open and free than, say, 75 years ago, but to think that simply opening up seasteads will lead to libertarian utopias is, in my view, hopelessly naïve. The same reasoning can be applied to settling outer space. It’s something I very much look forward to but I have little hope for libertarian utopias. Lord of the Flies, anyone?
Thiel should be wary about ham-fisted, redistributive democratic government, but I would pose to him that, for the long run, it is still the least bad alternative, and that things really are — albeit ever so slowly — moving in the right direction.
Probably the living thinker (and doer) whom I admire the most (after Reihan!) is Peter Thiel. Of course, Thiel is most famous for co-founding PayPal and now being a very successful investor with a winning hedge fund and venture capital firm.
As a wantpreneur and financial amateur, I obviously admire his business record, but Thiel (a philosophy student in college) is also a tremendously smart “big issues” thinker. (By the way, why doesn’t he have a blog!)
I even read his (slightly juvenile but, like everything Thiel touches, brilliant) book The Diversity Myth. When I saw a video of him mentioning and commenting on the old French classic The American Challenge I was positively giddy with excitement. His talks on the financial crisis over at BigThink is one of the most illuminating takes on the financial crisis out there.
Most recently, Thiel, a hardcore libertarian, has a post up at Cato Unbound (also one of my very favorite locales on these interwebs) arguing basically two things:
- Democracy is not just incompatible with capitalism but just not very good, basically because the losers will use the political system to tax the winners into submission ;
- Libertarians need to give up on politics, and society basically, and build their own libertarian havens, be it in cyberspace, outer space or through seasteading.
I should say at the outset that I’m no enemy, quite on the contrary, of “far out” ideas. After all, I favor the abolition of prisons, schools, museums and retirement, I believe Nairobi should be a bigger startup hub than Silicon Valley a generation from now and, like Thiel, I like to think there’s a chance I’ll live to 3,000. But I’m afraid I will have very conventional objections to Thiel here.
The question of the compatibility between democracy and capitalism I think is a real one, but can also be overstated (I do think there’s a problem with the compatibility between libertarianism and democracy, but that’s another fight for another day).
I’m afraid that the only way I can make my point is through the old, tired trope that democracy is the worst regime at the exception of all others. Yes, democracy lends itself to boneheaded redistribution, and ham-fisted government interventions into the economy. But authoritarian regimes don’t? Even personal freedoms aside, even the most capitalist-friendly regimes are actually not so capitalist.
If you look at China, there are large amounts of unleashed capitalist fury, so to speak, but it is always within a government-managed system. A French businessman living in China compared Chinese-style capitalism to L’Oréal: you have several business units competing with each other, but at the end of the day, they’re all part of the same P&L. The fate of Huang Guangyu, once China’s richest man and now disappeared, should give pause to authoritarian-attracted libertarians. Mirabeau once famously described Prussia as “an army with a state” as opposed to a state with an army, but I’m not sure how he would describe China’s endlessly blurred mash of army, Party and business.
Singapore probably has the smartest, leanest, business-friendly policy environment, much admired by this proponent of “small, smart government,” which is obviously made possible by the city-state’s scrupulously refined form of (not so) soft authoritarianism. But the Singaporean state also owns all of the real estate in the country and is a fan of industrial policy, whose more nasty effects are softened by the country’s very smart and nimble policymakers but should, again, dampen libertarian enthusiasm for technocratic government. A business professor and Asia expert used to tell us about Singapore’s response to the lack of the kind of open innovation and risk-taking we see in the US: a massive publicity campaign involving posters with the word “THINK.” The government orders you to think for yourself! Ahem.
Conservatives frequently deride the European Union as an undemocratic technocratic pseudo-super state, but the reality is much more complex. It’s true that we have to thank the EU’s “undemocratic” elites for the (relative) liberalization of Europe in the past decades, without which we would be even further behind. But in reality, bodies like the EU commission are actually very democratically accountable — to EU governments’ elected leaders, who rely on them to make the tough decisions and then act as a political lightning rod.
Megan McArdle is very happy that Ben Bernanke, unelected and unaccountable, has a bigger role in the response to the financial crisis than Maxine Waters, and is only able to take the dramatic steps he is precisely because he is unaccountable, and so am I. But — and I realize this is a cliché, but an unescapable one — even if you have the smartest technocrats running the country today, what about their successors, and their successors’ successors? The historical record of unelected governments in this regard is not very good.
Democracy is not so much about electing people as having a process and a system of checks and balances that ensures that basic rights are protected.
No democratic country is as pro-free market as Thiel, or myself, would like, but I would wager that no authoritarian regime is better than the democratic alternatives on that score, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, I would wager that even though no democratic country is as pro-free market as is advisable, they are still headed (slowly, so slowly) in the right direction. Even after the financial crisis, the political consensus is still much more pro-free market than it was 40 years ago. Politics is messy, it moves slowly, in fits and starts, with one step forward and two steps back, and there are real problems with financial regulation only happening in the aftermath of crises, but I still like it better than the alternatives.
As far as potential libertarian escapes are concerned, I’m afraid I also have to be (mostly) bearish.
Thiel mentions three possible avenues: cyberspace, outer space and seasteading.
I actually agree with Thiel on cyberspace:
In the late 1990s, the founding vision of PayPal centered on the creation of a new world currency, free from all government control and dilution — the end of monetary sovereignty, as it were. In the 2000s, companies like Facebook create the space for new modes of dissent and new ways to form communities not bounded by historical nation-states. By starting a new Internet business, an entrepreneur may create a new world. The hope of the Internet is that these new worlds will impact and force change on the existing social and political order. The limitation of the Internet is that these new worlds are virtual and that any escape may be more imaginary than real. The open question, which will not be resolved for many years, centers on which of these accounts of the Internet proves true.I agree with him on the tremendous potential of the internet to bring about change to the world, and that whether this change is more real than virtual is a question that will be answered over the long term.
As for outer space, Thiel believes that
[b]ecause the vast reaches of outer space represent a limitless frontier, they also represent a limitless possibility for escape from world politics.and that seasteading opens a space
[b]etween cyberspace and outer space [where] lies the possibility of settling the oceans.I think this is naive because, to put it simply, escaping world politics is not escaping politics. Wherever there is more than one man, there will be disagreements about how to live, how to allocate resources, and these disagreements can only be resolved through politics or violence, and for many issues (pollution, defense…), mere libertarianism has few answers. Presumably the idea is that seasteading communities will compete with one another for inhabitants and thus will have to downshift to a “lowest common denominator” of live-and-let-live libertarian political consensus.
Humbug!, I say. Nation states already compete for citizens, and yet we still have Zimbabwes and North Koreas. I would argue that this competition has already produced countries that are much more open and free than, say, 75 years ago, but to think that simply opening up seasteads will lead to libertarian utopias is, in my view, hopelessly naïve. The same reasoning can be applied to settling outer space. It’s something I very much look forward to but I have little hope for libertarian utopias. Lord of the Flies, anyone?
Thiel should be wary about ham-fisted, redistributive democratic government, but I would pose to him that, for the long run, it is still the least bad alternative, and that things really are — albeit ever so slowly — moving in the right direction.
more theses
“Marriage, in what is evidently its most popular version, is now on the one hand an intimate ‘relationship’ involving (ideally) two successful careerists in the same bed, and on the other hand a sort of private political system in which rights and interests must be constantly asserted and defended. Marriage, in other words, has now taken the form of divorce: a prolonged and impassioned negotiation as to how things shall be divided. During their understandably temporary association, the ‘married’ couple will typically consume a large quantity of merchandise and a large portion of each other.”
- Wendell Berry
via Alan Jacobs
- Wendell Berry
via Alan Jacobs
found on 95 theses
"Why did anyone begin work on a doctorate in the humanities in those days? Why does anyone do it now? They did it in the past—and their academic grandchildren do it now—for reasons that are not dreamt of in the philosophy and theology of the market. Becoming a humanist, let us remember, is not just signing up for a job. It certainly does not open the way to power or wealth: scholar has never rhymed with dollar. To become a trained humanist, rather, is to join a tradition, which has usually been embattled, while parents scream “No, for God’s sake go to law school!” (That is what Petrarch’s father said to him, thereby inaugurating a great tradition.) In the old days, a professor did not receive a job offer, but a “call”—as ministers and rabbis did. To enter this tradition, you have always needed intellectual ability and technical skills, but even more you need conviction and passion and determination. One might say that you need a vocation. And the vocation of scholarship is hard, as Weber warned in times worse than these.
One reason graduate school demands so much time, so much effort, and so much difficulty is that it is designed—badly, and clumsily, but not insanely—to attract and then to test people who think they have this sort of calling. Graduate study is nothing less than a quest—and you cannot undertake a meaningful quest without trials. Menand does not grasp this existential reality. As long as graduate school is this sort of place—and it still is, and it still has to be, or the traditions that it preserves will wither and die—its intellectual demands will be high, and its psychic ones higher, and it will require long years of study."
Anthony Grafton, Humanities and Inhumanities
One reason graduate school demands so much time, so much effort, and so much difficulty is that it is designed—badly, and clumsily, but not insanely—to attract and then to test people who think they have this sort of calling. Graduate study is nothing less than a quest—and you cannot undertake a meaningful quest without trials. Menand does not grasp this existential reality. As long as graduate school is this sort of place—and it still is, and it still has to be, or the traditions that it preserves will wither and die—its intellectual demands will be high, and its psychic ones higher, and it will require long years of study."
Anthony Grafton, Humanities and Inhumanities
Big Bosoms And The Big Bang: Did The Human Condition Really Emerge In Europe?? | The New Republic
Big Bosoms And The Big Bang: Did The Human Condition Really Emerge In Europe?? | The New Republic
John McWhorter
John McWhorter
There they go again.
This week in Nature we learn of the discovery of a 35,000 year old erotic figurine in Germany, 5000 years older than previously known such work by early humans.
We are to take from this that evidence for an artistic mindset - i.e. modern, abstract thought - mysteriously "exploded" into the human endowment at this time. "The Big Bang," some call it, an apparent Great Leap Forward in toolmaking, burial rituals and art among European peoples at this time. Scholars of human evolution have taken a cue from this and supposed that the Big Bang was the result of some genetic mutation that led to humanity of a modern cognitive level.
John Noble Wilford at the Times notes the fascination over the "inspiration and symbolism behind the rather sudden flowering" that figurines of this period...The Great Grocery Smackdown - Magazine - The Atlantic
The Great Grocery Smackdown - Magazine - The Atlantic
I started looking into how and why Walmart could be plausibly competing with Whole Foods, and found that its produce-buying had evolved beyond organics, to a virtually unknown program—one that could do more to encourage small and medium-size American farms than any number of well-meaning nonprofits, or the U.S. Department of Agriculture, with its new Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food campaign. Not even Fishman, who has been closely tracking Walmart’s sustainability efforts, had heard of it. “They do a lot of good things they don’t talk about,” he offered.
The program, which Walmart calls Heritage Agriculture, will encourage farms within a day’s drive of one of its warehouses to grow crops that now take days to arrive in trucks from states like Florida and California. In many cases the crops once flourished in the places where Walmart is encouraging their revival, but vanished because of Big Agriculture competition.
I started looking into how and why Walmart could be plausibly competing with Whole Foods, and found that its produce-buying had evolved beyond organics, to a virtually unknown program—one that could do more to encourage small and medium-size American farms than any number of well-meaning nonprofits, or the U.S. Department of Agriculture, with its new Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food campaign. Not even Fishman, who has been closely tracking Walmart’s sustainability efforts, had heard of it. “They do a lot of good things they don’t talk about,” he offered.
The program, which Walmart calls Heritage Agriculture, will encourage farms within a day’s drive of one of its warehouses to grow crops that now take days to arrive in trucks from states like Florida and California. In many cases the crops once flourished in the places where Walmart is encouraging their revival, but vanished because of Big Agriculture competition.
the sun rises every morning
“The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”
— G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
19 March 2010
01 February 2010
Romoeroticism
InsideCatholic.com - Romoeroticism
"This year, just like last year, Gay Pride weekend coincided with the feast of Corpus Christi.
Washington, D.C.'s Pride parade was fairly restrained: It featured a cornucopia of Episcopalians, and all the marchers went out of their way to sweetly drape beads over the little elementary-school girls standing in front of me. There were Affirming Baptists; as the parade passed by me, a knot of gay men to my right joked -- in that gay way that is never really joking all the way down -- that maybe they could be Baptists again now. There were strollers, lots of strollers . . . at least five floats' lengths away from the guys in the padded leather thongs..."
check it out.
Yesterday turned into one long discussion on homosexuality, gay rights, how do I interact with my gay friends at my conservative christian college etc. This morning I woke up and found this recommended by an Anglican man I very much respect.
For a more personal and indepth discussion on the positions on homosexuality in the church check out: http://slaggetyslagg.blogspot.com/
check it out.
Yesterday turned into one long discussion on homosexuality, gay rights, how do I interact with my gay friends at my conservative christian college etc. This morning I woke up and found this recommended by an Anglican man I very much respect.
For a more personal and indepth discussion on the positions on homosexuality in the church check out: http://slaggetyslagg.blogspot.com/
31 January 2010
The Bristol * A Neighborhood Eatery & Bar
The Bristol * A Neighborhood Eatery & Bar
The Bristol offers a locally-sourced and seasonal menu with
Mediterranean roots. The diverse menu includes bar snacks,
daily specials, a rotating chalkboard menu featuring nose-to-tail
cooking, charcuterie and 5th Quarter offerings focusing on
sustainable foodstuffs.
intriguing and so much money.
02 January 2010
Court 13
Every so often a group of commited artists come together and create a place for smart, witty, and deeply meaningful work to be generated. Introducing Court 13, a group out of New Orleans, that has garnered quite a bit of heartfelt support over the last few years. Their latest endeavor, Glory At Sea (which has been nominated for numerous awards after its showing at the latest SXSW) is set in their home of New Orleans, immediately post-Katrina. While I think everyone should check out their most mature film to date, their other films, especially Death to the Tinman, are insightful, smart and possess the disjointed irony of a Wes Anderson film that seems to be influencing so many of the twenty-something writers I know.
If there's one thing you should do before the semester begins, spending 10-25 minutes with one of Court 13s shorts is it.
If there's one thing you should do before the semester begins, spending 10-25 minutes with one of Court 13s shorts is it.
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