The Bush-McCain Challenge: It’s a bit of partisan “education” by way of MoveOn.org. It’s not an intellectually demanding quiz, but it’s worth playing through to the “carrot round.” Have fun.
Technorati Tags: bush, moveon.org, mccain
Tonight’s Fund-Raising Call
The Democratic National Committee called tonight. After all the sterling work the party has done since the 2006 election, helped of course by my hefty donations (five figures if you go to the right of the decimal point), a very cheerful and polite and hopeful-sounding young woman wanted to ask me for another couple hundred bucks.
You know, I was on the verge earlier today of writing down the litany of the woes I read about and hear about and witness and the sense I have that we’ll be good and tangled up in these things for a good long while: The people blown to pieces day after day after day in Iraq and Afghanistan, the people losing their homes or walking away from them, the four-buck-a-gallon gasoline, and the president who says everything will be fine if we just do things his way. Then there’s the stuff we apparently just accept as part of the landscape now–our shambles of an education system (tell me, when’s the last time you heard the candidates slug it out over that?), our excellent but increasingly unaffordable system of health care, and the fact we’ve apparently decided that as a country we can’t or prefer not to pay our own way anymore.
Did I mention that domestic ferry passengers in Washington State are being accosted by border agents demanding proof of citizenship? Or the sudden and calamitous decline of the last big salmon runs in California over the last year? Declining dollar, anyone? The estimate of my state’s budget deficit for the next year increased from $8 billion to $10 billion to $20 billion in just the last four days (or maybe it didn’t).
And then I look at the parties and the trio from whom we’ll select our next president. While all of the above is transpiring, one of the Democrats has been reduced to talking about his minister’s loony views and apologizing for speaking frankly about the fear and frustration that drives the electorate. His principal opponent is capitalizing on the fear and frustration to sabotage him (and probably herself, too, in the fullness of time). The guy from the other party appears to be promising more of his predecessor’s worst policies along with a few gems of his own.
Plenty of tunnel. No light. I know this is not the glass-half-full view. I know I am not being “part of the solution.” I am not being the change I’ve been waiting for or that you’ve been waiting for either.
You know, tonight’s not a good night to ask for that two hundred bucks.
Today’s Best Expression
“As mad as a hatter.” That’s a tried and true formulation, though maybe a little archaic. One of Kate’s colleague’s has supercharged it and and updated it a little. In reference to someone who might be a little off-center, she’s fond of saying, “He’s as crazy as a f—ing mad hatter.”
So there, Charles Dodgson.
Boston Final
Some really fast people won the (men’s and women’s) Boston Marathon. Here are the final results for the two guys I was following:
Congratulations, you guys.
[Update: Pete’s time is a personal record by about 6 minutes. Pete reports, “What an amazing race! The crowds … you can really feel how attached everyone is to this race.” Crowds four and five deep along the route, kids high-fiving runners and handing out refreshments. “Coming into the big city … very fun … a lifetime experience for sure.” He also says, very soberly: “I’m drained”–and Wildflower, which I spoke of in the first Boston post earlier today, is off his calendar. I call that a wise call, with another huge challenge just two months ahead.]
Technorati Tags: boston marathon
Our Dues
What a strange ritual April 15 is. I’m guessing that for most of us, paying taxes and all that entails is our most intimate interaction with our government. Some years, I swear I get the taxes done expeditiously. Not this year. And as tax years go, this one’s a little harrowing. My mind rests easier, though, knowing that I’m paying my tax dues to pay for plenty of this instead of dead-end ideas like this.
Technorati Tags: taxes
Peace ‘n’ Love ‘n’ the Olympic Torch
The New York Times published an excellent piece this morning about the origins of the Olympic torch relay and how it relates both to the ancient Greeks and our enlightened 2008 world. The story recounts the invention of the torch-lighting ritual and relay especially for the 1936 Berlin Olympics and Leni Riefenstahl‘s intended paean to Aryan culture, the film “Olympia.” I remember the movie’s opening sequence, but had no idea at all that I was watching the birth of the whole torch routine. In the movie, the Times’s piece recounts, “the torch is conveyed from one bearer to the next and ends in Berlin at a 110,000-seat stadium where it ignites an altar of flame. Through shimmering heat the sun itself can be seen, vibrating in sympathy. And Hitler salutes the cheering crowds. This passing of the torch thus demonstrates a lineage of inheritance — a historical relay — making Nazi Germany the living heir to Ancient Greece. A claim was being staked. ”
Technorati Tags: olympics
Undergraduate Notes
In my return to college, one thing I’ve wondered is whether the undergraduate population is as out of it, history and civics-wise, as the periodic headline-grabbing “our kids can’t find Washington, D.C., on a map” studies suggest. Honestly, I haven’t talked enough with my classmates to come to any opinion. As I’ve noted before, the only thing that has really caught my attention is the distractions people readily indulge in class, especially the online kind. In class last week, I was sitting behind a guy who was reading a graphic novel on his laptop while sporadically taking notes on the lecture. Across the aisle, a woman worked on her email most of the hour. No, it wasn’t a great lecture.
Actually, I’ve been noticing something else, too. I’m taking just two classes, so what I see is hardly a basis for sweeping conclusions. But, after 10 weeks I’m pretty sure about this one: most students don’t want to speak in class, period. In both my classes, I have instructors who are given to asking questions of the assembled multitude, then glancing around the room expectantly. Sometimes the questions are obvious, sometimes they’re obscure. It makes no difference: most of the times, these expectant queries meet with silence. No: an uncomfortable silence. Maybe that’s just me: I want to talk, and I love to answer questions (to the point of being a pain in the ass about it, I sometimes think). But in one class of about 150 people, the same three or four or five people seem to do about 75 percent of the student talking; in a discussion section for the same class, it’s the same three out of 15 who speak the most week in and week out. In my Irish history class, the professor designated one full class session to questions about an upcoming paper; when he threw the floor open at the beginning of the hour, the 30 people in the room just stared at him. He said he’d just as soon return to his lecture notes if that’s how we were going to be. A couple of kids finally cracked and said something. (In this case, the professor showed that his idea of a question-and-answer session was a 15- or 20-minute answer to a single question. That left room for about three questions for our 50 minutes together.)
I had to make an appearance in the history department office last week; the advisor, who got her B.A. in her late 30s or early 40s, I think, is pretty talkative. She asked me how things were going. I told her that things are swell–only a minor exaggeration—but that I was puzzled by the reluctance of so many people to participate in class discussions. “They don’t want to look stupid,” she said, and added that she had observed the same thing when she was in class a few years back. It makes sense to me. There are few things worse than looking dumb and uncool in front of your peers. I hate it. Still: to get to Berkeley, you have to be one of those students who does very, very well in high school. Thinking back to high school, many though by no means all of the brightest kids were pretty personable and willing to speak up. I don’t know whether something has happened since then–the competitive grind to get the grades, test scores and extracurricular laurels you need to get to the right school, perhaps–but I feel like something has changed.
And in conclusion: Earlier today I came across a column that touches on this subject (maybe tangentially) by a college journalism professor at Case Western Reserve. My impression is that you have to be pretty sharp to get in there. Anyway, the teacher, Ted Gup, a former investigative reporter, has some harsh things to say about the kids who show up in his class. He starts with an anecdote: how none of the students in his seminar on government secrecy knew what rendition (the CIA kind) means. He continued:
“That instance was no aberration. In recent years I have administered a dumbed-down quiz on current events and history early in each semester to get a sense of what my students know and don’t know. Initially I worried that its simplicity would insult them, but my fears were unfounded. The results have been, well, horrifying.
“Nearly half of a recent class could not name a single country that bordered” Israel. In an introductory journalism class, 11 of 18 students could not name what country Kabul was in, although we have been at war there for half a decade. Last fall only one in 21 students could name the U.S. secretary of defense. Given a list of four countries — China, Cuba, India, and Japan — not one of those same 21 students could identify India and Japan as democracies. Their grasp of history was little better. The question of when the Civil War was fought invited an array of responses — half a dozen were off by a decade or more. Some students thought that Islam was the principal religion of South America, that Roe v. Wade was about slavery, that 50 justices sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, that the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1975. You get the picture, and it isn’t pretty.”
But Gup spends most of the column trying to find a prescription for what ails a society that excels in this paradox: It turns out bright kids, many of whom are perfectly ignorant of the world around them. Here’s the link again: “So Much for the Information Age.”
Technorati Tags: berkeley, uc berkeley
Old Business
I’m always a little relieved to discover that I’m not the only person in the world with procrastination and lack-of-work discipline issues. We watched the movie “Adaptation” again; we saw it on DVD around the time it came out, but I didn’t remember it well, and I certainly didn’t recall how much it dwells on the scriptwriter’s neuroses and lack of productivity. One passage, a voiceover as the writer sits down to his assignment, is perfect: “To begin… To begin… How to start? I’m hungry. I should get coffee. Coffee would help me think. Maybe I should write something first, then reward myself with coffee. Coffee and a muffin. So I need to establish the themes. Maybe a banana nut. That’s a good muffin.”
So, after having gone to the kitchen to refill my coffee cup, here’s something new on the procrastination/discipline front: a Wednesday op-ed from The New York Times on the biology of willpower. The basic take is this: We only have so much self-control; if you spend it on one thing–getting your writing assignment done on time–then you won’t have as much left over for that other good habit you want to pursue, like working out. But that’s not the end of the story. If you understand you’re working with a limited store of self-control, you can manage the supply; and the researchers say that practicing this kind of control is a form of exercise: it actually helps you develop more willpower:
“… It can be counterproductive to work toward multiple goals at the same time if your willpower cannot cover all the efforts that are required. Concentrating your effort on one or at most a few goals at a time increases the odds of success.
“Focusing on success is important because willpower can grow in the long term. Like a muscle, willpower seems to become stronger with use. The idea of exercising willpower is seen in military boot camp, where recruits are trained to overcome one challenge after another.
“In psychological studies, even something as simple as using your nondominant hand to brush your teeth for two weeks can increase willpower capacity. People who stick to an exercise program for two months report reducing their impulsive spending, junk food intake, alcohol use and smoking. They also study more, watch less television and do more housework. Other forms of willpower training, like money-management classes, work as well.”
***
And speaking of procrastination: Here’s something held over from a week ago. Robert Fagles, the most recent great translator of Homer and Virgil and others, died last week (here’s the New York Times obit; and here’s a little side-by-side comparison of his translations compared to past masters of the art–Fitzgerald, Pope, and Chapman). Nothing to say, really, except to take note of someone who was a superb storyteller in his own right.
“… They harnessed oxen and mules to wagons,
they assembled before the city walls with all good speed
and for nine days hauled in a boundless store of timber.
But when the tenth Dawn brought light to the mortal world
they carried gallant Hector forth, weeping tears,
and they placed his corpse aloft the pyre’s crest,
flung a torch and set it all aflame.“At last,
when young Dawn with her rose-red fingers shone once more,
the people massed around illustrious Hector’s pyre . . .
And once they’d gathered, crowding the meeting grounds,
they first put out the fires with glistening wine,
wherever the flames still burned in all their fury.
Then they collected the white bones of Hector–
all his brothers, his friends-in-arms, mourning,
and warm tears came streaming down their cheeks.
They placed the bones they found in a golden chest,
shrouding them round and round in soft purple cloths.
They quickly lowered the chest in a deep, hollow grave
and over it piled a cope of huge stones closely set,
then hastily heaped a barrow, posted lookouts all around
for fear the Achaean combat troops would launch their attack
before the time agreed. And once they’d heaped the mound
they turned back home to Troy, and gathering once again
they shared a splendid funeral feast in Hector’s honor,
held in the house of Priam, king by will of Zeus.“And so the Trojans buried Hector breaker of horses.”
–Robert Fagles: “The Iliad,” Book 24
Technorati Tags: fagles, new york times, writiing
Old Business
I’m always a little relieved to discover that I’m not the only person in the world with procrastination and lack-of-work discipline issues. We watched the movie “Adaptation” again; we saw it on DVD around the time it came out, but I didn’t remember it well, and I certainly didn’t recall how much it dwells on the scriptwriter’s neuroses and lack of productivity. One passage, a voiceover as the writer sits down to his assignment, is perfect: “To begin… To begin… How to start? I’m hungry. I should get coffee. Coffee would help me think. Maybe I should write something first, then reward myself with coffee. Coffee and a muffin. So I need to establish the themes. Maybe a banana nut. That’s a good muffin.”
So, after having gone to the kitchen to refill my coffee cup, here’s something new on the procrastination/discipline front: a Wednesday op-ed from The New York Times on the biology of willpower. The basic take is this: We only have so much self-control; if you spend it on one thing–getting your writing assignment done on time–then you won’t have as much left over for that other good habit you want to pursue, like working out. But that’s not the end of the story. If you understand you’re working with a limited store of self-control, you can manage the supply; and the researchers say that practicing this kind of control is a form of exercise: it actually helps you develop more willpower:
“… It can be counterproductive to work toward multiple goals at the same time if your willpower cannot cover all the efforts that are required. Concentrating your effort on one or at most a few goals at a time increases the odds of success.
“Focusing on success is important because willpower can grow in the long term. Like a muscle, willpower seems to become stronger with use. The idea of exercising willpower is seen in military boot camp, where recruits are trained to overcome one challenge after another.
“In psychological studies, even something as simple as using your nondominant hand to brush your teeth for two weeks can increase willpower capacity. People who stick to an exercise program for two months report reducing their impulsive spending, junk food intake, alcohol use and smoking. They also study more, watch less television and do more housework. Other forms of willpower training, like money-management classes, work as well.”
***
And speaking of procrastination: Here’s something held over from a week ago. Robert Fagles, the most recent great translator of Homer and Virgil and others, died last week (here’s the New York Times obit; and here’s a little side-by-side comparison of his translations compared to past masters of the art–Fitzgerald, Pope, and Chapman). Nothing to say, really, except to take note of someone who was a superb storyteller in his own right.
“… They harnessed oxen and mules to wagons,
they assembled before the city walls with all good speed
and for nine days hauled in a boundless store of timber.
But when the tenth Dawn brought light to the mortal world
they carried gallant Hector forth, weeping tears,
and they placed his corpse aloft the pyre’s crest,
flung a torch and set it all aflame.“At last,
when young Dawn with her rose-red fingers shone once more,
the people massed around illustrious Hector’s pyre . . .
And once they’d gathered, crowding the meeting grounds,
they first put out the fires with glistening wine,
wherever the flames still burned in all their fury.
Then they collected the white bones of Hector–
all his brothers, his friends-in-arms, mourning,
and warm tears came streaming down their cheeks.
They placed the bones they found in a golden chest,
shrouding them round and round in soft purple cloths.
They quickly lowered the chest in a deep, hollow grave
and over it piled a cope of huge stones closely set,
then hastily heaped a barrow, posted lookouts all around
for fear the Achaean combat troops would launch their attack
before the time agreed. And once they’d heaped the mound
they turned back home to Troy, and gathering once again
they shared a splendid funeral feast in Hector’s honor,
held in the house of Priam, king by will of Zeus.“And so the Trojans buried Hector breaker of horses.”
–Robert Fagles: “The Iliad,” Book 24
Technorati Tags: fagles, new york times, writiing
Unapostrophizing
Some things to clear out of the in basket (which consists of a :
Apostrophizing:By way of Lydell, news that the apostrophe is really and truly dead–or at least no one really knows what to do with it anymore. The item is from the Chicago Tribune’s Mary Schmich. She notes a momentous local occasion: The unveiling of a statue of Ernie Banks outside Wrigley Field. The exterior of the inoffensive old ballpark also hosts a hideous sculptural tribute to the celebrated late beer-swiller Harry Caray, but that’s another story. Schmich describes the legend on the Banks installation:
Was the inscription on the correct side of the granite base? Yes, it was. Right down there on Ernie’s left it said:
LETS PLAY TWO.
Let us play two. Your 5th-grade teacher taught you this. When you drop a letter between words, you insert an apostrophe. In other words:
LET’S PLAY TWO.
“I’m the sculptor, I’m not a writer,” said Cella, sounding good-natured. “I just read it the way I heard it in my head.”
I will not argue with the directive Schmich remembers her teacher imparting (if I were to argue, I’d say the directive is incomplete). What is lovely here is that the artist shrugged off the error. It was not his job to get it right. And the job of no one else, either, because lots of people saw this thing before it went public and never flagged the error. (The episode is reminiscent of one here in the Bay Area a few years ago in which an installation at a public library included several misspelled names.)
I’m sure Ernie was happy with the inscription, with or sans apostrophe. Chances are this will be the most interesting thing his old team does this year. In the spirit of Mr. Cub, I offer a slogan for the season: The Cubs will be orthographically reprobate in 2008. Catchy, huh?