Things I Learned During the Week of February 13-19

(this post was written by Kyle on February 19, 2006, and it concerns & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & )

There once was a post called . It was posted more often than you could look. It showed up once a week, looking tired and meek. But was also as long as a book.

Here are some of the things I learned this week…

  1. …from movies:
    • That there’s only so many times I can watch a movie about a troubled family in a hypocritical suburb. This entire genre should be banned for at least one generation. Let’s see what happens when suburban kids grow up without watching troubled suburban kids. On the same note, let’s prevent kids from reading Catcher in the Rye. Instead of all that, they’ll watch documentaries about foreign cultures and read books written by Asians, Africans, and South Americans. Maybe, just maybe, suburban kids (of which I am one) will stop worrying about how “tough” their lives are (especially when Netflix doesn’t send their movies fast enough) and learn how to use their inherited power for good. Because in some sense, suburban kids are the princes of yesterday. It’s time they learned how to wield the silver spoon as a mighty sword of justice.
    • Great movies are always great. They’re timeless. But at the same time, they catch the time period they’re made in. And usually, when all is said and done, it’s those time-inspired bits that end up being timeless. Think of that scene in , where Walter Thatcher (the J.P. Morgan-like character), after sending a 25-year-old Kane a letter listing Kane’s fortune and some advice on what to do with it, gets a response from Kane that reads:
      Sorry, but I’m not interested in gold mines, oil wells, shipping or real estate…One item on your list intrigues me, the New York Inquirer, a little newspaper I understand we acquired in a foreclosure proceeding. Please don’t sell it. I’m coming back to America to take charge. I think it would be fun to run a newspaper.

      Then Thatcher repeats the last line, his head looking in different directions with each word, “I think it would be fun to run a newspaper.” Then he looks directly at the camera, and growls.

      That’s right. He growls at the camera. You couldn’t get away with such a thing today in a drama of Kane’s weight. It would come off campy. But watching it now, knowing it was filmed in 1941, well, it’s part of what makes the movie so great, and so fun to watch.

    • That a TV series that bases a large part of its dramatic movement on the sexual tension between two characters can only do one of two things:
      • pop the cork too early and lose what could be a great story arc (think Chandler and Monica; the two of them got together in a period of like three episodes or some shit; not to mention the fact that every story line having to do with them was just no good, and not to mention that Monica emasculated Chandler, killing off one of the funniest characters of the nineties and replacing him with a sniveling little wimp); or
      • drag the tension on so long that your fans stop becoming curious or anxious, and simply grow annoyed (think Ross and Rachel).

      It’s the latter effect that is happening to us as we watch the DVDs of (we’re on the third season). Luckily, the show has so much more than just the tension between Fleishman and O’Connell, so it’s getting to the point where that particular story line, for me anyway, is just an anchor around the rest of the show. My girlfriend, on the other hand, seems most concerned with their hooking up. Either bring the tension to climax, or put it out of its misery. That’s all that I ask.

  2. …from books:
    • That there is an argument in John Dewey’s that leads to the idea of videogames as a healthy exercise in world building, as opposed to “real” world building, which, as we can see in Iraq, involves the necessary presence of death and destruction. The idea is about three dozen steps away from what Dewey is writing about, but it’s there, on page 32 and 33 of my edition (pp 18-20 of the newer edition - according to Google’s book search anyway).

      It comes when Dewey is talking about Francis Bacon and his concept of scientific laws and principles, which “do not lie on the surface of nature. They are hidden, and must be wrested from nature by an active and elaborate technique of inquiry.” Aside from my question about his use of the word “wrested” (and his later analogy, “as torture may compel an unwilling witness to reveal what he has been concealing”), I understand Dewey as arguing in favor of “a logic of discovery.” But when put into a social and political world, there is a real danger that any progressive moves we might make will result in even more terrible conditions. It’s a necessary danger — when one is arguing in favor of the future, one is arguing in favor of the unknown, or as Dewey writes, “Science means invasion of the unknown” — but with today’s technology, it is possible to construct a model of one’s progressive plans. It is possible to use virtual reality as a place of experimentation. It’s possible to construct a virtual system where “world builders” can test the veracity of their systematic ideals.

      Of course, the danger here is also political. If revolutionary thinkers concern themselves with building the best virtual world they can think of, what happens to the real world? Could an argument be made in favor of leaving the real world to itself? Is focusing on the virtual world — which is little more than manifestation of a personal world — the ultimate in local thinking? Perhaps. But if people concentrated their ideals in that virtual space where ideals may actually have some real merit, and then just went about their business in the real world, interacting with other people as other people, and not as objects to be manipulated or used to serve one’s own interests — not to mention thinking of nature not as a resource to be used, or as an unwilling witness to be tortured, but as an Other that must be respected on its own terms — then perhaps the world would be a little better off. In other words, put all our sick little dreams into building virtual worlds, and let the real world exist on its own.

    • That I hesitate to understand Dewey too quickly, though it’s a bit disconcerting to see his use of words such as “wrested,” “invasion,” and “torture.” Now, he could be using this language because he’s talking about Bacon, meaning, he picked up Bacon’s metaphor; unfortunately, I haven’t read anything substantial of Bacon’s, so I can’t be sure. If not, however, I can see why Dewey is a truly American philosopher, and why the metaphors that he has set up leads to the Neo-conservative agenda. Again, I hesitate to understand him too quickly, especially since I haven’t read his most important books, one of which is one the the National Conservative Weekly’s “.” My ears are perked up, though.
    • That starting with an admitted fictional representation of an “original human” in order to build an argument can be sucessful, provided one doesn’t judge the rest of history based on that admitted fictional representation. Both Rousseau and Dewey begin this way, but Rousseau uses it to condemn society, which corrupted “original man”, while Dewey uses it to demonstrate how we might have got where we are, and how we might use such knowledge to construct a better future. The difference (looking to a better past vs. looking to a better future) makes all the difference. Rousseau ends up looking ridiculous (in the margin of the copy he was reading of Rousseau’s , Voltaire wrote such things as, “Pitiful!,” “Pretty bad metaphysics,” and “Ridiculous supposition!”); Dewey, on the other hand, ends up looking rigorous.
    • That, as much as I can’t stand Rousseau’s judgement upon humanity and its development, he did do me the tremendous service of inspiring the form of the argument I shall make in my senior study, “Of Creative Nonphilosophy.”
    • That Derrida, once again, comes through when I need him. Looking for more inspiration for my senior study, I came across this passage in his introductory essay to , entitled, “Tympan:”
      If philosophy has always intended, from its point of view, to maintain its relation with the nonphilosophical, that is the antiphilosophical, with the practices and knowledge, empirical or not, that constitutes its other, if it has constituted itself according to this purposive entente with its outside, if it has always intended to hear itself speak, in the same language, of itself and something else, can one, strictly speaking, determine a nonphilosophical place, a place of exteriority or alterity, from which one might still treat of philosophy? Is there any ruse not belonging to reason to prevent philosophy from still speaking of itself, from borrowing its categories from the logos of the other, by affecting itself without delay, on the domestic page of its own tympanum (still the muffled drum, the tympanon, the cloth stretched taut in order to take its beating, to amortize impressions, to make the types (typoi) resonate, to balance the striking pressure of the typtein, between the inside and the outside), with heterogeneous percussion? Can one violently penetrate philosophy’s field of listening without its immediately — even pretending in advance, by hearing what is said of it, by decoding the statement — making the penetration resonate with itself, appropriating the emission for itself, familiarly communicating it to itself between the inner and middle ear, following the path of a tube or inner opening, be it round or oval? In other words, can one puncture the tympanum of a philosopher and still be heard and understood by him?

      One can take that as the open question of my senior study.

  3. …from the web:
    • That , the Mac only web browser from Mozilla, hit version 1.0 this week, and that it crashes a hell of a lot less than — actually, it hasn’t crashed yet. The only thing I can’t stand about it is that, for some reason, it won’t respect my desire for tabbed browsing. While it has tabbed browsing, it still lets the browser open new windows instead of new tabs. I’m going to keep using Camino for now, but if they don’t fix this in the next update, I’m going back to Firefox.
    • That will no longer serve as the real world model of , aka the voluptuous Tomb Raider. The sexier half of Brangelina has been replaced by Karima Adebe, who, before landing the gig, was a sales assistant at Top Shop in London. Oh, and she was a model too.
    • That my friend Angie is a grown-up blogger now, leaving behind the teendom of Live Journal for a space on Blogspot, appropriately titled, “.”
    • That there are liberals in Idaho, who, despite the threats of Homeland Security officers, will stand up for their rights.
    • That you don’t have to know what you’re talking about in order to be considered an expert by PC Magazine.
    • That talented people can do some really cool shit with Photoshop, especially when they enter a contest, and especially when the rule of the contest is to alter some other shape into a cube, square, or rectangle. Here’s one example, but almost all of the entries are impressive.
    • That the Victoria’s Secret catalog from 1977 isn’t as sexual as the one from 2003, despite the fact that both catalogs are selling lingerie. When you’re looking at the photos, compare the body positions and the looks in the women’s eyes, as in this photo from ‘77 and this one from ‘03. Also, notice how the catalog from ‘77 includes photos of groups of women, groups in which they appear totally silent and disinterested, despite the fact they are drinking tea or opening gifts. Generally speaking, they just look bored. In the ‘03 catalog, however, all the women are alone, and if they’re not in the middle of some seemingly paradoxical catatonic orgasm, then they’re looking directly at the camera, as if to say, “I’m dressed like this for you.” Just by looking at these two catalogs, we can catch a glimpse at the way the idea of sexiness has evolved in the last quarter of a century.
    • That the controversy between the teachers and the administration in my hometown’s public school system has continued for at least one more week, spilling over into a Swampscott High School PTA meeting.
    • That there are really nice people out there, one of which has “” a very intriguing slide from a presentation about the “” for the non-technical, more business-oriented crowd.
    • That I like when people rag on the new interface for Outlook by quoting a Wilco song.
    • That Absinthe makes a good date-rape drink and that it helped Marilyn Manson find a wife.
    • That bloggers are the new etymologists [the Anil Dash permalinks don't work right now, so if you need to, it's the post for February 19].
    • That there’s something called that shows the earth breathing. According to a great article in this month’s Playboy, entitled, “What’s Going On Here,” Tim Flannery writes that the graph…
      …is one of the most wonderful things I’ve ever seen. In it, you can see our planet breathing. During every northern spring, as the sprouting greenery extracts CO2 from our atmosphere, the great aerial ocean, our earth begins a massive inspiration, which is recorded on the graph as a fall in CO2 concentration. Then in the northern autumn, as decomposition generates CO2, there is an exhalation that enriches the air with the gas…Looking back, I see the graph as a - the best-selling book that kickstarted the grassroots environmental movement — of climate change (p. 68).

  4. …from life:
    • That when one of your friends gets married in an extremely informal ceremony, so informal that no friends are invited, it’s great to have recording equipment around so that you and the rest of the bridegroom’s friends can record a radio show playing on the fact that none of us were actually at the wedding. All of which means that this week’s Coffee with Commuters is very funny. If all goes well, the file size will be small enough for me to put on the web for you to listen to.
    • That white russians are still a really good drink.
    • That no matter how old my girlfriend gets, it will always be okay to buy her a videogame-related product for Valentine’s Day.
    • That I really want to be able to make it through my life without having to deal with mice or rats, and that if you ignore it long enough, apparently the neighborhood cats will help you out.
    • That one of the most important finds in African-American studies in recent years deals is who remembers being taken from Africa, who recalls what it was like to be a slave among Christians, who earned his freedom by fighting in the Revolutionary War, and who went on to buy property not more than a mile from where I sit in Poultney, Vermont, which is also the first state that abolished slavery — actually, it never allowed it: slavery was abolished in the state’s original constitution, adopted in 1777.
    • That I thoroughly enjoy listening to a playlist I made a long time ago, but haven’t listen to in a while, called “Writing Tunes.” It includes:
      • Whipping Post, by the Allman Brothers
      • Baka Play Baka, by Baka Beyond
      • Mars Needs Women (1 & 2), by Bela Fleck and the Flecktones
      • All the jams from the deluxe edition of Blind Faith
      • Elysium, by Branford Marsalis
      • Eyesight to the Blind -> Why Does Love Got To Be Sad, by Clapton and Santana (thanks Josh!)
      • A shitload of Zappa, off Shut Up ‘N Play Yer Guitar
      • Some Gov’t Mule, off Live at Roseland Ballroom, and a tune from Wallingford, 02-26-05
      • A sweet set from Ladies & Gentlemen, The Grateful Dead, along with some stuff off So Many Roads
      • Phish’s Darien Jams from Darien Lake, 9-14-2000
      • The Stella Blue instrumental from Phil and Phriends
      • Some Mingus, some Brubeck, and some Herbie Hancock
    • That Chris Conner could be a bit of a genius.

And that’s it this week. Thanks for rubbing all up in my Gobbledygook.