flip the pig

MOVED

2008-03-01T09:40:00.002-07:00

We've moved back to wordpress - update your links, five readers!

It's a weird world out there.

2008-02-13T15:32:00.005-07:00

Today started a little strangely.

In my ongoing effort to shield a certain husband of mine from my SportsCenter addiction and statistical / win-loss observation / bracket preparation, I watch ESPN in the mornings at the gym. I don't mind that it repeats, but I do mind when someone "accidentally" changes it from Sports Center to plain ol' ESPN News. BO-RING. Anyway, this morning ESPN was covering the much ballyhooed appearance of Roger Clemens before members of the House committee on steroids in baseball this morning. Somehow, the whiz collection at ESPN managed to create a montage using highlights of Clemens' lawyer talking, George Mitchell delivering the report, any and all follow-up news coverage, and Brian McNamee's lawyer talking. I'd never seen a lawyer highlight before, but there's a first time for everything.

Here's something that's not at all weird - today my Grandma (we call her Gommy) turns 90. I asked her today if she was excited to be getting past 89. Her answer: "Man Alive!" In May she had a stroke - or a series of strokes - and was on the mend for most of the summer. Now, though, she seems mostly recovered and is in good spirits and relatively good health. What a blessing!

We moved in with Gommy in 1984. I know my brother, sister, and I have benefitted from her wisdom, her sharing life lessons regarding not drinking any water if you've been bombed on champagne, and her immesurable contribution to our lives, our projects, and our day-to-day well- being (including and especially the introduction of Apple Jacks to my diet circa 1987). I told her as much today, and I'm grateful that despite the strokes and other health challenges she's faced in the last year, she's seen it through to this day. I wished her as many more as she can handle.

Oh dear.

2008-02-08T11:32:00.000-07:00

So I'm going to write about politics here, and I won't make a habit of it. Until recently I've occupied a corner of the fashionable apathetic tent. I do want to comment, though on what I find to be puzzling, and that's all this vitriol directed at John McCain.

It's baffling to me that McCain, whose recent political career contains instances of *gasp!* working with democrats, can't be trusted precisely on those grounds. This is crazy talk. One of the things that has moved me to stand outside of the apathetic tent is the possibility that there will be a candidate on the ballot in November who is thinking in terms of progress, and not entirely ideology. Politics in this country has to be pragmatic to a degree, and that's the lesson of the last sixteen years. Dynastic politics comes with divisive philosophical commitments, cronyism, and other skull-and-bones BS. That thinking has gotten us nowhere - people are still poor, our schools are still suffering, kids can't get the health care they need because costs too much (!), our soldiers can't get the care they need when returning from war, we're still arguing about abortion instead of dealing with the issues at the root of the problem, and so on, and so on.

Here's the thing. No Joe American wins when ideology is driving political choices, either by the administration or party in power or by the factions of people in this country who are similarly motivated. It seems like it's time to start solving problems - from what I can tell, John McCain and Barack Obama (or "Oback Arama" as one reader of this blog mistakenly mentioned one night) are the only candidates who have the sense and credibility to make progress. And it's high time politics in America focuses on some pragmatic mix of philosophy and progress.

What words are next to you?

2008-02-07T18:49:00.001-07:00

Susan has tagged me with this meme. I will participate.

Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. No cheating! The nearest book is Magda King's A Guide to Heidegger's Being and Time

Find Page 123. Find the first 5 sentences. Post the next 3 sentences: "The phenomenon of conscience and the new formulation of care prepare the ground for finding the answer to the question, How is it possible for man to understand being? Although Heidegger does not expressly say so, the internal evidence compellingly points to the conclusion that here is the basis from which Division Three would have to start. The immediate function of the long preparatory inquiry, however, is to lead up to the second half of Division Two."

Tag 5 people: The Author; David; Drew. Really, besides Susan I only know a handful of bloggers.

Relief!

2008-02-02T10:17:00.000-07:00

First: 207 improv types freeze simultaneously in the great hall of Grand Central Station. Amazing!

After a few weeks in the desert of American Gladiators, Pros vs. Joes, reruns of The Office and The Biggest Loser, LOST has returned. It could not have come at a better time. Last week we recorded Antiques Roadshow in HD.

I was really impressed with Thursday's episode because the writers have managed to move the story forward. Moving the story forward is not the same as answering questions, but in the age of overblown plot-lines and questionable character development being able to advance the plot is an achievement to behold on network television. Lance Reddick asking Hurley "Are they still alive?" cemented the future trajectory of the show. It also managed to give us the specter of a villain, which the show needs. Sorry to those of you opposed to binary oppositions, but a good story needs a villain (or at least an entire cast of characters with questionable morals - cue the Wire).

I am part of a telly-obsessed family, so most of us gathered last night for tapas and LOST deconstruction. The hawkeye - my sister, KK - confirmed that it was Jack's dad in the rocking chair. Cue speculation! This will send a few of us hunting for Christian Shepherd in the next few episodes.

According to AICN, no Jack flashback/forward in sight. Michael is guaranteed to return in the last ep of this short season. Good! Who cares about Jack!?

Also returned (to my great joy): Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares on BBCA - it's not as good or as entertaining when bleeped, but the stories are still horrifying. We watched the first episode of Eli Stone, and I thought it was pretty good. The George Michael soundtrack didn't hurt.

Making the old new ... again

2008-01-21T11:04:00.000-07:00

In response to my earlier post on Will Okun's approach to the classics, regular reader and commenter SA makes the following observation: One might ask whether we read classic literature in order to affirm specific truths of some kind, or to discover something? If the former, it would make a great deal more sense to offer students some texts which contain the same truths as older texts but do so in language that is intelligible to them. I agree with SA's point that if the task is mere affirmation (i.e., we're trying to teach life lessons here), then the old text isn't necessarily necessary. I wonder though, in response to this point, if discovery and affirmation aren't two sides of the same coin, particularly when teaching older texts.

She continues with a nice turn of phrase: Perhaps, for those teachers finding sleeping students a problem, encouraging students to approach these supposedly "irrelevant" texts more like a sleuth than a slave would keep some students awake in class.

I like the "sleuth" idea a good deal, and find that when we're hunting and happen upon something it's pretty good. I'm trying this out in the first part of my introductory class by re-configuring the way we look at Descartes and Hume. Previously I taught Descartes and Hume in the context of epistemology only, but this semester I'm using a "span" approach to these thinkers, with the aim of talking about the connections between worldview, knowledge, God, and structure.

For example, I'm beginning with Part II of Descartes' Discourse on Method (1637) to try and divine the approach he'll take to the investigations in the Meditations (1641-42). The idea here is that we are able to understand - from the Discourse - more directly the kinds of values that Descartes thinks are important when it comes to the discovery of knowledge. Then we will examine the Meditations (1-3, 6) to see how well his stated values are honored. We'll look at portions of Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748) - especially sections 2-7 - and see which values Hume emphasizes with respect to knowledge, and see how they emerge in Parts II and V of the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (published posthumously in 1779), which is Hume's thoroughgoing attack on monotheism and Natural Theology.

The aim here is for students to see the texts in three ways: first, in terms of philosophical content - these texts form classic answers to the questions "What can we know?" and "What can we know about the existence of God?" Second, they should see and evaluate these texts in terms of their consistency by considering structural questions - are the stated approaches and positions of the earlier works honored and consistently expressed in the later work? Third, they must consider the models and structures offered by Descartes and Hume in terms of their own body of knowledge - what do they value when it comes to epistemological matters? This approach to the text should model the discovery - affirmation continuum that SA discusses above.

This disrupts the order of the textbook I'm using, but that doesn't bother me too much. It seems like at the beginning of every semester I'm thinking of new ways to approach the problem of teaching equivalent classics in my discipline. This is a funny thing, because my teaching (and probably life) mentor has been teaching literature for 35 years, and he starts over every time. I wonder if this problem changes when one is a minister/pastor. Probably not, but I'd be interested to find out.

The tale's in the telling.

2008-01-18T10:30:00.000-07:00

The NYT has a special section devoted to the presently-absent Awards Season. Here, you can find Manolha Dargis raving - again - about David Fincher's Zodiac. There's also a little article in the side bar about editing, which I happen to think is pretty interesting and important. Here's the link to the article.

One fascinating thing about the film theory class I took last year was that it demanded I look beyond the content of a story to see how it was being told. I was given the tools to give attention to things like shot composition (tools which bubble to the surface during all episodes of Heroes, when such poorly composited shots are thrown in to save the sinking story) and editing. But I don't think training in film language is necessary to watch well, though. It just gives a little more vocabulary for what we're seeing in action.

Anyway, read about the editors ... and that intrepid fellow who edited The Bourne Supremacy. Cue vomiting!

I liked The Bourne Supremacy, but it made me sick to watch it. And a little worked up.

Making the old new (?)

2008-01-10T15:35:00.000-07:00

This morning I found a well-timed little reflection in the NYT. Will Okun (guest-blogging for Nicholas Kristof in the Times) gives an "on the ground" perspective of the usefulness of teaching classics in the urban high school classroom. I'd recommend reading the post, but I'll comment on a couple of points he makes. Here's his opening salvo:

Of course, it is my responsibility as a teacher to engage the students in these classics so they can understand, analyze and appreciate the writings of our greatest thinkers. But I cannot. I have tried strategy after strategy, sought advice upon advice, and still, I am unable to spark sustainable interest in the vast majority of my students. Few students do the readings and even fewer seriously consider the ideas or themes presented in these writings. The class discussions are disgracefully unanimated and the student essays are dull, tedious and impersonal. For most students in my class, the months dedicated to the canons of Western literature are a dreadful waste of time. And yes, I know, this failure is mostly my fault.

Okun continues by explaining that his students are moved by authors that speak more directly to their situation, which by all accounts is determined by ethnicity and economic standing - instead of, say, Hardy (sorry AV) they are motivated by Wright or Angelou. He seems to salvage the class discussions and sleeping students with authors generally marginalized by the canon (although he doesn't say how he makes this transformation ... a miracle!). He all but leaves the classics to the "miracle workers" and runs by a mantra of "if it doesn't motivate student discussion, then why are we teaching it?"

Okun concludes:

The books I hope will foster the students’ love of reading are well written, intelligent, thought-provoking and clearly relevant. If these books produce more response, thought, engagement, learning and other academic results from the students, shouldn’t these writings form the backbone of my literature class? Considering my abilities as a teacher and the personal and academic interests of my students, I believe I am better serving the present and future needs of my students by offering more accessible readings that will hopefully ignite a lifelong passion for reading. After all, isn’t it better to have read and learned, than never to have read at all?

I can sympathize with Okun here, because - believe it or not - making texts relevant to students is something that rings true with every philosophy teacher out there, unless they don't care.

I mean, how do you make epistemology interesting and accessible to the freshman intro student without sticking Descartes in the stove, or giving some discussion about Hume's turban, penchant for backgammon, Kant's precise 3:00 walk, etc. etc.? This may sound like a stupid lesson, but it's one I learned early on last semester - these little trifles are good for a chuckle, but they don't make philosophy any more accessible, and they don't make it any more substantively interesting, either (although we may all pause to wonder in amazement that these trifles remain really important to me).

Also, a lot of what's out there and "relevant" (at least by Okun's lights) in my discipline is potentially too difficult to hand to the introductory student without the requisite background. Part of what makes Franz Fanon or Simone deBeauvoir interesting is the context they're reacting against - to appropriate philosophy for your group or your gender is to say hey, Descartes was wrong and here's where he falls short. I don't get this sense of context from Okun, and missing context is a big problem when it comes to teaching out of books. I guess what I'm puzzled by is Okun's insistence that all one can do is read the classics and teach only old lessons from them. Isn't the fundamental challenge of teaching in the liberal arts and humanities (especially) taking the classics and seeing lessons that fit our world?

There's really no reason to bulldoze your students with the idea that the "seminal texts" are that for a reason and are not to be challenged, and must be taught no matter what. In other words, the CANON (at least in philosophy) might be a dang myth, perpetuated by people who are intimidated by - or can't teach - the "classics." That's a bold statement, but I think we'd do better to think and teach in terms of a continuum, rather than a canon, or an atomistic approach dictated solely by social factors. That's my training though - the teachers who I hope to emulate have approached books - philosophical, historical, literary, or otherwise - in this way.

Anyway, it was a provocative little article.

One Year ... Milestone

2008-01-10T08:27:00.000-07:00

Weirdly enough, today is one year since I made my hosting debut at KUVO. Pretty exciting. KUVO has an awesome play list function - you can search for songs or shows that you liked. The shows I've hosted (and AV has planned) are linked to the left.

At least Hurley liked it.

2008-01-08T19:28:00.000-07:00

On a tip from a friend, I started looking for reviews of LOST and Philosophy. The amazon customer reviews are nice (my chapter even gets a direct mention). It appears Jorge Garcia - who plays Hurley on the show - likes the mention of his character as exemplifying Mill's Utilitarianism. Hmmm.

So much for that idea ...

2008-01-03T18:47:00.000-07:00

We have spent the last week playing the Nintendo Wii with AV's family. I have tennis/bowling elbow. We tried other games, but tennis and bowling were more fun, faster, and captivating to watch (which is weird, I know) than the real thing ... mostly.

In more news about things I like, season five of The Wire starts on Sunday night. I can barely contain myself. We recently worked our way back through seasons three and four, and could not believe the storytelling, craftsmanship (in terms of writing, directing and acting). Even AV, champion of David Milch and Deadwood as the best show on television recanted after seeing these last two seasons. It's like a novel on television, and almost every article out there makes some kind of comparison to Dickens. That's good, because I don't read novels anymore I may as well watch them. Certain circles of mine will be horrified by that statement.

Two articles: The Angriest Man in Television; The Believer - Interview with David Simon (by Nick Hornby). Follow at your own peril, since social realism generally employs bad language.

Susan has indicated her plans to blog about her in-process thesis - I begin the research phase of mine this semester, and so I am interested in bits and pieces here and there. No New Years Resolutions (or erroneously-titled "Long-Term Projects," which faded by June last year) this year - just hopes for health, happiness, and full Intro to Philosophy courses.

Back, Looking

2007-12-16T18:05:00.000-07:00

I'm relieved to announce that all that is left is grading. I shouldn't say "all," I guess, because that is pretty much everything. In the last week I finished up an internship, finished up an article on lies and special effects (that I thought wasn't due until next week, but there's nothing like working under pressure, right?), and said goodbye to the 106 students who made it through to the end of the semester.

As a celebration, we saw I Am Legend this afternoon. Some individual decided it would be a good idea to bring his young children to see this film. There is a series of gut-wrenching scenes - even for adults - that made one of the kiddos cry. That poor kid continued whimpering for a little bit, and that little sound of despair set me crying. Fortunately, the family left shortly after that ... and a good thing too. The movie was a little more than intense. Exhibit A: I spent about 75 minutes with my hand over my mouth in an attempt to muffle a scream that I was certain would come out of my mouth at any second. Exhibit B: the woman two seats over who insisted on narrating the film for us at regular speaking volume: "Oh, he must need that specimen for scientific purposes."

Those who know me and tolerate my company know I'm a regular reader of Ken Jennings' blog. After last week's announcement that Alex Trebek suffered a minor heart attack, he wrote this post. Best wishes for a swift recovery, Trebek. Come back soon to continue putting the screws to folks in the studio audience asking you poorly-conceived questions!

There's a lot more in my mind than I can muster the typing strength for, but I hope that the next week or so will return this pasttime to a semi-regular status. I'm looking forward to a spring semester threatened, not by the grading required by 121 students, but by Husserl and Heidegger (and maybe even Levinas and Derrida ... but who knows), preparation for a Master's Thesis, and another go-round with Intro to Philosophy and Logic. At least in the interim, I'm looking forward to a break.

28 On The Way

2007-11-25T17:13:00.000-07:00

I turn 28 tomorrow.

Being 27 has been much better - and as a whole much more interesting - than 26 was (as evidenced by this post, made about this time last year). In the last year I've had two things in print, I started a volunteer career in radio (again), I went to my 10 year high school reunion, I saw an unbelievable storm blow in over the Atlantic Ocean while on vacation, I've been able to play volleyball with my usual gusto, and I've made a career teaching (and doing some) philosophy. Good!

I'm grateful for AV, for my friends and family, blessed and lucky to have people of note (GinaOscar! Molly! James! Meagan! Susan! Dave! KentMarilyn! BQP!) in my life, and hopeful that the next year will be just as interesting as the last one. That's not too much to ask, right? Never a dull moment?

Arrived

2007-11-20T09:57:00.001-07:00

November has been quiet for a couple of reasons, not the least of which being the massive strain of work I am fighting. Six classes is too much, too exhausting, and too much grading! I have a week off, which is much needed and well-earned.

In other news, you can now find Lost and Philosophy: the Island Has Its Reasons in bookstores everywhere, as of today. A great birthday present (because really, everything that happens within one week on either side of November 26 counts as a birthday present).

Thanksgiving this year will be spent with my folks, brother, and grandma. Always a good spread of food, and of course good company. AV has perfected the brussels sprouts cooking (with bacon and high heat), and they're excellent. While I generally pride myself on being an adventurous eater, one thing (among a few, really) that I cannot abide is turkey. For some reason, I have never liked it. So I make my thanksgiving dinner from side dishes, which are aplenty - the aforementioned brussels sprouts, rice pilaf, jello with fruit in it, rolls, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and - the piece de resistance - green bean casserole.

I'm a real grinch about holidays (and here's a brief explanation of why), but I do love getting together with family and friends to sit around and eat, drink and visit. I love the visiting.

A (very) Tiny Rebuke

2007-10-22T16:23:00.001-06:00

At last night's dinner table:

Aunt Pucky: ... Yep, we got our boots kicked!
Niece MK: Pucky, that's sinning. When you talk naughty, you are sinning.
MK's Mommy: Yes MK. That's right. When you talk naughty, you are sinning.
Aunt Pucky: What? I said boots! I didn't say anything naughty! I meant boots like "booty!"

Stage Directions: Niece MK looks at Aunt over her eyebrows (a la George Clooney); Aunt Pucky shuts up and keeps eating.

Great (?) Moments in Teaching

2007-10-17T20:07:00.001-06:00

One thing I love about teaching philosophy is the occasional break it takes into narrative. In general, this can be dangerous and it is something I've tried to avoid. In my first semester of teaching, I received a comment on an evaluation that said "teacher tends to babble." After that evaluation, I consciously tried to remove myself and my stories (perhaps what I thought were useful illustrations) from my teaching. Lately - and motivated mainly by exhaustion - these stories have managed to creep back in. I'm not sure of their effectiveness in delivering content, but too bad! It's too late now!

Today I was discussing A.J. Ayer's "Freedom and Necessity." Ayer says that we are responsible for our actions (and have chosen freely) just in case (a) there were options from which we could choose (this elusive notion that "I could have chosen otherwise"), (b) we were not acting under pressure from some neruosis, and (c) we were not being compelled to act by any certain agent. While not all of us act compulsively - Ayer cites the kleptomaniac, who has no choice but to steal - we might be able to recognize points at which our agency (point (c) above) has been made forefit for some reason, and in such cases (c) we may not be held responsible for our actions. In order to illustrate what Ayer is after here, I told a story about my brother and sister.

When Patric(k) was a young feller, he thought once it would be a good idea to take a puff of our neighbor's smoldering cigarette. As he proceeded to take a drag, our sister Kerry walked in the room and caught him smoking the cigarette. For some unknown reason, Kerry determined she suddenly had some leverage. For the next many years anytime Kerry wanted something, she would ask Patrick to take care of it for her, "or else" ... generally under the threat of telling mom and dad that Patrick smoked that cigarette at Jo's. Many is in bold for a reason - I don't think it came to light until Patrick's early adulthood that Kerry had a cigarette over his head for fifteen or so years. In any case, this is an effective demonstration of constraint because Patrick's actions were - at least on Ayer's account - never free, as long as they were motivated by Kerry and the threat of telling. My students got a chuckle out of this story, and so they will be writing a quiz on Friday about Kerry, Patrick, and constrained actions.

Stories are also highly effective when I teach Kant's second articulation of the Categorical Imperative ("act as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end in itself, never only as means"). I always take a survey of how many students have waited tables or worked in retail - these are prime areas where an individual, a rational being with plans, projects, and goals have been used as mere means to someone else's end. In one of my ethics classes on Tuesday, this took a hilarious and unbelievably raucous turn into "what's the worst job you've ever had?" and/or "what's the worst interaction you've had with someone at work?" Some of my students who wait tables for a living educated their peers about their hourly wage ($3.64 an hour) and the consequences of not being tipped and receiving voided salary checks. Another student discussed the day in her job at the airport when a woman whose flight from Aspen was delayed threw her bags over the counter at my student's head.

Besides an extended version of the "what's worse" game ("Being Electrocuted"), Tuesday's class had an interesting unintended consequence of demonstrating why individuals should be respected - why servers should be given tips, why gate agents should be treated kindly, why you should be patient with retail employees, etc. In fact, one of my students said they would never stiff a server again, because now they have a face with the plight. Even if they didn't learn anything about Kant, at least they learned some common decency for folks in the service industry.

I refrained, I should say, from giving the "You treat your professor as mere means when ... " lecture, although I was sorely tempted. Alas, I refrained. We'll see if I can corral the conversation tomorrow.

I am a bandwagoneer.

2007-10-17T06:28:00.000-06:00

I have never watched the Rockies with any seriousness, ever. In fact, my fan-ness of baseball links only to those disastrous Mets. In any case, I count myself among the disbelieving class of Colorado residents who finally got behind the Rockies when things started going well. And really, they're playing exciting sports - I like exciting sports.

Interestingly enough, the New York Times has given a burst of Rockies coverage over the last few weeks (for unsurprising reasons). Suddenly, Dan O'Dowd's recruiting and managing paradigm (Denny Neagle, who?) is a good one.

Crazy Jobs I've Had

2007-10-09T09:11:00.000-06:00

Here is a list of crazy jobs I've had in my life:

(1) Replacement ~~troops~~ babysitter after my sister sliced her hand open while opening a can of Chef Boyardee. My sister was paid in "combat pay" after that.

(2) Algebra tutor for at least three people. I'm not sure that was such a good idea, but I think some of them passed.

(3) Cashier at "tacos at the mall," serving tacos and churros that rotated for goodness knows how long.

(4) Graduate Assistant in Student Activities, which was a good time EXCEPT for those instances of having to scrape drunken vomit out of the back of a bus with a dustpan. Or having to wipe the drunken vomit off the bathroom wall at the location of the fall formal.

(5) Summer Conferences, at the beck and call of 400 screaming cheerleaders, their coaches, and their camp organizers (who were not informed by any discussions I had with corporate about the apparently dangerous floor I ordered) ... Kristen and Chris, I know you're out there!

HT: Scot McKnight

Week Seven

2007-10-01T17:15:00.000-06:00

I am counting weeks.

This weekend I attended a departmental gathering (perhaps one of the most enjoyable of these sorts of things, ever) with my former professors and now colleagues. In particular, it was funny to hear Tom Duggan (the Grand Ole Opry of R's philosophy department) relate a story from one of his first outings as a Jesuit Scholastic, which involved scaring the living crap out of a study hall full of freshman boys. And one of the freshman boys in this story is the father of one of my former classmates and acquaintances. This acquaintance of mine won the venerable "Mr. Regis" competition by stuffing 78 grapes in his mouth, which I - in my co-hosting Vanna White get up (an old prom dress) - had to catch as they came out of his mouth in a hail of spit and grape juice. Memories. Pretty entertaining, if I do say so myself.

Speaking of memories, AV and I are s-l-o-w-l-y making our way through The War. We just finished the second episode last night, and one thing I found myself enjoying immensely was the color photographs and color film, particularly of Tunisia. It's a habit of students of history to imagine things in black and white (or in bland half-color, thank you Steven Spielberg*), thanks to newsreel images. It's a surprise and a kind of visual shock to see events of WWII recorded in color. We are still with last week's observations about all the foley work (Crash! Bang! Boom! Explode three times for effect!). But, the stories are still good and riveting, and I even teared up a little bit when I saw Rosie burning holes in airplane parts. Women's lib, man!

*The notable exception is Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line (1998), which is in full color and features a pre-JC Jim Caveziel in a heartbreaking role. It's Malick, so it's poetry and amazing, but I'm not sure if it aspires to be the historical document that Saving Private Ryan (also 1998) does.

In other news, I had "the talk" with one of my classes about the persistent text messaging. One of our class meetings last week was an absolute zoo - people were talking, texting (you know, as if I can't see what you're doing), sleeping, the whole works. It's exhausting to try and teach in those conditions, because it's so damned distracting. I told my students as much this afternoon, and as I was giving the talk I'm pretty sure that one of the students was sending a text message. AV and I had an enjoyable conversation with another teacher this weekend, and she suggested a kind of in-school scrambler for cell phone signals. It's like the TV-B-Gone but for beleaguered teachers. A battle I'll never win, I guess.

I'm planning to spend at least part of the evening watching the ROCKIES hopefully pull out one of the most exciting playoff chases in recent memory. I need something to distract me from the a-miserable Mets' catastrophic collapse yesterday. This picture, which was on the front of this morning's NY Times, really is worth a thousand words:

PHOTO: JOHN DUNN - NEW YORK TIMES

Story ... Straining

2007-09-27T15:30:00.000-06:00

Behold the appearance of Beardy MacJugface!

Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, Heroes manages to get worse. The insistence on adding more characters is really a bad move, because in trying to keep up with them all we learn absolutely nothing in terms of plot advancement. Either they get rid of half the characters or they fire the writers who can't hold the story together. Also, what was up with that totally belabored (and belaboring of the nothing that followed) sequence of shots around the Bennett/Butler dinner table? What the heck was the point of that? Oh man.

I've said it before, but one of the reasons LOST is so much more conceptually successful is that they pick a character and tell that story for the ep. I'm with the slow-moving, no-end-in-sight problems that plague LOST, but they're nowhere near as bad as the monster that is Heroes.

I will keep watching, I will continue holding my poor spouse hostage for 40 minutes once each week to determine where the train wreck will go next ... and hopefully I'll have the dander to keep blogging about it. Because if blogs are useful for anything, they're tailor-made for groundless rants about television shows.

And Again

2007-09-24T21:16:00.000-06:00

In a self-imposed break from the near-fanatical pace I've been working at over the last few days (nine days, to be exact, with no precise end in sight), I've taken some time to prepare myself for the approaching fall telly season. As regular readers might imagine, I'm particularly excited to watch (tomorrow night, recorded) the return of JUGHEAD PETRELLI et als. Rumor has it that Jughead will be sporting a beard. And thank goodness, because the only thing his long face, square jaw, and poorly conceived mind uttering terrible lines needs is more hair.

We were completely disappointed by the US version of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. The present farce is a total sham compared to the UK version, which remains one of the only series we could - and have - watch more than once ... four times, to be exact. The whole series. On the UK version, there is no spanking-new kitchen for the downtrodden chefs. No, even Ramsay is (by all appearances, anyway) scrubbing, dumping, scrubbing, tossing, etc. It's a dust-to-dust kind of operation, and so the FOX program budgets have ruined it for everyone.

We started watching Ken Burns's The War, despite highly mixed reviews. It's true that the sections on the contributions of Hispanic Americans seems tacked on, and for sure some of the footage and foley work is way over the top. (AV: "He could have saved an hour if he had shown one explosion instead of three.") Is the account exhaustive? Certainly not - and I don't think it has pretensions of being exhaustive. But it does tell an American story about a war that was not singly American.

In addition, it's living history. Who better to learn from than people who lived through it? The subjects tell their stories with candor, and frankly I find it mesmerizing - it's because I'm learning and watching at the same time (*gasp!*). I don't think every single bit of the criticism is warranted - the more I watch, the more I think I understand how Burns has conceived this part of history to fit in our collective experience.

When I was in college, our history department initiated the Stories from Wartime Series, which morphed into something called the Center for the Study of War Experience at the Reeg. Each spring, the Center brings in veterans to give first-person accounts of their experiences. Among the speakers I was fortunate to see in college were Paul Murphy, a survivor of the USS Indianapolis; Gen. Felix Sparks, among the liberators of Dachau; Clay Decker, a survivor of the Bataan Death March (he's the spry fellow in the photo of the rescued marchers at the front of the pack); WACs and WAVES, a member of the Tuskeege Airmen, Japanese-Americans interred on the basis of Ex Order 9066, you name it ... we saw it.

I joke that my history degree in college was really a degree in one of two things: WWII or Germany. This of course is not true (thanks to Father Guyer), but Ken Burns's project is bringing back a lot of latent information, lodged in my "history department" of my brain, and and memories of our exposure to those veterans.

A running commentary to continue ... provided I stop working and have a break.

Disaster Averted!

2007-09-20T16:01:00.000-06:00

The Daily Camera today confirms our earlier reconnaissance that the Wild Oats down the street from us will not close. Thank goodness.

Trebek has not yet called.

In "Where are we supposed to go to the bathroom?" news, AV read yesterday that the Barnes and Noble at Astor Place in New York City is closing. We do not buy books there, but we usually get off the subway at Astor Place, go to the can, and then make our way into the East Village. I guess we'll just have to hold it. Or something. Also troubling is the large spread the NYT is running this weekend about the East Village being a great place for tourists to go. I know, we're tourists, but we're knowledgeable tourists. We can get around down there with little trouble. In fact, I once (famously, right AV?) navigated us from Anthology Film Archives (2nd Avenue and 2nd street) to Union Square at night, with the clock tower visible from Astor Place as my only landmark.* I'm pretty sure that was the trip before we were stopped by a prada-wearing Texan in Grand Central who said, "You look like we do, can you help us get to blah blah location?" I puzzle over this remark even today.

*Reasonable evidence that we may have success if we ever want to go on the Amazing Race. Also, I memorize maps. That would probably help too. And both of us could be counted on in a Road Block involving fish eyeballs, large quantities of meat, goulash, and (possibly) an Ostrich egg.

More Misc. Mental Content

2007-09-19T10:14:00.001-06:00

Unnerving: I've suddenly entered a phase of my life where I'm forgetting things and losing things. Neither of these two events are new when applied to wallet and keys, but books and student papers are a whole other animal. There's no "What to do when you start forgetting things" section in the Adjunct Manual.

Update: The chuckling students chuckle no longer. I do have some incessant text messagers, though. My patience with that is nearing its limit.

Result of Excogitation: Last week I was enjoying Hume. Now, after a record three weeks in a row of dealing with his high-Turbanness, I am exhausted of his meager vision of the world. Hume's favored methods of recovery from a long day of philosophizing include a pint and backgammon with friends. I might take his advice on the pint, but never on backgammon. (Right, AV?)

The Week in Review

2007-09-16T09:59:00.000-06:00

My Moleskine, my mind:

Five down, ten to go.

The Giants win the Pennant!

2007-09-13T21:02:00.000-06:00

I've been fascinated by the story that broke this week, about the New England Patriots' alleged spying-via-video on other coaches and their signals. Bill Belichick (or "the Hoodie") is disliked around the league, so the hefty $500K fine leveled against him personally comes as a pleasant surprise to many, particularly those who have long held suspicions that this kind of call-stealing was going on.

John Clayton at ESPN thinks the fine is not enough. I'm inclined to agree. This is like finding out the smartest kid in the class was cheating the whole time, not because he needed to but because he could get away with it. Belichick has been cited as a genius, a true visionary. Now it looks like he's a grump and a cheat.

The New York (Baseball) Giants - the subject of this post's title - were accused of sign-stealing in that game against the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1951. Here's the wiki (caution!) on the topic.

Misc. Mental Content

2007-09-12T20:40:00.000-06:00

Unnerving: a pair of students who sit in the back of the class and snicker the entire time. What? Do I have something on my pants? I'm frantically checking my zipper in order to avoid an episode similar to one last semester when I went three quarters of a class with my fly open. Talk about neurosis.

Result of Excogitation: teaching Hume is fun and educational. Probably just for me, but I have such a hard time with a guy in a turban telling me that rational theism isn't epistemologically warranted.

repose

2007-09-10T20:55:00.000-06:00

a lame and happenstance convergence...

from "Shorpy" the hundred-year-old photography blog

from the magnum photographers blog.

The man in the straw hat and the child with her eyes open.

Out to Pasture

2007-09-07T07:46:00.000-06:00

Last night we traded in my old Hyundai (a.k.a. the "nut mobile," named so because when my mom was driving it while I had a broken leg, she insisted it was like getting into a walnut) for a different car. It had 74,000 miles on it after eight years of driving.

The nut was my first adult purchase, that purchase that required me to learn a minimum of financial responsibility. It was touch and go for awhile early in my ownership, a scenario I attribute to my own misunderstandings and misplaced priorities (it didn't help that I was waiting tables, and often came home with cash - cash which I stored in my dresser drawer. What good accounting!). The situation with me and my car turned around in the middle of my senior year of college, when I got a "real" job at an architecture firm doing administrative stuff and marketing stuff. When I finally paid it off in 2004 - and the title came in the mail - it was one of the proudest days of my life.

Once I got over the financial responsibility and started making my car payments with regularity, I started to deal with the maintenance. In the nut, this was always extraordinary. At one point, the chassis had to be lifted off of the guts because the gas line somehow was rubbing against the steering column, and gas was leaking in the inside of my car. Last year we had major battery drama, and occasionally the check engine light would come on. Nothing seemed to be wrong with the engine, but I would get a little electrical excitement now and then. The AIR BAG light stayed on for the last three years. Recently, when you'd put the car in reverse it would generate this really low whine.

Besides all this weirdness, though, the car was fabulous - getting me back and forth from Regis to the Seminary, driving from stem to stern - especially when I started adjuncting. One of the most exciting days of my adult life happened just last summer when I could finally drive the nut again after having a broken leg (I think it took about two months). There was an odd tingling sensation in my foot and leg for the first week - kind of like my leg was asleep, but somehow still working ... hard to explain - but being able to put the clutch in was pretty exciting.

So last night, we traded it in. We were walking out to the new car and the nut already had a sign on it to sell. It made me just a little sad, but it was a good car and did a good job. Hopefully it is going to its reward.

Whatever that might be for old cars.

Nearly Perfect

2007-09-05T18:32:00.000-06:00

After a long day of teaching: Miller's Gin & Tonic, Velveeta Shells & Cheese, Tennis.

Yesterday's News

2007-09-05T11:56:00.000-06:00

Lilian Calles Barger has a link to another story about the dual-lives of contemporary women. I don't know that I'm qualified to post on this, since I'm not a mother or homemaker by any stretch of the imagination (need confirmation? try my macaroni and cheese). In any case, the discussion continues. Old pal Josh Byers has a response over at his blog - he's linked to it in the comments on yesterday's post, but I'm providing it here.

My own reticence to an idea like the one introduced in yesterday's post stems from experience - in a highly intellectual environment - where men continue to make claims about women's vocational status (i.e., what women should do, or what ministry opportunities are available to them) as a way of disguising claims about women's ontological status (equal, separate but equal, or just separate?). My Greek professor used to begin every semester with a speech directed at men who were uncomfortable with the idea of learning a biblical language from a woman - she encouraged them to drop and take another (male) professor.

Even in my own degree program, there were male colleagues who adhered to (and in one notable case, promoted loudly) the paradigm that women are suboordinate to men. When I pushed them on it, asking them in our "Christian Ethics and Modern Culture" class how I could expect them to ever take my ideas and work seriously, they responded with the answer, "but we affirm you." I don't know what being affirmed of my suboordinate status looks like, or how that's supposed to help my intellectual confidence. Even male colleagues who identified themselves as sympathetic to the egalitarian cause eventually dismissed the issue as an one of interpretation, rather than deep ontological status. Especially toward the end, my confidence that I would be well-received in an intellectual environment with men was shaken pretty soundly.

I should say, though, that a similar view about women and their work seems to be present in the secular academic world as well. In this case, though, shouldn't our Christian environments do a little better? Maybe that's unfair. In any case, the debate about traditionalism vs. egalitarianism in Christianity is old news in the blogosphere, and I'm not intending to fan any flames or start any arguments. Instead, I'm just trying to give some (admittedly reductive) context to why public statements emphasizing female "roles" bother me. In any case, full disclosure is done.

Really?

2007-09-04T07:55:00.001-06:00

From the department of heavy sighs: Baptist seminary to offer homemaking for women only. It's not the homemaking part that bothers me - it's the assumption that underlies all this. The further I get from Seminary, the more alien this perspective seems to me. Jan's commentary is more eloquent - and frankly, more patient - than I could be on this topic.

Way to start the abbreviated week, no?

Fifteen to Go

2007-09-01T08:41:00.000-06:00

This week it began in earnest. I'm teaching six classes between three institutions, and so far can't quite keep my head straight. I'm plagued with questions like,"How am I going to remember all their names?" and "What did I tell them I would do for the next class?" and "Where am I? What day is it?" I'm expecting things to settle into a rhythm, which will be good. There seem to be a lot of lists around the internets about what everyone is reading. Here's what I'm teaching:

For Intro to Philosophy (3 courses): Ruth Sample, et als, Philosophy: the Big Questions (Blackwell, 2003). This book is a collection of primary sources which I have enjoyed using so far. It's well organized, and covers a lot of ground so I'm looking forward to using it again next semester.

For Language, Logic & Persuasion (1 course): Patrick Hurley's A Concise Introduction to Logic, which isn't all that concise. But it's a good text with a lot of resources for students and instructors. I don't teach a full-on logic course - this is more of a critical thinking/critical reasoning class, so NO PROOFS.

For Ethics (2 courses): I'm back to the trusty old standbys of James Rachels' Elements of Moral Philosophy and Lawrence Hinman's Contemporary Moral Issues: Diversity and Consensus. My students are also reading primary source materials (excerpts only) in metaethics and normative theory.

Fortunately, my Ethics and LLP courses are not new preps - I have the notes already, but the new intro course is proving to be time consuming, although very interesting. It's worthwhile to teach the primary sources (since the students can get it "from the horse's mouth," as it were), and it's a good exercise for me because I have to explain Descartes' ontological argument. There's a whole post somewhere - which I've tentatively titled "Sympathy for the Devil" - about my finally "getting" Descartes. He deserves more credit than I have ever given him, but it's still too bad he was just sitting by the oven and not in the oven.

The downside of this carnage is that I had to drop the course I was taking on movies and history, but I was able to (sort of) replace it with a one-credit internship at the Starz Film Center. I'm doing research (which means I get to watch some films) and writing program notes. It may be that I get to introduce a film or two down the line, but for now I'm content to see all of what the programming end of a film studies degree is like.

This weekend I'm planning to spend cozied up with David Hume, which may prove to make my outlook on life less-than-stellar. There's a reason he played a lot of backgammon and drank his fair share of pints - it's the Enquiry. When there are no metaphysical certainties, the best thing you can do is have a Guinness (or the 18th century Scottish equivalent).

Telly in Brief

2007-08-30T07:15:00.000-06:00

So disgusted were we with the finale of John from Cincinnati that we've started the true Milch masterpiece Deadwood all over again. Yes, horrified fans, we love Deadwood. It is the reason for our very expensive cuss jar. Just watch the show for an hour, and you'll see what I mean. Well, maybe you won't.

In LOST news, besides the impending publication of the text next month, Ain't It Cool News is reporting some new additions to the cast, all of which already sound better than the Paolo and what's-her-face (you know, they were buried alive or stunned or whatever) of season three. The highlights? Jeremy Davies - late of Herzog's "Rescue Dawn" and that weaselly fellow in Saving Private Ryan who wimps out at the end - and Lance Reddick are joining the cast.

Don't know who Lance Reddick is? You should watch THE GREATEST SHOW ON TELEVISION, The Wire to find out. In the show, Reddick plays Daniels, who experiences a meteoric rise through the police brass. He starts as the lieutenant of the special investigation unit (in season one) and last we saw him (in season four) has become the head of the Baltimore Police Department's Criminal Investigation Division. The last season is set to begin in January.

AV will say that Deadwood is better (more literate, more poetic), but I still think The Wire is better. Except for the third season.

Overheard

2007-08-29T12:48:00.000-06:00

While in line at the institution of my learning's (not teaching) bursar's office:

"I literally dropped the class two or three minutes after midnight."

"I'm sorry, but if I made an exception for you because of two or three minutes, what is there to prevent me from making an exception for the hundreds of students who drop classes four or five minutes after midnight. You see my reasoning here, right?"

"But I was in a clean room, making chemotherapy IV's. I couldn't leave a clean room to drop a class." (Emphasis in the original)

"I recognize that, but can I ask why you decided to put off dropping the class until the last day?"

Silence, then "Look, I'm just looking for a little empathy here. I'm two or three minutes late, and it costs me $200 dollars."

"Yes, I have empathy for you. But I cannot refund your $200 dollars."

Student bangs his hand on the table and leaves, not looking at the thirty people in line, all waiting on him to finish his whining. Dude, read your syllabus.

So ... probably no coffee.

2007-08-27T13:14:00.000-06:00

I'm a mere seventeen minutes from teaching an intro to philosophy class at my alma mater. I didn't think I would be nervous, but darn it if I don't have the most raucous butterflies at this very moment. About an hour ago I was casually thinking I would need coffee. Right now, I might throw up.

More to come.

Updates and General Disgust

2007-08-23T07:08:00.000-06:00

Update: Regular readers of this blog remember a couple of weeks ago when my computer failed while on vacation. The saga concluded this week, and happily. The lesson? Buy the extended warranty.

When we arrived back to Denver on Thursday, we took old Holmes (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. - all my electronics are philosophers) to the Apple store to drop off and see what happens. The person AV talked with over the phone was enthusiastic about the possibility of Holmes being replaced as a brand new MacBook. I was excited about this. The fellow at the Apple store was more cautious in his promises, and so Holmes went to pasture in Cupertino. On Tuesday this week, the doorbell rang and a computer showed up. I opened it to find the shell that once housed Holmes, but with brand new hard-drive, logic board, battery AND keyboard! A new computer! Maurice is up and working fine (yes, Maurice Merleau-Ponty). This is all very fortuitous, especially since this week I'm teaching Descartes and we're coming to the point where he's going to (try to) put his mind back in his body.

Update: This first week of teaching was pretty gruelling. I'm especially looking forward to next week, once all 141 of my students are in my face. The tough thing about this week is that I'm only kind of half in my work life - next week I should be able to figure out the rhythm of things.

General Disgust: The producers and geniuses at Top Chef have really done it this time. Last night, they booted off Tre, the most capable - seeming cook of them all. This is totally bunk, especially since Howie remains. The talent pool seems a little less than in previous seasons, and I suppose I'd better be steeling myself for the win by Hung, the over-confident, dangerous-with-his-knife Vegas chef (although, he did break down those chickens quickly, cleanly, and impressively last night ... he's still a jerk, though). Frank Bruni has already dismantled this challenge and all its pitfalls in his blog over at the New York Times. I agree categorically with everything he's said.

I received a funny e-mail from a former student this week, and of course it has to do with Jughead Petrelli. In MARCH last year, my student totally called the way last season of Heroes ended. He wrote me an e-mail this week to tell me that he totally called it. He wished me a nice semester. I can't WAIT for crappy television to begin again. I'm so tired of being amazed by Les Stroud and laughing at Mike Rowe. Dang.

Imagine my disappointment.

2007-08-18T19:47:00.000-06:00

"There is no need to allege that Descartes sat in or on a stove. A poele is simply a room heated by an earthenware stove. Cf. E. Gilson, Discours de la methode: texte et commentaire, 4th edition (Paris: Vrin, 1967), p. 157." (translator's note) Donald A. Cress, n3 in the Hackett edition of Descartes' Discourse on Method.

Kent = Vindicated

Here she comes ...

2007-08-18T11:42:00.000-06:00

She's going to be a doozy.

Throw it and see what sticks.

2007-08-13T18:10:00.000-06:00

When I was in high school, my english teacher illustrated the relationship between the brain and information using chicken wire and oatmeal. He threw the oatmeal at the chicken wire. Ta-daa! Knowledge. It's a surprisingly effective analogy.

In my preparation for teaching the summer course, I found myself motivated to learn more about sociobiology, the explanation of ethics from an evolutionary perspective. I think it is interesting stuff, and it provides an alternative explanation for the source of ethics - something I believe needs to be addressed in the ethics class. Anyway, it turns out that my initial reading (Michael Ruse's article, "Evolutionary Ethics" in The Blackwell Guide to Ethics) spurred more reading and research along these lines. I read David Quammen's The Reluctant Mr. Darwin - in the Norton Great Discoveries series - which presents the development of the concept of Natural Selection, both from an academic perspective and from the point of view of Darwin's personal life. I'm reading right now Bill Bryson's A Short History of Everything, which chronicles the development of major discoveries in the history and philosophy of science (this will also help me fill in some holes in my Jeopardy! preparation). Up next is E.O. Wilson's Concilience - the substantial tome on sociobiology.

The weird thing is that even when reading all of this, it still doesn't satisfy me as an adequate explanation for the things before me. Today I'm reading Bill Bryson on the porch, sitting with my husband, the Atlantic Ocean stretched out before me with hordes of people frolicking on it, and doggone it, it doesn't jive that this is all a happy accident. This piece of information actually made me just a little happy - recently I've been feeling a little (a lot?) unmoored. A little bit like I'm without convictions. This isn't true, of course, because I do have convictions ... it just happens that some of them have sunk to the lower layers in the last year.

This thinking and engaging reading incited a new ongoing project (I know, as if I need another) - I'd like uncover some of these sunken ideas from an opposite viewpoint and see what I can build. In short, throw it at the chicken wire and see what sticks. More to come.

Salvage Operation

2007-08-10T12:17:00.000-06:00

So we remain on vacation, now in North Carolina enjoying the sand and surf. We intended to spend our evenings watching a gaggle of Gordon Ramsay from BBC 4 (which means it's not bleeped - raving Ramsay in all his glory). We had to use my iBook - hooked up to the television here - to make this happen. This plan worked well for a couple of nights until Tuesday, when my computer screen turned black and began flashing a file folder with a question mark. AV couldn't get it to boot, even using commands and other things I have no idea about. Bad news.

My iBook is (was?) the repository of all my work for the last eight years. I've had a couple of computers in that space of time, but the latest one had the giant haul of stuff - all my preparation for the Seminary's comprehensive examinations, all the drafts of my book chapter, the paper I've been slowly preparing for conference presentations ... you get the drift. I didn't have a backup system because there seems to be a conceptual problem for me with a laptop and external hard drives - I work around the house a good deal, and really only "plug in" at night to recharge the battery. So the flashing file folder was an indicator that the bulk of my academic life was presently absent.

More immediately troubling was the present absence of all my (completed) syllabi and - in one case - a completed set of assignments and readings prepared and ready to go for the classes starting in a week and a half.

I know, don't cry for the girl who unwisely doesn't back up her stuff. The story

Anyway, I had a fitful sleep and woke up Wednesday morning to AV in problem-solving mode. He had a few options, he said. One was to call Apple and see what they could do (which we did). The voice on the other end of the phone confirmed that the flashing file folder was in fact an indication of a fried hard drive. There wasn't anything he could do immediately, the voice said, but you could try putting it in the freezer and see it if will boot long enough to get the stuff off the hard drive. No euphemisms or geek-speak here - put the computer in the freezer. Get the hard drive ultra-cold, and then see if it'll give up the goods.

Two hours later, a very cold iBook emerges from the freezer and AV tries to boot. Nothing happens. He turned it on its side, tries to boot, and a screen came up that hadn't come up before. He turned the iBook upside-down so that the screen and keyboard were perpendicular to the floor, and slowly but surely, the screens proceeded to flip as normal. Never mind that AV's brother had to hold the computer for 45 minutes while AV logged in and drag-dropped the files to the jump drive and iPod.

Turns out I had 1.7 GB of documents - all the things I really cared about getting off of my computer - and it took about 2 hours to get all the documents into safe places. Thank goodness for ingenuity and the freezer. The iBook is warrantied, so now we're waiting to send it off and see what happens.

I've backed everything up in three places.

If you're claustrophobic, don't go in there.

2007-08-05T06:19:00.000-06:00

We've been on vacation for a week - the first week we spent in New York with the folks (a lot of fun, as always). We did not make it to a show, but did find two out of print Clusone 3 discs at the Downtown Music Gallery. A coup! AV also ate torchon of pig's head at Momofuku Ssam Bar (I had the lamb's belly). All in all, a success. We are presently enjoying the sand and sun of North Carolina, and we'll be here for a week and a half.

After the reunion (photos of people you don't know can be found here), I was feeling intellectually depleted. I should probably attribute this to my completing a full summer of brain drain at the hands of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, but in any case, for the last half of the week AV was gone at the handmade film institute until about last Wednesday I couldn't be articulate and most of my insights were about inessential things (like my nails, for example, or Harry Potter). Poor AV. He returns from a week of intellectual stimulation with what sounds like a group of very interesting people, and surprise! Your wife's an idiot.

On Thursday last week AV and I met a friend of mine at MoMA. AV and I were on a mission to see the Richard Serra retrospective. Richard Serra is a brilliant sculptor working in giant steel plates. It's pretty awesome stuff, and it's stuff you can walk around in. This proved to be an interesting catalyst for my emerging from idiocy. On the second floor there are two huge installations of Serra's work, which are pretty much like steel labyrinths. They're molded in such a way that you can't actually see what is in front of you - you're required to follow narrow the path created by the steel in order to move forward. Additionally, the steel occasionally takes a curve that requires you to bend at the waist and effect a kind of zig-zag position with your body in order to maneuver through the sections. It's engaging and kind of terrifying at once. My friend - who is a dancer by training - was explaining how the sculptures challenge the notion of "center," where movement originates from. We continually reported an off-kilter feeling as we were walking through. As we arrived at the center of one of the sculptures, something clicked in my head and I started spouting Merleau-Ponty (I'm not kidding). In an important way, Serra's work supports MP's rejection of "spatiality of position," the idea that bodies take up space according to a grid/coordinate position. Serra's sculptures confound the grid because we were forcing our bodies to move more organically than mechanically - evidence for this is in my friend WT's admission that the sculpture challenged the center.

I've been making a joke about my processing of major events lately as"clinical," meaning that I attempt to think phenomenologically through the problem - this was the case with my Gommy's recent stroke, and - much less seriously - the reunion (alter egos emerging into my perceptual field), but here's an instance when it works kind of innocuously. I wasn't expecting to experience these pieces the way that I did, and since the pieces demanded a bodily engagement instead of a mere visual engagement, my experience of them was more profound and a trigger out of my own doldrums. :)

Thursday ended up being one of the most fun days I've had at the museum in a long time - we were enjoying ourselves immensely, and I think Serra's work intimidated people enough that it wasn't crawling with individuals trying to wind their way through the pieces. Thank goodness, because having to step over people or move single file through a Serra would be a horrible experience, but an experience nonetheless.

All's Well that, Well, Ends

2007-07-25T21:48:00.001-06:00

Harold Perrineau returns to LOST in the fourth season.

I received the publisher's proofs from my editor this week, and got to see how my writing will look on an actual book page. I'm responsible for reading through and correcting some typographical errors (if and where they exist), so that seems to be the last hurdle until the book appears in December. Now that Michael's on the verge of returning, I'm concerned that everything I've said will be wrong. But in truth, I'm only kind of worried about that. I guess we'll have to wait and see - I'm especially excited that now there's something to wait for.

All's Well that Ends Well

2007-07-24T11:37:00.001-06:00

Bill Murray Accepts Honorary Degree. The rumor was that he was booted from the reeg for, um, relieving himself on the sacred heart statue. In any case, he didn't finish his time at Regis - now he's an honorary doctor of humanities.

Jumping the Gun (and probably also the shark) for Ten Years

2007-07-23T22:00:00.000-06:00

Name: Becky Vartabedian - until age 22, I was known as Becky Case

What have you been up to since graduation? Family? Career? Hobbies? My life has followed fairly well the predicted path in my "Top Twenty Senior" blurb. Go to Regis? Check. Graduated just a couple hundredths of a grade point shy of cum laude. Finished a history major? Check. Finished a Political Science major? No Check. Traded that in for a philosophy major in an attempt to be vocationally (and intellectually) honest with myself. I dislike Descartes with the same passion I did ten years ago, but my rejection is more scholarly and does not include my singing the "I'm a Little Teapot" song (although considering I'm dealing with a man who sat in an oven for seven days straight, I suppose my early critique was appropriate). Became the prime-time DJ on KRCX radio? Check. During freshman year, Jon Davis and I hosted the "happy happy hour," which ran from 4-6pm on Thursdays. Dinner hour at the reeg is prime time.

I met AV in college while visiting Kent Talmage-Bowers's classroom. AV was his student teacher. We had one conversation about Chomsky in February. AV came into the bookstore where I worked once in April and I had no words - an early sign. We dated for two and a half years before getting married in June 2002. Then I went back to work at Regis in Student Life and started a MA at Denver Seminary.

Finished the MA in May 2006, this time with honors (ha!), and also picked up a couple of teaching jobs along the way. Was accepted at PhD program, but funding didn't shake out in my favor. Now I'm a mostly full-time philosophy professor (although an adjunct without office or benefits), and have returned to the fold of continental philosophy at UC-D. I'm pretty sure the second MA will be finished next December, but who knows.

I've extended my foray into the radio world as an occasional host on Jazz 89 KUVO. True to my quiz bowl roots, I auditioned for Jeopardy! in May of this year. I'm waiting for their call.

What do you miss about Northglenn? I suppose I miss the freedom to explore ideas with minimal risk. Now, every idea has some stake that must be made good on or discarded. I miss the compulsory exposure to a whole host of ideas, even though I couldn't understand most of them. (I'll admit Descartes had me on the ropes until the Summer of 2005. Having to teach something demands that you understand it - fast.)

Who was your favorite teacher? Oddly enough, I learned most of what I needed to know about teaching in High School. Kent Bowers, Mark Mavrogianes, the late, truly great Don McKenzie - all have direct influence in the way that I handle myself in the classroom. Not only do these three count among my favorites, but I owe them a tremendous debt of gratitude. Any in-practice failures are, of course, my own.

If you could go back and give your senior-year self one piece of advice, what would it be? Most people will answer this question something like "Don't take things too seriously!" or "Have more fun!" I won't tell Becky Case any of this, though. Remain serious, because you'll need it desperately later on (like when you're reading Plantinga or Husserl). As far as I can remember, Becky Case had the right amount of fun while in high school. Also, wearing your brother's shirt and shoes to school does not for fashion make. Take it with a grain of salt, though, because Becky Vartabedian wears mostly black (not because of some attachment to philosophy, but because there are far fewer risks in wearing black than, say, cerulean).

What is your favorite/funniest memory? I did love quiz bowl. I did have a great time at senior prom. I enjoyed running assemblies in front of the student body, even though I had my back to the freshmen most of the time. I liked school.

The funniest memory, though, involves IR, B(S)T, and CS. The four of us drove to see a volleyball game out at Eaglecrest in Aurora. After leaving the game, we unwittingly took a very wrong turn and in about a half an hour, found ourselves driving out in the country on a dirt road. The first sign we saw said "Bennett, 5mi; Kiowa, 10mi." It was 9:30pm, and I had to be home by 10pm. All we could do was laugh in disbelief at how far afield (literally, in this case) we'd ended up. I didn't make it home on time, but fortunately my parents got a kick out of the story, too.

What is one thing you would like people to know about the person you are now vs. the person you were then? Probably (hopefully) the same thing everyone else thinks - people change. We can't escape our early choices or youthful indiscretions (however slight), but we need not be captive to them, either. I'm doing the very thing I always hoped I would - live a life where ideas are important and drive my day-to-day being. I didn't expect, though, to have the privilege of sharing this life with someone who feels the same way about ideas that I do - that has made life immeasurably worthwhile. If it weren't for him, I'd probably be singing the teapot song on a sidewalk somewhere, probably wearing my brother's ill-fitting shirt.

You think you know, but you have no idea.

2007-07-20T20:27:00.001-06:00

A couple of weeks ago, my brother introduced us to Guitar Hero for the PS2. We had a lot of fun playing it for the time it was at my folks' house. We played this game on occasions when all of the family - nephew and niece included - were around. Our nephew, AK, is four and as a bright four-year-old, he naturally wants to take part in the same kind of fun that everyeone else is having. This was possible in the case of the "dakar" game, since AK could easily push buttons and sway along to the music. He couldn't actually play the music, but we let him have a turn, cheered him on, and he managed to have some fun with it.

The songs on the dakar game are mostly hard rock, fun guitar songs ranging from "Free Bird" to "Message in a Bottle." When we were playing, AK would often request the "Da Da Cha" song, singing only the refrain "Da Da Cha!" We knew that this song was Motley Crue's "Shout at the Devil," and so we obliged, impressed with his grasp of the baseline beat of the song. The dakar game went back to its owner soon afterward, and AK kept telling uncle Bub (my brother, Patric(k)) that he missed the dakar game, and da da cha, and Lars (his avatar for the game, a big hulking fellow with punk spikes and long blond hair).

I'm sure you can guess how this story ends. Blame is evenly distributed among the hard core dakar players: me, AV, my brother, and AK's dad.

So the other night we were all together again, each of us engrossed in our separate tasks - AV and I were caramelizing some bananas for desert, Eric (AK's dad) was acquiring the ladder to continue painting the walls in his family room, and Bub was laying on the couch. All of the sudden, AK sings "da da cha! Shout for the devil!"

It was just like in a movie. Somewhere, a needle was being pulled violently off a record. We paused the bananas, Bub abruptly sat up from the couch, daddy was coming in with the ladder, and AK's mommy - not privy to the incessant requests for da da cha weeks earlier - said, "WHAT did you say?! We DO NOT sing songs about the devil in this house!" The four bad influences in the room had saucer eyes. The worst part is that he just kept on singing it. We tried to get him to change songs, urging him to sing "Sending out an SOS!" (The Police's "Message in a Bottle,"). Eric even suggested some alternate lyrics to his favorite song: "AK, why don't you sing 'Shout at the Dremel?" but even after singing SOS, he went back to da da cha.

I'm fairly sure we've learned our lesson, and now we know that if da da cha is sung anywhere near mommy, there will be some trouble. My sister's always been the responsible one anyway.

In truth, I thought it would be a swear word, with AK overhearing me in one of my more off-color moments (which I consciously avoid when the kiddos are nearby). We didn't know he had actually heard the lyrics - we could barely understand what they were singing. But then again, what do we know about a four-year-old's mind? Clearly very little.

The Most Unkindest Cut of All

2007-07-18T10:20:00.000-06:00

Last night we attended the Colorado Shakespeare Festival's performance of Julius Caesar. During the outdoor performance, a bat was flying around over our heads. I hate bats. In addition to bats, I strongly dislike performances that use abstract staging techniques and re-set the play in a future period. Neither of these choices were well-explained, and so when the techno music accompanied the stabbing of Caesar I could only chuckle. In fact, someone (who will remain unnamed) leaned over and said, "Now is the time on Sprockets when we dance!" HBO's Rome (too short-lived and masterminded by Michael Apted) clouded my ability to watch the play well, since it tells the same story as Julius Caesar without the abstract staging, techno music, and setting.

Speaking of HBO, David Milch, creator and writer of such television glories as NYPD Blue, Deadwood, and (our new favorite) John from Cincinnati admits he doesn't know what John is all about. This doesn't bother me, because he manages to tell everyone's story eventually.

My feeling about Deadwood is that it was a complete story. The characters and their connections revealed themselves slowly, so anyone looking for immediate clarity won't be satisfied - you have to watch every show to understand what's going on. The thing about Deadwood was that there wasn't an extravagant mystery tying things together - it's just good storytelling in the hands of especially capable actors (Ian McShane, Timothy Olyphant, Molly Parker, Paula Malcolmson, Dayton Callie, Jim Beaver, Gerald McRainey (as the most evil television villain EVER), and Garrett Dillahunt, among others). Although it's not a Milch idea, The Wire has the same kind of completeness.

I will go out on a limb here and say that The Wire and Deadwood are better shows that Lost (blasphemy, I know) and even John from Cincinnati. I'm not sure that 's much of a claim, since it's so general, but it's something.

Tonight, the Radio

2007-07-13T13:00:00.000-06:00

AV and I will be holding it down tonight at KUVO from 9pm - 12am (MDT). Previous playlists can be found on the sidebar of our fine blog here.

The Reading

2007-07-12T10:22:00.000-06:00

Drew has a nice post about what and why he reads.

I read very little fiction. In fact, the fiction I read is limited to a six book rotation before bed. Five of the novels are from my childhood. Four of these five are written by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Complaints from students sound much less serious when I'm reading about a seven-month stretch of blizzards punctuated by the occasional threat of starvation.

For awhile, this was bothering me because I have long associated being intelligent and intellectually engaged with reading fiction. This connection was initially cemented in the early moments of AV and my relationship - he actually got me to read Infinite Jest (three bookmarks, people - one for the text, one for that long section on Madame Psychosis I skipped, one for the footnotes). From there I was digesting the enfants terrible of the postmodern fiction world (DFW, Eggers, DeLillo). My engagement with fiction ceased soon after that, a halt I attribute to entering graduate school. I recently talked with some of my colleagues about this fiction-less or fiction-limited life that I live, and was shocked to find that my friends - brilliant, funny, thoughtful fellows - only read mass market-type mystery novels. One said that a professor of his at U of Iowa stopped reading fiction because he was reading philosophy for a living. Tricky how that works.

This explains why Cormac McCarthy - another of AV's categorical favorites - proved so tricky for me. It's just so hard that I can't drum up the intellectual attention and respect it deserves. If anything, the fiction available that seems worth the effort is too sophisticated (here I'm not discriminating. I can get at The Road about the same as I can get at Middlemarch). Fiction paralysis probably results from my ability to digest it the way it ought to be digested.

If I'm reading anything for fun lately, it seems to be nonfiction. Favorites include Louis Menand's The Metaphysical Club (which I read and marked like crazy), Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential and A Cook's Tour. I have read a few essays from DFW's Consider the Lobster, which have been satisfying. More satisfying was his piece in the New York Times last year about Roger Federer. The man can write about tennis and the mind-body problem in the New York Times ("Federer as Religious Experience," August 20, 2006). I never questioned his genius again after that. I'm planning to start Lakoff & Johnson's Philosophy in the Flesh, but that probably qualifies better as work-related reading than reading for fun. It's my equivalent of AV's hauling Pynchon to the beach (have you seen the size of Against the Day? sheesh!).

pucky v husserl, a triptych

2007-07-11T22:46:00.000-06:00

The new phonebooks will be here in November!

2007-06-24T14:48:00.000-06:00

In the words of the immortal Navin Johnson: "I am somebody!" Here's the (non-ontological) proof. And some more, although vague.

two

2007-06-20T06:55:00.000-06:00

Make that three two and add two more.

two...make that three

2007-06-17T09:12:00.000-06:00

Not sure if I put these up.

the last is being processed...

Another Way at the Problem

2007-06-16T09:38:00.000-06:00

This time last year I was dealing with the problem of not knowing where to go in the storied discipline in which I work. I was thinking analytic epistemology was maybe a good idea, but I wasn't sure - and to be honest, I wasn't internally committed to the idea. Something just didn't feel right about it. This uncertainty stinks, especially if you are remotely considering applying to a PhD program.

Over the last year, though, things have revealed themselves very slowly. It's only just now that I've stumbled upon a philosophical question that is interesting, fruitful, and somehow is not a total stumper (there are a lot of those in philosophy). I'm spending some time on the problem of interaction, roughly the question "How do we know there are other selves?" My independent study is focused on this question, and the way it is resolved by phenomenology (Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger). It's important, I think, that the problem is usually couched as "How do we know there are other minds?" because phenomenology is in part an attempt to recover the whole self from the mind-body problem. Even in modern philosophy, though, this question has interesting resolutions (or attempts, in particular Leibniz's shot at it is fascinating). Merleau-Ponty resolved it pretty convincingly for me last semester, but I'm working deeper with his ideas this summer.

This question has consequences for how we behave toward those others we've discovered, so there's an important way in which this question is directed toward ethics. It is also a convenient study to be doing this summer, because in the fall I'm breaking from philosophy and taking a film studies course on "Film as History." I have designs on a paper about the problem I'm studying right now and The Lives of Others, which is a movie stinking with philosophical problems. It's also an amazing film.

Part of the good thing about going back to UC-D is that I've remembered I'm the most comfortable when I'm thinking in an interdisciplinary way, and continental philosophy is (at least for me) more congenial to this pursuit. When I told her this, my undergraduate advisor said "I told you so." She's been telling me this for years.

"You Don't Have to Put on the Red Light," or "Maybe we should have gotten those binoculars"

2007-06-11T09:37:00.000-06:00

Last night we saw The Police with my sister and her husband. We were sitting so high up that there was a nearby station for binocular rentals. We were, however, able to see someone in the (very) expensive seats doing jumping jacks (or, if you've seen Troop Beverly Hills, "the Freddy") throughout.

Thinking

2007-06-04T07:57:00.000-06:00

Susan has been kind enough to tag this blog with the "Thinking Blogger Award." Recent visitors may think such an award is misplaced. However, I am charged to tag other blogs that I read with such an award. Here goes:

Although he's probably already received this award once or twice, Johnny-Dee and Company at FQI are a pretty thoughtful bunch.
AH is on hiatus, but he's writing extensively in the areas he's interested in.
I've read Nathan Acks' blog for many years (I've known him since high school) - I appreciate the recent iteration of his blog at EcoPunk.Info.
Drew Moser - a friend from Seminary - writes thoughtfully about a whole host of topics.

This Just In

2007-05-28T20:42:00.000-06:00

After a long hiatus, I've added the following music to my iTunes (and, alas, my iPod):

Miles Davis, Sketches of Spain (in Miles Davis & Gil Evans, the Complete Columbia Studio Recordings); Columbia, 1957.
Sylvie Courvosier, Signs and Epigrams; Tzadik, 2007.
The Fell Clutch; Animul, 2005.
The Bad Plus, Prog; Heads Up, 2007.
Marc Ribot y Los Cubanos Positzos (and the Prosthetic Cubans); Atlantic, 1998.
The Bad Plus, Suspicious Activity?; Sony, 2005.
John Coltrane & Don Cherry, The Avant-Garde; Atlantic, 1960.

On Like Donkey Kong

2007-05-28T19:59:00.000-06:00

This week proves to be a busy one - teaching starts up again (and it couldn't come sooner ... I've turned into a heap of something over the last two weeks), my independent study starts, and we're moving at the end of the week. Not to mention that there are three deadlines - including the final, final draft of the LOST chapter - and a Jeopardy! audition on Wednesday. Yeegh.

Speaking of LOST, I'm still processing the season finale. Regular reader Wanda (!) thinks it was Ben in the coffin, and after a second viewing I think she is right. I was mostly cheered by the reappearance of Walt, although sans Michael, it didn't quite have the KAPOW! I was hoping for. In retrospect, though, it works out for me because I don't have to make any major revisions to my chapter. At any rate, I still don't get quite what was happening, but since I have until January to stew on it I'm not too concerned. Something will come to me, I'm sure.

Heroes ended predictably, and badly, although one of my ethics students predicted precisely how it would end about four weeks ago. After a season of half-hearted devotion, my favorite (and, IMHO, the best written) character is HRG aka Noah Bennett. I think it is because they took some time to devote to his backstory a la LOST, and so we have a better sense of him than any of the other idiots on that show. A constant MST 3K dialogue is running every time we watch Heroes, especially when Jughead appears (and in this case, disappears into the sky with his nuclear weapon of a brother).

We're into concert season. Friday night we saw The Bad Plus at the Boulder Theater. They were awesome, but someone heckled their opening band (who were not so hot, but that's just me), and that was strange and disorienting. But the Bad Plus delivered, and it was fun to see some of my new acquaintances and friends from my occasional radio gig there at the concert. On Saturday (6/2), we'll see Cyro Baptista and Billy Martin at the Boulder Theater - crazy anniversary drumming - and on the following Saturday, we'll hopefully see Wayne Horvitz and crew at Dazzle. June 10 we have nosebleed seats to the POLICE and I am really excited. I just hope they play my favorite songs.

Once we're in our new house I hope to start blogging again at a regular clip - much like I did last summer - although I'm not sure what form my philosophy posts will take anymore. I've rediscovered the joy and wonder that is continental philosophy (and for all accounts, I'm a sight better in the continental area than in the analytic one) so I'm anxious to spend the next eight or so weeks reading more deeply in the discipline. I'm also looking forward to the eight pounds I plan to shed in advance of my 10-year High School Reunion at the end of July (which I will attend sans AV, who will be hand-making film and shooting pictures on said handmade film while I am reuning). Should be fun.

Moving 101 (for academics)

2007-05-18T14:53:00.000-06:00

So we're moving in a couple of weeks, which is a good thing, because our new neighbors have turned the roof off of their living room into their public smoking lounge. In preparation for our three-block move, there is no end of sorting, shredding, trashing, etc. You would imagine that we have a lot of papers, notes, and books. Oh, the books. Two moves ago, AV drilled a couple of pulleys into the side of the house we were living in, and lowered the books via climbing rope from the third floor attic. We won't do that this time, but we still have to sort the books out. Now, if you know me, you know how I treat my books. They become the repository for notes, marks, and other evidences of careful, close reading. I cannot part with certain of my Seminary books. The books are always a trial, and so we try to move them ourselves - to spare everyone the weight of what it is to read for a living.

Last Friday I spent the entire day sorting out my file cabinet and came up with the following observations. For instance, you REALLY don't need those notes from 11th grade AP American History. Really. And that stuff that says "Retirement" or "Loan Consolidation" is stuff you should probably save. And when the shredder says "6 Sheets Maximum," it's not kidding. Obey, or you'll spend an hour picking paper out of the shredder with a small crochet hook. Skipping spin class was probably not such a good idea those last three weeks of school, particularly given the nature of your lungs after hauling trash and unwanted clothes from the top of your little house. These are all pearls of my experience that I'm glad to pass along to you.

But there are still some lingering questions. For instance, since I have electronic versions of stages of my Senior Honors Thesis, do I need to save the actual, handwritten stuff for something other than posterity? I'm half inclined to throw it out, but also hate to part with an entire year's (June 2000 - May 2001) blood, sweat, and (mostly) tears. I've whittled the college stuff down to mostly electronic versions and graded papers. Perhaps I should do the same with the honors thesis. Any suggestions?

My Life's Goal ... Achieved (Almost)

2007-05-11T07:33:00.000-06:00

Ken Jennings, that guy who won all that money after a 74-day stint on Jeopardy!, answers an innocent-looking question from a reader and faithful Tuesday Trivia participant named Becky. So happens, that Becky asks Ken what to study in preparation for her Jeopardy! audition. So happens that the person who asked the question is me.

I have an audition for Jeopardy! at the end of the month here in town. There is no guarantee that I will make it onto the show, even if I do well in the audition. My goal is modest, however. I need only make enough money to pay off my student loans. That's about two good days of Jeopardy!

Two eps plus Two Seasons left...

2007-05-04T14:54:00.000-06:00

E Online is reporting that LOST will end in 2009.We'll finally get to find some things out, and perhaps won't get left hanging a la Twin Peaks. Wednesday night's episode was GOOD (and guess who wrote it ... yep, those brilliant geniuses who penned the Desmond and the time-space continuum AND the Sayid torture victim episodes). Hopefully the last two won't stink. I cannot say the same about Heroes. Heroes stinks, but it is like a disaster that I can't stop watching. Especially with President Jughead in the white house.

PostScript: The New York Times telly writer, Allesandra Stanley explains the problem with Grey's Anatomy and all the hoo-hah over the impending spinoff with Kate Walsh: even if you're a lady doctor, your hormones still govern the landscape. Calling Laura Mulvey!

Been There, Done That

2007-05-04T09:25:00.000-06:00

Papers Are Due: Scot McKnight has a nice little post about an interaction with a student the day before a term paper is due. The student's response (“A couple pots of coffee and maybe a Coke or two and I’ll be fine. I’ve got all night") brings up VERY accurate memories of my college days, and in particular the days I was writing my senior honors thesis - I was subsisting on balance bars and Blue Ox energy drink, writing well from 11pm to 2am. Doesn't that sound disgusting? Pretty gross to me. In fact, I'm certain whatever nutritional value I was getting by way of the balance bar was immediately canceled out by the "taurine" in the drink. Ewww.

For the record, the last true all-nighter I pulled was for Dr. Bill Klein's summer intensive course on the Gospels and Acts. I also wrote a very good paper writing in one (very desperate, as I recall - I was negotiating with myself throughout) nine-hour shot in May of 2005. In both cases, such intensive writing was necessitated by other commitments. In the summer of 2003, I was roped into the summer conference program at Regis and was working far many more hours than I was paid for. In May of 2005, I had a very jammed finals week, and so wrote the roots of what would later become my major writing project at the Seminary in nine hours (Kant, Berkeley and Phenomenalism). There is something satisfying about being able to write something well in such a small space. This does not happen often (I can say that my paper on The Kingdom of God for Klein was okay, but my paper on Berkeley and Kant was a labor of love - does that say something about me? Probably just that I was more successful as a PR major than I was as a Biblical Studies student), but when it does, it's the height of intellectual satisfaction.

Speaking of intellectual satisfaction, I taught my last lectures for Spring semester yesterday. As a kind of wrap-up exercise in my Intro course, I asked the students to revisit the worldview diagnosis they did on the first day of class. When I asked them to respond to some of the same questions, there was a lot of chuckling - particularly of the "I had no idea that things would get so complicated" variety. I talked with a couple of my students after class, and one student said that she was initially intimidated by philosophy, but in the end she had no idea she could "be so philosophical." This comment struck me so positively, simply because a student was able to see that philosophy is accessible and might mean something on a level they didn't expect. Her friend - who launched a full scale campaign in favor of Descartes (really? Descartes?) - said that he gained so much satisfaction by seeing the way Descartes' ideas locked together. I told him that there's a lot of intellectual satisfaction to be had in reading and working through a difficult text. He enthusiastically agreed.

There's some controversy in one of the departments I teach at regarding a move to include and emphasize primary sources , as well as a three-period historical requirement in the Intro and Ethics courses. Some of the other part-time professors are frustrated because they find that students have so much difficulty understanding the primary source material that it somehow neutralizes any learning that may go on in the class. While I understand (and am readily on board with) their observations about their students, it occurs to me that teaching philosophy is *really* about teaching people how to read and how to write all over again - using things that many - if not all - of the students have never seen, in a genre of writing that is not as straightforward as the chemistry textbook they're looking at. This problem is compounded by the idea that aside from our own work in reading philosophy and writing analyses on these lines, we've learned essentially "by feel" how to teach it. It's not like there's a student teaching program in philosophy. Anyway, I don't imagine there will be much compromise on this point, and that's fine - either the department tells us what to teach, or the college (who doesn't have the same "on the ground" sensibility as other philosophy professors) will tell us what to teach, and possibly how to teach it.

This summer I'm focusing on exactly how to do this. I'm teaching an intensive 8-week ethics course that will rely mainly on primary sources (although not to the precise specifications and requirements of the department - the new program doesn't launch until Fall 2008, so we've got some time to acquiesce), and my aim and goal is to learn how to teach people to read closely. I can read closely - in fact, about half of what I do for a living involves this - but can I teach people how to do this? That's a project. In addition, I'm working on an independent study in phenomenology. I'm so fascinated by what I've been reading that my professor from the course has graciously agreed to oversee my work in this area. It's very relevant to my overall project w/r/t film and philosophy, but I need to put down some foundation first. I'm also helping to plan my 10 year high school reunion. Plus, I've chosen a new, source-heavy book for two of my intro courses, so I have to figure that out. Some outdoor volleyball marathons will no doubt make their way in as well. There are just a few projects kicking around, but I like my summers busy, I guess.

Weepy Music

2007-04-29T21:12:00.000-06:00

AKMA has posted in response to this week's (Onion) AV Club list of "Songs that Make Us Cry." The list includes some predictable indie weepies - I guess I shouldn't say *predictable* because my flirtation with the current strains of indie, "honest," anti-emo (or however you want to describe it) music was very brief. At any rate, I thought I would throw my two cents in about songs that make me cry and/or make me overly sentimental (a broad category), and songs that I try not to listen to on purpose.

Mark Knopfler and James Taylor, "Sailing to Philadelphia." This song is about Mason and Dixon. Andy loves Mason & Dixon by Pynchon. I love my husband. A strange association, but truly when the first chord of this song rings through, I'm totally rapt and soon crying. It's just a beautiful song.

I cannot make it through "Be Thou My Vision" without crying, either. My brother sung it at our wedding a capella, and I distinctly remember my sister standing on her tiptoes when Patric(k) went for the key change. Funny, she was already looking out for his career then. : )

Speaking of wedding songs, ours was/is Lyle Lovett's "If I Had a Boat." It was the recessional at our wedding, and just as our officiant finished giving our guests dinner directions, Lyle sang "Kiss my ass I bought a boat." Nice.

Paul Simon's "Graceland," which is very much a part of the week preceding my wedding. I spent a lot of time alone in my car pondering the next great stage of my life.

To guarantee automatic waterworks, play Paul Simon's "Father and Daughter." Even the mere thought of the song - and I'm not at all kidding - makes me want to cry.

Also anything by Tom Waits that is slow, involves an out of tune piano, and his quiet growling. I like my Tom Waits with noisy growling and loud jangly noises. Slow Tom Waits generates a similar response to what happens when I watch Buster Keaton movies.

I should also add that the theme song from The Backyardigans also causes me to dissolve into tears. It's completely beyond the bounds of reason, but the first two notes send me into convulsive sobs.

I'm sure we all have songs in these categories. These are mine, what are yours?

There are plenty of other things making me weep this week - in particular, the long list of logic problems that I have to teach tomorrow. The perils of willingly teaching logic at 8:30am on a Monday, I guess (next Fall I'll be teaching same class at 7:00am ... reminds me of high school math). I have one week of class left, and then it's on to finals. What a relief.

the first of a few or many

2007-04-16T19:52:00.000-06:00

This is the first of a series of short sketches in video - I'll be putting these together as occasional videos.

Here is a short video from Chicago, overlooking the tracks and the Institutes's ventilation exhaust.

Now Hear "This American Life"

2007-04-12T18:40:00.000-06:00

Riffing on the photo to the right, a recent episode of tAL "24 Hours at the Golden Apple" one of Chicago's finest diners. Listen. Preview. Both free on the internets. The exit song is from the classic and inestimable Tom Waits.

Does it help that it's a spring snowstorm?

2007-04-12T08:26:00.000-06:00

Not much.

According to the weather wizards at 9news, up to a foot is possible in the city. This saddens me, because the trees in our front yard are flowering and I expect the snow will take the nice blooms (and possibly some of the branches) off the trees.

The old "we need the moisture" bit just isn't working for me.

Experiencing Other People

2007-04-10T08:27:00.000-06:00

We were in blustery Chicago over the weekend for the Easter holiday (as evidenced by the new photo at your right). More details about that to come.

For now, though, I'm getting ready for a presentation in my phenomenology class, and I'm curious to know how you would respond to the following question:

What is it like to be social?

This is not a question I'm asking because I don't know (although some of you may say "She doesn't have a social life, so that must be why she's asking us!"), but because I'm looking for some descriptions of what it is like to interact with other people. What impact do others have on you? I mean these questions in a kind of vague existential sense, but am appreciative of more specific responses.

What do you, three readers, think?

Tornado in San Luis Valley

2007-04-01T11:40:00.001-06:00

Mere Means

2007-03-30T23:29:00.000-06:00

Yesterday AV and I took a car trip. We like car trips, and I'm still convinced that our ability to spend very long periods of time together in a moving vehicle - pleasantly, no less - is part of the reason why we get along so well. Today we were gone 10 hours. We made our way down to Penitente Canyon, which is roughly 20 miles southwest of Saguache (itself about 50 miles south of Buena Vista) nestled at the foothills of the San Juan mountains.* We also saw a tornado on the way. I'm not kidding, and anyone who reads this blog who (a) is married to me or (b) is related to me and lived with me during my childhood knows that I am absolutely, deathly afraid of tornadoes. It was very far away, and we stopped to tape it. So now we have video of a tornado.

Anyway, on our way home, we took highway 24 through Leadville. Leadville was where we concluded one of the scariest, most tense drives of our married life about three years ago**, so once we happened upon Twin Lakes it was har-de-har-har all the way into Leadville. We were starving, and so we pulled into a small little cafe on Leadville's main drag. As we walked into the cafe (which had maybe ten tables in all), we seated ourselves and began to wait. It was almost 10 minutes until our server stopped at our table. She took our order, and we waited another fifteen minutes for root beers that never came. We asked her to cancel our order - something we never do. She then proceeded to get huffy with us, and we left the restaurant.

I was a server in college, incidentally at the highest-grossing Chili's in the region, and until I became a teacher my nightmares almost always were about waitressing. Lost tickets, forgotten drinks, people sitting at tables for long periods of time drinkless - all these things I have done, and all of them I had nightmares about until I started teaching. I can certainly understand busy restaurants and servers "in the weeds" (or, dans la merde in a more sophisticated French setting), a place I found myself many nights in the period I was slinging fajitas - in one case, quite literally - at customers.

Because of my experiences serving (and one Sunday afternoon in which I waited on a very demanding table of eight to no tip), I often appeal to the plight of servers and those working in retail (another college job) to explain the point of Kant's second line of the Categorical Imperative: "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or that of any other, always at the same time as an end and never simply as means." If a server sweats blood for you (or minimally provides reasonable service and allows you to enjoy your meal), you give her a tip in recognition of her efforts. Kant's requirement is that we respect the goals, projects, and rationality of our fellows, because we have the same expectation for ourselves.

Now, the question I'm left with this afternoon is whether on this principle we were justified in leaving the restaurant as we did. My first thought is that we were justified in leaving, since servers are just as capable of treating customers as mere means, and so we have a Kantian justification for giving good service. But just because we don't get the service we expect, does that justify us in not leaving a tip? Is this overly retributive? Do I need a new example for my students?

Clearly, I've thought too much about this. Did you know that the word "tip" was initially an acronym for "to insure promptness"?

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*Our drive south on Hwy 285, especially through the San Luis Valley (spectacular views of the Sangre de Cristo mountains) is easily among the most beautiful drives I've ever taken in Colorado. Other spectacular drives include: Hwy 285 over Kenosha Pass into Deckers and Jefferson (if you've done it, you know EXACTLY what I'm talking about); Independence Pass in the late summer/early fall at night - scary, but like another planet; Anywhere in Grand County; Hwy 7 south from Long's Peak through Allenspark, especially on a rainy July or August day.

**Some friends were married in Marble, CO at the foot of the Maroon Bells. As we were driving through Aspen, we were low on gas and as we drove by a gas station, we erroneously assumed that there would be another gas station before we got on the pass. Turns out that the gas station we passed was the last one until Leadville. As we made our way up Independence Pass, the gas light came on. We white-knuckled it to the top of the pass and drove as much of the way down in neutral as was possible. As we rolled into Twin Lakes, we discovered the gas station to be closed and so on to Leadville we pushed. We barely made it, and important lessons learned: stop for gas at the gas station you see, because it might be the last one for many miles.

Grudge Match!

2007-03-20T18:48:00.000-06:00

The James Beard Foundation award nominees (pshew!) were announced yesterday. In the writing about food category (or something like that), Bill Buford's Heat squares off against Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. I have this strange prejudice about non-chefs writing about kitchens (according to AV, a "chef writing snob"), and so I put Buford's book down in respectful disgust about 2/3 of the way through ... even though it is about Mario Batali. AV loved it, though, so that's why this particular award is shaping up to be a grudge match. He's not yet read Omnivore's. Congratulations, also, to local fella Adam Cayton-Holland (Westword), who was nominated for a piece he wrote in December.

Speaking of Michael Pollan, I just finished The Botany of Desire, which was a lot of fun. Except for that part where he speculates that the theory of Forms was conceived while Plato was -- er -- "intoxicated." That was profoundly disturbing, and it has been bothering me since I read it last week. Now I'm on to reading Matthew Stewart's The Courtier and the Heretic about Leibniz and Spinoza. It's fascinating so far, and contains a passing reference to the defenestration of Prague. Stewart seems more sympathetic to Spinoza (and it's hard not to be sympathetic, given that he supported himself grinding lenses by day and writing scandalous philosophical treatises by night, all while Leibniz power-played his way around Europe wearing, no doubt, powdered wigs and the like), but it's made me want to read more Spinoza.

Yesterday we saw The Host, which was somehow reminiscent to me of Dr. Strangelove. It is, undoubtedly, a sharp poke at many things American ... but this is the subtext of a supremely artistic and complete film. We had a rollicking conversation about it over a less than stellar dinner out after the movie.

Spring break continues -- I've been grading quite a bit, and am hoping that the grading will be finished in time for me to do some actual planning and preparation for the second half of the semester. Tomorrow night I'm radioing from 10pm to 12 midnight (89.3 FM/www.kuvo.org) and looking forward to playing some adventurous music over the airwaves.

For some reason, I can't bring myself to talk much about philosophy over the blog-waves. I don't know if that's a side effect of a higher proportion of teaching to learning right now or what, but the substance of my blog has changed a lot over the last six months. Sorry to those of you readers who are interested in more substantial things, but it seems that the only things that grab me to blog about are non-philosophical in nature. Maybe someday soon I'll get back on the philosophy blog horse. For now, though, I'll stick to writing about movies, tennis, and telly ... and Spinoza.

If any doubts remain...

2007-03-14T18:08:00.000-06:00

...that Roger Federer may be one of the greatest athletes of all bloody time, check out this short video. You don't need to like tennis to appreciate the sheer athleticism (and frankly, dumbfounding skill) he exhibits.

HT: Kottke (which I don't read much anymore)

Plugging along till Break

2007-03-12T18:26:00.000-06:00

Speaking of plugging. In addition to the things Becky has pointed out, on Saturday, March 17 from 10am-5pm CU-Boulder is hosting the Brakhage Symposium, themed "Motion and the Real: Avant-Garde Film and the Fundamentals of Cinema" sporting prominent film theorist-historian-critic-curators Tom Gunning and Sally Berger (of MOMA) as well as CU Faculty Melinda Barlow and Dan Boord (a film of his).

The day is capped off by an evening screening of the wonderful FILM IST. 7-12 by Gustav Deutsch.

I'll be there, just look for the haggard, grumpy and coughing guy.

Inching. Towards. Break.

2007-03-12T09:53:00.000-06:00

Spring break is next week. I'm looking forward to having some time to collect errant thoughts (of which there are many). A few pop-culture related comments:

Last week's LOST was exceptional. It is really at its best when Damon Lindelof and Carleton Cuse are writing it -- they were responsible for the Desmond ep a couple of weeks ago that nearly made me weep with nerd joy. Drew Moser has some good thoughts on Sayid and forgiveness. I swear, as long as Jack stays over with the Others (and we don't see hide nor hair of him, Juliet, or Ben, or Kate, for that matter) the show is really, really good.

Reports from the Paley fest indicate that some major plot developments in coming episodes of Heroes look suspiciously like plot lines from The Watchmen series. We all knew that Heroes was ~~stealing~~ lifting familiar notions from other comics, and those of us who have read some comic books (me) and many comic books (Patric(k), AV) were getting to be okay with it. Is it "creative liberty" or plagiarism? Another reason -- besides that psuedo-philosophical narration that I've rejected before and Jughead Petrelli-- for me to watch with eyebrow lifted. Now we have to wait until late April for comic book forgery.

Seen anything good lately? We went and saw David Fincher's Zodiac on Friday night. It was looooong (2h 40m!), but good. It's great that there are some significant, interesting films in the mainstream (I'm thinking of Zodiac, Children of Men). Manolha Dargis really loved Zodiac -- read her review here. Last week we saw The Lives of Others, which won the Academy Award for best foreign film, and it was outstanding -- a perfect example of Bernard Williams' "moral squeamishness" critique of Utilitarianism, and perhaps the topic of my in-the-hopper master's thesis. I think we're also planning to see Bong Joon-ho's The Host, for fun and for looks.

Tomorrow night we'll be heading to Dazzle for live music -- Ralph Alessi is in town with Ravi Coltrane. On Wednesday night (as long as all is well) I'll be running the boards for the Jazz Odyssey at KUVO. I might not talk, but I'll be pushing the buttons that will bring you Matt or Teke's fine musical choices. Tune in from 10p-12a if you're up. According to my pal at KUVO, next Wednesday (3/21/07) will guarantee not only my presence, but my voice over the airwaves as well.

The new phonebooks are here!

2007-03-02T10:08:00.000-07:00

For the last week or so, I've been compulsively checking the Denver Post's Theater column for reviews of Footloose!, and today is the day. Read John Moore's review here, and get ready to start saying "we knew him when."

Way to go brother!

LTP: February Progress

2007-02-28T10:41:00.000-07:00

So it's the last day of the month, and I find myself needing to talk about my ~~new year's resolutions~~ long-term projects ... if only for consistency's sake.

Goal #1: Stop Buying Unnecessarily: so far, so good. I've mainly been buying groceries and gas, and spending most of my money on oranges. For some reason, I can't get enough of them. In particular, I'm fond of the cuties, the California mandarins that are easy to peel. The oranges have assisted in Goal #3 (taking better care of myself), because I've mostly stopped eating ice cream and other sweets before bed -- except for a run-in last week with some Chunky Monkey. My schedule has opened up so I can go to step aerobics and spinning classes, which I've been able to do about three times a week. These efforts are paying off in real, measurable dividends.

Strangely enough, I find that my purchasing and eating habits tend toward the extreme when I go to shop at King Soopers. Pre-packaged foods are so readily available that I find myself rationalizing certain purchases (ahem, Shells n' Cheese) because they're on sale or offered as a twofer or something like that. Limiting the visits to KS for coffee and seltzer is generally the way to go. It's strange how that happens. Anyway, these are reasonable developments. I've also managed to avoid Target for the most part, but I may need to go there to get a swimsuit. I don't swim and I don't actually "swimsuit" very often, so I can't quite rationalize paying tons for something I'll wear for a week.

Goal #4: Reintegrating Jesus is presenting itself with alarming urgency. I feel like in many ways my daily life and activities are disconnected from one another and from me. I've lost sight of the purpose for my projects. Will going to church and attempting regular devotional time solve my problems? Probably not. On reflection, though, the thing that was always "standing under" my school work, work, and teaching in the past five years was my attention to matters spiritual ... thanks mostly to being at the Seminary. I'm successful, I think, in my work and writing when it emerges as connected to something deeper than just the material at hand. On days like today, the absence of this commitment is keenly felt. Onwards, I guess.

Around Town Yesterday

2007-02-24T13:32:00.000-07:00

Last night, AV and I took in the opening performance of the Town Hall Arts Center's Footloose! Yes, we went to a show. I'm continually making good on my promise to see only musicals that my brother is performing in. If you scroll down on the link you'll see the production photos (and some stonewashed jeans). His performance as Ren McCormack has busted the metaphysics of the six-degrees game. I am screamingly proud of him, and last night as I was watching him swing his partner about during the closing number I was immediately grateful for all of the swing nights I dragged him to during college. But what we saw last night was all him, and it was fantastic. I did have some roberto cavalli-related flashbacks last night as I was rudely bumped by many ladies in horrid fur coats.

Yesterday I also answered phones at KUVO, and there I learned that the major public radio outlet in Colorado has outsourced all their fundraising drive functions. As if recorded local information wasn't enough, when you call to pledge funds to Colorado Public Radio, you speak to someone in Iowa or elsewhere who they've contracted to answer the phones. Basically, CPR has us all over a barrel. That's too bad. However, it also drives home the importance (at least to me) of the work KUVO does, not only in their format choices, but in their symbiotic relationship to the community. If you've not connected with KUVO yet, you really should. And I'm not just saying that because I give time and energy (and funds) ... it's a real gem in a sea of absolute rocks.

Earlier this week I learned that Wild Oats has been bought out by Whole Foods. This is bad news for a variety of reasons, but like other Wild Oats customers, I have two concerns. The first (and most major) having to do with the potential closing of stores. The Capitol Hill Wild Oats (aka our Giant Refrigerator) is excellent in terms of customer service and quality of meat and produce. I go there almost every other day to get fresh food stuffs for our evening meals, and if this went away it would change the character of our neighborhood. Also, I would be really upset. The second has to do with the quality of product and customer service once Wild Oats gets brought under the behemoth's umbrella. There's a reason (or a variety of them, really) that Wild Oats customers shop there and not at Whole Foods (sorry Mom -- I know you like the olives and cheese). As a fellow KUVO volunteer and down-the-street neighbor said yesterday, "They ask you for ID when you're shopping in Cherry Creek." We're all crossing our fingers that the Whole Foods aura won't infect our neighborhood grocery, and in this age of big-box stores and wacky rules about lobsters and foie gras, the Cap Hill Wild Oats is really the closest thing we've got to that concept.

Not in town: dooce's insightful and, frankly profound, commentary on the Britney Spears situation. We were remarking last week that the media and public that cares about this particular tragedy are the ones that built her up and now she's suffering at their mercy. Heather Armstrong contends that it may be evidence of postpartum depression which only adds to the tragedy and to the marked severity of the situation.

Also found yesterday: and disgusting, is this tidbit from a Greenwich Village Taco Bell/KFC (it just sounds like a bad idea, doesn't it?): here's some YouTube of rats on parade. Disgusting. According to one report, the Taco Bell/KFC where these rats were running wild was open to customers and serving food just the previous day.

Greatest Hits: Lent and Me are Friends

2007-02-24T10:18:00.000-07:00

(from March 2005)

I've been using lenten meditation as a procrastination tool for the last few days. Not sure that is something I should confess, but there you have it. For my meditations, I have been using two things. First is the "Little Black Book" that Regis UM distributes every Lent. It contains six-minute meditations, this year coming from Mark's Gospel. Second is the Orbis collection called Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter. Both have been very helpful in thinking on the Passion and the Lenten season.

I went to Catholic College. Catholic traditions (especially Catholic Social Teaching) and the Catholic disposition toward meditation and quietude are hugely influential parts of my spiritual life. I know it is part of some protestant traditions to celebrate Lent, but it is not an advertised Baptist practice. I always feel a little sneaky during Lent, a little like I am doing something I am not "supposed" to do. However, I don't know of any Christian tradition that doesn't advocate meditation on Scripture, lamentation, supplication and repentance, so we're all in the same company here.

Lent is a quiet time . It isn't filled with the expectation that accompanies Advent: that is the beginning of the story. Right now we are waiting for the midpoint (and as the Lord tarries, we are not yet at the end), when we understand Passion, Crucifixion and examination of our own lives. Today, I read Henry Drummond's "Turning." Drummond says that when Peter is caught
the third time denying Christ, "...when a person is in the thick of his sin his last thought is to throw down his arms and repent. So Peter never thought of turning, but the Lord turned. And when Peter would rather have looked anywhere else than at the Lord, the Lord looked at Peter. This scarce-noticed fact is the only sermon needed to anyone who sins -- that the Lord turns first."

No Christian I know admits to being Paul -- we all admit to being Peter first (and I often exhibit shades of Thomas): we recognize and discuss, since these admissions are typically public, our everyday denials of God in sin and admit the imperfections of our characters. I wonder how many of us remember that single gesture Luke (my favorite Gospel writer) captures in 22:61: "The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter." How many times each day does God look straight at us and we DON'T see? Peter saw, and (22:62) "wept bitterly." We see in Peter what we desperately wish for ourselves -- we wish to recognize our sin as it is happening. The remarkable thing about Peter's denials is that he is caught in a way that no one else is or, frankly, wishes to be...with the Lord physically standing right there. We are forced to imagine Jesus's heartbreak at that moment (because he is, for all our forgetfulness, human) and Peter's disappointment, for lack of a better term. Drummond reminds us of this moment and all that is encompassed in it.

Lord, give me awareness to know that you see my sin. Give me the presence of heart to know when you are looking at me.

Greatest Hits (for Lent): On Fragment 110

2007-02-22T09:00:00.000-07:00

Pascal on Listening: Fragment 110

There’s some debate about what is going on in Pascal’s fragment #110 (i.e., we recently started a debate about whether or not Pascal is a reliablist/externalist w/r/t belief in God), but Pascal does make some valuable comments on the role of the heart in hearing and understanding. Pascal’s epistemology is centered on the three orders: heart, mind and body. The order of the body covers knowledge we can gain through sensory experience, observation and experience of external data. The order of the mind covers reason and rational priniciples. Pascal believes that we can have success and knowledge via the mind, but as Groothuis points out,”those gifted in the use of reason may miss out on the realities of faith, which, while not opposed to reason, emanate froma realm beyond the ken of unaided human rationality…In his reflections on the infinitely large and small, Pascal highlights the limitations of the finite knower in relation to the universe (199/72)” (Douglas Groothuis, On Pascal (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth-Thomson, 2003) p42).

According to Pascal, the source of first principles of metaphysics–including numbers, space, time and religious experience–come from the order of the heart. Pascal seeks to energize the so-called “intuitive mind,” which uses all three orders to understand various things about the world. Pascal’s approach is abductive, interested in using a variety of data (from a variety of sources) to find the explanation that suits the available data. What is important for the purposes of spiritual formation and listening is the idea that Pascal presents in fragment 110. Pascal proposes that there are in fact some things that we don’t know and can’t know using reason. This “inability,” as he calls it, demands heart response. “Our inability must therefore serve only to humble reason, which would like to be the judge of everything, but not to confute our certainty. As if reason were the only way we could learn!” (110/282). This insight is of importance since Pascal says that to have knowledge of first things, we must use something other than our minds. In fact, knowledge of first things is unavailable to us via our minds. In terms of spiritual formation, it is a strong (philosophical) reminder that perhaps in order to really hear and understand others, all of us must be engaged: senses, mind and heart.

Learning to “humble reason” is a tough lesson for philosophy students. We are required to think and demand so much of our minds that we tend to isolate that capacity as the primary (and, for rationalists the only) source of knowledge. When it comes to other people, is it such a stretch that we have to use more? and that those occasionally disparate faculties of mind/sense/heart have to *gasp!* work together to truly hear others? Easier said than done, but certainly a good goal for us all to strive toward.

"The Universe Course-Corrects"

2007-02-15T06:46:00.000-07:00

Did you see it?!?! Did you see it?!?!

So sayeth Desmond David Hume in last night's STELLAR ep of LOST. While Desmond finds himself at the mercy of efficient causation (oh, the philosophical irony!), we learn that next week we'll find out what Jack's tatoos mean! Oh, hurrah! The greatest question of LOST to be ever answered! From the universe unfolding in an incontrovertible way to that whiny, screechy, doofus of a spinal surgeon. Real even story-telling there.

Actually, they would have to go a long way to top last night's show. Desmond is one of my favorite characters, but I can't help but be gleeful at the prospect of the universe sticking it to David Hume.

Bourdain as Blogger

2007-02-08T09:06:00.000-07:00

He's been guest-blogging (and is rumored to soon have his own forum) on Michael Ruhlman's blog. First it was about Top Chef, and now Anthony Bourdain has unleashed his furious commentary on the Food Network. I'm especially amenable to his suggested Iron Chef America matches, in particular Marco Pierre White vs. Gordon Ramsay as well as his unabashed admiration for Mario Batali. (Sensitive readers are warned herewith about language that appears in the pig-sanctioned link above.)

I've read Bourdain's Kichen Confidential and A Cook's Tour easily 20 times each and count them among my favorite. books. ever (and encouraging my difficulty in reading non-chefs writing about food). Although nowadays he's doing silly things like getting tazed by a SWAT division of the LAPD, I still think he is one of the most fun writers on food -- and on anything, as his recent acerbic commentaries on television can attest -- working currently. Anyway, this is hilarious reading.

Some Problems with Philosophy: Post Script

2007-02-06T19:37:00.000-07:00

Today we effectively concluded the first "unit" in my intro class, which had as its central focus an exploration of the attitude of philosophy. Paraphrasing Bertrand Russell, we decided that philosophy done well (and rightly oriented) does four things: (1) it adds to our store of knowledge and fills out our education, (2) it examines familiar things in an unfamiliar light, (3) it questions and challenges tradition, and (4) it provides -- somehow -- ways of coping with our everyday experience. I've asked them to write a short paper indicating which of the following thinkers they think best exemplifies the philosophical attitude: Thales, Socrates, Plato, Kierkegaard, or Nietzsche. The conversation over the last two weeks has been ~~really~~ exceptional in this class -- at 7:00am! -- so we've ~~really~~ been able to explore these ideas using the Pojman text. I'm ~~really~~ looking forward to their written responses.

At the end of our discussion today I broached the topic of preparedness, talking with them a little bit about why they think "now" (being in college, growing as a young adult, etc) is the right time to read philosophy. They ~~really~~ surprised me with their answers, which were all along the lines of their minds being ready to accept the abstract nature of these ideas, their force and the lens philosophy provides to reorganize their experience. What struck me was first of all, how frank they were in recognizing the way philosophy fits with and for them. I couldn't help but think of the poverty of my assessment below, in the sense that the way I've viewed this "unpreparedness" is a half-empty proposition. They come at the class feeling intellectually prepared -- like now is the time when philosophy will make sense. I've made an inverted assumption about my students, and today I'm pleasantly surprised.

Some Problems with Philosophy

2007-02-04T09:37:00.000-07:00

In a comment to my post below on Retooling, Ted makes the following point:

I wonder why some Christians lose their faith when they take philosophical courses. I knew a very intelligent guy, who was a very committed Christian, who took philosophy (I think he majored in it) at a well known Christian school. It seemed to throw him for a loop, and he dropped out of attending church for some time (years, I believe), before coming back. An aside question, so forgive me. I do remember that Francis Schaeffer told his students that when reading philosophy, they needed to be reading twice as much in Scripture (or something to that effect).

If I had faced this important point about three years or so ago, I would say immediately because in general, the church doesn't teach people to think. Now, though, I think it is a bit more complicated in the sense that no college student is adequately prepared for their first philosophy class, except in very rare cases. Reading primary-source philosophy is so challenging to students because it's not at all clear why these thinkers are asking the questions they are. We live in a culture where other kinds of inquiry are prized, and the insularity of discipline and specialization are encouraged. Science, math, philosophy, and theology or religious studies are not integrated the way they were in earlier periods of Western history. Somehow in our contemporary mind, these issues are either already settled or not worth thinking about (because they don't quite make a buck).

Certainly the contemporary Christian life requires balance and integration of rational inquiry and spiritual examination (although they are in no way opposed to one another), but our experiences as young Christians are heavy on the spiritual side. We fail to recognize the integrated nature of our intellectual heritage, and in doing so fail to prepare for the different ways in which individuals have answered questions that we've already answered in certain ways. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but my recent experience as a teacher indicates a general unpreparedness for the problems philosophy is concerned to answer.

In my intro class this semester, I've let the book do the leading in the sense that Pojman begins by discussing the proper attitude that philosophy requires. I'm hoping that by challenging students on an attitudinal level, the ground might be prepared for accepting philosophical problems and criticizing their proposed solutions. The perpetual challenge for the individual teaching philosophy is to train people to take philosophy out of the classroom, instead of engendering an hour and fifteen minute period twice a week where we suspend our regular lives and questions in favor of these more speculative issues. How does philosophy become influential for living and not a mere thought experiment?

LTP: January Progress (?)

2007-02-03T13:00:00.000-07:00

The girls over at Con$umer Di$obedience do a monthly round-up of their progress w/r/t their compacting goals. I committed myself to doing the same, and the note in my red Moleskine tells me it's time. So here it goes (you can find the full-ish discussion of goals and things in this post).

Goal #1: Stop buying unnecessarily. Yeah, right. At the very least, I am aware that I purchased too much stuff last month, well more than I should have. My conscience is somehow present when I'm at the checkout in the grocery store, but not at the checkout at Target. This is backwards, and stress constituted the substance of my purchases (not to be too Aristotelian about it or anything). Today AV and I made some major purges: a microwave (which nearly exploded the last time I used it), an old blender (thanks for the Magic Bullet, Mom!) and some other stuff. On some days -- like today -- I'm keenly aware of how much stuff we have, although we've done a good job of getting rid of things over the last two years or so.

For the next month or so, I think some keys to better purchasing management include the following: (1) make lists at the grocery store. This helps to avoid picking up unnecessary stuff and making additional trips for things I forgot. I think it is also somehow unconsciously satisfying to complete a list. (2) Keep buying food as locally and as in-season as possible. We live three houses from a Wild Oats market, and they're very clear about what is local. This is also an unconscious pacifier, because I feel satisfied when I've purchased fresh stuff that is local. (3) Avoid Target. The consensus over at Con$umer Di$obedience is that things from the big-box stores are cheaply made and fall apart easily. I think this is definitely true, especially with clothes and shoes. I'm just throwing good money after bad (I think) by purchasing too many clothes there.

Goal #2: Continue on the self-directed inquiry, research, and writing path. This goal has been working itself out nicely. I learned just last week that a review I wrote back in August will be published in the March 2007 issue of Teaching Philosophy. I'm also working my final paper for Film Theory into a publishable something, and I've developed a good relationship with my professor for that class. She's agreed to work with me on the thesis I'm planning to generate (and she was enthusiastic about it, too!). So far, so good. I have two or three projects in my mind -- in addition to the work I'm doing in this semester's Intro to Phenomenology class.

Goal #3: Take better care of myself. In spite of the two-week break I've recently taken from the gym (as well as recent weather-related cancellations at volleyball), I've been doing okay here. This coming week I'm planning to go to spinning twice and step class twice, so we'll see how that goes. I really like taking classes because I know that on some level everyone else is just as miserable and sweaty as I am. Also, I think the instruction in these classes at Auraria is appropriate. That helps. A recent discussion with my physician about related matters has indicated the immediate importance of regular exercise, and now the excuses are removed.

Goal #4: Reintegrate Jesus. Errr...I don't have any real reason for why this hasn't materialized yet. It's embarrassing.

You mean to tell me...

2007-01-30T06:27:00.000-07:00

...that Peter Petrelli is supposed to be both Rogue and Counselor Troi? Good night, people. Pick a paradigm and stick to it.

Last night's episode of Heroes is precisely what I was talking about in my latest conversation with the television. Rule 17, Tim Kring! Rule 17! Also, Nathan Petrelli -- although he appears to have a haircut -- still looks like jughead. If Claire Bennett is his daughter, then I will call her "indestructible daughter of jughead."

To Thales!

Retooling (2): Extended Version

2007-01-25T15:30:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I made some choices w/r/t the primary source texts I'm considering for my new and improved Intro to Philosophy course. I'm probably going to narrow down this list, but I won't be able to tell until I read them.

Bertrand Russell, Problems of Philosophy (Hackett)
Plato, Five Dialogues (Hackett) -- I'm looking to this especially for the Euthyphro and the Phaedo
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (Hackett)
Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditations (Cambridge)
Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Hackett)
Mill, On Liberty (again, Hackett)
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols (and finally, Hackett)

Notice what's missing...I had to suppress a very strong urge to include George of Cloyne's Principles Concerning Human Understanding (Me: yes kids, there is no such thing as matter...it's all in your head! Students: thanks for nothing!) and Kant's Groundwork. I want them to learn, not run from philosophy screaming.

On another note, this process started an interesting conversation between another early-morning colleague and I. I mentioned my interest in changing my course to employ all primary source material, and I asked him about his thoughts on the subject. He uses two of the books I propose above (and several more, I would guess), and he mentioned that using these makes the teacher/lecturer necessary and useful. While I'm not entirely sure he meant it this way, I took this comment to be an attempt at helping the students understand what the role of the teacher is in a philosophy class.

I guess I have always thought it a little unfair -- and hence my reticence to use the primary texts -- to give students walking into a field with which they have had little or no interaction (what, you didn't have a philosophy class in high school?) a set of texts that are by nature difficult and oblique. There was an occasion in college when, in a medieval philosophy class, we were given quite possibly some of the most challenging (and in some cases, almost unreadable to the undergraduate eye) texts possible, with the expectation that we would rely on the wisdom of the professor to navigate us through these difficult waters. The idea of professor-as-sage is something that is generally unwarranted...especially for a lowly MA like myself. My fear has always been that I would be selling my students a false bill of goods, and that I wouldn't be able to get them through the texts at all, much less do it wisely or with any sagacity (whoa).

On the other hand, the thing that leaves me so dissatisfied with the textbook approach is that the professor becomes virtually useless to the average student who pays attention while s/he reads and "gets it." I, and subsequently the time spent in class, end up being redundant for these students, and that troubles me a little. Of course, I make what effort I can to extend the text as far as I can but I'm not actually sure whether my students are -- on this approach -- learning philosophy or learning about philosophy. There's a difference.

On Karen's advice I've been trying to consider a question or an aspect of philosophy that motivates me in order to develop a theme for my class. It occurred to me this week while teaching about relativism and moral nihilism (I'm really digging the metaethics right now) that one thing of importance to me is progress. How is it that we change, and change for the better? Like we always said at the Seminary, philosophy is at the lower-layer of most things, and I think it it can -- in most of its forms -- inspire change and transformation. I hear the voice of the wisest person I've ever had the privilege of learning from mumbling in the back of my head, "thou requirest a little lower layer..."

Anyway, I'm curious what you think of my central question and my selected texts. What has been your experience (or recollection for all you Platonists out there) with primary sources and primary texts in introductory classes of any sort? Any words of wisdom, my friends?Also, thanks to some prodding from Keith, anyone can comment. Just keep it clean here, people. Leave the swearing to me.

Dear Television:

2007-01-25T08:49:00.000-07:00

Since you and I spend time together willingly -- and not mindlessly (except for that thing with the Real World, which I know you won't tell anyone about) -- can we come to an agreement about some things? Please?

Can you please tell the writers of Heroes to start applying Strunk and White's principle #17 of ommitting needless words to the storylines and subplots? Tell them to x-out some of that ridiculous dialogue and sappy plot development and just get to the cool comic book stuff. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the Hiro-Ando business (because it's somehow the best written stuff on the show...except for the incessant mentions of the "Nissan Versa, it's right outside!"), and I have high hopes for the new Christopher Eccleston character. Nathan Petrelli, on the other hand, needs a hair cut. He looks like Jughead. And Mohinder Suresh's psuedo-philosophical narrating is tiresome and puts me to sleep. More powers and using them, less finding out about the dynamics between the people with the powers. Oh, and tell them that HRG really shouldn't have a gun. It's not convincing.

Also, send a memo to those folks at LOST about Jack and Kate. WE DON'T CARE ANY MORE. And by "We," I mean me.

I will reserve my usual ire about the Food Network programming you've somehow let continue. I've let the thumbs-down button on the TiVO remote do the talking for me (and you're "on notice" as it were, Sandra Lee, Cans McMange, and Rachael Ray). By the way, thanks for cooperating with the TiVO. Your work together has given me much less to complain about.

Finally, can you please do something about that Alex Trebek? He is weird, and the only reason we know this is because Jeopardy! is on twice a day. If, somehow, I make it past the contestant's pool into the random contestant search and then onto the show I might recant, but in the mean time just have him read questions and cut the ancillary comments. You might consider sending him a copy of Strunk and White as well.

PS: How is it that Explanator remains the highest-rated show on Monday nights? Honestly. For a show that relies on David Caruso explaining something and then a cg zoom to that thing which he just finished explaining, it sure is catering to the least attentive denominator out there. You, my dear friend, can do better.

Thank your lucky stars you weren't in Portland on this day.

2007-01-20T08:53:00.001-07:00

HT: Kottke

More on Children of Men

2007-01-19T13:34:00.000-07:00

Media Mindfulness has a little piece on Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men. AV and I saw the film a couple of Saturdays ago and were blown away at it on a variety of levels. I'm particularly interested in the notions of realism that the film embodies (as realism in film is oddly turning into my pet project -- and probably thesis focus), and I appreciate the article's discussion of that idea -- as well as the quotation from Zizek that explodes the idea little more. He says, "The changes that the film introduces do not point toward alternate reality, they simply make reality more what it already is. I think this is the true vocation of science fiction. Science fiction realism introduces a change that makes us see better. The nightmare that we are expecting is here."

Part of what makes it credible, I think, is the film's direct, but not brow-beating reliance on familiar themes and images -- the war on terror taken to a horrific (but logical) extension. It doesn't take much for the viewer to build credible inferences between the world around us and the world on screen. This is why I think it is so much more effective as a morality play and a science fiction nightmare than Blade Runner. I suppose this inference goes without saying, but I want to argue that w/r/t Children of Men and elsewhere, our ability to build inferences between the real world and the world we see is what makes film so powerful and effective as a genre of moral texts. Hmm.

Read Manolha Dargis's review.

On Philosophy, Common Sense, Transformation

2007-01-19T08:19:00.000-07:00

I'm really excited about one of the textbooks I'm using this semester (Louis Pojman's, Philosophy: The Pursuit of Wisdom, 5/e). In his first chapter he tackles the question, "What is Philosophy?" No small potatoes there. On the second page of the chapter, he quotes Bertrand Russell, who says:

The [person] who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the cooperation or consent of his deliberate reason...While diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, [philosophy] greatly increases our knowledge as to what they may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never travelled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive the sense of wonder by showing familiar things in an unfamiliar light.

This passage perfectly captures what it is to teach philosophy and be transformed by it. However, the transformee must be open and willing to -- as Dr. Gordon Lewis is famous for saying -- follow the truth wherever it leads. It wasn't clear how much of a prima facie risk this "following the truth is" for those just walking in to a philosophy class. It's easy for me to champion that cause and talk about it during the first week of class, but it is another thing to draw students through that process and do so continuously over sixteen weeks. Furthermore, being enthusiastic about the ideas and helpful dispositions of philosophy is only good if people are willing to go along. Yet another reason why sometimes teaching philosophy is like selling something. It's still hard to tell who is buying.

There's an interesting move occurring now that I am a moderately-established adjunct that involves groups of us turning into groups of colleagues, and my group includes one full-time faculty member (the one who happened to evaluate me last semester) as well. We visit in the morning, sharing our woes and frustrations about early-morning students, the bookstore somehow managing to screw up a crucial book order, and the overall ridiculousness of text-messagers and sleeping students. (If you're tired and have difficulty getting out of bed, why -- pray tell -- did you sign up for a 7:00am class?)

I'm it!

2007-01-16T20:13:00.000-07:00

Nancy has charged me with the following meme. A good distraction for a busy week!

1) What’s the most fun work you’ve ever done, and why? Easy -- teaching! I can't believe I get paid to talk about philosophy and encourage others to think philosophically. It's something that (when compared with my time teaching worldview, apologetics, and philosophical matters in the church) can be done successfully, and that is fulfilling. I also like people, much more than I admit I do, and being a teacher gets me just the right amount of exposure.

2) A. Name one thing you did in the past that you no longer do but wish you did? Not the piano, that's for dang sure. Hmmm. Honestly, one thing I don't do anymore -- and this is fairly recent -- is be adventurous in my fiction choices. I think I've read the same five books for the last four years (with the moderately notable diversion into Zadie Smith's On Beauty). I honestly just stick to De Smet, South Dakota. I didn't used to, but that's graduate school for you.

2) B. Name one thing you’ve always wanted to do but keep putting off. This is a tough question. I think learning to box would qualify here, or learning caipoera. Probably learning caipoera would be awesome.

3) A. What two things would you most like to learn or be better at, and why? (1) Not being so danged competitive (read: being a more gracious loser), because I'm convinced I'm much less fun when I'm losing and mad about it ; (2) teaching Spinoza (for reasons that should be obvious -- doesn't everyone stink at teaching Spinoza?).

3) B. If you could take a class/workshop/apprentice from anyone in the world living or dead, who would it be and what would you hope to learn? I could conceive of a class on cultural observation and what we might learn from crowds from Kierkegaard. I appreciate his acerbic observations of crowds and mobs. And honestly, I'd like a sit-down with Berkeley and Hume in the same room, just to hear the debate, which I'm certain would be full of witticisms and thrown turbans.

4) A. What three words might your best friends or family use to describe you? Ridiculous (in the good way, whatever that is), funny, prodigious (esp. when it comes to eating or drinking bourbon).

4) B. Now list two more words you wish described you… brave, fit.

5) What are your top three passions? (can be current or past, work, hobbies, or causes) -- (1) spending time with AV and thinking and talking about what we're thinking about; (1.5) spending time with my family; (2) philosophy -- teaching it and learning it; (3) KUVO, lately.

6) Write–and answer–one more question that YOU would ask someone. Q: What floats? A: Apples! Churches! Lead! Gravy! Very Small Rocks! (voice from off-camera) A Duck!

Now you're it: Nathan, Paul, MOM (you should answer in the comments, mom).

Restart, Retool, Routine

2007-01-15T18:41:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow the business starts up again. I'm grateful for the month I get between classes, but in a lot of ways it has seemed eternal. I blame it all on the snow. Three preps (Intro, Ethics, critical reasoning) should be pretty exciting, and will manage to keep me honest. I like the challenge of the things I'm teaching, and the fact that I'm using all new textbooks all around will be pretty wild.

During a fabulous lunch on Friday, I was discussing with a friend of mine my desire to revamp the Intro class to integrate primary texts only -- and lose the "textbook" approach. The deal with primary texts is always scary. In the wrong hands, they can make philosophy seem impenetrable and/or ruin a class. In the right hands, though, they can keep a class interesting and/or make it a transformative experience for the students. My fear is the former, that my inexperience teaching might somehow screw up whatever I might bring to the texts. I fear I don't know the texts well enough to use them independently of any all-in-one anchor. When asked for advice, my friend says to choose a theme and work from there. I'm already thinking ahead to next Fall when my new-and-improved class will debut. I just can't think of a theme. It's funny, but the lack of an immediately-apparent theme for an intro to philosophy class goes directly to the unmoored nature of my own interests in philosophy. I'm not quite sure where I fit or what I want to study. Everything is interesting!

This week is about setting and getting acclimated to a routine. Absent a routine, things get weird. I sleep strange hours, I get headaches, I obsess about things that aren't as pressing as they seem at the moment (thanks a lot, Michael Pollan), I stop writing interesting blog posts, etc. The trick this time around is to integrate some of my long-term projects into the routine. Maybe once a typical day is established, I can overlay some thoughtful work in writing, thinking, and spiritually forming on the procedure.

I expect things to be slow (*gasp!*) around here for the next week or so, but I'll post from the trenches when I can.

So we're doing THAT again...

2007-01-11T10:07:00.000-07:00

Holy smokes. Last night I had the opportunity to be the guest host on KUVO's Jazz Odyssey. Here's my playlist. It was really a good time, and my thanks to Teke O'Reilly for making it happen. I played 21 songs -- AV and I were talking on the way home about how many more possible combinations there could be in the crates of music we have upstairs. Funny how that works.

When I was in high school, I sent in a playlist for 96.5 the Peak's Amateur Hour. They let me on the radio, and there was a tape made of that hour, which we found a couple years ago while we were moving. Then, when I was getting ready to go to college, I was just desperate to be a DJ on KRCX, Regis's then-AM radio station. My friend Jon Davis and I hosted the "happy happy hour," which went from 4-6 on Thursdays. So I'm no stranger to the radio, but there were a lot of people listening last night. The Curmudgeon even tuned in from his remote location. Anyway, it was a lot of fun and I even got a call about my playing Peter Brotzmann (which was ALL AV), so I guess I made a fan? Also, talking on the radio is a lot like teaching a class, but you just can't see the students.

KUVO is an important cultural component of our community, and they do their part to support creative music -- the JO is just one example of this. I'm sure glad we live in the vicinity of such a stellar station.

Yes, we have no bananas (and other miscellaneous)

2007-01-08T19:04:00.000-07:00

I love the title of this article: Round 4 Of Cold and Snow, Are You Kidding? It's the contents of the article I'm not so wild about.

The constant sounds outside our window are whirring, splashing, people yelling, and the miraculous sound of tire rubber accidentally catching pavement. The three inches or so of ice has finally melted off Emerson street (from the first snow) to reveal potholes. A friend came onto Cap Hill this weekend and said that 11th avenue was the worst he'd seen. Apparently Five Points is seeing more plow action than the hipsters on the Hill are. The City and County of Denver had better watch out, or we'll start generating some sort of volatile concoction using our empty San Pellegrino bottles.

As an attempt at consolation, I've been reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's The Long Winter. She and her family are snowed in from October to April with no entertainment other than singing. I keep thinking to myself, "It's not so bad! AV does not need to drive 40 miles for wheat!" And of course, all of these things are true and there really is no comparison. But somehow, facing down more snow and cold -- even in the comfort of my home -- is not something I'm looking forward to. I do catch myself in fleeting moments of panic where I think it would be a good idea to shovel out all the empty parking spots on the street or shovel out the ruts in our alley, but then I realize that more snow is coming and it probably wouldn't have the desired effect. One benefit of all this is the unprecedented snow days that AV has been having. His students are, in his words, "all gloom and doom" about this next storm. I think everyone is hoping for a deep freeze (and a late sleep) -- he says all this talking about it will make it much kinder than we all hope.

In news in the "that was really stupid, although well-intentioned" department, last night I played volleyball with a few layers on. While I was trying to maximize my fat-burning potential, I may have nearly given myself heat stroke. Note to self: shorts and tee-shirts, not pants and two shirts for future games.

Onwards and upwards, while firmly snuggled under covers and wearing wool socks, I guess.

An Echo, a Glimmer

2007-01-07T12:16:00.000-07:00

I was in the bookstore yesterday before the movie (which was totally awesome by the way) and picked up *South Park and Philosophy,* the first volume in the Blackwell Pop Culture and Philosophy Series. Lo and behold, on the inside flap I saw a list of forthcoming titles and there it was: "LOST and Philosophy, Sharon Kaye, ed." Evidence that I'm not quite dreaming or making something up in my head. The book will be out in September or thereabouts..

If you're wondering, the Blackwell series is different than the Open Court series. I'm not sure of the mechanics of this divergence. Anyway, there are about 30 volumes in the Open Court series, covering just about any aspect of popular culture (from "The Undead and Philosophy," which sounds gross, to "On Bullshit and Philosophy." I wonder if Harry Frankfurt saw that one coming).

If you're awake...

2007-01-06T11:19:00.000-07:00

You should tune in to KUVO, 89.3 this Wednesday (1-10) from 10pm-12am. I'm not saying why, but you just should. You can also listen online here. If you don't already listen to the greatest radio station on the planet, you should start immediately.

Another LTP

2007-01-04T08:56:00.000-07:00

In an earlier post below, I listed three "long-term projects" for 2007. Four days in, I've not yet been to the gym and purchased some gummi worms and pringles out of a vending machine at work yesterday. That's got to be a double whammy somewhere. Anyway, I'm not being too hard on myself. It's why they're goals and not, say, mandates.

It's been well over six months since graduation from the Seminary and roughly five months since I stopped teaching Sunday School. So I haven't been to church in five months. The tension is something like this: I've attended the same church my whole life, and I'm afraid to go anywhere else. It's actually not quite fear, but imagined comfort. Never mind I don't know half the people in the congregation anymore, but it is still somehow comfortable to go in there.

Susan is always writing these excellent posts about ministry and church, and she's written another one here. Her challenge:

I wondered today in class what would happen to our level of “community” if beginning this Sunday, all Christians were only allowed to travel walking-distance to Church, and bound to attend that single, walking-distance church for an entire year. And what if during that year, the primary purpose of attendance was to know and love everyone in the congregation (I’m assuming these churches will be smallish)~ love them like Jesus does. Forget whether the preaching is good (just go home and read your bible after church, or start a bible study group with 9 other people in your home, to make up for it) or whether the music is not your ’style’ (listen to what you like on your iPod as you walk home) or whether there isn’t a youth group for your kids (start one!) or whether you disagree with the doctrine (who believed everything exactly the same anyway, even in that church you used to attend that was 30 miles from home).

Funny about convergences. Susan's ideas here really meet up with some of the other goals and projects I have in front of me right now about moving away from convenience. Sure, walking to church might be convenient in terms of transportation, but it's not so convenient in terms of having to meet new people, participate in an unfamiliar community, or let the Word wash over you from a new perspective. Cognitive inconvenience is much more jarring than physical inconvenience.

The evidence of soul-poverty is clear in my life. My posts here have reflected this--all the posts before Christmas were complaints, and I think that is evidence of a lack of holy exposure (however, I do think it would take a miracle for me to enjoy and drink in the Christmas season). This is not all church's fault. In fact, it is mostly my fault, failing to take responsibility for my own spiritual work, waiting for it (whatever it is) to happen to me and complaining about what I don't like--ultimately letting those become excuses for avoiding church. What happened to "Knock, and the Door Shall Be Opened to You?" I'm waiting for someone to sense my presence and let me in.

Maybe I should stop hanging around outside.

Virtual Images, Actual Reality, Ways of Seeing

2007-01-03T15:30:00.000-07:00

This post (and the comments) over at the Constructive Curmudgeon taps into an idea I've been stewing about for awhile. It links up with a question fundamental to my current way of thinking: do digitally-created images have moral consequences?

If images have moral consequences, then it seems that there needs to be an acknowledgement of the kind of ontological reality of these images. It's fairly uncontroversial from a philosophical angle to argue that digital torture is problematic because it still resembles something in the non-virtual (real) world. This correspondence view of matching images to their referents seems to make sense. A kind of realism is necessary in order to draw meaningful (i.e., non-relative) moral conclusions. If we adopt the correspondence view, then it is equally uncontroversial to make a moral judgment about digitally-generated child pornography.

But what I want to point out is that outside of philosophical circles, realism and correspondence are not necessarily the primary ways of reading images. In fact, positing a correspondence between images and referents is viewed as relying on a parochial way of "seeing" the image--in particular, from a white, male, western perspective. Even if we acknowledge the limitations of correspondence views, saying "Yes, I am aware that the tradition locates correspondence as priveliged, but I'm going to use it anyway," can we transcend the limitations?

My film theory professor posed this problem to me in her comments on my term paper. If we emphasize a visual-epistemological system that holds to correspondence first and gender or culture second, are we limiting (or worse, ignoring) the insights of feminist or anti-colonialist film theory? How do we integrate these ideas to build a full-orbed interpretive framework?

All this (rambling?) points to the issues of (a) resuscitating a correspondence view as a meaningful way of seeing the world--a position which in fact may not need resuscitating, and (b) developing a correspondence view that translates to adequately accomodate more than it's often given credit for.

Helpful discussions of the relationship between digital images and correspondence (or "perceptual realism") are by Stephen Prince. See especially his "True Lies: Digital Images, Perceptual Realism, and Film Theory," and "Psychoanalytic Film Theory and the Problem of the Missing Spectator" in Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies, David Bordwell and Noel Carroll, eds (University of Wisconsin Press, 1996).

Out of Fashion (I think)

2007-01-02T14:15:00.000-07:00

I like the new year, and I like thinking about all the ways my life will be different in the coming 12 months. However, if the previous 12 months have taught me anything it is that a person never knows what direction things will flow. I wouldn't say that the last year has been about "letting go, letting God." I do think it has been about stubbornness in good and bad ways, and I daresay there is ministry in a good kind of stubbornness (perhaps we should call that "persistence," but "good stubborn" works for me). It's persistence (on my own part and especially on the part of my family) that helped me heal mentally and physically from a nasty physical injury. This was an excellent lesson of 2006.

I stopped making resolutions a long time ago, but I will say that the notion of some long-term projects (clever rebranding, no?) have been creeping around in my mind lately. I'll list some of them here, in no particular order.

-- Stop buying unnecessarily. I tried this project during April and May of last year, and it was really interesting to see that at the end of the month I had a substantial portion of my monthly income left to put into savings. Sadly, it was only a two month experiment in 2006. I'd like to try and make it a way of life in 2007. To be successful here requires that I break my retail therapy habit. Yes, it sometimes feels good to "buy something," but most of the time I certainly do not need that something. This also means that I stop buying the little things that add up--bottles of water, pens, highlighters (*gasp!*), magazines, etc.
This is a wider-scope idea than just focusing on the number of times I swipe my debit card each month. It also means taking the bus as often as possible, instead of driving. My bus pass costs money each semester, but pays off in droves when I use it. Since I will only be teaching at one institution this semester, my commute is no longer multi-directional so the bus pass will work well here.

-- Continue on the self-directed inquiry, research, and writing path. There have been some very surprising benefits from this work. I just need to do more! I'm excited about the shape my impending Master's Thesis will take, particularly since I was able to do some pertinent reading for my term paper in Film Theory and Criticism (about Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and realism in film). I'm looking forward to an Introduction to Phenomenology course I'm taking this spring, in which our main focus will be on Merleau-Ponty's The Phenomenology of Perception. I think the foundations of my major work are starting to take shape, and that is exciting.
Aligned with this idea is immersing myself more consciously in my work as a teacher. I feel like the last few semesters have just been a waiting game, waiting around for the next thing to happen. I think I'm still coming out of the having-so-much-to-do funk, that this has been an adjustment. Teaching is only good if you're paying attention for the full bore, and I (admittedly) dropped the ball and took some easy ways out last semester. I hope that as things continue in the shorter-term I'll be able to adjust to and think more critically about being a full-time teacher.

-- Take better care of myself. This means eating (which--as faithful readers know--is one of my favorite past times) a little less and better. This also means being consistent in exercise. I did well during the fall semester, but dropped off after volleyball finished on December 3. Fortunately, I'm back on campus and so near the gym this week, and volleyball starts again on Sunday. It maybe helps that this is coming up in July.
For as much as I love pop culture, there's a lot of poison in it. For example, do I really need to know about Britney Spears' adventures sans foundational garments? Or her passing out drunk at Las Vegas nightclubs? And her alleged status as a parent? I think some of it just needs to get cut out. But I will not stop watching TV, nor will I stop writing about what I watch. Maybe just being a more careful consumer of media will help my brain health. I will start just reading about Days of Our Lives though, instead of TiVO-ing it every day.

Anyway, I'm sure there are many other projects that will demand attention in 2007. What's on your list of long-term projects?

After the New Year...

2007-01-02T13:34:00.000-07:00

We've returned from a great visit in New York. Getting out of there last night was pretty ugly, since much of the city and Westchester were fogged in. We were delayed two hours and rolled into home around 1:30 last night.

AV and I dropped into NYC on Saturday. We spent about 30 minutes wandering around Midtown (jam-packed, btw) looking for our favorite noodle house. We looked on 46th Street, 47th Street, 48th Street (all between fifth and seventh avenues) and finally found it on 49th street between Fifth and Sixth avenue. We were starving by the time we arrived.

There were a few things on the docket for Saturday. One was to go to MoMA, but--as usual--it was jammed. We didn't stay, and we're still wondering if we will ever find a day when it is pleasant to go and see the insides of the museum. Something to think about. Another thing we wanted to do was to go to Chelsea and check out the Jonas Mekas installation at Maya Stendhal. We should have gotten the hint when walking by Pace Wildenstein (22nd street between 11th and 10th avenues) the doors were locked. Too bad, because a new exhibition by Robert Irwin was inside. There was a sign on the door at Maya Stendhal that said "we're closed until January 3." This information was helpfully not included on their websites. We ended up walking from Chelsea over to the East Village for a stop at Downtown Music Gallery. AV found some good stuff.

We ate dinner at the Chinatown Brasserie (308 Laffayette / at Great Jones Street), which was fantastic. We ate off the dim sum menu and had pork and crabmeat soup dumplings, crispy spring rolls with barbequed duck, pork buns (sweet barbecued pork in a boiled dough), fish skin dumplings, shrimp and Chinese chive dumplings, and tempura shrimp and chilies--kind of a shrimp chile relleno. We also had some interesting drinks there--AV had a bourbon drink with a ginger syrup and lime, I had a cranberry daquiri (cranberry juice with dark rum, crushed mint and lime). They were also good and went well with the dinner.

The Stone was a madhouse. We waited in line to get in to the 8:00 show for about an hour. There was a real jerk behind us, spewing about all of his knowledge of the Zorn catalogue and making digs at mainstream music. He was a total jerk and he talked the whole time. There were so many people that the fire marshall showed up. The show went on, but there were children crying, drunk and high college kids (they were partaking a few spots in line ahead of us) who shared with the group that they really had to go to the bathroom, and people behind us who kept standing up and leaning into the backs of our heads. Not your typical crowd, but it's good to see that so many people came out to pay the rent. I think that might be the last time we venture into the city so close to New Year's Eve.

New Year's Eve was spent at home with the family and good friends of the family who have spent the last 30-some New Year's Eve (only missing twice) with the Vartabedian clan. We played games, ate good food, and rang in the new year in the den with Dick Clark.

Aside from the madness in the city, it was a very refreshing vacation. It was especially nice to get away from the snow. I did not do any reading, other than Michael Pollan (which has started to make me crazy in some unproductive ways), and I knitted quite a bit. A good way to usher in 2007 and kick 2006 to the curb.

movies seen since late August

2006-12-24T13:57:00.000-07:00

AV here...

I 'm responding to a challenge issued by the administrator of this blog. I've been keeping a simple list of films I've seen this year using a format from "The Academic Hack," Michael Sicinski." He runs a great website, linked above and is way out of my league.

(- seen on video; / repeat viewing; [v] video piece; [p] paracinema (installation, etc.); [s] short, under 30 minutes; * grade changed upon repeat viewing)

December
Thank You for Smoking (Jason? Reitman, 2005) [4]
The Fountain (Darren Aronofsky, 2006) [4]
- /The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris, 1988) [9*]
- Kiss of Death (Henry Hathaway, 1947) [6]
- The Weather Man (Gore Verbinski, 2006) [5]
- The Constant Gardner (Fernando Meirelles, 2005) [4]
- Days of Heaven (Terence Malick, 1978) [9]
- Cafe Lumiere (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 2003) [7]

November
Old Well (Wu Tian Ming, 1986) [7]
The King of Masks (Wu Tian Ming, 1996) [8]
George Kuchar @DIFF
Climates (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2006) [7]
Suzan Pitt: Persistence of Vision (1979-2006) [6]
The Journals of Knud Rasmussen (Kunuk and Cohn, 2006) [7]
- Koko: A Talking Gorilla (Barbet Schroeder. 1978) [6]
EMPz 4 Life (Allan King, 2006) [7]
Rescue Dawn (Werner Herzog, 2006) [8]
Ten Canoes (Rolf de Heer, 2006) [8]
Invisible Wave (Pen Ek Ratanruang, 2006) [7]
Steve Anker @FPC w/ films from CalArts
- Pandora's Box (GW Pabst, 1929) [8]
- The Double Life of Veronique (Krzystof Kieslowski, 1991) [7]
- The Wild Blue Yonder (Werner Herzog, 2006) [8]

October
Nathaniel Dorsky @FPC
Song and Solitude "[Song and Solitude's] balance is more toward an expression of inner landscape, or what it feels like to be, than an exploration of the external visual world as such." 16mm, 2005-06, 21 min
Threnody "Threnody is the second of two devotional songs the first being The Visitation. It is an offering to a friend who died." 16mm, 2003-04, 20 min
The Visitation "... an occurrence, not one specifically of time and place, but one of revelation in one's psyche. The place of articulation is not so much in the realm of images as information, but in the response of the heart to the poignancy of the cuts." 16mm, 2002, 18 min
- Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (Ken Burns, 2004) [6]
The Departed (Martin Scorcese, 2006) [6]
- Lady in the Lake (Robert Montgomery, 1947) [4]
49Up (Michael Apted, 2005) [9]
Julie Murray @ FPC:
If You Stand (16mm, sound, 1997, 17 min),
I Began to Wish (16mm, silent, 2003, 5 min),
Untitled (light) (16mm, sound, 2002, 5 min),
Detroit Park (Digital video, 2005, 8 min),
Orchard (16mm, sound, 2004, 9 min),
Deliquium (16mm, sound, 2004, 15 min)
TIE Festival (notes Oct. 11-15) - link is to pdf, I saw most everything...
Jean-Pierre Gorin @FPC with Poto and Cabengo (1976?) [8]
- Enthuziam: Sinfonija Dombassa (Dziga Vertov, 1930 and re-synced Peter Kubelka, 1972) [8]
- Wonder Boys (Curtis Hanson, 1999) [6]
- The Tracker (Rolf de Heer, 2002) [7]
- Alexandra's Project (Rolf de Heer, 2004?) [6]
- The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (Werner Herzog, 1974) [8]
- Bartleby (Jonathan Parker, 2005) [3]

September
-Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (Michael Winterbottom, 2005) [7]
Brakhage: Wonder Ring (1955), Fire of Waters (1965), First Hymn to the Night - Novalis (1994), Weir-Falcon Saga (1970), The Wold Shadow (1972), Pasht (1965), Occam's Thread (2001)
-Picnic at Hanging Rock (Peter Weir, 1975) [8]
-The Last Wave (Peter Weir, 1977) [8]
-The Son (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 2002) [8]
- Walkabout (Nicholas Roeg, 1971) [8]
- Wanda (Barbara Loden, 1970) [6]
- Dead Man (Jim Jarmusch, 1995) [8]
- The Charcoal People (Nigel Noble, 1999) [6] - written by Jose Padhilla
- The Man Who Fell to Earth (Nicolas Roeg. 1976) [7]

August
-One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Milos Forman, 1975) [6]
-Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (Tommy Lee Jones, 2005) [7]
Drawing Restraint 9 (Matthew Barney, 2005) [8]

She never says what I'm thinking but she always says it better.

2006-12-24T09:43:00.000-07:00

In our house there we listen only to a small, merry band of trusted film critics. Richard Roeper is not one of them. Manohla Dargis (of the New York Times), along with Roger Ebert (whose The Great Movies and The Great Movies II are some of my favorite bedtime reads) and Howie Movshovitz are our favorites.

MD has released her list of the best films of 2006. My favorite line so far: "David Lynch’s “Inland Empire” isn’t for the faint of heart or lazy of thought, notably those for whom moviegoing is simply a more socially acceptable version of sucking on a pacifier." Her veiled (?) dig at Marty's *The Departed* is in a paragraph about one of my other favorite movies of the year (which I failed to mention previously), Michael Mann's *Miami Vice.*

In other news, we weathered the blizzard just fine. We have watched all three extended cuts of the LOTR trilogy (we are nerds). We have also had an unprecedented six-hour marathon of The Wire over the past day or so. Lots of films, lots of knitting, and probably some cabin fever. I have an unchecked amount of rage at the Denver Emergency Management people, who have failed to send the plows to even major north-south thoroughfares in Capitol Hill and other places around our fair city. I reported to my Dad that the old Case family blood bubbled up as we made our way down Broadway (Broadway wasn't even plowed!) and I added a few more dollars to the cuss jar. Fortunately, there is a warm wind blowing today. Hopefully some of the roads will shape up on their own.

We'll celebrate with the family here tonight (with Tamales and probably giant Martinis). We fly to New York tonight to celebrate the holiday with the folks there. We're expecting to make it into the city one day during our visit, will make one trip to the Stone (a once-a-month Stone benefit w/Zorn and friends to pay the rent for the space) next Saturday night.

Merry Christmas to you.