49ers 27 - Dolphins 13

about "What Becomes" by A. L. Kennedy

The dozen short stories in A. L. Kennedy's What Becomes depict ordinary people caught navigating a few moments in extraordinary pain. Kennedy's prose is pure, a gentle blend of proper-sounding English and freshly worded insights, and her dialog and breaks are organized efficiently, so the reading goes smoothly. That said, the laser focus on these distracted and emotionally crippled people gets heavy after a few stories, despite a few spliced-in bits of humor. Great for people who want to read sad things.

something about the movie "Lincoln"

"Lincoln" focuses on the President's efforts to pass the Thirteenth Amendment while negotiating the end of the Civil War. A superb Daniel Day-Lewis evokes a gifted but earthen man veiled in melancholy, defending the bloody and nightmarish warring to save the Union, the Emancipation Proclamation, and his push to eradicate slavery via the Constitution immediately, while the battle still rages. All of the supporting players more than hold their own--Sally Field included.

In all that's already been written about this film, only one point could still be made: this entry from The New Yorker--one of a couple excellent comments on the film found there--claims

It can’t be said too often, or too clearly, that the whole point of Lincoln is that he—and the Republican Party he then represented—marked the end of the policy of conciliation and compromise and cosseting that had been the general approach of Northern Presidents to the Southern slavery problem throughout the decades before. When the South seceded, Lincoln chose war—an all-out, brutal, bitter war of a kind that had never been fought until then.

According to the film, Lincoln felt the 13th Amendment was a compromise. Had they not compromised, the radical faction of the Republican Party (and their abolitionist constituents) would have enfranchised black men immediately, given them the vote, legalized interracial marriage, etc. A huge portion of the film is dedicated to Lincoln's pissing off those radicals. (But this "compromise" means little when it obliterates an entire region's economic way of life, which is probably The New Yorker writer's point.)

about "Psychiatric Power: Lectures at the College de France, 1973-1974" by Michel Foucault

In these lectures, Foucault defines psychiatric power as "that supplement of power by which the real is imposed on madness in the name of a truth possessed once and for all by this power in the name of medical science, of psychiatry". This definition hints at the areas Foucault explores: reality and truth, systems of power, and the disciplines of science and the human sciences. The lectures serve as an important follow up and, in some key respects, an amendment to his early work, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Reading this and staying engaged was a struggle. The reason for that is largely a matter of context: the practice of psychiatry (and administration of asylums) and the schools of thought therein have a complicated and rich history in Europe, particularly in France and Italy. Foucault digs into and entrenches himself in that history, but, as a student, there is no required preliminary reading to reference. Nevertheless, Foucault does impart many insightful points of brilliance:

• The appropriation and use of reality as a form of power

• The medicalization of children, and the creation and expansion of the concept of development as it pertains to rationality and moralizing, retardation, madness, and defining the normal and abnormal

• Foucault's redefining the abnormal, the retarded, etc, as individuals who act on instinct

• How psychiatry changed from a practice that confined, controlled, and sometimes corrected madness to a power that defines, controls, and sometimes corrects the abnormal, thereby expanding its power into the domain of normality

• The role of psychiatry and asylum administration in capitalism and maintenance of the workforce

• How medical science provides justification and grounds for power, but does not inform psychiatric practice

• The history of the concept of truth, and truth's development and role in science

This is not be a good starting read for people interested in Foucault. And people interested in pschiatry (or anti-psychiatry) should probably also not read this without some background in Foucault.

Note

• The edition I have does offer some good historical context on psychiatry.

a thing about the movie "Flight" (with spoilers)

Flight follows William "Whip" Whitaker, a crackerjack airline pilot struggling to admit to his alcohol and drug addictions in the aftermath of a plane crash. Part of the immediate dilemma for the audience and for Whitaker is that (1) the crash resulted from hardware failures, not pilot error, and (2) no other pilot could have negotiated the crash landing with as much skill, and saved as many passengers' lives as he did, sober or otherwise.

The film is about one man's struggle for redemption, but what we see from our theater seat is a struggle for control of truth. In Whitaker's mind, his functionality, his brilliance excuses the behavior that so many rush to judge irresponsible. That is his truth. But under threat of litigation and penalty for the lives lost, the airline and Whitaker's other adversaries use the discourse of medical knowledge, appealing to that discipline's knowledge-making authority, which justifies policies that were violated, and deems Whitaker unfit. The co-pilot, who chooses not to reveal Whitaker's drunkenness on record, appeals to the Word of God; God reveals the Truth, and Whitaker must face that truth.

Finally, after a slew of verbal confrontations, Whitaker is faced with the most intimidating of rhetorical situations--a hearing by the National Transportation Safety Board, an independent Federal agency "charged by Congress with investigating every civil aviation accident in the United States". Here, Whitaker surrenders control of the truth. He cannot speak another lie, he says. Whitaker's truth goes from belief in himself with a confident rejection of medico-juridical labels to, ultimately, the discourse of confession. He adopts the narratives spun about him by others, and finds himself now a craven denier of truth, and no longer a hero airline pilot.

Notes

• This was a fantastic movie. Every performance is spot on; Whitaker is played to perfection by Denzel Washington, and even John Goodman's over-the-top dealer works well, providing relief from the main character's ongoing struggles and tension. And Wikipedia notes, "Flight is (Robert) Zemeckis' first live-action film since 2000's Cast Away and What Lies Beneath, and his first R-rated film since Used Cars in 1980."

• Above, quoting the NTSB's Web site regarding the agency's purpose.

Rihanna singing "Diamonds" on SNL

Wittgenstein's seven propsitions from "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus"

1. The world is everything that is the case.
2. What is the case (a fact) is the existence of states of affairs.
3. A logical picture of facts is a thought.
4. A thought is a proposition with a sense. (An elementary proposition is a truth-function of itself.)
5. A proposition is a truth-function of elementary propositions.
6. The general form of a proposition is the general form of a truth function. (formula given) This is the general form of a proposition.
7. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

This you already know

Pre-election coverage foregrounds and makes estimations. The pundit sits in the middle of a mass of cross-talk, intercepting, expounding and proliferating meanings within the discourse that flows between and among candidates and the audience. In this analysis, the audience is parsed, filtered, separated out into segments that each have their own traits and values that call for individualized treatment from the candidates.

Then, after the big night, post-election coverage sets about interpreting new, limited sets of meanings, and projects them into the near and distant future. This analysis diagnoses the population using the tools of cohesion and normalization. The segments of people are recognized as key segments, but their numbers add up to a whole.

All this coverage depicts a scene in which, prior to election day, the candidates' message descends and swirls down within the electorate. Post-election, the message is sent from below, up to the risers on which sit the podiums and punditry chairs.

Who is the pundit? Who is qualified to be a pundit? Generally, a pundit must be someone who either (1) practices journalism for a publication of certain status, (2) someone who previously held a high-ish public office, or (3) someone who attained some celebrity while incorporated in a political campaign or party. As currently used, the word "pundit" appears to be a term of soft derision that depersonalizes the speaker, and casts them as coincidentally filling a seat that could be filled by so many. To call someone a pundit is to say, "Take their words with a grain of salt". In effect, this can serve to disqualify them while situating them within a dysfunctional machine.

But we have different kinds of pundits who serve different functions. Some speak for voters and are allegiant to one side. Others attempt to refocus, summarize, and speak of political events, trends, and developments when prompted. And now there is an elite.

First in 2008 but more so in 2012, Nate Silver of 538 emerged from the pundit crowd. The left has endowed him with a version of the Author function. His predictions (which cannot account for the unpredictable) draw credibility both from his name and from the nameless science purportedly behind him. The author name means nothing on a scientific paper; but Silver's work has his name, and seems to live on the weight of his name and on the namelessness of his numbers.

Notes:

In the middle of his victory speech, Obama, in his general, high rhetorical way, espoused a a key principal and belief that undergirds whatever his political philosophy is:

America’s never been about what can be done for us. It’s about what can be done by us together through the hard and frustrating, but necessary work of self-government. That’s the principle we were founded on.

This country has more wealth than any nation, but that’s not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military in history, but that’s not what makes us strong. Our universities, our culture are all the envy of the world, but that’s not what keeps the world coming to our shores.

What makes America exceptional are the bonds that hold together the most diverse nation on earth. The belief that our destiny is shared; that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations. The freedom which so many Americans have fought for and died for come with responsibilities as well as rights. And among those are love and charity and duty and patriotism. That’s what makes America great.

about "White Noise" by Don DeLillo

White Noise follows events surrounding a Midwest college professor, with much attention given to his family, a Brady Bunch-type arrangement. Our professor, Jack Gladney, is known for his unique academic departmental creation, Hitler Studies; this bit matters because it embodies a major theme in the novel: information overload--how each and every thing is problematized and probed and its hidden data and meaning is wrung out, spilling out into the air. Each source is inexhaustible, but ultimately, exhausted, you wonder whether all this data mining yielded knowledge or pollution.

The novel's action and dialog is immersed in data: trivia, reports, news, questions, answers, rhetorical questions, interrogations, analysis, meta analysis, educated guesses, second guesses, and so on. In the narrative, this information overload is symbolized by a toxic cloud that materializes over the town after a train wreck and chemical spill. The threat prompts a second theme (also represented in the cloud): fear of death. Jack Gladney is exposed to the cloud for perhaps too long and a fear of death sets in. But, after the real toxic cloud dissolves in microbiotic fury, Gladney learns his wife has struggled with an intense fear of death for months, and that she even sought help for it through an obscure, experimental pharmaceutical trial, taking pills to cure the fear. After dragging along these plot points for a time, at the end, out of nowhere, the novel takes a bizarre twist involving a murder attempt.

The characters are unrealistic and unlikable, each taking turns dismissing whatever the other characters choose to dwell on. They are all stupid quirky buffoons with no bullshit threshold. The cloud event is ridiculous because it starts out catastrophic but is quickly dealt with and rarely mentioned again. Gradually, during the reading I lost all motivation to consider the novel seriously.

Notes:

• The novel says nothing about it, but "information overload" might be one of those fears that pops up every couple generations.

Teaching the controversy

We have two theories being proposed to addressed unemployment.

The first is Job Creationism. This theory holds that a motivated elite creates jobs: low taxes motivate the elite to start businesses that will need employees. Jobs come from above.

The second is Job Evolution. This theory says that when conditions are right and the raw materials are there, jobs come: invest in education, infrastructure, and environment-friendly technologies, and jobs will emerge and evolve from within.

Radiolab doesn't prepare to conduct an interview

Recently, the annoying folks at Radiolab intended to investigate a phenomenon called "Yellow Rain", an apparently dangerous, mysterious precipitation observed in Vietnam and Laos circa 1981. At the time, the deadly rain attracted some media coverage while cold war tensions escalated between Russia and the US.

The producers and hosts apparently intended to limit the scope of the episode to the question, What was yellow rain? But during the show, the interview between a yellow rain witness, his translator/niece, and the Radiolab host and producer falls apart when the host pursues the witness about ambiguity in the testimony. After being pressed, the witness losses heart and, aided by his niece, implores the interviewers to focus on the death of their people in the proxy wars, and not the yellow rain.

From the get go, Radiolab was oblivious to fact that the story they were investigating was situated in an ongoing struggle with deep political implications. It was only when the witnesses were crying and pleading for recognition of the tragedy within the story that the "story changed" for Radiolab. Host Jad Abumrad explains:

We were all really troubled by that interview. We talked about it for weeks, and we had arguments about it for weeks. What does it mean for the story? What does it mean for us personally?

For the story, and for Radiolab: this is what concerns them. The vision of the show's hosts and producer got even more myopic in the end, somehow. Then the "conversation" ends with Radiolab essentially throwing up its hands at the controversy.

Inconsequential

People who follow politics and political coverage often criticize the media for not explicating policy proposals and instead focusing on polls and swing states. Such critics see the media as too focused on distractions. Now, following Tuesday's Presidential debate, an online public hears Romney's "binders full of women" comment and amplifies it, silencing other discussions for a day or so.

Maybe the "binders full of women" is sort of amusing, and within that amusement is the sense that some things are odd about Romney. Some things are, but nothing evidenced in his comment is revelatory unless you've never thought about who Mitt Romney is beyond his brand, "successful businessman".

The larger discourse on women voters and women's issues seems far more revealing about what we're like, and how we perceive ourselves and those around us. Women are sort of treated as a political g-spot in need of some serious finessing. This gender-oriented political discourse seems to say that a candidate needs to understand and address things women "care about" without appearing to stereotype women or lock them in the home. This CNN article on Romney's women-talk during the debate cites a political science professor voicing such a concern:

"His discussion of work-life balance appeared condescending to some because of the reference to women cooking dinner."

So the candidate must embrace gender difference but frame his embrace in terms of equality. Maybe most or all political discourse aimed at a specific segment of the voting public includes some version of outlining that segment, then erasing those lines, of conjuring their image, then making them disappear, but women are a good, current example of this, I think. The finessing and specific, pointed targeting of women leaves an impression that women are both foreign and essential to political discourse. A political writer in The New Yorker touched on all this when addressing political ads aimed at "women voters":

... that ad, like every ad targeted to women voters for the last half century, including those made by both campaigns this election season, assumes that women are wholly different species of citizen than men. The political imagination of American women, at least according to American political advertisers, begins with our cervixes and ends at the kitchen door.

Notes:

• The "binders full of women" meme nearly obscured the best bit of political gamesmanship by anybody of either party in years: Obama's "Proceed, Governor".

• Embracing gender difference while seeking equality is sort of similar to how feminist theory works in academia, I'd say, from my very limited experience with it.

This is a nice, closed circle

I think up answers to questions no one will ever ask me. And I ask questions of myself I will never answer.

A working class hero is something to be

The Onion has a lot of fun portraying Joe Biden as a free spirit whose working class roots and uncensored attitude clash comically with peoples' concept of groomed, self-preserving politicians. The political right casts him as an idiot, and mainstream media coverage comments on his penchant for "gaffes", but The Onion writers heroize Biden through their satire.

The Onion writers (and, by extension, members of their audience) who love Biden value in him a rebellious streak, his individuality, and his "authenticity" or sincerity, all of which is located in his being uncensored (Biden says what Biden thinks when Biden wants). The justification behind this reverence, however, lies in his being powerful and famous. Ordinarily, The Onion would mock disdainfully a blue collar, working class white who might wash his Trans Am shirtless in the driveway or resort to hitchhiking for transportation. Such a character would be portrayed as too dumb to know which party to vote for or what music to listen to or shows to watch on TV. His wife might even enter their white trash daughter in a child beauty pageant.

Notes:

• Biden, of course, is more competent and astute than one might think after reading about him, and The Onion writers and their audience knows this, which is why the satire works in two ways: it taps into (1) our concept of politicians and (2) our experience with press coverage of Biden.

A shade

Those eyes, which were already surrounded by tiny wrinkles, had begun to betray a worn-out man of doubtful morals, a duplicity, an ever-increasing irony and another shade of feeling, which was new: a shade of sadness and of pain—a sort of absent-minded sadness as though about nothing in particular and yet acute.

    --from Fyodor Dostoevsky's short story, "The Eternal Husband"

Glitzy craps all over the dinner table

The TV show "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" strings together footage of a lower-class family in the Southern state of Georgia, US. These are rednecks and white trash. The youngest daughter, a frequent child beauty pageant contestant, and her the mother are the center of attention; altogether, the family shown on TV is devoid of manners nearly to the point of being uncivilized. I've only watched maybe 10 minutes of this show but enjoy reading the internet/news articles about it, which are mostly negative. The negativity is partly snobbery but, more so, I think it's evidence of the dominant truth-making discourses in the culture.

The main criticisms run along the following lines:

• The family is being exploited (which underscores the lack of opportunity in this country)

• The show rewards bad behavior (such as laziness, poor health, and having kids by multiple fathers starting at a young age)

• The show ridicules the family (and, by extension, people like them)

The exploitation claim provokes an interesting debate, but it first assumes the other critiques are valid. The other criticisms--I've seen many variants of them--spur from the public assumption and promotion of medical, psychological, and economic discourses that generate knowledge about life. The criticism is drawn from that knowledge: the family's steady diet of junk food will sicken them, reduce their quality and quantity of life, and ultimately create costs to be absorbed by the rest of the population; the sudden fame and the emphasis on pageantry, the patriarchal confusion, and the laissez-faire parenting will prove emotionally crippling. All this might bear out for various reasons, but the widespread condemnation of the show for these reasons shows the power of these discourses in our culture. Society assumes these discourses and polices itself with their truths. It says, "Do not reward this behavior! Society must be defended!"

Notes:

1. Critics who've defended the show use the same discourses, saying the family's emotional health is OK because they are in on the joke and seem like they are happy and have decent familial relationships, etc.

2. Other critics have derided the show's quality, slamming it because it appeals to the lowest common denominator. This judgement, when pursued to its ends, justifies itself in the same discourses.

3. A show, especially one on a cable channel like TLC, doesn't need that many viewers to be a "hit". The standards for calling a show a hit have plummeted the last 20 years.

4. One well-written critique is this one from the AV Club, of which the highlight for me is the following:

We’re meant to laugh at the poor manners that Alana and her sister Pumpkin exhibit when an etiquette teacher comes to help make them more ladylike. It’s not the pair failing to transform into princesses after one session that is depressing. It’s that the show presents even the very idea of them being able to reach a point at which not farting at the table is even possible as a totally improbable idea.

Ah, the coup d'etat of the family's dignity. Now, turn that around: when we train a monkey to roller-skate, we're meant to laugh at the monkey on roller-skates. There's no joke when the animal is untrainable. But, when these girls shrug off attempts to train them in formal behavior, it's a disgrace. (And AV Club comments suck.)

5. The author of the Gawker article, "The Perfect Level of Fame", makes the case that the show and celebrity attached haven't seem to hurt the family, at least. But what gives this piece distinction is the following comment from maryannmom:

• Wow. This is a really long article. I started with the first couple paragraphs, then started skimming, then scrolled to see how much more there was, then read the comments, which were disappointing. So I guess I never will no exactly what the Honey BooBoo phenomenon is, but then this cultural stuff is so depressing, it is starting to make me feel kinda unibomberish, in that hide-yourself-in-a-cabin-without-electricity-kind of way. Feel me?

Some of this person's other comments on Gawker articles:

• Am I evil for hating on those Pinkett-Smiths? And being super annoyed by their tiny starlet baby fake rapper kids?

• I agree. The pressure! You must have to have a thick skin to take all those second guesses and negative opinions and comments. I loved this dress for being feminine. pretty and sexy and showed off her beautiful shoulders and arms. (girl crush!). Yeah, it blows that a guy just gets a suit and is done, but then that is why women are so much cooler. I just saw the Democratic women of the Senate at the DNC and it as great that they had a variety of outfits, sizes, hair and make up. Vive la difference (of style)!

6. These articles from Reality Blurred and Hollywood Reporter say the show isn't funny while making fun of the family the show is about. The Hollywood Reporter article has the line, "Glitzy craps all over the dinner table".

about "The Birth of Biopolitics", lectures by Michel Foucault

The lectures transcribed in The Birth of Biopolitics are the sequel to those in Security, Territory, and Population, a book I read in March. Neither book title really describes the content of the lectures, and this is especially true of the sequel. But Foucault acknowledges this; the mishap is apparently owed to poor planning.

Now, the lectures' original subject, biopolitics, is the governance of phenomenon related to life and population--families, birth rates, disease, hygiene, etc.--and this is with an understanding that governance takes many forms, that population is a kind of construct, that multiple powers are in play, and so on (Foucault qualifies almost compulsively). However, Liberalism provides the frame of reference for understanding biopolitics, so we first need to understand Liberalism. Hence, The Birth of Biopolitics actually explores Liberalism's philosophy and development in terms of tensions which Foucault calls relations of power (Liberalism here being understood as the limiting of government for maximum (economic) effect given the natural phenomenon of the market).

Reading, I was interested but still found the content dry. The Birth of Biopolitics doesn't have the kind of insights I normally look for and value with Foucault. This is more of a history and articulation of a political philosophy than anything else. Mostly, I enjoyed some early sections tracing the movements from governance under a wise sovereign guided by truths to the invocation of a market place and population policed by the state to the limiting of modern government in response to the police state. But, in all, the most lively section for me was Foucault's explication of Adam Smith's famous "invisible hand" metaphor.

Notes:

• I re-read Security, Territory, and Population before starting this one and it was worth it.

dear prudence,

In the ensuing slump of days, moments and presence and details surrendered into the more easily categorizable "day" and "night"; one was for sleeping, the other, not sleeping. Pitifully, if only those two categories kissed in the permanent dusk of hopelessness, he could listen to Emo, maybe even enjoy it. But so relentlessly nameless were the times that nothing could be done.

Not until months later did he think to even look for her. When he did, he went about it craftily but efficiently, only looking in the most unlikely places: in the passenger seat, in the picture frame on his desk, and, early in the morning, lying next to him. Torture, a few days of this. Then he stopped and, on a sheet of wide ruled paper, wrote:

Today I listened to a song that not long ago reminded me of you. I hadn't heard it in awhile and, having come across it again, I feel now its connected not so much with you as with a time, a time that sounds ancient somehow, so I waited for dust to fill my nose.

Then I tried to think of an analogy: "You, your memory, is gum on my shoe: sticky at first, then less so, and then altogether less and less noticeable." But that sounded stupid and insulting and ugly--nothing like you. I know there is nothing like you. And I'll never not ever think of you again. I will think of you often at times, I expect. But now finally I'm getting on, I guess. Or,

But nothing else came to mind. So he folded the page, spelled her name on the front, and, with the magnet bearing the number for Poison Control, pinned the note on the refrigerator.

On the first of the month--16 days later--he restocked the refrigerator with fresh citrus and greens and a 12-pack of grape soda. Pushing closed the appliance door, he removed the note, walked to the study filing cabinet, and tucked the page away in the folder with his priciest receipts.

The New Girl sports her newness

This New York Magazine profile says a Zooey Deschanel is not an Apple product like we all thought. A Zooey Deschanel is actually a constant, expansive, and versatile market force carried out through a persona. And a Zooey Deschanel persona is a composite of associations--associations with sexuality, quirkiness (sometimes mistaken for "originality"), innocence, fun, and indie credibility with all its emphasis on authenticity and sincerity. People, especially those who fancy themselves hip and/or original, explore these conceptual areas for opportunities to escape consumer culture. But every attempt to step outside that culture just expands the Market's reach there (and beyond). A Zooey Deschanel is that reach manifest; her persona is singular in that it does not change whether on or off camera, thereby invoking a claim to authenticity and sincerity that empowers it to follow the hip and the original to new areas into which the market can flourish.


Notes:

The NYMagazine profile writer is aware and even seems vaguely complicit with the permanent marketing campaign of a Zooey Deschanel--until sticking this jab at the end using a Zooey Deschanel's own words:

Hearing the CD reminded me of how she had gotten very impassioned when I asked her if she and Gibbard bonded over music the first time they met. “I’m wary about this thing about being in the generation of social networking where people are like, ‘I am my musical taste,’” she said. “I am not just a collection of music. Or a collection of movies. I think that’s a thing that people romanticize: ‘Oh my God, she likes this band so she is a dream.’ I’ve definitely learned that you can easily get stars in your eyes. I’ll meet directors and they’ll be like, ‘I love Godard!’ And they love screwball comedies and they love all these things I love, and then it’s, like, ‘Wait a minute, that doesn’t mean they can make movies.’“ 

Just because somebody likes something doesn’t mean ... anything, really.”

Right there a Zooey Deschanel shoots down the sole reason she is appealing, and apes the very reaction that people have to her: A Zooey Deschanel is so cute because she likes Hello Kitty! A Zooey Deschanel is a composite of associations and likes that constantly advertises those likes, thereby associating a Zooey Deschanel with whatever associations the audience has with the objects being liked.

In a sense, none of this is unique to a Zooey Deschanel, but it is perhaps taken to a new level and with a new audience.

I first saw a Zooey Deschanel in an Apple product commercial, and I noticed the face design that says, "You are looking at me" (or, "I am a thing that is looked at").

The Higgs, part 2

Back in July when the apparent Higgs Boson discovery was news, I posted here

The physics almost-news about the Higgs boson is simultaneously the most interesting and most boring thing going right now. Maybe this narrative conflict will resolve itself in a nice anti-climax.

This GQ article, "The Higgs Boson: Steaming Particle of Bull$#!%", seems to offer me exacting validation. Is it true that this is the thing that explains the existence of all things? No, "It just isn't true."