Category: Journal

Obama Spoke Stupidly

I don’t blame Oba­ma for what he said. For a very long time, to be black in Amer­i­ca was to be a tar­get for law enforce­ment (and I’m sure it still is occa­sion­al­ly at least).

But it is also true that for a very long time in Amer­i­ca (and, I sus­pect, any­where on the plan­et earth), even a white per­son can get him or her self arrest­ed for doing noth­ing more than argu­ing with a police officer.

Oba­ma admit­ted he did not have the facts and still offered up an opin­ion which was based on the past his­to­ry between police and African-Amer­i­cans. Oba­ma spoke stupidly.

Josh Mar­shall at TPM Media has an excel­lent post up about the posi­tion a police offi­cer is in every time he or she responds to a call. I rec­om­mend it.

Its Nice To Learn That Evrybodys So Concerned About My Health.

Kris Kristof­fer­son sings

Well, they final­ly came and told me they was a gonna set me free
And Id be leav­in town if I knew what was good for me
I said, its nice to learn that evry­bodys so con­cerned about my health.

The Repub­li­can’s con­cern over health care reform reminds me of that song. To be clear, the Repub­li­cans pri­ma­ry goal here is to have noth­ing done. One need look no fur­ther than the years 2003 through 2007. In those years the Repub­li­cans had majori­ties in both hous­es of con­gress and the pres­i­den­cy. Did they do any­thing about health care? No. It is not like the health care prob­lems that we have just appeared in the last two years.

Any Repub­li­can dis­cus­sion about “doing it right” and “going slow” real­ly just means pre­vent­ing any­thing from happening.

Translating Shakespeare to English?

Over at The New Repub­lic are duel­ing columns on the sub­ject of whether or not Shake­speare should be, effec­tive­ly, trans­lat­ed into mod­ern eng­lish. The pro argu­ment is deliv­ered by John McWhort­er and the con by Antoni Cimoli­no.

In the first place, this is a sil­ly dis­agree­ment. It is not like the orig­i­nal Shak­s­peare plays will be lost to future gen­er­a­tions if some­one rewrites them into mod­ern eng­lish (I own four com­plete Shake­spear­es myself!) So if some­one wants to make the attempt then best of luck to them. If some­one actu­al­ly man­ages a rewrite that is up to (or near­ly so) Shake­speare’s orig­i­nal, then that strikes me as a big win. And if they fail, then no loss. Just con­tem­plat­ing this is a good reminder of what one might be miss­ing when­ev­er read­ing a trans­lat­ed text. 

It hap­pens that I’ve been read­ing a lot of Shake­speare late­ly. I’ve read nine plays and in the mid­dle of num­ber ten. I start­ed by read­ing from The Yale Shake­speare edi­tion because each play is its own vol­ume so there is no heavy book to haul around. But for some rea­son, my The Yale Shake­speare does not include the three parts of Hen­ry VI and Richard III. So when I got to Hen­ry VI the choice pre­sent­ed itself of read­ing from The River­side Shake­speare or from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chicago’s Great Books edition.

The River­side is in one vol­ume with lots of notes and intro­duc­to­ry mate­r­i­al mak­ing it a large heavy book. The U of C edi­tion is in two vol­umes and no notes with just one page of biog­ra­phy mak­ing it a much eas­i­er book to han­dle. So I went with con­ve­nience over notes.

I dis­cov­ered almost imme­di­ate­ly that read­ing Shake­speare with­out the notes is more enjoy­able and, to my mind, more com­pre­hen­si­ble. Yes, I’m sure it helps that I took a cou­ple of Shake­speare class­es in col­lege (30 years ago!) and that I had just read sev­er­al plays with the notes before read­ing with­out the notes, but when I read Mr. Cimoli­no arti­cle in defense of the orig­i­nal plays it made a lot of sense. He points out that a tal­ent­ed actor will deliv­er the lines in such a way as to con­vey their mean­ing. I have found that read­ing straight through with­out stop­ping to look at a foot­note has a sim­i­lar effect.

Some­times I have had to read a giv­en speech or con­ver­sa­tion twice to under­stand it and I am cer­tain that there is plen­ty that I am miss­ing. I look for­ward to reread­ing the plays some­day to under­stand more.

The argu­ment in The New Repub­lic has more to do with the plays as per­formed than as read. I am not sure I’ve ever seen a per­for­mance of a Shake­speare play. I do remem­ber attend­ing an Eliz­a­bethan play and hav­ing a dif­fi­cult time fol­low­ing what was going on so I can sym­pa­thize with those who might pre­fer a trans­la­tion. But I felt that my lack of under­stand­ing had as much to do with not under­stand­ing what the actors actu­al­ly said as much as not under­stand­ing the mean­ing. So I also sym­pa­thize with the notion that com­pe­tent actors might make the mate­r­i­al more accessable.

And there is always the idea of read­ing the play before watch­ing the performance.

So, rewrite if you want, but like any trans­la­tion, it will nev­er be as good as the original.



What’s In My Interest?

I had the impres­sion sev­er­al days ago that momen­tum for health care reform slowed down some while Pres­i­dent Oba­ma was over­seas. A lot of the news in the past cou­ple of days has been that reform will only get done if the Pres­i­dent is active­ly work­ing to push it through congress.

I was also under the impres­sion that most Repub­li­cans would pre­fer that health care not pass.

And yet…

He [for­mer Sen­a­tor Zell Miller] drew more applause from the most­ly Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors …when he said Oba­ma need­ed to spend more time in Wash­ing­ton and less time trav­el­ing abroad. “Our globe-trot­ting pres­i­dent needs to stop and take a break and quit gal­li­vant­i­ng around,” Miller said, adding that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel needs to put “Goril­la Glue” on his chair to keep him in the Oval Office.

Ignor­ing the pos­si­ble racial slur here, I don’t under­stand the applause. If the Repub­li­cans want health reform to fail, then I would think they would not want the Pres­i­dent glued to his chair in the oval office, but would pre­fer him fly­ing around the globe.

Unless it was the racial slur.…

Hat tip to The New Republic

Late Show Music Choice

While I typed up the last post, David Let­ter­man was on the TV in the back­ground. My atten­tion was drawn when I heard the band play­ing If You Want to Be Hap­py, a Jim­my Soul hit from 1963.

The band was play­ing in David’s guest, Kather­ine Hei­gl, whom I have nev­er heard of, but from what I saw on Let­ter­man, I don’t think any­one would call her ugly. The lyrics of If You Want to Be Hap­py include: “If you want to be hap­py for the rest of your life, nev­er make a pret­ty woman your wife, so from my per­son­al point of view, get an ugly girl to mar­ry you” So the beau­ti­ful actress is played in with a song about the virtues of mar­ry­ing an ugly girl. Ms Hei­gl did not com­ment on the music and I won­der if she’s ever heard the song.

It turns out that Ms Hei­gl is on Let­ter­man to pro­mote the movie The Ugly Truth (the clip did not look promis­ing). Did the fact that the word “ugly” is in the title of the movie jus­ti­fy the song choice?

This is a great song that I’ve always loved. Mem­o­ry tells me that my old­est sis­ter loved the song (although she is (and was) beau­ti­ful!). But it seems an odd choice to play in a guest on a late night talk show.

The Judgment of Pigeons

Ear­li­er this month Freako­momics post­ed a pic of a car cov­ered in bird drop­pings and linked to a study that found that pigeons can be taught to dif­fer­en­ti­ate “good” paint­ings from “bad”.

This brought to mind a time when I was sub­ject­ed to the judge­ment of a bird.

My par­ents had a cot­tage on Magi­cian Lake in Michi­gan and so a fair amount of time in the sum­mer was spent up there. As cot­tages go, it was nice, but it was a cot­tage. Many of the “cot­tages” on the lake looked more like a pri­ma­ry res­i­dence (though few were), but ours was a nice cot­tage with a short pier and a cou­ple of row boats.

I remem­ber sev­er­al of us, my sib­lings and myself and per­haps a guest or two, were in the front yard more or less gath­ered around the table singing. I don’t know what we were singing, but singing we were. We were not in the habit of singing all the time, but with enough reg­u­lar­i­ty that any one time did not seem out of the ordinary.

I loved to sing, though I sus­pect I was not so good at it (I still love to sing and I’m sure I’m bet­ter now than I was then, but how much that says.…). At any rate, the song end­ed on a long dra­mat­ic note and I tipped my head back and real­ly belt­ed it out. And in the mid­dle of that note, a bird in the tree above judged me to not be such a good singer.

With laser pre­ci­sion the drop­ping found its way through the small gap between the top of my glass­es and my eye­brow and hit me square in the eye.

I knew imme­di­ate­ly what had hap­pened. I flung my glass­es off and ran the few feet to the lake and pret­ty much dunked my face into the water sev­er­al times. I don’t remem­ber much else about it.

I assume that every­one got a good laugh at my expense. Geez, I hope so. What a waste of mate­r­i­al if no one laughed at that!

At least it did­n’t plop right into my wide open mouth.

Justice Confirmation Hearings

I had a chance to actu­al­ly watch a lot of Tues­day’s hear­ings for con­fir­ma­tion of Sotomay­or. The hear­ings should prob­a­bly be called pos­tur­ing hear­ings. It does seem that much of what is said by the sen­a­tors has as much or more to do with shap­ing their own image as it does with try­ing to learn about the nominee.

The Repub­li­cans, under­stand­ing that Sotomay­or’s con­fir­ma­tion is a for­gone con­clu­sion, have their only hope of pre­vent­ing her con­fir­ma­tion by catch­ing her in an error. They return to the same sub­jects over and over wait­ing for Sotomay­or to make a mis­take. Sotomay­or has han­dled all the ques­tions with aplomb.

Sotomay­or was cor­rect to walk away from her “wise Lati­na woman” com­ment, but she walked too far away. It is not true that a wise Lati­na woman will make a bet­ter deci­sion than a white male. It is true that a wise Lati­na woman might make a dif­fer­ent deci­sion that is just as good as the white males. And it some­how nev­er gets men­tioned that for 180 years all of the Supreme Court Jus­tices were white males and in the next forty years all but four Jus­tices have been white males.

To watch the hear­ings is to enter a fan­ta­sy world where white males are the stan­dard for objec­tiv­i­ty. Where white males are nev­er influ­enced by their life expe­ri­ence as a white male. But, of course, a Lati­na woman is going to always be influ­enced by her life expe­ri­ence as a Lati­na woman (even though she has a lengthy record of not favor­ing minorites).

The truth is that any jus­tice is going to be influ­enced by his or her life expe­ri­ence. That’s the way it is, the way it has always been, and the way it will always be.

It is also the way it should be.

It is also that case that every judge should be able to empathize with the peo­ple who will be affect­ed by deci­sions. This repeat­ed mantra of “fideli­ty to the law” is not mean­ing­less. Fideli­ty to the law should be the guid­ing prin­ci­ple, but the law is not com­plete. If it were, there would be no need for judges. Con­ser­v­a­tives are hap­py to have empa­thet­ic judges, just as long as the judge is a con­ser­v­a­tive. Google “Ali­to empathy”.

Final­ly, an “activist judge” is a judge with whom the speak­er does not agree.

Con­fir­ma­tion hear­ings should turn on one ques­tion only: Is the nom­i­nee qual­i­fied to sit on the Supreme Court. This is deter­mined by ask­ing the nom­i­nee about var­i­ous issues that the Court has dealt with and like­ly will deal with. If the nom­i­nee can intel­li­gent­ly dis­cuss the sub­tleties of the var­i­ous issues, then the nom­i­nee is qualified.

Sotomay­or is clear­ly qualified.

Pence For President?

Is Mike Pence think­ing about run­ning for Pres­i­dent? I first asked this ques­tion on June 17. Now CQ Pol­i­tics thinks so, too.

House Repub­li­can Con­fer­ence Chair­man Mike Pence of Indi­ana recent­ly added his name to that list [of poten­tial can­di­dates for pres­i­dent for 2012] by sched­ul­ing a trip to Iowa start­ing July 25 — just before the final week of the hec­tic July session.

Remem­ber, you read it here first!!

Hat tip to TPMDC.

Short Memory

Can any­one, with a straight face, say that they under­stood the urgent­ly need­ed stim­u­lus plan to be a “two year plan.” If you say yes you are a liar. If some­one would have asked Oba­ma before pas­sage he would have denied it.

Where to begin?

Jan­u­ary 11, 2009

Oba­ma takes office Jan. 20 and is press­ing Con­gress to act quick­ly on a two-year eco­nom­ic stim­u­lus plan of about $775 bil­lion that includes new gov­ern­ment spend­ing and tax cuts.

Jan­u­ary 12, 2009

Oba­ma takes office Jan. 20 and is press­ing Con­gress to act quick­ly on a two-year eco­nom­ic stim­u­lus plan of about $US775 bil­lion that includes new gov­ern­ment spend­ing and tax cuts.

Jan­u­ary 13, 2009

That com­pares with Pres­i­dent-elect Barack Obama’s U.S. plans for a two-year stim­u­lus pro­gram of about $775 bil­lion, or about 2.8 per­cent of GDP.

Jan­u­ary 15, 2009

In his week­ly radio address on Jan. 10, 2009, Barack Oba­ma said the No. 1 goal of his eco­nom­ic stim­u­lus plan is to cre­ate 3 mil­lion new jobs in the next two years

Jan­u­ary 29, 2009

…the two-year stim­u­lus plan would pro­vide up to $1,000 per year in tax relief for most families…Obama said.…“This recov­ery plan will save or cre­ate more than 3 mil­lion new jobs over the next few years.”

Feb­ru­ary 2, 2009

This is a two-year bill. The bill that we’re talk­ing about is a two-year bill.

Feb­ru­ary 3, 2009

Obama’s plan will cre­ate 3 – 4 mil­lion jobs over the next two years.

Feb­ru­ary 06, 2009

The Kingsport Times quot­ed the gov­er­nor say­ing he would do any­thing he could to help pre­serve state jobs, but cau­tioned the $800 bil­lion stim­u­lus now before Con­gress is a two-year program.

Feb­ru­ary 08, 2009

Chris Wal­lace: “The Con­gres­sion­al Bud­get Office says only 64 per­cent of the House plan actu­al­ly gets out into the econ­o­my in the next two years. So how is that timely?”

Lar­ry Sum­mers: “I think this econ­o­my is still going to need some sup­port two years from now. And so I think the idea that not 100 per­cent of it spends out in the next two years is actu­al­ly a pru­dent one.”

Feb­ru­ary 9, 2009

The plan that we put for­ward will save or cre­ate 3 to 4 mil­lion jobs over the next two years.

Feb­ru­ary 17, 2009

Now, what makes this recov­ery plan so impor­tant is not just that it will cre­ate or save 3.5 mil­lion jobs over the next two years, includ­ing 60,000-plus here in Colorado.

Feb­ru­ary 18, 2009

Oba­ma said the law would save or cre­ate 3.5 mil­lion jobs over the next two years.

Feb­ru­ary 24th, 2009

“Over the next two years, this plan will save or cre­ate 3.5 mil­lion jobs.”

Consciousness, Part 2

Now the inter­est­ing part. If you have not yet read my def­i­n­i­tion of con­scious­ness, then you might want to do so.

In the last two days I’ve dis­cussed déjà vu and “slow motion..” Those two top­ics had a cou­ple of sim­i­lar­i­ties: in both instances the dif­fer­ence between the pro­cess­ing speed of the sub­con­scious and the con­scious is impor­tant; and con­scious­ness plays the role of a pas­sive observer.

In my opin­ion this is the usu­al role of con­scious­ness: pas­sive observer.

If you closed your eyes and count­ed to ten when read­ing my def­i­n­i­tion, do you believe your con­scious­ness had any­thing to do with the count­ing? Clear­ly not. Con­scious­ness could not get to two if the sub­con­scious was not there “hand­ing” the appro­pri­ate info to con­scious­ness at the appro­pri­ate time.

Sim­ple math? I ask what’s two plus two. You already know it is four. But how? Even if you added the dig­its “in your head”, it was the sub­con­scious car­ry­ing the load and feed­ing the info to the conciousness.

ABC’s? Same thing.

This is clear because most of the time, the num­ber sequence from one to ten (or fifty to sev­en­ty-five) and the alpha­bet are not present in con­scious­ness. If all of such details were present, the clut­ter would be overwhelming.

High­er math? Same thing. The cal­cu­lat­ing is going on in the sub­con­scious with the info fed to the conscious.

Plen­ty of learn­ing obvi­ous­ly takes place with­out con­scious­ness. Peo­ple “pick up” man­ner­isms from oth­ers all the time with no aware­ness that they have done so. Pavlov­ian con­di­tion­ing takes place with no con­scious aware­ness. Lots of learn­ing seems to rely on con­scious­ness to at least get start­ed, but con­scious­ness quick­ly inter­feres with learn­ing more than helps it.

One’s body feels and reacts to pain with­out con­scious­ness being involved. Sure, if the pain gets severe, one can­not help but be con­scious of it. This does not mean that con­scious­ness was nec­es­sary for the body to feel the pain and react to it. It only means that the con­scious­ness was aware of it.

I did say just above that “lots of learn­ing seems to rely on con­scious­ness to at least get start­ed,” but I did say “seems”. I think it is doubt­ful that con­scious­ness plays any role in most such sit­u­a­tions. Deci­sions are made sub­con­scious­ly and fed to the con­scious often with the atten­dent illu­sion that the deci­sion was con­scious­ly made.

I first encoun­tered this idea of the pas­siv­i­ty of con­scious­ness in the late sev­en­ties when I read The Ori­gin of Con­scious­ness in the Break­down of the Bicam­er­al Mind by Julian Jaynes. A book that begins with the com­pelling case of this pas­siv­i­ty. As the book goes on the oth­er case(s) being made are less (and less) com­pelling. Over the next thir­ty years I have spent a lot of time con­tem­plat­ing what my con­scious­ness was nec­es­sary for.

That last sen­tence per­haps gives a clue about the pos­si­ble pur­pose of con­scious­ness. I spent time con­tem­plat­ing. There seems to be con­scious inten­tion and thought. Was con­scious­ness doing the think­ing? Prob­a­bly not. Con­scious­ness was just hang­ing on to the idea wait­ing for the sub­con­scious to pro­vide info.

But did the inten­tion orig­i­nate with con­scious­ness? Maybe. But not nec­es­sar­i­ly. I sus­pect most (all?) of my “inten­tions” orig­i­nate subconsciously.

So what is con­scious­ness for? It is an amaz­ing phe­nom­e­na. It is a “space” where no space exists. It seems so com­plete­ly cen­tral to one’s iden­ti­ty, yet it seems to have no function.

My best guess at present is that con­scious­ness has the func­tion of allow­ing an indi­vid­ual to behave in a way that dif­fers from how one’s genet­ic and expe­ri­en­tial back­ground would dic­tate. I do not have any evi­dence of this. But it does seems clear that, at least occa­sion­al­ly, indi­vid­u­als do some­thing that is con­trary to the dic­tates of their genet­ic and expe­ri­en­tial back­ground. How is that possible?

Only with a con­scious effort. Even if the motive is based in the sub con­scious, it is only with the con­scious effort that an indi­vid­ual over­comes the genet­ic and expe­ri­en­tial dictates.