Success and Narrative Arcs

The issue of Israel returning terrorists to their homes distresses me. How is it that the remains of Israeli soldiers warrant the release of a living prisoner guilty of a particularly horrific crime? How is it that the life of on living Israeli soldier is worth that of possibly 1,000 incarcerated prisoners, many of whom have 'blood on their hands?'

One problem is that victory is gauged narratively by ultimate result. If one is free for one's whole life but dies in jail it is considered a defeat, but an 11th hour liberation is construed as triumph. This has nothing to do with Israeli, Palestinian, Lebanese or Korean, it is how stories are told, we build to a climax and interpret the narrative arc by examining the trajectory from beginning to end. To counter this sort of political interpretation would it be possible to release prisoners from jail for a decade, maybe two, conditional their return to serve out the remaining sentence? The families would be reunited with their loved ones, and they would have an opportunity to put their life in order, but would live every day contemplating their cold solitary end. To liberate prisoners such as Samir Kuntar can only bolster a narrative in which resistance is victorious, bolstered by a triumphant narrative arc. (So what if the agreement is not enforceable in a meaningful way, non-compliance would provide leverage for future negotiations.)

One theory (which I am not going to track down at the moment) is that Israel is getting all its ducks in a row before it bombs Iran and arrests any possibility of negotiations with its neighbors. It doesn't alter the problem of narratives, but it would lessen my frustration with Israel's hasty gov't.

Bottega Veneta- Spring Fashion 2009

Totaly says, "I'm here to fix da'na cabl."


After going through the whole slide show I really think that some designers have been doing so much for women, that they have forgotten how to design for men. Gucci is always strange, but Armani? Come on. Much more comfortable with the Prada stuff, myself. I'll take the trench coats, you can have the pinstriped prison pants.

No, you're more pretentious

I am kind of getting a kick out of people describing Barak Obama as an elitist. Mostly because it generally belies what elites they really are.

David Brooks made some comment a while back about how Barack Obama would not seem at home at an Applebee's salad bar for which Jon Stuart poked fun at him noting that Applebee's does not have a salad bar (what do I know?). Now Maureen Dowd asks Karl Rove "when was the last time he kicked back with a corncob pipe to watch professional wrestling?" That's right normal stuff. You know, good ol' Americana. Like having a banjo on my knee while shooting buck out on the prairie. Does Dowd know what people really do on Monday nights when MNF is not on?* But Rove is also a fool here for insinuating that being elite gives you any better an idea what a country club is (her characterization of the MacBook, Atlantic and NYT is spot on). Obviously, Rove is not a fool in that his purpose is to create the perception of an image (that of a WASP), even if Obama is, in fact, wholly ignorant as to the distinctions between woods and irons.

The more us educated types open our mouths, the more we demonstrate we have no clue what the rest of this country is up to.

*America for 400, the correct answer is: knocking back 40s while watching the WWE.

Low pay ain't all it's cracked up to be

My quick thought on this article is that Not For Profits are often a joke. They are poorly run with loose objectives and lots and lots of development work. Asking people for money sucks, its begging really. Why choose a career that is often unstructured, with colleagues that do not share one's professional aspirations and where begging is a large component of the job requirement?

TFA is an interesting example. Many people hate TFA and are frustrated with its unrealistic goals (throw inexperienced overachievers in the poorest schools in America for two years and watch nothing happen). Worse, however, it is soul sucking. The poverty of the ambition comes from having the life sapped out of you every single day. The poor pay (in many NFP) just exacerbates the problem.

The bottom line is that when there is a bottom line things tend to run better and be more demanding. That is why they attract Ivy Leaguers.

(Just as a disclaimer, though my former employer in a NFP, it is run rather well.)

Idiots

This is why right wing scholars believe that land-for-peace is a scam:

Israel offered on Wednesday to start direct peace talks with Lebanon, saying all issues would be negotiable including a tiny piece of Israeli-held land on the countries’ border that Israel has long argued does not belong to Lebanon but that the Lebanese say is theirs.

When the UN clearly sided with Israel in this regard on June 16, 2000 saying,

After consultations throughout the weekend, the Security Council this afternoon endorsed the work done by the United Nations as mandated by the Security Council, including the Secretary-General’s conclusion that, as of 16 June, Israel had withdrawn its forces from Lebanon in accordance with Security Council resolution 425 (1978).

This brand of diplomacy completely undermines credibility. Israel needs to go back to signaling school.

Yay

Congress has enacted a statute, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (DTA), 119 Stat. 2739, that provides certain procedures for review of the detainees’ status. We hold that those procedures are not an ade­quate and effective substitute for habeas corpus. There­ fore §7 of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA), 28 U.S.C.A. §2241(e) (Supp. 2007), operates as an unconsti­tutional suspension of the writ. (Justice Kennedy writing for the majority in Boumediene v. Bush)

Tim Russert at 58

I have felt a connection to Tim Russert given our colocal roots. He was smart, honest and considerate. A Buffalo guy.

What is interesting is how his death has coursed through the news circuit. As the bureau chief of NBC news I think he had a lot of impact in the news world and in Washington, though he was only a talk show host to most of the viewership. Every once and a while you get to see the disconnect between what we see and what 'is.' Russert was obviously extremely influential though not an opinion maker in the way O'Reilly or Olbermann.

I have money on Olbermann to replace Russert at MTP. Anyone got a better guess?

Addendum: After reading this article in The New Yorker over shabbes I am going to side with Shmuli on this one.

Political Recognition in Arabic 103

My Arabic textbook show Israel without the West Bank or Gaza, but still circumscribing the Golan Heights.

Public (read: Zev) Service Announcement

Just a reminder to all those loyal 3W readers out there that have not made their annual $5 gift to the UofC to do so before June 30th. It is a cut an dry collective action problem--you have less money, but if we all do it our degrees are worth more. And, aw shucks, I do have a fair share of dorky school pride (which translates into financial giving, through some unknown mechanism).

Shout Out

Though I leave in a few hours to Spain I just wanted to post this piece from Volokh showcasing Dr. Dauber's prose to the world. It seems odd to me that the readers of the post are primarily interested in law while the post is written by an English professor razzing anthropologists (and English is more dutiful about historical accuracy? Is that even a problem for English? Maybe that's not what they claim to do?). I think some of the commenters ignore that when responding.

My quick two cents is that Dr. Dauber complains about the dissolution of disciplines. In the old days people would study a discipline, their discipline, and ignore others. That was annoying. So people woke up and said, "My, our discipline is so removed from reality we need to politicize it!" And thus everyone became a political theorist. Which is bad, because the world already had too many of those (and also bad for my job prospects). And now we have humanities scholars running around like political theorists without any context (intellectual, historical, etc), which is, again, annoying.

Where Life Imitates the Absurd (or The Onion)

This was reported by the BBC on April 22.

This was posted by the ONN two weeks ago, I think (it doesn't say when it was posted, but I watched it sometime before Pesach).


9/11 Conspiracy Theories 'Ridiculous,' Al Qaeda Says

And you actually doubted that it was, "America's Finest News Source."

Up Side, Down Side

I have been reading a lot of Kant recently. I don't particularly like Kant, not because I don't like his intellectual framework, but because I have to put too much effort in to understand him. On the up side, however, it has allowed me to trample around blurting, "I Kant, I just Kant!"
Down side, up side.

Two Words That Should Always (or Never) be Found Together

Cookie-Monster and Proust. A-friggin'-Mazing!

Haredi Aesthetic

I shamelessly stole this from Miriam's blog (so there). My question is different from hers, however. What is the aesthetic of the video? To whom does it appeal? The note at the end seems to imply that it is expected that non-observant (Israeli) Jews will watch it, although that might also be imagined--our culture is so appealing that others will be enamored with it. Seriously, what is the video editor thinking with all the damn wipes? Does this conform to anyone's visual aesthetic?

Original Sin in Ten Lines

I never understood the story of the nachash. And all of a sudden it just makes sense.

1. But you know you want to eat the fruit.
2. But Dad said he'll kill me.
3. He won't.
4. OK, If you say so.
5. [Sin which tastes so good]
6. {Rustle of quick cover up with fig-leaf sheets}
7. What have you done?!!!
8. But she gave it to me.
9. SMACK
10. I'm never letting you back in My house again! And I got two things to say to you guys: you, get a job, you're gonna need it. And you, take the epidural, trust me.

How Badly do the Chagim Mess Up My Schedule This Year?

So that's the question I dread finding out every fall. The last few years have been annoying, but this fall takes the cake; Tuesday, Wednesday. Right smack dap in the middle of the week. Plus if you want/need to travel you there goes Monday. Over time, though, I have come to accept my fate.

I am pleased to report that the next few years are not quite as bad:
2009 Sat, Sun (Yay!) [3rd yr]
2010 Thurs, Fri [4th yr]
2011 Thurs, Fri [5th yr]
While Thurs, Fri is not helpful for most of the oylum, it is pretty good for academics as most classes do not meet on Friday anyway and Thursday tends to be lighter too. It also means that YK falls on shabbes so you don't lose a seventh work day.

There it goes

Right on schedule, three weeks before the big day, the poll numbers in PA start to converge. I don't know why it has to be within three weeks for people to have a clue on their voting preference, but it does.

Boy I'm Lucky

Another year, another crop of prospective grad students--all of whom are more accomplished than I. Plus they totally have their sh*t together. They want to study things like "libertarianism, particularly F.A. von Hayek, and to the role of aesthetics in political arguments" or "extra-judicial killing in the conflict involving Naxalite Maoist rebels". My personal statement was something like, "I like Hobbes, Locke sux, but I will read him if I have to. The End." Man I'm lucky they took me.

Thought on Humor: Why Marx is not funny

Not infrequently, I find myself arguing with people about humor in philosophy. I think Wittgenstein was funny. Hobbes is sort of funny. Keirkegaard is very funny. Marx is not funny. People take issue with that. Marx is very funny, they respond, he is full of quips and barbs. I came across this passage in Kant's CPrR that reminded me of this debate. He writes,

...and it is no wonder that they find inconsistencies everywhere, although the gaps they suppose they find are not in the system itself but only in their own incoherent train of thought. (p8 in the Cambridge)

While some read these sorts of cracks as an indication of the author's sense of humor, it seems strange to me to consider Kant funny. The difference between cracks and humor is where one sees inconsistencies or discontinuity. Humor is about establishing patterns and then breaking them (hence the Rule of Three). Thinkers like K and Witt. understand that there are no foundational patterns and therefore consistently undermine their own projects. Kant and Marx (la'havdil elef havdalot) find the humor (and inconsistencies) in the writings of others, but are committed to a rigidly consistent project themselves. That's why they are most certainly not funny.

I'm on strike!

I have been waiting years to say that in earnest, and now my time has arrived. I am actually on strike today. My union, the GEO, has called a two day work stoppage to protest UMich not giving us more money. I like more money, so I am participating. I don't know how I feel about keeping other people from class, though.