Freetail
Haven't been up here in a year or more. Lovely SA IPA. Crappy view. The weather is unbelievably nice for this time of year. Chilly for just a moment.
Midget Walk
Comanche Park #2
Walk down to Roland and back and nearly stranded by the rising water. They were turning people away as we came back because the water was rising so quickly. Very short walk but canopied along Salado Creek (apparently red foxes and red shouldered hawks and other critters still around). Howard Peak's vision of the Emerald Necklace; Greenway Trails.
Then we watched the Lone Star Nationals Quarter Midget Racing for a little while. Crazy, loud. The kids' heads tilted out over the left side of the car as they watch the curve of the track. Doggie clawing at my shoulder as they zip around.
Afterwards:
The chicken and the egg are the same thing
A while back I wrote about John McWhorter's view that language does not shape thought and my begrudging disagreement with him: "People who have a grasp of their language beyond that of the layperson must understand things different. So too, different cultures, predicated partially on language, must have some vital, if small, differences."
Now I read Lera Boroditsky's essay (originally printed in Scientific American in February 2011), "How Language Shapes Thought." Intriguingly near the end: "Teaching people new color words, for instance, changes their ability to discriminate colors. And teaching people a new way of talking about time gives them a new way of thinking about it." And: "What researchers have been calling "thinking" this whole time actually appears to be a collection of both linguistic and nonlinguistic processes. As a result, there may not be a lot of adult human thinking where language does not play a role." (28) Though the nonlinguistic processes seems like a fairly large hole, the argument goes back to language = culture, according to Boroditsky.
In (re)thinking about the children from different cultures (or subcultures) who are culturally more or less aware of the shapes of these toys might it not be more about the language used in these subcultures about toys than the number of physical objects each socio-economic group owns (McWhorter's argument being that black kids from Harlem and middle-class white kids from NYC don't speak vastly different languages -- they speak English)? Isn't it perhaps possible that there is different linguistic emphasis being placed on "toys"?
If nothing else, it is fascinating to think that there is still such disagreement over the issue.
--
Boroditsky, Lera. "How Language Shapes Thought." Annual Editions: Anthropology 12/13. Edited by Elvio Angeloni. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012.
Possum living
"The Old Fool likes to go around saying he can't decide what he wants to be when he grows up. But truthfully, not having to make decisions is one of the great luxuries of life--right up there with not having to go to work." (19)
--
Freed, Dolly. Possum Living: How to Live Well without a Job and with (Almost) No Money.
Friendly, ain’t she
In the High Empire of Roman rule:
"For those who subscribed to the liberal ideal, friendship rather than passion epitomized the desired qualities of reciprocity and inward freedom. Love is slavery, but friendship is freedom and equality. This despite the fact that in reality the word 'friendship' often (though not always) meant 'clientage.' Did people really have more friends then than they do now? I don't know. But friendship was talked about far more often than we talk about it today. Frequently, though, a culture speaks not of what really exists but of imaginary solutions to its real contradictions. (The Japanese do not commit suicide more often than Westerners, but they talk about it much more.)" (185)
---
Interesting that 1) our Western culture, which framework is still solidly set in Roman ideals, would be much more interested in passion than friendship as a means to freedom and 2) maybe the Roman's were too (that is, the whole brilliant idea of friendship rather than passion being the driving force behind happiness or at least a general Roman goal is largely debunked by the last two sentences of the paragraph). Still the idea is an interesting one as cultural values vacillate.
---
A History of Private Life: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium. Vol. 1. Paul Veyne, ed.
The culture of imprisonment
With typical aplomb, Adam Gopnik explores the problem of our booming (read: privatized) industrial-prison complex. Though elegantly stated, Gopnik's argument is nothing new. It's good to see it discussed openly in a renowned national magazine. And I say it's nothing new as part of my disgust with the culture of imprisonment and our general nonchalance about the whole affair rather than as a statement about the quality of the article (Gopnik is one of my favorite writers). It is, and I agree with him here, the biggest challenge facing the United States at the moment. Anyone could be arrested for nearly anything on the whim of a police officer or sheriff and have to spend the night in jail (if they don't get convicted of some obscure and/or obscene offence). When a society's police assumes guilt, that society is indeed, Kafkaesquely, always already guilty. What has to change before people understand this injustice? Why, if it is nothing new, has it not changed? These are deep-seated values that often take the form of economic argument (e.g.: police force in force means jobs for lots of Americans and if they're not arresting people, so the flawed logic goes, they're not doing their job). They need to be overturned so that we're not left behind morally, intellectually and, ultimately, I believe, economically.
None of this is to say that the SAPD, for example, is a ruthless band of people; as a matter of fact I have had nothing but good experiences with the police here in San Antonio. I just think, much like a misguided war posited on a flawed argument, which has nothing to do with the brave men and women who serve our country, that the general cultural acceptance of such incarceration must change.
---
"No more chilling document exists in recent American life than the 2005 annual report of the biggest of these firms, the Corrections Corporation of America. Here the company (which spends millions lobbying legislators) is obliged to caution its investors about the risk that somehow, somewhere, someone might turn off the spigot of convicted men:
Our growth is generally dependent upon our ability to obtain new
contracts to develop and manage new correctional and detention facilities. . . . The demand for
our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts,
leniency in conviction and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain
activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws. For instance, any changes with
respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of
persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional
facilities to house them."
---
Gopnik, Adam. "The Caging of America." The New Yorker, January 30, 2012. http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/01/30/120130crat_atlarge_gopnik?currentPage=all (accessed February 3, 2012).
Privacy and persecution
"The American Library Association points out, 'Privacy is essential to the exercise of free speech, free thought, and free association.' According to ALA, when people are concerned that their reading habits may be shared with others or used against them, they may limit their search for information. Their fear of judgment could restrict what they are willing to read. Therefore, the loss of privacy is also the loss of freedom."
But when you equate privacy with freedom of speech aren't you already inherently persecuted (or fearing persecution)? Freedom of speech means you can say what you want, presumably in public, rather than in your closet all by yourself. It means that you can read what you want even if Big Brother doesn't like it. While this is perhaps an ideal, it also the founding ideal of the US Constitution. ("We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.") It is why people use Goodreads: they believe in their right to free speech, liberty, tranquility and general welfare (as well as, of course, community).
(This questions of privacy also brings up interesting questions about the idea of privacy in our culture and time as opposed to say Greek antiquity. We are a very private people from bedroom to bathroom to study.)
Still any bureaucracy is laden with illogical moral values that impinge upon this (and other) logical human rights. The justice system is a Juggernaut powered by it's own sense of law founded in survival and erratic human values, as is our (and every other) government. Ultimately the only thing that can change this is a general groundswell of logic and human decency so read and share what you're reading and do more than survive; change the world.
---
"E-Reader May Be Invading Your Privacy" by Marissa Cuillo.
How we are strung along
"That was the funeral of Hector." (Trans. W.H.D. Rouse)
"And peaceful slept the might Hector's shade." (Trans. Alexander Pope)
"Thus, then, did they celebrate the funeral of Hector tamer of horses." (Trans. Samuel Butler)
"Such were the rites to glorious Hector paid." (Trans. The Earl of Derby)
"Thus held they the funeral for Hector tamer of horses." (Trans. Lang, Leaf, Myers)
"Such burial the illustrious Hector found." (Trans. William Cowper)
---
So ends The Illiad. I haven't spoiled anything, mind you. It was his destiny from the beginning. Still it is an ironic end in many ways. Understated and genuine (life and death do matter) as opposed to most of the epic drenched in blood and gore and filled with pompous windbags both mortal and immortal. Though ironic, it is fitting that the story ends with Hector, fully human. The gods are just as liable to squabble and fight. Indeed even more so than humans, who at least occasionally see the error of their ways (see the moving encounter between King Priam and Achillês near the end). The gods, on the other hand, are driven only by conceit, fear, jealousy and anger. It is their meddling and their inability to empathize that is most of the cause of all the death and suffering the mortal men and women of The Illiad must endure.
And so it is that Homer records the glorious (mis)deeds of humans and gods, tongue firmly in cheek.
---
Other quotes that I think show the self-consciousness of Homer and the absurdity of the events so drawn out:
"They were like a pack of ravening wovles ready for the hunt. How the savage beasts bring down a great antlered stag in the mountains and tear him to pieces with blood-dripping jaws! -- then off goest he whole pack to a brook, and they lap up the clear surface-water with long, thin tongues, belching out clots of gore." (230)
How this simile goes from apt to long-winded to absurd to terrifying (long, thin tongues, belching out clots of gore!).
"At last he [Zeus] thought it best that Patroclos should kill yet more, and drive Hector back to the city walls." (240)
But why? Ours is not to know the reasons of gods.
"As he [Antilochos] ws getting ready Nestor took the opportunity to give him some advice (although he was quite able to do without it)..." (332)
What a brilliant author's aside. Here is the true Homer revealed.
---
Homer. The Illiad. Translated by W.H.D. Rouse. New York: Signet Classics, 1937.
You can’t swing a [dead] cat without hitting some cash
Jake Adelstein is a journalist who writes about the yakuza. The essay is as much about his flamboyant personality and life. Excellent read.
---
On how the yakuza used to extort banks in the ninteen-eighties:
"'Sometimes we'd send three guys with cats, and they would twirl the cats around by the tail in front of the bank,' one [retired yakuza] said, with Adelstein translating. 'They'd do that until the bank finally gave them a loan.'"
Of course the bank never saw the money again. But then again swinging cat chorus was gone, too.
---
Hessler, Peter. "All Due Respect." The New Yorker 9 January 12, 50 - 50. Link [abstract].
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