We must Declare War on Gravity. Now!!

Some old numbers and a (possibly) new interpretation.

Back in August of 2006, Reason Magazine ran a story about the odds of an American being killed in a terrorist attack, and what they concluded was that I have a .0781% chance of being killed by a terrorist of any stripe--and that's "if terrorists were able to pull off one attack per year on the scale of the 9/11 atrocity." I also have a .4761% chance of being killed by falling down. That means gravity is 6 times more likely to kill me than a terrorist is.

Gravity, of course, has long been a bane of human freedom. Since Aristotle we've known that gravity was against everything free humans stand for, but it wasn't until Sir Isaac Newton that we were able to more clearly identify the threat--a threat that Albert Einstein has enabled us to fully understand. What we know now about gravity's inner-workings and motivations has, unfortunately, not slowed its machinations against human freedoms. Gravity is a killer that respects no gender, ethnic, or national boundaries; it will strike anyone--the nine-year-old Ukrainian gymnast, the poor Hispanic window-washer, the drunk fraternity boy, or the New Zealand mountain climber. In short, it is a force that will not stop unless we stop it.

Although there is an argument about whether or not the War on Terror is making terrorism more likely there is absolutely no question that fighting an unsuccessful War on Gravity will not worsen its effects. That, coupled with the significantly higher threat that gravity poses, leads us to the logical conclusion that we should be spending a lot more money attempting to destroy gravity as opposed to trying to destroy a less perilous threat like terrorism.

In that vein, I submit a proposal for your consideration. Last year, President Bush requested a budget of $72,400,000,000 to continue fighting the War on Terror. Since gravity is much more dangerous and causes many more fatalities, I propose funding the War on Gravity at $434,400,000,000. Since the threat is 6 times greater, the funding should be 6 times higher than the War on Terror, and this estimate is conservative since the dollar is not worth what it was in February of 2006 when President Bush made his request and since we do not yet have a plan of attack for ridding all free peoples from the specter of gravity.

If we work together on this, I am confident that we will rid the world of this insidious threat and breaker of old people's hips.

Allow me to Hate on the Newly-Resurrected "Daily Show"

So The Daily Show is back. I am thankful; don't get me wrong. But I was watching the 10 January episode (guest: John Zogby), and Stewart was making fun of the arabesque, overly ornate figurative language that the pundits tend to use when talking about the primary season. He was poking fun at the pop culture references that Chris Matthews, Lou Dobb, Bill Bennett, etc. use to describe the Democratic primary--Lawrence of Arabia, Friday the 13th, A Perfect Storm, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, and The Abyss.

Jon Stewart is a very smart man, and he has some very smart people writing for him. But the writer's strike has exposed some weaknesses in the show. They show some pundit--with whom I am not familiar--saying of Hillary Clinton: "she is looking into the abyss and the abyss is looking back." Stewart assumes that this talking head is referencing the James Cameron and Ed Harris flick The Abyss.

Except--hard as it may be to believe--the pundit was referencing Friedrich Nietzsche not a 1989 Hollywood project. It's taken from an 1886 book, Beyond Good and Evil: "When you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks at you."

I would have expected Stewart--or at least his staff--to know this. Very disappointing.

A Reaction to Zizek that Will Likely Mean Absolutely Nothing

Just finished watching Zizek!, the documentary on Savloj Zizek. I like some of what he says, but the bit in which he applauds himself rubbed me the wrong way. It made me put down the Kool-Aid and think about aspects of Zizek a bit more. He claims he does so because like a good Stalinist, he is just a part of history--no higher up than the members of the audience. He points up the spindly but strong strands of the web of ideology, but...

• in his tour of his apartment, he often repeats "this is my..."
• he wears Levi's like a good Eastern European, so he can have shaggy-assed hair and sweat through his shirt all he wants, but he's still Americanized
• he messes with his nose enough that I think he's a coke head (since he looks like he's tweaking most of the time)
  

In his book, he tells the joke about the German in Siberia who has no red ink (I'm not going to repeat the joke), and he associates that with a Western idea of freedom. We are totally free--except we don't have any red ink. The ink here is the language with which we may express our lack of freedom, but I would respond (as I'm sure many, many before me have) that if we don't have the language to express our lack of freedom, then we cannot conceive our lack of freedom, and if we cannot conceive it, in some ways it cannot exist. At the very least, we cannot know of it. So what I suspect Zizek is asking of us to do is to take his word for it, to have faith in his giant IQ and just assent. No thanks.

Zizek evokes quantam theory, so I will bring it up, too. If there is some sort of lack of freedom extant outside our experience, it is just as likely that there is not a lack of freedom outside our experience (see Schrodinger's cat and--to a lesser extent--Heisenberg's uncertainty principle). Until we can observe and/or measure that lack of freedom, it cannot truly exist. But since it is beyond our linguistic ability to capture or express, then how can we know it exists?

Language--and here I am closely following Lacanian ideas-- structures the mind and thought itself; so how in the world can there be a lack of freedom that we cannot express, that is beyond language? That would necessitate a return from the Symbolic to the Real and would in turn necessitate a dissolution of the self and (mistaken) identity. Is the lack of self (or a facade that we mistakenly represent as the self) preferable to a lack of freedom?

I guess Lacan would say yes to that question since the whole point of the psychic narrative arc is a frustrated return to the womb, to the Real.

Happy Christmas to All

An editorial from the Washington Post whose sentiment struck me as quite beautiful:

ON AND AROUND Dec. 25, 1914, many of the men fighting in the recently inaugurated war in Europe stopped for a short time to observe what came to be known as the "Christmas Truce." They sang carols back and forth, then came out of the trenches to meet, play a bit of soccer, share some food. "Just before dinner I had the pleasure of shaking hands with several Germans," a British soldier wrote in a letter home. "[A] party of them came 1/2 way over to us so several of us went out to them. I exchanged one of my balaclavas for a hat. I've also got a button off one of their tunics. We also exchanged smokes etc. and had a decent chat. . . . We can hardly believe that we've been firing at them for the last week or two -- it all seems so strange."
Normality was not long in returning. The Great War resumed in earnest, further spontaneous truces were discouraged in the interest of good military order, and by Christmas Day 1918 nearly 10 million men had died at war, along with some 10 million civilians. And of course it was still early in the century, the 20th since the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, an event whose significance had been proclaimed in the Book of Luke in words that resonated among people of every faith and following: "Peace on earth, goodwill toward men." Literally uncounted millions more were yet to perish in the wars, pogroms, purges, ethnic relocations and other acts of organized violence that culminated in the Second World War, which was in turn followed by a long "peace" in which uncounted millions more were killed.

The odd thing is that so much of the horror has been so mindless -- not part of a struggle for food, land or dominance or even of long-simmering discord between one group of people and another, but rather a puzzling eruption of hatred toward entire categories of people suddenly found, for no good reason, to be threatening, deviant, dangerously different -- the cause of all problems real and imagined.

Some students of the subject voice cautious optimism that the impulse to such violence is gradually declining or is being reined in. But then, of course, they thought that a hundred years ago, too. There was confidence then that the forces of education and technological and economic advancement would move civilization forward into an era of prosperity and understanding in which peoples would no longer wage war on one another. Perhaps by now we comprehend that while there is some truth in this, what is far more important than all the engines of progress is simply to understand and truly feel what it was that moved the hearts of the men who put down their guns and walked across a blasted field toward their enemies on Christmas Day 1914.

Joe Biden Hates me!

Just watched the most recent Democratic Primary debate (I know, I'm running far behind), and I've realized that I like Edwards, Kucinich, and Biden more every time I see them. I liked Edwards back in 2004, but there's this righteous (may self-righteous) anger in he and Kucinich that I just love.

At any rate, Biden was talking about appointing Supreme Court Justices, and he said that he'd appoint candidates with "life experience"--whatever the hell that is. He then said, and this is what pissed me off, that there were enough professors on the bench and what we really needed was a dogcatcher. Really? So us stupid, Ivory Tower, elitist eggheads don't have any life experience? That's painting a lot of us with a broad brush. I moved pianos, worked as a case clerk for asbestos litigation, drove a furniture delivery truck within the last decade, sold interior decorating crap at Pier 1 and Pottery Barn, got a Masters degree and started on a PhD, and taught freshman composition within the last 15 years. Is that not enough "life experience?" OK, my father had a triple-bypass surgery from which he almost died, I had my possibly-cancerous thyroid removed, and I got married all in the same month. Is that not enough "life experience?" Maybe having one of your best friends--a 32-year-old gay man in small town Texas--die of AIDS is enough. No? I've got a million of them: I played big-time high school football in Texas, was recruited by some smaller colleges, spent some time at Brasenose College in Oxford, have been hit on by my share of gay men, (I'd guess--I don't know what my share would be but I worked at Pier 1, Pottery Barn, and Nine West, so most people thought I was gay), gotten my ass kicked by a bouncer, done some farm work, quit smoking, lost my intellectual drive for about two years to alcohol and skirt chasing, cheated the IRS...

I'm not even special. The point is that it's easy to beat up on intellectuals and academics, but when the comet is hurtling toward Earth, you dig up some weird Native American artifact, or you need help writing your fucking paper, who do you call? Us. We have life experiences just like the next person. Tragedy, pain, joy, and love don't skip over us.

Happy Veteran's Day

We would do well to remember men like Wilfrid Owen--men who gave their lives, of course, but also the men who gave their limbs, their minds, or their youth to whatever The Cause was at the time. Veteran's Day strikes me as a time to acknowledge sacrifice and to account for them, our payments to The Cause. We should see if the scales balance. And if they do not, perhaps we should take a hard look at the value of The Cause.

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Wilfrid Owen, 1917

Update on Kahleefornya Versus the EPA

I blogged earlier about California suing the EPA in order to enforce its 2-year-old law requiring emissions control above and beyond federal levels. Well, it looks like it's really going to happen. And New York is going to follow suit (get it?) with the coal plants. The excrement has most definitely hit the air conditioning. We'll see how far the Administration and the EPA are willing to let this one go. I'm still unclear about the EPA's ostensible objection to this, though I'm sure there is one. We already know the unstated reason. I'm just too tired to find it right now: I've been grading freshman comp. papers, which is a lot like fighting a 14-year-old-girl. I can easily take one. Even 4-5 probably wouldn't be too much of a problem. But 25? No way. There are just too many, and they finally wear me down and break me.