Posted Saturday, May 31
Wish I'd Thought of That

Picture of a river. What were they thinking?
Posted Saturday, May 31
Depth Is Relative

The passage I shall discuss is from a book I've been rereading, Vance Packard's 1957 shocker, The Hidden Persuaders. (So well known in its day that Isaiah Berlin alludes in passing to 'hidden persuaders' in "Two Concepts of Liberty". Of course, Berlin always assumes his audience has read Herder as well ... Anyway, Packard was widely-read.)

Our own fine paperback edition of Packard's classic is in storage. Fortunately, some other fanatic has provided you with a JPEG and some excerpts here. You can't quite read the print on the cover. I'll just tell you the 'why' questions are as follows: why men think of a mistress when they see a convertible in a show window; why women are attracted to items wrapped in red; why some children's shows take sly swipes at parents; why automobiles are getting longer and longer; why men wouldn't give up shaving even if they could.

At least two of these questions raise a further question about psychology: were people dumb then?

The book does have a sort of fresh-scrubbed 'gee whiz, doc' tone - occasionally veering off into Troy MacClure among the Freudians. 'Hi, you may remember me from such self-help books as, What You Can't Know Has Hurt You, and You Can't Spell 'Idiot' Without the Id!'

One of the book's semi-sinister semi-central figures - a 'depth boy', as Packer styles the breed - is Dr. Ernst Dichter. (Shades of Philip K. Dick, whose doctors always have endearingly obvious German names.) Dichter is one of the fathers of M.R. (Motivational Research). By 'deep' Packard means, by our standards today, 'not staggeringly shallow and naive'. Or: 'not obtuse, to an almost unbelievable degree, about, for example, human sexuality.'

A passage about a different depth boy:

Professor Smith, in his book on M.R, reports incidentally that this agency [an ad agency] saved itself from hitting a hidden reef, in trying to sell a hair preparation to women, by getting timely counsel from social scientists. The idea, and it had seemed a brilliant one, was to sell a home permanent by showing identical hairdos of mother and daughter with the headline, "A Double Header Hit with Dad." It was cute, and when they asked wives causally - and at the conscious level - if the wives would resent the idea of being compared with their daughter in competition for the husband-father's admiration, they dismissed the possibility that such a competition could exist. The agency was apprehensive, however, and decided to explore the question in depth interviews. There is became quickly evident that women would indeed deeply resent a double "hit with Dad" theme. It was dropped.

Now the 'cute' idea in question is manifestly the sort of thing David Lynch might have worked into a scene in Blue Velvet, if it weren't a tad disturbing, not to mention over-obvious. How could grown, advertising professionals be oblivious to the anxious sexual overtones of this family romance ginned up to sell hairgoo?

In fact, Packard himself does not clearly see the problem even as he explains it: not just competition for admiration but - I would finish the thought but I don't want the google hits.

Or maybe he does see but (just like me) doesn't say (he wanted to get his book bought not banned.) But obviously the advertisers just didn't see what they had done. Clueless. Yeesh.

This passage suggests a truly yawning, psychic gulf between ourselves and our recent hominid ancestors. Of course, sexual naivete is sort of a cliche about the 50's. But it is interesting to wonder - I wonder if we can know: where was the line between what people didn't say, because it wasn't polite, and what they didn't see, because they just didn't think about human beings as being that sort of being.
Posted Friday, May 30
The Lord of the Rings

"Minas Tirith", Sung to the tune of "Oklahoma"

Miiiinas Tirith, where the West Wind whistles from the sea!
And the Kings of old on thrones of gold
Saw the light shine on the Silver Treeee!
Minas Tirith!

"Uruk-hai Songs For Uruk-hai Orcs", Sung to the tune of "Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats"

Are you Saruman-made? Can you see in the dark?
Can you snatch the two halflings and drag them away?
Can you say you are bigger than average orc?
Can you travel by night but then also by day?

Because Uruk-hai are and Uruk-hai do
Uruk-hai do and Uruk-hai would
Uruk-hai would and Uruk-hai can
Uruk-hai can and Uruk-hai do

"These Are a Few of My Favorite Rings," Sung to the tune of "These Are a Few of My Favorite Things"

Three rings for elven kings under the sky
Seven for dwarf lords in their halls of stone
Nine rings for mortal men all doomed to die
One for the Dark Lord there on his dark throne

One ring rules them!
One ring finds them!
One ring brings them all!

In darkness employ this one magical ring!
And there you can bind them all!!

"Moria", Sung to the tune of "Maria"

(spoken)
Moria . . .

(sings)
The most hideous sound, that faint ta-dum:
Moria, Moria, Moria, Moria . . .
All the hideous sounds of the deep in a single drum . .
Moria, Moria, Moria, Moria . . .
Moria!
I'm trapped in a mine that's called Moria,
A name on which I blame
A thing with whip of flame
Near me.
Moria!
It's dark in this mine that's called Moria,
And deep beneath the ground
How terrible a sound
Can be!
Moria!
Say it loud and there's orc arrows flying,
Say it soft and it's almost like dying.

Moria,
I'll never stop fearing Moria!

The most hideous sound I ever heard.
Moria.
Posted Friday, May 30
Mysterious Mother Goose

You find some weird shit in the Complete Mother Goose, I'll tell you that. I'm sure my husband is going to think this is about Schopenhauer somehow.

The Hart

The hart he loves the high wood,
The hare she loves the hill;
The Knight loves his bright sword
The Lady - loves her will.

Hmmmm. Or how do you like the opening verse of "A Little Man"?

There was a little man and he had a little gun
And his bullets were made of lead, lead, lead;
He went to the brook, and saw a little duck,
And shot it right through the head, head, head.

I don't want to spoil it for you, but the drake gets away. Perhaps to star in this little ditty.

Ducks and Drakes

A duck and a drake,
And a half-penny cake,
With a penny to pay the old baker.
A hop and a scotch
Is another notch,
Slitherum, slatherum, take her.

Now I bet we become the top Google site for "slitherum". Blog Googlewashing strikes again! Mwahahaha!
Posted Thursday, May 29
Wittgenstein On Enron

As usual, Matthew Yglesias is right. (And to bring to bear the Philosophical Lexicon with such precision? Deft, man.) The Donald MacKenzie Guardian piece on the Enronification of accounting is rather good, and the use of Wittgenstein on rule-following is rather a case of ... well, taking a precision instrument intended to help with a very particular problem, and driving a nail with it. Which works. (The particular problem, if you are curious, is: Wittgenstein.)

That said, there is one passage I know of - rather an obscure one, from Culture and Value - in which a point rather similar to MacKenzie's is made by Wittgenstein.

The effect of making men think in accordance with dogmas, perhaps in the form of certain graphic propositions, will be very peculiar: I am not thinking of these dogmas as determining men's opinions but rather as completely controlling the expression of all opinions. People will live under an absolute, palpable tyranny, though without being able to say they are not free. I think the Catholic Church does something rather like this. For dogma is expressed in the form of an assertion, and is unshakable, but at the same time any practical opinion can be made to harmonize with it; admittedly more easily in some cases than in others. It is not a wall setting limits to what can be believed, but more like a brake which, however, practically serves the same purpose; it's almost as though someone were to attach a weight to your foot to restrict your freedom of movement. This is how dogma becomes irrefutable and beyond the reach of attack.

A funny passage. If you wade in carelessly, you are likely to get the impression this is some sort of Orwellian cautionary tale about the dangers of newspeak. When, actually, the point is the opposite. The prison-house of language is unconstructable. The most you can do is hobble everyone so they only wander away if they really, really want to. And even then it may seem they haven't. (You can see how this could make trouble for those setting out to construct the prison-countinghouse of language, as it were. Always someone who really, really drags that weight around ... because there's a big pile of money just ... a ... little ... further.)

I think Wittgenstein was probably mulling the verbal vanity of the Tractatus. (Once upon a time, he thought he was walking right up to the wall that demarcates the bounds of sense. But no, he was just fussily insisting on forms of expression.) But the politico-theological point - nothing too deep or stunning, mind you, but nicely expressed - is a good one. I think the best case in point is probably not Catholic dogma, however, but arguments about interpretations of, say, the Bill of Rights.

I broach the topic because it seems vaguely connected to a current subject of discussion between Chris Bertram and Henry Farrell: the draft EU Constutition.

But first, MacKenzie's conclusions concerning Enron:

Understandably, momentum is gathering behind an apparent fix to American accountancy's Wittgensteinian problems. It is to shift from the "rules-based" US approach to the "principles-based" approach currently used to regulate accountancy in Britain.

In the latter, detailed rules are supplemented by an overarching requirement that a company's accounts give a "true" and "fair" view of its financial situation. It might indeed be a useful reform.

Of course, overarching requirements are subject to rule-following problems, just like rules. So keep it simple, so you can keep an eye on the folks dragging those weights around.

It strikes me that, just as the Brits are teaching us more sensible ways to keep the books, perhaps, they - and a lot of other folks - are poised to sign on to the Enron of all Constitutions. (I don't really know what I'm talking about here; just a thought.)
Posted Thursday, May 29
Plato Versus Democracy

I'm slated to teach an honors seminar on "A Great Thinker" next semester. I was going to do J. S. Mill but it turned out the political philosophy guy is doing 'toleration'. Too close for comfort. I gave way with good grace. Plato? Nietzsche? Kierkegaard? Wittgenstein? Couldn't decide, so (since the students were conveniently assembled for an orientation thingy) I put it to a vote.

Plato: 0. Nietzsche or Kierkegaard: 8. Wittgenstein: 2. Abstentions: 7.

I combined N. and K. on one ticket, thinking they would unfairly split the vote if divided (shades of Gore and Nader). Perhaps I did my work too well. We are now going to redo the election via email to confirm this quite decisive result.

Anyway, Plato would regard his dismal performance as a confirmation of his worst fears about the ill-effects of democracy.
Posted Thursday, May 29
Photoblogging Quote of the Day

"Wooooah! Cold-ee!"


Posted Wednesday, May 28
Aromatissima

My sister's live journal lets you put what music you're listening to when you post; I think that's a good idea. This took a little while to write, so: Here Comes the Fear (The Doves), Tennessee Mountain Home (Dolly Parton), Pyramid Song (Radiohead).

Philo Hagen had a nice post recently about how houses smell; specifically, the way each of the homes of his childhood friends had a specific aroma, but he could never figure out what his own home smelled like. I didn't have that problem. My childhood home smelled like pot smoke, mildew, and salt air. In this winter this was supplemented by wood smoke, heart-of-pine fat lighter and burning dust from the gas heaters. When I say it smelled like pot smoke you have to understand it smelled like pot smoke to a degree you can hardly imagine. The joint that had just been lit was just a thin, skunky treble which activated the basso profundo of all the previous ones, so that the ghostly residue of hundreds of pounds of dope were always swirling in the air.

I loved the way my best friend Caroline Stanislawski's new trailer smelled: air conditioning, trident gum, kool-aid in a plastic pitcher, and a thousand polyvinyl esthers being released from every fiber of wall-to-wall carpet and new furniture (it came furnished). Her house was so neat, like a little ship, and cool and new. In my house everything was old and falling down, like the shack next to the house that had "Mao is Acid" painted on one door and "Acid is God" on the other. The former door slides over the latter and has gradually faded many shades lighter since the shed is always open. There was horse feed and hay and black widow spiders in there. It had a dirt floor and lots of tools and seed packets. It smelled great but you weren't allowed to poke around. I told my mom that when I grew up I wanted to live in a double-wide trailer. My step-father teased me about it all the time, later, when I had moved beyond the trailer phase.

I think I'm one of those super-smeller, super-taster people. I always pay great attention to the way things smell. I've read that people have suceeded in digitising scent, and they have big expensive smell-cameras which they use to capture the scent of exotic tropical flowers too rare to be processed into perfume in the ordinary way; they can then play them back and synthesize them. I want one of those cameras so bad. Just think: you could capture the scent of the back of your baby's neck while she's sleeping and then play it back to yourself forever, even when she's all grown. If I had one now I could play back the scent of my grandmother's kitchen in Washington D.C.: floor wax, bourbon, True menthol cigarettes, some indescribeable odor from the "Brisker", a now-lost appliance which kept crackers crispy. I don't think they make them anymore. It allowed her to extend the life of her products; she was big on that. (She washed and re-used plastic cups till they got cloudy and were permamently impregnated with the taste of her famous iced tea.) There was always a half-eaten box of Bremner's Wafers in there in which the already bland crackers had aquired the gummy flavorlessness of Communion hosts.

If I had one of those smell-cameras and could make my own perfume it would smell like two parts tea olive, one part breath of spring, and one part daphne odora. The February smells of Bluffton S.C.

Right now my apartment in Singapore smells very nice, if a bit neutral. Sea air from the South China Sea, clean tile floors, little bowls of jasmine flowers. What else? Baking bread, vinegary baby sweat. What about you?
Posted Tuesday, May 27
Mysterious Orient Photoblogging Continued
If a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicyle ... well, I'm not sure where I'm going with this. But I've gone and wrote a little poem. It goes something like this (the tune's my own invention):

There's this store but two blocks down.
Sells nothing but fish and bicycle
... If bicycle were a mass noun.


And if you walk two blocks in the other direction, you pass Hacks Pte Ltd. Their logo apparently dates from a bygone era when advertisements - originally called 'aversiontisements' - were ... oh, just look at it.

I'm not sure what they sell.

We just sort of peek at their darkened doorway through a chainlink fence. Handerchiefs? Tissues? Phlegm? Tubercular, eyeball-less old Edwardians?

Anyone out there who still thinks hackers are 'cool'?


UPDATE: Turns out Hacks are cough drops. Very tasty, too. I like them. Mmmmmm. Haaacks.
Posted Monday, May 26
Xenobiology

There are a lot of funny things about the "Young Hipublicans" article in the NYT Magazine, despite what Gallowglass rightly derides as a terrible failed-pun title. (And in addition to the interesting facts about their funding, nation-wide organizations, etc.)

The author appears never to have met any Republicans before. He can't believe they look just like regular people. He's also astonished that some people actually like and admire Ronald Reagan. I'm the first to admit there's something a little mysterious about it, but I would hardly have thought the bare existence of Reagan worshippers shocking at this late date.

This is my favorite part, though:

Geoff Schneider, an economics professor at Bucknell, says that the conservative group's constant charge in The Counterweight, that the university is infected by political correctness and that professors seek to indoctrinate students with a liberal agenda, has had an effect in the classroom. ''As the conservatives have become more prominent, other students are more prone to believe that they are being indoctrinated,'' Schneider says. ''So the openness of a number of students to new ideas and new ways of looking at things has actually moved in a disturbing direction. Students are much more willing to write off something as 'liberal talk' - oh, I don't need to think about that, that's just ideology - as opposed to thinking, in a complex way, about all of the different ideas and evaluating them.'' Kim Daubman, a social psychology professor, concurs. Recently she taught a class in which she talked about the theory that news coverage of warfare in Iraq could lead to a rise in homicides in the United States. ''I could see the students rolling their eyes,'' she says. ''I could just hear them thinking, 'Oh, there she goes again!'''

Kim, if you hadn't just gone there again, they probably wouldn't have thought that.

And doesn't it sound as if Geoff is really saying "students are much more willing to write something off as 'liberal talk', as opposed to thinking in a complex way about the different ideas and then totally agreeing with me about everything"?

Leftist academy denizens should do two things. First, they could admit that lots of educators do think it is explicitly their job to indoctrinate young minds with the proper political ideas. (I myself have been severely criticized for insufficient attention to this crucial task - while teaching first-year Latin.) They could blame nameless other professors for this failing, while proclaiming that they themselves are open-minded, fostering debate, etc. etc. This would draw the sting from the conservative objection a bit (rhetorical sleight of hand can be valuable!). It's just like when a professor explains that you won't have to know dates in this class, just the big ideas, with the strong implication that he is a free spirit bucking the trend of mindless rote memorization that prevails at the university - when in fact almost no one makes you learn dates.

Second, they should stop being such big wusses. "The mean Republicans laughed at my shoes on the bus! I'm not going to school ever again!" (cue sobbing.) It's a good thing to have that fiesty libertarian guy in your section. He may be smart, and at least he keeps things moving. His abrasive, contrary ways can be the irritant that brings forth the pearl of correct political reflections in the other students. You don't have to curl up in a ball and die just because someone accuses you of promulgating liberal political ideals. Instead, how about getting into a debate which you actually win in front of the other students?
Posted Monday, May 26
Zoë Art

Our daughter is artistic and her technique improves daily. Her favored medium is cwrayow on paypaw. But she is a fair (and still ambidextrous) hand with a Pilot Hi-Tecpoint V5 extra fine. It look to me like a giant squid. But the artist, whose intentions are authoritative, says it is Koko (a.k.a. Tomoko, my colleague Mike's wife, who is very popular at our house.)

I think young Zoë has a Don Van Vliet thing coming on, stylistically. What do you think? (Other works of his are more resembling, but sadly unavailable on-line.)


Posted Monday, May 26
Life Imitates Daniel Pinkwater's Art

This one is from the archives. A while back the management took a trip up to Malacca. We had to eat somewhere, and ... well, we thought to ourselves: 'Selves, Daniel Pinkwater would not forgive us if we did not eat here.'

I had fried pomfret. Belle had crab, and it made her feel a bit funny. But she didn't get sick, so that was all right.


Oh, and later we called a cab from our hotel to take us to the bus station. But it didn't come, and it didn't come. Finally, 5 minutes before our bus was scheduled to depart, a courageous young bellhop loaded us into his car. It's a 15 minute drive - around round-abouts, past overloaded fruit stands, through colorful schools of rickshaws, fording streams of pedestrians - to the station. As we began our trip, the dulcet tones of "Addicted To Love" came on the radio. Before Mr. Palmer had said his full piece about amorous compulsion, we were there. We caught our bus.
Posted Sunday, May 25
Veritas Odit Moras: Josh Marshall Has The Goods

See what I did there?
Posted Sunday, May 25
The Smell of Wine and Cheap Perfume

Stephanie Zacharek has a rather plum gig as a Salon movie reviewer (maybe not the greatest job security, though). She is a hipster of a particular kind: she likes to pick up crummy mass-market cultural products before they have even fallen to the ground, brush them off, and serve them up as tasty, possibly ironic delights. Now, in principle I'm all for this. I mean, let's just take a step back: I'm a hipster. I like Journey, for crying out loud. One of my fondest memories is an impromptu live version of "Don't Stop Believin'" at a Red Rocket cast party in SF, with my friend Katie on the saw, Daniel on guitar, and everyone else singing along.

This Daniel (one of the greatest guys in the world) is one of the same type of hipster, even more so. Four years ago he was wearing trucker hats (usually saying something mysterious like "Smile...you're in Petaluma!"), but he's obviously given them up now. He performed one of the most strange and arbitrary revaluings of this kind when he and some of his college friends decided (well, stipulated is more like it) that the Whitney Houston vehicle The Bodyguard was cool, while it was still in the theaters, and went to see it like 15 times [I think he said he saw it 50 times. Every Saturday nights, at midnight, at a second-run theater - for a year. - ed.] He still listens to the soundtrack. Now, that's crazy, and possibly crazy cool. It's on that hipster knife-edge between cool and retarded. It does not constitute a recommendation to ordinary people that they should rent The Bodyguard. It's more like performance art or something. In this respect, Daniel would not make a good movie reviewer.

The problem with Stephanie Zacharek is that she's doing this crazy performance art thing while masquerading as a reviewer. This has led to a recent absurdity in which she, apparently with a straight face, ends up recommending that you go see Daddy Day Care rather than Down With Love (this is clear from a comparison of the two reviews--N.B. you will have to watch an ad.)

"Down With Love" is an aggressive trifle. Right from its kickoff, an explosively colorful animated credit sequence, the movie begs us to fall in love with it.

There's a good chance we might have. But the fatal flaw of "Down With Love," a note-for-note mimicry of early-'60s Doris Day-Rock Hudson comedies like "Pillow Talk" and "Lover Come Back," is that in mining what's kitschily amusing about those movies, it also re-creates far too faithfully everything that's unbearable about them.

Daddy Day Care, on the other hand, now there's a worthy movie:

Somehow the scene is energetic without being garish -- Carr has a knack for orchestrating chaos. (Even the movie's poo-poo jokes are subtle, and one of them is scored, brilliantly, to the same screeching string sound used during the shower scene in "Psycho.") Murphy and Garlin play off each other well -- they jibe each other almost subconsciously, the way longtime buddies do. Then the always-funny Steve Zahn steps into the mix: He's the duo's nerdy former co-worker who joins them in the business after they realize how well he gets along with the kids (he's the one who ascertains that one boy doesn't have a speech impediment but is actually speaking Klingon). Zahn doesn't have to do much to make an audience laugh -- in fact, the less he does, the funnier he is. In one of his best moments, he simply stands before us in a foam carrot suit, his unblinking eyes showing us how hard his character is working to embody the essence of carrotness.

All the actors relate well to the kids. Murphy, in particular, is fun to watch with them: He has a way of talking to them as if they were little adults, always allowing them their dignity.

Oh. My. God. Are you kidding me? Please be joking, Stephanie. The essence of carrotness? The movie's poo-poo jokes are subtle? Scored, brilliantly? Yeah, using the Psycho strings for a scary bathroom scene. That's new. If only they also used the da-da da-da Jaws music for when one of the kids is sneaking up on Murphy with a water balloon then we'll have an exacta of the two most obvious movie themes ever.

Now, a disclaimer. I haven't seen either movie. But. I have seen the trailers, and that is enough for me to be absolutely, metaphysically certain that anyone given a choice between the two should see Down By Love. OK, fans of the Ernest movies are excluded from the ontology of this metaphysics. But do they read Salon? I don't think so.

The brilliantly scored poo-poo scene is in the trailer, so I can say with confidence it wasn't even nano-amusing. The ads for Daddy Day Care were of the sort that make you think, wow, those were the best scenes they could find in the movie, and they all stank up the screen. How awful must the rest be? (Much like the trailers for, say Daredevil.)

So many things are wrong with this review. Murphy talks to the kids as if they were little adults? Um, Steph, if you remember from when you were a kid, that type of adult is not cool. He is not getting along with you. He is, in fact, supremely annoying and possibly creepy, like that friend of your uncle's who might be a pervert.

Zacharek even liked A View from the Top, for God's sake (review no longer available, but trust me, she did). This is a movie which, if Fametracker is to be believed, Gwyneth herself referred to as "A View from My Ass" until the producers made her stop.

What's going on here? It's like Zacharek has two different conceptual schemata. On the one had, you have an intentional, exquisitely turned attempt at art, which she judges a failure. Fair enough, maybe it is. On the other hand, you have a shoddy comedy from which you expect nothing, and she's saying, Hey, it's not as bad as you thought it would be. Now, that wouldn't even be so wrong if it weren't obvious that the movie is as bad as you thought, and she's just stipulating that it wasn't for the sake of being a crazy, cool person who was the only one who liked that shitty Eddie Murphy movie.

And now, I don't want to hurt anybody's feeling here, so let me just say that if I really knew Stephanie Zacharek I might think she was being crazy cool rather than crazy retarded. It's hard to know sometimes.