Insignificant Wranglings

Clients from Hell

2009-12-04T09:17:00.001-06:00

For more evidence of why an extensive education in rhetoric might be valuable in the 21st century broadcast society, please see Clients from Hell.

Courtesy of XKCD

2009-11-19T09:06:00.000-06:00

A Not-So-Sophistical Defense for Going for It

2009-11-16T08:48:00.004-06:00

First of all, congratulations to the Colts for an amazing second-half. They played better and they won the game. And they don't deserve the criticism that "Belichick handed them the win."

How often are coaches criticized for "coaching not to lose"? For being too conservative? Last night was an aggressive call, no doubt. But it was a call to win the game when you had your hands on it. Let's face it, this isn't like the Patriot SB teams that win with defense. When this team beats you, the ball is in Brady's hands.
Those who have read Halberstam's excellent Education of a Coach will remember that it has a dedicated discussion of going for it on 4th down. In short, academic statistical analysis supports the idea that coaches should go for it on 4th down every time they have 4th and short. They should go for it on 4th down every time they are across their own 40. Statistically, the possible reward of keeping the football is worth any risk. Essentially, going for it on 4th down isn't a matter of overcoming difficulty on the field as much as overcoming the psychological and cultural perception of going for it on 4th down. Yeah, its a rhetorical thing.
The Patriots hadn't put the running back in motion to create an empty backfield all night. Remember that the play in theory worked--Faulk was open and caught the ball beyond the first down marker. However, in practice, he juggled it and lost forward progress. These things happen. But saving the running back quick out (matched up on an inside linebacker, I believe) for when you really need it is the kind of things that the hoodie does. Once again, the human element and the statistical/theoretical element might be in conflict here--but that doesn't mean that going for it wasn't the right decision.
As far as Belichick having to apologize to his defense, I think this needs to be revised: the defense has to apologize to the offense. The offense spotted the Colts a 24-7 lead. In the second half of that game, the defense played the roll of butter, Peyton Manning and Reggie Wayne the roll of hot knife.
Finally, I think Belichick had visions back to the 2006 Playoff game. Remember that the Pats blew a 21-6 halftime lead in that game. Remember, too, that Belichick called the game conservatively in the fourth quarter--I do think that ghost showed up in the 4th quarter last night.

Was I surprised to see the call last night? Not really. Not as someone who has watched Patriot games for the past decade. The Patriots have always played to win the game. Last night, they just came up a foot short when they really needed it. And, oh, by the way, did anyone notice how the defense failed to even make Peyton Manning blink on that final drive? That's why you go for it on 4th down. You play (call) to win the game.

Why the New "V" Isn't "Battlestar"

2009-11-04T11:28:00.003-06:00

This started as an email to Casey's question of what I thought of the new V last night. He remarked that the show had clear conservative overtones. My response:

I agree on the conservative overtones- but art is meant to probe and question reality, and our current reality seems fairly liberal, so that's not too surprising? Eh, that's bullshit. I was surprised to see a show so overtly critique Obama's political agenda. Especially since, while I don't have demographics, most sci-fi fans are likely liberal. Although there's always Ayn Rand--maybe they are playing to that audience?

Overall, I didn't think it was a great first episode in the way that Battlestar grabbed me immediately. I think the show is trying very hard to bridge Battlestar and Lost, to produce the kind of tension and mystery that marks those shows.

Ultimately, it will likely fail on those fronts--here's why: Battlestar and Lost work extremely well in that they, like any great piece of art (but especially the pomo stuff), problematize clear notions of good and evil, us and them. V doesn't have that option. They are evil (most of them), we are good, let the struggle resume. This, of course, is also the foundation of conservative politics. But in the long run, this kind of clear opposition doesn't speak to our contemporary milieu. Perhaps, as I intimated above, there are a group of conservatives today who fear that Obama brings an evil covered in smiles, and that we need to unmask the "Red-Lizard" threat. But I don't really think so.

We'll see.

Jon Stewart on Fox News

2009-11-03T11:53:00.004-06:00

I discovered this at the Blogora this morning, and posted it to Facebook already. But I do have a few friends, well at least one, who resist the siren song of Facebook. So here's the video clip with my short, glib commentary.

The comment that MSNBC wishes they could be Fox News was on point, though I think the Washington Senators would have improved the analogy. The closing nod to Nietzsche, and the acknowledgment that the White House doesn't complain about MSNBC because "they agree with us," demonstrates that contemporary comedy is often more transparent, and thus more trustworthy, than either politicians or news agencies. Given Fox News' parodic claims to "balance," and Obama's intense interest in media new and old, the vituperate nature of this clash isn't too surprising. A reminder that the death of the author equates to the propogation of authors.

For those unfamiliar with Nietzsche, here's the relevant passage from his "We Scholars" in Beyond Good and Evil (I'll quote at length his comparison between meager intellectual laborers and true philosophers, but you really only need skip to the last line):

Those philosopical laborers after the noble model of Kant and Hegel have to determine and pres into formulas, whether in the realm of logic or political (moral) thought or art, some great data of valuations--that is, former positings of values, creations of value which have become dominant and are for a time called "truths." It is for these investigators to make everything that has happened and been esteemed so far easy to look over, easy to think over, intelligible and manageable, to abbreviate everything long, even "time," and to overcome the entire past--an enormous and wonderful task in whose service every subtle pride, every tough will can certainly find satisfaction. Genuine philosophers, however, are commanders and legislators: they say, "thus it shall be!" They first determine the Whither and For What of man, and in so doing have at their disposal the preliminary labor of all philosophical laborers, all who have overcome the past. With a creative hand they reach for the future, and all that is and has been becomes a means for them, an instrument, a hammer. Their "knowing" is creating, their creating is a legislation, their will to truth is--will to power.

What I find interesting here is that both Fox News and Obama represent this Will to Power--Kaufmann's choice of "legislate" works well for me, since both Fox and Obama equal share legislative power. Notice, too, that Nietzsche emphasizes "thus...shall" and not "it...be." Being here (object) is less important than emergence of Being, or the rhetoric of Being, of power to influence Being's becoming in the public eye. Thinking about politics over the past few months, it seems as if Fox News is beating Obama, that his Power is waning.

Of course, I feel compelled to say "Obama," as I am using it above, becomes something that Obama [flesh and blood] could not possibly contain or control. It becomes mimetic. As "we" host it, we invest in it. We invest more than it could hope to contain. Bubbles burst. Frustrations remain. As old notions of authority become evermore loquacious, I can't help but think of Nietzsche's "Night Song":

Night has come: alas, that I must be light! And thirst for the nocturnal! And loneliness! Night has come: now my craving breaks out of me like a well; to speak I crave. Night has come: now all fountains speak more loudly. And my soul, too, is a fountain. Night has come: now all the songs of lovers awaken. And my soul, too, is the song of a lover ("Thus Spoke Zarathustra")

It will be interesting, as we move toward 2012, to see and hear, in the era of increasingly democratized media, the overflow of fountains.

Links for Talk

2009-10-26T15:25:00.003-06:00

I'm guest lecturing in a graduate course tonight on the evolution from literacy to digitality (my playful name for the talk is "From the Ear to the Eye to the Mouth: Orality, Literacy, and Digitality"). I didn't have time to make a web presentation, so I'm posting some links I might need here:

ZeFrank on Standards of Taste
Wikipedia and Neutrality
Gunn and Berube Exchange Blows; Scholarship and Agonism
DOAJ, Open Science Community, OER Commons, NINES

Talkin' Shop: Teaching Direct Quotation

2009-10-15T10:02:00.003-06:00

I'm doing a nuts-and-bolts topoi approach to direct quotation today, and I thought I would share my brief overlay. I'm also interested in how other people approach the subject.

In class today we are going to focus on incorporating direct quotations into writing. Essentially, I consider quotes a 4 part process. There's the signal, the quote, the summary, and the analysis. While we'll be using this specifically for direct quotes today and this weekend, this is essentially the undelrying structure for most academic-argumentative paragraphs: a claim, followed by evidence, and analysis. The signal works to create ethos for the source: the source itself can either present logos or pathos (similarly, you can react to sources in the vein of logos or pathos).

Here's an example; let's say I was writing a blog on the struggles of newspapers to survive the digital transition, I might want to point to yesterdays NYT's article dealing with the Times Co. decision to hold on to the Boston Globe.

In his recent article, Richard Perez-Pena explains that the Times Co. has decided to hold onto the Boston Globe, at least for now. Perez-Pena explains that the Times Co. has been trying to sell the newspaper for the past month, but, since it hasn't received what it deems a credible offer, it has decided to pull the paper off the market. He writes:

Dan Kennedy, a journalism professor at Northeastern University who has closely followed The Globe’s troubles, said it might be better for The Globe to remain with the Times Company than to go to a new owner that might do more cutting or replace top executives. “But the company has its work cut out for it in terms of rebuilding credibility with the employees and the community,” he said.

Perez-Pena explains that the Times Co. has been involved in bitter labor disputes over the past year, as advertising revenues continue to fall: this move, as Kennedy notes above, could be a solid first move in rebuilding an important relationship with one of America's oldest, and most significant, newspapers. However, I think we still need to be a bit skeptical here: the fact that no one even proposed a reasonable offer for a newspaper that only 15 years ago commanded 1 billion dollars, the highest price ever for a single newspaper (Perez-Pena), does not bode well for the future of the industry. Like many newspapers, the Globe was slow to adapt to the digitalization of America's infosphere. Time will tell if recent efforts are too little too late.

If you look above, I first contextualize the quote--not only supplying where/when/who it came from, but also providing some sense of what the whole article discusses. Then I focus attention toward a particular point and supply the quote. After the quote, I first reiterate what the quote said (providing a bit of new information). This is an important step that a lot of writers skip. Always make sure you summarize a quote, so a reader knows precisely what you think it says. Then, in the final part of the paragraph above, I analyze the material. I respond to it. In this particular case, I am somewhat critical of the optimism that underlies Perez-Pena's piece.

A few other small points:

Notice the first time I reference an author, I use there first and last name. After that, it is sufficient to only use the last name.
Notice that I don't have a citation after the direct quotation: the reason here is that it is obvious where the quote came from thanks to my signal. This is an electronic source, so there is no page number citation, were it a print source I would have to include that. NEVER USE A PAGE NUMBER IN THE SIGNAL TEXT.
Notice in my analysis that I make a parenthetical to the author--its because I pulled the price of the Globe purchase in 1993 from his article. I don't directly quote it, so no quotation marks.
Finally, there's two kinds of quotations, in-line quotations and block quotations. Each have there own rules for academic papers (the dreaded MLA and APA guidelines). We will deal with those later in the course. In terms of blogging: quotes longer than 4 lines need to be blockquoted. Blogger has a button to help you do this. Blockquotes don't receive quotation marks.

Wait Til Next Year?

2009-10-12T06:43:00.006-06:00

As a Boston/New England sports fan, the first decade of the new century went rather well. Perhaps too well. Our cultural ethos is constructed around losing and misfortune. Might it be that things are returning to normal?

This was an odd year for the Red Sox. While the offense struggled mightily, and while the pitching staff failed to live up to the lofty expectations, the Sox still made the playoffs. To lose in a sweep is a bit unexpected; to see Papelbon blow the save seems fitting for a season in which he, and other beloved veterans, struggled.

The Red Sox still have a very good collection of young players. The bloated contract of J.D. Drew will haunt them for at least one more year (two if Drew stays healthy). It will be interesting to see what happens with Jason Varitek and Jason Bay in the off-season. ESPN doesn't have the CERA (catcher's ERA) numbers for Martinez behind the plate, but I am going to guess its not as good as Varitek's 3.87 (since the team ERA on the season is 4.35). It should not be overlooked that Martinez, and not Varitek, was catching yesterday as the Red Sox stellar, hard-throwing bullpen imploded. I was previously concerned about this.

Bay had a roller-coaster season. I imagine he is seeing dollar signs this off-season. The Yankees have a considerable amount of money rolling off the books this year. I still fully expect Carl Crawford to execute the one million dollar buyout on his contract to become a free agent. That will put Crawford, Bay, and Matt Holliday (ouch, that error hurt--I still think his numbers with St. Louis were an aberration--buyer beware with this guy) at the top of a talented group of free agent outfielders, that additionally includes Manny, a resurgent Abreu, Magglio Ordonez (injuries a factor here), and others. Most of the major markets--Yankees, Mets, Red Sox, Dodgers (bye bye Manny?) will be potential buyers.

I have a feeling that the team will see a major shake-up this off-season: only time will tell if Varitek, Bay, Papelbon, or Mike Lowell returns next season. Papelbon in particular will be interesting to watch. The Red Sox still control him, but they have had difficulty coming to terms the past few seasons--and just barely avoided arbitration last year. I think part of the hesitation here is giving Papelbon, who has a chronic shoulder issue, a high-end long term deal. To avoid arbitration, and make the deal worthwhile for all sides, the contract would likely work out something like 32 million for 4 years (K-Rod got 37 million for 3 as an outright free agent). I had a feeling, when the Sox wouldn't pull the trigger on the Halladay deal, that Bard was being groomed as a future closer. So, as much as I love the glare, I wonder how much longer Papelbon will be in Boston. Please note that my wondering has absolutely nothing to do with his performance yesterday. He lived dangerously at times this season, but is still a top closer. I just think, medically and economically, the Red Sox front office has showed hesitation to lock up Paps as they have locked up Pedroia, Youkilis, and Lester.

As to the Patriots, it is very hard for me to watch Tom Brady right now, if only because he set the bar so high. But his deep ball looks as accurate as JaMarcus Russell's right now. I remember when Joe Montana returned from his elbow injury- though still great, he wasn't Joe Montana. That's how I feel watching Brady right now. Again, time will tell whether, like Donovan McNabb, he is able to recover from this injury or if, like Carson Palmer, Brady never quite returns to the level he was pre-injury.

Reading Cicero Otherwise

2009-10-05T09:18:00.011-06:00

So I am more and more coming to the realization that I will likely have to learn at least Latin, if not Greek, in the coming years. My Latin is tolerable enough to work through small passages, but I admit to being reliant on translations. Reading Cicero in preparation for my graduate seminar this week, I was struck by what I believe to be a telling anachronism in a passage from J. S. Watson's 1970 translation:

For the proper concern of an orator, as I have already said, is language of power and elegance accommodated to the feelings and understandings of mankind. (20)

It was that last word that really struck me--mankind, since, to my knowledge, the Greeks did not have such a conception (this, I realize is a difficult statement--certainly, Plato and Isocrates, via Idealism and Hellenism, approach the concept, but I don't want to engage that fight here). Now I realize that Cicero is a Roman--but the opening section of his De Oratore is a pragmatic response to Plato's treatment of rhetoric. Essentially, Cicero argues that Plato, sitting in his corner (an allusion to Aristophanes' The Clouds), discusses important matters in dead, lifeless, bloodness, dry, academic language. The power of the orator comes in injecting life into this language--imbuing it with an animating passion.

It was this celebration of language that got my spider sense tingling--because, beyond the direct Enlightenment language of "mankind," I also hear an 18th century preference for understanding over passion. Readers of Addison and Samuel Johnson will be familiar with such an echo. To confirm my suspicion, I checked a few other [free, electronic] translations of the passage. First, from the 1904 E. N. P. Moor translation:

For the special province of the orator is, as I have said already more than once, to express himself in a style at once impressive and artistic and comfortable with the thoughts and feelings of human nature.

I hear in this one a remnant of Ramus--a reduction of oratory from style (I can't get into it here--but Cicero is suspicious of the term rhetoric, linking it to books, and prefers the term oratory, stressing the performative elements. Style has a default logography to it. Hmm.

From the 1822 Guthrie translation:

For, as I have often said, the province of an orator is to talk in a language that is proper, graceful, and suited to the affections and understandings of mankind.

"Proper" and "graceful" here are powerful Enlightenment concepts--connected to the Order of the Beautiful. A bit of interpretive induction suggests that the orators' power isn't suitable to the occassion, but rather to the Truth of Mankind. Again, I am reading beyond the lines, but I believe such a reading is productive.

Now, like I said, my Latin is rusty and was never close to fluent. But here's the original Latin:

hoc enim est proprium oratoris, quod saepe iam dixi, oratio gravis et ornata et hominum sensibus ac mentibus accommodata.

Rather than transform "hominum sensibus" as some form of "understanding of mankind"--which seems to [theoretically] universalist and [philologically] sloppy--I chose to go with a more literal representation of the words: one that captures sensibus as feeling/perception in connection with the senses. Additionally, let accommodata ring with its sense of "suitability" or "propriety." So, my amateur interpretation would look something like this:

For the particular being of oratory is, as said, weighty/pregnant speech furnished by a perceiving mind and adaptable disposition/soul.

While the use of soul might seem odd here, remember that this is Cicero's most direct response to Platonic censure. It is quite likely that he might want to tease out soul here--a way of exorcising Platonic spirits and celebrating rhetorical souls. Pregnant is a possible meaning for gravis--and I personally like it here, since it reminds us that the purpose of speech isn't transference, but growth. The notion of a[hu]mankind is proper to a transcendental, idealist, dualism which Cicero here, and in other places, resists. For Cicero, the orator is responsible, first and foremost, to the people surrounding her.

In historical rhetorical studies, theorists such as Poulakos and Vitanza often get accused of reading ancient texts with a postmodern bias (which they, and I, do). I wonder, however, if closer study of all translations wouldn't reveal the extent to which the texts we teach in graduate classes aren't, in ways that often escapes our attention, written from an extreme default modernity. There's a Levinasian slant to my reading--one drenched in a postmodern feminine [pregnant] ethic of responsibility, accountability, singularity, and transience. I think we can see in Cicero a celebration of the saying's power, a dedication to enacting change in the polis, and a skepticism of knowledge for knowledge's sake.

NOTE: I am working from a coffee shop today. I have found 4 other translations available at the USF library, so I will check those tomorrow.

Boycott Douglas Coupland--Or Not

2009-09-28T11:36:00.002-06:00

Here's another opportunity to use social media to get something right. Douglas Coupland recently taped a YouTube promotion for an upcoming book. In the promotion, he blatantly rips off an idea from ZeFrank's The Show called "The Earth Sandwich." Now, ZeFrank isn't necessarily the first person to generate the idea of an Earth sandwich, but Coupland uses locations and terms almost word for word from ZeFrank's project, videos, and user-comments. On his blog, ZeFrank admits that Coupland does give a small attribution in the video, but also explains that Coupland emailed him about using the project in his book. ZeFrank requested a footnote accreditation. He did not receive it. Seriously. Boo. You can find Coupland's video on ZeFrank's site.

To be honest, I hadn't heard of Douglas Coupland before today. And I know that any amount of controversy this generates will only serve to provide him attention. So, don't think of an asshole here. Seriously. Don't even think of that asshole Douglas Coupland. Go watch ZeFrank to help prevent any such thinking.

Two Bad Ideas from the Guardian

2009-09-26T07:21:00.005-06:00

I'm not sure about this story on computers grading standardized tests, because I don't know about the sophistication of the software or the levels of the students. My gut is to agree with Tim Oates, director of Cambridge Assessment:"Some approaches look like technology in search of a test, rather than assessment designed to accurately report attainment."

We've started a rather successful rhet comp reading group this semester--our first two readings have dealt with the "image" of teaching grammar and "correctness." This push toward automated software will exacerbate the problem rhet/comp has explaining why teaching grammar is often antithetical to teaching writing. Grammar is a matter of a-contextual order and precision, writing is a matter of highly contextualized and nuanced choices and experiment. That's why the medieval trivium included bothgrammar and rhetoric. And medieval universities assumed that a student needed four years of both subjects (along with logic--hence the 3) to gain proficiency.

Mistake Two: Terence Kealy provides an attempt at humor gone horribly wrong. "Let male professors sexually fantasize about their female students." Yeeeesh. Might as well make a monkey joke. Oops, that's on us.

A Few Resources for Class

2009-09-22T12:25:00.003-06:00

Here's some cut and paste on my part from comments on the first two weeks of blogging.

First, a few notes on linking.

When you link to another blog or publication, try to link to a specific article, not the general site. This makes navigation much easier.
Make sure link text is detailed. Writing detailed link text is an accessibility issue, particularly for blind readers. While you might not think that many blind people will find your site, this is something you need to be aware of and should be practicing now to develop good habits.
Treat links like greetings at a party. "Marsha, here's my friend Bill--he's a biochem major from Texas." Who knows, maybe you will facilitate a hook-up.

Second, and more importantly, a discussion/example of heuristic:

Here's my general advice for those of you who have developed a review-oriented blog project. Make sure you have a list of criteria (what in writing we call a heuristic) to get through every week. What are the important parts of a bar? What makes a place "the hot spot"? I can think of: atmosphere [lighting, decor, cleanliness], spacing [seating, dance floor, position of the bar, overcrowding], service [line to get in, wait for service, line at the bar, line at the bathroom], affordability [cover charge, bar prices], and entertainment [assuming there are live acts, dancing, pool tables or darts, televisions if it is a sports bar, etc]. By inventing a set of categories you will apply to every engagement, you will not only provide yourself with a helpful rubric for generating ideas, but also help organize your drafts.

Third, some brief notes on visual rhetoric:

Basically, there are four elementary aspects to visual rhetoric, referred to as the basic C.R.A.P. (contrast, alignment, repetition, proximity). I only really care about contrast--make sure your font-color and background color contrast enough to make things readable.
Using changes in color can be very effective, but be sure to maintain a consistent color palette. Color palette generators are available all over the web, here's a few: Degraeve Color Palette Generator works from a picture, Color Schemer provides a very basic palette, and CSS Juice has a list of 25 palette generators for people who like to play with such toys.

Santos on Hall on Kanye, Wilson, America, and Television

2009-09-17T13:59:00.001-06:00

While I agree with Michael Hale's general critique that Americans pay more attention to "artificial" dramas--be it Wilson's outburst on the floor of Congress or Kanye's usurpation of Taylor Swift's moment, I resist his implication that such attention can be traced back to network's desire for increased ratings. Certainly, Americans like to deal with simpler issues, and either exhorting or (in these cases) largely condemning the behavior of public figures makes for polite discussion. It also helps that these actions are by and large judicial, and have no bearing on our future. They lie comfortably in our past. However, the larger decisions, such as America's health care, are deliberative and deal with the future. There is much more at stake, and much less certainty as to what will/could be better for us all. Such decisions take a complexity of thought and depth of attention that many people, dealing with the daily struggle of family, school, work, and/or life, cannot afford to give. Television could, perhaps, nudge us toward a more involved civic life--but in giving us artifice, it is not acting against our desires, but with them.

They Say, I Say -- Kanye West Assignment

2009-09-17T12:29:00.006-06:00

Today I want to practice using the They Say, I Say bridges you read this weekend in reference to the recent Kanye West debacle. Take ten minutes or so to explore the following links and reactions to both Kanye's interruption of Taylor Swift and his apologies for the incident. Then, in a paragraph, use one of the bridges from pages 55-61 to formulate a meta-commentary on the situation [that is, your primary assignment isn't to comment on Kanye's actions, but to position yourself relative to an interpretation of those actions].

Kanye West’s Blog Apology
Of the apology, Michelle Collins of BestWeekEver writes “Only a few hours after the incident, Kanye blogged a sort of non-pology, saying that he’s sorry for what he did, but still believing that the action was completely and totally necessary BECAUSE BEYONCE DESERVED IT YEEZY.”
LA Times writer Ann Powers contextualizes Kanye's outburst with the Joe Wilson and Serena Williams incidents, noting that all three share elements of "racial conflict."
New York Times Op-Ed writer Maureen Dowd interprets Joe Wilson's rudeness as a primarily racial slur. While it does not directly address the Kanye situation, a number of other writers have drawn parallels.
Columbia Free Times writer Kevin Fisher questions racist interpretations of the Joe Wilson affair--his comments could also be interpreted to the Kanye incident (he opens his argument addressing Kanye and then transitions into Dowd's interpretation of Wilson's statement).
New York Times writer Mike Hale suggests that the attention paid to the incident says more about contemporary America's addiction to "artificial drama" (and our aversion to matters of actual importance).
Pop Culture Blog The A.V. Club shares a number of "theories" (ranging from serious to sarcastic) regarding the incident. A number of these perspectives claim the VMA incident as either self-promotion on the part of Kanye or staged promotion on the part of MTV.

I'll also want to take a look at recent articles on apology as a way of thinking about what Kanye might have said and to prepare you for this coming weekend's blog post.

Not All Things Are Equally True

2009-08-27T08:22:00.004-06:00

I've had a few posts up recently regarding healthcare reform, most recently T.R. Reid's 5 myths regarding international approaches to healthcare. Casey recently pointed me towards Ann Coulter's echo of Reid's piece, writing that he found it quite convincing. I think he's too smart for that--oh Casey, you are such a Socrates. Anywho, here's how a sophist would respond to Coulter's five points (I am particularly proud of point four):

The logic in the first point seems faulty to me. The solution to two private enterprises colluding together is to introduce a third? Or a 45th? What, exactly, prevents the 45 from colluding together? Multiplicity alone does not negate avarice.
The logic in point two: there are plenty of services the government supplies that 1) have no competition and 2) we cannot opt out of. Don't like the war in Iraq? Don't feel we need public schooling (or, for that matter, don't have children)? Pay up.
Point 3's anecdotal logic is too ridiculous to warrant comment. Only a die-hard conservative would claim that American insurance companies don't try to negate coverage. Without collective power, individual "choice" does not out-weigh institutional frameworks.
Point 4: back to analogy. Would you rather have health care work like: police, education, military, and fire departments, or like hamburger joints, dry cleaning, and insurance? Do I even have to comment here?
Point 5: Yeah, right.

4:37 Worth Your Time

2009-08-26T15:17:00.003-06:00

Granted, it might be because our daughter is undergoing ridiculously expensive medical treatments, or that, over the last year, my wife and I have seen first hand how insurance companies and hospitals work ~~over~~ err... with...err... people. But watch this:

I'm not saying that there's not some holes in the arguments. But, I am saying that anyone who has had to battle insurance companies can testify to their rigorous (dare I say sophistic) measures.

Fun with Photoshop

2009-08-26T06:28:00.003-06:00

Just in case you didn't know, apparently multiculturalism hasn't completed its world tour. This story from /. today: Polish Microsoft add changes a black guy to a white guy but neglects to edit his hand.

The official site has gone 404, the link connects to a mirror.

Plato Said, I Say

2009-08-24T14:33:00.002-06:00

Plato, Book VI, Republic:

Let's agree that philosophic natures always love the sort of learning that makes clear to them some feature of the being that always is and does not wander around between coming to be and decaying. (485a-b)

Me: No.

McLuhan and Baseball

2009-07-18T11:49:00.003-06:00

I've been thoroughly enjoying a re-reading of McLuhan's Understanding Media; I wanted to share this paragraph on baseball. McLuhan articulates something I have felt without being able to express for sometime. I think my interest in sabermetric evaluations of defense and BABIP stem from an unconscious desire to complicate and de-individualize baseball. Anywho, here is McLuhan:

Just where to begin to examine the transformation of American attitudes since TV is a most arbitrary affair, as can be seen in a change so great as the abrupt decline of baseball. The removal of the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles was a portent in itself. Baseball moved West in an attempt to retain an audience after TV struck. The characteristic mode of the baseball game is that if features one-thing-at-a-time. It is a lineal, expansive game which, like golf, is perfectly adapted to the outlook of an individualist and inner-directed society. Timing and waiting are of the essence, with the entire field in suspense waiting upon the performance of a single player. By contrast, football, basketball, and ice hockey are games in which many events occur simultaneously, with the entire team involved at the same time. With the advent of TV, such isolation of the individual performance as occurs in baseball became unacceptable. Interest in baseball declined, and its starts, quite as much as movie stars, found that fame had some very cramping dimensions. Baseball had been, like the movies, a hot medium featuring individual virtuosity and stellar performers. The real ball fan is a store of statistical information about previous explosions of batters and pitchers in numerous games. Nothing could indicate more clearly the peculiar satisfaction provided by a game that belonged to the industrial metropolis of ceaselessly exploding populations, stocks and bonds, and production and sales records. Baseball belonged to the age of the first onset of the hot press and the movie medium. It will always remain a symbol of the era of the hot mommas, jazz babies, of sheiks and shebas, of vamps and gold-diggers and the fast buck. Baseball, in a word, is a hot game that got cooled off in the new TV climate, as did most of the hot politicians and hot issues of the earlier decades. (Understanding Media 326)

To appreciate the passage likely requires familiarity with McLuhan's particular (and perhaps unintuitive) notions of hot and cold media. Hot media are those which sensually overwhelm the audience, such as books, movies, radio, and television; audience members do not participate in the creation of meaning as much as they are absorbed by it. Cool media, on the other hand, invite hermeneutic participation, the audience feels less as if they are receiving a finished product and more that they are engaged in the creative process. For McLuhan, such a binary was perhaps best represented by two media that we would likely consider similar today: "low definition" television versus "high definition" movies. Television was spontaneous (represented by the game show) while movies were, literally, scripted. Television was caught in the flow of lived time, while movies existed outside of time--and what could be more out of time than baseball, which follows no clock? In such light, how do we interpret baseball's contemporary emphasis on game time and continuity?

This is Not OK

2009-07-14T13:20:00.003-06:00

I saw this late-night on an infomercial.

Apparently, it was pulled from stores back in April after a bit of controversy. Now they must figure that the kind of people watching a midnight re-run of Monk won't be as politically mortified. I can't tell if this is intentionally racist, unintentionally racist, or not racist at all. But I'm pretty sure its not o.k. by any standard. Sure, president's can be monumentalized, but preferably not in Chia form.

Baseball Blog

2009-07-06T09:50:00.003-06:00

I've been busy with work, so posting hasn't been a priority lately. I'm teaching another section of Expository Writing built around digital citizenship, so I decided (after some encouragement) to start a baseball blog. As the first post explains, I tend to like to spend my lunches poking around statistical encyclopedia's and analysis, so hopefully this will translate into some sharable material.

Old meets New - Ze Frank on Time.com

2009-06-30T11:21:00.002-06:00

I've been enjoying Ze Frank's new posts over at Time.com. You should too.

He's got two up that I could find, this one on the Iranian election and this one on "Black and White."

As if the interactivity of The Show wasn't enough to make me love Ze Frank, now we have a commentary on the implicit repressive impulse of seeing the world in black and white. Cause, hey, sophistic rhetoric feeds off of grey.

A Disgusting Amount of Cute

2009-06-27T07:22:00.002-06:00

If you are up for it, I offer My Milk Toof. Its good, wholesome, clean, and, yes, cute. Thanks to ZeFrank for posting the link. Speaking of ZeFrank, he recently did a presentation at Webstock on The Show, worth a watch if you were into the project. I liked how he discussed the impact of working with people rather than working with texts or information.

A Great Page from Everything is Miscellaneous

2009-06-15T11:55:00.004-06:00

I'm finishing up another read of David Weinberger's Everything is Miscellaneous--wow do I enjoy this book. I wanted to post this passage to my living memory since I think it would make a nice opening to my Historical Rhetorics seminar this Fall. For a bit of context, Weinberger is discussing how the "miscellaneous" properties of digital organization essentially call into question some of the most profound and fundamental assumptions of Aristotelian taxonomy/ontology. Here Weinberger is sharing an encounter with psychology professor Eleanor Rosch. Since I'm in a typing kind of mood, I'll create a few paragraphs:

To know what a thing is, thought Aristotle, is to see what is essential about it (that humans are rational animals), and not be fooled by just what happens to be true about it (that humans have their navels on the front). The definitinos of those essences determine which things are in a category and which are turned away. Here there is no messiness, only an order so precise and harmonious that it is beautiful.

Or so Aristotle and generations of thinkers assumed. So de we when we argue about, say, how to define race, knowledge management, or blogging. But suppose this sort of Aristotelian categorization-through-definition were shown to be an essentially artificial way of approaching the world. Suppose the neatness it strives for is impossible. Suppose messiness is not a flaw in our thinking but enables it.

In her office, lit only by the late-afternoon light slanting in through the window, Eleanor Rosch turned back my question about the over-all significance of her work: "What do you think its significance is?" she asked. In a different tone of voice, from a person seated less squarely or dressed less practically, this might have been a request for praise. Instead, it seemed to be a way to get at why I had come, as well as a dodge by a person unwilling to speak as immodestly as my question proposed.

I paused, unprepared. "I think you unhorsed Aristotle."

This isn't a matter of pulling down a dusty equestrian statue. When I asked for an example of Aristotle's continuing influence, Rosch said "For the past two and a half days, I was at a conference on the effect of the media on the Buddhist transmission into our culture. Attendees kept asking "Wouldn't it help if you first defined Buddism?" By that they meant an Aristotelian definition. If that's what we need, then the conference couldn't have happened." She continuted: "As far as I can see, there isn't a single course that could be taught at this or any other University [...] if we had to start out by defining the subject matter. No one at the conference could define Buddhism, but no one had the least doubt about what the conference was about." (183-184).

Now, what do you think it means?

The Story is not the Same

2009-05-28T11:49:00.004-06:00

Work has been overwhelming of late, and I have been ignoring my blog and my friends. Sorry about that.

I have been following baseball more closely this summer than I have recently--its my lunch hour obsession. In addition to maintaining a fantasy team, I've been reading up on some of the new statistical analysis over at Baseball Prospectus. I find it really interesting stuff--and indicative of how complexity theory complicates traditional methods of assessment, but I'll save those posts for another day.

Today, I just wanted to share an email I sent to a former student and Cub fan. I had earlier expressed my empathy for the Cubs slow start this season, to which he responded that it was nothing new, and that losing builds "character." My response:

To think this word "character" a bit differently-- as a Red Sox fan, it is striking to me how much their World Series victory rocked Red Sox nation. Of course there was jubilation, but there was also a profound sense of loss, I think. And the second victory only punctuated that sense. At a psychologically unconscious level, I think winning the WS was quite disturbing for Sox fans since it robbed us of our identity, our character, our way of relating to the world.

Eventually, I firmly believe, the Cubs will win. They have grown into one of baseball's exclusive "large market" teams, providing them with a considerable financial advantage. As with the Red Sox, this will translate into a World Series victory. It will likely take a figure of Curt Schilling's stature--a leadership personality who commands the locker room, in the face of all that losing tradition, to envision and capture victory. Someone needs to wack a figurative bloody sock upside the billy goat's face, and the Cub's just don't have that guy--especially not when their best player can't keep his cool. But in the ESPN era, money does tend to translate into success (though sustaining success is a different matter).

So, to conjure up a quote that just doesn't mean to me what it used to, "keep the faith."

I might use this example later this summer--I am teaching a section of Introductory Composition and plan on using Jim Corder's "Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love." Losing the narrative of the "lovable losers" has been difficult for me--and I think traces of this difficulty can be read across Red Sox nation. All I can say is that, while I still watch baseball, something isn't there anymore, the experience feels uncanny, and I believe, in that moment, I am experiencing the withdrawal of what I thought was myself, so that, what is really missing is the me I thought myself to be.