When I Watch’d the Resident Artist

When I watched the resident artist,
When the paint, the dots, were splattered on the canvas before me;
When I was shown the technique, the brushstroke, and judged distance and depth,
When I standing watch’d the artist, Where he painted to the oooohs and aaaaahs in the gallery
How soon, uncomprehending, I became bored and restless,
Till ducking and sliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In to the pure, glowing cacoon of a lab, and with deep thought
Stared intently at the equations that govern’d all

-----
Isn't my poem better than Whitman's luddite touchy-feely stuff? It annoyed me that they just made a children's book out Whitman's "When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer". We are definitely teaching the wrong values to our kids. No wonder we are falling behind in science.

Nagel's "Bat paper" and Whitman Poem

In 1860 Walt Whitman wrote a two-line poem - Perfections:

Only themselves understand themselves and the like of themselves,
As souls only understand souls.

Does it remind anone else of Nagel's famous bat paper?

How can 50-something million Americans be so dumb?

The famous Daily Mirror headline about 59,054,087 Americans bneing so dumb was definitely on to something. I am convinced now.

I know that I am coming to this quite late in the game, but I just saw Michael Moore's "documentary" Farenheit 9/11.

To call that movie "crap" would be to insult crap. I seriously have far less respect for the people who saw it and told me to see it. The movie is so beneath criticism that I am not sure why anyone would dignify it with a critique (though Christopher Hitchens does a perfect job.) Do people no longer believe in thinking? I mean, seriously, my fellow Americans, what is up?

This is the most egregious instance of Confirmation Bias I have ever seen. Confirmation Bias the the psychological condition whereby one takes an argument to be convincing because you already agree with the conclusion. You may not like George Bush, I can respect that. But if, for you, this film contributed to that, you have a sad, sorry, excuse for an intellect.

I really hope that in 100 years from now there will be no copies of this film left. I would be mortified to know that future historians will be laughing their asses off, judging us by this, wondering how 50-something million Americans thought that this movie made a point.

Born-agains: in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam

Many years ago, I spent a very considerable chunk of time with Ba'alei Teshuvah; enough time so that I could have done a whole sociological study of them. I didn't, but I assume that someone has. I hope so. There is a lot that can be learned from such a study.

"Ba'alei Teshuvah" are "born again Jews" so to speak. They are Jews who have "repented", or "returned", usually to Orthodox Judaism.

There are many schools that seek out ba'alei teshuvah and they exist all over the world, though many are located in Jerusalem. There are all types. There was a school for the "thinking-rational" type of person, there was a school for the more "feeling/spiritual" type of person, and schools for those who took too much drugs. It is a rather large industry. There are even high school programs.

All this shows is that the type of person to go to these schools varies. However, what you do find in these schools, in a much larger concentration than you would find in the general population are "intense" people. What do I mean by that? It is hard to describe. You meet many people who get VERY into the programs. They become very committed to a radically different lifestyle, extremely quickly. They start to eat different foods, stop having sex (or even interacting with the opposite sex), some cut off communication with their families, some decide to settle in a country where they have no friends or family outside their new school friends, they adopt a new lingo, take on a new and difficult course of study, start learning hundreds of new Jewish legal regulations, adopting new political views, develop a disdain for secular culture, etc. People who do this very seriously, and very many do, suddenly become whole new people, and they are the most dedicated adherents of the group. They preach (regardless of how little they understand), they study, they often look down on those who are different in ways that are far more intense than those who, for example, were raised as Orthodox Jews.

For some there is a pendulum effect. Start in one far "spiritual corner" then go to the other, and then come and find a nice middle ground. That seems to be the normal pattern. Few people ease their way in this lifestyle to this gradually.

None of this is news - to Jews. For Christians it is a bit different. Jewish ba'alei Teshuvah make radical changes in their lives; so much so, that the institutions have often been compared to cults (though I would not endorse this too quickly). Christian born-agains, tend to have spiritual revelations that generally require less drastic behavior shifts than do shifts to Orthodox Judaism.

Anyone who has spent time with large numbers of ba'alei teshuvah can confirm any of this. The modern "ba'al teshuvah movement" started as a manifestation of all the movements of the 1960's, spurned on by the 1967 taking of Jerusalem after Israel's Six Day War.

But there is a new movement, that is just like the ba'al teshuvah movement, though it is not in Judaism. It is in Islam. There seems to be little doubt that Most radical Muslim Terrorists, most Islamic suicide bombers, most of the real fanatics that do the real crazy things, are Islamic Ba'alei Teshuvah. Islamic ba'alei teshuvah resemble Jewish ba'alei teshuvah in very many significant ways. 1) There is a belief that they are returning to something authentic. 2) It is something that comes from a dissatisfaction with establishment middle-class values. 3) It comes with the authority of tradition. 4) It has all the trappings of authenticity. 5) It provides a whole community. 6) It involves a radical change in lifestyle. 6) It provides a way to ignore your community and family in the guise of a higher and more important purpose. It allows you to devalue those things. 7) There are profound psychological effects of new sleep patters, new sexual habits, new eating habits, new peer groups, new authority figures, sudden changes of dress codes, shaving habits, and linguistic patterns. These need to be explored. 8) This one is rather important - one reason for the large amount of preaching that ba'alei teshuvah do is that they believe that the message that they started to believe in is incumbent on all - not just them. Everyone is obligated the same way that they were. Thus any sacrifice that they make is really a sacrifice that others should be making. If others don't it is OK to treat them with scorn, and in some cases make them do it without their consent.

All of this is manifested in radical Islam as much as it is in Orthodox Judaism. That is in the "born again" versions of both.

Muslim terrorists (like our 9/11 hijackers) are usually men who grow up in moderate Muslim households. They somehow fall in with radical groups or schools. They become religious, which involves returning to an "authentic" Muslim way of life. They do not trust their parents and former friends who "lost" the authentic way of life and start performing new rituals in the name of Islam. Some rituals are authentic to Islam, some are not. They wear strange clothing like tight socks, value certain burial rituals, shave or not depending on the situation, wear religious clothing, start reading the Koran intently and obsessively. Most importantly they believe that they are doing something that everyone ought to be doing. If they are obligated to die for some cause, then so are others. If my shooting the infidel from a hospital roof is endangering the people inside, . . . well it is their obligation to die for this too.

All this suggests that the newcomers to this are easy to manipulate. They take the word of the authority over what they know to be right and wrong. They take the word of their community and peer group over their former friends and close family. They can be told to do anything. And in the case of radical Islam, the "recruiters" know this, and it is deliberate.

This also give mainstream Islam some plausible deniability. "This is an extreme version of Islam" they say. "This is not mainstream." But this is disingenuous. These movements are generally funded from within mainstream orthodox Islam. The religious want the non-religious to come around. So they fund these movements in the name of religion. But they then express shock at what comes out of them.

This must stop.

Generally when Orthodox Jews try to get the non-Orthodox to become Orthodox the result is fairly benign. Many make a lifestyle change. Many make a radical lifestyle change, and those who do probably are not any worse off then they would have been otherwise. When radical Muslims do it they turn secular Muslims to human bombs. This is not benign. This is as malignant as it gets. Everyone in the Jewish community knows all the big Jewish institutions that do what I am talking about. Who is aware of the Islamic counterparts? Has this been studied? Have people been looking at these Sheikhs sitting in American prisons to see what their organizations, and those like them are up to? Have we put sociologists in place so we can see what is going on? Do we have psychologists working on this? Do we have good intelligence on these people? We need to know where these organizations are, who funds them, how they attract people, how they approach people, if they are interconnected in some financial way, if there is some way they centralize their education and training, etc. That will go a long way toward curbing the threat of radical Islam.

Flew recants

Every now and then philosophers change their minds about a position they hold. To most of us it is no big deal. From time to time it makes a tiny little splash in an already small pool of philosophical gossip. I remember a year or two ago Frank Jackson changed his mind about the Colorblind Mary argument, and a few Philosophy of Mind geeks had something to talk about for a week. I assume that there are less than 1000 people in the world who actually know what I am talking about, and less than 10 who care.

But when Anthony Flew does it, I think it is a big deal. Anthony Flew's Theology and falsification has been anthologized about fifty times. It is probably one of the most widely read piece of philosophy. He put forward one of the most standard argument for atheism ever. (I taught his paper in my class last week.) He now claims to believe in God. This is really big philosophy gossip. (Hat tip to Julian Sanchez.) Anthony Flew's name is almost synonymous with atheism (and libertarianism too).

Apparently his reasons are that he is becoming convinced by some fine tuning arguments, which I never bought, and I never understand people who do. Those arguments are designed to answer the question of "Why does the universe exist" or "Why does this particular universe exist. Presumably only certain universes are possible. That is to say that only certain kinds of universes can be supported by physics. There are a few answers to this question. God is one of them, though as many point out, it is hard to see how God answers the question in any real way. (Others, for example, involve the "many universes" answer.)

I wonder how much clarifying Flew plans on doing about this. According to one source he has not really changed his mind at all.

Now, although what Flew thinks at any given time makes no difference, it is interesting. It is the philosopher's equivelant of celebrity gossip. Flew's opinion is about as interesting as anyone elses, except that he has probably given this a lot of thought, but it is only the content of that thought, only his ability to give us his well thought out reasons and arguments, that matter in the end.

Orthodox Joke

The latest in our collection of Religious Jewish Jokes:

Why are Yeshiva guys not going to see The Passion of the Christ?

Becuase it is in Aramaic, and they are waiting for the Artscroll translation.

Upcoming vacation

"E" and I just booked tickets to Turkey and Israel. We will be in Istanbul, Izmir, and Jerusalem. Anyone know anything we should not miss in either of those places?

Review of Rabih Alameddine's I, the Divine

I decided to take a chance on Alameddine's other book, despite the fact that I really did not like his first one. This time persistence paid off. I, the Divine is a much better book.

It is a novel in first chapters. It is written from the standpoint of Sarah Nour el-din, a woman who keeps telling us the story of her life over and over. There is an anecdote in the story where Sara wants a particular painting she sees in a museum. So she decides to replicate the painting. It takes her 17 tries to get the painting right, and then the whole series gets exhibited as a history of the making of the painting, in chronological order. This book, written as her autobiography, is the same way. It is a collection of first chapters in her autobiography. Each time she has a new way of looking at her life, as if she can't make up her mind what is important. What sort of events should she tell about. Is her relationship to her mother most important, her brother, her first sexual encounter, her grandfather, her birth, her lovers, her child? So each time she writes the first chapter, we see a new angle of her life. The effect is rather good, and not nearly as pretentious as it sounds.

The book has no traditional plot, other than Sarah's life. Sara is Lebanese. She is a mother. She is a lover. She is part of a family, a friend, a player in a series of relationships, she exists in a social hierarchy, which is all conveyed well in the book. Her whole life is articulated, in a successive series of false starts in an attempt to convey her life.

Open Source Translation Project

I was talking to my friend "E" today and we came up with this great idea. The idea is Open Source translations.

Here is the plan. We ask everyone in the world who is bilingual (for now in English and something else) to take books, or whatever, in their language and translate it in to English. Of course this is a big undertaking, so what we really ask is if people can translate a page, or a paragraph, or a chapter. Ultimately the editor will colate all these pages and put them together.

We thought that there are tons of books out there, and we were thinking of Jewish books, but really, any books are useful to have, that should all be in English. Imagine if we took the complete responsa of Maimonides. There are probably a few hundred. If everyone with a spare hour or two did one responsa, we can have the whole thing translated. We put it up on line and ask people to check it for accuracy. Ultimately you have an editor who is fully competent in the language skim the whole thing, and you have a book. I was thinking that the complete poem of Yehudah Halevi might be useful too. Many have been translated, and many have not. If a hundred people each did one or two, we can have it done in no time, and it will be a great boon to the scholarly community, and look nice on academics' resumes.

This will of course take some web work, but it is ultimately doable, and I hope "E" and I can get to do this. If anyone wants to volunteer to do this, from any language to any other, be in touch. I think that open-source translations might be a good way to harness the talents of millions of bilingual people out there who only have a limited amount of time.

Computers have been doing this for a while. If we just chop the job up in to little parts and lewt everyine have a little part, we can get the whole thing done.

This is something that school children can get involved in, as can anyone who knows the language and can work a computer.

Review of Leo Strauss' Persecution and the Art of Writing

Sometimes one has a learning experience that really changes one's perspective. Reading Leo Strauss' Persecution and the Art of Writing is such an experience. I remember once reading a volume of David Halivni's Mekorot u' Mesorot and coming away transformed. The Talmud took on a whole new meaning. Each line of text was a different story than you originally suppose. It is right there in front of you waiting to be uncovered. Reading early biblical criticism, while not as easily convincing, is similar.

Persecution's goal is to teach us how to read in between the lines of certain texts. Those of us who study contemporary philosophy occasionally get a bit condescending when it comes to the medievals. (Unless he is reading too much in to them, which I doubt) Strauss reminds us that the medievals might have been backward, but they were not stupid. The medieval philosophers had to do their best work under the most adverse of conditions. Freedoms, such as we have now did not exist for most of recorded human history. To write and live one had to be careful. Censorship was ubiquitous. The geniuses who knew that they were writing for posterity needed to get certain messages out. Many of the subjects they needed to publicize might sound trivial now. But keep in mind that in the 16th century the soul's immortality was a VERY important topic of discussion for some of the top minds of the age.

Spinoza, Yehuda Halevi, and Maimonides all had things that they were trying desperately to say, but could not. Strauss shows us the secret to deciphering these authors. Strauss really reveals the genius of the authors he speaks about and renews my respect for their brilliance, and Strauss' too. Hume could not publish his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion in his lifetime as what he said was too controversial. It was controversial despite the fact that Hume never really tips his hand and tells us what he is really thinking. With Hume we see the first light of free thought. Before that we have secret messages embedded in texts which we have to uncover. The methodology varies from author to author, and Strauss doesn't give away too many secrets, but he definitely give us a new way to look at old philosophers.

This book was published some 50 years ago, but it is still as relevant today as it was then. Strauss, is by the way, taken to be one of the godfathers of the neocon movement. I suppose if one were to read between some lines here, one can see in the essay on Yehuda Halevi, why.

Post-election "analysis": They're just not that in to you

I have seen now countless hours of c-span, colloquia, and discussion, zillions of pages of blogging, op-eding, and punditry - all on the analysis of why Kerry lost the election. Countless theories have been put forth. I am pretty sick of them. By now we all know them by heart: no clear message, not sufficient youth vote, gays, irrational fear of terror, . . . The whole thing bores me to tears.

The Democrats just need to face reality: The country is just not in to you. Move on.

Yet another backlash has begun

I recently complained about the lack of real diversity on my campus after an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education did the same for the average US campus. I have since discovered that the Columbia Spectator has complained about this two days before me, the New York Times did it a week later, and so has today's Wall Street Journal. Now there's diversity for you.

But the story gets worse. To democrats and liberals this lack of diversity is either a good thing or simply a joke. (See the famous Brandom quotes about liberals just being smarter. . .) However, it is the same kind of joke that got Bush elected, and will start coming back to bite these people in the butt pretty soon. Using the American university as a large liberal indoctrination center will encourage lots of blowback (unintended consequences). How so? Well, today's NY Times has a piece on Liberty School of Law. The school's founder the Rev. Jerry Falwell said that "If our graduates wind up in the government, they'll be social and political conservatives. If they wind up as judges, they'll be presiding under the Bible." This, frankly, scared the hell out of me. But they are attracting students and justifying their existence on the grounds that there are not two sides presented on campuses in any discussion on any issue. There is no liberal and conservative view, but rather just a liberal view, and they are providing the conservative one. So we will end up with two types, liberals and conservatives, and this country will get locked in to ever murkier battles about some fundamental issues and we will be so polarized that half the country will be essentially democratically disenfranchised.

Liberals would do well to realize what is going on and not react by becoming even more liberal. That has been the strategy till now, and all it got them is a very conservative Executive branch, a very conservative legislative branch, a soon-to-be very conservative judicial branch, and a very large chip on their shoulder. It is time for liberals to take stock of themselves and their causes.

Here is some advice:
1) As many of my friends would say: "Stop hatin'". Get over the fact that you lost and stop hating Bush and conservatives. Stop patronizing them as if you know better. Most likely you don't. If you do, you certainly aren't smart enough to convince conservatives of it.

2) Prioritize. Find out what is important and pursue it. Do not pursue every single cause you think goes with the liberal package. If you think the environment is really the most important thing on the national agenda, pursue it. Tell us clearly why it is so important and how you will fix it. Do not blame anyone for not doing it, just pursue those issues. Do not think you will win every battle though. Do not then go for the war in Iraq, the Patriot Act, the FCC, tort reform, gay marriage, socialized medicine, more money for everything, bigger government, smaller military, more museums, abortion promotion, feeding the whales, helping the Palestinians, ignoring the Sudanese, supporting the UN, ending globalization, and whatever else liberals are vigorously pursuing these days.

3) Compromise. Realize that if you have any long-term interests, there will be short term compromises that you will have to make. Moreover, you are already making them because you have no choice, so you might as well look magnanimous doing it. Pretend to talk about how silly the gay marriage idea was. Agree that the Patriot act might help prevent some terrorism. Realize that Saddam was not a good guy and should have been removed regardless of whether he actually was in bed with bin Laden, or he just gave large sums of money to suicide bombers.

4) Listen. In a non-patronizing way, take a conservative to lunch. Find out what he or she cares about. Do not read a pamphlet called something like "How to win a debate with a conservative" beforehand. Do not try to be right. You will just end up realizing you are right, and the person you had lunch with will realize why he hates you and wants to screw over everything you hold dear. You will come off as sanctimonious and arrogant, like you usually do. This time, really listen. Realize that you two share the same country, and right now, he is on top. One day you might be, but now he is. Even if you disagree, you must learn to respect his point of view. This is what we have been teaching liberals since J. S. Mill. It is about time liberals take their own advice.

5) Think. Think about a) why you are a liberal and b) what that means to you. You might just find that you have accepted a whole package of ideas just because they were bundled together by Ralph Nader, Howard Dean, or the Village Voice. How many people out there really believe in every last one of the liberal dogmas? I certainly do not. Nor could I possible believe in every conservative dogma, nor could any sane human. Allow yourself the freedom to have your own opinions about everything. Assume that there are some things you might agree to if you can make a conservative friend. It won't hurt, I promise.

All of these will win you points with conservatives, will not change much anyway in "their" favor, and might get you a concession or two on something important. Moreover it might stem the flow of people leaving liberal and Democratic camps in droves.

Universities like Falwell's thrive on being the "alternative viewpoint". If liberals wire a bit less to the left there would be no need for such strong alternatives, and they would loose momentum.

As if you needed more reasons not to trust the UN

While I am sure the UN is doing important work in such important places as Namibia, it becomes clearer and clearer that when it come to real problems, it has an interest only in making gestures and sits around hoping that no one notices what it is really doing.

Three things in the news lately.

First, oil for food money (which was being embezzled left and right by the higher ups at the UN was going from Saddam Hussein to the families of suicide bombers. I wonder if anyone at the UN knew about this, or was it like everything else there - shrouded in secrecy and official cover-up?

Second, they have apparently asked anti-Semites to write the official UN report on anti-Semitism. I hear a literary version of Durban here. (For those of you who remember, Durban was where a major UN conference on racism pretty much turned in to a Jew-hating fest.) The UN might want to consider asking people who are familiar with the being a victim of anti-semitism, not a perpetrator, to write the report. I am sure they would never ask Sharon to write the report of the Palestinian problem.

Lastly, there is the month-old issue that the UN is knowingly employing Hamas members to help with various routine relief projects.

I want to talk about this last thing. We all know that the UN has been complicit in aiding Palestinian gunmen (famous ambulance video here.). But this is far more insidious. Why? Because Hamas in the territories, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, derives some of its street credibility from their suicide bombings and other terrorist operations. However, most of their popularity comes from the fact that they are a social institution. Hamas (and Hezbollah) operate schools, Mosques, and welfare programs of all sorts. It is THIS that makes them popular, and feeds their campaigns for "votes", funds, and probably most significantly, "martyrs" for the cause. Employing members of Hamas to do welfare activities puts them in higher profile places where Hamas can take partial credit for the work that the UN is doing. Thus the Hamas membership rises, and the UN can claim that they are politically neutral.

It is this sort of activity that perpetuates terrorist popularity. Classic bait-and-switch. They lure you in with free food and education, and then get you to blow yourself up "for the cause". The UN is providing much of the bait.

UNRWA is largely supported by American and Canadian tax dollars (40 percent). The US has supported many bad causes in its day. Some because there was a higher political goal, some out of bad judgment, and some out of ignorance. What is our excuse for this one, and where are the big complainers?

The Arafat Legacy

Lately one reads a lot about the Arafat Legacy. To some he is a Hero, to others a murderous butcher. I am assuming that those who view him as a hero cannot understand those who view him as a terrorist, and vise versa.

I think that the reason for the divergence of attitudes is obvious. It is not that one side likes terrorism, and the other does not. It is also not that one side likes the keeping the Palestinians in the quandary that they are in and the other does not. (If you fall in to one of those categories, I probably do not like you, and this does not apply to you.)

It goes back to a difference that is the foundation of the theory of Just War, one that I have mentioned many times before.

Arafat is a terrorist. He is a murderer of school children. He violated every internationally agreed-upon norm of civility and human decency. He inspired the last 40 years of depraved anti-civilian barbarism, including the Sept 11 attacks. There are few words (in English, Arabic has some that come close) to describe the inhumanity of Arafat.

Arafat also has goals that one should be able to sympathize with. He wants to liberate his people from foreign rule. He wants political autonomy and national self-determination and independence.

Let us make believe that there were absolutely no political options that Arafat had for negotiating with Israel. Let us also pretend that Israel was mistreating and politically disenfranchising the Palestinians. And let us further stipulate that the Palestinians had a central negotiating body, and a whole bunch of other reasonable conditions were met. . . It would seem to me that he is then (under our hypothetical scenario)fighting something resembling a just war.

However, regardless of the justice of his cause, he is fighting the war unjustly.

Those who praise Arafat forget this distinction. They seem to think that if the cause is just then all means to achieve it are Ok. But it is not. If your cause is just, then you can still be a vile terrorist. All you need to do is to deliberately target one school bus. You still have a just cause, but you are a murderer.

One must not praise a man and forget how despicable he was, but of course one must not let the actions of terrorism make us forget that despite the abhorence of their ways, there is still a legitimate problem, and they have a grievance that needs to be resolved.

Arafat's legacy was that he managed to blur this distinction. He blurred it so bad that he got a Noble Prize from an organization that could not see past what they saw was his just cause, and his merely temporary decision to use just means to attempt to resolve it.

So the propaganda goes back and forth. One side recalls the oppression of the Palestinian people. The other side recalls Arafat's strategy: target the innocent.

Arafat was the wrong leader for the Palestinian people. Had there been someone else 40 years ago, to lead the Palestinians, who understood that one does not take a just cause and fight it unjustly, there likely would be a lot of messes that the world is not in today.

Stickers for all - a proposed compromise

In the latest set of battles between the religiously zealous and the scientifically zealous, we find the new sticker war. Creationists want a sticker on school textbooks claiming that evolution is not a fact but merely a theory. The scientists (and ACLU, et al) claim that 1) it is a fact, and 2) the stickers would violate the separation between church and state.

Now, everyone knows that evolution is not a fact, though it is about as close as scientists get to one. There is a LOT of evidence for it, though there are a lot of internal disputes about many details. And 2, it is clear that the only real challenge to the scientific story comes from religion, or religiously motivated thinkers.

(In some sense this is reminiscient of our last election.)

In the spirit of ecumenical harmony, I would like to propose a compromise that I suspect would make both sides upset. We allow the stickers to be put on every science book in Georgia. In exchange, the scientists get to put a corresponding sticker on each bible in Georgia that says “This Bible contains material on many topics, both scientific, historical and ethical. All of this is mythology, not a fact, regarding the origin of the cosmos, humanity, civilization, and ethics. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered.”

Thus we have some Church in the State and some State in the Church. Good idea, no?