Saturday, January 8, 2011

Obama imagery

Originally posted on Los Thunderlads, 30 January 2009:

obama_poster_bob_hope

One recent post showed a photo of President Obama tying a bow tie; another discussed the intense fascination with his physical person that seems to have gripped so many people. That led some of us to compare our favorite pictures of Mr O.

The original

The iconic image of Mr O so far is probably Shepard Fairey‘s “Hope” poster. In October, Fairey himself contacted boingboing.net with a link to a collection of spoofs of his poster. A few I can’t resist copying appear after the jump.

With apologies to Robert Downey, Senior

With apologies to Robert Downey, Senior

Wasn't this his official campaign poster?

Wasn't this his official campaign poster?

Pleasant to look at, and useful as an explanation of the word

Pleasant to look at, and useful as an explanation of the word

For fans of 70s TV

For fans of 70s TV

Mr O

Originally published on Los Thunderlads, 26 January 2009:

Photoshop at its finest

Photoshop at its finest

From a friend of the blog:

I’ve been reflecting on how, in these very early days of the Obama administration, there is such relentless focus upon the person of Barack Obama himself, as if the man constitutes the real locus of substantiality in this situation. Ironically, the case is tending so much to the diametric opposite: Obama is a virtual spectre, a wraith, an empty place-holder. He is, top-to-bottom, configured by the present complex of circumstances facing the country and earth (although world conditions have chillingly small bearing on the highly-inward gaze which is the hallmark of US political perspective) … This complex of circumstances, the range of plausible methods to engage it, and the particular types of public reaction that these methods will inexorably evoke: all of this amounts to an essential structure of near-fatalism: A pine cone will not fall up; water will not freeze at boiling temperature. In the same way, the deep-rooted urge to ogle Das Leader, whatever it’s all about, certainly is linked to a voracious need to place the mask of a human face upon a disconcerting, and highly impersonal, black vortex of historical forces. We believe that, because we can see Obama physically upon the TV screen, therefore we can truly see him. What’s even more frightening than the realization that Das Leader is, at bottom, a social construction, is the uneasy suspicion that that social construction is being – cunningly, indefatigably – moulded and tweaked for public consumption by the mind-nexus of power-wealth. Consider the recent news that a US “remote unit” in a border region of Pakistan has killed twenty-two people. Das Leader has not been in power for one week, and he’s already handed down orders to kill people: no evidence required, no judicial process. Pharaoh has put them to death, for he is Pharaoh. And since they (a) were almost certainly not US citizens, and (b) may have satisfied a definition of “terrorist,” they are in consequence right-less subhumans on both counts. The fact that the sarcastic final clause of my prior sentence would meet with a thoroughly above-board “yeah” of acknowledgment from vast legions of Americans, with no ensuing deeper rumination, is a sobering index of where we are.”

From Acilius’ reply:

“good points about Mr O. one of the reasons i like to call him “Mr O” is that the letter O does suggest the “empty place-holder” 0. he is a vacant space which the spectator can fill with any image s/he may wish. his accession to the presidency invites us to construct in our minds any narrative that may help us to live with “a disconcerting, and highly impersonal, black vortex of historical forces.” (america’s 44th, and first black, vortex of historical forces.) that narrative may concern a redeemer prince who embodies our highest hopes or a leering tyrant who confirms our deepest fears. in either case, we can feel that the processes in which we are enmeshed are familiar, intelligible, human. it isn’t too different from what we were talking about before. those of us who don’t understand theoretical physics can listen to an explanation of the big bang, visualize eggs hatching, and tell ourselves that the familiar image we have thereby produced is the way it really happened. it then seems to us that the physical world isn’t so puzzling after all. if we can understand ordinary eggs, how much harder could it be to make sense of a cosmic egg? the social world might also seem less mystifying if we can reduce its larger scale processes to personal narratives. and not the personal narratives of actual, complex human beings, but the personal narratives of archetypal figures familiar in legends as old as the stone age and as fresh as the movies.”

Let me clarify my remarks here. These remarks are from an email discussion that had, the week before, centered on what goes in the minds of scientific illiterates such as myself when we hear experts try to explain the Big Bang theory. My idea was that as we listen, we tend to draw on the same kind of nature imagery that people have been using since prehistoric times to devise myths that would help make the confusing, dangerous, frustrating aspects of reality seem familiar and comprehensible. So whatever the physicists on the History Channel’s The Universe may be trying to say, what I and people like me end up believing we heard is a Cosmic Egg creation story that could have been told around any Neolithic campfire.

In my reply above, I suggest that the fixation on Mr O may be part of a similar phenomenon. I do not mean to suggest that my correspondent is trying to cast Mr O as a “leering tyrant” and thereby to make his own myth about him. This last point would likely have been clear in the original context, since my correspondent voted for Mr O and has in the past supported other politicians whom no one would regard as incapable of the “Pharaonic” behavior he laments. Nor do I mean to deny that there may be situations in which an individual can take an action that will change the course of history.

Robert Frost and Conrad Aiken

Originally published on Los Thunderlads, 27 December 2008:

Aurora e Titone, by Francesco de Mura

Aurora e Titone, by Francesco de Mura

(image)

In Greek myth, Tithonus was a Trojan prince, the brother of King Priam. According to a poem of the early seventh century BC, the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (lines 218-238,) Tithonus’ youthful good looks attracted the attentions of Eos, the goddess of the dawn. Aphrodite had condemned Eos to lust after mortal men. Eos abducted Tithonus and kept him in her mysterious land in the east. She lavished him with gifts. Eos went so far in her generosity to Tithonus as to ask Zeus to make Tithonus immortal. That may have been going too far, or not far enough- Eos neglected to ask Zeus to stop Tithonus’ aging. So he grew old, lost all ability to move his limbs, and took to babbling incessantly. Eos locked him up in a golden chamber when this happened. The hymn’s detail about Tithonus’ babbling may be reflected in later traditions that represent him as a great singer. The fifth-century BC writer Hellanicus of Lesbos says that Eos took pity on him and turned him into a cicada, a creature whom the ancients suspected might be immortal. In the poem below, Aiken follows the modern tradition of representing Tithonus as a grasshopper rather than a cicada.

Arachne transformed, from a 1703 edition of the Metamorphoses of Ovid illustrated by Johann Wilhelm Bauer

Arachne transformed, from a 1703 edition of the Metamorphoses of Ovid illustrated by Johann Wilhelm Bauer

(image)

According to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Arachne was a maiden from Lydia in Asia Minor who challenged the goddess Minerva (the Greeks would have said the goddess was Athena) to a weaving contest. When Arachne won this contest, the goddess responded with such fury that Arachne hanged herself. Taking pity on her victim, Minerva revived the girl in the form of a spider. Ovid represents Arachne as an innocent, though she has been thought of in other ways at other times. The story of Arachne’s encounter with Tithonus appears to be Aiken’s own invention. Aiken also takes some further liberties with the story, as you will see.

The Wedding,” by Conrad Aiken

At noon, Tithonus, withered by his singing,

Climbing the oatstalk with his hairy legs,

Met grey Arachne, poisoned and shrunk down

By her own beauty; pride had shrivelled both.

In the white web- where seven flies hung wrapped-

She heard his footstep; hurried to him; bound him;

Enshrouded him in silk; then poisoned him.

Twice shrieked Tithonus, feebly; then was still.

Arachne loved him. Did he love Arachne?

She watched him with red eyes, venomous sparks,

And the furred claws outspread… “O sweet Tithonus!

Darling! Be kind, and sing that song again!

Shake the bright web again with that deep fiddling!

Are you much poisoned? sleeping? do you dream?

Darling Tithonus!”

And Tithonus, weakly

Moving one hairy shin against the other

Within the silken sack, contrived to fiddle

A little tune, half-hearted: “Shrewd Arachne!

Whom pride in beauty withered to this shape

As pride in singing shrivelled me to mine-

Unwrap me, let me go- and let me limp,

With what poor strength your venom leaves me, down

This oatstalk, and away.”

Arachne, angry,

Stung him again, twirling him with rough paws,

The red eyes keen. “What! You would dare to leave me?

Unkind Tithonus! Sooner I’ll kill you and eat you

Than let you go. But sing that tune again-

So plaintive was it!”

And Tithonus faintly

Moved the poor fiddles, which were growing cold,

And sang: “Arachne, goddess envied of gods,

Beauty’s eclipse eclipsed by angry beauty,

Have pity, do not ask the withered heart

To sing too long for you! My strength goes out,

Too late we meet for love. O be content

With friendship, which the noon sun once may kindle

To give one flash of passion, like a dewdrop,

Before it goes!… Be reasonable, — Arachne!”

Arachne heard the song grow weaker, dwindle

To first a rustle, and then half a rustle,

And at last a tick, so small no ear could hear it

Save hers, a spider’s ear. And her small heart,

(Rusted away, like his, to a pinch of dust,)

Gleamed once, like his, and died. She clasped him tightly

And sunk her fangs in him. Tithonus dead,

She slept awhile, her last sensation gone;

Woke from the nap, forgetting him; and ate him.

Spider eats cicada

Spider eats cicada

(image)

Acceptance,” by Robert Frost

When the spent sun throws up its rays on clouds

And goes down burning into the gulf below,

No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud

At what has happened. Birds, at least, must know

It is the change to darkness in the sky.

Murmuring something quiet in her breast,

One bird begins to close a faded eye;

Or overtaken too far from his nest,

Hurrying low above the grove, some waif

Swoops in just in time to his remembered tree.

At most he thinks or twitters softly, “Safe!

Now let the night be dark for all of me.

Let the night be too dark for me to see

Into the future. Let what will be, be.”

Boxing Day 2008

Originally published on 26 December 2008:

Referee Micky Vann ends a fight between Amir Khan and Martin Kristjansen, 5 April 2008:

Micky Vann
Micky Vann

Referee Ian St. John steps in between Kevin Mitchell and Carl Johanneson, 9 March 2008:

Ian St John
Ian St John

Referee Raul Caiz Jr separates Bernard Hopkins and Howard Eastman, 19 Feb 2005:

Raul Caiz, Jr.
Raul Caiz, Jr.

Referee Gus Mercurio watches Barry Michael connect with Lester Ellis, 12 July 1985:

Gus Mercurio

Referee Arthur Marcante takes Joe Frazier to his corner while Muhammad Ali gets up, 8 March 1971:

Arthur Marcante
Arthur Marcante

Referee Ruby Goldstein ready for action as Rocky Marciano and Ezzard Charles fight for the heavyweight title, June 1954:

Ruby Goldstein

Referee Arthur Donovan declares Joe Louis knocked out and Max Schmeling the new champion, 16 June 1936:

Arthur Donovan
Arthur Donovan

Notes on the 6 Oct 2008 issue of The American Conservative

Originally posted on Los Thunderlads, 24 October 2008:

For me, the highlight of this issue was a piece by Claes G. Ryn, editor of Irving Babbitt in Our Time, The Representative Writings of Irving Babbitt, and the author of Will, Imagination and Reason: Irving Babbitt and the Problem of Reality. Unfortunately Professor Ryn does not mention Babbitt’s name in this article, but he does give a strongly Babbittian analysis of the so-called “conservatism” that has entranced so many of America’s policy makers. After rehearsing Babbitt’s argument that our Constitution can work only in a society where people are committed to simplicity, value tradition, and are accustomed to respecting limits, Ryn discusses the theories of Leo Strauss, whom he considers to be a sort of anti-Babbitt. “According to Strauss,” Ryn writes, “no real philosopher gives credence to ‘the conventional’ or ‘the ancestral,’ to use his terms. Respecting them represents the greatest of all intellectual sins, ‘historicism.’ Inherited ways are, he insisted, mere accidents of history. Respect is owed to the ‘simply right,’ which is ahistorical and rational.” It is this ahistorical, anti-traditional, intellectualistic creed that has inspired neoconservative thinkers who have argued in favor of the wars and other power grabs of the current administration in Washington.

Anna van Riel

Originally published on Los Thunderlads, 18 July 2008:

Ukulele Hunt’s latest video of the day showcases New Zealand’s Anna van Riel playing a nifty little tune of her own composition.

She’s also on youtube as half of the acoustic duo Bellebird; here they play their song “Too Strong Daddy,” apparently in their living room.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEzCkncyI-Q

Of course she’s on myspace; the videos are registration-only, but there’s music available on the home page.

http://www.myspace.com/annavanriel

And the band’s myspace page has several free songs.

http://www.myspace.com/bellebirds

http://ukulelehunt.com/

The Atlantic, June 2008

Originally posted on Los Thunderlads, 13 May 2008:

A lively, pleasant read this month.

Some articles about Barack Obama. Joshua Green’s “The Amazing Money Machine” leads to the idea that no two successful presidential candidates use the same fundraising model. Marc Ambinder’s “HisSPACE”, about Obama’s ideas on using the Internet to make government operations more visible, contains this sentence:

Communication and transparency are virtues only up to a point; as students of bureaucracy know, both eventually become an enemy to efficiency.

But of course it is precisely at the point where transparency becomes an enemy to efficiency that it becomes a virtue. The last thing we want is a really efficient bureaucracy. An inefficient bureaucracy is a nuisance, a waste, a headache. A truly efficient bureaucracy can make life so easy for its clients that it leaves them no opportunity to achieve or create anything.

Transparency is like all other institutions of democracy: worth everything in the fighting for, worth nothing once achieved. Even a moderately efficient bureaucratic system can absorb the formalities of democracy and domesticate them thoroughly. Nietzsche wrote about this several times. In Twilight of the Idols, he issues his customary harsh dismissal of the institutions of liberalism (“reduction to the herd animal!”,) but does then qualify his contempt:

As long as they are still being fought for, these same institutions produce quite different effects; they then in fact promote freedom mightily. Viewed more closely, it is war which produces these effects, war for liberal institutions which as war permits the illiberal instincts to endure. And war is a training in freedom. For what is freedom? That one has the will to self-responsibility. That one preserves the distance which divides us. That one has become more indifferent to hardship, toil, privation, even to life. That one is ready to sacrifice men to one’s cause, oneself not excepted. Freedom means that the manly instincts that delight in war and victory have gained mastery over the other instincts- for example, over the instinct for “happiness”… How is freedom measured, in individuals as in nations? By the resistance which has to be overcome, by the effort it costs to stay aloft. (from section 38, as translated by R. J. Hollingdale in the Penguin Classics version)

Needless to say I would not endorse any of this without reservation. But I do believe that the proper growth of the human person requires freedom; that “the will to self-responsibility” is a major part of freedom; that freedom can exist only where all power has definite limits; and that the only thing capable of limiting power is conflict with an opposing power. Conflict itself, not documents or other formalized procedures resulting from conflict, is what ensures freedom.

Gregg Easterbrook’s “The Sky is Falling” looks at the possibility of a disastrous meteor strike, analyzing as an example of inefficient bureaucracy NASA’s failure to live up to Congress’ mandates to map the inner solar system. Locked into a metric which calculates success as a function of the number of astronauts deployed, the space agency wastes billions pointlessly repeating its Nixon-era triumphs, leaving undone work that might, quite literally, save the world.

“In the Basement of the Ivory Tower” gives “Professor X” the opportunity to speak the unspeakable- some of the students he teaches in two-year colleges are wasting their time taking classes when they would be better off working. Not that it’s their fault; jobs which never involve a bit of research or sustained sequential reasoning now routinely require four-year degrees.

www.theatlantic.com

Highlights from the 31 March 2008 issue of The Nation

Originally posted on Los Thunderlads, 19 March 2008:

Alex Cockburn’s column treats the NY Governor prostitution scandal, characterizing Spitzer’s behavior as “various rendezvous with consenting adults.” I suppose I should familiarize myself with scholarship like that of somebody’s mother, but it strikes me that this phrase doesn’t capture what goes on with prostitution- mutual consent means that both parties consent to the same thing. When men like Spitzer consent to a sex act, women like “Kristen” consent to sleeping indoors, having enough to eat, and not being so badly beaten by their pimps that they need reconstructive surgery to breathe.

An editorial points out that it used to be routine in the USA for botched elections to be redone. Several articles document the economic cost of the Iraq war, both in terms of lost wealth and of increased income inequality. Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky collect statements powerful Washington types made in 2002-2004 predicting that the Iraq War would pay for itself.

Three reviews treat the work of Chilean writer Roberto Bolano. Carmen Bullosa analyzes the assemblage of pseudo-biographical vignettes known as Nazi Literature in the Americas; Marcela Valdes surveys Bolano’s life and work; and Forrest Gander tries to decide which of Bolano’s works is best. Catching my attention, Valdes quotes Nicanor Parra’s remark:

The four great poets of Chile

Are three

Alonso de Ercilla and Ruben Dario.

While Gander mentions that “Bolano considered Tres (Three), a book of poems published in 2000, to be ‘one of my two best works.’” So the two best works of Bolano/ Are one/ Three.

Criminal Thinking and Disordered Nationalism

A note about an issue of The American Conservative, originally published on Los Thunderlads 17 October 2007:

The highlight of the issue is a piece by psychotherapist Jim Pittaway analyzing American nationalism in terms of the therapeutic model of "Criminal Thinking." Pittaway explains that "the unholy triad at the core of antisocial thinking is narcissism, impatience, and need for control." "The narcissistic predator carries senses of special entitlement and deep grievance." Because his view of himself is so exalted, he cannot recognize that his behavior has brought unjust suffering upon anyone else. As an example of this kind of pathology, Pittaway quotes United States Senator Jon Tester. "Refereeing a civil war in Iraq has distracted us from fighting a war in Afghanistan." As if our troops were just minding their own business, quietly making their way to the home of Taliban/ al Qaeda, when they took a wrong turn and wound up in the middle of this mysterious conflict in Iraq.

In the context of a disordered nationalism, impatience and the need to control others combine to create a sense that one's leaders are in fact omnipotent, and that if there is evil in the world it can only be because those leaders have defaulted in their duties. "In this construct, any failure to control must necessarily be failure on the part of whoever was supposed to do the controlling; the core idea of America's potential to control everything can never be questioned. This logically absurd notion is an irreducible component of both the criminal personality and our New Nationalism. So, like the habituated criminal, nationalist America does not have to accomodate society around us and instead must pursue ever more desperate measures to control things that cannot, and ought not, be controlled." These "ever more desperate measures" form a "kind of progression of increasingly less desirable outcomes experienced by the Criminal-Thinking offender when he tries to take control of the situation, loses it, escalates, and winds up dead or in prison for crimes he never intended to commit when he started out. As long as he cannot self-regulate, and the criminal thinker cannot, he is doomed to play out to the end."

Pittaway gives two ways out of nationalistic Criminal Thinking. As you would expect in a magazine called The American Conservative, one way out is an appeal to such American exemplars of the republican tradition as Lincoln and Jefferson, claiming that they both preached and exhibited self-restraint. "Self-control -- not controlling others -- is at the heart of American patriotic tradition." The grimmer way out is the path Germany traveled after the Third Reich. "When you're living in the rubble you've created, narcissism is difficult to sustain. When you have to engage in a daily struggle to survive, impatience is useless if not deadly. When you have been defeated so thoroughly that you lack both capability and will to resist those who beat you, you don't control anything. By 1950, those same German people and their leadership reverted to pro-social thinking in government."

http://www.amconmag.com/2007/2007_10_22/article1.html

In the same issue Dave Lindorff reports on a bizarre incident that occurred this August 29, when without authorization a crew loaded a B-52 with six cruise missiles armed with live nuclear warheads and flew across the country. Even more bizarre, six airmen connected with the incident have died in the weeks since. Most bizarre of all, the story has barely received notice in the mainstream press.

The cover story argues that conservatives will need to share more than hatred of Hillary Clinton if they are to win the 2008 elections. An article about Graham Greene expresses amazement that G. W. Bush recently mentioned The Quiet American when he himself so obviously embodies the worst traits of that novel's two protagonists. Uri Avnery reviews Mearsheimer and Walt's The Lobby, Neil Clark decries the British Conservative Party's leftward drift, and Pat Buchanan expresses nostalgia for Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy.

Superman vs the... Fashion Designers?

Originally posted on Los Thunderlads, 19 September 2007:

superman-vs-the-dude.jpg

Friday, January 7, 2011

2010 Roundup


Last year, we published 195 posts on our parent site, Los Thunderlads. Among the most popular were "Words that can be spelled using chemical symbols," "Sex, perhaps; sexiness, no," "Georgia O'Keeffe Paintings," "Pictograms taking care of business," "The strong do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must," "More veiled women," "Conway's game of life," "The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain rereleases two early albums," "The labors of Hercules," and "Discover Magazine, June 2010." I can explain the popularity of some of these posts, but not of all. Maggie Jochild linked to "The labors of Hercules" on GroupNewsBlog. Al Wood gave "The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain rereleases two early albums very high praise on Ukulele Hunt. And "Sex, perhaps; sexiness, no" links to this picture. Also, a post that mentioned Susie Bright attracted Susie Bright's own attention; a Tweet from her drove a lot of traffic to the site, not so much to that post.

2010 was also the year Los Thunderlads joined Twitter; we don't do much there, and have attracted only a few dozen followers. We might start taking more seriously in 2011. Also drifting about in cyberspace is a side project I started in February and haven't touched since March, Classical Ukulele. Compared with the fate of that site, I've almost done a good job keeping up with another satellite, our Tumblr site.

Early in the year, Believer1, aka Mrs Acilius, posted several very interesting things at her site, One Believer. She hasn't posted there since April, when she discussed differing attitudes towards the proper relationship between religion and politics as found in the "World Values Survey." I can recommend that post, and also those titled "Wheelchair Basketball," "Birthdays are for Everyone," and "Fun with Stats."

I haven't stirred up any great controversies in comment threads at other sites. The only place where I've been commenting regularly is Alison Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For blog; to the extent that I have role there, it is most definitely not that of provocateur. In fact, on one occasion I was part of a successful effort to soothe an irritable discussion draw people out of the woodwork. At Language Log, by contrast, I've apparently acquired such a reputation as a troublemaker that all I have to do is use the word "'Tis" and parties form for and against "Acilius' argument." A couple of months ago I left a comment on Steve Sailer's blog in which I explained why I no longer leave comments on Steve Sailer's blog.