JOLLY DAYS, an artist's journal

Stand With Haiti

2010-01-16T04:02:02Z

Ira Altschiller

The pervasive images of suffering Haitians is almost too much to bear. The flood of media coverage and enormous American and international efforts to aid the earthquake victims are only partly reassuring. It is a race against time now.

Charities around the world have launched massive fundraising efforts. Countries such as Argentina, Armenia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Iceland, India, Israel, Mexico, Norway, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Qatar, Russia, Switzerland, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and Venezuela, have sent various medical and rescue teams (often consisting of the nation's military and firefighters) to aid the relief effort.

The press is estimating up to 100,000 might have been killed; the already impoverished country, with most of its population at the epicenter of the earthquake, is at the mercy of aid arriving before disease and social collapse envelops the country.

This organization, Stand With Haiti, has been recommended by many as reliable — if you wish to make a donation, and still don't trust the Red Cross (sequestering contributions for 9/11 victims to other purposes).

[via Slate]

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David Brooks notes that the problem of poverty is brought to the fore by this tragedy,

This is not a natural disaster story. This is a poverty story. It’s a story about poorly constructed buildings, bad infrastructure and terrible public services. On Thursday, President Obama told the people of Haiti: “You will not be forsaken; you will not be forgotten.” If he is going to remain faithful to that vow then he is going to have to use this tragedy as an occasion to rethink our approach to global poverty…

Consensus and the Media

2010-01-14T23:08:02Z

Ira Altschiller

Tocqueville said America was a land of consensus. That is counter-intuitive. You would expect America to be the land of the independent thinker — respect for individual rights and all. The current partisanship shows how accurate Alexis de Tocqueville was though.

Many are more interested in signaling membership to an affinity group than in thinking. Consensus is a product of tribal thinking and fears of being different. In other words, consensus is adolescent. Consensus is understandable — it is an oil of social intercourse. There is a bullying subtext to consensus that is deadly though.

This Slate article points out what has been apparent about the media for a long time — Slate and the author should be applauded for saying it in a media venue:

Every news organization clings to a consensus view about the world, whether that organization considers itself liberal, conservative, centrist, objective, or impartial. Although editors and reporters are usually encouraged to nibble on the skin of the consensus—mostly to appear fair and balanced—it's the rare news organization that allows journalists to sink their fangs into what their colleagues consider a settled issue. Which institutions and which sources to treat as credible, what constitutes a story, and how hard to pursue that story are all governed by a news outlet's consensus thinking. (Most of the hostility directed at the Fox News Channel isn't about content but the network's vehement rejection of the conventional wisdom.)

Consensus thinking in the media is high profile consensus. It's the media, after all. But the media follows, like ducklings their mommy duck, the perceived biases of the public. The media is business by another name. If you're not popular you can't sell advertising. A weird symbiosis: the media and public manipulating one another to ever lower levels. Devolution of thought — with graphics. The Pew Research Center did a study of media bias during the election and found the media chased the public opinion polls. Favoring Obama because the public seemed to; chickens without a head.

With the addition of the internet echo-chamber an inevitable dumbed down exchange of slogans becomes the viral default. This miasmic me-too fog has permeated public discourse, vitiating the arts and sciences, and the mothership: academia. What is most striking is the influence of celebrity journalism. Once disdained and reviled, it has become the default; celebrity journalism is journalism now. Obama was elected and governs as a celebrity.

Most elections use movie advertising and tabloid journalism techniques as their template. The press accedes to press conferences that are pre-managed. Obama goes on media photo op visits to Europe and Asia. The visits don't even seem well-prepared by his staff. He comes away with nothing. As though staff believed Obama's incredible charisma and overwhelming rhetorical skills — neither of which have ever presented — will convince the rest of the world to abandon their own interests. Nations have interests.

An example of the celebrity mindset: Jim Lehrer, in announcing putative changes on his PBS show recently, declared — nearly stamping his foot — we are not about entertainment. But of course they are. What does he think his "senior correspondents" are? They are aggrandized news readers. If the newly named PBS NewsHour really wanted to change they would clear the decks and rotate correspondents and bring in new producers. Their recent name change shows they are fearful of the brand-name taking the franchise down when Lehrer retires — the Martha Stewart problem — but aren't focusing on their content. If the government leans right, the press should lean left, and vice-versa.

What is particularly toxic is the demonizing of any but pre-approved views. Doesn't matter if it is on the Right or Left. Each of the little boxes of thought memes represented by those simple designations, of Right/Left, carries a fierce ostracism for any who stray from the company line. And the media thinks it is "fragmentation of sources and the internet" which are the problem.

The New Global Order: Here Comes China

2010-01-07T04:40:57Z

Ira Altschiller

A new book, "The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order," prognosticates what a world dominated by China might be. This NYT book review says the book's author sees more than a new super-capitalist player, slowly adapting and adopting Western values. A comfy fantasy.

Instead, the author says that China's value system will come right along for the ride. China likes democracy among nations, not within nations, is the way the reviewer put it.

The original delusion in America was that capitalism forces freedom. That idea was derived from American corporate interests wanting to do business with a cabillion Chinese. But China is doing just fine thank you with an authoritarian state enabling capitalism as long as it doesn't tread on state power. The state is a player in the capitalist enterprise. A cynic might say that the American model does the same thing by other means: lobbyists write the laws. It just feels democratic in the US, in other words.

The problem with all this has probably occurred to many people: Just how stable is China now? With the power to conceal and redact what the world and the Chinese people see; to force Western corporations like Apple and Google to filter what services are offered, it is not easy to know. China might be a far less happy place than the merry Chinese capitalists, as seen on TV, suggest.

When Obama went to China and gave a speech to party members cum students he ratified the censorship, denying true societal contact. (This was enabled by the MSM as a victory.)

… [the author] dwells little on the everyday turmoil of Chinese life — the mélange of cultures in its cities, the violent uprisings of its peasants, the factional struggles in its leadership, the pollution in the air, the gridlock on the streets, the bubbly economy and the corrupt bureaucracy.

Capitalism, when it is working, is invention and originality; freewheeling, simpleminded, optimistic and sometimes reckless — it has a lot to do with individuality and true competition. Not a model, as mentioned earlier, always followed in America. But a state that suppresses dissent ruthlessly can have enormous problems in coming up with something groundbreaking — intellectually, artistically, philosophically. Greece reigned even when Rome ruled. The Chinese are good at copying and doing it efficiently. But then Mussolini made the trains run on time.

Abayudaya

2010-01-04T22:52:38Z

Ira Altschiller

The moving tale of the Ugandan Jews, called the Abayudaya, is described by photojournalist Richard Sobol:

For four generations the Abayudaya Jewish Community in Eastern Uganda has survived despite numerous hardships. Living in virtual isolation until the early 1990's these struggling subsistence farmers have observed Jewish customs and celebrated the Sabbath and Festivals of the Jewish calendar together as families. Guided by their faith in the Jewish Laws of the Torah, they pray together in mud huts designated as synagogues and chant Hebrew prayers to an Afro beat. Spread out over many miles, the 600 members of this community have held on to their beliefs through civil wars and periods of religious intolerance. Although their faith has at times added to their economic perils, they affirm the power of religion each day, in a life filled with dignity and grace.

Richard's photos are luminous with the human spirit.

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Richard's site, with some of his photos.

Richard's book, Abayudaya: The Jews of Uganda.

This wiki entry tells the remarkable tale.

The centerpiece, and not to be missed: You can hear the Abayudaya's music here. The music reminds me of Paul Simon's work with South African musicians. The Abayudaya's music is sweeter, lighter, and more resonant.

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Tangentially related, but of great interest, is this bhtv online discussion about faith and its relation to science. Nick Wade, NYT science reporter, is enormously informative.

Stewart Brand: How Buildings Learn

2009-12-27T06:03:56Z

Ira Altschiller

Stewart Brand's book, "How Buildings Learn", was made into a BBC 6-part series, which you can see here. It is a well done series about an outlier subject. The English have mastered the documentary.

Brand is a gentlemanly figure from the 1960s. He found a niche, not out of calculation, but simply of personal interest, and built a cool tool empire in "The Whole Earth Catalog". It was a New Age publication before the word had ambivalence — sanctioned consumerism. Politically correct privilege.

Stewart Brand believes in "the people". He likes aging buildings, repurposing spaces. Stewart Brand picks schlock over blandness, the idiosyncratic over the unique expression. He thinks buildings learn — Brand's quaint way of putting those ideas.

Brand begins his BBC series by denigrating modernist architecture. The ego of architects are derided, as exemplified by Frank Lloyd Wright; Wright's lack of concern for the people who lived in his structures an easy target. Wright's ego was all, and the people who lived in and worked in the buildings he built were secondary. The Guggenheim Museum is really a structure built by a wannabe sculptor as a hymn to self — at least that is how I always felt about it. Not a good place to view art. So there is some traction to Brand's ideas about modernist architecture and its often noted soullessness.

Like many pop culture writers he decorates a thin reed of a premise with interesting factoids. Reminiscent of Malcolm Gladwell. But Brand is a more attractive, less careerist thinker. He isn't trendy — Brand is rather an authentic American academic eccentric.

Brand's low key pronouncements ring a populist chord. He is affirmative to the point of being cultish about just average folks. Brand rallies behind a banner that is suspicious of elites. Brand went to Phillips Exeter Academy and Stanford University.

His target is not elites of power or money — attributes he could be said to possess — but of the culturally or intellectually evolved. It is all very 'Sixties. To be privileged and of the elite, but consider oneself on the side of Everyman, is the hat trick. Brand is very much of our time in his underlying collectivist impulse and the ambivalence one feels when listening to him.

Like most collectivists, Brand ignores individual achievement, evolved aesthetic sense, intellect that derives from study. He likes the ad hoc, the jerry-built. He personifies buildings, generalizes human beings, cherry picks examples that support a thin premise. Brand's philosophy might have a recrudescence now, with collectivist mind in ascendancy. Perhaps a necessary balance to the vaunting, obnoxious ego and narcissism of contemporary culture. Perhaps throwing out the baby with the bathwater — the pendulum, once again, swinging too far.

Stephen King Presents N.

2009-12-22T21:46:41Z

Ira Altschiller

I love the comic book form, even if more of a fan of the art. I'm thinking Alex Raymond, Will Eisner, Mad Magazine art. Current work — well, we will let others judge. From the comic book mind of pop culture have emerged movies based on comics and comics based on novels, and novels based on comics. M. Night Shyamalan's career has been rooted, thus far, in attempting to transcribe the fun of comics to the screen. The comic form as literary form, by its nature, tends to be shallow; that has left little for the director of The Sixth Sense to work with. But some comics, like Batman, have had a few good outcomes.

Stephen King has entered the fray by releasing a "new form" comic. These are two minute animated digital comics. You can see 25 here. Not really animation, but easy, bite(byte) sized pieces of an imaginary, gothic realm.

Exciting idea. Anything that gets people reading, entering imaginary territory, looking at images in a thoughtful, maybe interior way, on new gadgets for reading and thinking — what's not to like?

Jason Segel: Dracula's Lament

2009-12-19T04:30:12Z

Ira Altschiller

If you didn't see it when it was aired on TV, here is a wonderful performance on Ferguson's show by Jason Segel, of the song, "Dracula's Lament".

As Jason makes his appearance, both as singer and co-puppeteer, the curtain is lifted on the Wizard of Oz structure of theater — the illusion and its workings revealed all at once. But nothing is lost in the revelation. Seeing the puppet "worked", and performing, all at the same time, enhances by addition. It makes you smile.

At YouTube

Tiger Woods

2009-12-17T05:32:21Z

Ira Altschiller

Can you get enough Tiger news? It is all over the place, for a reason. Entertainment value.

This can seem to be insensitive to the dissolution of a marriage, but really, it would be Tiger's circumspect calculation to make, prior to his actions, if he were to avoid this spectacle. For the rest, it is a guilty pleasure, a gossip fest. The pop culture is a celebration of mediocrity, so it is no surprise that the ringmasters, figurehead celebrities, are the paradigmatic mediocrities. Great at golf, not so great at being a human being, is Tiger Woods. Chris Rock was quoted in one sports column as saying that, "A man is only as faithful as his options." That's the cynical view, of a celebrity, who is probably more than a little familiar with Woods' world, and making proactive excuses.

In one Seinfeld episode, George, through a devious trick, using his dead girlfriend Susan's picture as a ploy, entered the magical world of beautiful women — who felt sorry for him; thence George was transported, with his Susan-photograph-ticket, to the enchanted world of night clubs, where all the inhabitants were beautiful women, all willing, all sympathetic. George mucked it up, of course. But posited was this magical kingdom of available beauty. Tiger's life has confirmed the suppositions of that Seinfeld episode. Tiger lived in that magical world — it really exists, just as we always suspected. In Tiger's version, it is a world of pre-arrangement, where Tiger didn't have to do much more than make a call. It was all "handled" for him.

Tiger, inhabited by an obsessive personality, groomed to self-absorption, charged forth and applied his obsessiveness to extra-marital affairs — all that might be available to a rich celebrity. He befriended CEOs of major corporations and Arab sheikhs. Tiger is a construct of management consultants, of the complicit media, of popular delusion once again made manifest.

Woods, in his personal life, seemed led on solely by his most best-est friend, Mr. Johnson; led by a dowsing stick, pointing, to whatever Tiger felt like doing. Tiger is obsessive and felt untouchable, an incendiary combo. Or more sympathetically: to escape from the pressures of his sport, his celebrity and his responsibilities, he acted inappropriately. Only patronizing hypocrites reeking of schadenfreude would express it that way.

The astonishing focus required for the greatest golfer who has ever lived will be tested still further when he returns, once again, to his one true home, the long green fairways in the strange land of golf, where his memories will now include recently acquired demons. Demons harder to ignore perhaps than any before.

When the tightly wrapped unravel, what's left? Yet another test.

Obama's Nobel Peace Prize Speech

2009-12-14T04:13:18Z

Ira Altschiller

Obama, in his Nobel Peace Prize speech, finally got it. He gave the speech Bush could never give, although the content was identical to Bush's doctrine, but Obama was articulate. He did it in front of an audience that was giving him a peace prize for just about nothing, and expecting a continuation of his recent public declarations, criticizing his country on foreign soil.

Instead, Obama said that sometimes democracies have to believe in themselves and in the affirmation of democracy. All countries are not morally equivalent. He said that sometimes force is necessary, even if most unwelcome, and gravely considered. He said that Iran and North Korea were dangerous regimes not to be waved off as legal outliers, but evil regimes.

But it is also incumbent upon all of us to insist that nations like Iran and North Korea do not game the system. Those who claim to respect international law cannot avert their eyes when those laws are flouted. Those who care for their own security cannot ignore the danger of an arms race in the Middle East or East Asia. Those who seek peace cannot stand idly by as nations arm themselves for nuclear war.

He didn't mention his prior, dangerously naïve calculations, that a talk cure would work if given time. He said it in his way, but he said it. Great presidents have the ability to grow in office. Obama may just have that capacity.

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The great thing about being the Enabled One is that, for Obama, he can change direction without concern. The delusional viral construction of Celebrity Obama by his enablers has given Obama an industrial strength insulation.

What do these supporters do? Do they continue to enable even though they were decrying Bush, in the most deplorable terms, for the same ideas? Do they deny their prior excesses? Do they criticize Obama? Anyone who criticizes Obama is a racist, according to Alec Baldwin and Janeane Garofalo, and other celebrity deep thinkers — not to mention the New York Times editorial page. Obama has become a man with a discernible character, rejecting the celebrity tin god the media made him — at least for the moment.

There will be times when nations - acting individually or in concert - will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified…We can acknowledge that oppression will always be with us, and still strive for justice. We can admit the intractability of depravation, and still strive for dignity. We can understand that there will be war, and still strive for peace. We can do that - for that is the story of human progress; that is the hope of all the world; and at this moment of challenge, that must be our work here on Earth.

There is only the small matter now of follow through.

The "new" PBS NewsHour

2009-12-08T00:00:31Z

Ira Altschiller

The "new" PBS NewsHour - formerly the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer— was described by Jim Lehrer the other day. They intend to be multitaskin' fools, mixing web and TV broadcast. That is, do what they have done all along. This change bespeaks Executive Producer Linda Winslow trying to make a mark for herself rather than a focus on value for the viewers. The Lehrer/PBS web site has always been a confusing mix, so it is not such a certainty that this web emphasis is going to be more than a careerist confection for Winslow and Simon Marks. A viewer would go to find further, and often recommended material from the broadcast, which then led to a time-wasting nuisance in finding it. Maybe they can make something of it in this new foray. The nature of the web material — how much it truly deepens understanding — is central. The first instantiation of all the newness today seemed untethered. Neither news broadcast, nor TV magazine. Who would have an impulse to check their site?

There is also the question about whether a show that is entwined with TV broadcast should be adopting another medium. The idea has the feeling of lumbering dinosaurs wandering into an infinite digital jungle. I don't think I'd be moved to go to the web for more from PBS' News Hour. More likely, I might go to the web to find out what the NewsHour is not telling me with its roundtable of anointed commentators and all-too-familiar reporters (ahem, Senior Correspondents).

To this end, we've merged our broadcast and digital staffs and expanded our newsroom. Our senior correspondents will have a larger presence online. All of this is aimed at bringing you the same high-quality "MacNeil-Lehrer" journalism online that is our hallmark on-air.

Nothing like self-proclaimed high quality and merging of staffs. Isn't this an under the hood, inter-office memo made into a pronunciamento?

There is also the question of demoting Lehrer. Lehrer is a congenial host — he did much better than I had expected when MacNeil left. He exudes decency, restraint, a personal sense of honor, and a low key amusement that is very appealing. A news show needs a trusted figure to weave through the show, especially since now they have adopted multi-location "reality" newsroom backdrops — a trendy patchwork. They don't have the bucks to compete with the broadcast networks, with their Bridge of the Star Ship Enterprise look — so the background has an oppressive, distracting quality.

Lehrer's NewsHour had been getting better and better until they tanked during the election. Basically, like the rest of the media, they joined the Obama campaign via young producers and editors running without supervision. At least that appeared to be the problem. The vitiated newscasts might as likely have been the impulse of higher-ups.

When technique is tweaked often it is content that suffers. We will see if PBS NewsHour can regain its lost integrity. Or even, if they know it had been squandered, as they diddle with their GUI.

Wikipedia Editors and Jimmy Wales

2009-12-07T23:36:52Z

Ira Altschiller

Wikipedia editors are leaving.

One factor is that many topics already have been written about. Another is the plethora of rules Wikipedia has adopted to bring order to its unruly universe -- particularly to reduce infighting among contributors about write-ups of controversial subjects and polarizing figures.
"Wikipedia is becoming a more hostile environment,…Many people are getting burnt out when they have to debate about the contents of certain articles again and again."
Wikipedia's struggles raise questions about the evolution of "crowdsourcing," one of the Internet era's most cherished principles. Crowdsourcing posits that there is wisdom in aggregating independent contributions from multitudes of Web users. It has been promoted as a new and better way for large numbers of individuals to collaborate on tasks, without the rules and hierarchies of traditional organizations.

I'm dubious about crowdsourcing myself. But Wiki speaks for itself. If Tim Berners-Lee is being suggested for a Nobel Prize then Jimmy Wales and team should get two for Wikipedia. With all its problems, patchiness, drift, Wiki is an enormous contribution to the betterment of the world. Wiki is an Ancient Library of Alexandria brought up to date and democratized (to some extent — there have been discussions about just how large the significant cohort of contributors truly is [see Aaron Swartz]). If you take Wiki with a grain of salt you will do fine. But that is true of Britannica as well. It's true about most things.

YouTube Screening Room

2009-12-06T02:48:06Z

Ira Altschiller

YouTube is releasing, in their Screening Room, some award winning shorts.

I thought this one was so good. See what you think (11 minutes)…

Or, watch it at YouTube

Global Warming and Science - Freeman Dyson and Al Gore

2009-12-06T02:38:53Z

Ira Altschiller

So Freeman Dyson appears to have been right. Global warming scientists were engaged in lousy science, is the way Dyson put it.

…a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit … and released 61 megabytes of confidential files onto the internet.… When you read some of those files - including 1079 emails and 72 documents …this scandal could well be “the greatest in modern science”. These alleged emails - supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists pushing AGW theory - suggest:
Conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.…
But perhaps the most damaging revelations…are those concerning the way Warmist scientists may variously have manipulated or suppressed evidence in order to support their cause.

It was never clear why putatively bright and educated people would easily recognize the foolishness of Creationist "science", but dumb down to Al Gore's global world wide religion of global warming with alacrity. Now it is understandable how Gore, who has investments in many Green companies and stands to benefit mightily if the government pushes some bucks in that direction, might be predisposed towards what must be a genetically derived clueless credulity — the alternative, cynical manipulation, is so unattractive I don't even want to think about it.

But what of those who want science to remain above partisanship? Isn't it obvious waste, dirty air, slovenly manufacturing, and poisoning of the environment are deplorable? Why juice it up with Chicken Little pronouncements when the current state of knowledge is ambiguous? Gore and friends did more damage to the idea of an honorable science than any concatenation of Creationist science could do. We really do need to pay attention to emissions and treatment of the environment.

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A sample of one email, quoted in the link above,

The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.

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Finally, Denis Dutton's site has been honorably conveying the media suppressed debate about climate change for sometime now.

Obama's Afghanistan Speech

2009-12-03T08:17:16Z

Ira Altschiller

Obama's long dark night of the soul, in which he tried to decide what to do about Afghanistan, after months and months of discussion, finally came to a speech. He told the cadets at West Point that he was going to send Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal pretty much what he had asked for. It was an impossible decision, with no good option. But even so, Obama chose wisely. People are saying that it is the most important decision of his presidency, because the media loves top ten lists. But no one knows how important the decision will be until some outcome is clear. The horror of the situation is that, broke and hurting, we have to invest more lives and money to make sure things don't get worse. It is a gamble, a big gamble. Sometimes that is the only choice life offers you.

While Obama's rhetoric was hostile to McCain and Bush about the Iraq war during the campaign, Obama is doing, after his tortured Hamlet-moment, the only thing he could do in Afghanistan — what Bush had done in Iraq, and McCain would have done had he been elected. This is a surge; but with a difference: it is a surge without a clear strategy.

Obama's "timetable" is a bow to those who want to leave yesterday. A terrible mistake to telegraph intentions here. So too the idea of send 'em and then bring 'em right home — a decision without decisiveness. Not much of a strategy there — you don't have to be Sun Tzu to know that.

If the public could hear what Obama is hearing privately, and grasp the true nature of the enemy faced by the free world; if the public could understand the dangers in creating a vacuum in Afghanistan, it would be obvious Obama went with commonsense. Obama is not, despite the publicity, Shakespeare's Henry V giving his St. Crispin's Day speech. Nor did he rally the troops, "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers…" But it was, as Henry V was for Shakespeare, a tortured and ambiguous moment in American history, where a revulsion for war meets the hard reality of the world as it is. Obama delivered the speech in a reluctant way; even more hesitant, detached and clipped than is his usual demeanor — at least, when not preaching grandly.

The meme about Obama's great speechifying, and his ability to convince by conviviality have both evaporated like the mists they were. Niall Ferguson said on Lehrer recently that Obama gave grandiose speeches from Cairo to Shanghai and got nothing for it. Obama got no help with Iran from China, and China is still pegging its currency to ours — not desirable.

Obama, who is regarded as a good writer by those who don't know good writing, never personalized the war as Bush's speechwriters had done, even if delivered maladroitly by the Maladroit One. Obama never provided personal stories about the conditions of the innocents in Afghanistan and of the help we have offered already. Obama likes to apologize for his country, make grandiose statements to be applauded, and avoid the positive if it pertains to American actions.

The cadets were impressive in their gravitas, if not our president. But at least Obama came to the best decision he, or anyone could.

Pinker and Wright

2009-11-21T22:59:15Z

Ira Altschiller

The discussion @bhtv between Robert Wright and Steven Pinker fulfills the promise of Wright's venture. Although Wright conceived the bloggingheads site as one of controversial battle, where attention is garnered from dispute (the Jerry Springer model: Battle of the Minds, in Wright's incarnation), the amiable discussion with Pinker @bhtv gives collegiality a good name — it is a better model for his site. It also brought out the best in Wright.

There was much to learn in the discussion with Pinker. As this weblog is at least in part a notepad, here are some culled thoughts, that seemed of interest:

They discussed the moral center of human life — Spinoza's "viewpoint of eternity"; given many names from the veil of ignorance to the golden rule to the categorical imperative, all share the idea of removal of self in making a judgment.

Pinker's disinterest in discussing religious belief systems made a lot of sense. Wright wanted to find some validation of his Deistic ideas, what Pinker said an evolutionary biologist would call the "shape of the adaptive landscape". But Pinker didn't feel the enterprise, of entangling analysis and belief in verbiage, was a project worth undertaking. If only more would jump on board. Let people believe, or not believe, what they want, without disparagement.

The very interesting observation was made that "humanitarian revolutions" often extend the circle of empathy. Empathy is often only local, applied to family, maybe friends, or colleagues. Extending our humanity means extending our sympathy.

Pinker, in brief but crystal clear fashion, described Chomsky's enterprise: Pinker said every decade or so Chomsky changes his formulations. The "deep structure" of language, for example, was an early and now abandoned concept as there was no proof for the concept. (This reminded me of Chomsky and John Searle going at it in the pages of the NYRB years ago; one bone of contention was that Searle noted the change in Chomsky's ideas and Chomsky was petulant in denial. It appears Pinker is affirming Searle's contentions.)

Pinker said Chomsky is currently advocating a minimalist idea, not directly related to evolution; an idea which sounded a lot like Wolfram's cellular automata. Cellular automata are simple structures that replicate and in their replication evoke, well, language as it pertains to Chomsky, and all that is, according to Wolfram.

Pinker feels Chomsky sees language as a Gouldian spandrel — a usage of the spare parts of evolution — rather than a direct consequence of evolution.

A very interesting discussion of directness and indirectness in language; of the necessity for "plausible deniability" and how that is provided by indirectness.