Hypotyposis on a Good Day

Jared Diamond and the NYTimes

Is it time to read Jared Diamond's books?

The New York Times > Books > Sunday Book Review > 'Collapse': How the World Ends:

Taken together, Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse represent one of the most significant projects embarked upon by any intellectual of our generation. They are magnificent books: extraordinary in erudition and originality, compelling in their ability to relate the digitized pandemonium of the present to the hushed agrarian sunrises of the far past. I read both thinking what literature might be like if every author knew so much, wrote so clearly and formed arguments with such care. All of which makes the two books exasperating, because both come to conclusions that are probably wrong.

[....]

Diamond's analysis discounts culture and human thought as forces in history; culture, especially, is seen as a side effect of environment. The big problem with this view is explaining why China -- which around the year 1000 was significantly ahead of Europe in development, and possessed similar advantages in animals and plants -- fell behind. This happened, Diamond says, because China adopted a single-ruler society that banned change. True, but how did environment or animal husbandry dictate this? China's embrace of a change-resistant society was a cultural phenomenon. During the same period China was adopting centrally regimented life, Europe was roiled by the idea of individualism. Individualism proved a potent force, a source of power, invention and motivation. Yet Diamond considers ideas to be nearly irrelevant, compared with microbes and prevailing winds. Supply the right environmental conditions, and inevitably there will be a factory manufacturing jet engines.

[....]

What might human society be like 13,000 years from now? Above us in the Milky Way are essentially infinite resources and living space. If the phase of fossil-driven technology leads to discoveries that allow Homo sapiens to move into the galaxy, then resources, population pressure and other issues that worry Diamond will be forgotten. Most of the earth may even be returned to primordial stillness, and the whole thing would have happened in the blink of an eye by nature's standards.

I got a kick out of the review of Collapse in the NYTimes, though I'm sure it is rather glib. The last paragraph strikes me as a bit silly. The problem is not there is not an essentially infinite amount of stuff in the cosmos but that basically everything outside of the earth is outside of our reach! And I'm not convinced that traveling to another planet is just like people sailing across the ocean five hundred years ago.

First Things, Milosz, Bach, and Contrarian Science

I'd like to reflect more on the Christian themes in Czeslaw Milosz's poetry. Good places for me to jump off from are two articles in the November 2004 issue of First Things (a contrarian, often cranky, usually intelligent journal):

• FT November 2004: The Witness of Czeslaw Milosz

• FT November 2004: More On Milosz:

While glancing at these pieces, I came across mention of J. S. Bach in Bach, Hitler, and the People Called German:

And of course there is no Germany without Johann Sebastian Bach, whose music was, says Ozment, in sharp contrast to that of the Enlightenment, and especially of the French Enlightenment. “What distinguished Bach’s work and made it lasting was the musical-emotional demonstration of humankind’s need for transcendence and majesty, yet utter inability to encompass and master either.” The Enlightenment believed in man’s ability to resolve the riddle of history, both to mock and to play the gods. “By contrast, Bach’s music reasserted the dialectical character of reality and the bipolarity at the center of the human heart, each mysterious and complex beyond all human fathoming. . . . The alternating loss and restoration of harmony left the auditor with an intermittently pleasurable, but never final or secure, sensation of reconciliation, which was also the intention of the juxtaposition of Law and Gospel in the Lutheran sermon: oneness only in division, righteousness only in sin.”

And when I have some more time to look at minority dissenting views on global climate change, I can start with FT November 2004: Strange Science.

Adam Hochschild, William Wilberforce, Cody's Books

It intrigues me that Adam Hochschild will be talking about a subject for which my slim knowledge comes almost entirely from one article (which has meant a lot to me): Every Arrow Needs a Bow: William Wilberforce.

OUR EDITORS RECOMMEND:

Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves by Adam Hochschild (Houghton Mifflin; 467 pages; $26.95): The abolitionist movement in 18th century Britain marked an unprecedented shift in civil society. Slaves had rebelled throughout history, "but the campaign in England was something never seen before," writes Adam Hochschild. "[I]t was the first time a large number of people became outraged, and stayed outraged for many years, over someone else's rights." In "Bury the Chains," Hochschild, the Bay Area author of "King Leopold's Ghost," presents a gripping and inspiring account of the abolitionist crusade. He deftly teases out the movement's significance in terms of the activist techniques that evolved from it, from consumer boycotts and lapel pins to media campaigns.

This coming Wednesday: LITERARY GUIDE: Adam Hochschild Discussing "Bury the Chains." 7:30 p.m. Cody's, 2454 Telegraph Ave., Berkeley. (510) 845-7852.

a new book on bicycles

A two-wheeled tour of modern history / The bicycle's track record shows it playing a central role in industrialized era:

Being a lifelong bicyclist -- I have used a succession of them as my primary means of transportation for 50 years -- I harbor a bias in favor of a book that glorifies the subject. And glorify bicycles David V. Herlihy does. That is unsurprising, given Herlihy's intense affair with bicycling since his teenage years, which coincided with the importation of European 10-speeds into the United States. Later, he lived in Italy, where he rode a high-quality racing bike.

As one who knows the joy of cycling and want others to experience it too, I'm looking forward to reading the book and understanding better how we got to our present situation in which so few of us bike.

the continuing battle between consumers and companies

 Now call centers can make Nice on phone:

On the other hand, there's a bright side to this new technology. If you're not getting anywhere with a service rep, all you need to do is start cursing your head off. A supervisor will be on the phone within moments.

There must a way to level the playing field between customers and the BigCo. I'd like to find better ways to aggregate information about how customers are being treated (perhaps in near real time) by various companies so that we can make buying decisions that reward good players and punish recalcitrant big companies that stonewall consumers.

Intense shadows on Sproul Plaza

I was taken the by the very sharp and dramatic shadows at around 2pm yesterday.

The Nobel Laureates are gone!

There used to be banners of Nobel Laureates around campus. No more....

Lloyd's revealing question

I answered Lloyd's question ("How much of yourself do you think you have revealed in your weblog...?") on my professional blog, but my post might be of interest to my readers here.

Notelets from yesterday

You might get a chuckle out of Jib Jab's Second Term on Yahoo!, though the first big Jib Jab hit This Land was funnier in my opinion.

The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > From the Desk of David Pogue: For TiVo, It’s Not Over Yet: I have always wondered what made TiVo interesting.

My collages and those in the New York Times

Generating my own collages prompted me to notice The New York Times > Arts > Art & Design > Making Art From Bits and Pieces:

In rescuing and dignifying scraps of local life - a matchbook from a bar, someone's tossed-off photo-booth portrait - Mr. Evans can be thought of as a historical preservationist, operating on an unusually intimate scale. Yet his own moods seem reflected in how he handles the materials. In one day's collage, ticket stubs and candy wrappers explode like fireworks against an ebulliently bright background. In another, juxtaposed images of Hitler and Oliver North make a grim political statement.

The sky near 2195 Hearst (I)

The other day, while waiting for CV to arrive, I looked up in the sky and saw this dramatic image.

János Pilinszky

As I shared my interest in Czeslaw Milosz known among my friends, one of my housemates told me about the great Hungarian poet János Pilinszky. I'll list some references that I will come back to when I'm ready to learn more about Pilinszky:

• JÁNOS PILINSZKY:

As a writer of metaphysical poetry, essay and drama, Pilinszky has deeply influenced postwar Hungarian poetry. His early experiences in the second World War prison camps where he spent several months had only strengthened his personal alienation and existential anguish, and resulted in uniquely intense poems.

• Partisan Review:

In their attempt to confront the horror and name the unnameable, poets such as Czeslaw Milosz, Zbigniew Herbert, Tadeusz Rózewicz, and János Pilinszky committed themselves to a dry, laconic anti-poetry. They displayed a powerful ambivalence toward the very work they were creating, mistrusting it for outlasting the Catastrophe and, in the words of Rózewicz, "for having survived when those who created the poetry were dead."

• poetrymagazines.org.uk - János Pilinszky:

HUNGARIANS CONSIDER János Pilinszky to be one of their best living poets. Sándor Weöres, a towering poet, and nobody’s lipserver, calls him ‘our greatest’.

Notelets for 2005.01.25

I now know who LeRoy Neiman is.

More on Milosz: Books | In gratitude for all the gifts by Seamus Heaney.

Rise of Mandarin

I have mixed feelings about the rise and perhaps inevitable dominance of Mandarin Chinese in the North American context.   My parents and I speak Toisan, a dialect of Chinese closely related to Cantonese.  On the one hand, I would love to learn Mandarin myself.  (A summer of study gave a taste for the beautiful tones of the language spoken by over a billion people.)  On the other hand, I'm afraid that the history of Chinese immigration to the U.S. and Canada will be rewritten to neglect the fundamental early contributions of Toisan and Cantonese speaking Chinese immigrants, the ones who help build the railways and slaved in these countries before it became easier to be Chinese in North America.

BAY AREA / Mandarin speaks to growing class / Immigration, business spur Chinese classes:

Much as Japanese was the language of aspiring capitalists and cultural adventurers in the 1980s, Mandarin Chinese is attracting more students at all levels and ethnicities, in part because of mounting recognition of the importance of the language, and the growing number of Chinese American students enrolled throughout the Bay Area.

Mandarin, the national language of China, is one of many dialects. Cantonese, the main dialect of southern China, once predominated in the Bay Area. But immigration from Taiwan and elsewhere in mainland China boosted the number of Mandarin speakers here -- and has now pulled ahead of Cantonese, community observers say.

Chasing Mandarin dreams in S.F. schools:

Superintendent Arlene Ackerman said she realizes the demand and is incorporating some immersion programs into her "Dream Schools" initiative, which involves adding academic rigor and longer hours to low-performing schools.

"I'm looking at what are going to be the languages that are widely spoken in the future, in these young people's adult lives," she said. "Mandarin and Spanish -- those two are certainly world languages. ... Those are the ones we want to make sure they have access to."

busy week; slow start to writing

I flipped my wiki page this morning, and only now, in the late afternoon am I getting some quality time to write. It's rather remarkably how much time and energy meetings take up. I also find it difficult to achieve fluent expression when I cannot settle into my writing mental space.

Flowers Laura gave me

I took a few pictures of the flowers that Laura gave me last week. I really enjoyed getting them. ( I then generated a little collage with Picasa, which gave my pictures an unexpected new life!)

I've gotten into fabric! (really?)

I thought that it would be really cool to pick up some fabric for my new cubicle -- but the line was too long for my tired brain and feet to wait.

Malcolm Gladwell

I'm a Malcolm Gladwell fan but not on the scale of some of his devotees. BTW, he is speaking at Cody's Bookstore next Thursday.

Believing what can't be proven

I thank Catherine for pointing out edge.org's What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?. I see that at least Catherine, Lloyd, Lynn, and Laura have presented some of their own answers or intimations of answers. The question is certainly one of those big and sloppy ones. But it is hardly a novel one, so I am bemused by the interest that edge.org's posing of the question has generated.

The question is a tough one to answer for me because I need to fight the temptation to be comprehensive, definitive, and exacting in whatever I might write today. I also don't want to go for the most basic or obvious (for example, that I believe in the existence of an all-powerful and all-loving God or that Jesus was that God Incarnate) but feel the need to make such fundamental statements because they are in such contradistinction to the vast majority of "third culture" scientists who share what I'm guessing is the largely unarticulated (and I might add unproven) belief that there is no God.

I want to move beyond a meta-discussion. I will just throw myself out on a limb and throw out a bunch of things I believe are true but can't prove:

• there is no odd perfect number

• the humanities will never be reducible to physics

• in fact, chemistry will never be reducible to physics

• our knowledge of physics will always be limited and subject to expansion

• Bach is the greatest composer ever

• life is a miracle

• love even more so

Posted by rdhyee at 11:06 PM