I am a National Champion (In case you didn't know)

You can learn interesting things about me if you type my name incorrectly into Google. For example, I won a national speech tournament in After Dinner Speaking.

Book me for your parties, weddings, and ethnic events today!

You'll also see that I took 3rd in Impromptu Speaking, 5th in Impromptu Sales (I have no memory of that, for a variety of reasons), and 5th in Informative Speaking. In short, I was a speech powerhouse.

Interestingly enough, in keeping with the nature of this post, my After Dinner speech was about Narcissism, if I remember correctly. Damn, that was ten years ago. I have done nothing with my life. (Well, unless you count starting a family and getting an MFA, but trust me, not much effort was invovled with either of those things.)

Bush Wrong Again

Just watched a video clip of President Bush, who was asked to name the position player and pitcher he would sign to start a new organization with. His answer: Chase Utley and Roy Halladay. Wrong again, Mr. President. The correct answer was: Albert Pujols and Johan Santana. We also would have accepted Hanley Rameriz and Josh Beckett, Grady Sizemore and Brandon Webb, or Curtis Granderson and Jake Peavy.

UPDATE: I thought of another one better than the president's: Jose Reyes and Roy Oswalt

"Questions for McCain"

Confession time: I read every George Will article in sight. In fact, whenever I see his byline, my heart flutters a little and I sneak the newspaper/magazine/laptop off to a secret location so I can be alone with him.

This may seem odd since I typically align myself with what I'll call the Global Left (don't ask me to define that). However, I think it's important for every Leftist to read conservative voices, not simply to "know thy enemy" or test your mettle again the opposition's best, but to realize that good ideas and arguments arise from every source, not just your precious, hardened ego-bearings.

Will is on my conservative list because he's a great writer, witty, influenced by the more sober "Buckley" wing of the Republican party (as opposed to the batty religious fundamentalist wing), a rabid baseball fan (well, as "rabid" as someone named George Will can be), and because he toes no party line, using his logical, skeptical columns to question bad ideas wherever he finds them, with no regard for elephant or donkey.

I don't agree with everything he writes. In fact, I seldom agree with the sum total of his arguments, since they always lead back to a conservative ideology I find partial at best. However, I seldom finish one of his articles without learning something and questioning my ideas. You can't ask for more.

His recent Newsweek piece, entitled, "Questions for McCain," is boilerplate Will. While most conservative columnists spend their time defending McCain and attacking Obama (Will does his share of the latter as well), he plays no favorites. Several of McCain's policy positions (in particular campaign finance and foreign intervention) have given Will plenty to complain about in the context of conservative ideology. I thought the following "Question" was a wonderful rejoinder to the dim Republican argument against the invented, oxymoronic term "judicial activism":

You vow to nominate judges who "take as their sole responsibility the enforcement of laws made by the people's elected representatives." Their sole responsibility? Do you oppose judicial review that invalidates laws that pure-hearted representatives of the saintly people have enacted that happen to violate the Constitution?

I realize most Americans can't name the three branches of government, so it's a little too much to ask them to understand the system of separation of powers and checks and balances, but I'm always amazed by how many politicians, contrary to the Constitution, seem to think the judiciary should simply sit on their hands and let popular sovereignty reign. (Lest they be activist judges; the only way to avoid this, according to these folks, is to not act, or to simply rubber stamp every law the people's representatives create).

One reason the judiciary exists is to interpret the laws in light of the Constitution, in order to check the law-making powers, in case said laws violate the Constitution. No system is perfect, but there's a reason this one was put into place: the masses can sometimes be wrong and act in ignorance of the Constitution. That's why we have the collection of super-elites known as the Supreme Court whose judgments are supposed to come from a place removed from the bias of the political process, their primary goal being allegiance to the Constitution, framers' intent, and a long history of case law.

Now of course disagreements about how to interpret these documents create conflict and a unique Supreme Court politics (hence the strict constructionist/living document divide, or some such characterization) but as Constitutional experts, they're much better off making these decisions than, say, a representative elected from Alabama's fourth district, just to pick a random place where stupid people live.

Verb the Noun

Some words that can do themselves:

run the run (as in, "I ran the 5K")

walk the walk

talk the talk

phone the phone (As in, "Call my phone")

spear the spear

screw the screw (ouch)

drink the drink

I'm sure there are more...

The Kiddie Vote

An interesting thought experiment/potential modest proposal about giving all kids the right to vote. The author makes some valid points about the power of old people (not me, just anyone older than me) to skew politicians' agendas and rack up large debt for children to pay off in the future. Also, he suggests that children are no more unreasonable about their voting criteria than are adults. (A reader in the comment thread says that her six-year old likes Hillary because she's "a big lady" and doesn't like Obama because he looks like Voldemort. This strikes me as no less baseless than the Obama-is-a-Muslim argument a scary percentage of adults believe because they heard it through a forwarded email.)

While I have long advocated either lowering the voting age to match the age of the youngest persons tried as adults or simply trying no one as an adult until age 18, I don't fully sign on to the above article's thesis. My biggest problem would be with parents telling their kids whom to vote for (or, more or less, forcing them to vote a particular way). Most people aren't independent thinkers until their leave their parents. (Especially when the parents are vaguely fascist.) Additionally, this measure would give disproportionate power to people with lots of kids, who tend to be socially conservative, statistically. A few more kids, a few more votes, a few more homosexuals banished onto prison islands. I'm just saying.

Tom Waits announces tour with faux press conference

Has to be seen to be believed.

From a Cereal Commercial

"Who knew antioxidants could taste like maple brown sugar?"

The Post-American World

Fareed Zakaria has a wonderful article in Newsweek (actually it's an excerpt from his new book, The Post-American World) that is definitely worth checking out.

He starts with the premise that in the last ten years or so, the world has undergone a dramatic shift. He calls it "the rise of the rest," meaning that cultural and economic centers have risen up around the world, rivaling America's dominance on many fronts. He mentions the following symbolic examples:

Look around. The world's tallest building is in Taipei, and will soon be in Dubai. Its largest publicly traded company is in Beijing. Its biggest refinery is being constructed in India. Its largest passenger airplane is built in Europe. The largest investment fund on the planet is in Abu Dhabi; the biggest movie industry is Bollywood, not Hollywood. Once quintessentially American icons have been usurped by the natives. The largest Ferris wheel is in Singapore. The largest casino is in Macao, which overtook Las Vegas in gambling revenues last year. America no longer dominates even its favorite sport, shopping. The Mall of America in Minnesota once boasted that it was the largest shopping mall in the world. Today it wouldn't make the top ten. In the most recent rankings, only two of the world's ten richest people are American. These lists are arbitrary and a bit silly, but consider that only ten years ago, the United States would have serenely topped almost every one of these categories.

There are, of course, authentic economic structures beneath the surface of this pop culture and entertainment gloss:

Antoine van Agtmael, the fund manager who coined the term "emerging markets," has identified the 25 companies most likely to be the world's next great multinationals. His list includes four companies each from Brazil, Mexico, South Korea, and Taiwan; three from India, two from China, and one each from Argentina, Chile, Malaysia, and South Africa.

Fakaria believes that America can still lead, and that we have tremendous advantages, including our leading role in nanotechnology and biotechnology, our flexible and diverse economy, and our university systems. According to a ranking system developed in China, the United States has 8 of the world's top 10 universities and 37 of the top 50! As he mentions, this attracts a large amount of foreign students:

Foreign students and immigrants account for almost 50 percent of all science researchers in the country. In 2006 they received 40 percent of all PhDs. By 2010, 75 percent of all science PhDs in this country will be awarded to foreign students. When these graduates settle in the country, they create economic opportunity. Half of all Silicon Valley start-ups have one founder who is an immigrant or first generation American. The potential for a new burst of American productivity depends not on our education system or R&D spending, but on our immigration policies. If these people are allowed and encouraged to stay, then innovation will happen here. If they leave, they'll take it with them.

A strong plea for better immigration policies. Thomas Friedman once wrote that foreign students should be granted automatic citizenship upon receiving their master's degree. Good luck getting that through Congress, but the spirit of his proposal seems right.

Zakaria closes by addressing the paradox of American expansion. That is, we like to expand economically into other countries, but feel threatened when that same globalization washes ashore here:

Americans—particularly the American government—have not really understood the rise of the rest. This is one of the most thrilling stories in history. Billions of people are escaping from abject poverty. The world will be enriched and ennobled as they become consumers, producers, inventors, thinkers, dreamers, and doers. This is all happening because of American ideas and actions. For 60 years, the United States has pushed countries to open their markets, free up their politics, and embrace trade and technology. American diplomats, businessmen, and intellectuals have urged people in distant lands to be unafraid of change, to join the advanced world, to learn the secrets of our success. Yet just as they are beginning to do so, we are losing faith in such ideas. We have become suspicious of trade, openness, immigration, and investment because now it's not Americans going abroad but foreigners coming to America. Just as the world is opening up, we are closing down.

I plan on reading the book when I get a chance. This topic is kind of the external correlate to something I've been thinking about lately, which is the rise of global consciousness, that is, the kind of shared discourse that always accompanies the creation of a new culture, and the worldviews that inevitably follow. I may have to bone up on some Jurgen Habermas to figure this one out, but I plan on writing about this before too long. The emergence of a new cultural construct, the biggest one this planet can hold, is a given if the evolution of consciousness continues in the unite/reorient/expand pattern it's shown throughout history. More on this later.

I Got Nothing

Really, nothing. Gas done gone. Costs too damn much to get more. Barely got fumes to idle on. Vapors make sick me anyway. Way gone, really. Gas really sick. Fumes damn me. Nothing idling on nothing. Costs much more to get sick, really. Way too damn gone. Really nothing to get anyway. Too much idle gets me sick. Gets me gas. Gets me too damn much nothing really. Nothing much really to get anyway. Fumes to vapors really. Damn.

"DNC, I need you to need me"

Al Gore's new blog

Globe Bless W.I.T.

William Irwin Thompson has some astute observations about American presidential politics on his blog:

Americans insist on voting for their President as if they were voting for student body president in high school. So politicians have to be popular and not smart. Smart is elitist. So they have to kiss babies, eat junk food, bowl, lie through their false smiles, and invoke the plastic malled banalities about God and the Flag that will not please the former or improve the global symbolic value of the latter.

The common adage is that Americans want to vote for someone they'd be willing to sit down and have a beer with. I'm sure that's just bullshit and no one really votes that way. But sometimes I'm not so sure. The media has been all over Obama lately for eating arugula, bowling a 37, and not doing shots at some local bar while scratching his butt with a hunting rifle and belching the theme song to Walker Texas Ranger. Personally, anybody low enough on the totem pole to have a beer with me should never be president. I don't care if French is his first language, he only eats moss and lichens, and he cleans his bidet with 1000 dollar bills. (I also don't care if he is a she, or if he/she is gender queer.) Could we get back to the issues please? Oh, those are soooooo boring.

We report....you decide we're morons

Apparently Fox News did a story comparing the Clinton and Obama debates to the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates. However, they seemed to think the "Douglas" in question was Frederick Douglass, not Stephen Douglas. Simply beyond parody. Fox is now re-writing history, not just current events. I mean, I guess Abraham and Frederick would have had a few things to debate. They were both against slavery, but Lincoln was not in favor of full rights for blacks, and actually favored the idea of sending blacks back to Africa. However, I doubt the debates would have had the same importance without the pro-slavery Stephen Douglas on board. Fox News...We Report....sort of.

Li-Young Lee Reading

I saw Li-Young Lee read at Drake University last night. This was part of Des Moines' annual Poetry Festival, which I used to attend on a regular basis. Over the years I've seen readings from Charles Simic, Charles Wright, Eavan Boland, Marvin Bell, and Ruth Stone, as well as others, all at the Des Moines Fest. Since their event, due to sheer boobery, never has a webpage or any noticable publicity, it's difficult to figure out what other events are held. There used to be a couple of days of events, including readings by Iowa poets (an oxymoron?) and various workshops. Now it seems to be whittled down to one reading by a "major" poet, which I guess means based on book sales. I think they had Billy Collins a couple of years ago. Lee seems fitting for their purposes, since he turns up on public television and such.

Anyway, the reading had its moments, but the Q &A session was pretty fascinating. Not only does Lee have an incredible biography, but his ideas on poetry are atypical, at least in a Western environment. He talked about poetry as a yogic practice and the free verse poem as being organized around a series of coincidences. If prose is the language of causality (this happens because of that) then poetry is the language of synchronicity. He also spoke about the difference between "me" (the small, limited self focused on its own egoic concerns) and "I," the larger self we tap into with poetry, the self that, according to him, contains 1.4 million years of human evolution in its DNA, and so the vast experiences of humanity, as opposed to simply one human. This is of course, not likely as scientific as implied, but at least is an attempt at an antidote to the narcissism that sometimes creeps into poetry, since his formula calls for going beyond "me," though his work is still often rooted in autobiography.

From "Meditation and the Neuroscience of Consciousness"

p. 36 "Hence, a meditative technique that enables the practitioner to know Awareness or Clarity must somehow avoid attending to the particularities of object and subject and grant access instead to the fact of knowing itself. The problem, according to Chag-zôg theorists, is that untrained persons are deeply entangled in the accidental features of experience; generally, they focus especially on the features of the object, and occasionally they are explicitly aware of themselves as subjects. But in either case, untrained persons are not aware of what is invariant in those experiences."

Though maybe not to you, this is passage is humorous to me. I guess because the language ratherly clinical describes something that seems like it would be anything but. In the language of Buddhism, of course, the "untrained persons [who] are not aware of what is invariant in those experiences" are stuck in Samsara (a much more poetic, and shorter, way to say that). And, of course, the "invariant" itself has a variety of names across many cultures, "Nirvana" in Buddhism, is one example. However, I'm enjoying the manner in which the authors are striving for a scientific language to discuss these phenomena, and I certainly applaud scientists for entering these meditative fields (figuratively and literally). After all, at its most basic, "science" simply means "to know," and so knowing meditative states isn't really out of bounds.

Modernist Journals Project

Pdf versions of Modernist journals pre-1923, courtesy Brown University.

What Neuroscience will never measure

Yesterday I read an interview with philosopher Ken Wilber in Salon.com, the first relatively mainstream magazine I've seen him interviewed in. For those familiar with his work, there was nothing new. In fact, he uses many of the canned lines I've heard from him before. However, in light of yesterday's post, and my continued reading of neuroscientific approaches to meditation, I'd like to share a quotation from the Wilber interview I thought was well-stated:

"Q: You're saying there's no way we can map what's happening in our brains -- the neuronal activity, the synaptic connections -- to explain what's going on in our inner experience.

A: That's right. All you can do is map certain correlations. You can say that when a person's thinking logically, certain parts of the brain light up. But you can't determine what the person is thinking. More important, you can't reproduce the reality of the person thinking because that's a first-person experience. This first-person reality can't be reduced to third-person material entities. What that means is that consciousness can't be reduced to matter. You can't give a material explanation of how the experience of consciousness arises."

On some levels, this strikes me as so obvious as to need no commentary. However, as we know, the materialist philosophy is alive and well, though, I am told, not in philosophy departments, just in science. But, I cannot lie, I did write a paper for Modern Western Philosophy arguing for a Hobbesian materialist position, and the above response by Wilber only seems obvious to me now because I've spent so much time with his work, much of which initially served as a massive corrective to several flawed views I once held, one of which is explained away above in a way that, for me, ends the argument for materialism forever.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to reading more about neuroscience and learning what the brain looks like from the outside during meditative states. There's really only one way to know what it looks like from the inside, which, to the best of my knowledge, doesn't look like a neuron firing.

Picking Back Up

Sorry, I haven't had much to say lately. This strikes me as a good thing.

I have been reading a couple of things, as usual. I thought I would share this killer sentence from an Albert Goldbarth poem, found in The Kitchen Sink: New and Selected Poems, 1972-2007:

"You can stroke a head to sleep and still/ not understand the universe an inch behind its eyes."

I like the ambiguous pronoun "its" here, which could refer to either the head or the universe, the latter implying that humans are the "eyes" of universe, or its awareness. But, more importantly, Goldbarth is commenting on the privileged position of subjective consciousness, how it cannot be re-created from the objective position. That is, you can tell me what's on your mind, but I can never be your mind. I can chart your brain with a machine, but what it looks like from the outside is a different thing---unknowable to me---than its subjective correlate.

This connects directly to the other thing I'm reading, a long essay on neuroscience's work in the realm of meditation. It's about 120 pages, and I'm 1/4 through, so more on this subject later. Well, okay, I'll share a bit that I thought was brilliant, which is the authors' (yes, more than one scientist signed on to this game) justification for dabbling in practices traditionally championed by Eastern religious traditions. It's very simple, and integrally-minded, I might add: just as the world of medicine pays attention to the ancient findings of native peoples, who, without the benefit of Western science, sorted through nature's offerings and discovered a whole host of legitimate, as well as bogus cures, so too does the scientist of consciousness look to the true amateur professionals (in this case, Buddhist meditators) who have been studying subjective brain states for a couple thousand years. Then, applying the best of Western science, these meditation findings can be stripped of their needless metaphysical postulations and presented in a new context.

In any event, the scientific studies on meditation are multiplying as we speak, and this essay proposes to summarize current neuroscience approaches to the subject (pun intended).

Local Newscaster Non sequitur

After an interview segment with the mother of an accused kidnapper, the anchor says, with a straight face, "Doyle said her son is so charming that he once talked his way out of an Iowa mental institution."

Happy Earth Day from Al Gore

A new post.

Overheard at local diner:

"It was a stabby-looking two-by-four."