langer

To everyone who complains about the amount of political discussion on Tumblr

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 02:20:00 -0400

There was a time in American history when openly airing political opinions in public wasn’t considered to be either “taboo” or the sort of activity that would be met with a common derision along the lines of “that’s so last year.” People once published lo-fi blogs (they called them pamphlets back then) that actually influenced the course of public events by influencing the course of public debate.

And those were the days when democracy was at its healthiest.

We’re less than sixty days from a watershed election in our national history and people want to talk about it. If you’re not interested maybe it’s because you’re so last year.

Face it: politics is your new fixed-gear bicycle.

"Until lately the best thing that I was able to think of in favor of civilization, apart from blind..."

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 12:01:50 -0400

“Until lately the best thing that I was able to think of in favor of civilization, apart from blind acceptance of the order of the universe, was that it made possible the artist, the poet, the philosopher, and the man of science. But I think that is not the greatest thing. Now I believe that the greatest thing is a matter that comes directly home to us all. When it is said that we are too much occupied with the means of living to live, I answer that the chief worth of civilization is just that it makes the means of living more complex; that it calls for great and combined intellectual efforts, instead of simple, uncoordinated ones, in order that the crowd may be fed and clothed and housed and moved from place to place. Because more complex and intense intellectual efforts mean a fuller and richer life. They mean more life. Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have enough of it.”

- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

barthel / vanmega / cameronr: I think that being well informed on current popular culture trends...

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 00:30:51 -0400

barthel / vanmega / cameronr:

I think that being well informed on current popular culture trends is just as important as being versed in politics and history.

The selection of “current popular culture trends” as something on par with politics in terms of relevance or importance is wholly subjective and arbitrary—and ultimately, I feel, meaningless.

To be conversant in popular culture means to be in control of a language and a lexicon that serve to grant or deny access to a particular social group—and all groups work this way. In David Singh Grewal’s fascinating new study of social dynamics entitled Network Power, this would be described as a standard: “A standard must be shared among members of the network to a sufficient degree that they can achieve forms of reciprocity, exchange, or collective effort. Consider, for example, networks of English speakers, Internet chat room participants, consumers in the Euro zone, or people who use the metric system. In every case, a standard is central to the existence of the network, serving as a convention common to all its members.”

Individuals can belong to many networks and be excluded from many others based solely on our ability to harness the respective standards of each group. I belong to a network of people who are interested in comparative literature and critical theory; as such it is necessary that I know something about Barbara Johnson’s latest book or Slavoj Zizek’s most recent talk or why Brian Leiter is hating on continental philosophy this week. I belong to another network of people who build applications for the web, and so it’s necessary that I know something about MVC, database sharding, and typecasting. I belong to yet a third network of Formula One fans, which means I know something about the Gurney flap, remote telemetry, and Spa Francorchamps.

And on and on and on.

Brian Leiter, MVC, and Spa are terms that may well sound as foreign to you as talk of Lindsay Lohan’s girlfriend sounds to me, but that doesn’t mean I’d have any less ground on which to assert that one’s understanding of them is just as important as one’s understanding of politics. There’d be just as much validity to my statement as there is to yours—which is to say: none.

This is because of the direct relationship between one’s ignorance of a network’s standards and one’s exclusion from that network. I’m excluded from the network of football fans because I can’t command the vocabulary of football.

And this is drastically different from politics, at least in its most prevalent parliamentary forms: one’s knowledge or understanding of the dominant standards has no relation to one’s ability to participate. In the United States you can only be excluded from the political network by being an alien, being under the age of 18, or being a felon (though recent elections have tested this theory).

Also drastically different from politics: my ignorance of Lindsay Lohan has no impact on my livelihood or the livelihood of anyone around me. It only serves to exclude me from that network. On the other hand, one’s ignorance has absolutely no bearing on his or her ability to participate in the political network, but drastic consequences for both oneself and everyone else who is a part of that network.

"Survival as a Passion"

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 23:32:00 -0400

John McCain is obsessed with his personal history as a POW—and that’s fine. What’s terrifying is that he wishes to ride this biography all the way to the White House where he’ll become the commander in chief of the entire American military apparatus.

Why so terrifying? Consider this passage from Elias Canetti’s Crowds and Power entitled “Survival as a Passion”:

The satisfaction in survival, which is a kind of pleasure, can become a dangerous and insatiable passion. It feeds on its occasions. The larger and more frequent the heaps of dead which a survivor confronts, the stronger and more insistent becomes his need for them. The careers of heroes and soldiers suggest that a kind of addiction ensues, which in the end becomes incurable. The usual explanation of this is that such men can only breathe in danger; to them an existence without danger is stale and flat; they find no savour in a peaceful life. The attraction of danger should not be underestimated, but what we tend to forget is that such men do not set out on their adventures alone. There are others with them who succumb to the danger and this affords them the continually repeated pleasure of survival, which is what they really need and what they can no longer do without.

In order to satisfy this craving it is not always necessary to expose oneself to danger. No one man can himself kill enough other men. On a battlefield, however, there are thousands all acting in the same way, and, if a man is their commander, if he controls their movements, if the very battle springs from his decision, then he can appropriate to himself all the dead bodies which result from it, for he is responsible for them. It is not for nothing that the commander in the field bears his proud title. He commands; he sends his men against the enemy, and to their death. If he is victorious, all the dead on the battlefield belong to him, both those who fought for him and those who fought against him. In victory after victory he survives them all. And this is what he wants; the triumph he celebrates later leaves no doubt of it. The significance of his victories is measured by the number of the dead. A triumph is ludicrous when the enemy has surrendered without a proper fight and there are only a few dead. It is glorious when the enemy has defended himself bravely, when the victory was strongly contested and cost many lives.

I repeat myself: John McCain defines himself by his survivor status. And he wishes to command the United States military.

Stop talking about Palin's family

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 00:24:46 -0400

80% of America says the country is on the wrong track. To inject family values into this race is to shoot ourselves in the foot.

Neither Democrats nor the mainstream media brought up Palin’s family in the first place; Steve Schmidt did. These decoys were part of a deliberate strategy to pave the way for tonight’s red carpet rollout of every tried and tested bogeyman in the right wing arsenal. They can’t make this election about policy so they have to make it about how Democrats hate families.

They don’t want to talk about how the national average for per-capita earmark spending is $51.19, while during Palin’s tenure in Wasilla, AK, it was $1,000. They want to talk about elitist northerners, the angry left, and the liberal media.

They don’t to talk about how Palin is now refusing to testify regarding her role in what could amount to a serious abuse of power. They want to talk about elitist northerners, the angry left, and the liberal media.

They don’t want to talk about how an entire convention center full of patriotic Republicans holding “America First” placards stood up tonight to applaud a woman with serious ties to an Alaskan separatist movement inspired by “hatred for the American government” and “the damn flag.” They want to talk about elitist northerners, the angry left, and the liberal media.

If our goal is to win this election I strongly advise against doing anything Steve Schmidt tells us to do.

"But for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original,..."

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 22:01:27 -0400

“But for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence… truth is considered profane, and only illusion is sacred. Sacredness is in fact held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness.”

- Ludwig Feuerbach, summarizing this week in American politics in his preface to the second edition of The Essence of Christianity

Orange's Unlimited Web Page

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 13:02:04 -0400

Orange's Unlimited Web Page: Fun.

From the Penguin & Pelican Collection

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 12:57:25 -0400

From the Penguin & Pelican Collection

If we’re looking at instant messaging networks, we’re all apparently connected by at...

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 11:09:54 -0400

If we’re looking at instant messaging networks, we’re all apparently connected by at most 6.6 degrees of separation.

By way of social networking sites, on the other hand, it looks like three is the new six.

Yet this all seems a bit petty and frivolous to me. Can either of these rubrics connect me to someone in Sudan? How about Ecuador? Or inner-city Baltimore for that matter?

These studies stand in stark contrast to the legitimately meaningful value offered by the web, as Zach Klein noted when Union Square Ventures threw down for Meetup:

“The next generation of services will need to have an impact on the real world and the real economy, not just an attention economy driven by self expression and discovery online.”

- Brad Burnham

just what i see

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 10:40:25 -0400

just what i see: The iPhone photography of Greg Schmigel. A neat idea—reminds me a lot of my so-called lifecast, although this guy clearly frequents more interesting places than my MacBook Pro ever does.

A message from Campaign for America’s Future airing...

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 00:52:50 -0400

A message from Campaign for America’s Future airing throughout the convention in the Twin Cities media market.

37signals: How to manage long breaks in your software side projects

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 23:35:10 -0400

37signals: How to manage long breaks in your software side projects : A painfully obvious strategy I wish I’d thought of years ago.

"What is he gonna do? Accuse Barack Obama of fathering two black children?"

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 11:17:26 -0400

“What is he gonna do? Accuse Barack Obama of fathering two black children?”

- TPM’s Eric Kleefeld on McCain’s hiring of Tucker Eskew, the man who famously asked South Carolina voters in 2000, “Would you be more or less likely to vote for John McCain…if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?

À une passante

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 10:53:11 -0400

by Charles Baudelaire

The street about me roared with a deafening sound.
Tall, slender, in heavy mourning, majestic grief,
A woman passed, with a glittering hand
Raising, swinging the hem and flounces of her skirt;

Agile and graceful, her leg was like a statue’s.
Tense as in a delirium, I drank
From her eyes, pale sky where tempests germinate,
The sweetness that enthralls and the pleasure that kills.

A lightning flash… then night! Fleeting beauty
By whose glance I was suddenly reborn,
Will I see you no more before eternity?

Elsewhere, far, far from here! too late! never perhaps!
For I know not where you fled, you know not where I go,
O you whom I would have loved, O you who knew it!

"The strangers on Hudson Street, the allies whose eyes help us natives keep the peace of the street,..."

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 10:45:00 -0400

“The strangers on Hudson Street, the allies whose eyes help us natives keep the peace of the street, are so many that they always seem to be different people from one day to the next. That does not matter. Whether they are so many always-different people as they seem to be, I do not know. Likely they are. When Jimmy Rogan fell through a plate-glass window (he was separating some scuffling friends) and almost lost his arm, a stranger in an old t-shirt emerged from the Ideal bar, swiftly applied an expert tourniquet and, according to the hospital’s emergency staff, saved Jimmy’s life. Nobody remembered seeing the man before and no one has seen him since. The hospital was called in this way: a woman sitting on the steps next to the accident ran over to the bus stop, wordlessly snatched the dime from the hand of a stranger who was waiting with his fifteen-cent fare ready, and raced into the Ideal’s phone booth. The stranger raced after her to offer her the nickel too. Nobody remembered seeing him before, and no one has seen him since. When you see the same stranger three or four times on Hudson Street, you begin to nod. This is almost getting to be an acquaintance, a public acquaintance, of course… On Hudson Street, the same as in the North End of Boston or in any other animated neighborhoods of great cities, we are not innately more competent at keeping the sidewalks safe than are the people who try to live off the hostile truce of Turf in a blind-eyed city. We are the lucky possessors of a city order that makes it relatively simple to keep the peace because there are plenty of eyes on the street. But there is nothing simple about that order itself, or the bewildering number of components that go into it. Most of those components are specialized in one way or another. They unite in their joint effect upon the sidewalk, which is not specialized in the least. That is its strength.”

- Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities

"A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church..."

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 00:43:26 -0400

“A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation.”

- The Baptist Faith & Message, adopted June 14, 2000 (yes, 2000 A.D.)

"The worst that can happen to men in war is to perish together; and this spares them death as..."

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 20:18:42 -0400

“The worst that can happen to men in war is to perish together; and this spares them death as individuals, which is what they most fear.”

- Elias Canetti

"Which one of us, in his moments of ambition, has not dreamed of the miracle of a poetic prose,..."

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 20:17:48 -0400

“Which one of us, in his moments of ambition, has not dreamed of the miracle of a poetic prose, musical, without rhythm and without rhyme, supple enough to adapt itself to the lyrical impulses of the soul, the undulations of reverie, the jibes of conscience?”

- Charles Baudelaire

"New York is just too big, too complex to be served by any one writer. At best he can only offer his..."

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 20:16:08 -0400

“New York is just too big, too complex to be served by any one writer. At best he can only offer his little tribute to something he loves, but which is beyond him.”

- Robert Moses

Banksy hits Birmingham.

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 09:29:55 -0400

Banksy hits Birmingham.