Ludwig was baptized 239 years ago today.

1.  Nonsense sharpens the mind!  (Readers of this blog are in luck!)

2.  Testosterone makes men stingy! (That explains it!)

3.  David Brooks:  Social and affective neuroscience “will replace misleading categories like ‘emotion’ and ‘reason.’ I suspect that the work will take us beyond the obsession with I.Q. and other conscious capacities and give us a firmer understanding of motivation, equilibrium, sensitivity and other unconscious capacities.” (I don’t know what I feel or think about this….)

4.  Yottabytes!?!  (That’s how much information Big Brother has on you and me.)

5.  Heil Heidegger! — Carlin Romano on Heidegger:

How many scholarly stakes in the heart will we need before Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), still regarded by some as Germany’s greatest 20th-century philosopher, reaches his final resting place as a prolific, provincial Nazi hack? Overrated in his prime, bizarrely venerated by acolytes even now, the pretentious old Black Forest babbler makes one wonder whether there’s a university-press equivalent of wolfsbane, guaranteed to keep philosophical frauds at a distance.

(Don’t hold back, Carlin.  What do you really think of Heidegger???  Make sure to read the nearly universal negative comments to Carlin’s screed.)

2.  How to get your money’s worth when ordering a beer.

3.  How to have morality without religion.

4.  How to get an education for free.

5.  How to think about Fiji Water.

He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.

–Nietzsche

Well, another summer come and (almost) gone.  What did I do on my summer vacation?  I climbed a mountain.  I swam in the sea.  I wandered the desert.  I gazed into an abyss.

No, I don’t just mean the Grand Canyon.  I mean the abyss of Facebook and Twitter.  And this abyss has been gazing into me.  It gazed into me as I climbed mountains, tangled with wild animals, watched sunrises and sunsets, sweated by the Saguaros, dodged lightning, feted my children’s successes, did my job, aired my grievances, expressed my hopes, cracked a few jokes.  I know I left out a bunch, but since I know the full context of all my postings it feels like nothing got left out at all.  Yes, it is true that I often don’t have the faintest idea what my “friends” are talking about in their posts…most are just in-jokes of various degrees of levity or angst.  I don’t have the context.  You had to be there, I guess.  But by posting my own inscrutabilites, I have this sense I’ve sent it all out there into the e-byss of virtual relationships (perhaps an oxymoron, that).  Now why would I have done that?  Why would anyone?

Facebook turned “friend” into a verb (“friending”).  By their count, I have friended or been friended by a mere 53 “friends”–the page with the list more modestly calls these “connections,” now.   My FB friends include:

• 1 wife/soul-mate/love-of-my-life/BFF
• 0 ex-wives (imagine that!)
• 2 blood relatives (my parents)
• 2 step-kids
• 15 step-relatives
• 2 ex-girlfriends, who, though well rid of me both then and now, really seemed to have meant that old “we’re just good friends” line…at least virtually
• 2 women (but they were girls back then…) who I would have liked now to be calling ex-girlfriends (I mean that in a good way…) but who would probably have known this back then, thus explaining why they kept a wide berth at the time; i.e., to avoid being referred to decades later as an ex-girlfriend of mine
• 1 woman (but she was a girl back then) who would have had NO IDEA that I’d have liked to have included her in the preceding category–she kept an even wider berth
• 1 ex-girlfriend–I guess that’s the right designation–of my stepson (for some reason)
• 11 professional colleagues, some close, some more distant…one of whom apparently counts for TWO of my friends (c’mon, H-H…pick one profile and stick with it!  I’ll be accused of padding my numbers…)
• 1 son of a colleague (that is not an epithet, btw)
• 3 pretty good pals from my youth (whom I more or less hadn’t seen or heard from since youth)
• 11 various and sundry acquaintances from high school days and just after

Of the “friends” I know (I admit I don’t really know all of them–even most of them, truth be told), there isn’t one I don’t at least think I like.  I’m glad to be “friended” to all of them (if that’s how you say it).

Having so few friends/connections makes me “unpopular.”  I confess this does not bother me in the least.  At one time, perhaps it would have, but this is not that time.

I have twittered this summer, too.  I have two “followers.”  I like the sound of that: FOLLOWERS.  Anybody can have friends, but to have FOLLOWERS!  But I digress.  My followers consist of one of my FB friends (to protect reputations and fallout from my fading yet opportunistic memory, I decline to say from which category), and  my brother, who is not my friend, FB-wise.  I noticed, too, that I picked up a couple of faux-”followers” who glommed on when I tweeted about someplace I visited in Arizona (hotels and tourist services).  I found that a little creepy, really.  I like to know my followers.

On Facebook, I was often invited to take challenges, answer poll questions, pass virtual drinks around, test my knowledge of music or films, check my compatibility with other people’s tastes in music or films, and on and on.  I declined.  Nothing personal.  No, really, it’s nothing personal.  I like personal, and those little Hallmark-y type mechanisms for interacting are not needed among actual friends, so I refuse to make use of them with my virtual friends (if there are such things).

I uploaded a few pictures.  I looked at pictures from my friends.  I like looking at pictures, even if I don’t know who or what I am looking at.  I just enjoy a good picture.  There rarely are any good pictures, though.  Just pictures, snapshots, some a little embarrassing to tell the truth, but mostly just photos of people doing people stuff or places that looked like they needed to be photographed at the time one of my friends was standing there.  But good or bad, I do look at the pictures.   Beats reading, really.

I was just thinking that if I got all of my FB friends in one room for a party, it would be a weird party.  I like weird parties as a rule, so maybe it would be good.  But it would definitely be weird.  It reminds us that you can have lots of different friends, have friends of widely varying personalities, but that you wouldn’t necessarily want to have them all over on the same night.  You can like lobster.  You can like peanut butter and jelly.  But you won’t like lobster and peanut butter and jelly, if you catch my meaning.

Some of the postings from my friends were thought provoking…not just the Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot kind of provocation (“Wha???”), but the kind that actually provoke thought.  Not often, but now and then.  Sometimes the postings were downright hilarious.  Yes…I was LAUGHING OUT LOUD!  But again, not very often.  Some people wrote nice things.  Some people wrote ambiguously nice things, so I chose to take them in the nicest possible sense.  Nobody said anything too mean or negative.  Only the occasionally e-burst of boredom or quotidian frustration.  These things pass.  Nothing of it will mean anything in a few hours, let alone months or years.  FB postings are as ephemeral as water cooler conversations.  Or text messages.  Or tweets.  Or sneezes.  I was once directly asked a serious question–off line, in the email functionality of FB.  The question required effort–I had to watch a video and give my opinion.  I did that.  I didn’t hear anything more about it.  That’s the way it goes.  Even if you have a good question or thought, by the time anyone gets around to commenting, the moment of your own initial interest is probably gone.  As it probably should be.  FB is just something to pass the time.

I am probably violating some code of FB conduct by talking about FB, rather than just talking on FB.  Who wants to be asked why they’re doing what they’re doing?  Who even wants to know why, themselves?

Anyway, the fall semester is at hand.  Back to learning/teaching philosophy (as if that’s not what I’ve been doing all along…).

So the question is this:  Do I continue with Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking activities?  I’ll leave it up to you.  Just leave a comment and a vote.

Oh…wait…I forgot.  I’m BLOGGING.  Probably to myself.

David Plotz says we should read the Bible, every single word of it.  And we should read his book, too.  Why?

Question: After someone reads the Slate article, do they have any reason to buy your book instead of just buying a Bible? What does your book have that a Bible doesn’t?
David Plotz: You can leave my book in the bathroom, and not feel guilty about it!
My book is by no means a substitute for the Bible. It’s an effort to bring a new, curious, irreverent perspective to a book that has been made inaccessible and difficult by clergy and academics. If there is anything I hope Good Book does, it is to show readers the exuberant, fascinating messiness of the Bible, and encourage them to read it themselves.

Seems like a good enough reason.

John Rawls also says (from the beyond the grave) that we should read the Bible.  He said the following in his recently published undergraduate thesis:

An ounce of the Bible is worth a pound (possibly a ton) of Aristotle.

Even the Peripatetic Prattler can’t disagree.

David Harvey says we should read Marx’s Capital.  He’ll even help us.

Economist and blogger  Paul Krugman says we should read torturers the riot act in order to reclaim America’s soul.  Why?

…because America is more than a collection of policies. We are, or at least we used to be, a nation of moral ideals. In the past, our government has sometimes done an imperfect job of upholding those ideals. But never before have our leaders so utterly betrayed everything our nation stands for [...] the only way we can regain our moral compass, not just for the sake of our position in the world, but for the sake of our own national conscience, is to investigate how that happened, and, if necessary, to prosecute those responsible.

(“Never before”?  Really?  Maybe Krugman hasn’t read Zinn or Chomsky.  Maybe he doesn’t watch Democracy Now! Anyway, I hope his net’ll catch all the Democrats who were briefed a long time ago about all this, along with the Republican S.O.B.s).  You can read some of the relevant memos here.

A. N. Wilson says we shouldn’t bother reading C.S. Lewis.  Anything at all linguistic should be sufficient to lose our atheistic faith:

The phenomenon of language alone should give us pause. A materialist Darwinian was having dinner with me a few years ago and we laughingly alluded to how, as years go by, one forgets names. Eager, as committed Darwinians often are, to testify on any occasion, my friend asserted: “It is because when we were simply anthropoid apes, there was no need to distinguish between one another by giving names.”
This credal confession struck me as just as superstitious as believing in the historicity of Noah’s Ark. More so, really.
Do materialists really think that language just “evolved”, like finches’ beaks, or have they simply never thought about the matter rationally? Where’s the evidence? How could it come about that human beings all agreed that particular grunts carried particular connotations? How could it have come about that groups of anthropoid apes developed the amazing morphological complexity of a single sentence, let alone the whole grammatical mystery which has engaged Chomsky and others in our lifetime and linguists for time out of mind? No, the existence of language is one of the many phenomena – of which love and music are the two strongest – which suggest that human beings are very much more than collections of meat. They convince me that we are spiritual beings, and that the religion of the incarnation, asserting that God made humanity in His image, and continually restores humanity in His image, is simply true. As a working blueprint for life, as a template against which to measure experience, it fits.

You can read an interview with this convert here.

Mark Edmundson says we shouldn’t be reading “readings.” Rather, we should just be reading.  He begins:

If I could make one wish for the members of my profession, college and university professors of literature, I would wish that for one year, two, three, or five, we would give up readings. By a reading, I mean the application of an analytical vocabulary — Marx’s, Freud’s, Foucault’s, Derrida’s, or whoever’s — to describe and (usually) to judge a work of literary art. I wish that we’d declare a moratorium on readings. I wish that we’d give readings a rest.

Amen, brother!

And speaking of amen, the Pope will have to read this secret memo (scroll down…it’s the second piece) before President Obama will visit the Vatican.

As is often the case with letters to the editor, the letter as printed is an edited version of the letter as sent.  I appreciate mine being printed, and the edited version does convey the key point I tried to make.  But here is the full, somewhat more provocative, letter, as sent:

To the Editors:

I write neither in defense nor in opposition to the President’s decision to loosen restrictions on embryonic stem cell research, but rather to draw attention to an insidious idea that infects both the Inquirer’s editorial and Tony Auth’s editorial cartoon (3/10) on this issue. In claiming that the President’s “directive helps to separate ideology from scientific inquiry,” the Inquirer’s position tends to reduce morality to ideology. But this effectively opposes science to morality, and insofar as “science” is opposed to morality, it is no longer science but the ideology of “scientism.” This ideology dismisses as mere “ideologues” those opposed for moral reasons to using human embryos willy-nilly for scientific research. But this dismissal is not rooted in amoral scientific reasoning, but in its own deep-seated ideological presuppositions.

I’m not so sure “ideology” or morality can (or even should) be finally and completely separated from science, anyway.  Ask yourself:  Would you prefer that science drive morality (even if it drives it out of the public square)? Or would you prefer that morality drive science (even if it were to put the brakes on certain courses of research)? If the second option makes you nervous (as it clearly does the Inquirer), before you take the first option you might remember such “men of science” as Mengele and Kevorkian. Both held that being expert in “science” makes one expert in “morality.” Both believed that if science can do it, science should do it. That’s all the “morality” that’s needed—the rest is “ideology.” They would never “shut off a field of vast potential without knowing the possible results.”

But morality is not based on the possible but on the good. Dismissing morality as “ideology” stifles debate and impoverishes democracy. Those of us who believe this are willing to live—and perhaps die, as someday we all must (a point we seem never to remember)—with option two.

Let me be very clear:  I am not at all calling those in favor of embryonic stem cell research “Mengeles” and “Kevorkians.” I am cautioning against arguing like them when advocating for such research. There may well be, on balance, a stronger moral argument in favor of embryonic stem cell research than against it (the editorial mentions some important moral considerations). But the claim that we should engage in it simply because scientifically we can is not a scientific claim or a moral claim, but an ideological one—and a dangerous one at that.

Speaking of bloom, I first heard about this in a talk (notice) by Yale psychologist Paul Bloom:  the world’s ”most desirable painting.”  Mentioned also in Dutton, an experiment in the nineties by Komar and Melamid conducted surveys to determine tastes in painting. Here is the most desirable painting for Americans:

The funny thing is, in almost all the world, everyone prefers paintings that contain a lot of blue, water, trees, animals, people, and historic figures.  Here, for instance, is the favorite from Kenya:

You can check out the rest of the (remarkably similar) most desired–and the least desired–paintings for different nationalities here.  Just one thing:  Can sombody please explain to me the Dutch (whom I love and yet cannot fathom)!

Self-medication may be the reason the blogosphere has taken off. Scientists (and writers) have long known about the therapeutic benefits of writing about personal experiences, thoughts and feelings. But besides serving as a stress-coping mechanism, expressive writing produces many physiological benefits. Research shows that it improves memory and sleep, boosts immune cell activity and reduces viral load in AIDS patients, and even speeds healing after surgery. A study in the February issue of the Oncologist reports that cancer patients who engaged in expressive writing just before treatment felt markedly better, mentally and physically, as compared with patients who did not.

Scientists now hope to explore the neurological underpinnings at play, especially considering the explosion of blogs. According to Alice Flaherty, a neuroscientist at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital, the placebo theory of suffering is one window through which to view blogging. As social creatures, humans have a range of pain-related behaviors, such as complaining, which acts as a “placebo for getting satisfied,” Flaherty says. Blogging about stressful experiences might work similarly.

Have I mentioned I’ve spent A LOT OF TIME IN AIRPLANES LATELY???

There…I feel a little better already.  But wait, have I not been mucking up the environment and contributing to global warming with all this traveling?  I am starting to feel guilty, ashamed, sinful.  Freeman Dyson can explain that.  In reviewing a couple of new books on global warming, he notes:

All the books that I have seen about the science and economics of global warming, including the two books under review, miss the main point. The main point is religious rather than scientific. There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. The ethics of environmentalism are being taught to children in kindergartens, schools, and colleges all over the world.

I must’ve got religion, ’cause I feel convicted.  In fact, we should all feel convicted.  Dyson continues:

Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion. And the ethics of environmentalism are fundamentally sound. Scientists and economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds and butterflies is good. The worldwide community of environmentalists—most of whom are not scientists—holds the moral high ground, and is guiding human societies toward a hopeful future. Environmentalism, as a religion of hope and respect for nature, is here to stay. This is a religion that we can all share, whether or not we believe that global warming is harmful.

Yet isn’t that what Czech President Vaclav Klaus, famed global warming denier, has being going on about lately?  He doesn’t think this is a religion we can or ought to share.  He complains in a recent book:

The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy, and prosperity at the end of the 20th and at the beginning of the 21st century is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism.

Klaus sees no hope at all in the religion of environmentalism.  He’s worried about his country’s economy.  So are the leaders of India, China, and Brazil, to name just three who are unlikely to get the new-time religion.  Money talks; piety walks.

But to go back to Dyson:  he concludes by suggesting that while the morality of environmentalism is good and righteous, it does not have to be the case that global warming deniers are automatically consigned to the coal-fired flames of hell.  You can still be a conservationist while being agnostic about global warming.  And are there not other equally important moral challenges that confront us?

Unfortunately, some members of the environmental movement have also adopted as an article of faith the belief that global warming is the greatest threat to the ecology of our planet. That is one reason why the arguments about global warming have become bitter and passionate. Much of the public has come to believe that anyone who is skeptical about the dangers of global warming is an enemy of the environment. The skeptics now have the difficult task of convincing the public that the opposite is true. Many of the skeptics are passionate environmentalists. They are horrified to see the obsession with global warming distracting public attention from what they see as more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet, including problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation, and social injustice.

I think the John McCain approach to global warming is fair enough:  “but what if it is true?”  Okay, so let’s take some steps to clean up our act.  But it seems to me that too many people seem to pick this issue to get most passionate about, I think, because it is so “easy.”  Not easy to solve but easy to be passionate about.  Apparently you can be passionate about global warming all the way along your commute to work each morning, all alone in your car.  I mean, you don’t have to ride the trolley or, God forbid, walk.  Certainly you wouldn’t be required to sell your house and buy a condo in a high-rise across the street from your office.  You wouldn’t have to quit your travel-demanding job or stop going to international conferences because of the pollution it generates–perhaps you could just buy carbon offset credits.  You wouldn’t have to give up t.v. or the internet; you could just buy “Al Gore lightbulbs.”  You know what I mean…nobody wants to get crazy about it or anything.  And let those other countries endanger their economic well-being.  We’re already taken care of.  But by all means, let’s end global warming now.

On the other hand, if instead of the environment you were passionate about, say, hunger, homelessness, or the intense struggles in some of our inner-city schools, well then you’d have tostep outside your front door and actually do something that might be risky, that would get you out of your comfort zone, that might have you looking into the eyes of a hungry, homeless person with a first and last name.  They might have a knife, and who know the last time they’ve bathed.  Scares the daylights out of me!  Way too hard.

So I’m allowing myself to enteratain a certain level of global warming guilt.  In atonement, I’m working on the environment.  I’ve got my  ”Al Gore lightbulbs” (except in my reading lamp, because you can’t see a thing with those spirally things).  I walked to work today (how about you?)  I’m going to cancel an upcoming trip (have I MENTIONED HOW MUCH FRICKIN’ TIME I’M SPENDING IN AIRPLANES?!).  I turn the lights off when I leave the office, even to go to the copier (which I’m going to try to use less of).  I’m doing my part.