60s and 70s Science Fiction Madness

To prove: If you pursue the absurd far enough, eventually you break through to the sublime.

1. "Barbarella" (1968).

2. John Carpeneter's freshman directorial effort, "Dark Star" (1974).

3. Buck Rogers in the 25th Century theatrical pilot opening: Buck dreams of space disco queen Erin Grey for 500 years while adrift in space.

4. Buck Rogers in the 25th Century: Twiki falls in love.

5. "Starcrash" (1979).

QED.

Tyler Cowen on Growing Income Inequality and Our Unequal Future

1. Cowen's new book on our unequal future: "Average Is Over." Economist review of "Average Is Over." Daily Beast review of "Average Is Over."

2. "The great reset": In 2012, real median household income was 8.3% lower than in 2007.

3. New results on labor market polarization.

Strange Synergy

1. Tyler Cowen's reflections on the economy and society in the new world of big data and ubiquitous computing.

2. "Billy Mordor"'s reflections on cyberpunk and the end of golden-age sci-fi: technology transforms our social problems, it does not solve them.

More Wisdom of the Desert

"One of the elders used to say: In the beginning when we got together we used to talk about something that was good for our souls, and we went up and up, and ascended even to heaven. But now we get together and spend our time in criticizing everything, and we drag one another down into the abyss." (From The Wisdom of the Desert [selections from the Verba Seniorum], Thomas Merton, translator, p. 95.)

The Wisdom of the Desert

"The story is told that one of the elders lay dying in Scete, and the brethren surrounded his bed, dressed him in the shroud, and began to weep. But he opened his eyes and laughed. He laughed another time, and then a third time. When the brethren saw this, they asked him, saying: Tell us, Father, why you are laughing while we weep? He said to them: I laughed the first time because you fear death. I laughed the second time because you are not ready for death. And the third time I laughed because from labours I go to my rest. As soon as he said this, he closed his eyes in death." (Thomas Merton, trans., The Wisdom of the Desert [Selections from the Verba Seniorum], p. 105.)

Christian Mantra Meditation

"If you like, you can have this reaching out wrapped up and enfolded in a single word. So as to have a better grasp of it, take just a little word, one syllable rather than of two, for the shorter it is, the better it is in agreement with this exercise of the spirit. Such a one is the word "God" or the word "love." Choose which one you prefer or any other according to your liking--the word of one syllable that you like the best. Fasten this word to your heart, so that whatever happens, it will never go away. This word is to be your shield and your spear, whether you are riding in peace or in war. With this word you are to beat upon this cloud and this darkness above you. With this word you are to strike down every kind of thought under the cloud of forgetting, so that if any thought should press upon you and ask you what you would have, answer it with no other word but this one. If the thought should offer you, out of its great learning, to analyze that word for you and to tell you its meanings, say to the thought that you want to keep it whole and not taken apart of unfastened. If you will hold fast to this purpose, you may be sure that the thought will not stay for very long. And why? Because you will not allow it to feed itself on the sort of sweet meditations that we mentioned before." (The Cloud of Unknowing, ch. 5.)

The Cloud of Unknowing's recommendation to use a suitable word of a single syllable as a tool of contemplation bears a striking resemblance to the use of short mantras in Hindu and Buddhist meditation. The author of the Cloud permits personal discretion in the choice of a word for contemplation, unlike in some Hindu and Buddhist meditation traditions, which prescribe particular words (either for everyone, or to particular individuals).

The purpose of repeating and focusing on a single, spiritually appropriate word seems similar in all of these traditions: to enable the mind to loosen its attachment to particular objects of sensation, thoughts, and feelings, and to increase the focus and power of the contemplation or concentration exercise, which can eventually result in the transcendence of the ego and the experience of sacred reality--variously conceived as God, Atman, or Nirvana.

This resemblance should not, of course, blind us to the very real theoretical and practical differences between these religious traditions. But the resemblance is striking, and may come as a surprise to many; even the Cloud's description of how contemplation of a single word can serve to "strike down every kind of thought" is strongly reminiscent of Zen texts which advocate abandoning "dualistic" thought through the practice of repeating "mu", or through other koan work or zazen techniques. Indeed, the central theme of The Cloud of Unknowing is that of the thought-transcending mystery which surrounds the sacred or the divine (hence the work's eponymous image, which is based on the cloud surrounding Moses during his period of revelation on Mount Sinai), a theme also present in Hindu and Buddhist mystic texts.

Why did all of these traditions insist upon the inability of thought or reason to penetrate the sacred or the divine? This, despite the fact that they all have intricate theologies or metaphysical theories which attempt to reduce the sacred to a comprehensible form. And, granted that the sacred is in some sense a mystery, when a person uses mantra meditation or some other technique to climb the mountain and experience the sacred, what does he find there? There is no way to know except to climb the mountain, to follow in the path of those who have gone before. What will you see?  

Links

1. Review of Katy Butler's Knocking on Heaven's Door: The Path to a Better Way of Death. 

2. "Noise is the supreme archenemy of all serious thinkers."

3. A thoughtful critique of Reza Aslan's Zealot.

4. Philosophy has a sexual harassment problem.

5.  Review of Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam.

6. Sarah Stillman's stunning piece in The New Yorker on the injustices of civil asset forfeiture.

7. National Geographic profile of amaranth.

8. Progress towards explaining near death experiences.

9. Apps for pets. 

10. Never give up!

The Evolution of an SF Archetype

1. C. L. Moore's Northwest Smith;

2. George Lucas' Han Solo;

3. Joss Whedon's Malcolm Reynolds.

Critique of Barbara Frederickson's Happiness Research

Debunking Barbara Fredrickson's happiness research: it's a maths problem. Fredrickson collected the wrong kind of data to use with her co-author Losada's differential equations, and Losada's math is gibberish, according to a new paper by Brown, Sokal, and Friedman. (Hat tip to Marginal Revolution; Will Wilkinson blogs the story.)

Georges de La Tour, Magdalene with the Smoking Flame

Another spiritual and artistic masterpiece by de La Tour.

Georges de La Tour, The Penitent Magdalene

Influenced by Caravaggio's chiaroscuro technique, Georges de La Tour made it his own, creating religious themed works of great depth and power (in addition to his more light-hearted but still psychologically revealing genre paintings). The subject matter of The Penitent Magdalene makes its connection to the Christian contemplative tradition clear. Mary Magdalene, in the words of The Cloud of Unknowing, "stands for all habitual sinners truly converted and called to the grace of contemplation" (ch. 22).

Incidentally, this view of Mary Magdalene has its origin in Luke 10:38-42: "Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.’ But the Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.’" The "one thing" was later interpreted as God; Martha became a symbol of the active life, Mary of the contemplative life.

The Cloud of Unknowing, an anonymous 14th century English text which contains advice for Christian contemplatives, also makes use of the mirror imagery which can be found in de La Tour's piece: "God's word, whether written or spoken, is like a mirror. The spiritual eye of your soul is your reason. Your spiritual face is your consciousness. And just as your bodily eyes cannot see where the dirty mark is on your bodily face without a mirror, or without someone else telling you where it is, so with your spiritual faculties. . . . It follows, then, that when a person sees in the bodily or the spiritual mirror, or knows by the information he gets from someone else, goes to the well to wash it off--and not before" (ch. 35).

Students of Zen Buddhism will recall the use of the mind as mirror metaphor, which originates in Laozi's Daodejing, but which is taken up in Zen works such as Hui-Neng's Platform Sutra. However, in Zen, the mirror stands for the mind itself, which must be cleansed through meditation so that it reflects the world and one's true nature more clearly; in The Cloud of Unknowing, the mirror represents the word of God, not the mind, though it performs the similar function of enabling one to see clearly into one's true nature (in this case, for the purpose of sussing out sin).

The Great Delusion

The Great Delusion is the thought that now is not the moment of awakening.

In Search of Moebius

BBC documentary on the famous French comic artist.

Links

1. Amazing Bowling Green artist Dennis Wojtkiewicz.

2. Alchemy Goods: "upcycing" bags etc. from used bicycle tires.

3. Kenyan Reality TV: advice for farmers, served up with politeness.

4. Drinking coffee lowers suicide risk. And here is a summary of recent research on the health benefits of coffee.

5. David Sloan Wilson on how evolution can reform economics. And here is a page with articles from a special issue of the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization on this topic.

6. Who's who in the history of Western mysticism.

7. 16-year old pitching sensation Tomohiro Anraku, and the culture of Japanese baseball: "Only more throwing will allow Anraku to perfect his mechanics, and only perfect mechanics will prevent injury."

8.  Why singular "they" is grammatically correct.

9. Two book reviews for the price of one: on occultism during the Enlightenment. 

10. A summary of the evidence on supplemental vitamins and health: vitamins do not improve health, and seem to increase the risk of some cancers. This article also contains a profile of the role of Nobel-prize winner Linus Pauling's shameful role in spreading misinformation about the alleged benefits of vitamin supplements.

11. On German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk's reimagining of the Nietzschean Uebermensch: the Superman as supreme self-trainer, with Jesus and Socrates (Nietzsche's blood enemies) as prime exemplars.

12. Elizabeth Anderson on the relevance of 17th century Levellers and 19th century abolitionists to contemporary debates about equality; e.g., “An Arrow against all Tyrants, shot from the prison of Newgate into the prerogative bowels of the arbitrary House of Lords and all other usurpers and tyrants whatsoever” (1646).

13. Discovery of a 3,000 year old palace reignites debate about the historical nature of the kingdom of Israel.

14. David Lynch was so traumatized by the song "It's a Small World" that he insists on referring to it as "Flappy" rather than its true name.

Links

1. Noah Smith explains why neither the New Keynesian model nor Real Business Cycle theory can explain Japan's economic situation.

2. The Zimmerman case as one of overreaction and misinterpretation.

3. The reconsolidation theory of memory: memories are remade when they are recalled.

4. Barriers to increasing quinoa production.

5. U.S. STEM graduate programs depend for their existence on foreign students.

6. Republicans and the farm bill: "it doesn't count as spending as long as it redistributes upwards."

7. Henry James was not anti-immigrant.

8. Peak water (peak agriculture)? And this.

9. The "living rock".

10. Lou Reed reviews Kanye West's "Yeezus". 

11. The problem with clutter.

12. Against multitasking.

13. Scientist Carl Hart on myths about drugs.

14. "I find it hard to talk about what I love. Yet dislike summons an instant legion of words and sets them to work."

Belated Thoughts on the Anniversary of Our Nation's Birth

On this celebration of our nation's birth, it is fitting to celebrate the founders as much for what they DIDN'T do as for what they did. Consider these three great omissions by General George Washington, after the war had ended and the Articles of Confederation had been replaced with the new Constitution: he had no great ambition to be president of the United States, but evidently sought and held the office out of a sense of duty; he did not plunder the public purse while in office (as can be witnessed even today by visiting his humble estate, Mount Vernon--its very plainness serves but to embellish his honor); he did not cling to power once his term was over, but retired to private life. 

How many leaders of violent revolutions can boast of such a humble legacy? Although I am an anti-Federalist, and believe that the federal government instituted by the Constitution has ever had an unfortunate tendency toward tyranny at home and imperialism abroad, one can surely respect the Founders for the numerous crimes which they did not commit, but which were in their power.

Lives of the Philosophers

Charles Sanders Peirce:

"From 1879 until 1884, Peirce maintained a second job teaching logic in the Department of Mathematics at Johns Hopkins University. During that period the Department of Mathematics was headed by the famous mathematician J. J. Sylvester. This job suddenly evaporated for reasons that are apparently connected with the fact that Peirce's second wife was a Gypsy, and was a Gypsy moreover with whom Peirce had allegedly cohabited before marriage."

Links

1. Interview with Clive James on his ill health, estranged marriage, and recent translation of Dante's Divine Comedy (conceived in part as an amatory missive to his estranged wife, a Dante scholar).

2. Copyright makes books and music disappear.

3. Understanding evil: interviewing Japanese war criminals.

Memento Mori

Sancta Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini (Rome, Italy).

Links

1. On 3D printing as a "gateway drug", and other thoughts on digital manufacturing.

2. Book review of My Lunches with Orson: the mad genius of Orson Welles.

3. Kevin Vallier responds to Robin Corey on Hayek and Nietzsche.

4. An economist on 'the arithmetic' of space travel.

5. Lane Craig, theist philosopher and rhetorician extraordinaire.