12.17.2001


I've been reading the archive of Curtis White articles from CONTEXT. I think White tends to be needlessly controversial, but his stuff is always thought-provoking. Here's some high(low?)lights:

From Whatever Dude:

So we have seen Cradle Will Rock, American Beauty, Magnolia, Being John Malkovich, and David Lynch's The Straight Story lauded as "major cinema." And when asked whether I "liked" one of these heirs to cinematic art, I invariably say, "Yes, I liked it," whatever aesthetic force my "liking" might have, because I probably did "like" it more than The Matrix or MI2 or you-fill-in-the-blank cineplex fodder. But I also feel rather dumb about acknowledging a world in which liking or not-liking are my only options. When we capitulate in this way, aren't we just saying we're no better than Beavis and Butthead? This sucks, that rocks, this is awesome, and everything is finally just a lot stupid. Of course, this is a perfect state of affairs for a culture that thrives on thoughtless and ephemeral enthusiasms. Remember Refrigerator Perry? The dolls, the games, the enduring ballyhoo?

From his two part article on Harold Bloom and The Great Books, All That You Know Not to Be Is Utterly Real (Part I, Part II):

And yet the question "of what does the greatness of the great works consist?" is exactly the right question, and if the deconstructive critical lineage has had no other positive contributions to make to contemporary thought (and I think it has had many), it has posed this fundamental aesthetic/epistemological question and fairly warned, "Do not answer with a tautology, or through vaporous metaphysics, or the wish fulfillment of ideology." Frankly, there have not been many responses worthy of the deconstructive challenge, although there are several that should be available to us (and I'll come to that). It is in part because of the vacuum created by the thoroughness of deconstruction's critique of aesthetic metaphysics that those of what Harold Bloom calls the School of Resentment have had the opportunity to de-aestheticize literary criticism and, worse yet, de aestheticize our expectations of literary texts. It's as if we're being told, "If you can't tell me why the aesthetic should matter without revealing yourself as hopelessly metaphysical or hopelessly Republican, I sure as hell can tell you why sexism, racism, homophobia and imperialism matter." The unhappy consequence of this argument, for those of us who think that art should matter, is the conclusion that the least important aspect of a work of art is precisely its artfulness.

From Saving Private Ryan: Don't try to do no thinkin'!:

Thus the film's murderous thesis is fully disclosed. Self-survival, the survival of the good, requires that one always choose death. The cynicism and brutality of the first execution back on Omaha beach is excused in its fact if not in its style. Bad table manners, perhaps, but in murdering the prisoners the American soldiers did what they had to do. This is advocacy of international vigilantism and no whit more self-reflective than any Dirty Harry narrative.

That was really long and I wrote about eight of the words myself. Also, the Dalkey Archive Press is selling any 100 of its books for $500, quite a deal.
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12.16.2001


How I learned to trust economists:

I just saw a huge white stretch limousine pulling out of a Dunkin' Donuts parking lot.
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12.11.2001


However much the technology used in the Segway changes our world, I'm betting it doesn't change it half as much as the gyroscopes used inside already have. One of the first applications of the gyroscope was in an airplane's attitude indicator or artificial horizon. Without gyroscopic instruments in planes, poor weather flying was literally impossible - when the horizon is obscured, a turn with the nose pointed down feels very similar to flying straight:

Most people would insist that they can indeed feel the bank. We have all had the experience while reading or dozing on an airliner of feeling a lurch and looking up to see, as expected, that the airplane is tilted. The lurch comes when the airplane dips or raises a wing, starting into a turn or starting out of one. Sometimes we can even give a direction to the bank. But if we then close our eyes, we have no way of telling that we are sitting at an angle. I know from experience how difficult it is to convince people of this. When the bank is visible -- for instance, on a clear day -- the tilted horizon looks so unusual that the view overpowers other perceptions. But during flight on black nights, or in clouds, the bank is imperceptible, and passengers are heedless. They may feel the odd lurch, but they have no way of guessing the airplane's degree of bank. The inner ear, and with it the sense of balance, is neutralized by the motion of flight. The airplane could be momentarily upside down and passengers would not know.

Of course, none of this matters unless you are the pilot. But historically pilots have made the same mistakes as passengers. Having been given the airplane, they had to learn to use it. Generations were required. Eventually they admitted that instinct was unreliable in clouds, and that they needed special instruments to tell them what was happening to the plane. Without the instruments they went into mysterious banks and dived out of control.

The instruments necessary to fly through clouds or to fly at night without a visible horizon all use gyroscopes.

More gyroscope stuff:
How a gyroscope works
How the gyroscope steers ships
Gyroscope: the band
Gyroscope on a chip
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12.10.2001


My friend Cait sent me this link from her hometown paper:

Escapee Caught

ST. JOHNSBURY VT - It's not often someone gets caught trying to break into prison.

But that's what allegedly happened Friday at the Caledonia County Work Camp in St. Johnsbury, where Vermont State Police claim to have nabbed an inmate who had escaped and was trying to sneak back in.

Police claim the man had a case of beer and a carton of cigarettes with him -- that he'd escaped, gone to a nearby convenience store to buy beer and cigarettes, and then tried to slip back in without being noticed...

Truth is stranger than blah blah blah.
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12.5.2001


Ways in which evolution has failed me personally:

• I have asthma.
• The second toe (the one right next to the big toe) on my left foot is too long, so when I walk I'm always pushing off that toe. Every night that toe aches.
• I can't see without glasses.
• I'm tone-deaf.

Ways in which evolution has failed us all:

• David Horowitz

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12.3.2001


I was in NYC this past weekend and I was running late, so I took a car from Brooklyn to Manhattan. I noticed after a couple of minutes that all of the warning lights on the dashboard were lit: Check Engine, Low Gas, Oil, Call Mama, Flip Tape, etc. I didn't think much about it -- I just figured there was some fuse blown that was causing all the lights to come on, regardless of the condition of the car.

Then the Low Wiper Fluid light came on.

The preceding has been an experiment in portent.
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mark@markand.com
aim: mdanderson45