The Debates:

The political debates, for me, a decided voter, are still a fascinating spectatcle.

Here are some of Bob Novak's notes from the debate, on CNN:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/blog/09/30/novak.blog/

Hugh Hewitt's blog weighs in with commentary and a scorecard:

http://hughhewitt.com/#postid973


My thoughts:

In the beginning I was a little disappointed in Bush, because I found him repeating the same theme in the same way too often. He kept pressing Kerry's view on Iraq, some times in ways I thought were unnecessary. An addendum might be that I am not your swing voter, and so my responses may not be accurately generalized.

Kerry's view of Iraq came off very weak, all the same. He refused to say that Iraq was a mistake, when he was asked, and tried to synthesize his old statments, of Iraq being a threat, and agreeing we needed to go in, while condemning Bush's choice and lamenting our mess over there. I found his synthesis required straight out contradiction, and was ultimately convoluted untruths. It would be better if he committed one way or the other. Bush does not have this problem.

Interestingly, Kerry claims greater subtlety than Bush. Bush is not subtle in the debate, true, he is straightforward. Kerry is less direct, but I don't see him as being subtle in any consistent or logical way. Major bummer for him.

I had wished that Bush had addressed the development of tactical nuclear weapons jab. It was a good move on Kerry's part. It reflects powerfully his view of the world, which is much less US-centric than Bush's. For example: the "global test" cited by Kerry for discerning the proper time for pre-emptive strike.

I used to think that way, until I read Shakespeare's King John. Now I'm convinced that serving another people above your own would be a wicked way to lead. Bush's duty is to his country, and he recognizes this. To what does Kerry owe his allegiance first and foremost?

I watched Andy Kaufman's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind today.

How happy is the blameless Vestal’s lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sun-shine of the spotless mind!
Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resigned.

-Alexander Pope, from Eloise to Abelard.

The movie is a creative story surrounding the relationship of a man, Joel, played by Jim Carrey, and Clementine, played by Kate Winslet. Because of the rocky nature of their relationship, after one year Clementine decides to erase all of her memories of Joel, without telling him. It was an impulsive decision to break up with him.

Joel decides to exact his revenge by following suit. But, as the memories disappear he realizes how much he treasures them, and a great deal of the movie takes place inside his head, as he frantically attempts to rescue whatever memories that he can, while the crew of the company he has hired works feverishly to finish the job he hired them to do.

The movie ends up being an enjoyable meditation on the nature of relationships, their troubles, and the solution to these troubles. It reminds me of the river Lethe, at the top of Purgatory in heaven. However, the erasure of memories in Dante had a nobler purpose. It was the final purgation of all evil, and the memories were re-instated with the holy context given to all of life in the vision of God that is the felicity of Paradise.

The movie is rated R, though, so it's to be approached with caution: it has a lot of swearing and some sexual content. That's not too suprising.

I registered on-line today to get a free Stat Counter for my site! I look forward to seeing all the neat information I can get. Thanks to Phil for the tip. If you want one, it's easy, free, and hasn't got any spam attatched or anything! Check it out at www.statcounter.com.

Banana Phone, meet the Badgers.

I was in Joshua Tree this weekend with Phil, Lem, Dustin, Joe, and Tim.

It was fun. It was kinda hot, though, in the 90s. We camped at Black Rock, which is actually barely on the outskirts of the park, and you can't access any of the rest of the park from it. It doesn't have any of the rocks, but it does have nice fauna and flora. It is also a little higher than the rest of the park, so we were hoping that would moderate the temperature a bit. It's also the closest part of the park.

I learned a little more about coyotes on this trip. They were all around our campsite, I think because they can get water there. At night we would hear them singing, a burst now and again would bely their nearness. The night we arrived I saw one run by our campsite in the moonlight. I really could see its shadow better than its body, but it sped by like a hovering ghost. It looked supernatural. Later, as I stood, admiring the morning's golden radiance on the desert, a jack rabbit burst out of a nearby bush, maybe 3 or 4 feet away from me on my left, and sped thumping by, ears flat on his head. Immediately following this a coyote burst out of the bush, saw me, made a quick left turn, slowed to a lope, and disappeared behind a bush several yards away. I followed, curious to see more of the dog, but he was not to be found. This is despite me constantly watching the bush for further movement, and looking in the desert all around it. It is as if it disappeared. His craftiness really took me by surprise, but it reminded me again of the Coyote of Navajo legends.

Staplers!

Staplers are a wondrous invention of the Civilized World, designed to organize and collect our lives into handy manageable stacks.

One can call these inventions any number of things, but one of the best things to call them is "click-clicks." Why? Because that's what they sound like when you use them, which is onomatopeia. Murmur is another good word that's onomatopeiac. My girlfriend has introduced me to this innovative presentation of the concept of Stapler with her poetic genius.

My girlfriend is a Stapler Goddess. She dwells on Olympus in the mailroom. Her favorite staplers are small. That way they are cute and handy. These staplers are therefore the most blessed of all, as she pays them special attention. She is a good goddess, unlike all those other amoral Greek deities. We're all lucky to have her looking out for our office supplies.

All Hail Queen Libby! Majestic Goddess of the Click-Click! Beauty weilding staples of healing and comfort!

The Prophet of the Goddess speaks, there is a revelation. "Keep clicking on."

The revelation is over. Go back to your meaningless lives.

Whoa! What's this? Dustin Guenther has a BLOG! Check it out!

Dustin's Blog is SO COOL!

Check out Banana Phone on Phil's site!

Early one morning
With time to kill
I borrowed Jebb’s rifle
And sat on a hill
I saw a lone rider
Crossing the plain
I drew a bead on him
To practice my aim

My brother’s rifle
Went of in my hand
A shot rang out
Across the land
The horse, he kept running
The rider was dead
I hung my head
I hung my head

I set off running
To wake from the dream
My brother’s rifle
Went into the sheen
I kept on running
Into the south lands
That’s where they found me
My head and my hands

The sheriff he asked me
Why had I run
And then it came to me
Just what I had done
And all for no reason
Just one peace of lead
I hung my head
I hung my head

Here in the court house
The whole town was there
I see the judge
High up in the chair
Explain to the court room
What went through you mind
And we’ll ask the jury
What verdict they find

I felt the power
Of death over life
I orphaned his children
I widowed his wife
I begged their forgiveness
I wish I was dead
I hung my head
I hung my head

I hung my head
I hung my head

Early one morning
With time to kill
I see the gallows
Up on a hill
And out in the distance
A trick of the brain
I see a lone rider
Crossing the plain

And he’d come to fetch me
To see what they’d done
And we’d ride together
To kingdom come
I prayed for god’s mercy
For soon I’d be dead
I hung my head
I hung my head

I hung my head
I hung my head

I like the Johnny Cash version of this song.

A few items of interest:

1) This website contains interesting flash animations that involve kitty cats in music videos. Some of them are creative, but I can't vouch for all of them. Trippy. So, check out Rather Good

2) Tonight I'm going to enjoy some free tickets, courtesy of the Torrey Honors program, to see the Lord of the Rings symphony at the Hollywood Bowl. This is my first time going to the Bowl, and the music's good. I'm looking forward to it.

3) I was thinking about Chesterton's article today about America, when I happened upon a section in my historiography that peaked my interest. It talked about a Tory historian who was exiled from America. An American exile seems strange to me. But it's not. If you disagree with the Creed of America (our Constitution), then you haven't got any real call to be an American. And Chesterton talked about it, but the full implications were driven home.

In other countries, you can have different ideas about government and live there, because the government isn't based on an idea, but on a state of affairs. But in America, the social contract is defined by the ideas in the Constitution. Doesn't this entail those that are living document advocates of the Constitution should be thrown out of the country? They disagree the document means anything, anyway, in a proper sense of meaning. :-)

So, this kinda ticks a guy off:

Spanish Newspaper advertisement

There's some controversy on how to properly translate it. I take it passively, as a charitable translation, and am still offended. One spanish blogger diagrees. He says you should translate it actively. The two ways to take it are: 1) You can do a lot in a day, imagine what can happen in three months. Or, 2) A lot can happen in a day, imagine what can happen in three months. My initial translation was the second, as I said, because I don't think people would be that inhumane. But, if you think about, it's still an example of sensationalistic News reporting that is trying to make money explicitly off other people's suffering.

HAPPY TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY!


Visit the The International Talk Like a Pirate Day Website

More Chesterton on our great country:

It may have seemed something less than a compliment to compare the American Constitution to the Spanish Inquisition. But oddly enough, it does involve a truth, and still more oddly perhaps, it does involve a compliment. The American Constitution does resemble the Spanish Inquisition in this: that it is founded on a creed. America is the only nation in the world that is founded on creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature. It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just. It certainly does condemn anarchism. and it does also by inference condemn atheism, since it clearly names the Creator as the ultimate authority from whom these equal rights are derived. Nobody expects a modern political system to proceed logically in the application of such dogmas, and in the matter of God and Government it is naturally God whose claim is taken more lightly. The point is that there is a creed, if not about divine, at least about human things.

http://www.dur.ac.uk/martin.ward/gkc/books/america.html It's from a book he wrote on visiting America (What I Saw in America) published in 1922.

I think he has a better idea about the nature of America than most Americans have anymore. It's a common sense, clear cut, obvious interpretation. If people'd look, they'd see he's absolutely right. I hope that America doesn't forget the Declaration of Independence, because without it we're no better than the Terror, and we're bound to be in for it sooner or later.

Here is an article by Chesterton titled: On American Morals. It is dated, of course. It seems to be from the 1920s, and was published in '29.

His general criticisms are that America's moral values are not based on any sort of reasonable system, but rather on irrational association. I wonder if he is not in some way right. Alcohol is by no means inherently evil in and of itself. It has no moral quality. For that matter, neither does cocaine. But, on the other hand, things can be dangerous and unfit for the commonweal because of mankinds' weaknesses.

The last paragraph I found particularly punchy and thought provoking because Chesterton attacks racism. I wonder, however, whether or not Chesterton is attacking a particular American quality or a particular human quality. The quality of irrationally associating doesn't seem inherently human, though it may be inherently democratic. I wonder how fostered American idealogy is by those in power. If you can create a population that's hedonistic it will assist the selling of goods. If you can create a non-thinking populace, then demagogues will find power much more easily.

If you haven't ever seen Johnny Cash's video of "Hurt" you probably should. It's the most powerfully sad music video that I've ever seen. It makes me so lonesome I could cry.

Lem took this cool picture of me. Man, I'm cool!



He has a few other pictures from a trip a small group of us took to Denny's last night. It was pretty fun. I drank ranch dressing with a straw.

I'm working on a paper for Romantic literature, and I've decided to address directly the issue that puzzles me most about the Romantics. How can a group of people that produce such good art have such a bad epistemology? So I'm going to write about Wordsworth, who seems the most sensible and is undoubtedly the most orthodox of the Romantic period.

Wordsworth is described as having something that seem to me very similar to the erotic type experiences that we learn about in Plato's Phaedrus. How could have that kind of experience using the faculty of imagination? Unable to answer this question with an internal inquiry of Wordsworth's works, I'll instead try to figure out how he thought he had that experience. Important poems in my paper will be The Prelude, which I hope I can read in full by the time I write the paper, but am somewhat skeptical about, and the Ode (Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood) which is a poem I lead a session on my Junior year fall semester, anyway. I'll throw in Tintern Abbey for fun if I have time.

Also, this is cool. Some people recognize the innate greatness of some people. Then they name things after that person.



Of said phenomeon this is one example.

This last weekend I went on a retreat where I got to jump off a 30 foot high rock into a lake. That was fun, but scary. The thing about jumping off big rocks is gravity. You push yourself forward, but then you're totally out of control until you hit the water. And then you get wet.

The thing about getting wet is water.

You can see some of the rock jumpin' pictures on Phil's webpage

I'm reading Blake again right now. What a crack-pot genius-head.

I enjoy his poetry on one level, as it's very simple verse and flows easily. Yesterday I read a sampling of the Songs of Innocence and today I read a sampling of the Songs of Experience. I read the whole books last year, and was impressed. I get frusturated by his views on the temporal Church, though, which impress me as little better than insults to the bride of Christ. And, for a man who has such faith in the dignity and ability of mankind, he sure doesn't seem to like them very much.

He has a bit of work to do to sell me on his epistemology, also. What is the Poetic Genius? How can I understand the world with my Imagination? Of course, taking a class on Romantic literature, I'll have quite a bit of time to think about it.

Peter Kreeft is coming to Biola in October. Awesome. He's going to sit in on a Saturday meta-Torrey session. The man who edited the Summa of the Summa is going to discuss the Summa with us. Awesome!