Righteous Diplomat

A postage stamp issued for Hiram Bingham IV , a man Israel designates a Righteous Diplomat.

From the website that campaigned to honor Bingham's “courageous dissent” :

Hiram Bingham IV, of Salem, Connecticut (who is the son of Hiram Bingham III, the explorer who discovered Machu Picchu in Peru in 1911) died in 1988 at age 84. When he was the US vice consul in Marseilles, France from 1939 to 1941, he boldly defied State Department policy by writing visas for those fleeing the Holocaust, by hiding refugees in his diplomatic residence who were most wanted by Hitler, and by coordinating daring escapes to other countries from Southern France. Harry helped rescue renowned painter Marc Chagall, …anti-Nazi author Leon Feuchtwanger, Nobel Prize physicist Otto Meyerhoff, and ordinary refugees.

Virtues often cluster — he was a modest man:

One time, he became ashen-faced with deep frowns when he painfully recalled long lines of refugees outside his Marseilles consulate window anxiously seeking visas. He said they were being “treated like cattle” —and he quickly changed the subject. His eleven children did not know the extent of his rescue efforts until recent years, when old documents of that era were found in his Salem farmhouse and at various museums.

Big Al

Al Gore's appearance on Fresh Air today had its interest. I hadn't heard him in awhile. He has been getting press based on his speeches about the dangers of global warming and the movie Larry David's wife made to showcase the issue through those speeches.

Terry Gross, playing, as expected, the enthralled acolyte, didn't press Gore in ways that might have been helpful for the listeners in assessing the man. Although Gross described Gore as “more lively” in his public presentations, he sounded sanctimonious, unctuous, weary with things in a smug way — he sounded like he was sucking a lozenge.

I felt the election was stolen from Gore. I thought he got a bad shake. It wasn't our finest hour. After the election Gore seemed to lose it with shrill demagoguery, something that diminished him, and diminished the natural empathy you have for someone who was robbed. (It was really the country that was robbed.)

Gore is obviously correct about global warming — there isn't much question that corporate governance of the nation has led to exploitation on many levels. And that is what we have now, corporate USA. It has its good sides — look at the great products from Apple. But it has its bad sides. Look at the lack of active government oversight of corporations that sell products that sometimes don't work — right now there is a thread at Macintouch about Toshiba's dubious support for its hard-drives. No doubt Gore's presence on the Apple board has had something to do with Apple's new Green awareness.

Whether Gore will run still seems open. He certainly would have a better chance than The Hilary. Why can't the Dems find a good candidate?

Dianne Wiest

Dianne Wiest…will recount the story of seven National Guard soldiers killed when their vehicle was blown up in Iraq.

I don't know if you saw Wiest on the National Memorial Day Concert aired on PBS last night, but it was remarkably moving. We tuned in after Wiest had begun; at first it appeared she was retelling a personal story. When Wiest finished she went to embrace the families and you could hear a woman's voice saying, “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

From PBS:

Away from their families and facing peril together, the soldiers from the Black Sheep [National Guard Unit ] became a band of brothers. On the day of the tragic attack, two Bradley fighting vehicles were on patrol in a rural area near the village of Taji. Sgt. James Scaruffi's vehicle was following closely behind the Bradley, vehicle carrying his six comrades when he saw the explosion.

“My first thought was that it had disintegrated. The explosion was so strong, it actually lifted the Bradley up in the air and moved it about 150 feet. It landed upside down in an irrigation canal, and it was still burning” All those inside were dead.

Sgt. Scaruffi was devastated, but there was no time to grieve; two days later, he was back on patrol. But once he came home, the images returned.

“I don't want to talk about it,” he says, “but I guess I have to, 'cause I was there. Somebody like me has to come forward and tell their story.”

Charity Begins In The Studio

This article describes the charity art auction mechanism. A wealthy person or established gallery decides to raise money for a worthy cause. They get status, publicity and the benefit of being seen as charitable. They call well-known artists who give work. The motivation of the artists is ambiguous, but whatever their intent, the actual charitable act originates in the studio of the artist. Some lesser known artists say, “it is the only way I could get my work in that gallery”. Others don't want to refuse a well-known collector or art organization or seem ungenerous.

There is the risk that the work will not be bid high — status lost. To prevent this status-disaster dealers come to these events to buy the work themselves to make sure the value of their stable is not depleted. Adding to the ego dance, the artists are often asked to “ask other artists” to contribute. What possible status benefit there would be to an artist who is asked second-hand is also unclear. Unless the higher status artist is asking a lower status artist who wants to be on good terms with the higher status artist. A lotta status goin' on.

The shoddy logic of commercial culture is also in high display. The artist can only deduct the cost of materials for their contribution — even if it is sold for tens of thousands. The collector gets the full charity benefit tax relief. In addition, the collector can, and often does, resell the work at market value. Neither artist, nor charity, gets a cut.

Not much charity in evidence.

Small Talk

I've been receiving a newsletter from a company named Smalldog.com. They sell Mac stuff — I purchased an item a long time ago from them. There was always something off-putting about this “happy face” company — a manipulative cutesy commercialism that most beseiged consumers recognize easily and disdain. They are dog lovers so you are supposed to like them and buy stuff from them. The logic escapes me.

The merry crew at Smalldog had in their recent newsletter of Mac related information a gratuitous political rant (if you go to the latter forum link, check out the cogent reply posted at the bottom of the page).

If you aren't interested in the details, the rant boils down to the moral equivalence argument: Israel, the US, presumably any democracy, is the same as Iran, North Korea — why should we have nuclear weapons when they can't? The US is hypocritical. We should deplete our arsenal — that's Don Mayer's answer. Also as usual, the logic is identical to that of the enemies of the US and Israel. The rant then devolves into the usual sanctimony about nuclear disarmament with the predictable callous disregard for details and realities.

Here are some comments about the bloviations of Don Mayer at Smalldog.com…

Don Mayer wrote:

…in the Middle East we have an undeclared nuclear power in Israel. I completely understand how some might look at our stand with regard to Israel's nuclear weapons and contrast that with our stance versus the Iranian nuclear development program and wonder about the consistency of our moral pronouncements. I understand that Israel's very right to exist is still in play, but turning a blind eye to their nuclear weapons in the Middle East while ramping up for confrontation with Iran over these same weapons is difficult to fathom.

It really isn't difficult to fathom at all. Trying to deflect criticism by the disingenuous use of the word “understanding” is equally transparent. Here is what Don doesn't understand: Israel is a deeply egalitarian democracy fighting for its survival. Iran is a theocratic dictatorship whose leaders are redolent with the hatemongering of mid-20th century Europe.

… An isolated North Korea sees nuclear weapons as essential to their security, an embattled Israel likewise sees defense of their country demanding a nuclear arsenal. I can name a dozen other countries that may soon feel that their are compelling reasons to make a bomb, countries such as Brazil, Venezuela, Turkey, or Saudi Arabia.

Moral equivalence and moral retardation are cousins. Because a country sees “compelling reasons” doesn't mean you have to buy those reasons, or ignore the nature of the regime. Israel is surrounded by dictatorships deflecting from their illegitimacy by targeting Israel. Poor “isolated North Korea …likewise sees defense…”?

…mass destruction from falling into the hands of terrorists and yet the only weapons of mass destruction used or discovered in the [Iraq] war were our own. We talk about Iran destabilizing the Middle East and the administration floats the notion of using nuclear weapons to destroy Iran's nuclear weapons. That is the height of hypocrisy…

Bill Clinton bombed Iraq because of their efforts to develop nuclear weapons. (“Significant issues regarding Saddam's nuclear-weapons program remain unresolved…prudent assumption for the IAEA should be that Iraq's nuclear weaponization program continues, and that Iraq may now lack only the fissile material.”) Iran has stated it wants to destroy Israel. Iran has expressed its hate of America; Iran has been identified as the world leader of state sponsored terrorism. Shocker — we want to destroy Iran's weapons before they can use them — Iran's stated intention.

Our policy should be to create a world free of nuclear weapons and we should be setting the example by taking the first step and dramatically reducing our insane stockpile of nuclear weapons.

Let us applaud Don Mayer — he is for mom and apple pie. I'm not sure how that supports sanctimonious platitudes unrelated to the issues, or preening “goodness”. The world a better place if democracies didn't have nuclear weapons? The world a better place if democracies don't act to prevent terror states from acquiring instruments of mass murder? Iran shocked into pacifism by a step-down of the arsenals of democracies?

The Cutting Room Floor

We just watched, via Netflix, Tell Them Who You Are, a 2005 documentary made by the son of Haskell Wexler about his father — a man whose occupation was described as “cameraman” by Elia Kazan. Wexler knew a lot of famous people and had worked on many well-known movies, so there is the celebrity spectacle as a draw. The movie was really meant to be about a father and a son.

Wexler is a cantankerous man — not because he was 80 when the movie was made, but because he was a cantankerous man. He was being fired from the set all through his career. The reason for this choppiness was Wexler's strong left-wing convictions, which infected everything he said and did. Well, okay, it had nothing to do with convictions or being left-wing, it had to do with his personality. Wexler would have done well if he had grown up in our time — contentiousness was his true métier. If ever two people were separated at birth it was Haskell Wexler and comic book guy Harvey Pekar. From facial structure, to physical gesture, to psychological slant, these two generate the same vibe.

Wexler was born to great wealth; he lived through the Depression without a ripple in his privileged life. But he never identified with power — rather he rejected it in the terms of the 'Sixties, the rhetoric still fresh to him in his eighth decade.

Sorting through the issues in the movie leaves you mystified as to intent and desired cinematic resolution. The son wanted approval clearly, and in the end, he got it. The father, never having lost his abrasiveness, softened. But no one said anything that offered a sense of context and depth. You were left finally with Hollywood types who were nakedly inarticulate and completely unaware.

We watched this movie on the heels of Jim Cameron's Aliens Of The Deep, which was so promising. Terminator was such an entertaining, well-done movie; Cameron's documentary about the astonishing creatures of the deep sea seemed a perfect match. Same deal as above: the ego of the guy. Cameron, with money and the seduction of moviemaking, lured NASA scientists, Russian scientists, experts on the subject of deep sea flora and fauna.

The movie itself had about fifteen minutes of the spectacular morphological imagination of Nature in its full splendor — the creatures were astonishing; even with the saturation of media images of monsters and CAD moviemaking, you laugh and are delighted watching these creatures. That was fifteen minutes.

The rest of the one hour and thirty minutes was devoted to Cameron, and then there was more Cameron. You watched him explain to a NASA scientist the problems she would have with remote vehicles on Mars. He had himself filmed discussing “ambient oxygen” with a scientist. There were shots of faces peering through portholes saying “Oooo, look at that”. All the guy had to do was film the stuff and then explain what you were seeing. But there was almost no effort to describe or give a fuller understanding of the few creatures that made it into the Hollywood spotlight. They were lost on the cutting room floor.

Spinoza

[via Denis Dutton]

Interesting interview with a woman who knows a lot about Spinoza.

There are these two, very different scholarly traditions in Judaism, the mystical and the Talmudic. And in Amsterdam, the mystical tradition—kabbalah—was very, very important. At least two of the three major rabbis in Amsterdam in Spinoza's time were kabbalists. In the Tractatus Spinoza indicates that he knows the kabbalah and doesn't think much of it. But there are certain preoccupations—why is there something rather than nothing; the meaning of suffering—that are the two ultimate mysteries that kabbalah wrestles with. And Spinoza wrestles with them as well.

Spinoza's rationalism was his salvation or his retreat, depending on your point of view.

Kiss My Aura, Dora

The pop culture is such a celebration of mediocrity lately that it is worth going back a little to what at least was interesting and surprising at one time and still retains some interest — emphatically not commercial pop culture. Frank Zappa makes the assumption that his audience is not a bunch of conventional nitwits; Zappa takes a level of sophistication for granted that is almost non-existent now, in pop culture's American-Idol-Land.

You can listen to Zappa's “Key Tracks” @ Rhapsody.com for free. Just search for Frank Zappa and choose “Key Tracks”.

Frank Zappa Key Tracks
1. Systems Of Edges
2. Sofa No. 1
3. Tiger Roach
4. Tears Began To Fall
5. Mr. Green Genes
6. Hot-Plate Heaven At The Green Hotel
7. Heavy Duty Judy
8. Catholic Girls
9. Dinah-Moe Humm
10. Transylvania Boogie
11. Tiny Sick Tears
12. Tush Tush Tush (A Token Of My Extreme)
13. It Just Might Be A One-Shot Deal
14. Sleep Dirt
15. Echidna's Arf (Of You)

Go Go Gehry

Architect Frank Gehry has art-world street cred — an elevated reputation in the club that used to be called the avant-garde, and the richest clients in the world — which means mostly corporations, cultural institutions, or people with corporate-sized pocketbooks. Gehry's work has become iconic in the way that logos are memorable, floating on the sea of the popular culture with a very special sauciness.

In the labyrinth of reputation and theory that is the current art world, Gehry has attempted to mix the expressiveness of Abstract Expressionism, the down-home-materials based aesthetic that is popular among artists who affect populism, and the dumbness of installation art, to create a whole not-so-new vocabulary of exploded forms, using computers to complete the synthesis of aesthetic correctness with all of the above.

Installation art can make the lowliest curator feel that they too are creative. Rather than do the hard work of finding, trying to understand, then trying to express, insights about new work for the public to see and begin to understand, many curators see installation art as an easier route to ego gratification; a way to elevate their own status as collaborators in a faux-creative act that nobody much cares about anyway, but that makes a great cocktail party ice-breaker. Serious curators are left to fend for themselves in their job competition with these flashier manifestations of an honorable profession, somewhat at a loss these days for any leadership.

Gehry has rejected the formalities and embraced theory, big time — as Dick Cheney would say. Still, Gehry has shaken things up, which is a good thing. His career really is about the art world more than about his work, which has been the case with highly publicized artists since Duchamp. Turning a building, a functional space, into an individual expression, is something of a hat trick. The trick being: how did he get the clients to agree to this level of self-indulgence? Why would a corporation or museum want their building to be so exhibitionistic and callous towards its contents and surroundings.

The answer is ego — corporate ego, the ego of corporate leadership. These look-at-me buildings satisfy the type of people who become corporate leaders, and the anonymous boards that seek attention for themselves — all of a sudden, they too are collaborators in art for the ages.

The oddness of the buildings seems somehow to conflate to “individuality” for a corporate mentality. Unconcerned about setting or locale — although there is an incredible amount of airhead rationale for just the opposite — that is, that the works have a meta-relationship with their environment — Gehry's buildings are “smart-dumb” in their self-absorption.

With all that said, I'd go back to what was dropped in earlier — they do shake things up, and that is a good thing.

This review is a smart, clever, somewhat coagulated assessment of Gehry. The writer makes many interesting points:

Thirty years ago Guy Debord defined spectacle as 'capital accumulated to such a degree that it becomes an image'. With Gehry and other architects the reverse is now true as well: spectacle is an image accumulated to such a degree that it becomes capital. Such is the logic of many cultural centres today, designed, alongside theme parks and sports complexes, to assist in the corporate 'revival' of the city - its being made safe for shopping, spectating and spacing out.

””“

It turns out Frank Gehry and director Sydney Pollack are friends — proving once again that all famous people know one another.

The Welcome Delusion

Listening to a series of podcasts of a university physics course it struck me how different the “real world” is from our daily experience of it — from our comfy concept of “reality”. The truth of physics is a universe of waves and indeterminacy — far from the solid-seeming, enduring reality of our day to day.

This reminded me of Glenn Reynolds' comment years ago after he had heard Terry Gross give a talk. He said, “She didn't even sound like Terry Gross.” Her voice and presence were so different from Glenn's mind-picture; it surprised him. And this yielded yet another radio memory, when Jackie the Jokeman was in a mock argument with Howard Stern and Jackie said something about the way Stern manipulated the control panel to “enhance” his voice — to make it deeper, more resonant, more powerful. Like a revelation from A Face In The Crowd, it turns out Howard wasn't Howard, even in his most basic connection to his large audience, his voice.

And then on John Nack's weblog, there was a recent mention of the reality-mod of those emblems of beauty in our popular culture — the photographic manipulation of beauty, and the disturbing truth. Look here.

Distractions

…the illusionist and professional martyr David Blaine rose to the surface on Monday night, ending a week submerged in a water-filled transparent sphere that adorned the plaza at Lincoln Center. After catching his breath, he told us that he loved us.

Like Houdini before him, David Blaine's public events have a morbid fascination. Blaine's exhibitionistic masochism doesn't leave you feeling good about the spectacle, just unsettled.

Speaking of the downer-morbidity-spectacle, I read something recently in which a writer suggested that our current obsession with Six Feet Under-type morbidity shows came from an unlikely source: Elisabeth Kübler-Ross — the princess of Death. I once was in an audience when this strange woman gave a talk to an audience of doctors and nurses. With a heavy accent (she was Swiss), Ross presented her ideas with an authority one can only have for a topic in which the subjects cannot represent themselves — the deceased; what really struck me was her grandiosity and the high Germanic-melodrama of her presentation. Her Five Stages of Grief theory seemed to me an unscientific invention, but it has been heavily embraced by the media. In later life Kübler-Ross was involved in a wacky sexual scandal involving a medium and widows. (It's true.) Kübler-Ross instigated the benevolence of the hospice movement and, according to this writer, the grotesquerie of CSI.

Teaching and Podcasts

I'll say the obvious. Teaching, great teachers, are the gems, the gold of any society. They are the bridge to the future — emissaries carrying the best each generation has to offer. I have never understood why the incomes of teachers were not more on a par with CEO's, or if that is too much of a reach, at least with airline pilots.

I started thinking about teaching because I have been listening to a number of podcasts, mostly science based, that are essentially recordings of university courses. I mentioned not long ago a really interesting podcast of an Astronomy course given by professor Richard Pogge at Ohio State. I am just about half-way through a new series of podcast/classes given at Berkeley by physicist Richard Muller. The class is wonderful. The subject matter is just what you would want in a physics class: not the technical underpinnings, involving several years of math, but the real world examples and principles underlying physics as it is currently constituted. Physics is the mother of the sciences, the foundationalist prime mover of all the sciences.

Muller is an exemplary teacher: an excellent, generous communicator, if somewhat distracted in a comical, absent-minded way; he is something of a ham-bone, he packs a big ego; he loves displaying his knowledge — he genuinely loves his subject — and so much more important, he communicates the wonder of the knowledge; the mystery of things.

The darker terrain: teachers are often frustrated actors who have survived the gauntlet of a guild discipline that gives them a chance to have at the ready a status that a professional actor could only wish for. Teachers have power in the classroom and so can fool themselves about their captive, dependent audiences. Because of this built in power I think many teachers begin to convince themselves that they are really, truly, fascinating, riveting individuals; that the smiles of those bright young faces is pure admiration — the professors don't hear that at least some of the laughter at their small witticisms is nervous and forced.

Like a drop of ink in clear water, in any audience, there are those who don't care, for whatever reason. This inattentiveness gives rise in the podcasts to some funny, embarrassing moments. In one of these classes I audited, a biology course, the teacher would stop and scold two girls for talking, his ire rising like a comedian in a slow burn — he didn't seem to realize that thousands were listening; Muller himself will note publicly that someone is sleeping and ask that they be brought back to wakefulness — no doubt to the student's great embarrassment, although you don't see that on the podcast, which is almost worse.

They really need producers for these podcasts. Those remonstrances should probably not be aired; class housekeeping should be edited: homework and tests and cheating discussions, kept out of the public view of a podcast. Muller seemed petulant in his talking about cheaters, undignified; although obviously, the issue is a legitimate one, especially, if like Muller, you care. Muller, and the biology professor, felt dissed. But these podcasts are the public airwaves — someone needs to edit this stuff. A university might say, these podcasts are just an add-on, our students are our focus. Again, they are airing this stuff, that changes things whether they want it to or not. Clearly the teachers are delighted at the far reach of the podcasts — in every single course they will mention at some point that they received an email from a distant locale — a point of pride and delight. They will have to live with the responsibilities of that greater audience as well.

Americans are particularly prone to feeling that the future can be changed for the good; that people can better themselves. Tony Soprano's Russian girlfriend said that the rest of the world doesn't understand why Americans are always trying to fix things — she said that the rest of the world just accepts things as they are. If that is true, I'll take the American way. Teaching is one vehicle that has a heavy claim on this hope for the future in America, in the world.

LinkADink — course/podcast websites:
Physics 10 — This class, discussed above, has the unfortunate subtitle — designed to flatter and deelight — Physics For Future Presidents. As I say, there is often something of the performer-huckster in good teachers. In this case, it looks like the professor is beginning the promo for a book based on his class notes. (He would better subtitle the course Mysteries of the Real.) Make sure to watch the video streams. This is a visual class — dependent on demonstration and diagrams. The class notes are voluminous but well-worth reading.
Astronomy 162 — this is professor Pogge's class on astrophysics— a great subject.