Unpacking all the stuff in your new apartment requires frequent reading breaks. 

Some to share:

The First Things website has been all redone and it is too easy to get lost in there for a delightful hour. Example: a recap of Leon Kass's recent speech for the National Endowment for the Humanities. I am wondering why I only see an account of his speech on this website, and not on any other religiously oriented blogs...especially since it seems he started out his speech with a discussion of the word mentsch. 

Disturbingly, I suppose, some of the other bloggers are too busy with this sort of thing. Yikes. 

This is terrifically un-PC, but 1) it's the Onion and 2) I did have to take a course on educational theory this past semester. And this sort of piece seems absolutely necessary in light of that. 

It's Shavuot this weekend. That means, cheese time. I will offer some cheesy rabbinic student info for the holiday: 

•Why do we eat cheese for this holiday? Beats me.  I bet they really teach it in the fourth or fifth year. Not to little second yearlings, that's for sure. I did hear a rumor that it's either because a) Moses brought down the commandments on Shabbat so nobody could do the work of a ritual slaughter b) the people had just heard all these new kashrut laws but the kids wanted a snack now - no time to kasher everything - so they just sliced up some cheese and crackers instead. 

•Why is it mostly cheesecake, cheese blintzes, etc - not just the aforementioned cheese and crackers? Rennet issues. 

•Why ten commandments? Why not all of them? Why not seven? 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L940yIeVZzE&feature=related

Imperialist Beverages

Dave and I enjoyed a number of India Pale Ales this past weekend, but with all the Brideshead-watching we did and the Sword of Honor reading on Dave's part, you may have wondered well, keeping in the vague British-colonial spirit of things,  where the devil are the pink gins?  

They are the favored drink of officers and gentlemen.

But I actually first encountered the pink gin not in Evelyn's work but in a book by his brother, Alec: Hot Countries. My copy isn't here with me in Ohio, so I'd like to make an InterLibrary Loan request from whoever in the family does have it.  A great accompanying summer beach read is Alec's book Island in the Sun. It's nowhere near the quality of Evelyn's novels. It is almost as equally amusing though. Part of the amusing quality is that it's just a knockoff of Crime and Punishment, set in a British West India colony, with plenty of pink gin to go around. 

Blogger Meet-Up!

It's been a few days since I got back from a very enjoyable trip to visit the Dave Dude (also known as the webmaster general of this site) at his tony digs in Palo Alto, but posting has been light because 1) Dave is now in Kansas for work and 2) I took the red-eye back home to Ohio and had to finish moving into my new apartment. 

But how about some trip highlights? 

1) Dave showed me the lab where he works. I didn't get to see many cool pieces of equipment, because they were all packed up in Pelican cases to go to Kansas. But I had a great time kicking around campus while he had classes and meetings with advisors. I like the buildings that surround his lab: the Packard building, the Bill Gates building, etc. I haven't been on a real college campus (HUC is small) in a while and was delighted to find ample weirdness. For example, a big teepee set up with hand-painted signs urging students to join in the hunger strike that the teepee dwellers were staging. I couldn't quite see what the strike was for - I think something to do with bringing back certain campus groups that had lost funding.  

-I took the elevator up to the top of the Hoover Institute. Great view. Wanted to see if I could get a Thomas Sowell autograph or something, but it was 4 pm on a Friday, and I was shy. So I just looked at their big Herbie Hoover exhibit. 

2) In the evening we went to the San Francisco symphony. They played a Sibelius symphony - Michael Tilson Thomas provided a warning before they started: This is going to be weird, folks, and you probably won't like it. Okay. I didn't, really. The "bitter pill" was new composition by a guy named Mason Bates, who proclaimed his individuality and creativity by wearing a t-shirt onstage. Oh you rebel you. The music for the symphony wasn't all that weird, and Mason just provided some electronic twerps and squeaks on his keyboard and speaker system. I've heard worse. It was mostly just like listening to the soundtrack for a space movie. Then Yuja Wang played a Prokofiev piano concerto. This was a fine, but not memorable performance. I'll let Dave fill in more here, if he likes. I was under the influence of jetlag and a few glasses of champagne.

3) Saturday morning hike to see some big redwood trees was unfortunately cut somewhat short due to climate change. Driving up to the trail, it was a bright sunny day. We turned the corner to the trailhead and it was about 20 degrees colder and rainy. We trekked in for about twenty minutes, then decided against needless suffering, and went for a walk down in his sunny neighborhood instead (just a few miles away). 

4) Saturday evening jazz concert was phenomenal. I liked the venue, the War Memorial of San Francisco. Much cozier and more intimate than the symphony hall - also it has great murals. We heard Kenny Burrell and his band. This was my first live jazz performance ever. I loved both the experience and the actual band. I was much more awake than at the symphony. I guess I hadn't really been able to appreciate the unity and improvisation of jazz when I listened to it on CDs. It helped that Kenny had a remarkable pianist, Benny Green, and drummer, Clayton Cameron. Cameron performed a neat trick during one of his drum solos: the disappearing drum sticks. He seemed to just sort of toss them over his shoulder and magically produce a new one. Sort of a showmanship parlor trick, but still impressive. It was also interesting that he used the brush a lot during his solo. 

5) Sunday morning some of us woke up with our crankypants on. Maybe too much sauce at the excellent North Shore restaurant the night before? 

The remedy was a quiet, beautiful drive up to Half Moon Bay. In the afternoon we cooked up a bunch of delish produce from the local yuppie-style farmers market. We bought some extremely organic artichokes. We closed out the evening drinking IPA, enjoying Dave's big balcony and the sunny, very California sound of Pat Matheney on the stereo. 

In between all of that we ate a ridiculous quantity of blackberries, watched parts of Brideshead the original BBC production, and I helped Dave with the bottle of Lillet that I found in the fridge. 

Vanitas Vanitatum

Continuing on about Jazz, Art Tatum is one of those great players who will play more notes than you ever thought imaginable.

Willy sums it up very nicely here.

For your listening enjoyment, listen here. This is "Have You Met Miss Jones" performed by Art Tatum. I don't think he ever met my old piano teacher. She'd probably wonder what color he was imagining as he played.

But why Vanitas Vanitatum? Itunes is great like that, searching for what you want you end up with something completely different. I always chuckle, while listening through all of my Pablo Casals, suddenly I'm listening to Petey Pablo. There's something completely different. ("Vanitas Vanitatum" is a Schumann Piece for cello and piano.)

Daily Reads

Haven't seen this make the URJ website yet. Wonder why. 

Candy Bomber!

Israel and Iran. 

Reading Roundup

Happy Birthday to a hero. 

Everyone's reading George Eliot these days. 

I like his columns so far. This one's good, too. 

Flying Pig

I got my official digital pictures from the Flying Pig Half-Marathon that I ran on May 3. The Flying Pig race is a big Cincinnati event. It was very well organized and I really enjoyed it. 

I wouldn't be all that excited about the finish time but maybe it's more impressive if I tell you that, due to starting line traffic and first mile bottlenecks, the official clock read 20:00 at mile 2. So, I must have really started spinning my wheels to make up for that somewhere. 

In these pictures you'll see that I have my ipod on, but I actually didn't listen to it until mile 11 or so. I was too engaged in plotting my strategery in all the race traffic, and trying to make sure I at least got ahead of the people in piggy ears and pink tutus. 

I was anxious about the snacks, expecting maybe bacon flavored Gatorade, but I didn't see any pig stuff until the post-race expo down by the river with all the vendors. But I would like to mention one water station sponsored by Smuckers. Most water stations have gatorade, and sometimes orange slices or banana chunks, which are hard to eat while running. This one had little teaspoons of peanut butter, followed by little spoons of jelly. Brilliant!

Reading

Fun, explanatory video on the budget. 

In the mail. 

Faith and tolerance.

Well, I really liked the book. 

More on the awareness of true evil (see link to Roger Simon a few posts back). 

One Quiet Night

Recently, "One Quiet Night" showed up in my mailbox. This is it too.

I had been meaning to get this album for quite some time on the recommendation of jazz guitarist I played with only on a few occasions. I got "Bright Sized Life" back in the summer/fall just as I moved out to California. Even though music by Pat Metheny and even the Metheny Mehldau record has been in my collection for some time now, I never really paid much attention to it until this past year.

"One Quiet Night" is by no means a new album, but that doesn't mean it isn't still good. It is Pat Metheny solo on the baritone guitar. You might think, "Really? It sounds like he's already down two points." But he manages to pull it off, I think. Having the baritone guitar allows him to hit lower notes than if he were on a normal guitar, thus he produces a much fuller sound.

Overall, the album is mellow, but that doesn't make it boring whatsoever. As is typical, Metheny's compositions are harmonically rich making them a pleasure to listen to. Anne said that when she listened to "Bright Sized Life" she claims to have just fallen asleep. Yes, I think that Metheny's music just has a mellower aspect than say Oscar Peterson, but just about anything will if you've only had 4 hours of sleep.

Just as with most jazz performances, what makes them interesting is not usually the tune itself, it is what the performers do with the tune. By contrast, if you compare playing a tune like "All the things you are" and playing one of the Mendelssohn string quartets. If both performances were played with strictly the notes on the page, hands down, the Mendelssohn quartet would be more interesting. That's because there are about 20 notes actually written for "All the Things you are." What makes the performances comparable is how the jazz is interpreted. For example, Oscar Peterson would make more notes come out of a piano than you would have ever though possible, Brad Mehldau plays it in 7/4 time, Keith Jarrett would have the most long-winded phrases, and Pat Metheny would play it slower, smoother, and just prettier than everyone else, cherishing every note he plays (I think). And that's kind of how, "One Quiet Night" comes across.

Reading

The awareness of evil leads people to religion. I can't remember right now where else I've read that, but I know I have. 

I agree that the RAC is taking the wrong stance. For my views on school vouches and school choice, view the Milton Friedman Choir singing about it on my sidebar links. But I wish Commentary hadn't labeled their post that way. The RAC really does not speak for all of Reform Judaism (even if they think they do). If an Orthodox political action group had taken a particular stance, I wonder if Commentary would have labeled the post "Orthodox Judaism says....." such and such. Again, I agree with the substance of the post but wish there had been a bit more sensitivity with the headline. I will also admit that I am probably somewhat  hypersensitive on the point. 

Bet it was fun to be a student in his class. 

California

Reason # 27 why California is just great:

If you think you are strange, there's always someone loonier.
Cyclecide

Lone Survivor

Last night I had the opportunity to hear Marcus Luttrell give a talk at the Cincinnati Library. The event was held in the lobby of the downtown branch, and it was packed - standing room only. I was very glad to see this. 

Luttrell and three of his teammates were part of Operation Redwing in Afghanistan in 2005. They were on a reconnaissance mission high up in the Hindu Kush mountains and were ambushed by over 100 Taliban fighters. His three teammates were killed and Luttrell was severely injured - I think he mentioned that his pelvis was broken, at least one of his legs was broken, he had been shot in the back, and he had bit his own tongue in half after being tossed off the mountain by an RPG blast. Then he endured torture at the hands of the Taliban, who found him after he was taken in by Afghani villagers. The first rescue mission was shot down by more Taliban fighters; the second rescue mission took six days to get to him. This is the very bare bones story. The book is fast-paced, conversational, and well worth the three to four hours it will take you read it. I think I first read the book in 2007. Before I read this book, I don't know if I quite understood what a hero was. I know I didn't understand that we still have them today, in America. 

Luttrell is a recipient of the Navy Cross. His fallen teammate Mike Murphy was awarded the Medal of Honor. After multiple surgeries and time to heal, Luttrell actually went back for another 7 month tour in Iraq. 

I had seen a clip of Luttrell on the Today Show.  Luttrell understated his injuries and the trauma afterwards, as is typical of SEAL modesty and humility, and didn't elaborate any more than he had to. So I didn't expect the enthusiastic, very funny, and very affable man who took to the podium last night. I certainly didn't expect the Texas twang which flowed at a mile a minute, yet was completely understandable. I suppose he had to talk fast, to get that whole story in an hour. By the way, Luttrell also speaks Pashtun. 

The man who introduced Luttrell set a great tone for the evening. He opened by saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls..." and I thought, who says boys and girls anymore? How delightful! He continued, "....and I am glad to see young people here tonight because it is important that you learn about bravery, honor, and courage. You will learn about it tonight." I was very glad to hear such....well, old school values being promoted. No worries about whether the boys and girls would be damaged by hearing such gruesome accounts, and/or by seeing a man who had killed a lot of Taliban, and proudly, and was about to talk about that in some detail. No, the attitude seemed to be that the earlier children learned about this, the better. I agree. I don't think the SEALS go in much for self-esteem benefits. 

I'm not going to completely recount his talk because most of it is in the book. I'll recommend the book once again here. It really changed my perspective about what real dedication is, and how incredibly brave and honorable some people are. And that I should, um, probably quit whining about my hangnail and my really hard final exams.  

But I have to share a few highlights from his talk because they are so darn funny. As I said, I hadn't expected to laugh while hearing about this very sad, and very inspiring account. 

•Luttrell frequently used a phrase that I liked a whole bunch. To make sure that we were on the same page, instead of saying "Am I clear? Is that making sense?" Luttrell always said, "Y'all pickin up what I'm throwin down?" Loved it. 

•He said that before starting BUD/s training, they all had to take psychiatric evaluations..."That's just to make sure that we're crazy. You really do have to be, to be in this program."

•A man walked up to the stage about five minutes in to say that they couldn't hear in the back. Luttrell switched mikes, then said "That was a bold move, sir. Coming up here like that. You bout got yourself shot." This got a big roar of approving laughter. 

•His father told him and his twin brother that he expected them to be in the military for some time after college, with the reasoning that "Before yall exploit this country, yall are gonna serve it." He grew up near Huntsville, Texas.

•The attrition rate is pretty high for the SEALs training - I think he said out of a starting class of 200, only 14 made it, or something close to that. He said the best stories always come from people who didn't go through SEALS training. "I mean, I could probably kill you with my thumb, too, but it'd take a while, so I'd just rather shoot ya, you pickin up what I'm throwin down?"

•"People talk a lot about gays and the military these days....lemme tell you, there's definitely no homophobes in the SEALs. We were always so cold so we loved getting as close as possible to each other. If another guy said he had to pee, while we were in that Pacific ocean water, we'd swim over to him just to share in the warmth."

•On when he and his teammates were happened upon by some local goatherders, one of whom almost accidentally stepped on his rifle butt: "That upset me so I stood up and - you know, if you want to get someone's attention real quick and they have a big long beard - just grab that beard hard, and pull it towards you. That's what I did." This is really good advice. 

•When he was being kept by the Afghani villagers (and tortured by the Taliban every night) he said his favorite part of the day was when the village elder came and gave him a big green putty ball to chew on - opium. "Look, I was pretty beat up, but when I had that stuff, I felt like I could run all the way home to Texas. Now I know how they do it - those suicide bombers. You feel like you can just fly, or do absolutely anything."

He ended his talk, somewhat abruptly, with his rescue by Army Rangers ("I can't believe I was saved by the Army"). He said after that there's a whole 'nother story but that's not what he was there to tell. He knows that veterans, and especially SEALS, normally don't like to talk about what they've been through. He just made a promise to God, while he was getting shot down the side of the mountain, that he would make sure his friends and their bravery was never forgotten. He was there last night just to tell their story. 

I didn't get pictures because there were many, many, many people who had known that they had to get there early enough to buy the book and get a special letter to get a place in line. I would have had to wait until all of them had gone through the line (probably 2 hours?). It was still a great privilege to hear him speak, in person. 

Himmelfarb's new book

I was pretty excited to get my new book in the mail last week. Gertrude Himmelfarb's book, The Jewish Odyssey of George Eliot, promised a combination of some favorite interests: George Eliot, Judaism, Himmelfarbian political views. All that's missing is the Navy (and actually, that's in there too, sort of)*. 

The book is an easy, quick read and of course, very enjoyable. Himmelfarb is a great writer and doesn't put in any academic/scholarly/deconstructionist analysis sort of hooey. I don't think it is at all necessary to have read any Eliot in order to understand and appreciate the book. I think she does an excellent job of summing up the main points and memorable segments of Daniel Deronda, which is the main book being discussed here. 

I had a big pile of sticky-markers to mark sections that had new and /or exciting points, as I usually do when I read. But I actually didn't mark anything until about halfway through. This is because, as I mentioned, there is a lot of recap. Not only of Eliot's novels, but of her journey in reading various philosophers - which means, a lot of recap of your standard 19th and 18th century Western philosophy. 

I think Himmelfarb does a nice job tracing Eliot's intellectual path to come to learn about Judaism, but in the end doesn't really answer the question why. Oh well. It's an interesting path nonetheless. 

I started really perking up when Himmelfarb points out that even though Mordechai is the predominant Jewish figure, the book is named after Daniel. Why? "Judaism, for her, although unique in its faith, its people, and its history, was of a whole with the culture and history of mankind...this is why Deronda the disciple, not Mordecai the prophet, is the eponymous hero...Deronda embodies the wholeness of Judaism, retaining the virtues of the English gentleman while discovering and abiding by his true faith as a Jew..."

Well, I've been up to my ears in readings on Moses Mendelssohn and Leopold Zunz in my prep for final exams this week, so this certainly rings a bell, somewhere, on something. 

The epilogue is really the best and most interesting part of the book. For example, Himmelfarb wonders how else a book about Jews would have been written by a typical person informed by Victorian attitudes toward Jews. Himmelfarb thinks it is more probable that a hero would have been someone like Klesmer - a "rational" Jew who is cosmopolitan and progressive. But for Eliot, "Her Jewish question was not the relation of Jews to the Gentile world, but the relation of Jews to themselves, to their own people, the beliefs and traditions that were their history and their legacy. This Jewish question was predicated upon a robust Judaism...not a defensive, beleaguered Judaism but an affirmative, even an assertive one."

Well, I certainly like that idea of Judaism too, and I think Deronda embodies that. But then I feel that she starts to exaggerate the point, when she brings in Nathan Sharansky.  In comparing ideas from Nathan Sharansky's tract Defending Identity with various letters from Eliot, Himmelfarb finds that both seem to have the idea of "Judaism as a communal faith finding its expression in a national identity." Both the character Deronda and Sharansky came to discover their Jewish identity rather late, and both were excited to find that belonging to a common world or nationality "gives strength not only to community but to the individual as well." 

This reminded me of how Himmelfarb took a turn in an essay on the Reform Act of 1867, in a collection called Victorian Minds. The essay is mainly about Disraeli, of course. By the end of the essay Himmelfarb is vehemently asserting that Disraeli and his move to pass the Reform Act was far from an anomaly but in fact was -and is-  the very essence of political conservatism. And that in fact conservatives have always been about being flexible and not too ideologically-bound compared to liberals, in any context, and so on and so forth.  I got the sense that Ms. Himmelfarb might have been relying too much on contemporary political views in defending past political heroes. 

That isn't to say that I didn't fully enjoy both that essay and this book and those particular areas of concern. I actually agree with them, pretty much. But I think that under hard scrutiny, there might be a few too many holes. 

Deronda was the first book by Eliot that I read. I was absolutely amazed to find a Victorian novel that was periodically dotted with quotes from Zunz and the Talmud. I was also delighted by the beautiful language and amazingly pin-point descriptions of Eliot (you think to yourself, yes, that's just the way it is sometimes, isn't it?). When I came to the famous pub scene with Mordecai and his buddies, I was blown away. Why is this not standard reading amongst liberal Jewish leaders? 

*Okay, here is the sort-of connection between all this and the Navy. Disraeli, who may have in some way been an influence on  Eliot's choice of protagonist (same three-syllable D name, Jewish, dark complexioned) appointed Sir Joseph Porter to be First Lord of the Admiralty in his government. Porter was mocked because he apparently had absolutely no experience with ships or the Navy whatsoever (he started out as a newsboy). Porter was probably the inspiration for the Admiral in Gilbert and Sullivan's comic HMS Pinafore. While Queen Victoria's reaction to the operetta was supposedly "We are not amused," Disraeli was in fact highly amused and started calling Sir Porter "Pinafore."

And Himmelfarb notes that "this insistent moral theme, 'that idea of duty,' pervaded all of Eliot's novels...Indeed, it became her trademark." It's true, Deronda gets a bit annoying in this way. The same way that Ralph Rackstraw, from that same operetta, is comically annoying in his insistence on duty. You see where I'm going with this? I'm not entirely sure either. 

But I do know that I grew up in a family odd enough that, at an early age, the children knew many of the lyrics to HMS Pinafore. Then I joined the Navy. Then I read a lot of books about Disraeli and by George Eliot. That's really all it is. 

Not In Kansas

Glen Elder State Park

Over the past week, I drove some 1300km around Kansas looking at field sites for an upcoming VLF recording campaign. We surveyed a bunch of sites to find optimal sites for when we return at the end of the month to do more detailed and precise recordings.

Our receivers are designed to effectively record all electromagnetic radiation in the frequency range of 100 Hz to 30 kHz (the VLF frequency region). We are interested in two sources of radio noise, sferics, or the impulsive signal that comes from all lightning strikes, and VLF transmitters like NAA or NPM. These transmitters are operated by the Navy.

The primary objective of the recording campaign is to capture the waveforms of many sferics and characterize them such that we can learn information about how far they have traveled in the Earth-Ionosphere waveguide and what may have perturbed their propagation in the waveguide.


This picture is from somewhere in Kanopolis State Park, KS. I actually know EXACTLY where this is, I just can't tell you.

Who knew Kansas was dotted with State Parks? I sure didn't. Almost every lake or reservoir has a small State Park attached to it. Just big enough for a few horse trails and some campgrounds. And hopefully a VLF receiver.

Condiments.

My family knows of my serious aversion to ketchup. Not just on hamburgers. Anywhere. 

On hamburgers, I prefer guacamole as the condiment. But I can deal with a mustard-decorated Whataburger. 

'Brothers at War'

I saw this movie about a month ago - had to schlep all the way over to Dayton, to the movie theater closest to the Air Force Base, to find it. It was definitely worth it. I'm glad to see that Kyle Smith rates it a "good to go" as well. 

Smith mentions how the film has some real "psychological complexity," both in regards to the soldiers and in terms of the Rademacher brothers' family dynamics.  Smith comments on a scene in which a bunch of "trained death dealers" return from a 5-day surveillance trip on the Syrian border - and unwind by watching The OC. 

One section of the movie follows an American soldier who is in charge of training a group of Iraqi policemen (or maybe they were with the Iraqi army? I wasn't sure.). Anyway, it sure looked like one of the most frustrating jobs out there. But what really impressed me was not just the difficulty of the job, but how the U.S. soldiers gave it their all, were proud of the Iraqis for any bit of progress, and truly believed in them. It showed some serious heart and dedication.

The opening sequence nicely captures Rademacher's personality and the way that following these impressive servicemen and women can give one's perspective a necessary tweak. Jake (the filmmaker) is talking to a U.S. soldier and says, "Yeah, see, a bad day for me is like, there's no cream cheese for the bagels out on the craft services table..."

Later in the movie you get the rest of that conversation. The same U.S. soldier finds a dead Iraqi citizen in the middle of the road, where the Iraqi policemen/army was supposed to have been patrolling. He says, "Yeah, see, what's your worst day like? This is my everyday...." (I'm obviously paraphrasing and trying to remember from a month ago). 

Go see it, if it's playing near you. 

Review

The Wall Street Journal book review of Willard Spiegelman's new book Seven Pleasures: Essays on Ordinary Happiness was so good and enjoyable to read itself that I immediately ordered the book from Amazon. 

The book is short - just under 200 easy pages - so I was able to read it pretty quickly. I was very disappointed. I found the book unbearably elitist and condescending. I mainly got the impression that Spiegelman would be happy if only he could live in (pick: Venice, Copenhagen, Bavaria, New York, etc, you get the idea), and go to world-class art galleries all day. Unfortunately, he is stuck in the unenlightened backwater of Dallas, which is inhabited by knuckle-draggers. But if you happen to live in a big eastern seaboard city, or can regularly attend ballroom dancing classes, there might be a chance for you to find happiness with compromising your intellectuality. 

The book does, as the review says, focus mainly on the point that one can be an intellectual and be happy, at the same time. But I don't see this as a big revelation. In fact, I think that assuming the opposite is pretty silly. It's sort of a silly argument for a whole book. 

I was also intrigued by the review because of the subjects that Spiegelman picks to write about: writing, reading, walking, swimming, listening - all things that I already enjoy doing. (except swimming in indoor lap lane pools.) So I thought it would be pleasantly self-affirming to read about how they give others pleasure, too. 

He did make a few points that I liked, and I'll list a few. 

•In recounting the joys of translating the classics from Latin, he writes that "the study of Latin accomplished something that my studies in English and French had failed to do: it made me aware of how poetry actually works. My native language did not have the same effect on me; because I understood it, I mistakenly thought that I could read it less carefully." My experience with biblical poetry confirms this. 

•He likes to read while eating. Me too. 

Okay, on to a few places that show why I was put off:

•On walking - "Dallas, TX, my latest residence, offers plenty of resistance to walkers...it is mostly physically unappealing, and it is hot..." and he follows up by contrasting how awesome a time Kierkegaard probably had walking around in Copenhagen, instead. There are some very pretty parts of Dallas - White Rock Lake, for example. I think it's enjoyable to amble along quiet streets in Highland Park and admire the landscaping. My mom, sister, and I, and even the dudes, love taking walks in Dallas. We have a quiet and beautiful neighborhood, with lots of big shady trees, to walk in. We like checking on the turtles in this one little backyard pond halfway through. Spiegelman refers to the opening scene of Mrs. Dalloway in which the said Mrs. goes out to get the party flowers, and how she waxes about the smell of lilacs: "For someone like me, so long resident in Texas, the mere fact of lilacs in redolent bloom and chestnut trees (both species unavailable in Dallas) gave a promise of sensuous bliss." Spieg, you are trying to write a book about happiness, right? So why the complaining about what you don't have? Why don't you also appreciate the southern mountain laurel or magnolias? 

•The rest of his stuff about walking is mainly how great walking is in Venice. I bet it is. But something about going on and on about how great it is to walk in old European cities doesn't quite jive with the premise about ordinary happiness, to me. I had expected to see, maybe, the joys of taking an early-morning walk in the suburbs, with squeals of little kids, smells of breakfasts, etc...

•He writes briefly about how he is an atheistic Jew, but that he likes going to Quaker meetings. He writes, "Even a religious Refusenik like me has been known to enter places of worship, for a wedding or funeral..." Gee, how kind of him. And how irritating to refer to atheism with the term Refusenik. The suffering that the real Refuseniks endured because of their religion.....

•On listening to music: His favorite example of how a visual production matched the music was this one: a 1976 production of Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites, "performed on a mostly bare stage and opening with the nuns in their habits splayed facedown on the raked floor in the form of a cross. The opera ends with an ascent to the scaffold as the huddled women  sing their final prayer to the Virgin and march to an invisible guillotine..." I do believe he was serious. 

•In his chapter on "listening," he discusses playing music at some length, but doesn't seem to make any distinction between the two activities. Odd. 

•Finally, he is impressed that the Quakers are allowed to convene in Dallas, "in the land of guns, in a state that loves the death penalty." I doubt that any Texans love the death penalty. Some might think it is necessary. That's a very different thing. And to say otherwise is just plain mean. In the beginning of the book he quotes The Nichomachean Ethics: How does one become just? By doing just deeds. Who does just deeds? The man with the sense of justice. (He does follow this with a quote from Legally Blonde. Another early tip-off). Anyway, he uses Aristotle's reasoning to apply to happiness: you get happy by doing happy things.  What's the point of his condescending snark about the people who fund his university? It made me unhappy. 

What made me happy again was the arrival, on the following day, of Gertrude Himmelfarb's new book, The Jewish Odyssey of George Eliot. 

The evening reads

Wow. This sure is a must-read. Addresses: Jews and classical music, Jews and the draw toward radical leftism, Rosenzweig....

Far from a coward - at least now. 

On a very different note - did someone say beauty pageant scandal?

No, not the one we've been hearing about on an endless news loop. 

Doom

History of doom-mongering....

Looks like an interesting book, but I dunno, it's just that doom-mongering seems like it can be so much fun. 

Put on the Fools-cap and Grin....

Ross Douthat's column on the Arlen Specter Switch addresses the issue of politicians and their supposed principles. Well.....

I recently finished Adam Kirsch's excellent new biography of Benjamin Disraeli.  The Specter spectacle reminds me of what Disraeli said upon becoming Prime Minister: "I have climbed to the top of the greasy pole."  [Although, from what I've read elsewhere, Specter might actually be slip-sliding down that greasy pole. ]

For example, the way that Disraeli rather easily gave up his fight the Corn Laws, after so vehemently fighting Peel on the issue, "seemed to justify the charge that he had never cared about them at all, but merely used the issue for his personal advantage...To the very end of his life, Disraeli was regarded by his foes, and sometimes by his friends, as essentially an opportunist." (from Kirsch). 

But, I mean, what is the business of politics, after all....?

From Disraeli to George Eliot's Daniel Deronda ( not so great of a leap):

"'Confound it, Dan! why don't you make an opportunity of saying these things in public?....If you would seize an occasion of this sort to make an impression, you might be in Parliament in no time...'

'I am sorry not to do what would gratify you, sir,' said Deronda. 'But I cannot persuade myself to look at politics as a profession.'

'Why not?....the business of the country must be done...'

'I don't want to make a living out of opinions,' said Deronda; 'especially out of borrowed opinions. Not that I mean to blame other men. I daresay many better fellows than I don't mind getting on to a platform to praise themselves, and giving their word of honour for a party...'

'I'll tell you what, Dan,' said Sir Hugo, 'a man who sets his face against every sort of humbug is simply a three-cornered, impracticable fellow. There's a bad style of humbug, but there is also a good style - one that oils the wheels and makes progress possible. If you are to rule men, you must rule them through their own ideas...It's no use having an Order in Council against popular shallowness. There is no action possible without a little acting.'

'One may obliged to give way to an occasional necessity,' said Deronda. 'But it is one thing to say, 'In this particular case I am forced to put on this foolscap and grin,' and in another to buy a pocket foolscap and practise myself in grinning. I can't see any real public expediency that does not keep an ideal before it which makes a limit of deviation from the direct path. But if I were to set up for a public man I might mistake my own success for public expediency.'"

Anyway, where were we? Oh yes, Arlen Specter.....

Different Tastes

This one's for the sister:

Maybe I'll go see the movie after all. 

and this one's for the Dad. I know you like this stuff. Ew. 

Old Music Review

Just to get some of that up here, too. This is a from a good while ago......

I really enjoy going to chamber music. It gets better and better the more you go. Maybe its because it is always such a joy to actually hear the real instruments, hear real acoustics and not your speakers. Maybe it is because you know that it is a complete escape: you are guaranteed not to see anyone you know there, yet still have a great time. However, there is still something to be said for getting to hear some of the most dramatic, beautiful, and sometimes just your favorite tunes played by the best musicians.

There was no bitter pill to swallow with the Kalichstein, Laredo, and Robinson trio this evening. They put on an excellent concert featuring Beethoven and Shostakovitch, thats it. They opened with a Beethoven apparently composed for a young student of his, which I had never heard before, but it was wonderful.

They then played Shostakovitch Trio Op. 67. You should listen to it again. It is perhaps one of the most dramatic pieces written for piano trio. It is definitely one of my favs, and I have an excellent recording of the Trio Wanderer doing it. I did not realize that the opening of the andante is played such that the higher pitched notes are actually played as harmonics on the cello while the lower tones are just the lower register of the violin. It definitely explains the peculiar quality of the sound and eerie texture that you hear in that opening. Mr Kalichstein, the pianist, was kind enough to say a few words before they played this piece describing some aspects of the piece. He said that Shostakovitch was very aware of politics and the world around him, and this was often reflected in his music in subtle ways. This particular piece was apparently composed just after he learned of the Nazi concentration camps. I don't know if this is true, but it sure is a nice thing to say and a great motivation for the very heavy mood of the piece.

The one thing, however, is that they moved through the large, high gravity chords that begin the Largo (and allegretto) sections perhaps a little too quickly. They moved faster than the Trio Wanderer's recording, which I think doesn't do justice to the weight and foreboding nature of those chords.

They concluded with the Archduke trio by Beethoven, which was simply marvelous. The real talent of the KLR trio is in their ability to completely control the weight and texture of each note, and do it together. I remember one phrase in which the cello and the piano were so completely together, and that they were playing exactly the same tone and feel of staccato from their respective instruments. Beautiful.

However, I had the unfortunate luck to sit next to the biggest Boob in the audience. I thought that as you got older, your sense of etiquette and respect for others improved. Not so with this fellow. He was fidgitier than I was when I was 8. Every minute, he shifted his weight around, moved to scratch himself in such a way as to produce the most noise. And then his watch went "beep beep" three chords into the Largo section of the Shostakovitch. He even had the audacity to check his cell phone for messages during the first movement of the Beethoven. I almost smacked him. I can't believe that his wife sitting on the other side of him let him get away with it too.

Furthermore, it was the strangest professional concert setting I have ever been to. They played in some side theater at the Mountain View Performing Arts center which was really a theater space that they had brought risers and chairs into and covered the floor with tasteless black matting of the variety that you would normally find covering something like a basketball court when it is being used for some event other than basketball. Needless to say the venue was not acoustically excellent nor beautiful, it was surrounded by the typical black theater curtains. Can the city of Mountain View, home to Google, Microsoft, Intel, AMD, and many others I'm sure, not afford to build a first class performance venue?

As usual, I was by far the youngest person in the audience.

Feynman and, maybe, Maimonides

Dave sent me this quote a few days ago, along with a video he made. He's a little tied up in preparations for a secret gold-digging trip to Kansas (was that too much info, Dave?) but I wanted to get it up here, anyway. 

"I have asked you to imagine these electric and magnetic fields. What do you do? Do you know how? How do I imagine the electric and magnetic field? What do I actually see? What are the demands of scientific imagination? Is it any different from trying to imagine that the room is full of invisible angels? No, its not like imagining invisible angels. It requires a much higher degree of imagination to understand the electromagnetic field than to understand invisible angels. Why? Because to make invisible angels understandable, all I have to do is alter their properties a little bit- I make them slightly visible, and then I can see the shapes of their wings, and bodies, and halos. Once I succeed in imagining a visible angel, the abstraction required- which is to take almost invisible angles and imagine them completely invisible - is relatively easy.

[skipping some stuff]
"When I start describing the magnetic field moving through space, I speak of the E- and B- fields and wave my arms and you may imagine that I can see them. I'll tell you what I see. I see some kind of vague shadowy, wiggling lines-here and there is an E and B written on them somehow, and perhaps some of the lines have arrows on them."

-Feynman (Vol. II 20-8)

Alternatively, it kind of looks like oobleck.

www.stanford.edu/~straussd/oobleck.avi

[end note from Dave]

The quote sort of reminded me of some things I've been studying for my theology exam - in particular, the notes I have from a class on Maimonides' Guide to the Perplexed: that ""As to His essence, the only way to describe it is negatively. For instance, He is not physical, nor bound by time, nor subject to change, etc. These assertions do not involve any incorrect notions or assume any deficiency, while if positive essential attributes are admitted it may be assumed that other things coexisted with Him from eternity." Unrestrained anthropomorphism and perception of positive attributes is seen as a transgression as serious as idolatry, because both are fundamental errors in the metaphysics of God's role in the universe, and that is the most important aspect of the world." 

I suppose the reason the Feynman quote reminded me of this was the common theme of the limits of language - perhaps also the ultimate limits of our own imaginations and cognitive abilities. 

Cool People Live Here?

Once you put that on a sign in your front lawn, don't you sort of negate the possibility of it being true?

http://tinyurl.com/chv7bp

Well, excuse us! 

Also, a new symphony hall, really? What're they going to use the old one by I.M.Pei for? 

Weekend Reading Round-Up

Well, here's what I picked through this weekend.....first weekend of month is always a good one with so much to choose from: new issues of Commentary and New Criterion, plus all the good weekend stuff at the Wall Street Journal.

But my top recommendations are:

Mark Steyn on British antisemitism, with Broadway musical references

On Going to Synagogue

He's Israel's new ambassador to the U.S. 

Mark Levin's new book

Very bad situation of Jews in Venezuela

The SAT is still really unfair, but in different ways than I used to think

I triple-dog dare you to try this, Dave.

I'll stick to my pink gin, as usual, thanks. 

Sorry Dave, it looks like Terry Teachout went with another acting article in this month's Commentary. And his WSJ contribution is also about plays - well it's about orchestras, but orchestras that do the music for plays. But I'm sure you'll let me know if Nordlinger's new-New Criterion column is worth a look. Chances are, probably yes. Usually sticks to the music. 

Two Different Views on Job

A few days ago, our assignment for Bible class was on the Book of Job. 

It spurred me to re-read this article from Azure magazines, a few issues back.

http://www.azure.org.il/article.php?id=20

 I thought this was a very interesting (if not completely convincing in every single example) take on Job. 

I also just finished reading a book by Donovan Campbell, called "Joker One: A Marine Platoon's Story of Courage, Leadership, and Brotherhood." Great book, highly recommended. 

Here's the part that seemed to be to be highly relevant to my schoolwork for the week. The background is this: the platoon was stationed in Ramadi in spring 2004 - a time when the insurgency was really going strong and there were a lot of American casualties. Campbell was leading a small squad out on a patrol and they stopped to hand out some soccer balls and candy to a bunch of kids. Some insurgents decide this would be an excellent time to fire RPG's, even though there were obviously a bunch of little kids hanging around the Marines. After the RPG lands and kills a bunch of kids, instead of taking cover, a Lance Corporal stays out in the open to administer first aid to the kids - and he is killed. 

Campbell writes: "Despite the anguish, and the self-doubt, and all the questions, I wasn't ready to give up on God just yet. I didn't understand the tragedy of Bolding [the lance corporal's] death, and I still don't and I won't pretend to, but seeing the simple faith of my Marines made me realize that, as a leader, I had a very basic choice to make: 1) I could throw in the towel on God - in other words, rationalize away my inability to understand and comprehend the infinite by stating that He didn't exist; or 2 I could accept the fact that this life is painful, and tragic, and messy, and that God's designs often don't coincide with my plans and that many times I won't, and will never, understand why that don't, but that none of this means that God doesn't exist or that He is isn't ultimately good. The first choice, as I saw it, offered me no hope. Without God, then Bolding's life and death were meaningless - he served no ultimate purpose, he worked for no greater good...With God, though, Bolding's life and death were in service of the infinite, of a personal deity who cared and who intended the best for His people, even if they didn't see it or didn't want it. The second choice offered me hope, and I reached for it and strapped myself back into the responsibility of leadership."

I had finished Joker One after that particular class session and this quote stood out in light of all the discussions about Job. 

Happy Birthday, Pete

This weekend Pete Seeger turns 90. I'm not a big fan of "folk song army" music. A column Ron Radosh wrote a few years ago didn't help my view very much - http://tinyurl.com/b63wqm

What is the folk song army, you ask?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yygMhtNQJ9M

Not The End

While "Fluxions" was Newton's term for what we now call derivatives, I do not actually advocate the end of derivatives. Their end would make my homework have less of those pesky little d's running around, however.