John & Belle Have A Blog

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They Will Never Achieve Respect

Out here in Singapore we can't watch Bill O'Reilly. I only hear about him when he gets mad at the internet, or pollutes the justice system with frivolous lawsuits. Like everyone else, I've read Matt Welch's much-linked Reason post on O'Reilly's recent, awkward brush with the concept of truth. There's nothing really to argue about here, since I take it no one would wish to take O'Reilly's side (is he always this crazy? If so, why is he so popular?) Anyway, he is truly indignant that attacks on the personal dignity of public figures, and incessant exposures of their sexual antics, are driving good folk from public service.

There's a price to be paid here. It's obvious that if you want power in this country, whether it's in political office, in the media or in business, you're going to get worked over. And many people simply are not going to put themselves in that position. Thus we lose a lot of good people in public service.

Does anybody really care what Arnold Schwarzenegger's sex life was all about in 1977? Does that have any bearing on what he would do as governor of California? I mean, it's nuts. This kind of exposure, pardon the pun, is hurting the country.

There's going to come a time when Americans start to see that some political tactics are simply unacceptable. I believe we are an inherently fair people. And although the press and certain individuals can make money off scandal, they will never achieve respect.

Indeed.

I thought I'd do a little experiment. (I google, you decide.) Bill O'Reilly + Bill Clinton and my second hit was a two-month old piece on Hillary and ... the Monica Lewinsky scandal. How Hillary MUST HAVE been suspicious, even though she PRETENDED to be shocked. You might have thought that particularly ember had gone cold. But no. It's June, 2003; and Bill O'Reilly can't resist poking the ashes. It's obviously TOO IMPORTANT to let it go.

Rotten Racket

I haven't really been keeping up with my weekly new logo regime. And on the old blog I used to provide little links so you could read the original back cover. Ah, well. Progress. I'll try to do better.

Zoë's First Blog Post

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Tacitus Now!

Let me begin by saying that Tacitus is one of my favorite conservative bloggers, and I really hope his unconventional method of applying to graduate school bears fruit. That would be justice. And I realize his bottom 20 of the 20th list (as per Belle's post below) is too silly to keep kicking so hard - but, dammit, it's going to give me my only excuse to blog a few things I'm never going to blog otherwise.

Puddin'

Casting modesty to the winds, I will tell you that I am a very good cook. It's my hobby. Tonight, for example we are having a rustic galette of chinese spinach, caramelized onions, and goat cheese with pine nuts and golden raisins, in a whole wheat-oatmeal crust. Mmm. It was a big pain in the ass, but we'll hope it was worth it. Also, steamed carrots with ginger, and butterscotch cookies for dessert.

Tragically, my husband doesn't like pudding. Not even homemade butterscotch. Not crème caramel. Not trifle, with homemade pound cake and lots of sherry and syllabub on top. He makes a partial exception for chocolate pudding, but kind of grudgingly, like, couldn't you have just made cake? (Just like when I make cornbread, you can tell he's thinking, this could have been biscuits.)

So I was looking forward to having a child to indoctrinate in the virtues of rice pudding, butterscotch, etc. I made Indian rice pudding last night, because my mom is here and has been sick; it's very soothing. Imagine my disappointment last night when I presented Zoë with some kheer, garnished with raspberries. She looked doubtful. She tasted. "Mommy, any chocolate pudding?" No. She tried again, hopefully, "Zoë have chocolate cake?" Hmm. Maybe John got to her first. I fed her some again today and she likes it just OK. Not crazy about it. (Too cardamom-y?) Damn. I'll get fat if I make pudding that I alone will eat and then also have to make cookies or something for everyone else.

I've been meaning to offer recipies for a while so here it is, straight from an Indian friend's mom. Kheer. It's really easy. I hope you like it. Sigh.

1 quart whole milk
1/2 cup rice
6 cardamom pods, cracked
1 bay leaf
scant 1/2 cup sugar
1 can evaporated milk (with whole it will be very rich; 2% is fine too)

Bring milk, rice, cardamom and bay leaf to rolling boil in a heavy saucepan over high heat. Don't let it boil over; just turn off the heat if it starts to try and climb out of the pan. Turn heat down to medium, so that mixture is still bubbling, and cook for 30 minutes, stirring pretty frequently, almost constantly for the last 5 or 10 minutes. Remove from heat and fish out bay leaf. Add between 1/2 and 1 can of evaporated milk; with a whole can the finished kheer will be soupy (that's how my friend likes it). I think 2/3 can is best. Add sugar. Let cool with plastic wrap touching the surface, then chill in fridge. It thickens as it cools. If you feel fancy you can garnish the bowls with slivered almonds, golden raisins, chopped citron, or even edible gold and silver leaf (this is what they do in India, but I've never done it at home. I might do it sometime for a party; it would be cool). This makes 6-8 servings.

The Evil of Banality

Tacitus is generally a very sensible fellow; see, for example, this post in which he ably disposes of David Adesnik's contention that all is well in Iraq apart from renegade Ba'athists in the Sunni triangle.

On the other hand, take a gander at this list of the worst people of the 20th century (he notes that it "was sent in at an absurdy late hour and hence the result of a muddled thought process.")

Vladimir Lenin
Adolf Hitler
Josef Stalin
Mao Tse-Tung
Peter Singer
Bertrand Russell
Kaiser Wilhelm
Yassir Arafat
Abd al-Aziz bin Abd al-Rahman bin Faysal Al Saud
Sayyid Qutb
Clement Atlee
Woodrow Wilson
Pol Pot
Kim Il-Sung
Ayatollah Khomeini
Lyndon Baines Johnson
Gamal Nasser
Neville Chamberlain
Emperor Hirohito
Ho Chi Minh

This list strikes me as somewhat...what shall I say...heterogenous. And I continue to be surprised by the extent to which people think Peter Singer is an actively evil man rather than a head-in-the-clouds, utilitarian, all-too-utilitarian type. It's not as if he's poised to seize the reins of power and launch a Herodian slaughter of the innocents, and everyone who's ever met him seems to agree he has a good will. More evil than Idi Amin? How much more? A lot more? But then, Woodrow Wilson?

I have been ignoring the moose in the room here up till this point. Bertrand Russell? Betrand Russell?! Tacitus indicates that he might remove Russell, having given it more thought. But what were the grounds in the first place? Being a conscientious objector in WWI? Writing a really bad novel (John's suggestion)? Being a staunch Socialist who isn't an apologist for Stalin seems unlikely to land you in the top 1,000, by my reckoning. Maybe Tacitus tried to get through the Principia sometime and was scarred for life? Perhaps someone will enlighten me.

Photoblogging

Some Singapore scenes.

Experimental Theater

I'm getting ready to teach Meno next week, and there's a bit that often rubs readers the wrong way. Truth be told the whole virtue-geometry-virtue sandwich sticks in everyone's cognitive craw. Never mind that. I'm thinking about the bit where Socrates criticizes Meno for liking Empedocles' theory of perception (i.e. that there are 'effluvia' off objects that fit our eyes, ears, so forth.) Socrates dismisses this theory as 'theatrical' [tragic, poetic], even though it seems not half bad as an empirical hypothesis. We read this today as a symptom of the weakness of Plato's anti-empirical view of science. Which is fair enough. But he's actually got a baby in all this bathwater, like so. In fact all Meno is interested in is theatrical 'plausibility'. He isn't interested in taking it to the next level of experiment, confirmation, so forth. It wouldn't occur to him that this is a research program, let alone that there might be expert knowledge to be attained. Skip ahead more than a thousand years - and three weeks in my syllabus - to Descartes. Here's a funny passage from Richard Popkin's book, The History of Scepticism From Erasmus to Spinoza:

Darwin As Educator

My highly experimental second post last night ended on a sour note. I opined lazily that Darwinists - through no fault of their own - sometimes suffer from a sort of disfiguring, protective hunch in their presentations, especially their popular ones. They know that certain perfectly innocuous formulations of agnosticism on any number of points will invite radical misunderstanding and misrepresentation. I didn't provide a shred of evidence this is so. But, conveniently, Brian Leiter provides - not a case in point, exactly; an associated phenomenon. He links to this indignant rebuttal by a misrepresented author. In this case, the phrase that rolls around and has to call on its author for protection is 'long-standing question'. Darwinists, like other scientists, ought to be able to admit in public that there are lots of such things in their field. But, of course, if they do, someone will insist this proves creationism deserves equal time in the classroom, and now the Darwinist must spend his weekend sending clarificatory letters to the editor. On the other hand, if Darwinists deny that there are long-standing questions they are screwed from the other end.

I belabor my tiny point because while rereading "Schopenhauer As Educator" this morning for my Nietzsche module, I came across the following passage - about 'solitary thinkers'; but we can pretend it's called 'the Texan Darwinist'.

While they desire nothing but truth and honesty, they are encompassed by a net of misunderstandings; and however vehemently they may desire, they cannot prevent a cloud of false opinions, approximations, half-admissions, indulgent silences, erroneous interpretation from gathering about their actions. Because of this a cloud of melancholy gathers on their brows; for such as these it is more hateful than death itself to be forced to present a semblance to the world; and their perpetual bitter resentment of this constraint fills them with volcanic menace. From time to time they revenge themselves for their enforced concealment and compelled restraint.

Of course, that's approximately 137% too hyperbolic.