Month: October 2009

Norm Geras probes the tension between Christian understanding of free will and the Church's command to not commit suicide:

The metaphysical freedom to take one's own life is not worth as much if it isn't one's own to take but under an authoritative prohibition. Furthermore, every other choice in which right is told from wrong by reference to God's will is now equally constrained. If your life isn't yours to take, then presumably it also isn't yours to do with as you judge to be right in other respects. Not only may you not kill yourself because you don't belong to yourself, you may not act according to your conscience when your conscience is in conflict with some putatively God-given rule on other matters. The sphere of moral deliberation and choice that this delivers for the committed believer is significantly eroded; and the image of the free person as morally autonomous and fit to arrive at his or her own reflective judgements is undermined. Is this an intellectually acceptable state of affairs for those attached to the gift, and the value, of metaphysical freedom?

These are deep questions. I find it very hard to believe that the God I believe in would not see a desperate suicide with compassion in the way the Church's dogma cannot. But what the Church rightly intuits is that what is at stake here is not free will to do what you want; it is free will to end free will, to end the mysterious gift of life long before it is over. I distinguish this as well from the suicide of those in desperate pain and no real life yet to live.

Cleveland, Ohio, 8 am

Jim Holt offers a brief tour d'horizon. First an introduction:

The American philosopher Sidney Morgenbesser (1921-2004) was an odd case. For decades he held the prestigious John Dewey chair in philosophy at Columbia University. Before that, he was mentor to Hilary Putnam. Yet he rarely wrote anything. Instead, like Socrates, he was known for his viva voce philosophising. He was also known for his ‘zingers’…

The one best known to me was a (maybe apocryphal) encounter with the New York cops involving a misunderstanding of the word "Kant." But Jim has more:

‘Professor Morgenbesser, do you believe in Mao’s law of contradiction?’ a student asked.
‘I do and I don’t.’

‘Professor Morgenbesser, why is there something rather than nothing?’
‘Oh, even if there was nothing, you still wouldn’t be satisfied!’

Morgenbesser to B.F. Skinner: ‘So, you’re telling me it’s wrong to anthropomorphise humans?

Morgenbesser on pragmatism: ‘Great in theory, doesn’t work in practice.’

Morgenbesser was also a rabbi, which helped him see the Jewish side of philosophy.
Jewish ethics: ‘can’ implies ‘don’t’.
Jewish logic: if not p, what? q maybe?
Jewish decision theory: maximise regret.

These retro Internet ads never get old:

No postage!

A guide to damage control. Some context:

On August 19th, 2007, an oil tanker off the coast of Australia split in two, dumping 20,000 tons of crude oil into the sea. Senator Collins, a member of the Australian Parliament, appeared on a TV news program to reassure the Australian public.

This is one version of the explanation:

Just as Christianity at some point will defeat Christianism. From a National Geographic article on Indonesia:

[A]lthough Indonesians continue to embrace Islam in their private lives with greater fervor, it's become clear that most don't want religion to be enforced in the political sphere. "So many people equate Muslim piety with radicalism," says Sidney Jones, an Indonesia specialist with the nonprofit International Crisis Group who has lived in the country for more than 30 years. "Indonesia is full of examples of why that notion is wrong." As Islamist politicians have moved to regulate women's dress codes and ban activities like yoga, moderates have begun to make their voices heard. In the Indonesian parliamentary elections this past April, candidates backed by Muslim organizations received less than 23 percent of the vote, down from 38 percent in 2004.

(Hat tip: 3QD)

Samantha Shapiro reports on Sesame Street’s international operation:

Since the inception of “Sesame Street” in the United States 40 years ago, the nonprofit New York City-based organization that produces the show, which is now called Sesame Workshop, has created 25 international co-productions. Each country’s show has its own identity: a distinctive streetscape, live-action segments featuring local kids and a unique crew of Muppets. Bangladesh’s “Sisimpur” uses some traditional Bangladeshi puppets, and South Africa’s “Takalani Sesame” features Kami, an orphaned H.I.V.-positive Muppet.

But in each co-production, at least in its early years, every detail — every character, every scene and every line of script — must be approved by executives in the Sesame Workshop office, near Lincoln Center. This requires a delicate balance: how to promote the “core values” of Sesame Street, like optimism and tolerance, while at the same time portraying a version of local life realistic enough that broadcasters will show it and parents will let their kids watch. The Palestinian territories have been, not surprisingly, a tough place to strike this balance, Sesame executives say, rivaled only by Kosovo.

June Thomas tries to understand why the poor are short on teeth:

In a country in denial about class divisions, a mangled mouth is the clearest indication of second-class citizenship. Missing or rotting teeth are like a scarlet T, declaring their owner to be trash. Sered and Fernandopulle describe the way that a group of well-meaning Idaho women who volunteered at clinics and early childhood development programs judged "those people" who weren't able to get dental care for themselves or for their children. "These middle-class women," they wrote, "identified bad teeth as a sign of poor parenting, low educational achievement, and slow or faulty intellectual development." When Stu Price, Ed Helms' character in The Hangover, wakes up in Las Vegas and discovers he is missing a front tooth, his horrified response is to declare, "I look like a nerd hillbilly." Every lazy screenwriter knows how to label a character as a menacing half-wit: give him gnarly teeth and a sleeveless T-shirt.

Your mom is on YouTube dancing like nobody's watching:

And someone's already made a Timberlake/Samberg remix! (NSFW)

(Hat tip: URLesque)

Joe Klein's latest thoughts:

Despite the rants about "mad mullahs" and neoconservative calls for regime change, the Iranians have been careful about their foreign policy in recent years. As the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate found, they respond to international pressure. They are an obnoxious regime, but only a second-level danger to the U.S. The Obama Administration should continue its attempts to engage the Iranians while preparing to contain and deter them if they actually try to build a bomb. It should not revert to the foolish bellicosity of the last Administration. And there is good news: Ahmadinejad assured us that he would not attempt to change Iran's constitution and run for a third term in 2013. That should come as some small relief to the mass of Iranians who yearn to breathe free.

Well, Khamenei is the real problem. And given that Ahmadinejad was happy to institute a coup to stay in power this year, I have no trust in anything he says. But that does not mean we have to resort to asinine Krauthammer-style "It's Munich!" hysteria. It may be that we can help manage a situation in which the Iranian people slowly but inexorably take their country back from the brink, just as Americans recently did theirs'.