Month: November 2009

The Oakeshott conference was quite wonderful in so many ways and I hope to blog about it soon. But leaving the rather poignantly named Waco International Airport, I came upon one of those little moments of grace worth passing along. On my way to the gate, the shoe shine man did a boisterous sales job. "You've got plenty of time, sir. Plenty of time."  I brushed him off, but he kept at it. I find the whole process of a shoe shine faintly embarrassing (although it has its moments in a leather bar) and the idea of sitting up on a pedestal while someone bows and scrapes on your shoes … well, it just feels wrong to me. Before me in line, Roger Scruton had sat there and been ministered unto and I had inwardly smirked (to my shame).

But the man insisted – he was African-American – and at that point my libertarian instincts kicked in. This was his job and my own snooty sense of p.c. amour-propre shouldn't get in the way of his making a buck.

So I climbed up, sat down, and by way of easing my discomfort, asked him where he was from.

"Waco, all my life, sir." I then asked him what it was like when he was younger (he seemed in his sixties, I'd say). He told me of a tornado, and of floods. I then asked him about segregation. He didn't hesitate to talk about it, but I could tell he would have never brought it up if I had not prompted him. Yes, he recounted the indignities, as he dabbed my shoes with polish, but without a trace of bitterness: of how he and a co-worker would have to enter a store by different entrances, how any hint of rebellion would be met with violence, how you had to keep your head down or "you had a problem", how certain neighborhoods were simply off-limits by day or night, how his relatives had been beaten, how he had learned to keep his peace and do his job. At one point, it got so bad he left for Nevada. But he soon returned.

I asked him how he survived. "Prayer," he instantly replied. "I just prayed. We all prayed. We're Christians and we prayed. Couldn't have got through it without prayer. And prayer for them too."

He meant, prayer for those who tormented him.

We hear constantly about what Christianity is, but it seems to me that this was as clear a statement as it gets. And when I hear some dismiss religious life, and argue, as my friend Hitch does, that religion poisons everything, I wonder what they would say to this man.

On the plane to DC I took out my Merton (I'm re-reading The Seven Storey Mountain these days) and came across this passage:

It was St Augustine's argument, that envy and hatred try to pierce our neighbor with a sword, when the blade cannot reach him unless it first passes through our own body.

The shoe shine was a Christian. And he was happy.

It’s the most pressing question we face. I know of few people I’d rather hear discuss it than David Frum and Joe Klein:

They have their beedy eyes on the blogosphere – especially the Alaskan blogosphere.

Norm Geras:

The question 'What does music mean?' might be a question about how we explain music: explain what it does for us, what its appeal is; or explain its function or value in human communities. It might be, then, like 'What do clouds mean?' or 'What does all this ash mean?' or 'What does the failure of the banks mean?' On that basis, however, I would think that music must have many meanings, since there won't be one unilateral way of integrating it within an intelligible system of causal or functional explanation. Think of music as used in religious ceremonies, as celebrating official occasions, as privately enjoyed by an individual, as making so much noise that it stops you thinking, as background to a movie, as facilitating or prompting dance, as inexpressibly wonderful and as utterly rebarbative and mystifying.

Bryan Appleyard mixes it up with PZ Meyers. This comment by Peter Burnett attempts to sum up PZ's shtick:

The formula goes something like this:

Step 1–Begin by describing a philosophical challenge with a mixture of anger and fatigue, much as you would describe discovering a termite in your house after the exterminator had been through and presumably destroyed them all. The contempt must ooze front and center before you even address the argument so that anyone who might be inclined to take the challenge seriously is forewarned and suitably cowed. Don't skimp on the insulting adjectives.

Step 2–Deflect the issue from the profoundly philosophical to the mundane by suddenly talking lab gobbledegook about genes, mutations, etc.

Use words like phenotype liberally and try to throw in a diagram. Extra points for insisting Darwin himself was well aware of what you are saying and would have agreed with you unreservedly;

Step 3–Insist that any argument that comes within a hundred miles of religion, no matter how ethereal or tentative, leads directly to biblical literalism, preferably as practiced in the American South. Show in one paragraph how it is the root of every atrocity in history, will lead to the end of scientific inquiry and justifies the bombing of innocent villagers by the U.S. Air Force.

Step 4–Bask in the glow of hundreds of one-sentence comments thanking you profusely for your courage and agreeing you have proven there is no need to read what your opponent said to know that the stupid twit isn't even worth reading.

An open-source site, antville.org, compiled and voted on the 101 best music videos of the 00s. Johnny Cash's "Hurt," directed by Mark Romanek, was number 23. Another Dish fave after the jump:

The transhumanist immortaleers are going to have a hard time playing Dr. Frankenstein.

Jeremy Kessler describes why the Frankenstein story lives on:

Mary Shelley conceived of Frankenstein at a time when science, the modern representative of reason, was moving toward world-making and away from its traditional world-representing role. The more powerful applied reason became, the more creative became the rationalists’ work. Dr. Frankenstein marks the moment when the work of reason threatened itself with success. 

Timescapes Timelapse: Mountain Light from Tom @ Timescapes on Vimeo.

It's best to start young:

[C]ompanies seeking an edge over their rivals should ensure that children are exposed to their brands as early in life as possible. That's according to Andrew Ellis and colleagues, whose new research shows that the classic "age-of-acquisition" effect in psychology applies to brand names as much as it does to everyday words.