Castle-builders and bricklayers

Since I've pounced when the New York Times Book Review has gone astray, I should probably now praise it since it's done right. (NB: I usually like the NYTBR, but I think it needs the occasional spanking.) Not only do they place a hilarious, scathing review of Michael Crichton's new anti-science novel next to a positive, thoughtful review of Freeman Dyson's new collection of essays, The Scientist as Rebel, but George Johnson's review of Dyson also implies what's wrong with religious attacks on science as dogmatic and anti-god:

• "It's jarring at first to hear the Scientist as Rebel describing himself as a conservative. But that's Dyson: as resistant to categorization as the universe his colleagues are trying to mathematicize. 'In the history of science,' he [Dyson] writes, 'there is always a tension between revolutionaries and conservatives, between those who build grand castles in the air and those who prefer to lay one brick at a time on solid ground.'"

Dyson's description of the history of science may seem oversimplified as it's quoted (NB2: Note Harder: I haven't read the piece Johnson quotes), but it does acknowledge that scientific fields are fraught with debate and modes of thought that conflict. Why does that matter? Because there's such scientific concurrence about evolution and global warming. And lest some claim that Dyson, a long-time teacher at Princeton, is simply a brainwashed and brainwashing academic, note that he never received a Ph.D., yet worked closely with Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga as they developed the work that would earn them the Nobel Prize in 1965, and has been a lucid, articulate, thoughtful writer on science throughout his life.

Also, and more importantly, Dyson believes in god (here I disagree with him), and his faith is thoughtful. In a lecture, Dyson said, "Both as a scientist and as a religious person, I am accustomed to living with uncertainty." I wish more policy-makers and fervent believers would come to understand Dyson's uncertainty and his intelligence about science and religion.

Hey douchebag! Theory and Practice Edition

What they said.

Your weekend atheism fix

David Letterman on Pat Robertson

Letterman nails it:

Pat Robertson: "God waterboarded me"

VIRGINIA BEACH (AP)--On the heels of his prediction that a terrorist attack late this year would lead to a "mass killing," "religious" "broadcaster" Pat Robertson recanted, claiming that God tortured him and threatened his life if he did not make the prediction.

Flanked by his family, an emotional Robertson said, "There I was, crocheting a "Jesus Saves" pillow for the Jew family down the street, when a couple of archangels in black hoods burst into the house." Robertson proceeded to tell a harrowing story of his blindfolded travels to a foreign country. "The food was delicious," he said, "but I couldn't understand a word they said."

And in his most shocking claim, Robertson said he was unmasked, and there stood the Lord Almighty himself, who proceeded to waterboard him. "He wanted me to say all manner of ridiculous, frightening things about a major attack against the U.S. He wanted me to say it was nuclear."

God declined comment for this article.

I want the person of '07 to be ME!

Now that Time declared YOU the person of '06, I want to throw my hat in the ring for '07. That's right, ME, Crazy Little Thing, president, Crazye Little Thinge Enterprises, Ltd. So vote for me. Start calling Time today, before that magazine's unplanned obsolescence drags it down into the muck and they declare Joe Klein their house liberal. Wait, that happened already? Shit.

***

Speaking of Your reign as '06's person of the year, I'd like to note that 2006 was the year of the needless YouTube story. Suddenly, a video's being posted became cause for a newspaper to fill space so their trod-upon reporters would not have to do any, you know, reporting. Don't believe me? Go plug "YouTube" into LexisNexis and get back to me.

***

Speaking of patting myself on the back, in '06, I established this here blog, and I got over 20K page views. That rounds to about 62 visitors a day (the blog started on Feb. 11), though I should note I had big boosts certain days from, among others, Deadspin, Sports Illustrated, Crooks and Liars, Michael Bérubé, Chicky Wang, The Big Lead, Awful Announcing, and assorted others. So thanks. I will give you all big kisses. My goal for this year is to be linked by Gawker, Michelle Malkin, and Time, once it realizes I'm the person of this year.

***

Tomorrow (Jan. 3) is my birfday. Celebrate appropriately.

***

Lastly, at Chicky Wang's arm-twisting suggestion, I'm going to share with you what I'm listening to on ye olde mp3e playere. But instead of mentioning all the cool stuff, I'm going to try and justify the most potentially embarrassing songs I've got on there.

Lily Allen, "Smile": I usually don't listen to britpop, but her name kept coming up on music sites like Idolator and Pitchfork, so I caved in and listened. It's a solid dance tune, and witty to boot. I highly recommend it.

J.C. Chasez, "Until Yesterday": If you're scratching your head trying to figure out where you know that name from, he's one of the putatively straight, non-Timberlake alumni of N*$%@#Sync. Again, I listened on Idolator's recommendation. The lyrics suck, but it's good for working out. Also, you have to appreciate any song with the balls to include the rare lyrics, "If you play with fire then you'll get burned." Truly original.

The Beach Boys, Various Songs: Is it cool to like them yet, or is my appreciation of them a sign that I should just throw in the towel and start wearing Dockers?

Green Day, Various Songs of Recent Vintage: I'm sorry, but these guys are too fucking earnest to be taken seriously, so if you don't think they're embarrassing to have on an mp3 player, you're wrong. And if you do, well, every once in a while, I like to feel earnest.

Liz Phair, "Everything to Me": Unfortunately, this isn't from the "Exile in Guyville" era, it's from the more recent, much-maligned pop era. Yes, I like hooky songs, okay?

LL Cool J, "Mama Said Knock You Out": Does not hold up after all these years. But it did lead to my submitting a potential List to McSweeney's, only to have it rejected. Maybe I'll post it here someday.

Oasis, Various Songs: Basically the Beatles, but with the worst of Lennon's earnestness. But "Fuckin' in the Bushes" is a particularly good opening song when I'm at the gym.

Weezer, "We Are All on Drugs": I know this song sucks. I just can't help it.

A wholehearted endorsement

Back when I posted my complaint about the New York Times Book Review Best Books of 2006, my friend Jake emailed to say he agreed. Then he added, "I would add one thing to your list of complaints: where the hell was The Road on that list? Don't know if you read it or liked it, but I fucking loved that book. Scared the hell out of me, but, god, I loved it."

I hadn't read Cormac McCarthy's The Road yet, but I have now. I couldn't agree with Jake more. It's an incredible novel. I think its flaws are minor (though there are some interesting and troubling gender issues worth discussing), but the novel is so moving, so well crafted, so horrifying, I can't believe there wasn't a place for it in the NYTBR list. I keep thinking about the novel, not only for its emotional potency (that's my fancy way of saying it scared the hell out of me, too), but for how brilliantly put together it is. It's one of those novels where you close the book once you're done and say out loud, "Wow."

So put down that book on your comps list and go read The Road.

Happy Holidays, Bill Simmons!

As we veer closer to the new year and the end of the NFL Regular Season, I'd like us all to take note of a special event that's coming up: the final nail in the coffin of Bill Simmons' credibility. You see, this season, he's decided to compete against his wife in picking NFL games. With one week to go, she's four games up on him. I can't claim that he can retain his dignity by winning by one game, but that would be something, I suppose.

Still, she's pretty routinely kicked his ass at picking games despite the fact that she knows little about football. Also, each week, she's had a sidebar column that demonstrates hubby Bill's biggest weakness as a writer: he can't condense. He just types and types and types; he doesn't know how to hit it and quit (R.I.P., James Brown). So keep a close eye on NFL games this Sunday. Both Simmons' picks will go up on the Worldwide Leader's site on Friday. And next week, he'll be claiming (again) that this has been the weirdest gambling season ever. For the rest of us, it'll be the happiest.

NBA fans, what's wrong with this statement?

From NBA Kommissar David Stern: "We believe that the heat of the moment allows certain overstepping of traditional bounds."

Quiz time: This statement was used by Stern regarding:

• a. the league's crackdown on players complaining to officials about calls? You know, the one where players get technicals for looking at refs wrong?
• or b. Isiah Thomas' insanity after the brawl at MSG?

If you answered "b," you are correct. Now, for the lightning round. Is Stern's above quote deeply ironic in terms of

• a. the league's crackdown on players complaining to officials about calls? You know, the one where players get technicals for looking at refs wrong?
• b. Isiah Thomas' insanity after the brawl at MSG?
• or c. all of the above?
  

Some easy thoughts about difficult poetry

My Funkytown acquaintance Kristi Maxwell writes over at her blog, "Thinking: We should banish the terms "difficult" and "difficulty" from our discussions of poetry." Though I like the idea of banishing certain terms from poetry discussions, I wonder who takes care of this. Where are the thuggish poets to do this? Will the Poetry Society of America send over John Ashbery to confuse us and Yusef Komunyakaa to make us cry? Will the Academy of American Poets take conference fees from us and brick us in, cask-of-amontillado-like, behind Norton anthologies? Will Billy Collins come tickle us until we wet ourselves and cry uncle? Or will some devious character place the collected poems of Robert Lowell and James Merrill precariously on some top shelf to topple onto us and trap us in some awkward position so we can only count down the moments until our last breath?

Seriously, though, I think I agree with Kristi, at least in principle. Calling certain poetry "difficult" is like calling certain children "difficult": why won't you just behave and do as I'd like you to? What's with all the noise and seeming nonsense? "Difficult" is simply a term that obscures the real discussion--what is this poem doing or trying to do? (I imagine this term is particularly annoying in workshop.)

At the same time, though, "difficult" can be useful. The syntax in Paradise Lost, for example, is difficult to access, especially because we have to read complex sentences with line breaks. Plus, we like our sentences short and obvious these days. But that difficulty is a good (and important) thing in Paradise Lost. The syntactic difficulty seems like a fruitful thing to talk about. Also, I think "difficulty" can be a good starting point. So what do you mean, difficult? Is the poem illogical? Or does it rely on another kind of logic? Say, the logic of sound. Or does it follow wordplay and rhyme with little apparent attention to the immediately comprehensible?

And if we get right down to it, any poem worth reading is "difficult" in some way. (Sweeping generalization alert!) Good poems require a high level of attentiveness, even if (as in the case of, say, Frost) they seem narratively simple to understand. Another way of saying this: what is the aesthetic of the non-difficult poem?

But these are just some starting thoughts, and I'm not a poet or scholar of poetry. Someone more coherent and intelligible take over from here.

Update, 12/15, 9:31 am. In the comments, Kristi says what I meant to say, only more clearly--when people use the word "difficult," they're referring to the surface of the poem. So thanks to Kristi, "more coherent and intelligible" than me as I predicted.

My wife is going to be pissed

BREAKING NEWS: Soy makes you gay!

(Via Crooks and Liars, via Right Wing Watch, via dolorosa)

As a (mostly) vegetarian, I'm in real trouble. Praise be for the wisdom of the ever-sane World Net Daily. According to Jim Rutz, who seems a little crazy (or at the very least, needs a proofreader), soy is "a devil food" that leads to increased homosexuality by stimulating your "'female side,' physically and mentally"; "commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality"; might "explain the dramatic increase in obesity today"; and "may be boosting the rapidly rising incidence of leukemia in children."

If you'd like to read all the scientific evidence that proves just how dangerous soy is, well, you won't get it from Jim. He provides no links, though he does claim that there's research and scientific evidence for all his claims. Plus, he reassures me with his opening: "Now, I'm a health-food guy, a fanatic who seldom allows anything into his kitchen unless it's organic. I state my bias here just so you'll know I'm not anti-health food." Whew.

Of course, I'm scared here because I don't want to find that my "testosterone is suppressed by an excess of estrogen." (Geez, I think Rutz must have gone to Harvard Medical School.) But this explains that, despite the fact that I've always hated musicals, I've recently realized Singin' in the Rain is one of my favorite movies. Plus, I have no qualms about carrying a rainbow umbrella when I walk the dog in the rain. Also, my beard (not to mention my wife, my other beard) must be cover as a heterosexual. What am I to do?

Oh, wait, I'm largely in the clear: "If you're a grownup, you're already developed, and you're able to fight off some of the damaging effects of soy. Babies aren't so fortunate." Again, whew.

As it turns out, fermented soy (including soy sauce and tempeh) is okay, but tofu will increase your gayness, you baby-hating so-and-so.

Don't let the fact that he's a religious nutball and has no background in science or medicine keep you away. Avoid the soy.

Aargh

You know, I just get so peeved at the New York Times Book Review. I can't help it, I suppose. In this past Sunday's edition, they listed their "10 Best Books of 2006": five works of fiction, five works on nonfiction. (They are so kind as to include poetry on their 100 Notable Books of the Year.) Here's what bugs me:

• Of the ten books, all were published by major presses. Oh, and of the publishers included, several are owned under the same subsidiaries (Penguin Group, Random House), and one (Henry Holt) also publishes the imprint Times Books, a joint venture with the New York Times. God Bless 'em.
  
• Of the ten writers, seven have contributed their writing to the Times within the past year.
• Several received multiple reviews by the Times (including Richard Ford's The Lay of the Land, which received not only two reviews, but also an odd piece by Charles McGrath about riding through New Jersey with Ford).
• The NYTBR devotes its cover to the list but only one page and capsule reviews for the books.
• And speaking of the cover, it's a vending machine with the books in it. I suppose next year they'll have an iPod with the books listed as songs.

The books aren't ranked, but the usual problems of "Best Books" lists are apparent, in addition to the problems I listed above. Why not ask prominent writers to contribute essays about this year's books that they loved or that intrigued them. I'd be interested in, say, Marisha Pessl (one of the Times fawnees, both on the list and in their coverage of the book throughout the year; oh, and she sometimes writes for them, too) tying together disparate books, fiction and nonfiction, that she read, or dealing with a novel that she can't stop thinking about.

Besides, any "Best Books" list that doesn't include Grisham is just plain shallow. I mean, come on--do Times reviewers not travel in airports?

Anything to help a grad student out

Go here.

Holiday Vandalism Challenge!

Of all the kitschy shit people are putting on their lawns this holiday season, I think the one that disturbs me the most is the white skeletal deer that lights up. There are several varieties, as I learned on my most recent walk with the dog, but the one I see most commonly is a pair that features one deer with its head down as if sniffing the ground, the other with its head tilted upward as if sniffing the air. Naturally, their heads rotate.

I mention this because last year, a family down the street from my parents had the pair of deer with rotating heads. Some enterprising vandal arranged the deer so that the one with its head in the air appeared to be mounting the one with its nose to the ground. Remember, heads rotating. Somehow, the owners of the display failed to notice for about a week. Tragically, though my mom drove by it twice a day and kept telling herself to get a picture, she failed to do so.

That brings us to the first ever Crazy Little Thing Called Blog Holiday Vandalism Challenge!©®™ If you can provide me with a photo (better yet, with video) of the wonder that must be two lit deer engaging in amorous holiday cheer, I'll post it to this here blog and you'll win some sort of as-yet undecided prize. (Please note: I am not endorsing vandalism; what I describe above is probably illegal, and you should probably not do it. Or at least not get caught. I'm simply endorsing comic/journalistic recording of said vandalism.)

Royale, avec fromage

So I saw the new Bond flick, Casino Royale, this weekend. Pretty good, all in all. Daniel Craig's a great actor, and my wife made her requisite loud gasps at surprising moments. But here's what bugs me: in a movie series known for its gadgets and mechanical trickeration, how could you have an agent say, "It's amazing what you can do with Photoshop these days"? Honestly, aren't spies using software a little more sophisticated than Photoshop? I mean, they aren't just pranksters.

Yet more things I want for Ex-mass

• An acceptance letter.
• Any Regina Spektor cd, but especially "Begin to Hope." (By the way, go watch her video for "Fidelity" if you haven't already.)
• The end of sweatshop labor, or at least a drastic reduction.
• Fewer fast-moving cold fronts with winds that wake me up in the middle of the night.
• Something good on dvd, I don't know what.
• A re-release of Superman Returns on dvd with the right goddamn ending. (Long story--watched the movie last night; the studio clearly demanded a different ending. And the studio got it.)

All I want for Christmas

(and my birthday, which falls shortly after Christmas)

• The tea stains off my two front teeth.
• Elvis Costello cd's, including "My Aim is True," "Get Happy!" "Imperial Bedroom," "Trust," and "The Delivery Man."
• [REDACTED]
• The final Harry Potter book to come out so I can gloat when most of my predictions about it are true.
• Good mental health.
• A scarf.
• [REDACTED]
• Whatever the best Jay-Z cd is.
• All the white evangelicals to realize how inherently racist it is to wish for a return to America's glory days of the pre-1950s.
• For said evangelicals to realize how inherently silly it is to believe that God guides American history and that He/She/It speaks directly to them.
• A good Hold Steady cd.
• The ability to eat the apples I buy and not forget about them, letting them rot into softness next to the stove.
• Nothing pony-related. (Take heed, bro and sister-in-law.)
• An academy award for Borat.
• More email, less junk email.
• [REDACTED]

Updated

• A new pair of jeans.
• Less back pain.
• Really stylish hair, but just for about a month.
• Underwear. Well, only from my wife.
• Functional government.
• [REDACTED]
• Funnier running jokes.
• A new laptop.
• A working knowledge of a foreign language.
• Cable television without the addiction to bad television.
• Funkytown's football team to make it to the NFL playoffs. (This would be funnier if they weren't an NFL team.)
• Bill Maher to realize that a comedian wearing a suit is still merely a comedian.
• For said comedian to realize that his one-liners aren't that great, that few comedians use one-liners anymore, that smirking when you reach the one-liner doesn't make it funny.
• To ease up a bit on people like Bill Maher and direct my energy elsewhere. Like Deadspin.
• Coffee, without the shakes.

Updated again

• A one-credit course for all incoming undergraduates on how to use the fucking bathroom, including the normalcy of using a urinal, the good reasons not to pee on the seat, and how to flush.
  

Hey Douchebag! "Hitchens Hearts Borat" Edition

(Warning: Borat spoilers ahead)

If Christopher Hitchens were to dine with a Southern, Christian family that lived on Secession Drive, how long do you think he’d last before being asked to leave? I ask because Hitchens has written an odd, scattershot essay about Borat for Slate. That means it’s time for another installment of “Hey Douchebag!”

Ever the contrarian (or reactionary, I can’t decide which), Hitchens doesn’t like Borat. But it’s where Hitchens begins that signals just how off his piece is: he makes a lot of hay about a bad summary of the movie in a review in The New Statesman (subscriber only). He begins with the bad table-of-contents listing (not likely to have been written by the reviewer), “Sacha Baron Cohen’s exposure of crass Americana.” Like any headline, that one does an injustice to both the movie and the review. Neither the film nor Ryan Gilbey, the reviewer in question, is interested solely in “crass Americana.” Hitchens, of course, cannot deny the volume or variety of American crassness in the movie (the homophobe who tells Borat to shave his mustache because he looks like a Muslim and terrorist; the frat boys who extol bad behavior with women, then go on to support slavery; the Pentacostals who speak in tongues and “save” Borat; the incredibly long line of people waiting with books, magazines, and life-sized reproductions of Pamela Anderson’s character in Barb Wire, who all want their memorabilia signed by her). Given how troubling the acknowledgement of so much crassness would be to his thesis, he ignores it.

Gilbey’s offending paragraph is, as Hitchens points out, inaccurate, especially in Gilbey’s odd (though not entirely inaccurate) use of the word “compliance” to describe how storeowners respond to Borat. But instead of acknowledging that Borat receives at times compliance and at times resistance (though it’s actually no surprise that a gun owner wouldn’t sell a “Kazakh” a gun with a camera trained on him), Hitchens focuses on “the discovery that Americans are almost pedantic in their hospitality and politesse.” He then catalogs the good manners of those who come into contact with Borat and acknowledges the normalcy of those who threaten Borat on the subway. But here’s what Hitchens (and many other reviewers) have missed: Borat isn’t just satirizing the “attitude of painfully maintained open-mindedness and multiculturalism that is really being unmasked and satirized by our man from the 'stan” (Hitchens) or “crass Americana”: he’s also (and maybe most importantly) exposing how Americans use decorum and politesse to obscure their narrowmindedness (and worse).

Let’s take the example of the formal dinner Borat attends in Birmingham, which Hitchens returns to as a prime example of the pedantic hospitality and politesse of Americans. We’re introduced to the diners by way of a street sign, the above-mentioned Secession Drive. On this street that stands as a stark reminder of the South’s enduring legacy of the Civil War, they tolerate his behavior admirably. (It’s worth noting they knew they were on camera and signed waivers.) But they speak to him and of him in the most condescending way. When Borat compliments a woman on her “erotic physique,” the pastor in the group says with the slow nod of patronizing, “That’s correct. That’s a very good observation.” And when Borat is out of the room, a woman speaks of how easy it would be to “Americanize” Borat. Hitchens summarizes that moment as when they “agree what a nice young American he might make,” a summary that elides just how patronizing that moment is.

Borat’s vulgarity and crassness escalates in each scene not to elicit the vulgarity and crassness of some Americans (though he succeeds in that), it escalates to show how we mask our crassness. That’s why scenes such as “The Running of the Jew” matter so much as counterpoint—many Americans imagine that we’ve moved well beyond crass racism, jingoism, and prejudice. The counterpoint of Borat’s crassness with the disturbing (and sometimes easily pierced) masks of Americans is what the movie is really all about.

That, and the opportunity to hear a fat man yell, “Eat my asshole!”

NFL Officiating Officially Sucks

In an era when any play in a football game has at least four camera angles, bad officiating simply should not have a role in deciding games. A few weeks ago against Tampa Bay, Cincinnati got screwed on a phantom roughing the passer call on Robert Geathers, and today, on Cincinnati's last-chance drive against Baltimore, officials failed to call an obvious 4th down pass interference that would have kept the drive alive. Would Cincinnati have won today's game? Not necessarily, but they should be 5-3 (the Tampa game) and could be 6-2 if they'd had a shot on their last drive. The cameras were in the right place to see, but not the officials.

*****

A plea to sportswriters everywhere:

Stop using the phrase "perfect storm." Any time a couple of circumstances lead to an outcome, a sportswriter (or, in the case of Randy Cross, an announcer) will call it a "perfect storm." And each time they do, I get the sense that they're using it because they think it makes them sound smart. But now it's become a sports cliche. Go ahead, use Google to see how often ESPN's writers use it, or Sports Illustrated's, or the writers aggregated through Yahoo Sports.

*****

I love the Sports Gal

As I've mentioned elsewhere, Bill Simmons has long since lost his edge, but at least his football picks are worth reading for his wife's brief columns. She's funny, and unlike her hubby, she doesn't labor the jokes she makes, she just makes them and moves on. Also, she's out-picking him so far this NFL season. I'm rooting for her.

It is futile to resist

Olive wants you to call for change.













If you don't, she'll take away your frisbee.