Yet another academics-related heartbreaker

I just finished reading To Be and Not to Be: Negation and Metadrama in Hamlet by James Calderwood as part of a research project that I’m working on this summer, and the book was about as much of a bust as an extended scholarly work can be, which is really saying something considering the book held oodles of appeals for me personally: not only was the book one of the few to deal directly with the exact same sort of issues I’m interested in within my project, but its first few pages also revealed itself to be partially inspired by one of my favorite philosophical works of all-time–Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Of course this revelation also turned out to be the exact point at which the book went to shit, as Calderwood decided to focus on exactly everything about the Tractatus that is now useless. Stuff like The Big Ludwig’s discussion of solipsism and the say/show distinction and so on are arguably of a piece with the Investigations, but what Calderwood decided to base his entire freaking argument upon was essentially Wittgenstein’s theory of proper names (i.e. that they are utterly specific and pick out a definite object) was rendered more or less useless by Wittgenstein’s later philosophy. In fact, the whole business of proper names being fundamental–the “given”–is a crucial part of Wittgenstein’s logical/linguistic atomism, which he actually blew a pretty substantial hole through way before he wrote the the Investigations. I understand that Wittgenstein’s late stuff came quite awhile after the Tractatus and that Calderwood’s book itself is sort of a relic by now, but the book still came out over 30 years after Wittgenstein kicked it. Either Calderwood couldn’t be bothered to sift his way through the PI, or he was simply picking and choosing which parts of Wittgenstein’s thought would inspire his argument, without worrying about whether or not that picking and choosing was even justified. 

But beyond that the book is still abominable. Calderwood’s prose is clear enough, but still unbearable because he tried to be clever and failed wholeheartedly. Generally I’m all for clever prose–I never really understand why some people get all up in a roil over it–but, man, the cleverness has to be appropriate to the situation. Scholarly work, if it’s going to be clever, probably calls for an especially understated sort of cleverness that consists mainly of interesting and yet totally precise and transparent word choice. Instead, Calderwood goes for a style of cleverness that is probably more suitable for writing magazine articles about pop culture, as he apes Shakespeare endlessly, working phrases from his plays into his prose like dull teengage potheads work quotes from Judd Apatow films into their conversation. At one point he actually describes the play itself as setting its canon ‘gainst self-slaughter while trying to describe how the play resists its own self-reflexivity. (And, yeah, the entire work is filled with weird comparisons like that suicide-compared-to-reflexivity bit there.)

On the whole there was probably one useful and enlightening chapter in the book, which is pretty disappointing for a book ostensibly entirely about metadrama within Hamlet. Even if it sucked, it should have been a useful resource. This is why I will never write worthless fluff, if I decide to become a scholar. Augh.

The essence of ballpoints

Recently one of my friends told me that during a class taught by one of the prominent professors here in this English department (which houses my major), the professor picked up a pen and asked the class what the essence of the pen was. A few students offered up guesses as to its essence and the prof shot them down, continuing the game a bit further until finally giving them his own explanation as to just what exactly the essence of the pen was. 

 

I mention this because I wonder whether I am right to be insanely depressed by this. I haven’t taken a class with this professor, but up until hearing about this I had been really anticipating doing so. But now I just wish Lenore Beadsman Sr. could step out of the fictional realm and whack him upside the head with her broom.

This prof had seemed brilliant. I’m essentially heartbroken.

Draft day, pt. 1

Tomorrow is going to be almost exclusively devoted to geeking out on the NBA draft which, by the way, will now will feature two Pacers picks in the teens, thanks to some pretty stellar maneuvering by the basketball Jesus himself today: not only did Bird rid the team of of Jermaine O’Neal and his perpetual injuries and his 22-million-per-year contract and his like batting average of a field goal percentage, but he filled the most gaping hole on the team (PG) by acquiring T.J. Ford who, spinal condition notwithstanding, will be by far the best PG to play in blue and gold since Mark Jackson (i.e., eight years ago). And the fact that Ford is probably only an above-average PG in the league (semi-All Star on his best days) only goes to show just how dismal the position has been most of this decade. (It literally goes without saying that Jamaal Tinsley is no longer a part of the works–Bird and his staff usually don’t even bothering mentioning him anymore.)

And then of course there is the obligatory plodding stiff with a large expiring contract, except in this case the stiff is Rasho Nesterovic and actually a pretty servicable player: aside from being one of my personal favorite roleplayers the past few years, the guy has put together a few decent years, averaging solid numbers in 20-23 minutes per game. Plus during his time in San Antonio the guy was consistently praised by Popovich as one of the best team defenders on the squad. 

The Pacers also get the #17 pick, meaning that the Pacers will now have owned the #17 pick for 3 out of 4 years, landing a steal in Granger one year and a talented but shakey Williams the next. Realistically if Bird hits with this #17 then the player will probably fall somewhere between Granger and WIlliams with regard to productivity–which is totally okay! That would make the player a borderline-to-solid starter, which is the kind of thing the Pacers need right now. As it stands right now I have no idea who Bird might be targeting with that pick, but I’m sure he’s locked in a couple guys (possibly one of the Kansas guards).

But the really great thing is what’s shaping up to happen with the Pacers’ original pick at #11. With Rose, Beasley, Bayless, Mayo, Love, Lopez, Gordon, Gallinari, Alexander, and Westbrook seemingly pretty well locked in as the top 10 players in this draft, only one of them has to slip just one spot for the Pacers to land one of the high-value picks. And while in my most exuberant fantasies Bayless freefalls and they land him, realistically it’s more likely to be one of Lopez, Love, Gordon, Gallinari, or Alexander. I would be thrilled to land any of Lopez, Love, or Gordon, as they are all some of my favorite players in this draft at positions of need for the Pacers, but of the five possibly dropping they are the least likely. Realistically Gallinari or Alexander will probably be there, which is harder to get excited about, mainly because the Pacers already have a surplus of SF’s and those two seem to on the whole have much less potential as players. If they’re still there at #11 I could very easily see Bird passing on them and taking one of the decent players slotted into the teens of the draft, which would not be very exciting but probably wise.

It remains to be seen what is done with Foster, who if dealt could probably get the Pacers one more pick in this draft. Would that be worth it? Likely not. 

Another exuberant fantasy: Larry deals Foster for a pick, combines that with #11 and #17 and Granger and deals for the Heat pick at #2, and lands Derrick Rose. PG position solved for the next 12 years. 

 

 

I promised axolotls

And so you will get axolotls: I decided tonight that I will sometime (hopefully soon) own not one but two axolotls, and their names will be the reflexive noun of my choosing (debating between Itself/Oneself/Myself/Ourself) for one and then the other will be named Cliché. 

If you don’t know what axolotls are then you first need to know that they are the most amazing of all God’s creations. And then after that you need to know that Julio Cortazar wrote an excellent short story about them. And then finally you need observe the adorableness:

 

 

 

Okay, and now this time for real

It’s looking like that I’m going to be contributing to a politics-oriented groupblog with three other much more culturally and politically in-touch dudes than myself, which means that now there’s actual some real pressure here to get used to the whole blogging game. I’m still a little unsure about the whole ordeal, as I tend to think that my opinion on anything is pretty much shit, but still I do have this like medium-sized compulsion to chime in on important issues and stuff, mainly because it seems like if I never say anything then I can’t ever really blame anyone but myself when everything I never spoke out about goes straight down the shitter.

 

So, here we go.

Giving it another go

I’m going to give this blog another shot, if for no reason other than I need to improve at reacting critically to news (and whatever) within my writing, and also I need to get over my strange fear of expository/argumentative writing, because supposedly I’m half-decent at it when I’m not like frothing at the mouth with insecurities related to my ability to reason and explain and assert and etc.

Here goes?

A bad omen: Before I corrected it, the first clause of this post originally came out like this: “I’m going to give shit blog another shot.”

Aye.

This doesn’t seem quite fair

The author over at Philosophy, etc. asks whether logic is overrated–and even being the logic neophyte that I am*, I could have guessed what had him so down on logic: silly uses of logic! Even with the limited understand I’ve got of the subject, I know that any sort of formalism is pretty much worthless if we’re fast and loose with how we construct the formalisms. In fact, of all the uses for logic, the one which he is speaking of is probably my least favorite–why bother mixing natural language argument with formalisms? Granted, I haven’t read a whole lot of philosophical work where this is done, and I’m sure there are those who do it well, but at first blush it seems pretty unneccesary. There’s a lot more that’s interesting about logic that’s not just about how it helps philosophers do their work! And to suggest it underrated because of this one silly way that it can be used seems pretty fundamentally unfair.

 That modal version of the ontological argument that he links looks pretty interesting, though. I think I’ll post on that next, once I brush up on my modal logic some. I’m not sure I understand the whole argument as such, yet.

 But, really, who would have thought that there’d ever be an even more insane version of the ontological argument? The original one itself put me in the sort of mood where doing cruel and senseless things to various charismatic megafauna seemed totally justified. (Shades of campy movies: “I felt like putting a bullet between the eyes of every Panda that wouldn’t screw to save its species.”) I simply can’t wait for the modal version!

* – Actually, I’m not a total neophyte, really, due to my more or less undue obession/love/compulsion for the subject, but compared to someone who teaches at Princeton (!) I most certainly am quite neophtyic .

A question

How does one create a philosophy of art blog and somehow resist calling it: phart? I mean, really?

A truly sad moment for full-bore Lame Joke Opprotunists everywhere.

About abused men

Arguing for the recognition of domestic violence as gender-indifferent problem has sort of become my hobbyhorse as of late, but this post by ampersand over at Alas! is 1) a pretty awesome and totally through introduction to the subject and 2) a really important argument to keep in mind when addressing this subject and still trying to behave like a decent human being. I wasn’t really aware of this before reading ampersand’s post on the topic (and I’m not really that interested in becoming more aware of it, for reasons that I become obvious), but apparently there’s a separate thread to the Men as Victims of Domestic Violence argument that is really pretty insidious: per ampersand, there are mens’ rights activists who, instead of explaining how domestic violence against men is something that actually happens, participate in a sort of Victimhood Olympics–think stuff like “Well, our sex is beat up by our lovers just as often as your sex is! You’re not special!” Here’s how ampersand nutshells the argument she’s reacting against:

The primary argument made by men’s rights activists is that men are as likely, or more likely, to be abused by a wife or girlfriend than the reverse. They base this opinion on various family violence studies. Typical is Warren Farrell’s statement that “the great majority of two-sex studies that have been done (more than a dozen) find women and men to be equally as likely to initiate domestic violence at every level of severity.”

This may or may not be the primary argument of the MRAers–I don’t really know! And frankly, if it is, I’m not all that interested in learning more about MRAers in the first place. But what’s important here is that, primary argument or not, it’s not the most important argument. For anyone who’s not caught up in inane cross-gender pissing wars, whether men “are as likely, or more likely, to be abused by a wife or girlfriend than the reverse” is pretty damned irrelevant. Seriously, who the hell cares? Rather the important questions are 1) is it a problem for a significant number of men, and if so, 2) are people doing anything about it? Getting all huffy about whether it’s an equal problem seems to be more about the people making the argument than it is about the people getting abused: it’d be like your town getting bombed and, the day after, making sure that everyone knew that the particular subclass of humanity that you most associate with was killed in numbers equal to anyone else’s subclass of choice, like really man. The reaction to that kind of argument should and always will be a loud, hearty Go Fuck Yourself. It takes the focus away from the victims, reeks of some sort of perversely schaudenfreudic strain of chest-thumping, and just isn’t all that useful.

Sidenote: ampersand cites Philip Cook as one of the MRAers, which is probably fair. I’ve read his book, however, and honestly on the whole it is pretty tame: the first section is a survey of several different surveys that show domestic violence to not be particularly picky in whose life it terrorizes, the second section is a collection of (heartbreaking!) interviews that he conducted with a variety of abused men, and the third section is more or less written right at abused men, telling them everything that they can do if they’re stuck in an abusive relationship. It’s only toward the end that his argumentation gets even slightly toxic–there’s one part in particular where he shoots down the patriarchy on some exceedingly flimsy evidence concerning how often lesbian lovers beat lesbian lovers. He does sort of stress the Equal Victimhood line a bit much, but I got the sense that this was primarly for some pretty harmless rhetorical reasons: if you start out by stating that domestic violence is a gender-equal problem, you can get past all the ridiculous names that people’ll call you for even harboring the thought that a man could be beat up by a woman, and reach some sort of compromise along the lines of “well, yeah, maybe it’s not an equal problem but, here, look: it’s still pretty damned frequent!” I myself am guilty of this from time to time, mainly because I get sick of getting laughed out of the building on multiple occasions by humanities professors for even suggesting that domestic violence against men is a legit social problem. (I had one Comm prof stare at me for a good long half-minute while his cheeks billowed out to the sides, practically ripping at the seams trying to contain all the laughter that he desperately did not want to direct at the shy, sensitive, and quiet student [me!] whom he considered to be a pretty good friend. He eventually did let it all out it one big gut-bust of laughter that sounded like multiple barrels rolling down a long flight of stairs. I have a really hard time not thinking of him as a Sexist Bastard, and haven’t talked to him since.)

Anyhow, the important thing to keep in mind is that domestic against men (and also women, and children, and homosexuals, etc etc.) is a problem (almost any of the modern domestic violence surveys will make this clear–like, say, the US Justice Dept report on violence against women, which found one man for every three women who were physically assaulted by an intimate) and that it’s problem that most people are not only are ignorant of, but most people find the possibility of it even being a problem to be comically ridiculous! There’s a lot of stuff that is seriously fucked up with the way that we live and think about things when violence against men is cool and funny. And to an extent, the same is true for violence perpetuated by men, so long as it is only directed at, well… other men! But I’m flying a little off the handle here. In the end ampersand and yrstruly are both at the same place with regard to domestic violence against men:

And to those men’s rights activists who say that we need more services for male victims of domestic violence – I agree completely! It’s only the men’s rights claim that women and men are equal victims of intimate violence that I’m disagreeing with. I don’t think anyone can look at the facts and deny that women are sometimes violent, or that male victims of intimate violence need more support services.

However, I’d like to point out that there’s an opposite (and just as dangerous) argument regarding men and domestic violence that one should oppose just as harshly as the argument that ampersand tears apart. I mean the untruths that you still see everywhere about how domestic violence against men simply doesn’t happen. Take the Julian Center’s Myths/Facts page, for example, which under fact #3 explains how “women account for 95 percent of domestic violence victims”–basically, dudes never get beat up, ever! Awesome. This sort of disinformation is just as evil as arguing the Equal Victimhood line in order to pretend that men have got it just as hard as women, because the end result of both strategies is one more person who needed help and got ignored.

I’d go on, but I’m frustrated and eager to end this thing. Goodbye.

This is the best of all possible worlds

I mean, really guys.