Jon Cogburn's Blog

Philip Larkin - The Mower

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.

Philip Larkin - The Old Fools

What do they think has happened, the old fools,
To make them like this? Do they somehow suppose
It's more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools,
And you keep on pissing yourself, and can't remember
Who called this morning? Or that, if they only chose,
They could alter things back to when they danced all night,
Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some September?
Or do they fancy there's really been no change,
And they've always behaved as if they were crippled or tight,
Or sat through days of thin continuous dreaming
Watching the light move? If they don't (and they can't), it's strange;
            Why aren't they screaming?

Siri philosophizes!

This made my day.

Just wait for the thirty eight second mark, when the interviewer asks Siri about the inverted spectrum.

I don't know if the answer would pass the Turing Test. Certainly we've all had students in our offices who don't do much better, but I'm honestly not sure they pass the Turing Test either. . . Whoah, Dude! Like what if all our students are robots and stuff.

In any case, I know that much of the answer is just plain weird, but we should still all be happy that the liar paradox got in there somewhere.

nice prose poem by Levi Bryant

I don't know why THIS affected me so much.

Maybe just because I resonated with every single one of them? Maybe because I'm a huge mark for any kind of Latour litany, and Levi's post plays against the type in an aesthetically pleasing way?

Anyhow, I've reconfigured it into actual free verse after the jump.

Ela Toghat Al Alaam - To the Tyrants of the World (click link for full poem)

Hey you, the unfair tyrants...You the lovers of the darkness...You the enemies of life...You've made fun of innocent people's wounds; and your palm covered with their bloodYou kept walking while you were deforming the charm of existence and growing seeds of sadness in their land

via www.newappsblog.com

Rainer Maria Rilke

For the sake of a single poem, you must see many cities, many people and Things, you must understand animals, must feel how birds fly, and know the gesture which small flowers make when they open in the morning.

Ft. Worth City Councilman, Joel Burns (It Gets Better)

Christopher Robin to Winnie the Pooh (nice suggestion of performative contradiction at end)

You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think.

Muzammil Siddiqi

We pray to God that this will not happen to the Jewish people or to any people anymore.

Philip Larkin - Down Cemetary Road

university website (courtesy Roderick Long)

Rig Veda

Who really knows? Who will here proclaim it? Whence was it produced? Whence is this creation? Perhaps it formed itself, perhaps it did not. The one who looks down on it from the highest heaven, only he knows–or perhaps he does not know.

Michael Bloomberg (well worth watching all the way through)

Slate interview with Larry Sanger (co-founder of Wikipedia)

I went to graduate school with Larry. He's a pretty singular personality. While finishing his dissertation he taught himself fiddle and started jamming every week with the Columbus bluegrass and Irish fiddle scene. In a short time he got good enough to teach lessons. He also ran a web page on Y2K related stuff that ended up getting cited in several books. And he and Ty Lightner (of Yvonne Craig fan site fame; one of the first such sites on the internet, one that he started half as a lark, but that ended up getting him face time with much of the cast of the original Batman; Ty is now a computer programmer and one of the top Netflix reviewers in the world) and I used to go to the great performances put on as part of the choreography MFA degree at OSU sometimes once a week.

His dissertation was on epistemic circularity. It's really interesting how that work played a role in the way Wikipedia was initially set up and then with Larry leaving it. Here are some of the many money quotes (whole interview HERE):

Yeah, I can imagine that the social dynamics get pretty ugly. But my understanding is that you left Wikipedia over deeper philosophical schisms.

I had lots of deep philosophical schisms with Wikipedia in the end, although also some agreements.  The first problem was what we were just talking about: reigning in all the bad actors, doing something to reduce the number of trolls and the amount of time we spent dealing with them.

The other problem was that there needed to be some sort of mechanism—it didn't have to be anything like editorships or review before publishing or anything like that—but some sort of low-key role for experts in the system.

Why did you feel so strongly about involving experts?

Because of the complete disregard for expert opinion among a group of amateurs working on a subject, and in particular because of their tendency to openly express contempt for experts. There was this attitude that experts should be disqualified [from participating] by the very fact that they had published on the subject—that because they had published, they were therefore biased. That frustrated me very much, to see that happening over and over again: experts essentially being driven away by people who didn't have any respect for those who make it their lives' work to know things.

Where do you think that contempt for expertise comes from? It's seems odd to be committed to a project that's all about sharing knowledge, yet dismiss those who've worked so hard to acquire it.

There's a whole worldview that's shared by many programmers—although not all of them, of course—and by many young intellectuals that I characterize as "epistemic egalitarianism." They're greatly offended by the idea that anyone might be regarded as more reliable on a given topic than everyone else. They feel that for everything to be as fair as possible and equal as possible, the only thing that ought to matter is the content [of a claim] itself, not its source.

Things to do if you want to live longer

Nice Daily Beast article HERE. They didn't mention anything about driving, which as the number one killer of people in their teens and twenties, has one of the biggest impact on death rates. Anyhow, here are the things they do list, with the percentage effect on your chance of being dead within 20 years.

There's some interesting philosophy here. Given how literally toxic getting laid off is (you are 15-20% more likely to die within twenty years if you are laid off), shouldn't this be reflected in criminal proceedings against people whose criminal behavior results in lots of other people losing jobs?

Also, lots of these things effect men and women differently. For example, being Mormon is much better for male mortality rates than for women. Should this inform feminist critiques of Mormonism? More strikingly is the effect of marrying a spouse more than 7 years younger than you (which decreases mortality for men and increases it for women).

Also, it is really important not to confuse correlations with causation. For example, a lot of the sleep data is probably the result of the fact that people who sleep too much are likely to be sleeping off hangovers. So there is a common cause for sleeping too much and increased mortality, rather than sleeping too much causing increased mortality. I strongly suspect the optimist/pessimist thing is the same thing. If a large enough percentage of the pessimists and optimists are being rational, then whatever is causing the pessimism and optimism is whatever is causing decreased and increased mortality rates. This being said, I'm going to express all of the following as if they were causal, because it's more fun that way.

1. Don't get laid off: +15-20%.
2. Get and stay married: +20%.
3. If you are a married woman, not marrying someone over seven years younger than you: +20%; if you are a married man, marrying someone over seven years younger than you: +11%.
4. Do not  more than 8.5 hours a night: +15% (but sleeping less than 4 hours is horrible too).
5. If you are a woman, have a waste less than 35 inches; if you are a man have one less than 40 inches: +25%.
6. Be an optimist: +55%.
7. Sit less than 8 hours a day: +18%.
8. Go to church regularly and do the social stuff involved: +25%.
9. Be a Mormon- men: +6.7%, women: +3.2%.
10. Be rich: +15%.
11. Drink two glasses of red wine a day (and no more): +25%.
12. Don't watch television: -8% for every hour a day consumed.
13. Live in Hawaii (life expectancy 81.3 versus Louisiana with 74.2).
14. Be a woman (outlive men by 5.1 years)
15. Be literate: +50%.

Bilbo Baggins

I've lost my dwarves, my wizard, and my way.

Philip Larkin - Myxomatosis

Caught in the center of a soundless field
While hot inexplicable hours go by
What trap is this? Where were its teeth concealed?
You seem to ask.
I make a sharp reply,
Then clean my stick. I'm glad I can't explain
Just in what jaws you were to suppurate:
You may have thought things would come right again
If you could only keep quite still and wait.

Philip Larkin - Going, Going

I thought it would last my time -
The sense that, beyond the town,
There would always be fields and farms,
Where the village louts could climb
Such trees as were not cut down;
I knew there'd be false alarms

In the papers about old streets
And split level shopping, but some
Have always been left so far;
And when the old part retreats
As the bleak high-risers come
We can always escape in the car.

Things are tougher than we are, just
As earth will always respond
However we mess it about;
Chuck filth in the sea, if you must:
The tides will be clean beyond.
- But what do I feel now? Doubt?

Or age, simply? The crowd
Is young in the M1 cafe;
Their kids are screaming for more -
More houses, more parking allowed,
More caravan sites, more pay.
On the Business Page, a score

Of spectacled grins approve
Some takeover bid that entails
Five per cent profit (and ten
Per cent more in the estuaries): move
Your works to the unspoilt dales
(Grey area grants)! And when

You try to get near the sea
In summer . . .
        It seems, just now,
To be happening so very fast;
Despite all the land left free
For the first time I feel somehow
That it isn't going to last,

That before I snuff it, the whole
Boiling will be bricked in
Except for the tourist parts -
First slum of Europe: a role
It won't be hard to win,
With a cast of crooks and tarts.

And that will be England gone,
The shadows, the meadows, the lanes,
The guildhalls, the carved choirs.
There'll be books; it will linger on
In galleries; but all that remains
For us will be concrete and tyres.

Most things are never meant.
This won't be, most likely; but greeds
And garbage are too thick-strewn
To be swept up now, or invent
Excuses that make them all needs.
I just think it will happen, soon.

Delmore Schwartz - Philology Recapitulates Ontology, Poetry Is Ontology

Faithful to your commandments, o consciousness, o

Holy bird of words soaring ever whether to nothingness or
to inconceivable fulfillment slowly:

And still I follow you, awkward as that dandy of ontology
and as awkward as his albatross and as

another dandy of ontology before him, another shepherd
and watchdog of being, the one who

Talked forever of forever as if forever of having been
and being an ancient mariner,

Hesitant forever as if forever were the albatross

Hung round his neck by the seven seas of the seven muses,

and with as little conclusion, since being never concludes,

Studying the sibilance and the splashing of the seas and of
seeing and of being's infinite seas,

Staring at the ever-blue and the far small stars and
the faint white endless curtain of the
twinkling play's endless seasons.

Jonathan Bennett

The patchwork theory of Vaihinger and Kemp Smith throws some light on these passages about imagination; and it may even be possible to discover precisely and in detail what thoughts lie behind the neurotically inept exposition of the Transcendental Deduction. Such a discovery would probably not be worth the trouble.

John Stuart Mill

It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.

Dr. Seuss

"What's more," snapped the Lorax. (His dander was up.)
"Let me say a few words about Gluppity-Glupp.
Your machinery chugs on, day and night without stop
making Gluppity-Glupp. Also Schloppity-Schlopp.
And what do you do with this leftover goo?
I'll show you. You dirty old Once-ler man, you!

"You're glumping the pond where the Humming-Fish hummed!
No more can they hum, for their gills are all gummed.
So I'm sending them off. Oh, their future is dreary.
They'll walk on their fins and get woefully weary
in search of some water that isn't so smeary."

Marcus Aurelius

Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.

Another nice Harman quote

But the real point, and frankly it’s a very Heideggerian point, is that what a philosophy actually accomplishes cannot be identified with the philosopher’s own understanding of it. That is a commonplace in the arts, and there are many examples of it even in the sciences. -Graham Harman

In the Nichomachean Ethics Aristotle said something to the effect of "We love our teachers, but we must love the truth more."

Phillip Larkin - The Whitsun Weddings

That Whitsun, I was late getting away:

    Not till about

One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday

Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,

All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense   

Of being in a hurry gone. We ran

Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street

Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence   

The river’s level drifting breadth began,

Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.

All afternoon, through the tall heat that slept   

    For miles inland,

A slow and stopping curve southwards we kept.   

Wide farms went by, short-shadowed cattle, and   

Canals with floatings of industrial froth;   

A hothouse flashed uniquely: hedges dipped   

And rose: and now and then a smell of grass   

Displaced the reek of buttoned carriage-cloth   

Until the next town, new and nondescript,   

Approached with acres of dismantled cars.

At first, I didn’t notice what a noise

    The weddings made

Each station that we stopped at: sun destroys   

The interest of what’s happening in the shade,

And down the long cool platforms whoops and skirls   

I took for porters larking with the mails,   

And went on reading. Once we started, though,   

We passed them, grinning and pomaded, girls   

In parodies of fashion, heels and veils,   

All posed irresolutely, watching us go,

As if out on the end of an event

    Waving goodbye

To something that survived it. Struck, I leant   

More promptly out next time, more curiously,   

And saw it all again in different terms:   

The fathers with broad belts under their suits   

And seamy foreheads; mothers loud and fat;   

An uncle shouting smut; and then the perms,   

The nylon gloves and jewellery-substitutes,   

The lemons, mauves, and olive-ochres that

Marked off the girls unreally from the rest.   

    Yes, from cafés

And banquet-halls up yards, and bunting-dressed   

Coach-party annexes, the wedding-days   

Were coming to an end. All down the line

Fresh couples climbed aboard: the rest stood round;

The last confetti and advice were thrown,

And, as we moved, each face seemed to define   

Just what it saw departing: children frowned   

At something dull; fathers had never known

Success so huge and wholly farcical;

    The women shared

The secret like a happy funeral;

While girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared   

At a religious wounding. Free at last,

And loaded with the sum of all they saw,

We hurried towards London, shuffling gouts of steam.   

Now fields were building-plots, and poplars cast   

Long shadows over major roads, and for

Some fifty minutes, that in time would seem

Just long enough to settle hats and say

    I nearly died,

A dozen marriages got under way.

They watched the landscape, sitting side by side

—An Odeon went past, a cooling tower,   

And someone running up to bowl—and none   

Thought of the others they would never meet   

Or how their lives would all contain this hour.   

I thought of London spread out in the sun,   

Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:

There we were aimed. And as we raced across   

    Bright knots of rail

Past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss   

Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail   

Travelling coincidence; and what it held   

Stood ready to be loosed with all the power   

That being changed can give. We slowed again,

And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled

A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower   

Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.

Martin Hagglund

The desire to live on after death is not a desire for immortality, since to live on is to remain subjected to temporal finitude. The desire for survival cannot aim at transcending time, since the given time is the only chance for survival. There is thus an internal contradiction in the so-called desire for immortality. if one were not attached to mortal life, there would be no fear of death and no desire to live on. But for the same reason, the idea of immortality cannot even hypothetically appease the fear of death or satisfy the desire to live on. On the contrary, the state of immortality would annihilate every form of survival, since it would annihilate the time of mortal life.

Rumi

If you pretend to be Hallaj,
And with that fake burning
Set fire to your friends,
Don’t think that you’re a lover.
You’re crazy and numb,
You’re drinking our blood,
And you have no experience
Of the nearness.

Slavoj Zizeck

To put it even more bluntly, my claim is that it is Milbank who is effectively guilty of heterodoxy, ultimately of a regression to paganism: in my atheism, I am more Christian than Milbank.

James Lileks is an underappreciated national resource

James Lileks, brilliant writer of some of my favorite books (i.e. The Gallery of Regrettable Food, Gastroanomolies: Questionable Culinary Inventions from the Golden Age of American Cookery, Mommy Knows Worst: Highlights from the Golden Age of Bad Parenting Advice, and Interior Desecrations: Hideous Homes from the Horrible 70's) and host of one of my favorite blogs (The Bleat, linked to in the Daily Read section at the right), has posted a set of vignettes from a cruise he just took with his family. As usual, they are insightful and hilarious.

PART I

PART II

PART III

PART IV

PART V

There ought to be a category for the kind of popular anthropology at which Lileks excels. He's a national treasure. His website is one of the best things on the interwebs, containing:

	Matchbook Museum. Lovely examples of commercial art in its smallest, most portable form.
	Comic Covers. Unusual or risable examples of old comic book cover art. Part of Comic Sins.
	100 Mysteries. Chewing through a big box of public-domain Hollywood mystery movies, one at a time.
	StarTribune. Column on Friday and Sunday.
	Black & White World An ongoing look at movies that decided color was just so obvious.
	The 30s. Devoted to the detritus of a misunderstood decade.
	Comic Ads. Delightful examples of comic book ads. Part of Comic Sins.
	Miscellany. For those things that go nowhere else.

T.S. Eliot

Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.