In this essay, Jacques writes about the perversion of the word "culture" and gives has a brief look at the things the later essays will focuses much more upon.#

Pointing out that culture comes from agriculture, that is "to cultivate" a person. A cultured individual is an cultivated individual. Jacques writes that cultivation in a person these days goes against all odds,#

Since culture is no longer clear, why not simply say "the educated man or woman"? The answer is that the word educate has been just as badly tossed about as the other. No need to give a parallel account of its tribulations. Today anybody with a diploma from any institution calling itself educational is counted among the educated, while the disparate doings of our elementary and high schools are also called education. The difference between instruction and education has been forgotten, and it is usual, commonplace, to hear people say that in this or that school or college, students are given an education.

My concern, then, is with something other than culture and education as these terms are bandied about. Culture and education are qualities found in persons who have first been taught to read and write and then have managed, against heavy odds, to cultivate their minds, to educate themselves. [pg. 4]

Jacques suggests that perhaps the reason cultivation is increasingly difficult is that our obsessive with information, collection and management.#

The nineteenth century established both the cult of art and the passion for history. So we collect everything and, in the professional jargon, "make it available." [...]

Yet I venture to think that in the qualitative, honorific sense, culture-cultivation-is declining. It is doing so virtually in proportion as the various cultural endeavors-all this collecting and exhibiting and performing and encouraging-grow and spread with well-meant public and private support. The reason is not merely that very abundance tends to distract attention, to leave no time for digesting and meditating upon the experience, though that is an important drawback of the glut. [...] [pg. 5]

One problem that Jacques identifies is the professionalization and specialization of aspects of culture...#

What I am pointing to is something implicit in specialism but rarely noticed or expressed, namely, that through specialism culture is delegated to the experts; it is no longer the property of whoever wants to partake of it for the good of his soul. [...] The expert takes a little subject for his province-and remains provincial all his life. But there is worse. By this delegation of culture the importance of art and the humanities is shifted to a new ground. These good things are no longer valuable for their direct effect on the head-and-heart; they become valuable as professions, as means of livelihood, as badges of honor, as goods to be marketed, as components of the culture industry.

[...] The interest displayed is scarcely culture; it is not for self-cultivation; rather, it is, in sociological idiom, a leisure-time activity, like being a baseball fan. Both hobbies generate the same pedantic, miserlike heaping up of factual knowledge. One illustration tells the tale: there are said to be more than three hundred societies devoted each to a single author, [...] [pg. 6-7]

Jacques is dismay at the decline of good history,#

It used to be that unassuming readers cultivated their minds through history which feeds curiosity and furnishes the imagination. Good histories, moreover, are part of literature. Today that source of culture has dried up too: it has been delegated, and professional historians no longer write for the public but for one another. [pg. 9]

A major misconception is that scholarship is good for culture. What does Jacques have to say?#

We are mistaken when we believe that culture and the humanities are being served by scholarship. The truth is that art and culture do not belong in a university. It cannot be a home for them, because culture proper and scholarship proper are diametrically opposed. [..,] the original intention of scholarship persists, [...]: it is analysis; that is, the narrow scrutiny of an object for the purpose of drawing conclusions. [pg. 10]

As opposed to appreciation and a means of cultivation.

Scholarship attempts to turn art and culture into a science, something to be broken down and reasoned about.#

The magic spell of science is evident in these various procedures: scholarship has yielded to the irresistible pull that science exerts on our minds by its self-confidence and the promise of certified knowledge. But, to repeat, the objects of culture are not analyzable, not graspable by the geometrical mind. Great works of art are great by [virtue] of being syntheses of the world; they qualify as art by fusing form and contents into an indivisible whole; what they offer is not "discourse about," nor a cipher to be decoded, but a prolonged incitement to finesse. So it is paradoxical that our way of introducing young minds to such works should be the way of scholarship. [pg. 14]

When coming back to the idea of universities and why they may be good or bad, Jacques says something that can be applied with substitution to may institutions and projects.#

Schools and universities have never been efficient institutions and they should be judged by their aims and arrangements rather than by their results, which depend so much on the coincidence of a true teacher with an apt student. [pg. 16]

The Culture We Deserve: A Critique of Disenlightenment by Jacques Barzun is a collection of essays about the failings of contemporary culture. What I enjoyed most of them is that they do not have a doomsayer's feel, but instead they point of problems in a constructive way and mean to give guidance and a path for progress. The title should not invoke the feeling that man is a horrible race and deserves the doldrums it finds itself in, but instead the idea that we deserve better and it is within our power to grasp it.#

Via Atrios is Bush's foreign policy as described by a soldier.#

I know they hate my guts, but they can't say so because I've got a gun.

A.J. reviews the movie "Underworld"...#

It seems every time someone gets a hold of a vampire/werewolf legend they tailor it to their liking. That's fine, artistic license and all, but it leaves you the viewer with the decision to wipe everything you assumed to know about these immortals and start fresh. If you find yourself caught up in questions like "How come these vampires can use mirrors?" or "Why does the sun never seem to come out?" or "Why doesn't Selene ever run out of bullets?" then you'll be disappointed before you're halfway through the movie.

[...]

My biggest complaint probably wasn't addressed for brevity's sake. I would have liked a little more detail on the distinctions between vampires and lycans. It seemed the lycans were more powerful as a group than the vampires, but then certain vampires were making lots of Puppy Chow towards the latter half of the film. While you can piece together the history as the film progresses I was curious about the practical purposes behind the "Awakening".

The stated purpose of the "Awakening" was for there to be one elder in each clan awake at a time. No, why is THAT useful? My speculation is to avoid power struggles and perhaps to let the leaders "rest"... sometimes you need a break, eh?

Matt Moore also saw and reviewed the movie, he's not very impressed...

[...] The actors in this movie are amazingly blank, all except for Victor, the ancient leader of the vampires. Bill Nighy plays him with a sinister intelligence, and actually seems to be driven by something. Everyone else has one emotion. Celine is intense and quietly angry, Michael is scared and quietly sensitive, and Kraven is loudly, well, craven and whiny. I blame the writing.

Like I said, this could have been a meaningful movie, and it attempts to address concerns like familial love and betrayal, eugenics, and the psychological effects of longterm war and group hatred. Alas, it fails. Plus, it's not even shot that appealingly. It's nearly a black and white movie (well, a dark gray and darker gray movie), the filters used are so blue that details are nearly invisible. The action scenes are kenetically staged, but they're nothing special. The best shot is of Celine landing in the street after jumping out a window, but that's right at the beginning and also in the trailer. As Beth said, when the one thing that strikes her eye is a cool shade of lipgloss (I didn't notice the lipgloss, I only had eyes for Beckinsale's ass), the movie was not very good.

Scoble responds to criticism of MSN Messenger's recent change that block out some third-party clients...#

If I go into a Toyota dealership to look at a Corolla, I wonder if they'd agree to sell me one of its Avalons (a much higher priced car) for the price of the Corolla? No? Of course. Now isn't that evil!

But that's what James wants Microsoft to do. He wants Microsoft to invest in the network, pay the bandwidth, the salaries of the folks doing everything, wants a state-of-the-art data center so his IM always stays up and doesn't get flaky, but then wants to use it from any third-party client that can attach to the network. That, and he wants Microsoft to leave open a security flaw so that his third-party network can get access.

That sounds as sane to me as if I expected Toyota to sell me one of its Avalons at the same price as a Corolla. Yes, customers would get increased value from having more people on the network. But, that cost must be justified with sound business reasoning. So far, I haven't seen that reasoning.

Someone needs to love this girl, she deserves it.#

Richard thinks about Dave Winer's essay about friendship.#

He kind of loses me with the discussion of tapes, but he's absolutely right: I desperately wanted (and to a degree still want, though not as desperately) to change how my friends behave, but it's only recently that I figured out if I love them unconditionally for who they are, and that however badly I think they treat people other than me, it's not my fucking problem, and when I sit down and calmly think about it, my friends are my friends because of how they treat me. The girl who said "fuck you" to me never really wronged me. She has been, on the contrary, rather kind to me, and on at least some level, respects me. I've tried to repay her kindness with admiration, but I suspect it takes me longer than she would like for me to admit it. It's like that for all my friends: most don't know I think the world of them, but that's simply because I haven't told them yet.

Two Things: Get out an tell them! And I've heard it said that you have to watch out for someone who loves you unconditionally because it's a sign that they settle far too easily. Heh.

Don Park writes his thoughts...

I consider Dave to be a friend and I am also one of those people who has a different definition of the word than Dave does.

I call friendly people with whom I have interacted with, in person or online, as friends. Pretty loose indeed. When a friend and I get to know each other well, I call him/her a close friend. When friendship lasts over a long time, I call him/her an old friend. Regardless of depth or time, I call friends with admirable soul, good friends.

Friends whom I know very well, had known for decades, and have good souls are called my best friends. I have very few best friends but among them there are those who will give their life for me and me likewise. I call them true friends. I have two true friends.

Richard found the best quote from this article about the visible panty line.#

Even Monica Lewinsky was savvy to thong hermeneutics, knowing that snapping her thong strap in front of Bill Clinton was a hail-to-the-chief move destined to summon compelling associations -- that she was a modern liberated girl steeped in mainstreamed porn culture; that she was cool with wearing the renamed G-string; and, that she was willing to suffer minor discomfort for sexual frisson.

Via Richard is an article about asexuals.#

"I'll come home from college and a couple of my relatives will be like, 'So are there any hot girls out there — you getting any?'" says Mark Maynard, an asexual twenty-year-old college student in Kentucky. "I just sort of mumble and don't really respond at all." While some asexuals find support in gay groups, others say they're harassed by queer individuals who claim they're repressing a sexual identity. "In this culture you have to be gay or straight — there's no other option," says Kate, who admits wishing she could be sexually attracted to someone. "It would be so much easier to fit into the culture — as much as I don't want to betray the community, so to speak."

[...]

"I find having a nonexistent sex drive reduces life's problems by fifty percent," she says. "I hate sex, but I'm fairly open minded. I think sexuality is just like religion: to each their own."

Hah.#

A New York Times Article about the jealous monkey research paper previously found by Gene Expression.#

The study's implication that we are, to some extent, hard-wired for fairness speaks with special force to the legal system. American law has undergone a transformation in recent years, led by conservative Supreme Court justices and scholars, away from a focus on broad principles of fairness and toward a willingness to subject people to treatment that might be unjust, on the grounds that it is legal. The monkey study suggests, however, that fairness might be more than a currently unfashionable legal concept. It may be integral to who we are.

Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal, researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University, chose capuchin monkeys because capuchins are among the few primates — along with men and chimpanzees — that hunt cooperatively. Team hunting has evolutionary advantages, allowing a species to capture prey, like squirrels, it otherwise could not. In many monkey societies the dominant male eats what he wants, and the others fight over the scraps. But in societies like those of capuchins — and humans — in which hunting is done cooperatively, food is more equitably distributed.

The reason for the sharing is obvious. Cooperative primates will be reluctant to engage in a group hunt if they cannot be assured that their reward will be properly related to their efforts. The capuchin monkeys in the study did not care merely about rules: it was not enough that they were given a cucumber slice when that was what they expected. They also wanted the rule that was applied to them to be, in a larger sense, fair.

Godless at Gene Expression looks at an analysis from 1931...#

While some of the language is a bit archaic (e.g. "negro" rather than black), the writer seems like a well-meaning, albeit realistic type:

But no one should assume that present results are final as regards quantitative expression of degrees of difference in general intelligence. On the other hand, it does not seem probable that the fact of difference can be altered by any improvement in the tests or any discounting of results on account of inferior home and school environments, differences in cultural stimulation, greater social repression, hook worm or other environmental factor. I think it will be found a universal rule that, among different classes and types in the American population, there is a correlation between social status and intelligence. One might wish to exclude recently arrived immigrants but for all others the rule holds — not for individuals but for groups or classes. The negro no doubt labors under severe handicaps and there is nothing in the point of view here taken which would lend support to those who would make those handicaps more severe or further restrict the colored man's opportunities. We shall even attempt later to show that there is no convincing biological argument against the crossing of the races. We are under the unfortunate necessity in dealing with such a problem as this to speak of the race as a whole and do so in order to establish comparisons on an understandable basis. But law and social custom should deal with the individual on his merits and on the findings here presented a portion of the negro race equals or excels the average white man in those qualities tested by the scholastic and intelligence tests.

This is absolutely true, and a legitimate criticism of us at GNXP is that we understate the extent of the overlap between groups. More interesting, though, is the fact that 72 years ago there were people who expressed many of the same sentiments that Razib, I, and others have talked about on this website: an appreciation of the reality of both differences and similarities, and the need for individual treatment under the law as far as is practically possible.

Peter Lindberg is insightful.#

Quick note: Constrained universes of expression and reality shows. After a few generations (seasons with different shows) the concept is familiar; the series producers can spend less time explaining the format (universe) and has a wider range of possibilities open. Early on, the shows were often confusing until after a few episodes.

Brad DeLong writes about the task of economic historians. I think my professor is where ever he is as well...#

The missing key, it seems to me, is an appropriately textured and useful theory of "government success" as well as "government failure": in Northwest Europe and in East Asia, heavy-handed governments interested in resource allocation, national champions, and neomercantilist industrial policies--such governments managed to orchestrate or conduct or to feebly wave their batons while the musicians did what they would have done anyway--and the result was for two generations astonishingly rapid growth and extremely prosperous, relatively egalitarian societies. Elsewhere--well, restrictions on imports to boost your terms of trade and ensure that scarce export earnings are spent on capital goods that serve as the carriers of technological knowledge turn out, in practice, to enrich the nephew-in-law of the Vice-Minister of Finance. Protected home markets to provide a garden in which to cultivate national champions--the plants that grow in them turn out to be something like the carniverous monsters from "Little Shop of Horrors." Policies motivated by a desire to improve income distribution and to tilt prices in a socially-productive dimension turn out to impoverish rural and export producers and to transfer wealth to politically-powerful urban middle classes who might otherwise riot, seize the TV station, and declare that you are your government are overthrown.

[...]

Mainstream economists need better theories. But mainstream economists' theories are in the final analysis only crystalized history. And we are the masters of history.

We need to help mainstream economists. But how?

Don Park says that Koreans curse a lot...#

This is not limited to Korea nor others. There was this executive level guy who was in habit of using foul language in the office and made the mistake of directing four-letter words to me. I knew he really meant to say "Nice to see ya again", but it came out like "How's the bloodsucking biz, c**ksucker." So I responded in the same language, "I see that you didn't get fired yet, a**hole." Then he and I both grinned and shook hands. Of course, people standing around us were a bit shocked, but I think they understood that there was little prospect of a fist fight breaking out.

Philip Greenspun had an epiphany. I love it.#

After researching how to do bind variables in Java [...], which turns out to be much harder and more error-prone than in 20-year-old C interfaces to relational databases, I had an epiphany: Java is the SUV of programming tools.

A project done in Java will cost 5 times as much, take twice as long, and be harder to maintain than a project done in a scripting language such as PHP or Perl. People who are serious about getting the job done on time and under budget will use tools such as Visual Basic (controlled all the machines that decoded the human genome). But the programmers and managers using Java will feel good about themselves because they are using a tool that, in theory, has a lot of power for handling problems of tremendous complexity. Just like the suburbanite who drives his SUV to the 7-11 on a paved road but feels good because in theory he could climb a 45-degree dirt slope. If a programmer is attacking a truly difficult problem he or she will generally have to use a language with systems programming and dynamic type extension capability, such as Lisp. This corresponds to the situation in which my friend, the proud owner of an original-style Hummer, got stuck in the sand on his first off-road excursion; an SUV can't handle a true off-road adventure for which a tracked vehicle is required.

Via Ask Bjørn Hansen via David Weinberger is "Seth Gordon [suggesting] that we shouldn't talk about computer security as it was a war game or a disease problem."#

People who are familiar with computer security understand where the dramatic metaphor ends and where prosaic reality begins. If I have a physical firewall around my computer, and someone lights a physical fire outside of it, the safety of my computer depends on the resources of the arsonist: with the right chemicals, any firewall can be turned to rubble. If I have an electronic "firewall" between my computer and the public Internet, and the firewall is configured to block all incoming traffic, the world's most brilliant network engineers with the world's most powerful computers will not be able to override the firewall simply by sending packets to it over the Internet.

But try to think like someone who doesn't know much about computer security, doesn't have the time or inclination to learn, and doesn't know how to interpret the metaphors. Microsoft is the largest and wealthiest software company in the world, and Windows and Office are their flagship products. Surely, if they are vulnerable to computer viruses, then any comparable products from any competitor must be at least as vulnerable. Any claim that an operating system written by a bunch of volunteers is more secure than Windows doesn't deserve a moment's serious consideration