Thinking words...

Vale Christopher Hitchens (1949 - 2011)

2011-12-16T15:15:00.000-08:00

Irreplaceable.

I know of no other like him in range of intellect, contempt for fashionable “educated” opinion and vice-like grip on the facts of the case. He didn’t need to explain things; in fact he disdained explanations. He simply called things what they were.

Not so good on music perhaps, and occasionally unsteady also in the thin air of poesy. And let it be admitted that Hitchens never published an important tome on plasma astrophysics, or distinguished himself in morphological analysis of Old and Middle Indo-Aryan. Mere mortals may be gratified there were at least hints of lacunae in his appreciation – which was wide, deep and marvellously enunciated – of authentic, significant human endeavour.
In my desultory reading of political commentary since I first heard the strong, clear Hitchens voice resonating through my portable earphones on the nauseating, indelible morning of September 12, 2001 (Melbourne time), I have been alternately amused or annoyed by the compulsion of commentators (both expert and wannabe), when mentioning Hitchens, to dissociate themselves carefully from his views before (typically) prattling on lamely.

     “I [don’t always/rarely/hardly ever] agree with Hitchens, but…”, it goes, or some variant of that. This disclaimer apparently requires mandatory insertion before or after mentioning his name in an odd ritual of inverted genuflection. But after that’s done, there is little hesitation to attempt to add substance to a banal comment by citing support for it somewhere in Hitchens’s work.
     What is darkly humorous is that the people so keen to aver their independence of thought in this way seem to be simply reassuring themselves. Surely they don't think that the bald statement itself, without further explication, qualifies as an opinion? They see no need to make good on their claim by proceeding to refute those other opinions with which they purport to disagree; to lay bare Hitchens’s supposed logical flaws, missing evidence, moral blindness, errors of construction. Above all, to proffer something better.
     Absent that intellectual honesty and rigour, why would anyone care what they think? Claiming not to agree with someone all of the time simply does not qualify as an “opinion”, any more than wearing a t-shirt with a “designer” logo printed on the front makes me smartly dressed. (And anyway, of course they don’t “always” agree with whomever. What sort of idiot does?)
     And so – what a delight it was to receive these words this morning in a message from a very old friend who, I happen to know, did not always agree with Hitchens:

The truth of Hitchens’ power, for me, was that I could never pass up what he wrote. Whether I agreed with his point of view was irrelevant. An article by Hitchens appears, you read it, simple as that. He writes a book, you buy it. And there was always a great reward for doing so.

Just so.
     My favourite Hitchens piece appeared in The Atlantic of September 2003. It is a brief appraisal of Edward Said’s works, and it delivers new insights each time I read it.
     It contains one of the master polemicist’s best ripostes. After citing Said’s claims, made in his introduction to a new edition of Orientalism, to the effect that current Western policy in Iraq deliberately sought the annihilation of the country’s cultural patrimony, Hitchens remarks, “This passage is rescued from sheer vulgarity only by its incoherence.”
     Of course, any reasonably literate person can get off withering fire like that, but Hitchens immediately backed it up by exposing in a glaring light, as only he could, the distorted history and tendentious omissions that underlay the subject passage.
   It was a classic instance of Christopher Hitchens calling things what they were.
     According to a story in Forbes:

Hitchens, like Steve Jobs, was among the first patients to benefit from a very new technology: the use of DNA sequencing to pick cancer drugs that might have a better chance of slowing a tumor’s growth.

    Does this mean that in the next century we can create a Christopher Hitchens replica in a lab somewhere? The idea has some appeal, although who can say whether the 22nd century-world really will want another smoking, “drink-soaked former Trotskyist popinjay”, as he was famously characterised by one of his many detractors?
    More than likely, there will be laws against everything he fearlessly, eloquently stood for.
     He’s left us stacks of books and articles that will reward repeated reading, and hours of live debate captured on video clips.
     He’s also left us an example of how to face death with equanimity and sly humour. “I seem to have a touch of cancer this morning”, he is reported to have answered a hospital nurse who had asked him how he was feeling.

It's just semantics

2010-12-14T03:36:00.000-08:00

Here are some reading assignments for people who think words are just words.

A University of New South Wales study finds that "given the choice between fat and obese, the term fat is the lesser of two evils."
A doctor has been arrested in Pakistan on suspicion of violating blasphemy law by discarding a business card of a man named Muhammad.
In the holy city of Qom, an eye for an eye is not a figure of speech

Crackpots exploded

2010-12-13T02:31:00.000-08:00

The peerless Christopher Hitchens has no doubt taken the true measure of the man, Glenn Beck, in his Vanity Fair article, “Tea'd Off”.

I trust Hitch to get it right, never having actually listened to Beck myself, but having read enough of his supporters and critics to have no desire to listen to the mouth himself. I've heard it all before.
But there's something missing from Hitchens's smackdown. He writes:

A large, volatile constituency has been created that believes darkly in betrayal and conspiracy. A mass “literature” has been disseminated, to push the mad ideas of exploded crackpots and bigots.

This is new? What of the “Bush lied, people died” crackpots, most of whom still walk among us? Those who still insist that the 9/11 massacre of innocents was the work, not of our enemies, but of our government itself: what of them? Why don't they get a mention here?
Come on, Hitch, I know you've been as tough on the “blame the victims” crowd as anyone; but the right-wingnuts have no exclusive franchise on paranoia.

Clear thinking in academia

2010-06-12T00:12:00.000-07:00

Today, walking in Melbourne near a university campus, I saw a poster proclaiming "Opposing anti-Muslim racism day."
Perhaps for university people it is no longer admirable simply to oppose racism. One must specify which particular flavour of racism is objectionable on a particular day.
Being a word guy, leaving aside the question of how a religion got to be a "race", I thought it would be interesting to cancel out the double negative and see what is left over. And here is one possibility: "Supporting pro-Muslim racism day."

...and other words that rhyme with 'lies'

2010-04-28T05:03:00.000-07:00

Be like socially progressive academics!
Use these words whenever you want to appear to have a point to make but actually haven't one:

Demonize
Stigmatize
Marginalize

Especially useful in passive participle form to avoid attribution. But even with the agency identified, they effectively mask any verifiable detail.

Hul-LO-oo?

2010-04-12T04:49:00.000-07:00

US President Warns of Terrorists With Nukes. (Here)

Blatant fear-mongering!

U.S. President Barack Obama ... says terrorists who obtained nuclear materials would be the "single biggest threat" to U.S. security.

Right wing paranoia!!

Come on people — you didn't let Bush get away with this shameless neo-con amygdla-diddling. How come it's okay when Obama does it? Where's the outrage?

Simply divine

2010-03-22T01:23:00.000-07:00

Zowie! Who says you can't be a spiritual leader and a snappy dresser?

Hmmm...Would the shoes of the fisherman go with this outfit?

Debased debate

2010-03-05T00:00:00.000-08:00

I often wonder why the terms of argument around the topic of anthropogenic climate change are so debased and becoming more so. “Climate change is real”, for example, seems to pass as a substantive contribution. Is there really an ontological issue involved here? Or are there a lot of people who aren't aware that the earth's climate has done little except “change” for the past few billion years? And that the reasons for those changes are many, and complex, and some are understood better than others? Which is why what is needed is clarity, not dogma and point-scoring dressed up as “consensus”.
     And how about “the science is settled”? Do serious scientists need to drop such fatuous conversation stoppers when their data is questioned? Or is it just the dilettantes and dabblers who say such things? Whoever they are, we should regard the motives of anyone who seeks to throttle discussion in such a high-handed way as suspect. I would have thought that "settled" science — science that is not open to question and debate — is indistinguishable from dogma.
     Long ago Pierre Abalard (1079–1142) wrote, "To believe with certainty we must begin with doubting."
     And every day we are asked to believe that the enemies of science are “sceptics”. 'Scuse me, really smart and superior person, but can I just point out that scepticism is the very basis of all science? And just knock it off with the drowning polar bears, will you? Thank you so very much.

Off to the races again

2010-03-02T03:03:00.000-08:00

From an article in The Australian about the Adelaide festival:

Leading indigenous artists say the days of white, establishment arts companies creating indigenous productions is coming to an end. Rachel Mazza Long, the director of one of Australia's two indigenous theatre companies, Ilbijerri, says she would have liked to see [artistic director Paul] Grabowsky commission an indigenous director for the Chooky Dancers, rather than Nigel Jamieson. Mazza Long says a white director, for example, could not have made a film such as Samson and Delila.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/adelaide-festival-a-city-looking-to-up-the-ante/story-e6frg8n6-1225835341919

It seems that if you use the word “indigenous” nowadays as a substitute for “non-white”, then racist comments such as those by Rachel Mazza Long, cited in the article, are supposed to appear innocuous. Not to me, they don't. But to newspaper editors, apparently, they do. Substitute "black" for "white" in those comments and maybe you'll see what I mean.
Aside from the blatant bigotry, is there not something comical in the notion of “creating indigenous productions”? Dictionary definitions of “indigenous” suggest that the word referred originally to something present “from time immemorial”. If “indigenous productions” can be “created” for contemporary arts festivals, the word must indeed have come to mean something very different. And what it means now is that it's no longer about history, but about “race” — a totally discredited concept I am sorry to see here elevated to meretricious respectability by self-proclaimed representatives of people who have suffered so much on its account. Or by their unthinking mouthpieces in the mainstream media.

Exposed

2010-02-03T19:31:00.000-08:00

I had a housepainter at my place today. He asked me where my accent was from—the usual Australian friendly curiosity I find tough to answer: grandparents from Ontario, Boston and Southern California, parents from California, schooling in northern Chicago suburbs, almost a score of years in Melbourne.
As he was leaving he asked me how I felt about what was going on with Obama in America—“all the turmoil” as he put it. I make a general rule of avoiding this line of conversation with housepainters, so I said “Oh, I don’t follow it too closely; I’ve been here since 1992.”

“You don’t have Foxtel?” he asked, almost incredulously.

“I don’t watch TV at all. But I do read newspapers and magazines and books.”

“Oh,” he said, in a helpful sort of way. “Obama is turning the whole place into a Marxist country. It’s totally against the Constitution.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “And Glenn Beck is exposing it all.”

Cue Orson Welles: Thus nature balances itself.
A few years ago Australians were telling me that George W. Bush had the IQ of a fence post—on one of his better days—and the military action against Saddam Hussein was “an oil grab.” It was true because they saw someone say it on TV.
Clearly television—the medium itself—is the culprit here, not left-wing/right-wing conspiracy theories. The cognitive style of television exploits and aggravates the lack of critical thinking for which, in turn, modern education is mostly to blame. It is widely the case that kids aren’t taught to think, to analyse, to identify logical fallacies in common discourse. Instead, they’re rewarded for repeating whatever passes for the opinions “appropriate” to their particular time, place, and demographic. “Opinions” of this sort go in and out of fashion like shoes and t-shirts, entirely independent of any real merit.

Mrs. Malaprop's dumplings

2010-02-02T02:08:00.000-08:00

There are some fun malapropisms (and yes, I know fun is supposed to be a noun, not an adjective) over at Schott's Vocab.
     I wish I'd written down all the good ones I've been witness to. There were some doozies; but the one indelible malapropismic event that I think will never be surpassed was this one.
     Sitting at dinner with the in-laws (this marriage ended long ago — possibly before it began), there were all these wonderful aunties whose grasp of English was intuitive rather than schooled. And as the desultory conversation drifted to hot Chicago summers, and suitable attire there for, one delightful auntie with sparkling blue eyes remembered: “I used to have the most comfortable cocksucker suit.”
     The distance isn’t all that great, orthographically, from seersucker to cocksucker. But in sitting-at-dinner-with-family terms, it's measured in light-years, and I choked on my pierogi. I hoped no-one noticed.

Stoppard time

2010-01-30T12:56:00.000-08:00

According to Nigel Farndale writing in the (UK) telegraph, Tom Stoppard “has a love of cheap gags.” Two examples are proffered: “The days of the digital watch are numbered.” Cheap gag? Amusing wordplay, I’d say.
And then: “If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music and of aviation.”

Cheap gag? No, there’s definitely something else going on there. I think he’s riffing on the lazy habit of mind (we all do it) that posits “if this or that had or hadn’t happened, then….”

Once you allow a counter-historical “what if”, there is simply no point in continuing with the “then what”, because you’re now in a hypothetical cosmos, where ordinary causality is suspended, and about which we can know nothing at all. You can say anything you like. All bets are off. You’re doing what Einstein said not even God would do—playing dice with the universe.

What we refer to today as “Beethoven” is not a mere person, but a whole galaxy of causes and effects preceding him and following him in interaction with countless other such galaxies—and all in strict accordance the laws that govern The Way Things Are.

Now—suspend or amend those laws, and what do we have? Well, what we have is a different universe.
If the numberless chains of causality that got all of us here are severed, the rules changed, one may as well relocate aviation history into the Napoleonic era—or for that matter, into the Middle Ages, or into Mycenaean Greece—as speculate about a towering genius’s sudden youthful demise that never happened.
I must admit that in the end, I don’t know if all this is what Tom Stoppard is getting at or not. But given the importance, in his work, of pastiche, of implausible simultaneity, of suspended laws of probability and hapless characters who seem to have fallen out of time, it won’t do to dismiss it as a “cheap gag.” More likely, it is the kernel of an idea for a new play.

View from up here

2010-01-22T17:11:00.000-08:00

Novelist Peter Carey, speaking from the tower of Melbourne's Sofitel, says, “The whole world is getting more stupid.” Apparently you can see that from up there. Or he could anyway. Perhaps that's why the rooms cost so much.
     Is Mr Carey doing anything about this? Is anyone? Should the United Nations appoint a commission to deal with runaway global dumbing? Can some sort of cap and trade scheme be hammered out?
     Carey’s proposed solution is to make the teaching of literature in schools “much, much more important.”
     Is it just me, or do some writers have a high opinion of themselves?

Thuggery: When is it OK?

2010-01-18T14:45:00.000-08:00

The issue over which a lot of carbon emissions have been spent recently, both here in Oz and overseas, is whether violent attacks on visiting international students in Australia are or are not “racist”.

How refreshing it would be if outrage over violence against [fill in racial, ethnic or gender attribute here] people were supplanted by outrage over violence against people. No particular kind of people. Just people.

The sets of opinions that people call “racism” or “sexism” are present everywhere in the world, and always have been. Do we really want to be in the business of telling people what opinions they are permitted to have? And anyway, the real problem is not people's opinions; it's lawlessness and thuggery.

Do the people crying “racism” really believe that bashing people is okay as long as the victims are of an ethnicity other than the one they imagine themselves to be defending? I don't believe they do, but if they do, how is that not “racist”? And if they don't, why can't they own up to it and drop the racial shtick?

Do campaigners against “violence against women” really believe that the violence would be okay if it were not directed against women? I don't believe they do—but why don't they say it?

Perhaps more to the point, do the people getting bashed feel better or worse if they know they are a victim of a “racist” attack, or some other sort to which a premium label can be applied, rather than a generic sort of bashing?

Must we have designer brands for thuggery? Do we really need to go on creating new categories of victimhood? Why do we do this to ourselves?

Let's just put the thugs where they can enjoy the fellowship of like minds (I'm thinking prisons are particularly well-suited to this purpose) so that polite, generous, considerate, non-violent people—most of the world's people, in other words—can be free to go about their business.

Reverse hermeneutics?

2010-01-16T17:47:00.000-08:00

Hermeneutics is the formal study of methods of interpretation, usually of written texts.

The Wikipedia article on hermeneutics tells us that the German philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher ( 1768-1834) “defined hermeneutics as the art of avoiding misunderstanding” in human communication. That's him at left with the dinner napkin.

If that's the case, I am tempted to describe effective technical communication as a kind of pre-emptive reverse hermeneutics. By that I mean it should be our objective to prevent misunderstanding in advance — before the message is received — rather than leaving it to our audience to construct plausible meaning from ambiguous data after the fact.

Here's another way of saying it. “Clear writing is not just writing so as to be understood. It is writing so as to leave no possibility of being misunderstood.” I've seen that excellent axiom attributed to Coleridge (who was an almost exact contemporary of Friedrich's) but have never succeeded in tracking it to its lair.

The Wikipedia article also claims that “there arose in his [Schleiermacher's] time a fundamental shift from understanding not only the exact words and their objective meaning to individuality of the speaker or author.”

Well, that's a pretty horrible sentence, even for Wikipedia. Overlooking the mangled syntax, I can't begin to fathom what the phrase “objective meaning of words” might refer to. Meaning is never objective, nor does it reside in words. Meanings are the dynamic result of interactions.

Science, meet George

2010-01-16T16:22:00.000-08:00

Cellphone users are not just dangerous drivers. They walk funny, too.

Why do they like to turn themselves into loud-mouthed annoyances and walk into parked cars? The reason, says a neuroscientist at the University of California, is that they tend to “create visual imagery related to the conversation in a way that overrides or obscures the processing of real images.”

“An animal would never walk into a pole,” he said, noting that survival instincts would trump other priorities.

But George the cat, who shares our house, not only bumps into things; he trips over rocks too. And all without the aid of a cellphone.

One of these statements must be true:

George is not an animal.
The neuroscientist is being diplomatic.

Morphing at warp speed

2010-01-16T15:35:00.000-08:00

From The Guardian:

According to the Oxford English Corpus, a database of a billion words, dozens of traditional phrases are now more commonly misspelled than rendered correctly in written English.... [Some are] so widely used that the wrong version is now included in Oxford dictionaries alongside the right one.

And that was 2006. One can only imagine what further orthographic strides have been made in the intervening years of blogatorial free ~~reign~~ rein.

Stunning revelation about earthquakes

2010-01-16T14:40:00.000-08:00

Amid unimaginable suffering, one might expect NY Times reporters to avoid silly bromides like this one.