arts and entertainment

Uncategorized

It is far from writing, and there is no way that it makes up even a hundred words.

But, in justification of my addiction to 3quarksdaily, here is a sample of the random, but often striking edification that they bring into my life:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhcjeZ3o5us]

There is great promise in the ability to copy and paste such magic. Hannah Arendt suggested that culture was once about edification – the urge to make oneself better by experiencing the creations of others. Long before I was around to mull it over, she worried (in Between Past And Future) that this urge underlying culture was undemocratic, because most people have little to gain from improving themselves – they don’t want culture, they want entertainment. The space between the populism of mass entertainment and the aristocracy of hoi-polloi ‘art’ is hard to bridge, and leaves a gaping chasm where a truly democratic practice of art should be. Contra Arendt, I am filled with hope that there is space for a truly popular culture, and this piece – not only accessible in the haunting beauty it admits in such a short time, but accessible in being online, free in every sense of the word – provides some promise of bridging that chasm. I do hope that Google doesn’t ruin this wonderful tool.

The Cat in the Hat and tests in the bag

culture, education, politics, US

Who are these people?

It is eminently logical that the reading comprehension tests scores of children and adults alike increase according to the time they spend reading for pleasure. More, it is not surprising that children with more than 100 books in their home score markedly better on standardized tests, including math tests,, than children whose parents own fewer than 10 books. And, especially for those who us have attended college, there is nothing breathtaking with this final conclusion, which along with the first two bits of trivia comes from a study by the United States National Endowment on the Arts discussed here in the New York Times:

students who lived in homes with more than 100 books but whose parents only completed high school scored higher on math tests than those students whose parents held college degrees … but who lived in homes with fewer than 10 books.

Thus my opening: who are these people? The correlation is remarkable only in the plainest, “notable”, sense of the word. What is breathtaking is not the conclusion, but the fact that there is a significant cohort of college-graduate parents who own less than 10 books.

I can think of only two even vaguely believable explanations for the existence of these people. Completing college is no guarantee of economic success. Perhaps, facing the slouching, lurching beast which is poverty in the United States, and specifically caught between its twin jaws of a pitiless labour market and an increasingly toothless welfare system, some college-graduates may be included in a sizable cohort priced out of books, as if they were only a disposable luxury.

More likely, in response to a rising tide of unnecessary credentialism, these parents participated in four years of post-secondary schooling so mind-numbing that, instead of feeding a flickering flame of passion for learning, the experience so finally smothered whatever academic spark they left high-school carrying that they respond to books in their home not with an inflamed literary temperament, but a more literally pyromaniacal urge.

Critics of the study suggest that the authors under-measure internet reading – though if my writing is any example of what is available, then we can be sure that writing on the internet is no substitute. Books are, the critics argue, a thing of the past. However, the conclusion about such correlations show that books still matter, and for children they matter at home.

There is a bright side, in the form of a clear lesson for all of us: if one wants to avoid a child so precocious that she corrects grammar and regales with trivia, the choices are to sell off one’s Hawking, Hemmingway, Chomsky and Chaucer, or to put them, along with the Cat in the Hat, under lock and key. At least until standardized test day. (via Arts & Letters daily)

proportional rep and a good first step

city, elections, politics, Uncategorized, war

If democracy works at all, and MMP fails, we can just kick the bums out, and go back to our charming, ineffective, tradition.

The core argument underlying my support for the proportional representation proposal being put to the vote on October 10th – which will, with luck, ‘drag Ontario politics out of the 17th century and into the 21st – is laid out in the Ultra Vires here. Questionable title aside, included here are the sources and further discussion promise in the authornote.

To an accusation of ‘intellectual dishonesty’ received for this criticism of Urqhuart, which now includes a link to the original article, where, I maintain, he relies more on name-calling and misrepresentation than argument:

Besides those like Ian Urquhart who seem to get starry-eyed over the charms of any tradition, no matter how ineffective the institution…

I depend on statements such as these:

The system can lead to permanent minority governments and a proliferation of fringe parties;

which, in the middle a news article (describing the new proposal as “radical”) seems to fall short of reasonable standards of journalism, or argument, for that matter, especially when, as I stated in the piece, the proliferation of minority parliaments under proportional systems is debatable. Perhaps more blame might be laid on the Star’s editorial board than on Mr. Urquhart, who has remained silent on the issue for at least four months, especially since I view Mr. Urquhart’s opinions as generally insightful and well-informed.

To the core of the argument: some might disagree on the nature of democracy itself, but that’s worthy of a much longer article. However, even given support for the idea that debate, deliberation and consideration are as much, if not more important to ‘democracy’ than plurality voting systems unfortunately doesn’t dispose of the advisability of switching systems. Here, repeated, are the two strongest arguments against the October 10th proposal:

First, because the system will use party lists, MPPs may be less accountable to the ‘local constituency associations’ which this coalition somehow believes holds sway now. And because of the (debatably) higher likelihood of minority governments under the new system, they rail against the power that might be held by small parties, while discounting the unrepresentative sway held in the current system by large parties.

The real weakness of the proposal – the difficulty of almost any proportional representation system – is in choosing who gets the seats not allotted by local election. Clearly, opposition to party lists is about more than just accountability. While supporting ‘principled leadership’ over ‘administrative efficiency’, Lorne argues that party lists will only exacerbate the as-yet unquenched tendencies of parties toward corruption, nepotism, and personality-cultism, fed by a power-seeking motive which will only become more lucrative under the new proposal. Instead of inspired voices willing to spark public debate, lists will quickly fill with Machiavellian autocrats and a coterie of clashing sycophants. Underlying a belief in this process is a clearly identifiable incentive: with guaranteed access to at least partial power, politics inside every party will start to become personality-based, with those close to the core winning the spoils: almost-guaranteed seats.

This guy is likewise assured that party lists will toss Ontario head-first into an endless night of the long knives.

Yet with moderate regulation and moderate party discipline, the party list system could inspire the grassroots to seek out principled, eloquent representatives of the issues important to their party, instead of aligning around local level incumbents who are almost impossible to replace. If parties realize the potential of the list system, then conventions could become more like leadership conventions with many winners, instead of half-rigged races where the top dog also gets to choose, according to their personal motives, which contendors come in second, and third and fourth…

Perhaps Lorne’s experience with the Liberal party leads him to see dark days if the proposal wins, where I see real possibility of a passionate, informed public discourse. The NDP, despite attempts from the centre to manipulate results, has been surprsingly democratic of late.

Ultimately, the difference is, I’m willing to take the risk for the sake of democracy, and for the possibility of ending the ‘politics of fear.’

 

More on Arrow’s Democracy Paradox here, and on deliberative democrats here. An exciting proposal for more democratic politics, tangent to the electoral system proper was proposed in Fiskin and Acherman’s Deliberation Day.

the mayors loss and the city’s gain

city, politics

For a decision to bring the re-opening of community centres to a vote in the next two weeks, Toronto’s Mayor Miller has been accused of bowing to pressure and flip-flopping on the issue.

It doesn’t really matter how the Star swings this thing. The past three weeks has been an act of brazen, awesome political theatre on the part of Miller. For those opposed to his ends, perhaps ‘shocking’ instead of awesome.

Miller did exactly what he needed to do to win the necessary support for the new taxes in the upcoming October vote: put a camera-ready service, that the middle class was willing to fight for, on the chopping block for – wait for it – a total of two Mondays.

Now, Miller may come off looking like a ‘flip-flopper’ or an opportunist, a political hack. Royson James, if he hadn’t already reached the limit of his ire, would probably have reached it after this series of decisions. But the Mayor has also tied serious, meaningful, painful service cuts to the taxes he wanted – just in time for the October vote on those taxes. Who would want to be the councillor voting for the re-closure of the community centres, after being on the local news for two weeks speaking out against those cuts? With three years left in his term, the taxes will still be around when the Mayor is done his, but the two Mondays without community centres will be gone from collective memory.

So, Miller ‘loses’, but he gets what he wants, which is what the city needs. And he’s still Mayor. Cynical? Sure. But nowhere near as cynical as all the councillors who voted against the proposal without offering alternatives, who changed their mind on the vote, losing the city $60 million this year, and who have focused on trashing the Mayor to their own political gain instead of mounting either i) support for the new taxes or ii) support for a meaningful alternative. Sometimes, when you’re dealing with whining children, you’ve got to play headmaster. Which he has done with style.

So, good on you, Mayor Miller. Bring on the new taxes.

Leadership and Forgiveness

politics, war

Michael Ignatieff has written a long-awaited mea culpa for his support of the US invasion of Iraq in the New York Time Magazine here.

Mea culpa is an admission of fault, and there is much to be faulted for. The invasion of Iraq stands for two great tragedies. The first is gaunt in its scale, stark in its inhumanity: the 600 000 lives which may have been saved had the war not occurred. The number stands as a humble reminder that piled high enough, snuffed out lives, ruined families, and destroyed homes becomes, in their repetition, only a statistic. Yet there can be no denying that these lives are a sizeable remainder in the arithmetic which ‘good political judgment’ required.

The second tragedy was borne out before the first bomb even fell on Baghdad. It is the tragedy of hopelessness against the very logic of force and arrogance. Contra the realists, from Morgenthau to Kissinger, the logic of brutality and greed are not the sole shape that relations between states can take. The invasion of Iraq confirmed a view of a world where disputes are settled with violence, where power decides against argument. In short, it represented the victory of unilateralism over something more democratic. Increases in terrorism and fundamentalism since the invasion are only a corollary to that logic.

Ignatieff has no compunction about the logic of force. In a stunning display in the NYT of his turn from soft liberalism to stark neoconservatism, American Empire (Get Used to It)[1], he had this to say on the invasion of Iraq:

“The choice is one between two evils, between containing and leaving a tyrant in place and the targeted use of force, which will kill people but free a nation from the tyrant’s grip.”

Such a statement discounts not only the lives lost, but the alternatives hidden between unchallenged tyranny and unilateral force.

Getting Iraq Wrong revisits the hubris supported so vehemently in the 2003 piece, but lacks the thrilled tone Ignatieff had for American resolve in January of 2003. The tone is softened with good reason. In the four and a half years since Ignatieff came out swinging, he has entered political life in Canada, only to see his leadership hopes haunted by the ghosts of his position on Iraq invasion. Some believe that the so-called admission of wrong-doing in the NYT may yet provide him with the clean slate needed to present himself in case an embattled Stéphane Dion cannot find firm footing in time for the next election, and is forced to resign.

Is he really cleaning slate? Here is what Ignatieff says he has learned from the transition to political life.

“An intellectual’s responsiblity for his ideas is to follow their consequences wherever they may lead. A politician’s responsibility is to master those consequences and prevent them from doing harm.”

Which is an attempt to cleave the intellectual from the political and vice versa; a bit of parlour magic he would certainly like to perform on his own public life. Yet drawing such a divide seems disingenuous, and more, dangerous. During the Vietnam War, Kissinger counseled a policy of unremitting violence according to a logic of force he believed to be true; yet he also promoted a result in Vietnam, and Cambodia, that followed that logic. Ignatieff also promoted such a result.

Ignatieff was no ivory tower academic, no pince-nez prognosticator, before he entered political life. He was then, as he is now, a public figure. His opinion in January of 2003 was not only ‘theory’, tossed haphazardly into the intellectual fray to be debated further, but counsel to the people of a country already on the cusp of invasion, to march to the drum of war already beating from the White House.

Again, that march to war was not inevitable. Ignatieff knew he was providing counsel, which is why he then relied on the threat of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ to bolster his claims, and now claims that it was only his own ‘self-justifying’ emotions, inspired by ire over what Hussein had done to Kurds, that truly spurred him to his decision. He knew his position, his words would contribute to the final decision to invade.

As a mea culpa, then, the piece falls short: errors may be intellectual but wrongs have consequences. Admitting one has been wrong is not the same as admitting one has done wrong. And dividing so starkly the public role of the intellectual from the public role of a politician means that Ignatieff dismisses the damage that he did while claiming that others – with charmed lives – helped him learn a lesson, without admitting that the lesson was learned at a cost he too must bear: 600 000 lives, and a world slightly more beholden to the power of the most expensive army.

Ignatieff suggests that having been given more power, he can now be trusted to make wiser decisions. The implication is that, given the leadership of the country, he can’t possibly get it wrong. What he has not done is what would take true resolve: seek forgiveness.

Continue reading →

One and a two

Uncategorized

Brevity. Soul. Wit.

Thus answered (with apologies to the Bard) to my own question: what makes writing interesting?

I have spent a great portion of the past 8 years reading, but not writing. Mike recently started an email salon, whose current topic is orbiting around what Bill Readings has referred to as The University in Ruins. One of the many problems with our system of higher education is that it leaves so many of its graduates still unable to express themselves about anything but a sliver of their own opinion, and often that opinion is attached to a topic about which most people know nothing – and care for only a little bit less.

In my case, despite a ‘minor’ and two years of something else, 120% of the credits I was supposed to earn has left me most capable of telling you how one might prove that Kepler’s formulas describing the elliptical orbit of bodies around a gravitational centre (not quite true when there’s more than two bodies) can be derived from Newton’s simple formulas describing the scale of the force exerted by gravity (less true near the speed of light). Yet I am far less able to express even the most basic of half-truths I have been gathering about the desperation of human life or the dizziness of our relations to one another from magazines, blogs, films, books, or best yet, the overflowing of conversation that have each in their share soaked up my ‘spare’ moments for the past 8 years.

So, here it is. The first shot over the bow of a planned 109 600 words. I have given myself three years at 100 words a day to learn how to half-express myself in digital ink. To become a writer who, at least when not travelling near the speed of light, hits somewhere near the truth. To shorten, sharpen, and swing a little more in my words, while I aim for sweet, sensible expression, out here among the multitude of bodies.

If I don’t trip up, I’ll try and stumble on something worth talking about, too.