free variable

Andrea got me a DirecTV TiVo receiver for my birthday (albeit six months early, so as to fit in with the NFL season). So far, I’m at least as impressed as Bill Bumgarner is, although I have a different brand of receiver than he. I’ve never used a TiVo before, so I can’t speak to how the DirecTV box is different from the standalone TiVo. I’ll have to check the “software upgrades” out so that I can use my ethernet network instead of a phone line.

Already, I’ve found a good use for it, though. I am often forced to watch ESPNEWS for longer than I’d like in order to catch something on “the crawl.” The TiVo “instant replay” button — which, I can guarantee, will get a workout on Sunday afternoons — is about the greatest thing ever to happen to “the crawl.” (Of course, it would be even better if the dearly departed “ESPN interactive” channel were to return, but I’ll take what I can get.)

Now my goal is to confuse the “automatic ratings” system as much as possible by giving “thumbs-up” to widely-varying program choices. Heh.

The kicking drama continues: the Minnesota Vikings just released Brett Conway and signed Morten Andersen. (For those of you who blinked, they had signed Conway and released Aaron Elling last week.) The URL of this announcement on the team’s official web site has a nice Freudian slip:

http://www.vikings.com/news_detail_OBJECTNAME_AndersonSignes9704.html

As a Scandinavian-American, I am acutely sensitive to the “-son” / “-sen” / “-sson” distinctions; one would assume that a Minnesotan website editor for a team named the “Vikings” would be as well — that is, unless they had figured that the Vikes would be bringing this fellow out of retirement and prepared a URL accordingly.

Andrea and I went to a great football game last weekend when we were in the Twin Cities. I’d never been to a nationally-televised football game before, and this was an exciting one to start with — it was a total track meet. Honestly, how many times do you see a team that scores nine touchdowns kick two fake punts? I posted a photo of the last touchdown at the photolog; unfortunately, my camera was set up for outdoor, bright-light photography, so the shot is a little blurry.

A word to the wise: the Metrodome concession stands offer something called a “Dome Dog” that is $1 more than a “regular” hot dog. If you’re dumb (like me), you may assume that this is probably a good deal. However, the only difference between the “Dome Dog” and a “regular” hot dog is that the “Dome Dog” comes with a nondescript bag of potato chips. (My cousin Abe points out that “Everyone falls for the ‘Dome Dog’ once.” Unfortunately, given my zeal for hot dogs and the relative infrequency of my attendance at live Minnesota sporting events, I think I’ve actually fallen for it more than once.)

Smarter people than I have devoted a lot of ink, bits, and vocal activity to the copyright, technological, and civil-liberties issues raised by the entertainment industry’s habit of purchasingaggressively lobbying for additional laws whenever the spectre of a challenged business model appears somewhere on the horizon. (Indeed, one might say that more people have written about this than I have.) To clarify my position: I am not a defender of so-called “media piracy.” Rather, I believe that copyright infringement should be a crime. However, the proper response to crime — even to widespread crime — is to enforce existing laws, not to introduce additional ones (such as the DMCA or the proposed SSSCA/CBDPTA and INDUCE acts), especially when the additional laws have the side effects of criminalizing legitimate activity (such as fair use and computer systems research). I am also inclined to agree with those (like Lawrence Lessig) who argue that the current copyright terms are effectively unlimited, and thus borderline-constituitional at best.

With that out of the way, here’s the quick thought: I was listening to a public-radio show about I, Robot and robots in general last night. As one might expect, the discussion was mildly interesting but rather dismal in terms of depth and engagement: as two examples, it seemed that the essence of “autonomy” was unclear to the host and guests, and the controversial concept of “substrate independence” (in the context of consciousness/intelligence) was implicitly assumed by all participants. However, what got me thinking was the host’s introduction, in which he contrasted Asimov’s vision of robots as virtuous, logical servants with Hollywood’s robots (and technology in general), which are malicious, destructive, or (at the very best) golems that are on a collision course with tragedy.

I realized that I couldn’t think of any movie that portrayed technology in an essentially positive light. I then briefly wondered why the entertainment industry would take such a consistently, thoroughly Luddite stance, before realizing that there’s no question there: Why wouldn’t an industry whose chief lobbyist once compared the VCR to the Boston Strangler take every possible opportunity to produce anti-technology propaganda? From within the current, well-documented Hollywood mindset, what could possibly be good about any technology that isn’t narrowly focused to extract as many dollars out of every copyrighted work as possible? I guess I don’t know a lot about Asimov, but if I put Hollywood’s protectionist dystopia up against, say, John Gilmore’s idealist view of the technological future (read through to the end), I know which one I’d rather be inhabiting in twenty years.

In other news, Logic Express is very nice. The learning curve isn’t as steep as I’d feared, although it does take some getting used to. Obviously, there are a lot of features I haven’t touched yet. I’m looking forward to getting into it some more, but my impending prelim is putting a pinch on nonessential activities. I may still post a quick track soon if I come up with something presentable.

A common cliché of procedural crime dramas and spy movies involves recovering precise visual information (e.g. a license plate number) from a blurry photograph or videotape. Usually this technique is introduced by having a hard-boiled detective asking the bespectacled computer operator to “enhance that.” Invariably the computer speedily obliges after some typing and clicking. Who knew it was that easy to violate the Nyquist theorem?

note to Nyquist-savvy readers: Ordinarily, I put explanations that I assume some people won’t need in notes like this; the typographical conceit is designed to prevent these explanations from intruding on the main text. In this case, though, the “explanation” is on the meta-level — the rest of this post is an explanation of the Nyquist theorem. If you’re familiar with the Nyquist theorem, chuckle at the previous paragraph and skip the rest of this entry. The continual presence of this “feature” in television (most recently, last night, in some show Andrea and I were watching) irritates me so much that it has inspired me to write this up; mea culpa if it’s patently obvious even to folks who don’t know the Nyquist theorem.

Unfortunately, it’s not easy to have an “enhance” feature. In fact, it’s impossible. Not “impossible,” as in “‘impossible’ until the next release of Microsoft Windows descends from the sky to the platform in front of the golden calf, enabling all good things.” Not “impossible” as in “intractable, but computable if you had the age of the universe to wait for a result.” Rather, it’s “impossible” as in impossible.

The Nyquist theorem has to do with sampling analog signals into the digital domain. Basically, it states that, to reproduce a signal with a maximum frequency n, you’ll need at least 2n samples per second. A corollary to this is that, if you sample at rate n, you will not be able to recover anything that is more detailed than a sine wave with a frequency of 2n.

The above figure shows two sine waves. The red wave has a frequency of three times that of the green wave; it is also out of phase with regard to the green wave. This may not look much like a blurry traffic camera photo, but it’s the same principle — the Nyquist theorem applies whenever we sample discrete values (like a computer image or an audio file) from an analog data source (like light or sound waves) or continuous function (like the sine wave).

Let’s say that the green wave corresponds to the blurry photo and the red wave corresponds to the actual scene (presumably including the license number). Say also that we’ve taken five samples (corresponding to the tic marks on the x-axis). Notice that, at these points, the two waves have the same values. That means that, as far as our discrete representation knows, the scene could correspond to either the green wave or the red wave. By sampling, we’ve created an approximation of the initial source. In the case of digital music, like CDs, this works because the sampling is high-resolution enough to reproduce all of the frequencies that a good microphone can capture. In the case of the blurry traffic photo, on the other hand, this doesn’t work — there are infinitely many “precise images” that correspond to any one blurry approximation!

Therefore, if the “CSI” gang manages to get an indictment based on an “enhanced” license plate image, someone on the “Law & Order” side will likely manage to create reasonable doubt — since, for all we know, that blurry image corresponded to someone else’s plate.

I’m currently listening to Signore! Cos E Quel Stuppore? – Susanna, Conte, Contessa, Figaro from the album “Mozart: Le Nozze Di Figaro – Karajan” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

The first season of Sledge Hammer!, the greatest television show ever, is now available for preorder on DVD. It ships on July 27. This is very exciting news. (…and I’m not the only one to think so — this set is already ranked #472 on Amazon.)

I’m currently listening to Cancion del Emperador from the album “Classical Byrd” by Charlie Byrd

Andrea and I were watching an episode of Law and Order while I was trying to piece together what I wanted to say about the Hutchens article. In it, McCoy was struggling (not a lot) to keep his ostensible Catholicism from infecting his judgement on a matter of priest-parishioner confidentiality. He said: “I have to decide which part of the Constitution I like more, the ‘separation of church from state,’ or the ‘free exercise of religion.’”

I know that Sam Waterston has done some work with a publication that exclusively employs writers who know the Constitution so well that they have even been able to locate rights in its text that the Framers forgot to include. Therefore, filming must have been quite rushed for him to allow his character to utter such an obvious mistake: the actual text of the Constitution has very little to say about the “separation of church from state,” unless you consider the “establishment clause” and the “free exercise” clause to be separating church from state. Unfortunately for McCoy, they don’t (necessarily) do so in any meaningful way, and neither clause had anything much to do with the case at hand.

Andrea and I saw Troy, Wolfgang Petersen’s current “unendliche Geschichte,” last night. It was entertaining overall (especially for $4 at the inexpensive cinema we attended — $8 at the local googolplex would have been too much). However, it was overlong (nearly 2:45!) and had some critical problems preventing it from being as good as it could have been.

note to cut-to-the-chase-savvy readers: If you want to “experience” Troy in 150 fewer minutes than it would take to do so in the theater, check out this amusing abridged version. Unfortunately, it will probably be amusing only if you’ve already seen the movie.

The first and most crucial problem is that the movie was emotionally uncompelling. None of the characters were worth caring about, with the possible exceptions of Hector and Priam. There was nothing heroic about Achilles — a cocky meathead who couldn’t make it through twelve lines of dialogue without mentioning that he was fighting for his place in the history books. I was wholly unconvinced that anyone would be willing to die because this Achilles fought with him. Paris and Helen are obnoxious adolescents, à la “Troy, 90210.” Why adolescence — perhaps the most tiresome, worthless, and deleterious aspect of industrial Western society — is constantly projected by our media on to societies that, blissfully, never knew it is beyond me. Tragic heroes are bound by duty to something external, but for the adolescent, “tragedy” is the conflict of two momentary whims — hardly a basis for mythology.

In trying to cram over a decade of war into a commercially viable movie, the mythic aspects suffered greatly. Hector is established as a legendary hero by the continued presence of cheers from the rabble. Achilles is established as a legendary hero by kicking so much ass. Unfortunately, that’s not all it takes, or Homer would have also written “Bon Jovi, Live from Budokan” or “Die Hard” (in which a wisecracking Odysseus rescues the estranged Penelope from an office building full of barbarians). While the Iliad explored the complexities of the mythical, larger-than-life personalities of the mythical, larger-than-life players, this movie followed a standard recitative-aria structure designed apparently to appeal to violence-crazed men and their fingernail-buffing significant others: emotionless but superbly filmed battle scenes sandwiched between scenes of pointless character development, sex, or spousal nagging. (Fortunately, at no point did Orlando Bloom — as Paris — “surf” down a staircase on a shield, spraying a stream of arrows at invading Greeks.) There is no “legend” in this movie, but how could there be, when there is barely any human interest, or even adult characters?

Darrell Hartman has a letter from Athens in the Christian Science Monitor today, which describes the disappointment that some contemporary Greeks have expressed at the portrayal of their ancestors; it is worth reading. As I sat in the theater, in front of several young women excitedly speaking Greek to one another, I wondered: how does this make them feel to see, for example, Agamemnon “downsize[d]…into a petty imperialist,” as Hartman puts it? (I was reminded of the news reports of Somali Americans watching bootleg copies of Black Hawk Down and cheering, for some reason.)

The score, by talentless hack James Horner, is an horrific embarrassment: almost three hours of chewing over one motive stolen from the fourth movement of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony (perhaps Horner should “reply” to “just criticism” himself!), with occasional reversion to “ominous string sounds” and clichéd microtonal feminine Mediterranean wailing. I swear I could have done at least as well myself as a 2d-year undergraduate music major. Seriously, introducing a Falco impersonator in order to sing “Rock me, Menelaus” would have constituted an improvement.

One might assume that such a movie might have a clear, heavy-handed set of foreign policy recommendations, but one would be wrong. There are a number of clear jabs at war in general and at various situations that arise in wars (the example of a “king who is too far from combat to know we’ve won” comes up frequently in the first reel). However, this movie may serve as a foreign-policy Rorshach test. Who do you see as America? The isolationist “they’ll never breach our walls” Trojans or the colonizing “must rape the world” Spartans? Did the downfall of Troy (in the movie) result from ignoring Hector’s advice not to attack the retreating army, or from ignoring Paris’ advice to burn the horse? For the Trojans, was the abduction of Helen really “why they hate us?” Maybe these are interesting questions, but it is perhaps best that this film didn’t raise them; I can’t imagine it would have a coherent answer.

I’m currently listening to 59. Rezitativ from the album “J.S. Bach – Matthäus Passion BWV 244″ by Masaaki Suzuki/Bach Collegium Japan

Friends, which has absurdly been touted by NBC as the greatest comedy in the history of television, is wrapping up its run as I type. Given the amount of fawning, onanistic attention paid to this event by the news media, an observant extraterrestrial might assume that a large nation-state, or perhaps the whole world, was controlled by a group of six young people — perpetually-immature, vapid libertines, not yet at the the level of refinement of Kierkegaard’s aesthete — who have, tragically, passed on. These tedious characters have no sense of responsibility except to the immediate satisfaction of their fleeting whims, and they are one-dimensional and emotionally trivial enough so that the consequences of their impulse-fulfillment (whether to do so is to engage in an ill-advised tryst or to have a child) remain absent from the narrative.

Fortunately for those benighted souls who can’t tune in in time for the asinine display, NBC is offering tonight’s spectacle on DVD in five days (presumably in an attempt to recoup the $1 million they pay each Friend per 22-minute episode). Unfortunately, this DVD likely won’t offer the best part of the “live” experience. With advertisers paying up to $20 million for a 30-second spot, the spaces between the bursts of canned-laughter spiced inanity could easily be of NFL-playoff or even Super Bowl-caliber.

I’m currently listening to A un dottor de la mia sorte from the album “Il Barbiere di Siviglia” by Claudio Abbado

About a month ago, I posted an entry about Christian angst, Christianity, and the depiction of both in television; my friend Taryn raised some interesting issues in the comments. I’d like to address one of these questions now: she asks

But ultimately, I think there is a question about what function television has in society, which is an old question about the function of art or literature. Is it simply to reflect aspects of human experience, or is it to instruct? (And if to instruct, for whose purposes?) I don?t believe that it necessarily has to be one or the other, since I watch L&O for its shiny no-thoughts-attatched value, but is there a way to negotiate television as an industry and television as some form of art that may delight and/or instruct?

My concern with the depiction of Christianity on television is that it is a sort of minstrel show: a set of conventions mired in stereotype, to be produced and consumed by people who have little to no actual experience with the subject matter. It would be better, one might argue, for depictions of “Christianity” to remain entirely absent from television than for the types that do appear to be the only representations of actual Christianity in the media. Of course, ostensible “Christianity” and “Hallmark spirituality” “sell” well — ratings for shows like Touched by an Angel and Seventh Heaven are high in certain demographics, despite the fact that such shows, while chock-full of “believe in yourself” treacle, feature none of the distinctive aspects of orthodox Christianity; most are downright heterodox or heretical.

So these shows do not reflect human experience — at best, they reflect a simulacrum, constructed by the media. It seems that any “experiences” of Christianity reflected by television could be discredited by actual experience of Christianity. Certainly, these shows instruct, since a significant number of young adults have probably enriched their understanding of various Constitutional challenges to criminal charges by engaging the Law & Order franchise.

My concern is what and why they attempt to instruct. Our mass media has taken Hunter S. Thompson’s concept of “gonzo journalism” to its logical conclusion; no longer content to create stories so that they might report on them, media agents are interested in creating truth that buttresses their presuppositions. The media operates with a strange logic, in which repeated assertion of propositions increases their truth. One need not look far to see the absurd, patently false assertions that people are willing to assent to simply because of their statement by mass media. Furthermore, the media is more than willing to do violence to our language, making firm concepts into malleable ones to suit a rhetorical or political aim. When the concerns and motives of a group of people are reduced to a caricature, though, the violence is done not just to the word describing the group, but to the group themselves.

One might argue at this point that a variant of my complaint with the media could be applied to any controversial, polemical, or dishonest art, and I won’t deny that it probably could. Few would propose banning a work of art because readers find in it a coarse or defamatory stereotype. Rather, the solution to such offense in art is further reflection and engagement; one need only examine overtly-politicized liberal arts curricula to see that “further reflection and engagement” are in full bloom. (Whether or not the formulation of Fermat’s Last Theorem was informed by “heterosexism” and misogyny is a question best left for specialists.) However, the difference with the media is that it is ephemeral, ubiquitous, and is most often consumed uncritically: we do, as Taryn suggests, appreciate (some) television because it is entertaining and because we don’t have to think about it. Indeed, thinking about it would — in many cases — spoil the fun. Finally, it’s gone before we have a chance to consider it. The problem I have with the mass media, including television, is that it regularly defames people like me; is actively hostile to my concerns, to my motivations, and to my God; and that there is little or no escape.

I’m currently listening to El grillo from the album “Josquin Desprez — Motets et Chansons” by The Hilliard Ensemble

That’s how many Monday Night Football games feature the indefatigable and perennially-underrated Minnesota Vikings this year. (The full NFL TV schedule is here.) How will I bide my time while dreaming of implausibly great ways for them to avenge their inauspicious exit from contention last December? By rooting for the Rhein Fire, man. The road to World Bowl XII goes through Düsseldorf, baby!

Yes, I am seriously considering following NFL Europe this year.

You really ought to download Neverball, a free game similar in concept to the old labyrinth game where one guided a marble through a maze by controlling the plane of the maze with knobs. (Recently, the “Super Monkey Ball” series of games for the Nintendo have had a similar gameplay dynamic.) Neverball is available for Linux, Windows, and OS X, and will probably destroy a few afternoons for you.

I’m currently listening to Heinrich Isaac – Tota pulchra es from the album “Silver – The Best of the Tallis Scholars” by The Tallis Scholars

I wound up listening to the “bad ideas” network of Wisconsin Public Radio on Thursday night, which usually features shows in which unemployed, apparently-inebriated syndicalists call in — ostensibly to ask questions of a usually intelligent guest — and express their wack-job ideas. The phrase “I just want to make one more point” is a frequent utterance, for example; “points” are generally punctuated by sanity-defying bursts of logical gymnastics.

I was driving, and didn’t think it would be wise to don headphones, so I was listening to the radio. The classical music network of WPR had descended into the tar-pit of unattractive, nominally-listenable 20th-century flute music, eliminating my preferred car-music source. Since I regard commercial radio as only marginally more palatable than a serious groin injury, I clenched my jaw and switched over to the Extremely Uninformed Debate Network.

The EUDN was playing Here on Earth with Jean Feraca. Feraca is a demi-celebrity in Milwaukee, I believe, and has an enjoyable cooking show on WPR. Here on Earth, on the other hand, generally consists of exploring novel and effective means of finding fault with Western culture; it seems targeted at bourgeois dilettantes who believe that the only the misunderstood, othered and romanticized descendants of the peoples that their ancestors once colonized could be responsible for authentic art or legitimate culture.

On Thursday, though, Feraca was interviewing Michael Palma, a poet who wrote a fairly recent verse translation of Dante’s Inferno. Palma was contrasting his approach, which maintains the terza rima scheme of the original, with those of translations that focus on the prose of Dante’s work. No sooner had he stopped for breath than the first local genius called in to “make a few points.”

This caller was a real piece of work; the sort of guy who you can imagine has business cards printed up with “B.A., mina cum laude” written after his name. We’ll call him “Shadrach,” because I don’t remember his name and “Shadrach” is bound to be more interesting than whatever his actual given name is. Shadrach was out of the gate like a degreed greyhound on uppers: “Well, when I was in college, blah blah blah, read all the great books of the Western Canon, blah blah blah, preferred literal translations with Italian en face … reasonable people cannot disagree about this, blah blah blah, therefore you, Michael Palma, acclaimed translator, are wrong.”

The moment of Zen happened in short order. Feraca interjected quickly and without irony (emphasis added): “Shadrach, there’s an Italian proverb ‘tradire è tradure,’ which means ‘to translate is to betray.’” Congratulations, Jean — I think that’s the most (intentionally or otherwise) Tractarian thing I’ve ever heard someone say.

Without fail, the sort of Christianity depicted in television drama is wholly monolithic. It is a cultural Christianity, marked by the sort of trappings that are readily recognizable to non-practitioners. It is chiefly Roman in character because such trappings abound in the sacraments and pieties of the Roman Catholic church — who hasn’t seen a detective go to a confessional or superstitiously mention the intercession of a saint? — and because Roman Catholicism is, if my experience is any guide, a largely cultural phenomenon on the coasts, where most television drama is produced and where the target audience for most mass media lives.

In the sort of Christianity that exists in television’s world, Christian characters fall under four types. The first is the crazed fundamentalist, a straw man who is always as unattractive as possible and is frequently deranged or sociopathic, but whose main crime is always an improper transfer of religiously-motivated ideals from the private world to the public, generally combined with a zeal for violence or offense. The second is the culturally Christian protagonist; his or her public faith consists of mildly rebuking those characters whose temperament is irreverent, in recalling episodes of religious practice from childhood, or in making moral claims that barely stray outside the acceptable bounds of mass-media orthodoxy. There are a spectrum of these characters; one gets a sense that some are actually Christians in a meaningful sense, even though no direct evidence of this appears on camera. The third is the hypocritical clergy figure; we’ve seen the contemporary incarnation of this stereotype at least since The Scarlet Letter, and it is no less tiresome now. The fourth is the nonjudgmental mentor figure, who can be either a priest or nun, a pastor, or someone whose “saintly” nature is frequently mentioned by other characters. Type Four never explicitly expresses anything remotely related to orthodox Christian doctrine or practice, but instead dispenses semi-coherent Yoda-like wisdom or feel-good clichés devoid of the hallmarks of actual faith.

The Christianity of television drama is also one that has missed out on most of the Christian academic and theological traditions of the last two millennia. In a practice so frequent as to be almost a genre convention, television writers will establish a crisis of conscience for a Type Two character by making her soliloquize about how a good God could allow the possibility of evil, cancer, crime, or eating dinner with one’s salad fork. This is, apparently, television producers’ shorthand for something quite like Dostoyevsky’s “furnace of doubt.” Raising these questions is fine, although it is slightly implausible that an adult Christian has never dealt with them before demanded to by the circumstances of a Very Special Episode. What isn’t fine is that these questions are treated by the medium as if they have no answers, or at least no satisfactory answers. The resolution of the crisis does not come, say, in reading C.S. Lewis’ The Problem of Pain or in receiving peace that passes all understanding, but in a motivational-poster-like encounter with a Type Four character or in a brilliant triumph of human agency just before the credits roll. I suppose that there are intelligent people for whom the existence of evil or of human frailty is a stumbling-block to faith; with this in mind, it is unconscionable that the “problem” of evil is presented as one which has no solution, especially when the image of Christians as stereotypes divorced from actual Christian faith is so pervasive in the mass media.

Kierkegaard described despair as originating when we try and understand the eternal in light of the temporal: trying to weigh eternal ramifications of temporal choices, for example, or recognizing that our temporal concerns are irrelevant even as they still eat at us. His solution to despair is not in bucking up and figuring things out for ourselves, or in interpreting temporal events as pointing to evidence that we weren’t really confused. Rather, despair is solved only in total reliance on God. Objections to Christian faith like the “problem of evil,” then, are only remotely sensical if the appropriate relation to revealed truth is “attempts at rationalization.” As Christians, we concede that our facilities will always be inadequate to comprehend the eternal. The portrayals of Christian angst in television drama, on the other hand, don’t appear to acknowledge that: for them, the a struggle of faith is the struggle with the world not being as you think it should, or as you believe God would have it to be. At best, this represents a pre- or post-Christian worldview.

I’m currently listening to Zueignung, Op.10, No.1 from the album “Fritz Wunderlich – Beethoven, Haydn & Strauss, R. Lieder” by Bavarian State Orchestra, Fritz Wunderlich & Jan Koetsier

…is the tentative name for a game I’ve invented and “play” at parties now. It’s a little like aggressively playing devil’s advocate, but one must be more subtle if it is to work. Basically, the game goes like this:

1. Happen upon an ill-informed, bumper-sticker-logic-ridden political discussion. If you are a graduate student — if you are involved in academia at all — this will not be difficult.
2. Pick a few commonplaces that people generally recite as a substitute for thinking in such discussions. For bonus points, choose a few in advance. Some, of course, are easier than others. It is a safe bet, for example, that a political conversation among drunk graduate students will rapidly degenerate into bashing of “evangelical Christians,” “globalization,” “drug companies,” or various particular politicians and/or judges, depending on what kind of crowd you run with. It is much harder, however, to steer a conversation into a level of near-fisticuffs over something that actually might affect someone’s life — say, whether or not China’s currency valuation should be tied to the dollar — merely so you can frustrate someone who has a strong opinion on the issue.
3. This is the fun part: with a prepared or extemporaneous statement betraying naive goodwill to the object X of derision, ask for an explanation of precisely what is so bad about X. Obviously, you don’t want to be combative; I’ve found “Hey, I don’t know all the facts, but what’s the deal with X, anyway? Is she/he/it really that bad?” to be a helpful way to start the conversation. Of course, you do have the facts, and you’re prepared to use them, in response to every objection. Furthermore, unlike your unwitting victims, you believe that intelligent people of good will may disagree about X. (For bonus points, try and find an opinion that you believe intelligent people of good will could not hold, and attack or espouse that. It’s a bit harder to do that without blowing your cover.)
4. If you really want to get style points, a good finesse test is to find a person who is willing to introduce internal inconsistency in defense of what appears to be a relatively unimportant presupposition, say, an epistemically unjustifiable hatred of some unidentifiable local elected official.
5. Finally, the easiest part of this game is determining the winner: it is you. You win, and they lose.

Why does it work? In an environment with very little intellectual diversity, like a box of puppies or a university campus, common conversation depends to a great deal on shared presuppositions and enthymemes. In the litter, it is simple things, like “chewing on things is an ultimate moral Good,” or “getting picked up by the scruff of your neck is embarrassing.” In higher academia, it is even simpler things, like “politician X is a butthead.” Whether or not X is, in fact, a butthead is irrelevant; Wittgenstein would say that X‘s detractors are playing a particular “language-game,” or that they are operating in a “suburb” of our language. One of the rules of their game is that X has a head that is composed almost entirely of gluteal matter, and changing that is tantamount to convincing your dog that, when you pick him up by the scruff of his neck, you’re praising him. (Of course, it is much more fun to play my game if you also believe that X is a butthead.)

Richard Rorty, whom I find distasteful, has a concept that he calls “final vocabulary.” It is useful for our purposes in playing “Whack-an-Enthymeme.” One’s “final vocabulary” is a set of words that one uses to “justify their actions, their beliefs, and their lives.” The most fun you can have playing WaE is by making yourself into an outsider in the language-game of others at the party, one who does not share their final vocabulary. You may be amazed (or just depressed) at how few people can explain what “progressive,” “socially just,” or even seemingly objective terms like “capitalist” mean, and, beyond that, at how much of their positions depend on these shared meanings.

I guarantee that playing this game regularly will make you more critical of people you fundamentally agree with and more able to listen to people you fundamentally disagree with. Alternatively, it will just make tedious political flamefests and whine-sessions at parties more tolerable. Either way, why not play?

I’m currently listening to Lachrymae Antiquæ from the album “Early Music (Lachrimae Antiquae)” by Kronos Quartet

Last night, the Minnesota Vikings played like the Vikings that usually only appear when I’m holding a joystick, demolishing the Chiefs. Of course, there are some commentators and other sources that are more qualified to talk about the game. I’m here to talk about my couch-bound trash-talking, which undoubtedly helped the Vikes to victory.

For most of the season, I have referred to Trent Green as “named after the greatest assault on Christianity in history.” I thought this was pretty severe, but I figured that I’d better ramp it up a little for the Vikes, so I started referring to him as “enemy of the Gospel.” Andrea wasn’t particularly amused, but sixty minutes, two picks, and a 44.1 passer rating later, my taunts had clearly worked.

I’m currently listening to Dmitri Shostakovich: Quartet No. 8 – 2. Allegro Molto from the album “Black Angels” by Kronos Quartet

I’m watching ESPN’s Sunday NFL Countdown right now. The hosts were all worked up into a lather about excessive celebration in the NFL — some pro, some con. There are probably good arguments on either side. However, since everyone involved in this discussion goes into “pundit mode” — in which perfect solutions are available as long as the world magically begins to conform to the speaker’s assumptions, priorities, and enthymemes — it seems that a group of sports journalists and ex-players is unlikely to identify such good arguments.

What caught my ear, though, was Steve Young weighing in. Speaking against celebrations that glorify the individual, he railed against the extreme individualism that characterizes American society. He then claimed that Americans now value the individual over society so much that we’ve even invented a Constitutional “right to privacy.” Amazing.

I’m currently listening to Communion motet: “Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern” from the album “Praetorius: Mass for Christmas Day” by Gabrieli Consort & Players/Paul McCreesh

A couple of weeks ago, when I first saw an ad for the “Alien Quadrilogy” box set, I remarked — out loud — “What’s next, a hyperquadrilogy?” I’m sure that with more work, I could do a better job of commangling (not a typo) Greek and Latin roots, but it would be tough.

By itself, the fact that I got annoyed at a stupid commercial is unremarkable, but it seems that the Onion’s video review staff are similarly amused by the misnamed tetralogy. This is not that important by itself either, but this week’s Onion also includes a review of a DVD release of Pale Flower, which I had not heard of. Since I like noir a lot, and I like gangster films as well, perhaps I will see it soon.

I realized this weekend that Super Hang-On is totally anti-third-world in a not-particularly-sneaky way. Super Hang-On is a classic Sega motorcycle racing game that has four course choices of varying difficulty, corresponding to North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Africa is the shortest and easiest course, followed by Asia, then America , and then Europe. As a kid, this was a little confusing, since I thought you were supposed to be driving across the continents and it seemed to me that Africa would be the longest. Perhaps there’s an unsinister explanation — maybe they just wanted to cram more scenery (e.g. windmills, Eiffel tower, etc.) in the Europe level — but I think it’s sad (sad!) that no “orientalist” has yet addressed this blatant “othering” in “ludology”.

(Perhaps I should make this into a “Cultural Studies” Ph.D. dissertation.)

Junior Seau fired by ESPN from all potential future SportsCenter and/or highlight reel appearances, à la Gregg Easterbrook or (more notoriously) Rush Limbaugh.

Well, at least that would be consistent. I can’t be the first person to point this out, but it seems like the only consistent way to draw the ire of media companies with a stupid comment is if it’s directed at media companies.

I may have spoken too soon about this being “in all probability” Clemens’ last game — from here, in the top of the 10th with 2 outs and 2 strikes, it certainly looks as if it could go either way.

What a bad night to try and study!

UPDATE (Thu Oct 16 23:17:14 CDT 2003): I did speak too soon. Oh, well. At least the elimination of the Cubs and Red Sox means we can put off waiting for the apocalypse for another year.

I have near-total antipathy for the Yankees. Actually, that’s not strong enough — I hate them (as an institution) with virtually every fiber of my being and regard them as only a few degrees removed from absolute evil. I like to see them lose more than I like to see just about any other team win. However, I was saddened (to my surprise) to see one of this generation’s greatest pitchers get sent out — from what, in all probability, is his last game — on such an inauspicious note. I had a Clemens-endorsed mitt seventeen years ago, from the year of his first Cy Young award. He is one of the last players that I followed as a kid to still be in the game; he, along with players like Ripken, Viola, and (before the allegations of last year) Puckett, represents a baseball that I was able to idealize.

This was back when I still loved baseball, before the absurd season-ending strike, and (perhaps more importantly) before I was old enough to realize that, for the most part, the major leagues are populated by functionally-illiterate, felonious, overpaid jerks who barely graduated from high school. I stopped watching after the strike, except to go to a few Orioles games (when in DC) and Twins games (in college), and to see Ripken break the streak on TV. I did still like the minor leagues, and remained a fan of the Frederick (MD) Keys and the St. Paul Saints. It’s only been in the past couple of years that I’ve been able to care about major-league baseball again at all, even in spite of organizations like the Yankees and crooks like Selig, who do their best to spoil it.

I guess I have no real evidence for this, but Clemens seems like one of the nice guys, and not like part of the problem. In any case, his professional record is objectively in a class by itself. Here’s hoping that the end of his career doesn’t overshadow the rest of it for him, and that he can now devote time to his family and to his charitable activities.

1. Sure, you’ve seen the Vikings’ rad mascot, riding into the Metrodome on a motorcycle, wearing animal skins, etc. But did you know that he holds the world record for shaving with an ax? (I always knew he was cool. I just didn’t know how cool.)

2. This answers the question we’ve all had for a long time: “What if I want to get married at Lambeau Field?”

Andrea and I saw Luther tonight. For the most part, it was a beautifully made movie, but it had some flaws. That’s not to say I don’t recommend it — I do, but it could have been better. Here are a few things that struck me, which you may or may not want to read if you haven’t seen the movie:

• The filmmakers used a number of “cheap tricks”, including the death of two children — one to illustrate Luther’s primarily pastoral role and position on suicide (rather, the position on suicide alluded to by a remark in one of his “Table Talks”), and one to put a human face on the Peasants’ Revolt. (The latter child seemed primarily to be in the movie to put a human face on the sale of indulgences.)
• The movie is extremely fast-paced, and might not make sense to a viewer who hasn’t some sense of the history involved. As an example, Melanchthon is mentioned by name once — when getting yelled at by Karlstadt — and doesn’t appear again until he presents the Augsburg Confession. Another example is this: Luther’s exile at the Wartburg takes about six minutes of screen time, although he grows a beard (but not the rad Junker Jörg beard we’d hoped for) and translates the NT in that time.
• Luther is presented as something of a mainline Protestant in some ways, most notably in scenes where he preaches: in the aisle, and without notes. (Obviously, there are some liberalizing and revisionist tendencies in the movie, but I don’t believe that there was anything that essentially damaged the depiction of Luther’s mission.)
• Luther’s internal struggle with the devil isn’t presented in the best possible way — they make him look like a madman. Granted, any soliquizing will make the speaker look a little nuts, and there couldn’t be a much faster way to do it, given how compressed the film is.
• Cajetan is depicted as sympathetic to Luther’s cause but bound by hierarchical polity — even mentioning the need for a pope “like Luther” at some point. Cajetan was certainly more sympathetic than Leo X, but that’s not saying much. As I understand it, Luther completely out-debated an unprepared Cajetan; to hear the more polemical Catholic apologists tell it, any history that claims that Luther defeated Cajetan is utterly false and inconceivable. In any case, the closest reading of Cajetan to the one in the film that I’ve seen is that he thought Luther to be brash and out-of-turn, but nonetheless raising points that demanded additional consideration and debate.
• The end of the movie is particularly abrupt. Furthermore, the superimposed titles at the end credit Luther’s thought for its implications for secular life as well as theology. I don’t know how happy Luther would be with the Enlightenment and all of its detritus, but I think that some of the text immediately preceding the credits could be eliminated.

Obviously, these criticisms (and the others I had) are comparatively minor — the movie was immensely entertaining, fast-paced, and (in places) profoundly moving, presenting a well-rounded picture of Luther’s theological and intellectual acuity, pastoral concern, sense of humor, and piety. The Rome sequence was particularly well-done in painting a human institution that had elevated popular piety to the sacred and — for economic and political reasons — held the faithful hostage with threats upon their life and afterlife. (One can see a similar selling-doves-in-the-temple picture in Rome even today.) The peasants’ revolt and the figure of Karlstadt serve as a brilliant metaphor for what can happen when one holds individual judgment over the Christian tradition (here, of course, I refer to Oberman’s “tradition I”, or the Gospel kerygma and its traditional interpretation, à la Irenaeus).

The movie also had some mildly clever points: while watching a morality play, Luther eats an apple and absently plucks the lute of a nearby musician. One pilgrim (standing behind Luther in Rome) requests the plenary indulgence for a relative named “Wolfram Eschenbach” — in an apparent reference to a secular tale, taking place at the Wartburg, about a man who, like Luther, was a misunderstood genius with no shortage of musical talent and who, also like Luther, made a fruitless trip to Rome.

I was pleased that Luther’s role as “reformer” was presented over an imagining of him as “revolutionary”, “church founder”, or “innovator” (which are the favored caricatures of Luther by fans of the idea human progress or by RC character assassins). Luther’s work was intended to serve the universal church, and it is to the detriment of all Christians that many who today are informed by the Lutheran tradition have either decided to embark upon a political quest for ecumenism at any doctrinal cost, or have erected an isolationist ivory tower of correct doctrine. While I agree with David Yeago’s assertions that Luther’s work was in the spirit of the catholic tradition (again, “tradition I”), I disagree with his implication that, at the time of the Reformation, the RCC was not irrepairably damaged as a vessel to preserve that tradition. (However, my ecclesiology will have to come in another post, later.) Luther’s humility, concern and doubt were also apparent — a fact that Ebert, who was apparently seeking a brash movie about a selfsure humanist genius, derided. The Luther of this film is captive to the Word and the Spirit, but has no illusions about himself being any more special because he is an instrument of the same — like the real Luther.

Briefly, I’ll address the “film” aspects: the cinematography was beautiful. Joseph Fiennes portrays Luther well, and Peter Ustinov is stunning as Frederick. The fellow who plays Melanchthon (even though he has three speaking lines in the whole movie) resembles the famous Dürer woodcut. The only things that were totally missing were more Cranach (he appears, but his work is only in the corners of the frame at times), and Ein feste Burg (the only chorale in the movie was Aus tiefer Not, hilariously sung in a Bach harmonization by a group of peasants at Augsburg). It is definitely worth seeing, even modulo the minor flaws. I can’t wait for a DVD with an extended director’s cut, which should ameliorate the choppy feel of some of the first act.

Andrea and I have had DIRECTV (all capitalized so I don’t have to determine how to bicapitalize it) for a few weeks now; it was a gift to me from her parents so I could better keep up with football. I, having lived in the benighted world of broadcast-only TV all my life, realized instantly that it was rad. Channels of “just news”, “just movies“, “just sports”, and “just sports news” appeared to me as a graphing calculator might have to Euclid. I don’t think I realized the totality of its radness, though, until I looked at the schedule for my local FOX affiliate during week 3 of the football season.

Before we got hooked in to the fabulous world of satellite, it was pretty rare that I got to follow my lifetime favorite team, but sometimes the local station would play a Vikings game if there wasn’t a Green Bay game at the same time. (Being a Vikings fan in Wisconsin is like being confessional in the ELCA.) I had heard from some of my benighted, broadcast-only friends that the FOX station had cut the late game in week 2 (after Green Bay had played the early game) in order to present some ridiculous locally-produced Packer postgame show/locker room report. The Green Bay game was the late game in week 3, and I foolishly assumed that — since there were some good NFC games in the early slot that week — the local FOX station might show a game I was interested in seeing. (I was secretly hoping to set up another TV in order to watch two games at once.) No dice. FOX 47 (WMSN) played the FOX pregame show at 11 AM, and then cut to infomercials until kickoff of the Green Bay game. Absurd, absurd!

Also, you have to give mad props to DIRECTV for solving a signal theft problem via technical means and not via endless litigation or by strongarm tactics dependent on unconstitutional legislation.

I’ve seen a number of ads on TV for a concert by someone named Sarah Brightman. I had no idea who this was, but my friend Taryn informed me that she is the spouse or former spouse of that inveterate hack Andrew Lloyd Webber. I probably could have figured this out based on the ad, which featured five or six shots of this woman, wearing a wireless microphone, in an elaborately staged setup, with a different costume in each shot, and singing what I can only assume (based on banality, poor vocal production, etc.) are treasures of the musical theatre repertory.

After seeing this commercial (on ESPN, for Pete’s sake!) for about the fiftieth time, I asked Andrea: “If this woman is such a good singer, why does she need a microphone?” She was not particularly amused.

As a Webber-bashing aside, I was in London with my parents the summer after my sophomore (wise fool, indeed) year in college, and some Webber production was heavily advertised there, touted as “the fastest show in the world”, or similar. Of course, the signs and flyers were in multiple languages: “Die Schnellste Show der Welt!”, “Le plus rapide…” etc. My father and I agreed that if your tagline sounds stupid in German, it’s probably a sign that it might not be a bad idea to rethink your ad campaign.