The Misspent Life

AWOL

I will be in DC today and tomorrow and will probably not have consistent internet access or time to write anything.  Some people will be happy with this state of affairs.  Mrs. P. snark all you want in the comments.  You cannot hurt me more than you already have.

A Must-Read

Most of you being good little 'wingers and of the more high-minded variety, I assume you've read Edward Feser's article at TCS and the cross-post and discussion over at Right Reason?  If not, you should.  It is a great read, very informative (at least for me, encapsulating in a few paragraphs some important "table stakes") and also raising a point that I had never considered.  Namely, why is it that rational theological arguments are dismissed as out of bounds in public debate while other controversial philosophical points are considered in bounds.

Folly Folly Folly

Robert the Llamabutcher reminds us that today is the anniversary of Seward's Folly.  Longtime readers will remember that Seward's Folly played a part in my site's first glimpse of a large number of readers courtesy of Mr. Enoch Soames.  It was a bit of a cockup on my part, as I referred to it as Stewart's Folly.  What a silly ass I am.

I Spit in Your General Direction

I'm sorry to pee on your leg, but where have you been these last two days?  I think that my posts have been, while not good, at least not as bad as usual these past few days.  And yet only a few of you have comments?  Are you all busy, or do you simply not care?  I seem to get more rise out of you by posting absolutely nothing, than when I put together at least a few sentences that may or may not present a coherent idea or theme.

I take some solace in the fact that many of you have gone silent throughout the blogsphere (I hate the word blogosphere).  But on the whole, you have been nothing but a disappointment.  Please make a better effort in the future or else I will withdraw your reading privileges.

Nervous

You know, I am excited about going to graduate school.  Even though it might turn out that I only got into one program, I still got in somewhere and will be pursuing my PhD in the fall.  Yet at this stage I am a bit more scared than I am excited.  Have I made the right choice?  I don't have much doubt that I can swing the academics; after all, I can read and write (although it will take time to get back to my old and higher standards), and am great at talking to groups and enjoy teaching very much.  But I do have doubts whether I can survive in the environment given my personality and philosophy.

I tend to discount conservative lamentations on the state of the academy, even when they come from those who should know (like Roger Kimball and The New Criterion crowd, Stanley Kurtz, etc.).  After all, it can't possibly be that bad and surely things will start changing now, right?  Reading things like this article in The Washington Post I begin to have doubt about that. 

Of course, while surveys like this show how liberal or Left academia is, they don't give insight into the practical effect of these statistics, like if there is a bias in hiring or in the evaluation or treatment of graduate students.  Without any scientific study showing these things they can continue to use the "conservatives just don't want to be academics" dodge and continue to dismiss as anecdotal the personal testimony of those who felt that there was discrimination against them. 

After all, is it not conservatives that say that the fact that minorities feel they are victims of discrimination does not prove that there is, in fact, discrimination?

Betwetter Catfights

I take issue with this article in The Independent on what are called Coldplay knock off bands.  I do not disagree that there are a lot of imitators out there and that a lot of bands sound alike (what Blimpish calls "bedwetter music"), but I do think that the bands they label Coldplay imitators are a bit of a stretch.

Keane and Snow Patrol have very different sounds than Coldplay, with Keane being more orchestral and Snow Patrol being more electronic/produced.  It is a valid point that they have something of the same ethos, but then Coldplay surely should not be considered the standard against which others are basing their sound.  I'm calling bullshit on them because Coldplay is very much a knock off of Travis' The Man Who (which just prior to Coldplay's first success was the dominant album).  The Man Who, of course, is a knock off of Radiohead's OK Computer (ditto).

Maybe I am being defensive because I am something like obsessed with Snow Patrol, but if one listens to their earlier stuff, it is very different than Coldplay and yet still consistent with their current sound.

As much as I am loathe to argue, I think that a band's status as a knock-off, sound-alike band is somewhat determined by their own success.  The more successful a band, the more a band has taken a popular sound and tweaked it and added its own flavor (a la Keane and Snow Patrol).  Those bands that do not really have much of a different sound do not reach the same commercial success (a la Starsailor, Turin Brakes, Palo Alto) as the first ones to hit it big.

Cool Read

I enjoyed this article from OpinionJournal today on Amazon's number one reviewer, Harriet Klausner.  It is a really neat story.

Drrty Pop

I point you to this post by Jan Bear on pop versus soda.  I've long been a fan of the Pop Vs. Soda page.  This led me to ponder my own strange vocabulary habits.  While born and raised a Chicagoan, I've sometimes been known to say coke in place of my standard pop.  I usually will say coke when at a restaurant, as Coca-cola is more commonly found in restaurants and it is a pain when you order a Pepsi and they say "Is Coke okay?"

My usage of coke is all the more bizarre [wow, that phrase could mean so many things] considering that I am, in general, a Pepsi man.  But this leads me to another strange thing.  I have preferences for when I drink Coke and Pepsi.  I prefer Pepsi in a can, but Coke in a bottle (I'm talking plastic ones) or from a fountain.  I cannot explain this, but I do not like Coke in a can or Pepsi from a bottle or from a fountain.

I won't even go into the habit I had, when a youngster, of calling it beer with my friend.  We thought we were being grown up, and I enjoyed the slight irony and frivolity of it.

There, are you happy now?

Ocho

Number eight.  Northwestern.

Expanded Ideas

I want to expand upon something that I mentioned in my post here that probably sounded a bit odd; namely, why I was thinking of things like Lebenskultur or Todeskampf. That sounds a bit pretentious, I will admit, but it was to some constructive end. I should also mention that I’m writing this quickly and should not be taken as any kind of well thought out argument—I’m just throwing out ideas that I’ve been kicking around at times.