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Showing posts from 2008

NOVA

God, I love PBS. As a certified liberal elitist, now that I'm living in NYC, I just can't help myself. Last night they had a show on NOVA called The Bible's Buried Secrets . Quick capsule review: best televised bit on early biblical history I've ever seen (admittedly a small set of shows). But it's a really excellent, nonjudgmental, and thorough review of the evidence for a non-specialist. That means any fundamentalist Christian, Jew or Muslim who watches it will go into an apocalyptic fury, most likely. But the best part about the whole situation? You can watch the whole thing online! For free! That's why PBS is so utterly awesome. Not only do they consistently make the best documentaries in the country (for example, see pretty much every Frontline episode), they also post them online! At a decent quality!

Is Islam inherently violent?

There's been a lot of talk, both on the conservative and the liberal side, about this movie " Fitna " that has just come out. It's a short movie with a clear ideological purpose: to show that Islam is an inherently violent religion. I'm reminded of the Jon Krakauer book a couple years back Under the Banner of Heaven , which was about these Mormon guys who killed their sister-in-law and baby niece and claimed that God had told them to do it. According to Krakauer, these guys were supposedly influenced by the peculiar Mormon doctrine of revelation to commit this crime. Mormonism does have this rather ridiculous history of disavowing bits of its dogma that become politically inconvenient--it was only when the US threatened war that they had a revelation and gave up polygamy, and it was 1979 that they allowed blacks to become full members in the same way. Thus the argument went that this history uniquely prepared these men to believe that God was talking to them

Cool-ass site

I've just added VBS TV to my links, and boy, that's a pretty awesome site. It seems to me to be the future of journalism--openly biased, guerrilla-style reporting from places like North Korea and Bolivia . I highly recommend those two series (the only ones I've seen so far). The North Korea series is basically the story of an American in North Korea without too much of an agenda. It's incredible, and that's all I'll say. What a place. The Bolivian piece is more focused; it's primarily about the coca trade. Apparently coca leaves are in everything down there--from just chewing on the leaves to tea to ice cream. They use it, without much in the way of side effects, to keep alert (like coffee, basically) and to counter the effects of high-altitude living (La Paz, the capital, is at around 13,000 feet). There's a lot of history there I didn't know. Anyway, check 'em out. They come in little bite-sized 5-10 minute episodes, so they're gre

McCain's "spiritual guide"

Apparently there is another crazed religious lunatic aside from John Hagee that John McCain has taken an endorsement from. This one's name is Rod Parsely : McCain said, "I am very honoured today to have one of the truly great leaders in America, a moral compass, a spiritual guide, Pastor Rod Parsley. Thank you for your leadership and your guidance. I am very grateful you are here." [...] In his book, Silent no More , Parsley says the United States was ordained by God to defeat Islam. In one chapter, titled The Deception of Allah he writes: "I cannot tell you how important it is that we understand the true nature of Islam, that we see it for what it really is. In fact, I will tell you this: I do not believe our country can truly fulfil its divine purpose until we understand our historical conflict with Islam. I know that this statement sounds extreme, but I do not shrink from its implications. The fact is that America was founded, in part, with the intention of se

Westwater: a Story

I suppose it was good manners, or my lack thereof, that made Byron punch me in the face. I don’t mean to say he was justified in striking me—far from it—that’s just what must have been going through his mind. I imagine like most males he had harbored a secret desire to hit someone square in the face, just to see what it was like. And who better to practice on that someone whom he outweighed by a solid eighty pounds. I was thirteen at the time, and Byron, though he was only eighteen months older than me, overmatched my paltry five foot eight by a good seven inches. We were on the Colorado river, on a trip through Ruby-Horsethief Canyon, then down through Westwater Canyon, which was the most dangerous and exciting part of the trip. The Phelpsclan, Byron’s family of eight, was the author of this experience, and I joined them as Byron’s friend. The first inkling of the disaster I would later experience happened at the outset of the trip,

Kafkaesque

I finished The Metamorphosis , and I'm about halfway through both The Castle and The Trial. I'm finally learning what the word "Kafkaesque" means. My definition would involve layers of obscure, contradictory, hellish bureaucracy that suck people in forever, though I'm still not sure that's the whole story. The concept of Catch-22 is very much derivative of this idea. Sometimes it's quite humorous, like when K. is meeting with the council chairman of the village who speaks of a legendary bureaucrat named Sordini who is known chiefly by the thuds coming from his office from large stacks of files falling over--yet the council chairman insists that he is infallible. The bureaucrat's logic is the circular version commonly seen at police stations and the like--Kafka was really ahead of his time. Still, I find his prose often irritating. Everyone, including K., argues constantly in this dry, clinical way that betrays little emotion though they often

Science

So I'm creeping up on my last year as an undergraduate, and truth be told when this thesis is done I don't think I'll do any science ever again. I'm sick to my back teeth with the whole business. I suppose that's how this whole business goes. I'm looking into grad school in Middle Eastern History, but I would like to take a few years off first, figure out what I like to do. Law school is looking tempting as well. I wonder if Reed has the wrong idea about pretty much everything. We're well-prepared for grad school but not much else. Course, a lot of that is my fault, but still. I'd be happier and dumber at Stanford. Is that better? I'm not sure.

The Great Gatsby

Just finished The Great Gatsby. I'd call it a well-written meditation on the American Dream. The writing was impeccable at delivering the character of the narrator, which was otherwise mostly unmentioned. I suppose there was some symbolism about the American Dream in there somewhere with the green light and such, but I don't hold with such things. The Metamorphosis is up next in my queue.

Moby Dick

I just finished listening to Moby Dick, by Herman Melville. It's available here free of charge. I thought the reader, though certainly not a professional, did quite well. He knew his pronunciation on all the myriad whaling terms, and clearly knew the work quite well. His Captain Ahab voice was my favorite--it became very familiar by the end. I would say this book is half whaling textbook and half adventure novel. I kept thinking about how one would make a movie out of such a work, and my only conclusion is that half or more of the material would have to be discarded. It is a crazy work, weirder than I had imagined possible for such a highly-regarded work. Still, I liked it immensely. Still, what a great story. Melville clearly had a passion for the subject, and the tale is well told, with excellent characters. The ship is almost a microcosm of the world, with an incredibly diverse crew, fairly treated by the author (for 1850, that is). Ahab was my favorite character; perh