Let's Get Physics-cal

I've become increasingly conflicted about the work of contrarian social scientist Charles Murray. His work in The Bell Curve has been the most obvious subject of dispute, but his recent book about secondary education is equally--if not as overtly--inflammatory and audacious.

Now Murray's written an op-ed for the New York Times about Obama's imperative to make greater use of community colleges and reform the education system by encouraging certifications in lieu of 4-year college. Most people don't really need a BA or a BS to achieve happiness, says Murray, much less their vocational goals.

To make his argument, Murray relies once again on his favorite (if questionable) metric for talent: IQ--which for many, discredits the argument entirely. Nonetheless, I'll grudgingly concede that he's sort of got a point.

You think I’m too pessimistic? Too elitist? Readers who graduated with honors in English literature or Renaissance history should ask themselves if they could have gotten a B.S. in physics, no matter how hard they tried. (I wouldn’t have survived freshman year.) Except for the freakishly gifted, all of us are too dumb to get through college in many majors.

Ouch. Ditto.

Just last night, when speaking with my father (a double major in Math and Physics), I admitted that physics was one of those subjects where my brain just, well, breaks. Calculus? Loved it. But physics? [Grasshoppers].

Presumably--and as much as I myself like to doubt it--I am one of the people who Murray deems worthy to attend a four-year college. And frankly, (based on my experience thus far), getting a PhD in the social sciences is more about persistence and hard work than aptitude or talent. As Jefferson said:

I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.

I wonder what he would think of Charles Murray.

Doing the Math

I was stunned this morning when I opened the Washington Post Style section.

A few months ago, I ran into a classmate from high school on the bus from Philly to DC. He's become a prominent DJ on the East Coast, snagging the recent cover of City Paper. We joked about starting a club for quasi-famous TJ alums as he informed me that my former math partner had been signed to the same record label as Bikini Kill. A few weeks later, I sent him a link to her MySpace, and we both marveled that she was "really blowing up."

Fast forward to this morning. Her single, "Bag of Hammers," is listed as the Posts' #3 song pick for the year, and her album is included in their the top 10 for the year.

Writes J. Freedom Du Lac on her album (Thao Nguyen with the Get Down Stay Down, "We Brave Bee Stings and All"):

"And Thao Nguyen came across like Edie Brickell fronting Modest Mouse, only better."

Back in the day when I knew her, "Thao" went by "Theresa," but she was always down-to-earth and just plain fun (which is a stretch, for math class). I couldn't be happier that she's doing so well.

<-- With Stupid?

Takes one to know one.

Taking Swings

President-elect Barack Obama and I might not see eye-to-eye on many things--videlicit, the role of government in protecting liberty and pursuing the common good--but his character nonetheless impresses me. The (studied) dispassion and drive that the Clinton campaign (rightly) criticized during the primaries reflects tremendous mastery over personal comportment. In this regard, Obama often mirrors David Brooks' elegant description of Tiger Woods.

As an adult, he is famously self-controlled. His press conferences are a string of carefully modulated banalities. His lifestyle is meticulously tidy. His style of play is actuarial. He calculates odds and avoids unnecessary risks like the accounting major he once planned on being. “I am, by nature, a control freak,” he once told John Garrity ... as Garrity resisted the temptation to reply, “You think?”

The ancients were familiar with physical courage and the priests with moral courage, but in this over-communicated age when mortals feel perpetually addled, ____ is the symbol of mental willpower. He is, in addition, competitive, ruthless, unsatisfied by success and honest about his own failings. (Twice, he risked his career to retool his swing.)Notice any similarities in the manner of depiction?

Another article in the Post today illustrates Obama's remarkable discipline. (An amusing contrast to Brooks' wry self-description as a rotund schlep amongst the unwashed masses). Will Obama's ascension from the disheveled vice and manifest peccadilloes of the masses translate into seamless governance? Or at the very least, a few hole-in-ones? One can only hope.

Kennedy Mystique

An article in the NYT touches on the generation gap concerning Caroline Kennedy: it's nice to know that I'm not the only one who doesn't particularly care, or even know, who she is.

Is it ridiculous that she's seeking a Senate seat, with her only prior political contribution being her endorsement of Obama a few months ago? Yes. She deserves every ounce of (gentle!) censure and mockery she's received from the press.

Let's end entitlement politics. Look where it got us last.

Abstraction

This week I finished the research project that monopolized my time and attention for 80% of the semester. It's no exaggeration to say that I'm more proud of this project than I am of my Masters thesis. (Also true: I probably worked harder on it, which says much for my current endeavors but very little of my previous ones...)

Nonetheless, a moment of shameless self-promotion, my abstract:

"The Internet has become a critical medium for American politics: in 2008, almost half of American adults looked for political information online, and 30% of internet users contributed to online political discussions. Using the candidacy of Sarah Palin as a case study of a provocative political event, this paper examines the tone, partisan leanings, and referentiality of six elite blogs. First by sampling overall trends of Palin coverage and then by performing a content analysis of a sub-sample of posts, this paper finds that the valence and stridency of blog posts vary by partisan identification, and that stridency dramatically affects the referential structure of posts. Although the referentiality of blog posts varies significantly by stridency and by blog, it does not vary along partisan lines. Nonetheless, the relationship between stridency and partisan conformity exposed by this paper illustrates a trend amongst conservative blogs to repeat the allegations of “liberal media bias” often voiced by traditional conservative media outlets, contributing to an “echo chamber” effect in the blogosphere."

Interested? Let me know. I'll talk your ear off.

"The rare accomplishment of sublimity on the interwebs."

P. cued me in to this delightful phenomenon a few days ago: like Tuscan Whole Milk? Never heard of it? You're missing out. As P. puts it, an illustration of "the rare accomplishment of sublimity on the interwebs."

The ways in which the Internet has impacted our existence are manifold, of course, and mind-boggling. I'm not just talking about International Pillow Fight Day -- well, actually, I am. But its nonetheless difficult to imagine our lives devoid of digital, say, only 10 years ago.

(Really--click on the link. It won't fail to amuse.)

And another diversion:


Really, Tim Berners-Lee. I'm sure this is not what you imagined, but thank you.

Holiday Cheer

It's no secret that the holiday season is somewhat less idyllic for adults than the blissful winter wonderland one imagines as a child. Stress? Check.

As if dealing with families (troublesome interpersonal dynamics; conflicting expectations, etc.) or the lack of one (depression accompanying feelings of solitude, isolation, alienation) weren't enough, two recent posts in the NYT highlight another often-hellish dimension of the holiday season: the obligatory holiday party.

By one's early twenties, we've all been to one, witnessing for ourselves strained obligation as it meets binge behavior. Jim Atkinson, a recovering alcoholic, argues that his inability to drink provides an opportune excuse for absence from such gatherings. Susan Cheever questions whether social control--the relatively recent stigma attached to public drunkenness--helps people to avoid getting sloshed amongst so-called "friends".

The feelings both writers describe--the emptiness, the utter desperation as obligation, convention close in, and the subsequent urge to obliterate the discomfort of sentience--are far too recent a memory to dispel.

Cheers.
Drink up. Or don't.

These boots were made for walkin;'

Does anyone besides me find it ironic (yes, wrong use of the word) that Obama's first effort will be to improve infrastructure--but that his inauguration will likely break the infrastructure of DC?

Can the Center Hold?

Like John Yoo and Francis Fukuyama, I find Charles Krauthammer mildly terrifying. His is a brilliant intellect leveraged to unconscionable ends by the Bush administration. His justifications for the Iraq war--like the pure ideology of neoconservatism or "democratic realism"--are limpid and stunning. (Including pejorative overtones).

While it's easy to dismiss him as an ideologue crackpot, he is nonetheless quite shrewd. Take, for example, his assertion that by choosing Palin, McCain effectively undermined his campaign's message of "experience" to its detriment. Score: 1, Krauthammer.

Today's op-ed in the Washington Post is equally astute. Perhaps Obama has chosen centrist picks because he is uninterested in resolving the messy business of foreign policy and the floundering economy--and instead, interested in dramatic reform--Paul Krugman's New New Deal--at home.

If Krauthammer's right, I can only hope that Obama will employ the same merciless efficiency of his campaign in domestic policy. Or will it be the Second Coming?

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Stick with Stick Figures.

I've (re)discovered that my life could be more concisely expressed through stick figures.

Right now, I sort of feel like this:

But mostly, more like this:

Viva semester.

The grass is always greener...

Even the most cantankerous conservative could not deny the obvious: Democrats have been graced with a political phenom. An outlier. As some pundits have put it (and conservative ones, I tell you!), Obama is a political talent that comes "once in a generation."

And, you know--his campaign? The one that raised $750 million--which was more than donations to the 2004 presidential campaign equaled with both parties combined? Well, snaps to them too.

Democrats are enjoying their greatest political victory since LBJ in 1964. And it's not yet Inauguration Day. But "progressives" have already found something to whine about.

Those laurels? Who wants 'em.
I'm not going to lie. I'm amused.

We Didn't Start the Fire(bomb)

As I grow older, I become increasingly unimpressed with radicalism. To fancy oneself an iconoclast seems like foolhardy navel-gazing: it's both immature and irrational. Given the world population--6.7 billion--is it statistically likely that any "new" idea is not shared by someone else? I'd argue that ideas truly "outside the box" take time to percolate--and that the feats of iconoclasts are more about implementation than ideas. Newton wondered about the apple--but it was conceptualizing calculus that made him radical.

Nonetheless, there is a different kind of "radicalism" that equates political ideology with action--one that is dangerous, selfish, and equally pompous and myopic. Contributor Emil Henry pleads in the Washington Post for respite from the firebombs and vicious attacks by animal rights activists on scientists who use animal subjects in their research. It's appalling.

True radicalism is the willingness to spend a lifetime in the intellectual wilderness, patiently waiting for one's ideas to blossom, benefiting supporters and critics alike. Radicalism is creation, not destruction. Words do not exist to sufficiently to vituperate those who willfully, maliciously misunderstand.

Atlas Poised

I don't normally agree with Thomas Friedman, but today I found myself nodding along with him as I read his op-ed about the impact of the (unfortunate, yet inevitable) bailout on my generation.

Agree or disagree with the idea of the bailout -- it's happening. Today Obama announced a variety of initiatives that he will try to use to help stave off unemployment and spur industry. I'm no economist, nor am I an expert in infrastructure, so I can only appreciate the endeavors he's outlined (homage to green technology, etc. etc.) for their politically savvy, rather than their potential as prophylactics that might halt the downward spiral of our floundering economy.

So while Friedman and I might have different ideas about, well, what is a good idea, I agree with him that the very least we can do is audit the success of these initiatives. Says Friedman:

Our kids should be so much more radical than they are today. I understand why they aren’t. They’re so worried about just getting a job or paying next semester’s tuition. But we must not take their quietism as license to do whatever we want with this bailout cash. They are going to have to pay this money back. And therefore, we have an incredibly weighty obligation to make sure that we not only spend every stimulus dollar wisely but also with an eye to creating new technologies.

That this is our burden. Ayn Rand must be rolling in her grave.

Life isn't fair.

George Will is, well, hilarious in his op-ed today about the Fairness Doctrine. Quoth Will:

"Because liberals have been even less successful in competing with conservatives on talk radio than Detroit has been in competing with its rivals, liberals are seeking intellectual protectionism in the form of regulations that suppress ideological rivals."

The phenomenon of conservative talk radio is a fascinating one -- and one that I'll likely discuss in the future (when my life isn't consumed by final papers). For those who are interested, however, see Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Joe Cappella's The Echo Chamber, for an interesting analysis on that same subject.

YouTube's Greatest: 2008

The Washington Post released a list today of their favorite video inanities on the net.
See #1. Who called it? Oh yeah. ;)

More Hoopla

...about my high school.

Scarier than Cloverfield

Two articles today that are simply terrifying.

First, the District of Columbia voted to allow bars and nightclubs to stay open 24 hours a day during inauguration, and to serve alcohol until 5 AM. As if it's not enough of a difficulty dealing with security--protecting Americans from both terrorists and themselves. Or supporting a transportation system and city infrastructure that very well might break down under the burden of an extra 4 million "guests." Might I point out that they're not even sure that inauguration attendees will fit on the Mall?

Oh, heck with it. Let's encourage everyone to get drunk.

These are rather paternalistic concerns for a libertarian, eh? But even libertarians must buckle to the demands of reality--and if that wasn't good enough, Cass Sunstein agrees with me.

Secondly, David Ignatius underscores the threats represented by the well-coordinated terrorist attack on Mumbai. The pressure that national security consultants work under simply baffles me--and I can hardly fathom the bravery and intellectual fortitude that it would take to endeavor to protect the country on a day of heightened risk. (Read: Inauguration.).

But, you know, if I decide to partake in the chaos myself, it seems I'm well positioned. Commute to DC from Philly. Everyone's doing it.

"Unworthiest Hand"

My opinions regarding the Harry Potter books are infamous. In fact, 90% of you already have your mouse poised over the "X" mark in your browser as you think, "Oh no. Not this again."

I've consumed the time and attention of countless audiences with my objections, so I'll spare you the inevitable tirades about the homogenization of culture as I rage against the tired imperative: "You should really read them. They're great books." (See below, at your own risk).

Even amongst educated people--perhaps particularly amongst educated people--it appears that I'm in the minority.

You all enjoy your Potter books. I'll just yearn quietly for the moment of poetry when life breaks into the crystallized beauty of a sonnet...

(And for good measure and those who haven't heard it already, my response to "You should really read them. They're great books:"

No, they're not. The Sound and the Fury is a great book. The Wealth of Nations is a great book. Harry Potter is not without merit, but as a literary feat, it is clumsy; artless; and mediocre at best. More importantly, I think that it is dangerous to slip into imperatives: by no means should it be compulsory that thinking, rational individuals "should" partake in universal cultural consumption practices. And do I care that people are not reading books, but browsing the Internet, or watching TV? Not really. I think it's silly that the same people who chide me for elitist tendencies--objecting to my assertions that less-accessible literary classics (see: Rainbow, Gravity's) are "great(er) books"--simultaneously allege that reading is superior to other media consumption practices. I may have high standards and strange habits of my own, but I don't expect the world to share them. Say it with me: free will; diversity; choice.)

ACL-You?

"It is no wonder that advocates of free speech prefer also to assume that their fellows are reasonable." --Elihu Katz