Too Early For Thinking

From the desk of: Joel

Maybe Greg Oden keeps getting hurt because the Norse god Odin is angry that they share the same last name. Maybe Greg Oden should change his name to Greg Smith. Or Greg Poseidon.

Robyn took me to see the Nutcracker at the Krannert Center on Sunday. It was lots of fun - I had never seen the entire ballet before - but I think that my entire experience was tainted by being raised on Fantasia. During the Chinese dance, all I could see were those cute little mushrooms running around in circles. It was hilarious.

If I were Boise St. and TCU, I would take three knees and then punt on each of my first possessions as a form of protest against the BCS for being stuck in the Fiesta Bowl playing against each other.

Robyn found this interview of Bard professor Roger Berkowitz in Harper's Magazine. Berkowitz is discussing the writings and philosophy Hannah Arendt, who is buried at Bard and is pretty much our alma mater's philosophy bff. (With the possible exception of maybe Kant.) You should read it if you have time. Some highlights:

The political lies Arendt worries about are not mere falsehoods. They are political acts in which facts are denied and alternative realities are created. In denying facts, the political liar acts to change the world, to make reality anew so that it conforms to our needs and desires. In this way, lying is at the essence of political action....

Arendt’s letter to Ellison has been seized upon as evidence that she recanted her opposition to forced integration. This overstates the case. Ellison rejects Arendt’s claim that black parents exploited their children by sending them into such an explosive situation. Arendt’s admission that she did not understand the black experience of sacrifice does not suggest that she altered her view that forced desegregation was a fundamental violation of the rights of all parents to educate their children as they wished....

After the war, she stood with Judah Magnes as a critic of the establishment of Israel as a Jewish state. Instead, she advocated for a binational state that encompassed Jews and Arabs as equal citizens. Whether such a state was ever possible, many have credited Arendt with prescience in her prediction that a Jewish state would necessarily be chauvinist, that Palestinians—as second class citizens—would emerge as refugees presenting an insolvable problem, and that Israel would become a militarized state....

5 Thoughts On A Thursday

1) Oh, man, I am totally ready for the Civil War game tonight! I have been Oregon-geeked out all day today; I've got my Ducks sweatshirt, my Dead Guy Ale*, my copy of Sometimes A Great Notion. I am psyched!! Go Ducks!

2) By the way, does anybody else think it's a bit odd that it's the Oregon-Oregon State game that has become the Civil War game? I mean, doesn't every University of X play X State at some point during the season? And it seems to me that, of all the 50 states, Oregon may have the least to do with the actual Civil War? (On second thought, that's probably exactly the reason why. There's probably be a lot more violence if they started calling Illinois vs Illinois State or Georgia vs Georgia Tech the "Civil War" game. Who gets to be the Blues? Who's the Greys?)

3) I actually did end up answering that student who asked me, "What is philosophy?" I fumbled about a bit, and then told him that it was kinda like psychology - because he knew what psychology is - in that it's a way to learn about people and find out why they do the things that they do, except that philosophy is also interested in trying to find out what are the right and wrong things for people to do, and to find out why those things are right or wrong. This seemed to satisfy him, and I was able to breath easy knowing I wouldn't have to get into the whole Meaning of Being issue.

4) I'm sorry about the big vacancy at the end of November there. Robyn and I were in Ohio for Thanksgiving, visiting her grandparents and other relatives. As you might have guessed, the grandparents don't have WiFi; we were able to get a weak signal from one of the neighbors if we stood in the corner of the guest bedroom at just the right time of day and held the laptop over our heads while spinning in a counter-clockwise direction. Having said that, we had a great time in Ohio, and got to eat lots of good food, drink lots of good wine, and play a lot of Bridge with Robyn's grandparents.

5)

The Oregon bears, Jonas Stamper found, were all well fed on clams and berries, and fat and lazy as old house cats. The Indians, nourished on the same two limitless sources of food, were even fatter and a damn sight lazier than the bears. Yes. They were peaceful enough. So were the bears. In fact the whole country was more peaceful than he had expected. But there was this odd... volatile feeling about the new country that struck him the very day he arrived, struck him and stuck, and never left him all the three years he lived in Oregon.

*Only because Deschutes Brewery doesn't have a distributor east of the Mississippi. Does anyone else want to start a petition to change this sad fact?

Portland - still funny

Brought to you by Married to the Sea :

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How About You Tell Me What Philosophy Is, And I'll Tell You If You're Right

A question of identity:

Can the Muppets become an internet meme, even if (a) They existed before the internet, (b) They are far cooler than the internet or anything that has ever been produced by the internet, and (c) Their popularity is in no way contingent upon the internet or internet users?

The evidence:




Wordlustitude: fan-muppet-tastic

adj. A kid-friendly version of fan-fucking-tastic.

Real citation: "@Messshy I've been chatting to Sharon Corr about it and RTed on youtube...*name drop* It's fan-muppet-tastic!!! Can't stop watching it! x"
(Nov. 27, 2009, Andalucian Kitty, Twitter, http://twitter.com/AndalucianKitty/statuses/6125134250)

Made-up citation: "Kids today think Elmo is fan-muppet-tastic... But they don't know what I know. In the seventies, Elmo lived on coke and Satanism--and that was on a good day."

Brian Lynch: 30 ROCK is a rip-off of THE MUPPET SHOW!

Tina Fey's 30 ROCK is currently the most acclaimed comedy series on television. It's won numerous Emmys and Golden Globes and I think Pulitzers. Critics and audiences alike love the show and its lovable zany characters, and consider it one of the most original comedies in years.

And I guess it is original...if you've never seen THE MUPPET SHOW. Because, my "friends" (in quotes because I don't know or trust you, please don't be offended), Tina Fey's 30 ROCK is quite obviously ripping off Jim Henson's beloved TV show.

"You're crazy", you say? "Wow, now with the insults. This is why I don't trust you", I respond. And the I hit you up with so many facts you HAVE to concede I'm absolutely right.

November 30, 1969! This is like that time in high school when your friend "discovered" this band called Led Zeppelin and would talk about nothing else for the entire semester! The verdict: The internet has no authority over anything ever having to do with the Muppets or their popularity or their inherent cool-ness. It may only reproduce and distribute Muppet YouTube videos and make comments on LOLcats.

Weekend Update

It's a cold and clear Saturday morning here in Urbana. I'm watching giant, cornfed midwesterners bash into each other in the Minnesota vs. Iowa game, while the radio is playing "Commodity Saturday," the all important weekly corn and soy crop report. It all feels very American. Fortunately Robyn is making some eggs benedict. Delicious, treacherous eggs benedict.

Remember what I was saying about how awesome Pac-10 football? Well, Sports Illustrated agrees with me. So there.

The senate is supposed to finally vote on the health bill today. But, wait - what do you mean that the effects of the Health-Reform Bill won't take effect until after 2013? That is, not until after 2012, when Obama has already either been re-elected or not, and after I get the chance to either show my approval or disapproval of the Healthcare in the 2012 election, and, most importantly, the bill won't take effect until the apocalyptic cataclysms of 2012? That sucks.

Yesterday was Library Friday in for our 8th grade reading and writing class, which the students really like and is a nice, relaxing way to end the work week. I have been spending most of this time reading The Diary of Anne Frank with one of our students. Yesterday, while we were reading, he suddenly turned to me and asked, "What did you major in in college?" "Philosophy." I said. "Oh." he said, and turned for a minute back to his book. After a pause, he looked at me again and asked: "What's philosophy?"

Gulp.

Be Careful What You Wish For OR The Blazers Are Rolling

You know you spend too much time on the internet when your life revolves around how long you should wait before posting your first guest post on someone else's blog.

Conventionally, when one convinces a female to give you her number (usually through a case of mistaken identity) you wait three days before calling said girl back. Does that same rule apply to internet diaries? If you get invited to guest post, are you supposed to wait three days? Is it more appropriate to wait longer because you're terrified of causing the whole thing to jump the shark? At what point do your friends who own said blog think you've fallen off the face of the earth, or worse, mistakenly think you aren't interested in blogging?

What if the only personal reflection writing you've ever done was about which of the terrible bands you listened to in middle school had the most meaningful lyrics?

After sweating profusely for about 2 weeks, I've finally decided to make my maiden post on our friend Joel's blog. I hemmed and hawwed for a while about what this post should be about but in order to explain that I need to backtrack. Despite my enjoyment of stories about the haughtiness of cats or Manifest Destiny, my favorite Logios posts are sports related. Joel's ability to divine the BCS system is mind boggling; apparently NASA has a whole team devoted to it and they still don't understand why Oregon is ranked below USC.

So since probably last spring or fall, I have been bothering Joel to do a Blazers post. "Com'on man, they're really good." That was kind of the extent of my argument- I suppose can now see why it wasn't very persuasive. I can only guess that he got fed up with my nagging because now my boss (Joel) has demanded I put out good copy on the Blazers ASAP. So here goes:

I like the Portland Trail Blazers and they are good this year. My role here will be the occasional update on the team's progress, good games, bad games, and jokes about how old Greg Oden is. Possibly some economics too though given my bosses' (Robyn and Joel) advanced degrees, I don't plan on straying into policy or academics with any frequency. I also listen to a lot of really bad music (still) and so will probably write about that sometimes.

Cheers!

Yes, I Do Love Pac-10 Football

While Robyn and I were eating delicious pulled pork sandwiches on Saturday at the Black Dog in Urbana, and most of the raucous crowd was hooting and hollering at the Iowa-Ohio State game, I was keeping my eye on the sports ticker that showed the following: Stanford 35, USC 21, 4th quarter. I couldn't believe what I was reading. A week after beating my beloved Ducks, the Cardinal was crushing 'SC in the Coliseum!!! This is one of the many reasons why I love the Pac-10: Anything can, and will, happen. Later that night, I watched 'Bama beat Mississippi State 31-3 in the most boring football game ever in grand preparation for their showdown next week with Chattanooga. And, with Ohio State winning the Big Ten, the Pac-10 remains the only major conference left with any drama concerning who their champ will be. The Ducks are on top for now, and it's probable that the champion of the Pac-10 will be the winner of the Toilet Bowl Civil War Game. But by my calculations, six of the ten Pac-10 teams still have a mathematical possibility of reaching the Rose Bowl:

1) Oregon (8-2, 6-1): Win at Arizona, Win vs. Oregon St.

2) Arizona (6-3, 4-2): Win vs. Oregon, Win at Arizona St., Win at USC.

3) Oregon State (7-3, 5-2): Win at Wash. St., Win at Oregon. Have Arizona lose once.

4) Stanford (7-3, 6-2): Win vs. Cal. Have Oregon lose once, Arizona lose once, and Oregon State lose once.

5) USC (7-3, 4-3): Win vs. UCLA, Win vs. Arizona. Have Oregon lose to Arizona and Oregon State. Have Arizona beat Arizona State. Have Oregon State lose to Washington State. Have Cal beat Stanford and Washington, thereby creating a six team tie for first place. The first tie-breaker would be those six team's records against one another, which would be: USC: 3-2, Arizona: 3-2, Oregon State: 3-2, Stanford: 2-3, Cal: 2-3, Oregon: 2-3. Oregon, Stanford, and Cal would all be dropped, leaving only Arizona, Oregon State, and USC, and since USC beat both Oregon St. and Arizona, they would win the final tie breaker.

6) California (7-3, 4-3): Win at Stanford, Win at Washington. Have Oregon lose to Arizona and Oregon State. Have Arizona lose to Arizona State and USC. Have Oregon State lose to Washington State. Have USC lose to UCLA. This would create a four-way tie for first between Oregon, Oregon State, Cal, and Stanford. Their head-to-head records would be: Oregon: 1-2, Stanford: 1-2, Cal: 1-2, Oregon State: 3-0..... Damn. Maybe there are only five teams that can still go to the Rose Bowl. Let me get back to you on this one.