Concrete Lunch

It’s not hoarding if you’re actually going to use them.

Gotta get the good shapes when they are available.

Today the Supreme Court found in favor of Hobby Lobby in their case against the federal government, which will allow them to NOT offer birth control as part of their insurance package.

Yeah…not even going to write about this.

I just want to point out that you can go to any version of this story on a major news website, like Yahoo! News, and read the Comments sections, and you will be blown away by how ignorant many of our countrymen are. Mind blown, again.

My friend Dave recently posted this article about Neil deGrasse Tyson’s recent (and perhaps frequent) jibes at the field of Philosophy.

I will start this commentary by saying that I’m pretty much in agreement with Dave on most of his thoughts. I’m less outraged than Dave, as I don’t think NDT has Philosophy on his hit list. I think Neil has made remarks, based on his personal opinion, that are off target, and I also think in this particular podcast he was trying to be conversational and funny with the host. Still, he seems to be on-record as standing by his comments.

It’s a bummer when someone you like says something dumb. Like when you meet someone, or see an old friend, and everything is going fine and the conversation is going well, then he or she says something about “the damn[insert minority name here].” Yeah, I do think NDT’s comments about Philosophy are dumb and take a very narrow view of Philosophy. On a personal level I give him a pass because I think is excellent work in science education outweighs one opinion I think is dumb.

When I first heard about this topic months ago, I found it kind of hard to believe that someone of Tyson’s stature and leanings would think that Philosophy is useless. But in retrospect, it isn’t that hard to believe. I think quite  a few famous scientists over the years have expressed similar opinions. They seem to view Philosophy as the predecessor of Science — something that Science has replaced.

Reading NDT’s remarks, his biggest problem with Philosophy seems to be the tendency for it to go into bottomless pits of questions within questions, endless linguistic analysis, etc. Frankly, this is kind of true. That does happen, and I think even philosophers sometimes get frustrated with that (I am guessing — I am not a philosopher). He seems to feel that really smart people should not go into Philosophy as major field of study and/or profession because it is unproductive.

Well, there are plenty of counterarguments that can be made to NDT’s remarks. Here are some. And here are even more. And here’s my favorite! I’m not going to even try to compete with these guys. I have my own argument though, and it goes like this…

Generally, the study of Philosophy can have the effect of making people less stupid.

Yes, that’s a block quote. I quoted myself.

Having gone to a Baptist university (Baylor), I think I’ve seen philosophy from a different vantage point than NDT. Sure, I only took one Philosophy class — the first one — but what I saw was a bunch of very intellectually sheltered young people, most from a very rigid religious belief system, challenged to consider other ways of thinking. Challenged to examine not only their own beliefs, but WHY and HOW they held those beliefs. Challenged to a level of introspection few of them had ever approached, and certainly were never encouraged to approach.

How many introductory Science classes can make the same claim? None that I have ever been involved in. I would hazard a guess that only a tiny fraction of science classes challenge anyone to consider their own thought process or beliefs.

One might think that at a place like Baylor the Philosophy classes would be bullshit — stacked with professors seeking only to further indoctrinate Baptist kids. But that wasn’t the case. The department was full of real philosophers, doing the real thing, and hammering at those kids’ brains with mind-opening questions.

That’s a pretty extreme example. Most universities aren’t Baptist, but I would guess that most young students (and older ones) are just as cemented in their beliefs as those Baptist kids. Philosophy can help to jackhammer that cement.

Sure, there are people who take Philosophy classes and even major in Philosophy that remain rigid a-holes, who act unethically, who are completely unaffected by the teaching. But overall, I think a good Philosophy class is good for the human mind.

One other thing. Most of these discussions seem to look only at the value of Philosophy to the scientific endeavor. By that I mean “what progress in Physics has been made by Philosophy”. Philosophy is a LOT more than that. It is Ethics. It is Logic. It is Epistemology. Now, science is surely delving into these realms, and has some interesting things to say about them. But really, I don’t think is has contributed much to Ethics, which is only perhaps the most important area of human thought.

And yes, I still love the new Cosmos and I still like NDT. I just think he needs to pull his head out of his ass on this issue.

I’m reading this great book called Detroit City Is The Place To Be: the afterlife of an American metropolis, by Mark Binelli. It’s about his return to the decaying city of his youth. He documents his experiences.

I can’t tell you too much about it because I’m only on Chapter 2, but so far I’m enjoying it a lot.

Anyway, Mark moves in on Service Street, a short street that appears to be in the process of gentrification by hipsters and whatnot.

I was wondering what it actually looks like, so I decided to check it out on Google Maps Street View.

As I’m moving down the virtual street I see 3 people walking by the Google Van, and of course two of them are compelled to flip off the camera.

Seriously, is that the best you can do? Flip off the Google van? I’m so tired of seeing people raise their middle fingers in photographs I could just yak. I see this all the time in skateboarding. Someone has to be all PUNK ROCK and flip off the camera. What does that mean? How old are you? 15? Let me just clear this up — it’s dumb. Don’t do that. It makes you a jackass.

End of rant.

Fair warning. This is one of those posts that will make me seem like one of those people who just can’t enjoy anything. “He always has to over-think stuff, doesn’t he?” That’s what you may say to yourself as you read this. Well, that may be true, but I am right about this…and Noam Choksky is right…so just give me a few minutes of your time.

In the mid 1990s, my wife and I saw the film Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media. It was cool to be in grad school in Austin in those days. You could see stuff like this at the theater there on the drag. It was before Austin was so blown-out. The final days of the Slacker era. Now it’s a big Crate & Barrel. But I digress…

So we were watching this film, and I can’t remember if my friend Rich was with us, or if we were discussing this latter, but Rich is a big sports fan. He’s also smart person – into literature, writing, and thinking smart thoughts. When we brought up Chomsky’s ideas about the function of sports in our society (and I include all of Western culture here), Rich chuckled and said “he’s right”. Man, I love Rich. Dude is just one of the best.  Here’s a clip from the film…the part we were discussing.

Which brings us to the World Cup.

If “regular” professional sports are, as Chomsky claims, a distraction, then the World Cup has to be the Numero Uno Worldwide Distraction Grande. Soccer is international. If you throw in all the Americans who are into it, it becomes even more international. And if you then throw in all the Americans who enjoy pretending to be into it, it is really really international.

“So where are you going with this, Bob?”, you are probably asking yourself. Well, I’ll tell you.

This morning my wife found and posted this link, regarding the so-called “oil reforms” in Mexico – Fooling Mexican Fans.

In case you don’t want to read this article, here is my summary: The Mexican oil industry is not private. It is owned by the state. Big filthy money men in our country and theirs want to privatize it. They are of course making the argument that in private hands it will benefit the Mexican people more. If you look at, ohhhhh, the entire history of privatization of natural resources in Latin America, you will find  this claim highly suspect. It has been used over and over, always resulting in natural wealth being sucked OUT of a country, usually into US Banks and the accounts of a few powerful locals.

So this is all being debated (pushed) while Mexicans are distracted by the World Cup.

Somewhere in Houston, men smoking big cigars and drinking brandy in darkly lit wood-paneled rooms are experiencing massive Petro-Boners as they thank the God of Joel Osteen for the existence of soccer.

Now, besides providing a distraction to keep the great unwashed masses’ brain cells occupied, Chomsky of course makes the point that sports provide training in what he calls “irrational jingoism.” This opinion is echoed by the late Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, as discussed in this article from New Republic. In case you are too busy watching a World Cup game to read this short article, or too drunk, or both, Borges says essentially the same thing as Chomsky — that soccer’s role is to train people in Nationalism and mold the psyche into one that can accept mass movements and nationalism as Virtuous with a capital V. 

Oh God, I feel myself being drawn toward an Orwell tangent. Must – not – go -there.

So, is there anything I like about the World Cup? Yes. Here is my favorite thing about it.

I like it that there is a place on the world stage where a smaller, less powerful country has the potential to kick the shit out of big powerful mean countries. However, I dislike that fact that anyone thinks this actually means anything.

Last week the world lost a unique person.

Had I been a little younger, or Tom a little older, I’d probably have known Tom pretty well. As it was, I graduated from Baylor just about the time he arrived.

At a Baptist university like Baylor, it might seem strange to find yourself part of a group of the school freaks. Skaters, musicians, artists, writers, philosophers, stoners, goths, poets. But that’s how it worked out. At UT Austin, or maybe any other school, we’d have been a lot more average, but at Baylor we were the weirdos. We liked it that way. You could always go to the old fountain in the middle of campus (not there anymore — the fountain, that is) and find some of the crew.

When I arrived at Baylor in 1983, it wasn’t like that. There was no such scene. There were a few interesting oddballs, but no scene. Somehow at the beginning of my Junior year that changed. There was a sudden influx of people who didn’t fit in there, but fit in together. I was older than most of them by a good two years.

So by the time Tom got there I had graduated. I’d make frequent trips back to skate with my friends, and later to see my soon-to-be wife. On one of these trips I briefly met Tom. I am sorry to say I have no recollection of it, but Tom remembered. Apparently he was like that — remembered everything. Over the last few years we got to know each other a bit via Facebook, as part of that little community of friends, now connected by electronic means.

But still, I can’t really say I knew him.

I think that is my loss.

People tell me that I must see the film Idiocracy.

People I respect and think are really smart tell me how great the film is.

Then you hear people comparing the real world to the world portrayed in the movie. “See — Idiocracy is true”. That kind of thing.

However, I hear the same thing from people I think are dumb, or those I just disagree with. They are applying their own social/political filter to the film and they see what they want.

So what we have is a film that everyone thinks is speaking from their point of view. I’m not really interested in that, so I’ll never watch the film.

Just thought I’d say that I’m still loving the inexpensive yet super useful Google Chromebook. I have the $249 Samsung model, and it may be the best $249 I’ve spend on technology in a long time. I’ve had it a year. No problems at all.

I am at this point pretty settled on having a nice Mac desktop in my office, be it a Mac Mini or maybe and iMac at some point, and a Chromebook for mobile computering needs.

Just read that the new Miss USA is a 4th degree black belt in Taekwondo and a “certified instructor” after 12 years of training.

Man, some arts just sell those belts don’t they? Preposterous.