Market Madness

Once again, the "free" market trumps the free flow of information and the vital interests of the consumer:

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/29/5504/

But this is just part of a general, and more disastrous, trend:

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/30/5535/

Despite the promise of green in going green, some see more green in being yellow.

(A&P) What "is" is

Here's a link to my previous post on the various uses of the word "is."

Empire Falls

Truthdig's Chris Hedges on the twilight of American Empire.

Turkey Torture

Another powerful and timely essay from Common Dreams.

Polluted Passivity

Here's a link to a helpful page on the passive voice, a problem for many young writers.

The following sentence contains a canonical, eventive (or dynamic) passive voice construction. Notice that, contrary to the more familiar and straightforward subject-acting-on-object structure, the object of the action (the river) is the subject of the sentence while the actor, the one performing the action, is the object:

The river was polluted by the factory farmers.

A simple inversion of the subject and object produces this better result in the active voice, where the actor (the intensive rearing of animals) is the subject of the sentence:

The factory farmers polluted the river.

(Don't confuse the passive voice with the past tense. “The factory farmers polluted the river” uses the active voice to describe a past action.)

A long-time hunter of passive voice constructions, I stumbled recently over a couple of troublesome look-alikes. Here’s my attempt to clarify the grammatical distinctions between the following passive-looking creatures (so that I might take better aim in the future). I'll place my current, no doubt incomplete, view in parentheses. Comments/corrections/clarifications welcome.

The river was polluted.
(As above, an eventive (dynamic) passive or stative (static) passive, depending on the meaning; that is, either someone polluted the river or the river was in a polluted state as a consequence of someone or something acting on it.)

That is a polluted river.
(A so-called “adjectival passive.” As I understand it, while adjectival passives are not true passives (because participial adjectives, not verbs), they can contribute to the overall passivity of a sentence. This sentence may be indistinguishable in this instance from the stative passive above, “That river is polluted.”)

Don't swim in a polluted river.
(An imperative containing either an adjectival passive or stative passive.)

He is bearded.
(A self-reflexive adjectival passive?)

Turkeys of the World Unite

On Turkey Day

One bird we honor on this day of thanks;

Alongside our symbol of freedom she ranks.

Regard for her grows as we near “Turkey Day.”

(I’ll parse her death as “regard,” if I may.)

Are turkeys the victims of vile human power?

A simpering few harbor thoughts fairly dour:

“These birds live their lives in a self-conscious way;

These birds aren't for stuffing, or eating,” they say.

Don't people agree that tradition's a right;

One sufficiently strong to eclipse the bird’s plight?

Perhaps they’re just bored, confused, or hate cooking;

It’s only a bird (and rather ill-looking).

Those in the know limit thought to our brains:

Alone we can suffer, feel pleasures and pains.

Just meeting our needs – a formidable feat;

How dreary the world, each entrée sans meat!

Life’s like a raft, with but room for one kind;

(And -- tofu be damned -- they're too simple to mind.)

The turkey we honor on this day of thanks;

Alongside our symbol of freedom she ranks.

(Pe) LTV

Wikipedia offers a good summary of the labor theory of value.

(IH) Curious Cats

Following up on BB's post regarding curiosity, here's a brief essay on the value of curiosity. (The essay nicely qualifies my claim that curiosity can kill us, suggesting that it is often our inability to deal with specific consequences of being curious which actually proves fatal.)

(PE) Health Care-less

The NY Times' Krugman outlines the failures of US health care.

(IH & PE) Ollman on Exams

Bertell Ollman's "Marxist" critique of school-based examinations. An excerpt:

Exams also play a key role in determining course content, leaving little time for material that is not on the exam. Among the first things to be omitted in this "tightening" of the curriculum are students' own reactions to the topics that come up, collective reflection on the main problems of the day, alternative points of view and other possibilities generally, the larger picture (where everything fits), explorations of topics triggered by individual curiosity, and anything else that is likely to promote creative, cooperative, or critical thinking.

(IH & PE) Cheney and Ideology

As I noted last week:

"It's a distinctive characteristic of an ideology that it resists refutation." --- Peter Singer.

And that resistance often takes the form of ignoring or denying the evidence, as Dick Cheney's efforts confirm.

(IH & PE) Just Deserts?

Taking a crack at a rather persistent myth.

(A&P) Lansing Against Weitz

(A&P) Kenneth Lansing argues, against Weitz in particular, that we can and must define art. A brief excerpt:

"If art educators teach anything at all, they teach composition, artistic procedures or techniques, and skill building. But how can they justify the teaching of composition or design if there is no specific compositional characteristic that a work of art must possess? How can they justify efforts to develop skill in the handling of the tools and materials of art if such skill does not need to be reflected in works of art? Who is to say what students must know and be able to do in art if the production of art objects doesn't require any particular knowledge or ability?

Consequently, I am compelled to ask why someone doesn't entertain the idea that we may have assigned the term "work of art" unjustifiably to certain things in the past. Or is it "okay" to have thrown that term around carelessly only to discover, years later, that we can't define the nature of its referents because they don't have anything in common?

I am also compelled to ask how evaluation in art can be carried out in any logical fashion if we don't know what the subject is or what it requires. To get an idea of how important such a problem is, try applying it to a different discipline. Consider, for example, the fix that teachers of aeronautical engineering would be in if they didn't know what an airplane was."

(IH & PE) Bertell Ollman Reading

Excerpts from Bertell Ollman's How to Take an Exam... and Remake the World.

(IH) Born to Rationalize?

Evolutionary biologists contend that we, along with other primates, are natural excuse-makers.

(A&P) Definability and Openness

Morris Weitz claims that art is an indefinable-because-open concept. I tentatively suggested today that he conflates indefinability and openness, overlooking in the process the possibility of a definable-yet-open conception of art.

Weitz -- or perhaps Wartenberg -- apparently assumes that a satisfactory definition of art must be an intensional one (a specification of the necessary and jointly sufficient conditions required of each member of the set under consideration). But Weitz's preferred extensional (in this case, ostensive) definition of art is still, obviously enough, a definition. Even so, I remain hopeful that we might construct a satisfactory -- however inclusive and broad -- intensional definition of art.

See Jeff Strayer's handout for a brief summary of the relations between necessary and sufficient conditions and any attempt to define art.

(A&P) Writing Tips

The Writer's Complex at Empire State College offers a helpful and complete grammar and punctuation review.

(IH) Singer on Ideology

Here's the quote from Peter Singer I mentioned this morning in its original context:

It is a distinctive characteristic of an ideology that it resists refutation. If the foundations of an ideological position are knocked out from under it, new foundations will be found, or else the ideological position will just hang there, defying the logical equivalent of the laws of gravity. In the case of attitudes to animals, the latter seems to have happened. While the modern view of our place in the world differs enormously from all the earlier views we studied, in the practical matter of how we act toward other animals little has changed. If animals are no longer quite outside the moral sphere, they are still in a special section near the outer rim. Their interests are allowed to count only when they do not clash with human interests. If there is a clash--even a clash between a lifetime of suffering for a non-human animal and the gastronomic preference of a human being--the interests of the nonhuman are disregarded. The moral attitudes of the past are too deeply embedded in our thought and our practices to be upset by a mere change in our knowledge of ourselves and of other animals.

(PE & IH) Nice Title

Thought-provoking essay on the "Tortured Logic of Torturers." An excerpt:

Isn’t it interesting that folks who can calculate when life begins down to the mysterious movement of the zygote in utero aren’t able to say with assurance what torture is even when someone is choking in front of them?

(IH & PE) If the President Does It...

Judge Mukasey's waffling on waterboarding allows his boss (and others) to avoid prosecution for war crimes.