Friday, April 23, 2021

Althouse

Althouse

"The sort of readers inclined to buy a 900-page book about [Philip] Roth, of all people, are not readers who are afraid to encounter questions about horrible male behavior. "

Posted: 23 Apr 2021 12:41 PM PDT

"[I]f you can make it through Roth's novels eager to know more about the man who wrote them and drew so deeply on his own life to do so, surely, you're prepared to encounter ugliness on the page and off it.... In halting printing and shipping of the Roth book, Norton may want to show that the company is willing to take a financial hit in order to demonstrate its values. But nobody, other than maybe Norton, gets anything out of such a decision. It would be far more productive for the company to publish the book, let the public decide its merits and commit to donating any profits — and maybe even a figure that matches Bailey's advance — to charity instead. Why didn't Norton trust the reading public to decide on the merits of the Bailey book for itself?"

From "Why stopping the distribution of the Philip Roth biography was a bad idea" by Alyssa Rosenberg (WaPo). The publisher, Norton, withdrew the book because of allegations that the author, Blake Bailey, "groomed" his middle school students and, after they became adults, pursued them for sex and that he raped a woman. Bailey denies all that.

Roth authorized this biography, which gave Bailey access to many people and to Roth's papers. It's an important book and it shouldn't be suppressed. I think the book should be released even if we saw Bailey murder somebody. The book doesn't further any harm to anyone. If Bailey committed crimes, he should be answerable in a criminal proceeding. If the actions are torts, he could be sued, and if he's made money, it will increase his ability to pay damages.

As Rosenberg speculates, it seems that Norton is attempting to structure the facts to cut off its own responsibility, but it's hard to see how there's liability for a publisher publishing a book written by a criminal/tortfeasor.

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There is no comments section anymore, but you can email me here. Unless you say otherwise, I will presume you'd enjoy an update to this post with a quote from your email.

"She wrote in her autobiography that Bob Dylan tried to seduce her by playing her his latest album, 'Bringing It All Back Home,' and explaining in detail what each track meant."

Posted: 23 Apr 2021 12:03 PM PDT

"(It didn't work. 'I just found him so … daunting,' she wrote. 'As if some god had come down from Olympus and started to come onto me.') Jagger had more luck, and for a few seemingly glamorous years they were a generational It Couple. But there were tensions from the start, and Faithfull wasn't sure she was cut out for the wifely muse role that, even in such bohemian circles, she was expected to play...." From "She's Marianne Faithfull, Damn It. And She's (Thankfully) Still Here. The British musician has had several brushes with death in her 74 years. But Covid-19 and its long-haul symptoms didn't derail her latest project: a spoken-word tribute to the Romantic poets" (NYT). 

I was interested in that — "As if some god had come down from Olympus and started to come onto me" — because isn't that the way gods from Olympus actually behave in the story? No, no, they proceed directly to rape. I'm thinking of Leda and the swan — that sort of thing.


There would need to be some new telling of a Greek myth with a god like the one Faithfull described, not lording his godliness but explaining lyrics on his new album — earnestly imagining that she would turn her favor upon him because he visualized the "diamond sky" and "haunted, frightened trees."

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There is no comments section anymore, but you can email me here. Unless you say otherwise, I will presume you'd enjoy an update to this post with a quote from your email.

"There was almost a celebrity-like aura around him. It wasn’t a normal class. He would go on these long tangents about life and spirituality."

Posted: 23 Apr 2021 01:01 PM PDT

Said Amelia Brown, quoted in "Past Students Say Professor of Rock 'n' Roll Sexually Harassed Them/Six former University of Michigan students have filed legal papers accusing a former lecturer of sexually harassing them and the school of not doing enough to protect them" (NYT). The class Brown took with the professor, Bruce Conforth, was "Beatniks, Hippies and Punks."
[One former student] says, according to the court papers, that Mr. Conforth pressured her into a series of sexual encounters, some of them in his campus office, and later, after she had graduated, raped her in his Ann Arbor apartment. A second former student, Ms. Brown, said she was pressured into a sexual encounter with Mr. Conforth after he told her he had feelings for her and pursued her for several weeks. A third woman said he aggressively kissed her. The other plaintiffs say Mr. Conforth propositioned them to have sexual relationships, at times sending them sexually-charged messages or emails and persisting even after they said no. One woman said he gave her a raccoon penis, suggesting it was a talisman.... 
Two women said that as part of the effort to engage with them sexually, Mr. Conforth had employed the ruse of suggesting he was a member of the so-called "Order of the Illuminati," a secret society whose mysteries were popularized in Dan Brown's novel "Angels & Demons."...  The women said they thought Mr. Conforth had the potential to be a kind of spiritual and artistic mentor, but then things grew strange. In legal papers filed in a Michigan court, Ms. Brourman said Mr. Conforth invited them to an arboretum on campus where he engaged in a mysterious ritual that involved cutting off pieces of their hair and giving Ms. Brourman a series of objects, including the raccoon penis, seeds and some kind of medallion. She was warned to keep them with her, or there would be "repercussions," the court papers said....

He used — in the words of the NYT characterizing the statements of the women — "charisma" and "Svengali-like manipulation."

What's the origin of "Svengali"? He was a character in a 1894 novel, "Trilby." A quote from the novel

He would either fawn or bully, and could be grossly impertinent. He had one kind of cynical humour, which was more offensive than amusing, and always laughed at the wrong thing, at the wrong time, in the wrong place. And his laughter was always derisive, and full of malice. 

An actor in the role (from 1905):

 

ADDED: A raccoon penis bone is not as unusual a keepsake as you might think. From "8 Hard Facts About the Penis Bone":

Raccoon penis bones are considered by some in the South to be lucky charms. The little bones are also known as coon dogs, Texas toothpicks, and Abrahams. Southerners wear them on necklaces, keep them in their pockets, and even include them in bridal bouquets. The trend went Hollywood in 2004, when Sarah Jessica Parker and Vanessa Williams were both seen wearing raccoon baculum earrings.

FROM THE EMAIL: Madison Man writes:
I am struck by the complaint "They allowed him to win awards" by one of the plaintiffs. How passive, as if his skill at being an engaging lecturer so that many students learned material is irrelevant. Should only the unsullied be allowed to win awards?

"[E]xcessive hygiene practices, inappropriate antibiotic use and lifestyle changes such as distancing may weaken [our microbiome] going forward in ways that promote sickness and imperil our immune systems."

Posted: 23 Apr 2021 09:51 AM PDT

"By sterilizing our bodies and spaces... we may be doing more harm than good.... [T]he microbes we encounter in daily life — on other people and in our spaces — are the data that the immune system relies on to program and regulate its operations. Deprived of these exposures, especially at the start of life, the immune system is prone to malfunction. The result can be allergies, asthma, autoimmune disorders, obesity, Type 2 diabetes and other chronic medical conditions.... Hygiene zealotry not only deprives people of interactions with helpful bacteria, but it may also be driving some essential microbes into extinction.... In the months to come, the health of our microbiomes may partly depend on the willingness of those who are vaccinated and at low risk to take off their masks and intermingle with one another, as we all used to do. 'A lot of things people do when they're together that we didn't use to think about — shaking hands or embracing, kissing or hugging — these sorts of sociocultural practices could play a part in the exchange of microbes,' says Tamara Giles-Vernick... a medical anthropologist...."

From "Can We Learn to Live With Germs Again?/The health of our bodies and microbiomes may depend on society's return to lifestyles that expose us to bacteria, despite the risks" (NYT). 

There are lots of different risks, and avoiding some causes you to take others. I'd say let the people who want to go without masks — and get back to hugging and kissing — do it. Study how it works out. This idea of just being extra careful about everything until we're sure isn't even coherent, as this article shows, because taking extra care to avoid contact with germs is a failure to take care to maintain exposure to good microbes. Those of us who are vaccinated should be free to encounter the world again. 

Notice that warning: "Deprived of these exposures, especially at the start of life, the immune system is prone to malfunction." That means the lockdown is particularly risky for babies and young children (who are also the ones with the least risk from the disease). 

FROM THE EMAIL: Mike sends this apt bit from George Carlin: 

The dawn/sunrise distinction — 6:01 and 6:05.

Posted: 23 Apr 2021 06:41 AM PDT

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The official sunrise time was 6:02. I love when the disc of the sun appears, but so often, like today, it's much more colorful when the sun shows itself indirectly. The line "it's always darkest just before dawn" came to mind. Clearly, it's not always darkest just before sunrise, but dawn and sunrise are not the same thing:

Dawn is the time that marks the beginning of twilight before sunrise. It is recognized by the appearance of indirect sunlight being scattered in Earth's atmosphere, when the centre of the Sun's disc has reached 18° below the observer's horizon. This morning twilight period will last until sunrise (when the Sun's upper limb breaks the horizon), when direct sunlight outshines the diffused light.

This morning, dawn began at 5:32. If you want to go out and see the sunrise, like I do, check the cloud cover percentage before you go out. If it's not 100% or 0%, you've got a shot at seeing great color in the clouds before sunrise. So notice not just the sunrise time but when twilight begins — dawn.

Activated women hitting new peaks of ineffectuality.

Posted: 23 Apr 2021 09:26 AM PDT

FROM THE EMAIL: Paddy O writes: 

Your post on ineffective "activated women" reminded me of this great passage from Jurgen Moltmann (one of the most important/influential Christian theologians of the last century), who is considered the grandfather of Liberation Theology (his book Theology of Hope in the 60s inspired much of the movement's early leaders).

Here's what he had to say on ineffective activism in his book on the Holy Spirit:

If we compare the two ways of knowing, it is easy to see that modern men and women need at least a balance between the vita activa and the vita contemplative, the active and the contemplative life, if they are not to atrophy spiritually. The pragmatic way of grasping things has very obvious limits, and beyond these limits the destruction of life begins. This does not apply only to our dealings with other people. It is true of our dealings with the natural environment too.

But the meditative way of understanding seems to be even more important when it is applied to our dealings with our own selves. People take flight into relationships, into social action and into political praxis, because they cannot endure what they themselves are.

They have 'fallen out' with themselves. So they cannot stand being alone. To be alone is torture. Silence is unendurable. Solitude is felt to be 'social death'. Every disappointment becomes a torment which has to be avoided at all costs.

But the people who throw themselves into practical life because they cannot come to terms with themselves simply become a burden for other people. Social praxis and political involvement are not a remedy for the weakness of our own personalities.

Men and women who want to act on behalf of other people without having deepened their own understanding of themselves, without having built up their own capacity for sensitive loving, and without having found freedom towards themselves, will find nothing in themselves that they can give to anyone else.

Even presupposing good will and the lack of evil intentions, all they will be able to pass on is the infection of their own egoism, the aggression generated by their own anxieties, and the prejudices of their own ideology. Anyone who wants to fill up his own hollowness by helping other people will simply spread the same hollowness.

Why? Because people are far less influenced by what another person says and does than the activist would like to believe. They are much more influenced by what the other is, and his way of speaking and behaving.

Only the person who has found his own self can give himself. What else can he give? It is only the person who knows that he is accepted who can accept others without dominating them. The person who has become free in himself can liberate others and share their suffering.

Jรผrgen Moltmann, Spirit of Life

His most recent book (he's 95!) is also really interesting, and readable, if you're interested: Resurrected to Eternal Life: On Dying and Rising.

"As I talk closer to the family, they said that, 'Well, the real reason they stopped was because his tags had expired.' Well, I come to Minnesota to tell you your tags have expired."

Posted: 23 Apr 2021 09:28 AM PDT

"Your tags of racism has expired. Your tags of police brutality has expired. Your tags of white supremacy has expired. Your tags of looking at us different than everybody else, has expired. Your tags have expired. It's time to renew and get some new tags. A tags of righteousness, tags of fairness, tags of treating everybody the same way. Tags of 'No justice. No peace.'... Those tags done expired... That ain't going to happen no more.... I hope y'all are alive in Texas, we on the way. Because your tags have expired. We are going to stop by North Carolina where a young man was shot yesterday. We're going to look in Columbus, Ohio, your tags have expired. We're going wherever you show up, because your tags have expired.... God made a promise... He said, 'The first shall be last. And the last shall be first'.... God will take care of Daunte, now. Stand up and be what we were born to be. We're not anyone's slave. We're the children of God! We're the children of God! We're the children of God."

Said the Reverend Al Sharpton, quoted in the Daunte Wright Funeral Service Transcript (misspellings corrected.)

FROM THE EMAIL: Paul writes:

Long-time reader, rare commenter here. Al Sharpton called for "A tags of righteousness, tags of fairness, tags of treating everybody the same way." Robin DiAngelo, in White Fragility, one of the books that has become part of the canon of the anti-racist religion, wrote "It is not possible to teach someone to treat everyone the same. We can be told, and often often are told, to treat everyone the same, but we cannot successfully be taught to do so because human beings are not objective." I think DiAngelo is deeply, profoundly wrong, and it is my sincere hope that the Al Sharpton view will become (return?) to the predominant view, and I think doing so will require pointing out quotes like hers whenever a black person of the left makes a statement like the one Sharpton made.

"I genuinely do love you and your community. You’re so human and beautiful. You make New York City special."

Posted: 23 Apr 2021 06:10 AM PDT

"I have no idea how we ever lose to the Republicans given that you all are frankly in, like, leadership roles all over the Democratic Party. We have, like, this incredible secret weapon. It's not even secret. It's like, we should win everything because we have you all." 

Said Andrew Yang, referring to the gay community and gunning for the endorsement of that Stonewall Democratic Club of New York City. And they hated it! 

I'm reading "Andrew Yang, Looking for Endorsement, Offends Gay Democratic Club/Participants described Mr. Yang's remarks as offensive, saying that even as members of the club wanted to discuss policy issues, he mentioned gay bars" (NYT). 

Now, why did they hate it? I'm guessing they prefer some other candidate, and they ran to the New York Times to send out their negativity against Yang. He's the frontrunner, and he needs to be taken down. He expressed nothing but love and inclusiveness, but apparently, they don't want their special status talked about, they just want a policy-based discussion of the kind he would do with any group, including the least diversityish people. Who knew? 

But, I wonder, if he'd come on like that — talking policy in the same way he would with, say, straight white people — would they have run to the New York Times and claimed to have been offended that he showed no interest in their particular status and fed them generic material he could have served anybody?

I don't know. But I will disapprove of the line "You're so human." All humans are human. To say "You're so human" is to imply that the humanness was in question or that other humans are less human. It's a bit like "Black lives matter" in that it states a fact, but the only reason to state it is that there's a background notion — alive in the hearts of other people — that black lives don't matter. You might tell gay people "You're so human" because you mean to say: There are other people out there who think you're subhuman or barely human. 

Here's how members of the group expressed their offense: 

Multiple participants described Mr. Yang's remarks as offensive, saying that members of the club who raised policy issues found his mention of gay bars off-putting.

"Gay, gay, gay. Wow," one person wrote in the chat accompanying the forum, which was later shared with The New York Times. "More to us than just that."

To Harris Doran, a club member and filmmaker, Mr. Yang's insistence on referring to members as "your community" particularly stung. "He kept calling us 'Your community,' like we were aliens," Mr. Doran said.

Sasha Neha Ahuja, one of Mr. Yang's two campaign managers — both are gay — said she heard at least one other candidate on the call use the same term, and suggested that some members had gone into the interview process with their minds already made up....

Mr. Yang's interview was one of nine the club held Wednesday night, before it held its endorsement vote. He was unlikely to win an endorsement, given the club's longstanding relationship with [NYC comptroller Scott M.] Stringer, but Rose Christ, the club's president, said Mr. Yang could have delivered a performance that avoided the ensuing outcry....

Eh. Like I said. They have someone else they want — it's Stringer — and they need to take Yang down. 

"When I see a candidate come in just with Michael Scott levels of cringe and insensitivity, it either tells me Andrew Yang is in over his head or is not listening to his staff," said Alejandra Caraballo, a member of the organization, referring to the character played by Steve Carell on "The Office." "Those are both radioactive flashing signs that say he is not prepared to be mayor of New York." Ms. Christ said members were offended that Mr. Yang chose to focus on bars, parades and his gay staff members. "Those are not the substantive issues that our membership cares about and it came off poorly," Ms. Christ said.

Christ is hilariously heavy-handed. It's just a radioactive flashing sign to say "your community." Ha ha ha. Let's use that against everyone, okay? Let's cringe at any fawning over anybody's diversity factors. Let's get outraged at anything like "I genuinely do love you and your community. You're so human and beautiful." I could sign on to that. Just make it a general rule, okay?

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There is no comments section anymore, but you can email me here. Unless you say otherwise, I will presume you'd enjoy an update to this post with a quote from your email.

"Kubrick the nudnik is here again."

Posted: 23 Apr 2021 03:19 AM PDT

I'm reading "Kubrick's Human Comedy/Though Stanley Kubrick was often characterized as icy, his life and filmography reveal that his heart was as large as his mind" (NYRB): 

When [his high school friend] asked Stanley why he didn't do his own assignments, he got this placid reply: "I'm not interested." 

What did interest him was the Graflex single-lens high-speed camera his father had given him for his thirteenth birthday, with which he learned to capture crisp images of subjects in motion. Soon he was spending hours in the darkroom in the apartment of another friend, whose mother was heard to complain, "Kubrick the nudnik is here again." 

The nudnik first sold a photo, of a downcast news vendor surrounded by tabloid headlines announcing the death of FDR, at age seventeen to Look magazine. Over the next five years Look used his images in 135 articles 

You can see many of the Look photographs — including the downcast news vendor — here (at The New Criterion)("A 1949 shoot at Columbia University includes a photo of three physicists standing atop a massive particle accelerator, as well as that of a laboratory scientist handling a glowing rod reflected in his dark, circular glasses; neither image is extricable from thoughts of Dr. Strangelove").

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I've abolished the comments section — I couldn't handle the constant vigilance it required of me — but you can do the equivalent of commenting by emailing me here. I will presume you want your words published in an update to this post, and unless you tell me how you want to be named, I'll use your first name only.

People were attracted to "your strident certainty," Russell Brand tells Jordan Peterson, who's been through severe trials and is amazed to still be alive.

Posted: 23 Apr 2021 02:50 AM PDT

 

(To comment, can email me here.

"I think taking off all your clothes — and I’ve never taken off all my clothes — is not only immoral but boring."

Posted: 23 Apr 2021 02:49 AM PDT

"There has to be something left to the imagination. If you take everything off, you please a few morons and chase all the nice people away." 

Said Tempest Storm, in 1969, quoted in "Tempest Storm, Who Disrobed to Enduring Acclaim, Dies at 93/One of the most celebrated strippers of her time, she began her career in burlesque's golden twilight and continued performing into her 80s" (NYT).

By the time she was in her late teens she had made her way to Los Angeles, where she found work as a cocktail waitress. A customer told her she ought to be in show business and asked whether she could perform a striptease. "I said, 'What is that?'... I was from a small town, I didn't know. He said it was just dancing, but you take your clothes off. I said: 'Oh, no, not me. My mother would disown me.'" 

Here's an interview she did with Roger Ebert in 1968. Excerpt: 

"They tried full-scale burlesque in New York a year ago: comedians, three chorus lines, the works... But it flopped and now they're back to strippers. What I object to is the dishonesty and cheapening that goes on. The thing that killed the family audience for burlesque, in my opinion, was when some strippers began 'flashing' - that's burlesque lingo for showing everything. Not only is that unpleasant, but it's unnecessary.

"The secret to a good striptease is to leave as much as possible to the imagination. No matter what men may think, they don't actually want to see a performer just come out and take off her clothes. There's got to be communication, there's got to be contact. In my act, although I eventually do get down to the legal minimum, I actually put on more clothes than I take off. There's some psychology in this. A performer who can communicate a feeling of modesty is sexier than one who just strips."

You've got to communicate, and what do you need to communicate? Modesty!

(To comment, email me here.)

Lilac.

Posted: 23 Apr 2021 08:22 AM PDT

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FROM THE EMAIL: Timothy writes: 

Good morning Ann, I feel like saying, "Long-time listener, first-time caller" as is so often heard on a call-in radio show! I'm sure I probably commented once or twice over the past 15 years that I've read your blog, but I guess I'm moved this morning to e-mail you. 

Interestingly (to me, anyway!) is the thought that I likely would not have commented under the previous system, underneath the entry that caught my attention: your beautiful lilac photos. The lilac is my favorite flower & one of my all-time favorite fragrances of any sort. And I associate lilacs with my mother (who turns 74 in a couple weeks) – who had a lilac tree in the backyard of the house we grew up in. (It makes me wonder if that tree is still alive, 26 years after I last saw it?!) 

Have a great weekend!

It's nice when a person in your thoughts is associated with a particular flower. I associate my father with gardenias (because my mother did, and I don't even remember why). I don't think there's anyone else in my life that I've associated with a particular flower, and I doubt if anyone associates me with any particular flower. I do like flowers, but it's not as though I'm crazy about one particular flower!

"Now, a robot has been trained to speak aloud its inner decision-making process, giving us a view of how it prioritises competing demands...."

Posted: 22 Apr 2021 04:34 PM PDT

"The researchers asked Pepper to set a dinner table according to etiquette rules they had encoded into the robot... When instructed to place a napkin on a fork with inner speech enabled, Pepper asked itself what the etiquette required and concluded that this request went against the rules it had been given. It then asked the researchers if putting the napkin on the fork was the correct action. When told it was, Pepper said, 'OK, I prefer to follow your desire,' and explained how it was going to place the napkin on the fork. When asked to do the same task without voicing the inner speech, Pepper knew this contradicted the etiquette rules so didn't perform the task or explain why.... With the potential for robots to become more common in the future, this type of programming could help the public understand their abilities and limitations, says Sarah Sebo at the University of Chicago. 'It maintains people's trust and enables seamless collaborations and interactions between humans and robots,' she says."

New Scientist reports. 

First, I wondered if people would become too trusting, and maybe the robots will take over. Then, I thought, the robots could help us sort out our rules and preferences. And maybe we'll become better at thinking through our own decisionmaking, as robots demonstrate how to make rational decisions and show us, transparently, what they are taking into account.

FROM THE EMAIL: Tim writes: 

The "inner speech" is just a basic program at present, says Pipitone. "At this moment, it's a narrative of Pepper's process," she says. 

Yeah, this is a testing and debug technique as old as programming, except we just used print functions in different parts of the decision trees instead of text to voice. Often is was a sign of desperation, with me anyway. When your program simply refuses to work and you don't know why, it's pretty frustrating, that I will allow. Who would have thought that I could have gotten written up in New Scientist for it though? Instead of calling them debug statements within the program's logic, I should have called them the program's "inner voice" giving us the skinny on its lived experience?

As for trusting, I just drove a car across country that had a "driver assist" function that was so good I came to trust it *a lot* in light traffic situations. Finding and opening a water bottle, changing the playlist on Spotify, then I caught myself starting to do the same stuff in a car without the feature. Yikes!
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