Thursday, July 31, 2008
Doc Drivel -- Idealist
Doc Drivel realizes, watching Gone Baby Gone, that an intersection with religion has left him forever idealistic and Manichaean, trying to impose a framework of good and evil on a messy world. He is also idealist in a Kantian sense, the messy world only exists as a result of the framework of the mind., and would blink out of of existence if we did. Whether the universe exists out of my mind, its mind, or His mind, we do agree that, as Dr. King said, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Doctor Drivel's favorite movie quote
From the Year of Living Dangerously
BILLY And the people asked him, saying, What shall we do then?
GUY What's that?
BILLY It's from Luke, chapter three, verse ten. What then must we do? Tolstoy asked the same question. He wrote a book with that title. He got so upset about the poverty in Moscow that he went one night into the poorest section and just gave away all his money. You could do that now. Five American dollars would be a fortune to one of these people.
GUY Wouldn't do any good, just be a drop in the ocean.
BILLY Ahh, that's the same conclusion Tolstoy came to, I disagree.
GUY Oh, what's your solution?
BILLY Well, I support the view that you just don't think about the major issues. You do whatever you can about the misery that's in front of you. Add your light to the sum of light. You think that's naive, don't you?
GUY Yep.
BILLY It's alright, most journalists do.
GUY We can't afford to get involved.
BILLY Typical journo's answer.
BILLY And the people asked him, saying, What shall we do then?
GUY What's that?
BILLY It's from Luke, chapter three, verse ten. What then must we do? Tolstoy asked the same question. He wrote a book with that title. He got so upset about the poverty in Moscow that he went one night into the poorest section and just gave away all his money. You could do that now. Five American dollars would be a fortune to one of these people.
GUY Wouldn't do any good, just be a drop in the ocean.
BILLY Ahh, that's the same conclusion Tolstoy came to, I disagree.
GUY Oh, what's your solution?
BILLY Well, I support the view that you just don't think about the major issues. You do whatever you can about the misery that's in front of you. Add your light to the sum of light. You think that's naive, don't you?
GUY Yep.
BILLY It's alright, most journalists do.
GUY We can't afford to get involved.
BILLY Typical journo's answer.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Registering a rifle
Recently brought B's inherited Winchester 22 rifle (Model 67a) into DC when I noticed in one of the briefs in the Supreme Court handgun case that rifles have been allowed all along. Some hoops I just went through to register it (trying to get in before the handgun rush) included:
1) bringing a signed affidavit that, among other things, I haven't been convicted of being a prostitute, abrogating strikers, or running a bawdy house
2) paying $48
3) being fingerprinted extensively
4) producing a passport size photo
5) taking a test and most exciting of all
(drum roll)
6) bringing the rifle today into DC police headquarters at 300 Indiana following their advice to have a family member stay double-parked outside (so I don't have to walk far with it) while I carried it in
To lower the troubling risk of being misinterepreted as a threat, I focused carefully on clothes, wearing a wrinkled white "polo" shirt with khaki shorts, along with beat up Nike tennis shoes, so I looked like just another sporting, shlepping boomer carrying heat.
The initial response at the 300 Indiana metal detector was more interpretative than anything, as if I was a sort of oversized rorschach inkblot. "He can't bring that in here." "No that's handguns you can't bring in.." "Wait a minute." "Let me call someone." "Why don't you give that to us." "We're getting you an escort." All the while I follow my main lesson from my 30 minutes of FBI training 25 years ago, "don't move."
And in less than five minutes I was escorted upstairs to gun registration, where they helped me out with great friendliness and enthusiasm, though with some bemusement, I think, at my handwriting, the lack of a serial number on the rifle, my suggestion that the gun was an antique, and my inability to describe what I might use the gun for. "Shooting varmints? " one officer asked. "Write down that you plan to keep it unloaded and locked in your room," advised another.
As I strolled outside to the car only a half hour later the brilliant Washington summer sun glared at everyone, but I smiled and carried my rifle nonchalantly, as though I did it every day.
1) bringing a signed affidavit that, among other things, I haven't been convicted of being a prostitute, abrogating strikers, or running a bawdy house
2) paying $48
3) being fingerprinted extensively
4) producing a passport size photo
5) taking a test and most exciting of all
(drum roll)
6) bringing the rifle today into DC police headquarters at 300 Indiana following their advice to have a family member stay double-parked outside (so I don't have to walk far with it) while I carried it in
To lower the troubling risk of being misinterepreted as a threat, I focused carefully on clothes, wearing a wrinkled white "polo" shirt with khaki shorts, along with beat up Nike tennis shoes, so I looked like just another sporting, shlepping boomer carrying heat.
The initial response at the 300 Indiana metal detector was more interpretative than anything, as if I was a sort of oversized rorschach inkblot. "He can't bring that in here." "No that's handguns you can't bring in.." "Wait a minute." "Let me call someone." "Why don't you give that to us." "We're getting you an escort." All the while I follow my main lesson from my 30 minutes of FBI training 25 years ago, "don't move."
And in less than five minutes I was escorted upstairs to gun registration, where they helped me out with great friendliness and enthusiasm, though with some bemusement, I think, at my handwriting, the lack of a serial number on the rifle, my suggestion that the gun was an antique, and my inability to describe what I might use the gun for. "Shooting varmints? " one officer asked. "Write down that you plan to keep it unloaded and locked in your room," advised another.
As I strolled outside to the car only a half hour later the brilliant Washington summer sun glared at everyone, but I smiled and carried my rifle nonchalantly, as though I did it every day.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
The Social Sciences: As Perceived by a Philosophy Major
Alasdair MacIntyre critiques the social sciences in After Virtue; among other faults, they can't seem to predict anything. Another flaw...or virtue: the ideas in a social science tome can be, and usually are, adequately summarized on the jacket, often making the book itself superfluous.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)