Reason #1 why you don’t want the government legislating morality: you might disagree with the government definition of moral.

The irony here is that the people who have argued for years that we should not legislate morality now make the most strenuous use of the law, when the “logic of morals” is attached to their own policy. Lincoln, grasping that logic, conceded that “if slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away.”

Faced with such a grave predicament, for the British Army was a shambles compared to its ‘wooden walls,’ at least one newspaper editor took the time to taunt the Emperor, and his invasion fleet cooped up in Boulogne.

T’invade, or not t’invade – that is the question –

Whether ’tis nobler in my soul, to suffer

Those haughty Islanders to check my power,

Or to send forth my troops upon their coast,

And by attacking, crush them. –T’invade – to fight –

No more; – and by7 a fight, to say I end

The glory, and the thousand natural blessings

That England’s heir to; – ’tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish’d. – To invade – to fight –

To fight – perchance to fail: – Ay, there’s the rub;

For in that failure, what dire fate may come,

When they have shuffled off from Gallia’s shore,

Must give me pause. – There’s the respect,

That makes me thus procrastinate the deed:

For would I bear the scoff an scorn of foes,

The oppressive thought of English liberty,

The pangs of despis’d threats, th’attempts delay,

The insolence of Britain, and the spurns,

That I impatient and unwilling take,

When I myself might head the plund’ring horde,

And grasp at conquest? Would I tamely bear

To groan and sweat under a long suspence,

But that the dread of something after battle,

That undecided trial, from whose hazard

I never may return, – puzzles my will,

And makes me rather bear unstated vengeance,

Than fly from Boulogne at the risk of all.

And thus my native passion of ambition

Is clouded o’er with sad presaging thought:

And this momentous, tow’ring enterprise,

With this regard, is yearly turn’d aside,

And waits the name of action.

For an enjoyable history of this period, check out The War for All the Oceans.

I purchased Cowen’s book after reading Ben Casnocha’s excellent review in The American. Ben’s piece nailed the euphoria I feel as curator of my own information stream, a curious combination of opinion headlines, news from the cartographical world, the occasional blog war over localism, among other topics. I ruthlessly purge my feeds, striving for a funnel of news where each headline has a personal relevance, but still offers breadth and opinions that challenge my beliefs. The river of posts and stories get funneled into appropriate tags, which I later revist.

For instance, a DIY tag is attached to interesting projects that would help me improve from hopeless handyman to soul crafter (to use Matt Crawford’s lingo). I budget an hour or two over the weekend to try my hand at simple soldering or turning old maps into wallpaper. I have a “readme” tag that goes on longer articles: on a weekend getaway I printed out several dozen and lingered by the poolside diving into essays on Aristotle, career development, and Catholic liturgy. Afterward, I digitized my notes and created several outlines for future blog posts.

This process renders intelligble both my collection of feeds and the myriad random articles I read at the behest of friends’ emails, Tweets, blog posts, Facebook, and the every other form of sharing a hyperlinked, “You gotta see this.” Coupled with the “Note in Reader” bookmarklet, I’m able to find fascinating connections, and preserve them in a coherent fashion, in spite of my unspeakably bad memory. For instance, while reading the Adkins’ excellent naval history of the Napoleonic Wars, I came across a line recounting popular discontent with Britain’s naval strategy. It stirred a memory of a hilarious map I’d seen on the web, but I couldn’t remember beyond that. I nipped into Google Reader, searched my “Mappish” tag for Britain, and scrolled through the handful of results until I found this hilarious image.

That whole process is what Cowen calls autistic thinking. Not in a perjorative way, mind you (don’t even think of making that mistake). No, here’s how he describes it:

One strong feature of autism is the tendency of autistics to impose additional structure on information by the acts of arranging, organizing, classifying, collecting, categorizing, and listing. Autistics are information lovers to an extreme degree and they are the people who engage with information most passionately. When it comes to theri areas of interest, autistics are the true infovores, as I will call them.

…

I began to see that the autistic mind-set about engaging with information is a powerful way to understand the whole world around us. Especially now.

Cowen believes that autism, far from being the severe mental handicap it is often made out to be, actually has some benefits. In our digital era, where categorizing is invaluable, anyone tapping the benefits of autistic cognition has a great competitive advantage and will be much more comfortable in our information-rich age.

So, what’s the problem? Chapter Two.

Cowen spends the second chapter hammering the point that autistic kids are neither to be pitied nor censured, but celebrated. Autism is a blanket term crudely applied to a variety of conditions and larded up with connotations, all of it negative. Cowen wants us to think of recognize that autistic congnition is can be a blessing and the condition is far from a curse. Autistic folks, as much as the infinite variety that term is slapped upon can be described, are no more handicapped than brunettes, Chinese or short people.

That’s a wonderful sentiment, but I don’t understand who exactly he’s arguing with.

Do people really view autism as a completely negative term? I can’t help but wonder if that’s generational. My first thought on hearing “autistic” more closely matches what Cowen is celebrating in autistic cognition. I thought, “socially awkward, sometimes extremely so, with potential intelligence benefits, a la Bill Gates.” By comparison, my mother described autism in purely negative terms. My wife, who has taught students ranging from seriously to mildly autistic, had a more nuanced view.

Don’t underestimate the downsides of autism. Some high-functioning autistic children may benefit from that kind of cognition, but the problems that many autistics face aren’t just the imaginary creation of overwrought “experts” and distraught parents.

Like I said, I want to enjoy this book, and I agree, so far, with Cowen’s underlying thesis. I’m just not entirely comfortable with his approach so far. More on this as I get deeper into the book.

That being said, I have no time for this kind of mauldin sentiment, from Beth Schuster in the LA Times, describing Cleveland High’s graduation:

As an education editor for The Times, I tend to see the worst of Los Angeles’ public school system. Budget cuts, teacher layoffs, high dropout rates, low test scores. The list goes on. And on.

As the mother of a Los Angeles Unified School District graduate, I saw the best the system has to offer this month.

It’s worth pausing there. Note that we’re not talking about the best that education has to offer, nor the best that students can do. We’re not celebrating individuals here: we’re celebrating “the best a system has to offer.” So, do tell Beth, what does this system offer?

Sitting shoulder to shoulder on the bleachers, we cheered along with the sisters and brothers of one graduate as they held up a homemade sign: “First Male in our Family” to get a diploma. One mom said her son is going into the military. I recognized a family whose daughter is going to Sarah Lawrence College and another whose daughter is going to UC Santa Barbara. Success has many definitions on graduation day.

The evening began with a speech by Principal Bob Marks. One mom in front of me didn’t recognize him, and that was OK with her. “Thank God we don’t know him,” she laughed.

I looked over to the crowd standing next to the bleachers. They couldn’t get seats. They were my daughter’s humanities magnet teachers, smiling, talking, joking. They were cheering on these kids they had taught philosophy, art history, literature and film — all without the help of textbooks, instead using photocopied materials and a few field trips to plays, an opera and art museums. These teachers made up for a lack of resources with their determination, dedication and ingenuity.

Three students made heartfelt speeches, and another rapped his heart out. The audience roared its approval. Forty valedictorians (those with a 4.0 grade point average and above) had gold tassels hanging from their mortar boards.

This will take some parsing. First, we should apparently applaud the system because many students in it have different definitions of success? I think the credit should go to the individuals, who likely did so in spite of the system. No, that’s not just me saying that. Consider Beth’s description of the humanities magnet teachers: they did all their best work in spite of having no textbooks, without adequate funding for trips, and they did it through their personal virtue. Some system. And still it gets better.

Apparently, a system that allows parents to not even recognize the principal of the school is…well, Beth doesn’t really say what it is, except that it’s definitely a laughing matter. But that laughter carries an implication that the chuckling mom wouldn’t like the principal if she knew him. To be fair, perhaps the principal fills the role of the dean, and not making his acquaintance is the mark of a student who has dodged detention. But Beth doesn’t really permit that interpretation. She refers to Cleveland High as a family, later. What does that make the principal? The awkward uncle that no one really wants to know?

Further, what about the academic achievement being celebrated here: the graduation had 40 valedictorians. Curious. According to just about every definition I can find, and every real human being I’ve asked, the valedictorian is an individual award. In just about every case it’s an award for the best student, someone who has the highest or darn near close the highest grades (even schools that like “well-rounded” valedictory speakers demand one of the best students).

Cleveland High, however, has a different definition: anyone who gets over a 4.0. Ah, excellent. Since 4.0 used to mean an “A,” otherwise known as the highest grade, clearly they’ve been shifting the grading schedule to allow top students to feel even awesomer about themselves, and not so awesome students to still net high sounding GPAs. I can’t remember the term I usually hear when that’s discussed, but I think it sounds something like shmade shminflation. Also, since they just gave everyone above a arbitrary GPA the title “valedictorian,” why didn’t they just call it “highest honors” or “summa cum laude?” Apparently, words that have traditionally meant what they were desribing proved inadequate to Cleveland High’s administrators.

The final bit is a tearjerker:

But it was the last name called that drew tears universally. Kenza Kadmiry, sitting in a wheelchair, was handed her diploma by the principal. She had become the soul of this class, its tragedy and its hope. Kenza was hit by a car in February as she walked her bike across the street, and is now a quadriplegic. But her smile that night was huge. A fundraiser for her the week before drew about 500 friends of Cleveland. Families pull together in times of trouble, and this public school is, wonder of wonders, a family.

Kenza’s story really is heart-breaking and inspiring. And by every account I’ve read, the school came together in a wonderful way to support her and her family.

Kenza’s tragic accident, and the community that rallied in the wake, doesn’t have any clear connection to “the system.” Worse, shoehorning it into a piece lauding “the system” seems a little cheap: how exactly did Cleveland High’s status as a public school facilitate the response to Kenza’s accident? What about Principal Nemo’s public family made a difference in how the community came together?

The answer, of course, is that it didn’t. What Schuster describes is a beautiful example of community that owes nothing to the system. Every ounce of credit should go to the individual families and students of Cleveland High, whose exact composition was merely the artifact of bureaucratic fiat and district lines. I don’t doubt for a minute that the administratio did everything it could to bring people together after Kenza’s accident, that the teachers played a vital role, hell, I bet the janitors got involved. But “the system” Schuster describes is not merely the sum of the people subjected to it.

Schuster closes on a line that cemented the deeply troubling feeling growing in my gut.

The troubling stories that I had edited that week vanished from my mind as I finally found something to celebrate: a public school that worked.

Bingo: a tale of heroic individuals and inspiring charity is reduced to an band-aid to conceal the gaping sores of the public school system. The graduating class survived misallocated funds, resource-deprived teachers, redefinition of academic success, and the traumatic crippling of a beloved student. The lesson Shuster learns? Public schools can work.

Here’s one you’ve probably heard—and groaned at—before: You know how you can tell Parisians are the most worldly, sophisticated people in the world? Even the children there speak French!

It’s a dumb joke, but I think it also goes a ways toward explaining why Dana Goldstein thinks the essay prompts on France’s college entrance exams cover “complex, intellectual topics” that their U.S. counterparts would never be expected to attempt. Like Michael Moynihan, I’m not quite as impressed. First, the prompts are pretty vague and, like the ones I remember seeing on similar tests as a teenager, offer a fair amount of latitude: They’re the kind of  questions that give a middling student the opportunity to produce a competent response, and a stellar student room to show off.

He goes on to dissect the highfalutin test translations that breed this attitude, serving up a rephrased exam that is hilariously unimpressive. Kudos to Sanchez. Of course, anyone who has actually had firsthand experiences with France’s next generation probably didn’t even need that much proof.

The summer after high school, I spent six weeks teaching English at a summer camp in the Loire Valley for French teens, mostly between 12 and 16. At that tender age, the body tends to heal faster; if I had to duplicate it, I’d probably be scarred for life. We spent half the day in the classroom and half the day in normal summer activities. I spent the entire day wondering what the hell was wrong with the French.

It was an all-male crew, and on the whole, they were good-natured, fun-loving characters, and I think back on that summer fondly. Fondly, that is, until I remember the repeated fire alarms going off at 3am, as the youth decided to revolt and have water battles, indoors, in the middle of the night. Or the absence of anything resembling respect for authority, most notable in the violence I suffered on the soccer field. Or the fact that the several dozen teens had the collective maturity of a Miley Cyrus fan snorting crushed NoDoz. That’s as a group, mind you.

Coming back from a run late one night, I heard a rustling in the dining room. I flicked on the lights and found two of the oldest campers curiously huddled in a dark corner. Braced for a confrontation, I stalked back to see what form of methamphetamine the clowns were furtively freebasing. I loomed over the 18 year olds, one of whom needed to shave, and demanded they fess up, in my best wrath of God voice. They mournfully produced two juice boxes and a tube of cookies. The juice boxes, it should be noted, came from a fridge recently packed with beer and wine, the preferred tonic for the counselor angst.

Obviously, I can’t claim the fifty odd fellows at the camp were the best the Gauls could produce. However, the camp’s organizers, native French themselves, assured me the boys came from good middle to upper-class stock, all attended quality schools, and, in fact, didn’t include a fair number of students who didn’t make the grade. They were almost all from Paris and betrayed no symptoms of exposure to lead-based paint, despite their often incomprehensible behavior. And in spite of their wretched classroom behavior, they exhibited an astonishing amount of concern over their final grades (the one fellow I failed was inconsolable).

Are their brilliant French students, more than capable of essaying thoughtfully in response to challenging questions? Of course. And far be it from me to suggest that French students are just as incompetent as their American counterparts (the misanthrope in me will only so far). Still, as Sanchez notes, these test questions “look an awful lot like the essay prompts on comparable American tests: Allowing the brightest students to spread their wings, but also capable of acceptable if rather more workmanlike answers.”

[W]hat I wonder — and hope for (I think) — is whether or not Pixar will ever chuck the kiddie elements altogether and make a movie that specifically targets adults. Yes, yes, part of their genius is their cross-generational appeal, which they really do pull off better than any other filmmakers. But these days, I also think the folks at Pixar are making better mainstream entertainment than nearly any other creators in any other medium, and given the paucity of satisfying adult drama in theaters these days, I’d love to see them work on a project that didn’t have to entertain the six year olds in the audience, that didn’t have to merely hint, however compellingly, at the sadness and joys of adult life.

On reflection, it’s a perfectly understandable response. I can’t remember the last Pixar movie I saw that I didn’t leave the theater raving about they were the last great story-tellers in America.

That being said, I’ve never had Peter’s reaction. Part of that is clearly is the simple fact that animation is overwhelmingly a tool for kid’s stories: no impressive “serious” CGI films  spring to mind. But what does spring to mind are disasters like Beowulf (disaster to my mind, anyway). I can’t help wonder that perhaps Suderman underestimates the predisposition of the medium to delivering a “family-friendly” message.

Consider the Muppets. No rule of cinema forbids outlandish puppets conveying serious themes, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. And Jim Henson certainly tried. Besides The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth (movies that terrified me as a very small child), he also tried to tackle (somewhat) more serious themes on the Jim Henson Hour and The Storyteller. The result was hardly smashing: both shows got canned almost immediately, Labyrinth was a box office flop, and none of the efforts moved outside the realm of fantasy or a Muppet Show-esque humor.

Pixar’s animation-style, admittedly, is rather more flexible than even Gonzo. But the history of animation of all kinds suggests that insofar as artists want to grapple with serious stories, they have to do so indirectly. Someone needs to get nailed by an intrinsic field subtractor, rape a muse, or kill a lot of people and blame it on the Illumnati, to judge from celebrated works of animation in print and on screen.

That’s not the most shocking of claims, but even if it were wrong, I’d still want Pixar to stick to family films. Pixar’s stories are wonderful in large part because they only hint at the “sadness and joys of adult life.” Any backyard astronomer knows that if you look directly at a star, it appears dimmer. Looking just to the side of it or by establishing it as part of a broader constellation, it’s easier to pick out even faint stars and give them a place in the vast night sky. Pixar’s movies keep you engaged in the story, but it really is drawing the connections between those poignant points in life, and making them more meaningful.

I’m certainly looking forward to Brad Bird’s 1906, if it ever gets off the ground, but I wouldn’t mind if Pixar kept tiptoeing around seriousness.

If you’d like to read more about my time in Greece (the reason for this blog in the first place), you’d be better off starting here, and poking around in these archives back at the blog’s original incarnation. If you’re looking for the infamous clown article, you can find that here.

Otherwise, feel free to browse, but consider yourself warned. If you’re overwhelmed with nostalgia for the real Doughty Traveler, here’s the original blog, created back in the days when Pyra Labs had just been acquired by Google, and Twitter was a twinkle in Evan Williams’ (and Biz Stone’s) eye.

On Being a Clown.

Check it out. It’s totally for real, and it’s totally my life. Extreme.

interstice \in-TUR-stuhs\, noun;
plural interstices \in-TUR-stuh-seez; -suhz\:
1. A space between things or parts, especially a space between things closely set; a narrow chink; a crack; a crevice; an interval.
2. An interval of time.

Thank you, Dictionary.com.

The fascinating professor is a walking encyclopedia. Never fail to learn a worthy word from him.

In other news, most posting is happening over the The Platinum Body. Check it out when you have a chance.

After many years of living in the Pasadena area, the clan made a trek to the Rose Bowl Flea Market, an extravaganza of used trinkets, castoff curios, aging antiques, a flea market festivus. I wouldn’t consider it a serious excursion; more of an initial foray, a reconnaisance mission of ample merit to justify the price of admission. We wandered about for a happy hour and a half, seeing enough to make me realize that bargains are to be had, but take some serious effort on the part of the shopper.

Like every other red-blooded American speculator who has a touch of the fey in him, I’ve often dreamt about stumbling across a priceless piece of lace, an invaluable image of an overlooked artist, an uncherished china set whose manufacture is sufficiently ancient or expert as to be appraised in the millions, a fact only made known to me in the middle of an episode of Antiques Roadshow. Unlike the other incredulous folks on that show, I wouldn’t shed a tear for said item, pledging to preserve it on the lintel or brick it up in an alcove of home. I’d turn around and sell that thing faster than you can say, “Bob’s your uncle,” invest in a high-yield hedge fund and spend the rest of my life reading books and changing the world as I randomly see fit.

Aaaaanyway, after that somewhat happy insight into my daydreams, back to the Rose Bowl. The flea market is a massive, hot, crowded place that succeeded in making me vastly more respectful of all the souks and bazaars I’ve wandered through in the Middle East (okay, so they were in Tunisia, and they numbered three or so). By the end of my time at the flea market (”I’m talking ’bout flea market”), I found myself wishing the vendors would show more than an whiff of interest in my arrival. In the medina in Tunis, if you’re eyes so much as betrayed an interest in the mass-produced hookahs piled in front of a booth or the glassware handblown by native tribeswomen in the Grand Erg Oriental (no doubt conveyed to Tunis by louage and camel), a salesman/woman will be clinging to you like the black alien suit that’s taking over Spiderman this summer (and becomes Venom when it falls on that smarmy actor whose name I can’t recall).

To be honest, I think I prefer the happy medium of the Sunday street market in Ljubljana. There, fellows who had aged beside their (now) antique wares peddled relics of the Cold War that once had been staples of their lives. Others sold farm implements that seemed suited for the 16th century, but appeared to still have dirt on them. But, more relevant to this conversation, they were engaged without being overbearing. Most fellows were willing to negotiate a fair amount, share information (true or false wasn’t exactly clear), and explain details of the various incredibly complicated mechanical devices that may or may not have once told time, but now looked more suited to permanently detatch infant fingers from baby hands. They weren’t completely buddy-buddy, nor did you want them to be, but there was an unspoken rapport. Ah, for the days of my youth and the cobblestone streets of Slovenia’s capital.

Regardless, the flea market will undoubtedly be the source of much more gold in weeks (years?) to come.