the horns of ammon are upon them 

girls in combat with storm approaching 

girls in a storm 

Darger's Visionary Paintings

Here are a few examples from the artwork of Henry Darger. Read his bio at http://www.saraayers.com/darger.htm

University, Inc.

Easter Sunday and die Sonne scheint.

Ms. Washburn in a recent book University Inc.,

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/bookSearch/isbnInquiry.asp?sourceid=00412886996296316645&ISBN=0465090516&bfdate=03-27-2005+09:49:06&popup=0

has published an expose of the corporatization of higher education. Because state funding of higher education has been reduced 20 percent, universities have farmed out their research to the highest bidding companies. The companies retain intellectual property rights and the divided loyalty of their chosen professors. This problem is akin to the university as a brothel of whores.

While this problem affects particularly those "instrumental" uses of science. Biotechnology, pharmacology, engineering, computers, etc....all all of them being farmed out to the highest bidder! The research is no longer in the public interest but in the private.

In an interview this morning on C Span, she spoke briefly to the question of the humanities. To my delight she mentioned the way in which humanities is treated as a commodity and the students are consumers. Feng has long faced these difficult waters.

Peak Oil

I just finished watching an astonishing movie, "The End of Suburbia" (see: http://www.endofsuburbia.com) in which policy experts discuss the implications of peak oil production. Peak oil production is that point in the bell curve at which the world's oil reserves are being tapped at maximum yield beyond which oil cannot be extracted as prodigiously or as cheaply. Experts are in agreement that peak oil productivity is likely to happen somewhere between 2005 and 2015. This means that as we pass that peak, fossil fuel prices will spike sharply, most definitely having a chilling effect on the domestic and global economy. The film points out that the form of life known as suburbia is headed towards a major collapse. Strip malls, 50 mile commutes to work, suburban housing will be the casualty on the descent. This has MAJOR consequences that will be felt in our lifetime. Additional information may be found at:
http://www.peakoil.net
http://www.fromthewilderness.com
http://www.postcarbon.org

These problems call for some major thinking and planning. Going skiing with Renner this last winter we were presented with bumper to bumper traffic for about 30 miles up into the Sierras. It forced us to ask deep questions about the sustainability of this culture. Above all we were convinced that for most of the public locked into this traffic this type of thing does not any longer seem out of the ordinary, given the fact that there have been large migrations to Northern California from Southern California. What a rude awakening we will face in the future. The specifics of what we can expect include
1. increased U.S. military operations, especially in the middle east
2. longer and longer recessions ending in economic stagnation known as "depression"
3. increasing civil strife

We are on a sinking ship friends, its time to begin charting our salvation from it. As I delve into this topic further I will post some recommendations and ideas. But again, this collapse is going to be gradual taking perhaps 20 or 30 years to really emerge. Our generation will be effected it seems, but especially our children's generation.

Bob Herbert on the Republicans

We have all watched the republicans reshape the country according to the interests of capital. A very nice precis may be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/25/opinion/herbert25.1.html?hp

John Rawls (1921-2002) 

Aristeas of Proconnesus

You have heard me mention Aristeas of Proconnesus and I'd like to give a little more detail about his life and his poem, the Arimaspea. All of my information comes from JDP Bolton's Aristeas of Proconnesus (Oxford University Press, 1962). Little is known of his life other than what Herodotus records of it. Bolton fixes his floruit in the Seventh century bc. Aristeas' poem, which survives now only in a few fragments, probably served as source material for Herodotus' histories. Here is his description of the life of Aristeas:

Aristeas also, the son of Caystrobius, a native of Proconnesus (an island in the Sea of Marmara), says in the course of his poem that, possessed by Apollo, he reached the Issedonians. Above them dwelt the Arimaspi, men with one eye; still further, the gold-guarding griffins; and beyond these, the Hyperboreans, whose country extend to the sea. Except the Hyperboreans, all these nations, beginning with the Arimaspi, encroached on their neighbors......I will now relate a tale which I heard concerning him (Aristeas) at Proconnesus and Cyzicus. Aristeas, they said, who belonged to one of the noblest families in the island, had entered one day a fuller's shop, when he suddenly dropped dead. Hereupon the fuller shut up his shop, and went to tell Aristeas' kindred what had happened. The report of the death had just spread through the town, when a certain Cyzicenian lately arrived from Artace (a seaport about five miles from Cyzicus), contradicted the rumor, affirming that he had met Aristeas on the road to Cyzicus and had spoken with him. This man, therefore, strenuously denied the rumour; the relations however proceeded to the fuller's shop with all things necessary for the funeral, intending to carry the body away. But on the shop being opened, no Aristeas was found either dead or alive. Six years afterwards he reappeared, they told me, in Proconnesus, and composed the poem which the Greeks now know as the Arimaspea, after which he disappeared a second time.

Herodotus is, as Bolton points out, "the one firm source" certifying the existence of Aristeas. A few dubious fragments of the Arimaspea survive in other late ancient sources such as Tzetzes. These fragments tell of visiting shaggy one-eyed men in and around the Black Sea. There is clearly some connection with shamanistic practices, e.g., 'bilocation' and 'phoibolamptos' (possession by Apollo). But the really amazing thing about Aristeas for me is the fact that we have here the earliest western example of travel literature, of an adventure driven not by military campaigns or the love of some woman, but solely the desire to go beyond and see for oneself what is there.

Ishi, the last Yahi, Oh Great One!

Upon Spending the Better Half of Two Days Reading Concrete Poetry

Despite the !novelty!, the , the crAZiness

it is clear that

not one single dessicated page

scribbled on by the hand of man

is equal to

the simple light

that flows through

my window

Nansen's team hauling sledges over the Greenland ice cap 

Nansen's Greenland Trip

Here is a photograph of the great Norwegian Explorer Fridtjof Nansen's expedition across Greenland. All of the equipment had to be produced by Nansen himself orcommissioned by him directly. Check out the database of Nansen photographs at http://www.nb.no/baser/nansen/english.html

The virtues of adventure

If one explores the history of moral philosophy there is one virtue that one will never find listed: adventure. Aristotle's list of the virtues of character includes courage, temperance, justice, and the intellectual virtues. Kant lists several duties to oneself and others, but there is never any mention of a virtue of exploration--to go beyond oneself. This is surprising, given the fact that both thinkers possessed a firm commitment to truth, even when it conflicts with the status quo. The virtue of adventure may be a modern phenomena, achieving expression in the explorations of Lewis and Clark, Von Humboldt, Byrd, Nansen, Rasmussen, etc. But there have been interesting medieval expressions of this virtue such as in Cabeza de Vaca and, for all their horrible excesses, the Conquistadors. The earliest expression of this in the Greek world has got to be Aristeas of Proconnesus. Prehistory is itself a grand tale of this most human virtue. So how come here has been no attempt to describe the unique moral virtue that is present in these men as a Moral Virtue? Much of what is taught in ethics classes is conformity to a limited range of virtues. We essentially give away only that safe and secure set of morals and virtues which society has an interest in cultivating in its drones. It is bad form to even mention the "virtues of artists", precisely because they generally do not have them. When I think of exploration, adventure, testing the limits, I think that there is something of value here, something in the human character that is willing to go outside the fold, to see the world with direct eyes, to be open to transformation in the liminal space.

Feng and a fresh Pere Marquette steelhead 

Freestanding Conceptions of Justice

The question of whether freestanding conceptions of justice are truly possible is enormously interesting. A "freestanding" conception of justice is the term John Rawls employs to describe a conception of justice that "is neither presented as, nor as derived from, (a comprehensive doctrine)" (P.L., 12) It is, in other words, an abstraction made by citizens away from their religious or philosophical views. Surveying the public political culture of our society we seek to identify a conception of justice that best expresses the practice of citizens in the political institutions of a free, democratic society. Our comprehensive views may support this concept--and indeed Rawls is hopeful that reasonable comprehensive views will be able to support this--but we must ask whether it is possible for citizens to operate with an attenuated of the right, one in which they bracket off their own deeper convictions for the sake of limiting justice.

the paradoxes of freedom

Paradoxes of freedom arise when citizens exist in a political space governed by ideals of freedom and autonomy and when these citizens simulaneously exist in an economic space of control and heteronymy. These paradoxes in turn generate what social theorists call a "legitimation crisis". This means that the values of the political space are but empty lip service when the concrete form of life is rather one of narrow oppression. It is characteristic of modernity to claim autonomy as a moral ideal. It is characteristic of capitalism, on the other hand, to require a degree of oppression in the form of forced labor (even if one is "free"). The paradox arises in this case when we discover that we are not what we think we are and yet find both schemes of explanation somewhow accurate.