Outer Life's Outer Links

Faun

Before the Great Inflation

I remember when I was treasurer of Harvard we had a bookkeeper who'd got the same salary for twenty years. He was doing the same work. He didn't expect a raise. You got promoted, sure; but not just a raise on general principles.

Paul Cabot, quoted by John Train in The Money Masters.

Paradoxically Speaking

Life is interesting with some paradox. When I run into a paradox I think either I’m a total horse’s ass to have gotten to this point, or I’m fruitfully near the edge of my discipline. It adds excitement to life to wonder which it is.

Charles T. Munger, "Academic Economics: Strengths and Faults After Considering Interdisciplinary Needs," Herbert Kay Undergraduate Lecture, University of California, Santa Barbara Economics Department (October 3, 2003).

An Interchangeable Pair of Organ-Grinder Monkeys

[It] was, properly speaking, not a "movie" at all, but a brief, fevered glimpse into a previously unsuspected entertainment limbo that haunts our own world like some nightmarish alternate universe. . . .

[The Olsen] twins are indeed monsters, Frankensteinian creatures conjured up by the ruthless logic of our entertainment machine. They had to exist, because it was [im]possible for them to. Chained since the age of one to the drudgery of churning out TV series and straight-to-video movies for children (almost 40 of them in their 17 grim years on earth), these youthful media moguls have the burned-out gaze and hangdog servility of an interchangeable pair of organ-grinder monkeys.

Liz Penn, reviewing New York Minute in "Girl Movies '04: The Good, the Bad and the Sparkly" (The High Sign).

We're All Rance

He skewers Hollywood and the cult of celebrity on an anonymous Web log that has spawned a cult following. He claims to be an A-list actor, writing under a pseudonym, but admits he may not be believed.

Who, exactly, is "Rance?" . . .

"The guessing game distracts from any message I might have," [Rance] told Reuters. "Then again, I'm not yet sure I have a message and in any case the amusement makes it all worth it. More than once I've seen items that upon first glance suggested the game might be up and I felt my stomach plummet."

Rance said he set up the Web site on a whim with help from a computer-savvy friend, seeing it as a "really good way to bitch about my job" without suffering any career repercussions. He chose the name "Rance" as a pun on "rants." . . .

"With no disrespect intended, media in general seldom if ever permits a person, be he actor or President, to present himself the way he would like -- and certainly not to the degree a blog does," Rance said.

"Still, there's a megabyte or two's worth of irony in my situation," he said.

Dan Whitcomb, writing about his interview with Rance in "Hollywood Mystery Man 'Rance' Has Internet Abuzz" (Reuters).

A Beavis & Butthead Moment

The authors nail some interesting questions.

Andrew David Chamberlain, in "Thinking About Prostitution" (The Idea Shop).

Mmmmm Portugalade

Augustus Carp, Esq., describing his discovery of a delightful new beverage called "Portugalade":

I had seldom experienced such a sense of warmth and comfort as it very quickly began to endow me with. Peculiarly attractive to the nostril, it was no less grateful to the tongue, while upon its downward passage, it lent an extraordinary balm to a naturally irritable digestive system.

Nay, it did more, for as it enriched the blood mounting to an always responsive brain, I found myself the vehicle of a delightful flow of new and most valuable ideas. I say valuable, and this was indeed the case, but many of them were also outstandingly humorous, and time after time I was obliged to call for silence so that none of those present might fail to hear them.

Sir Henry Howard Bashford, from Augustus Carp Esq., by Himself.

Ulysses and Outer Life Are More Alike Than You Think

Michael Blowhard on James Joyce's Ulysses:

But, it's hard to avoid reflecting that it's a little absurd to expect many people to be thrilled by a book that's really hard to get through, that doesn't have much action, that is widely recognized to be intellectually and structurally overcomplicated, and that tends to put even those who are willing, prepared and eager [to read it] to sleep.

Michael Blowhard, in "'Ulysses' on Audio" (2Blowhards).

The Hardest Question on the Overpopulation Test

I'm not going to say that the problems commonly lumped together as overpopulation are not problems. They are problems. Attempts to make fewer people are not necessarily going to fix those problems. Attempts to fix the problems are more likely to fix the problems. Now, if you define as a problem your opinion that there are "too many" people, then you should be subjected to this test: Pick the people you think shouldn't exist. If you think America is currently doubly overpopulated (and some people do), then you should be happy if I chose at random half of your friends for you to give up. You have to tell these (soon to be former) friends "I wish you didn't exist. The world would be a better place without you. Never speak to me again."

Russell Nelson, in "Overpopulation" (The Angry Economist).

If We Could Just Teach the World to Sing

It is the habitual fantasy of many Americans that if the U.S. would just stop intervening abroad everybody in the world would enact the lyrics of John Lennon's "Imagine." History suggests otherwise.

Niall Ferguson, interviewed by Frank Bures in "Our Imperial Imperative" (The Atlantic). Link swiped from Dr. Curmudgeon & Co..

A Hygienic and Innocent Pastime

Perhaps our happiest times, however, were those spent with Nature during my father's annual fortnight's holiday, when we would usually procure lodgings at some such salubrious resort as Clacton-on-Sea or Cliftonville, near Margate. Here we would abandon ourselves to the contemplation of the waves, and here, under my father's skilful tuition, I became quite an adept at an entrancing pursuit less well known, I think, than it should be.

Consisting in the first place of the selection of a flat-shaped stone -- itself often a gleeful and difficult task -- it then becomes the object of the participators in the game to propel this seawards across the surface of the ocean. Being heavier than water, it would naturally be supposed that at the first impact with the latter the stone would sink; and indeed, if projected by an unskilled player, this is what usually eventuates. As I was happy to demonstrate, however, to our Sunday School mistresses only last year at Southend, in the hands of a careful and experienced performer this is by no means necessarily the case. Supporting the stone, with its flatter surface downwards, on the flexed middle finger of the thrower's hand, his (or her) forefinger should lie along its circumference, the thumb gently resting on its superior surface. It should then be so cast as to travel horizontally, its flat surface parallel to the surface of the water, with the surprising result that, when at last it drops, it bounces into the air again and proceeds onwards. Nay, it may even, in the hands of the most expert, repeat this process two or three times, to the intense and delighted fascination of those who have been privileged to witness him.

Not lacking in the element of competition, yet devoid of all possibility of personal danger, affording healthful exercise, but at the same time immune from the perils of over-exertion, it has always seemed strange to me that, up to the present, it has played so small a part in our national life. An island community, here if anywhere is a diversion that should surely appeal to us; and I for one should rejoice to see the day when, instead of the football ground and the tennis pitch, our coasts should be thronged with eager young men and women enjoying this hygienic and innocent pastime.

Sir Henry Howard Bashford, from Augustus Carp Esq., by Himself.

Chomsky and Outer Life on Spectator Sports: An Odd Confluence, Or Strange Bedfellows

And spectator sports also have other useful functions too. For one thing, they’re a great way to build up chauvinism — you start by developing these totally irrational loyalties early in life, and they translate very nicely to other areas. I mean, I remember very well in high school having a sudden kind of Erlebnis, you know, a sudden insight, and asking myself, why do I care if my high school football team wins? I don’t know anybody on the team. They don’t know me. I wouldn’t know what to say to them if I met them. Why do I care? Why do I get all excited if the football team wins and all downcast if it loses? . . .

All of this stuff builds up extremely anti-social aspects of human psychology. I mean, they’re there; there’s no doubt that they’re there. But they’re emphasized, and exaggerated, and brought out by spectator sports: irrational competition, irrational loyalty to power systems, passive acquiescence to quite awful values, really. In fact, it’s hard to imagine anything that contributes more fundamentally to authoritarian attitudes than this does, in addition to the fact that it just engages a lot of intelligence and keeps people away from other things.

Noam Chomsky, speaking of "Spectator Sports" in Understanding Power, reprinted at "Spectator Sports" (Soul Pacific). Link via "Chomsky on Sports" (Elliptic Blog).

See "Taking the Spectator Out of Spectator Sports" for Outer Life's take on spectator sports.

But Without A Beat I Can't Dance to It

The fact is that today the young, educated and sophisticated listeners who, 40 years ago, would have paid attention to classical music, have turned to fashionable genres like indie rock. They even practice the connoisseurial behavior — seeking out obscure artists, reveling in the cachet of cult knowledge — that "high-brow" listeners apply to classical music. . . .

It is only the content of the music — the aesthetics — that differ.

Which brings up an inflammatory and un-PC question: Is one genre of art superior to another? I have no grudge against contemporary popular music (with the possible exception of Radiohead). It's ephemerally and ironically fun at its best. But classical music at its best offers works that are dense with meaning, hard to immediately grasp and therefore more interesting for a longer time.

So if the classical music establishment wants to lure young listeners, the real task is to reassert the absolute value of the Western art music tradition. In other words, classical music leaders must challenge today's entrenched post-counterculture relativism that sees a Schubert symphony as the equivalent of the latest White Stripes album.

John V. Bennett, in "Rachmaninoff Isn't Radiohead, Dude!" (LA Times).

Chicken With Its Head Cut Off

Eligible, not too stupid
Intelligible, cute as cupid
Knowledgeable, but not always right
Salvageable, and free for the night

Well my heart's runnin' round like a chicken with its head cut off
All around the barn yard falling in and out of love
Poor thing's blind as a bat
Gettin' up, fallin' down, gettin' up
Who'd fall in love with a chicken with its head cut off?

My wife doesn't understand me
Many dozens, hope to land me
I'm for free love
And I'm in free fall
This could be love
Or nothing at all

We don't have to stars exploding in the night
Or electric eels under the covers
We don't have to be
Anything quite so unreal
Let's just be lovers

The Magnetic Fields, Lyrics to "Chicken With Its Head Cut Off" from Volume 1 of 69 Love Songs.