St. Obama, Deliver Us ...

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Flash: The Hubble Is Back

See The Inquirer (Oct 18 2008)

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Greenery

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Timbers & Piers

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Fall Nears

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Market Crises versus Market Ajustments

A major cause of the current financial crisis, it is said, is the "depressed" real estate market. But "depressed" implies that real estate prices are too low. One could also easily say -- and many people did say -- that real estate prices were "inflated." On the whole, it is a good thing that the price of residential housing has declined -- and let's hope that efforts to pump up prices to their previous "inflated" levels fail.

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The Philosophy Teacher

Jonathan Mahler, "The Thinker," NYTimes (Sept. 19, 2008):

After class, [Professor Kelly] Jolley and I walked across Auburn’s mostly deserted campus and into town for lunch. It was oppressively hot and humid; Jolley wore a fraying straw boater to keep the sun off his face. Over pizza and iced tea, I asked him if he ever wondered whether his style of teaching might be inappropriate for a large state school like Auburn — if the cost of his approach is that he’s teaching to the few rather than the many. “My view is that you really fall into a trap when you start allowing what you believe about your students to dictate how you teach your discipline,” he answered. “Too often these days we end up setting up our courses in light of what we believe about our students and we end up not teaching them. At best, we end up housebreaking them.”

[snip, snip]

In Jolley’s ideal world, every student would catch the philosophy flame, but he knows this will never happen. He says that philosophy requires a certain rare and innate ability — the ability to step outside yourself and observe your own mind in the act of thinking. In this respect, Jolley recognizes that his detractors have a point when they criticize his approach to teaching. “It’s aristocratic in the sense that any selection based on talent is aristocratic,” he told me. “I know it offends everyone’s sense of democracy, this idea that everyone’s equal, but we all know that’s just not true.”

Perhaps the dispute between Jolley and his critics boils down to how you define great teachers. You typically think about them as being devoted, above all, to their students. Jolley says his first priority is to philosophy itself. “I care about the discipline of philosophy more than the academic fate of any individual student — and I think I should,” he said. “Otherwise I’m just a baby sitter who occasionally breaks into syllogism.”

Jolley's notion that his philosophical endeavors in the classroom ought to be pitched to the best students rather than to average students is perhaps questionable. But his commitment to rigor is admirable. I, any event, admire his courage and his quite-literal idealism.

One has the sense or hope that Prof. Jolley thinks the "best" students are the most inquisitive. And with that thesis it is hard to disagree.

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One Trillion for Wall Steet but Not One Farthing for Social Security or Medicare?

Social Security is going bankrupt (it is said) and we can't continue down that path!

Medicare is going bankrupt (it is said) and we can't continue down that path!

Wall Street is going bankrupt (it is a fact) and we can't continue down that path. Throw the Street a trillion dollars! That'll fix things. But ... Social Security ... Medicare? Well...we can't afford such profligacy, now can we?

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The Nature of Visibility

The weather forecaster just said that it is a beautiful day and that "visibility is as far as the eye can see."

Well, gee, that's an interesting proposition. Or not?

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Freedom of the Press Russian Style

Philip P Pan, "Russian Activist Shot Dead By Police," washingtonpost.com (Sept. 1, 2008):

A leading opposition figure in Russia's volatile Ingushetia province was shot and killed Sunday after being detained by police, authorities said. His colleagues issued a call for protests in response, and human rights groups demanded an investigation.

Magomed Yevloyev, a businessman and the owner of a Web site that angered Kremlin-backed local leaders with its coverage of official corruption and police abuse, suffered a gunshot wound to his head while in a police car taking him to a station for interrogation, a spokesman for the Russian prosecutor's office told the Interfax news agency.

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258,000 houses destroyed by earthquake?

It appears that another terrible tragedy has taken place in Sichuan Province in the People's Republic of China. An earthquake has leveled 258,000 houses. So AP reports that Xinhua News Agency reported today.

But how did the Chinese news agency manage to come up with this large number just two days after the earthquake? Is there a chance it might be a bit high? A bit low? A bit too precise?

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Personality Cult

The country worries about Hillary Clinton's psyche. Or some of the country does. And HR Clinton seems to encourage us to worry about her psyche.

In some countries the public worries about the psyche of the Great Man. Now are to worry about the psyche of the Great Woman?

Disgusting. We've got more important things to worry about.

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What about MY Catharsis?

The NYTimes reports that "Mrs. Clinton is in the midst of a 'catharsis.'"

Well, I'm in a midst of a catharsis too. So why am I not getting press and media attention? Darned unfair, I say.

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Rembrandt in the New World

'Tis Time

Windows on Train Gateway to the New World

Ellis Island again

Gather While Ye May

Grass & Leaves in Late Summer in Liberty Park

By the Hudson in Late Summer

Soviet Man Spoke Russian

Not much has changed. I see that many people even in the American media are wont to refer to Ossetians and Abkhazians as "Russians." Of course, the Abkhaz and the Ossetians are not ethnic Russians. Stalin tended to deport people in order to do away with nationalist sentiments. Today Russia just reclassifies people; it gives them passports and calls them "Russians." (And if that doesn't work, the Russians like to obliterate the towns and the countryside that the offending populations inhabit. See, e.g., Grozny, Chechnya. Afterwards a democratic referendum is held [the dead do not have a vote] and peace is proclaimed.)

The Europeans have the right approach: let Czechoslavakia break into two countries and then invite both to join a truly transnational union. Of course, even the EU is not fully consistent. Witness its member states' treatment of, say, Basque nationalist sentiments. 

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Sixth Circle of Hades

As punishment for the attack on Georgia, Russia will be condemned, though not to the most nether regions of Hades, but at least to the near-nether regions:

...NATO foreign ministers were discussing possibly scaling back high-level meetings and military cooperation with Russia if it does not abandon crucial positions across Georgia.

Paul Ames, "NATO mulls closer ties with Georgia" (AP), The Guardian online

I imagine Putin will lose many sleepless nights over this terrible ignominy. No contact with the League of Nations! ... er ... NATO. How awful.

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What Is NATO Worth?

Never mind Georgia or Ukraine. Would NATO defend Poland or the Baltic states -- Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania -- against a Russian military attack?

There is good reason to wonder.

The only real protection against Russian military aggression may be to live in the U.S.A. -- or in another country with its own "nuclear shield" -- or in a country such as Afghanistan. (China, for many reasons, is almost surely immune to Russian military aggression.)

Irredentism, it seems, is an ever-recurring human disease.

Is the life expectancy of a Russian male at birth still approximately 57 years? Ah, Russian imperial glory. Well, at least Russia still leads Zimbabwe in this respect. Or so one hopes.

But there is a bright lining to every dark cloud: the reconquest of Georgia would provide more real estate for dachas for Russian apparatchiks -- and, who knows?, it might lead to the birth of a new (Georgian? non-Georgian?) Stalin.

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Cityscape

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Woes of the World: Estimated Five Million "Easily"-Preventable Deaths in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the Last Decade

Sometimes massive human catastrophes are largely ignored by the world. See this BBC Story about the continuing human catastrophe in the DRC.




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The KGB in the 21st Century

What is the meaning of the KGB in the 21st century?

The KGB is crude, dirty, and violent.

Vladimir Putin was a KGB agent.

Perhaps Putin still is a KGB agent -- at least in spirit. But, if so, this KGB man wraps himself in religion.

The Russian state is Putin's god.

God (the real one) help us all!

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Summer in the City

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The (Grisly) Soviet Story

See The Soviet Story

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Summer Reflections, Jersey City 2008

http://tillers.net

Summer 4

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