Ciceronian Review

Top Hat

Salt Lake City has a pretty good ballet company Ballet West.  Not great or New York good, but pretty good, and well worth watching (or paying to see I should say).  I go once or twice a year.  They have a short program season, half to two-thirds of which I cannot bear.  Not because of the dancers but the choreography.  Nutcracker -- no never again without a small person who has never seen it, and probably never at all except at the best companies.  And then they do an old big thing, La Bayadere (which is not old, but still lumbers a bit).  I try to go to the programs with short pieces and multiple choreographers.  Which is a long way to a short review of the last show of the season.
As I said, good dancers.  They are always a bit better than I expect them to be.  And they do the traditional stuff very well indeed (relative to being here).  The corps is pretty good and good at being a corp.  (Plenty of times I say ABT corps perform anything but as a corp, so it is an accomplishment.)  So the ending program was a nice mix of traditional and modern ballet choreography Balanchine's Serenade (which was quite nice), Caniparoli's Hamlet and Ophelia which I likes a lot, followed by Bruce Marks' Continuo.  Most of the last was  last.  Not very interesting, beyond a piece for a lot of men to dance.  A few good bits, but overall nothing more than passing time.  Show ended with Twyla Tharp's Nine Sinatra Songs, very funny dance.  Done well, the dance is very funny, even if you don't know much about dance.  Funny and interesting.  But, what I found interesting is that Ballet West did a bad job with it.  The dancers knew their parts (even if various bits of costuming fell off).  And they did some impressive things, particularly when one dancer lost her shoe, all fine.  It was clear, however, that they could not perform the dance properly -- they were not loose enough I think, or not quite something.  I fell into the notion that because the Tharp piece is more relaxed, that a lesser company would be better at it.  On the contrary, and to my surprise.  I've seen it done a number of times, with the likes of Baryshnikov and Farrell.  But this performance showed me just how really accomplished the performances were, how very difficult it is.  It was a surprise to me to realize that the piece is hard for anyone not at the very top of ballet, or perhaps trained as modern or jazz dancer. 
I know this seems to end negatively.  I enjoyed the show and will be back, and the dancers are good.

And the really odd thing, the thing that is astonishing, is that Ballet West is one of about half a dozen pretty good to decent professional companies in Utah, that Utah supports more and better professional dance than Los Angeles. 

Polling

 

 It is obvious that the Pennsylvania primary solved nothing for the Demoncrats. All of the arguments from before the primary are re-circulating. But a fair portion of the analysis and the arguments are tissue thin. There is no weight to arguments about who is better positioned to stand against McCain, because that is all too far off and too unpredictable. The polls now are simply not stark enough to bear any weight. After all, if polls eight months in advance of events were good predicators, there would be no contest in the Demoncratic party – Clinton would be the nominee. Hasn’t worked that way. And has not historically – polls this far in advance of elections are not much help. So we should ignore that line of argument. Similarly, it is very hard to know whether and the extent of defections from Clinton or Obama to McCain (or home with a beer). It is foolish to make much of anything of those sorts of poll results this far from the event. To harp on a favorite of mine, Carter lost because of Khomeini. The polling, up until shortly before the election, did not show Reagan winning.  Tea leaves. The one with the most votes? Well, okay, but do we really mean to say that people who attend caucuses don’t count, or count less?  Why should that oddity of delegate selection make a difference? The point is that these are short term debating points, not matters of principle.

Last week - Thursday I believe - The Daily Show did a very funny and biting piece on Clinton's changing views on what justifies her nomination.  Sometimes it is voting, sometimes it is support of people who are Deoncrats and sometimes those not Demoncrats.  Sometimes it is the party regulars and stalwarts, and sometimes it is anyone but.

Too bad she could not bother to read the Intelligence Estimate before she voted for war.  But that would confuse the issue with facts.

Time Wasting

I took another look at the Johns Adams series over the weekend.  Another disappointment.  I do not think the acting is bad, but I find the script just dull, and entirely too talky.  The characters were not interesting in the first three episodes, and the story was all in the telling -- not much of anything happened on the screen.  The Constitutional Congress scenes were, for example, awful: speech after speech with no sense of the world around.  I stopped in from time to time on other episodes, and it was always the same.  Didactic speeches and poses struck.  Maybe I just don't care about the characters. 

A good contrast is with Rome, another HBO effort.  There were speeches there too, but the characters did things as well.  The speeches led into events, did not merely recite them.  It as also interesting because there was a greater range of characters, it was not merely the high in conflict with one another.  The Tudors is just the high and mighty prancing about and indulging themselves.  That show is difficult to listen to.  But the clothes are lovely -- I watch every week for the clothing.  But who cares about any of the people; they are so small, metaphorically.  In John Adams, the folk are small in both senses.

Libertarianism est arrivee

These are the heady days of libertarianism.  It has arrived, and will shortly fill the law reviews.  Green and glorious, the center of all right-thinking people of good faith.  (Well, perhaps faith is not required.)  But here it is.  We know this because Cass Sunstein is writing about it, and Sunstein is an inerrant indicator of high intellectual fashion.  Whatever it is he is writing about, that is at about to be the thing to write about in the legal academy.  No matter the quality, there he is.  Civic republicanism (oh, sadly, a life measured in only a few years), web communities (which he got completely wrong) and so on.  So, exploit it while you can. And, one hopes, more serious thinking will get some attention as well.  Or not -- any reference by Sunstein to Otsuka? 
Whatever Friedman's merits as an economist, in political theory he was almost always out of his depth.   His efforts in philosophy were uniformly failures.  But that should matter greatly as he was an economist and it is that field in which we should judge him.  Like most of Sunstein, this too is about two inches deep.

Donna Dog

Harraway's book is divided into three sections, by subject and style.  The middle and final sections are the most accessible, and they were the most interesting for me.  Harraway is a biologist at UCSC  (the loveliest university in the county).  The book is not so much about when and how species interact, but rather about interactions between human beings and dogs (with some side stories and thoughts).  That is why I bought it.  When not being a theorist, she has interesting things to say; when talking biology theory she has interesting to things to say.  Philosophy, not so articulate.  I think one of the key messages is that species meet, interact.  In other words, there is somebody, albeit rather different, on the other side.  Dogs are intelligent and interesting creatures, as are lots and lots of other creatures.  (I think bees are in the category, too.)  So how to interact in ways that respect the conscious fellow over there?  She has things to say about that which consider the dog without anthropomorphizing the monsters.  A good and proper balance, respecting the drives different sorts of dogs experience.  That comes through much more clearly in the last two sections.  The second is mostly about her experiences with her dog in agility competitions.  (Basically, running obstacle courses -- a sport virtually designed for Australian shepherds.)  A bit much about the place in Sonoma -- clearly someone is getting paid well -- but that is envy (Sonoma is gorgeous).  That part of the book should be of interest to all sorts of dog nuts, like me.  The last section is more personal reminiscence about her family and career and so on.  I found the discussions of family touching.  The career story was different.  Touching in a different way because, in the middle of a discussion of some (in my view, not hers) remarkably silly people, she discusses Gary Lease, who recently died and from whom I took some classes long ago.  That discussion reminded me of that time.  But it also included a very kind discussion of contrasting misunderstanding.  One discussion starts out with meeting some graduate students who are soon off to a celebration of a birth, the celebration involving, inter alia, eating the placenta (cooked, apparently -- gourmet cannibals I guess), followed shortly by a dinner hosted by Lease who served freshly killed wild boar (my that would have been great) and the hostility of some to such meat (and maybe to meat tout court).  I guess mass destruction of insects does not matter.  Cannibalism is okay but eating the wild is not.  Not clear what theory moved these people. 

The first section is a discussion of theory informed by Foucault and Freud.  Fraud and fake.  It does provide an opaque apparatus that looks smart.  But neither should be taken that seriously.  Freud was a failure as a scientist, and largely a fraud.  Foucault is no better -- an archeology without historical accuracy.  With some Lacan thrown in.  If you spend the time, the ideas in this section match well enough to the other, and there is a theory of sorts.  But the language is not only an obstacle, the theoretical apparatus is a mess, and, ultimately, wrongheaded. 

I read Donna Haraway's When Species Meet recently.  Near the end of the book she talks a bit about her colleague at UCSC Gary Lease.  (About the book tomorrow.)  I took several classes from Lease back in the day.  He taught in religious studies, as far as I knew then all concerned with the ancient Mediterranean religions.  The classes I took concerned that -- Mithraic cults and the like.  Quite interesting stuff, even for the likes of me.  What stood out was the effectiveness of Lease in conveying something of the experiences involved in the religions, what it is that was done, not just recitation of the doctrines and/or beliefs.  We sacrificed a ram in one class.  In addition to the shock of killing an animal, there was an attempt to convey the import for the religion of sacrifice.  I thought him a wonderful teacher.  He introduced me to Metamorphosis, a work I still think about and have re-read (in translation I hasten to add).  The focus on experiential aspects of the ancient religions made them intelligible I thought.  (Really, myths alone get dull pretty quickly I think, particularly when one is lounging about in Santa Cruz.)  And it made it a little easier to understand religious belief at all.  I thought he was a prototypical teacher for SC, an odd guy committed to interesting things and activities, and out of the mold.  Not a lot of folks on the UCSC faculty hunted.  Lease died in January, and I had been thinking about that off and on.  Dying and dead people have been on my mind a good deal in recent months.  And then Lease pops up in a book, which, even in the few pages, convey well what Lease was like, at least to students like me.
There is a memorial scholarship:

Faith Talk

I watched the Faith event for the Demoncrat candidates last night.  It was as interesting as the usual debates.  Start with the most important thing -- what Hillary wore.  Lovely yellow outfit of some kind.  No, what was interesting was that her skin came out very yellow.  Maybe the TV or the lighting, but she looked horribly jaundiced.  Kind of  distracting for a while, I admit.  Barack has a purple tie -- or was it blue?  He looked a little yellow, come to think of it. 

Of course neither would answer the question about when life begins -- and for the expected reasons.  Hillary also got a question about termination of life (I don't recall if Barack was asked the same question -- he should have been as the hosts stuck closely to the same questions for each).  She dodged all around, as expected.   Another one no one will answer.  But I am not all that disappointed.  I did not expect direct answers, not to those questions.  I was pleased that Barack did affirm belief in modern biology, even if it took a few minutes for him to get to. 

It was a political performance in most respects -- what do you say to those who think there is too much religion in the public forum?  Well, blah on and on, and just don't be mean in advancing religious views.  I did not think either gave persuasive answers to that, although Obama came closer.  I wonder if it is just that his way of side-stepping is more comfortable to me than her way of side-stepping?  Both danced around a number of issues.

At the end of the night, there was no change for me.  Spent a short time listening to the commentary and wondered once again why those people get paid.  After reciting the most painfully obvious points, they seem to have nothing to say.  No insight into what was said or even who was chosen to ask questions. 

It is also interesting to be completely marginalized.  No interest there is talking to atheists or agnostics.  Not in a church, then you can be passed by.  Which is, after all, true.  No one loses elections by ignoring the atheists, and no one wins by attending to them. 

Ruination Day

Today is the anniversary of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.  Among the US Presidents, he is without parallel.   

The Second Inaugural Address is below the fold. 

Odd Humor

Last week Clinton appeared on the late night chat show, Tonight Show.  She made joke with Leno about dodging sniper fire to get to the show.  I take it the aim was to make light of a "misstatement" about visiting Tuzla under fire when, in fact, she sauntered across the landing field for a reception with children.  I see the political idea here -- the jokes acknowledge error, show an ability to acknowledge error, present an appearance of self-awareness, etc.  Huckabee on The Daily Show.

For me, it does not work.  I am an outlier I suppose, on this.  I found the joking horrifying.  First, it seem a rather odd way to respond to being caught in a lie.  Clinton did not make a "misstatement" -- she lied about the subject and persisted after others present contradicted her.  (Sounds a bit Bush to me.)  Second, more important, it seems a peculiar line for someone who hopes to lead the military to make jokes about the circumstances of war -- what is it that is funny about sniper fire?  Particularly when there are US troops under fire now.  (It is all the worse to me that Chelsea is plainly not going to be making any sacrifice for her country -- more of the Bush league.) 

I think her campaign ended with the Tuzla issue.  Think about the ads come November -- start with McCain returning from Viet Nam.  Next, put up Clinton talking about Tuzla, running the voice over a picture from the actual Tuzla landing and reception.  Tag lines are pretty easy -- A Commander in Chief Who Tells the Truth - Vote McCain.  Run similar scenario with excerpts from the Leno jokes. 

Philosophy is a scam.

According to my email filter, Philosophy is a scam.  Should have known. 
I get announcements from Oxford about several different categories of books.  The emails re books on law and on classics come through fine, but the email for new books in philosophy is always marked as a potential scam.  The humanities really have fallen into disrepute.  Or maybe it is just the prevalence of books about Hegel?