Canadian Hockey

Emotions are still a little raw after the Canadians got trounced in hockey, and one Canadian declared, "Also, the Bruins had more Canadian players and the Canucks more Americans so all this proves is that Canadians are better hockey players." An interesting point. But what they don't seem to understand is that in America we have a lot more opportunities to do other things besides hockey and dog-sledding. Besides, hockey is kind of a nasty game, people beating each other with sticks.

( Macro Fun )

Canadian Hockey

Emotions are still a little raw after the Canadians got trounced in hockey, and one Canadian declared, "Also, the Bruins had more Canadian players and the Canucks more Americans so all this proves is that Canadians are better hockey players." An interesting point. But what they don't seem to understand is that in America we have a lot more opportunities to do other things besides hockey and dog-sledding. Besides, hockey is kind of a nasty game, people beating each other with sticks.

( Macro Fun )

Scott Adams on the Nature of Men

Scott Adams, the "Dilbert" cartoon guy, has put up a post that is riling some feathers, as he takes up the sexually charged issue of men behaving like men badly. People are bashing him for being an apologist for rape. I think he is just playing on the idea why the world is not a happy place. Christians might call it original sin, our depraved nature.

( Man Talk )

Scott Adams on the Nature of Men

Scott Adams, the "Dilbert" cartoon guy, has put up a post that is riling some feathers, as he takes up the sexually charged issue of men behaving like men badly. People are bashing him for being an apologist for rape. I think he is just playing on the idea why the world is not a happy place. Christians might call it original sin, our depraved nature.

( Man Talk )

The Red Market

Whereas black markets trade in illegal goods like guns and drugs, the “red market,” the journalist Scott Carney says in his revealing if somewhat scattershot new book, trades in human flesh — in kidneys and other organs, in human corneas, blood, bones and eggs. Many of the real-life examples he cites in this chilling volume cannot help but remind the reader of a horror movie, or of Kazuo Ishiguro’s devastating dystopian novel “Never Let Me Go” (2005), in which we learn that a group of children are clones who have been raised to “donate” replacement body parts.

In “The Red Market” Mr. Carney recounts the story of a police raid on a dairy farmer’s land in a small Indian border town that freed 17 people who had been confined in shacks and who said they’d been bled at least two times per week. “The Blood Factory,” as it was called in the local press, he writes, “was supplying a sizable percentage” of the city hospitals’ blood supply.

-- Michiko Kakitani for The New York Times

Carney also brings out the class effects: “Eventually, red markets have the nasty social side effect of moving flesh upward — never downward — through social classes. Even without a criminal element, unrestricted free markets act like vampires, sapping the health and strength from ghettos of poor donors and funneling their parts to the wealthy.”

Of course, this true of all trade, whether it's the legitimate trade of normal goods and services or other sorts of black market goods such as sex. But it does seem only more gruesome when it comes to these red markets. It would seem that more technology can sometimes have the effect of making the world nastier.

The Red Market

Whereas black markets trade in illegal goods like guns and drugs, the “red market,” the journalist Scott Carney says in his revealing if somewhat scattershot new book, trades in human flesh — in kidneys and other organs, in human corneas, blood, bones and eggs. Many of the real-life examples he cites in this chilling volume cannot help but remind the reader of a horror movie, or of Kazuo Ishiguro’s devastating dystopian novel “Never Let Me Go” (2005), in which we learn that a group of children are clones who have been raised to “donate” replacement body parts.

In “The Red Market” Mr. Carney recounts the story of a police raid on a dairy farmer’s land in a small Indian border town that freed 17 people who had been confined in shacks and who said they’d been bled at least two times per week. “The Blood Factory,” as it was called in the local press, he writes, “was supplying a sizable percentage” of the city hospitals’ blood supply.

-- Michiko Kakitani for The New York Times

Carney also brings out the class effects: “Eventually, red markets have the nasty social side effect of moving flesh upward — never downward — through social classes. Even without a criminal element, unrestricted free markets act like vampires, sapping the health and strength from ghettos of poor donors and funneling their parts to the wealthy.”

Of course, this true of all trade, whether it's the legitimate trade of normal goods and services or other sorts of black market goods such as sex. But it does seem only more gruesome when it comes to these red markets. It would seem that more technology can sometimes have the effect of making the world nastier.

Genesis 12 Abraham

And the Lord said to Abram, “Go forth from your land and your birthplace and your father’s house to the land I will show you. And I will make you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great, and you shall be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you, and those who damn you I will curse, and all the clans of the earth through you shall be blessed.”

-- Genesis 12: 1-3

Things have finally settled down on the planet. We have been expelled from paradise, corrupted in sin, and we have been wiped out in a global flood, save for one seafaring family, and we have been made estranged from each other and dispersed over all the earth for building a great skyscraper (great by ancient standards).

With Abraham, the story becomes more standard, more like a soap opera, the story of a God-fearing clan through whom God will work out His destiny for humankind. Alter points out a textual indicator of this narrative shift:

The Israeli biblical scholar Moshe Weinfeld has aptly noted that after the string of curses that begins with Adam and Eve, human history reaches a turning point with Abraham, as blessings instead of curses are emphatically promised.

On a personal note, for such a key, holy text of Western civilization, I find much of the upcoming story on Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to be a bit flat and underwhelming, this extended family drama of nomadic shepherds. It is no “Iliad” as far as reading pleasure is concerned. Nevertheless, it does have its moments and charms, and it is at the foundation of our cultural heritage, and I am hoping that Alter’s commentary will enrich the matter.

Genesis 12 Abraham

And the Lord said to Abram, “Go forth from your land and your birthplace and your father’s house to the land I will show you. And I will make you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great, and you shall be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you, and those who damn you I will curse, and all the clans of the earth through you shall be blessed.”

-- Genesis 12: 1-3

Things have finally settled down on the planet. We have been expelled from paradise, corrupted in sin, and we have been wiped out in a global flood, save for one seafaring family, and we have been made estranged from each other and dispersed over all the earth for building a great skyscraper (great by ancient standards).

With Abraham, the story becomes more standard, more like a soap opera, the story of a God-fearing clan through whom God will work out His destiny for humankind. Alter points out a textual indicator of this narrative shift:

The Israeli biblical scholar Moshe Weinfeld has aptly noted that after the string of curses that begins with Adam and Eve, human history reaches a turning point with Abraham, as blessings instead of curses are emphatically promised.

On a personal note, for such a key, holy text of Western civilization, I find much of the upcoming story on Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to be a bit flat and underwhelming, this extended family drama of nomadic shepherds. It is no “Iliad” as far as reading pleasure is concerned. Nevertheless, it does have its moments and charms, and it is at the foundation of our cultural heritage, and I am hoping that Alter’s commentary will enrich the matter.

The Paradox of Fiction and the Possibly Real

Sully leads us to a little literary discussion. Brandon Watson gives us the "paradox of fiction":

We human beings read, watch, and listen to a lot of fiction. We know that it is fiction. But we have emotional responses and attachments to the characters. So, according to Colin Radford, who first put it forward, this shows that there's something incoherent in our emotional responses: we feel for things we know don't exist.

But what I really like is the answer to this paradox that J. L. Wall gives us:

Fiction doesn’t present the unreal; it presents the possibly real, something balancing precariously between the real and the non. (This holds, it should be said, for fantasy, science fiction, and other “genres” as well as in realistic or literary fiction; they just go about it, as is the case in variation between individual works, in different ways.) We empathize with fictional beings not despite their unreality, but because of their possible reality.

I know these possible realities, especially cast in beautiful literary art, make my life's reality bearable and a lot more interesting.

Although I enjoy movies, the power of the visual is such that I cannot really identify with the characters, because they are so not me, which can be plainly seen as well as heard in their voices. When the ideas are expressed in written words, I think it is easier to lose oneself directly in those ideas. If I see Brad Pitt on the screen, I may enjoy the action and the movie and even feel for the character, but I know completely and profoundly that that is not me. When reading the thoughts and actions of a protagonist on the printed page, on the other hand, there is not that immediate and cold remove between me and the art, and I am deeper into the illusion of fiction.

The Paradox of Fiction and the Possibly Real

Sully leads us to a little literary discussion. Brandon Watson gives us the "paradox of fiction":

We human beings read, watch, and listen to a lot of fiction. We know that it is fiction. But we have emotional responses and attachments to the characters. So, according to Colin Radford, who first put it forward, this shows that there's something incoherent in our emotional responses: we feel for things we know don't exist.

But what I really like is the answer to this paradox that J. L. Wall gives us:

Fiction doesn’t present the unreal; it presents the possibly real, something balancing precariously between the real and the non. (This holds, it should be said, for fantasy, science fiction, and other “genres” as well as in realistic or literary fiction; they just go about it, as is the case in variation between individual works, in different ways.) We empathize with fictional beings not despite their unreality, but because of their possible reality.

I know these possible realities, especially cast in beautiful literary art, make my life's reality bearable and a lot more interesting.

Although I enjoy movies, the power of the visual is such that I cannot really identify with the characters, because they are so not me, which can be plainly seen as well as heard in their voices. When the ideas are expressed in written words, I think it is easier to lose oneself directly in those ideas. If I see Brad Pitt on the screen, I may enjoy the action and the movie and even feel for the character, but I know completely and profoundly that that is not me. When reading the thoughts and actions of a protagonist on the printed page, on the other hand, there is not that immediate and cold remove between me and the art, and I am deeper into the illusion of fiction.