Friday, November 23, 2007
Another list of books
From the NYT, the top 100 of 2007. None of the fiction really grabbed me; I wanted to read about 50% of the nonfiction.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Monday, November 12, 2007
A Fine Screed
on Norman Mailer, here.
I've never read any Mailer, but I'm pretty sure I share this guy's opinion. Wish I had written the review, too.
I've never read any Mailer, but I'm pretty sure I share this guy's opinion. Wish I had written the review, too.
Friday, November 9, 2007
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Major girl crush
on Kay Hymowitz, who has a great piece in City Journal about the globalization of the single young female.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
The newest age of man: fluid post-adolescence
Brooks calls this "odyssey", which I don't like very much, but I suppose it does need a name.
He suggests that with time, this new generational structure will "solidify." I'm not so sure.
He suggests that with time, this new generational structure will "solidify." I'm not so sure.
Monday, October 8, 2007
Friday, October 5, 2007
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Minivan on the serengetti
You can take the human out of the savannah, but you can't take the savannah out of the human. Here.
Hitchens on Roth
Short version: DO NOT WANT. Here.
Hitchens is a lunatic on religion, but on so many other topics he's right on. This confuses me.
Hitchens is a lunatic on religion, but on so many other topics he's right on. This confuses me.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Interesting questions about universities, the humanities, Western Civ, religion, and the meaning of life, here.
Argues that the research ideal has robbed universities of the ability to address the big questions of metaphysics, and that the humanities can regain the authority to do so by reviving Western Civ.
I'm disposed to agree with a lot of the argument, but I doubt that in the end Western Civ courses will have the galvanizing effect he desires, particularly without recourse to religion; the poststructuralist critiques are too strong now, I think, to allow liberalism to return to the happy place it was in before it ate up its own values.
Argues that the research ideal has robbed universities of the ability to address the big questions of metaphysics, and that the humanities can regain the authority to do so by reviving Western Civ.
I'm disposed to agree with a lot of the argument, but I doubt that in the end Western Civ courses will have the galvanizing effect he desires, particularly without recourse to religion; the poststructuralist critiques are too strong now, I think, to allow liberalism to return to the happy place it was in before it ate up its own values.
Apaglia pro homen, or Camille gives the girls a hard time
Camille Paglia, on men and sperm, here.
Best paragraph:
Best paragraph:
Aydemir belongs to the school of criticism that views everything in art, history, or culture as a "text," a slippery narrative that can be read like a book. The problems with this language-based style of analysis are, first, that its conclusions are already tediously contained in its premises and, second, that it makes a poor fit with subjects, such as sex, that overlap the physical world of concrete action. Predictably, ejaculation as Aydemir treats it accomplishes or supplies nothing but a descent into the murky waters of infinite subjectivity.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Marriage and Kids are Divorcing
New report on attitudes toward marriage and children, from the Pew Forum, here.
The marriage gap, disparities in attitudes v. behavior (especially among elite whites), diminishing importance of children in marriage v. growing importance in chore sharing (!).
The marriage gap, disparities in attitudes v. behavior (especially among elite whites), diminishing importance of children in marriage v. growing importance in chore sharing (!).
Reproduction and extinction
Modern love, via TimesSelect, here.
Re: my contention that the past decades have seen not so much a shift in sex culture but an extinction: the rituals and narratives that once both initiated and constrained sex have largely disappeared, without reproducing or mutating themselves---in the same ways that food culture has broken. Is this the cause or effect of new technologies, like the the birth control pill or high fructose corn syrup? In any case, the human result is more freedom, yes, but also confusion, self-deception, paralysis, and fear.
Re: my contention that the past decades have seen not so much a shift in sex culture but an extinction: the rituals and narratives that once both initiated and constrained sex have largely disappeared, without reproducing or mutating themselves---in the same ways that food culture has broken. Is this the cause or effect of new technologies, like the the birth control pill or high fructose corn syrup? In any case, the human result is more freedom, yes, but also confusion, self-deception, paralysis, and fear.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Notches, natch
New CDC sex stats, reported here. The money shot: almost one in three American men says he has had sex with at least 15 partners, while just one in 11 women reports similar behavior, according to a government survey.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Stanley Fish on the new atheists
I copied the whole thing below, because it's behind the Select wall which---I swear---I'm going to cancel this week.
Atheists like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens believe (in Dawkins’s words) that “there is nothing beyond the natural, physical world” and that “if there is something that appears to lie beyond the natural world, we hope eventually to understand it and embrace it within the natural.”
In reply, believers, like the scientist Francis S. Collins (”The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief”), argue that physical processes cannot account for the universal presence of moral impulses like altruism, “the truly selfless giving of oneself to others” with no expectation of a reward. How can there be a naturalistic explanation of that?
Easy, say Dawkins and Harris. (Hitchens doesn’t seem to have a dog in this hunt.) It’s just a matter of time before so-called moral phenomena will be brought within the scientific ambit: “There will probably come a time,” Harris declares, “when we achieve a detailed understanding of human happiness, and of ethical judgments themselves, at the level of the brain.” And a bit later, “There is every reason to believe that sustained inquiry in the moral sphere will force convergence of our various belief systems in the way that it has in every other science.”
What gives Harris his confidence? Why does he have “every reason to believe” (a nice turn of phrase)? What are his reasons? What is his evidence? Not, as it turns out, a record of progress. He acknowledges that, to date “little convergence has been achieved in ethics,” not only because “so few of the facts are in” but because “we have yet to agree about the most basic criteria for deeming an ethical fact, a fact.”
But we will , if we are patient. The field of “the cognitive neuroscience of moral cognition” (a real mouthful) is young, and “it is clearly too early to draw any strong conclusions from this research.”
Of course one conclusion that could be drawn is that the research will not pan out because moral intuitions will not be reducible to physical processes. That may be why so few of the facts are in. No, says Harris, the reason for our small knowledge in this area is the undue influence of – you guessed it – religion: “Most of our religions have been no more supportive of genuine moral inquiry than of scientific inquiry generally.”
This is a remarkable sequence. A very strong assertion is made – we will “undoubtedly discover lawful connections between our states of consciousness [and] our modes of conduct” – but no evidence is offered in support of it; and indeed the absence of evidence becomes a reason for confidence in its eventual emergence. This sounds an awfully lot like faith of the kind Harris and his colleagues deride – expectations based only on a first premise (itself asserted rather than proven), which, if true, demands them, and which, if false, makes nonsense of them.
Dawkins exhibits the same pattern of reasoning. He believes, like Harris, that ethical facts can be explained by the scientific method in general and by the thesis of natural selection in particular. If that thesis is assumed as a baseline one can then generate Darwinian reasons, reasons that are reasons within the Darwinian system, for the emergence of the behavior we call ethical. One can speculate, as Dawkins does, that members of a species are generous to one another out of a desire (not consciously held) to preserve the gene pool, or that unconditioned giving is an advertisement of dominance and superiority. These, he says, are “good Darwinian reasons for individuals to be altruistic, generous or ‘moral’ towards each other.”
Exactly! They are good Darwinian reasons; remove the natural selection hypothesis from the structure of thought and they will be seen not as reasons, but as absurdities. I “believe in evolution,” Dawkins declares, “because the evidence supports it”; but the evidence is evidence only because he is seeing with Darwin-directed eyes. The evidence at once supports his faith and is evidence by virtue of it.
Dawkins voices distress at an imagined opponent who “can’t see” the evidence or “refuses to look at it because it contradicts his holy book,” but he has his own holy book of whose truth he has been persuaded, and it is within its light that he proceeds and looks forward in hope (his word) to a future stage of enlightenment he does not now experience but of which he is fully confident. Both in the vocabulary they share – “hope,” “belief,” “undoubtedly,” “there will come a time” – and the reasoning they engage in, Harris and Dawkins perfectly exemplify the definition of faith found in Hebrews 11, “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
What is and is not seen will vary with the faith within which observers look. Bunyan glosses the scene in which the townspeople mock Christian as he flees toward a light he can barely discern and they do not discern at all: “They that fly from the wrath to come are a gazing stock to the world.” Paul comments in 1 Corinthians 2 that to the man “without the Spirit” the things of the Spirit are “foolishness”; he simply “cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” Those who have not found the arguments of natural selection persuasive will not see what Dawkins and his colleagues see, not because they are blind and obstinate, but because as members of a different faith community – and remember, science requires faith too before it can have reasons – the evidence that seems so conclusive to the rational naturalists will point elsewhere.
But what about reasons? Isn’t that what separates scientific faith from religious faith; one is supported by reasons, the other is irrational and supported by nothing but superstition? Not really. One of the basic homiletic practices in both the Jewish and Christian traditions is the catechism or examination of one’s faith. An early 19th century Jewish catechism is clear on the place of reason in the exercise: “By thinking for himself , let [the pupil] learn the sunny nearness of reason.” Christian catechists regularly cite 1 Peter 3:15: “Be always ready to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you.” In short, and it is often put this way, at every opportunity you must give reasons for your faith.
The reasons you must give, however, do not come from outside your faith, but follow from it and flesh it out. They are not independent of your faith – if they were they would supplant it as a source of authority – but are simultaneously causes of it and products of it; just as Harris’s and Dawkins’s reasons for believing that morality can be naturalized flow from their faith in physical science and loop back to that faith, thereby giving it an enhanced substance.
The reasoning is circular, but not viciously so. The process is entirely familiar and entirely ordinary; a conviction (of the existence of God or the existence of natural selection or the greatness of a piece of literature) generates speculation and questions, and the resulting answers act as confirmation of the conviction that has generated them. Whatever you are doing – preaching, teaching , performing an experiment, playing baseball – you must always give a reason (if only to yourself) for your faith and the reason will always be a reason only because your faith is in place.
Some respondents raised the issue of falsification. Is there something that would falsify a religious faith in the same way that some physical discoveries would falsify natural selection for Dawkins and Harris? As it is usually posed, the question imagines disconfirming evidence coming from outside the faith, be it science or religion. But a system of assumptions and protocols (and that is what a faith is) will recognize only evidence internal to its basic presuppositions. Asking that religious faith consider itself falsified by empirical evidence is as foolish as asking that natural selection tremble before the assertion of deity and design. Falsification, if it occurs, always occurs from the inside.
It follows then that the distinction informing so many of the atheists’ arguments, the distinction between a discourse supported by reason and a discourse supported by faith, will not hold up because any form of thought is an inextricable mix of both; faith and reasons come together in an indissoluble package. There are still distinctions to be made, but they will be distinctions between different structure of faith, or, if you prefer, between different structures of reasons. The differences between different structures of faith are real and significant, for each will speak to different needs and different purposes.
Mine is not a leveling argument; it does not say that everything is the same (that is the atheists’ claim); it says only that whatever differences there are between religious and scientific thinking, one difference that will not mark the boundary setting one off from the other is the difference between faith and reason.
This does not mean either that the case for God and religion has been confirmed or that the case against God and religion has been discredited. (Despite what some commentators assumed, I am not taking a position on the issues raised by the three books; readers of this and the previous column have learned nothing about my own religious views, or even if I have any.) My point is only that some of the arguments against faith and religion – the arguments Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens most rely on – are just not good arguments. The three atheists needn’t give up the ghost, but they might think about going back to the drawing board.
Atheists like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens believe (in Dawkins’s words) that “there is nothing beyond the natural, physical world” and that “if there is something that appears to lie beyond the natural world, we hope eventually to understand it and embrace it within the natural.”
In reply, believers, like the scientist Francis S. Collins (”The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief”), argue that physical processes cannot account for the universal presence of moral impulses like altruism, “the truly selfless giving of oneself to others” with no expectation of a reward. How can there be a naturalistic explanation of that?
Easy, say Dawkins and Harris. (Hitchens doesn’t seem to have a dog in this hunt.) It’s just a matter of time before so-called moral phenomena will be brought within the scientific ambit: “There will probably come a time,” Harris declares, “when we achieve a detailed understanding of human happiness, and of ethical judgments themselves, at the level of the brain.” And a bit later, “There is every reason to believe that sustained inquiry in the moral sphere will force convergence of our various belief systems in the way that it has in every other science.”
What gives Harris his confidence? Why does he have “every reason to believe” (a nice turn of phrase)? What are his reasons? What is his evidence? Not, as it turns out, a record of progress. He acknowledges that, to date “little convergence has been achieved in ethics,” not only because “so few of the facts are in” but because “we have yet to agree about the most basic criteria for deeming an ethical fact, a fact.”
But we will , if we are patient. The field of “the cognitive neuroscience of moral cognition” (a real mouthful) is young, and “it is clearly too early to draw any strong conclusions from this research.”
Of course one conclusion that could be drawn is that the research will not pan out because moral intuitions will not be reducible to physical processes. That may be why so few of the facts are in. No, says Harris, the reason for our small knowledge in this area is the undue influence of – you guessed it – religion: “Most of our religions have been no more supportive of genuine moral inquiry than of scientific inquiry generally.”
This is a remarkable sequence. A very strong assertion is made – we will “undoubtedly discover lawful connections between our states of consciousness [and] our modes of conduct” – but no evidence is offered in support of it; and indeed the absence of evidence becomes a reason for confidence in its eventual emergence. This sounds an awfully lot like faith of the kind Harris and his colleagues deride – expectations based only on a first premise (itself asserted rather than proven), which, if true, demands them, and which, if false, makes nonsense of them.
Dawkins exhibits the same pattern of reasoning. He believes, like Harris, that ethical facts can be explained by the scientific method in general and by the thesis of natural selection in particular. If that thesis is assumed as a baseline one can then generate Darwinian reasons, reasons that are reasons within the Darwinian system, for the emergence of the behavior we call ethical. One can speculate, as Dawkins does, that members of a species are generous to one another out of a desire (not consciously held) to preserve the gene pool, or that unconditioned giving is an advertisement of dominance and superiority. These, he says, are “good Darwinian reasons for individuals to be altruistic, generous or ‘moral’ towards each other.”
Exactly! They are good Darwinian reasons; remove the natural selection hypothesis from the structure of thought and they will be seen not as reasons, but as absurdities. I “believe in evolution,” Dawkins declares, “because the evidence supports it”; but the evidence is evidence only because he is seeing with Darwin-directed eyes. The evidence at once supports his faith and is evidence by virtue of it.
Dawkins voices distress at an imagined opponent who “can’t see” the evidence or “refuses to look at it because it contradicts his holy book,” but he has his own holy book of whose truth he has been persuaded, and it is within its light that he proceeds and looks forward in hope (his word) to a future stage of enlightenment he does not now experience but of which he is fully confident. Both in the vocabulary they share – “hope,” “belief,” “undoubtedly,” “there will come a time” – and the reasoning they engage in, Harris and Dawkins perfectly exemplify the definition of faith found in Hebrews 11, “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
What is and is not seen will vary with the faith within which observers look. Bunyan glosses the scene in which the townspeople mock Christian as he flees toward a light he can barely discern and they do not discern at all: “They that fly from the wrath to come are a gazing stock to the world.” Paul comments in 1 Corinthians 2 that to the man “without the Spirit” the things of the Spirit are “foolishness”; he simply “cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” Those who have not found the arguments of natural selection persuasive will not see what Dawkins and his colleagues see, not because they are blind and obstinate, but because as members of a different faith community – and remember, science requires faith too before it can have reasons – the evidence that seems so conclusive to the rational naturalists will point elsewhere.
But what about reasons? Isn’t that what separates scientific faith from religious faith; one is supported by reasons, the other is irrational and supported by nothing but superstition? Not really. One of the basic homiletic practices in both the Jewish and Christian traditions is the catechism or examination of one’s faith. An early 19th century Jewish catechism is clear on the place of reason in the exercise: “By thinking for himself , let [the pupil] learn the sunny nearness of reason.” Christian catechists regularly cite 1 Peter 3:15: “Be always ready to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you.” In short, and it is often put this way, at every opportunity you must give reasons for your faith.
The reasons you must give, however, do not come from outside your faith, but follow from it and flesh it out. They are not independent of your faith – if they were they would supplant it as a source of authority – but are simultaneously causes of it and products of it; just as Harris’s and Dawkins’s reasons for believing that morality can be naturalized flow from their faith in physical science and loop back to that faith, thereby giving it an enhanced substance.
The reasoning is circular, but not viciously so. The process is entirely familiar and entirely ordinary; a conviction (of the existence of God or the existence of natural selection or the greatness of a piece of literature) generates speculation and questions, and the resulting answers act as confirmation of the conviction that has generated them. Whatever you are doing – preaching, teaching , performing an experiment, playing baseball – you must always give a reason (if only to yourself) for your faith and the reason will always be a reason only because your faith is in place.
Some respondents raised the issue of falsification. Is there something that would falsify a religious faith in the same way that some physical discoveries would falsify natural selection for Dawkins and Harris? As it is usually posed, the question imagines disconfirming evidence coming from outside the faith, be it science or religion. But a system of assumptions and protocols (and that is what a faith is) will recognize only evidence internal to its basic presuppositions. Asking that religious faith consider itself falsified by empirical evidence is as foolish as asking that natural selection tremble before the assertion of deity and design. Falsification, if it occurs, always occurs from the inside.
It follows then that the distinction informing so many of the atheists’ arguments, the distinction between a discourse supported by reason and a discourse supported by faith, will not hold up because any form of thought is an inextricable mix of both; faith and reasons come together in an indissoluble package. There are still distinctions to be made, but they will be distinctions between different structure of faith, or, if you prefer, between different structures of reasons. The differences between different structures of faith are real and significant, for each will speak to different needs and different purposes.
Mine is not a leveling argument; it does not say that everything is the same (that is the atheists’ claim); it says only that whatever differences there are between religious and scientific thinking, one difference that will not mark the boundary setting one off from the other is the difference between faith and reason.
This does not mean either that the case for God and religion has been confirmed or that the case against God and religion has been discredited. (Despite what some commentators assumed, I am not taking a position on the issues raised by the three books; readers of this and the previous column have learned nothing about my own religious views, or even if I have any.) My point is only that some of the arguments against faith and religion – the arguments Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens most rely on – are just not good arguments. The three atheists needn’t give up the ghost, but they might think about going back to the drawing board.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Friday, June 8, 2007
Arriviste and Parvenu
Lots of good stuff on Marginal Revolution today, including how lefties and righties adjust to status and money.
Riiiiiiiiiight
Dumb blondes "rationally choose to invest less than others in education and other forms of human capital." Okaay.
More likely that men, not brunette women, are the inventers of blonde jokes, and that these jokes are written in the language of the male libido: "despise" and "desire" are synonyms.
More likely that men, not brunette women, are the inventers of blonde jokes, and that these jokes are written in the language of the male libido: "despise" and "desire" are synonyms.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Kindersmarten
Jack's birthday misses the cutoff here in Missouri, and I've been stewing a bit over what to do; I'd always imagined he'd be two years behind Elena in school. This article just about convinces me that I'll just let him wait it out another year in preschool.
Friday, June 1, 2007
Knocked up knocks it out
Good review of what sounds like a pretty good movie. Maybe? I never saw "Virgin."
My idea of hell
4:45 A.M. -- Wake, put on workout gear. Head to kitchen and fire up the oven to cook whatever dinner that night will be. Take laundry to the basement and start the washer. Hop on the treadmill -- conveniently located in the laundry room, with a TV on an eye-level shelf in front of it. Churn away for 30 minutes. Move laundry to dryer. Head upstairs to check on the cooking dinner entree, pack nonjunk lunches. Attack the ''chore of the day'' (depending on day of the week: wet mop floors/scour bathrooms/dust and vacuum/clutter management/scour refrigerator and appliances). Shower and dress for work. Put on a long lab coat to cover the nice outfit and keep spills at bay.
6:15 -- Wake up kids. Cool dinner entree and prep any side dishes that need to go with it. Kids eat breakfast, cereal or toast, then gather up their stuff for school.
7:00 -- Kids depart for bus ride/walk to school. Set table for four, wrap and store dinner entree in the fridge.
7:15 -- Take off the lab coat and go to work.
From this old piece in the NYT about "Work-life balance." Fatuous, pandering, like most of what this particular writer produces.
Maroon 5 - Makes Me Wonder Full Video
I shouldn't have watched interviews on YouTube; the bloom's off. I should have known anyway: "And it really makes me wonder if I ever gave a f--- about you and I." I'll copyedit his lyrics anytime he asks, though.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Full stop
No more periods, here. I have a lot of questions about this, though. First of all, when you're on the regular pill, you don't have a true period, so you don't get true PMS, either. (Some women believe they do, of course, but that's because most of PMS is psychological. Says me, smugly, who doesn't have it anyway.) So "alleviating PMS" is not a valid reason for the no-period pill; regular pills alleviate it already (and are often prescribed for this reason precisely). And Saletan makes a good point: the regular pill has benefited men as much as (or perhaps even more than) women, and this super-pill is just more of the same, making women seem more sexually available to men for more of the time, without taking into account the nature and sources of genuine female desire. However Saletan also makes the important point that monthly periods for thirty or fourth years aren't natural either, since the female body evolved to be pregnant or lactating (and thus not ovulating) during most of the fertile years. And there's no doubt that preventing pregnancy has been a mostly unalloyed good for women. I just wish men would pitch in a little. (I'm lucky in this regard.)
I promise this isn't just a bitter personal rant; this particular issue doesn't affect me one way or the other. I don't have difficult periods, and in any case I loathe being hostage to a daily pill and would never go on the pill for that reason and others.
I promise this isn't just a bitter personal rant; this particular issue doesn't affect me one way or the other. I don't have difficult periods, and in any case I loathe being hostage to a daily pill and would never go on the pill for that reason and others.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Philosophies of Men (no scripture)
Is there an "ought" in that "is"? Adventures in natural and moral philosophy, here. I followed most of it, but got lost in the last few paragraphs where the author purports to bring the thread back around to a real reason why one ought not boil babies.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Repro-tech Man
Fatherless kids, and other unnatural wonders, here.
I actually don't have too much of a problem with fatherless kids, provided the mother has money, but I hate the idea of motherless kids.
Also interested in the language of "intentionality"; it seems to me that a version of this idea underlies the LDS abortion position.
I actually don't have too much of a problem with fatherless kids, provided the mother has money, but I hate the idea of motherless kids.
Also interested in the language of "intentionality"; it seems to me that a version of this idea underlies the LDS abortion position.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Totalitarianism
Sensational for obvious reasons, but I'm interested in the comments on totalitarianism and private judgement. Dalrymple on Koestler, here.
To keep me honest...
Something I don't know how to account for, under my present assumptions, here: once all controls are properly applied, sex appears to be academically detrimental for boys, but not for girls.
Mother-load
Once again, it's fertility, not discrimination, that's holding women back. Women in science, here.
How many kids?
One child brings more subjective well-being to the parent than none or more, here. What about the kids, though?
Friday, May 4, 2007
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Hominid Evolution
5 million to 7 million years ago: Divergence of chimps and hominids.
1.7 million to 3.2 million years ago: Hominid males and females evolve to current size differential. Genus Homo emerges.
250,000 years ago: Homo neanderthalensis established in Europe.
100,000 years ago: Homo sapiens evolves in Africa.
50,000 years ago: Homo sapiens spreads to Europe and compete with Neanderthals.
40,000 to 50,000 years ago: An explosion of intellect and creativity gives humans a competitive edge.
30,000 years ago: Neanderthals, unable to adapt, die out.
15,000 to 20,000 years ago: Humans travel to the Americas.
1.7 million to 3.2 million years ago: Hominid males and females evolve to current size differential. Genus Homo emerges.
250,000 years ago: Homo neanderthalensis established in Europe.
100,000 years ago: Homo sapiens evolves in Africa.
50,000 years ago: Homo sapiens spreads to Europe and compete with Neanderthals.
40,000 to 50,000 years ago: An explosion of intellect and creativity gives humans a competitive edge.
30,000 years ago: Neanderthals, unable to adapt, die out.
15,000 to 20,000 years ago: Humans travel to the Americas.
Sunday, April 8, 2007
Blood and Horror
More Caitlin Flanagan here, and a lot to like. Including, perhaps, just a bit of tasty smugness at an ungainly sentence: "They reveal something about the eternal and dangerous nature of being female, and because of this, they merit a great deal of our attention." Blech. Also a quibble: Flanagan writes that "the reality of women’s and girls’ lives is that they include as strong an impulse for sex as men’s." Women are subject to desires as strong as men's, yes, and just as motivating, but sex is generally the instrument, not the ends, of that desire.
Friday, March 30, 2007
And Her, Too
Still loving Caitlin Flanagan. Pretty good review piece here on college life for girls. Her single insight---that girls are more attached to home than are boys---feels right, but of course it's difficult to get data on that sort of thing. And what about the fact that most cultures have been patrilocal---the bride leaves her family, the groom stays with his?
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Monday, March 26, 2007
Working Girls
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?search_term=alison+wolf&id=7398
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Gender Wars
NYT story on women and sexual assault in the military, here. Elicited every conceivable response in this reader. And a question, too: women usually enjoy more sexual bargaining power when they are in a minority among men, not less. So what makes the military different?
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Knife to the Heart
Dear Mom and dad Pless tell me wat it will Be like wen I am Baptisd. Tell me wen your prers were Ansrd. love Elena
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Justice for All
Lactation for men, of course. But also: at age 50, all men go on mandatory testosterone blockers until age 85. Women go on birth control pills during the first 35 years of sexual activity---ages 15 to 50, roughly---at great personal expense, most notably their very libidos, in order provide abundant, no-consequence sex for men. It's only fair, then, that men alter their hormonal balance in order to accommodate post-menopausal female sexuality.
There would probably be some sub-optimal side-effects, of course. But the same is true of birth-control pills. Fair is fair.
There would probably be some sub-optimal side-effects, of course. But the same is true of birth-control pills. Fair is fair.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Monday, February 12, 2007
Science and Feminism
From the LAT, on science's changing relationships with the political left and right, here. No mention of feminism, which would undermine the argument that the left is now the friend of science: feminism is left, but still pretty hostile to science.
McDonalds Hookup
Apropos of Charlotte Simmon, this from the Washington Post.
And this.
Hookup sex culture is like fast food culture: whereas food and sex were once part of the formalized ways of organizing human relationships and interactions, they are now part of the amorphous, informal human practice that bubbles up in the place of overturned cultural mores. The bubbles work pretty efficiently to make food and sex abundant for all. But humans didn't evolve in enviroments of abundance, and surfeit may produce a new set of problems.
And this.
Hookup sex culture is like fast food culture: whereas food and sex were once part of the formalized ways of organizing human relationships and interactions, they are now part of the amorphous, informal human practice that bubbles up in the place of overturned cultural mores. The bubbles work pretty efficiently to make food and sex abundant for all. But humans didn't evolve in enviroments of abundance, and surfeit may produce a new set of problems.
Saturday, February 3, 2007
Friday, February 2, 2007
Pinker Time
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
The ugly truth
I came across a comment on CT, excerpted here:
This seems right to me: that is, I think the commenter is right that this cultural wisdom exists, and I think that these particular cultural nuggets do reflect something true about male sexuality (whether natural or cultural, I don't know). Obviously this is depressing, even devastating, for women. Are any of my readers (both of them male, I think, and one of them my husband) willing to say she's wrong?
There’s this narrative everywhere from Dan Savage columns to television (from A to B, I know) that goes like this: “Men have a “natural” sex drive, and can’t control how they feel sexually, which is why they’ll get bored with you once you’re married and then divorce you for a younger woman. It’s your job to stay as young-looking as you can, but your partner will inevitably stop being attracted to you as you get old, saggy and boring.”
Then there’s the other narrative that goes “You need to be Sexxeeee regardless of how you feel personally, because you are in competition with models, strippers and college co-eds, and your partner is fantasizing about trading up, even if he doesn’t say so. He may stay with you for the sake of the kids, but he’s really longing for no-consequences sex with cheerleaders.”
This seems right to me: that is, I think the commenter is right that this cultural wisdom exists, and I think that these particular cultural nuggets do reflect something true about male sexuality (whether natural or cultural, I don't know). Obviously this is depressing, even devastating, for women. Are any of my readers (both of them male, I think, and one of them my husband) willing to say she's wrong?
Friday, January 26, 2007
Monday, January 22, 2007
Pornography and Rape
Christian sent me the link to this piece in Slate, arguing that using internet pornography decreases men's urge to rape.
I, uh, disagree.
I, uh, disagree.
Britney and Sexual Selection
Okay piece on why a porn-friendly culture is bad for women, here.
But this? "Why men have become more discreet than women, assuming they have, is one of those cultural mysteries that is yet to be solved." Really? It seems to me to be no cultural mystery but rather one of the basic facts of human sexual dimorphism.
But this? "Why men have become more discreet than women, assuming they have, is one of those cultural mysteries that is yet to be solved." Really? It seems to me to be no cultural mystery but rather one of the basic facts of human sexual dimorphism.
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Friday, January 19, 2007
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Single serving
51%
It seems to me that this news is good for women only if that 51% in question actually want to be single; if they would prefer to be married, this may indeed be bad news. Furthermore, as you hint and the article notes, singleness is distributed extremely unevenly across the demographic categories: at the coincidence of particular slices of race and class, marriage has virtually disappeared, whereas it is still very much a live option in other places. In other words, the increased incidence of singleness may suggest that some women have more freedom to choose a family-configuration than they have enjoyed in the past, but it almost certainly suggests as well that other women have much, much less.
Indeed, I suspect that Murphy Brown---that is, white, college-educated, upper-middle-class, thirty/fortyish, with child(ren)---is, in 2007, more *likely* to be married, or to want and expect to be married someday, than virtually any other kind of woman.
I also wonder a bit about the optimistic predictions of re-shaped "social and work policies." As far as I can tell, this basically translates to "universal daycare"---but as your brave personal post below suggests, daycare alone will never be enough. Mothers and children need functional extended family networks---and marriage greatly increases a mother's access to this sort of social capital through the network of in-law kin she acquires.
More from NYT here.
And David Brooks wrote:
The Elusive Altar
It seems to me that this news is good for women only if that 51% in question actually want to be single; if they would prefer to be married, this may indeed be bad news. Furthermore, as you hint and the article notes, singleness is distributed extremely unevenly across the demographic categories: at the coincidence of particular slices of race and class, marriage has virtually disappeared, whereas it is still very much a live option in other places. In other words, the increased incidence of singleness may suggest that some women have more freedom to choose a family-configuration than they have enjoyed in the past, but it almost certainly suggests as well that other women have much, much less.
Indeed, I suspect that Murphy Brown---that is, white, college-educated, upper-middle-class, thirty/fortyish, with child(ren)---is, in 2007, more *likely* to be married, or to want and expect to be married someday, than virtually any other kind of woman.
I also wonder a bit about the optimistic predictions of re-shaped "social and work policies." As far as I can tell, this basically translates to "universal daycare"---but as your brave personal post below suggests, daycare alone will never be enough. Mothers and children need functional extended family networks---and marriage greatly increases a mother's access to this sort of social capital through the network of in-law kin she acquires.
More from NYT here.
And David Brooks wrote:
The Elusive Altar
If all the world were south of 96th Street, what a happy place it would be! If all the world were south of 96th Street, then we could greet with unalloyed joy the news that after decades of social change, more American women are living without husbands than with them.
We could revel in the stories of women — from Riverside Drive all the way to TriBeCa! — liberated from constraining marriages and no longer smothered by self-absorbed spouses. We could celebrate with those — the ad executives as well as the law partners! — who now have the time and freedom to go back to school and travel abroad, and who are choosing not to get remarried.
But alas, there are people in this country who do not live within five miles of MoMA, and for them, the fact that many more people are getting divorced or never marrying at all is not such good news.
For voluminous research shows that further down the social scale there are millions of people who long to marry, but who are trapped just beyond the outskirts of matrimony. They have partners. They move in together. Often they have children with the people they love. But they never quite marry, or if they do, the marriage falls apart, with horrible consequences for their children. This is the real force behind the rise of women without men.
The research shows that far from rejecting traditional marriage, many people down the social scale revere it too highly. They put it on a pedestal, or as Andrew Cherlin of Johns Hopkins puts it, they regard marriage not as the foundation of adult life, but as the capstone.
They don’t want to marry until they are financially secure and emotionally mature. They don’t want to marry until they can afford a big white-dress wedding and have the time to plan it. They don’t want to marry until they are absolutely sure they can trust the person they are with.
Having seen the wreckage of divorce, they are risk averse, but this risk aversion keeps them trapped in a no man’s land between solitude and marriage. Often they slide into parenthood even though they consider themselves not ready for marriage. The Fragile Families study shows that nearly 90 percent of the people who are living together when their child is born plan to get married someday. But the vast majority never will.
In her essential new book, “Marriage and Caste in America,” Kay Hymowitz describes the often tortuous relations between unskilled, unmarried parents. Both are committed to their child, but in many cases they have ill-defined and conflicting expectations about their roles. The fathers often feel used, Hymowitz writes, “valued only for their not-so-deep pockets.” The mothers feel the fathers are unreliable. There are grandparents taking sides. The relationship ends, and the child is left with one parent not two.
It’s as if there are two invisible rivers of knowledge running through society, steering people subtly toward one form of relationship or another. These rivers consist of a million small habits, expectations, tacit understandings about how people should act and map out their lives.
Among those who are well educated and who are rewarded by the information-age economy, the invisible river reinforces the assumption that childbearing is more arduous and more elevated than marriage. One graduates from marriage to childbearing.
But among those who are less educated and less rewarded, there is an invisible river that encourages the anomalous idea that marriage is more arduous and more elevated than childbearing. One graduates from childbearing to matrimony.
The people in the first river are seeing their divorce rates drop and their children ever better prepared to compete. Only 10 percent of students at an elite college like Cornell are from divorced families, according to a study led by Dean Lillard and Jennifer Gerner.
The people in the second river are falling further behind, and their children face bad odds. For them, social facts like the rise of women without men cannot be greeted with equanimity. The main struggle of their lives is not against the patriarchy.
The first step toward a remedy, paradoxically, may be to persuade people in this second river to value marriage less, to see it less as a state of sacred bliss that cannot be approached until all the conditions are perfect, and more as a social machine, which, if accompanied with the right instruction manual, can be useful for achieving practical ends.
Family chain
Children are perpetually disappointed by their mothers (and fathers), who are helplessly captivated; women are perpetually disappointed by men, who are helplessly captivated (some of the time).
Inside the box
The Justin Timberlake SNL video, my crush on Adam Samberg, and that disappointing Julian Barnes piece.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Paradise Now
I signed up for Netflix again. I wish the site had a "history" feature that would archive all the DVDs sent, but it doesn't, so I'll do it here, instead.
Maybe not all wrong, but still
From the department of "Wish I Had Written It", this from American Scholar on bioculture's critique of high theory.
Friday, January 5, 2007
Is this why kids aren't marrying these days?
From the NYT, a list of fifteen questions couples should ask each other before marriage, here.
Thirty years ago, at least five of these questions would have required no negotiation at all; seventy years ago, at least ten of them.
All that negotiation---starting from scratch, no social script---feels like a lot of work.
Thirty years ago, at least five of these questions would have required no negotiation at all; seventy years ago, at least ten of them.
All that negotiation---starting from scratch, no social script---feels like a lot of work.
Thursday, January 4, 2007
Dennet blows smoke about religion
Daniel Dennett, here
Cf th Slate Romney piece below.
Also, I think this will look more and more like a campaign against women as well as a campaign against religion.
Cults will rise and fall, as they do today and have done for millennia, but only those that can metamorphose into socially benign organizations will be able to flourish. Many religions have already made the transition, quietly de-emphasizing the irrational elements in their heritages, abandoning the xenophobic and sexist prohibitions of their quite recent past, and turning their attention from doctrinal purity to moral effectiveness. The fact that these adapting religions are scorned as former religions by the diehard purists shows how brittle the objects of their desperate allegiance have become.
Will those descendant institutions still be religions? Or will religions have thereby morphed themselves into extinction? It all depends on what you think the key or defining elements of religion are. Are dinosaurs extinct, or do their lineages live on as birds?
Cf th Slate Romney piece below.
Also, I think this will look more and more like a campaign against women as well as a campaign against religion.
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