“I’ve been doing what Karl Malone did, running up the mountains.” —New York Knicks point guard, Stephon Marbury on preparing himself for Mike D’Antoni
Does this mean Marbury still owns a VHS player? How else could he watch these?
David Brooks’ thoughts on Neural Buddhism have been getting a lot of attention. He argues that trends in neuroscience no longer support radical materialism, but seem to support a kind of mysticism. This has implications:
In their arguments with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, the faithful have been defending the existence of God. That was the easy debate. The real challenge is going to come from people who feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits. It’s going to come from scientists whose beliefs overlap a bit with Buddhism.In unexpected ways, science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other. That’s bound to lead to new movements that emphasize self-transcendence but put little stock in divine law or revelation. Orthodox believers are going to have to defend particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They’re going to have to defend the idea of a personal God, and explain why specific theologies are true guides for behavior day to day.
I’ll check out his reading recommendations, but I’m not even sure Brooks is right on the science. Just because neuroscientists can describe what an ecstatic experience looks like and verify that believers are not lying when they say they are having such an experience doesn’t mean there isn’t a simple material explanation for it.
On the cultural side, I don’t agree that “neural Buddhism” represents some new great challenge to religious belief. It will undermine the faith of people whose spirituality relies exclusively on their ecstatic feelings – and that is a good thing for religion. If science can describe those feelings, it is likely that it can soon induce them in people. Belief that the Holy Spirit is the immediate cause of these feelings will cease, just as belief that God is the immediate cause of drought has ceased.
Ecstatic religious experience could become a part of spa treatments, or some kind of new therapy. Hot stones, deep tissue massage, then the transcendental-therapeutic mask. I find this silly and interesting, not threatening.
If neural Buddhism comes, it will be an invitation for American religion to move away from its emotionalism (and obscurantism) and back to serious theological reflection. I can’t wait.
Will Wilkinson recently returned from Turkey and he didn’t enjoy haggling. Will smartly writes:
I understand the price discrimination argument for haggling, especially in a country with a lot of poverty and tourism. But probably hundreds of my dollars stayed in my pocket because I didn’t have good information about the quality of products and I knew the retailer is better at bargaining over the surplus than I am, so… there was no transaction and no surplus. Sure, there is a lot of successful gouging going on, but add up millions of instances of “I know you’re going to screw me,” and I suspect that the average retailer is doing worse rather than better under the haggling system. And how about the average native consumer? In competitive posted-price markets, the system basically pre-haggles the price down to the point where the consumer gets most of the surplus. This is why Wal-Mart is a humanitarian triumph, and a shining symbol of civilization.
Well, I don’t quite agree with that last bit. I had the chance to go to Egypt last year and I really did enjoy haggling. In the Khan al-Khalili bazaar men would tug on my coat and give me a very practiced desperate look that seemed to say, “Just give me your money. I need it. I could take it if I felt like it.” It was exhausting. But it had its charms if you were willing to master it. Ask to sit down and discuss the price over some tea – that usually helps. As an American you aren’t getting the objects as cheaply as some natives, sure. But you really aren’t getting “screwed” either; this is the third world. Stay interested in the object and noncommittal about the price and it falls, and falls, and falls. Try that at Neiman Marcus.
Also, I think my friend Will is not counting the non-economic aspects of a haggling transaction. First there is the very real benefit of making economic transactions more social. Will may feel he’s getting squeezed, but local customers may be getting service and value. Sure, you agree to pay too much one time, then get a nice discount when everyone knows your money is tight. Sellers will get good and bad reputations locally. There are also the psychic pleasures of screwing over Americans – certainly worth losing a few bucks from the very few tourists like Will who are turning over the macro and micro economic consequences of haggling in their heads instead of getting into the spirit of things.
Will may identify Wal-Mart’s scanners, listless employees, and algorithmic pricing structures with civilization. My guess is that it is just one white man’s prejudice for a depersonalized economy. There are probably many Arabs, Turks, and others from haggling cultures that, if they thought about it, would consider computerized pricing a kind of atavism.
Joyce Carol Oates wrote movingly of the referee in a boxing ring as a "ghostly presence" that embodies our conscience, freeing us to enjoy the almost animal fear and awe of the sport. The idea of an embodied conscience has fascinated me until I realized that mine would be Tim Gunn from Project Runway. He is not a judge exactly, but he offers judgements. He is stern, and has a spare minimalist personal style. His job on the show is to task the designers with projects and then to float throughout the room, Tim-Gunn-like, as they work. As someone trained in Thomistic philosophy, I can only conclude that Tim Gunn’s being and essence (ente et essentia) are inseparable. More formally, Tim Gunn is Tim Gunn-ness itself.
I imagine him at my office, looking over my shoulder at some half-finished jokes about Mike Huckabee. "I have to be honest," he’d start gravely, "I think this needs alot of work, Michael." I would explain my thinking. He would nod again, then snap. "Okay, well make it work." And I would make it work.
What my Tim-Gunn-conscience would say to my co-workers, I will never share.
Alternately, I can imagine my embodied conscience as Gob from Arrested Development. (By the way, this is the best news I’ve heard in weeks. )
I wish I could write ad-copy as a freelancer.
Wearing nice shoes and belts are essential to the modern man-about-town. Lady-wise it’s helpful. But don’t you need something else to let her know how sophisticated you are? That’s where Kenneth Cole comes in with the Metallic Leather Condom Holder.
She’ll see the care you take to protect your jimmy hats just like you’ll take care of her. The shiny armor-like texture will evoke images of courtly love as you grab your stereo remote and put on some John Mayer jams. She’ll tip her head back and smell the full 4 fluid ounces of Drakkar Noir you put on, totally in love with your striped shirt. You’re thinking of buying a boat this year!
NSFW
In my ignominious career at Bard College I studied theology and was always on the lookout for a good deal on books. One night I remembered that the Latter Day Saints give out the Book of Mormon for free. I invited the two local missionaries to campus. I even got them to cough up Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price. Boy were they surprised when a Catholic was “chasing” them through Scripture.
And lately it seems like everyone has something to say about the plausibility of Mormon doctrines. There is much to be said about that, but I’ll spare you the excerpts from my considerable collection of James Talmage and Bruce McConkie volumes. The more interesting question is this: what about the plausibility of Mormons themselves? That is, as our next American elite.
Jamie Kirchick has released his long talked about piece on Ron Paul. Apparently everyone in Washington was reading it and so it was difficult to get to TNR’s server. Just a few interesting notes. The piece is titled "Angry White Man," which is odd because that is also the title of an old Washington City Paper profile of the paleo-conservative and racialist theorist Sam Francis.
Kirchick focuses on offensive things that appeared in various Ron Paul newsletters in the 80s and 90s. Apparently there was such a thing called "The Ron Paul Survival Report"- (I’m trying to imagine other congressmen giving their names to something like that: The Jerry Nadler Survival Report perhaps?)
My immediate thoughts are these: Shouldn’t it be "Avuncular White Man"? Paul can get worked up about sound money, or the military industrial complex, but I don’t see him all that angry, ever. I interviewed the man for over an hour and I didn’t get a whiff of gunpowder from him. Talcum powder, maybe. After preparing us for an absolutely devastating indictment Kirchick ends his piece with a really lame charge.
Maybe such outbursts mean Ron Paul really is a straight-talker. Or maybe they just mean he is a man filled with hate.
Uh… maybe I’m bored already. Can we go back to the part where someone (Kirchick gives us no clue who) called New York City Rapetown?
The indispensable Dave Weigel reports Paul’s response in which he gives MLK and Rosa Parks the goldbug hug.
Also noteworthy DC gays love Dr. No. Berin Szoka writes:
You hear that? Gayest slate ever!The richest irony is that the Ron Paul grassroots campaign in Washington, DC—Jamie’s hometown—has found its earliest and strongest supporters in DC’s gay community. It would not surprise me if our slate of delegate and alternate delegate candidates for Ron Paul is the gayest slate in DC (measured by number of gay individuals—not gayness of individuals), very probably the gayest slate in DC ever
While David Simon deserves all due credit, it should be noted that Isiah Thomas has also "prepared an elaborate, moving brief for despair and (ultimately) indifference" – the New York Knicks. Being on vacation at home in New York, I sometimes turn to "the home of Knicks basketball, 1050 ESPNRadio" and listen to Brandon Tierney do the post-game show until midnight. Every night the show has the same ominous feeling that came just before Bodie was killed on The Wire. Every night. Tierney would be McNulty in this analogy. (Here is his MySpace page)
As I write this, the Knickerbockers are getting ready to leave their hotel rooms for the AT&T center in San Antonio. Recently they suffered their eigth consecutive double-digit loss at Madison Square Garden. This humiliation came at the hands of the Sacramento Kings, a mediocre team when healthy. Two nights ago the Kings were missing their three top starting players to injuries. This happened the day after Thomas, the Knicks GM and coach, promised the New York media that the he’ll bring a championship to MSG, the place Michael Jordan referred to as "the Mecca" of basketball. "I know people will laugh even more at me," he said, "but I’m hell bent on getting this accomplished and making sure that we get it done,"
