In praise of literary crack

I usually fill in the blogging days between Christmas and New Year by going over the highs and lows of the year in reading. I'm jumping the gun a little bit now to say a few words in favor of literary crack.

Ordinarily, I have about five books going at any given time, often of a fairly solemn nature. I try to turn the page of each twice daily. At the moment, my pile includes Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (I'm up to Justinian), the Bhagavad Gita, Beowulf, Collapse by Jared Diamond, and a book on Tolkien.

But sometimes you've just got to blow it all out with some fun stuff. This week that meant listening to an unabridged audio of volume 2 of Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan's vampire trilogy The Fall. I mentioned volume 1, The Strain, here a while back.

These are not wimpy, sparkly, sexy or existential vampires. These are gross nasty viral parasites with bloodworms that do all kinds of nasty things, of which blood sucking is way down the list.

Reading something like this is kind of like gorging on burgers from White Castle or Five Guys. Not something to do every day but damn good every now and then.

I can't wait for volume 3.

END OF AN ERA. Here's an item on the departure of Don Blankenship from Massey Energy. The link includes video as well as text.

DENY THIS. Here's a profile of a pioneering climate change scientist and his work.

THE NEXT BAD DEAL? Dean Baker predicts a looming fight over the future of Social Security.

IN LIEU OF BARBIES, girl chimpanzees may play with sticks as if they were dolls.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Of reading, classics, vampires and such

I usually keep a pile of several books going at any given time and try to turn a page or two of each per day. Usually these are pretty dense and a page or two is plenty.

At the moment, my pile consists of some stories by Chekhov, The Fall by Camus, Vol. II of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Aristotle's Politics and Eaarth, Bill McKibben's new book about climate change (which is a real downer, by the way). Oh yeah, and Thoreau's Walden.

I don't always see eye to eye with Henry, but I share his fondness for old classics:

Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length give way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old. To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader far more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem.

Still and all, sometimes you need to clear the palate and there's nothing to do just that like a vampire novel. For fun, I've been listening to Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan's The Strain. These vampires aren't sexy or teenybopper heart throbs or tragic existentialists. They are totally repulsive viral parasites with totally gross appendages. Listening to it made mowing the lawn a bit more entertaining.

I have a feeling Thoreau wouldn't have been a big fan of vampire novels.

PLAYING WITH FIRE. As I've been ranting for the last week or so, deficit mania could make the recession worse. And Krugman thinks so too.

WHATEVER. This is disappointing.

THIS COULD EXPLAIN A LOT. Research on voting behavior suggests that such decisions are often made on the basis of non-verbal and superficial factors.

A LITTLE GOOD NEWS. Blenko Glass, a WV company that specializes in handmade glassware has fought its way back from the brink after nearly closing for good last year.

MONKEYS like TV too.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

TGIF

Random picture. Was it once warm enough to grown these things?

Hectic week. In lieu of a regular post, here are some random items that caught my eye:

ONE YEAR LATER. The Recovery Act had its first birthday this week. While it may have been too small, it did a lot of good.

REASON #3949 why we need comprehensive health care reform.

FREE MARKETS. Who pays?

VAMPIRES are considered here as cultural barometers.

URGENT ANCIENT FISH UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Out of the labyrinth

Random picture of Kanawha Falls.

El Cabrero has been blogging this week about the recent minimum wage increase. President Obama in the past has expressed interest in a further increase, but that seems to be on the back burner now. It would be nice to get it to a decent level and then index it for inflation.

But that's not the only way to reduce poverty (or at least make it less bad). Another effective strategy is the federal Earned Income Tax Credit. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities,

In 2005, the EITC lifted 5.0 million people out of poverty, including 2.6 million children. Without the EITC, the poverty rate among children would have been nearly one-fourth higher. The EITC lifts more children out of poverty than any other single program or category of programs.

The federal Child Tax Credit, which was recently expanded, is also a major help. Often, the same people qualify for both.

Many states (around or maybe over half if memory serves) also have Earned Income Credits set at some fraction of the federal. WV hasn't taken that step yet, but some of us have tried.

The Half in Ten campaign also has some good ideas about poverty reduction. My top items, from there and elsewhere,include health care reform (poverty can make you sick and sickness can make you poor); expanding, extending and modernizing unemployment insurance; and ensuring access to vocational and higher education.

IF IT'S FRIDAY, it must be Krugman.

DON'T TELL THE COAL PEOPLE, but a survey shows that most people around the world think dealing with climate change should be a priority.

SHUT EYE. Is it nap time yet?

I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU, but I could use a story about a bat that walks on all fours.

MIGHT AS WELL throw in this item about vampires.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Oh yeah, humility

Seamus McGoogle takes great pride in his humility.

As noted yesterday, as a young man Benjamin Franklin, whose Autobiography is the theme lately at Goat Rope, took it upon himself to achieve moral perfection.

It would be hard to say something like that today with a straight face...

Not surprisingly, he found his task difficult:

I concluded, at length, that the mere speculative conviction that it was our interest to be completely virtuous, was not sufficient to prevent our slipping; and that the contrary habits must be broken, and good ones acquired and established, before we can have any dependence on a steady, uniform rectitude of conduct.

From his reading and further rumination, he came up with a list of requisite virtues to pursue which he committed to writing. The first list included temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, and chastity.

He showed the list to a Quaker friend, who

having kindly informed me that I was generally thought proud; that my pride show'd itself frequently in conversation; that I was not content with being in the right when discussing any point, but was overbearing, and rather insolent, of which he convinc'd me by mentioning several instances; I determined endeavoring to cure myself, if I could, of this vice or follow among the rest, and I added Humility to my list, giving an extensive meaning to the word.

Leave it to a Quaker to bust your bubble...

SPEAKING OF RELIGION, here's a discussion of the results of a recent survey on religious identification in the US. There have been some major changes since the 1990s.

ON A RELATED NOTE, here are some reflections on religion, morality, and the idol of unfettered capitalism.

SERENITY NOW! Anger and hostility are bad for the heart, especially the male heart.

YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS. If you can.

URGENT RENAISSANCE VENETIAN VAMPIRE UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The uses of adversity?

Wu prefers to sleep through hard times, which may not be a bad idea.

It is an article of faith in some circles that going through hard times brings out the best in people. In many myths, books and films, the hero or heroine must undergo an ordeal to achieve greatness. There are all kinds of popular sayings to the same effect, as in "no guts, no glory" and "no pain, no gain."

I do not entirely agree. Misery, as they also say, loves company. The world is full of unnecessary or preventable suffering, which usually only leads to more of the same. Given the choice, I'd rather get rid of it.

Then there are those who seek for some deep and perhaps cosmic purpose in human suffering and insist that it is all somehow for the best. Voltaire did a great job of skewering that viewpoint in his hilarious little novel Candide, and far be it from me to try to improve on that masterpiece.

I find that kind of cosmic optimism to be a real downer. For the record, I can't imagine a more depressing thought than the idea that this is "the best of all possible worlds."

Still there are some bullets that can't be dodged. In such cases, tenacity can be a virtue. And it really is sometimes true that going through tough periods can build a kind of endurance. Nietzsche famously said "What does not destroy me makes me stronger" (although the evidence often leans in the other direction). Sometimes telling yourself that can help a bit.

So can having some kind of goal or purpose, as Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl argued in Man's Search for Meaning (search the Goat Rope archives in the upper left hand corner for an earlier series here on his ideas). To quote Nietzsche again,

He who has a strong enough why can bear almost any how.

WORKS FOR ME. In the wake of the financial bailout, the union SEIU has proposed organizing bank workers.

HARD TIMES have sparked a boost of interest in WV's historic New Deal sites.

I COULD HAVE TOLD THEM THIS. Scientists have discovered that dogs have what seems to be a sense of fairness and are capable of envy. Perhaps they might have discovered this sooner if they'd have tried the novel experiment of giving food or treats to more than one at a time. My theory is that they can even do a kind of canine arithmetic in which they quantify the goodies and express disappointment if the balance doesn't add up.

I COULD HAVE TOLD THEM THIS ONE TOO. Research indicates that aging brains may be easily distracted. What was their first clue? And what were we talking about, anyway?

IN OTHER URGENT NEWS, vampires are cool again (or still).

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: DISTRACTED

Lady Luck

Albrecht Durer's engraving of Fortuna. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

It's interesting that one of the Roman divinities to survive well into the Christian era was the goddess Fortuna, the personification of luck. This was the subject of Howard Rollin Patch's 1927 book, The Goddess Fortuna in Medieval Literature.

One of her symbols is her famous wheel, which was the inspiration of the TV game show Wheel of Fortune. It's not a bad image, which is probably why it has endured so long. As you've no doubt noticed if you've ever ridden a Ferris Wheel, as it spins along sometimes you go up and sometimes you go down.

As the ancient Roman writer Seneca put it in his tragedy Agamemnon,

Whatever Fortune has raised on high, she lifts but to bring low.

I think Fortuna's wheel image is a good one to keep in mind as one navigates life's vicissitudes. If things are going good, don't assume that will always be the case. If things are going bad, remember that this too is subject to change.

Nobody owns her.

NO DIRECTION HOME. USA Today reports an increase in homeless families with children.

NO JOB EITHER. Business Week expects a bulge in layoffs in the wake of the recession.

BOOGIE NIGHTS. A "dinosaur dance floor" has been discovered in Arizona.

ECONOMISERY. Did forgetting Keynes contribute to the current mess? Maybe, as this item argues.

GET A ROOM. Scientists in England claim to have created the worlds most relaxing room.

VAMPIRISM 101. Everything you always wanted to know about animal vampirism can be found here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THE FLEXIBILITY OF MEMORY

Caption: This guy can't remember where he was going but won't admit it.

In addition to comments and links about current events, this week's Goat Rope provides a daily dose of Nietzschean nuggets for your dining and dancing pleasure from his odd little book Beyond Good and Evil.

Even though Nietzsche had a mental breakdown in his later years and was arguably unsteady all along, he had some occasional great psychological insights which have been appreciated by Freud, Jung and many others.

Today's selection highlights the pliability of our memory. It's long been known that autobiographies are anything but objective accounts of past events and that two or more people who experienced the same events will have widely differing memories of them.

How does that happen?

'I have done that,' says my memory. 'I cannot have done that'--says my pride, and remains adamant. At last--memory yields.

CALLING CONGRESS. If you haven't already, please consider calling your representatives today using AFSC’s toll free number: 1-800-965-4701 and urge them to override President Bush's CHIP veto. All WV's delegation is on board but congresspeople from other states need a push.

THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR ECONOMICS went to members of the reality-based community this year. Winners included Eric Maskin, Leonid Hurwicz, and Roger Myerson who studied the limits of the market for delivering public goods (like education and health care). Here's an excerpt from Reuters:

Societies should not rely on market forces to protect the environment or provide quality health care for all citizens, a winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize for economics said on Monday.

Professor Eric Maskin, one of three American economists to receive the award, said that he "to some extent" takes issue with free-market orthodoxy championed by U.S President George W. Bush and some other western leaders.

"The market doesn't work very well when it comes to public goods," said Maskin, a slight, soft-spoken 57-year-old who lives in a house once occupied by Albert Einstein.

Adam Smith said pretty much the same thing in his 1776 Wealth of Nations, but this empirical work is welcome and needed these days.

WOMEN STILL LAG behind men in earnings despite gains in educational attainment. One equalizer seems to be a union card.

CORPORATE WELFARE DEPARTMENT. According to the AP,

Seniors and other taxpayers could have saved nearly $15 billion this year if the government slashed administrative costs in the Medicare drug program and negotiated the same kind of discounts it does for poor people under Medicaid...

BONUS VAMPIRE FEATURE. If you're wired for sound, here's an amusing NPR story on the many faces of Dracula.

DINOSAUR UPDATE. We interrupt previously scheduled programming to report on the discovery of a new dinosaur that

was as tall as a four-story building. From nose to tail it was longer than a pair of tractor trailer trucks laid end-to-end -- or, if you're a dinosaur junkie, half again the length of a small brontosaurus.

The beast was unearthed in Patagonia and is believed to have lived around 80 million years ago.

UNEMPLOYMENT AT RECORD LOW IN WV. WV's Chicken Littles keep trying to create a climate of panic in the hope that this will give them the opening to unleash their version of economic shock and awe. Alas for them, the news isn't all bad all the time.

SINCE YOU GUYS HAVE BEEN PRETTY GOOD TODAY, here's a special treat via YouTube: Jesse Jackson reading from Green Eggs and Ham.

YOU TELL ME where else you can find a blog with Nietzsche, dinosaurs, Dracula, and Dr. Seuss all in the same post...

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: MUY ALTO