A clown on a wall:
An unrecognizable face on a lamppost:
Gandhi on the sidewalk:
Three faces on a wall:
An elusive face in a shredded poster:
UPDATE: I now know that the "unrecognizable face" is Andre the Giant and that it is part of a big art project. I'm not going to publicize it because I don't think artists should deface--even with a face--public property. I like to photograph things that are destroyed or partially destroyed, but not because I want to encourage destruction.
June 3, 2004
SoHo art, not art.
A closeup of a gaudy scupture outside an art gallery, mellowed by the shade of a fire escape:
An exuberant sculpture reflected in a gallery's mirrored window:
Mannequins:
An exuberant sculpture reflected in a gallery's mirrored window:
Mannequins:
Manhattan vending views.
The view from Newark.
Why, yes, I am in Newark. Sorry to post so late, but I got up at 4:30 to get an early plane, and there was no WiFi in the airport, and I'm only now in a hotel room with internet access.
The taxi arrived early-- it was not yet 5:30 am--and the cab driver engaged me in conversation. Is that your VW Beetle in the driveway? That question was used to drag me into a long discussion about gas mileage and the bad people who buy cars that don't get good gas mileage and so forth. Yeah, I don't like SUVs either, but I don't really want to talk about it before 6 am. He likes driving the early shift, because he likes to see the sun rise, because there are only so many sunrises that are going to take place in one's lifetime, so one ought to try to see them all. Thanks, I always like to think about how short life is first thing in the morning, especially before getting into an airplane.
The people in the airport were mercifully quiet. Everyone seemed to get the idea that it was too early in the morning to talk. I arrived in Newark (for my conference tomorrow) only to find the hotel would not let me check in until 3. So I checked my bag and got on the PATH train for Manhattan, where I spent the day wandering around the Village and SoHo. Photos to follow this post very soon. I must first sort through the 100+ pictures I took before the battery died.
The taxi arrived early-- it was not yet 5:30 am--and the cab driver engaged me in conversation. Is that your VW Beetle in the driveway? That question was used to drag me into a long discussion about gas mileage and the bad people who buy cars that don't get good gas mileage and so forth. Yeah, I don't like SUVs either, but I don't really want to talk about it before 6 am. He likes driving the early shift, because he likes to see the sun rise, because there are only so many sunrises that are going to take place in one's lifetime, so one ought to try to see them all. Thanks, I always like to think about how short life is first thing in the morning, especially before getting into an airplane.
The people in the airport were mercifully quiet. Everyone seemed to get the idea that it was too early in the morning to talk. I arrived in Newark (for my conference tomorrow) only to find the hotel would not let me check in until 3. So I checked my bag and got on the PATH train for Manhattan, where I spent the day wandering around the Village and SoHo. Photos to follow this post very soon. I must first sort through the 100+ pictures I took before the battery died.
June 2, 2004
A new David Sedaris book!
There's only one person who writes books that I pick up the first time I see them and buy without even looking inside to see if it's good. That's David Sedaris, whose new book Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim appeared yesterday in lots of nice big stacks at Borders. They weren't there the day before. They sprang up overnight. I picked one up immediately and set about to do the shopping that led me into the store in the first place.
I walked up the big central staircase. We have an amazingly large and nice Borders on the west side of Madison, a city that has plenty of people who carp lengthily about businesses that aren't locally owned. My answer re Borders, if I ever engage with this sort of carping, is that I lived and shopped in Ann Arbor back in the days when Borders was the local bookstore. Am I supposed to punish it now for being so good and successful? Let the local business be better and I'll go there. The local University Bookstore has filled up its first floor with T-shirts and sweatpants: they are the ones I chose to punish. On the other hand, I get my coffee on State Street at the locally owned Espresso Royale or (if I want a sandwich) Fair Trade. I walk past Starbucks, not because it's a chain, but because their coffee isn't as good. (They are remodelling it, making it more comfortable somehow, so I'll probably check it out.)
So, as I was saying, I walked upstairs at Borders, and one of the store employees saw I had the new David Sedaris book and said, "He's really funny." I said, "Yeah, I know. He's the one author whose books I buy right away without even looking inside." She said, "That's what everyone says."
I walked up the big central staircase. We have an amazingly large and nice Borders on the west side of Madison, a city that has plenty of people who carp lengthily about businesses that aren't locally owned. My answer re Borders, if I ever engage with this sort of carping, is that I lived and shopped in Ann Arbor back in the days when Borders was the local bookstore. Am I supposed to punish it now for being so good and successful? Let the local business be better and I'll go there. The local University Bookstore has filled up its first floor with T-shirts and sweatpants: they are the ones I chose to punish. On the other hand, I get my coffee on State Street at the locally owned Espresso Royale or (if I want a sandwich) Fair Trade. I walk past Starbucks, not because it's a chain, but because their coffee isn't as good. (They are remodelling it, making it more comfortable somehow, so I'll probably check it out.)
So, as I was saying, I walked upstairs at Borders, and one of the store employees saw I had the new David Sedaris book and said, "He's really funny." I said, "Yeah, I know. He's the one author whose books I buy right away without even looking inside." She said, "That's what everyone says."
What's distinctive about June 2?
It's Chris's birthday! Happy birthday to Chris and to anyone else who shares this excellent day for a birthday. Chris, the younger of my two children sons, is now 21.
UPDATE: Chris--who has a summer job at Whole Foods--emails:
UPDATE: Chris--who has a summer job at Whole Foods--emails:
Thanks for blogging about me. And feel free to mention that my first legal drink was an Appletini while you're talking about Gwyneth Paltow's baby's name. I've also been memorizing PLU numbers for every kind of apple we have at Whole Foods, so it's been very appley. If that's at all interesting; maybe it isn't.
June 1, 2004
Even The Economist is trying to figure out why Gwyneth Paltrow named her baby Apple.
It's a rather complicated meditation (link via A&L Daily):
Well, that still doesn't explain Apple. Re Apple, it's less helpful than US Magazine which said on the cover it was going to explain the name, which led me to pick up the magazine, check the index, look for page 34 (hard to do because these ad-filled magazines have very few pages with numbers on them), only to find this quote from Paltrow's husband: "We thought it was a cool name."
And not only doesn't The Economist explain "Apple," it is nerdily obtuse about why people give more weird names to girls. Obviously, it's the same reason men keep wearing gray suits decade after decade while women wear all sorts of colors, patterns, and styles. Back in the 60s I seriously thought that was going to change. (And I'm finding it too hard to get a good link to pictures of extremely mod "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" and completely hippie men's fashions.) But it hasn't. Despite the gay rights movement--it all boils down to: fear of looking gay.
Alexander Bentley, of University College, London, and his colleagues are studying the mathematics of cultural transmission. For this sort of work, birth records—which contain every instance in a country of one sort of cultural object, namely people's first names—are a particularly good source of data.
Dr Bentley looked at the frequencies of different first names in American babies. One of his findings was that the “mutation rate” in names is higher for girls than for boys. Parents, in other words, are more liable to be inventive when choosing a name for a baby girl. The researchers have found that for every 10,000 daughters born in America there is an average of 2.3 new names. For sons, the figure is 1.6.
Dr Bentley is not sure why this is the case. One possibility is that in a society where family names are inherited patrilineally, parents feel constrained by tradition when it comes to choosing first names for their sons. As a result, boys often end up with the names of their ancestors. But when those same parents come to choose names for their daughters, they feel less constrained and more able to choose based on style and beauty.
Well, that still doesn't explain Apple. Re Apple, it's less helpful than US Magazine which said on the cover it was going to explain the name, which led me to pick up the magazine, check the index, look for page 34 (hard to do because these ad-filled magazines have very few pages with numbers on them), only to find this quote from Paltrow's husband: "We thought it was a cool name."
And not only doesn't The Economist explain "Apple," it is nerdily obtuse about why people give more weird names to girls. Obviously, it's the same reason men keep wearing gray suits decade after decade while women wear all sorts of colors, patterns, and styles. Back in the 60s I seriously thought that was going to change. (And I'm finding it too hard to get a good link to pictures of extremely mod "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" and completely hippie men's fashions.) But it hasn't. Despite the gay rights movement--it all boils down to: fear of looking gay.
"17½-year-olds vary widely in their reactions to police questioning, and many can be expected to behave as adults."
So writes Justice O'Connor, concurring and providing the fifth vote, in today's Supreme Court opinion, Yarborough v. Alvarado. The Court leaves in place a state court conviction and reverses the opinion of the Ninth Circuit, which would have required a new trial excluding the statements that were given without Miranda warnings. Under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996--an omnibus congressional reaction to the Oklahoma City bombing--federal courts can only grant habeas corpus if the state court's decision “was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.” The Supreme Court has cases saying when Miranda warnings are required, but none of them make the defendant's age a factor. The state court only has to get the clear rules of law from the Supreme Court cases right and then not apply them in a way that is unreasonable. The cases in question required police to follow an objective test of whether the person being questioned would feel free to leave. Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, concentrating on keeping the test objective, thought that "consideration of a suspect’s individual characteristics–including his age–could be viewed as creating a subjective inquiry." Thus, it wasn't "unreasonable" for the state court to fail to make any reference to the defendant's age.
Justice Breyer dissents, joined by Justices Stevens, Souter, and Ginsburg:
UPDATE on the theory that some reader somewhere wants some opinion on the subject: This 5-4 split is a very old rift for the Court, which goes back far beyond the 1996 Act that gave the Justices some new terms and some new Congressional intent to take into account. Since at least the mid-70s, the Court has been split over what the role of the federal courts is in habeas cases for state prisoners. To put it simply, one side of the Court views the lower federal courts as having a role similar to the U.S. Supreme Court, making up for the fact that only a very few criminal cases will be heard by the Supreme Court on direct review. They think that the lower federal courts ought to serve as a surrogate for the Supreme Court, redoing the work of the state courts and correcting for mistakes in the articulation and application of law. The other side of the Court thinks that direct review is different from habeas review, and that the lower federal courts, exercising their habeas jurisdiction, should leave state court decisions as the last word unless a particular state court's performance is too far out of line (for example, to use the terms of the 1996 statute, if the state court missed the clear Supreme Court case law or applied it unreasonably). There are very basic differences about federalism here. One side mistrusts the state courts and thinks the federal courts are needed to ensure that there isn't a systematic underenforcement of federal constitutional rights. The other side thinks the state courts basically deserve respect as courts and the role of the federal courts should be to serve as a corrective only when state courts show some sign of not taking its duty to enforce federal law seriously enough. You might think the intrusion of Congress in 1996 into the whole longstanding debate would have resolved this conflict, but, quite interestingly, it hasn't. Congress has the constitutional role to make the statutes that govern federal jurisdiction, but the courts have to interpret those statutes, and the tendency to see in jurisdiction statutes what one thinks federal jurisdiction should be is very strong.
Justice Breyer dissents, joined by Justices Stevens, Souter, and Ginsburg:
Alvarado’s youth is an objective circumstance that was known to the police. It is not a special quality, but rather a widely shared characteristic that generates commonsense conclusions about behavior and perception. To focus on the circumstance of age in a case like this does not complicate the “in custody” inquiry. And to say that courts should ignore widely shared, objective characteristics, like age, on the ground that only a (large) minority of the population possesses them would produce absurd results ....
UPDATE on the theory that some reader somewhere wants some opinion on the subject: This 5-4 split is a very old rift for the Court, which goes back far beyond the 1996 Act that gave the Justices some new terms and some new Congressional intent to take into account. Since at least the mid-70s, the Court has been split over what the role of the federal courts is in habeas cases for state prisoners. To put it simply, one side of the Court views the lower federal courts as having a role similar to the U.S. Supreme Court, making up for the fact that only a very few criminal cases will be heard by the Supreme Court on direct review. They think that the lower federal courts ought to serve as a surrogate for the Supreme Court, redoing the work of the state courts and correcting for mistakes in the articulation and application of law. The other side of the Court thinks that direct review is different from habeas review, and that the lower federal courts, exercising their habeas jurisdiction, should leave state court decisions as the last word unless a particular state court's performance is too far out of line (for example, to use the terms of the 1996 statute, if the state court missed the clear Supreme Court case law or applied it unreasonably). There are very basic differences about federalism here. One side mistrusts the state courts and thinks the federal courts are needed to ensure that there isn't a systematic underenforcement of federal constitutional rights. The other side thinks the state courts basically deserve respect as courts and the role of the federal courts should be to serve as a corrective only when state courts show some sign of not taking its duty to enforce federal law seriously enough. You might think the intrusion of Congress in 1996 into the whole longstanding debate would have resolved this conflict, but, quite interestingly, it hasn't. Congress has the constitutional role to make the statutes that govern federal jurisdiction, but the courts have to interpret those statutes, and the tendency to see in jurisdiction statutes what one thinks federal jurisdiction should be is very strong.
Newark!
Ah, Satan's Laundromat is photoblogging Newark. These are my kind of photographs, and I will be heading to Newark at the end of this week for the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics Annual Health Law Teachers Conference. I'm not a health law teacher, but I was asked to speak on the subject of New Federalism and Health Law. I'm only speaking for 15 minutes, but I'm charged up at the moment to draft an article with the title "Experimenting With Drugs in the Laboratories of Democracy: Assisted Suicide, Medical Marijuana, and Federalism."
It will be interesting to see Newark, a city I lived quite near when I was a high school student. We lived in Wayne, New Jersey, in a community called Packanack Lake, that had an exclusionary scheme--you had to be accepted into the "country club" to be allowed to buy a house--that got enough press that they sang a song about it on "That Was The Week That Was," which was kind of The Daily Show of its time. Except weekly. And David Frost was on it. Newark was considered too uninteresting/ugly/dangerous to visit. If you wanted to be in the city, you'd go to New York. Another thing I always held against Newark is that it impinged on my original home town of Newark, Delaware. If you said you were from Newark (pronounced "New Ark") and didn't add Delaware, everyone not from New-Ark would try to make you say it in an unpleasant slurred New Jersey way. And now the dominating New Jersey city has even overwhelmed my own pronunciation. I have to stop and think to say the name of my own home town right.
So maybe I'll have some gritty Newark sights to photoblog like Satan's. Or maybe I'll take a side trip to Wayne and see what's happened to it in the 30+ years since I've laid eyes on it. But you can't be in northern New Jersey without longing to be in NYC, and I intend to ensconce myself in a nice hotel looking out on Central Park on Saturday and Sunday. I want walk around the City again, and see some museums, including these frogs. Maybe I'll go to the theater, but it's too early to see The Frogs.
It will be interesting to see Newark, a city I lived quite near when I was a high school student. We lived in Wayne, New Jersey, in a community called Packanack Lake, that had an exclusionary scheme--you had to be accepted into the "country club" to be allowed to buy a house--that got enough press that they sang a song about it on "That Was The Week That Was," which was kind of The Daily Show of its time. Except weekly. And David Frost was on it. Newark was considered too uninteresting/ugly/dangerous to visit. If you wanted to be in the city, you'd go to New York. Another thing I always held against Newark is that it impinged on my original home town of Newark, Delaware. If you said you were from Newark (pronounced "New Ark") and didn't add Delaware, everyone not from New-Ark would try to make you say it in an unpleasant slurred New Jersey way. And now the dominating New Jersey city has even overwhelmed my own pronunciation. I have to stop and think to say the name of my own home town right.
So maybe I'll have some gritty Newark sights to photoblog like Satan's. Or maybe I'll take a side trip to Wayne and see what's happened to it in the 30+ years since I've laid eyes on it. But you can't be in northern New Jersey without longing to be in NYC, and I intend to ensconce myself in a nice hotel looking out on Central Park on Saturday and Sunday. I want walk around the City again, and see some museums, including these frogs. Maybe I'll go to the theater, but it's too early to see The Frogs.
What's in the Times Arts section today?
1. A Princeton student (Kathleen L. Milkman) gets a big article, with a big picture of herself, all about her senior thesis, on the first page of the Arts section. How does one pull off such a thing? She did a statistical analysis of the content of the stories in The New Yorker. (Hmmm .... sounds like a job I used to have.)
2. New Oprah's Book Club choice: Anna Karenina. (The nice Pevear/Volokhonsky translation.) Can't say anything against that, can you?
3. Stanley Kubrick's crazy archive has been transformed into a huge museum exhibit. I want to see it, but--right now at least--it's in Frankfurt, at the Deutsches Filmmuseum.
4. There's going to be a big fundraising concert for John Kerry at Radio City Music Hall on June 10th. It has a name: "A Change Is Going to Come." That title is based on the beautiful song "A Change Is Gonna Come," which was written by Sam Cooke after witnessing a civil rights demonstration in 1963 ("I was born by the river/In a little tent, and just like that river I've been running ever since"). I guess "Gonna" had to be changed to "Going to." But that is one of the best songs ever, and it never hurts to stop and think about how great Sam Cooke was. Go to that first link and see the list of artists who have covered that song. Artists appearing at the June 10th concert are: Jon Bon Jovi, Whoopi Goldberg, Wyclef Jean, John Mellencamp, Bette Midler, James Taylor, and Robin Williams.
5. David Foster Wallace has a new book of short stories and Michiko Kakutani is not being very nice about it.
The study was long on statistics and short on epiphanies: one main conclusion was that male editors generally publish male authors who write about male characters who are supported by female characters.... and left others wondering why the NYT put a big article about her on the first page of the Arts section. Standard reader response: What about my plucky graduate? The answer must be: we all care about the short stories in The New Yorker. ... Don't we?
The study's confirmation of the obvious left some wondering why Ms. Milkman, who graduates this morning from Princeton with high honors, went about constructing such an intricate wristwatch in order to tell the time, but others admire her pluck and willingness to cross disciplines in a way that wraps the left and right brain neatly into one project.
2. New Oprah's Book Club choice: Anna Karenina. (The nice Pevear/Volokhonsky translation.) Can't say anything against that, can you?
3. Stanley Kubrick's crazy archive has been transformed into a huge museum exhibit. I want to see it, but--right now at least--it's in Frankfurt, at the Deutsches Filmmuseum.
4. There's going to be a big fundraising concert for John Kerry at Radio City Music Hall on June 10th. It has a name: "A Change Is Going to Come." That title is based on the beautiful song "A Change Is Gonna Come," which was written by Sam Cooke after witnessing a civil rights demonstration in 1963 ("I was born by the river/In a little tent, and just like that river I've been running ever since"). I guess "Gonna" had to be changed to "Going to." But that is one of the best songs ever, and it never hurts to stop and think about how great Sam Cooke was. Go to that first link and see the list of artists who have covered that song. Artists appearing at the June 10th concert are: Jon Bon Jovi, Whoopi Goldberg, Wyclef Jean, John Mellencamp, Bette Midler, James Taylor, and Robin Williams.
5. David Foster Wallace has a new book of short stories and Michiko Kakutani is not being very nice about it.
Unfortunately for the reader, such tiresome, whiny passages predominate in this volume. There are moments in "Oblivion" when we catch glimpses of Mr. Wallace's exceptional gifts: his ability to conjure both the ordinary (a Midwest motel room with a television stuck on the motel's welcome page) and the extraordinary (a Spider-Man-like figure, who may or may not be a terrorist, scaling the slippery side of a skyscraper); his ability to map the bumpy interface between the banal and the absurd."Reams and reams of stream-of-consciousness musings ... free-associative ramblings ..." -- sounds like a blog!
These moments, sadly, are engulfed by reams and reams of stream-of-consciousness musings that may be intermittently amusing or disturbing but that in the end feel more like the sort of free-associative ramblings served up in an analyst's office than between the covers of a book.
May 31, 2004
Sensual aftereffects of rain.
There is respite from all the rain, and now the front garden is teeming with insects that I'm afraid are baby mosquitoes. If anybody needs fresh chives, I've got them. I don't intentionally grow edible things in my yard. The chives have just lived on from the days when I did try to grow food:
But what are these? They look awfully lewd!
I'm not about to eat the mushrooms that are lolling about in my yard. But are they morels?
UPDATE: Yikes! Diva competition!
ANOTHER UPDATE: Tonya posts a relevant literary passages and relays dinner hilarity in the midst of which I said, "I thought my yard should be wearing pants."
But what are these? They look awfully lewd!
I'm not about to eat the mushrooms that are lolling about in my yard. But are they morels?
UPDATE: Yikes! Diva competition!
ANOTHER UPDATE: Tonya posts a relevant literary passages and relays dinner hilarity in the midst of which I said, "I thought my yard should be wearing pants."
WAC Life.
For Memorial Day, here are some scans from my mother's "WAC Life/War Department Pamphlet," dated May 1945.
The cover:
Chapter 1 (Text: "So you're in the Army! You've had your fears and doubts, your cheers and kidding, your tears and farewells. Now, as the boys say, 'This is it!' You're somewhat of a different person already. You're not 'that sweet little Smith girl from Sycamore Street' nor 'that awfully capable Mrs. Smith' any more. Now you're Mary Smith, enlisted woman ..." )
Chapter 2 (Text: "Your job as a Wac, in its broadest definition, is to back up the fighting man. Your place is to render a service to him, not to fight at his side. He depends upon the service which you provide. The fact that your function is service rather than combat does not put you in any secondary or subordinate position. Your activities contribute directly to the winning of the war. Activities such as yours could not alone win the war; but alone they could lose it if they were left undone or were done badly.")
Here's some advice from Chapter 7:
The cover:
Chapter 1 (Text: "So you're in the Army! You've had your fears and doubts, your cheers and kidding, your tears and farewells. Now, as the boys say, 'This is it!' You're somewhat of a different person already. You're not 'that sweet little Smith girl from Sycamore Street' nor 'that awfully capable Mrs. Smith' any more. Now you're Mary Smith, enlisted woman ..." )
Chapter 2 (Text: "Your job as a Wac, in its broadest definition, is to back up the fighting man. Your place is to render a service to him, not to fight at his side. He depends upon the service which you provide. The fact that your function is service rather than combat does not put you in any secondary or subordinate position. Your activities contribute directly to the winning of the war. Activities such as yours could not alone win the war; but alone they could lose it if they were left undone or were done badly.")
Here's some advice from Chapter 7:
As a people, we're earnest about this war. Our enemies have learned that we're deadly earnest. So are our Allies. We don't wail when things go badly, nor blow off steam at every victory. The fight goes on, come good news or bad.
The answer is
less round. Jeremy seems to be obsessing about his head and his fingernails after last night's dinner at which Tonya and I finally met the blogger from the other side of Bascom Hill who inspired us to pursue the special UW style of blogging that he pioneered. (What, you don't see the similarity?) Nina, who got the whole Jeremy-inspired blogging phenomenon started was also there. Ever perceptive of the smallest details, Jeremy has noticed that his acolytes can be kept track of alphabetically, as our last initials are ABC. So we need a D to continue the trend. (Hmmm ... there are three D lawprofs, but the prospects at least for now for a D are slim indeed.) Among the four of us, two bottles of wine were consumed along with many fried calamari and assorted slabs of beef and fish. Topics discussed: Blogging! And some other things (religion, dyeing one's hair, divorce....).
UPDATE: My sister divas have weighed in here and here.
UPDATE: My sister divas have weighed in here and here.
May 30, 2004
Misreadings.
Tonya has some thoughts on blog comments generally and specifically on my experience with them. She notes that the main problem she's had with comments has been readers misreading her (including not getting the humor). That reminds me of something I had wanted to say about the comments. It is actually something that bothers me as much as the rudeness and the use of personal attacks instead of substantive arguments. It is how badly people read!
This is a matter I notice as a law professor too. Being a lawprof offers many occasions for seeing how poorly people read. Even in a class of well-qualified students (something I feel sure of based on my Admissions Committee work), where the students have a strong motivation to read the cases carefully in preparation for class, I am continually surprised by how little of what is written is understood. Even before going more deeply into the context of the cases and the motivations of the decisionmakers, students find it hard simply to restate the reasoning laid down in the text. Even when sentences are read out loud in class, many students cannot then paraphrase what the text means. On exams, I beg the students to answer the question asked. I write several times in the text of the exam: "Remember, you can only receive credit for answering the question asked." Yet many students seem to read the question and derive only a general idea of the area addressed and launch into a flow of verbiage that is in no way aimed at the precise question.
The experience with comments on this blog has reinforced my belief that people are not reading with a clear head. I don't think I'm encountering unintelligent people (especially in the case of the students). I think people read with their emotions: they know what they want to see or what they are afraid someone might be saying, and their emotions take over the processing of the words they are looking at. Emotion is a necessary component of human thought, and we could not do without it, but part of education must be controlling the freeform flow of emotion long enough to see the words on the page. I realize every word means what it means because it is absorbed into an individual person's subjective mind, but people need to discipline themselves a bit to fend off the misreadings and misunderstanding that constantly pull us away from the mind of the writer we read to encounter.
For as long as I can remember, I have felt frustrated by how slowly I read compared to other people. I have though known a few other people, people I respect very much, who share the same frustration. Yet I also know the feeling of just glancing at an article and believing I know what it says. I know we can't spend our lives ponderously laboring over other people's sentences. But we need to be aware of when we are really reading without risk of misunderstanding and when we are being reckless. Certainly, there are times when we need to read accurately, such as when reading an exam question or before attacking something someone has written. Learning to read and reading well are a constant struggle. The author's ideas don't just pop into your head when you look at the words. A large part of what appears in your head is your own thinking, and of course, the main reason to read is to develop your own mind. You want to cause thoughts of your own. One reason for reading slowly is to stop and think (or blog about) your own thoughts. But you're misreading if you can't tell the difference between your own thoughts and the writer's.
UPDATE: Chad Oldfather of Oklahoma City University School of Law emails:
This is a matter I notice as a law professor too. Being a lawprof offers many occasions for seeing how poorly people read. Even in a class of well-qualified students (something I feel sure of based on my Admissions Committee work), where the students have a strong motivation to read the cases carefully in preparation for class, I am continually surprised by how little of what is written is understood. Even before going more deeply into the context of the cases and the motivations of the decisionmakers, students find it hard simply to restate the reasoning laid down in the text. Even when sentences are read out loud in class, many students cannot then paraphrase what the text means. On exams, I beg the students to answer the question asked. I write several times in the text of the exam: "Remember, you can only receive credit for answering the question asked." Yet many students seem to read the question and derive only a general idea of the area addressed and launch into a flow of verbiage that is in no way aimed at the precise question.
The experience with comments on this blog has reinforced my belief that people are not reading with a clear head. I don't think I'm encountering unintelligent people (especially in the case of the students). I think people read with their emotions: they know what they want to see or what they are afraid someone might be saying, and their emotions take over the processing of the words they are looking at. Emotion is a necessary component of human thought, and we could not do without it, but part of education must be controlling the freeform flow of emotion long enough to see the words on the page. I realize every word means what it means because it is absorbed into an individual person's subjective mind, but people need to discipline themselves a bit to fend off the misreadings and misunderstanding that constantly pull us away from the mind of the writer we read to encounter.
For as long as I can remember, I have felt frustrated by how slowly I read compared to other people. I have though known a few other people, people I respect very much, who share the same frustration. Yet I also know the feeling of just glancing at an article and believing I know what it says. I know we can't spend our lives ponderously laboring over other people's sentences. But we need to be aware of when we are really reading without risk of misunderstanding and when we are being reckless. Certainly, there are times when we need to read accurately, such as when reading an exam question or before attacking something someone has written. Learning to read and reading well are a constant struggle. The author's ideas don't just pop into your head when you look at the words. A large part of what appears in your head is your own thinking, and of course, the main reason to read is to develop your own mind. You want to cause thoughts of your own. One reason for reading slowly is to stop and think (or blog about) your own thoughts. But you're misreading if you can't tell the difference between your own thoughts and the writer's.
UPDATE: Chad Oldfather of Oklahoma City University School of Law emails:
Even though I never got around to leaving a comment (I started to one time, and somehow via the registration process ended up instead with a blog of my own that I’ll probably never use), I’m sad to see your comment function go. ...
I couldn’t agree more with your Misreading post. I’m also continually struck by the number of times I encounter suggestions that what appear to be epic scholarly debates might have at least something to do with mutual misreading. One example is Posner-Dworkin. I’ve seen both of them accused of failing to understand what the other has written. I see this sort of thing all the time. Then it makes me wonder, like you: Is this how it is that everybody else seems to be able to read so fast? And then: Is this why so much scholarly debate often appears less like debate and more like people talking past one another?
The truth about bra sales and breast size.
Instapundit links to Living in Europe about how big breasts are getting in Denmark. The news comes from a lingerie company: ""We can clearly see a development. Where the standard size earlier was 75B, these days we sell at least as many C- and D-cups. It's my impression that young women today generally have much larger breasts. Many are slim and even use up to an E- or F-cup."
Well, good luck to big breast fans, but, quite aside from the fact that the "impression" is coming from a company that is seeking (and getting) publicty, you can't use the brassiere sales statistics as the measure of the size of breasts among women generally. The larger your breasts are the more likely you are to have to wear a bra every time you leave the house. The smaller they are the more optional it is: it's a matter of social convention and fashion. If social convention or fashion changes and there are fewer times when you feel you need to wear a bra just for the sake of wearing a bra, the ratio of large size bra sales to small size bra sales will increase. The large breasted woman needs a substantial collection of bras. A smaller breasted woman might go years without buying a new bra. Maybe there is a trend among small breasted women to resort to a bra only for the occasional somber occasion or sheer blouse or there is a trend toward regarding fewer occasions as somber or away from caring that a top is sheer or clingy enough to make it visible that you aren't wearing a bra.
Well, good luck to big breast fans, but, quite aside from the fact that the "impression" is coming from a company that is seeking (and getting) publicty, you can't use the brassiere sales statistics as the measure of the size of breasts among women generally. The larger your breasts are the more likely you are to have to wear a bra every time you leave the house. The smaller they are the more optional it is: it's a matter of social convention and fashion. If social convention or fashion changes and there are fewer times when you feel you need to wear a bra just for the sake of wearing a bra, the ratio of large size bra sales to small size bra sales will increase. The large breasted woman needs a substantial collection of bras. A smaller breasted woman might go years without buying a new bra. Maybe there is a trend among small breasted women to resort to a bra only for the occasional somber occasion or sheer blouse or there is a trend toward regarding fewer occasions as somber or away from caring that a top is sheer or clingy enough to make it visible that you aren't wearing a bra.
A weary Kerryism.
The Washington Post interviewed John Kerry:
I don't think "soaring" is quite the right word for anything Bush might say in an interview. Even "rhetoric" seems to be a stretch if you're talking about Bush speaking in his own words, as opposed to reading a speech. Bush has dealt with his lack of a way with words by just speaking very simply (and rarely). Kerry's problem with words leads him into wordy, pretentious-sounding rambles.
Kerry's use of the word "chauvinistically" is a mind-numblingly poor word choice. It reminds me of the time Ralph Nader said "Don't burlesque me." Except that Nader's use of "burlesque" is dictionary-perfect, just a dictionary definition not ordinarily heard outside of an English Literature classroom. Kerry's use of "chauvinistically" isn't quite right from a dictionary standpoint. It should mean: in a manner characterized by "[m]ilitant devotion to and glorification of one's country; fanatical patriotism." "Chauvinism" is a fancy word that--outside of idiomatic feminist usage--should be avoided unless it has a precision of meaning that makes it worth the risk of appearing hoity-toity. The precision of meaning that "chauvinistically" has that distinguishes it from the normal word--"patriotically"--is not anything Kerry even wanted to say, let alone had a special reason for risking appearing hoity-toity. And Kerry has a huge interest in avoiding appearing hoity-toity.
Now, let's look at the sentence as a whole: "The idea of America is, I think proudly and chauvinistically, the best idea that we've developed in this world." It's so boringly verbose! He could have said, "America is the best country in the world." But he had to relocate America into the realm of ideas for some reason: "The idea of America is the best idea in the world." What's with the intellectualization? Does he mean the the ideas in American law and government are the best ideas? Extra words should add extra meaning or precision. (The sentence does appear out of context, as the Washington Post editorializes that he was stumbling over words.) So at the center of his sentence is the standard incantation "America is the best country in the world," or perhaps "American ideas are the best ideas in the world," but he makes it "The idea of America is the best idea we've developed in the world." As if the idea that an idea has been "developed" adds some value.
Then he has that clunker clause breaking up the sentence: "I think proudly and chauvinistically." Why stop in the middle and say that he thinks what he's saying (I'm John Kerry and I approve this message)? Why add the adverbs at all (quite aside from the mistaken use of "chauvinistically")? It seems as though he caught himself expressing pride and patriotism and he felt it necessary to remark on his own attitude, as if from a distance. Here I am, having to be the candidate, saying the candidate things, so I have to say I believe in America again, because that's what's required. That's what I would think if I were in that position. I'd feel distanced and alienated: oh, no, here I am, having to say that again, feeling like it's a load of crap, even though I actually do believe that the ideas in American law and government are the best ideas. Maybe there's some reluctance and weariness about going through all the motions we require a person to make before he can be President. (Most of us would have gotten much wearier, much earlier in the game.) Maybe the slip of using "chauvinistically" did add precision to his expression--though not a precision he would want to appear in his statement. Maybe he genuinely thinks the endless professions of patriotism that are required of a candidate are a lot of baloney. I don't hold that against him--and I certainly don't think finding this kind of thing tedious means he's not patriotic. But I don't think talking like that is going to help his cause. And if he really is getting weary of having to say such things, why not make it as brief as possible? Because people are getting weary of these long sentences.
And by the way, the Washington Post could use some more copyediting: "the soaring rhetoric on freedom and democracy that are commonplace" should be "the soaring rhetoric on freedom and democracy that is commonplace."
During the interview, he eschewed the soaring rhetoric on freedom and democracy that are commonplace in Bush's speeches and news conferences. At one point, he stumbled over the words when he tried to emphasize his interest in promoting American values: "The idea of America is, I think proudly and chauvinistically, the best idea that we've developed in this world."
I don't think "soaring" is quite the right word for anything Bush might say in an interview. Even "rhetoric" seems to be a stretch if you're talking about Bush speaking in his own words, as opposed to reading a speech. Bush has dealt with his lack of a way with words by just speaking very simply (and rarely). Kerry's problem with words leads him into wordy, pretentious-sounding rambles.
Kerry's use of the word "chauvinistically" is a mind-numblingly poor word choice. It reminds me of the time Ralph Nader said "Don't burlesque me." Except that Nader's use of "burlesque" is dictionary-perfect, just a dictionary definition not ordinarily heard outside of an English Literature classroom. Kerry's use of "chauvinistically" isn't quite right from a dictionary standpoint. It should mean: in a manner characterized by "[m]ilitant devotion to and glorification of one's country; fanatical patriotism." "Chauvinism" is a fancy word that--outside of idiomatic feminist usage--should be avoided unless it has a precision of meaning that makes it worth the risk of appearing hoity-toity. The precision of meaning that "chauvinistically" has that distinguishes it from the normal word--"patriotically"--is not anything Kerry even wanted to say, let alone had a special reason for risking appearing hoity-toity. And Kerry has a huge interest in avoiding appearing hoity-toity.
Now, let's look at the sentence as a whole: "The idea of America is, I think proudly and chauvinistically, the best idea that we've developed in this world." It's so boringly verbose! He could have said, "America is the best country in the world." But he had to relocate America into the realm of ideas for some reason: "The idea of America is the best idea in the world." What's with the intellectualization? Does he mean the the ideas in American law and government are the best ideas? Extra words should add extra meaning or precision. (The sentence does appear out of context, as the Washington Post editorializes that he was stumbling over words.) So at the center of his sentence is the standard incantation "America is the best country in the world," or perhaps "American ideas are the best ideas in the world," but he makes it "The idea of America is the best idea we've developed in the world." As if the idea that an idea has been "developed" adds some value.
Then he has that clunker clause breaking up the sentence: "I think proudly and chauvinistically." Why stop in the middle and say that he thinks what he's saying (I'm John Kerry and I approve this message)? Why add the adverbs at all (quite aside from the mistaken use of "chauvinistically")? It seems as though he caught himself expressing pride and patriotism and he felt it necessary to remark on his own attitude, as if from a distance. Here I am, having to be the candidate, saying the candidate things, so I have to say I believe in America again, because that's what's required. That's what I would think if I were in that position. I'd feel distanced and alienated: oh, no, here I am, having to say that again, feeling like it's a load of crap, even though I actually do believe that the ideas in American law and government are the best ideas. Maybe there's some reluctance and weariness about going through all the motions we require a person to make before he can be President. (Most of us would have gotten much wearier, much earlier in the game.) Maybe the slip of using "chauvinistically" did add precision to his expression--though not a precision he would want to appear in his statement. Maybe he genuinely thinks the endless professions of patriotism that are required of a candidate are a lot of baloney. I don't hold that against him--and I certainly don't think finding this kind of thing tedious means he's not patriotic. But I don't think talking like that is going to help his cause. And if he really is getting weary of having to say such things, why not make it as brief as possible? Because people are getting weary of these long sentences.
And by the way, the Washington Post could use some more copyediting: "the soaring rhetoric on freedom and democracy that are commonplace" should be "the soaring rhetoric on freedom and democracy that is commonplace."
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