Quote of the Day

"When a person is twenty-one or twenty-two years old and facing that great enigma about what to do, envying the law students or medical students who can get on a set of rails and run on it and know where they're going, the writer doesn't know. But a writer should also bear in mind there are numerous paths to this goal and they're all O.K. It's like a huge river with a lot of islands in it. You can go around an island to the left or right. You can go to this or that island. You might get into an eddy. But you're still in the river. You're going to get there. If the person expects the big answers at twenty-one, that's ridiculous. Everyone's in the dark."
-John McPhee, quoted in Literary Journalism by Norman Sims and Mark Kramer

Speaking of writing, Practicing Writing is a great blog featuring tips and opportunities for writers (h/t to Kate).

Amazing Grace

Update below

At least one newspaper is doing well. Sort of. For a moment.

Is the iPad newspapers' saving grace? It's even the focus of Doonesbury comics this week.

We have two-thirds of a perfect storm right now simultaneously being explored by Gary Trudeau and others. The first is the New York Times' online "paywall." The second is the iPad.

Pay dirt (as in what I pay right now)
That's right, the New York Times will soon begin charging for access after a certain number of articles. No more all-you-can-eat buffet without a subscription. Welcome to news a la carte.

Apparently Newsday has had great success with this. Hah.

Having to pay to access any online story would hurt a lot of amateur bloggers like me because one, my audience doesn't necessarily subscribe to every newspaper, and two, my income does not at the moment support me subscribing to every online news source I read. Luckily, though, it's unlikely that free online news will ever go away. It will probably just change forms.

Check out the Nieman Journalism Labs' paywall widget.

iWhat?
Did you see the iPad? I saw the iPad. It looks like a big iPod Touch. It's "magical and revolutionary" at an "unbelievable price." But I believe the price.

The Big Money writes that a key to Apple's success is its antisocial attitude. This is true, but there is another factor as well.

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee
MacWorld predicts that newspapers and magazines will benefit from portable e-readers. Just think: all the news, no physical production cost. Just lay it out in a digital format and you're good to go. The downside to this is that Apple will undoubtedly try to sell subscriptions through iTunes, meaning that Apple will be getting a cut of the hard work that newspapers do. (For ha-has: I link freely to articles, and you get added commentary!)

While this can save "print" (err, let's work on another name for that) publications, it will give Apple greater power over media. Apple is saving newspapers, and it's doing a much better job than the federal government did when it saved America's "cannot fail" institutions. Those institutions were given fairly free rein. Apple is holding newspapers by the lede. A better model for newspapers would allow you to subscribe directly through the publication's website, bypassing Apple entirely. But Apple wants to control the media because its device will be expensive. Worst case scenario for us/best case scenario for Apple: People will buy cheaper e-readers, but it will only be iPad users that can download the content they want. Let's hope it never comes to this

Update 6:30: I was just discussing this with my friend Anthony, who is an English major. His greatest concern is for the book publishing industry. The same logic applies regarding Apple's control of media. The difference is that book publishing has not lost revenue due to declining readership and a loss of advertising.

Two Poems

These I just rediscovered.

As they were written many months apart, I didn't intend both these poems to feature Buddhism, animals and death. But they do. I hope you enjoy.

I hope the mayfly I just killed was Buddhist

Death by newsprint –
the business section eclipsed the table lamp’s
mirthless glow as a story on Citgo’s Venezuela
trouble hit hard an unintended audience.

Perhaps he was meditating on death
or fashioning tiny mayfly prayer flags
from stray banana peel fibers,
which he’d dole out to other Buddhist mayflies

to place wherever Buddhist mayflies’ prayers need saying.
I’d like to think the life I took
just might have had a prayer
because Buddhist flies get another chance.

A mayfly’s samsara:
eat shit and mate.

I would have sent an incarnation onward as a station
on Nirvana Railways, giving it a second or third
hundredth shot at bodhi, which for Buddhist mayflies
is realized simply one day at time.

- - -


“The Badgers are on fire!”

Billy’s callin’ – I let it ring
because I know he’s watching
the Wisconsin game too, and wishes
to discuss the ten unanswered points,
and the announcer’s absurd observation.

I wonder if they’re worried, the badgers,
confronted with their abruptly
existential condition, combusting spontaneously like
frantic badger-shaped logs soaked in kerosene,
sputtering like stuntmen or popping like prop jobs,
these also on fire.

Or are they transcendent little furry burning monks,
tranquil as a phoenix in its last moments aflame
with foreknowledge of impending rebirth?

I imagine shouts of “FIRE!” in the Kohl Center –
spectacle of the unexpected. Still the squeak
of high tops, the quickening cadence
of leather on maple continues
as the home team smokes its competition.
Bucky bravely stands, sentinel on the sidelines,
mascot-ed head immersed in a Gatorade cooler.

In defense of pantheism

A couple weeks ago I went to see Fern Gulley III: Pandora's Cry in 3D IMAX. You can imagine my disappointment when they instead showed James Cameron's Avatar.

Yes, Hollywood loves pantheism, but what some do not understand is that pantheism is a legitimate religious outlook. Ross Douthat's December Op-Ed column in the New York Times used James Cameron's Avatar as a launching point to decry pantheism as a religion. His argument is pretty weak. He would be better off arguing that people should consider pantheism more carefully before dismissing it as a legitimate religion entirely.

Douthat opens with a definition of pantheism and its relation to Avatar:

“Avatar” is Cameron’s long apologia for pantheism — a faith that equates God with Nature, and calls humanity into religious communion with the natural world.

So far so good. His definition is pretty accurate, if short to fit in print. He then gets into the requirements of a religion:

The threat of global warming, meanwhile, has lent the cult of Nature qualities that every successful religion needs — a crusading spirit, a rigorous set of ‘thou shalt nots,” and a piping-hot apocalypse.

To a degree, I accept this proposal, but I would tone it down to accommodate all religions, not just the Abrahamic ones. Let's replace the violent imagery of a crusading spirit with message. Yes, those are different things, killing with the goal of spreading your religion does not legitimate it. In fact, you don't even need to spread your religion in order to make it legitimate. In fact, the crusading spirit should probably be disregarded outright. But I digress. Let's trade the thou shalt nots for philosophy. Let's exchange eschatology (view of the "end time," whether this is communal or personal) for piping-hot apocalypse.

Let's take a look at pantheism.

• Message: We are all of this earth.
  
• Philosophy: Respect life. Find your balance.
• Eschatology: You will die and rot. If you have a soul, it will even return to the "all." But don't expect singing angels.
  

Okay. Now we can all speak together productively about this. But Douthat doubts that pantheism deserves a voice:

The question is whether Nature actually deserves a religious response. Traditional theism has to wrestle with the problem of evil: if God is good, why does he allow suffering and death? But Nature is suffering and death. Its harmonies require violence. Its “circle of life” is really a cycle of mortality. And the human societies that hew closest to the natural order aren’t the shining Edens of James Cameron’s fond imaginings. They’re places where existence tends to be nasty, brutish and short.

The comparison is absurd. The problem of evil that monotheisic religions deal with is very difficult to argue, and imbues the religion with a great deal of mystery. By Douthat's logic, pantheism is not a legitimate religion because the causes of suffering and death are accounted for. Wait, a religion with an empiracally-provable philosophy? Why haven't we all hopped onboard? Douthat is blinded by monotheistic eschatology such that he thinks the only religion worth having is one with a parent-child relationship: if you eat all your food and are a good little boy, you'll get ice cream for dessert. He can't imagine a religion without that happy ending: "Religion exists, in part, precisely because humans aren’t at home amid these cruel rhythms [of death and decay]."

Whereas monotheistic religion promises heaven, Douthat argues, pantheism presents a "downward exit, an abandonment of our tragic self-consciousness, a re-merger with the natural world our ancestors half-escaped millennia ago." Pantheism does not hope for a future of bliss, but it does have an eschatology of individual death, which is really communal death, as everything on earth is subject to death and decay. Further, Douthat perceives a "re-merger with the natural world" to be feeble as compared to today's robust monotheistic religions. Anyone who takes a course in philosophy knows that the "appeal to belief" is fallacious. Any number of people believing X does not make X true.

Douthat concludes, "But except as dust and ashes, Nature cannot take us back." Wait, let me try this from the other side. "But except four our souls, the existence of which has not been proven, the all-benevolent creator whose existence has not been proven cannot take us back." In either case, a person is retuning to something he or she believed in. I believe that's what faith is.

Fuse!

I've got some new work up on the Fuse website:

The Calculus of Climate Change
Running in Place
Slapshots of Bob Driscoll
Mustache + November = Movember

Also, the 2010 winter issue of Fuse, Ithaca College's prospective student magazine, is out. I've got a couple articles in there, and I was the student editor for "Dig It." Check it out on Issuu.

Losing late-night laughs?

It feels good to be back. We've got a great show for you tonight.

I'm not sure if you've heard of NBC'snew reality/drama/puzzle concept, titled "Swapping Times." I'm a little sketchy on the details, but I think it has something to do with moving around nighttime talk shows to get more viewers. There's even the possibility of getting voted off the network if your ratings aren't good enough. That's some great programming.

I tried to do little research, but strangely was having problems with viewing the NBC.com clips featured on the HuffingtonPost website: "Conan Skewers NBC in Monologue" and "Leno Canceled? Jay Jokes About Rumors in Monologue."

Whenever I tried to play the videos in Firefox or Safari, the browser shuts down about 15 seconds in. Then I tried to play the whole Jay Leno show on his website, which also froze Firefox. It seemed awfully suspicious on NBC's part, but it turns out it was just a bad boot.


see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Stick around, we've got a great show for you tonight. Sometime.