Kanye,

I'm happy for you and everything, and Imma let you finish, but Regina Spektor actually had one of the best videos of all time.
*shrug*

Yes, Kanye's a jerk, that's nothing new. And yes, this post is very late. But honestly, Regina Spektor has a history of interesting and creative videos, and those from her latest album are no exception.

Below is "Man of a Thousand Faces" from the new album Far.



Rock on.

Why in the world...

...is "eschatology flatulence" not a Google Bomb?

It's not even close. There are over 16,000 sites that include both these words.

I don't get it.

Edit: Somehow, though, my blog is now the number two search result. Yea?

Raphael's "School of Athens"

I've always liked this painting. I'm much more a fan of Michelangelo than of Raphael, but the summit of the philosophers has always seemed like one of the most amazing learning environments to ever be conceived. Well, that and I live in a little college town by the name of Athens.

The two philosophers at the center of the painting are generally thought to be Plato and Aristotle*. But it's generally thought that Raphael based certain philosophers on artists of his time. Plato is connected to da Vinci. Michelangelo is in the painting, but there is debate about who he is -- is he Aristotle, standing proud with his Ethics, debating his teacher?


Or is he the brooding figure of Heraclitus?


I think he's both. Michelangelo was certainly the dark, depressed figure that painted himself as a lifeless skin in "The Last Judgement" in the Sistene Chapel, but he was also the master who completed the ceiling of that very same chapel with almost no help from his apprentices.

But if Michelangel gets to play both roles, why does da Vinci only appear once? Where is the most famous Renaissance painter? I think he might be Pythagorus as well -- the bald, bearded figure hard at work on the foundations of geometry and architecture -- just as da Vinci is well-known for his volumes of notes on anatomy and inventions.


Rock on.
*Scholars determined the places of Plato and Aristotle by which books they hold in the scene. Plato holds his Timaeus, and Aristotle, his Ethics.

These images were retrieved via Wikimedia Commons and are in the public domain.

Threshold Crossing and Professor Ransom

Yet another post from my continuing series on Lewis' Space/Ransom trilogy.

It should be noted that since writing this piece, I have had a few more ideas on Lewis and the hero journey. I'll be trying to develop this, and may post a few ideas as they come up

* * *

The title here refers to Joseph Campbell's Hero Journey Cycle (from The Hero with a Thousand Faces). For an explanation, here's a useful link from UC Berkley.

Professor Ransom never meant to go on a journey. In fact, Lewis states specifically in Out of the Silent Planet, “The last thing Ransom wanted was an adventure....” All he wanted was a vacation. Unfortunately for him, he climbed over the hedge, crossing the threshold into a limenal space. Just as a bridge over a river or the edge of the forest in other works of fantasy, this barrier represents a division of two worlds. And while Ransom will experience multiple cycles, and even cycles within cycles, this marks the beginning of the journey which will span the entire trilogy. It is in the simple, almost juvenile act of climbing over the hedge that Ransom sets the entire narrative into motion. He enters into the limenal space, and will not leave it until he returns to Perelandra at the end of That Hideous Strength.

Once he's crossed the threshold into the adventure he did not want, Ransom is abducted, starting a second, smaller cycle. This abduction takes Ransom, quite literally, to a different world, across Deep Heaven. After arriving on Malacandra, he encounters a perfectly redeemed world and a heavenly being – the Oyarsa of Malacandra, Mars himself. Meeting the Oyarsa marks the beginning of Ransom's rescue from his abductors, and his return to Thulcandra. The return is not without its difficulties, and a strict time limit of ninety days is imposed on Ransom and his abductors – should they fail, they will be unmade with their already-doomed vessel. After landing, Ransom is abandoned in the doomed ship and emerges back on Earth in the rain. It is worth noting that the ship on which Ransom and his captors travel is roughly egg-shaped. Ransom is reborn both on Mars and on Earth, submerging himself in the Martian waters and Terrestrial rain, in a sense baptizing himself. It is also worth noting the similarities between maritime and extraterrestrial travel. Like the Greeks going to Troy, Caspian on the Dawn Treader, and Ishmael on the Pequod, the use of ships marks the beginning and ends of many voyages.

In Perelandra, Ransom travels to Venus under the orders of the Oyarsa whom he met on Malacandra. What's interesting here is his method of transportation – a coffin-shaped vessel, complete with a face covering similar to a burial shroud. He emerges in the oceans of Perelandra. Upon encountering the King and Queen of Perelandra and the Oyeresu of Malacandra and Perelandra, Ransom makes his return trip in much the same way, but with a physical wound from his fight with the Unman. He arrives back on Earth a transformed man, physically stronger but still bleeding from his heel. His coffin-shaped vessel is loaded with resurrection imagery. And in his new life on Perelandra, he is immediately baptized in his emergence from the tomb. Just as in Out of the Silent Planet, his return voyage begins with him encountering the Oyeresu. Returning to the normal world, Ransom carries the wound with him until he returns to the site of injury at the end of That Hideous Strength. His wound is a physical reminder of his ordeal.

While on Perelandra, Ransom physically fights the Unman, with the battle concluding in a cave. The fight submerges the warring duo in water, with them emerging on a beach. Ransom must continue to fight the Unman as he climbs out of the cave. This is yet another cycle – within a cycle, within a cycle. But the imagery cannot be ignored. The fight with the Unman and the physical hardship of exiting the cave are perhaps the best examples of struggling to cross the threshold.

What brings the overarching cycle to an end is Ransom's return to Perelandra. While Ransom entered the limenal space through the simple act of climbing over a hedge, he leaves the limenal space through the extraordinary act of leaving the planet. In this act, though, something odd happens. He may be leaving the limenal space, but he is also leaving a profane place. His period of testing included trips to sacred lands, but reached its climaxed in the profane. His reward, his earned innocence, is on the unfallen world of Perelandra, with the great men of the past who have not died, but live forever on the sacred island.

Anonymous -- Internet Golem

A golem* is a creature in Jewish folklore made by man out of inanimate material, generally soil. Much like Dr. Frankenstein's Monster, the best-known story of a golem ends with the creature betraying its maker.

I have jokingly referred to the Pillsbury Doughboy as a golem, and along those lines, so are the fabled Gingerbread Man and his comical form, the Stinky Cheese Man.

But what would an actual 21st century golem look like? A creature made from an inanimate material brought to life by its creator, and then being set loose to destroy order and harvest chaos?

I suggest the Internet-based Anonymous, a collection of web-users from the Something Awful forums, 4chan and 7chan, and any number of other sites that compose the basement of the World Wide Web. Anonymous is not a single person, but it is not really a group, either. Anonymous has no coherent membership, no leaders, and no common goal (in fact, it often turns on itself). It is self-aware, which is, granted, rather unlike a golem. But it has a mysterious life force -- like the magic words and combinations of letters which bring a golem to life, so anonymity gives Anonymous the ability to, for better and for worse, get away with what they do. Take away the life force, take away the creature.

Now, I'm not suggesting that we grab pitchforks and torches, form a mob, and take down Anonymous. Just trying to flush out a thought.

Rock on.

*The term means "cocoon", but also "silly" or "stupid". The Hebrew root for the Yiddish word means "incomplete substance". It's likely that Tolkien's Gollum is a reference to this phrase, slipping from Smeagol, his Superego and Ego, into Gollum, his Id, becoming a baser creature

Health Care Refo-oh crap, what are you doing with that noose?

From a recent NY Times article:

The bitter divisions over an overhaul of the health care system have exploded at town-hall-style meetings over the last few days as members of Congress have been shouted down, hanged in effigy and taunted by crowds. In several cities, noisy demonstrations have led to fistfights, arrests and hospitalizations.

Um...on the up-side, people are starting to take notice of politics. Yea!

On the down side, we're starting to look like those Fox specials with names like "The World's Wackiest/Most Violent Parliaments."

I understand that divisive issues will lead to frustrations on both sides. Great. Read up on the topic, take a side based on an informed opinion, and make your voice heard.

But be respectful and calm. Don't start a riot. This is not Iran. This administration did not steal an election. We are not being oppressed. We are being asked to join in a debate over the future of healthcare, like the civilized country we are.

And as a brief aside to those calling for these protests (I'm looking at you Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh, and O'Reilly): for eight years, you told protesters that they were un-American. You said dissent was un-patriotic. You questioned the loyalty of any who didn't fall in line behind the Bush administration's agenda. But now, dissent is patriotic, as your picket signs read. You organize events and encourage your followers to disrupt meetings and protest taxes, and then claim it's grassroots.

But I've never seen grass grow from the top down.

I'll let Mr. Jon Stewart explain*:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Master Rebators - The Crank Cycle
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Spinal Tap Performance

Rock on.

*I was going to right a brief explanation of Fox New's claim about Cash for Clunkers seen in the posted video. It took on a life of it's own and is now posted here.

On Cash for Clunkers and Why Fox News Sucks at Math

I started to write a brief end note to this post about political fist fights, town hall meetings, and the conservative double standard. The end note was going to be on an outrageous claim from Fox News that the Cash for Clunkers deal was running out of money. But the note quickly spiraled, and has taken the form you see now.

Now, on to Cash for Clunkers.

Yes, due to the program's popularity, it burned through it's allocation rather quickly, leading to additional funds being allocated. But at the time FN's claim, the math worked out like this:

The statement claims CfC was allocated $1 billion, and spent $96 million with another $96 million promised, and was therefore "basically out of money already". That's dishonesty in reporting. Let's look at this in digits.

One billion = 1,000,000,000
One million = 0,001,000,000

Notice the three extra zeros. At this point, CfC had spent $192,000,000. Out of $1,000,000,000.

Each clunker traded in is worth between $3,500 and $4,500.

Let us now consider this with smaller numbers and get rid of a few zeros. We'll move the decimals over six places. One billion becomes one thousand and one million becomes one. We will leave the percentages the same.

CfC allocated-------------$1,000.00
CfC spent-----------------$0,192.00
Each additional deal----$0,000.0045

Each additional clunker traded in costs less than one half of one percent. That means that 202,000 more trade-ins were made between Fox New's wonderful display of (willful) ignorance and the renewal of CfC.

What thinking man, given a thousand dollars, would claim that he was out of money after spending $192, if each purchase cost him less than half a penny?

Using elementary-school level math, you can move the decimal over one more place, and see that 19.2% of the allocation had been expended.

Does this mean that Fox News is a less-than-twenty-percent-of-the-glass-empty style pessimist? If this is the case, they are truly the most depressed people in the world. By the time you're a teenager, you're "basically" almost dead.

Another option is that they so incredibly simple as to not understand the difference between a million and a billion. But I would hope that "America's News Network" was smarter than that.

Instead, I see it that the network that claims to report the facts and let the viewer decided, who has taken "Fair and Balanced" to be their slogan, is so incredibly biased as to purposely misinterpret the facts to mislead the public.


Rock on.

Edited on 8 September 2009 for minor formatting changes.

Did you know...

...that Christopher Hitchens sends his daughter to a private Quaker school?

That's what he said when he was interviewed by the Commonwealth Club of California.

He was asked which religion he detests the least, and gave the response that even the Quakers make the mistake of viewing faith as a good thing.

It is of the highest order of hypocrisy to claim that religion poisons everything and then send a child, your child, to a religious institution.

Rock on.

Don Miller on Story and Christianity

I realize that the title is very descriptive. The point in all of Don Miller's books is the role of Story. In fact, his latest book, coming out in August, was originally going to be called Let Story Guide You, though he rewrote it and changed the title to A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.

Anyway, he gave a brief overview of the book on his blog, and laid out what he thinks is the true narrative structure of Christianity.

For more on Million Miles, see Miller's interview -- really, it's more of a video-taped conversation -- with his publisher, also on his blog.

For more on Miller himself, check out his website, his blog, or any of the many posts I've written on Miller.

Rock on.

Lewis on Temptation in Pre- and Post- Fall Worlds

In the Ransom trilogy, the dark eldila of Thulcandra (Earth) use multiple means to tempt both the Queen of Perelandra (Venus) and Mark Studdock, including vanity, independent control, and greed. The Unman must start from scratch, so to speak, and create these concepts within the Green Lady*. The NICE, however, has an easier job, as Mark is already in a fallen world, and can appeal to these already existing concepts.

First, there is vanity. For the Green Lady, this means allowing her to see herself in a mirror, and putting into her mind the idea that she could be more beautiful. Along with the connection the Unman has made between age, power, knowledge, and beauty, he tries to convince the Green Lady to disobey Maledil in order to gain beauty. With Mark, the leadership of the NICE uses his vanity to turn him into a tool – Mark's longing to join the inner circle leads him to obey reject friendship, romantic love, and charity.

The Unman also tells the Green Lady that she can control her own fate – that by settling on the fixed land, the Green Lady might become independent, no longer relying on Maledil or even the King. The NICE attempt to control all of the natural world, and pull Mark into their quest, and as he goes further and further into the upper tiers of leadership, he participates more and more in controlling (manipulating, though, may be a better word) not just Nature, but other hnau as well.

In conjunction with tempting her with vanity and control, the Unman gives the Green Lady an coat, telling her that it can be hers and she can keep it where weather, animal, and hnau cannot reach or destroy it. In other words, the Green Lady can store up treasures that are hers and hers alone – she can be greedy. Here, Mark's temptation is different. He desires not material possessions, or even power, so much as acceptance. But, like material greed, his desire drives him to alienate anyone who may get in his way and blinds his decision making process.

Rock on.

*The Green Lady is the Queen of Perelandra. The novel, Perelandra, is in some ways Lewis' retelling of Paradise Lost. As such, the Green Lady represents Eve, and the Unman, Satan.