atthesametime

12:23 pm: Radio! Radio!

Continuing my long decent into total fucking loon, I got a short wave radio. I am just beginning to figure the damn thing out. Turns out the world of shortwave is more complicated than I expected. The truly foreign or weird is much more elusive than I naively thought. Stations don’t broadcast 24 hours a day and reception is generally poor. This probably has something to do with the fact that it is an antiquated technology  no one uses anymore. I am excited about it.

For reasons that are beyond my scientific understanding but that have  something to do with solar rays and other stuff, the best time to listen to foreign broadcast shortwave on the east coast of America is the middle of the night. This just adds to the crazy factor when my wife finds me toying with the radio at one in the morning.

“Find any spies?” she asks, knowing about my mission to track down a numbers station.

“Not yet, but I found a station in Korean!” I respond.

“Oh how interesting.” She says with the level of sarcasm only attainable by those who have grown up in the caldron of sarcasm known as the island of Manhattan.

Won’t she be surprised when I find UVB-76!

I might need a more powerful antenna. I am considering stringing one up to our fire escape. Is that the behavior of a crazy person?

 For now my initial observations are:

• The vast majority of shortwave in English is about Jesus.
• Alex Jones has a pretty extensive presence  on shortwave and he is pretty upset about the future of America.
• Almost all of what I have heard is talk radio in various languages. This is a disappointment. I was hoping for some good African music, but that now seems unlikely. The languages I have heard in order of frequency are: English, Chinese, Arabic and Korean. I wish my Arabic was better because twice I have come across a station with a very pissed off sounding woman shouting in Arabic.  
• The only music I’ve heard is traditional Chinese.

Stay tuned for more reporting from the fringes of the dial. 

09:02 pm: The Books of 2011

I read exactly 40 books last year. Only four less than last year. That is surprising since I was definitely much busier this year. The numbers are a little juiced because I got sucked into the Walking Dead graphic novel series, but all in all, not a bad year. Still somehow Cosma read roughly 160 more than I did while also being a math genius and shit. I’ve listed all the books below with a note on whether or not I would recommend them for the average reader, the reader with a preexisting interest in the subject matter or not at all. 

08:48 am: For old times sake
I was out to dinner a couple of weeks ago with an old time LJer and our partners and the subject of Secrets Monday and what an odd and wonderful internet thing it had become. I thought maybe it would be fun to dust it off and see if there was still any life in it. Is there?

TELL ME A SECRET

1) Post anonymously, I have no way of knowing who it is, IP logging is off.
2) Tell me anything you wish, it can be directed at me or it can be
completely random or just something you need or want to get off your
chest. Silly or serious.

12:16 pm: NaNoWrimo?
Are any of you nerds doing NaNoWrimo?

01:54 pm: Look! A Book Review!

Aristotle's Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Middle Ages

Richard Rubenstein

 

 

I have for some time been interested in the interplay between classical Greek philosophy, rabbinic Judaism, and early Christian thought. Neo-platonic thought and early Christian doctrine share a lot in common, and Aristotle had a clear influence on the codification of the Talmud. So when I saw the subtitle of this book, I was excited for an overview of that area of history. I guess I should have read the back cover before I purchased this one, because the title is highly misleading. This book has almost no information about the early Christian era; it is a book about the rediscovery of classical thought in the high middle ages and Renaissance. Think Thomas Aquinas and Peter Abelard, not Rabbi Akiva and Augustine of Hippo.

 

Though this book turned out to not be at all what I was looking for, it was interesting. As a theology buff, I enjoyed the arguments regarding the nature of the trinity, the infighting between the competing monastic orders, and the turn towards Aristotelian logic in theological debate. You can look down your nose at monks arguing over the question of how many angels fit on the head of a pin, but the rigor that people like Aquinas and Abelard brought to the discussion of theological questions is the foundation for the logistical thinking which brought us the scientific revolution. And the scientific revolution brought you the iphone, so shut up.

 

Aristotle’s Children may not have been what I was looking for, but as a piece of popular religious history, it’s a good read. Recommended for the curious.

 

 - Sean

 

    

10:59 am: Saturday

Think of how freeing it would be to believe that the world is ending tomorrow. You can quit your job, stop paying into your kid’s college education fund, and know that by Sunday, the mundane troubles that make up modern life will be over. As I write checks to my student loans, or send another threatening letter to another government agency screwing another one of my clients, I can definitely relate to wanting to just give up on it all. Perhaps believing in these apocalyptic prophesies is rooted in deeply held beliefs, but I think it is also tied to a very common modern angst.

 

Life is often soul crushingly boring. The rapture is a nice way to spice up your day. But if you have stopped paying your credit cards, mortgaged your house to pay for billboards, and told your children they aren’t going to heaven with you, I imagine you will wake up on Sunday with a hell of a spiritual hangover.

10:34 pm: RBG



Born 78 years ago today in the Flatbush, Brooklyn, you remain an inspiration to progressive lawyers everywhere. You were a Jew in a law school of wasps, a woman in a field of men, and you remain a principled and brilliant justice. You inspire me to work harder, do more, and never let them see you sweat. Happy birthday, Mrs. Ginsburg, I hope you have many more.

09:51 am: As villagecharm  mentioned last night, I have been cheating on livejournal. A couple of months ago I started yet another new blog; this one dedicated to my primary interest: books. You can see it at foxhillreview.wordpress.com

So far, it is going well. I’m excited about what Charm and I are writing for it. The fact that it is searchable on google and is actually attracting the attention of strangers is a plus.

 I will still be posting here every once in awhile, but if you’re bored or book obsessed, check out Foxhill.

02:48 pm: Dear Mountain Goats Obsessives,

Please give me a lyric about love that isn't depressing.

thanks,
me.

06:56 pm: Discourses and Selected Writings

Epictetus (trans. Robert Dobbin) (Penguin)



Epictetus. Freed slave, logician, and stoic, is one of the many classical writers more often referenced than read. Epictetus’s name is bandied frequently when the subject of stoicism comes up. His writings were extremely influential on Marcus Aurealius (some of the writing attributed to Epictetus exists only in quotation in the Meditations) and that which influenced the great Marcus gets remembered.

This volume is made up of two works, the “popular” Enchiridon and the longer, more rigorous, Discourses. I read this, bizarrely, after having it recommended on a running blog. Unlike much of modern philosophy, the book is accessible and wonderfully funny. I do not read Greek, so I do not know if this is because Epictetus himself was funny, or if the translator, Robert Dobbin, took liberties with the text.

Now, before we go any further it should be noted that I don’t know jack shit about ancient philosophy, but that doesn’t stop me from writing about it fairly regularly. The rest of this review may read like undergraduate essays, but whatever.

I you are a new student of Stoicism like me, I’d recommend tackling the Enchiridon first. I would actually recommend reading it before the Meditations. It is short and accessible but not as poetic as the Meditations. Building from simple logistic formulas, the Enchiridon lays out the basic ideas underlying Stoicism.

Those ideas, put simply, are that there is that which we can control, and that which we cannot control. Identify which is which and live accordingly. Our emotions and actions are controllable; the actions of others and the ways in which others perceive us are not controllable. Make your emotions and actions coincide with your ethics, and don’t worry what others think of you. Pretty simple, right? Not exactly. Controlling ones desires line them up with ones ethics is no easy task; neither is not caring about what the emperor thinks of you. Much of this book is taken up with addressing just how one goes about living such a life.

Stoicism, and its obsession with self-discipline, could only have come about in a society of surplus. Those struggling to find enough food to eat don’t worry about whether their fine robes are making them soft. The enduring appeal of the school is tied to the enduring desire to rise above the pettiness of our everyday lives through control over ourselves. It isn’t an easy way to live, but it is one I find appealing. In moments of weakness, I imagine I will return to it for inspiration.