Dissent!

OK, not to go over the top on Al Gore, but here's Michiko Kakutani's remarkably muted review of his book; she basically does a 1,300-word paraphrase of his central arguments. And here's David Brook's ass-whupping of Mr. Gore, in which he basically says Gore is a soulless, heartless, simple-minded psuedo-intellectual.

For those of you without TimesSelect:

But Gore's imperviousness to reality is not the most striking feature of the book. It's the chilliness and sterility of his worldview. Gore is laying out a comprehensive theory of social development, but it allows almost no role for family, friendship, neighborhood or just face-to-face contact. He sees society the way you might see it from a speaking podium — as a public mass exercise with little allowance for intimacy or private life.

...

Some great philosopher should write a book about people — and there are many of them — who flee from discussions of substance and try to turn them into discussions of process. Utterly at a loss when asked to talk about virtue and justice, they try to shift attention to technology and methods of communication. They imagine that by altering machines they can alter the fundamentals of behavior, or at least avoid the dark thickets of human nature.

TennisWorld, All Growed Up

Time was, TennisWorld was just a two-bit operation without blog software, institutional support, or a following. Just me and Pete going at it, primitive methodologies and all. Two and a half years later it's a well-oiled machine and Pete's basically running the show himself (of course with the volunteer help of a few of his thousands and thousands of readers). Look at how many comments he gets!

Anyway I thought this post was a great example of why it's a popular and versatile blog. It's total tennis-nerd stuff, but Pete happily veers off topic when he feels the need to.

(I gotta say, though, really not digging the bright-blue italics and giant green serif treatment of Teddy Roosevelt's "Man in the Arena" quote...)

Offset My Ass?

Is Al Gore full of hot air? I don't know. But this definitely puts saintly carbon-offset purchasers under slightly harsher scrutiny.

Are carbon credits for real? How do you know? How do you know what these companies do to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? And how do you know that what they do actually works? And who regulates or certifies them? It's all pretty shady, although, to be fair, there's no reason to not believe that in some (or many) cases everything is as advertised.

:: link from Jeannie Choi ::

Gore Watch

Al Gore is the cover subject of this week's Time magazine, which manages to feature Michael Moore on the cover as well. I imagine righties are vacating the subscriber's list faster and faster these days (as well as people who like good writing -- did anyone see the editor's letter in the Time 100 List issue? "Influence is hard to measure, and what we look for is people whose ideas, whose example, whose talent, whose discoveries transform the world we live in. Influence is less about the hard power of force than the soft power of ideas and example." Ugh.)

That said, the Gore cover story -- which is jarringly in the first person and which is long and fawning -- is OK. I thought the more interesting part was the excerpt of the Goracle's new book, The Assault on Reason, which seems to diagnose The Problem With America quickly, convincingly, and kind of eloquently. Maybe you'll believe, too, that the problem basically comes down to the stranglehold the television media has on our fickle attentions. Our civic discourse, he says, has devolved from a public exchange of ideas in newspapers and books and magazines into parallel one-way streamlets of bite-sized propaganda issuing from our flat-screens. It's not a new idea, but he seems to cover it from all the angles.

In practice, what television's dominance has come to mean is that the inherent value of political propositions put forward by candidates is now largely irrelevant compared with the image-based ad campaigns they use to shape the perceptions of voters. The high cost of these commercials has radically increased the role of money in politics—and the influence of those who contribute it. ... as a result, ideas will continue to play a diminished role. That is also why the House and Senate campaign committees in both parties now search for candidates who are multimillionaires and can buy the ads with their own personal resources.

His solution? The internet, "the most interactive medium in history." Sounds good to me.

Also, I find it hilarious that Gore is running at 12% in the polls -- tied with John Edwards -- even though he's not in the race. I guess an Oscar, a Nobel nomination, global celebrity, and some credibility can do a lot for a dusty old former vice president.

Crossword Vocab #5

ECLAT:
brilliance; ostentatious display


ELITE [TYPE]:
typewriter type that runs 12 characters to the inch (as opposed to PICA TYPE, which runs 10 characters to the inch)

Never Forget the Assman

Remember the glory days of Dick Assman? In the midst of some discussion about funny names today, I suddenly recalled the 15 minutes our favorite Saskatchewan petrol station owner earned in 1995, with the help of David Letterman. He got so famous that Time decided to make him even more famous.

I'm proud to have been part of that great cultural moment.

Second Billing

More funny stuff on the Clinton campaign, in the NYT.

Hillary's team is struggling with, among other things, getting just the right dosage of Bill, and in the right places.

“We don’t want to make the Al Gore mistake — trying to separate Hillary from the president, or not sending the president out because you think he’s not well liked or because he might be a better speaker than Hillary,” one senior campaign adviser said, who spoke about internal campaign strategy on the condition of anonymity. “Voters would think we were acting phony.”

Well thank goodness. Now that voters know Team Hillary's trying to appear like they're not trying to appear a certain way, they can all rest easy.

This was also really funny. The thought of an over-eager Bill being scolded and told to leave the room makes me chuckle:

When need be, she also knows how to cut him off. In preparation for a Senate debate, she more or less ordered him out of the room when he began coaching too much, Democrats close to the Clintons say. During a policy discussion awhile back about New York issues, when Mr. Clinton began to pontificate, she told him that he did not exactly know what he was talking about and to hush up.

Guest Blogger: Clifford

An e-mail from my brother tonight (with hyperlinks added):

Subject: It's about time...

...that there's a Chinese player that will probably be in the NBA like this.

This is a video of him dunking.

This is a video of him at an american scouting camp.

It says he's only 16!

A Heartbreaker

Did I ever tell you that USTA league tennis is a serious, serious sport? Captains cry, hold grudges, and nearly faint when their teams win in the playoffs. They drive across Staten Island and through Brooklyn and into Queens to attend matches, will pay out of pocket to hire line judges for matches, and even try to grease the palms of their favorite players by waiving court fees. Well, at least my captain does.

Enough about that. This is about me. Today I played a tough match with my Brooklyn mixed doubles team; it was for the Brooklyn championship, and if we win tomorrow we can claim the city/regional championship. All this could lead to a state championship in Syracuse, and if we keep going, the Nationals, in Puerto Rico.

But, you see, I had previously planned on attending my former violin teacher's recital with two good friends (former students of hers as well) tomorrow, the day of the regional. It's been years since all four of us were in the same room together, and who knows when it'll happen again? There would be no way to be in both places at once. My teammates begged me, and even offered to have a car service pick me up in Katonah (Westchester) and drive me to the National Tennis Center, in Queens. They had me convinced; I'd pull out of the recital at 4:30 p.m. and get chauffeured to Flushing Meadows. I had to consult Dan; we had a long dramatic talk, during which he convinced me that I was being a loser and just trying to appease too many people instead of just doing what would make me happy. Unfortunately, sometimes those two things are inseparable.

So I pulled the plug on my captain's hopes and dreams for 2007. I think she might've been crying a little. My partner said that if I wasn't playing she wouldn't play, partially because she doesn't have very good chemistry with the only other guy available to take my place, and partially because they'd have little to no chance to advance anyway.

I'm feeling pretty ambivalent.

One Learns One's Scale

Besides being a really interesting perspective on parenting and the hyper-competitive world of college admissions these days, this NYT piece made me think of how earnestly I used to try -- and how hard it is to stay that way as you get older.

:: hat-tip to Dan "Almost Jobless" Hsiao ::

Digestive System Back in Order

After several days of sleeping in not my bed and only being able to consume noodles and congee (with whatever digestive ability I had leftover after the round-the-clock marathon cross-hemisphere intercontinental ballistic airplane flight), I am seemingly able to obliterate Western-style food once again, as if it were the old days. Yesterday it was pizza with Elliott for lunch, and today it was a big-ass burrito (with chicken and refried beans!) for lunch. And I am feeling no ill effects. Perhaps I should reintroduce things like fruits and vegetables as well.

Anyway, that coupled with the return to my own bed and my first full night of sleep in over a week, and I'm almost a person again.

But the real question is, can I handle a return to the office? For now I may possibly take on a position with Eric (who, for the record, is neither pushy nor neurotic nor annoying . . . OK, a little neurotic) on a short-term basis doing whatever random work his company may need me to do. Nothing particularly special, but I'll be making enough money and living comfortably again, so that's nice. Plus there's a possible lead with a Shanghai technology firm, but now they want to see my transcript, so I'm sure that's the end of that.

:: image from holamun2.com ::