All I got from the guy who gave me my coffee this morning was a look of utter confusion and disgust when I attempedt to pay for said coffee and a croissant with those weird gold one-dollar coins. He was not amused.
A woman just walked into the lab I'm in with a Nalgene (or similar) water bottle that is remarkably phallic. She is absentmindely caressing it as she waits for the computer to boot up. I'm having a hard time containing myself.
I arguably have a missing period in the first paragraph, but I think it would be a pretty complicated argument that would establish that one of the correctly-placed periods is actually the period from the place currently lacking a period, and hence is misplaced, and the missing period is actually missing from one of the places currently occupied by a period, since the wrong period occupies it. I mean, periods are fungible, right, so it's not clear how such an argument could really proceed.
It's not directed at anyone in particular and there have been a number of bloggers (and people IRL) that I like/respect who say that, but it just seems weird to me. Yes, a small minority of the commercials are amusing or entertaining but the idea that people would be SO impressed by the ways that large corporations can dupe them into buying more crap they don't need that they eagerly await it seems kind of messed up.
I think that a couch would want to have the absolute truth on the bench, to go in on a Hail Mary pass, onside kick, fake punt, triple reverse, etc., but you don't want to be relying on the absolute truth for the bulk of your offense.
When I liked football I absolutely hated the SB commercials, and I actually quit liking the Olympics just because of the commercials, human interest stories, and the production values generally.
I was at a coffee shop earlier today and the couple next to me--who had obviously just spent their first night together (maybe maybe their second), were discussing the superbowl party he was going to later that afternoon. I could tell that he was reluctant to invite her, not because he didn't want to continue hanging out with her, but because he was afraid that her meeting all his friends in full superbowl mode would scare her off.
Joseph Brodsky thought so. He judged the quality of culture of a nation to be the inverse of its success in sports.
The Soviet Bloc put enormous effort into sports development, and nations like Bulgaria did much better in sports than in anything else. Brodsky seemingly wasn't completely happy with actual American culture either, though he was pro-American.
The nations which do best by Brodsky's standard would be China and especially France.
For example, the French track and field world champions since 1960 are Guy Dru and Michel Jazy. Two guys.
Does ignorance of / indifference to / contempt for sports make one a higher-grade intellectual?
Sports? Sports? Sports? We're not talking about sports! This isn't a gritty January hockey game with two points on the line and your team only one point behind the conference leader. This isn't a December football featuring two wildcard teams with doubtful chances, where the game is nonetheless up in the air because the two teams haven't played each other in two seasons. Shit, this isn't even basketball. This is the Superbowl. This is massively overdetermined (hah) psuedo-football, complete with an 'entertaining' halftime show (halftime shows aren't supposed to be entertaining, christ). Face it, this is a really loooooonnnnnnngggggggg idiotic TV show that is (ineptly) intended to appeal to drunk, bored women as well as idiot men that incidently has something to do with some sport.
No. You want your fucking good sporting event, you want to be awake at 3 am watching a truly awesome and viciously competitive crosscountry ski race broadcast from the other side of the planet.
That completely avoided your question in favor of ranting about something else, and I AM TOTALLY OK WITH THAT.
Weman, are you being a touchy, sarcastic Swede? The Scandinavian countries do better than expected in the Olympics, due especially but not exclisively to funky Winter Olympic events that no one else in the world cares about. By Brodsky's standard this is not a good thing.
The nation that would do best by Brodsky's standard is India. A billion people and nopretty much no succesfull athletes in its history, a remarkable achievement.
Can't you subvert the corporate control by watching the Super Bowl and then deciding, based on the commercials, which products you are not going to buy?
I concede, David. Forgot those guys. I suppose we could add Indonesia.
The Chinese are working diligently to decrease their cultural superiority. A Chinese, Zhu Jianhua, came close to winning the high jump in 1984. He finished third, but what I remember was the commentary by Dwight Stones, who badmouthed Zhu because he didn't get the gold. The infuriating thing was that Stones had participated in the same event, and had finished behind Zhu in fifth.
More recently a Chinese hurdler won a gold, but actually the Chinese haven't been doing too well, so their culture is intact.
No, I'm giving you a heartfelt compliment, and you repay me with this!
I must shamefully admit to being pretty sure you're wrong about France and China. China has various swimmers and gymnasts, and, uh, they dominate table tennis. I guess per capita they're not that successful.
France has had one of the leading men's soccer teams for a while, which automatically makes them a leading sports nation. All other sports are just objectively insignificant in comparison.
I don't really follow sports, but I somehow know all this anyway.
So by Bordsky's standard Eddie (the eagle), the famed British ski jumper, was sort of a reverse Jesse Owens? Proving the superiority of Britain by his abyssmal performance? I think I just tied my brain in a knot trying to untangle that.
Archimedes out to Socrates, Socrates back to Archimedes, Archimedes out to Heraclitus, he beats Hegel [who, like all the Germans, is still thinking] . Heraclitus a little flick, here he comes on the far post, Socrates is there, Socrates heads it in! Socrates has scored! The Greeks are going mad, the Greeks are going mad. Socrates scores, got a beautiful cross from Archimedes. The Germans are disputing it. Hegel is arguing that the reality is merely an a priori adjunct of non-naturalistic ethics, Kant via the categorical imperative is holding that ontologically it exists only in the imagination, and Marx is claiming it was offside.
Soccer is not a recognized sport, is it? That's "foosball", right -- the game you play in taverns?
France has bicycle racing, foosball, a little rugby, a little tennis, maybe some ice skaters. Not much for a nuclear power, if you ask me. China's a little better.
Without TV I would still like sports.
I don't like Lacan or Zizek much, but the pickup commercials at the superbowl demand some bizarre form of analysis.
The only athlete-philosopher I can think of is the Norwegian Arne Naess, who is the father of "deep ecology" and was a competitive mountain-climber. He is also Diana Ross's uncle-in-law and pop singer Leona Naess's great-uncle.
You mentioned that you knew someone on it at Tom and Catherine's site. The couple of episodes I've seen have been good. The girls come off just as cringeworthy as the guys, if not more so.
My big question is why he didn't cite Dennett, since he's already cited Dummett and Devitt.
They sound like they should be three trolls in the Nibelungenlied, or something like that. Or maybe a Marx-borthers type comedy team. But not soccer players.
Regarding Rorty, in his "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature" he tried to set analytic philosophy on a different path, but failed utterly. I like Rorty as a renegade analytic philosopher, but I hate all analytic philosophy whereas he really doesn't.
I am really a hostile witness with regard to questions about Davidson. I don't know enough about him to be able hurt him, but I'd probably be willing to perjure myself if I could get him sent to the slammer for the rest of his natural life.
Yeah, I'm a hater. The problem with the world isn't too much hate. It's hating the wrong people.
Rorty is a Nation liberal and is big on the secularism and neutrality of government and the public sphere and is a big anti-foundationalist, so the New Criterion would hate him.
David, I'm a malcontent. I explain at enormoous length on my website. The philosophy I like has almost no traction in the academic world: Stephen Toulmin, Michel Meyer, Chaim Perelman, defunct schools like process philosophy, and a lot of stuff pejoratively classified as "social criticism" or "wisdom literature" which is not classified as philosophy any more.
I actually like Foucault, but my reading of Foucault would have horrified him.
My expertise, such as it is, is in Chinese philosophy.
I have read most of Idiocentrism. I thought you knew that.
Just today a read a little about it Zhuangzi, and thought of when some blogger I liked (FL?) complained about how the public's conception of philosophy was "wisdom literature" as you put it, and how your rants maybe weren't entirely silly, b/c a defintion of philosophy that encompasss Zhuangzi, at the least, shouldn't be seen as absurd.
I knew you liked my site, I didn't know how much you read.
By and large analytic philosophy dominates in the US, in my experience anyway. One problem I have is that sometimes I grumble about things that are no longer true, since i've been out of touch for awhile.
Does anyone know about when half-time is likely to be? I'd kind of like to see the Rolling Stones' show, although I'm a little disappointed that they didn't go with a Motown act.
Yeah, John Cobb seems to have done a book on everything.
Are you familiar with David Griffin? He's a process theology guy who has published a couple books about how the official story of what happened on 9/11 can't possibly be true and how the evidence suggests an inside job. I suggest reading some of his stuff any day you want to feel completely angry and powerless.
I've read some of Griffin's non-political stuff, on philosophy of time.
There's also a philosopher named Fetzer in Duluth MN who does conspiracy stuff. "Assassination Science",about the Kennedy assassination was impressive.
Paul Wellstone's plane went down about 60 miles from Duluth, and I already knew Fetzer was there. When I heard about Wellstone's death, the "There are no coincidences!" circuits in my brain all overheated and burned out.
I am not involved with that stuff, but believe it or not -- there actually have been conspiracies in human history.
61: I'm completely amazed by how you'll write post after post about the problems w philosophy, and seem fairly agitated about it, and in the same breath admit you're not really qualified to say if it's true.
I'm not a professional or an expert, but an advocate and an outside critic. My biggest criticism is the opportunity-cost of analytic philosophy -- they've driven stuff out of philosophy which used to be inside philosophy. Since my grounding is in the areas which have been excluded, my point of view is by definition unprofessional.
As a blogger with no career ambitions, it doesn't cost me anything to state my actual opinion, and let the chips fall.
Rorty was notorious for starting a game as a QB and then deciding that football was pointless and that he wanted to be a raconteur. Most of his stories are pretty anodyne.
So this is: timeout, commercial, two minute warning, commercial, review, commercial, score, commercial, kickoff, commercial, a couple of plays, halftime.
These are state of the art commercials. Lacanians and cultural-studies people should be paying close attention. This is the nerve center of the American Imaginary, or maybe the horrible, unprocessed American Thing.
These commercials occupy a liminal space between pure commerce and pure art. To the extent that they transcend the boundaries enforced by neoliberal hegemony and reach the level of art they are transgressive acts of resistance whereby they do not market but perform the ritual of marketing in the process of agitating for higher aspirational goals.
I'm not entirely sure that 99 gets it. If we interrogate the terms of argument further, we find that the ideas of "pure commerce" and "pure art" reify the concept of purity, a concept that is problematic at best; what is needed is a richer, more inflected vocabulary that speaks to the truth* of hybridity, mixture, and the indeterminacy of identities.
*Here I am using a concept of truth adapted from one of my recent journal articles. It is not to be confused with the concept of a naive empirical truth so effectively critiqued by those people I usually cite.
Interrogation at Abu Ghraib was not as sophisticated as it is in cultural studies work, but I don't think that PhD's should be too proud to learn from the Army. But my guess is that liberal elitists will refuse to adopt common-sense methods of interrogation.
Yeah, but even watching football life, half the time they're setting up plays. Boring. Whereas soccer, basketball, the game *moves*.
Football is interesting for strategy reasons. When it isn't about strategy (like in the Gooberbowl) who gives a shit?
Soccer is a lot more of a 'I kick the ball, you give me the check' kind of game. But it's only fun when you're watching the Spanish announcers.
What they should do with the Superbowl, if they were going to make it interesting, is to have the four teams in the conference championships play on Saturday. Then the winners fly to the Superbowl site (undomed, preferably with snow!) and play the next day. Now there'd be some goddamn football.
Plus, the players are a lot hotter.
Well, they ain't fat, that's for sure.
ash
['They should've started a new sport after the Ice Bowl.']
11: If the period is missing, then it is certainly misplaced, no? Instead of placing it correctly at the end of its sentence you have left it idling in the halls of unused punctuation marks. Which is not the correct place for it, I think we can agree.
Have yet to read the thread but: you guys surely noticed Jagger getting silently bleeped when he tried to say "cocks" -- a vocabulary malfunction I suppose.
Fusbol players continued to have extravagent hair even when the rock stars all got haircuts. I especially remember the Italian Buddhist guy who had all kinds of bangly shit in his 'do.
134: Yeah, but some soccer player's hairdos are teh hott. I got to watch an exhibition game with Reál Madrid last year, and damn David Beckham with that headband. Even from far away, it was sexy.
I have to say that going to high school in a place where the members of the soccer team were exalted, rather than the football team (as we had none) provided for a lot hotter dudes to drool over.
Zidane may be my one exception to finding Arab men hott. He's just that awesome.
And don't get me started on the designated hitter rule.
Yeah, what communist thought that one up?
The Steelers may be a better team than the Seahawks--obviously they were in this game--
Hon, 1> the Seahawks lost to the Cowboys, at home. The blue & silver were a 6&10 team last year who should have been a 6&10 team this year. As in the suxxor, major. 2> Better defense always wins. They got two weeks to heal up and figure out how to beat the shit out of the other guys. Sadly, Pittsburg must of played really shitty to only win by 11. 3> MY MOM was rooting for Seattle. She has an unerring nose for losers. And if you think you've got some clever jokes about MY MOM and losers, trust me, mine are more vicious.
Now, the Mariners, there's a real team. There we go! Opening day in Seattle is probably way better than going blind at the first Pirates game.
ash
['The Seahawks are like the (Texas) Rangers, except not as consistantly awful.']
I'm glad other people are talking about how hot soccer players are compared to football players, so I don't have to. And yet it's not the same, without Ogged to get all dismissive about it.
On Rorty: did *Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature* attempt to set analytic philosophy in a different path in the sense of trying to bring it in line with newer ideas of psychology and neuroscience? Is that what the mirror of nature bit is?
in soccer the game moves, but where does it move, and to what end? Also, I don't know what you're talking about with regard to teh hott; Jerome Bettis has back. and front.
After watching this game, I'm convinced that the NFL is a crooked institution.
In truth there were several close calls that went the Steelers' way, but none I thought unequivocally wrong (given my complete failure to understand the holding rules). I thought Roethlisberger did get the nose of the ball barely across the stripe of the goal line.
As for 172, stop trolling me. Pittsburgh is a very nice place.
I was in Pittsburgh for the first time this past fall, it was much nicer than I had expected. Not nearly the industrial wasteland I had expected, though I stayed mostly around U of Pitt, with a brief trip over towards Carnegie Melon. I enjoyed it muchly.
160: It was a different trick play. Against Cincinatti they direct snapped it to Randle El, who was lined up in the backfield; Randle El ran right, then threw it (backward) left to Roethlisberger, who had a touchdown pass to Cedrick Wilson wide open. This time, Roethlisberger pitched it to Parker, Parker handed it to Randle El coming from the end around, and Randle El pulled up and threw the TD to Ward.
Randle El probably has the best passing stats in the league. But I got the impression that the last time they executed this gadget play, El's backwards overhead pass to Roethlisberger was not part of the play design. This time Ward looked back to El and you could actually sense his urgency as he realized how open he had just become.
188: No way. Roethlisberger had to run back behind Randle El (so Randle El's pass would be a lateral and Roethlisblogger would be eligible to pass) and he had to be ready to receive the ball. If it's a Randle El option with no plan for R-blogger to pass, he's not standing there waiting for the ball.
On Rorty: there are, I think, two answers. One is that Rorty is a Cold War social democrat of a type that has, throughout its existence, been afflicted by something like what Lester Bangs once described as "psychic BO". Leftists find their lack of enthusiasm for actual revolutionary projects uncongenial, and caring liberals are far icier on a number of topics (as witnessed by the NYU grad strike rationalizations). So don't doubt that a lot of people are minding the bottom line when they talk about things like "rort"; said people have it out for the considerably less anti-foundationalist Habermas and anyone attempting to adduce general grounds for a threat to established powers (and I mean, c'mon, Jacques Derrida was at least as interesting as David Brooks is and probably a bit more rigorous in his thought).
Of course, Rorty isn't altogether serious about uprooting privilege, and so there is probably room for a more charitable assessment of problems with him. It seems to me that, for all his attempts to rally Davidsonianism to his project's defense, Rorty parts with him in leaving out a part of analytic philosophy's development which many people find essential: conceptual analysis. I am thinking in particular of Wittgenstein's attitude to Dewey. In the Tractatus, in what is surely a reference to Dewey's *The Influence of Darwin Upon Philosophy*, Wittgenstein states that neither the theory of evolution nor any other scientific theory has a bearing on philosophical issue.
What Wittgenstein introduces instead is a concept that persists throughout his work: grammar. Philosophy is an analysis of grammar. Now, it's pretty hard to argue that the editor of *The Linguistic Turn* is unfamiliar with exercises in conceptual analysis. But in *Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature* we find Rorty opting for Dewey's much more relaxed naturalism over isolating a set of semantic problems, mixing up physical bodies and norms and what have you as objects of piecemeal pragmatist examination. This is what McDowell calls Rorty's "bald naturalism", and although they may seem like a separate issue one could argue that the reaction to Rorty's Continental wanderings is based in part on their also lacking the framework of analysis and argument that motivates his analytic peers. Perhaps Rorty's arguments are of a different, *older* type, and fail to excite on account of this.
The Deweyan part of Rorty is what I like. The continental part I don't like; it seems that he welded continental anti-foundationalism onto American-liberal end-of-ideology public neutrality, which would also fit with support for the Cold War (somewhere he confessed to Humphreyism, which he does not express much at "The Nation".)
Wittgenstein's purist definition of philosophy seems extraordinarily narrow and a bit psycho, since all kinds of very peculiar passionate utterances show up in his writings and notes which cannot be squared with his philosophical method. He seems to have been trying to separate the normative and the descriptive-scientific, but his intense, rather mystical attitude toward normative expression was far different from that of the other analytic philosophers I've read.
According to Rorty, there is no fact 'out there' about whether this is the Rorty thread or the drunken gloating thread; rather, our moves in the discourse of this thread are what determine its nature. So this can be the drunken gloating thread, if the practice of making this the drunken gloating thread is successful. RARARARRAR.
201, he thinks the 'mirror of nature' is a bad metaphor; the notion of philosophy and thought in general as representing or corresponding to the real world is a bad one, because we can't make sense of the world independent of our inquiry. If I remember correctly. He has another piece called "The World Well Lost" that makes this point more succinctly (in fact it's really where I'm getting this); he thinks that if we view our thought correctly we'll see that there's no world independent of us, and that that's good. Or something like that.
MH--I suppose that it can be both. Then there's the problem with unclear questions. Is it a boy or a girl? Yes is a perfectly acceptable answer, but it's pretty clear that it's fairly rare to be botha boy and a girl.
Having read about 15 pages of this over lunch, I think I did guess exactly wrong. Ironic, because Malachowski conjectures that one reason Rorty is so controversial is that people who don't understand him that well--or much of the rest of philosophy--like to throw his name around. Literary theorists, for example.
I can't seem to get the link in 210 - or anything in the princeton.edu domain. And I can't get anything in the berkeley.edu domain either (and haven't been able to for days). Both give me "problem loading page" errors. Can anyone else go here and here?
Thanks (and thanks for the link, ac). Now I have to figure out why I, personally, can't get certain edu sites. I'd guess there was spyware somwhere on my laptop - though I've scanned it recentlyn - but why block some edu sites?
Rorty is the bogeyman for the same reason coldplay is the bogeyman. Ignoring any other flaws in their work, they are too popular among the wrong sort of person.
Not that anyone's wondering, but it probably was spyware. I changed the TCP/IP settings to obtain everything automatically and the pages work now. I just wish I knew more about what caused them to be set to what they were, and whether or not any information was being monitored/stolen while that was going on.
Go Steelers!
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 2:00 PM
That was quite generous of the unnamed gentleman, to give his coffee to a woman. Was she in desperate need of it?
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 2:01 PM
All I got from the guy who gave me my coffee this morning was a look of utter confusion and disgust when I attempedt to pay for said coffee and a croissant with those weird gold one-dollar coins. He was not amused.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 2:03 PM
ben, double-post. Is that part of it, somehow? I wouldn't put it past you.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 2:05 PM
Damnit, w/d!
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 2:05 PM
Not anymore, silvana! I don't know how that happened, but I suspect it's because of a certain someone's headache.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 2:07 PM
The pre-eminent cock theorist of our time gets headaches? How disappointing. Mere mortals.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 2:09 PM
No, actually, someone else's. If it were mine I would have copped to it.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 2:11 PM
You misplaced a period in the first paragraph, I think.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 2:12 PM
A woman just walked into the lab I'm in with a Nalgene (or similar) water bottle that is remarkably phallic. She is absentmindely caressing it as she waits for the computer to boot up. I'm having a hard time containing myself.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 2:14 PM
I arguably have a missing period in the first paragraph, but I think it would be a pretty complicated argument that would establish that one of the correctly-placed periods is actually the period from the place currently lacking a period, and hence is misplaced, and the missing period is actually missing from one of the places currently occupied by a period, since the wrong period occupies it. I mean, periods are fungible, right, so it's not clear how such an argument could really proceed.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 2:17 PM
Pet peeve: the people who say they "only watch the Superbowl for the commercials", which is equivalent IMO to announcing "I am a corporate whore".
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 2:38 PM
Would you care to expand on that, Becks?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 2:41 PM
[whistles]
On the offense: too many philosophers on the field. 15 yards. Repeat derivation.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 2:42 PM
What Richard Rorty doesn't understand is that relativism doesn't always work -- depending on the situation, there sometimes might be absolute truth.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 2:43 PM
It's not directed at anyone in particular and there have been a number of bloggers (and people IRL) that I like/respect who say that, but it just seems weird to me. Yes, a small minority of the commercials are amusing or entertaining but the idea that people would be SO impressed by the ways that large corporations can dupe them into buying more crap they don't need that they eagerly await it seems kind of messed up.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 2:48 PM
I think that a couch would want to have the absolute truth on the bench, to go in on a Hail Mary pass, onside kick, fake punt, triple reverse, etc., but you don't want to be relying on the absolute truth for the bulk of your offense.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 3:00 PM
Or a coach, too.
When I liked football I absolutely hated the SB commercials, and I actually quit liking the Olympics just because of the commercials, human interest stories, and the production values generally.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 3:03 PM
I was at a coffee shop earlier today and the couple next to me--who had obviously just spent their first night together (maybe maybe their second), were discussing the superbowl party he was going to later that afternoon. I could tell that he was reluctant to invite her, not because he didn't want to continue hanging out with her, but because he was afraid that her meeting all his friends in full superbowl mode would scare her off.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 3:09 PM
Does ignorance of / indifference to / contempt for sports make one a higher-grade intellectual?
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 3:10 PM
Joseph Brodsky thought so. He judged the quality of culture of a nation to be the inverse of its success in sports.
The Soviet Bloc put enormous effort into sports development, and nations like Bulgaria did much better in sports than in anything else. Brodsky seemingly wasn't completely happy with actual American culture either, though he was pro-American.
The nations which do best by Brodsky's standard would be China and especially France.
For example, the French track and field world champions since 1960 are Guy Dru and Michel Jazy. Two guys.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 3:25 PM
Hey, you people really are watching the Superbowl! Fie on you!
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 3:43 PM
Does ignorance of / indifference to / contempt for sports make one a higher-grade intellectual?
Sports? Sports? Sports? We're not talking about sports! This isn't a gritty January hockey game with two points on the line and your team only one point behind the conference leader. This isn't a December football featuring two wildcard teams with doubtful chances, where the game is nonetheless up in the air because the two teams haven't played each other in two seasons. Shit, this isn't even basketball. This is the Superbowl. This is massively overdetermined (hah) psuedo-football, complete with an 'entertaining' halftime show (halftime shows aren't supposed to be entertaining, christ). Face it, this is a really loooooonnnnnnngggggggg idiotic TV show that is (ineptly) intended to appeal to drunk, bored women as well as idiot men that incidently has something to do with some sport.
No. You want your fucking good sporting event, you want to be awake at 3 am watching a truly awesome and viciously competitive crosscountry ski race broadcast from the other side of the planet.
That completely avoided your question in favor of ranting about something else, and I AM TOTALLY OK WITH THAT.
ash
['Strawberries and whipped cream baby! C'mon!']
Posted by ash | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 3:47 PM
The nations which do best by Brodsky's standard would be China and especially France.
You are clearly a high grade intellectual and a first rate mind.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 3:55 PM
Curling. TV curling. Now thatis a sport!
At least my brother in Vancouver says so. He's gone native.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 3:55 PM
Weman, are you being a touchy, sarcastic Swede? The Scandinavian countries do better than expected in the Olympics, due especially but not exclisively to funky Winter Olympic events that no one else in the world cares about. By Brodsky's standard this is not a good thing.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 3:58 PM
The nation that would do best by Brodsky's standard is India. A billion people and nopretty much no succesfull athletes in its history, a remarkable achievement.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 4:01 PM
Can't you subvert the corporate control by watching the Super Bowl and then deciding, based on the commercials, which products you are not going to buy?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 4:01 PM
And I assume the philosophers here are familiar with this?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 4:09 PM
I'm not watching the Superbowl. I'm in the fucking library.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 4:10 PM
I concede, David. Forgot those guys. I suppose we could add Indonesia.
The Chinese are working diligently to decrease their cultural superiority. A Chinese, Zhu Jianhua, came close to winning the high jump in 1984. He finished third, but what I remember was the commentary by Dwight Stones, who badmouthed Zhu because he didn't get the gold. The infuriating thing was that Stones had participated in the same event, and had finished behind Zhu in fifth.
More recently a Chinese hurdler won a gold, but actually the Chinese haven't been doing too well, so their culture is intact.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 4:12 PM
No, I'm giving you a heartfelt compliment, and you repay me with this!
I must shamefully admit to being pretty sure you're wrong about France and China. China has various swimmers and gymnasts, and, uh, they dominate table tennis. I guess per capita they're not that successful.
France has had one of the leading men's soccer teams for a while, which automatically makes them a leading sports nation. All other sports are just objectively insignificant in comparison.
I don't really follow sports, but I somehow know all this anyway.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 4:14 PM
30: There's a library for that?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 4:15 PM
Better than the non-fucking library, which is also non-smoking and alcohol-free.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 4:15 PM
So by Bordsky's standard Eddie (the eagle), the famed British ski jumper, was sort of a reverse Jesse Owens? Proving the superiority of Britain by his abyssmal performance? I think I just tied my brain in a knot trying to untangle that.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 4:17 PM
All other sports are just objectively insignificant in comparison.
Figures a European would think some silly-ass thing like that.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 4:18 PM
Here's a transcript of the philosopher soccer "football" match.
The dramatic finish:
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 4:19 PM
31: Oh, fair enough. Sweden does punch above our weight when it comes to sport. Our soccer team is ranked 14th in the world says wikipedia.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 4:20 PM
Soccer is not a recognized sport, is it? That's "foosball", right -- the game you play in taverns?
France has bicycle racing, foosball, a little rugby, a little tennis, maybe some ice skaters. Not much for a nuclear power, if you ask me. China's a little better.
Without TV I would still like sports.
I don't like Lacan or Zizek much, but the pickup commercials at the superbowl demand some bizarre form of analysis.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 4:21 PM
Also, didn't Marie-Jose Perec win a couple of golds for France in the 200 and 400?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 4:22 PM
Eddie the Eagle would probably improve the British profile some, but the Brits have had a lot of Olympic success.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 4:23 PM
Does ignorance of / indifference to / contempt for sports make one a higher-grade intellectual?
Perhaps, if one isn't planning to watch the Beauty and the Geek marathon instead.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 4:24 PM
You just can't stay away from those geeks.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 4:27 PM
But it would be uunatural for us not to punch above our weight. We can't help it.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 4:28 PM
The only athlete-philosopher I can think of is the Norwegian Arne Naess, who is the father of "deep ecology" and was a competitive mountain-climber. He is also Diana Ross's uncle-in-law and pop singer Leona Naess's great-uncle.
I do hate Swedish pop, though.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 4:30 PM
Is Beauty and the Geek actually any good? Have I mentioned here that I know someone who knows someone who was on it?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 4:30 PM
You know, if anyone could actually answer the question about Rorty in the post, I'd appreciate it. Seriously! I want to know.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 4:34 PM
You mentioned that you knew someone on it at Tom and Catherine's site. The couple of episodes I've seen have been good. The girls come off just as cringeworthy as the guys, if not more so.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 4:37 PM
My big question is why he didn't cite Dennett, since he's already cited Dummett and Devitt.
They sound like they should be three trolls in the Nibelungenlied, or something like that. Or maybe a Marx-borthers type comedy team. But not soccer players.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 4:39 PM
That comment is to the wrong post, Emerson.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 4:41 PM
Regarding Rorty, in his "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature" he tried to set analytic philosophy on a different path, but failed utterly. I like Rorty as a renegade analytic philosopher, but I hate all analytic philosophy whereas he really doesn't.
I am really a hostile witness with regard to questions about Davidson. I don't know enough about him to be able hurt him, but I'd probably be willing to perjure myself if I could get him sent to the slammer for the rest of his natural life.
Yeah, I'm a hater. The problem with the world isn't too much hate. It's hating the wrong people.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 4:47 PM
Davidson is dead, actually, and is thus for the time being beyond your reach.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 4:48 PM
Go Seattle!
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 4:51 PM
Rorty is a Nation liberal and is big on the secularism and neutrality of government and the public sphere and is a big anti-foundationalist, so the New Criterion would hate him.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 4:51 PM
So if analytic football is football and continental football is soccer, where does that leave England?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 4:52 PM
Do you like phenomenology? Structuralism? From what you hinted at you don't seem to, but then why single out analytical philosophy?
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 4:53 PM
That Diet Pepsi commercial was gross.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 4:54 PM
David, I'm a malcontent. I explain at enormoous length on my website. The philosophy I like has almost no traction in the academic world: Stephen Toulmin, Michel Meyer, Chaim Perelman, defunct schools like process philosophy, and a lot of stuff pejoratively classified as "social criticism" or "wisdom literature" which is not classified as philosophy any more.
I actually like Foucault, but my reading of Foucault would have horrified him.
My expertise, such as it is, is in Chinese philosophy.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 4:57 PM
If you like process, you should become a theologian. Process theologians don't have to read anything! It's awesome!
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:02 PM
I have read most of Idiocentrism. I thought you knew that.
Just today a read a little about it Zhuangzi, and thought of when some blogger I liked (FL?) complained about how the public's conception of philosophy was "wisdom literature" as you put it, and how your rants maybe weren't entirely silly, b/c a defintion of philosophy that encompasss Zhuangzi, at the least, shouldn't be seen as absurd.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:09 PM
I knew you liked my site, I didn't know how much you read.
By and large analytic philosophy dominates in the US, in my experience anyway. One problem I have is that sometimes I grumble about things that are no longer true, since i've been out of touch for awhile.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:11 PM
I like Hartshorne but I extract the theology when I read him. John Cobb's economics book "For the Common Good" is great. He had a coauthor.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:13 PM
On-topic: except for the punter, the Pittsburgh offense is ineffectual.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:14 PM
I'm not really very knowledgeable about or necessarily interested in philosophy. I think I've read one book in whole by a philosopher (Plato).
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:16 PM
Does anyone know about when half-time is likely to be? I'd kind of like to see the Rolling Stones' show, although I'm a little disappointed that they didn't go with a Motown act.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:19 PM
Yeah, John Cobb seems to have done a book on everything.
Are you familiar with David Griffin? He's a process theology guy who has published a couple books about how the official story of what happened on 9/11 can't possibly be true and how the evidence suggests an inside job. I suggest reading some of his stuff any day you want to feel completely angry and powerless.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:20 PM
63: I'm telling you, go Seattle!
Plus, their uniforms are a lot prettier.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:21 PM
I'm live blogging the commercials at my blog. Feel free to leave comments about your favorites.
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:23 PM
I've read some of Griffin's non-political stuff, on philosophy of time.
There's also a philosopher named Fetzer in Duluth MN who does conspiracy stuff. "Assassination Science",about the Kennedy assassination was impressive.
Paul Wellstone's plane went down about 60 miles from Duluth, and I already knew Fetzer was there. When I heard about Wellstone's death, the "There are no coincidences!" circuits in my brain all overheated and burned out.
I am not involved with that stuff, but believe it or not -- there actually have been conspiracies in human history.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:27 PM
61: I'm completely amazed by how you'll write post after post about the problems w philosophy, and seem fairly agitated about it, and in the same breath admit you're not really qualified to say if it's true.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:27 PM
"any day you want to feel completely angry and powerless."
Back when John was Zika my working theory was that he did like to feel that way.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:30 PM
I'm not a professional or an expert, but an advocate and an outside critic. My biggest criticism is the opportunity-cost of analytic philosophy -- they've driven stuff out of philosophy which used to be inside philosophy. Since my grounding is in the areas which have been excluded, my point of view is by definition unprofessional.
As a blogger with no career ambitions, it doesn't cost me anything to state my actual opinion, and let the chips fall.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:31 PM
Rorty was notorious for starting a game as a QB and then deciding that football was pointless and that he wanted to be a raconteur. Most of his stories are pretty anodyne.
Posted by Mike | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:32 PM
This game is making me regret not going to the library.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:32 PM
Two good plays and it's a new ball game.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:33 PM
Plus, their uniforms are a lot prettier.
Gawd, you're such a girl.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:34 PM
Ok, things are looking more promising.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:35 PM
Ben, I thought you were taking a nap.
And they *are* prettier.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:36 PM
Roethlesberger legitimately should have an umlaut in his name. I wonder if he's into metal.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:38 PM
There's Smasher's razor.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:39 PM
What a time for the 2-minute warning!
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:40 PM
Aw, shit.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:40 PM
The Steelers are not ashamed to be prissy.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:41 PM
That wasn't a TD.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:41 PM
Let the review begin.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:41 PM
No TD. I can tell by reading the stats on my computer.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:42 PM
Crap.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:44 PM
So this is: timeout, commercial, two minute warning, commercial, review, commercial, score, commercial, kickoff, commercial, a couple of plays, halftime.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:44 PM
That's how football works. Which is why it sucks.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:45 PM
That's how television works. Not really football's fault.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:46 PM
Hey, they don't do that shit for soccer.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:46 PM
Wait, they're skipping the commercial this time. My faith in football is restored.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:47 PM
Is it just my impression, or are comments posting faster on the blog right now?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:48 PM
These are state of the art commercials. Lacanians and cultural-studies people should be paying close attention. This is the nerve center of the American Imaginary, or maybe the horrible, unprocessed American Thing.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:48 PM
Ah, but it's not how soccer works. Alledgedly that's a big reason it's never become successful in the US.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:49 PM
91: According to the new rules, I'm not pwned, right?
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:50 PM
Hey, they don't do that shit for soccer
Sure, because nobody's watching.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:51 PM
Yeah, but even watching football life, half the time they're setting up plays. Boring. Whereas soccer, basketball, the game *moves*.
Plus, the players are a lot hotter.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:51 PM
These commercials occupy a liminal space between pure commerce and pure art. To the extent that they transcend the boundaries enforced by neoliberal hegemony and reach the level of art they are transgressive acts of resistance whereby they do not market but perform the ritual of marketing in the process of agitating for higher aspirational goals.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:51 PM
"Life" s/b "live," of course.
I wish I could see the commercials. I feel left out.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:52 PM
Don't the peripheral tribal peoples of the world pay a lot of attention to soccer?
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:52 PM
99 got it, but needs to be expanded to about 50,000 words.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:54 PM
Ugh, the Rolling Stones? They had Aretha Frankling at the beginning, why not just stick with a good thing?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:58 PM
Franklin. I"m using Mr. B.'s laptop, the keyboard is tiny.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 5:59 PM
I'm not entirely sure that 99 gets it. If we interrogate the terms of argument further, we find that the ideas of "pure commerce" and "pure art" reify the concept of purity, a concept that is problematic at best; what is needed is a richer, more inflected vocabulary that speaks to the truth* of hybridity, mixture, and the indeterminacy of identities.
*Here I am using a concept of truth adapted from one of my recent journal articles. It is not to be confused with the concept of a naive empirical truth so effectively critiqued by those people I usually cite.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 6:01 PM
105 also nails it.
I always thought those little Lacanian graphs were cute. Could you slap one in?
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 6:04 PM
Go Gilette Fusion! Sorry I'm late, I was being sociable downstairs. IYKWIM, AITYD.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 6:05 PM
[tweeet!] Unnecessary use of "interrogate," on eb. Redo comment.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 6:07 PM
Is anyone timing the halftime?
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 6:14 PM
I am only a poseur at culture theoretical parody; I really haven't read enough of the originals to be able to do anything more than a generic version.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 6:18 PM
Charlie Watts still looks pretty good.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 6:19 PM
Is there ever a necessary use of "interrogate"?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 6:30 PM
FAST WILLIE!
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 6:32 PM
(UNC alumnus, I'll note)
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 6:33 PM
Interrogation at Abu Ghraib was not as sophisticated as it is in cultural studies work, but I don't think that PhD's should be too proud to learn from the Army. But my guess is that liberal elitists will refuse to adopt common-sense methods of interrogation.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 6:39 PM
#112: Obviously, yes.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 6:39 PM
Crap, pwned.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 6:41 PM
Jesus, you blink and the game changes.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 6:41 PM
I know, what's with Seattle falling apart? Get it together, boys.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 6:42 PM
Yeah, but even watching football life, half the time they're setting up plays. Boring. Whereas soccer, basketball, the game *moves*.
Football is interesting for strategy reasons. When it isn't about strategy (like in the Gooberbowl) who gives a shit?
Soccer is a lot more of a 'I kick the ball, you give me the check' kind of game. But it's only fun when you're watching the Spanish announcers.
What they should do with the Superbowl, if they were going to make it interesting, is to have the four teams in the conference championships play on Saturday. Then the winners fly to the Superbowl site (undomed, preferably with snow!) and play the next day. Now there'd be some goddamn football.
Plus, the players are a lot hotter.
Well, they ain't fat, that's for sure.
ash
['They should've started a new sport after the Ice Bowl.']
Posted by ash | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 6:43 PM
Baby Clydesdale commercial? Adorable.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 6:43 PM
11: If the period is missing, then it is certainly misplaced, no? Instead of placing it correctly at the end of its sentence you have left it idling in the halls of unused punctuation marks. Which is not the correct place for it, I think we can agree.
Have yet to read the thread but: you guys surely noticed Jagger getting silently bleeped when he tried to say "cocks" -- a vocabulary malfunction I suppose.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 6:43 PM
Yeah, chess is interesting for strategy reasons too, but it ain't a spectator sport.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 6:44 PM
OK, I flip past the Superbowl and all I see is a closeup of them stretching some dude's quad in a very, very gay way.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 6:46 PM
There are those who would disagree with that.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 6:46 PM
125 to 124, I hope.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 6:46 PM
25 or 6 to 4.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 6:47 PM
Yes, and *they're* really fun to hang out with, let me tell you.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 6:48 PM
SB, I don't understand your comment.
Not that that's necessarily remarkable.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 6:50 PM
128: The gay quad-stretchers?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 6:51 PM
Also: they only had three songs -- why did they have to sing fucking Start Me Up?
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 6:52 PM
Wow. How quickly it turns.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 6:52 PM
Chess geeks.
"25 or 6 to 4" was a song by, I think, Chicago or someone like that.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 6:52 PM
Fusbol players continued to have extravagent hair even when the rock stars all got haircuts. I especially remember the Italian Buddhist guy who had all kinds of bangly shit in his 'do.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 6:54 PM
okay, they're back in the game. yay!
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 6:55 PM
I should have watched the game. The first half was obviosuly boring.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 6:55 PM
the superbowl's today? I'll be.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 6:57 PM
Not only is it a song by Chicago, it's also a true statement as applied to this thread.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:04 PM
134: Yeah, but some soccer player's hairdos are teh hott. I got to watch an exhibition game with Reál Madrid last year, and damn David Beckham with that headband. Even from far away, it was sexy.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:04 PM
Sylvana's right: in this game, I only see the one guy who has anything resembling an interesting head of hair. Soccer players are *way* cooler.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:06 PM
player's = players'. fuck.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:06 PM
Silvana, I liked the Buddhist guy's hair.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:09 PM
Sylvana's
Who?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:09 PM
Yeah, and even the ones who don't have crazy hair are cooler. I mean look at him. Damn.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:09 PM
Silvana. She didn't get all hissy about it, Apos.
#144 gets my endorsement.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:11 PM
I have to say that going to high school in a place where the members of the soccer team were exalted, rather than the football team (as we had none) provided for a lot hotter dudes to drool over.
Zidane may be my one exception to finding Arab men hott. He's just that awesome.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:14 PM
Seattle's looking good.
Jinx?
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:20 PM
Yeah, jinx. They got a penalty.
Seattle's looking crappy.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:21 PM
147: that resulted in a sack. So, yes.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:21 PM
Let's test this.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:23 PM
Pittsburgh's looking good.
Jinx?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:23 PM
This is a complex jinx system we're dealing with. I think that we need one of those Lacanian graphs I asked for.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:25 PM
Apostropher doesn't have a million dollars.
Jinx?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:26 PM
He'll have trouble paying off the million-dollar judgement, then.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:27 PM
Holy cow.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:28 PM
I lack Emersonian powers.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:28 PM
Whatever the hell that was, it was sweet.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:28 PM
That was a rather ridiculous play.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:29 PM
It's possible for Seattle to come back, if they play better.
Zizek has explained why conscious attempts to trigger jinxes don't work. Something to do with "le objet petit a" or shit.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:29 PM
Didn't Pittsburgh do that, or something similar, in one of the earlier rounds?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:31 PM
Okay, I blame Emerson.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:31 PM
When my little brother was 13 or so he'd blame himself for jinxing the Minnesota Vikings. It took years of therapy to cure his resulting alcoholism.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:34 PM
I don't ask you to become an alcoholic, merely that you reverse your damn jinx.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:35 PM
It looks to me like it's over. Not a good fumble.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:35 PM
I'm losing interest in this game. Bah.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:45 PM
Well, I was hoping Pittsburgh would win, but I still think I should've gone to the library.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:54 PM
Pretty weird that Seattle was paid to throw the Super Bowl.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:54 PM
Alternate theory: cool hair > cool uniforms?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:57 PM
So the Steelers finally finished off the Japanese National Yodeling team?
AWESOME!
ash
['No, really.']
Posted by ash | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:58 PM
Don't the announcers remember the missed field goals?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:58 PM
Another theory: Pittsburgh is better.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 7:59 PM
The Steelers may be a better team than the Seahawks--obviously they were in this game--but Seattle is way, way, way better than Pittsburgh. Trust me.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 8:02 PM
I would have liked the game better without the trick play.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 8:04 PM
And don't get me started on the designated hitter rule.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 8:05 PM
There's Pittsburgh (regular season) and there's Pittsburgh (playoff version).
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 8:08 PM
And don't get me started on the designated hitter rule.
Yeah, what communist thought that one up?
The Steelers may be a better team than the Seahawks--obviously they were in this game--
Hon, 1> the Seahawks lost to the Cowboys, at home. The blue & silver were a 6&10 team last year who should have been a 6&10 team this year. As in the suxxor, major. 2> Better defense always wins. They got two weeks to heal up and figure out how to beat the shit out of the other guys. Sadly, Pittsburg must of played really shitty to only win by 11. 3> MY MOM was rooting for Seattle. She has an unerring nose for losers. And if you think you've got some clever jokes about MY MOM and losers, trust me, mine are more vicious.
Now, the Mariners, there's a real team. There we go! Opening day in Seattle is probably way better than going blind at the first Pirates game.
ash
['The Seahawks are like the (Texas) Rangers, except not as consistantly awful.']
Posted by ash | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 8:28 PM
"Must of"? Something needs fixed!
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 8:29 PM
I'm glad other people are talking about how hot soccer players are compared to football players, so I don't have to. And yet it's not the same, without Ogged to get all dismissive about it.
On Rorty: did *Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature* attempt to set analytic philosophy in a different path in the sense of trying to bring it in line with newer ideas of psychology and neuroscience? Is that what the mirror of nature bit is?
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 8:36 PM
On Rorty, no.
For reasons alluded to by Weman, I'm uneasy speaking as an expert on philosophy.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 8:40 PM
I guess I could read it. He's often associated with Kwame Appiah, who I have been reading and who does say that, so I took a shot.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 8:44 PM
Haven't read all the comments yet but wooo! Steelers! Cowher! Hines Ward! Bus! Thumb!
19 seems entirely justified to me.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 9:01 PM
in soccer the game moves, but where does it move, and to what end? Also, I don't know what you're talking about with regard to teh hott; Jerome Bettis has back. and front.
After watching this game, I'm convinced that the NFL is a crooked institution.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 9:06 PM
Dammit, where's Cala? Probably drunk.
In truth there were several close calls that went the Steelers' way, but none I thought unequivocally wrong (given my complete failure to understand the holding rules). I thought Roethlisberger did get the nose of the ball barely across the stripe of the goal line.
As for 172, stop trolling me. Pittsburgh is a very nice place.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 9:18 PM
I was in Pittsburgh for the first time this past fall, it was much nicer than I had expected. Not nearly the industrial wasteland I had expected, though I stayed mostly around U of Pitt, with a brief trip over towards Carnegie Melon. I enjoyed it muchly.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 9:24 PM
Congrats, Weiner & Cala.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 9:25 PM
160: It was a different trick play. Against Cincinatti they direct snapped it to Randle El, who was lined up in the backfield; Randle El ran right, then threw it (backward) left to Roethlisberger, who had a touchdown pass to Cedrick Wilson wide open. This time, Roethlisberger pitched it to Parker, Parker handed it to Randle El coming from the end around, and Randle El pulled up and threw the TD to Ward.
Probably no one really cared about that.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 9:26 PM
Congrats Weiner, Cala. And congrats to the NFL, which achieved the result it sought.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 9:28 PM
Randle El probably has the best passing stats in the league. But I got the impression that the last time they executed this gadget play, El's backwards overhead pass to Roethlisberger was not part of the play design. This time Ward looked back to El and you could actually sense his urgency as he realized how open he had just become.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 9:29 PM
188: No way. Roethlisberger had to run back behind Randle El (so Randle El's pass would be a lateral and Roethlisblogger would be eligible to pass) and he had to be ready to receive the ball. If it's a Randle El option with no plan for R-blogger to pass, he's not standing there waiting for the ball.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 9:36 PM
OK, who wants to pay me to bet them about comparative team records next year?
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 9:41 PM
Congrats, Weiner & Cala.
Weinett & Calatt.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 10:19 PM
On Rorty: there are, I think, two answers. One is that Rorty is a Cold War social democrat of a type that has, throughout its existence, been afflicted by something like what Lester Bangs once described as "psychic BO". Leftists find their lack of enthusiasm for actual revolutionary projects uncongenial, and caring liberals are far icier on a number of topics (as witnessed by the NYU grad strike rationalizations). So don't doubt that a lot of people are minding the bottom line when they talk about things like "rort"; said people have it out for the considerably less anti-foundationalist Habermas and anyone attempting to adduce general grounds for a threat to established powers (and I mean, c'mon, Jacques Derrida was at least as interesting as David Brooks is and probably a bit more rigorous in his thought).
Of course, Rorty isn't altogether serious about uprooting privilege, and so there is probably room for a more charitable assessment of problems with him. It seems to me that, for all his attempts to rally Davidsonianism to his project's defense, Rorty parts with him in leaving out a part of analytic philosophy's development which many people find essential: conceptual analysis. I am thinking in particular of Wittgenstein's attitude to Dewey. In the Tractatus, in what is surely a reference to Dewey's *The Influence of Darwin Upon Philosophy*, Wittgenstein states that neither the theory of evolution nor any other scientific theory has a bearing on philosophical issue.
What Wittgenstein introduces instead is a concept that persists throughout his work: grammar. Philosophy is an analysis of grammar. Now, it's pretty hard to argue that the editor of *The Linguistic Turn* is unfamiliar with exercises in conceptual analysis. But in *Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature* we find Rorty opting for Dewey's much more relaxed naturalism over isolating a set of semantic problems, mixing up physical bodies and norms and what have you as objects of piecemeal pragmatist examination. This is what McDowell calls Rorty's "bald naturalism", and although they may seem like a separate issue one could argue that the reaction to Rorty's Continental wanderings is based in part on their also lacking the framework of analysis and argument that motivates his analytic peers. Perhaps Rorty's arguments are of a different, *older* type, and fail to excite on account of this.
Posted by Jeff Rubard | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 10:23 PM
Thanks!
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 10:57 PM
The Deweyan part of Rorty is what I like. The continental part I don't like; it seems that he welded continental anti-foundationalism onto American-liberal end-of-ideology public neutrality, which would also fit with support for the Cold War (somewhere he confessed to Humphreyism, which he does not express much at "The Nation".)
Wittgenstein's purist definition of philosophy seems extraordinarily narrow and a bit psycho, since all kinds of very peculiar passionate utterances show up in his writings and notes which cannot be squared with his philosophical method. He seems to have been trying to separate the normative and the descriptive-scientific, but his intense, rather mystical attitude toward normative expression was far different from that of the other analytic philosophers I've read.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 5:25 AM
Incidentally, Lyotard of the post-modernists ("no grand narrative") reminds me exactly of Daniel Bell of the anti-ideologists 30+ years earlier.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 5:46 AM
RARARARAR! One for the thumb!
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 7:23 AM
Here we go....
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 7:51 AM
Now what do we say? We can't say 'One for the thumb.' BECAUSE WE HAVE IT.
'Start on the other hand?'
RARARARAR.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 8:12 AM
Excuse me, this is the Rorty thread. "Drunken gloating" is the next door down.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 8:25 AM
It would be "One for the cock". Is this penis-envy, or was she setting up the joke?
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 8:27 AM
Is the second half of 178 exactly wrong?
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 8:43 AM
According to Rorty, there is no fact 'out there' about whether this is the Rorty thread or the drunken gloating thread; rather, our moves in the discourse of this thread are what determine its nature. So this can be the drunken gloating thread, if the practice of making this the drunken gloating thread is successful. RARARARRAR.
201, he thinks the 'mirror of nature' is a bad metaphor; the notion of philosophy and thought in general as representing or corresponding to the real world is a bad one, because we can't make sense of the world independent of our inquiry. If I remember correctly. He has another piece called "The World Well Lost" that makes this point more succinctly (in fact it's really where I'm getting this); he thinks that if we view our thought correctly we'll see that there's no world independent of us, and that that's good. Or something like that.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 9:09 AM
Has everyone seen that Chris Bertram is offended?
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 9:27 AM
203 -- I had seen it but not bothered to read the comments til just now. They are pretty entertaining too.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 9:58 AM
Is everyone actually working today? Or are you all just hung over?
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 9:58 AM
I failed to achieve sufficient drunkness last night to be hungover.
Alas, 'I was watching the game' still does not count as a good reason to slack on one's dissertation.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 10:12 AM
People need 'a reason' to slack on their dissertation nowadays?
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 10:19 AM
205: Can't it be both?
Posted by Matthew Harvey | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 10:20 AM
MH--I suppose that it can be both. Then there's the problem with unclear questions. Is it a boy or a girl? Yes is a perfectly acceptable answer, but it's pretty clear that it's fairly rare to be botha boy and a girl.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 10:27 AM
Having read about 15 pages of this over lunch, I think I did guess exactly wrong. Ironic, because Malachowski conjectures that one reason Rorty is so controversial is that people who don't understand him that well--or much of the rest of philosophy--like to throw his name around. Literary theorists, for example.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 11:11 AM
Ahhh. Cala, check that out.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 11:12 AM
This may be an odd request:
I can't seem to get the link in 210 - or anything in the princeton.edu domain. And I can't get anything in the berkeley.edu domain either (and haven't been able to for days). Both give me "problem loading page" errors. Can anyone else go here and here?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 11:17 AM
Can anyone else go here and here?
Yes. Can't be more helpful than that, though.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 11:20 AM
Me too. In lieu of a dumb joke, why hasn't my comment on this been approved yet? Wah.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 11:22 AM
BG, I didn't mean to sound like a total prick with my comment -- I was just trying to quote from Family Guy.
Posted by Matthew Harvey | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 11:22 AM
Another link.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 11:24 AM
Very exuberant article.
Thesis: Both Seattle and Pittsburgh played their best games in the conference championships.
LONG LIVE THE GADGET PLAY!
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 11:24 AM
In lieu of a dumb joke
That won't do. We demand our dumb joke, and we demand it now.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 11:24 AM
Thanks (and thanks for the link, ac). Now I have to figure out why I, personally, can't get certain edu sites. I'd guess there was spyware somwhere on my laptop - though I've scanned it recentlyn - but why block some edu sites?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 11:27 AM
Perhaps some university installs spyware to block its rivals. Have you visited Harvard's site recently? They're sneaky bastards.
(There you go, slol.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 11:32 AM
I can get all the Ivies but Princeton, all the UCs but Berkeley. I'm not going to go to every university website in America.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 11:38 AM
Rorty is the bogeyman for the same reason coldplay is the bogeyman. Ignoring any other flaws in their work, they are too popular among the wrong sort of person.
Posted by Joe O | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 12:08 PM
No, apostropher is the bogeyman!
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 12:08 PM
Not that anyone's wondering, but it probably was spyware. I changed the TCP/IP settings to obtain everything automatically and the pages work now. I just wish I knew more about what caused them to be set to what they were, and whether or not any information was being monitored/stolen while that was going on.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 12:58 PM
he confessed to Humphreyism
I don't know about everyone else, but that would annoy me about Rorty. Hubert Humphrey doesn't have an -ism.
Also, my question was seriously meant, and not just about the Super Bowl, but really honestly about sports.
Also, good on you, eb.
Also, yes, Weiner, that was one.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 5:14 PM
I note that my comment to the old thread still hasn't been approved. It was a very nice comment. (You're welcome, slol.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 7:32 PM
One of my blogs is a dot-edu, and yeah, I get blocked, too. 'Sup with that?
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 7:53 PM