On the American Acquisition of Property

"If Hollywood wanted to capture the emotional center of Western history, its movies would be about real estate.  John  Wayne would have been neither a gunfighter nor a sheriff but a surveyor, speculator or claims lawyer.  The showdowns would occur in the land office or the courtroom; weapons would be deeds and lawsuits, not six-guns.  Moviemakers would have to find some cinematic way in which proliferating lines on a map could keep the audience rapt.

"Western history is a story structured by the drawing of lines and the marking of borders.  From macrocosm to microcosm, from imperial struggles for territory to the parceling out of townsite claims, Western American history was an effort first to draw lines dividing the West into manageable units of property and then to persuade people to treat those lines with respect.

"White Americans saw the acquisition of property as a cultural imperative, manifestly the right way to go about things.  There was one appropriate way to treat land--divide it, distribute it, register it.  This relationship to physical matter seems to us so commonplace that we must struggle to avoid taking it for granted, to grasp instead the vastness of the continent and the enormous project of measuring, allocating and record keeping involved in turning the open expanses of North America into tranferable parcels of real estate.  Like the settlers themselves we steadfastly believe in the social fiction that lines on a map and signatures on a deed legitimately divide the earth.  Of all the persistent qualities in American history, the values attached to property retain the most power."


from

The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West by Patricia Nelson Limerick (pp. 55-56)

Sigh... How To Be Stupid Teaching People How Not To Be Stupid

Where to begin?

• This film extols "critical thinking" (a position with which I am sympathetic) but it exhibits very little of it.
• It is narrated by an anonymous "voice-of-God" speaker who makes a number of statements which we (the viewers) are encouraged to accept because -- wait for it -- he says so...or maybe because we already accept them.  Virtually no logical argumentation is in evidence, no weighing of alternatives is apparent, no references are cited and, as far as I could tell, no further reading is suggested.
• This film is an infomercial trying to sell us a commodity called ""Critical Thinking"; perhaps it serves a purpose as a "battle cry"; perhaps it gives comfort or amusement to the already-converted.  What it does not do, in any meaningful sense of the words, is educate or instruct. 
• Stylistically, this film has all the wit of Plan 9 From Outer Space.
• Critical thinking is not the same as philosophical realism; David Lewis was a modal realist who believed that every possible world actually exists, that reality encompasses every possibility.  David Lewis (although I believe he was wrong) was a critical thinker.
• Nobody really "waits until all the facts are in" for the simple reason that, in the real world, under real constraints of time and resources, it is almost always impossible to tell when "all the facts are in".  Clinging to mottoes does not encourage critical thinking.
• This film pays lip service to the complexity of situations and to "shades of gray"...and then fails to exhibit any appreciation of either in the black-and-white opposition it presents between "critical thinkers" and "wish fulfillers".

I could go on...but you get the idea.

I Suppose It's Time For Me to Reaffirm My Lack of Faith...Again

This blog post in the New York Times' intriguing philosophy series has reminded me that I haven't stated my position on [Gg]od lately.

 I am an atheist. This is not a wholly logical position; I cannot prove that there is no [Gg]od. Technically, therefore, I suppose I could be considered an agnostic. I don't feel that way, however.

 I've never seen an argument of the existence of [Gg]od that came even close to convincing me. I certainly cannot recall (nor can I imagine) any that would cause me to care if a creator exists. I have never understood why so much religious philosophical energy has been devoted to trying to establish the reality of a creator of the universe. The far bigger (and largely unaddressed) challenge, in my opinion, is establishing what difference the existence of such a thing should make in anyone's life. If you managed to convince me of its reality you would still not have convinced me that it is sentient; that it has or had intentions; that those intentions are meaningful (or even intelligible) to human beings; that it cares what we do or what we think; that any sort of "relationship" whatsoever is possible with it.

So I call myself an "atheist" because, even if it is not literally, logically true it communicates a truer message to my audience than would calling myself an "agnostic". I cannot prove with absolute certainty that the sun will rise tomorrow but the probability that it will not seems to me to be so remote as to not make it worthwhile taking my minuscule "uncertainty" into account. For all intents and purposes, the sun WILL rise tomorrow. For all intents and purposes there is NO god.

The final word goes to Nina Paley's Mimi (Mimi & Eunice):

Knit One, Purl Two

Via Debra Dickerson, here is a collection of yarn marvels from Patricia Waller.
For example:

(or am I, as Dickerson says many do, confusing crocheting and knitting?)

Love the Art, Not (necessarily) the Artist

Roman Polanski: Still a rapist -- Women’s Glib