Saturday, May 17, 2003 A Weekend Story By Diana Hsieh @ 11:25 AM This was priceless... I was happy. My girlfriend and I were dating for over a year, and so we decided to get married. My parents helped us in every way; my friends encouraged me, and my girlfriend? She was a dream! There was only one thing bothering me, quite much indeed, and that was my mother-in-law to be. She was a career woman, smart, but most of all beautiful and sexy, who sometimes flirted with me, which made me feel uncomfortable. One day she called me and asked me to come over to check the wedding invitations. So I went. She was alone, and when I arrived, she whispered to me, that soon I was to be married, and she had feelings and desires for me that she couldn't overcome. So before I got married and committed my life to her daughter, she wanted to make love to me just once. What could I say? I was in total shock, and couldn't say a word. So, she said, "I'll go to the bedroom, and if you are up for it, just come and get me." I just watched her delicious behind as she went up the stairs. I stood there for a moment, and then turned around and went to the front door... I opened it, and stepped out of the house. Her husband was standing outside and with tears in his eyes, hugged me and said, "We are very happy and pleased, you have passed our little test. We couldn't have asked for a better man for our daughter. Welcome to the family." The moral of the story: Always keep your condoms in your car. Link / Noodles / Trackback Friday, May 16, 2003 Post-Vacation Blues By Diana Hsieh @ 10:40 AM Over the past year, I've managed to dramatically increase my productivity, largely with the help of a simple weekly time management system in excel. (You can see a sample sheet of a single, typical week in excel. Tuesdays and Thursdays only required two hours of work because I was in school most of the day. Readings for class aren't counted as work in the system, but papers are.) As a result of targeting and tracking my time in various projects, I've managed to get so much more done this year than last. But I still have a lingering problem, one that was particularly evident (and particularly painful) this week. I hope that others might have some suggestions for how to resolve it. The problem is that once I stop work for a much-needed few days of vacation, returning to work is a painfully difficult process of days and days. I simply can't manage to concentrate on work again; it feels physically impossible. This time around, it was a slow and painful process, despite a fast-approaching deadline for my Camp Indecon lessons. Yesterday, I did finally manage to get some work done, but it was too little too late. (This is not a problem unique to philosophizing, as I remember having the same post-vacation difficulties while working as a programmer.) So any suggestions or tricks for getting back into the groove of work after time off? Link / Noodles / Trackback Thursday, May 15, 2003 The Desert of the Real By Diana Hsieh @ 8:45 AM VAGUE AND ABSTRACT BUT NONETHELESS IMPORTANT SPOILER ALERT! I agree with some of criticisms of Stephen Hunter's (spoiler-heavy) review of The Matrix Reloaded. The politics of Zion, for example, really weren't all that captivating. And we're definitely stopped in the middle of a larger movie, which is frustrating. But his argument that the second movie lost touch with the first's themes of "What is real? I am in control of my own life?" is just plain wrong. He writes: Perhaps the most serious deficiency of "Reloaded" is conceptual. Possibly it couldn't be helped. But at the core, the idea of what the Matrix meant -- and it was that idea that drove the film to astonishing success and influence -- isn't truly reestablished here. I suppose the Wachowskis take it for granted and assume that we do as well, but that's dangerous. It was so useful an idea, so resonant, an equal-opportunity delusion for the secret paranoids that all of us really are: that a secret screen of anti-reality had been imposed by a cabal of mechanical monsters to hide the elemental truth. We're zombies, they drain our electricity, what we see is simply neural responses to pricks inside our brains. Au contraire! Neo's discovery of the true purpose of The One folds those same themes back on themselves. He and Morpheus and everyone else thought that unplugging from the Matrix left them securely in the Real World. They thought Zion was free and independent. But all is still merely an elaborate deception of the Matrix designed to maintain the dominance of the machines -- but not in the obvious brain-in-a-vat way. And significantly, that plot twist resolves some of the deeply unsatisfactory ideas of the first movie, including fatalism and irrelevance of choice, the puzzle about source of Neo's One-ness, and so on. The original themes of The Matrix are more subtle and twisted in Reloaded, but certainly very much still in force. I won't say more, as I don't want to get into the details... go see the movie! VAGUE AND ABSTRACT BUT NONETHELESS IMPORTANT SPOILER ALERT! Link / Noodles / Trackback The Matrix Reloaded By Diana Hsieh @ 1:23 AM Paul and I just returned from our late viewing of The Matrix Reloaded. A few quick thoughts: The fight scenes were wowowowow awesome. The relationship between Neo and Trinity was well-fleshed-out (*ahem*). Zion is not exactly a holy Christian or Moslem or Jewish enclave. The plot twists were completely unexpected, but nevertheless sensible in retrospect. The mystical bizarreness of the first movie was resolved. Many unanswered questions linger for the third movie. Sometimes, I fear high hopes for a movie. I wasn't disappointed tonight though. It was awesome. Link / Noodles / Trackback Wednesday, May 14, 2003 Not Always So Boring By Diana Hsieh @ 3:44 PM Neil Cavuto is Fox News' calm and straight-laced VP of business news and host of "Your World." But he's not as nice and boring as he looks. Today's Righteous Fisking of Paul Krugman, for example, was pure delight. I'll quote the whole thing, as a slice is just inadequate. Since no good deed goes unpunished, leave it to The New York Times to take a shot at me. Not The Times itself, but columnist Paul Krugman, who blasts me for my apparent blatant partisanship. He writes: "Neil Cavuto of Fox News is an anchor, not a commentator. Yet after Baghdad's fall he told 'those who opposed the liberation of Iraq' -- a large minority -- that 'you were sickening then; you are sickening now.'" First off, Mr. Krugman, let me correct you: I'm a host and a commentator, just like you no doubt call yourself a journalist and a columnist. So my sharing my opinions is a bad thing, but you spouting off yours is not? Exactly who's the hypocrite, Mr. Krugman? Me, for expressing my views in a designated segment at the end of the show? Or you, for not so cleverly masking your own biases against the war in a cheaply written column? You're as phony as you are unprofessional. And you have the nerve to criticize me, or Fox News, and by extension, News Corporation? Look, I'd much rather put my cards on the table and let people know where I stand in a clear editorial, than insidiously imply it in what's supposed to be a straight news story. And by the way, you sanctimonious twit, no one -- no one -- tells me what to say. I say it. And I write it. And no one lectures me on it. Save you, you pretentious charlatan. Let me see if I have this right, Mr. Krugman. Journalists who opposed this war are OK. Those who support it are not. Says who? You? I'm less of a journalist because I was in favor of this war, but you're more of a journalist because you were not? You imply that by being in favor of this war, I'm pandering, and by extension, my company is pandering to the White House. Nowhere does it ever occur to you, one can legitimately not agree with you. That doesn't make me less of a journalist. But, Mr. Krugman, it does make you more of an ass. Here's the difference: You insinuated it, I just said it. Now may I suggest you take your column and shove it? Andrew Sullivan characterizes Cavuto as responding "somewhat intemperately." That's an understatement. But Krugman deserved every bit of Cavuto's intemperate response. Oh, and Matthew Hoy has a nice dissection of the stupidity of the rest of Krugman's column. (According to Hoy, the version of Cavuto's comments reprinted on Fox News' site isn't word-for-word perfect. Perhaps I'll TiVO the later airing, as Paul and I are -- of course -- off to see The Matrix: Reloaded this evening.) Link / Noodles / Trackback Author's Notes By Diana Hsieh @ 2:36 PM An academic life is not, sadly enough, terribly conducive to humor. So that's why these author's notes about responsbility for errors in articles are so damn funny. Link / Noodles / Trackback Role Models By Diana Hsieh @ 9:40 AM Eugene has some good comments on role models, particularly on how much a role model needs to be "like us." He writes: ...while I'm not an expert on the psychological research surrounding this subject, my sense is that it's not inherently that hard for people to find role models who differ from them in race or sex. People are capable of being inspired by people who lived centuries before them, who spoke a completely different language, had a completely different ethnicity, and lived a completely different sort of life. Ask an American classical musician, for instance, which figures in history he has admired -- is he likelier to mention American or English composers, or German or Russian ones? People are capable of abstracting those factors (which in any event shouldn't be the basis for admiration), and focusing on more important matters, such as the person's great achievements or great character (which should be the basis for admiration). I suspect that people are likewise able to abstract race and sex as well. But while I think people are inherently able to choose role models from either gender and any race, ethnicity, religion, and era, social attitudes can change that. The more we talk about how girls need female role models, blacks need black role models, and so on, the more we send the message that children should seek only role models of their own race and sex. And, as I've argued above, that message is actually harmful to those children who belong to a race or sex that -- often through no fault of its own -- simply does not contain role models (in the particular fields in which the children are interested) who are as great as those that have been produced by another race or sex. An excessive and highly publicized focus on race- and sex-specific role modeling is thus, I suspect, harmful to the very groups (women and nonwhites) that it's trying to help. I agree that people ought to look broadly within the whole of humanity for their role models. As a philosopher, I would have no role models at all if I confined myself to my own sex, that Russian Jewish woman philosopher notwithstanding. To find role models in the history of philosophy, I must look beyond the superficial similarities of race, sex, and class to the more fundamental issues of method, style, and ideas. And I'm far better off for doing so, as I can pick and choose from among the best, e.g. Aristotle, Locke, Mill, rather than from a small (and frankly mediocre) subset. From the outside, I certainly have little in common with a misogynistic, slave-holding Greek who lived over 2000 years ago, a.k.a. Aristotle. And, despite her sex, I have little in common with a Russian Jewish immigrant fascinated with Hollywood, a.k.a. Ayn Rand. Friendship would likely have been impossible with either of these philosophers. But the whole point of philosophy (as well as other endeavors like art, science, and so on) is to transcend those cultural divides and personal preferences, to find something universal to all humanity. So to look for role models based upon superficial characteristics is to radically misunderstand (in good postmodernist fashion) the whole point of these subjects. One final note: I could be, I suppose, a very good woman philosopher. If that were my goal, then women philosopher role models might be appropriate. But to think in such terms is limiting, patronizing, and deeply sexist. I want to be a very good philosopher, period. (I wonder if other women in philosophy think in those terms, however. At CU Boulder, about a third of the grad students in philosophy are women -- and most of them are focused on feminist issues, not real philosophy. That's disappointing, but not surprising.) Link / Noodles / Trackback Tuesday, May 13, 2003 Silly Joke from Who Knows Who By Diana Hsieh @ 11:27 AM In pharmacology, all drugs have two names, a trade name and generic name: Tylenol is acetaminophen, Aleve is naproxen, Amoxil is amoxicillin, Advil is ibuprofen, and so on. The FDA has been looking for a generic name for Viagra, and announced that it has settle on mycoxafloppin. Also considered were mycoxafailin, mydixadrupin, mydixarizin, mydixadud, dixafix, and of course, ibepokin. Link / Noodles / Trackback Sunday, May 11, 2003 Principles of Healthy Eating By Diana Hsieh @ 10:43 PM As a general principle of cannibalism, this one by Jonah Goldberg seems pretty sensible to me: "And while I'm not kosher myself, I do think I would prefer to eat only kosher people." Sometimes being pro-Judiasm can go a bit too far, I must admit... More seriously, Randy Barnett has an excellent article in NRO on Bill Bennett on drugs versus gambling. I'm generally unenthused and unconvinced by the gleeful response to the revelations, but Barnett's argument makes sense to me. Link / Noodles / Trackback

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