January 14, 2012, 10:50 AM ET

Tim Tebow (and the Secular Jews)

"So, if Tebow wins against the Pats on Saturday night, then even the Jews are going to convert to Christianity." So opined my not-exceedingly observant (or reverent) Jewish breakfast partner yesterday. "What about the Reform Jews?" I asked. "Absolutely and they'll be holding tambourines." he responded. "Reconstructionist and Secular Humanistic Jews, too?" "Faster than you can say 'egalitarian congregation.'" "What about Jews in like Belgium or Israel?" "Can't be sure about Belgium, but if Israeli Jews come to Christ it could refresh certain synergies on the foreign policy level." The combination of improbable football success and unabashed faith in the form of Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow is now triggering conversations like this across the country (Surely, the essay "Tim Tebow (and the Secular Sikhs)" is going up over at HuffPo as we speak). Many Conservative Christians... Read More

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January 13, 2012, 06:23 PM ET

Friday the 13th: Turning 21 and 55

From Act II, Scene I of Congreve's The Way of the World: "To Pass our youth in dull indifference, to refuse the sweets of life because they once must leave us, is as preposterous as to wish to have been born old, because we one day must be old. Youth may wear and waste but it shall never rust in my possession." I wrote that line in my journal on Friday the 13th of January, 1978, the day before I turned 21. I was superstitious. I was afraid I would never be as happy again. I was defiant against my older self, arguing with the woman I would become, jealously guarding my right pleasure, defending myself against my unseen enemy: my older self. Happy I most certainly was: I was in London, reading novels by Hardy, Gissing, Orwell, and Webb under the tutelage of Dr. Lillian Haddakin at UCL as part of a six-month study abroad program. It's true that a small room in Ramsey Hall had been given...

Shock and Awe

By now you've probably seen the video that appears to show four U.S. marines urinating on the dead bodies of Taliban fighters. It is shocking. The men urinate on the bloody corpses with such a lack of enthusiasm, a sort of perfunctory defiling of the dead, that it is difficult to believe they are doing it out of anger or fear (as many of their defenders have suggested). The oddest part is when one of the Marines says in a high, sing song voice "have a great day, buddy." No doubt the tone was sarcastic, but it is also the same voice you'd use with a child or a pet. The official U.S. response has been to express shock. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said such behavior was utterly deplorable. And Secretary of State Clinton agreed, saying

It is absolutely inconsistent with American values, with the standards of behavior that we expect from our military personnel and that you know the vast,...

The Wanton Wages of Income Inequality

According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, reported in yesterday's New York Times, about two-thirds of Americans now believe that there are “strong conflicts” between rich and poor in the United States. It appears that this new-found willingness to confront the reality of income inequality is one of many salubrious results of the Occupy Wall Street movement, and a message that Democrats will push increasingly (and appropriately) in the coming elections. And part of that reality is that even as they decry “class warfare,” Republicans have long promoted precisely the kind of income inequality that the rest of the country is finally coming to acknowledge. And here is a further reality that needs acknowledgment: Income inequality isn’t only morally undesirable, it is literally hurtful to our social fabric as well as our personal health. This is the take-home message... Read More

January 12, 2012, 05:10 AM ET

Between a Rock and a Sublime Place (Part 2)

Earlier, I wrote a bit about rock climbing, noting how it offers a corrective tonic for a scholarly life that often feels out of touch with the real world. Navigating one’s body on rock nonetheless offers no shortage of mental challenges as well, beyond the requirements of logistical planning and the cliché of “extended periods of boredom punctuated by occasional moments of sheer terror.” I’m thinking about a kind of body-thought in which the climber seeks to become one with the rock, calculating instantaneously and fluidly how best to use its cracks, bumps, and rugosity to ascend with a minimum of effort … not so much imposing one’s will as using the natural features to surmount themselves. On occasion, of course, complaining muscles must be overcome, along with the tendency of some rock to splinter, of cracks to shatter or be too narrow or too shallow for good purchase, ... Read More

January 11, 2012, 09:12 PM ET

Darwin’s Not So Cuddly Ideas: A Reply to Michael Ruse

First, thank you, Michael, for the compliment you paid me in your previous Brainstorm post. I am deeply flattered and honored, and I’ll try not to let it go to my head. And I sincerely return the compliment. Here, I’d like to respond to your objections to my remark about living in a “post-Darwin age” that appeared in my post, “Parents, Cuddle Your Children.” I think it would be silly to argue Darwin was behind the “decline and fall of modern child rearing and education,” and certainly didn’t mean to imply that. Yet I do take issue with the idea that there isn’t “an either/or between Darwin and Plato”—and not because of whatever respective ideas about education they each had (I have no idea about what Darwin thought of education other than what you wrote). Although I don't doubt your statement that Darwin was convinced of the “importance of the moral sense for human nature," his theory...

Rick Santorum Doesn't Understand How the Labor Market Works

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum recently criticized President Obama's initiative to increase college-going as "elitist snobbery." Said Santorum:

I have seven kids. Maybe they’ll all go to college. But, if one of my kids wants to go and be an auto mechanic, good for him. That’s a good-paying job – using your hands and using your mind. This is the kind of, the kind of snobbery that we see from those who think they know how to run our lives. Rise up, America. Defend your own freedoms.

The chart below, from the invaluable Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce, shows the educational attainment of auto mechanics in three time periods:1968-1971, 1988-1991, and 2004-2007.

In the early 1970's, when Rick Santorum was entering high school, most auto mechanics were high school dropouts. About a third had a high school diploma, and only seven percent had been... Read More

January 10, 2012, 11:12 AM ET

Charles Darwin and the Cuddle Factor

Today, because we live in a post-Darwin age of “social constructs,” we find the idea of “man’s nature” too teleological for our taste. To Plato and Rousseau, however, it would have been preposterous to discuss child rearing without embedding it in this idea. How can you tell how to direct the education of a child without having in mind an idea of the adult you want?

Whenever Laurie Fendrich writes a piece for Brainstorm, I drop everything and read it at once. There is not only a deep love of the arts and culture generally, but there is a moral purity that I find truly humbling. (Sorry Laurie if this embarrasses you, but I am really not just saying it.) So I was a bit taken aback in the last column (but one now) by the paragraph reproduced above. I guess if I am anything in this world, I am a Darwin scholar – I have this horrendous 400,000 word Darwin Encyclopedia about to... Read More

January 10, 2012, 10:56 AM ET

Pannapacker at the MLA, 4: Twitter Is Scholarship

By William Pannapacker

SEATTLE

The MLA convention is a huge, four-day event with hundreds of sessions and dozens of social gatherings. Like a big city, it’s impossible to comprehend the whole of it; you can sample it, randomly, focus on new developments, or deepen your engagement with the fields you already know. Or you can try to do all of those things at once. For that, Twitter is a great help. In fact, there may be more people engaging in academic conferences over Twitter than physically attending them. I used to run from one concurrent session after another, trying to sample as much of the conference as I could. Lots of other people did that, I remember: we’d lurk near the doors, and bolt—as inconspicuously as possible—during the applause after the most interesting talk. I don’t do that so much anymore. It seemed rude at the time. But now I find myself... Read More

January 10, 2012, 10:48 AM ET

The Résumé Reader

There’s an identifiable human type out there—I don’t know what others call it, or how its particularities manifest themselves in academe or the rest of the world, but in the art world, I call it the “Résumé Reader.” Say I’m at an art opening for a friend’s exhibition and I see someone I know. I smile, walk over to the person, and offer the usual, “Hey, nice to see you. How are you?" With a non-Résumé Reader, what follows is the ordinary stuff—something like this: “Hi, great to see you, too! I’m doing OK. My classes are going really well—I have a couple of really interesting students. Plus I’m lucky because I’ve got a course off, so I’m getting more studio time this semester. I’ve stretched up some big canvases to work on. I’ve been feeling pretty good—swimming again regularly. Anyway, how are you?” Thereupon follows a chat—some pleasant... Read More