Thursday, February 28, 2013

Happy Birthday, Meinong!


We have had several occasions to to hail that celebrated ontologist, gentleman, astronaut and circus-clown (for such he might have been, in a parallel universe), Professor Alexius Meinong.   We have even alerted the world to his birthday -- a delicate and needful act, that, since (like Easter) it falls on a different day each year, and sometimes  twice in a fortnight.

Meinongism has seen a resurgence of late.  A recent historian of philosophy quotes the ontological maximalist Alvin Plantinga, thus:

Of course, it isn’t my claim that this state of affairs [e.g. Putnam’s being a politician, or Meinong a circus clown] does not exist, or that there simply is no such state of affairs;  indeed there is such a state of affairs and it exists just as serenely as your most solidly actual state of affairs.  But it does not obtain; it isn’t actual.
-- “Actualism and Possible Worlds” (1979), quoted in Stephen Schwartz, A Brief History of Analytic Philosophy (2012), p. 220.

This is essentially an exhumation of the Meinongian view (see The Golden Mountain Does Not Exist), but with the terminology of exist vs. subsist being replaced -- most awkwardly -- by obtain vs. exist.   (You can imagine the confusions such paltering might give rise to:  “It depends upon what the meaning of is is.”)

Even more bizarrely, he goes on:

Socrates is a contingent being;  his essence, however, is not.  Properties, like propositions and possible worlds, are necessary beings.  If Socrates had not existed, his essence would have been unexemplified, but not nonexistent.  In worlds where Socrates exists, Socrateity is his essence;  exemplifying Socrateity is essential to him.

Here, truly, we have Eigenschaften ohne Männer!  Our master Quine  foresaw such folly.  (Almost thou persuadest me to become a Nominalist.)

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Le feuilleton continue (continued)


(Mise à jour  en bas de page.)

With the payoff to Diallo, longtime followers of the DSK affair(s) sighed that they wouldn’t have Strauss-Kahn to kick around anymore.
Au contraire.  Now yet another bedmate  scribes a tell-all memoir and delivers a quick kick in the cobblers:

Pas une fois n'apparaît le nom de Dominique Strauss-Kahn dans le livre que la juriste et chroniqueuse Marcela Iacub consacre à la liaison de sept mois qu'elle a entretenue avec lui. Le mot «cochon», quand ce n'est pas «roi des porcs», lui sert de pseudonyme. Le récit s'intitule Belle et Bête. Cent vingt pages, un coup éditorial pour Stock - et, par ricochet, pour Le Nouvel Observateur qui publie ce jeudi les bonnes feuilles et une longue interview de l'auteur -, les répliques de DSK et d'Anne Sinclair qui s'indignent, chacun de leur côté, du procédé: le scandale est assuré.

To this, a reader retorts:

Il est peut-être cochon , mais elle c'est une sacrée truie !!

*
Si cela vous parle,
savourez la série noire
en argot authentique d’Amérique :

*

For more to keep you warm in winter, try these:


*
Travaillant au noir,
le détective  se trouve aux prises
avec le Saint-Esprit
C’est quoi, le péché irrémissible ???

*

But why let France have all the fun?   The current issue of the London Review of Books features a fond look-back on that greying granddaddy of sex scandals,  The Profumo Affair:


Christine Keeler, for whom Profumo lost the world -- and was pretty p.o.’d to lose it.


There were plenty around who wanted to exploit any evidence of bad behaviour in high places for their own purposes. Newspapers probed the private lives of politicians in the hope of finding the scandal that could wreck them. Opposition politicians floated rumours and conspiracy theories in the hope that the newspapers might bite. Davenport-Hines finds all this contemptible: men (and the occasional woman, such as Barbara Castle) bent on power and using prurience and censoriousness as a way to get it.

Sound familiar?

It should.  Here is the latest in a string of sordid revelations about those who cynically hounded Bill Clinton:

Former senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico, a Republican, disclosed Wednesday that he has a son born in secrecy over 30 years ago.
“More than 30 years ago, I fathered a child outside my marriage,” Domenici told the Albuquerque Journal in a statement.


In an almost unbelievable twist, the tart in question was not some random floozie, but the daughter of his buddy in the Senate:

Domenici said he kept the matter secret because the mother of the child, Michelle Laxalt, asked him to do so. Her father, Paul Laxalt, was himself a U.S. senator from Nevada from 1974 to 1987 and served as chairman of the Republican National Committee.

The Washington Post makes no mention of the screaming irony in this, but alert readers jump on it:

Sen. Domenici voted "Guilty"on both counts on the impeachment charges against Bil Clinton. Like Henry Hyde, manager of the impeachment, and Newt Gingrich who was pursuing a Congressional aide while Clinton was pursing Monica, Sen. Domenici did not consider the hypocrisy of his actions.

--
So let's look at the people who found Clinton's behavior so disgraceful it required impeachment. 

Gingrich - having an affair while voting for impeachment. Not to mention cheating on the first while she was in the hospital 
Domenici - one affair we know of. Anyone want to believe it was the only one? 
Hyde - having an affair while voting for impeachment 
Burton Had child through affair.  
Chenoweth Had longtime affair 
Bob Barr - Had affairs with second & third Mrs. Barrs while married to the first & second Mrs. Barrs respectively. 

And that's what I come up with with just a few minutes of research.  

*     *     *
~ And now for something to relax with: ~

*     *     *

[Update 27 Feb 2013]  A review of the opuscule:



Alors que les médias s'emparent du livre de la juriste pour crier au génie, il semblerait que l'affaire Belle et Bête vire au bal des hypocrites.

    Si l'on en croit les arbitres des élégances littéraires, l'affaire DSK aurait accouché d'un écrivain: Marcela Iacub. Le livre de cette brillante juriste, Belle et Bête, oscillerait entre La Métamorphose de Kafka et Truismes de Marie Darrieussecq, ce qui laisse de la marge tout de même. Alertés par ces grognements de joie, nous avons à notre tour plongé le groin dans cette porcherie.

    Est-ce de l'art ou du cochon? Rien de tout ça. Ce n'est pourtant pas le mascara (que le personnage du livre aime goûter sur les yeux de sa partenaire) qui nous aveugle. L'auteur retranscrit ici son «expérience» dans un style plat et insipide. Pour filer sa métaphore, Marcela Iacub écrit comme un gland. Afin d'épater la galerie médiatique, elle a emballé cet amas informe de fantasmes et de réalités dans un concept choc: le cochon. «Quel génie! Quelle originalité!», s'égosille la meute.
    Le bal des hypocrites.

    Rien n'est bon dans ce cochon-là. Le récit ne s'élève jamais au-dessus de l'autoanalyse de comptoir, comme le montre bien Florent Georgesco dans sa critique du Monde . Le plus incroyable dans cette histoire est la prétention délirante de son auteur: elle voudrait ni plus ni moins sauver son cochon. Sainte Marcela, priez pour nous! Certains en feraient volontiers une nouvelle sainte Blandine. Contre cette impie, Christine Angot a sorti ses griffes. «Non, non, non et non», elle ne veut pas être comparée à elle. Ah oui? Et son livre inspiré de sa liaison avec Doc Gynéco, c'était quoi? L'affaire Iacub, qui avait des airs de Salon de l'agriculture, vire au bal des hypocrites.

As so often, the alert Le Figaro readers offer some choice Comments, useful for anglophones  learning the language:


Lamentable ce déballage de charcuterie!! Plus lamentable encore les intellectuels de monoprix qui s'esbaudissent!!!
--
Avez-vous eu l'occasion de voir le email envoyé par Iacub à DSK (daté d'octobre 2012) ou elle s'excuse auprès de lui (mais "c'est pas de sa faute parce que des méchants lui ont demandé de faire la sa**pe" etc) ? Non ? J'ai vu le texte hier sur Canal et je me suis demandé une chose : le texte paraît écrit (syntaxe, structure des phrases, etc.) par une ado en dernière année de bac, sans talent. Ca m'a surpris pour une personne donnée comme habile de sa plume, intellectuellement brillante...
---
Tout ceci est bien à l'image de la France d'aujourd'hui une pornocrate de gauche qui se fait piéger les doigts dans le pot de confiture par une pseudo juriste pseudo écrivain pseudo chercheur libertaire de gauche. Gardez vous de tremper dans ce marigot peu ragoutant
---
si l'on est intelligent comme il est sensé l'être et qu'il y a un risque à courir : on verrouille sa braguette !
---
Abandonnons cette dame et son livre ...un livre de bobo ..rien de plus.. très prétentieux..


.




Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Discretion (on "Argo")


In hearty acknowledgment of "Argo"s winning the Best Picture prize,  we repost our initial notes (with minor updates).

~

 My wife and I just saw the movie “Argo”.  B.L.U.F. : Excellent.

The only thing you could tax it with, really, is its implausible plot.  And yet, the story is apparently a faithful reflection of what actually happened, in a little-known episode of the history of our dealings with Iran.   The film recalls “Wag the Dog” as being an off-kilter intersection of cinema and reality.

(Presidential Discretion advised)


Basically, through out-of-the-box thinking, careful preparation, and meticulous execution, the CIA and the Carter Administration spirited some on-the-run American embassy workers out of Khomeini’s Iran.   And then refrained from taking credit for the op, since Iran might have taken revenge on the remaining hostages being held in the embassy;  instead, Jimmy Carter credited the Canadians.  Such self-effacement surely contributed to the failure of his re-election, since the electorate was dunned daily with newscasts ending “….Day 346 of the Hostage Crisis”, and Carter himself was seen as hapless.   (He also -- most have forgotten -- launched a UBL-snatch-style helicopter rescue attempt, which failed, owing to sandstorms.)  Instead, most “low-information voters” no doubt credit Ronald Reagan with getting the hostages back -- he got to pose smiling for the photo opps with returnees -- though in fact he had nothing to do with it.   Carter was tough on Iran and they hated him for it;  Reagan’s own cringing groveling antics have gone down in history under the name of Iran-Contra.

And suddenly it struck me -- Carter’s discreet and low-key decency, versus the let’s-play-dress-up Dubya cavorting on an aircraft carrier, all dolled up in a flight suit, beneath the banner “Mission Accomplished” (…. not …);  and later putting our men downrange into further peril by his crowing “Bring it on”.    Or the chest-thumping belligerance of John McCain -- “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran”.
Too, note our President’s discretion, when Obama met privately -- no photo-opps -- with the victorious Seals after they took down UBL.  (This, since their identities are confidential.  Subsequently, some of the SEALs themselves  have  alas  shown less discretion.)

~

In addition to the factual historical discretion of President Carter, this movie -- spectacular in premise -- is remarkably discreet in its artistic treatment:  most notably in the lead performance of Ben Affleck (depicting the real-life CIA hero Tony Mendes) so low-key it almost disappears off the screen.  Affleck was also the director, so he could have allowed his actorly self to hog the action;  but far from it.  And this reflects the fact that clandestine agents do not succeed by calling attention to themselves.  (The Bush-era CIA clowns who botched the Milan snatch, leaving a trail of frequent-flier miles  and luxury hotel bills, would have done well to borrow a page from that playbook.)
This comes out particularly when Affleck/Mendes outlines the far-fetched jump-the-shark scenario for the exfil, and one of the group in hiding (there is one in every bunch) whines obstreperously.  Affleck doesn’t pull rank or macho him out;  he remains expressionless and silent, for the very good reason that the man’s housemates, with whom he has served long weeks of virtual captivity, go back much farther and deeper with him.  Well aware that the holdout is endangering their lives, they remonstrate with him, successfully.

Both the op and its artistic depiction could almost be described as under-the-radar;  but the film does allow itself some fun.  Not, to be sure, in the hostage scenes, which would have been in poor taste, but in Hollywood.  Here John Goodman and Alan Arkin romp to their heart’s content -- and to ours -- turning in memorable splendid performances.

*     *     *
~ Commercial break -- mini-movie ~
We now return you to your regularly scheduled essay.

*     *     *
[Update, 18 Feb 2013]  In Iran --  Crits Nix Tricks Pix:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/world/middleeast/stung-by-argo-iran-backs-conference-decrying-hollywoodism.html?ref=global-home&_r=0


Update 31 July 2014] We noted above that Reagan received undue credulous-public credit for the release of the Tehran hostages, and that he used his own Presidency for disgraceful truckling to Iran.  It turns out there may be more to the story, of a particularly ominous kind.
I’m reading the new biography of Robert Ames -- The Good Spy by Kai Bird (2014).   We reach the time after the Shah of Iran had been overthrown, and Khomeini was in power,  but the U.S. embassy had not yet been attacked.  What should be done about the ex-Shah?
The author introduces this chapter with an unvarnished quote from President Jimmy Carter (we ourselves -- since this is a family site -- shall varnish it slightly, to the extent of replacing a vowel with an asterisk):   “F*ck the Shah.  I am not going to welcome him here when he has other places to go where he’ll be safe.”  This was no more than prudent, in accord with national security.   Yet “Carter had been hounded for months by a lobbying campaign, code-named ‘Project Alpha’, personally financed by David Rockefeller” (p. 228);  Rosalynn Carter’s diary states “Kissinger, David Rockefeller, Howard Baker, John McCloy, Gerald Ford -- all are after Jimmy to bring the shah to the United States.”  Alas, Carter eventually bent to the relentless pressure, and on 22 October 1979, the shah arrived in New York. 
Two weeks later, our embassy in Tehran was taken over, and the hostages seized, in what became the defining tragedy of the Carter administration, and  a convenient preparation for Ronald Reagan to take over the Presidency.  In other words -- there might never have been an Iranian hostage crisis, but for behind-the-scenes Republican meddling.
Incidentally -- One wonders whether influential Republicans would have urged anything so imprudent, had Ford won re-election.   They might well have then taken their partisan (not to mention national) interests into account, and let the Shah fly off to Paris or wherever.  (Indeed, Paris had a lot to answer for, having nurtured Khomeini.) -- The incessant antics of John McCain, hectoring President Obama into launching yet another ill-advised Mideast war (Libya, Syria), raise anew this unanswerable question.

But it gets worse.


Prior to the Shah-hosting fiasco, the CIA had actually been on a very promising approach to renewing good relations with Iran -- for which no true strategic objections existed.   The ‘great satans’ Iran really had to worry about  were the ones on its own borders, Iraq and the USSR.  Furthermore, the CIA had intel that Iraq was preparing to attack Iran, and moreover had surveillance assets (disrupted as a result of the Iranian revolution) which could be re-activiated -- one of which (IBEX) would protect Iran against an invasion from Iraq; and one of which (Tacksman) would have restored our own channel of intel about the Soviets.  All this was blown to blazes when Carter caved to Republican hounding and let in the Shah.

But it (maybe) gets worse still.


There have long been reports and rumors that, fearing an “October surprise”, the Reaganites had some sort of back-channel understanding with the Khomeini regime, to delay the release of hostages until after the November elections.   A serious, possibly baseless charge, of an action bordering on treason.   But Bird presents some new evidence (new to me, anyhow).
A major source for Bird’s book, and second only to Ames as a personnage thereof, is one Mustafa Zein, who claims to have been the object of a Reaganite (William-Casey-ite) overture along just those lines;  and moreover, to have tape-recorded the session, using (the sort of wild coincidental detail that a screenwriter might be chided for making up) the same trick suitcase, implanted with a hidden recorder, that Ames had given to his chief quasi-spy PLO asset but who didn’t need it any longer (having recently been assassinated) …  Anyhow, the tapes and transcripts of this treasonous overture, if indeed it was ever made, are said to lie in the PLO’s archives in Tunis.
This sounds like a job for an enterprising librarian.


~
For those of you who actually read an entire book anymore,
try this one!
(Don’t worry, this one is broken up into short stories,
and bite-size philosophical entremets)
~

For a discussion of another CIA-related movie, again drawn from actual history, try this:




[Update 12 April 2015]  That these old issues  remain of present relevance, is suggested by a gormless prepared remark by one Rand Paul, a man who would like to be President, in the speech launching his campaign:

The Kentucky senator made the obligatory genuflection to Republican icon Ronald Reagan, declaring: “I envision a national defense that promotes, as Reagan put it, peace through strength.”
But then he continued, “I believe in applying Reagan’s approach to foreign policy to the Iran issue.”
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/Decoder/2015/0411/Can-Rand-Paul-recover-from-his-rocky-presidential-campaign-roll-out-video




The lingua franca of jihad


A group of seven French nationals was recently kidnapped in Cameroun by Boko Haram, which has just released an interesting video of the hostages:


The hostages are all French, and Cameroun is officially francophone; and the local language is Hausa, with English as an official language.   Nevertheless, the captor’s speech is read in correct, classical, native-accented Arabic.  The rhetoric is stately, the syntax complex -- much like the addresses Usama Bin Laden used to give.  Moreover, the speaker refers to his group as the  Jamâ`atu ahli l-sunnati li-da`wati wa-l-jihad,  “which they nickname ‘Boko Haram’”.  There is indeed quite a contrast in feeling-tone between that mouth-filling Arabic phrase, with its careful and accurate morphological vowelings (and which means:  “Group of the Sunni people, for preaching and combat”),  and the local-language Boko Haram (basically, “bookums nogood” [*]), which by comparison sounds like pidgin.  In keeping with this, the speaker wastes no time at all denouncing the depravities of Western culture, but adorns his discourse with much stately religious phraseology.
Here classical Arabic is being used as an international koiné or lingua franca, much as French was the language of international culture diplomacy in the eighteenth century, spoken as far east as the courts of Russia.   As such it is a step towards the kind of thinking that would be required for the re-establishment of the Caliphate, of over a thousand years ago, and which once stretched from southern Spain (al-Andalus) to the dimly-remembered lands  beyond the far rivers of the east.

[*]  It turns out that the conventional etymology of Hausa boko from English book  might be mistaken:
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303701304579549782784964904

Monday, February 25, 2013

Souvenirs de déontologie détectivale

Par définition, le private eye (détective privé) est un homme solitaire.  It vit, il poursuit  sa solitude.  Tant mariage que progéniture  lui est interdit.  Il se lève  seul  le matin, se couche  seul  le soir;  et il meurt seul, quand enfin -- des balles de plomb au cœur -- pour lui sonne l’heure.  Et du dernier soupir, il murmure…

Nunc dimittis, Domine, servum tuum  …

Des histoires sombres, donc, mais d’un catholicisme benthique -- profond bien que sous-entendu -- et pourtant d’un humour édifiant, anagogique;  en langue démotique  de l’Amérique profonde.

Allez-y -- goûtez-les -- gratuit.

(Je ne me souille pas en matière du divorce)

En plus:
*
Travaillant au noir,
le détective  se trouve aux prises
avec le Saint-Esprit

*
et (lu par l'auteur):





*
Si cela vous parle,
savourez la série noire
en argot authentique d’Amérique :

*

Et si les mathématiques vous intéressent, consultez:
~   ~   ~

Si vous êtes arrivés ici depuis Reddit.com, voici une conspiration ahurissante  qui a été ébruitée -- puis étouffée -- sur ce site-là, puis éclaircie par la suite  par le docte et énigmatique Docteur Justice:


Et (réservé au francophones):



Pour visualiser toutes nos causeries en langue de l’hexagone, voici:

Sunday, February 24, 2013

What is it like to be a bat??


That classic query by the philosopher Thomas Nagel  has for many decades  stood as an uncrackable conundrum.  Yet, surprisingly, until right now, no-one has thought of simply asking a bat what it is like.
And so, speaking through an interpreter (none other than our good friend and colleague  Dr John Dolittle, of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh), we put the question to an amiable fruitbat of our acquaintance, and he replied as follows:

efInfn2090sdpqoieavnq¥ÉÀ$)Benv8Y$%&JœÃKJGF$##!@!FFGIU^$FDF+(Kk+=ÕefInfn2090sdpqoi‰ÂÊnq¥ÉÀ$)B4rtwgsnY$%&JK?>GKJGF$##!@!FŸU^$FD®+(KÍ+=ÕefInfn2090sdpqoieavnq¥ÉÀ$)BU5¢Y$%&J∆™¿JGF$##!@!F»ñIU^$FDF+(Kk+=Õ …

According to the good Doctor, that all makes perfect sense in bat-language, and presents a fascinating portrait of the cave-dwelling, upside-down-hanging, echo-locating, fruit- and bug-eating, night-flying life (ah what delight, to mate  in mid-flight!) of these nocturnal vespertilians:  but unfortunately the account is not translatable into English.

For more on the excellent Professor Nagel, try here:
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/search/label/Thomas%20Nagel




[Update]   The bulk of Lofting’s late novel Doctor Dolittle’s Garden (1927)  concerns just such an exercise:  learning the language of insects.   The book is alas not so engaging as its predecessors, simply because such creatures must be forever inscrutable to our psychic understanding.  (Granted, one entomologist could write a fine book titled For Love of Insects.)
The illustrations, however, continue to be outstanding.   He was his own E.H. Shepherd, so to speak, and one increasingly appreciates his qualities as a draughtsman.






[Bibliographic post-note]  In the course of seeking a .jpg to download, I came across a handful of purported “Dolittle” titles  of which I had not previously heard:  for the very good reason that they are latter-day fakes.   I shall not cite any of the titles  even to denounce them -- Nicht gedacht  soll seiner werden.  There is nothing wrong with coming up with new stories about characters broached by deceased authors -- most of European literature has been exactly that, since ancient times, and sometimes as a very explicit continuation as in the two halves Le roman de la rose, respectively by Guillaume de Lorris et Jean de Meung;  indeed, I have essayed such myself, in the matter of the good doctor, here:  Doctor Dolittle voyages to visit the Penguin King.   But these commercial ventures seek lucre by passing some hasty new Machwerk off  as from Lofting’s own hand (for legal reasons, the covers merely say “based on stories by HUGH LOFTING”, hoping you’ll skip over the fine print, and do not name the ghostwriter;  but catalogues, with only an “Author: “ field and no “Fake author: “ field, make no such distinction.)   And the illustrations are of an unspeakably humdrum nature; everything that made the Dolittle pictures special  has been lost.

The Undead Sea-Scrolls


The New York Times provides a detailed and saddening article about the latest installment in the academic quarrels -- stretching back for decades -- surrounding the Dead Sea Scrolls:


 They could not have led to more acrimony had they been the Apple of Eris.
There are serious issues here, which I shall not address.

~

And yet (to don the sock  and doff the buskin),  the contention they have occasioned  is as nothing, compared with the academic uproar surrounding the recent discovery of the Lost Sonnet of St Augustine.   That this is the most important philological find in the past thousand years, is now acknowledged by everyone.   But the question on everyone’s lips  is -- Why? Who purloined the manuscript??   Where is the original Latin ???


Before we shall discover an answer -- aye, mark my words -- there shall be discovered  many a body  in many a library, 
the dressing-gown pierced by a dagger
of rare oriental design …  ……   …………….

Einführung in die Detektiven-Mechanik

Der Detektiv -- Private Eye, versteht sich -- ist ein Mann ohne Eigenschaften.   Das Ziel seiner Forschungen  bestimmt er nicht selbst:  das ist ihm eben von aussen gegeben.   Einem Priester gleich, darf er nicht heiraten;  und wie ein Priester, schaut er tief in die menschlichen Sünden und Laster  hinein.   Er ist selbst  so ein Sünder -- O, ein wie schwerer ! -- seine Erbsünde kann er aber nur mittels endlosen Forschens  büßen.

Wie bringt es Murphy fertig, damit klarzukommen?   Einsicht bringt die klassische Fallsammlung, I Don’t Do Divorce Cases (Scheidungsgemauschel -- Nein, danke!)  Und hier können sie das kostenlos anprobieren:


*
Für psychologisch tiefgreifende Krimis,
in pikanter amerikanischer Mundart,
und christlich gesinnt,
klicken Sie bitte hier:

*


*
Falls Sie im Doktor-Justiz-Sammelsurium
weiterblättern möchten,
Bitte hier klicken:

*