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Gens du pays
Jul. 10th, 2006 11:59 pm
High today, here: 23. Dewpoint then: 16. High dewpoint: 19.
High today in TO: 23. Dewpoint then: 19. High dewpoint: 19.
Low today on the balcony: 19.4. High: 24. Currently: 19.4.
But then, what is a real country these days, eh? One striking thing about the World Cup final matchup: the Italian goalie had an apparently French surname, and the French goalie had an apparently Spanish surname. And none of the noticeable French players are what they call "pur laine" in Quebec.
As one of the games--I guess it was Italy-Portugal--was heading toward extra time, the thought occurred to me, what if extra time ended with the score still tied, and the teams refused to go to penalties, and insisted on carrying on until someone scored? After all, no one thinks penalties are a good way to settle a game. But then, late in the game yesterday, the two English commentators said that penalties wiere fine with them, because it is, after all, a skill in the game. Well, sort of, but the skill mostly consists in not screwing up, doesn't it? You shouldn't not score. If you don't score, either you missed the net, or the goalie got lucky. Penalty shots in hockey are at least different in that respect; goalies should stop them around two-thirds of the time (and they are, therefore, preferable to give up, rather than power plays, when, e.g., you're down a goal late in the game). Deciding a game by penalty kicks in soccer is more like deciding a game by free throws in basketball.
I don't know why you'd want to deform the game in some way like this anyway, but if you must--why not corner kicks, with all the players on the field? Or free kicks from twenty yards out? (Which would be kind of like how they run overtime in the CFL, having the teams take turns starting from midfield with the ball. Which is, of course, also terrible.)
Anyway, so much for soccer for another four years. Back to the library at WLU today, and a great whack of TLSes, a few NYRBs, and a couple of LRBs, along with a new Ancient Philosophy and a Virginia Quarterly Review. Which was a whole lot of questionably enlightening material to get through, even without the newsmagazines. Thomas Nagel appeared in both the NYRB and the TLS (or was it the LRB?), and about all I learned from his two appearance is that he has something bordering on a pathological dislike for Michael Sandel. (It is, actually, not at all clear to me why good formalist liberals from something like the Rawlsian mold might not have taken the Democratic position of neutrality on slavery just as well as they presently take a position of neutrality on abortion, as Sandel says they would have, and as Nagel says is ridiculous.) In the June 8 edition of NYRB, I started off with a review of a book on Joseph McCarthy, which impressed me with just how crazy he was and how much he screwed up the political atmosphere in the US--and had me thinking, you know, it's a bit funny how lefties seem to trot out McCarthy as the great shame of the American right, when the more pertinent effect seems to be to suggest how bad things aren't, now, in comparison--and then the next thing I read was an article on Mearsheimer, Walt, and the Israel Lobby business, and, wow, you have to tip your hat, did they ever set that hook. I mean, of course I don't know if it was intentional, and, sure, the parallels may be overblown or whatever, but....
Another of them had a lead review by Ian Hacking, on a couple of books about autism, which is apparently Hacking's new thing, the multiple personality / dissociative identity thing having (thankfully, he says) blown over. And, who knows, maybe reading that piece set the brain-gears in motion for it to occur to me that Prado never mentions Hacking in his Searle/Foucault book, which is, in the first place, odd for an analytically oriented (let alone Canadian) philosopher of his generation talking about Foucault, and, in the second place, kind of telling as far as Prado's take on Foucault, at least in this book, is concerned: what Hacking gets from Foucault is all about how (social) reality conforms itself to our categories (so, Hacking's Foucault is, basically, the HS1 Foucault), but Prado has his Foucault holding that reality is, in itself, determinate. (These two ideas aren't actually contradictory--there are, say, determinately gay people, but only for this historical moment--but you might not want to complicate the latter idea with the former.)
A terrible thought struck me in the midst of my underlining and exclaiming tonight: maybe this book is some kind of joke; maybe Prado is really out to make Foucault, or a caricature of Foucault, ridiculous. (I have always been aware of their being an odd disconnect between the way Prado comports himself as a philosopher-in-the-world, and the way he writes--and also between the way he writes and the way he encourages his students to write. (I once wrote for him a "Postmodern Platonic Essay in the Bow-Wow Style", after he had brought in an abstract painting as an example of a good essay.) He is a very grey cardboard academic writer. But maybe it's a joke!)
Oh, and: Ozzie Guillen says Kenny Rogers is starting the All-Star Game because he's the best pitcher in the American League right now.
Actually, Kenny Rogers is not the best pitcher on the Tigers right now. (He's not even the second-best starting pitcher on the Tigers right now. Quite possibly not even third-best.)
I did, however, enjoy this quote from him: "There's a lot of guys that deserve to start, but it was unfortunate they pitched yesterday."
High today in TO: 23. Dewpoint then: 19. High dewpoint: 19.
Low today on the balcony: 19.4. High: 24. Currently: 19.4.
But then, what is a real country these days, eh? One striking thing about the World Cup final matchup: the Italian goalie had an apparently French surname, and the French goalie had an apparently Spanish surname. And none of the noticeable French players are what they call "pur laine" in Quebec.
As one of the games--I guess it was Italy-Portugal--was heading toward extra time, the thought occurred to me, what if extra time ended with the score still tied, and the teams refused to go to penalties, and insisted on carrying on until someone scored? After all, no one thinks penalties are a good way to settle a game. But then, late in the game yesterday, the two English commentators said that penalties wiere fine with them, because it is, after all, a skill in the game. Well, sort of, but the skill mostly consists in not screwing up, doesn't it? You shouldn't not score. If you don't score, either you missed the net, or the goalie got lucky. Penalty shots in hockey are at least different in that respect; goalies should stop them around two-thirds of the time (and they are, therefore, preferable to give up, rather than power plays, when, e.g., you're down a goal late in the game). Deciding a game by penalty kicks in soccer is more like deciding a game by free throws in basketball.
I don't know why you'd want to deform the game in some way like this anyway, but if you must--why not corner kicks, with all the players on the field? Or free kicks from twenty yards out? (Which would be kind of like how they run overtime in the CFL, having the teams take turns starting from midfield with the ball. Which is, of course, also terrible.)
Anyway, so much for soccer for another four years. Back to the library at WLU today, and a great whack of TLSes, a few NYRBs, and a couple of LRBs, along with a new Ancient Philosophy and a Virginia Quarterly Review. Which was a whole lot of questionably enlightening material to get through, even without the newsmagazines. Thomas Nagel appeared in both the NYRB and the TLS (or was it the LRB?), and about all I learned from his two appearance is that he has something bordering on a pathological dislike for Michael Sandel. (It is, actually, not at all clear to me why good formalist liberals from something like the Rawlsian mold might not have taken the Democratic position of neutrality on slavery just as well as they presently take a position of neutrality on abortion, as Sandel says they would have, and as Nagel says is ridiculous.) In the June 8 edition of NYRB, I started off with a review of a book on Joseph McCarthy, which impressed me with just how crazy he was and how much he screwed up the political atmosphere in the US--and had me thinking, you know, it's a bit funny how lefties seem to trot out McCarthy as the great shame of the American right, when the more pertinent effect seems to be to suggest how bad things aren't, now, in comparison--and then the next thing I read was an article on Mearsheimer, Walt, and the Israel Lobby business, and, wow, you have to tip your hat, did they ever set that hook. I mean, of course I don't know if it was intentional, and, sure, the parallels may be overblown or whatever, but....
Another of them had a lead review by Ian Hacking, on a couple of books about autism, which is apparently Hacking's new thing, the multiple personality / dissociative identity thing having (thankfully, he says) blown over. And, who knows, maybe reading that piece set the brain-gears in motion for it to occur to me that Prado never mentions Hacking in his Searle/Foucault book, which is, in the first place, odd for an analytically oriented (let alone Canadian) philosopher of his generation talking about Foucault, and, in the second place, kind of telling as far as Prado's take on Foucault, at least in this book, is concerned: what Hacking gets from Foucault is all about how (social) reality conforms itself to our categories (so, Hacking's Foucault is, basically, the HS1 Foucault), but Prado has his Foucault holding that reality is, in itself, determinate. (These two ideas aren't actually contradictory--there are, say, determinately gay people, but only for this historical moment--but you might not want to complicate the latter idea with the former.)
A terrible thought struck me in the midst of my underlining and exclaiming tonight: maybe this book is some kind of joke; maybe Prado is really out to make Foucault, or a caricature of Foucault, ridiculous. (I have always been aware of their being an odd disconnect between the way Prado comports himself as a philosopher-in-the-world, and the way he writes--and also between the way he writes and the way he encourages his students to write. (I once wrote for him a "Postmodern Platonic Essay in the Bow-Wow Style", after he had brought in an abstract painting as an example of a good essay.) He is a very grey cardboard academic writer. But maybe it's a joke!)
Oh, and: Ozzie Guillen says Kenny Rogers is starting the All-Star Game because he's the best pitcher in the American League right now.
Actually, Kenny Rogers is not the best pitcher on the Tigers right now. (He's not even the second-best starting pitcher on the Tigers right now. Quite possibly not even third-best.)
I did, however, enjoy this quote from him: "There's a lot of guys that deserve to start, but it was unfortunate they pitched yesterday."
