So expect me to say less for a few months.
Cap and Trade
Saturday, Jun 13th, 2009 by Paul | 0 Comments
It seems to me that cap and trade, as it is currently formulated, is probably a bad idea. Here are some of my concerns:
1) The benefit, as measured by the extent of decrease in global warming, seems to be negligible. According to a recent analysis by Chip Knappenberger, reduction of U.S. CO2 emissions to 83% below 2005 levels by 2050 — which is the goal of the Waxman-Markey bill — would only reduce global temperature in 2050 by 0.05° C. Even in the highly unlikely event that the entire world were to follow suit and reduce CO2 emissions by the same amount, the resulting reduction in global temperature by 2050 would still be less than 0.5° C. Knappenberger’s analysis is given here and here, and assumes the IPCC mid-range or high-range emissions scenarios. For low-range scenarios the temperature change would be even less. His analysis relies upon the MAGICC simulator (the Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse-gas Induced Climate Change) which you can download in order to run the calculations for yourself.
Filed under: climate science, economics
Reasoning about Music
Friday, May 15th, 2009 by Nathan | 0 Comments
God created the integers; the rest is the work of man. – Leopold Kronecker
I.
What are we saying when we talk about music?
This question encapsulates the paradox that follows closely on the heels of all musical theory. Put in its most basic form, the problem that has dogged theory since Boethius is that of the relationship between reason and the esthetic sense. The earliest theories show that the coexistence between the two was never an entirely easy one:
In the final analysis, it was to this that the Pythagoreans’ harmonic analysis of the universe led: the discovery of incommensurables. And no matter how they might juxtapose the numbers, no matter to what lengths they might extend their mathematical circumlocutions, one fact remained, a fact that has ever since proved resistant to mathematical rationalization: there is no fraction m/n that will divide the whole-tone into two equal parts.[1]
The Pythagorean construction of music was an attempt at reconciling the rational and the beautiful, and at showing that they are, indeed, one and the same. In this sense it may be seen as corollary to the impulse behind the Parthenon: the Athenians believed that the golden ratio, applied to every dimension of a structure, would create something that was beautiful precisely because of its mathematical perfection.
In music, as exemplified in the previous quote, this dream was quickly shown to be illusory. While the Parthenon was constructed ex nihilo, and could perfectly mirror the rational dreams of its designers, the Pythagorean theorists of music were confronted from the beginning with a stubborn fact: there were pre-existing and deeply engrained notions of what constituted the proper and beautiful in music—the whole tone and the semi-tone, the modes, the tuning of the lyre—and, although they hovered tantalizingly close to the realm of reason, they ultimately eluded its grasp.
The early history of music theory was thus a reflection of fundamental debates about the nature of the beautiful. Boethius, through whom the most significant elements of ancient theory have come down to us, saw a basic opposition between the rationalism of the Pythagoreans and the empiricism of Aristoxenus, with Ptolemy mediating between the two. Boethius himself came down firmly on the side of the rationalists:
Van Cliburn
Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 by Paul | 1 Comments
It is important to have heroes. When I was young Van Cliburn was one of my heroes. This performance, with Kirill Kondrashin in Moscow in 1962, came four years after his victory in the Tchaikovsky Competition — an event that precipitated a cultural thaw in the cold war. Notice Nikita Khrushchev applauding at the end.
The thirteenth Van Cliburn Competition is May 22 to June 7 in Fort Worth — with live webcasts here.
The First Elegy
Saturday, May 9th, 2009 by Paul | 1 Comments
from the Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke
Who, if I shouted, among the hierarchy of angels
would hear me? And supposing one of them
took me suddenly to his heart, I would perish
before his stronger existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror we can just barely endure,
and we admire it so because it calmly disdains
to destroy us. Every angel is terrible.
And so I restrain myself and swallow the luring call
of dark sobbing. Ah, whom can we use then?
Not angels, not men, and the shrewd animals
notice that we’re not very much at home
in the world we’ve expounded. Maybe on the hill-slope
some tree or other remains for us, so that
we see it every day; yesterday’s street is left for us,
and the gnarled fidelity of an old habit
that was comfortable with us and never wanted to leave.
Oh, and the night, the night, when the wind full of space
feeds on our faces — for whom wouldn’t it stay,
yearned for, gently disappointing night
that wearily confronts the solitary heart.
Is night more easy on lovers? Ah, they only
hide their fate from themselves by using each other,
Don’t you know that yet? Throw the emptiness
from your arms into the spaces we breathe, so maybe the birds
can feel the expanded air, more ardently flying.
Filed under: poetry
Spengler
Friday, Apr 24th, 2009 by Paul | 0 Comments
Over the past decade the identity of Spengler, the pseudonymous Asian Times columnist, has been the subject of considerable speculation. Last week, Spengler finally revealed himself to be David P. Goldman — classical musician, philosopher, conservative economist, and senior financial officer for Bear Stearns, Credit Suisse, and Bank of America.
Spengler’s columns are dense, oracular, and provocative — it is prudent to ingest them in small quantities. They are remarkably erudite, and show an impressive command of cultural and religious history. Although I might take issue with particular conclusions, the scope and intensity of his thought is invariably bracing. By his own estimate, the Asian Times columns reached a million readers, and the high level of public interest is evidenced by the 5000 or so registered participants in the Spengler Forum.
Some interesting Spengler essays to try are:
Overcoming ethnicity
Socrates the destroyer
Tolkien’s Ring: When immortality is not enough
Benedict XVI is magnificently right
This almost-chosen, almost-pregnant land
The most recent Spengler column is about the Susan Boyle phenomenon. He remarks:
Meanwhile, in China, 60 million children are learning Western classical music under the gimlet gaze of strict teachers. East Asian singers, particularly Koreans, are working their way up the ranks of provincial opera companies, and every one of them sings better than Boyle. Who do you think is going to run the world 20 years from now? As the Italians say, we’re bolliti, “boiled”. Now we can spell it with a “y”. I hate to always be the one to say this, but the hope is fatuous. No, you can’t.
These talent spectacles, Spengler observes, betray an undercurrent of self-worship: we choose to pay homage to what is like us rather than what is above us.
David Goldman has a new home as associate editor at First Things.
–Paul
Monday, Apr 20th, 2009 by Paul | 0 Comments
A new study finds an inverse correlation between time spent on Facebook and GPA.
–Paul
Filed under: education
Susan Boyle
Sunday, Apr 19th, 2009 by Paul | 0 Comments
Here is the full video of Susan Boyle’s performance on Britain’s Got Talent on April 11. And here is another recording from 10 years earlier. I don’t know quite what to make of all this. She has a remarkable voice and is quite musical. She also seems unpretentious and fully deserving of whatever recognition she receives. But I can’t help feeling manipulated by the presentation, which seemed to be a cynical attempt to repeat the narrative of Paul Potts. We should not be surprised that there are undiscovered reservoirs of talent among those who have not been anointed by the taste-mongerers. Nor should we need to be reminded that music has to do with what the ears hear rather than what the eyes see. We should always be listening for ourselves — and thinking for ourselves.
–Paul
Filed under: music
Gobekli Tepe
Thursday, Apr 9th, 2009 by Paul | 0 Comments
The exciting archaeological discoveries at Gobekli Tepe, a megalithic site in southern Turkey that predates Stonehenge by about 6000 years, are reported on the Smithsonian website. Gobekli Tepe consisted of multiple T-shaped stone pillars, up to 16 feet tall and weighing 7 to 10 tons each, arranged in circular patterns on a hilltop. The location was apparently used for religious purposes and probably preceded the advent of agriculture in the region.
The link is from Jebadiah Moore’s excellent The Jeblog, where he remarks:
I really like the theory that the desire to create this place led to the development of agriculture rather than the other way around. Perhaps I’m just romantic, but I like the idea that humanity only wrested itself into a single place in order to fulfill a higher goal.
In a similar context, speaking of the Hopewell mounds at the High Bank site in Ohio, I can remember Bob Horn observing that the gods can be useful to humans.
–Paul
Filed under: archaeology
Freeman Dyson
Sunday, Mar 29th, 2009 by Paul | 0 Comments
An article on Freeman Dyson in The New York Times Magazine this week — The Civil Heretic by Nicholas Dawidoff — prominently featured Dyson’s skepticism about global warming:
IT WAS FOUR YEARS AGO that Dyson … announced that “all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated.” Since then he has only heated up his misgivings, declaring in a 2007 interview with Salon.com that “the fact that the climate is getting warmer doesn’t scare me at all” and writing in an essay for The New York Review of Books … that climate change has become an “obsession” — the primary article of faith for “a worldwide secular religion” known as environmentalism. Among those he considers true believers, Dyson has been particularly dismissive of Al Gore … and James Hansen … Dyson accuses them of relying too heavily on computer-generated climate models that foresee a Grand Guignol of imminent world devastation as icecaps melt, oceans rise and storms and plagues sweep the earth, and he blames the pair’s “lousy science” for “distracting public attention” from “more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet.”
This was followed by an interesting column in today’s NYT by John Tierney, Tragedy is not Freeman Dyson’s Business, about the contrast between naturalistic and humanistic perspectives on climate change. Tierney concludes with: “I find Mr. Dyson’s arguments compelling, but I have a feeling some Lab readers will disagree. Fire away.”
I think Freeman Dyson is a good scientist. Last summer I sent various friends a link to his NYRB essay, The Question of Global Warming. But I am somewhat surprised — and this may indicate my own bias — to see the doubts of a leading scientist displayed so visibly by the New York Times. Is this perhaps a concession that the science is not yet settled? Will we next see a discussion in the Times of, say, Roger J. Pielke, Sr. or the scientists at Climate Audit?
–Paul
Filed under: climate science
American Exceptionalism
Tuesday, Mar 17th, 2009 by Paul | 0 Comments
I have long been an admirer of Charles Murray. He is a good man whose extraordinary political courage captures something of what is best in the Quaker tradition. His recent essay, The Europe Syndrome and the Challenge to American Exceptionalism, makes a case for American exceptionalism based upon the idea that the purpose of government is to facilitate the pursuit of happiness — as understood in an Aristotelian sense:
My argument is drawn from Federalist Paper No. 62, probably written by James Madison: “A good government implies two things: first, fidelity to the object of government, which is the happiness of the people; secondly, a knowledge of the means by which that object can be best attained.” Note the word: happiness. Not prosperity. Not security. Not equality. Happiness, which the Founders used in its Aristotelian sense of lasting and justified satisfaction with life as a whole.
Murray claims that there are only four “institutions” in society within which human beings can attain this kind of deep satisfaction: family, community, vocation, and faith.
Filed under: philosophy, science