Land art

The rains have turned our familiar Torre Pines beach into an art studio.

Weather!

Saw the ocean today - briefly - during a pause between downpours. In the pretty much uninterrupted rain of the last 5 days, the total annual precipitation at TPSR has nearly tripled - though it's still below average!

New tricks for old dogs

You might have noticed the article in Friday's Times, part of a series on the digitalization of the humanities, on a new Google-sponsored project to chart the frequency of the use of words in 500 billion words of scanned texts. The assorted scientists and mathematicians involved in the project think a whole new kind of knowledge will be yielded by this data. But is it data? (You may remember the lampooning field day I had when Google let us do word frequencies in all recent internet posts; I think I was on to something beautiful.) Perhaps because of the civilizing effect of my mathematician friend J, I've tried this time to be more collegial. Could one learn something here? Imagine a new kind of humanistic knowledge gleaned digitally from old tomes? (But don't call it culturomics.) The rise and fall of modish words and idioms, at least... I recalled one of my students' recent (mis)use of a perhaps pertinent proverb: "you can always teach an old dog new tricks," he said. You can? Since when?! One could certainly imagine someone inverting for effect. And maybe to someone born in 1992, the retrainability of old dogs is old hat (thank goodness if so!). So perhaps, I thought, the proverb has flipped in meaning?! I used the new google utility, somewhat hampered by a five-word phrase limit. The results (American rather more than British) are suggestive. Sort of. If only in the US, the teachability of old dogs would seem to have been an open question since the 1950s. Resilient culture-forming Baby Boomers may be behind the proverb flip.

Rain in southern California

Another rainy December in Southern California... By the end of this one (full color detail below!) the barrel cactuses should be full to bursting!

Professor oppressor?

An article in the Economist's year-end issue dares to suggest that "doing a PhD is often a waste of time." Some people I know are fuming over it. It's true that it doesn't go as far as one would wish, but I do think there's much truth to it. Not that I'm happy about it. But I find myself rehearsing many of these same arguments to students contemplating graduate studies. Isn't offering inconvenient facts part of our job description?

The argument in essence is that universities produce too many PhDs, many more than they hire back as professors. Indeed, universities are hiring fewer professors all the time, as university teaching is fobbed off on poorly paid part time and term faculty, and research is done increasingly by poorly paid itinerant postdocs.

None of this, alas, is news. But the article makes clear that it's become a vicious circle. Precisely because they glut the market with qualified candidates for academic jobs, universities are able to generate research and instruct the young with ever fewer full-time professors earning a living wage and job security. It might take the eye of the Economist to show us the higher education industry as an industry. The products which this industry seeks rational ways to maximize are research and teaching. PhDs, which might once have seemed our most important product, are increasingly raw material.

Meanwhile promising lives are being wasted. The article seems a call to the huddled masses of PhD candidates to recognize their exploitation and rebel: you have nothing to lose but your chains! Far from being your best friends, the only ones who appreciate your gifts and encourage you to further study, your professors are in fact your oppressors.

That's a bit simplistic - professors don't run the business. If society valued the humanities, research, etc., etc., things might be very different. But we're not just victims here. We have responsibilities, especially to our students - responsibilities which might conflict with our responsibilities to our disciplines and to "the university."

We should certainly do what we can to make the public good of higher education, research, etc. better understood, and available to more people. In the meantime, however, we have to level with students about the current situation.

I usually tell students that there are serious costs and uncertain outcomes to PhD work, but, under the right circumstances, they may be worth bearing. What's not recommended is taking on debt to do a degree you don't find rewarding in hopes of getting a dream job as a professor at a fancy university in a desirable city. If the coursework and research aren't valuable as ends in themselves, and not just as means, think very hard before making this choice.

But our responsibilities to our students and to the university need not be in conflict. Maybe we need to consider that the university is also a means, not merely an end in itself.

What is the greater end? That the life of the mind, learning, research, critique be vibrant and available to many. We believe that to be a mark and a component of a good society, and want to help our students enjoy full lives and careers which contribute to and participate in it. Universities, squeezed between political pressure, corporatist governance, inward-looking disciplines and consumerist students, may not be doing a good job of promoting this, even within our walls. Helping society imagine and reward professions which do this beyond the professorial might be in the best interests of students and universities, too, providing more support for both - and conversation partners throughout society.

Don't Ask Don't Tell,
R. I. P.

D. O. M. A. next?

Well and truly gone

Looking north from 13th St, across the plot where 65 stood, to 14th St.

An ice sculpture of the logo of the Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen, at a fundraiser talent show/silent auction tonight.

HASK has already served many more meals in 2010 than in any year before, and there's no reason to suppose 2011 won't be as bad.

Still looking for a holiday gift for someone? You could make a donation to HASK in their name on their cool new website...

Gentrification

The Times has mapped out demographic changes registered by the 2010 census. My neighborhood of Prospect Heights is indeed among the most quickly gentrifying - that is, an Afro-Caribbean population is being pushed out by white folks like me. The map below names Prospect Heights as one of the New York neighborhoods which has changed most. The analysis above (using a different color code: blue = black; green = white) shows Park Slope and Prospect Heights population (not population change) in more detail. My block (just above the densest concentration of dots), surely mostly light blue a decade ago, has changed completely.

Der Erde gleich

65 Fifth Ave - leveled! Seen here from the corner of 13th St., through the work entry where the main entrance used to be, and from the 5th floor of 80 Fifth. The floor beams look like the ribs of an ancient fish.

Friend request

An intern at Facebook mapped the "friendships" of their network - 10 million randomly chosen friend pairings. (Click twice for the lovely filamenty details.) Wonder what this will look like in another ten years?

Snow at last!

Let it snow!

I haven't had a chance to see much dance this season, but I'm very glad to have had a chance to see Mark Morris' "The Hard Nut" today at BAM. An updating of Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker" by turns witty and tender, "Hard Nut" will celebrate its 20th birthday next month (and was being presented as part of Mark Morris Dance Group's 30th anniversary year). There are only thirty-odd dancers, in a legion of roles. But even if you had twice that, why not use all of them for the Dance of the Snowflakes as Morris does, men as well as women? Everyone's invited to this party!

Parlor trick

At MoMA today, a player piano. I mean, a piano roll. I mean, whatever. A Bechstein grand with a hole cut out for a player to slip through - a player who has to play upside down, without the middle notes! On the other hand, the player can take the piano for a stroll while playing...
Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla's "Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on Ode to Joy for a Prepared Piano" was even nicer from above, spinning people around it - even before the piano sallied forth, a tinny "Ode to Joy" echoing through MoMA's vast atrium.

Cold outside

It's chilly today - so cold that the flowers in front of the delis have not been put out. It was also the day for teaching evaluations in "Religion in Dialogue," so to refresh the students' memories of what it's all about, I left the class with Ray Charles and Betty Carter in a little dialogue of their own, "Baby, it's cold outside." A little naughty, perhaps!

Vindicated!

In the new Scientific American, Charles Seife (author of Proofiness) takes apart the Pew poll which apparently showed that atheists knew more about religion than religious people. Seife notes that the results are a lot less clear if the standard technique for representing uncertainty is used (only 6% of the sample self-identified as "Atheists") - and if "Nothing in Particulars" (10%), many of whom don't believe in God, are classed with Atheists.

The Pew study revealed less about our faith in God than it did about our faith in polls - which, far too often, is blind. (SciAm, Dec 2010, p33)

As you may recall, your trusty religion poll reader noticed much that Seife finds wrong with the way the poll was reported (along with things it takes a religious studies scholar to notice). You read it first here!

65 Fifth Avenue, almost gone!

Darkening

Advent (up here in the northern hemisphere) coincides with the shortening of days. Here in New York we've had pretty bright weather - though a bitter cold front has just arrived - but the dark is rising. In church this morning, the familiar words from Isaiah, inspiration for the famous "Peaceable Kingdom" paintings of Edward Hicks,

The wolf shall also dwell with the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together;
and a little child shall lead them. (11:6)

crystallized for me a rising sense of the injustice of the world, of the impunity of the privileged and powerful in their oppression of the poor and vulnerable. How wonderful such a peaceable kingdom would be. How long overdue. And how hard to imagine.

Short on words

At our annual Religious Studies faculty dinner tonight, my colleague V recounted a joke which appeared at the close of a recent article on Poland and which seemed to have universal relevance:

The former polish president, Aleksander Kwasniewski, who served for 10 years, said the best way to describe Poland today was with a short story: “A group of children say to a rabbi, ‘Please tell us in a few words what the situation is,’ ” and the rabbi answers, ‘Good.’

“The children say, ‘Perhaps you can use a few more words,’ and the rabbi responds, ‘Not good.’ ”

The former president laughed, but then said that the story was not funny.

It adds up!

Went today with my mathematician friend J to see some of the oldest mathematical artifacts around, in a sweet little exhibition at our friend the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World called "Before Pythagoras: The Culture of Old Babylonian Mathematics." In display were cuneiform clay tablets from 4000 year old tablets, including two J knew from math history and ethnomathematics text books. The famous Plimpton 322 (above), which scoops the Pythagoren theorem, and YBC 2789 (below), which has a remarkably close approximation to the square root of 2... The real pleasure, though, came as we slowly learned how to make out a few of the numbers (conveniently the right column above goes 1-15) and so to actually see what was going on. The next challenge, though, is that the Babylonian numbering system (which I learned about in J's ethnomathematics class) is sexagesimal - it's base 60! We felt like little Champollions making deciphering and then confirming that 1, 24, 51, 10 is in fact the number inscribed along the central diagonal above - and that 1 + 24/60 + 51/3600 + 10/216000 indeed adds up to something very close to the root of 2 - 1.4161713! (We confirmed this on our own palm-shaped calculation device, J's iPhone.) How did they figure it out?!Great fun - and it was just the start of an afternoon of cultural stimulation, which continued with the John Baldessari show at the Met, and then, after J had to head home to New Jersey, two more Met shows for me, both splendid, The World of Khubilai Khan and Jan Gossart. I haven't energy to tell you about them, but here are two piece from each, picked more or less at random: "California Map Project" (1969), "The Spectator is Compelled..." (1966-68); model of a stage (1210), near life-sized wooden arhat (14th c.); "Deposition from the Cross" (1525), "Portrait of a Man (Jan Jacobsz. Snoek?)" (c. 1530). An amazing feast.

Now, plus or minus 50 years

Another interesting session of "Religion in Dialogue." MH, a Catholic priest who is also an authorized Zen teacher, came to class today. It was he who recommended Knitter's Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian, whose last chapters and conclusion we read for today's class. Knitter (who, we learned in the conclusion, while still a Catholic theologian has recently also taken Refuge in a Tibetan Buddhist tradition) is a champion of what he calls religious "double belonging," but it was much more interesting to have a double-belonger in the room with us!

Actually, double-belonging doesn't really describe MH fully, whose calling to be a Catholic priest has not swerved since he was 13. (Knitter left the priesthood after a quarter century, though he's still a Catholic theologian.) The Zen tradition in which MH received the dharma transmission is an American Soto tradition led by Roshi Bernie Glassman which doesn't require that one become a Buddhist: "Zen transcends Buddhism." MH is one of several Catholic priests who've become authorized teachers in this tradition - not Zen priests, he stressed - and he leads both masses, centering prayer and Zen meditation sessions at his church. His friend Knitter would describe MH as an instance of religious double belonging, MH said, but for him there's never been question that the Catholic call is the major one. On the other hand, Zen practices have immeasurably deepened his Catholic practice. (And not only Zen: MH is a serious student of yoga, and is also familiar with Kabbalah.) And ultimately, there's just one reality, to which all traditions try to deepen our relation, and everything you need to know is right here in the Now - though it may take us 5 minutes or 50 years to understand that.

Students were fascinated by MH and his journey. It isn't every day you meet someone who spent 22 years as a Carthusian, not to mention has gone on to build such interesting religious bridges (all practice-based, not just theory) - and received the dharma, too! They asked about his sense of vocation, how he decided to become a priest, a monastic, how his family responded, and then how he decided to return to society, if that was difficult, etc. "It makes me realize I've been really lazy in my religious life so far," said one. Other questions were about his religious explorations (not syncretism, which he cited Swidler as rightly deploring), whether he felt conflict or contradiction (never), had encountered negative responses (none, but he doesn't have a web presence which would attract hateful "pajamahadeen"), how he would talk to an exclusivist, even what his politics were. Two students with Southern Baptist sympathies became nearly inquisitorial though in a more baffled than aggressive way: but doesn't the Bible say that only...? (it's a hard book to read, symbolic, requiring prayer and study), how do you understand being saved? (saved from what?), the afterlife? (you mean eternal life, 'afterlife' sounds like an afterthought: eternal life starts now), heaven and hell? (some people live in them already now, and nothing is infinite but God). I'll be interested to see what they made of his responses!

We ended with a few minutes of silence, punctuated by the chiming of a little bell he uses as a Zen teacher.

(Picture source)

Unconventional truth

Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian gets more and more interesting. The first four chapters are about theological questions but in the final two - "Prayer and meditation" and "Making peace and being peace" - Knitter shows why and how he arrived at these theological ideas, and how they help him be a better Christian. He thinks Christians need a "Sacrament of Silence" to help us get beyond archaic and wordy liturgies and prayers which we can no longer believe. But it's not that silent meditation is to take the place of words. Rather, Zen-like meditation will help us recognize that "The finger is not the moon" (59f). Christian language and liturgy are "symbolic," but that's not a failing but an empowering limitation. (He doesn't use the Buddhist language of conventional vs. absolute truth here, but easily could.)

[H]ow does the unitive, non-dualistic, mystical Sacrament of Silence fit with all the other sacraments and rituals of Christian practice? ...

To answer that question directly and simply: I've been able to bring the Sacraments of Silence - or more accurately, its fruits - with me into Sunday Mass and into our daily worship services at Union Theological Seminary. And it has made a qualitative, dare I say life-saving or faith-saving, difference in the way I'm able to participate in those rituals. My regular practice of silent meditation has enabled me not just to bear with the torrent of liturgical words but also to be swept up by their power.

There's no one clear way to explain why this happens. But I'm sure it has to do with the way the practice of silence keeps me aware that the content of the liturgy, like the content of all Christian doctrine and dogma, is ultimately a matter of Mystery. And Mystery, by its very nature, both needs words but also remains beyond the reach of words. So as I raise my voice to sing "Glory to God," as I declare that "I believe in God the Father Almighty," as I make my confession to "all the angels and saints of heaven," my practice of silence has helped me feel that all these words are as true a they are inadequate. They are symbols. And they are true precisely because - dare I say only because - they are symbols. To know that all our liturgical and ritual words, gestures, hymns are symbols releases their power.

While the words and images that make up the liturgical life of the church inform and guide my values and hopes and actions, I know that there is so much more than what they tell me, so much more than I can know, so much more I'll never know. So I hold and cherish these words - time-honored, treasured words passed down in the tradition of my community. But I do not cling to these words. They are true. They are never the Truth. By not clinging to them, they can touch me even more deeply. In knowing that they are fingers, I can see the moon! (162-63)

(Picture source)