"A time of revolution ... is an uneasy time to live in. It is easier to tear down a code than to put a new one in its place, and meanwhile there is bound to be more or less wear and tear and general unpleasantness. People who have been brought up to think that it is sinful for women to smoke or drink, and scandalous for sex to be discussed across the luncheon table, and unthinkable for a young girl to countenance strictly dishonorable attentions from a man, cannot all at once forget the admonitions of their childhood. It takes longer to hard-boil a man or a woman than an egg."
The theme-park industry has two tiers. The really big money is in what insiders call “destination” parks. These are so fancy and expensive that people fly thousands of miles to visit them. Asian governments invite Disney and Universal Studios to build ever-bigger parks on their territory in the hope that this will spark a tourist boom, which it usually does. Because they aim for a global audience, Hollywood theme parks tend to be spectacular but self-consciously inoffensive to all nationalities. To learn about the real America, you have to look at its smaller theme parks—the ones only Americans visit.
People do not fly to Dollywood; they drive there in big cars full of squabbling children. East-coast accents, let alone foreign ones, are rare. The park is thus an excellent window on what people in this part of the American heartland like.
WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848
Topic: Society
10:36 am EST, Nov 26, 2007
Here is the Washington Post review:
Of late we have been blissing out on books and other material about the Revolutionary period, and of course the Civil War years are of inexhaustible fascination to millions, but the years in between are pretty much ignored. Yet as Daniel Walker Howe makes plain in this exemplary addition to the Oxford History of the United States, this was the time when the United States was transformed by a series of revolutions, the most important of which were in transportation and communications, that "would overthrow the tyranny of distance," which until then had "remained for Americans 'the first enemy,' as it had been for inhabitants of the Mediterranean world of the sixteenth century."
...
"In a broader sense ... the spread of the electric telegraph effectively decoupled communication from transportation, sending a message from sending a physical object. The implications of this alteration in the human condition unfolded only gradually over the next several generations. But contemporaries fully realized that they stood in the presence of a far-reaching change. They valued not only the shortening of time to receive information but also the speed with which an answer could be returned; that is, conversation was possible.
Among a wealth of praise, "What Hath God Wrought" also earns a starred review from Publishers Weekly:
In the latest installment in the Oxford History of the United States series, historian Howe, professor emeritus at Oxford University and UCLA (The Political Culture of the American Whigs), stylishly narrates a crucial period in U.S. history—a time of territorial growth, religious revival, booming industrialization, a recalibrating of American democracy and the rise of nationalist sentiment. Smaller but no less important stories run through the account: New York's gradual emancipation of slaves; the growth of higher education; the rise of the temperance movement (all classes, even ministers, imbibed heavily, Howe says). Howe also charts developments in literature, focusing not just on Thoreau and Poe but on such forgotten writers as William Gilmore Simms of South Carolina, who helped create the romantic image of the Old South, but whose proslavery views eventually brought his work into disrepute. Howe dodges some of the shibboleths of historical literature, for example, refusing to describe these decades as representing a market revolution because a market economy already existed in 18th-century America. Supported by engaging prose, Howe's achievement will surely be seen as one of the most outstanding syntheses of U.S. history published this decade.
In my very first post on this blog, I promised more detail about why the jobs that one might expect after law school aren't anything to look forward to. I'm fulfilling that promise here, and moreover offering some more reasons why you, yes you, dear undergraduate reader who is applying to law school, should decline to go there. Most of my examples come from litigation, because that's what I know, but I'll bet one could come up with an equally good set from transactional work too. My aim here is to come up with the definitive anti-practice-of-law essay, one to which I and others can point bright-eyed undergraduates to for some time to come.
What follows is a loosely divided list of things that you might not know about the practice of law, and which should give you pause before you invest three years of your life and countless thousands of dollars in tuition and opportunity costs to go to law school. Law school really has little value other than to prepare you for a legal career of some sort. If you want to go into business or consulting, an MBA is quicker and provides more useful skills ("Thinking like a lawyer" is a bug, not a feature.), and, while lawyers do enter other careers (prominently writing for some reason) there's no reason to believe anything they got in law school put them there.
It's all about fear. Law firms prey on fear. Some of that fear is real. A lot of it is imaginary, and it is the imaginary fears that have created a system that appears to take really bright people and chew them up.
Let's face it. It's bullshit that people need to hire lawyers to solve their problems. It's ridiculous that the law is written in such confusing and arbitrarily convoluted language that ordinary people can't understand their rights or laws that are meant to protect them. And it's insane that to pay for law school you need to either be born rich or crazy. But who does it help to stay out of the field and let it be a one-sided conversation?
That fundie guy uses the education he has received in science to (attempt to) dismantle its core assumptions and prove that his view of the world is correct. If I can do something analogous with my law degree, without convincing myself along the way that my core assumptions about humanity were wrong, then I will consider this law school thing a success.
Virginia Postrel, in The Atlantic Monthly | Notable & Quotable | WSJ
Topic: Society
8:16 pm EST, Nov 18, 2007
Dallas and Los Angeles represent two distinct models for successful American cities, which both reflect and reinforce different cultural and political attitudes. One model fosters a family-oriented, middle-class lifestyle -- the proverbial home-centered "balanced life." The other rewards highly productive, work-driven people with a yen for stimulating public activities, for arts venues, world-class universities, luxury shopping, restaurants that aren't kid-friendly.
One makes room for a wide range of incomes, offering most working people a comfortable life. The other, over time, becomes an enclave for the rich.
Since day-to-day experience shapes people's sense of what is typical and normal, these differences in turn lead to contrasting perceptions of economic and social reality. It's easy to believe the middle class is vanishing when you live in Los Angeles, much harder in Dallas.
Who has not imagined to himself a country inn, where the traveller shall really feel in, and at home, and at his public-house, who was before at his private house; whose host is indeed a host, and a lord of the land, a self-appointed brother of his race; called to his place, beside, by all the winds of heaven and his good genius, as truly as the preacher is called to preach; a man of such universal sympathies, and so broad and genial a human nature, that he would fain sacrifice the tender but narrow ties of private friendship, to a broad, sunshiny, fair-weather-and-foul friendship for his race; who loves men, not as a philosopher, with philanthropy, nor as an overseer of the poor, with charity, but by a necessity of his nature, as he loves dogs and horses; and standing at his open door from morning till night, would fain see more and more of them come along the highway, and is never satiated.
Earth Then and Now: Amazing Images of Our Changing World
Topic: Society
10:48 am EST, Nov 17, 2007
300 stunning before-and-after photographs that show the staggering transformation of our world.
Earth Then and Now records the dramatic way our planet has changed over the past century. On one page is a specific part of the world as it was 5, 20, 50 or even 100 years ago. On the facing page is the same place as it looks today. Each stark visual comparison tells a compelling story -- a melting glacier, an expanding desert, an encroaching cityscape, a natural disaster.
Earth Then and Now reminds us that nothing is without a cost. Highly topical and thought provoking chapters in this book include:
* Environmental change: Bearing witness to the effects of global warming * Industrialization: Revealing the hidden costs of "progress" * Urbanization: Showing the effects of our spreading cities * Natural disasters: Reminding us of the power of nature * War: Using comparisons to show the impact of armed conflict * Travel and tourism: Illustrating the predatory nature of development.
Concise captions explain the facts and then allow the reader to draw personal conclusions. Anyone concerned about the environment will enjoy and appreciate Earth Then and Now.
Love, marriage, and sex with robots? Not in a million years? Maybe a whole lot sooner. From a leading expert in artificial intelligence comes an eye-opening, superbly argued book that explores a new level of human intimacy and relationships—with robots.
From Pygmalion falling for his chiseled Galatea to Dr. Frankenstein marveling at his "modern Prometheus" to the man-meets-machine fiction of Philip K. Dick and Michael Crichton, humans have been enthralled by the possibilities of emotional relationships with their technological creations. Synthesizing cutting-edge research in robotics with the cultural history and psychology of artificial intelligence, Love and Sex with Robots explores this fascination and its far-reaching implications.
Using examples drawn from around the world, David Levy shows how automata have evolved from the mechanical marvels of centuries past to the electronic androids of the modern age, and how human interactions with technology have changed over the years. Along the way, Levy explores many aspects of human relationships—the reasons we fall in love, why we form emotional attachments to animals and to virtual pets such as the Tamagotchi, and why these same attachments could extend to love for robots. He also examines the needs we seek to fulfill through sexual relationships, tracking the development of life-sized dolls, machines, and other sexual devices, and demonstrating how society's ideas about what constitutes normal sex have changed—and will continue to change—as sexual technology becomes increasingly sophisticated.
Shocking but utterly convincing, Love and Sex with Robots provides insights that are surprisingly relevant to our everyday interactions with technology. This is science brought to life, and Levy makes a compelling and titillating case that the entities we once deemed cold and mechanical will soon become the objects of real companionship and human desire. Anyone reading the book with an open mind will find a wealth of fascinating material on this important new direction of intimate relationships, a direction that, before long, will be regarded as perfectly normal.
