06.27.08
Posted in Sport at 11:24 pm by Dan Jensen
When I hear the name Jackie Robinson, I am sometimes reminded of Ty Cobb, as was Branch Rickey:
“This is the most competitive man I’ve known since Ty Cobb.”
— Branch Rickey (to Red Barber)
There’s a difference, of course. No black man could have got away with Cobb’s behavior (nor could most other white men), but Robinson and Cobb had this much in common: they were both warriors.
No major leaguer has ever come close to Cobb’s record of 50-54 steals of home. Robinson, in his short ten-year career, was the modern player to come closest, with 19-20 (we cannot be exact because it’s not an official stat).
Robinson may not have been the first modern player to play the game of baseball the good old-fashioned way; the way it was played before Babe Ruth. It may be that Robinson’s teammate Pistol Pete Reiser was the first. Branch Rickey might have had something to do with the baseball renaissance as well. Perhaps a renaissance was to be inevitable once non-whites were admitted into the major leagues.
In any case, it must have been a pleasure to see the old game back, after nearly two decades without Cobb.
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Posted in Dixie, Sport at 8:45 pm by Dan Jensen
Baseball “historian” Daniel Okrent righteously denounced American icon and baseball great Ty Cobb in Ken Burns’ Baseball miniseries:
“Cobb is the great black mark on the history of baseball … he was a man of vile temperament and vile habit … I think that Ty Cobb in his totality is an embarrassment to baseball.”
—Third Inning, “The Black Mark”
Some people just have no sense of historical context; even some people who call themselves “historians”.
I wonder whether Daniel Okrent realizes that there were a few other racists in America in Cobb’s time. Does he realize there might have been a few in Cobb’s home state of Georgia during the Post-Reconstruction Era? I wonder whether Okrent has seen the 1915 film The Birth of a Nation. It might remind him just how racist a place America very recently was.
I wonder whether Okrent is aware that Major League Baseball was itself an all-white organization long before and long after Cobb.
I wonder whether Okrent has ever heard of the Black Sox scandal, and how it nearly ruined baseball. As far as I know, Cobb never threw a baseball game. It doesn’t really seem to have been his style, really. He was too competitive.
Cobb was a vile racist. Cobb was a violent bully. Cobb was a ruthless competitor. Cobb was a shameless self-promoter. Cobb was a Coca-cola investor.
Can one imagine a more All-American resume?
Cobb’s mother shot his father.
Good. Now we have guns in the story. Can one imagine a more All-American upbringing?
Yes, it’s true that Ty Cobb assaulted a handicapped heckler. How very politically incorrect of him! How insensitive to the underprivileged! I suppose he would also hit a girl or even a bespectacled girl! This was no “Christian gentleman”.
But it is also said that Ty Cobb paid Shoeless Joe Jackson a visit in Jackson’s hometown of Greenville, SC after Jackson had been expelled from Baseball. Imagine that: compassion? Could Cobb have been human after all?
Ty Cobb was a remarkable man. He wasn’t anybody’s hero, but he was an American phenomenon, and a phenomenon worthy of awe.
Further Reading
Tom Stanton: Cobb was nicer than most people think.
©2008 Dan J. Jensen
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06.26.08
Posted in California, Humor at 3:22 pm by Dan Jensen
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CHICO, CALIFORNIA. Millions of Californians finished off their last packs on Wednesday, on the eve of the day that the new statewide smoking ban is scheduled to take effect. As a consumer panic hit cigarette retailers throughout the state, the second-hand smoke rising from San Diego to Happy Camp could be seen from satellite.
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Posted in Sierra Nevada at 5:29 am by Dan Jensen
One special characteristic of the Sierra Nevada is that it’s a rare example of a high mountain range in a Mediterranean climate, which means that it is dry and sunny half the year and moist and mild during the other half of the year. This combination makes for a very combustible cycle of fuel production and fuel dehydration.
I’ve been looking for sister ranges of the Sierra Nevada; that is, other igneous ranges. What this means is that I’m looking for well-forested mountain ranges in Mediterranean climes. This generally means high mountain ranges, because altitude generally means two things: (1) orographic precipitation for production and (2) orographic lightning for combustion.
You’d think that the Andes where they cross the Zona Central of Chile would be an ideal example, but the Andes are rather sparsely forested in the northern half of the Zona Central, perhaps because the Andes are too lofty to the north for extensive forestation. South of here, in the Maule district (VII) and even more in the Biobio North district (VIII), there is more forest, but there is also more precipitation. Rain is in fact so common that it’s hard to call the climate Mediterranean. There is really no time of year that is truly dry in the southern half of the Zona Central; not, at least, as dry as most of California is in Summer.
There aren’t very many other choices, as far as I am aware. There are many lower Mediterranean ranges, and several high ranges near to Mediterranean climes, but not many high ranges are in Mediterranean climates.
The only others I know of are in Iran: the Alborz, Zagros, and Sabalan mountains. None of these is heavily forested, but in the case of Iran we can be quite confident that they were once more forested than they are today.
At present, though, I can think of no mountain range in the world that shares with the Sierra Nevada this Mediterranean annual cycle of production and combustion at a comparable scale.
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06.25.08
Posted in Politics at 5:20 pm by Dan Jensen
I was ready. I was set. Obama was my man. He’s for pluralistic politics, and so am I. He’s an apostate, and so am I. He’s for change, and so am I.
Now that I’ve finally met the real Barack Obama, I’m thinking I’ll take the other guy; you know, the two-faced war monger down in AARPizona who’s decomposing before our eyes.
Now we see that when Obama finds himself in the lead, he won’t debate. Admittedly, we saw this in the primaries as well. Maybe it’s not so much about being in the lead. Maybe he just doesn’t like to debate.
As if that weren’t enough, we now find that once he finds like he has more money than the other guy he foregos public financing. As if THAT’S not enough, he proceeds, taking a page from Slick Willie’s play book, to redefine private donations to be “public”, suddenly determining that the public financing system is broken!
Forget Slick Willie. Calling Bill “slick” was premature. Obama is so slick he’s slimy.
Listen to what Dan Carlin has to say: The New Old Politics
Further reading:
David S. Broder, Washington Post: Getting to know Obama
David Brooks, New York Times: The Two Obamas (subscription required)
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Posted in Politics, Heraclitus at 12:44 pm by Dan Jensen
Here’s Alan Saunders, host of the Australian program The Philosopher’s Zone, reflecting on the influence of Heraclitus on Australian philosophers John Anderson and John Passmore.
I find that what Passmore talks about most is not so much Anderson as Anderson’s lectures on the Greek philosopher Heraclitus and in fact not so much Anderson’s lectures on Heraclitus as Heraclitus himself. About Anderson, I’m still a bit in the dark, but Passmore has convinced me of why Heraclitus mattered to him and why Heraclitus ought to matter to me.
As presented in ‘Memoirs of a Semi-Detached Australian’, Heraclitus is a philosopher of flux: change, the conflict of contrary things, is the essence of life. We cannot impose order from above; order emerges, in the way that it should emerge in democratic societies, when, as Passmore puts it, ‘contrary interests achieve a degree of balance without losing their distinctiveness.’
“Balance” is an apt enough term, I suppose, but I might have used “harmony.” The key here is that socially and politically, there is no one universal foundational truth. Truth is emergent.
Saunders continues, explaining how Heraclitus saw us as distinct, yet entangled to the point that we compose a kind of social organism that transcends individualistic notions such as active and passive individuals.
But however distinct we may be, we are inevitably entangled in all that lies around us. We can be spectators, says Passmore, but even a spectator can have an effect on the game: the way I look at you may have consequences for you and your behaviour.
Such a social dialectic has been infamously misinterpreted by Marxists to undermine the individual in society. Where they have failed to follow a truly dialectical model is in imposing a universal foundation upon society, and not allowing change to emerge organically, in a free society. The individual must be defended against all powers, whether those powers be kings or mobs, for the collective to thrive.
And what I see when I see you, or what you see when you see me, will be the result of whatever information we have and our earlier histories, all of which makes for a complex tangle of relations, which is why, Passmore remarks, Heraclitus warns us to expect the unexpected. We can never possess certain knowledge or make entirely reliable predictions.
This is a useful philosophy to have. I for one find it entirely congenial, and it tends to encourage a certain pluralism, or at least anti-dogmatism, of outlook…
See Ockham’s Razor, Aug 22, 2004
I agree with Saunders, though I do regret that dialectical thinking has too often been made the servant of dogmatism. Self-professed dialecticians since Hegel have oft as not failed to go the distance with the Heraclitean dialectic, and settled for the comfortable security of foundationalism. By employing dialectical thinking as a philosophical PR representative for universals, they have missed the point at best, and have at worst been guilty of philosophical deceit.
This reminds me of how Heraclitus, having evident respect for the genius of Pythagoras, called him “the prince of impostors.” Pythagoras was a mathematical genius who has had great influence on western thought, science, and Heraclitus as well, but who enslaved his genius to a dogmatic agenda.
“Pythagoras son of Mnesarchus pursued inquiry further than all other men, but choosing only what he liked from these compositions, made a wisdom of his own: much learning, artful knavery.” —Heraclitus
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06.24.08
Posted in seeker at 3:16 pm by Dan Jensen
Kill your idols (before they kill you).
Here’s a shirt with some splendid irony. I might have to add it to my already excessive collection. All my Dylans have been chucked on the rag pile.
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06.23.08
Posted in Dixie, Sport at 12:55 am by Dan Jensen
He could have contented himself with stardom, but he had to go out and try to break the last great American monopoly, Major League Baseball.
“I am pleased that God made my skin black — but I wish He had made it thicker.” —Curt Flood
As a kid I was, for some mysterious reason, a fan of the Saint Louis Cardinals. When I gave my heart to Baseball in the mid-1970s, I lived thousands of miles from Saint Louis and the Redbirds were mediocre, but it may be that I absorbed some subconscious reverence for the team from overhearing the San Francisco Giants games and sports talk shows playing on Dad’s radio. |
“Baseball’s Best Centerfielder” |
I was raised with the certain knowledge that Willie Mays was the greatest baseball player ever, and that the Giants were miserably hopeless. That was just Dad’s way of being a baseball addict. It seems like baseball has always been a bad trip for him, but that rarely stopped him from listening in on a game.
It seemed like he had nothing bad to say about the Cardinals. Maybe that’s why I became a Cards fan rather than a Giants fan. Maybe it was those glowing red and white home uniforms. Names like Stan Musial, Bob Gibson, and Lou Brock shone in the firmament of my childhood; though not quite so brightly as Mays.
Some seem to have believed that Curt Flood was a better defensive centerfielder than Mays. That’s saying a lot.
I don’t remember hearing much if anything about Flood. He was a masterful centerfielder and embattled player activist, who left Major League Baseball long before my dad and little brother converted me. Until recently, I had no idea what he went through. The old stories of American racial hatred never cease to shock me.
By 1957, my second year in the South, I thought I was beyond crying, but one day we were playing a double-header…And…after the end of the first game you take your uniform off and you throw it into a big pile and the clubhouse manager, he comes and he gets your uniform and he drys them and he cleans them and then you play the second game with the same uniform…I, like everybody else, I threw my uniform right into the big pile with everybody else’s and the clubhouse guy came by with one of these long sticks with a nail on it and he very carefully picked my uniform out from the white guys uniforms and my little sweatshirt and my little jock strap and everything. Sent my uniform to the colored cleaners which was probably 20 minutes away and there I sat while all the other guys were on the field. [The crowd has] really been giving me hell all day long, and now I’m sitting there stark naked waiting for my uniform to come back from the cleaners and the other guys were out on the field. So finally they get my uniform back and I walk out on the field . . . boy you’d think that I had just burned the American Flag.
Curt Flood, Ken Burns’ Baseball, Seventh Inning.
Story: Flood Is at Peace With His Lost Career
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06.21.08
Posted in Religion at 12:00 am by Dan Jensen
Verses celebrating Daena, that celestial maiden of ancient Iran; symbol of faith and conscience. … This is largely plagiarized from the Vendidad and Hadhokht Nask, employing some degree of arbitrary license.
♦—♦—♦
At the end of the third night,
when the dawn appears,
it seems to the soul of the faithful one
as though he were delivered
amidst plants and aromas;
it seems as if a wind were blowing from the region of the south,
from the regions of the south, a sweet-scented wind,
more sweet than any other …
And it seems to the soul of the faithful one
as if he were inhaling that wind into his nostrils,
and he thinks: ‘Whence does that wind blow,
that sweet-scented wind … ?’
And it seems to him as though his own Daena
were advancing toward him on that wind,
in the shape of a maiden fair,
bright, white-armed, strong,
tall-formed, high-standing, full-breasted,
beautiful of body, noble, of a glorious seed,
of the size of a maid in her fifteenth year,
as fair as the fairest things in the world.
‘Then comes the beautiful,
shapely, strong and well-formed maid,
with the hounds at her sides,
she who can discern right and wrong,
with great following, happy,
and of high understanding.
And the soul of the faithful one addresses her,
asking: ‘What maid art thou,
who art the fairest maid I have ever seen?’
She answers him: O thou
youth of good thoughts, good words, and good deeds,
of good religion,
I am thine own conscience!
‘Everyone did love thee for that greatness, goodness, fairness, …
strength and freedom from sorrow,
in which thou dost appear to me;
‘And so thou, O youth
of good thoughts, good words, and good deeds,
of good religion!
didst love me for that greatness, goodness, fairness, …
strength, and freedom from sorrow, in which I appear to thee …
‘I was lovely and thou made me still lovelier;
I was fair and thou made me still fairer;
I was desirable and thou made me still more desirable;
I was seated at the fore
and thou made me foremost,
through this good thought,
through this good word,
through this good deed of thine; …
© 2008 Dan J. Jensen
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06.20.08
Posted in Religion at 10:38 pm by Dan Jensen
Religion is often juxtaposed against conscience. There is a good reason for this: religion is truth that descends upon man, whereas conscience is truth that emerges from within man.
That said, it should not be maintained that moral intuition is intrinsically antagonistic to faith. The Zoroastrian religion uses conscience synonymously with religion—and quite literally: the Avestan word for religion, “Daena” (akin to the Persian-Arabic “Din”), is also the Avestan word for conscience.
“Conscience” has two related meanings. First, it is a moral intuition (literally, a “knowing”). Secondly, it is a sense of shame. In religious circles, the latter usage is often employed, inasmuch as moral intuition is often rejected. Zoroastrianism appears to use the concept in both senses.
In Christianity, there is of course plenty of shame, but though men are seen as flawed, conscience is treated more as a moral intuition than a capacity for shame:
When the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another … —Epistle of Paul to the Romans
And again:
Love worketh no ill to his neighbor: love therefore is the fulfilment of the law. —Epistle of Paul to the Romans
From such sayings of Paul, “examination of conscience” has become orthodox Catholic practice. It does not presume a state of guilt, but rather presumes a capacity to distinguish right from wrong:
Directly, this examination is concerned only with the will, that is, with the good or bad intention that inspires one’s thoughts, words, and actions. — Catholic Encyclopedia: Examination of Conscience
Again, some other scriptures focus more on incapacity and shame. This appears to be the case with Baha’u'llah, who emphasized the Judeo-Islamic notion of religion as revelation of and adherence to divine law.
Regarding the incapacity of man, Baha’u'llah said:
Man is unable to comprehend that which hath streamed forth from the Pen of Glory and is recorded in His heavenly Books. Men at all times and under all conditions stand in need of one to exhort them, guide them and to instruct and teach them. —Lawh-i-Maqsud
Regarding fear and shame:
The fear of God hath ever been a sure defence and a safe stronghold for all the peoples of the world. It is the chief cause of the protection of mankind, and the supreme instrument for its preservation. Indeed, there existeth in man a faculty which deterreth him from, and guardeth him against, whatever is unworthy and unseemly, and which is known as his sense of shame. This, however, is confined to but a few; all have not possessed and do not possess it. —Words of Paradise
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