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A somewhat (ugh) strained
(but, uh, still useful) analogy
Education is like human excrement. In one's early days, it is up to one's parents to make sure that one doesn't go around soiled in public. But soon that responsibility devolves to the kid. Similarly, at the start of one's education, the parents are in charge. But soon it should devolve to the kid who's being educated.
For a normal, able-bodied person, personal hygiene is pretty easy to handle oneself. Learning the basics of human knowledge, acquiring the skills to maneuver in modern society, these are a bit harder than wiping after having relieved oneself of the remains of the day's feastings. But still, the direction of responsibility should be as clear as the direction of a flushed toilet's contents.
Modern public education is based on the idea that it takes an expert to wipe your ass.
Designations | February 4, 2005 | Wirkman Virkkala
What kind of a Finn name is "Sibelius"?
I finally started to read a book on Sibelius. So at last I learned the answer to today's title question: What kind of a Finn name is Sibelius ?
None!
His great-grandfather, Johan Martinpoikka (son of Martin ) settled on a farm named Sibbe. As was the custom in that place and those times, the family took on the name of the farm. But they almost immediately Latinized it, which may have a fashion at that time, too (most Finns before and after added an ala or an inen and let it go at that, for their last names). Sibelius sounds more ancient Latin than any modern tongue. The Sibelius family was Swede-speaking, though living in Finland. The composer was christened Johan Julius Christian, but was called Janne by relatives and friends, and adopted the French form of the name, Jean, after his uncle Johan who used the moniker when travelling. So Sibelius was born a Swedish-speaking Finn with a Latin last name; though he grew up to learn Finnish and fully immerse himself in Finnish myth, he would adopt as his public Christian name a French form of that oh-so-common name, John.
Well, I certainly have no cause to object. Sibelius was certainly no ordinary John. He was the greatest composer to emerge from north of Europe. His symphonies, especially, rank him with Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and . . . arguably, no one else. Even Brahms and Schubert play second to Sibelius's muse.
Finland's traditional naming practices seem weird to us today. My great-grandfather, Abraham, was a Hautakoski (which means grave rapids, or cemetery brook ). He married a woman named Anna and moved onto the family farm in Kaustinen. So, naturally, he became a Wirkkala! (Pronounce that, or, if you are in Finland, or me, spell that, with a V: Virkkala.) And it appears from Sibelius' great-grandfather's original name, Martinpoikka, that a Scandinavian-style naming system also played a part in the chaos of Finnish names. (My last name would be Ernipoikka, in that system.)
None of this strikes me as nearly as interesting as the Latvian system of naming. I have a friend who, when you address him, you call him simply Oscar. But when you talk about him behind his back, you call him Oscars. With an added s ! Latvia has a grammar of names.
In America, of course, this is all very alien. As Butch the boxer said, This is America, honey. Our names don't mean shit.
Designations | February 6, 2005 | Wirkman Virkkala
| ThinkingMatters
Stand up
The life of Howard Hughes must be inspiring, not only for his bravery and ambition, but perhaps also for a certain creative craziness. At least, that's what I've learned by going to The Aviator last night. I think it may have inspired me. To act.
The Aviator is a good movie. But I'm surprised I noticed; all through the thing, several couples behind me wouldn't stop talking. Who's that? and Wow, that's crazy! were some of the unoriginal questions and comments I endured. There were many, many more. It got quite distracting.
So, as the film neared the end and Hughes's craziness became more apparent, I took a cue: I stood up. It crossed my mind that maybe I should climb onto the seat, but that seemed a bit too crazy. So I just stood.
Almost immediately somebody behind me commented, That man is standing up! A woman giggled, incredulously. A few moments later a man commanded, Sit down!
I turned around and snarled, I'll sit down when you shut the fuck up! The swearing, I thought, was necessary to get their attention.
There were some slightly hushed twitterings and conversings, if only to re-assert themselves (nobody's going to tell us what to do ), but within a minute or two they shut up. And I sat down. And the film became very fun, as Alan Alda's character was beaten down in full public view by Leo DiCapprio's character.
After the film I talked to the manager about chattering customers. She offered to give me a pass to a future show. I said I wasn't asking for anything, though I added that, perhaps, if in a future meeting management could discuss noisy customers, and maybe do something about it, I'd appreciate it.
The problem of noisy theater-goers is increasing. Any semblance of manners is going out the window. It's as if people go the movies thinking they are just plopping in a DVD at home! They aren't. They are paying a ticket to a theatre that admonishes them to be quiet while the movie's running. And yet too many people can't help themselves. Talk talk talk talk talk.
I'm thinking of responding more creatively in the future. I'll bring in a digital camera and turn around and take snapshots of the talkers. Maybe I'll record their conversation on tape, too. Maybe I'll set up a public website devoted to black-balling loud, inconsiderate patrons of the cinema. Maybe we'll lick this problem yet.
For once I can say with complete sincerity: Enough talk! It's time for action.
Designations | February 9, 2005 | Wirkman Virkkala
| ThinkingMatters
Hoppe's world
I just finished reading Flynn's World the other day. This may be Gregory McDonald's best series novel yet. There is no dominant plot. Several problems beset our hero, Francis Xavier Flynn, an ach-saying Irish-American spy-cum-Boston police inspector. He solves them all:
- his daughter's boyfriend, a wrestler, is found with his ear nailed to a tree in a cemetery
- a policeman on the force seems to be arresting only blacks, Hispanics, Jews, and homosexuals
- a college professor's life and livelihood are being threatened for apparently PC reasons
Flynn admirably breezes through the novel, quipping and philosophizing and chiding and inquiring and . . . acting responsibly. With honor. And insight. (McDonald has always been a sharp cookie; now he proves that he's more than smart, he might even be wise. As always, the dialogue — most of the novel, like most of Mencken's marriage, consists of talk — is excellent.)
The portrait of college life that emerges from Flynn's World is somewhat chilling. One suspect in the case of the harrassment of the old-fashioned professor is a young lecturer who does not believe in disciplining his kids, who are wild things, utterly lacking in manners, consideration, or self-restraint. To him, no values seem superior to another, and this somehow becomes an argument that no values should be imposed on another (including his kids), which somehow becomes an argument to impose this view of life on his students and attack anyone who disagrees as flagrantly immoral! And the professor under attack is an Old Guard historian who thinks that history selects the canon, and is utterly puzzled by the coercive tactics of the new advocates of chaos. As well he should be. They are born of a strange confusion. Muddle.
The general effect of this movement against traditional standards and ideologies has been to Marcusify the Academy, to institutionalize censorship as long as the censorship comes from the Left, as evil ol' Marcuse frankly put it. In the name of sensitivity and rights, these people are utterly insensitive to the rights of others, especially the right — often gained by contract — to speak freely.
Case in point? The recent persecution of Hans-Herman Hoppe. This tenured professor of economics at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas got put in the hot seat by a student who took offense at a rather theoretical discussion of time preference relating to various groups. But, oh, homosexuals were analyzed along with married and unmarried heteros, and the young and the old, and, well, you know what that means: bending over backwards for easily offended intellectual lightweights who just happen to be . . . gay. The whole thing is pretty stupid, really. Hoppe is no great economist — I suspect he's a bit of a loon — but there's no excuse for the way he's being treated by his employer. He did not personally attack any one person. He merely discussed time preferences as exhibited in different groups. (Oh, he did give a bizarro explanation of Keynes's time preferences, but the student didn't appear to be offended by that.)
Of course, the student's a whiner, and he expects and demands that his whining complaint be treated seriously. And these days, when anyone takes umbrage at a challenge (think of Condi Rice's successful rhetorical ploy before the Senate committee), everyone just folds. They can't handle a straight denial of a demand for sympathy. Anyone who makes a complaint of this kind deserves to be treated with contempt, not sympathy, and certainly not allowed to direct the full weight of a university's wrath.
Thankfully, the ACLU has taken up Hoppe's case, and UNLV has received quite a few emails in support of the professor.
On a libertarian listserve, today, in regards to the Hoppe case, I got involved in a discussion with some misguided fool on the nature of methodological individualism. This libertarian radical apparently believes that MI precludes statistical analysis. I'm afraid I treated him as imperiously as Hoppe is said, by the whiner, to have treated his students — my post has not gone through the moderation process of that listserve, so we'll see if I went too far or not. Oh, well. Some people you can hope to enlighten; but those who misunderstand basic theory and defend their nonsense with dogmatic vigor don't deserve my time and attention. (That's not a question of time preference, but an easier-to-understand economic concept.)
After thinking perhaps too long about Hoppe's case, I turn my attention back to Flynn's World, noticing, now, how admirably McDonald blends his themes. All three problems Flynn faces are about the challenge of particularist ethics in an open society. A family deals with its question of honor in an old-fashioned way. A Nazi cop builds bombs in his cellar. And . . . amidst relativists utterly unhinged by their own theories, an old-fashioned liberal humanist weathers abuse. But his case turns out to have a more personal element to it. All in all, very satisfying. I think Gregory McDonald is trying to tell us something. But he's making the reader figure out, exactly, what. Now that's, perhaps, the best way to challenge students.
Designations | February 10, 2005 | Wirkman Virkkala
The Great American Symphony?
There are many contenders. But really, the winner is clear.
A far more difficult question would be, What's the Great Finnish Symphony ? With the work of Sibelius alone you have a varied lot of contenders. My favorites are the Third and the Fifth, and these are truly great symphonies. The Sixth, to my ears and imaginations, sounds more Finnish, though. The Seventh is widely considered a masterwork, and gets more discussion. The Second is everybody's favorite; it's Oh So Romantic, you know. While the First, hey: I think it a marvelous work. Haven't heard the unnumbered Kullvervo Symhpony yet.
Then there are great works by Rautavaara, Sallinen, and Aho. Do they seem especially Finnish ? Well, that question I'll leave to another time. Such questions are tricky, and, if Wittgenstein was right, almost evil to contemplate. I don't think they are evil. Just fun. (In some philosophies, evil and fun are the same. Hah!) And perhaps a little goofy. Don't mind that.
Designations | February 11, 2005 | Wirkman Virkkala
Leftist whiners: the newest niche market
Paul Jacob, on Townhall.com, gives a pretty thorough overview of the Hans-Hermann Hoppe affair at the UNLV. In the course of it he deals with something I'd not thought of:
Students are indeed customers, and one hopes a university seeks to please rather than offend its customers. But the complaint is from one customer. What about all the other customers seeking the free flow of ideas? And the school's standing as a place of academic freedom? Seems that to serve its customers, UNLV should abide by its contract and respect Hoppe's right to say what he thinks, provided, as in this case, he is not being abusive.
In a sense, this is true. But maybe the UNLV is intent to seek as customers those who are PC-oriented — who are, in fact, whiners by nature. Maybe by bending over backward for a prissy, easily offended student, the university hopes to encourage more such students (there are probably many) and discourage for employment those scholars and teachers who would be unwilling to comply with this marketing plan.
What could be wrong with that? May not an institution of higher learning market itself as it pleases?
I still find it disgusting. I believe that people should cultivate the character that allows them to resist taking offense. To me, intellectual matters should be debated on intellectual grounds, and getting huffy because somebody said something slightly derogatory about a group to which one belongs . . . well, that's childish. Foolish. Repulsive, even. And then using that offendedness as a way to tyrannize others, using institutional review, strikes me as passive-aggressive. Worse, maybe. It's the tryanny of the Last Man, to use Nietzsche's terminology.
But hmmm, I note that I used the word prissy, above. That's a code word of homophobes, I think.
In my defense, I can honestly say I have no homophobia. I've lightly brushed aside the groping hands of other men, taking no offense. I've encouraged as friends a number of gay and bisexual men and women.
But I will say this about my friends who happen to be gay : not one of them is a whiner, or a groper, or prissy. They are exemplars of what this Michael Knight character is not: free-thinking, autonomous individuals who know how to hold their ground.
Designations | February 13, 2005 | Wirkman Virkkala
Forcing people to save
When I first began thinking about politics, I thought I was a liberal. Well, I was a liberal, but I was fast ceasing to have much sympathy for the Democratic Party and its self-described liberals.
My trouble with liberals was first that their programs had so little to do with liberty, and second that their programs seemed to be based so emphatically on lies to cover up theft.
Take Social Security. The basic idea was forcing people to save for their retirements. I was a little surprised that everyone thought forcing people was a good way of behaving, but leave that aside. Social Security took the money and paid it out immediately to others. What wasn't spent on current retirees wasn't invested, really, either. It was taken by Congress for general fund purposes. IOUs were put in its place.
And when I was growing up, it was already clear how the demographics were shaping up. The first generations were reaping huge returns; later generations — we're talkin' about my generation, here — were not going to get such a great deal. Our contributions (taxes) were rising. And when the bulge hit, I just knew that postponing retirement was going to be a very live issue. In the long run we are all dead, yes; but if you made the run longer, then the system would be more solvent, since more potential retirees would be dead, and not able to collect a dime. Yup, this was generational equity at work!
My reaction at the time was to reject the Democratic Party lock, stock, and barrel. It still enforced the third rail view of Social Security debate, at the time, and I couldn't support it for that reason alone. The Democratic Party had embraced lying and cheating. I wanted no part of it. I was a liberal in that I favored liberty; I wasn't a socialist favoring mass theft and financial con artistry.
The Republican Party was better on the issue at the time, but worse on many others. Now, of course, it is Republicans who are talking about reforming and even privatizing Social Security. Jeff Jacoby wrote a good column on that, recently. He explains it all pretty succinctly. I discuss the same issue on Instead of a Blog, in an essay titled Social Security Privatization, Some Whys and Wherefores. It continues these reflections in a personal way, not as a rigorous argumentative article.
I'm quite soft on forcing people to save, these days. In the context of the welfare state, a person who has not saved for retirement is something of a threat to the body politic, like a walking carrier for typhoid.
But I'm quite hard on forcing people to put their savings in a con game like Social Security. If we want to make sure people save for their retirements, then do. But don't run it through an insolvent system that drains a person's wealth rather than increases it.
Designations | February 14, 2005 | Wirkman Virkkala
Hindemith, Merikanto, and Donald Duck
I spied a CD on eBay, recently, and almost bought it. Featuring cello works by Hindemith (one of my favorite composers), a Finn named Merikanto (whose work I haven't heard enough of), and that of two strangers, it seemed ideal. But then there was the cover to the CD:
Donald Duck? I know, it's an arty rendition. But still: Donald Duck?
I let it go. Maybe someday I'll buy it. When I'm in a more adventuresome mood. I've listened to Hindemith's Kammermusic No. 3 many times. The other works I'd like to hear.
But when I think of great cello music, I don't think of Donald Duck.
Designations | February 17, 2005 | Wirkman Virkkala
Auctorial apology
It's been ten days since updating this log. Why? Illness, work, then computer troubles (I think a simple PRAM battery brought my system down). Now I feel better, and I've a new computer running. I still am behind on work, though.
There's a lot I could comment on. But for the moment, something Eugene Volokh wrote on Volokh Conspiracy is on my mind:
Because I Write in English, Not Latin, Dammit: Just got an edit in which my "indexes" — referring to the indexes at the backs of books — was changed to "indices." I promptly changed it back.
I don't feel that strongly about this (the forcefulness of this post's title is mild hyperbole), but I prefer to follow the English "-es" plural over the Latinate versions when possible. Sometimes only the Latin form may be common, and sometimes I'm just so used to the Latin version (consider "matrices," which is much more common than "matrixes," and I've thus heard mostly the former and rarely the latter). But when the two forms are equally common, I like to stick with English idiom.
I have a different standard. When I write, I hear the words, the sound of them. So I often choose to use those words that please me more, by sound, or are easier to say. And, to me, indices is much easier to say than indexes. That ks sound followed quickly by an ez ending is a little difficult to make clear. I have enough problems with my natural fast-talking mumble as it is. Indices, on the other hand, is easy to say, and sounds good.
Similarly, the old Latin adjective auctorial is now being replaced with its modern English version, authorial. Trouble is, the English version sounds snootier and is harder to say. I prefer auctorial. Maybe I just don't like the updated version's similarity to ethereal. And it may be that auctorial looks more uncommon on the page, but, as I wrote above, my standard is speech, and it's amazing how obnoxious authorial sounds when spoken.
Designations | February 27, 2005 | Wirkman Virkkala
The Oscars and the Fast Forward button
If ever there were a case for using your VHS or Tivo, last night's Oscars ceremony was it. The worst I've ever seen. Too well-orchestrated for those precious odd moments that steal the show. The host's first quip, Welcome to the 77th and last Oscars . . . seemed like prophecy. Chris Rock as host was horrible: an insult comic who berated good actors like Jude Law for not being stars. Well, who cares about the stars?
I guess the answer is, we do, though I protest: my favorite films of the year were not star vehicles, though one did contain stars (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), but in this case the stars were carefully shot out of the heavenly context of the eternal backlight of the Hollywood mind. My other favorite, Sideways, was far from a star vehicle, though Virginia Madsen may be the most agreeably beautiful woman in Hollywood. But there's the truoble: her beauty is friendly, not imposing; not star quality.
OK: It was good to see Million-Dollar Baby beat out The Aviator where it counted. The better film won. But was Eastwood's film really better than Sideways? Not really. But it was SERIOUS, and so worth an Oscar, as the Oscar logic goes.
Chris Rock introduced Jeremy Irons as a commedian, or a comic genius, or somesuch. As if to prove the joking appellation, a crash occurred off-camera, sounding an awful lot like a gunshot. Irons responded deadpan: I hope they missed. Very funny. Irons's hope was fulfilled, for too soon we saw Rock again.
Some nice touches: the Johnny Carson commemoration; Yo-Yo Ma playing cello (not very well) to the homages to this last year's dead; Biance's outfit for the French number; the de rigeur cartoon figure on stage, this time the Edith Head parody from The Invincibles.
Still, the best moment was the M&M commercial I had not seen before. Of course, I may have skimmed through something better. The whole event cried for (and got, from me) a viewing using the Fast Forward button on my remote control.
Designations | February 28, 2005 | Wirkman Virkkala
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