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Getting the Continental Drift

Posted May 1, 2004 By Dave Thomer

Many, although not all, of the essays I’ve written for this section of the site can be considered part of an overall narrative, starting with the historical tradition of Western philosophy and its roots in Plato and Descartes, moving to John Dewey and other American pragmatists’ effort to rethink the fundamental premises of that tradition, and then using that response as a catalyst for a new theory of individual development and civic organization. It is worth noting, however, that American pragmatism is not the only critical response to the Platonic/Cartesian tradition. A number of thinkers, mostly in France and Germany, have developed a number of positions loosely referred to as “continental philosophy,� which often take the critique in very different directions.

It’s worth noting that just as there are a number of pragmatists, many of whom disagree with each other often on significant details, continental philosophy is no monolith. Any generalization one tries to offer would have exceptions. For the most part, however, it is safe to say that continental philosophy embraces relativism and is skeptical of arguments that try to logically prove a universal truth. (Many continentals do believe in some kind of eternal absolute, but that such eternity is unknowable to human minds.) Continental thinkers often appear to heavily blend philosophy with other disciplines, which sometimes have the effect of making their prose more forbidding to those trying to pull out a straightforward set of premises and conclusions. Jacques Derrida, for example, has a very heavy element of literary criticism in his work; language structures and shapes thinking, and can thus become a filter that hides the truth from us, so one should try as much as possible to take apart the language and get past the structures it imposes on us.
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Filed in Philosophy

Thinking About Learning

Posted April 1, 2004 By Dave Thomer

Education was a paramount concern for John Dewey during his career, as can be seen from some of his book titles: The Child and the Curriculum, The School and Society, Democracy and Education, and Experience and Education all concerned themselves chiefly with the topic. At the University of Chicago, he taught not only in the Philosophy department, but in Pedagogy as well. With his wife, he ran a model school at the university in which he could implement and test his theories; it was the removal of his wife from her position that led Dewey to leave Chicago for Columbia. Today, Dewey’s theories are still debated in professional academic literature, discussed in education programs, and even occasionally remarked on outside purely academic circles. Unfortunately, both in Dewey’s time and now, those positions are frequently mischaracterized and set up as straw men.

Dewey’s education theory was not merely focused on technical questions of curriculum and formal schooling. In Democracy and Education, he uses education in its broadest sense, as the fundamental activity of individual and social life. To understand this, it is necessary to explore the manner in which Dewey defines life. That which is living engages in an active effort to sustain and perpetuate itself, making use of its surroundings in a continuing attempt to achieve this goal. Nonliving objects are passive – they do not respond to changes in their environment with an expenditure of energies designed for self-preservation. If a force is bearing down on a rock, and the force is great enough to break the rock, the rock simply breaks; it does not attempt to shift or redirect the force so that its continued coherence is no longer at risk. Plants will send out roots to seek for water and move their leaves toward light sources; animals will seek out and even store food. Dewey describes growth as the restructuring of experience and the use of available resources in a process of self-perpetuation and self-renewal. Life strives to grow; it changes itself to overcome obstacles and take advantage of available opportunities. When growth stops completely, life ends. For human beings, growth is not merely a question of physical survival, but of intellectual and emotional flourishing – we grow in our ability to understand our surroundings, in our capability to act on and alter our environment; in doing so we develop and fulfill new potential not just for ourselves, but for the community to which we belong. For the individual, preparing for and experiencing these opportunities for growth is education.
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Filed in Philosophy

Not the Brightest Bulb

Posted April 1, 2004 By Dave Thomer

If you, for some reason, have found yourself wondering about the state of my gardening skills, let me try and sum it up for you:

I am such a rotten gardener that the plants I try and kill end up thriving.

A little stage setting is perhaps in order. When we moved into this house last year, the front walk had a small garden to the side of it, in which numerous plants were converting carbon dioxide to oxygen and generally having a merry old time. These plants didn’t totally appeal to Pattie and me, and quite frankly we weren’t sure exactly how each one was supposed to be maintained, but as new homeowners we had many, many other fish to fry – not least of which was that the back yard contained some truly tenacious plant forms that I am still unconvinced did not originate from another planet. (I’ve been checking the Mars Rover pictures very closely to see if I can find any of these things’ forebears, let me tell you.) So we neglected that front yard for a month or two.

This was exactly the opportunity a battalion of weeds had been waiting for. They started sprouting, and pretty soon they were starting to crowd us off that front walk. Another week or two, I think they would have evolved legs, crawled out of the dirt, and body-blocked us from getting into the house. So one morning I dutifully went out and yanked every piece of greenery I could find. I pulled, I dug, I yanked, and when I was done I sprayed that dirt repeatedly with Super Duper Weed and Plant Killer. Then, and only then, I replanted the ground with grass seed.

And not any grass seed, mind you. No, I consulted experts like my parents. Now, the house I grew up in had, and I am being totally honest here, one of the nicest back yards on my block. It damned well better, since my mom kicked us out of the nice air-conditioned house on many a summer day to cut grass or pull weeds or prune hedges or whatever the heck one does in a garden. So I thought I was on pretty safe ground getting a recommendation from them. “Get ryegrass,â€? they said. What the heck, I said, if the lawn doesn’t work out, I can toss the leftover seed in my bread machine. Read the remainder of this entry »

Filed in Special Order Speeches

The Law on Terror

Posted April 1, 2004 By Dave Thomer

One of the themes you often hear from the Bush Administration and its supporters regarding their homeland security policies is a criticism of those who would emphasize the role of law enforcement in fighting terrorism. For example, Vice President Dick Cheney said in a March speech:

Senator [John] Kerry has questioned whether the war on terror is really a war at all. … In his view, opposing terrorism is far less of a military operation and far more of an intelligence-gathering, law-enforcement operation. That approach has been tried before and proved entirely inadequate to protect the American people from the terrorists who are quite certain they’re at war with us.

The implication is that these law enforcement proponents are not as serious about terrorism as the current administration, who recognize the need for decisive military action against those that would harm American citizens. As someone who agreed with the post-September 11 military action against the Taliban in Afghanistan but opposed the invasion of Iraq, I am unsurprisingly ambivalent about our current aggressive approach. I am unambivalent in thinking that Cheney and others are far too dismissive of the role of a law enforcement approach to counterterrorism. Read the remainder of this entry »

Filed in Public Policy

How I Learned to Not Burn My Roast

Posted March 1, 2004 By Dave Thomer

I like to eat. Quite a bit, actually. Whenever Pattie and I talk about taking a trip, one of the top items on the agenda is, “Where are we going to eat?” Going to restaurants has always been one of our preferred forms of recreation. As much as I like food, though, for a long time I wasn’t particularly comfortable in the kitchen; I knew how to make a few basic meals, and that was pretty much it. I didn’t have a whole lot of variety, and I didn’t have the basic knowledge to vary the recipes I did know and have much confidence in the results. I mean, yeah, I could whip up some mean English muffin pizzas and pork roll-egg-and-cheese sandwiches, but man can not live on these alone. Not without significant cholesterol-lowering medication, anyway.

My limited knowledge was sufficient during my college years, and even during the one year I spent in New York after graduation. I didn’t have a lot of time or money to put into cookware or ingredients; in college I was sharing a fridge with five other guys and whichever of their girlfriends were living in the apartment at the time, and when I graduated I had a kitchen roughly the size of my desk with equipment that almost certainly posed a fire hazard to myself and neighboring counties. But once I moved back to Philly, into an apartment with a ridiculously nice kitchen for a rental apartment, I knew it was time for change. I had to learn to really cook. Read the remainder of this entry »

Filed in Life in Practice

From That Kid to Tough Pig – Part 1

Posted March 1, 2004 By Dave Thomer

Soon after my daughter was born, she started watching the 6:30 AM showing of Sesame Street on our local PBS station. The combination of colorful, frenetic characters and music was, unsurprisingly, a big hit. It was soon clear we would need more Muppet material, and as we’ve discussed before here, Pattie and I are nothing if not big on the research. So I started checking out Muppet websites, and eventually found my way to Tough Pigs. The essays and reviews on the site combined insightful analysis with the irreverent humor you’d want to see in a site devoted to the Muppets. And I soon discovered that the site’s webmaster, Danny Horn, lives right in my back yard. Danny is the Education Director at the Mazzoni Center, Philadelphia’s gay/lesbian/bi/trans health center, working with the staff at Philadelphia public schools on GLBT health and safety issues. (He and his boyfriend Ed live in the suburbs with three cats and a house full of Muppet toys.) I thought it would be neighborly to chat with Danny about the Muppets, his site, and fandom, so we got together for an IM chat.

So, ladies and gentlemen, let’s have a big welcome for Danny Horn! YEEAAHHHHH! (Waves arms wildly while leaving the stage . . .)

DT: We might as well start at the beginning. How’d you become a Muppet fan in the first place?

DH: How did I become a Muppet fan. I don’t think people become Muppet fans. I think it just happens before you’re even conscious of it. I was born in 1971, which was two years into Sesame Street. So I was watching Sesame since before I can remember; it was just always there. Then I was five when The Muppet Show started in 1976. I remember seeing commercials for the show over the summer, and I watched the first episode that aired on the New York station. It was Rita Moreno, and it ended with the sketch that had Rita trying to sing “Fever” while Animal interrupted with crazy drum riffs, and at the end, Rita comes up behind Animal and crashes his head with cymbals. It was so obviously the best thing ever. So that was pretty much it. Read the remainder of this entry »

Filed in Culture and Media

From That Kid to Tough Pig – Part 2

Posted March 1, 2004 By Dave Thomer

More of Dave’s conversation with Tough Pigs editor Danny Horn:

DT: Well, I was going to ask you what motivated you to attach a forum to your webzine, but I think you already answered that one.

DH: Well, there have been some other places for people to gather over the years, but I wasn’t happy with any of them. I was on the Muppet newsgroup for a long time, that’s where I first met a lot of the people that I still hang out with. But newsgroups were kind of the Wild West; they were the lawless frontier. Full of trolls and crazies and cattle rustlers.

DT: Yeah, I’ve generally steered clear of unmoderated newsgroups for a while. And even with moderated groups and message boards, finding the right tone can be a challenge.

DH: Well, you have to be able to moderate well. It’s a skill, and it’s not easy to do it well. But in my opinion, you need some rules to make a group work well. Unless you want to keep fighting the cattle rustlers forever, and that gets old.

DT: In a hurry. It also helps to have that core group of people who feel comfortable with the tone you’re going for, and can keep things moving in that direction.

DH: Yeah. That happens naturally in a group, I think, that it develops in a particular direction.

DT: The Tough Pigs forum seems to reflect the same tone you go for in the webzine itself, so I imagine there’s some symbiosis there.

DH: To some degree. The site pulls in the kind of people who like the site. But it’s also because I run the forum with the same kind of attitude that I run the site.

DT: It works because it works.

DH: I guess. Yeah.

DT: Getting back into the way back machine for a second . . did the fanzine have the same tone and approach as the website, or did that evolve? Read the remainder of this entry »

Filed in Culture and Media

The Naval Arms Race Between the World Wars

Posted March 1, 2004 By Dave Thomer

(In light of the current focus on international arms races and disarmament efforts, it may be worthwhile to look for some historical perspective on the competing forces that drive these efforts and the often unintended consequences of well-meaning decisions.)

After World War I the United States, Great Britain and Japan were the world’s leading naval powers, and each country continued a rapid buildup of forces in order to maintain dominance over their local sea waters and protect their overseas interests. America was particularly concerned with maintaining the Open Door policy in China and in defending – as much as possible – its possessions in the Philippines while maintaining coastal defenses. In 1918, the Navy General Board set as its goal the establishment of a navy superior or equal to every other navy on Earth – a departure from its previous policy, which was content to be second to Great Britain. The Wilson Administration presented a naval building plan to Congress that would result in the United States’ possessing a fleet of 39 battleships and 12 battle cruisers, a force that would far exceed Great Britain’s. The high costs of such construction, along with the growing spirit of pacifism and isolationism in Congress and the American public, eventually led President Harding to call the 1920 Washington Naval Conference, which established a number of treaties to govern the conduct of nations in the Pacific. The Washington Treaty, probably the most significant of these agreements, established limits on the total tonnage of ships each nation could build, along with limits on particular classes of ships such as heavy cruisers and battleships. These limits were set according to a ratio of 5/5/3 among the United States, Great Britain, and Japan, respectively, a compromise which formed the basis of American naval policy for over a decade and had the seemingly-beneficial effect of pleasing no one, as no side achieved the clear advantage it sought. Read the remainder of this entry »

Filed in Special Order Speeches

Off in My Own Little World

Posted February 1, 2004 By Dave Thomer

One of the things I remember hearing – and thinking – as the Internet, DVDs, and other new technology came to the fore in the Nineties was that all of these new gadgets would help spread the word on new artists; stuff that previously would have flown under the radar would get an all-new visibility. I remember signing up with the Firefly service and entering, in fairly extensive detail, my musical and other preferences; the idea was that my custom designed Firefly “agent� program would flit about the system and find other users with tastes similar to mine and let me know what other stuff they liked. The technology never quite lived up to the potential, but the Net was young, and I was pretty sure it would get better.

Today, old and new technology alike has made the situation better. I’m a member of one of the best public radio stations around, WXPN in Philadelphia. I have a Netflix account that delivers my selections from a vast library of DVDs right to my mailbox. I have digital cable that not only gives me dozens more channels, it lets me access many programs at a time of my choosing through its On Demand service. Over the years I’ve developed a huge profile at Amazon that informs their recommendation lists, and my Internet access lets me peruse message boards to see what new acts I might be missing. There should be a never-ending stream of Cool New Stuff making its way into my cranial space. Read the remainder of this entry »

Filed in Culture and Media

Love Conquers: San Francisco and Marriage

Posted February 1, 2004 By Dave Thomer

Just when I thought that this election year was guaranteed to make me bitter and cynical beyond belief, I have a new hero: San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom. Newsom recently concluded that California’s laws prohibiting marriages between two people of the same sex violate the state constitution’s protections of equal rights for all citizens. Furthermore, he decided to do something about it, and ordered city officials to start granting marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples.

Now, apart from the fact that I completely agree with Newsom’s stance on same sex marriages, I find his actions inspiring because he saw a situation where he felt the state wasn’t living up to its best ideals and to its obligations, and – let me repeat this for emphasis – he decided to actually do something about it. He took a stand and pressed the issue, forcing Californians and Americans to confront the matter head on. (A recent Salon article suggests that’s par for the course with Newsom.) He did it despite members of his own cabinet – including some of his gay advisors – telling him that Californians weren’t ready for this, that it would cause too much political damage. I am well aware that the rules of the game mean that you have to be cautious with the accumulation and spending of political capital in order to get anything good done, but it feels good, even once in a while, to hear an elected official say “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.”

In doing so, Newsom has accelerated the debate on marriage rights, perhaps even more than Massachusetts’ Supreme Court did with its recent decision that a ban on same sex marriages violates that state’s Constitution; it will be several more weeks before Massachusetts starts issuing licenses. I hold nothing against the Massachusetts Court there – I think an elected executive has much firmer ground to stand on in taking such actions than a judiciary. Both decisions are examples of political courage in a cause that I believe future generations will recognize as just, and they have already inspired other officials to follow suit. Read the remainder of this entry »

Filed in Public Policy
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