The Best Of The Best Albums Of 2014

Best Of list season is upon us once again. Rejoice! This year, the top albums section is a little larger than usual. In the past I've tried to keep it to 10 selections, but I'd rather not subject myself to the painful mental calculation that is having to make a cut.

So after taking a quick look at my Best Of 2014 playlist on my computer (these are the notable albums that graduate from my general 2014 playlist), I've chosen the records that I've found myself coming back to more often than others. This is how I arrive at what is 'best.' In a further deviation, I will not be ranking the albums in any sort of preferential order. Instead, I'll order them by release date. This will save me from even more cognitive distress.

Click the images to be spirited away to YouTube...

* * *

The Best Of The Best Albums Of 2014

James Vincent McMorrow - "Post Tropical"

The Hotelier - "Home, Like Noplace Is There"

The War On Drugs - "Lost In The Dream"

Chet Faker - "Built On Glass"

Kishi Bashi - "Lighght"

Lewis - "L'Amour"*

Owen Pallett - "In Conflict"

The Antlers - "Familiars"

FKA Twigs - "LP1"

QT - "Hey QT"†

Tennis - "Ritual In Repeat"

alt-J (∆) - "This Is All Yours"

Perfume Genius - "Too Bright"

Thom Yorke - "Tomorrow's Modern Boxes" / "Youwouldn'tlikemewhenI'mangry"‡

D'Angelo and The Vanguard - "Black Messiah"

* * *

Honourable Mentions

 Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra - "Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light On Everything"

Phantogram - "Voices"

Beck - "Morning Phase"

Cloud Nothings - "Here And Nowhere Else"

Real Estate - "Atlas"

You Blew It! - "Keep Doing What You're Doing"

Doug Paisley - "Strong Feelings"

Jamie xx - "Girl / Sleep Sound"

Ought - "More Than Any Other Day"

Damien Jurado - "Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son"

First Aid Kit - "Stay Gold" / "America"

Jack White - "Lazaretto"

Tycho - "Awake"

Lost In The Trees - "Past Life"

El Ten Eleven - "For Emily"

Cocoanut Groove - "How To Build A Maze"

Aphex Twin - "Syro"
Manchester Orchestra - "Cope" / "Hope"
Pink Floyd - "The Endless River"

Jessie Ware - "Tough Love"

Caribou - "Our Love"
Hannah Diamond - "Every Night"

___

* This is a 2014 reissue from Light In The Attic records. You can read more about Lewis here.
† It's a single, not an album. So what?
‡ The single "Youwouldn'tlikemewhenI'mangry" was released December 26, two months after the full length was released. It's a darn good track, and you can name your price and download it here. Since I paid about $50 for "Tomorrow's Modern Boxes" on vinyl, I opted to name a price of $0 to download this terrific single.

Stieg Larsson's Millennium Series

I don't often read novels, but when I do it's usually the ones that the movies I like are based on. I consume my fiction mainly through movies and television shows, and this applies perfectly to the Millennium series. I'm just not as into fiction books as these two:

Post by The Film Stage.

The original Swedish film adaptations found their way on my To Watch list in 2009, and I thought they were terrific. When it was announced that David Fincher would direct the English adaptation, I was rightly stoked. Fincher is easily one of my favourite directors. It wasn't until after The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011) was released that I finally picked up the novels. They've been sitting on my shelf ever since.

For whatever reason, I've chosen to start reading the series this week. I'm just about through with the first novel in the series, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. The original Swedish title is Män som hatar kvinnor, which literally means "Men Who Hate Women." I think that's a way cooler title, but I guess it's a little less inviting than what it was ultimately changed to for the English market.

It's been a while since I've read any novels (the last was Cormac McCarthy's Child of God a few months ago), so I guess the time was right to take a break from my steady diet of non-fiction. Other novel-reading-after-movie selections include David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, John Ajvide Lindqvist's Let The Right One In, and Christopher Priest's The Prestige. I got the jump on Paul Thomas Anderson's upcoming film adaption of Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice and read that one a year or so ago. 

Off the top of my head, one of the only non-film-adapted novels I've read somewhat recently is The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt. It's a great little novel, and last I checked it was optioned by John C. Reilly for the film adaptation. There's also Pynchon's Bleeding Edge and Lindqvist's Handling The Undead. And there was Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which I read long before there was even news of a screen adaptation. (See also: The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories.) I've been following the non-existent progress on that one for years until it was finally produced as a television series which is set to air next year. I'm super excited about that one.

There aren't many other novels on my radar, except for maybe David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks. Non-fiction is really my thing these days, and has been ever since I devoured so much Michael Crichton and Stephen King in my early teen years. Tolkien came a little later. But dang if I ain't lucky I grew up in the days before Harry Potter and all these other "YA" blockbuster series. Yeesh. I will never understand why adults read YA stuff, either. They should be embarrassed. But I suppose it's better than reading nothing at all...

It's Hard Out Here For A Frontierswoman: "The Homesman" (2014)

A little uneven, but director Tommy Lee Jones manages to creates some engaging and unsettling moments. The cast was terrific, though I found Swank to be a little too wooden. It's a shame Steinfeld wasn't old enough to play Cuddy.

Given that they're the entire impetus behind the film's plot, there is precious little exploration of the "insane" women outside of a few grim flashbacks. While those scenes are successful, we lose all three characters just as they're introduced. That's an opportunity wasted right there. Outside of 'the frontier is hard' and 'men are scoundrels,' the film doesn't really say a whole lot about them or their experience. Though I suppose that there's any focus on women at all (specifically Swank's character) is something of a coup. Mick LaSalle writes:

The phrase “feminist Western” has been thrown around with regard to the film. Better to say “The Homesman,” based on a 1988 novel by Glendon Swarthout, is concerned with the struggles of women in the West. Just imagine living in a world in which every man is filthy, half drunk and brutalized by hard living, where even the biggest idiot considers himself superior to every woman he sees. Just imagine being a woman in that world. Now imagine living in that world alone.

Overall, it's a decent film that struggles to find the right tone and balance. I feel like this was a mediocre film that could have been a good one. Now I just want to watch True Grit (2010) again for, like, the eight time.

O! The Varieties Of Compatibilism

I enjoyed Gazzaniga's book and would recommend it, but I, like Jerry Coyne, was unmoved by his compatibilist hedgings. Naive 'free will' is one of those old ideas that we made up and began to take for granted, and now we have to all sorts of heavy lifting to undo it. For me, it is far more parsimonious to accept that in light of a deterministic universe, libertarian notions of 'choice' (or any type of free will based on dualist ideas) are incompatible with our understanding of the nature of reality.

I could be wrong, of course, but whenever I see free will being redefined it strikes me as an attempt to hold on to some old idea for no other reason than that it was here FIRST! In this way, it is very much like what Sophisticated Theologians do when they distance themselves from what their revealed holy texts actually say and move toward some new definition of faith or god(s) that can coexist with a modern understanding of the world. The average believer seldom grapples with these heavy intellectual problems and are content to have their immature and unsophisticated view of their faith go unchallenged.

This constant revision should be a clue as to how desperate some are to cling to old ideas in light of new information. At some point, it may be useful to throw it all out and start working from scratch on new explanations rather than trying to square leftovers from more ignorant times with our newfangled enlightened ones.

It has gotten to the point where one must try very hard to see 'freedom' where it probably doesn't exist. And when our intuitive impression of what it means to be a free agent doesn't comport with reality, why not just change or reimagine the definition of said freedom or agency? It all smacks of wishful thinking and moving goal posts. This, again, is very reminiscent of how people work to reduce dissonance with respect to holding onto certain idiosyncratic religious beliefs in the face of contrary evidence. Why can't we just shake it off and start constructing arguments from the ground up instead of building on top of what are almost certainly unsound intellectual foundations?

In case my ramblings were unclear, it may serve to quote Coyne at length here:

One of the most obvious resemblances of theology to compatibilism is the continual redefinition of “free will” so that (like God) it’s always preserved despite scientific advances. When Libet and Soon et al. showed that they could predict a person’s behavior several seconds in advance of that person’s conscious decision, the compatibilists rushed to save their definition, declaring that these experiments are completely irrelevant to the notion of free will. They’re not. For if free will means anything, it means that our choices are coincident with our consciousness of making them (to libertarians, our consciousness makes those choices, and we could have chosen otherwise). There is no scientific experiment, no finding from neuroscience, that will make the compatibilists give up their efforts, for they will simply continue to redefine free will in a way that humans will always have it. That resistance to evidence is another way compatibilism resembles Sophisticated Theology.™

In Which I Make Some Unnecessarily Snarky Comments About Richard Linklater's "Boyhood" (2014)

And now, some unnecessarily snarky comments about Richard Linklater's "Boyhood" (2014):

1. Grown-ups are the worst.
2. This movie is Liberal propaganda.
3. RICHARD LINKLATER STOLE MY TASTE IN MUSIC.
4. "You don't understand us!"
5. The Mom has the worst taste in men.
6. Director films movie intermittently over 11 year period. You won't believe what happens next!
7. They couldn't find any better child actors in Texas?
8. Movies grow up so fast. Where does the time go!?
9. You guys. Life is hard, you guys.
10. I've been saying stuff like "It's always now" since, like, 2006.

No, but seriously, following the story of a child growing up over a decade+ is a great idea for a movie. The problem is you still actually have to make the dang movie.

Thinking about "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman

After briefly outlining the trajectory of his research with Amos Tversky, Daniel Kahneman drops this little nugget in the introduction to Thinking, Fast and Slow:

By and large, ...the idea that our minds are susceptible to systematic errors is now generally accepted.

The irony is that few minds ever confront themselves in the critical ways necessary to fully come to terms with this. Most of us are simply unaware of the kinds of cognitive biases and unconscious processes that shape how and what we think. What is doubly ironic is that we are overly confident in our beliefs, impressions, and preferences for no good reason. We seldom ask ourselves why we think what we do. Nor do we often consider the possibility that the conclusions we reach may be wrong and/or based on unfounded assumptions or unreliable information:

The confidence that individuals have in their beliefs depends mostly on the quality of the story they can tell about what they see, even if they see little. We often fail to allow for the possibility that evidence that should be critical to our judgement is missing—what we see is all there is.

I can assert without hyperbole that the world would be a much better place if more people seriously contemplated how our thought processes are riddled with systematic errors, or that the idea of the self (that there is a coherent and essential "I" in all of us that is the conscious author of our thoughts) is an illusion. The notion that humans are fundamentally free and rational agents has been dramatically undermined by the findings of cognitive psychology. As a result, economics has undergone somewhat of a revolution in light of our new understand of human behaviour. Now, behavioural economics is all the rage!

On a more personal level, accepting that our brains come loaded with biases can lead to better and more productive relationships and interactions. One of the main reasons I seek to learn about all the ways our intuitive reasoning fails us is so that I may be better equipped when I tell someone they are wrong on the internet. I readily admit that sometimes I just cannot help myself... (Wait, who is the "I" and "myself" in this sentence? Why should they be at odds and struggling for control? Just who is in charge here, anyway?)

So after seeing many references to Kahneman's work in other books, and seeing him in an episode of BBC Horizon called "How You Really Make Decisions", I finally picked up a copy of Thinking, Fast and Slow a few weeks ago at a used book store (hardcover in great condition). Better late than never, I guess.

And if this isn't a nearly perfect description of what it's like to be a "confident idiot" in a complex world, then I don't know what is:

A remarkable aspect of your mental life is that you are rarely stumped. True, you occasionally face a question such as 17 x 24 = ? to which no answer comes immediately to mind, but these dumbfounded moments are rare. The normal state of your mind that you have intuitive feelings and opinions about almost everything that comes your way. You like or dislike people long before you know much about them; you trust or distrust strangers without knowing why; you feel that an enterprise is bound to succeed without analyzing it. Whether you state them or not, you often have answers to questions that you do not completely understand, relying on evidence that you can neither explain or defend.

They're illusions, Michael: "Waking Up" by Sam Harris

Although we are only beginning to understand the human mind at the level of the brain, and we know nothing about how consciousness itself comes into being, it isn't too soon to say that the conventional self is an illusion. There is no place for a soul inside your head. Consciousness itself is divisible—as we saw in the case of split-brain patients—and even in an intact brain consciousness is blind to most of what the mind is doing. Everything we take ourselves to be at the level of our subjectivity—our memories and emotions, our capacity for language, the very thoughts and impulses that give rise to our behavior—depends upon distinct processes that are spread out over the whole brain. Many of these can be independently interrupted or extinguished. The sense, therefore, that we are unified subjects—the unchanging thinkers of thoughts and experiencers of experience—is an illusion. The conventional self is a transitory appearance among transitory appearances, and it vanishes when looked for.

Waking Up: A Guide To Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris

Em-dash overuse notwithstanding, this is such a good summary of how the self is an illusion that it should be printed up on little cards and handed out to people on the street. It is no coincidence that this passage appears near the end of a terrific book which also extolls (among many other fascinating and enlightening things) the importance of having a competent teacher who can point a student in the right direction on the contemplative path of inner exploration. 

Sam Harris has written another challenging and important book. It is also a necessary one. One of the many questions that invariably arises in response to the project of New Atheism to disabuse the world of faith-based malarkey is how is one supposed to find meaning in life without religion? It is not just believers who worry about this. It is not unlike the concern over whether humans can be moral without religion. In The Moral Landscape, Harris tackled this by showing how science and reason can guide us toward moral answers. Similarly, Waking Up provides us with good reasons for seeking spirituality (i.e. meaning) in a secular context through meditation and contemplating the nature of our own consciousness.

Not that "I" needed any further convincing but if one has lingering doubts about the death of dualism, Waking Up should close the case. Coming to terms with the fact that we are our brains is, as Sam Harris argues, liberating. That the stakes couldn't be any higher in recognizing this is illustrated by this eminently tweetable gem:

Confusion and suffering may be our birthright, but wisdom and happiness are available.

"I" mean, dude. Seriously. Admittedly, "I" was always going to like this book. Rarely are expectations so dramatically exceeded. The phrase gets thrown around quite a bit, but Waking Up truly is required reading. (Also, The Self Illusion by Bruce Hood.)

("I" briefly considered changing the title of this post to "Their illusions, Michael" which, I think, is funnier, but less clear and just looks like a typo instead of a reference.)

"The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History" by Elizabeth Kolbert

"Since the start of the industrial revolution, humans have burned through enough fossil fuels—coal, oil, and natural gas—to add some 365 billion metric tons of carbon to the atmosphere. Deforestation has contributed another 180 billion tons. Each year, we throw up another nine billion tons or so, an amount that's been increasing by as much as six percent annually. As a result of all this, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air today—a little over four hundred parts per million—is higher than at any other point in the last eight hundred thousand years. If current trends continue, CO₂ concentrations will top five hundred parts per million, roughly double the levels they were in preindustrial days, by 2050. It is expected that such an increase will produce an eventual average global temperature rise of between three and a half and seven degree Fahrenheit, and this will, in turn, trigger a variety of world-altering events, including the disappearance of most remaining glaciers, the inundation of low-lying islands and coastal cities, and the melting of the Arctic ice cap. But this is only half the story."

- The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert

Quoted, at length, for truth. What else is there to say? We done goofed.

HBO Documentaries: "Terror At The Mall" (2014)

Having survived the Westgate shopping mall attack in Kenya and speaking in the documentary Terror At The Mall, Amber Prior has this to say:

I don't really blame them as individuals. They really were just ordinary men with very, very wrong ideas about life. When I spoke to them there was a real calm and determination about what they were doing. You know, they were there to send out a message to the world, however messed up that message was, and to die doing it.

To survive such a horrible ordeal and still be able to think about it rationally in real terms... Brilliant. She's my fucking hero. 

Five* Albums I'm Really Into Right Now

Here are five* albums I'm really into right now (click image to be hear a song on the yootubes):

The War On Drugs - "Lost In The Dream"

FKA twigs - "LP1"

The Antlers - "Familiars"

Owen Pallett - "In Conflict"

Tennis - "Ritual In Repeat"

* Note: After a few complete listens, I am also thoroughly into the new ∆ (alt-J) record, "This Is All Yours" - but since it isn't really out yet, I chose not to include it in this list.

Nancy Writebol claims "God uses experimental drugs."

Nancy Writebol, an American medical missionary who recently recovered from Ebola gave a press conference today and said crazy things like this:

“The Lord came near, ‘Am I enough? Am I enough?’” My response to the Lord, was, ‘Yes you are enough.’”

And this:

“This is not our story, it is God’s story. God is writing this.”

Take THAT dead and dying Africans. If this is all part of god's plan, then he/she/it is a moral monster. If god didn't "write" this but allows it to occur, then he/she/it is a moral monster. If god is indifferent to this earthly suffering or is otherwise powerless to stop it, he/she/it is a moral monster and is hardly a god worth praising. This is inescapable.

The arrogance displayed in attributing one's survival to "god" or "faith" (who, mysteriously, works through medicine with experimental drugs that are developed slowly over time -- I mean, what's taking him/her/it so long to come up with the full blown cure?) in the face of so many deaths is truly reprehensible. The unmitigated gall of this woman!

Yes, I know Writebol fell extremely ill while trying to help people who are suffering from a terrible disease. It goes without saying that this should be commended. But if the Lord is "enough", why accept the medical treatment and experimental drugs at all? All I'm saying is, if I were the Lord, I'd be a little annoyed by this.

But then, this is the same Lord who is "writing" the story by creating these diseases only to work slowly and inefficiently through medical science, allowing doctors and researchers to pursue all sorts of blind alleys and dead ends before kinda sorta maybe hitting on something that might work. Meanwhile, the suffering is allowed to continue while he/she/it "works" in these mysterious ways as scientists take the heat for not having all the answers yet.

God gets all the credit and none of the blame. How convenient.

How Did It Come To This?: "Inferno" by Robert A. Ferguson

"Inmates have been judged to have brought whatever discomfort they suffer on themselves, and there is little desire to measure that discomfort. Hundreds will gather for candlelight services at the location of an execution. Yet few blink an eye over a sentence of life without parole. ...

"By keeping those in prison securely hidden from public view and by making sure that the criminals who perform serious crimes never reappear, society confirms that it does not want to think about whatever suffering takes place behind jailhouse walls even if it knows that humiliation, discomfort, crime, and physical abuse are prevalent there. Confusions in the relation of pain to punishment are masked by an indifference that controls communal attitudes toward the huge population in American prisons."
- Robert. A Ferguson, Inferno: An Anatomy of American Punishment

"The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons."
- Fyodor Dostoevsky [h/t "Con-Air" (1997)]

As I've become more interested in the How and Why of human violence and its historical trends, it was perhaps inevitable that I would seek a deeper understanding of crime and its causes and the administration of criminal justice. How the human animal (an evolved creature like any other, subject to and shaped by the pressures of natural selection) seeks to live in a civil society of its own design is about as an important area for critical examination as it gets. Nothing modest here. What constitutes a crime and why? How and why do people come to commit criminal acts in the first place? How and why do we treat criminals in the way we do? These are significant questions that should concern everyone in society.

Connected to the process of justice is how the system and its outcomes are perceived and interpreted by people in general, especially those who have little to no contact with it. One need look no further than the comments section of a news article or blog post about crime and/or the people who commit criminal acts to be confronted with an overarching and disturbing aspect of what Justice means to many people: Punishment.

Some vocal commenters, protected (and perhaps embiggened) by the distance and anonymity provided by the internet forum, are quick to revel in the need for ever harsher punishments for those who perpetrate heinous acts. Even if the idea of proportionality is brought up, that is, how long sentences should be relative to the severity of the crime, precisely what "doing time" entails is apparently seldom fully considered.

It is difficult to grasp intellectually what it truly means to be sent away to prison for a given number of years. Being denied personal freedom is seen as the just punishment for those who abuse said freedom. However, this is only part of the story. Consider the horrors prisoners must endure on a daily basis at the hands of other inmates and some prison "guards". We know the stories about rape and the terror of violent gang regimes and hierarchies. They have so permeated popular culture that they have almost become trivial, even comical. This is both ironic and tragic.

And yet, some people still feel that prisoners "deserve" to be subjected to this kind of hellish environment. They are criminals, they say, why should we care what their lives are like in prison? They should get what's coming to them. An eye for an eye, just deserts, and all that. To me, this is tantamount to sadism. Retribution is a slippery slope that makes us indifferent to or even suspect of the plight of prisoners, which invariably leads to a kind of punishment creep. They are still people after all. Even attempting to discuss the nightmare prison situation is to invite accusations of "siding" with the criminals over the victims. This is a false choice, and a lazy rhetorical tool. It is a serious impediment to peeling back the curtain on the current state of our punishment regime. We don't want to see how the sausage is being made, let alone consider that we may need to change the recipe.

A cursory examination of human nature reveals a tendency to take pleasure in inflicting punishment. This should give us pause. How could it be just for a person who possessed too much of the wrong kind of substance to be sent to a place where they are terrorized by rape, violence, and other shocking forms of abuse? Not to mention that prisons as they currently exists are effectively recidivism factories...

This is why when I stumbled upon Inferno: An Anatomy of American Punishment by Robert A. Ferguson on one of my daily internet wanderings, I knew it would be the book for me. I'm not even two chapters in and it is already evident that this book is dazzling in its scope with respect to legal theory, literature, history, and philosophy. As I read it, I feel as though I'm being let in on a secret. It's like I'm being presented with answers to the questions I only vaguely knew I had. But this is a retrospective conceit. Of course smart people have already been wondering and writing eruditely about these things! And this is exactly the book I've been waiting for.

Obviously, I would recommend this book to anyone involved with or interested in the criminal justice system. But since we all naturally feel as though we have an innate sense of justice and have an impulse to inflict punishment upon those who have done wrong, Inferno should be required reading for everyone. People are tried, sentenced, and punished on all of our behalf, so shouldn't we take an active and critical interest in how and why the system works the way it does?

Philosophy, What Is It Good For?: "Plato At The Googleplex" by Rebecca Goldstein

Philosophical progress is invisible because it is incorporated into our points of view. What was tortuously secured by complex argument becomes widely shared intuition, so obvious that we forget its provenance. We don't see it, because we see with it.

Plato At The Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away by Rebecca Goldstein

I can scarcely summon the superlatives to sufficiently communicate the joy that is reading this book. So I won't embarrass myself trying. Just pick up a copy and read the dang thing. SPOILER ALERT: If you mouse over the image in this post, you'll get a nice surprise about the jacket and cover design (which I thought was a really nice touch)...

I've included the quote above because it addresses the kind of "philosophy-jeering" (as Goldstein phrases it) that has become a meme among some prominent scientists. Broadly speaking, there is a popular notion that modern physics has left philosophy in its explanatory wake, accusing philosophers of lounging about in seminar rooms asking each other the same questions over and over again while never making any real progress. In effect, philosophy has been rendered obsolete by the awesome power of Physics. Goldstein devotes some time to refuting this, and offers her apology (in the true Platonic sense of the word) in defense of the contributions philosophy has made (and, more importantly, continues to make) in the realms of scientific inquiry, morality, and meaning.

I'm as big a fan of folks like Lawrence Krauss and Neil deGrasse Tyson as anyone, though I am dismayed when I read about their dismissive attitudes towards the value of philosophy. That's kind of a bummer, but I still think they're cool. In this interview, Goldstein briefly outlines why we still need philosophy:

What—if anything— are our lives about? Even if they’re not really about anything—goodbye to the old monotheistic usurpation of this question—can we find answers that will allow us to maximize our own flourishing and—of equal if not greater importance—reasons to care about the flourishing of others? (Caring about ourselves comes kind of naturally to us.) Philosophy has been addressing such questions and making significant, if invisible, progress with them almost ever since there’s been philosophy.

 I couldn't agree more.

What—if anything— are our lives about?  Even if they’re not really about anything—goodbye to the old monotheistic usurpation of this question—can we find answers that will allow us to maximize our own flourishing and—of equal if not greater importance—reasons to care about the flourishing of others?  (Caring about ourselves comes kind of naturally to us.) Philosophy has been addressing such questions and making significant, if invisible, progress with them almost ever since there’s been philosophy. - See more at: http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2014/interview-with-rebecca-goldstein-on-plato-at-the-googleplex-philosophy-for-the-public-and-everything/#sthash.Tqx4dB6V.dpuf

What—if anything— are our lives about?  Even if they’re not really about anything—goodbye to the old monotheistic usurpation of this question—can we find answers that will allow us to maximize our own flourishing and—of equal if not greater importance—reasons to care about the flourishing of others?  (Caring about ourselves comes kind of naturally to us.) Philosophy has been addressing such questions and making significant, if invisible, progress with them almost ever since there’s been philosophy. - See more at: http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2014/interview-with-rebecca-goldstein-on-plato-at-the-googleplex-philosophy-for-the-public-and-everything/#sthash.Tqx4dB6V.dpuf

What—if anything— are our lives about?  Even if they’re not really about anything—goodbye to the old monotheistic usurpation of this question—can we find answers that will allow us to maximize our own flourishing and—of equal if not greater importance—reasons to care about the flourishing of others?  (Caring about ourselves comes kind of naturally to us.) Philosophy has been addressing such questions and making significant, if invisible, progress with them almost ever since there’s been philosophy. - See more at: http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2014/interview-with-rebecca-goldstein-on-plato-at-the-googleplex-philosophy-for-the-public-and-everything/#sthash.Tqx4dB6V.dpuf

What—if anything— are our lives about?  Even if they’re not really about anything—goodbye to the old monotheistic usurpation of this question—can we find answers that will allow us to maximize our own flourishing and—of equal if not greater importance—reasons to care about the flourishing of others?  (Caring about ourselves comes kind of naturally to us.) Philosophy has been addressing such questions and making significant, if invisible, progress with them almost ever since there’s been philosophy. - See more at: http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2014/interview-with-rebecca-goldstein-on-plato-at-the-googleplex-philosophy-for-the-public-and-everything/#sthash.Tqx4dB6V.dpuf

"Creating Freedom: The Lottery Of Birth" (2013): Not All Documentaries Are Created Equal, colon A Rope Of Sand

 "Creating Freedom: The Lottery Of Birth" (2013)
Directed by Raoul Martinez & Joshua van Praag

I downloaded this documentary after IMDb'ing Steven Pinker to see if he was in anything I hadn't already seen. I found Creating Freedom: The Lottery of Birth and saw that Daniel Dennett was also interviewed for the film. Too bad they're only featured for about three or four minutes in the doc just to say that humans are tribal and have evolved to trust their parents (and by extension, authority figures in general). Beyond that, there's little reason to give this documentary your time. Curiously, and despite the title, the real implications of the lottery of birth is scarcely explored. No, we do not choose the time, place, and to whom we are born. But the documentary makes only a passing reference to this rather obvious (though seldom recognized) fact before moving on to how none of this would matter if we were only able to overcome those nefarious social systems put in place to prevent us from being truly free... WAKE UP SHEEPLE!

If you already know a little about the human animal through the writings of smart people, this does not offer much in the way of anything new. The narration is a little over the top, and vaguely conspiratorial at times, what with references to shadowy Elites meeting in secret boardrooms trying to figure out why people are so hard to control in a democracy. The interviews with prominent scientists and other authors serve only to create a tenuous link between what we can reasonably say about what humans are actually like and the filmmaker's outlandish narrative about how society is organized to limit your freedom (as though there is such an attainable thing in the first place).

If you're interested in the brain, read something like Steven Pinker's How The Mind Works, or even something with a narrower scope like Michael Gazzaniga's Who's In Charge?. For the psychology of the self, check out Bruce Hood's The Self Illusion. And to learn more about how and why individuals slip easily into roles they otherwise would never imagine they could (Milgram experiment, the Stanford Prison Experiment, Abu Ghraib, etc), pick up Philip Zimbardo's The Lucifer Effect. These are just a few titles off the top of my head, and could probably name a few more if I put in the effort, but these books are a good place for the uninitiated to start as any.

Plane Drain

It has been a rough year for airplanes. More specifically, it's been a rough week. This torrent of tragedies has garnered about as much media attention as is allowable against the backdrop of the Israeli ground invasion in Gaza. That these accidents have all occurred in a startlingly short period of time is purely coincidental. I haven't checked, but I'm sure the interwebs is abuzz with various conspiracy theories.

But more importantly, the recent loss of life from airline crashes may skew the perception of how safe air travel really is. Looking at the numbers, deaths from plane crashes has been trending lower in the last decade or so. However, 2014 is proving to be an aberration:

(Chart from The Upshot)

It's easy to see from the graph that air travel related deaths peaked prior to the 1980s, but has been decreasing ever since. Planes have never been safer, despite the anomaly that this year is turning out to be. Regardless of the news coverage of the recent disasters, there is no reason to fear air travel. As a matter of comparison, an average of 2 500 Canadians per year died in motor vehicle traffic accidents between 2007-2011. This is not an insignificant number, especially when you consider that the airline fatalities represent global totals. I don't even want to look at the global number of car deaths per year.

In an ironic twist, some people choose to avoid air travel in response to hearing about plane crashes. They opt to drive instead, and thus increase their risk of injury or death. This is precisely what happened after 9/11 resulting in and esitmated 1 600 more traffic deaths in America than would normally be expected. Granted, this phenomenon was also bound up with the fear of terrorist attacks, but the worry was directed primarily at airline safety.

It is necessary to put the terrible news about the recent plane crashes in context and bring some perspective to the number of fatalities. Don't be afraid to fly. It's still much safer than driving. Whenever you get worked up about your next flight, try to remember how many planes take off and land all over the world every day without any trouble at all. Normal, mundane things that go as planned simply don't make the news. Oddly, neither do most motor vehicle accidents unless they're particularly large or dramatic, or if you live in a small town. And if more people choose to fly, that means more room on the roads for motorists -- which makes everyone safer!

What Does Money Mean Anyway: Alan Hull's "Pipedream" (1973)

Oh Anna, what does money mean anyway?
I've got more than all that
I can smile when it's a rainy day
I can see what's behind the big money game they all must play.

Turns out Pipedream by Alan Hull is a terrific album. And I probably never would have listened to it were it not for the rather odd cover art. As I was thumbing through many boxes of vinyl records (purchased as an entire lot with the intent to resell some potential hidden gems), the surreal image on the sleeve of a man smoking his own nose through a pipe like a dragon eating its own tail demanded that I spin the record contained therein.

I was not disappointed. Not that I had any expectations. I had never heard of Alan Hull before. After looking the album up on Wikipedia, I read that Pipedream was Hull's first solo album after the band Lindisfarne broke up. I don't know who they were, either. But as I dropped the needle, it became obvious that I had stumbled upon a darn good record -- and an original UK pressing on the Famous Charisma Label to boot!

There's some sturdy folk-rock songwriting on display here. Specifically, "Justanothersadsong", "Money Game", and "Country Gentleman's Wife" are standout tracks. The harmonica on "STD 0632" is reminiscent of Neil Young. By the time the album closes with "I Hate To See You Cry", Hull eschews tighter vocal arrangements and begins to throw his voice around all over the place with reckless abandon. It's a fitting closer, and the solo piano is a nice touch.

It's a solid record that I find myself spinning intermittently with some eagerness. What a cool find. Thanks, vinyl!

What Can Vampires Tell Us About Humanity? Some Pointless, Meandering Thoughts About The Film "Only Lovers Left Alive" (2013)

"Only Lovers Left Alive" (2013)

Written & Directed by Jim Jarmusch

It's easy to take the long view of history when you've been around for (and contributed to) so much of it. Being effectively immortal really helps put things in perspective. The problem is that it's too much perspective!

At least it is for a vampire named Adam (Tom Hiddleston), who has grown somewhat cynical about humanity over the centuries. Who can blame him? We haven't always reacted in the most tolerant and understanding way to individuals who have revolutionized the world through their ideas and discoveries. We are still squabbling over Darwin, as Adam painfully reminds us. Let's face it: He's got a point.

Eve (Tilda Swinton) is a little less pessimistic. She likes her iPhone and her extensive collection of classic books. So there's that.

Of all the things vampires have to worry about, the contamination of their food supply is pretty high on the list. This is precisely what humans have done to themselves with their various blood sicknesses, unwittingly putting vampires everywhere at risk. Kids these days! Also, there's that other thing we're doing that is tantamount to poisoning the planet... so, like, maybe it's a metaphor?

Perhaps the lives of humans are so nasty, brutish, and short that we collectively fail to gain the wisdom necessary to become good stewards of the planet. We tend to pull ourselves back from brink just in the nick of time. It appears that Vampire Adam & Eve have been around long enough to figure this out, but are content to keep to themselves while they let us go about our self-destructive business. The irony is that our fate is also theirs. 

There's a larger point in all of this, but I have failed to make it. This movie also has some good music.

___

"The Future Of The Mind" by Michio Kaku

This ain't your typical brain book. Writing from a physicist's perspective, Kaku focuses on the intersect between technology and neuroscience. From magnetic resonance imaging to electroencephalography, the study of the brain has undergone a revolution in recent decades as new tools have allowed scientists to probe the brain with increasing resolution and insight. Much of this technological advancement stems from our understanding of the physics of magnetic and electrical fields and applying them in novel ways to help answer the age old question of how the mind works.

But this is only the beginning of the story. When we look at the current state of art with respect to the study of the brain, a fascinating picture of the future starts to emerge. Fortunately, I possess just enough familiarity with Star Trek to get references to tricorders (cell phones with MRI capabilities) and the Borg (nanoprobe implants in the brain to enable telepathic communication). Scientists have already been able to read minds by creating a mental dictionary by matching up signals emanating from the brain when subjects focus on particular letters. This effectively allows someone to type using only the power of the mind. Needless to say, this is pretty wild. And we're just scratching the surface here...

Again taking a physicist's viewpoint, Kaku outlines a definition of consciousness that assigns "levels" which correspond to how an organism models the world according to a set of feedback loops and parameters. This is called the "space-time theory of consciousness" and it is certainly a handy way to think about the various ways in which animals are conscious. The "levels" in the theory roughly line up with stages in the evolution of the brain, from the reptilian, to the mammalian, to human. In increasing complexity, the brains of animals create models of the world in order to achieve their goals starting with simple sensory input about the environment (reptilian), then expanding their model to incorporate their relationship to others (mammalian), and ultimately including the parameter of time by evaluating the past to make predictions and plan for the future (human). Hence, the "space-time theory of consciousness".

Once thought impenetrable to scientific inquiry, the problem of consciousness is becoming less opaque by the day. With the recent news that scientists may have found the proverbial 'on/off' switch for consciousness, our lofty philosophical notions of the special place occupied by human awareness are slowly coming back down to earth. Granted, there's still a long way to go in fully comprehending how all the complexity of human mind emerges out of the traffic of the brain, but real progress is (encouragingly) being made. This is a good thing. I, for one, am perpetually enthralled and amazed by the capacity for the brain to know itself.

Currently Reading: "Ship Of Theseus" by V. M. Straka (?)

I happened upon this novel while perusing a stuffy used book store and purchased it on a whim. How can one resist such a neat old-timey cover? I had never heard of the author, nor did I bother to crack it open before deciding to buy it. Had I done so, I may have put it back on the shelf because it seems that at least two people (judging from the handwriting) have apparently been carrying on a conversation written in the margins of the book. Who does that!? And who would want to buy a book that's all marked up?

As it happens, this conversation has revealed a whole new dimension to the story beyond the novel itself. There is some dispute over the authorship of Ship Of Theseus that may or may not involve the translator F. X. Caldeira. The intrigue doesn't stop there, however, and I'm only just getting started. The mystery surrounding the amnesic character known (so far) only as "S." has certainly piqued my interest. There also seems to be some academic competition and skulduggery going on, which has yet to be fully revealed to this reader. It's all kind of 'meta' with a story taking form on top of a story, and the two are inextricably linked.

I have no idea where all of this is heading, and I will resist seeking out any answers online before I have finished examining the book and its extraneously inserted contents. Further down the Straka rabbit hole I go... 

Currently Reading: "23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism" by Ha-Joon Chang

I need only spend a few short minutes on the interwebs before I find another interesting book to add to my To Read list. Some how, some time ago, I stumbled upon some article on some website expressing something about how some people have become skeptical of free market capitalism in the wake of the recent financial crisis for some reason. This article mentioned the book 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang. Predictably, I immediately opened up a new tab and went to Amazon to add the title to my wishlist. 

Continuing on the theme of economics, free market capitalism, and globalization, the time was right to pick up this book. So far, it has exceeded my expectations. Each myth-busting chapter is setup in such away that the assumptions and assertions of free market capitalists are succinctly (though not necessarily unfairly, in my opinion) presented, and then rather persuasively debunked using clear and engaging language and some real world examples.

The book deals with such neo-liberal ideological claims as:

• Running a company in the interest of increasing shareholder value incentivizes the company to perform well. (It doesn't, and it often results in short-term profit seeking measures that hurt a company's long term growth and lifespan.)
• Markets need to be free and they cannot be efficient and profitable where there is government interference. (There's no such thing as a 'free market', which is a primarily a political definition to begin with, and even the most liberal markets only appear that way because we take much of the 'ambient noise' of established rules for granted. This includes regulation surrounding environmental protection and child labour laws.)
• We live in a post-industrial age where manufacturing is relegated to less advanced economies such as China because there is simply less demand for manufactured goods in the West. (While jobs in manufacturing have certainly declined in places like the United States and Britain, this is mainly an artifact of greater productivity and the lower costs of manufacturing relative to the service industry, as well as outsourcing and other processes of de-industrialization.)

Perhaps my favourite example so far deals with the assumption that people are primarily motivated by self-interest and that social harmony and prosperity emerges from selfish individuals thinking only of themselves. These ideas are, at best, naive and misleading, and at worst they seek to bring out the worst in people. What motivates individuals is far more complex than objectivist Ayn Rand fanboys would care to admit, or even acknowledge. People do things for all sorts of other reasons than just money. We have a sense of duty to family, community, and country. We like to feel as though we contribute. We like to help and volunteer our time and resources. Of course, the most cynical of ideologues would say these 'reasons' ultimately boil down to self-seeking behaviour masquerading as some degree of altruism or selflessness.

Ha-Joon Chang goes on to explain how if people really were entirely self-seeking in their behaviour, the project that is human Civilization would simply grind to a halt. There would be so many cheaters out there that we'd spend all of our time trying to catch them and prevent ourselves from being cheated. Taking that old bumper sticker slogan from Adam Smith that "it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest" to its next logical step would result in a world that is not only unworkable, but also downright disturbing. 

23 Things... is the perfect little book to serve as a potent antidote for those who have imbibed the poison kool-aid that is neo-liberal economic ideology. The ideas that became fashionable in the 1980s have produced legions of academic and political followers that continue to shape our economic lives. Books like Ha-Joon Chang's should help to break the fever, though it is often the case that well reasoned arguments based on evidence are scarcely effective in the face of obstinate ideology. In any case, I have another book to add to my wishlist: Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism by one Ha-Joon Chang.

It is also quickly becoming an inescapable fact that I will have to read Thomas Piketty's Capital In The Twenty-First Century.

Currently Reading: "The End Of The Free Market" by Ian Bremmer

Advocates of pure capitalism insist that the "invisible hand" must be allowed to work its magic - and that any effort by government to guide its actions can only burden markets and distort their natural operation. Others argue that [Adam Smith's] writings on morality and natural empathy suggest that Smith would reject much of the libertarian dogma justified in his name. In any case, pure capitalism has never existed in the real world, and only the most ideologically committed of economic anarchists believe that it should. Markets can't meet every human need, fear and greed ensure that markets will never work perfectly, and no market participant enjoys perfect information.

The End Of The Free Market by Ian Bremmer

Those last points about why pure capitalism will never be able to operate perfectly in the real world (i.e. a giant ball of dirt floating in space inhabited by psychotic apes) seems so obvious as to be scarcely worth singling out for emphasis. Ignoring seemingly basic facts about reality is typical of extreme economic ideologies, whether they be utopian visions of anarcho-capitalism or communism. But hey, a man can dream, right?

With The Collapse Of Globalism still fresh in my memory, Bremmer's book is helping me understand the mechanics and goals of the kind of state capitalism that is practiced by some nations, particularly China. After the financial crisis of 2008/2009, we saw the rise of state intervention into the more 'free' economies of the West. This prompted some who were skeptical of global free markets to further question the ability of laissez-faire capitalism to provide sustainable growth, while bolstering their own position that the state should play a role in guiding economies to meet certain public and political goals.

I likes me some Ian Bremmer, and his G-Zero book greatly influenced how I've come to view international politics and the power of nation states to act and lead on the global stage. The End Of The Free Market is proving to be an equally enjoyable and informative read.

Currently Reading: "The Collapse Of Globalism" by John Ralston Saul

Global economics came to be presented as a tool to weaken government, discourage taxes both on corporations and on the top bracket of earners, force deregulation and, curiously enough, to strengthen private sector technocracies in large corporations to the disadvantage of real capitalists and entrepreneurs. That predilection for the large over the small meant that the Globalization movement would actively and quite naturally favour the limitation of real competition.

The Collapse Of Globalism and the Reinvention of the World, by John Ralston Saul

So I purchased this book probably seven or eight years ago and it has been sitting on my shelf unread ever since. That is, until I picked it up last night (after finishing that new Zodiac book). Why did I buy it? I didn't know who John Ralston Saul was then, and I sure don't know who he is now. I think I just liked the title and cover, and it looked like something a smart person should probably read. 

In all honesty, I don't feel I'm quite smart enough to be reading this now, let alone when it was first released. But I'm getting the gist here and there, about how economists and governments bought into the ideology and promise of globalized free markets and that accepting economics as the dominate force in shaping Civilization became viewed as an inevitability. 

I'm right there with you, Saul.

Apparently this book was reissued in 2009 after the financial crises with a new epilogue. I have the hardcover first edition, so I get to read it for the first time in the context of a prediction that appears to have later been vindicated.

For the record, I also have an unread copy of John Ralston Saul's "A Fair Country" -- it, too, has a rather attractive cover:

Who Is The Most Dangerous Animal Of All?

Well, I'm (almost) convinced.

The evidence presented in The Most Dangerous Animal Of All by Gary L. Stewart Mustafa is fairly compelling. Admittedly, I'm not an expert in all things Zodiac but I do have a little more than a passing interest in the case. I've read both of Robert Graysmith's books about the Zodiac killer, which made a rigorous and persuasive case for Arthur Leigh Allen. The David Fincher film based on the books is one of my favourite movies.

Despite all the circumstantial evidence that points to Arthur Leigh Allen, his handwriting samples never matched the Zodiac letters. More crucially, when a DNA comparison was made between Allen and a sample from the stamp of a Zodiac letter, they did not match. This leads to speculation as to whether the Zodiac even licked his own stamps, or that perhaps he wasn't acting alone in the killings. Rationalizations aside, the best evidence here points to excluding Allen as a suspect.

Of course, there have been many suspects over the years. Yet the case remains unsolved.

Until now!?

Harper Collins did a great job of keeping this book under wraps. Given the sensitive and extraordinary nature of the claims, this cautious approach was understandable. I'm surprised they were actually able to keep it secret. The cynic in me is also aware that the allure of the big reveal and making a big surprise splash in the press is a great way to move paper.

When I first saw the cover design online, I was immediately struck by the resemblance between the mugshot photo and the police sketch of the Zodiac. I was working from memory alone, as the book cover wasn't juxtaposed against the sketch in the particular article I was reading. From a purely aesthetic perspective, I liked how the hard cover edition of the book had a translucent red dust jacket with the mugshot of Earl Van Best Jr. visible underneath the titles and credits. Nice touch. (Like a handwriting comparison?)

In one of the photo sections of the book, the police sketch is overlayed on top of the photo of Van. It's one thing to do a quick side by side comparison by eye, but these two images line up very closely. But this is by no means conclusive, obviously. After all, didn't every square look like this in the 60s?

Though I won't list them here, there are many interesting aspects of Van's life story that fit in with what we 'know' about the Zodiac. As for the key evidence presented in the book, here are the main points worth mentioning:

• Van's fingerprints show a scar that matches the bloody prints left behind at the Paul Stine murder scene
• The name Earl Van Best Jr. can be found in the ciphers that Zodiac claimed that, if solved, would reveal his identity
• Based on samples of Van's handwriting from his marriage certificates, it is "virtually certain" that he is the same person who wrote the Zodiac letters

A longer list can be found here, but for me, the last point is the most important one. You don't have to be an expert to notice the similarities between Van's handwriting and the Zodiac's. But when you have a forensic analyst that is willing to stake their reputation on being "virtually certain" that Earl Van Best Jr. wrote the Zodiac letters, then you've really got something.

But what about the DNA? Not that it was particularly difficult, but I avoided stumbling across any spoilers about The Most Dangerous Animal Of All. I knew about the partial DNA profile in the Zodiac case, and I knew this would be a crucial point of evidence in legitimizing Gary Stewart's claims. But as I was nearing the end of the book, it became clear that a DNA comparison would not be a part of this narrative. 

Stewart had submitted his DNA to the SFPD, but his profile has yet to be compared to the Zodiac sample from the stamp. The author speculates that since his biological mother later went on to marry a homicide detective who was once involved in the Zodiac case, the police may be sitting on the test in order to avoid possible embarrassment. There are some strange coincidences going on here, and it's a real shame that a full DNA analysis wasn't done before this book was published.

In the end, there's a lot to go on, and it is important to remain a little skeptical. The DNA thing is kind of tough to get past. But this may be worked out in the near future, and hopefully this book gets the ball rolling on that. The Zodiac has been silent for 40 years, so I'm willing to wait a little longer for the conclusion to this story.

... "I need to know who he is."