The deep cause is my limited tolerance for online activity. I can only sit in front of a computer for so long in a given day before my mind starts going buggy.

Consider the analogy of a balloon. You fill the balloon with too much water, and it is going to break.

For this reason, an application like Facebook, which generates a lot of water, takes up space in my cyber-balloon.

I know that this sounds vapid and a bad use of my time. However, lest you judge too quickly, the vast majority of my facebook time is spent playing chess. And, at this point in my life, chess is important.

The Borders of Things will remain here, floating, perhaps to be taken up someday again when I actually feel as if I want to contribute to things. And it is a valuable record, for myself, of the first three and a half years of my life in Seattle.

I love you all. Really.

Happy New Year.

But then he read this little article on "sweeping" new arguments on the evolution of art, and he realized that, in fact, the literary critics have been saying these things for, well, millennia. Aristotle said that imitation was innate; Nietzsche said that art was communal, festive (and any literary critic worth her weight in salt will tell you that the modern "great individual artist" myth is a recent invention); and didn't folks like Melanie Klein and Jacques Lacan have a lot to say about the role of the mother?

Maybe the last point is a bit of a stretch. But give us our brief moment in the sun: it's fun to see the sciences having to play catch-up for once.

Depending on who you talk to, this bill would have cost anywhere from $150-$375 per household per year in sales taxes, and an extra $80 per $10,000 of car value in car tabs annually. Opponents said it was too expensive for too little, that it would take forever to pay off, that it wasn't radical enough to save the environment (Sierra Club and others), that it wouldn't ultimately solve congestion problems.

At the end of the day, I don't know exactly why this bill didn't pass. We'll see. And I am willing to admit that it might not have been the best possible transit plan. But that is exactly what drives me absolutely crazy about Seattle politics: we are simultaneously too idealistic and insufficiently willing to actually sacrifice. "I am only going to vote on a transit plan that solves everyone's problems and doesn't cost me any money." And don't even think about expecting everyone to drive less, regardless of the cost of gas.

This is probably an example of Kant's point that while we know that not everyone will agree with our claim that something is beautiful, we act as if it elicited universal assent. That is, I say that you SHOULD fine JN's music beautiful, even if I know that you will not, and that my reasons for saying so are subjective.

But if you don't, then I say you are missing out.

Don't dress up because you have to--do it because you want to.

But the article is still worth reading, and I think one paragraph in particular shows both the strength of SZ's criticism and its weakness:

“Culture” has commonly become the name for all those things we practice without really taking seriously. And this is why we dismiss fundamentalist believers as “barbarians” with a “medieval mindset”: they dare to take their beliefs seriously. Today, we seem to see the ultimate threat to culture as coming from those who live immediately in their culture, who lack the proper distance.

If "proper distance"=disbelief is one dialectical pole and fundamentalism as unadulterated belief is the other (the one Zizek seems to consistently defend, as long as it is within the proper Stalinist-Marxist framework), it strikes me that a synthesis is possible. Namely, the attitude that one takes one's beliefs so seriously that one is willing to question them. Every major religion, doctrine, or ideology has this crucial strain, often uncomfortably cohabiting with both the liberal pluralists and the fundamentalist dogmatists. The study of theology, for instance, always begins from a position of belief but is willing to put that belief into question so that one may attain a more complete, compelling, or authentic understanding. Slavoj may find that suspect, the slippery slope toward fast capitalism, but I believe it is the hard center worth pursuing.

But almost entirely. Because while we may overapply the term "hate speech," it is clear to me that such a category has merit. Is it too broad to say, for instance, that the nooses hung on a schoolyard tree in Jena, LA were a type of speech act?

But that is the exception, not the rule. Anderson's point is that we are confusing the two.

The article does a fairly good job of discussing that fine line between artistic products and art as a discipline. You rarely hear some one say "yes, in one respect, your four year old could make that canvas. But to reduce a Pollock to finger painting is to miss the point that your four-year-old actually gets." At the same time, she doesn't fully explain why the "way of seeing and thinking" that is art demands a certain form of coaching, ie, discipline. The reason no one questions Mozart's youthful compositions is that Mozart simply could not produce a symphony without undergoing the necessary training. In other words, a symphony as such requires a tradition, while paint on a canvas, as such, does not necessarily. Much more, obviously, could be said in this vein.

Marla's case also raises the distinction between potential and actual talent. Some people are born with an innate understanding and sensitivity to color and line. But that ability will only remain innate until it is cultivated by technique.

Again, lots to talk about. Thoughts, dear friends?