205-228

What an interesting vote! Economic libertarians voting against government protection of economic libertarianism. (Democrats supported the bill 140-95; Republicans opposed it 65-133.) Call these guys what you will; they are not, for the most part, hypocrites. What I will call one of them, namely Darrell Issa (R-CA), is astonishingly poorly prioritized, because he proclaimed his opposition to the bailout would amount to "a coffin on top of Ronald Reagan's coffin (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/30/business/30bailout.html)." Aside from this just being a rhetorically weird thing to say, it's not comforting to know that our representatives place some early-eighties economic project ahead of our, umm, economy.

There are lots of reasons to oppose this bailout, the main one being that without it our financial system can finally take its 30-years-of-Reaganomics medicine. The shenaniganical argument that cutting taxes for rich people magically makes everybody money is finally getting its day in court. I hope enough of our representatives voted against the bailout because it's no alternative to smart regulation of the markets and an economy grown by the development and sale of something truly useful, like green technology, as opposed to the bubble train that's kept us afloat this long.

Sorry All Over The Place

Part 1

David Foster Wallace has killed himself. No other writer I know of linked academic curiosity and soul-searching so well. DFW made it clear that taking apart a concept - even a relatively harmless one like grammar, but including more profound ones like identity, life-purpose, and math - and probing its intellectual depths is not only worthwhile but possible, for laymen. You don't need to be a genius (like DFW) to shove something down your brain's gullet and get it clicking on levels you didn't even previously know were there. In this way his genius mirrors Einstein's: a genius that has that forehead-smacking of course-ness about it. Like the answer was hanging there in front of all of us the whole time. DFW was a map leading to understanding in any pursuit under the Sun, and now that map has been erased.

Part 2

I have just done the hardest thing in the world for me to do, and that's to hurt someone's feelings. I feel ripped apart on so many levels right now, and if I try to heal myself on one it hurts even more on the others. Not even writing about it helps, but thanks for reading.

From Chortles To Guffaws

It occurs to me that two of my favorite Simpsons quotes are funny for the same reason.

The context of the first one I forget, but Marge pleads with Bart to try to do something, to which he responds "I can't promise I'll try - but I'll try to try."

The second one, I think, is from the episode Bart the Mother. Bart needs to learn how to care for an unborn bird whose mother he killed, so he watches a Troy McClure documentary. When introducing himself, Troy says, "You might remember me from such nature films as Earwigs Eew! and Man Versus Nature: The Road to Victory." It's the latter fictional documentary that applies here.

Both jokes poke fun at bits of indisputable-if-hackneyed wisdom: like Yoda said, do or do not; there is no try. Bart's line flies in the face of every high school football coach's motivational creed, under which trying itself is unacceptable.

Similarly, advocates for holistic medicine, organic groceries, animal cruelty prevention, etc., will insist, correctly, that humans are a part of nature; we cannot do without it and harmony with it is desirable. Troy's documentary is therefore ridiculous.

As someone who tries with very limited success to engender a laugh or two at most any social gathering, I have precious little understanding of what technically makes something funny. But I think I can break down these examples in this way: they imply a person or group of people who completely lack the basic pieces of wisdom that I discussed above. Not that these pearls are indisputable fact, but that anyone contradicting them needs to take care to carefully justify his statement, lest he look oafish, like Bart and Troy.

Has anyone already classified all jokes in such a way? Or, preferably, in a more concise way? Am I re-inventing the wheel and, therefore, to be made the subject of fun?