Still here.

Yes, still here. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving Week, then returned home so that I could immediately fly out to Dallas on business. But now I’m back and hope to begin posting semi-regularly again.

Future Schlock

Look at the headlines on any given day, and it’s possible to make a convincing case that yes, we’re on the cusp of some major seismic shift in world history. There’s the clash of civilizations, the culture wars, the battle for the climate, and the war on this/that/the other. Spengler’s thesis, to the extent that I understand it so far, which is only halfway through an abridged version of his seminal work, is that great cultures go through a nearly deterministic arc from youth to dotage. This process of maturation, culminating in eventual death, is reflected in the form-language of the culture (form-language has the curious sound of a portmanteau forced by translation from the original German).

This language, made manifest in the art produced, evolves over time and so it’s incorrect to artificially separate architecture, for example, into distinct linear periods. Architecture, according to Spengler, represents a continuum of development. In the differences between an early church and a Gothic cathedral, the historian can trace the changes between a culture in the springtime of tentative youth and the self-assured autumn of late middle-age.

Frankly, I don’t know enough about architecture to know whether he’s full of it. I’m inclined to believe he is not, but I also know that making vague predictions in the far future is a fairly safe occupation, especially if the news is generally on the bad side. In any event, his theory of history as a study of an organic whole rather than a series of discrete events is interesting, as are his theories of rising/falling civilizations. It’s not much of a stretch to think that things are on the brink of something…but aren’t they usually? Couldn’t it be schematically boiled down to:

“Something is about to happen. Maybe not today, but tomorrow – and then, everything will start being different.”

Well, duh.  Now if something happen, my future disciples will say that I was right, and if nothing bad happens soon, the naysayers need only be told that we haven’t waited long enough. Bonus points if I point to a ‘general state of flux that will last midway into the next century’.

And as long as I’m engaged a free-form essay about, er, the future, let me go on record as believing that the bright-and-shiny transhumanist future with a Singularity and all the rest of that Vernor Vinge/Ray Kurzweil nonsense is an unrealistic fever-dream after a Star Trek wank-a-thon. There, I said it. When we can build bug-free spreadsheets, I’ll start worrying about machines taking over our neo-Tokyo future. In meanwhile, peruse the RISKS digest if you need any further evidence. Save my entire consciousness to a hard drive and carry it around? Sounds lovely, but no thanks.

I’m not worried about computers approaching (or surpassing) the functioning power of a human brain. In the first place, the human brain != CPU, so I think that the analogies are specious at best. In the second place, the blue-skying of the future sounds a lot like the wistful daydreams of a generation that is about to move into retirement age and the Great Beyond that follows. We’ll live forever as electronic patterns and transcend all limits imposed by this sub-par meat bag we have to inhabit. Gnosticism never really goes out of style – it just rebrands itself.

Mind you, I say this as someone who has spent the better part of his life working with technology. I know what it can do, and I know what it’s supposed to do, but I also know how often people (and organizations) tend to fetishize it for its own sake. Then the technology doesn’t look so good, and we can’t figure out where we’ve gone wrong. The solution must be better technology. Rinse, repeat.

As it happens, I think the future is a little more accurately described by Josh Ellis’ “Grim Meathook Future“, which I ought to warn you is not necessarily family-friendly reading. This is a miniature version – the longer, later edition of the essay has been unfortunately lost.

I guess I’m done for now. I’ll probably come back and tweak this, so don’t go nuts if it changes. Don’t get the wrong idea, by the way, about Spengler. I’m still reading and enjoying it, and I will have to reckon with his thesis after I’ve finished it.

Back from Botswana and a return to Regensburg

I finished up Tears of the Giraffe last night, and thoroughly enjoyed it. We’re on a minor McCall Smith roll here, as we’ve got an audio version of The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs checked out from the library for a road trip we’re about to make. I can concentrate a little more fully now on Decline of the West. I think a mélange of Prof. Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld and Oswald Spengler will do just fine for vacation reading.

Umami, how I love you.

As mentioned in a prior post, we recently paid a visit to a favorite Japanese restaurant and I’ve been possessed with the idea of making miso soup at home ever since. Some are no doubt laughing at this notion – it’s not exactly a complex dish. Your biggest difficulty might be in locating a couple of the ingredients, but after that, it’s just about Pop Tart simple.

As it happened, Google Maps alerted me to an Asian grocery store just down the road from my office, so I swung in on the way home. It was tiny, Korean, and jam-packed with things whose purpose I could only hazily guess.

My shopping list: miso paste, dashi, silken tofu and, if possible, one of a couple different types of seaweed. I found everything I needed, but chickened out on the seaweed. In lieu, I hit a regular store on the way home for green onions and some shiitake mushrooms.

Dashi is instant soup stock made of kelp and bonito flakes. I thought it smelled lovely, but E. pronounced it a bit funky. Once in the water, though, it mellowed quite a bit.

The rest of the recipe follows – for the most part, I used this one, but had glommed on the seaweed parts from another one that I can’t find at the moment.

• 3 cups of water
• 1 tsp. dashi (I used Ajinomoto Hon Dashi)
• 1 ½ tb. miso paste (I bought the lighter, “shiro” variety – look in the refrigerated section)
• 1 tb. soy sauce
• 1 ½ oz. silken tofu, cut into little squares. Or more. Or less. Up to you.
• thinly sliced mushroom to taste
• thinly sliced green onion to garnish

Add the dashi to the water and bring it to a boil, then back it down to a simmer. Add the mushrooms and let them go for 2-3 minutes. In a small bowl, mix the miso paste and soy sauce. When the mushrooms are done, kill the heat and let the soup cool for a wee bit. The miso paste is alive, and if the water is too hot, the culture will die. Other recipes (including the one on the miso package itself) said to add it to the boiling water, so your mileage may vary. Drop in the miso/soy sauce mixture and stir gently until it’s thoroughly mixed. Add the tofu, then serve. Yields 2 decent-sized adult portions and several small kid-sized “we want to try it” bowlfuls. For the record, everyone loved it, so we’ll probably double this recipe next time.

The end result was wonderful, and easily on par with what we’ve had in restaurants. It was agreed that we have a keeper, and it ought to come in handy for future Friday night meals. It’s nutritious as can be, and cheap to boot.

A wee peek…

…at Spengler, mit hyperlinks.

This – the inward and outward fulfillment, the finality, that awaits every living Culture – is the purport of all the historic “declines,” amongst them that decline of the Classical which we know so well and fully, and another decline, entirely comparable to it in course and duration, which will occupy the first centuries of the coming millennium but is heralded already and sensible in and around us today – the decline of the West. Every Culture passes through the age-phases of the individual man. Each has its childhood, youth, manhood and old age. It is a young and trembling soul, heavy with misgivings, that reveals itself in the morning of Romanesque and Gothic. It fills the Faustian landscape from the Provence of the troubadours to the Hildeshiem cathedral of Bishop Bernward. The spring wind blows over it. Childhood speaks to us also – and in the same tones – out of early-Homeric Doric, out of early-Christian (which is really early-Arabian) art and out of the works of the works of the Old Kingdom in Egypt that began with the Fourth Dynasty. A mythic world-consciousness is fighting like a harassed debtor against all the dark and daemonic within itself and in Nature, while slowly ripening itself for the pure, day-bright expression of the existence that it will at last achieve and know. The more nearly a Culture approaches the noon culmination of its being, the more virile, austere, controlled, intense the form-language it has secured for itself, the more assured its sense of its own power, the clearer its lineaments. We find every individual trait of expression deliberate, strict, measured, marvelous in its ease and self-confidence, and everywhere at moments, the coming fulfillment suggested. Still later, tender to the point of fragility, fragrant with the sweetness of late October days, come the Cnidian Aphrodite and the Hall of the Maidens in the Erectheum, the arabesques on Saracen horseshoe-arches, the Zwinger of Dresden, Watteau, Mozart. At last, in the grey dawn of Civilization, the fire in the soul dies down. The dwindling powers rise to one more, half-successful, effort of creation, and produce the Classicism that is common to all dying Cultures. The soul thinks once again, and in Romanticism looks back piteously to its childhood; then finally, weary, reluctant, cold, it loses its desire to be, and, as in Imperial Rome, wishes itself out of the overlong daylight and back in the darkness of proto-mysticism, in the womb of the mother, in the grave.

Spengler, Lewis, Joe-of-the-wine, and katsudon

We paid a visit to our old haunts this past weekend, spending one day with each set of grandparents and another among dear friends on the occasion of a baptism. Good food was had by all concerned, and the children were most unwilling to return home. We comforted them, slightly, by reassuring them that we’d be hitting the road one week hence, as we’re visiting more family in the MD/DC area for Thanksgiving week.

The trip allowed me to visit a favorite used-bookstore, which was good, since they appear to be closing at year’s end. I scoured the shelves looking for must-haves, but only came away with two: an abridged one-volume version of Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West and a C.S. Lewis collection which includes Surprised by Joy, The Four Loves, The Business of Heaven and one more work whose name escapes me at the moment. I’ve started Decline of The West, though it’s slow going. On the one hand, it’s fairly easy to read about the signs of civilization’s collapse, then scan the headlines and start wondering when the new dark ages will begin. On the other hand, there’s all that Halloween candy to finish off, so let’s keep things in proper perspective, shall we?

Parts of it remind me of Jacques Barzun’s From Dawn To Decadence, which also happens to be in the news a little bit this week because Barzun himself turns 100 shortly, and the old guy just keeps on cranking. Barzun is hopeful, I think. It’s convenient to say that Spengler is not, but he was writing in the dusk of pre-World War II Europe, so let’s cut the guy from slack. In any case, it’s chewy stuff and not to be seriously confused with the work of the other Spengler, who writes for the Asia Times Online.

We also hit Trader Joe’s, that we might stock up on cheap red wine and other comestibles. It feels like a guilty pleasure, but really, it’s not. Much of the food there is dirt cheap and darn good.

Lastly, I hasten to add that E. and I managed a date night (woohoo!), which found us at a tiny Japanese restaurant that must only be patronized by regulars. We haven’t been in there in months and the server still recognized us immediately, as she has on prior visits. If you’re in the mood for katsudon, let me know and I’ll think about telling you where it is.

Books, Greek

Wrapped up Mansfield Park the other night. I found it easy to tell that it was written later in her career – the whole tone seemed a little darker, the wit sharper. I’ve detoured into detoured into Tears of the Giraffe, which is the second book in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith. After this, it’ll be….well…I’m not exactly sure what yet. It’ll be something.

In the interim, we’re barreling back to Atlanta for the weekend in order that we might attend a baptism. The week after that finds us venturing to Maryland for Thanksgiving week. Beyond that, everything turns to haze. I’ve been peeking at craigslist to see what used aquarium setups are going for, and it looks like that might be the ticket for the paludarium project. Many folks are dumping loads of gear for pennies on the dollar.

Lastly, here’s a nifty resource I came across the other: Elpenor’s Home of the Greek World, which has every needful thing for a would-be Hellenist.

Visitors, garage doors, paludaria and Spenser.

Hwæt! Our weekend was full. A dear friend of my wife’s came to visit us over the weekend. Her eldest and ours were boon companions back in Atlanta, so the boys spend most of the weekend tearing around the house and yard while the rest of us just sort of steered clear. They left early Sunday morning, which was a bummer.

For my part, I spent nearly all of Sunday replacing our garage door opener. This is something I’d sort of tackled at our old house, though in that case I was only swapping the motor out. This was, essentially, a full replacement of everything and I’m happy to report that I only made two trips to the hardware store medias in res. And I managed to avoid major injury or further damage to other parts of the house. As a bonus, the whole thing works. Door goes up and down, lights come on, etc. I may go back and re-hang the thing from the ceiling a little more neatly, or perhaps I won’t. We’ll see.

Working all day in the garage also pointed out the need of a bona fide workbench with some decent lighting. The alternative is to continue to do without, which means sawing things on a step-stool while I hold them in place with my foot. Not good.

Starting to look again at paludaria, and am thinking that this might be an interesting wintertime project. What is a paludarium? Something between an aquarium and a terrarium: water for fish, land for plants. A paludarium seeks to re-create the biotope found at the margin of a river or pond, and they’re commonly used to provide habitats for frogs and whatnot. The land and water sections are segregated, and it’s this bit that’s causing me a little confusion. How to provide drainage for plants in the ‘dry’ section? Without it, we stand a very good chance of turning the dry land into a bog. Nasty. Maybe you just have to be very judicious with watering, but I don’t see any way around it beyond drilling the bottom of the tank and putting a catch pan under there. Stick to air-plants and moss? Bah. More research is clearly needed.

Ah, and before November gets too far underway, let’s hear from Spenser.

Next was November, he full grosse and fat,
As fed with lard, and that right well might seeme;
For, he had been a fatting hogs of late,
That yet his browes with sweat, did reek and steem,
And yet the season was full sharp and breem;
In planting eeke he took no small delight:
Whereon he rode, not easie was to deeme;
For it a dreadfull Centaure was in sight,
The seed of Saturne, and faire Nais, Chiron hight…

Feast of All Souls

Lord, support us all the day long,
until the shadows lengthen,
and the evening comes,
and the busy world is hushed,
and the fever of life is over,
and our work is done.

Then in your mercy,
grant us a safe lodging,
and a holy rest,
and peace at the last.

John Henry Cardinal Newman

Today the Church remembers all who have passed before us.

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. Requiescant in pace. Amen.

From Mesopotamia to Google

Having the greatest library in the world means very little if you can’t find what you’re looking for in it. In “Future Reading“, Anthony Grafton describes the history and future of the digitized book, the endless struggle to inded things appropriately, and the idea of a grand universal library containing everything ever written. via