"You're an inanimate fucking object!"

All quotations are from the Allan Bloom translation (Basic Books, 1979).

Realizing that I'm somehow still deeply drawn to the Millenium Falcon whenever I see it, I've tried to figure out what it is that's so interesting about it. First, of course, there is the nostalgia. The toy Falcon I played with as a kid was the biggest toy in the family for the longest time, and while it was the source of much dispute between my brother and I, it also connected us to the mythical universe of Star Wars as a whole. I was fascinated by the toy's detail, especially the many compartments, but also by simple things like the clips allowing you to attach the smuggling floor-panel to the ceiling. I can still smell the Kenner plastic. I loved zooming around the yard with it, pressing the button on the side and having the two D-batteries drone out the electric whine of the engines.

"Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy! Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star, or bounce too close to a supernova and that'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?"

Another part of the Falcon's mystique has got to be its sheer aesthetic appeal: the imperfect symmetry, the combination of round and jagged shapes, the balance of weight and sleekness, the interior passageways and turrets, the blue jets, etc. Even though it's technically just a YT-1300 light freighter, it's the only one we see in the Star Wars films, and it's clearly designed to stand out from any other ship.

"It's the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs. I've outrun Imperial starships. Not the local bulk cruisers mind you, I'm talking about the big Corellian ships now. She's fast enough for you old man."

This raises the third point of why the Falcon is so gripping. Rather than being a mere spaceship, a means of getting characters to their destinations or of providing action sequences, there's a sense in which the Falcon is an actual character in the Star Wars narrative, or at the very least a complex plot device. It has its own deviant personality, having been modified by Han Solo to suit his illicit activities as a smuggler. It's maternal, harboring the crew in its deck during a search, introducing Luke to the adventures of the universe beyond Tatooine, and rescuing him after his first confrontation with his Dark Father.

I'm also relying on Kubrick's own descriptions of the closing 'star-child' sequence as representing humans "returning to Earth prepared for the next leap forward in man's evolutionary destiny" (Thomas Allen Nelson, Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist's Maze. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982, 130). This language echoes that of Kant in the Anthropology, where he investigates the character of humans so as to know in advance about their destiny.

Of course, I'll need to watch the film again, and perhaps re-read the book as well. It's been far too long for me to write anything on this without the material fresh in my mind. However, I hope this isn't too clichéd a connection, and that I'm doing more here than the equivalent of pointing out that Pink Floyd's "Echoes" lines up with the last 23 minutes of Kubrick's film (though even this, and the other associations the film evokes for viewers, fascinates me).

I must admit, I was initially rather disappointed to hear the story. I've been aware of the print-news crisis for quite some time now, and have tended to (conservatively) frame it as the negative result of the dominance of television 'news' or blogs, or of Americans' short attention spans and laziness in general. I held pretty fast to the notion that newspapers are our only accepted (read: credentialed), viable option for critical public discourse. After all, don't all blog posts eventually trace back to some actual reporter's story? Further, how do we know which bloggers to trust?

While I still view this whole development as a pretty momentous historical shift, after hearing of the new online implementations at the PI, I'm excited to see what arises out the situation. Apparently the PI is getting rid of the model of specialized reporters and editors, instead training everyone to do some combination of tasks. More interestingly, though, they're making use of Seattle's wired population (and I don't necessarily just mean the amazing coffee here) to source certain aspects of the news. This means finding and vetting blogs and linking to them for crucial information.

To me, this last point highlights at least two important elements of the new system. First, there is a potential shift from authority to critical thought (for lack of a better term). As one PI worker who has stayed on through the online shift put it, trust is now earned rather than assumed, both on the part of bloggers and news reporters. Of course (and here is really the crux of the issue), this assumes that there are readers capable of investing trust, that is, able to think critically about what they read, and to use multiple sources to arrive at an understanding. Not that this hasn't been assumed (falsely or not) in the past; but it's no longer sufficient to simply say that one read something in such-and-such a newspaper.

A second aspect of the online shift has to do with location and community. Online presences, as the aforementioned woman from the PI stressed, are not simply virtual. While we are getting more and more of our national and international news from online wire feeds and aggregators, and are 'connected' globally in this virtual sense, newspapers (online or off) have a concrete, geographical presence. Furthermore, so do blogs: bloggers live in real places, and often post about local events and ideas. One way to get local information, then, is to source many voices directly, and to favor those blogs that consistently present reliable and helpful information. And this, I would assert, is not so different from the antiquated notion of the man-on-the-street reporter in the town square (it's just that we don't have town squares, and no one talks to anyone on the street).

An exciting prospect, then, is that the local/regional news site becomes something of a local source collector, in which the reporters can present a story based not the their qualifications as experts, but on their combination of perspectives, which the reader can always check themselves. The problem, naturally, is that this assumes a broad connectivity, literacy, and critical ability on the part of the population.

...and why wasn't this nominated for any oscars?

I saw Man on Wire on the plane coming back from Germany in January, and remember wondering at the lack of any references to Zarathustra's tightrope-walking scene. Especially given that, in his own self-characterization, J. Petit describes himself as a kind of Übermensch, or at least someone whose nature willfully compels him to superhuman feats. In fact, were I to teach Nietzsche, I would most definitely assign this film as extra credit.

Ever since seeing The Reader earlier this week, I've been preoccupied with what I take to be one of its core themes: hermeneutics.

No no, hear me out. I'm not just projecting my dissertation topic onto everything. I swear.

In the last third of the film, as the plot nears the sentencing climax, the main character Michael, a law student in Heidelberg, engages in a seminar discussion about the meaning of the war crime trial he is observing. The professor has just made the point that law must be applied by taking into consideration the historicity of the events and people under consideration, that is, one must know what they knew and why they acted as they did. A rather truculent student, who sees no difficulty in assessing the motives, and thus the guilt of the accused women, volunteers to execute them himself.

In response both to this bellicose classmate and to his teacher, Michael states that the purpose of the trial is to understand. The point is not to go 'behind' the testimony and find some hidden purpose, or to explain away the actions by labeling them criminal. Rather, the sole purpose is to understand what happened.

This notion expands to include the remainder of the plot, since Michael himself has to struggle with Hannah's admission of guilt (really, her refusal to admit her illiteracy). The question surely is "why did she do that?", but Michael cannot begin to answer this before he even knows what she did, or to put it another way, who she is. The film ends with him not necessarily knowing 'why' she did anything (her suicide is not a 'motivated' act), but in the closing scene we see that he knows enough to tell the story: with Hannah's life complete, he can at least understand her by telling the story of their interaction.

The film shows really well the limits to our possible understanding. After all, neither we nor Michael ever get an explanation, of Hannah's acts or those of her fellow war criminals. The author of the book on which the film is based, Bernhard Schlink, has clearly struggled with questions of how to understand the past, specifically the history that every contemporary German is burdened with. In a recent talk at Boston University, he spoke about the difficulty in keeping the issue of the Holocaust an open topic for understanding. It is not something that has been 'digested,' that is 'over and done,' as so many German students lament to their teachers. Yet neither is it simply a problem, lacking data, awaiting a solution. It's a history that has to be taken up continually and anew. To understand it is to understand differently.

Coming soon: thoughts on the word 'historic' in current political discourse.

I had the great pleasure of seeing James Blackshaw perform at the Brattle this evening. As expected, I was thoroughly blown away. It never ceases to amaze me how one person can make so many lovely sounds with just one instrument. More than a few times during the set, I found myself transported to strange, distant spaces and times.

Though he didn't play my all-time favorite, "The Cloud of Unknowing," the set did include two songs from his upcoming album, The Glass Bead Game, to be released in May. Given Mr. Blackshaw's penchant not only for referencing obscure ideas and texts, but actually conveying their symbolism in his sound, this promises to be another great venture. I've always wanted someone to tackle the material from that book, in some form. I'm still convinced there is some connection to Husserl in whole concept of the bead game, but have yet to follow that hunch up with research (does anyone know if Hesse read Husserl?). (Also, somewhere across the country, Dr. Madsen recalls in horror that I "made him" read that book one Christmas break.)

Opening for Blackshaw were Micah Blue Smaldone and Meg Baird. Smaldone, hung over from a night of drinking "with [his] mother," had a craftedly buzzy sound, which for me evoked the experience of finding something natural (yet mundane) teeming with significance. Like a frog, perhaps. Baird's sound was more ethereal and soothing, aided to stirring plateaus of bliss by her pedal-steeling partner from Brooklyn.

Having experienced three amazing ways to make an instrument make meaning, my recently rekindled love of the guitar is enflamed (spirit?).

The problem is, I only have one day of vacation left, so I might not solve this before I get back to Boston.