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Let it be known: I am still loyal to The First Barbarians.

-Yonza the Barbarian

A Good Biography, by the Dr.

There are many criteria that ought to be considered when evaluating a biographical account: accuracy and pertinence of included (and excluded) information, for example, or the evenness and subjectivity of the biographer. Or length. Some time ago biographers and editors must have conferenced and decided that no biography shall be published totaling less than 250 pages, despite a mountain of empirical evidence suggesting that there are just some bastards so base and banal that a 25-page biography seems unbearable and gratuitous. To be fair, writing a biography is surely a challenging task. It must be thoroughly researched, organized for chronological and explicative clarity, and (generally) contain a plot or character arc; something to theme and direct the biographee's life in a way that makes sense to an audience accustomed to predictable televisual and dramatic moralizing.

In these prurient and tabloid/scandal-obsessed times, it seems to be very a la mode and popularly rewarded to be a celebrity garbage-rifler, building up your subject only to belittle him or her later by tarnishing or impugning the subject with juicy, psychopathic, borderline slander. Gems hidden within 400-page profiles such as "The secret to Arnold Schwarzenneger's success as a professional weightlifter was his hidden fetish for coitus with quadruple amputees, whom he had to physically support and maneuver during his sexual episodes," or "Rosie O'Donnell was once overheard to claim responsibility for 62% of American cases of erectile dysfunction," can make a Best-Seller. But it is not these ridiculous quotes or reckless implications which make a biography truly great.

A great biography must do more than acquaint you with its subject (and the possible filthy rumors surrounding said subject); by the time you reach the final punctuation mark, you ought to feel as though you've befriended the subject. You should know more than merely the pitfalls and triumphs and childhood crushes, but about the experiences and traumas that mold character and substantiate essence. "It is from the numberless diverse acts of courage and belief," Robert Kennedy once said, "that human history is shaped." If the scale of that statement is reduced, then we deduce that one's own individual history is shaped by one's own diverse acts, no matter how brave or craven, seemingly significant or insignificant. One's life is as a quilt, woven with experience. And with a biography, it's the little, private anecdotes - the ones you wouldn't know about if someone hadn't done extensive research - that stand out more than the Public Access Facts, that give you insight into the infinite Why?'s of another's life, that help to explain or address things that an individual is either incapable or unwilling to do himself.

Evan Thomas' biography of Robert Kennedy, "Robert Kennedy: His Life" does a fine job of filling out the picture of an icon. It does not allow for a romantic, one-dimensional depiction of RFK as a martyr, nor does it cop out by taking advantage of the treasure trove of Kennedy gossip and lore. Rather it fosters a multi-patterned and textured characterization that accurately reflects RFK's degrees of complexity and, at times, confusion. Thomas' bio treats Kennedy as an obsessive self-improver, one with a natural disposition that presents an exercise in opposite extremes: weak child and bully, runt and patriarch, petulant and munificent, coward and hero. In navigating the contours of Kennedy's life, Thomas moves towards explaining the contradictions inherent in his nature.

"He was brave because he was afraid." This dueling nature of conflict and contradiction was a necessary component to Kennedy's character (a duality I suspect is an extant and animating force in most beings with a conscience), an imperative made explicit in Thomas' prologue. Kennedy's courage bloomed from a bud of fear and insecurity inculcated by his domineering father and overachieving older brothers. As a boy, Bobby was effusively praised by strangers in Hyannis who mistook him for his brother after John had recently been decorated as a war hero. One can only surmise what the effect of this praise was on young and fragile Bobby; to taste the sweetness of affection and recognition misplaced - meant, actually, for his older brother. Some years later, Bobby met John on his way to a movie theater with a date. John, liking the way Bobby's date looked, decided to accompany the couple to the movie. The next morning, he called up the date and took her out, and she never heard from Bobby again. These endearing anecdotes do more than just reinforce an image; they help us understand the environment and circumstances in which Bobby developed and to grasp his resolve and ambition to make something more of himself.

At times, the biography specifically chronicles Bobby's feats of courage, an attribute he emphatically prized. One of Kennedy's finest moments involved scaling the summit of Mt. Kennedy, then the highest unclimbed mountain in North America at almost 14,000 feet. Kennedy reached the top despite an intense fear of heights. As a young Attorney General, Kennedy was known for being ruthless, but Thomas provides a touching scene of Kennedy's tenderness when, at a party at his house, he noticed Judy Garland looking forlorn and out of place, not speaking to anyone. Kennedy, shy and overlooked as a boy, sought her out and swept her away for a slow dance. And when Jackie gave birth to her (and John's) first child - a stillbirth - Bobby was the only family member on hand to comfort her. Scenes like this testify to Bobby's sensitivity, making his reputation for ruthlessness seem all the more uneven and willful, and his humanity more rounded and full.

But Bobby was not without his quirks; despite his constantly evolving sense of justice and responsibility, he never outgrew boyhood in some ways. His enthusiasm for challenging others to push-up contests, including the teamster Jimmy Hoffa, his arch-nemesis as a government prosecutor, is a fine example of his almost foolishly boyish competitive streak. Several years after Hoffa, Kennedy took a break from his presidential campaign to toss a football around with a young college graduate for 45 minutes, claiming to be sick and tired of dealing with mayors and staffers. Apparently, since money had never been any object to Bobby, he did not make a point of traveling with it. A staffer's story goes that while sitting in church, he contributed $1 to the collection plate for Kennedy - Kennedy looked at him, point blank, and without sarcasm asked, "Don't you think I'd be more generous than that?" Presumably, this preceded the advent of the AmEx Centurion Card.

Alternatively, "George, Being George," the editor explicitly states, is not a biography. Not in the traditional sense, at least. Instead of the tried-and-true straightforward prose narrative, "George, being George" is an anthology of oral histories, collected and arranged to form a loose semblance of the chronology of George Plimpton's life. This collectively written approach constitutes a radical departure from the realm of traditional biography, where the scope is unilateral and refined. The effect is to exaggerate the significance of certain isolated events or experiences that could otherwise have easily gone undocumented, helping to construct a multivocal and tessellated fabric.

Like Kennedy, Plimpton nurtured an inner childishness manifested by lifelong glee and revelry in fireworks, pranks, parties, and helmetless bicycle riding, even as a white-locked septuagenarian. Plimpton, who always aspired to be an illustrious writer but deferred out of respect to his responsibilities as editor for the Paris Review, tellingly imagined children's stories with an early girlfriend. The story of his expulsion from the stuffy, preppy Exeter Academy - involving a toy gun and a macho football coach who, apparently, screamed like a little girl whenever surprised - would bring a smile to any mischief-maker's face.

This failure to abolish (or even admonish) the child within fueled Plimpton's curiosity, something evidenced not only in his interests in taxidermy and bird-watching (every birdwatcher I've ever known has suffered from a chronic curiosity of sorts) or women (a friend once said of Plimpton that he was "far more curious than serious about women"), but in outright fascination. His enthusiasm and capacity for marveling were infectious, his vocabulary stuffed with expressions of juvenile purity: "Golly!," "Good heavens!," "Can you believe that?"

Also like Kennedy, Plimpton was known to travel without money (Is this a Brahmin thing, instilled from birth? Have they been so comfortable with money for so long that it has been ingrained to feel as though one has it, even when one doesn't?), to the frequent inconvenience of friends. His oft-admired ability for extemporaneous speech appeared at an early age when, at Cambridge, he was asked an exam question about Charles James Fox, a prominent British statesman from the 18th century. Plimpton, drawing a blank, began to spin a tale about a middling second baseman who played for the Cincinnati Reds, a charade he carried on for 3 hours. And while Plimpton became famous for writing about his experiences as an amateur in the professional sports world, what could have been his most heroic story - the capture of Sirhan Sirhan after he opened fire on RFK - was never written. Perhaps it was too close to the heart, or maybe Plimpton felt it would have been exploitative to write about, but for some reason he never did, an omission which testifies to his character. Another testament to that character is the almost masochistic joy with which he told the story of his first heartbreak to friends; so long as he had a story with which to entertain people, to draw them in, it didn't matter if pain was involved, even if the pain was done to him.

This is the gift and ultimate purpose of a truly great biography; to connect us with the palpable humanity of the subject, making a story that might seem distant or abstract universally relatable. The purpose is not to aggrandize, demonize, or mythologize, but to diminish the ostensible gap between the subject and the audience. In the biographical realm to praise a man is nothing, to explain a man, everything. Hence, the more you can reveal, paradoxically, the more you can create.

A Review of This Piece by Yonza the Barbarian

Probably the most dissapointing part about the essay "A Review of This Piece" is its very instantiation, that is, the very fact that it ever crossed the line from a funny little idea for a post-modern, meta, self-referential piece to a written-out realization of the idea on a GoogleDoc document. It would have been enough had the author done something like, say, write a story where an aspiring author has an idea for a piece conceptually identical to "A Review of This Piece." This would have been sufficent. This is the same critique I have for works like Duchamp's "The Fountain" which is a sculpture that is actually just a urinal with Duchamp's signature on it. Yeah, yeah, Duchamp makes a funny point with this piece, but do we actually have to see the urinal for the point to hit us? No. We don't. We get it -- it's a subversive challenge to thought about what makes art art. I don't need to look at a toilet to get his point. Just tell me the idea and spare the actual ripping-a-urinal-from-a-wall process.

And it is the same with "A Review of This Piece." Just by telling someone the idea you could sort of glean everything there is to be gleaned about the concept. Just like seeing the urinal won't provoke any additional thought once you already "get" the concept, reading "A Review of This Piece" does not provoke any more thought than reading a sentence or two about the concept would have.

Furthermore, the meta and the self-refferential are, in the humble opinion of this author, both a tired and a limited artistic playground. We've seen it all already: the circle of stairs that seem to go forever upward, stories within stories, realities within dreams, this in that and that in this. The whole post-modern self-reference game was vivified and exhausted with Valesquez's Las Meninas. Any kick we get out of seeing the twists of a meta-piece, well, it is no more fulfilling than seeing a magician show you your card. It is superficial and overdone, is what it is.

But the essay also lacks in its formative aspects. The author's prose are uneven: sometimes they show the ambivalance of a child and sometimes they show the self-righteous authority of a spoiled monarch. As for the former voice, we see it in the opening sentence, "Probably the most dissapointing..." where the "probably" functions as an unecessary qualifier and leaves readers doubting the authors competance. The highhandendness crops up in the middle of the essay, "The author's prose are uneven: sometimes they show the ambivilance of a child and sometimes they show the self-righteous authority of a spoiled monarch." A "spoiled monarch"? Not only is this simile distastefully extreme and hypocritical, but it is out of place. Why "monarch"? Why not something more topical like wall street bigwig or CEO. Also -- and this is inevitable when you undertake "meta" pieces -- the text often becomes too cerebral and dense. Take the following: "if a given piece can reference itself --e.g. if it could draw a quote from the end of itself in the beginning of itself -- then it would have to be atemporal because a nod to the end already exists in the beginning." If I wanted a tongue twister, I'd recite "she sells sea shells."

But for all its flaws, "A Review of This Piece" makes a modest effort in redeeming itself because, admittedly, it is a moderately interesting concept. It touches on certain issues of aesthetics -- questions about whether the written word is really an art that is temporal (like music) or if it is atemporal (like paintings). The thought experiment goes that if a given piece can reference itself --e.g. if it could draw a quote from the end of itself in the beginning of itself -- then it would have to be atemporal because a nod to the end already exists in the beginning. Music, on the other hand, only exists through time since the end of a piece is never really certain at the beginning of that piece (even if all the notes are written, any given performance of a piece can vary, so you never know, for example, how loud the flutist will play the last note, or if the man playing the cello will sneeze and play an E instead of an A etc.).

The most important fact that this concept brings out, however, is a bit more broad and a bit more profound. "A Review of This Piece," more than anything else, is a demonstration of, specifically the creative process, but less specifically of human thought and judgment in general. In this sense the piece is not unique in its self-referential criticism, it is just unique in that it sifts out everything but the self-referential criticism. We are all self-critics. We are constantly creating something, whether it is a word or gesture, a thought or a decision, an interjection or an objection, whether it is going in for the kiss or a sending the e-mail or taking the job or quitting the job. And just as we create them and they are in our purview, it is then bound to be critiqued, mulled over, scrutinized, and it is often difficult to see when or if the distinction between impulse and scrutiny is there. Self-doubt. Self-aggrandizement. A knock of the palm on the forhead. A shit-eating grin. A clutch of our hair in regret or in guilt. A million deicisions to look back upon and to count and compile and to do this only as the list of decisions grows.

All-in-all, what is redeeming about the essay, its more poetic moments, its more insigtful moments, are outweighed by the fact that it could never stand on its own, and even if it could, this could never be admitted lest the entire purpose of it remain unrealized. I would suggest that you spend your time doing better things, and not read "A Review of This Piece" by Yonza the Barbarian.

The Bullfight, by the Dr.

At the risk of sounding mono-educated and totally without outside reference, I'll warn you that I'm about to compare one sport to another. Specifically, I'm comparing two athletes in one sport with (what I suppose counts as) two athletes from another. I believe the analogy I've chosen is most a propos and thus worth the risk.

Last night's MLK Day basketball game between the Lakers and Cavs was like a bullfight; Kobe Bryant - the Matador, Lebron James - the Bull. Having established that context, the final result could probably have been predicted. After all, the matador typically defeats the bull. Typically. But the analogy I selected has little to do with the arena or the expected outcome of the game; instead, it was chosen based on the participants' style of play.

Bryant's litheness and grace were on display throughout the night. Combining his raw athleticism with a ripened and thorough understanding of the game, he seemed to float around the court, always moving efficiently and easily. Clearly playing injured (he wore a bandage above his right eye and aggravated a sprain in his ring-finger on his shooting hand during the game), Bryant nevertheless showed that his killer instinct was still in tact, repeatedly going for the jugular during a 4th Quarter that saw the Lakers build what proved to be an insurmountable lead. To the disappointment of the frenzied crowd, many of his attempts fell short, but Bryant did hit on 2 incredible jump shots that pushed the Laker lead. The first - a spinning fadeaway baseline jumper that shimmied through the net as the shot clock expired - was clearly a shot that only Kobe could hit. He followed that immediately with a drive to the left side of the lane where he appeared to sail past the basket but managed to turn his upper body at the last minute to loft a soft rainbow shot that sank as he drew the foul.

Over the years, Bryant has developed into a gelid and efficient killer and can be both subtle and showman, often on consecutive plays. There is nothing in his game or demeanor to suggest that he is ever not playing within consummate control, and his sense of timing is impeccably measured, like a firing squad gunman. His tendency is to test and toy with the defense through the first 3 quarters, shooting his long, stretching jumpshot and dancing his way toward the rim through smooth, rhythmic drives, before settling in for the kill. Ultimately it was Bryant's supporting cast, particularly Pau Gasol and Trevor Ariza, who ended the Cavs' late run, but Bryant's 12 assists were the quietest and most significantly overlooked statistic of the night.

At this stage of his career, there simply is no force in the NBA like James; his game is based on strength and power and utilizing his exceptional (some say freakish) athleticism. He rumbles down the lane like a runaway wrecking ball, bouncing smaller defenders off and charging into larger defenders like a sledgehammer slamming against a wall. His barreling drives to the lane seem un-premeditated, chaotic and reactive, and his play - while not always graceful - is always overflowing with energy. His drives to the basket are not crafty or serpentine like Bryant's; with James it's more like a mad dash to the rim as he bulls his way through defenders, batting them around as if they were bowling pins.

Last night Lebron struggled from the field after several full-speed run-ins with Andrew Bynum, the Lakers' hulking post anchor, and his teammates failed to take advantage of many of the open looks he earned for them. Still, James delivered his share of highlights, such as a ferocious block from behind in transition, where he sailed in to batter the ball off the backboard as if it were a volleyball. He played the passing lanes with stealth all night; several Laker passes fell prey to steals by James, which he pounced on with jaguar-like quickness. He also flushed a quick and vicious left-handed dunk over Lamar Odom. Odom, who stands several inches taller than James and is no shabby athlete himself, never stood a chance.

In anticipation of last night's game, J.A. Adande wrote an article for ESPN which basically said something to the effect of "There will never be another player like Michael Jordan, so let's stop looking for The Next One. Instead let's focus on the two best we have (i.e. Lebron & Kobe) and the rivalry brewing between them for title of the Game's Best Player." I agree with those sentiments, and although the two rivals battled through injuries and struggled at times during last night's game, I think we've found a great rivalry. Or perhaps a better way to say it is that the rivals have found each other: the Matador and the Bull.

The Edge, by the Dr.

But with the throttle screwed on, there is only the barest margin, and no room at all for mistakes. It has to be done right... and that's when the strange music starts, when you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhilaration and vibrates along your arms. You can barely see at a hundred; the tears blow back so fast that they vaporize before they get to your ears. The only sounds are the wind and a dull roar floating back from the mufflers. You watch the white line and try to lean with it... howling through a turn to the right, then to the left, and down the long hill to Pacifica... letting off now, watching for cops, but only until the next dark stretch and another few seconds on the edge... The Edge... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others- the living- are those who pushed their luck as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later. But the edge is still Out there. Or maybe it's In. - Hunter S. Thompson

In the excerpt I've chosen as an epigraph, Dr. Thompson was writing specifically about motorcycles and death. But the concept of The Edge and the description match the rush & thrill of just about any activity that forces adrenaline to seep out through your epidermal pores and erases any trace of quotidian thought from your brain. What's so beautiful and euphoric about The Edge is exactly what is so downright dangerous and delinquent about it; when you're ripping through a hollow vortex, at the center of which is you, there is no room for conscious thinking, just instinct and instant muscular reaction.

There is just something vital and ineffable, almost holy, about great velocity - it's like moving Zen. The evacuation of the conscience. It's greatly valued and increasingly rare (and, as such things invariably go, increasingly exploited) to experience a moment of purity and focus, undistracted by something vapid and ordinary and emotional - an ethical dilemma, a billboard advertisement, a stockyard of self-reverie - something which taints and distills the essential Experience of Existence. Such a moment, when it is reached, qualifies as transcendent. Reaching The Edge can be achieved by riding a motorcycle at terminal speed, skydiving, engaging a bear in fisticuffs, or, I've learned, by skiing.

More so than most earthly things, there is something decidedly lunar about skiing. The puffy garb that arms you against the cold is almost Storm Trooperian in its weight and surface area coverage. The body motions, shifting from up-to-down and left-to-right with most of the body weight distributed forward and down, seem to defy gravity to a certain degree. The dusty, foamy tail kicked up in your wake by the carving action of your edges is distinctly astral, and the crater/callus juxtaposition of the mountain - the multifarious ridges and valleys with their assorted corrugations and dimples - all is suggestive of a luminous world which all of us have glimpsed by night, but so few have actually felt underfoot.

It is only fitting, then, that you experience something of another world through skiing. The faster you crank your speed, the wider your optical aperture opens, the deeper the rush of your senses as the world itself rushes by you, almost liquid, the emptier your mind becomes. Freedom from thought. The moisture leaps to your eyes and spits out the corners as you meet the wind head-on and your knees bend and ankles whip from side to side like a typewriter roller on amphetamines and your speed keeps climbing with your hissing, S-shape turns so if you catch an edge or simply just fall you will keep sailing at highway speed (professional racers approach 100 MPH) only no longer balanced on your feet but bouncing and careening downhill for maybe 100 feet but you know this so your body locks you in and there is simply nothing to do but act and react: thrill.

It is comforting to know that when this world gets to be too much (or too little) to handle, there is still another world for us to escape to right here, and an Edge to (perhaps asymptotically) approach.

A Breath of Fresh (and Rarefied) Air, by the Dr.

"When I see three oranges, I juggle; when I see two towers, I walk." - Philippe Petit

Have you ever been shown evidence (visual, audio, otherwise) of something that suggested conclusiveness but was just so incredible, literally incredible, that you couldn't allow yourself to believe it? Your senses internalize and process what appears to be real & true but you feel something slightly askew, a knot at the base of your brain stem. Better to be a cynical skeptic than a sucker, and nobody appreciates laughs had at his or her expense, so you store away that something's-off feeling while you passively nod your credulity - that way when you are invariably informed that you fell for it, you can proudly (and with the force and conviction of one who has since learned he's right) declare No, you knew it all along. After all, in these modern times the once clearly-marked line between Genuine and Synthetic, Authentic and Artificial, has been so eroded that it becomes difficult (if not impossible) to discern whether even sensually-enjoyed personal property (breasts, lips, hair) is the Real McCoy. With PhotoShop surgery and doctored audio clips and digital effects that can convincingly recreate anything from weather patterns to ancient cities (not to mention products like I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Butter, whose brand name boasts its authentic inauthenticity), there is more reason than ever to doubt what appears before you, ostensibly claiming Realness.

Fortunately, Man On Wire is neither a hoax nor an elaborate conspiracy. Instead, the documentary is based on fact, and it constitutes a towering monument to the boundless possibility of humankind. Featuring a playful and almost Kubrickian soundtrack, the film is multifunctional: equal parts Heist, Elegy, and Visual Poem. The Heist involves the execution of the so-called Artistic Crime of the Century: securing a cable between the roofs of the Twin Towers for the purpose of walking it. The film artfully cultivates The Heist motif, employing a series of America's Most Wanted-esque dramatic recreations detailing the events that immediately preceded The Walk, and interviews with the perpetrators describing the anterior period of espionage and observation.

There are images of a young Petit - gymnastically sinewy, boyish & foxfaced - cross-edited with archive video of construction of the Towers. The grainy 1970's footage of brawny, beer-bellied workers operating machinery in cloudy haze, whitehot sparks shooting in small arcs, enormous steel pieces and pipes and rivets rising by crane and cable, provides testament to the awesome task of assembling and constructing (and, especially in the earlier, gloomier, more piecemeal stages, implicitly evokes images of the wrecked doom of) the Towers. "Usually when you have a dream, the object of your dream is there, confronting you, but the object of my dream [didn't] exist yet," Petit said in anticipation of the Towers' completion. The effect of the original footage is to establish something tangible; the arduous and monumental construction project physically embodies the construction and potential realization of Petit's dream. One parallels the other in ponderousness and painstaking method.

Man On Wire does not include any images, discussion, or suggestion of 9/11, yet in viewing the footage of their construction, one finds it difficult to avoid thinking of the Towers' ultimate undoing. That the Towers took over 4 years to complete, and just over 1 hour to tumble and crumble down to fire and rubble, is a painful realization for the viewer. The photos of Petit suspended, balanced a quarter-mile above the street at the apex are ghostly beautiful, not only for the awe and fear they inspire but also due to the foreknowledge that what Petit achieved really was once-in-a-lifetime, sui generis, inimitable.

Petit described his insatiable proclivity for high-stakes wire-walking as the "dream of not so much conquering the universe, but as a poet conquering beautiful stages." His motives less Napoleonic, more Proustian, Petit saw himself as an artist, and those who watched him perform considered themselves a veritable and constituent audience. Like other courageous acts that assume an artistry through their sheer audacity, the images of Petit on the wire are at once heroic, beautiful, and incomprehensible. They are enhanced by the artist's phenomenal ability on the wire. When he genuflects, his salute not only honors the challenge he perceived presented by the Towers, but represents a tribute to the monument of possibility.

In light of my last piece, it seems I might have been too hasty to rush to judgment and condemnation on the state of modern American heroes; perhaps we merely need to reach out for and embrace whomever offers us a chance to participate in his or her dream and a glimmer of heroic wisdom, even if it is a Frenchman. "Life should be lived on the edge," Petit says, without a trace of cliché or pun. "To refuse to taper yourself to rules, to refuse your success, to refuse to repeat yourself, to see every day, every year, every idea as a true challenge...then you are going to live your life on the tight rope."

Accesibility as a Necessary Criterion for Physicality and its Implication for the Existance of a Soul -- Thought Jot by Yonza the Barbarian

Physicalists assert that the world is made up of only physical substances. Dualists assert that there exist physical substances as well as nonphysical substance like the soul.

Could universal access be a necessary criterion for a substance's physicality? My intuition tells me 'yes.' A rock is a physical object. It contains the property of having universal accessibility. What I mean by this is that any given person's physical body has the possibility of being in direct causal contact with the rock. Anybody could -- and this does not mean everybody does -- touch/see/hear/taste/smell the rock. Access to this causal contact is not denied to anyone.

If it is agreed that the possibility of universal access extends only to physical objects then it is easy to show how the dualists are correct. There do exist things where only a subset of persons (agents) have access. For example, my visual experience of the computer screen. Only a subset of persons (agents) have access to this thing, the subset containing only one member. The member happens to be me, Yonza the Barbarian.

It would be near impossible for a physicalist to deny that my experience is only accessible to me (to think that modern fMRI thought-reading techniques put this notion to the test is to misunderstand the notion of accessibility. It is conceivable that technology might allow us to rig a system where your experience is identical to my experience, but just like identical twins aren't the same person, identical experiences are not the same experience). The only point of attack would be that accessibility is not a necessary feature of physical objects. I cannot think off the top of my head how anyone could clearly deny it, although, admittedly, I have not given a rigorous argument for it, and have relied merely on intuition. I suspect most people will have similar intuitions.

Death of the American Hero, by the Dr.

On January 11th of 2008 (Anno Domini) Sir Edmund Hillary died at the age of 88 in his homeland of New Zealand. Owing much to his Sherpa guide, Tenzing Norgay, Hillary achieved the unimaginable in becoming the first man to summit Mt. Everest (all 29,029 feet of it) in 1953. After reaching the top of the world, Hillary crossed the Antarctic, formed a foundation for building schools and clinics in Nepal, served as president of New Zealand’s Peace Corps, and wrote numerous books about his experiences. Still, climbing Everest endured as Hillary’s most lasting triumph, and, in recalling the adventure, he once stated, “I have had a dream and it has come true, and that is not a thing that happens often to men.”

For his audacity in aspiring to and then realizing his dream SEH became a global hero, and the anniversary of his passing draws my attention to a disturbing trend of disappearing heroes in American culture. The archetypal national heroic types of Patriot and Cowboy have receded into traditional folklore (or, perhaps more tellingly, been designated as names for vaunted NFL franchises – a trade commodity to be bought and sold in the marketplace) and many of our proud historical figures have faded under Time’s blinding, unblinking light. The courage and achievements of old idols do not resonate with us as they did the generations that preceded because of the relative temporal distance between us. Those of us that are studious and interested may be wary of our history, but an individual intuitively attunes to and immerses himself in his own time, lest he find himself an outcast and half-mad relic – the 7th grade history buff who curses Lincoln up and down (in the present tense) and stoically cloaks himself in Confederate Gray.

The shelf-life of today’s “hero” expires before there is time to be inscribed in the history books. As a result of the staggering rewards offered for success and a ubiquitous and mosquiton Media, the would-be-hero of yesterday faces constant scrutiny. In a land whose proud slogan has always been that any man can make something of himself, Americans delight in the debasement and disparagement of men, particularly those with a touch of the Self-Made to their story. We have developed a ravenous and insatiable appetite for seesawing our heroes, catapulting them to epic heights only to swing them violently earthward. The thrill in glorification and debasement seems, to me, a perversely contemporary (and diagnostic) national attitude.

In our time we have seen O.J. Simpson accused of a double murder (and convicted of armed robbery in Vegas, where the American Dream went to die), Bill Clinton receive oral favors from an intern, Stephen Ambrose plagiarize several works, Jeffrey Skilling and Dennis Kozlowski convicted for fraud and misappropriation, Michael Jackson accused of molesting children, Michael Jordan (the greatest, period) divorced for infidelity, and a slew of professional athletes (including gold-medal winners and modern day record holders) charged with using illicit hormones and steroids. These selections represent not only achievers who reached the apex of their respective field, but also are drawn from the traditional fountains of modern heroism: sports, politics, entertainment, business, and academia. In another era, some of their misdeeds might have gone unnoticed. In our time, they have a depreciating effect on the perpetrator.

I do not wish to suggest or imply that any person should be elevated above the law or freed from punishment or consequences. But perpetual media attention has such a humanizing (isn't it sad how that word assumes a negative connotation?) effect that accomplishments often get overlooked or diminished. The hero, totally humanized, loses his aura and influence. His ability to inspire is decimated.

While studying in Argentina, I found the treatment of heroes abroad totally different. There, the culture of the hero still flourishes, albeit in a far more immemorial manner. Borges and Gardel are universally appreciated national figures. Despite confounding extraprofessional behavior and a litany of drug addictions, Diego Maradona is lionized as the greatest fútbol player to ever dribble; his La Mano de Dios goal in the 1986 World Cup against England considered a profound act of national destiny. Eva Peron – though polarizing for her politics – is worshiped by her supporters as a goddess and was hailed as the savior of the working class. Although not without her detractors, Evita joins the others on the strength of her supporters to compose an irreproachable group of national heroes. This tradition is not necessarily better; it grants its heroes immunity through their daunting accomplishments, effectively making them one-dimensionally good. Cast as such, they become noncomplex caricatures.

The path to redeeming the nature and idea of the Hero involves relearning the definition. Among such characteristics as courage and ability, the OED includes in its definition of hero the word “demigod,” which word refers to a figure that is half-god, half-human. Within this definition lies hope for the future of the American hero. Demigod implies a being that is illustrious, yet fallible; enlightened, yet reproachable; deified, yet mortal. Through the Hero's Dream, the holy Immortal is accessed, and we relate to the vessel through which the Dream is channeled - the Hero, himself - through his humanity. It is in our best interest to recognize the dichotomy of the Hero, who needs but 2 things: a dream and supporters. The Hero’s duty is to provide the dream, as SEH did, and do his utmost to attain that dream, to push the boundaries and limitations of humankind and in so doing make us all the better for it. It is our duty, the rest of us, to provide the support without which the hero and his dream will surely die.

Why "B" is the most Gangster Letter by Yonza the Barbarian

B Boys, Beat boxing, bass, beat, beatings, bitches, Biggie Smalls -- spend a little time in the gangsta’ rap world and you’ll immediately notice that the letter 'B' is overrepresented. But perhaps overrepresented is a misnomer since the letter accords perfectly with the style and content of gangsta’ rap. But why is the letter 'B' so fuckin' gangsta’? A quick summary of some of its phonetic components might reveal its bangin' secrets. 'B' is what is known as a bilabial plosive which basically means that it is a letter where closure of both lips cause the stoppage of airflow (other letters, such as labiodental fricatives V and F are not plosives and do not cause the stoppage of air flow, and some non-English letters make use of nasal or glottal stops).

But what is so special about being a bilabial plosive? After all, 'P' is a bilabial plosive and that is probably the nerdiest, most white boy letter in the fuckin alphabet (you heard me right, P Diddy). The difference between B and P is small, but it is significant. 'B' is a voiced bilabial plosive while 'P' is a voiceless bilabial plosive. A voiced speech sound is one that uses the vocal chords; it tends to rise from the gut, to sound bassier, and to just be leagues more gangsta'. A very clear difference between voiced and voiceless is the difference between "Z' and 'S'. Z is much deeper, more masculine, bordering on leonine growl while 'S' is effeminate and taciturn and bordering on a house cat's purr. And while 'Z' is pretty gangsta’ (tip of that hat to you, Jay Z) it is no 'B'. What makes 'B' so gangsta’ is the way the voiced speech sound seems to explode with the bilabial outpush of the lips. It sounds like a thump, a bass drum, or the sharp, resounding explosion of a bullet. To make it more gangsta', try relaxing your lips. Allow your cheeks to puff out before you release the push of air. And it is no coincidence that these suggestions (puff cheeks, relax lips) are built in to the facial structure of the king of gangsta' rap Bs, Biggie. He has big floppy lips and puffy cheeks and the B's explode off them like the "Bang!" of a shotgun. Take the opening line from Things Done Changed "Remember back in the day." The word "remember" is a just a prelude to the real first explosion of the song -- that being the "back" -- which kicks it off like a car getting jump started or the initial crack of a cord-pull lawnmower before its blades buzz into full grass-chopping speed.

These are the a B c’s of gangsta’ rap.

Peace out…bitches

Art, Subjectivity, Objectivity, and an Experimental Proposal by Yonza the Barbarian

A central question in Philosophy of Art is whether art is objective or subjective. In its most basic and simplified form, the objectivist argues something like "there must be something about the Mona Lisa that makes it better than a four-year-old's scribble of a smiley." The subjectivist argues, "even amongst the most refined critics there is disagreement over what paintings are good and what are bad. How could we conclusively say that some of these critics are wrong and some are right, and who has the authority to say such things?"

What makes characterizing art criticism as an objective science difficult, is the fact that there are no agreed upon criteria with which to criticize works. Furthermore, any proposed criteria, unless rigorously supported, would seem arbitrary and subjective in itself, and so would actually deepen the problem rather than resolve it.

One attempt to create such a criteria, undertaken by the great David Hume in his essay Of the Standard of Taste, comes close to providing some solid arguments for why there is an objective standard of art that could be provided by hypothetical "Perfect Judges," which are basically critics with no prejudices, no biases, and perfectly refined taste. If you want to see his argument check out the essay (I'm sure it can be found online somewhere and if not check out the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

Hume's proposal is a good first crack at setting up a well-founded mechanism for objective art criticism. Below I will propose another possible foundation and an experiment which might have implications on objective art criticism. Note: my argument is a conditional one in that I am not arguing that art is objective, I am arguing that if art is objective then the theory below might be a good way to start developing objective criteria. Much of what I will write below might seem flimsy, but that is okay because I'm not going for a super-rigorous point here. Just a suggestion of thought, rumination, and experimentation.

Okay, so, I'll start off with a whopping proposal with little foundation: let us say that art is simply communication (as countenanced by Tolstoy). Let us also say that communication can be broken down into units of information, something that can be objectively measured in bits. So if I say to you, "I am 23 years old" let us say that this statement has X number of information bits. If I said to someone else that "I am 23 years old and I am male" let us say that statement has Y number of information bits. Now, it is clear that the following is an objectively true proposition: X " < " Y, or, in English, I have communicated less information in the first sentence than I communicated in the second sentence.

So if (1) art is communication and (2) communication can be directly measured in bits then (3) art can be objectively measured. Now this doesn't prove that art is objective qua art, it proves it is objective qua its communicatory mass, after all, Tolstoy would claim only that art is communication, not that the more it communicates the better it is (if he did contend this, then the OED would be far superior to the Mona Lisa!).

Now I am going to my a claim (more like, a suggestion) and this is a big leap, I know: let us assume that there is an analogy between elegance in mathematical proofs and in the quality of art works. When we talk about elegance in mathematical proofs, we are usually referring to how simply a proof can be successfully contrived. If student A proves some postulate in 10 steps, and student B proves some postulate in 30 steps, we can say that A has a more elegant proof. He has managed to demonstrate (communicate?) the exact same thing using less Space (the word "Space" is very ambiguous. Defining my use of "Space" here would take a whole other essay so I'm gonna forgo further explanation for the time being).

My conclusion is that perhaps we can measure the quality of art the same way we measure the elegance of mathematical proofs: the amount of information bits communicated per unit Space (Space used ambiguously). In this sense, the best writer would be able to communicate the same amount of content, emotion, etc. etc. (all reducible to information bits) in a smaller amount of Space (here Space might = words, sentences, lines, pages , but not necessarily). The sentence "It is me and my age at this particular moment in time is equal to the number that is three more than 20" is much worse than the sentence " I am 23" because both sentences communicate the same thing but one takes up much less Space.

Here is a little experimental proposal that could put my theory to the test. Have a few artists and writers work together to do the following: take an already painted work of art, write a 3 page description of the work, and have another artist who has not seen the original work paint what the writer wrote. The writers goal is to have his artist's samizdat painting match the original painting as precisely as possible. My theory entails that, assuming the painters are all equal, a writer's work could be judged objectively based on how close the reproduced painting is to the original.