Stop worrying and love the road.

 

My stepsister Louise and I drove from Philadelphia to the North Carolina Outer Banks today. Despite typically being ambivalent or downright opposed to hallmarks of American culture like cars and fast food, for me this road trip was unambiguously delightful.

It helped that we took a scenic route, driving through Delaware and the Delmarva Peninsula across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel (it's both!) through Virginia Beach. It was beautiful countryside on a textbook June day. It helped too that the best of those things were on display. The Wawa folks knocked it out of the park with the breakfast burrito; it was all of the sensual gratification and visceral satisfaction that fast food aspires to be. And the road trip is the automobile at its best. I felt real camaraderie with the stranger in the BMW who for thirty miles wove with me past and around traffic that seemed to know nothing of the "drive right, pass left" principle.

Something else was at play though. A big reason the road trip was so enjoyable was the peace that came from living for one day as an American and not as an individual. I did what I was supposed to do, and what I was supposed to do was drive. For a century this ritual pilgrimage to wherever has been more American than apple pie, unless that apple pie was served at a McDonald's drive through. Taking part in it made me feel like a properly turning gear in a precisely tuned clock.

I felt this peace most acutely at a rest stop in Delaware. After getting out of the car I paused to take in the well-groomed lawn and the 1950's classic cars that were trundling into the parking lot at that moment. I continued in past a procession of vending machines each tempting me with a different variety of saccharine, preserved, and caffeinated satisfaction. The bathroom experience with its automatic flushes and antibacterial hand foam could not have been more tranquil if I had been brought through on a conveyor belt. On the way out I paused again to smell the tiger lilies ringing a spurting fountain.

At no point was there any doubt what I was supposed to be doing. I with all others present fulfilled my calling. We sustained America and thus were Americans together. That felt good.

The Weight of Futility

Cynicism, sarcasm, and a mode of detached indifference called "being ironic" have become the dominant posture through which my generation interacts with the world. This trend likely has deep roots, at least as deep as Bart Simpson, but I believe it has intensified in even the last five years. You could point to a lot of reasons, but a major one has got to be the continued emergence of electronic technologies.

These technologies are supposed to enrich our lives by making more accessible modes of expression that previously required a lot more money and expertise. My dad once told me about the painstaking work of splicing together 35mm film in the editing process when he was a teenager. A method like that required a lot more time and care than any of the free digital video editing programs out there, and professional or semiprofessional packages are not much harder to reach.

Making processes like video editing or photography or publishing easier and more accessible seems like a slam dunk, but one drawback is that the ease of producing the form of the medium can mask the absence of meaningful content. Any idiot can make a coherent movie now, but that doesn't mean that idiot has something worthwhile to say. The result is a saturation of media in which whatever is significant is buried among mountains of inanity.

I feel this malaise when I take pictures with the ridiculously affordable SLR I bought last May. Walking on the beach in Santa Cruz, California the other day I wanted to take a picture of the view looking down the coast at the reflection of sunlight off the ocean. Instantly I was awash in existential angst. First, in the world there are much more beautiful beaches at much more appealing seasons than Santa Cruz in late December. Second, I do not know how to make good use of my camera, and even if I did I am sure there is equipment which would improve the final product.

The connection of everything with everything means my photo could only be evaluated in the context of photographs of tropical beaches done by professionals the world over. Yet because everyone has seen so many of those pictures, even they elicit scarcely a neuron excitation in the brain. To even take the picture seemed a preposterous conceit, like a droplet of water aspiring to become an ocean wave and inevitably collapsing into an inconsequential eddy.

In a climate of such media ubiquity, it is easy to despair of saying anything original or meaningful. Whatever could be said has probably been said already a hundred thousand times, and probably more competently and expressively at that. At the same time, access to all of those prior expressions makes them essentially insignificant themselves.

The resulting world is one in which it seems there is nothing new to say, and in which that which has been said has demonstrably fallen short of the Ultimate. How could anyone interact with such a world, except through sarcasm, indifference, and cynicism? To do so is simply to bow to the crushing weight of futility.

Authenticity

Much of what has been lost in recent decades has been achieved by maintaining form and sacrificing substance for price.

Take eggs for instance. There is no question that what you buy in a supermarket qualify as eggs. They were laid by chickens, after all. But it does not follow that all eggs are equivalent. I used a few of these droopy, pale-yellow puddles in a brownie recipe last night and I was almost embarrassed. To hold them next to pastured eggs is a joke, unless you haven't seen pastured eggs.

Furniture is another example. What you may buy at Ikea certainly qualifies as a desk; it has a flat surface and you can put things on it. But no one would call this thing equivalent to a desk which is skillfully made with quality materials. Such things are so rare now that I can hardly conjure a picture of one in my mind.

Sound. My laptop has speakers which can play any song. But play something on speakers owned and modified by my housemate Matthew and you will discover that you hardly knew the music beforehand.

Friendship. Though you can socialize with someone on facebook, it does not compare to the face-to-face.

I do not claim that there is no good reason why in virtually every sphere of life our society has shifted toward hollowed-out shells of its former constituents. The trade-off is between substance and price. My pastured eggs cost ten times more than the cheapest eggs you can buy. The same can be said for furniture, sound equipment, or quality time with friends. This sort of mechanism is responsible for the extension of a high standard of living to much of our society, so that many more can have "eggs" and "desks" and "music" and hundreds of "friends." It is an egalitarianizing process and therefore I understand how it is American.

But this process once unleashed continued unabated, past the point of strict economic utility until we no longer remembered what we had lost and did not wish to get it back even when we could afford it.

We are not a materially poor society. We are destitute not of money but of the good, the true, and the beautiful. It is only logical that we exchange the resource we have in abundance for the resource we lack.

Instead we spare no expense on our isolation and on our glowing screens.

Culture Crossing Complications

Stereotypes only get you so far.

I find understanding Korean culture is helped very little by any kind of stereotype, or even by some of the more nuanced things I picked up in my Korean studies before coming here.

I usually try to understand the world by finding a few guiding principles and explaining everything I see in terms of them. I don't think this has much to do with why I majored in physics, but that is exactly what physicists try to do. Newton used three concise laws to explain all motion.

However, if there are a few such principles at the core of Korean culture, they elude me. American stereotypes of Koreans, such as aptitude in math and science and obsession with video games, are several dimensions short of what I find here. I have found approximately nothing in Korea which would lead me to deduce those stereotypes.

It's not that I haven't tried to understand the people here in such a way. At times, I form a hypothesis based on an experience, but it seldom explains other experiences. (Am I living and breathing the Scientific Method or what? Makes one sick...)

For example, before leaving the airplane in Korea I had to fill out a card certifying that I did not have Swine Flue or any of the associated symptoms. The next day customs even called me to make sure that I hadn't come down with the bug. This experience led me to think, "Koreans are very serious about hygeine and preventing the spread of disease."

I am baffled, then, every time I use a public bathroom and find there is absolutely no soap. Not just no antibacterial soap - no soap.

Asian cultures are also known for being family oriented. This is true of Korea, yet people get married late even by American standards and the population is almost the fastest-declining in the world, with a birth rate of around 1.15.

Another example: when we went to the beach one afternoon three weeks ago, only one other person actually took off the clothes he was wearing over his bathing suit - and he was Chinese. The rest went in and got soaked in their clothes.

This might lead you to think that Koreans are very shy and private when it comes to their bodies. But then you would have no way of explaining the group shower I took in the same room with 5 other guys later that night, or the culture of public bathhouses here in which you can have your skin scraped by a stranger while you swelter in the nude.

A reductionist who has failed to this point might throw up his arms and label the country something like, "Korea: Land of Contradictions." But that label would excel in both ignorance and in arrogance. The fact the people can't be understood via a few simple rules (i.e. "They're just like us except a, b, and c...") does not indicate that their culture is strange or illogical; it indicates that there is something wrong with the reductionist approach.

This failure is one reason humility is such and important virtue in crossing cultures. As an outsider, the only way to begin to understand a people is by living as one of them. The presumption that you could understand them through a textbook, or that trying to understand and accept their culture isn't necessary in loving them, is fatal.

Omniscient God chose to live as one of his creations in demonstrating his love for them. We celebrate this miracle as Christmas. We would do well to fully consider the implications of his Incarnation.

Up

I saw Up last night.

I was struck by how unorthodox of a film it was. For one, it doesn't follow a traditional story arc, even though some sort of arc is present.

For two, it is full of the whimsical and the fantastic.

For three, it doesn't worry about logically explaining certain things. Normally this means filmmakers were sloppy, but in this case they intentionally don't bother. The ability of an old man to inflate enough helium balloons to lift his house overnight and the associated physics of those balloons just aren't important.

It's also the saddest "children's" film I've ever seen. I don't say that because there is (or isn't) a sad ending or some tragic "Bambi's mom" kind of moment, but because the film is draped in a quietly melancholic aura.

So kudos to Pixar for continuing to tell the best stories, and to be willing to venture well off the beaten path in doing so.

I also took the occasion to rank all Pixar movies. This list is objective and absolute.

1. The Incredibles
2. Toy Story
3. Monsters Inc.
4. Up
5. Ratatouille
6. Finding Nemo
7. Wall-E
8. Cars
9. Toy Story 2
10. A Bug's Life

Further comments available upon request.

Post Office Cross-Cultural

It is kind of weird, when you think about it.

Today in the post office, I was approached by an Asian couple (I think Korean) in their or 40's or so. The woman asked a question - how were they to seal their envelope?

"Oh, you have to lick it," I said. I think they heard me, but thought they must have gotten the words wrong. "With your tongue," I elaborated, pantomiming the motion.

They were quite amused.

How many aspects of our culture do we learn by the age of six, never to think of again unless reminded that they are but aspects of our culture?

Advent Conspiracy

I don't have the words to express how beautiful this video and its vision are to me:



Yes, please.

Thanks to jaeyde for showing this to me.

Charles Darrow Lied

My school sent me today to a seminar on classroom management in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The seminar was interesting and useful, but the most lasting impression was made upon me by
a lunchtime stroll down the boardwalk.

Atlantic City, if you didn't know, is the inspiration for the game Monopoly, hence my taking a walk on the boardwalk and passing things like St. James's Place. The atmosphere of the city exudes that same kind of promise - fortune and thus happiness are only a few rolls of the dice away.

The boardwalk promises its own romance. Start with a clear autumn day on the warm side of brisk. Add the splendor of the Atlantic Ocean and the associated salty air. Provide a walkway from which to take it all in, add in quaint shops selling inexpensive and nostalgic American food, and you've got a recipe for sepia-toned enjoyment.

The lords over this enterprise are the casinos, who with straight, even grinning faces ignore the obvious fact that the system is rigged against you. No one seems to notice.

I found a few other things on my stroll. New Jersey, unlike Nevada, stops short of legalizing prostitution in addition to gambling. So instead of being solicited by women in front of brothels, I was solicited by women in front of massage parlors. It seems to be human nature to buy all varieties of sensual pleasure where one sort is already available.

Fortune tellers abound as well, offering such ridiculous methods as phrenology. One modestly proclaimed, "Specializing in solving all problems. Health, financial, and love."

Mixed in without explanation is the New Jersey Korean War memorial. The only people I saw there were Korean. It was cool.

Benches on the boardwalk have not one but two arm rails between the outer two, creating three distinct seats, and eliminating any possibility of being used as a bed. The memory of one homeless man sitting on one makes me think of what happens in Monopoly when you land on that last hotel property whose rent you can't afford.

On my way back I attempted to enjoy some of the aforementioned nostalgic American food, two hot dogs and some french fries, out on the boardwalk. I was foiled by belligerent seagulls, clustering and squawking more and more around me. I got up right as one lunged at my fries. Later another one smacked me in the head with its wing. I couldn't help but think of how birds in Scripture represent the powers of Satan, as when Abram drove them away in Genesis 15:11.

One contrast surpassed all of these in the disgust it brought me. At the start and at the end of my walk I passed a beggar woman. She stood and sang, completely tone deaf, beating for percussion on a plastic bucket that looked like a sand castle toy. Most street performers are musically gifted, and her complete lack of talent heightened the sense of desperation she conveyed.

A few feet up from her, another beggar danced, without coordination, displaying some physical deformity. It is hard to know whether to call her a girl or a woman, because in body she was dressed and styled like an eight-year-old, and in face she looked over forty.

The backdrop against which these beggars stood, and the filler for all of these scenes, was the casino crowd. It was easier for me to understand the presence of residents and workers, who for whatever brokenness at least seem to belong there. But, in the midst of that whole scene, the scores of white senior citizens chasing Borgata and lewd comedians like Robin Williams raised the largest sense of outrage and futility that I felt.

The way I felt about all of this didn't really hit me until about an hour ago, several hours and a nap after returning. In a different situation I might shout and cry. Instead I raise this small outcry against Trump's stronghold on the beach.

The New Testament asserts that all of creation was made by and for Jesus Christ, and that one day he will return to assert his ownership of every square inch. While I feel powerless against that monstrous boardwalk, I long for the day when he will put an end to all of its lies and all of its pain.

True Education

Lasagna facilitates true education.**

The high school physics textbook from which I will be teaching next year begins with a philosophical treatise on the nature of science and its relation to religion, the arts, and technology.

Were I teaching a worldview class, this chapter would provide me with weeks of material. A pure physics course could probably skip the chapter without missing a beat. Fortunately, the philosophy of my school allows the former to supplement the latter.

Among many thought-provoking quotes, I find:

A truly educated person is knowledgeable in both the arts and the sciences.

I believe this summarizes the philosophy behind liberal arts education. Penn's College of Arts and Sciences, the school from which I have my degree, still practices this idea in theory: In addition to 18.5 courses in my major (physics), I had to take courses from seven varied sectors, in addition to language, writing, and quantitative data analysis requirements. In this way, no student gets out of the College without being exposed to the full spectrum of arts and sciences.

In theory.

It doesn't surprise me that the above quote would come from a physicist. Most physicists I've encountered are also students of the liberal arts. Many consider themselves philosophers, or so their actions indicate (like the writing of this chapter), and many have deep love for literature. Indeed, I feel I could have almost as easily majored in English or history as physics or biology, and I treasured the excursions into these other subjects which my requirements permitted me.

However, I can't help but feel that the reverse is considerably less true for most students of the liberal arts. While most of my colleagues in physics enjoy studies in music or philosophy or religious studies, friends majoring in liberal arts disciplines are likely to take the easiest and fewest courses in science and math possible.

Geology is a favorite because it fulfills two requirements simultaneously. So instead of plumbing the wonders of creation with the time permitted them, students suffer through a semester of rocks and plate tectonics (interesting, to be sure, but hardly at the top of the list) and learn very little.

I think this highlights a real failure. A popular excuse is that these students simply can't handle real science courses, but I'm skeptical. Students at Penn have demonstrated considerable aptitude in math and science before being admitted.

Instead, I think there is very little popular appreciation for the sciences. And it is quite possible that introductory courses for non-majors go about things the wrong way.

Perhaps physics courses for non-majors should include conceptual overviews of the great staggering truths of physics: To describe light as either a particle or a wave, or even as both, is inadequate. Time moves slower when you move faster. It is literally impossible to know exactly where something is at a specific time.

I could go on. Having an inkling of these ideas changes fundamentally one's conception of reality, something which undoubtedly deserves expression in the arts. Intro courses should make them clear.

However, I think the core problem is that our culture somehow devalues science. Science is for geeks and mad professors, but only technology has relevance for the general public. It doesn't have nearly as much to teach about the human condition than literature or history. Or so the assumptions go.

Bunk, I say. As a science teacher, I hope to instill otherwise.

As for you who haven't filled your science requirements, do yourselves a favor. Don't take the boring way out.

*My old housemate Carlos is a notable exception. An English major, Carlos wishes he had done physics. Now there's a man with his head on straight.
**Gosh, by year's end two of these people will be married, and the other two likely aren't very far behind. Growing up is weird...

False Doctrine on the News

I briefly saw a cable news segment tonight criticizing John McCain for his reluctance to offer an on-the-spot opinion on insurance companies which cover medicine for erectile dysfunction but not oral contraceptives. The logic behind this report peeves me.

We're talking about equivalent situations here, right? Many men need medication for erectile dysfunction in order to have sex; many women need oral contraception in order to have sex. Paying for only one situation is a clear case of sexism!

I disagree. In the man's case, there is something wrong with his body, albeit often a natural result of aging.* In the woman's case, the only thing "wrong" with her is fertility. I resent calling this natural state a condition to be methodically subdued.

Americans today would much rather sex and reproduction were two noninteracting spheres, but nature nags otherwise. Many demand contraception to accomplish this divorce and maintain the modern life, but I do not acknowledge a fundamental human right to be barren.

Deeper than the insistence that sex be enjoyed without fear of attachment to another human being, or of the catastrophe that would be creation of new life, is the loud insistence that all people are exactly the same. For decades academics have obsessed over promulgating the worldview that no difference among humans is fundamental, and therefore any existing difference can and should be eradicated.

Society is constructed, they say. Morality is constructed. Emotions are constructed. Gender is constructed. "If it is constructed, then I will demolish it, and build my own."

Vanity and Babel. No amount of scholarly analysis or advance of medicine will bring a man to give birth.

We are stuck with the we that we are.

*I don't necessarily think ED should be covered by insurance. It probably depends on the situation. As my friend Josh puts it, "if a 70-year-old guy wants to pretend he's 40, he can do it without me picking up any of the tab."

Image is in the details.

The logo is a siren. Mistake?

Not being a coffee drinker, I was confused by the sizes at a Starbucks recently. Fortunately, they provide handy examples up front, from which I deduced the following translations:

Tall normally means something is bigger than its peers, but in this case tall means small. Customers ordering a tall are freed from feeling like they are depriving themselves.

Grande means large. Instead of feeling guilty about indulging, customers can take a caffeinated vacation south of the border. Arriba!

Venti means Supersize. We have learned though from our forebears in the 1990's that Supersize will kill you. So Starbucks had to rename it. Venti is Italian for 20, as in the number of ounces in the drink, or the square root of the caffeine dose.

It's great ideas like these that helped Starbucks open a new location every workday in the 1990's.

Developments Explained

Red: My home. Purple: My favorite bike route. Yellow: Housing developments.
Made using Google Earth. Click to enlarge.

A lot changes in 18 years.

That's how long I've lived at 63 Ruth Avenue in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. In the scheme of things, that's no time at all. And yet, look at all of the yellow circles above.

Those circles mark housing developments which have gone up in the time I've lived here. You can see these four all within two miles of my home, with one just beyond my backyard. By convention, these places are named after that which they supplant: "Kimberton Meadows;" "Brimful Farms;" "Foxfield;" "Heritage Place." They are also known as "what's wrong with America."

My ears bristled at the sharp criticism that my friend leighcia, with some help from Jane Jacobs, leveled against the suburbs. Simulating nature? That's not what I learned from all of those bike rides growing up, or from the tall maples and soft moss in my front yard.

I think what leighcia was really addressing, as clarified in the comments section and by her husband Matthew, is not what lies along the purple bike path, but what lies within the yellow circles. Here we are on the same page.

Two questions surround these developments. First, why would anyone build these houses? Second, why would anyone want to live in them?

The explanation to the first question is simple, if unsatisfactory: economies of scale. It's much easier and cheaper for one company to build a lot of nearly identical houses all at once than if each house were to be built to order by its future inhabitants. While that makes economic sense (often the only sense something needs to make for it to happen), it leaves out much of what should go into making a home.

I believe the central flaw lies in that the people designing and building the homes are not, in general, the people who will be living in them. Design ingenuity centers on modularity and ease of construction rather than on quality of final product.

From the point of view of construction workers, since the homes are to be built and never seen again, why take pride in them? Why make anything sturdy, or unique, or (dare I suggest) beautiful? Certainly not for personal credit - that will go to Toll Brothers. It becomes a job to complete, not one to do well.

Blame cannot rest entirely on the builders. They are only in one sense giving people what they want. Going back to my second question then, why would anyone want to live in these houses? I present a hypothesis.

First, the homes are generally expensive, which makes them symbols of status. They carry characteristics that give the appearance of wealth, such as high ceilings and large square footage. This is true regardless of how ugly they are.

So young couples looking to start a family go right for the houses which broadcast that they are already successes. They may not be able to afford them, but is success really something you can afford not to buy?

Since the houses are built at the same time, lots of young couples at the same stage of life flock in at the same time. They bring vehicles which broadcast success and drive around their children who broadcast success. The homogeneity of the neighborhoods becomes homogeneity of the neighbors.

The removal of many differences between people in these developments might sound like a recipe for a close-knit community, but I don't think that is what usually develops. Community breathes through interdependence, but this vision of success is built on independence.

Instead of community then, residents find an individualist conformity. Since everyone pursues the same vision simultaneously, the way to be most successful is to deviate the least from that vision.

This is exemplified in the classic suburb exercise, mowing the lawn. Because of builder demands for house density and buyer demands for near-mansions, few development houses have yards to speak of. Regardless, on Saturdays everyone mows their postage stamps at the same time.

We see then why people build and live in droves of hideous houses. People will take success in whatever package they are told contains it. None of the success signals outlined above require houses to be of any aesthetic quality. So they aren't.

My description of the mentality of those who live in these developments may sound a bit extreme. While I would be reluctant to apply it to individuals whom I know and love, I do think in the aggregate these ideas go a long way toward explaining the four yellow circles around my house.

Teh Awesome

I'm so happy that there is a Wikipedia entry for the word "teh." They actually describe it as an English article.

Only something built on user-generated content could have entries for things so obscure. And the page has over 500 revisions over its history!

What an age we live in.

My Name is Nicholas

Rock stars: is there anything they can't do?
Image grabbed from weezer.com.

New Weezer album! Yeah!

Weezer is the most popular group I think I've ever liked. Virtually all of my favorite music was written by dead men, whether Ludwig van Beethoven or Jerry Garcia. But few high school memories are fonder than Blue Album sing-a-longs.

I gave the new album a listen-through and I like it. Wikipedia cites frontman Rivers Cuomo in saying the album includes, "longer songs, non-traditional song forms, different people writing and singing, instrument switching, TR-808s, synths, Southern rap, and baroque counterpoint." You can hear all of that.

The fascinating part of Weezer to me is their blending of the artful and the popular. After the success of their debut album, they released Pinkerton, which was a concept album of a Puccini opera. It wasn't successful, and in backlash they released The Green Album, which is rather empty and unadventurous and was thus very successful.

Another example - according to Wikipedia,

The second single off Make Believe was "We Are All on Drugs"...MTV refused to play the song, so Weezer re-recorded the lyrics by replacing "on drugs" with "in love" and renaming the song "We Are All in Love".

Finally, they had to add songs to the most recent album because it didn't have enough "marketable" material. So they just made some. The album's first single, "Pork and Beans," was written for that reason, and it's been their most successful single ever.

In other words, it seems like the band sticks mostly to what they like to do, effortlessly supplementing with "sellout" material to further their aims. I think it's hilarious and admirable.

Finally, check out the music video for "Pork and Beans" below. It features many of the most popular YouTube stars. While in general I hate music videos, I think this one is a valuable cultural artifact:

"Pork and Beans"

Thanks for all you've shown us.

"Shopping has never been more important."

This quote from Swedish clothing company H&M, the same people who bring us this lovely advertisement on the bus stop outside DRL:

We "believe" that you're all morons.

You may have heard about AIDS. You may have wished you could do something about it. Well, great news - you can go on doing what you've always been doing and wonderful companies like H&M will save the world for you. All you have to do is buy their quality products. "Designers Against AIDS" joins initiatives like the RED campaign (critiqued here by my lovely friend leighcia) which bundle virtue with their products to superficially fight the world's great ills.

Everybody wins. The designers get their names advertised and associated with a "good cause." H&M gets the revenue spike associated with a successful campaign. You get to feel great about yourself for your altruism.

And those suffering from AIDS? They don't actually get anything. It took some digging on the web site, but I eventually found something which told me goals more concrete than "fighting AIDS," though not much more concrete. A whopping 25% of these proceeds go to "raise awareness and prevent the spread of AIDS worldwide."

I wouldn't be surprised at all if advertising for this campaign qualifies as "raising awareness."

Their other efforts appear to be centered on getting people to use condoms, which puzzles me. Do they not consider research for a cure a worthwhile investment? Do they think that since those who have already contracted HIV are going to die anyway, it's not worth caring for them? Both of these areas seem at least as important to me as preventing the spread of the disease (and I imagine that it's controversial how much good condom campaigns actually do). Their exclusion seems to betray some hypocrisy that I can't put my finger on.

So, for all of its noise, the campaign actually does very little more than repeat a message harped on since middle school to wealthy young Westerners.

Meaningless as the stated goals of these campaigns may be, I would go as far as to say their unstated goals are actually sinister. They seek to establish corporations as the agents for moral action in our society, rather than encouraging people to actually care about the problems and actually do something with their lives to solve them. They are a sedative, deepening complicity in an existence centered around consumption and self-gratification. They are poison.

Ezekiel speaks well of such false prophets (and false profits?):

Because, indeed, because they have seduced My people, saying, 'Peace!' when there is no peace--and one builds a wall, and they plaster it with untempered mortar*--

say to those who plaster it with untempered mortar, that it will fall. There will be flooding rain, and you, O great hailstones, shall fall; and a stormy wind shall tear it down.

Surely, when the wall has fallen, will it not be said to you, 'Where is the mortar with which you plastered it?' "

Therefore thus says the Lord God: "I will cause a stormy wind to break forth in My fury; and there shall be a flooding rain in My anger, and great hailstones in fury to consume it.

So I will break down the wall you have plastered with untempered mortar, and bring it down to the ground, so that its foundation will be uncovered; it will fall, and you shall be consumed in the midst of it. Then you shall know that I am the Lord.
Ezekiel 13:10-14

*Other translations render "untempered mortar" as "whitewash."

P.S. H&M is also behind a gigantic photo of a reclining and nearly nude woman above the Philly Car Share pod at 21st and Chestnut - nothing like filling a public space with an image damaging to men and women alike. They also appear to have a penchant for giant murals (like this giant Madonna in New York) which are actually ads - nothing like mixing advertising with art. I hate this company.

Personal Media Player Purchase - Philosophical Analysis

A couple of other concerns nagged at me about whether or not to buy an mp3 player.

It’s the earbuds.

iPod is actually a great name, because the device enables each person to disconnect him or herself from the rest of the world. Because of the portability and the sheer amount of songs you can fit on one of those things, it’s common for people to listen at any time in which conversation is not required.

Instead of listening to the sounds offered by his or her environment, an mp3 player gives its owner the option of piping in more agreeable or more stimulating or less confrontational media. Surroundings become muted. Anything that wants to get attention must fight through the chosen tunes.

So mp3 players encourage the impulse, part of human nature, to withdraw from the rest of the world into a universe in which we are the center. I’ve been part of at least one conversation in which I was competing with an iPod for attention, and it isn’t a good feeling.

To summarize, iPod --> solipsism --> uncomfortable Nick.

I went on a bike ride today, from my house out to a nearby track for a one mile run,* and I took my Sansa View. I was delighted to be accompanied by enjoyable music – it really is magical to have clear and beautiful music delivered by tiny buds which you hardly feel.

By my third lap around the track, the novelty had worn off. Rides are when the silence and the slowly changing landscape help me listen to God, away from the warring stimuli that usually block him out. I realized the last thing I wanted to do was take the stimuli with me during one of the few times I’m actively seeking to hear his voice.

All of that said, weighing all of these concerns I still decided to buy the View, and I really do like the nifty little thing. The experience of brushing my teeth was much improved by listening to The Grateful Dead, and earbuds beat laptop speakers by leaps and bounds.

In general, it’s great to be able to fill boring or half-occupied times with good listening. I just think there’s plenty about these innocuous seeming things to be cautious about.

*Run. Lumbering, panting jog. Same thing.

P.S. Another minor concern was the continuing trend toward more convenient but lower quality music. i.e. live performance --> vinyl --> compact disc --> mp3. But it's hard to argue with a format which allows such a variety of music with such portability. And you have to really listen for the difference at a reasonable bitrate.