Daniel Silliman

4.5.02

Cannon on the Loose
“Some people,” he said, “can’t tell whether you are responsible or whether you are a loose cannon out trying to make your name or something.”

“That’s probably a matter of interpretation,” I said.

He laughed, because it seemed right at the time and because even my answer was an example of why some people couldn’t tell if I was responsible or it I was a loose cannon.

“I certainly don’t know which it is,” I said.

“From the time I have known you, I’d have to go with the second one,” she said later, a friend, someone who likes me knowing me as a loose cannon.

“Ah,” I thought, “but maybe it is my responsibility to be a loose cannon, to be unpredictable and to shoot a targets that have been so safe. Yes, I am a responsibly loose cannon.”

by Daniel Silliman @ 6:29 PM. : Comments 0

Postmillenial site
I've been looking for a good site on Postmillenialism and I believe I have found it here. This is a great place with a lot articles (by all the important writers) covering the Postmillenial ground well.

Besides, how could they go wrong with a Postmil name like "It's not that bad folks!"

by Daniel Silliman @ 6:13 PM. : Comments 0

2.5.02

National Writer's Conference
My press addiction should be satisfied--or perhaps just intensified--this August. I'm looking at going to the National Writer's Conference, joint hosted by the Poynter Institute and the National Press Club, on political and government reporting. It looks like a good conference with some big names (some confirmed speakers and some with invitations), it looks like it will work into my plans and be well worth my time.

I love journalism and am looking forward to those two days already.

by Daniel Silliman @ 10:46 PM. : Comments 0

The State of Journalism
Dave Shiflett, over at National Review Online, has a fun piece on the New York Sun, ideological journalism and journalims as a whole. Maybe it is just my press addiction, but I loved his description of the great reporter homoginization:

"It is also true that we live in the Golden Age of Homogenization, in the sense that papers across the country tend to sound like they were all written by the same person. That person is not a particularly sharp writer, has no sense of humor, and tends to take himself far too seriously. Looking deeper into his soul we sense a simmering pot of boredom, weariness, and bitterness at having discovered that no Inner Hemingway lurks within."

It is too short, but go read the piece. There's more like this on the craziness of publishers and the insanity of newspapers and some good stuff on the Moonies and the Washington Times.

by Daniel Silliman @ 10:09 PM. : Comments 0

The Great and Liberal Arts
I was talking with a few other Hillsdale College students at lunch the other day and they were saying how quite a few of us came to Hillsdale with a focus—a personal emphasis—on conservatism, free-market economics, and limited government, only to have it shift and broaden. Today these students are into the classics, literature, history and philosophy instead of just politics and economics. Today they are reading Aristotle and Dante more than Mises and Hayek.

This speaks well for this school and it is a focus the administrators and public relations people haven’t emphasized enough. Our liberal arts focus is a good reason why the school is what it is. The school is better for being a haven of the liberal arts, a place where the “eternal contract” becomes real for 18-year-olds, a place where they discover or continue to discover knowledge.

As I said before, in the classroom on a mid-semester Thursday afternoon, the college’s position of the size or influence of government isn’t very relevant and the fact that everyone in the class is familiar with Homer and Virgil is obvious and important to the way that class is conducted.

by Daniel Silliman @ 6:49 PM. : Comments 0

30.4.02

Charting the Rise of My Education
I saw my education pay off in Fairfield Society debate tonight. In the discussion following the talk on the compatibility or contradiction between Christianity and Capitalism, I caught a flock of logic fallacies and followed one economics major shifting between two contradictory positions (psychological egoism and ethical egoism) depending on the success of the argument.

What a difference a semester in a good class makes. I knew he was doing the shifting though I had done the same thing a year ago, and I understood both positions and understood that the one—psychological egoism—is unfalsifiable and explains little about the world.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, the pleasure of knowledge and the joy of watching my education work.

by Daniel Silliman @ 7:02 AM. : Comments 0

Kerouac, and his place in the canon
Wherin, Seraphim and Silliman go a few rounds, in a gentlemanly fashion, on the subject of tradition, education and literature.

Seraphim contradicts my Kerouac post, sort of.

He doesn’t like Kerouac—but that certainly is not a reason to cull some writer from the canon, which he recognizes. He told me that he likes Kerouac, though less now than he used to, but doesn’t think he should. I certainly don’t endorse the man, or support the style, but he’s influence and importance should not be brushed aside because of bad ideology.

Seraphim then takes a swing at my anti-traditionalism. I am, of course, “pushing post-modern art again.” My post-modern artistic sympathies have been overblown—by me, by my detractors and by my defenders—mostly for stylistic reasons. Pitting Homer against Kerouac is not a dichotomy I erected, nor is it one I support. But, time passes and knowledge accumulates (even Kirk, the conservative, would agree with me) and some things pass from the syllabus to be replaced by the new knowledge. This is a competition—one Time judges—and the great remains.

Today we do not study the Civil War in a general education as much as it was studied in 1870. We have made room for World War II and modern affairs have changed our education. This should be equally true of literature but, for various reasons, English majors (among others including Philosophy majors) of a conservative stripe are too happy to sweep aside all modern events, influences and affairs as, alternately, irrelevant drek or destructive trash.

The best point Seraphim makes is made when he turns to the poverty of the education. Even the writers the students are familiar often amount to passing familiarity. Thus, part of the problem in the debate over the canon is the limits of the syllabus and the classroom. If students pursued literature as a personal endeavor and not as a class project, they could expand their knowledge and they could explore the wilder writers with the riskier projects, the recent works that has not yet been anthologized by Norton and the work that has fallen from the anthologies to make way for new material.

No modern individual should claim to be educated without knowledge of the works of Homer, Pound, Elliot, Kerouac, Dante, or Shakespeare. But neither should any modern person claim to be educated if their knowledge is limited to material covered by in syllabi and classrooms. A part—perhaps the part—of the liberal arts education is to teach the student to educate themselves. Pass beyond the classroom—learn the breadth and depth of the world.

Give us Homer and Kerouac and let us pass beyond the classroom.

by Daniel Silliman @ 7:01 AM. : Comments 0

Protestants and Birth Control
Open Embrace: A Protestant Couple Rethinks Contraception.
By Sam and Bethany Torode
A new book on the topic of Protestants and birth control looks really good. The authors were interviewed by Christianity Today a while back and it sounded like an intelligent and well grounded work. This is an exciting book and I expect it will some enter into the Church's debate.

I hope to read this soon. Catholics would do well to take a look at this for their arguments certainly need some shoring up--though no Protestant church has yet offered a sound alternative.

by Daniel Silliman @ 6:00 AM. : Comments 0

Go West Young Media
Seattle: poised to replace New York and save the media from itself.
Slate, the online magazine, is moving east—deserting Seattle and reasserting the primacy of New York City.

NYC has formed the center of the publishing for a long time. NYC formed the center, the news nerve system, the heart pumping everything everywhere else. The New York Times, every TV network’s headquarters (with the exception of Ted Turner’s CNN in Atlanta), all the major magazines, all the book publishing houses, all the advertising agencies, all of everything. This has received a little competition from D.C.—in political affairs—and L.A.—for entertainment. But, for all practical purposes the publishing world always sets its clock by NYC time.

This has led to a narrowness in the industry that could have and should have been avoided. NYC set the agenda. NYC was normalcy. NYC was where it was.

Except it wasn’t. Because of this the media world thought it was they missed stories, misunderstood stories and made up stories.

The Internet could have changed that. Seattle—the center of technology, the dot com world, the beginning of the information superhighway—had the chance to compete with NYC. Slate’s move is either a sign that nothing has changed, or the change is still coming and Slate has just missed the boat. I hope the latter is true. I don’t care about Slate but I do care about the state of the publication world.

Atlanta had the chance to steal the future from its NYC arrogance and failed (read Tom Wolfe’s book A Man it Full). Chicago once had the chance and also failed. Today Seattle has the chance. The future could be based in Seattle. Seattle was where America was reinventing itself.

Seattle, my home stomping grounds (though I stomp all up and down my West Coast), has the potential of replacing NYC. Seattle is a pretty city, with technology on its side. Without the past of an older city, Seattle—young and new and prosperous and full of potential and ready for the future—is new and hip and sweet and full of potential. Sure it has problems. It hasn’t yet had the time to sort itself out.

Seattle is new and the home of information technology is poised to take the lead away from NYC. Dear Slate, help save the publishing world from itself, from its NYC attitude and from lack of competition and diversity.

Go west young media. Move back to Seattle: It is a tremendous city and it is poised to take the future.

by Daniel Silliman @ 5:49 AM. : Comments 0

29.4.02

Kerouac deserves a place in the “great books" education
A student told me yesterday that he wrote in stream-of-consciousness style. He didn’t. In fact, he didn’t know the difference between writing something easily and quickly and stream-of-consciousness.

I guess this illustrates my problem with the manifestation of the “great books” philosophy. It is held by conservatives who want to say that old equals good (“test of time” or “wisdom of the anchients” or some such thing) and that the new does not compete. Generally those with such an education ignore the most current literature. The problem with this is that the modern stuff—even if it is drek—is an expression of modern, that is current, philosophies that we live with.

I was telling the fellow student about spontaneity and described Jack Kerouac and On the Road and stream-of-consciousness spontenaity. This was a smart student who would have been familiar with references to Aristotle or Dante or Shakespeare and the significance of their work but was ignorant to modern writers who have influenced the way we think and write. Even if we insist on stolid conservatism—decrying all writers of the modern and post-modern and post-post modern age—we cannot ignore writers we don’t like. They changed our world and have thus we should honestly explore their ideas and the reasons and significance of their work.

Check out the above link as part of your "great books" education. It is an interesting look into the style and form of writing by Jack Kerouac.

by Daniel Silliman @ 7:33 AM. : Comments 0

The Lights of Home
This is a very sweet picture of the earth at night.

Thanks to The Blogfather for the link.

by Daniel Silliman @ 3:00 AM. : Comments 0

The Glory of the Mess
Physicist Abraham Pais, describing the state of physics in the early 1950s in the book The Second Creation:

“It was a wonderful mess at that time. Wonderful! Just Great! It was so confusing—physics at its best, when everything is confused and you know something important lies around the corner.”

by Daniel Silliman @ 2:44 AM. : Comments 0

College Advertising
Hillsdale College has entered into an advertising campaign. They have an ad on the front page of National Review Online, for the college and they have an ad in the paper edition of National Review for the Academy’s grade school and high school program.

Seraphim takes the school to task for the online ad on a few points. The ad misrepresents part of the school’s history and makes political appeals to a political audience rather than making an appeal on the basis of education.

Why should Hillsdale College present itself purely in a political manner? The daily success of this school is not dependant on its political leanings but the academic excellence of professors and students, and its reliance upon the so-called “great books” and “wisdom of the ages.” On Thursday morning, reading Homer and Kant and Dante directly benefits me as a student. Hillsdale College’s political affiliations and persuasions, as important as they are, isn’t truly the stuff this college is made of.

The ad in the paper edition of the magazine, an ad for the program and the curriculum of the academy, is more aligned with something I would like to see. The ad is ostensibly a seventh grader’s test (in Mrs. Wolfram’s class) on the subject of Rome. The test asks students to place seven rulers in chronological order, evaluate the rulers, define a few simple Roman phrases (Pax Romana, papyrus), write on Roman education and entertainment, the fall of the Roman empire, the rise of Christianity, and the legacy of the Roman Empire in its contribution to the Western world.

The ad is good in idea, but it didn’t work out well on the page. It is awfully arrogant. Hillsdale Academy isn’t the only place such an education is offered nor is it the best possible education. The administration has recently made moves to ease the requirements of the education—lowering the standard and moving away from a classical education.

My recommendation to the school is to play up the liberal arts—the reading material of the Hillsdale freshman compared with the reading material of a freshman at a state school would be a good graphic example of the advantages of this school—and to play down the arrogance. Don’t pretend that everybody learns Latin or that all Hillsdale College students are brilliant or that this is the best education given anywhere.

by Daniel Silliman @ 2:43 AM. : Comments 0