Pittsburgh is the farthest west I have ever lived. In the service of figuring out where I am, I have begun to collect views on whether Pittsburgh is part of the Northeast or part of the Midwest or somewhere else.
First item:
from a letter to the editor of the New York Times sports section, Sunday, April 30, 2006, p.9:
"For the second time in two months, I have witnessed teams from Washington state--specifically the Seattle Seahawks and the Washington Huskies basketball team--be snubbed by pathetic referees while playing teams from the East Coast [emphasis added]....
"The East Coast bias is getting so ridiculously old... If anyone believes that the referees in the Super Bowl were not paid off to influence the game in favor of Pittsburgh, they are just flat-out ignorant!"
The letter is from Ed Gill of Seattle.
I have no interest in Mr. Gill's conspiracy theory of the Super Bowl, but I find his geography quite interesting for my project.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
My way or the busway?
I went this week to the Eastern Corridor Transit Study public input meeting on the Pitt campus.
I came in late, in time to hear a Gen-Y'er (or maybe Z; are we up to Z yet?) speaking in favor of light rail because it projects the right image to young people. A couple of speakers later, a member of the Sierra Club from Edgewood wanted to know why nobody was talking any more about converting the East Busway to light rail.
As I sat there, my thoughts went like this: when I moved to Pittsburgh, busways seemed like a clever idea because you can have the feeder routes go from neighborhoods to the busway to the downtown hub and then spread out again, thus giving people one ride to work (no transfers). (I suppose I'm still recovering from my 3 transfer ride (4 on rainy days) from my apartment in Arlington, MA to Logan airport. But that's another story.) Light rail is nice and makes me feel good and progressive in that old-timey back-to-the-past sort of way, but it seems that busways are cheaper, can be built faster, offer more flexibility, and might get people out of their cars sooner which is better for the environment than waiting around for light rail.
So I raised my hand and said all this (except for the part about Boston).
This set off quite a debate. Apparently I aligned myself with the bureaucrats at the Port Authority and with the realists against the environmentalists and the civic boosters.
So I decided I better read more about it.
See these thoughtful discussions here, here, and here. And here is a report from the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies on Bus Rapid Transit.
Turns out, Pittsburgh is either in the vanguard (trailing a bit behind Ottawa) or hopelessly stuck in the past or too cheap to do it right.
I'm still leaning toward BRT (now I'm learning the lingo). I understand the environmental concerns, but it seems hybrid technology is making buses cleaner and it's not as though the electricity to run light rail lines doesn't come from somewhere. I also understand the economic development issues that would seem to favor light rail over buses but as some of the comments in the discussions above point out (and as I pointed out at the meeting on Tuesday), you can have transit-oriented development around a busway station just as you can around a light rail (or heavy rail) station.
One other point of interest: I learn from the National Academies' report that BRT was touted in the transit plan prepared for the National Capital Planning Commission in the late 50s (1956-1959). I suppose I'll have to wait until I read Zach Schrag's The Great Society Subway to find out why this didn't happen in the DC area. I'm happy with the Metro--don't get me wrong! But imagine if the Capital Beltway had a dedicated busway alongside it. It would make all the planning for the proposed Purple Line moot. (I also take a personal interest since my father joined NCPC in 1959. Did Dad kill the Washington busway? Now that would be ironic. [And also impossible since he was the general counsel and not a transportation planner.])
I came in late, in time to hear a Gen-Y'er (or maybe Z; are we up to Z yet?) speaking in favor of light rail because it projects the right image to young people. A couple of speakers later, a member of the Sierra Club from Edgewood wanted to know why nobody was talking any more about converting the East Busway to light rail.
As I sat there, my thoughts went like this: when I moved to Pittsburgh, busways seemed like a clever idea because you can have the feeder routes go from neighborhoods to the busway to the downtown hub and then spread out again, thus giving people one ride to work (no transfers). (I suppose I'm still recovering from my 3 transfer ride (4 on rainy days) from my apartment in Arlington, MA to Logan airport. But that's another story.) Light rail is nice and makes me feel good and progressive in that old-timey back-to-the-past sort of way, but it seems that busways are cheaper, can be built faster, offer more flexibility, and might get people out of their cars sooner which is better for the environment than waiting around for light rail.
So I raised my hand and said all this (except for the part about Boston).
This set off quite a debate. Apparently I aligned myself with the bureaucrats at the Port Authority and with the realists against the environmentalists and the civic boosters.
So I decided I better read more about it.
See these thoughtful discussions here, here, and here. And here is a report from the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies on Bus Rapid Transit.
Turns out, Pittsburgh is either in the vanguard (trailing a bit behind Ottawa) or hopelessly stuck in the past or too cheap to do it right.
I'm still leaning toward BRT (now I'm learning the lingo). I understand the environmental concerns, but it seems hybrid technology is making buses cleaner and it's not as though the electricity to run light rail lines doesn't come from somewhere. I also understand the economic development issues that would seem to favor light rail over buses but as some of the comments in the discussions above point out (and as I pointed out at the meeting on Tuesday), you can have transit-oriented development around a busway station just as you can around a light rail (or heavy rail) station.
One other point of interest: I learn from the National Academies' report that BRT was touted in the transit plan prepared for the National Capital Planning Commission in the late 50s (1956-1959). I suppose I'll have to wait until I read Zach Schrag's The Great Society Subway to find out why this didn't happen in the DC area. I'm happy with the Metro--don't get me wrong! But imagine if the Capital Beltway had a dedicated busway alongside it. It would make all the planning for the proposed Purple Line moot. (I also take a personal interest since my father joined NCPC in 1959. Did Dad kill the Washington busway? Now that would be ironic. [And also impossible since he was the general counsel and not a transportation planner.])
New Media, Information, and History
An update to my posting on Kelly's article ("Nothing New Under the Sun").
If you are interested in a historical perspective on the impact that new media can have on the processing of information and the production of knowledge, the best place to go is to the work of Ann Blair who is working now on a project on what she calls "information overload in early modern Europe."
For the popular version of her work, see this Harvard Gazette article.
One of her early papers on the subject is posted at the Princeton Center for the Study of Books and Media site. (Scroll down to conference papers to find hers.)
If you are interested in a historical perspective on the impact that new media can have on the processing of information and the production of knowledge, the best place to go is to the work of Ann Blair who is working now on a project on what she calls "information overload in early modern Europe."
For the popular version of her work, see this Harvard Gazette article.
One of her early papers on the subject is posted at the Princeton Center for the Study of Books and Media site. (Scroll down to conference papers to find hers.)
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
What's new under the sun?
The May 14 “manifesto” by Kevin Kelly, “What Will Happen to the Books?” is very interesting. (I am a little behind in my reading of the New York Times Magazine, so this link will get you to the archives and not to the full text.) Kelly gives us a portrait of the future in which nearly every book has been digitized and in which information is seamlessly linked together.
Hmm... when is this all going to happen? At certain points, Kelly suggests that we are on the verge of this new environment and at other points, reality intrudes: lawsuits over copyright won’t be resolved quickly and the pace of scanning is unclear. And let’s remember that all that hyperlinking has to be done by humans (for now) for it to make any sense. And that takes time. So the “universal library” might be scanned in relatively short order, but the cataloging is going to be a long-term project. As in today’s world, libraries acquire books much faster than they can sort them into order.
He’s probably right that at some point a “book outside the universal library will be like a Web page outside the Web, gasping for air.” But that’s already the case for millions of volumes that sit unread in libraries and millions of documents that sit unread in archives. If we want to anthropomorphize, we can say that these books and documents patiently wait for their rescuers, historians and scholars of the present and future who will unearth them in the course of their research. Books can survive a long time without air actually.
Indeed, the biggest flaw in Kelly’s analysis is any sense of historical perspective.
Consider his breathless excitement over the activity of the readers in this universal library:
“Turning inked letters into electronic dots that can be read on a screen is simply the first essential step in creating this new library. The real magic will come in the second act, as each word in each book is cross-linked, clustered, cited, extracted, indexed, analyzed, annotated, remixed, reassembled and woven deeper into the culture than ever before....
“In recent years, hundred of thousands of enthusiastic amateurs have written and cross-referenced an entire online encyclopedia called Wikipedia. Buoyed by this success, many nerds believe that a billion readers can reliably weave together the pages of old books, one hyperlink at a time. Those with a passion for a special subject, obscure author or favorite book will, over time, link up its important parts. Multiply that simple generous act by millions of readers, and the universal library can be integrated in full, by fans for fans.” (NYT Magazine, May 14, 2006, p.45).
Wow! So prior to the Internet nobody ever read books, took notes, prepared indices, annotated editions, wrote commentaries, digested books for others, quoted passages in new writings, or cited the old texts in the new texts? The hyperlink concept was actually invented hundred of years ago--it was just called a footnote. The index, the abstract, the commentary all have long histories.
And a standard way of note-taking among Western scholars, for hundreds of years, was the commonplace book in which the reader arranged topical headings in a notebook and then copied passages from what he read under the various headings.
These days, the headings might be called “tags” which Kelly notes is a “recent innovation on the Web”:
“A tag is a public annotation, like a keyword or category name, that is hung on a file, page, picture or song, enabling anyone to search for that file.... Because tags are user-generated, when they move to the realm of books, they will be assigned faster, range wider, and serve better than out-of-date schemes like the Dewey Decimal System [Ouch!], particularly in frontier or fringe areas like nanotechnology or body modification.” (Ibid.)
[Not sure I want to know what “body modification” is.]
Now I’m not suggesting that the scale of the Internet or the machine-assisted nature of the searching won’t change the nature of all this activity. But it’s not as if, prior to the Internet, people have been slowly taking one book off the shelf, reading it, and putting it back and then moving on to the next book, all the while not communicating with each other.
As with many new technologies, the first thing people have done with the Internet is figure out how to do the same things they’ve already been doing better, faster, more efficiently. Then they will start figuring out to do new things with the technology and society really changes. Kelly’s analysis of how things will (could) change would be improved if he paid attention to what is truly new and what is a new way of doing the old.
For example, Kelly is really excited that “the universal library will encourage the creation of virtual ‘bookshelves’--a collection of texts, some as short as a paragraph, others a long as whole books, that form a library shelf’s worth of specialized information.” (Ibid.)
This isn’t new--you’ve got such things, I’ve got such things, Kelly’s got such things. For example, I’ve got a lot of really specialized information about the reception of a medieval book called the Kuzari. Some of it’s virtual--in my computer files--and some of it is ‘real’--on my bookshelves and in my file cabinets and scattered on the floor of my study, sometimes. And some of the connections are in my brain and some are in writing.
Next sentence: “And as with music playlists, once created, these ‘bookshelves’ will be published and swapped in the public commons.” (Ibid.)
I'm not sure what's new here. Don't we publish our specialized collections of knowledge nowadays?
Next sentence: “Indeed, some authors will begin to write books to be read as snippets or remixed as pages.” (Ibid.,)
Actually, learned authors writing during the Renaissance period had some notion this was going to happen when their readers got hold of their books. But regardless of authorial intention, we the readers have been doing this to texts for a long time.
Next sentence: “The ability to purchase, read, and manipulate individual pages or sections is surely what will drive reference books (cookbooks, how-to manuals, travel guides) in the future. You might concoct your own ‘cookbook shelf’ of Cajun recipes compiled from many different sources....” (Ibid., pp.45-46.)
Again, this sounds a lot like a commonplace book. And Kelly might want to read Malachi Beit-Arie’s discussion of medieval Jewish manuscript culture in which scholar-scribes often felt free to rewrite texts as they saw fit.
Skipping a bit: “Once snippets, articles, and pages of books become ubiquitous, shuffle-able and transferable, users will earn prestige and perhaps income for curating an excellent collection.” (Ibid., p.46)
Indeed, authors in the medieval and early modern periods often looked for patronage by claiming to have put together a useful compendium of information on a topic.
Ok, I think I’ve made my point.
Hmm... when is this all going to happen? At certain points, Kelly suggests that we are on the verge of this new environment and at other points, reality intrudes: lawsuits over copyright won’t be resolved quickly and the pace of scanning is unclear. And let’s remember that all that hyperlinking has to be done by humans (for now) for it to make any sense. And that takes time. So the “universal library” might be scanned in relatively short order, but the cataloging is going to be a long-term project. As in today’s world, libraries acquire books much faster than they can sort them into order.
He’s probably right that at some point a “book outside the universal library will be like a Web page outside the Web, gasping for air.” But that’s already the case for millions of volumes that sit unread in libraries and millions of documents that sit unread in archives. If we want to anthropomorphize, we can say that these books and documents patiently wait for their rescuers, historians and scholars of the present and future who will unearth them in the course of their research. Books can survive a long time without air actually.
Indeed, the biggest flaw in Kelly’s analysis is any sense of historical perspective.
Consider his breathless excitement over the activity of the readers in this universal library:
“Turning inked letters into electronic dots that can be read on a screen is simply the first essential step in creating this new library. The real magic will come in the second act, as each word in each book is cross-linked, clustered, cited, extracted, indexed, analyzed, annotated, remixed, reassembled and woven deeper into the culture than ever before....
“In recent years, hundred of thousands of enthusiastic amateurs have written and cross-referenced an entire online encyclopedia called Wikipedia. Buoyed by this success, many nerds believe that a billion readers can reliably weave together the pages of old books, one hyperlink at a time. Those with a passion for a special subject, obscure author or favorite book will, over time, link up its important parts. Multiply that simple generous act by millions of readers, and the universal library can be integrated in full, by fans for fans.” (NYT Magazine, May 14, 2006, p.45).
Wow! So prior to the Internet nobody ever read books, took notes, prepared indices, annotated editions, wrote commentaries, digested books for others, quoted passages in new writings, or cited the old texts in the new texts? The hyperlink concept was actually invented hundred of years ago--it was just called a footnote. The index, the abstract, the commentary all have long histories.
And a standard way of note-taking among Western scholars, for hundreds of years, was the commonplace book in which the reader arranged topical headings in a notebook and then copied passages from what he read under the various headings.
These days, the headings might be called “tags” which Kelly notes is a “recent innovation on the Web”:
“A tag is a public annotation, like a keyword or category name, that is hung on a file, page, picture or song, enabling anyone to search for that file.... Because tags are user-generated, when they move to the realm of books, they will be assigned faster, range wider, and serve better than out-of-date schemes like the Dewey Decimal System [Ouch!], particularly in frontier or fringe areas like nanotechnology or body modification.” (Ibid.)
[Not sure I want to know what “body modification” is.]
Now I’m not suggesting that the scale of the Internet or the machine-assisted nature of the searching won’t change the nature of all this activity. But it’s not as if, prior to the Internet, people have been slowly taking one book off the shelf, reading it, and putting it back and then moving on to the next book, all the while not communicating with each other.
As with many new technologies, the first thing people have done with the Internet is figure out how to do the same things they’ve already been doing better, faster, more efficiently. Then they will start figuring out to do new things with the technology and society really changes. Kelly’s analysis of how things will (could) change would be improved if he paid attention to what is truly new and what is a new way of doing the old.
For example, Kelly is really excited that “the universal library will encourage the creation of virtual ‘bookshelves’--a collection of texts, some as short as a paragraph, others a long as whole books, that form a library shelf’s worth of specialized information.” (Ibid.)
This isn’t new--you’ve got such things, I’ve got such things, Kelly’s got such things. For example, I’ve got a lot of really specialized information about the reception of a medieval book called the Kuzari. Some of it’s virtual--in my computer files--and some of it is ‘real’--on my bookshelves and in my file cabinets and scattered on the floor of my study, sometimes. And some of the connections are in my brain and some are in writing.
Next sentence: “And as with music playlists, once created, these ‘bookshelves’ will be published and swapped in the public commons.” (Ibid.)
I'm not sure what's new here. Don't we publish our specialized collections of knowledge nowadays?
Next sentence: “Indeed, some authors will begin to write books to be read as snippets or remixed as pages.” (Ibid.,)
Actually, learned authors writing during the Renaissance period had some notion this was going to happen when their readers got hold of their books. But regardless of authorial intention, we the readers have been doing this to texts for a long time.
Next sentence: “The ability to purchase, read, and manipulate individual pages or sections is surely what will drive reference books (cookbooks, how-to manuals, travel guides) in the future. You might concoct your own ‘cookbook shelf’ of Cajun recipes compiled from many different sources....” (Ibid., pp.45-46.)
Again, this sounds a lot like a commonplace book. And Kelly might want to read Malachi Beit-Arie’s discussion of medieval Jewish manuscript culture in which scholar-scribes often felt free to rewrite texts as they saw fit.
Skipping a bit: “Once snippets, articles, and pages of books become ubiquitous, shuffle-able and transferable, users will earn prestige and perhaps income for curating an excellent collection.” (Ibid., p.46)
Indeed, authors in the medieval and early modern periods often looked for patronage by claiming to have put together a useful compendium of information on a topic.
Ok, I think I’ve made my point.
Squirrel Hill Update
Update: we tried Silk Elephant over the weekend. Very good. I liked the vegetarian dumplings, the salmon dumplings, and the fresh rolls quite a lot. And the mushroom soup was excellent. My children, who are noodle experts, thought the Thai Noodle Soup was quite good and they were pleased that plain noodles were readily available.
Some notes on the neighborhood:
Free wireless at Rolladin Bakery/Cafe and at Te Cafe. These are two of my favorite new(ish) spots. Te Cafe has lots of tea; very expensive coffee that is good but my taste buds aren't sensitive enough to justify the difference in price; and nice sandwiches. And there always seems to be a copy of the New York Times. Rolladin, my favorite bakery in Squirrel Hill (yummy burekas[im]), has moved across the street and expanded into a full-fledged Israeli cafe with a breakfast and lunch menu. Nice place to sit and hang out. Kosher but gentiles and apikorsim (heretics) welcome.
Taqueria Mi Mexico (only for gentiles and apikorsim, I think) has closed.
Pacific Ring is a new "Pan Asian" restaurant. (Most of the menu is Chinese and Japanese.) I thought it was okay for a neighborhood place (but I prefer New Dumpling House down the street.) My colleague (who has spent considerable time in Asia) was less impressed. However, the City Paper reviewers gave it three stars and I usually agree with them so it's possible I was there on a bad night.
I have yet to try it, but I am pleased that we now have a kosher sushi restaurant (Susheli). I am guessing it's one of the only ones in North America outside of New York. A quick internet search turns up kosher sushi at Rubins in Brookline and a "Kosher Sushi Club" in St. Louis. Personally, I'll take my cucumber and avocado rolls anywhere, but I think it's nice to be able to say I live in a Jewish community with a kosher sushi.
4 kosher restaurants now: Milky Way (which I think has the best pizza on Murray Avenue); Susheli; Rolladin; and Pinati (Israeli Mizrachi, meat).
Two other new(ish) Asian places I want to try: Sweet Basil/La Filipiana which is Thai and Filipino (but apparently not fusion) and Silk Elephant which is "Thai Tapas."
Another Russian food store has opened on Murray Avenue in Greenfield, across from the Giant Eagle. A quick glance through the window suggests that this will be a good source for Wissotzky tea.
Some notes on the neighborhood:
Free wireless at Rolladin Bakery/Cafe and at Te Cafe. These are two of my favorite new(ish) spots. Te Cafe has lots of tea; very expensive coffee that is good but my taste buds aren't sensitive enough to justify the difference in price; and nice sandwiches. And there always seems to be a copy of the New York Times. Rolladin, my favorite bakery in Squirrel Hill (yummy burekas[im]), has moved across the street and expanded into a full-fledged Israeli cafe with a breakfast and lunch menu. Nice place to sit and hang out. Kosher but gentiles and apikorsim (heretics) welcome.
Taqueria Mi Mexico (only for gentiles and apikorsim, I think) has closed.
Pacific Ring is a new "Pan Asian" restaurant. (Most of the menu is Chinese and Japanese.) I thought it was okay for a neighborhood place (but I prefer New Dumpling House down the street.) My colleague (who has spent considerable time in Asia) was less impressed. However, the City Paper reviewers gave it three stars and I usually agree with them so it's possible I was there on a bad night.
I have yet to try it, but I am pleased that we now have a kosher sushi restaurant (Susheli). I am guessing it's one of the only ones in North America outside of New York. A quick internet search turns up kosher sushi at Rubins in Brookline and a "Kosher Sushi Club" in St. Louis. Personally, I'll take my cucumber and avocado rolls anywhere, but I think it's nice to be able to say I live in a Jewish community with a kosher sushi.
4 kosher restaurants now: Milky Way (which I think has the best pizza on Murray Avenue); Susheli; Rolladin; and Pinati (Israeli Mizrachi, meat).
Two other new(ish) Asian places I want to try: Sweet Basil/La Filipiana which is Thai and Filipino (but apparently not fusion) and Silk Elephant which is "Thai Tapas."
Another Russian food store has opened on Murray Avenue in Greenfield, across from the Giant Eagle. A quick glance through the window suggests that this will be a good source for Wissotzky tea.
Monday, May 22, 2006
Ruth Ann Dailey confused about her profession
Bill O'Reilly gets it, but one of our local pundits is completely confused about the difference between journalism and theology. See here.
Can anybody spot the problem with this analogy between the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's coverage of the Pennsylvania legislature and the Gospel of Matthew's "coverage" of the life and death of Jesus?
"Here's how [journalism] usually works: You have a busy life, filled with jobs and kids and chores and charity work, so you don't have time to attend, say, most sessions of the Legislature in Harrisburg. (If you're lucky, you haven't attended any at all.)
"Instead, you drop 50 cents into a little box and pull out a newspaper with regular, detailed reports on what our fine state reps are up to. The newspaper also carries first-hand accounts of things such as war, natural disasters, crime and government -- or crime in government.
"The newspaper's managers pool together all those quarters you drop at the newsstand (it costs less if you subscribe!) to pay reporters to do the observing and fact-gathering on your behalf.
"It's a good system, don't you think? It also happens to be the reason that I believe Jesus was divine, performed countless miracles, preached radical truths and didn't father children with Mary Magdalene.
"The eyewitnesses who heard his sermons, witnessed his miracles and touched his living body after they'd watched him die wrote about these events in both detail and great accord. Though they give Mary Magdalene credit for arriving first at Jesus' empty tomb, they don't mention a romantic relationship or children. They understood that the gospel concerns his blood, not his bloodline.
"There are far more early copies of their reporting and a far shorter gap between the originals and the surviving copies than for any other document from ancient times. And the authors of these journalistic accounts chose to die rather than renounce what they'd written."
If you are having trouble answering my challenge (to spot the faulty logic in the analogy), I recommend any basic textbook on the history of early Christianity.
In the meantime, two salient points:
1) The earliest of the four Gospels (Mark) dates from at least 3 decades after the death of Jesus. The usual range of dates given by historians for the four Gospels (without total consensus on when each was written) is circa 70 CE to circa 120 CE.
2) The penultimate sentence I quoted from Ms. Dailey is a red herring: yes, there are lots of early manuscript copies of the four Gospels. But all this tells us is that Christian communities in the late first century and early second century accepted these accounts and transmitted them as accurately as possible. It doesn't tell us anything about the reliability of the accounts regarding early first century events.
Ms. Dailey and other Christians are perfectly free to believe that the Gospel accounts are true. But if she is basing her religious faith on a notion that the Gospels have the same epistemological status as the AP wire, she is working from faulty premises.
Can anybody spot the problem with this analogy between the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's coverage of the Pennsylvania legislature and the Gospel of Matthew's "coverage" of the life and death of Jesus?
"Here's how [journalism] usually works: You have a busy life, filled with jobs and kids and chores and charity work, so you don't have time to attend, say, most sessions of the Legislature in Harrisburg. (If you're lucky, you haven't attended any at all.)
"Instead, you drop 50 cents into a little box and pull out a newspaper with regular, detailed reports on what our fine state reps are up to. The newspaper also carries first-hand accounts of things such as war, natural disasters, crime and government -- or crime in government.
"The newspaper's managers pool together all those quarters you drop at the newsstand (it costs less if you subscribe!) to pay reporters to do the observing and fact-gathering on your behalf.
"It's a good system, don't you think? It also happens to be the reason that I believe Jesus was divine, performed countless miracles, preached radical truths and didn't father children with Mary Magdalene.
"The eyewitnesses who heard his sermons, witnessed his miracles and touched his living body after they'd watched him die wrote about these events in both detail and great accord. Though they give Mary Magdalene credit for arriving first at Jesus' empty tomb, they don't mention a romantic relationship or children. They understood that the gospel concerns his blood, not his bloodline.
"There are far more early copies of their reporting and a far shorter gap between the originals and the surviving copies than for any other document from ancient times. And the authors of these journalistic accounts chose to die rather than renounce what they'd written."
If you are having trouble answering my challenge (to spot the faulty logic in the analogy), I recommend any basic textbook on the history of early Christianity.
In the meantime, two salient points:
1) The earliest of the four Gospels (Mark) dates from at least 3 decades after the death of Jesus. The usual range of dates given by historians for the four Gospels (without total consensus on when each was written) is circa 70 CE to circa 120 CE.
2) The penultimate sentence I quoted from Ms. Dailey is a red herring: yes, there are lots of early manuscript copies of the four Gospels. But all this tells us is that Christian communities in the late first century and early second century accepted these accounts and transmitted them as accurately as possible. It doesn't tell us anything about the reliability of the accounts regarding early first century events.
Ms. Dailey and other Christians are perfectly free to believe that the Gospel accounts are true. But if she is basing her religious faith on a notion that the Gospels have the same epistemological status as the AP wire, she is working from faulty premises.
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Strange to agree with Bill O'Reilly...
...about anything, but in an Associated Press dispatch by Richard Ostling, published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Saturday May 20, 2006, p.A2, O'Reilly is quoted as saying: "no gospel is history." Bill O'Reilly apparently shares the understanding of most academic historians regarding the historicity of the four canonical gospels of the New Testament: that they "all have different interpretations of what happened" and that they can not be taken as accurate history. As texts from late in the first century and early in the second century, they are not eyewitness accounts, but do offer us some clues about what may have happened earlier in the first century. However, our use of the text to reconstruct earlier events must be done cautiously given that they are later texts, offering particular theological interpretations to particular early Christian audiences. [The last two sentences are my summary of the views of historians that O'Reilly seems to share. They are not a paraphrase of O'Reilly's comments.]
It's worth keeping this in mind when we hear that The Da Vinci Code is "fiction." It makes claims about certain things being true which are not true. And certainly it is worth pointing out what supposed historical facts are not false lest anyone think that Isaac Newton was a member of a secret society that worshipped the eternal feminine or that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a baby.
But it's quite interesting to read the novel (and I suppose interpret the film) as a particular theological interpretation designed to speak to a contemporary audience.
To loosely paraphrase a famous comment about the study of Jewish mysticism: fiction making truth claims is fiction but the history of the acceptance of such truth claims is Religious Studies.
It's worth keeping this in mind when we hear that The Da Vinci Code is "fiction." It makes claims about certain things being true which are not true. And certainly it is worth pointing out what supposed historical facts are not false lest anyone think that Isaac Newton was a member of a secret society that worshipped the eternal feminine or that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a baby.
But it's quite interesting to read the novel (and I suppose interpret the film) as a particular theological interpretation designed to speak to a contemporary audience.
To loosely paraphrase a famous comment about the study of Jewish mysticism: fiction making truth claims is fiction but the history of the acceptance of such truth claims is Religious Studies.
Free Newspapers Update
The TribPM appeared again on our front steps two days this week.
Have taken no action except to read them.
Have taken no action except to read them.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Free Newspapers
I've been meaning to post for a while about free newspapers. (I've been meaning to post about a lot of things for a while but it's been a busy semester. You can tell the semester is almost over since I'm blogging to procrastinate grading.)
I am basically addicted to the printed newspaper. We subscribe to our daily paper, the Post-Gazette, 7 days a week. We also take the New York Times on Sunday. (I thought the terminology should be as quaint as the practice.) We subscribe to the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle. And I've been known to buy the Washington Post if I go grocery shopping on Sunday. I like the weekend section of the Wall Street Journal and will often put down a dollar for that newspaper on Fridays (although I try not to think about what portion of that dollar is paying the salaries of their editorial writers). A happy Sunday on vacation in Deep Creek, Maryland is one in which I can buy a Post-Gazette, a Post, a Times, and a Baltimore Sun. A Sunday in the Berkshires when I can pick up a Berkshire Eagle, a Times, and a Boston Globe is pretty satisfying too.
I pick up the City Paper every week and the Pitt News every day that I'm on campus.
And I have often suggested that major dailies should make themselves basically available for free. (I would keep a charge for delivery of the paper.) When free wireless is available across the land, nobody will buy newspapers.
So why I am not so excited about the proliferation of free daily newspapers in major cities? It started a few years ago with the "Metro" paper, a European import that started in Philadelphia and has spread elsewhere. The Washington Post now has it's own free daily and is in competition with a free paper in DC called the Examiner which has a sister paper in San Francisco. And right here in Three River City, we have the "TribPM."
The TribPM is a bit different from the others: For one, it's published in Pittsburgh, not exactly a growing media market and so isn't a defensive measure against potential incursion by the Metro or Examiner chains. It really is an afternoon paper and doesn't hit the streets until mid-day. It's published by the rather conservative Tribune-Review, but doesn't seem to take any kind of political line.
In its apolitical mix of celebrity gossip and somewhat vapid "lifestyle" information, however, its content seems pretty typical of the free dailies.
I am so addicted to the printed word that I will pick up a free paper--on the Washingon Metro; on Septa in Philadelphia; waiting for the bus in Pittsburgh. And I will read it. And I do understand the business model of these papers. Pay very little for content, paper, and ink. Pay out for a distribution system. Rake in advertising dollars.
But I always feel like I've wasted my time after I've read these papers: if I have already read the local daily over breakfast, I learn nothing new in terms of national or international news. The TribPM, as an afternoon paper, does have some news that hasn't made the morning paper, but there isn't usually anything in there that I can't wait to hear about until the next morning. There is some celebrity gossip in the TribPM that I wouldn't find in the Post-Gazette (or for that matter in the morning Tribune-Review), but I can certainly live without that.
A few weeks ago, the TribPM started showing up on my front lawn (er, front weed patch). This was the final straw: if I'm going to read it, I'm going to read it for the 10 minutes I'm waiting for the bus--I don't need it or want it once I'm home! And when we came back from a trip to find 3 days worth of free afternoon paper in front of our house, I realized I had to take action. So I called the office and asked that they stopped sending it. And they said yes and they did. (This may be the most surprising thing.)
I wish, though, that I had stayed on the line a bit longer to ask some questions:
--why did they think people would want this at home?
--doesn't home delivery add to the costs in a way that detracts from the simplicity of the business model?
--how many papers are they distributing to houses and how many "opt-out" calls have they gotten since you started?
I am basically addicted to the printed newspaper. We subscribe to our daily paper, the Post-Gazette, 7 days a week. We also take the New York Times on Sunday. (I thought the terminology should be as quaint as the practice.) We subscribe to the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle. And I've been known to buy the Washington Post if I go grocery shopping on Sunday. I like the weekend section of the Wall Street Journal and will often put down a dollar for that newspaper on Fridays (although I try not to think about what portion of that dollar is paying the salaries of their editorial writers). A happy Sunday on vacation in Deep Creek, Maryland is one in which I can buy a Post-Gazette, a Post, a Times, and a Baltimore Sun. A Sunday in the Berkshires when I can pick up a Berkshire Eagle, a Times, and a Boston Globe is pretty satisfying too.
I pick up the City Paper every week and the Pitt News every day that I'm on campus.
And I have often suggested that major dailies should make themselves basically available for free. (I would keep a charge for delivery of the paper.) When free wireless is available across the land, nobody will buy newspapers.
So why I am not so excited about the proliferation of free daily newspapers in major cities? It started a few years ago with the "Metro" paper, a European import that started in Philadelphia and has spread elsewhere. The Washington Post now has it's own free daily and is in competition with a free paper in DC called the Examiner which has a sister paper in San Francisco. And right here in Three River City, we have the "TribPM."
The TribPM is a bit different from the others: For one, it's published in Pittsburgh, not exactly a growing media market and so isn't a defensive measure against potential incursion by the Metro or Examiner chains. It really is an afternoon paper and doesn't hit the streets until mid-day. It's published by the rather conservative Tribune-Review, but doesn't seem to take any kind of political line.
In its apolitical mix of celebrity gossip and somewhat vapid "lifestyle" information, however, its content seems pretty typical of the free dailies.
I am so addicted to the printed word that I will pick up a free paper--on the Washingon Metro; on Septa in Philadelphia; waiting for the bus in Pittsburgh. And I will read it. And I do understand the business model of these papers. Pay very little for content, paper, and ink. Pay out for a distribution system. Rake in advertising dollars.
But I always feel like I've wasted my time after I've read these papers: if I have already read the local daily over breakfast, I learn nothing new in terms of national or international news. The TribPM, as an afternoon paper, does have some news that hasn't made the morning paper, but there isn't usually anything in there that I can't wait to hear about until the next morning. There is some celebrity gossip in the TribPM that I wouldn't find in the Post-Gazette (or for that matter in the morning Tribune-Review), but I can certainly live without that.
A few weeks ago, the TribPM started showing up on my front lawn (er, front weed patch). This was the final straw: if I'm going to read it, I'm going to read it for the 10 minutes I'm waiting for the bus--I don't need it or want it once I'm home! And when we came back from a trip to find 3 days worth of free afternoon paper in front of our house, I realized I had to take action. So I called the office and asked that they stopped sending it. And they said yes and they did. (This may be the most surprising thing.)
I wish, though, that I had stayed on the line a bit longer to ask some questions:
--why did they think people would want this at home?
--doesn't home delivery add to the costs in a way that detracts from the simplicity of the business model?
--how many papers are they distributing to houses and how many "opt-out" calls have they gotten since you started?
Monday, January 16, 2006
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Updates
It's been about a month so here is what I have been doing:
1. Attending the Association for Jewish Studies meeting in Washington. This starts to feel less and less like a conference and more and more like a reunion.
2. Saying good-bye to Philadelphia friends.
3. Relocating self and family back to Pittsburgh.
4. Unpacking boxes.
5. Saying hello to Pittsburgh friends.
6. Continuing to be out of touch with most of our NY, Boston, New Haven, Indianapolis, Chicago, California friends.
7. Enjoying the little stove-top espresso maker that our Italian tenants left us (really they left it for me since I'm the only coffee-drinker in the family).
8. Getting ready for the start of the semester.
9. Going to Pittsburgh Housing Court. Let me put it his way: The citation was dismissed because I did get the alarm permit after receiving the summons in the mail and I explained to the judge that I hadn't known about the ordinance before that. But a word of advice: if you are reading this and you have a burglar alarm in your house in Pittsburgh, and you don't have an alarm permit, google "Pittsburgh Alarm Permit" right now, fill out the application, and save yourself some hassles.
8. Starting the semester: 2 classes and undergraduate advising.
9. Updating the links to other blogs on the sidebar.
1. Attending the Association for Jewish Studies meeting in Washington. This starts to feel less and less like a conference and more and more like a reunion.
2. Saying good-bye to Philadelphia friends.
3. Relocating self and family back to Pittsburgh.
4. Unpacking boxes.
5. Saying hello to Pittsburgh friends.
6. Continuing to be out of touch with most of our NY, Boston, New Haven, Indianapolis, Chicago, California friends.
7. Enjoying the little stove-top espresso maker that our Italian tenants left us (really they left it for me since I'm the only coffee-drinker in the family).
8. Getting ready for the start of the semester.
9. Going to Pittsburgh Housing Court. Let me put it his way: The citation was dismissed because I did get the alarm permit after receiving the summons in the mail and I explained to the judge that I hadn't known about the ordinance before that. But a word of advice: if you are reading this and you have a burglar alarm in your house in Pittsburgh, and you don't have an alarm permit, google "Pittsburgh Alarm Permit" right now, fill out the application, and save yourself some hassles.
8. Starting the semester: 2 classes and undergraduate advising.
9. Updating the links to other blogs on the sidebar.
Sunday, December 11, 2005
Historian Detectives
Careful readers of my sidebar will note that I have been on a bit of mystery novel kick since the summer. But what has been more interesting is that I keep running across detectives who are (former) historians.
First, I had the pleasure of meeting Michael Ohayon of the Jerusalem Police department when I happened to pick up a Batya Gur novel to read on the plane to Israel last summer. Ohayon has an MA from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in medieval history. Then, when I mentioned to my stepfather that I had read and enjoyed a couple of the Batya Gur novels, he dug out a thriller from the mid-80s from one of his shelves--William Bayer's Pattern Crimes. At one point the detective mentions to another character that history is a passion or interest of his. Then, a few weeks ago, I noticed Gaudy Night on the shelf in my friend's new bookstore (see "My AAR-SBL" below). I had read all the Lord Peter Wimsey novels when I was a lad (I think circa 8th grade but I can't be sure now) but had completely forgotten the plot of Gaudy Night. I can't imagine that the musings on academic life, returns to places of one's youth, or the questions of marriage, family, career meant anything to me then. In any case, I had completely forgotten (if I ever paid attention) that Wimsey of Balliol had taken a First in history.
Dear reader, please leave the names of other literary historian detectives in the comments. Many thanks.
First, I had the pleasure of meeting Michael Ohayon of the Jerusalem Police department when I happened to pick up a Batya Gur novel to read on the plane to Israel last summer. Ohayon has an MA from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in medieval history. Then, when I mentioned to my stepfather that I had read and enjoyed a couple of the Batya Gur novels, he dug out a thriller from the mid-80s from one of his shelves--William Bayer's Pattern Crimes. At one point the detective mentions to another character that history is a passion or interest of his. Then, a few weeks ago, I noticed Gaudy Night on the shelf in my friend's new bookstore (see "My AAR-SBL" below). I had read all the Lord Peter Wimsey novels when I was a lad (I think circa 8th grade but I can't be sure now) but had completely forgotten the plot of Gaudy Night. I can't imagine that the musings on academic life, returns to places of one's youth, or the questions of marriage, family, career meant anything to me then. In any case, I had completely forgotten (if I ever paid attention) that Wimsey of Balliol had taken a First in history.
Dear reader, please leave the names of other literary historian detectives in the comments. Many thanks.
Sunday, November 27, 2005
File under: Headlines that make a Pittsburgh medieval historian a tad nervous
Allegheny County says goodbye to the Middle Ages
Turns out it's just a story about the demise of the Coroner's office.
Whew.
Turns out it's just a story about the demise of the Coroner's office.
Whew.
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Sibling Relations
Sibling relations are complex. Consider the following Thanksgiving message our Daughter composed to go on her Thanksgiving art project at school:
"I am thankful for my family, my brother, my friends."
"I am thankful for my family, my brother, my friends."
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
A Little More AAR
This morning, I went to this session:
A22-12 Study of Judaism Section
Tuesday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
Randi Rashkover, York College of Pennsylvania, Presiding
Theme: Jewish Thought: Culture and Curriculum
Alan Verskin, Princeton University
"Teaching Philosophy to the Multitude: The Thought of Nissim B. Moshe of Marseilles"
Ellen Haskell, Franklin & Marshall College
"Metaphor, Transformation, and Transcendence: Toward an Understanding of Kabbalistic Imagery in the Book of Zohar"
Marc Krell, University of Arizona
"The Prophetic Narrative as a Basis for Religious Socialism in Weimar Germany: Jewish and Christian Attempts to Navigate between Historicism and Dialectical Theology"
Kenneth Koltun-Fromm, Haverford College in Pennsylvania
"The Art of Writing: The Diaries of Mordechai Kaplan"
(It was actually Martin Kavka presiding.)
My original plan was to hear the first three papers and then duck out and head to another session to hear one of our graduate students. But I didn't have a chance to get a cup of coffee before hand, and I was feeling really tired, so I decided that I would just stay for the first paper since medieval philosophy and curricula are things I'm interested in. I apologized before the session began to the other panelists for needing to duck out (I left out the part about needing/wanting a cup of coffee, so if Professors Haskell and Krell read this, now I owe you both a bigger apology.) Alan Verskin's presentation of Nissim's conception of why one should teach the masses some philosophy but should certainly not yourself believe that there is any philosophical truth in scripture was compelling. Someone asked him why Nissim would write that scripture had no philosophical truths if he didn't want the masses to know this. Well, Verskin answered, it's not clear why he didn't do a better job writing this part esoterically. I think I would answer differently: Maaseh Nissim (the work in question which survives in only a couple of manuscripts and was printed for the first time only 4 or 5 years ago) was probably not intended as a philosophical textbook for the masses; rather, I would guess that it was intended as a manual for philosophically inclined preachers who could use it to prepare sermons which could inculcate some philosophy in the multitude.
Then on to the aforementioned coffee in the super-crowded Starbucks in the Marriott Philadelphia lobby. Some people reading the New York Times; some earnestly chatting; some staring into space; some staring into their bagels; some (okay one person) reading a pocket edition of the Mishnah.
And then to:
22-7 History of Christianity Section
Tuesday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
Arun W. Jones, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Presiding
Theme: East Meets West: Intra-Christian Tensions and Relationships
Jennifer C. Lane, Brigham Young University, Hawaii
"Comos and Communion: The Orthodox and the Other in Thirteenth-Century Central Asia"
Korinna Zamfir, Babes-Bolyai University
"An Overview of the Tensions Related to Mixed Matrimony in Transylvania during the Eighteenth–Twentieth Centuries"
István Keul, Free University of Berlin
"Denomination and Ethnic Affiliation in East Central Europe: Past and Present"
Brian P. Bennett, Niagara University
"Western Christianity as Other: The Discourse of "Latinism" in Russian History"
Amy A. Slagle, University of Pittsburgh
"The Internalized Other: Narrative Constructions of Ethnicity among American-Born Converts to Eastern Orthodox Christianity"
Responding:
Milica Bakic-Hayden, University of Pittsburgh
I came in time for the second half of Brian Bennett's talk--interesting material on Russia's version of "Occidentialism." Amy's paper (obviously the reason I went) is part of her dissertation on converts to Eastern Orthodoxy. This talk was on her ethnographic fieldwork in an Orthodox parish (Orthodox Church of America if anyone is interested) in Pittsburgh. I am on her dissertation committee so I may be accused of bias, but it was an excellent talk. My colleage, Milica Bakic-Hayden, responded to all the papers. Milica raised an issue about Amy's paper that I was thinking about as well: how typical is Pittsburgh? Ethnicity matters a lot in Pittsburgh. I realized this shortly after moving there when I saw the bumper-sticker: "Proud Hungarian-American Democrat."
A22-12 Study of Judaism Section
Tuesday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
Randi Rashkover, York College of Pennsylvania, Presiding
Theme: Jewish Thought: Culture and Curriculum
Alan Verskin, Princeton University
"Teaching Philosophy to the Multitude: The Thought of Nissim B. Moshe of Marseilles"
Ellen Haskell, Franklin & Marshall College
"Metaphor, Transformation, and Transcendence: Toward an Understanding of Kabbalistic Imagery in the Book of Zohar"
Marc Krell, University of Arizona
"The Prophetic Narrative as a Basis for Religious Socialism in Weimar Germany: Jewish and Christian Attempts to Navigate between Historicism and Dialectical Theology"
Kenneth Koltun-Fromm, Haverford College in Pennsylvania
"The Art of Writing: The Diaries of Mordechai Kaplan"
(It was actually Martin Kavka presiding.)
My original plan was to hear the first three papers and then duck out and head to another session to hear one of our graduate students. But I didn't have a chance to get a cup of coffee before hand, and I was feeling really tired, so I decided that I would just stay for the first paper since medieval philosophy and curricula are things I'm interested in. I apologized before the session began to the other panelists for needing to duck out (I left out the part about needing/wanting a cup of coffee, so if Professors Haskell and Krell read this, now I owe you both a bigger apology.) Alan Verskin's presentation of Nissim's conception of why one should teach the masses some philosophy but should certainly not yourself believe that there is any philosophical truth in scripture was compelling. Someone asked him why Nissim would write that scripture had no philosophical truths if he didn't want the masses to know this. Well, Verskin answered, it's not clear why he didn't do a better job writing this part esoterically. I think I would answer differently: Maaseh Nissim (the work in question which survives in only a couple of manuscripts and was printed for the first time only 4 or 5 years ago) was probably not intended as a philosophical textbook for the masses; rather, I would guess that it was intended as a manual for philosophically inclined preachers who could use it to prepare sermons which could inculcate some philosophy in the multitude.
Then on to the aforementioned coffee in the super-crowded Starbucks in the Marriott Philadelphia lobby. Some people reading the New York Times; some earnestly chatting; some staring into space; some staring into their bagels; some (okay one person) reading a pocket edition of the Mishnah.
And then to:
22-7 History of Christianity Section
Tuesday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
Arun W. Jones, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Presiding
Theme: East Meets West: Intra-Christian Tensions and Relationships
Jennifer C. Lane, Brigham Young University, Hawaii
"Comos and Communion: The Orthodox and the Other in Thirteenth-Century Central Asia"
Korinna Zamfir, Babes-Bolyai University
"An Overview of the Tensions Related to Mixed Matrimony in Transylvania during the Eighteenth–Twentieth Centuries"
István Keul, Free University of Berlin
"Denomination and Ethnic Affiliation in East Central Europe: Past and Present"
Brian P. Bennett, Niagara University
"Western Christianity as Other: The Discourse of "Latinism" in Russian History"
Amy A. Slagle, University of Pittsburgh
"The Internalized Other: Narrative Constructions of Ethnicity among American-Born Converts to Eastern Orthodox Christianity"
Responding:
Milica Bakic-Hayden, University of Pittsburgh
I came in time for the second half of Brian Bennett's talk--interesting material on Russia's version of "Occidentialism." Amy's paper (obviously the reason I went) is part of her dissertation on converts to Eastern Orthodoxy. This talk was on her ethnographic fieldwork in an Orthodox parish (Orthodox Church of America if anyone is interested) in Pittsburgh. I am on her dissertation committee so I may be accused of bias, but it was an excellent talk. My colleage, Milica Bakic-Hayden, responded to all the papers. Milica raised an issue about Amy's paper that I was thinking about as well: how typical is Pittsburgh? Ethnicity matters a lot in Pittsburgh. I realized this shortly after moving there when I saw the bumper-sticker: "Proud Hungarian-American Democrat."
Monday, November 21, 2005
My AAR-SBL
Some 8000 people (this is hearsay) are in Philadelphia now for the annual joint meeting of the American Academy of Religion and Society for Biblical Literature. It's always strange to go to a conference in the city you are (temporarily) living in. [An aside: my four year old daughter has told us that the proper term for what we are doing in Philadelphia right now is "half-living".] Unlike going to a conference in another city, one's normal life is right there.
Case in point: I spent Saturday (day 1 of the conference) at home with the family and went Saturday afternoon and evening to the grand opening of a new bookstore, owned by a friend of mine from grade school and high school who also ended up in Philadelphia. On your next visit to Northwest Philadelphia, please visit the Big Blue Marble Bookstore on Carpenter Lane in West Mount Airy.
Sunday, I went to Center City and went to a couple of sessions, had lunch with a new colleague in Pittsburgh who arrived in Pittsburgh as we were leaving this summer, had coffee with an old friend, went to the Pitt-PTS-Duquesne reception.
Of couse, I didn't pay enough attention to the SBL side of the update booklet and missed out on the special session devoted to Ron Tappy's discovery of what may be the oldest Hebrew alphabet. You may have seen this in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Chicago Tribune, or the New York Times. PaleoJudaica.com was there however so you can read his report.
The first session I went to was:
(1) A20-13 Study of Judaism Section
Sunday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
Shaul Magid, Indiana University-Bloomington, Presiding
Theme: Gender, Feminism, and Orthodox Judaism
Gail Labovitz, University of Judaism
"Assent to Ascent: Rabbinic Negotiations of Exile, Marriage, and Gender Relations"
Rochelle L. Millen, Wittenberg University
"Theological Approaches in Orthodox Feminism"
Jerome Gellman, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
"Cumulative Revelation and Orthodox Feminist Theology"
Nora L. Rubel, Connecticut College
"'Muggers in Black Coats': Gender and Ultra-Orthodox Jews in the Jewish American Imagination"
All four papers were excellent although discussion was dominated by Gellman's presentation in which he argued that while (a) the concept of cumulative revelation can be accommodated within contemporary Orthodox Judaism, (b) the sort of new revelation that a "moderate radical feminism" envisions would cause changes that could not be accommodated and that thus (c) the most Orthodox Jewish feminists can do is "bargain with patriarchy." Much discussion and contention over whether the changes he outlined could not in fact be accommodated and over the question of what he meant by "Orthodox." (Strangely many seemed to interpret him as arguing for a normative definition of Orthodox rather than a sociological one and also for arguing somehow against the changes that feminism advocates. These both seem to be misinterpretations of his position.) Only a little discussion about point (a) which I consider to be as interesting and much more problematic. He argued that Hasidism believed in cumulative revelation and was nonetheless accommodated in Orthodox Judaism. The problem is that all of his examples of Hasidic notions of cumulative revelation were 18th or early 19th century and one can argue that Hasidism is only included in Orthodox Judaism when it tones this stuff down. (One audience member and the chair of the panel made this point, more or less.) But nobody pointed out that there was no "Orthodox" Judaism in the 18th century for Hasidism to be part of or not part of.
The second panel I went to was:
A20-110
Study of Judaism Section
Sunday - 4:00 pm-6:30 pm
Steven D. Kepnes, Colgate University, Presiding
Theme: Place as Elsewhere: Home and Homelessness in Jewish Text and Commentary
Panelists:
Adam Zachary Newton, University of Texas, Austin
Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi, Hebrew University
Jacob Meskin, Hebrew College
Responding:
Martin Kavka, Florida State University
Newton and Ezrahi dropped out and Shaul Magid substituted. Meskin spoke on Levinas' attitudes toward Zionism and state sovereignty; Magid spoke on the Slonimer Rebbe's views of exile and diaspora. Kavka's response sparked off an excellent discussion although one that subsequently got a bit subtracked in my humble opinion on the question of whether a Zionism without messianism was or was not a viable option in the early 21st century. Some were arguing about whether it was or was not viable in a theological sense; others were arguing about whether it was or was not viable in a sociological sense.
There is usually very little at the AAR in my area (medieval and early modern Jewish intellectual and cultural history) which might explain why I don't often go to AAR. (This was my first visit since the 1999 meeting in Boston). But when I do go, I like to go to these sessions that are mainly contemporary Jewish thought and indulge in a little bit of constructive thinking. I also like to step back a bit and watch the theologians and philosophers at work. But it is a bit strange to find a wholly different model of "religious studies"--theological, "insider," constructive--at the AAR than the one I am used to in the department in which I do my work--historical, "outsider," and descriptive.
Today I went to the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies and actually did some work in the morning and then heard a fascinating presentation by Piet van Boxel in our weekly seminar series (moved to Monday from Wednesday because of Thanksgiving). Piet dealt with a project, run at the highest levels of the Church, in the late 1570s and early 1580s, to systematically survey Jewish biblical exegesis as represented in the commentaries published in various Biblia Rabbinica editions for objectionable passages, to translate them to Latin (sometimes via Italian), and then to comment on what was objectionable. This was not done for the simple purpose of expurgation, apparently, but for more complex reasons: to prepare material for missionary efforts, especially conversionary sermons; to set out official Church positions on Jewish exegesis; and to prepare a kind of encyclopedia of Jewish beliefs for reference purposes.
Then I headed back over to the Philadelphia Convention Center and had coffee with another Pittsburgh colleague. Then home to make dinner.
Tomorrow: a little more conference and then back to work.
Case in point: I spent Saturday (day 1 of the conference) at home with the family and went Saturday afternoon and evening to the grand opening of a new bookstore, owned by a friend of mine from grade school and high school who also ended up in Philadelphia. On your next visit to Northwest Philadelphia, please visit the Big Blue Marble Bookstore on Carpenter Lane in West Mount Airy.
Sunday, I went to Center City and went to a couple of sessions, had lunch with a new colleague in Pittsburgh who arrived in Pittsburgh as we were leaving this summer, had coffee with an old friend, went to the Pitt-PTS-Duquesne reception.
Of couse, I didn't pay enough attention to the SBL side of the update booklet and missed out on the special session devoted to Ron Tappy's discovery of what may be the oldest Hebrew alphabet. You may have seen this in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Chicago Tribune, or the New York Times. PaleoJudaica.com was there however so you can read his report.
The first session I went to was:
(1) A20-13 Study of Judaism Section
Sunday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
Shaul Magid, Indiana University-Bloomington, Presiding
Theme: Gender, Feminism, and Orthodox Judaism
Gail Labovitz, University of Judaism
"Assent to Ascent: Rabbinic Negotiations of Exile, Marriage, and Gender Relations"
Rochelle L. Millen, Wittenberg University
"Theological Approaches in Orthodox Feminism"
Jerome Gellman, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
"Cumulative Revelation and Orthodox Feminist Theology"
Nora L. Rubel, Connecticut College
"'Muggers in Black Coats': Gender and Ultra-Orthodox Jews in the Jewish American Imagination"
All four papers were excellent although discussion was dominated by Gellman's presentation in which he argued that while (a) the concept of cumulative revelation can be accommodated within contemporary Orthodox Judaism, (b) the sort of new revelation that a "moderate radical feminism" envisions would cause changes that could not be accommodated and that thus (c) the most Orthodox Jewish feminists can do is "bargain with patriarchy." Much discussion and contention over whether the changes he outlined could not in fact be accommodated and over the question of what he meant by "Orthodox." (Strangely many seemed to interpret him as arguing for a normative definition of Orthodox rather than a sociological one and also for arguing somehow against the changes that feminism advocates. These both seem to be misinterpretations of his position.) Only a little discussion about point (a) which I consider to be as interesting and much more problematic. He argued that Hasidism believed in cumulative revelation and was nonetheless accommodated in Orthodox Judaism. The problem is that all of his examples of Hasidic notions of cumulative revelation were 18th or early 19th century and one can argue that Hasidism is only included in Orthodox Judaism when it tones this stuff down. (One audience member and the chair of the panel made this point, more or less.) But nobody pointed out that there was no "Orthodox" Judaism in the 18th century for Hasidism to be part of or not part of.
The second panel I went to was:
A20-110
Study of Judaism Section
Sunday - 4:00 pm-6:30 pm
Steven D. Kepnes, Colgate University, Presiding
Theme: Place as Elsewhere: Home and Homelessness in Jewish Text and Commentary
Panelists:
Adam Zachary Newton, University of Texas, Austin
Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi, Hebrew University
Jacob Meskin, Hebrew College
Responding:
Martin Kavka, Florida State University
Newton and Ezrahi dropped out and Shaul Magid substituted. Meskin spoke on Levinas' attitudes toward Zionism and state sovereignty; Magid spoke on the Slonimer Rebbe's views of exile and diaspora. Kavka's response sparked off an excellent discussion although one that subsequently got a bit subtracked in my humble opinion on the question of whether a Zionism without messianism was or was not a viable option in the early 21st century. Some were arguing about whether it was or was not viable in a theological sense; others were arguing about whether it was or was not viable in a sociological sense.
There is usually very little at the AAR in my area (medieval and early modern Jewish intellectual and cultural history) which might explain why I don't often go to AAR. (This was my first visit since the 1999 meeting in Boston). But when I do go, I like to go to these sessions that are mainly contemporary Jewish thought and indulge in a little bit of constructive thinking. I also like to step back a bit and watch the theologians and philosophers at work. But it is a bit strange to find a wholly different model of "religious studies"--theological, "insider," constructive--at the AAR than the one I am used to in the department in which I do my work--historical, "outsider," and descriptive.
Today I went to the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies and actually did some work in the morning and then heard a fascinating presentation by Piet van Boxel in our weekly seminar series (moved to Monday from Wednesday because of Thanksgiving). Piet dealt with a project, run at the highest levels of the Church, in the late 1570s and early 1580s, to systematically survey Jewish biblical exegesis as represented in the commentaries published in various Biblia Rabbinica editions for objectionable passages, to translate them to Latin (sometimes via Italian), and then to comment on what was objectionable. This was not done for the simple purpose of expurgation, apparently, but for more complex reasons: to prepare material for missionary efforts, especially conversionary sermons; to set out official Church positions on Jewish exegesis; and to prepare a kind of encyclopedia of Jewish beliefs for reference purposes.
Then I headed back over to the Philadelphia Convention Center and had coffee with another Pittsburgh colleague. Then home to make dinner.
Tomorrow: a little more conference and then back to work.
Sunday, October 16, 2005
Edmund Bacon, 1910-2005
You have probably heard of his son Kevin. But unless you are a Philadelphian and/or someone who follows urban planning, you might not have heard of Ed Bacon who died last week. In case you haven't heard of him: he was the director of city planning in Philadelphia from 1949 to 1970 and was involved in nearly every one of the big projects that shaped Philadelphia (especially Center City) as it appears today. If you like Philadelphia, you have Ed Bacon to thank. If you don't like Philadelphia--well, I would question your judgement. Inga Saffron, the Philadelphia Inquirer's architecture critic has a thoughtful piece about Bacon's legacy in today's paper. I can't disagree with her about some of the flaws in Bacon's approach but I would point out that he was hardly alone in his thinking. He was certainly not the only mid-century planning official to support expressway bulding in central cities and (sadly) he was far from alone in seeing slums where later observers saw thriving "urban villages." But let's give credit where credit is due: if anything, Bacon stood out from the pack in appreciating some of the things that urban planners emphasize today. Given what the redevelopment of Society Hill could have turned into (cf. the West End of Boston or Southwest Washington), I can forgive Bacon for emphasizing the colonial period.
Friday, October 07, 2005
Boston HUBris Watch
My motto for Boston is "Not as nice or important as the people who live there think it is." (My motto for Philadelphia is "Nicer than the people who live there think it is.")(Needless to say neither city is about to hire me as a marketing consultant.)
So I tend to notice little things that suggest or reinforce an over-inflated sense of Boston's importance.
Today's entry comes from Richard Florida in the October Atlantic (p.49): "Together New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Boston have a bigger economy than all of China."
Florida's point is interesting, but he leaves us with the misleading impression that Boston is the 4th largest metro area in the US. But there are at least three other US metro areas (CMSA's) bigger than Boston: San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose; DC/Baltimore; and Philadelphia. (I also assume he's talking metro areas and not city populations since Boston doesn't even crack the top 10 in city size.)
Perhaps the Boston CMSA has the 4th largest economy in the US? This is possible although I am doubtful that it surpasses the three larger metro areas I mentioned.
So I tend to notice little things that suggest or reinforce an over-inflated sense of Boston's importance.
Today's entry comes from Richard Florida in the October Atlantic (p.49): "Together New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Boston have a bigger economy than all of China."
Florida's point is interesting, but he leaves us with the misleading impression that Boston is the 4th largest metro area in the US. But there are at least three other US metro areas (CMSA's) bigger than Boston: San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose; DC/Baltimore; and Philadelphia. (I also assume he's talking metro areas and not city populations since Boston doesn't even crack the top 10 in city size.)
Perhaps the Boston CMSA has the 4th largest economy in the US? This is possible although I am doubtful that it surpasses the three larger metro areas I mentioned.
Monday, September 12, 2005
Walking in Philadelphia
A couple of months ago, I posted a rant about bad driving behavior. I suggested that drivers were bad everywhere. After two weeks back in beloved Philadelphia, and having processed how much our car insurance premium will go up for the 4 months we are (yes, I know we could have not told the insurance company but we have many moral scruples), let me amend that post: I had forgotten how bad Philadelphia drivers were. And by bad, I do not mean that they do not have control over their vehicles or mastery of the technical skills involved in braking, steering, or accelerating. No, I mean that they are evil.
Here is one of the many elements of sociopathic behavior I noted in Pittsburgh:
"Not yielding to pedestrians at intersections. (How many of you remember from driver's ed that the pedestrian has the right of way at every intersection, not just controlled ones?)"
When I wrote that post, I should have been clear: many drivers in Pittsburgh fail to yield to pedestrians at intersections. But not all. Indeed, the majority stop, especially when turning. Not in Philadelphia. Not one. Never.
Here is one of the many elements of sociopathic behavior I noted in Pittsburgh:
"Not yielding to pedestrians at intersections. (How many of you remember from driver's ed that the pedestrian has the right of way at every intersection, not just controlled ones?)"
When I wrote that post, I should have been clear: many drivers in Pittsburgh fail to yield to pedestrians at intersections. But not all. Indeed, the majority stop, especially when turning. Not in Philadelphia. Not one. Never.
Signs of the times
The following caught my eye while traveling to the foreign lands of the Newark airport and Israel:
a) Sign noticed in Newark airport: “Ground Transportation. Información sobre Autobuses.” Part b is not a literal translation of part a.
b) In the new Ben Gurion Airport, probably 80% of signs are in Hebrew and English without Arabic. The remaining are in Hebrew and Arabic without English. I could discern no pattern.
c) A banner hanging from a building at the corner of Ha-Histadrut and Ben Yehuda streets in Jerusalem (at the top of the Midrachov): “Cannabis for a Peaceful Disengagment.” In Hebrew: Ha-am im Gush Hashish.
d) A banner hanging from an apartment balcony at the corner of King George and Agron streets in Jerusalem: “Ask me [picture of American Indian] about land for peace.”
I assume this was put up by an opponent of the withdrawal from Gaza. But, um, is this really an analogy that works in favor of Israel and Zionism?
a) Sign noticed in Newark airport: “Ground Transportation. Información sobre Autobuses.” Part b is not a literal translation of part a.
b) In the new Ben Gurion Airport, probably 80% of signs are in Hebrew and English without Arabic. The remaining are in Hebrew and Arabic without English. I could discern no pattern.
c) A banner hanging from a building at the corner of Ha-Histadrut and Ben Yehuda streets in Jerusalem (at the top of the Midrachov): “Cannabis for a Peaceful Disengagment.” In Hebrew: Ha-am im Gush Hashish.
d) A banner hanging from an apartment balcony at the corner of King George and Agron streets in Jerusalem: “Ask me [picture of American Indian] about land for peace.”
I assume this was put up by an opponent of the withdrawal from Gaza. But, um, is this really an analogy that works in favor of Israel and Zionism?
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