More from Allan Bloom: On Morality

"The ambiguity of human life always requires that there be distinctions between good and bad, in one form or another. The great change is that a good man used to be the one who cares for others, as opposed to the man who cares exclusively for himself. Now the good man is the one who knows how to care for himself, as opposed to the man who does not.[emphasis mine]"

--Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind

The first difference was on subject, content, direction, as in to whom one's efforts were directed, the milieu or the self. The second difference is one of ability, whether one can or not care for oneself. These appears to be on two different planes. Does this mean that the good man of antiquity doesn't know how to care for himself? In this sense then modern morality is much more widespread. One can be "good" as long as one acquires the ability to care for himself, regardless whether that ability is directed towards the milieu or just himself.

It's a dangerous and selfish world we live in...

On rock music

"... rock music has one appeal only, a barbaric appeal, to sexual desire--not love, not eros, but sexual desire undeveloped and untutored. It acknowledges the first emanations of children's emerging sensuality and addresses them seriously, eliciting them and legitimating them, not as little sprouts that must be carefully tended in order to grow into gorgeous flowers, but as the real thing. Rock gives children, on a silver platter, with all the public authority of the entertainment industry, everything their parents always used to tell them they had to wait for until they grew up and would understand later."

--Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind

Not sure if all rock music is all about sex (the beat sure is) but one thing I'm sure is that our undergrads don't read enough. This book has been lying in the library since 1989 and still good as new.

On Examinations

Foucault says...

"The examination combines the techniques of an observing hierarchy and those of a normalizing judgment. It is a normalizing gaze, a surveillance that makes it possible to qualify, to classify, and to punish. It establishes over individuals a visibility through which one differentiates them and judges them... In it are combined the ceremony of power and the form of the experiment, the deployment of force and the establishment of truth. At the heart of the procedures of discipline, it manifests the subjection of those who are perceived as objects and the objectification of those who are subjected. The superimposition of the power relations and knowledge relations assumes in the examination all its visible brilliance.[emphasis mine]"

"The examination as the fixing, at once ritual and 'scientific', of individual differences, as the pinning down of each individual in his own particularity (in contrast to the ceremony in which status, birth, privilege, function are manifested with all the spectacle of their marks), clearly indicates the appearance of a new modality of power in which each individual receives as his status his own individuality, and in which he is linked by his status to the features, the measurements, the gaps, the 'marks' that characterize him and make him a 'case'."

"the examination is at the center of the procedures that constitute the individual as effect and object of power, as effect and object of knowledge."

--Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish

Examinations are an instrument of power! Down with examinations!

A note on revision for historiography

Anything not understandable is probably not worth understanding.

You Are Best Described By...

San Giorgio Maggiore, Twilight By Claude Monet

What Famous Work of Art Are You?

Your Brain is 53.33% Female, 46.67% Male

Your brain is a healthy mix of male and female You are both sensitive and savvy Rational and reasonable, you tend to keep level headed But you also tend to wear your heart on your sleeve

What Gender Is Your Brain?

Rite......

Sundays

Finally finished my last assignment for the semester, and for the record, my undergraduate career. Coming to think of it, I didn't have much of a career, but let's not go into that. Another topic for another day.

Today is a Sunday, and... how shall I start? I have a special feeling for Sundays. Not because it is supposedly the day when you can get together, be happy and all, but rather, the opposite.

Sunday signifies the end of the weekend, when you remind yourself that the next day is the start of another work week, so you calm yourself down, get rid of that weekend hypes, stay in the house, and prepare for work, school, camp, whatever.

However, the weekend is not completely over yet, and so you'll have that lingering feeling that you haven't enjoyed yourself enough yet (I know I haven't. My Sundays have been spent either doing essays or readings for the past 4 years.) so you keep wanting more... Yet time does not wait, Monday is coming soon, and you really need to sober up. This explains the late Sunday nights. You should be sleeping yet you are up. Not willing to let go, until time forces you to. It is perhaps one of the hardest things life demands of you.

And so, my little sentiment. I hope I find something enjoyable to do on Sundays once I start working--if I start working. Suggestions? =)

Been very busy with a particular 3000-word essay and the medal test. Now that suddenly both are over, I feel a sense of emptiness. What shall I do with my life until I start on my final essay for the semester?

The medal test turned out well. The examiner was being generous with his comments. I was still a little nervous considering I haven't taken a dance test before.

Anyway, for those interested, here's a link to check out. Scroll down the page to look for the Manhattan Amateur Classics. Makes for good half-time entertainment in-between essay assignments.

http://journals.rpungin.fotki.com/dance/