Nietzsche and the Digital Abyss

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.  And if you gaze long enough into Google, Google will gaze back into you.

Why Does the Wall Street Journal Dislike the Seattle Seahawks So Much?

There were two articles featuring the Seattle Seahawks on the sports page of the WSJ the past two weeks.

The first article focused on the continual pass interference committed by the vaunted defensive backs of the team.  The argument was that the refs aren’t going to call pass interference on every pass play, even if pass interference happens on every play.  They’ll call it once, but not ten times in a row.  The Seahawks know this and have made it their strategy to smother the opponent’s receivers.

The intended readers of this article weren’t you and me, it was the NFL refs.  The refs were being called out.  “Come on, guys,” is the WSJ’s message. “Do your job, call more pass interference on the Seahawks.”

The second article featured the trash-talking of the Seahawks.  The Seahawks, according to the Journal, are very good at taunting opponents into committing personal fouls and not retaliating themselves.  More personal fouls are called on the opponent than on the Hawks.  Again, the Journal argues this is a deliberate and disciplined strategy.  The intended readers of this article weren’t you and me, it was the San Francisco Fortyniners.  The article was intended to be taped to 49er lockers.  “Be disciplined, guys,” is the message.  “They’ll taunt you, they’re good at it, and will try to get you to take a swing at them.  Don’t do it.”

The Seahawks must have gotten under the Journal’s skin at some point this year.  Maybe it’s just that they don’t believe a team from up there in that obscure corner of the country, the land of plaid shirts and pinecone eaters, could be that good, and must have cheated.  Or could it have been the Seahawks-Giants game this year?  The Seahawks humiliated the Giants in their own house, allowing the offense three points.  Sounds like a grudge to me, Wall Street Journal.

Two Birds in Argentina

We spend three weeks in December in Argentina.  Week one, Buenos Aires, the city of Evita, tango, the Boca Juniors and Jorge Luis Borges.  Week two, the wind and spectacular peaks of Patagonia; week three, the desert canyons, salt flats, and Malbec grapes of Cayafata and Salta in the north. 

But the two images that will remain imprinted in my memory are images of birds.

The first we saw hiking a forested trail in Patagonia.  We heard a scruffing and clattering in the trees about seventy feet away.  At first I thought I was seeing a black mammal the size of a beaver or woodchuck bouncing around on a fallen log.  I looked closer and realized it was a woodpecker.  I thought, “My God, this is unreal, I’m seeing a cartoon come to life!”  Later I learned we had seen a Magellanic Woodpecker, and the forward-bending tuft of feathers on its head  made this chicken-sized bird the model for Woody Woodpecker.

The second image was created by an Andean condor.  We took a back road to the Perito Morino glacier and were driving through a hilly estancia where sheep were raised. Normally these huge black birds, wings spanning eight to ten feet, soar a thousand feet above the ground.  But here several condors were carving turns in the thermals only a hundred or so feet overhead.  I saw a sheep followed by its lamb moving along a trail a short distance from where we were watching.  Suddenly the two creatures were darkened in the shadow of a condor drifting above them.  The shadow didn’t just flit across their heads.  The condor is so huge they were in its shadow for what seemed like several seconds.

The condors are not raptors; they were no threat to the sheep.  But for anyone raised attending a Christian Sunday school it is a primal image: the lamb, and the Psalm: Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death….