采访缘起
【导语：贾庆林如果有种，他应该留在香港，看看香港人的“七一”大游行，看看香港人到底想些什么；再勇敢些，到游行队伍中与香港人一起走一走。“党和国家领导人”却不敢和香港人一起庆祝香港主权回归祖国九周年，奇哉怪也！】
一，贾庆林为什么不在香港过“七一”？
贾庆林自1994年后，六月二十七日再度来港，当他被问及陈太决定“七一”上街一事时，他哈哈大笑。我想他当时脸色一定很难看，他怎么会笑得出来呢？
前政务司司长陈方安生表示七一上街游行，是公民的权利，即便用中央泡制伪《宪法》来衡量也是允许的；可是贾庆林却怕得要死。无耻媒体和帮凶文痞却攻击陈大是“频频发动攻势”，全力煽动市民上街，“瞄准全国政协主席贾庆林访港的黄金机会出招，矛头直指中央政府”，“挑拨市民与中央政府的关系”。
贾庆林如果有种，他应该留在香港，看看香港人的“七一”大游行，看看香港人到底想些什么；再勇敢些，到游行队伍中与香港人一起走一走。“党和国家领导人”却不敢和香港人一起庆祝香港主权回归祖国九周年，奇哉怪也！中共头目从毛泽东以下都是怕死鬼，深居简出、警备森严，口称和人民血肉相连，实际上视老百姓如洪水猛兽。在御林军簇拥之下的贾主席，心虚、怯弱、恐惧、尴尬兼而有之，我不知他这“哈哈”从何而来、因何而发？
二，贾庆林有什么脸皮讲教育？
贾庆林为天水围一个教师家庭题词曰：“五育并重，全面发展。祝愿香港教育事业健康发展”。可谓班门弄斧！一个把中国教育办得乱七八糟的骗子党徒，居然还有脸对香港的教育指手划脚、说三道四。
香港人不但把本地教育办得好，还花钱、花力气帮中国共产党擦屁股。仅香港一个教会团体香港基督教协进会之《五饼二鱼》计划，在2004至2005学年“薪火工程”中就资助了232名大学生，在南京城里的大学就读。
该机构“重建危校计划”，已在中国建成五百多间学校。仅2004年5月至2005年6月在建和新建的山区和农村小学就有：
甘肃省靖远县大芦乡大岘小学
甘肃省靖远县曹岘乡李湾小学
陕西省扶风县南阳镇章村小学
陕西省堡县元宋家沟小学
陕西省堡县景家沟小学
贵州省岑巩注溪乡岑王小学
贵州省岑巩县大有乡长溪小学
贵州省都匀市小围寨镇尧林小学
贵州省都匀市沙寨乡拉海小学
贵州省都匀市洛邦镇洛邦小学
贵州省都匀市阳和乡光荣小学
贵州省都匀阳和乡富河小学
贵州省凯里市大风洞乡老君寨小学
贵州省湄潭县高台镇金盆小学
贵州省黄平县浪洞乡湾溪小学
贵州省黄平县崇仁乡白仓小学
贵州省福泉市马场坪平寨村平寨小学
贵州省福泉市陆坪镇立沖小学
贵州省赫章县白果镇犀年塘小学
贵州省赫章县白果镇柜子岩小学
贵州省赫章县财神镇银厂小学
贵州省赫章县雉街镇雉鸡小学
贵州省赫章县兴发乡鹰嘴小学
贵州省剑河县革东镇养门小学
贵州省兴仁县龙场新镇坡寨小学
贵州省兴义市马场坪乡中湾小学
贵州省兴义市马场坪乡堡上小学
贵州省镇远县舞阳镇苦李坪小学
云南省镇康县忙丙乡马鞍山小学
云南省镇康县忙丙乡麦地小学
云南省镇康县南伞镇红岩小学
云南省丽江县大东乡建新小学
广西省那坡县百都乡者欣小学
广西省凌云县下甲乡那灯小学
广西省凌云县泗城乡那合小学
广西省龙胜县琉璃乡琉璃小学
广西省龙胜县三门镇双朗小学
“重返校园计划”由1994年开始推行。目的是资助中国贵州、云南、山西、广西、甘肃、宁夏等贫穷山区的失学儿童重返校园读书，而每个儿童所费也不过港币二百元。受资助的失学儿童已达数十万人。
像香港基督教协进会，以及乐施会、苗圃行动、光明之友等等这样对中国助学、救贫的慈善机构和个人，在香港和海外不计其数。我不惮其烦地抄出这些资料，一是为了感谢这些机构；二是问问贾庆林，你们这个号称三个代表的刮民党，以及你们这些骑在人民头上“为人民服务”的骗子，在你们招摇过市的时候，是不是应该先弄懂“羞耻”二字是什么意思呢？
国家统计局局长李德水把中国2004年GDP总量“普查”成159,878亿元人民币，即由16,537亿美元“普查”成了19,317亿美元。中国经济总量从1990年的世界第11位上升到世界第六位，其洋洋自得之态可掬。可是却把教育办成了向外伸手的“叫化子教育”，教育部成了名副其实的“破坏教育部”，可谓混账透顶、千古罪人！
三，赖昌星是贾庆林的心头病
据新华社《内参》报道：“福建省政界对赖昌星能否引渡返国审查，显得较平淡，认为赖昌星在福建当红时期，在任上的党政领导都已调离，或晋升中央领导层。和赖昌星有牵连的二百五十多名干部也都处理了，有的处决了。”但又说“赖昌星返国审查，势必牵涉到时任的书记、省长。”这不是指明你贾庆林和赖昌星还脱不了干系吗？
一九九九年十一月中旬，贾庆林在北京市委常委会议上说：当时是经福建省副省长推荐说，有个白手起家的殷商要见见，是见过几次，吃过饭，喝了酒，空谈一番。贾庆林在二OO二年九月，中央政治局生活会上承认：我有过失，喜欢和各阶层人士吃吃喝喝，酒喝多了，就会出事。
贾庆林及其家属以五千元、二千元价格“购”得当时市价五十多万元和八十多万元的二幢别墅，一幢在厦门，一幢在青岛。贾庆林的时任福建省外贸集团党委书记妻子林幼芳在一九九四年九月、一九九六年五月到香港考察时，就花了八十多万元买了四块名表及钻石饰品等。钱就是由省外贸集团的“小金库”提供的，其中就有赖昌星的“捐赠”。
中央、中纪委收到举报贾庆林及其家属、贺国强、王兆国等人和赖昌星关系的信函，近七年来从未间断过，共有三千三百多件。其中有来自司法界、北京政界、新闻界的，也有敦促贾庆林应公开澄清和赖昌星关系的。二OO一年、二OO二年，在“两会”上，曾有人大代表联署对贾庆林提出多点质询。(《看中国》2006年06月21日)
贾庆林的哈哈大笑能掩得住他的作贼心虚、心惊胆战吗？
四，贾庆林到底高兴些什么呢？
贾庆林到底高兴些什么呢？我看贾庆林只能为贪官遍地、腐败不堪、江河汚染，工人、农民和复退军人成为永久牌的奴隶而兴高彩烈了。贾庆林说：“我一直关注香港的发展，关注香港人民的福祉。”贾庆林先生，拜托了，请您千万不要“关注香港的发展”，也不要“关注香港人民的福祉”；中国人民无穷无尽的灾难就是拜贵党和您的关心、关注所赐呀。因为你们的“关注”，一国两制、港人治港早已名存实亡了；香港的资本主义制度早已奄奄一息；香港的经济、法治、吏治、治安早已日益恶化了。
贾庆林说：“我了解到，香港当前的情很好，可以说是政通人和、百业兴旺，我感到很高兴。”贾庆林应该明白：世界上只要没有共产党或共产党不执政的地方，无不政通人和、百业兴旺。一旦被共产党黑手所沾??，就是灾难的开始。
结论：没有共产党，就没有苦难、落后、愚昧、腐败、丑恶的新中国！
再见吧，贾庆林主席！
29jun2006为送贾庆林而作於流浮山寨
近日，经济学家钟伟连发“炮弹”，震惊业界，终于登上了“裸泳者”的经济学人顶峰。然而，把“裸泳者”这样率真自信崇尚“天体”的潮流引领者美称送给钟伟这个年轻的教授，似乎还有些不妥，因为“经济学者不一定要替百姓说话”这样“理性再理性”的文字，说出来也是需要勇气和基础的。
那么，勇气何来？基础何在呢？那便在于“裸泳者”早已成群结队，在于社会学家孙正平断言的“断裂社会”的来临。
事实上，中国经济改革以来，经济学便成了显学，报考相关院校者如过江之鲫，最终落脚者达成千上万，其中淡定而有志者，博览群书，深思谨研，终成杨小凯一类的大家，此外，还有众多经济学人也是成绩斐然。但经济学毕竟是社会科学，离开了现实土壤便往往成了无根枯树。加之中国学子又多有“经世致用”的传统情怀，于是，许多经济学人和市场经济改革大潮便一起浮沉了。所谓“吴市场”、“厉股份”、“杨破产”、“刘改制”等等，便是这么诞生的。
可以说，虽然影响力有大有小，但他们的确为中国市场经济改革模式的设计、深度的拓展做出了巨大的贡献。当然，这有个前提，即中国政府推行的市场经济改革“前无古人，后无来者”，只能如老一辈领导人所言，“摸着石头过河”，所以便不得不在很大程度上依赖这些“学贯中西”的经济学家。
于是，他们成了领导人的座上客，成了中国的当世显贵，没有一个学科的教授能像他们一样动辄处“庙堂之高”，没有一个学科的研究者能如他们一般“出将入相”，更没有一个学科的学子能和他们一样成为“先富阶层”的座上嘉宾！“市场”是他们“搬来纠偏”的，“股份”是他们“学来推广”的，“破产”也是他们率先勇敢地推进的。他们在指点江山的快感中成了社会红人，担任了经济学家之外的这样那样的“董事”、“独立董事”、“董事长”，并借助“官、学”杂交的“势”迅速拥有了“钱”！
“官、学、钱”的超级组合是可怕的，这在任何一个社会都是需要防范的“资源大垄断”。但不幸的是，在中国，这种垄断发生了。而正是这种垄断优势，让原本还算清醒的经济学家们步入了歧途。
众所周知，自省力甚强的老经济学家吴敬琏便是因为率先认识到了“权贵腐败”形成的可怕，屡次示警才获得民众支持，获得“经济学良心”尊称的，而“外来和尚”郎咸平更是靠着“旁观者清”的优势和近乎泼辣的作风才第一次掀起了“国企改革大讨论”，把改革的性质、路径、前途等公众关心的问题以“格林科尔”、“科隆”、“德隆”、“长虹”、“海尔”等案例的形式昭示天下，从而为自己博得了“郎监管”的美名。
一个“良心”、“一个监管”！可以看出，至今，中国市场经济改革中老百姓关心的核心问题已经发生重大改变。他们不再关心“大锅饭”的弊端，不再关心“市场经济是否要搞”，也不再关心“企业是否要破产”，他们的视野盯上了“做人的良心”、“经济学家做人的良心”，盯上了对改革、对企业、对某些人的“监管”问题。前者昭示精英信任危机，后者凸现社会机制紊乱，可见社会矛盾已经积累到了即将爆发的关口。
然而，我们的经济学家并未因此警觉，他们高高在上，依旧坐在精英阶层的豪宅名车上试图指点江山，而在遭受质疑和指责后，便“忍不住”说出众多让人耳熟能详的“名言”──“什么叫小康，小康概念要拥有两套房，应该鼓励中国人购买两套房，在家住一套，出去休假时住另一套。房价涨得快是正常现象”，“堵车是一件令人欣喜的事情。如果一个城市没有堵车，那它的经济也可能凋零衰败”、“群众不明白谁是真正维护他们利益的人”以及“国企改革大辩论不过是茶杯里的风暴”等等。而与此相对应的，便是任志强等人的“为富人盖房论”、“房奴论”等等让“穷人”咬牙切齿的富人理论。
试想，对于一些能轻松“购买两套房，在家住一套，出去休假时住另一套”的“贵族知识分子”而言，“房子为谁盖”有什么要紧的呢？他们能理解百姓眼里“维护他们利益的人”？那不过是“茶杯里的风暴”而已，而他们享用的是“金杯银盏”，“茶杯”又能算什么？
这个社会“断裂”了，断裂成了社会学家李强、孙正平教授眼中的无数个阶层，而阶层间流动性的阻隔则难免会造就阶级！“上学难”、“看病难”等现象为这种流动性的阻隔作了生动地描述，为此，我们能理所当然的期盼一个社会的和谐么？也正是在此基础上，我们才看到了钟伟先生“经济学者不一定要为老百姓说话”的“宏论”！
问题时，经济学者如果不为老百姓说话，那么它到底在为谁说话？为钟教授笔下的“真理”么？但据我所知，钟先生甚至比钟先生还“牛”的中国所谓经济学家也还未发现什么能与、凯恩斯、穆勒、哈耶克、蒙代尔相抗衡的真理呢？君不见，吴敬琏教授都能被同行后备挖苦“没知识”，何况其他人呢？
钟伟又说：“求真决定了经济学者不是喜鹊也不是乌鸦。稍通文墨的人都知道，在中国，悲观和批评的文章总是能轻易地获得掌声。”但据笔者考证，钟先生2005年上半年以及近期对中国股市以及房价下跌所发的“着名言论”，可全都是“一片废墟”般的“乌鸦断言”啊！莫非钟先生也是想“轻易地获得掌声”？
“学者应该替百姓说话吗？这需要看百姓的诉求是否在理，一个经受了哪怕粗浅经济学训练的研究人员，求真本性都超越了一切。”钟伟说。然而我要问的是，一个甚至更多的经济学者有能力判断“百姓的诉求是否在理”么？而且，如果“一个经受了哪怕粗浅经济训练的研究人员便能够让”求真本性“”超越一切“，那么其他”求真“学科的教育岂不显得多余？到死都倡导”说真话“的巴金老人难道是因为没学经济学而感到”求真“的可贵？
为所谓“求真”继续努力吧，中国大陆所谓的一些“经济学家”们。纵然不是所有人都象安邦资讯的钟伟教授一样再也不屑替为百姓说话，但看了近年来其发表的一系列自绝于基层百姓的言论，我感到国内不少所谓的“经济学家”真的已经“升天”了，“成仙”了──离彻底堕落不远了。
而更令人寒心的是，怪论频频，似乎预示着“升天”已经成为一种群体现象，尽管我知道并非所有经济学家都如此堕落，且招摇。
The Proust pill
Back in 1998, I decided to write a novel about a memory pill — a drug that would work like Proust’s madeleine. While I was busy writing, the science caught up with fiction.
(Illustration by Shout)
By Pagan Kennedy | June 25, 2006
A FEW MONTHS AGO, researchers at West Virginia University stumbled across a gene in the mouse brain that appears to erase long-term memories. When scientists switched off the gene, the mice developed super-charged memory, able to recall the solution to a maze they’d seen six weeks before, an eternity in mouse time. The discovery is only the most recent in a flurry of breakthroughs that promise a new class of drugs that might help us retain newly learned information and stave off diseases like Alzheimer’s.
Such drugs have been in development for some time, and it was in reading about them, way back in 1998, that I was first emboldened to create my own memory pill, one that could restore lost memories and the powerful emotions connected to them. A drug, in other words, that would work like Proust’s madeleine. One day the author dunked his cookie into tea, a smell from his childhood rose up, and he fell into a fugue state, the nursery-room scenes that would fill “Remembrance of Things Past” arrayed before him in magnificent detail.
What if powers of memory like that were always available to you? What would happen if, say, a memory of your fifth-grade classroom could become as vivid as the chair you’re sitting in right now? What if you could experience any lost pleasure-a long-ago tryst, say-over and over again? I set out to create a drug that would do all that, cooking it up in the only way I knew how: I wrote a novel about it.
My interest in creating such a pill was admittedly more personal than scientific. When I was in my teens and 20s, I used to be able to experience something like Proust’s madeleine moment. I could revisit scenes in vivid Technicolor: the cicadas buzzing through the burnt summer lawns of my childhood in Maryland; the sweaty nickel in my hand as I waited for the ice cream truck; the drop of blood that appeared on my best friend’s finger, like a magic ruby, after she pricked herself with a needle to show her undying allegiance to me.
But by my 30s, those memories had started to fade. What I was left with was a memory of what my memory used to be like, a poignant awareness of my own deficit. I first noticed this about eight years ago: One day, rooting through a drawer in mymom’s house, I came across a photo of myself as a girl. In the photo, I’m about 5 years old, decked out in a swami robe, my eyes hidden behind enormous Jackie O sunglasses. But I could summon no memory of that day, no explanation, though I had the conviction that I used to know what that picture was all about, that there was some important story connected with it. It felt like I had lost a key that unlocked some inner door. I could still press my ear to it, could still run my hand against its grain and examine its hinges, but I would never get through that door again.
My interest in creating such a pill was admittedly more personal than scientific. When I was in my teens and 20s, I used to be able to experience something like Proust’s madeleine moment. I could revisit scenes in vivid Technicolor: the cicadas buzzing through the burnt summer lawns of my childhood in Maryland; the sweaty nickel in my hand as I waited for the ice cream truck; the drop of blood that appeared on my best friend’s finger, like a magic ruby, after she pricked herself with a needle to show her undying allegiance to me.
But by my 30s, those memories had started to fade. What I was left with was a memory of what my memory used to be like, a poignant awareness of my own deficit. I first noticed this about eight years ago: One day, rooting through a drawer in my mom’s house, I came across a photo of myself as a girl. In the photo, I’m about 5 years old, decked out in a swami robe, my eyes hidden behind enormous Jackie O sunglasses. But I could summon no memory of that day, no explanation, though I had the conviction that I used to know what that picture was all about, that there was some important story connected with it. It felt like I had lost a key that unlocked some inner door. I could still press my ear to it, could still run my hand against its grain and examine its hinges, but I would never get through that door again.
And so I began my novel about memory. I knew at the time that several companies, including one appropriately called Memory Pharmaceuticals, were working to develop real treatments for memory loss, but I didn’t pay them much mind. My drug would be different. It would be recreational-Proust’s madeleine reduced to tiny chemical specks. My drug would launch the user into the best moments of his life, allowing him to savor long ago joys, allowing him to meet his boyhood self.
I worked on the novel in between other projects. I got stuck. I put it down. I was accustomed to writing fiction, but this premise pushed me toward science fiction, unfamiliar territory. I wrote in circles. I deleted entire chapters. For several years, I swore I would give up the book. But the idea of that imaginary drug continued to tug at me. And then, three years ago, I suddenly understood how to make the book work.
In that revision, I named the pill Mem, because I liked the way that word seemed to boil memory down to its essence. Mem sounded short, sharp, fast, fun, addictive.
We tend to think of recreational drugs as the toys of the young, but a memory drug is of course an elixir for the regrets of middle age. I imagined a professor stumbling into his 40s, a man whose marriage is breaking up, and who has fallen short of his ambitions. He uses the drug to cheat on his wife-with a younger version of herself. He gorges himself on long-ago moments when he believed he was on the verge of glory. He uses his past as pornography.
To my surprise, in the course of writing the novel, I saw just how dangerous this drug might be. The past is potently intoxicating, nd if we could ever taste it purely, undiluted by forgetfulness, we would, I came to believe, disappear into ourselves.
And that wasn’t the only surprise I experienced in the course of writing. While I was busy mapping out my plot, scientists were busy mapping out the mental switches that control the encoding of memories. And drug companies were developing pills to encourage old neurons to perform like young ones. Memory Pharmaceuticals, for instance, is currently testing a drug that could enhance our ability to retain information. In a recent trial, volunteers took the pills for 13 days and showed a significant improvement in their recall of words and pictures.
Such pills won’t send you rocketing back to prom night, 1982. But like the chemical I imagined, they do promise to take away the fog of forgetting. The implications of this remain to be seen: If we’re able to reel off every item on a shopping list from two weeks ago, will we find that the present moment becomes dimmer and the future less compelling? Perhaps not. But there’s another parallel between my drug, Mem, and the one being developed by Memory Pharmaceuticals. They’ve given their pill an eerily similar name: Mem 3454.
I have to admit, theirs sounds cooler than mine.
Pagan Kennedy is the author of “Confessions of a Memory Eater” and seven other books.
Books & Culture, May/June 2006
Goodbye, Blog
The friend of information but the enemy of thought.
by Alan Jacobs
About two years ago, my online life began to be centered on a computer application: not my word processing program, or my email program, but my rss news reader. rss (which apparently stands for Really Simple Syndication, though there is some debate about that) is a technology for capturing news headlines and summaries of stories, or their first few sentences, from websites. A site that offers these headlines is said to be providing news “feeds” to those who ask for them. The advantage of such syndication is that you can scan many headlines quickly, and open in your browser only the ones you really want to read.
Using NetNewsWire, I found I could get news from dozens of sources every day and thereby keep myself informed on pretty much everything I am interested in. For me the most exciting features of NetNewsWire were two: first, I could set the frequency with which I wanted to check my sites for new items, as often as every half-hour; and second, I could organize my sites in folders. Pretty soon I had a Technology folder, a Macintosh folder, a News folder, a Culture folder, a Literature folder, a Christianity folder, and so on.
Some of these sites were from what online writers call the msm (for “mainstream media”), but most of them were blogs, and with blogs you never know when someone is going to postexcept for Glenn Reynolds, the InstaPundit, who posts all day every day. Normal people might write an entry three out of four days, and then go on a fortnight’s hiatus; it gets tiresome to peek in at the website every day. NetNewsWire did the peeking for me, and let me know when it found something.
At first my interest was in newswhether about technology or politics or culturebut increasingly I became excited by the idea that the blogosphere could be a great venue for the exchange and development of ideas. One of the first blogs I got really attached to was called Invisible Adjunct. Now, alas, defunct, it was written by a woman who worked as an adjunct (that is, part-time and temporary) faculty member at a New York university, and her entries generated a fascinating conversation about the way the American university works, the way it should work, and how to get from Point A to Point B. I would read the site and think, “Yes, this is the way revolutions get started! Spontaneous communities of committed, thoughtful people testing their ideas against one anotheriron sharpening iron!” Granted, I was excitable in those early days, and talk of “revolution” was certainly misplaced, but I think I was right to be intrigued. As a member of the professoriate, I had long since gotten frustrated with the game-playing and slavishly imitative scholarship of the official academic worldall choreographed in advance by the ruthless demands of the tenure systemand I thought that the blogs could provide an alternative venue where more risky ideas could be offered and debated, where real intellectual progress might take place outside the System.
And sometimes this happens. Last year, on the group blog Crooked Timber (crookedtimber.org), which is largely written by political philosophers and social scientists, there was a fascinating discussion of the gifted (but in my judgment disturbingly perverse) fantasy novelist China Miéville. Not only did several of the Crooked Timber bloggers write brief essays about Miéville, but also Miéville himself responded with a generous and thoughtful essay of his own. The debate was far more interesting, and more genuinely reflective, than any discussion about literature I can remember participating in or even witnessingin a formal academic setting. That fantasy writing still, despite all the canon-bashing of the last twenty years, has a faintly disreputable air among many English professors added to the freshness of the debateas did the fact that none of the bloggers was an English professor. The whole conversation was a small victory for reading, a reminder that the importance of some books is seen from the excitement they create among thoughtful people, in this case people whose jobs require them to write about something else but who were moved or intrigued or excited or troubled by something China Miéville wrote and who therefore had to respond to it. (The experiment was recently repeated with an equally interesting symposium on Susanna Clarke’s remarkable novel Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.)
But this sort of thing happens all too rarely in the blogosphere, at least in part because of what Laurence Lessig calls the “architecture” of the online world, and more specifically of blogs. Several years ago Lessig wrote one of the definitive books about the Internet, Code: and Other Laws of Cyberspace. In it he tried to call a halt to all the fruitless debates about the “nature” of the internet. Is it its nature to be democratic or tyrannical, managerial or anarchic, or what? Lessig’s answer was that the internet doesn’t have a nature, that what it turns out to be will depend on the way it’s built, the code in which it is writtenits digital architecture.
Whatever one thinks about the structure of the internet as a whole, it is becoming increasingly clear that the particular architecture of the blogosphere is the chief impediment to its becoming a place where new ideas can be deployed, tested, and developed. Take, for instance, the problem of comments.
The industry-standard blog architecture calls for something like this: a main area on the page where the blogger’s own posts are presented, with the newest post at the top of the page; then, at the left or right or both, various supplements: links to other sites, personal information about the blogger, and so on. At the bottom of each post will be the hyperlinked word “comments,” usually followed by a parenthesis indicating the number of responses to the post: click on the word and you get to see all those comments. That’s where the real conversation is supposed to take place. And sometimes it does; but often it doesn’tor rather, the conversation just gets started and then peters out before it can really become productive. And this happens not because of inertia, but largely because the anatomy of a blog makes a serious conversation all but impossible.
Imagine this scenario: one Thursday morning you read an interesting post on a political blog about the torture of suspected terrorists by U.S. soldiers. You agree with the main thrust of the post, but think the writer has overlooked an important point, so you post a comment that says so. You then wait to see what response your idea elicits. The next few comments are by people who think that anyone who criticizes the government on this point longs for the return of Saddam Hussein to power and rejoices in the destruction of the World Trade Center, and by other people who think the height of incisive political commentary is the coinage “Bushitler.” You expect this sort of thing, you have learned to scan right past it in search of genuine reflection. Eventually someonemaybe the author of the original post, maybe someone elseresponds to your claim, negatively let’s say. You quickly defend your position, explaining it in more detail because more detail reveals that your view is not subject to the criticism that has been offered; but now you have to go to work, or pick up the kids from school; you’ll check back later to see what further response you have elicited.
But life is busy. You can’t check back until Saturday morning, and y that time the comment thread has died out. Maybe you did get a second response, maybe you didn’t, but in any case you note that the last comment in the thread was posted on Friday afternoon. On many blogs the comments to a given post are “closed” after a few daysno one is allowed to make further commentsusually because that helps to prevent the accumulation of comment spam, but also because so many threads degenerate into name-calling that the blog administrator has to shoo the belligerents along to another venue. And in any case both the blogger and the commenters have moved along to other posts, other ideas, other conversations.
Or consider this: what if you come across some new information, a week or a month later, that sheds significant light on the debate? You could, of course, send an email to the original blogger asking him or her to take a look at this new evidence; but whether the debate gets renewed will depend on whether the blogger decides to start a new comment thread; the old one will be dead and gone, such that, even in the unlikely event that comments are still open on it, the chances of anyone looking back into that Paleolithic era are slim indeed.
Architecture is of course not everything here; human nature is at work too. I think first of the extraordinary anger that seems to be more present in the blogosphere than in everyday life. Debate after debateon almost every site I visit, including the ones devoted to Christianityeither escalates from rational discourse into sneering and name-calling or just bypasses reason altogether and starts with the abuse.
Partly this derives from the anonymity of blog comments: people rarely identify themselves by their real names, and the email addresses that they sometimes provide rarely give clues about their identity: a person who is safe from substantive reprisals is probably more easily tempted to express rage. Alsoand this is a problem especially on the political blogscommenters can find themselves confronted with very different beliefs than the ones they encounter in everyday life, where they often are able to select their own society. A right-winger wandering into a comment thread on Dailykos.com is likely to get a serious douse of vitriol for his or her trouble; ditto a liberal who plunges into the icy waters of No Left Turns. And the anonymous habitués of a given site are unlikely to show much courtesy to the uninvited guest. (This is one reason why sites like the two just mentioned get more rhetorically, and substantively, extreme over time: everyone is pulling in one direction, and scarcely anyone shows up to exert counter-pressure.)
And then there are the “trolls”: people who comment specifically in order to get a rise out of other commenterspeople who have never transcended the discovery that being extremely annoying is one of the most reliable ways of getting attention. Most of us, by third grade or so, come to understand that hostile attention is probably worse than no attention at all, but trolls never learn to make such subtle discriminations. Thus no law of the blogosphere is more importantthough also more widely ignoredthan “Don’t feed the trolls.”
All in all, a blog is no place for the misanthropically inclined. Charlie Brown used to say, “I love mankind; it’s people I can’t stand,” and I have discovered that in the blogosphere, peoplein Mr. Brown’s subtle sense of the wordare pretty much inescapable. Many’s the time I have found myself hunched over my keyboard, my hands frozen above it, trying to decide which of two replies to make: the one assuming that my interlocutor is morally compromised, or the one assuming that he is invincibly ignorant. In such circumstances it’s always best just to get up and walk away, not darkening counsel by words without knowledge, or without charity anyway.
Chalk ths up, if you will, to deficiencies in my Christian character. But even for those more saintly than myself and there are a fewthe blogosphere inevitably accelerates the pace of debate to the timetable of daily journalism. In terms of how they treat substantive ideas, blogs are not very different from newspapers: they present an idea and then move on, as quickly as possible, to the next idea. Perhaps there can be, later on, some brief acknowledgment that that idea wasn’t treated fully and adequatelybut, as the newsreel in Citizen Kane reminds us, Time is On The March, and bloggers are under enormous pressure to march along with it.
The very notion of a blog (originally a “web log”) is that of a diary, a periodic account of what’s happening in someone’s life or someone’s mind, which is why one of the most delightful sites to emerge from this new technology is the one that posts, in classic blog formateven with comments, though they are called “annotations”the diary of that great observer of 17th-century social life, Samuel Pepys (www.pepysdiary.com, and yes, it has an rss feed). No one seems to be willing to chew over even a very substantive blog post for very long: instead, we want new ones. Otherwise our rss readers won’t have anything to tell us, will they?
It’s telling that the terrific conversations about (and including) China Miéville and Susanna Clarke on Crooked Timber arose not from the usual post-plus-comments format but from something very different, more centrally controlled and highly structured. As Henry Farrell wrote on the site before the first symposium, “A few months ago, the Miéville Fraktion within CT decided that it might be fun to put together a mini-seminar around Iron Council [Miéville’s 2004 novel], and to ask China to respond. He very decently said yes; you see the result before you.” So this exemplary intellectual exchange arose from something like the time-honored magazine practice of commissioning writers to produce a colloquium on a given subject. The Timberites even gathered the posts together and put them in a pdf, to make it all look even more like a Special Issue of some literary quarterly.
Blogs remain great for news: political, technological, artistic, whatever. And they provide a very rich environment in which news (or rather “news”) can be tested and evaluated and revised, as we have seen repeatedly, from cnn’s firing of Eason Jordan to the discrediting of Dan Rather’s story on President Bush’s National Guard service. But as vehicles for the development of ideas they are woefully deficient and will necessarily remain so unless they develop an architecture that is less bound by the demands of urgencyor unless more smart people refuse the dominant architecture. Even on a site with the brainpower of Crooked Timber, what happens more often than notindeed, what happens so often that I’ve taken the site from my rss reader and only check it once or twice a monthis the conversion of really good scholars into really lousy journalists. With few exceptions, posts at the “academic” or “intellectual” blogs I used to frequent have become the brief and cursory announcement of opinions, not the free explorations of new and dynamic thinking. One notable exception is the philosopher John Holbo, who edits and often writes for The Valve (www.thevalve.org), a website sponsored by the Association of Literary Scholars and Criticsand people often complain that his posts are too long.
As I think about these architectural deficiencies, and the deficiencies of my own character, I find myself meditating on a passage from a book by C. S. Lewis. In his great work of literary history, Poetry and Prose in the Sixteenth Century, Lewis devotes a passage to what he descries, with a certain savageness, as “that whole tragic farce which we call the history of the Reformation.” For Lewis, the issues that divided Catholics and Protestants, that led to bloodshed all over Europe and to a seemingly permanent division of Christians from one another, “could have been fruitfully debated only between mature and saintly disputants in close privacy and at boundless leisure.” Instead, thanks to the prevalence of that recent invention the printing press, and to the intolerance of many of the combatants, deep and subtle questions found their way into the popular press and were immediately transformed into caricatures and cheap slogans. After that there was no hope of peaceful reconciliation.
On a smaller scale, the same problems afflict the intellectual and moral environments of the blogs. There is no privacy: all conversations are utterly public. The arrogant, the ignorant, and the bullheaded constantly threaten to drown out the saintly, and for that matter the merely knowledgeable, or at least overwhelm them with sheer numbers. And the architecture of the blog (and its associated technologies like rss), with its constant emphasis on novelty, militates against leisurely conversations. It is no insult to the recent, but already cherished, institution of the blogosphere to say that blogs cannot do everything well. Right now, and for the foreseeable future, the blogosphere is the friend of information but the enemy of thought.
Alan Jacobs is professor of English at Wheaton College. He is the author most recently of The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis (HarperSanFrancisco).
Harry Potter and the violent illness
Ros Taylor
Wednesday June 28, 2006
The Guardian
JK Rowling hinted this week that the seventh and final Harry Potter novel might see the death of her protagonist. Several draft plots have come to light, taking up the story after Dumbledore’s death and Harry’s decision to break up with his new girlfriend Ginny in order to devote his life to defeating the evil Voldemort.
1 Harry embarks on a gap year teaching quidditch at Durmstrang, the German school of magic. The trip starts badly after his attempt to divert a Ryanair flight away from a cloud of Death Eaters is misunderstood by the Muggle authorities. Extraordinarily rendered to a detention camp run by Draco Malfoy and an army of house-elves, Harry spends months being tortured with Blast-Ended Skrewts. He manages to liberate the elves, but as they quarrel about whether freedom is worth the effort, Malfoy tips off the Muggles and Harry vanishes on board a dragon somewhere over the Atlantic.
2 After Harry and Ginny end their trial separation, a Hippogriff carries them to the honeymoon suite at the Three Broomsticks, now a gastropub. Neither suspects that the landlord is Voldemort, nor that he has laced Ginny’s butterbeer. By the time an oak-aged merlot alerts Harry, Ginny has been kidnapped and transformed into a bad-tempered barmaid. In the ensuing standoff, the pub loses its pretensions, but something nasty emerges from Harry’s rocket and he perishes along with a pan-fried chizpurfle.
3 With Hogwarts deprived of Dumbledore and descending into anarchy, the Ministry of Magic threatens to replace it with a City Academy unless new headmistress Minerva McGonagall improves the NEWT results. Harry tries to study, but becomes aware of a plot to steal the selection hat and allow a small number of Muggles to enter Hogwarts each year. In the ensuing struggle to maintain the school’s exclusivity, Harry is pushed off a crumbling battlement by Malfoy, who uses the incident to prove that Hogwarts is unfit for purpose.
4 Muggle treasurer Gordon Brown threatens to release a number of Hebridean Black dragons unless the wizarding community pays tax on all magical objects. Meanwhile, Brown’s arch-enemy – an oversized reptile with an ability to camouflage himself at will – persuades Harry to install a wind turbine on Hagrid’s hut. But much to Harry’s horror, the friendly reptile turns out to be Wormtail in disguise. Just as it seems that Lord Voldemort’s return is inevitable, Harry wins back Gordon’s trust with a hastily collected stealth tax and flies south to confront the reptile, which is eventually overwhelmed. The beast flees north and is confined to a glacier, but leaves behind the mysterious bill of rights, which Harry cannot help but open – and pays a terrible price for his weakness.
5 Harry reaches the quarter-finals of the Triwizard Tournament and is overcome by a strange sickness that leaves him unable to cast a spell. After Ginny confesses that she finds him repellent and plans to spend more time with the mysterious WaG, Harry learns the illness is irreversible from his only friend, a Shuffling Petricrouch. Summoning his inner magic and the help of a wild Roowain, Harry wins the trophy and the undying respect of his peers, but still ends up crawling into the forest to die after Ginny permanently withdraws her affections and expresses a desire to release a hit single.
被雪藏的另一位遇罗克式的烈士——王申酋
丁东
我在《南方周末》登了《遇罗克是谁》之后，接到了来自天南地北的许多电话，遇罗克在那么多人的心中活着，这是历史的安慰。由此还和遇罗克的弟弟遇罗文取得了联系，为即将付印的《遇罗克遗作与回忆》一书，充实了重要的内容，更是意想不到的收获。这本书问世后，有人问我下一步做什么？我说，下一步想推出《王申酉文集》。接 着又遇到了相似的问题：王申酉是谁？
问我遇罗克是谁的，是年轻的朋友。问我王申酉是谁的，却是成年的朋友，而且是知识界的朋友。的确，在12亿中国人当中，知道王申酉这个名字的人，太少太少了。
我第一次意识到王申酉的重要性是三、四年前。当时我和谢泳合写了一篇关于文革时期的民间思想的论文，钟沛璋先生读后说，文章不错，可惜忽略了王申酉。
从此，我就开始留意王申酉。直到去年冬天，我请邵燕祥先生为《孙越生文集》作序，又提起王申酉的事。他说，可以找金凤。并且当下拿出一本杂志，上有一篇访问金凤的文章。其中提到，有关王申酉的书出不来，成为金凤的一块心病。
终于，我找到了早已离休的资深记者金凤；终于，我读到了王申酉的遗作。王申酉的思想，在今天看来，都是正常的思想。他的不幸，就在于比常人早想了一、二十年：
——他批评“在我们国家里，还存在着‘革命’功臣与广大平民的不平等”是1963年；
——他批评思想独裁是1964年；
——他批评“三面红旗一出，三年困苦降临到六亿人头上”是1965年；
——他批评“在六万万人民中空前地培植起同封建时代类似的个人迷信、个人崇拜”是1966年；
——他指出“毛在十年前划了30万右派分子，他们绝大多数是无权无势的耿直志士”是1967年；
——在他1976年11月18日到23日写的“供词”里，全面地反思了建国以来一系列极左思想的恶果，提出了尊重价值规律，打破闭关锁国，实行对外开放等系统的改革主张。
他的观点，不过是写在日记中，写在给女友的书信里。他没有结社，也没有把他的主张付诸政治活动，仅仅因为思想，因为他的头脑里产生了与当时统治者不一致的思想，于是被判处死刑，立即执行！
让我们记住王申酉被枪杀的日子吧：1977年4月27日。这个日子和遇罗克被枪杀的日子——1970年3月5日一样，都是中国历史上最黑暗的日子，都铭刻着国家的耻辱。苏格拉底被杀死在2400年前；布鲁诺被烧死是在400年前；而中国杀死自己的思想家是二十世纪70年代。遇罗克只活了27岁！王申酉只活了31岁！有人慨叹当时中国没出几个思想家。中国人不是天生没有思想能力，而是最杰出的思想者，竟然被推上了断头台！
王申酉在80年代初平反时，首都的一些新闻机构组织金凤等一流记者，花了很大的气力去采访，准备像宣传张志新一样大张旗鼓地宣传王申酉的事迹。然而，报导写成之后，有关领导人却提出：“藏之名山，传之后世。”藏是藏起来了，一藏就是将近20年，文稿在金凤手里已经藏得发黄发脆。传之后世，就不好说了。连同代人都不知道王申酉是谁，后世人怎么会想起寻找他的踪影呢？
王申酉，让中国人知道你的名字！
