Page 140 marks a major shift in the narrative presentation of Infinite Jest. The all-caps chapter headings, which up to now have constrained themselves to either the name of the year in Subsidized Time or (much more rarely) a short one- or two-line description of the event to be described, suddenly explode into totally excessive information overload to a degree the chapter-heading pattern to which we've grown accustomed cannot hope to contain:

HAL INCANDENZA'S FIRST EXTANT WRITTEN COMMENT ON ANYTHING EVEN REMOTELY FILMIC, SUBMITTED IN MR. OGILVIE'S SEVENTH-GRADE 'INTRODUCTION TO ENTERTAINMENT STUDIES' (2 TERMS, REQUIRED), ENFIELD TENNIS ACADEMY, 21 FEBRUARY IN THE YEAR OF THE PERDUE WONDERCHICKEN, @ FOUR YEARS AFTER THE DEMISE OF BROADCAST TELEVISION, ONE YEAR AFTER DR. JAMES O. INCANDENZA PASSED FROM THIS LIFE, A SUBMISSION RECEIVING JUST A B/B+, DESPITE OVERALL POSITIVE FEEDBACK, MOSTLY BECAUSE ITS CONCLUDING ¶ WAS NEITHER SET UP BY THE ESSAY'S BODY NOR SUPPORTED, OGILVE POINTED OUT, BY ANYTHING MORE THAN SUBJECTIVE INTUITION AND RHETORICAL FLOURISH

The next two major chapter headings are likewise unrestrained and rambling, with the third chapter heading introducing ellipses, em-dashes, and question marks to the first's regime of parenthesis and cascading dependent clauses. The multiple perspectives characteristic of Infinite Jest have now, suddenly, infected the text itself; the chapter headings that had previously presented themselves as objective and reliable third-person-omniscient narration are now uncovered as subjective and perspectival, opinionated, excitable, and frankly a little confused.

The question Well, so whose perspective is this? immediately presents itself, only to be apparently foreclosed by the content of Hal's essay on postmodern heroism, which (with surprising sophistication for an 8th grader) argues that postmodern culture denies individual subjectivity in favor of herd subjectivity and interconnectedness, and denies traditional narrative hero in favor of bureaucratic flux. So maybe "perspective" is an outmoded category to look for in Infinite Jest; maybe this sort of decentered narrative chaos is the best we can hope for.

That postmodernism now emerges as a named problem in Infinite Jest—and maybe the problem—is further highlighted at this moment by a related complication of the way the chapter headings have heretofore been presented. The @ symbol in the quoted text above draws our attention to what I think is the second major textual innovation of the chapter heading on page 140: the reintroduction of history against the Jamesonian "perpetual present" of Subsidized Time, which in assigning totally arbitrary names to succeeding years both blurs all temporal distinctions and obliterates memory. Unsubsidized time—numerical time—implicitly foregrounds the importance of history in the steady increase of its digits; whether this is ideologically coded as "progress" or just "one damn thing after another," it is at least a map. Time, if we can say nothing else about it, passes; 1977 is thirty years after 1947 and thirty years before 2007. Subsidized Time is in this way the ultimate triumph of the postmodern over history; it delinks each year from any other, deterritorializing history itself. But history is tricky, and reemerges unexpectedly in a kind of return of the repressed: suddenly we learn that The Year of the Purdue Wonderchicken is four years after one event—the end of broadcast television—and one year after another—James Incandenza's death by suicide—at a time when Hal was in 8th grade, which marks this moment as occurring approximately five years before what is natural to think of as the "present" of the novel, the timeframe of the remarkable first section, the Year of Glad. Suddenly (and, perhaps for readers who are struggling with the time leaps, blessedly) we have history; we have context. How appropriate, then, that at the end of the "spoiler line" for today we are thrown back further than we have ever been, further, I think, than we might have thought we could go, so deep into IJ's history that it might as well be prehistoric: WINTER, B.S. 1960—TUCSON AZ.

* * *

On a completely unrelated note, let me add that the videophony section (144-151) is one of my absolute favorite pieces of this novel. Hilarious, brilliant, amazing, and totally 100% true. A+.

A final post closing the book on Palin, who, I am given to understand, is gone forever, never to darken the door of the Lower 49 again.

* Paul Begala analyzes the speech itself.

Let's stipulate that if there is some heretofore unknown personal, medical or family crisis, this was the right move. But Gov. Palin didn't say anything like that. Her statement was incoherent, bizarre and juvenile. The text, as posted on Gov. Palin's official website (here), uses 2,549 words and 18 exclamation points. Lincoln freed the slaves with 719 words and nary an exclamation; Mr. Jefferson declared our independence in 1,322 words and, again, no exclamation points. Nixon resigned the presidency in 1,796 words -- still no exclamation points. Gov. Palin capitalized words at random - whole words, like "TO," "HELP," and "AND," and the first letter of "Troops."

Gov. Palin's official announcement that she is resigning as chief executive of the great state of Alaska had all the depth and gravitas of a 13-year-old's review of the Jonas Brothers' album on Facebook. She even quoted her parents' refrigerator magnet. (Note to self: if one of my kids becomes governor, throw away the refrigerator magnet that says: "Murray's Oyster Bar: We Shuck Em, You Suck Em!") She put her son's name in quotations marks. Why? Who knows. She writes, "I promised efficiencies and effectiveness!?" Was she exclaiming or questioning? I get it: both! And I don't even know what to make of a sentence that reads:

*((Gotta put First Things First))*

Ponder the fact that Rupert Murdoch's Harper Collins publishing house is paying this, umm, writer $11 million for a book. Ponder that and say a prayer for Ms. Palin's editor.

* Steve Benen struggles to figure out the game plan, as well as looks to the historical record for evidence of whether "quitting your day job" has ever helped anyone run for president, much less someone three years out who is midway through her first term as governor.

* But it's Steve's co-blogger Hilzoy who gets in the best line I've seen on this.

Sarah Palin resigned as Governor so that she could help people who share her "ideas and ideals" get elected to political office. Maybe if she works really hard at it, she could even get one of them elected governor.

* Runner-up: the indispensable Al Giordano.

A quick observation: "Being an ex-governor is sort of like being a community organizer... except you have no actual responsibilities!"

* Ed Kilgore on the people I just can't understand, Palin's supporters.

In all the hype and buzz about Palin when she first joined the ticket, and all the silly talk about her potential appeal to Hillary Clinton supporters, the ecstatic reaction to her choice on the Cultural Right didn't get much attention. She wasn't an "unknown" or a "fresh face" to those folks. They knew her not only as a truly hard-line anti-abortionist, but as a politician who had uniquely "walked the walk" by carrying a pregnancy to term despite knowing the child would have a severe disability. And all the personality traits she later exhibited--the folksiness, the abrasive partisanship, the hostility towards the "media" and "elites," the resentment of the establishment Republicans who tried to "manage" her, and the constant complaints of persecution--almost perfectly embodied the world-view, and the hopes and fears, of the grassroots Cultural Right. (This was particularly and understandably true of women, who have always played an outsized role in grassroots conservative activism.) Sarah Palin was the projection of these activists onto the national political scene, and exhibited the defiant pride and ill-disguised vulnerability that they would have felt in the same place.

* Edge of the American West does that thing it does and explains how badly Palin mangled her "General McArthur" reference.

Once again Glenn Beck raises the questions the liberals in the MSM won't: Why did we buy Alaska in the 1950s if not to drill for oil?

Headlines to build my dissertation around: "Remembering the Past Is Like Imagining the Future."

Wednesday is the day I historically post links.

* It all finally makes sense; Michele Bachmann says the crazy things she says because she comes from an alternate universe where Jimmy Carter was president in 1976.

* Also in alternate-universe news: South Korean scientists claim to have cloned glowing dogs.

* Tough times in the mother country.

* They're turning Margaret Atwood's (very good) Payback into a full-length documentary about debt.

* "Crazy" Joe Biden was a key figure in the Arlen Specter party switch. Now who's laughing?

* The headline reads: "Student, 11, steps up to lead school band when budget constraints leave PS 37 without band teacher." Get this kid a scholarship anywhere he wants to go, and pour some real money into public schools already.

* The eleven most endangered historic places.

* Classic science fiction film on the Internet.

* The Bush-Obama position on state secrets takes a much-needed hit.

* The Fight Club Theory of Ferris Bueller.

* An entity passes the Hofstadter-Turing Test if it first creates a virtual reality, then creates a computer program within that reality which must finally recognise itself as an entity within this virtual environment by passing the Hofstadter-Turing Test. So now we just need to get Skynet self-aware.

Hour-long Jared Diamond lecture on the evolution of religion.

Krugman says he found himself in the science fiction of Isaac Asimov, especially the Foundation series—"It was nerds saving civilization, quants who had a theory of society, people writing equations on a blackboard, saying, 'See, unless you follow this formula, the empire will fail and be followed by a thousand years of barbarism.'"

Krugman and I have something in common. (via io9)

More apocryphal stories of the presidents.

Seriously, I have pink eye. That's just absurd. Here are some links.

* Utopia is now: curing cancer by virus.

* Dystopia is now: New York is talking about taxing Internet porn. What's 4% of free?

* How the Crash will reshape America.

* Debt: The First Five Thousand Years. Via American Stranger.

* Salute to British comic creators.

* Is Final Crisis "the death knell of the 'mad ideas' school of comics writing"?

* Nate Silver tries to statisticize the Oscars.

* Goodbye, Dubai.

* And Candleblog directs us to the official Trilogy Meter. Pretty good, but they got Back to the Future 2 wrong; it's not only better than the original, it's the greatest cinematic achievement of all time.

Playing catchup with the day's news.

* With Caroline Kennedy officially out of the Senate race in New York, WPIX is reporting that Kirsten Gillibrand will be Paterson's pick. If that's true, I'm shocked—I would have bet anything that Paterson would pick Andrew Cuomo to neutralize his chief potential rival.

* The Dark Knight: Snubbed!

* At this very moment, miles beneath the surface of the ocean, there is a British nuclear submarine carrying powerful ICBMs (nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles). In the control room of the sub, the Daily Mail reports, "there is a safe attached to a control room floor. Inside that, there is an inner safe. And inside that sits a letter. It is addressed to the submarine commander and it is from the Prime Minister. In that letter, Gordon Brown conveys the most awesome decision of his political career ... and none of us is ever likely to know what he decided."

The decision? Whether or not to fire the sub's missiles, capable of causing genocidal devastation in retaliation for an attack that would—should the safe and the letter need to be opened—have already visited nuclear destruction on Great Britain. The letter containing the prime minister's posthumous decision (assuming he would have been vaporized by the initial attack on the homeland) is known as the Last Resort Letter. Via MeFi.

* Related: Did the Soviets really build a doomsday device?

* Having seen Frost/Nixon, I can confirm the film has serious factual problems.

* I can also confirm that the Phillips Collection is a great (and surprisingly large) collection near Dupont Circle.

* That Guardian list of 1000 novels has some siblings: 1000 films, 1000 artworks, 1000 albums.

Every science fiction fan has a foundation for their nerdity. It is their Urtext. For me—and I take no particular joy in admitting this—there's no question that it is Star Trek. The first movie I ever saw in a theater was Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, and I watched more or less every episode of Star Trek produced before the day I came to understand the show's structural limitations sometime during the mid-'90s.

But if my nerdy nature can have a second foundation, it's undoubtedly Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, which I remember as vividly today as the day I read them a decade and a half ago. It's only partially an exaggeration to say that for me all theories of history are but footnotes to Asimov. (If it's good enough for al Qaeda, it should be good enough for everyone.)

Asimov Wiki
Timeline of the Robots/Foundation Universe
A favorite commentary, and a followup.

Now, I wouldn't recommend that any of you necessarily read these books now; I suspect Asimov's magic only really works on thirteen-year-old boys. But I bring this up because there's word that a Foundation movie is finally going to be made, and it's clearly going to be awful. The director attached, Roland Emmerich, directed Independence Day, the Godzilla remake, The Day after Tomorrow, and 10,000 BC. On his entire IMDb page only Stargate and The Thirteenth Floor (producer's credit) fills me with anything less than total dread. B-movies are great, but Foundation shouldn't be a B-movie. If anything, it should be a HBO series...

Did climate change kill the Roman Empire?

This thread from YayHooray (via MeFi) is easily the coolest thing I've linked to this year and possibly the coolest thing I've linked to in the entire time I've been doing this, with all the great flowcharts and infographics you've come to love from years on the innertubes. Some highlights:

this week's blog icon, the LEGO anatomy chart
probably next week's blog icon, the gummi anatomy chart
the week after that, sci-fi awesomeness
the interstate highway system as a subway map
your digestive system as a subway map
area codes in which Ludacris claims to have hoes
Sarah Palin pregnancy decision map
the map of Zork that doubles as my desktop
New Jersey invites you to come and see it all
extinction timeline, 1950-2050
narrative map of classic Choose Your Own Adventure novel The Cave of Time
risk perception and actual hazards
a chart of how Americans spend their money that seems to strongly argue for a national salary cap around $100,000
a map of the United States expressed in terms of proximate distance from Knoxville, TN
the Indo-European family tree (and again)
a visual guide to the financial crisis
a flowchart history of Cubism

Keep in mind those are just highlights. This is can't miss.

'God's Wife': excerpt from a NOVA story on the "Bible's buried secrets" dealing with Asherah, whom the ancient Israelites considered the wife of YHWH. From the second link:

Rachael Kohn: Now something must have happened which radically removes Mrs God from the scene.

Diana Edelman: Yes, Mrs God was obviously quite popular, well I think what happened really was the development of monotheism. In the period when Judah and Israel were States, we had a national religion which is perhaps best called Yahwehism and in that we had the divine couple, Yahweh and Asherah, and there we other gods, below them. We have mentioned in the Bible pestilence and plague, we have sun, we have moon, we may have Lady Wisdom, if she’s not Asherah reincarnate, so we had a range of deities. And in that set-up, the male god not only is judge of the earth, and in charge of the created order, but he’s in charge of the fertility of the crops and the fertility of the animals. It’s his wife who is particularly responsible for human fertility. And we find this set-up throughout the ancient Near East. As a matter of fact, if Israel and Judah hadn’t had it, they would have really been the oddballs.

But Israel, well Israel ceased to be in 721 BC, Judah continued that religion. When it was sent into exile there was a change, and it’s when they come back from exile that it seems that Mrs God has been ousted. She’s no longer welcome in the Pantheon. And it’s when we get the new Temple rebuilt in Jerusalem the traditional date for that is given under Darius about 515 BCE.

We have all sorts of funny things in that new Temple. No.1, we don’t have The Ark any more. The primary symbol of Yahweh when he used to be the God of Judah, was the Ark, which seems to have been tied up with the title Yahweh of the Hosts, showing him a very martial God; that symbol is gone. Now it’s not like they couldn’t have had that symbol in the Temple. They could have easily rebuilt an Ark. So what we’re seeing here is a change in the understanding of God and God’s function. Yahweh is being depicted in a new way. He’s no longer just the God of Judah, he is a universal God who controls all of history. He isn’t a warrior God any more because he doesn’t have a particular nation he can be warrior God of any more. Even though we’ll have language that he is going to go out and suppress the nations himself, we find this in some of the prophetic language, even from his late period.

Along with this change though, we no longer have a wife. Asherah is gone, probably the other Gods in the Pantheon as well are all becoming absorbed into this deity whose name used to be Yahweh Sebaot, but now he’s become Yahweh Elohim, the Goddest of the Gods.

Michael Lind's striking post at Salon argues that the historic election of Barack Obama this week represents the start of a fourth American Republic to match the First (1788-1860), the Second (1860-1932), and the Third (1932-2004ish), a 72-year structural pattern that will likely catapult Obama into the pantheon of truly great American presidents: Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt, each in their own way founders of the nation.

Policy shifts, more than public opinion polls or election results, suggest that a truly transformative moment may be upon us. The first three American republics display a remarkably similar pattern. Their 72-year life span is divided into two 36-year periods (again, give or take a year -- this is not astrology). During the first 36-year period of a republic, ambitious nation-builders in the tradition of Alexander Hamilton strengthen the powers of the federal government and promote economic modernization. During the second 36-year phase of a republic, there is a Jeffersonian backlash, in favor of small government, small business and an older way of life. During the backlash era, Jeffersonians manage to modify, but never undo, the structure created by the Hamiltonians in the previous era.

In this calculus Obama is the new, progressive Hamiltonian, whose reinvigorating vision the nation will dominate American politics for decades. And Bush is likewise the last Republic's final Jeffersonian:

George W. Bush was not only the final president of the Jeffersonian backlash period of Roosevelt's Third Republic, but the last president of the 1932-2004 Third Republic itself. The final president of a republic tends to be a failed, despised figure. The First Republic, which began with George Washington, ended with James Buchanan, a hapless president who refused to act as the South seceded after Lincoln's election. The Second Republic, which began with Abraham Lincoln, ended with the well-meaning but reviled and ineffectual Herbert Hoover. The Third Republic, founded by Franklin Roosevelt, came to a miserable end under the pathetic George W. Bush.

Provocative stuff. Now Obama just has to live up to it.

Kottke notes only five events have garnered the 96-pt treatment on the front page of the New York Times.

MEN WALK ON MOON
NIXON RESIGNS
1/1/00
U.S. ATTACKED
OBAMA

Kevin Drum has gotten a lot of people talking with his suggestion that the Left is better off having lost with Kerry in 2004 if it meant going on to win with Obama in 2008.

Back in 2004, I remember at least a few bloggers and pundits arguing that liberals would be better off if John Kerry lost. I never really bought this, but the arguments were pretty reasonable. Leaving George Bush in power meant that he'd retain responsibility and blame for the Iraq war. (Despite the surge, that's exactly what happened.) Four more years of Republican control would turn the American public firmly against conservative misrule. (Actually, it only took two years.) If we waited, a better candidate than Kerry would come along. (Arguably, both Hillary Clinton and Obama were better candidates.)

Conversely, it's unlikely that John Kerry could have gotten much done with a razor-thin victory and a Congress still controlled by the GOP. What's more, there's a good chance that the 2006 midterm rebellion against congressional Republicans wouldn't have happened if Kerry had gotten elected. By waiting, we've gotten a strong, charismatic candidate who's likely to win convincingly and have huge Democratic majorities in Congress behind him. If he's willing to fully use the power of his office, Obama could very well be a transformational president.

Dana at The Edge of the American West and Hilzoy both make arguments that this is something a political partisan must never allow themselves to consider—you have to fight to win, every time, as hard as you can, because the future is uncertain and unknowable and the present is immediate. And yet it seems to me that Kevin is obviously right that the horrific Bush victory in 2004 could in fact turn out to have been better than a Kerry victory, given a successful Obama presidency and a long-enough time horizon. It depends what Obama does once he takes office, if he turns out to be the transformational president I have long believed he will be, and to what extent the disastrous policies of the last four years can be "undone" through wise policy in the next eight.

As it stands, alongside what evil he has done, Bush has nearly singlehandedly destroyed both the Republican Party and conservatism as an ideology. Republicans were driven from Congress in historic proportions in 2006, with 2008 looking to surpass it. Obama, the most progressive candidate for president in my lifetime, will nominate at least two, and possibly more, judges to the Supreme Court, while (again, in the best-case scenario) implementing environmental and social reforms that could come to redefine American capitalism in much the same way as the New Deal. 2008 could realign the country politically, in our favor, for decades.

Does a Kerry presidency match this? As much as I like Kerry and as hard as I worked to get him elected, this counterhistory seems much less successful. A Kerry who wins 2004 in a squeaker in Ohio still faces the disastrous consequences of the first Bush term, as well as Katrina and perhaps even, to some extent or another, this year's bottoming-out of the post-Fordist culture of debt. In that universe we might well be watching Kerry go down to a nail-biter against Romney, a fight I'm not at all sure we'd win. Likewise, Republicans weren't forced out from Congress in 2006, and don't face crushing losses in 2008. The country, though spared four very bad years, has not been transformed.

The point is this: taking a longer view than the four-year election cycle, a very successful Obama presidency will have been better for both the Left and the country as a whole than the weak, "caretaker" Kerry presidency we likely would have gotten out of 2004. If Obama lives up to the hype, historically speaking it might have all been worth it. Let's hope.

RIP, Madelyn Dunham: Barack Obama's grandmother has died at 86 on the eve of his historic ascension to the presidency.

Obama spoke about her passing not long ago at a rally in Charlotte:

I want everybody to know though a little bit about her. Her name was Madelyn Dunham. And she was born in Kansas in a small town in 1922. Which means she lived through the Great Depression, she lived through two world wars [ED: nope], she watched her husband go off to war, while she looked after her baby and worked on a bomber assembly line. When her husband came back they benefited from the GI bill, they moved west and eventually ended up in Hawaii.

She was somebody who was a very humble person, a very plainspoken person. She is one of those quiet heroes we have all across America, who are not famous, their names are not in the newspapers, but each and every day they work hard. They look after their families. They sacrifice for their children, and their grandchildren. They aren't seeking the limelight. All they try to do is do the right thing. And in this crowd, there are a lot of quiet heroes like that, people like that, mothers and fathers and grandparents who have worked hard and sacrificed all their lives and the satisfaction that they get is in seeing their children or maybe their grandchildren or their great-grandchildren live a better life than they did. That is what America is about. That is what we are fighting for.

Big numbers: Obama's speech at the DNC last night was seen by more than 38 million people.

Nielsen Media Research said more people watched Obama speak than watched the Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing, the final "American Idol" or the Academy Awards this year. Obama talked before a live audience of 80,000 people in Denver.

His TV audience nearly doubled the amount of people who watched John Kerry accept the Democratic nomination to run against President Bush four years ago. Kerry's speech was seen by just over 20 million people.

Obama's audience might be higher, since Nielsen didn't have an estimate for how many people watched Obama on PBS or C-SPAN Thursday night.

Earthquakes, volcanoes, and civilization: Eric Force argues in Geoarchaeology that major ancient civilizations tended to align themselves over major tectonic plate boundaries:

First, he mapped plate boundaries and what archeologists say are the birthplaces of 13 major ancient civilizations. They ranged from Rome and Corinth in Western Europe, to Memphis and Jerusalem in the Middle East, to historic sites in India and China. Then, Force calculated the probability that the sites were randomly located, given that plenty of suitable land was available for settlement. The number crunching suggests that 13 of the 15 sites aren't the product of chance. Instead, ancient people appear to have chosen to snuggle up close to a tectonic crack-- often within 75 kilometers--despite the risk of quakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions. (The exceptions were in ancient Egypt and China.) The analysis did find that civilizations farther from plate boundaries seemed to persist longer, perhaps because they had to contend with fewer natural disasters.

Theories abound about why tectonic zones might have boosted the growth of early civilizations, says Force. Geologists know that plate boundaries often have ample water supplies that might have attracted early settlers, for example. And volcanoes can help create rich soils. But no factor explains the pattern, Force says. He is intrigued by a psychological explanation: "Maybe the elders are telling the kids that they'd better be prepared to cope with a lot of risk and change," he says--spurring the next generation to develop more sophisticated quake-resistant architecture, for instance, or create better ways to store food.

That idea appeals to archeologist Geoff Bailey of the University of York in the United Kingdom. "It could be that a certain level of geological instability demands organizational responses from the societies that live in such areas," he says, calling it "a sort of challenge-and-response theory of social development." In his own work, he's even speculated that similar tectonic challenges, and not just factors such as climate change, could have spurred the evolution of humans in Africa. A little shaking up, he suggests, isn't necessarily a recipe for disaster.

There's a pretty convincing takedown at Dienekes' anthropology blog, but still it's food for thought.

Via MeFi.