Alan Jacobs

In my previous post I linked to my review in First Things of Vodolazkin’s novel Laurus, which bears the title “Russian Brahmin.” But when I first saw the review online, I was appalled to see the the title “Russian Brahman” — and I discovered that, at some point after I last saw the text, someone had gone through the article and where I had written “Brahmin” changed it to “Brahman.”

In the review I claim that Vodolazkin’s hero goes through something very similar to the four ashrama, or life-stages, that a Brahmin seeking enlightenment might pass through. This has absolutely nothing to do with Brahman, except insofar as anyone seeking enlightenment will be indirectly contemplating Brahman.

My friends at FT corrected the text on the website within five minutes of my pointing it out. But in the print edition the error will last as long as even one copy remains legible. Stupid Gutenberg galaxy.

At the moment, my editors at FT do not know who made the change, but clearly it was made by someone who, with no knowledge of Hinduism, decided I had made an error. I cannot tell you how delighted I will be to receive, over the next few months, emails and tweets explaining to me that “Actually, Brahman means…” This post is for the authors of those emails and tweets.

I’ve had a few articles and reviews come out so far this year, and for the handful of people who might be interested, here’s a list:

• "Miss Marple and the Problem of Modern Identity," in The New Atlantis
• "Where Individuals Come From" (review of Siedentop's The Invention of the Individual), Books and Culture
• "The Extremes of the New Sensibility" (review of Cotkin's Feast of Excess), The Wall Street Journal — paywalled
• "The Counter-Desecration Phrasebook" (review of Macfarlane's Landmarks)
• "Roger Scruton vs. the New Left" (review of Scruton's Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left), The American Conservative — paywalled
• "Russian Brahmin" (review of Vodolazkin’s novel Laurus), in First Things — paywalled

My friend Dan Treier has written a long, thoughtful, sober, and wise post on what Wheaton College — and other Christian institutions — can learn from the Larycia Hawkins debacle. I hope some of the people, both inside and outside the college, who right from the beginning of the controversy, when little was known about what was actually happening, shouted their judgments and demands from the rooftops will read and heed.

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“650”] via warriorsworld.com[/caption]

Of all the things that separate pickup basketball from basketball played at a very high level — as it is played in the NBA and in the best college programs — probably the most dramatic is help defense. When you’re playing pickup ball you guard your guy, and that’s about it. If you happen to be able to sneak up behind someone else to steal the ball, or come over to block a shot, that’s awesome — but it’s not expected. Your job is to guard your guy. But at the higher levels of the game defenders are always helping one another, and in general it’s fair to say that the better a defense is overall, the better it will be at helping.

However, when you’re playing the Golden State Warriors it may be that help defense … well, that it just doesn’t work.

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“3445”] via warriorsworld.com[/caption]

By definition, if you help one of your teammates defend his guy, you leave your guy open. And if another teammate jumps over to pick up your guy, then his guy is open. Help defense is predicted on the belief that it’s possible for such rotation to be quicker and more intelligent than the offensive response to it — that the offensive players will be slow to move the ball, or will make an inaccurate pass, or will run out of time on the shot clock. And often that’s just how it works out.

Just not when you’re playing the Warriors.

So what if it turns out that the best way to play the Warriors is to play as you do in a pickup game? — just guard your guy. Don’t help out, don’t switch unless you absolutely have to, go over the top of every single screen.

But then they’ll drive past me! 

Yes, they will.

And then they might get an easy shot! 

Yes, that’s likely, though you will get some help if they get close to the basket from your big men, just as happens in a pickup game.

But what they won’t get is open 3-point shots — the kinds of shots they make more frequently than any team in the history of basketball, the kinds of shots that can very quickly turn a tie game into a double-digit lead for GSW. The Warriors as a team shoot 42% from 3-point range, which is the equivalent of shooting 63% from 2-point range. If you can cut down dramatically on their 3-point attempts — and contest the ones they do take, which you can do more easily because you’re still guarding your guy — and simply keep them under 60% from 2-point range … you’ll have a chance. It just might work. Better than conventional defensive strategies are working, anyway.

Of course, this would take a coaching staff bold enough to take the risk of abandoning a universally-practiced system of defense, and a team smart enough to break its old habits, and a group of big men disciplined enough to avoid fouling people shooting layups. In other words, it would take the Spurs, who, after all, have a history of abandoning universal practices.

I love watching the Warriors, but it would make me very happy if Pop were cooking up something like this in his South Texas basketball laboratory.

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“620”] via cleveland.com[/caption]

• List of fictional toxins
• List of instruments by Harry Partch
• Traditional dyes of the Scottish Highlands
• Computational Complexity Theory
• Sequential game

here

Some lines from a Daily Beast story about Breitbart’s support for Trump:

• “Never f*** with Breitbart. Ever.”
• “If a guy comes after our audience ... we’re going to leave a mark. We’re not shy about it at all. We’ve got some lads that like to mix it up.”
• “It was a planned deployment.... After I criticized Breitbart and criticized Trump, they decided they were going to weaponize themselves and go after me.”
• “If there’s one guy on earth I wouldn’t f*** with, it’s a guy who builds AR-15’s as a hobby.”
• “They’re the kind of people who, if you accidentally brushed against their shopping cart in the supermarket, their response is to burn down your house.”

What does Kottke mean, “John Oliver’s 22 minutes of pain for Donald Trump”? That segment, you can be sure, caused zero seconds of pain to Trump or to anyone who supports him. Everything Oliver said is completely true and is also absolutely ineffectual, utterly useless. If there is one person in America who is now thinking “I was going to vote for Trump until that John Oliver takedown” I’ll eat my hat.

[caption id=“attachment_15779” align=“aligncenter” width=“545”] The Brazos River in Waco[/caption]

James Fallows names eleven signs a city will succeed. I’m wondering how they apply to Waco.

1. Divisive national politics seem a distant concern.

Um … not really? But right now, where are national politics a distant concern?

2. You can pick out the local patriots.

Definitely, and I haven’t even been here that long. The first person who comes to mind is Jimmy Dorrell, the pastor of Church Under the Bridge and the president and co-founder of Mission Waco. Also Fiona Bond, who does a lot of her dynamic work with Creative Waco.

3. “Public-private partnerships” are real. I think so. I saw some impressive things last year when my son Wesley was interning with the Waco Downtown Development Corporation, which has had a role in bringing some cool businesses to the downtown area (see below).

4. People know the civic story. Yes — but it’s not a very positive story. What people seem to know about, even locals, is the tornado of 1953, the siege of the Branch Davidians — which actually happened ten miles away — and, especially within the black community, a horrifying lynching of a young man named Jesse Washington in 1916. (I’m not linking to that Wikipedia page because of a deeply disturbing image.) We’re seeing just the beginnings of a new and more positive civic story, thanks above all to one couple, Chip and Joanna Gaines.

5. They have a downtown. This is happening! The Gaineses’ Magnolia Market (just noted), Dichotomy Coffee and Spirits, Lula Jane’s, the recently re-opened Waco Hippodrome — these are all really good signs. We’ll see if they have staying power, but I really think they will.

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“760”] photo from Waco Tribune[/caption]

6. They are near a research university. Yep.

7. They have, and care about, a community college. Yep — a good one, too.

8. They have unusual schools. I’m not so sure about this. Waco’s relative poverty seems to hurt its schools and roads more than anything else. For a certain clientele, Live Oak Classical School is a fine option, but I am desperately hoping that the revitalization of the downtown area brings in more people and a stronger tax base that can revitalize the schools. But there’s a chicken-egg problem here: the kind of people who can raise the tax base won’t want to move here without better schools. (UPDATE: I just learned about Rapoport Academy, a charter school on Waco’s East Side that Nancy Grayson, the owner of Lula Jane’s (see above) founded in 1998. Turns out that my friend and colleague Jonathan  Tran is on the Board of Directors there! So much that I still don’t know….)

9. They make themselves open. Honestly, I don’t know.

10. They have big plans. Getting there!

11. They have craft breweries. Not much on that front at the moment, but that has something to do with all the great breweries in Austin and Dallas. However, how about what might well be the top craft distillery in America? And another one on the way? (UPDATE: Check out the Bare Arms Brewpub.)

Overall, I think, the signs are pretty good — and if you remember what Waco was like ten years ago (I do, because that’s when I was first offered a job by Baylor), the overall improvement of the place is stunning. So I think we have a bright future here — but if y’all want to join us, you’d better do it before the property values start a steep climb….