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Show Cyan Magenta Yellow Black Wednesday, March 9, 2005 Music professor returns from exile Off the Wasatch But popular Snow College instructor may not stay long By John Hales By Roger Baker Staff writer Horsefeathers I’d like to recommend a book that people who live off the Wasatch will understand better than others. The recommendation is a bit awkward since this family newspaper will not be inclined to print the title. Not even the New York Times in its review of the little book found the title of the 2005 monograph by Harry G. Frankfurt “fit to print.” Perhaps I can help with the title by noting that my father called a ubiquitous substance found on the bottom of stockyards “horse feathers.” When he was in a less expressive mood, the stuff of which I speak, male bovine feces made plain, he simply called “stuff.” From here on in this column, readers’ noses will identify “stuff” as the stuff of Harry G. Frankfurt’s monograph, “On B— s—.” This is a serious. Frankfurt is not writing a joke. As an eminent and renowned moral philosopher at Princeton University, he knows his stuff and is qualified, along with many other professors I know, to write publishable stuff or perish, and if it were a joke about stuff, it would be much longer than 67 pages. Real stuff gets spread far and wide and deep. A reputable publisher, Princeton University Press, prints this concise stuff. Frankfurt first states the obvious. There is a lot of stuff out there. “One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much [stuff]. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share.” We all seem to do some stuffing from time to time. And the larger point here is that we all recognize stuff when we see it. It is probably a lot like porn in this respect. As one Supreme Court Justice said, “I can’t define pornography, but I can recognize it when I see it.” Stuff also lacks clear definition but easy recognition. This is where Frankfurt steps into the breech; he tries to put a definition on stuff that even the lay reader of philosophy will understand. Using the Oxford English Dictionary and earlier work on “Humbug” by Max Black, our little book on stuff distinguishes stuff from humbug, balderdash, claptrap, hokum, drivel and many other more fragrant substances. He does not include horse feathers on his list, something that would certainly disappoint my father. The insidious nature of flinging stuff is that it is short of lying yet as deceptive as lying. It is more than “hot air” and “spit and polish.” And what it seems to do is promote the speaker. Odious stuff is designed to make the stuffer look good, knowledgeable, and acceptable. That is the irony of stuff. We use something foul smelling, phony, and false to make us look sweet. Now here is his thesis in a nutshell; lying is preferable to stuffing. Perhaps this is because it is easier to get away with stuffing that lying. People are more tolerant of the stuffer than the liar. But there is more to it. The liar knows the truth of the matter. One cannot tell an intentional whopper without tacitly admitting that he is concealing the truth. Frankfurt argues, “It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth.” Further, a lie is quite specific. It is not spread around for effect. Unlike stuffing, lying actually constrains speech when it confronts a specific truth or fact. On the other hand, the stuffer acknowledges no truth. The stuffer takes no sides. He is not on the side of truth or falsehood. The facts of the matter are irrelevant. This makes stuffing more dangerous and more insidious than lying. It doesn’t matter if the stuffer is found out because he is already quite visible. He has nothing to deny because he did not lie. In short, stuff is self-serving and irresponsible, and few social pressures suppress it. The only defense is to recognize it when we see it and perhaps this will be a bit easier with Frankfurt’s help with a definition. Swap Meet Starting April 1st EVERY WEEKEND! Historic Highway 89, East 400 North, Centerfield, South Sanpete County Seller spaces available. Call 435-851-9955 $10/day or $25/weekend A5 Sanpete Messenger - Sanpete Messenger/Gunnison Valley Edition FREE Parking and FREE Entrance for Buyers EPHRAIM—Libor Ondras, a viola player and Snow College music teacher who was deported to Slovakia in 2003, has returned to the college as an adjunct instructor, but his tenure there is uncertain at best. Ondras—who had been a strings professor and orchestra director at Snow—was welcomed back to the campus last semester after being in Slovakia for a year-and-a-half awaiting resolution of his case with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). While he was gone, however, the college filled the fulltime position left open when he was deported, meaning that it could only offer him a part-time position upon his return. “I can’t support myself and my wife on a part-time salary,” Ondras says, indicating he has little choice but to seek a job at another institution. Although Snow officials cannot offer Ondras a full-time position, they are sensitive to his situation. “The president [Snow’s President Michael Benson] is actively trying to help him get a full-time position somewhere else,” says Rick Pike, director of public relations at the school. Going Home In February 2003, Ondras was on his way to Slovakia to visit his mother, who was having surgery to remove cancer. As he has preparing to leave the country from Chicago, he submitted to customary questioning. The questioner asked him if he had ever been convicted of a crime, and Ondras replied that he had not. A similar question had appeared on a questionnaire Ondras filled out in 2000 as part of an application for a work visa, except that it asked if he had ever been charged with a crime. Ondras had indeed been charged with a misdemeanor while a student in Texas, but says the charge had been dismissed and should have been expunged. On the advice of an attorney at the time, therefore, he answered the work-visa application in the negative. In Chicago, INS had both of Ondras’ responses, but through further research also found the misdemeanor charge that had been made against him. Ondras says INS officials accused him of misrepresenting the facts and ordered him to stay in Chicago until the matter could be thoroughly investigated. Ondras left Chicago, however, in what he describes as “a terrible attempt, but a desperate attempt to do what I felt I had to do.” Ondras says the Snow College orchestra had been invited to participate in a conference and concert that was an important event to his students. He says he disobeyed INS instructions because the threat of deportation meant the possibility of letting his students down, which he did not want to do. After driving about an Libor Ondras is back at Snow College, but his future at the college is uncertain. hour outside of Chicago, Ondras says he realized he had made an unwise decision. He says he called his wife, telling her that if INS called her that she should tell them he was going back to them. They did, she did, and he did. Deported When he returned to Chicago, INS ordered Ondras deported to Slovakia, and told him he could not come back to the United States for five years. An effort to bring Ondras back started immediately. He and his attorney filed an appeal with the INS office in Chicago, but were denied. A second appeal was made to the Administrative Appeals Office in Washington, D.C. The INS approved the second appeal on June 27, 2004, stating— according to Ondras—that the Chicago office had abused its power. Ondras returned several months after that, as soon as the hurdle of processing the necessary paperwork was cleared. He returned, however, to a questionable future at the college. Vacancy filled During his absence, the college was obliged to fill the vacancy he left. Although the decision to replace him was not a pleasant one for the college, dean of Fine Arts and Music Department chairman Vance Larsen says the decision was (See “Libor” on A7) ‘World Year of Physics’ offers presentations on great thinkers By Geoffrey Pace Staff writer EPHRAIM—Imagine being brought before a tribunal of a religious hierarchy and being accused of heresy because of your beliefs and teachings that the sun, not the earth, is the center of the solar system. This was Galileo Galilee’s fate in 1633. The great medieval astronomer had to be led about in a penitent’s robe before a plenary session of Vatican cardinals “abjuring” his “errors and heresies.” Galileo was a pioneering astronomer of the mid 1600s who dared to advocate doctrines from earlier astronomer Copernicus suggesting that the sun was the center of the known universe. Upon hearing of these teachings in a published work called “Dialogue,” Pope Urban VIII was furious. He felt betrayed by Galileo for he saw his authority and integrity as pope to have been impugned. As part of the weekly convocation series at Snow College, Dr. George Seielstad, director of the Northern Great Plains Center for People and the Environment, will discuss Galileo’s findings and related topics on Thursday at 12:30 p.m. in the Eccles Center. His topic will be “How Special Are We? The Tale of Copernican Humiliation.” 17th century astronomer Galileo Galilei, who was censured and placed under house arrest by the Catholic Church for teachings contrary to Catholic church doctrine, such as heliocentrics. In addition, Seilestad, part of a speaker’s bureau that is sending speakers throughout the nation this year to celebrate the World Year of Physics, will give a free public lecture Thursday at 7 p.m. in Room 327 of the Science Building. Seilestad’s topic for the public lecture is “Einstein’s Annus Mirablilis” (or Einstein’s Miracle Year). “The World Year of Physics really is a once-in-a-lifetime event, and it is a pretty big deal for us to have a speaker of this caliber come to Ephraim,” said Larry Smith, dean of natural science and mathematics. According to the University of Oklahoma website at hsci.cas.ou.edu/exhibits, “It was not until as late as 1822 that Pope Pius VII approved a decree of Holy Office of the Inquisition that gave permission to print works treating the immobility of the Sun and the mobility of the Earth.” And it wasn’t until 1835 that the “De revolutionibus of Copernicus and the Dialogue of Galileo” were removed from the list of prohibited books of the Vatican. As an addendum to the contention between the pope and Galileo, the Upper Midwest Aerospace Consortium (UMAC) has this to offer listeners to Dr. Seilestad’s talk (from the consortium’swebsite, www.umac.org): “One look into the deepest recesses of space dwarfs the planet we reside upon as little more than a dust mote afloat in a vast cosmic sea. And now, the deepest humiliation of all, we encounter the fact that the matter we and everything we are familiar with is only 4 percent of all the matter-energy there is.” 7R TXLW VPRNLQJ FDOO 7587+ |