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 |    Not for the faint of art. |
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Complex Numbers A complex number is expressed in the standard form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers and i is defined by i^2 = -1 (that is, i is the square root of -1). For example, 3 + 2i is a complex number. The bi term is often referred to as an imaginary number (though this may be misleading, as it is no more "imaginary" than the symbolic abstractions we know as the "real" numbers). Thus, every complex number has a real part, a, and an imaginary part, bi. Complex numbers are often represented on a graph known as the "complex plane," where the horizontal axis represents the infinity of real numbers, and the vertical axis represents the infinity of imaginary numbers. Thus, each complex number has a unique representation on the complex plane: some closer to real; others, more imaginary. If a = b, the number is equal parts real and imaginary. Very simple transformations applied to numbers in the complex plane can lead to fractal structures of enormous intricacy and astonishing beauty. ![Merit Badge in Quill Award
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The theme for this month's "Journalistic Intentions"  [18+] is Earth. It's a well-rounded topic, and I hope it doesn't leave you flat. Feel free to click that link and enter. I know it can be intimidating to have such transcendent competition as Me, but I didn't win any prizes in the last round there, so you do have a chance.Gazelle Conservation Achievements Gazelle Conservation Achievements is the name of my grunge Toto cover band. I picked up the habit, elsewhere on the internet, of turning unlikely phrases into band names. After all, a lot of band names are unlikely phrases. Pearl Jam (yes, I know what it means). Steely Dan (that too). Goo Goo Dolls. Green Day. It's like they sit around after practice, get stoned, and brainstorm the weirdest, most surreal names that they can. The next day, when they're sober, they pick one out of a hat and run with it. Then, when they become all famous and shit, someone will inevitably ask, "So where did the band name come from?" In order to avoid seeming random and/or stoned, they'll always say something like, "Oh, our drummer, Pete, woke up with the name in his head from a dream." Or, "It was the name of Chester's first dog." And then Chester has to run around the internet changing all his challenge questions for password recovery. I heard somewhere that the band Jethro Tull went through a bunch of different names before settling on that tribute to a person most often described as an eighteenth century agriculturist who probably no one who's not a farmer would have ever heard of were it not for Ian Anderson's band.An agriculturist (not to be confused with an aggro cultist) is apparently not the same thing as a farmer, though I suppose it's possible to be both. I guess it's kind of like in physics: you have theoretical physicists to think of weird experiments and do math, and then you have experimental physicists whose life's work is to make the theoretical physicists look like idiots by proving them wrong. That's because theoretical physicists, and presumably agriculturists, work in the realm of (wait for it...) theory. And more often than not, theory goes against the concept known as "common sense." So there's always pushback from common-sensers whenever something theoretical pops up that doesn't, in their limited worldview, make any damn sense. Like the idea that spacetime is curved, or that our bodies are basically collections of quarks and electrons, neither of which can be actually seen. But then someone tries the new theory, and behold, it works, and a couple of generations later, that becomes common sense. If there's one thing I've learned in my time on the planet (which is round), it's that I've learned more than one thing. If there's another thing I've learned, it's that common sense is neither. Never trust a politician that runs on a "common sense" platform. Inevitably, they're so stuck in their ways that they'll ignore all evidence that is contrary to their interpretation of common sense, much to the detriment of their constituents. Maybe they should take a page out of the band playbook: Get stoned. Brainstorm some new ideas. When sober, pull one out at random and try it. Sure, much of the time it won't work. But sometimes it will, and that's how you get new stuff. Because, remember, the idea that the Earth is flat is just common sense. I mean, look at it. It looks flat, doesn't it? Unless, I guess, you're in the mountains, and then it looks all craggy and shit. But then you do some simple measurements and think about it for about 20 seconds with an open mind, and the truth reveals itself. None of which explains why we need to conserve gazelles, I'm afraid. Or why. I guess it's so that lions will have something to eat tomorrow. I mean, that's just common sense. |
| I've been writing in this blog for a long time, and I usually take steps to avoid duplicating entries -- though I'm willing to bet something has slipped through now and then. Today's article is related to one I did earlier this month (see "Respair!" ), but it's not the same article even if it does have some things in common. Unfortunately, none of them have to do with drinking. Lexicographer and TV personality Susie Dent recently embarked on a curious, self-appointed mission. She is determined to bring the word “respair”, last used around 1525, back into common usage. This is the point of intersection between this and the previous discussion. Stop trying to make "respair" happen, Susie. It's not going to happen. There is a direct relationship between a language and the society that uses it. Our needs, beliefs and history are fundamental principles that shape language. Lexicographers have shown that the pandemic has led to an explosion of new words and phrases, including “Blursday” and “covidiot”. For a long time, I believed, on no real evidence, that some Inuit peoples have dozens of words for "snow." Lots of people believed that. It confirms something in one's own worldview, that language reflects the concerns of the society that uses it. This turns out to be... kind of not the case. Not really. The "direct relationship" quoted above sounds to me like some version of the misnamed Sapir-Whorf hypothesis , which sadly doesn't have anything to do with a certain Klingon serving in Starfleet.But what do I know? I'm hardly an expert on this sort of thing. I'm no linguist. I'm barely functionally bilingual. Hell, I never even bothered to learn much Klingon. Here are five terms recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary which are connected, in different ways, with the importance of appreciating and loving oneself, one another and life in general. If I could be arsed, I'd comb through the OED looking for words related to drinking. My attempt to add my own, danchu, has not yet achieved widespread use (along with several other words I coined). Danchu describes the state of being completely obliterated by drinking, and which later I found has a close approximation in Mandarin that means "fade to black" as in the end of a movie, which was satisfying in My sight. Adamate: to love very much This verb is formed on the root of the Latin verb amare, which means “to love”. There is evidence of its use by dramatists in the 17th century. I mean, we already have "adore" and other words signifying great love. And this one, adamate, is just begging to make puns such as "I see that adamate the apple." Verdict: No. While it is difficult to establish exactly why “adamate” did not become popular, the more negative associations of the French loan might have played a role. I can't imagine why. Something like 60% of English words are derived from French, from what I understand, and I'm sure a lot of others have negative associations in French. The English word "excite," for example. In French, the verb exciter means "to arouse," and yes, it means that in the sexual connotation. Meanwhile, we use "excite" for everything from being pumped to go to a rock concert, down to the smallest shifts in energy levels of an electron. Autometry: self-measurement, self-estimation Although still used in mathematics, in connection with measuring the dimensions of something, I am interested here in a single use of “autometry” by the poet Robert Southey. In his 1829 book, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society, which details imaginary conversations between the author and the social philosopher Thomas More. Southey uses “autometry” to refer to the significance of one’s own judgement: “You judge of others by yourselves,” he writes, “and therefore measure them by an erroneous standard whenever your autometry is false.” So is it AU-to-met-ry, au-TOM-et-ry, or something else? I don't see the need for this word either, except in some of those writings you see where the author just has to show off his or her enormous vocabulary. Biophilia: love of life This word is probably best known as the title of Icelandic singer Björk’s seventh studio album. “Biophilia” and its counterpart “necrophilia” were coined in the 19th century as technical terms in psychology. The popularity of the term “necrophilia” and its increasing association with deviant sexual practices have been boosted by a number of high-profile criminal cases. Not a Björk fan, and I'd never heard of that album. My thought is people will think it's the antonym of necrophilia, because by default people are always thinking about sex, but the two words have entirely different connotations. But the desire to have sex with the dead is almost universally recognized as deviant, while the desire to have sex with the living is the default. But no, it just means "love of life." And it uses two well-understood roots: bio- and -philia. So any English (or Greek) speaker encountering the word can instantly guess at that meaning, "necrophilia" notwithstanding. Verdict: whatever. Collachrymate: to weep together COVID has of course seen physical proximity severely restricted. In this context, this verb, which represents a physical expression of sympathy, is particularly resonant. I... I guess I just don't have context for this one. Maybe because of the societal expectations put on men: weeping is something we do alone, and then only when something really bad happens, like your dog dies or your favorite sportsball team loses. I don't think I've ever, in my entire life, even as a child when crying was expected, sought out someone to collachrymate with. Run for comfort to parents, sure, like most kids - but they don't cry with you; they try to make the wailing stop so they can get some damn peace. While I don't believe in promoting antiquated and useless gender roles, that programming is still with me. Perhaps someday, as a society, we'll overcome it. For those who are inclined to find a weeping partner, I mean, go for it. But will you really want to say, afterwards, "We engaged in collachrymation?" Verdict: No point. Mesology: the science of achieving happiness This noun has been in use in scientific texts since the end of the 19th century. It probably comes from the French word, mésologie, which refers to the study of the relationship between an organism and its environment. However, we also find the term earlier, around 1830, in the writings of the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham, in what might well be an instance of an ad hoc coinage. He defines “mesology” as the scientific enquiry or branch of logic that deals with the means of attaining happiness. I've spent some time in here pointing out the futility of having "happiness" as a goal to achieve. The short version is, it's not a goal to strive for, but the result of something else. An emergent property, perhaps. Therefore, I do not believe that there is a science of achieving happiness. The closest I can think of, for me, is zythology, which is the art and science of beer making. Because beer makes me happy. Your definition, of course, may vary. And I might also argue that happiness isn't having what you want, but wanting what you have. That's the opposite of setting goals and working toward them. I find this word distasteful. In short, how about we find something other than words to give us satisfaction in life? Unless, of course, you're a linguist, in which case, well, you do you. |
| While I've done a few short-ass movie reviews in here -- there's another one below -- it's not often that I focus on contemporary TV, apart from nerding out over Star Trek sometimes. I don't fully agree with everything in this Cracked article, but one thing the author and I can agree on is that this particular show is awesome. See, I don't usually seek out other peoples' opinions on shows and movies I watch. That may be a bit hypocritical, since I'm displaying my opinions here for other people, but I prefer to draw my own conclusions before finding out what other people think... and then I usually forget to find out what other people think. But when it's on a website I read anyway, okay, fine. And I'm actually glad someone else likes this show. It's nuts that it has been 42 years since we've had a Superman movie whose critical reception didn't consist of exasperated sighs at best or angry nerd screeching at worst. Look, any movie involving a fandom is going to result in angry nerd screeching. It's as inevitable as construction on the DC beltway and almost as annoying. This is true for fantasy, science fiction, and the odd blend of the two that is the superhero movie (or show). Someone's not going to like it. Someone loud. Like a tractor-trailer accident on a two-lane road, there's just no getting around it. That Christopher Reeve Superman movie got a pass because it came out while the internet was in diapers. There's just something about Superman that makes him exceptionally hard to adapt on film without crapping the bed in some way or another. Well, yeah. It's hard to write a relatable story about someone who's indestructible and extraordinarily powerful, especially since, over the 90 some years of the character's existence, they kept coming up with new powers so he could get out of the situations they put him in. It got so bad that, in the comics, they pulled a reset back in the 80s that depowered Superman quite a bit. Because before then, he spent most of the 70s using his godlike abilities to do little more than keep Lois Lane from finding out that he was actually (spoiler alert) Clark Kent. While we've been sitting here waiting for a Superman movie that's good at something other than inspiring a million internet flame wars, CW's Superman & Lois show has quietly reinvented the Man of Steel by not reinventing him and just sticking to what made him work in the first place. (A revolutionary concept no one else had thought of, apparently.) There's... more to it than just sticking to what made him work in the first place. I said it was hard to write a relatable story about someone who is, essentially, a god. But it's not impossible. Also, with TV shows, you get more time to develop characters, backstories, relationships, settings. In the past, lower budgets for TV have interfered with a lot of the spectacle, but even that's becoming less of a problem now. A major issue in live-action Superman adaptations is that they seem ashamed of Superman. Which is something even the Aquaman movie wasn't, and that character was the second-biggest joke in comics (after Arm-Fall-Off-Boy from the Legion of Superheroes... don't ask). Smallville thought showing a blue blur on screen was more acceptable than letting Clark Kent put on his dang costume, while Zack Snyder's Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice decided that the only way we'd all believe a man can fly is if he's conflicted about saving people and, oh yeah, kills a bunch of them. You know, I never actually saw Smallville. It was a noughties thing; streaming wasn't readily available like it is now, and I can't deal with commercials. As for the Snyder movies, you're not going to get me to say anything bad about Zack Snyder. I've enjoyed every movie of his that I've seen. Yes, even that one. That one, too. And also his Superman movies. My only gripe about his Superman movies is that whatever character he had dressed up in a red and blue costume, it wasn't Superman. Superman Returns and Justice League came the closest to depicting the idealistic Superman from the comics, which is ... not a good state of affairs. I also don't care what other people think about Superman Returns; I thought it was a good movie. Kevin Spacey -- before he became a pariah -- made an excellent Lex Luthor, and Brandon Routh was good at both Superman and Clark Kent, even if he was mostly channeling Reeves through the whole thing. Keep in mind that when we say that there hasn't been a truly good cinematic Superman this century, we're not talking about the quality of the acting. Tom Welling, Brandon Routh, and king of nerds Henry Cavill did a great job with the material they were provided (even if, obviously, they couldn't hold a candle to Nicolas Cage's glorious Superman test footage). Incidentally, if you haven't seen The Witcher, Henry Cavill is awesome in that. Superman & Lois's writing is refreshing because it lets Superman be his own uncomplicated self -- the complications come from external factors, like having to raise a hormonal superpowered 15-year-old, and in seeing how such a massively idealistic character deals with them. How do you introduce conflict and tension in a story that's about Superman? Give him drama that he can't use his powers to solve. Like teenage kids. Also, while we already praised the other actors, it helps that actor Tyler Hoechlin can play a convincing dork better than anyone since Christopher Reeve. And my only gripe about S&L is that Tyler Hoechlin is the spitting image of a cousin of mine, and I simply can't get the resemblance out of my head. Other than that, yes, it's absolutely worth watching.   I'm not generally a fan of horror movies, but I decided to give this one a try on Monday. One-Sentence Movie Review: X: While the basic plot of this is straight out of How To Make A Horror Flick, this movie, which, unlike some others of its genre, contains no supernatural elements, elevates the story past simple slasher gore by confronting themes of life, death, movies, fear, love, sex, and why renting an AirBnB is never a good idea. Rating: 4.5/5 |
| I have a few articles in the queue related to science fiction technologies popularized in Star Trek. This is one of them. Why Can’t People Teleport? Set your phasers on stun, because we are going to beam you up on the physics of teleportation. Sadly, none of them involve phasers. Yet. If I find one, it'll pop up here eventually. Let’s face it: Nobody likes to travel. Wow. You're not playing to me with that lede, are you? I love to travel. I'm the avatar of the phrase "It's not the destination, but the journey." I've even been known to say that there is no such thing as destination, only the journey. I make an exception for airport security theater and steerage seats on airplanes. But everything else about travel, in any mode, is part of the adventure to me. Still, I could see the advantages of the topic, which is teleportation. Whether they’re traveling to get to an exotic location for vacation or traveling to work on a daily commute, nobody actually likes the part where they have to travel. I'm the exception that negates the rule. The people who say they like to travel probably mean they like to arrive. That’s because being somewhere can be really fun: seeing new things, meeting new people, getting to work sooner so you can go home early and read physics books. The actual traveling part is usually a drag: getting ready, rushing, waiting, rushing some more. Whoever said “it’s the journey, not the destination” clearly never had to sit in traffic every day and never got stuck in a middle seat on a transatlantic flight. This article could have skipped these first few sentences and I'd be more inclined to feel sympathetic to the author. Teleportation has been a fixture in science fiction for well over 100 years. And I'm pretty sure some version of it was in fantasy long before then. We could get to other planets more easily, too. Imagine sending colonists to the nearest habitable planet (Proxima Centauri b, four light-years away) without having to spend decades in transit. Goddammit, how many times do I have to say this: there is not the slightest speck of evidence that any planet orbiting Proxima Centauri is "habitable" by our definition, and plenty of evidence that they're not. You're losing me here. But is teleportation possible? And if it is, why is it taking scientists so long to make it a reality? Will it take hundreds of years to develop, or can I expect it as an app on my phone sometime soon? I think I have a good idea of the answers to these questions, but I'm going to read on anyway, my annoyance with the writing notwithstanding. If your dream of teleportation is to be here in one moment and then be in a totally different place the next moment, then we are sad to tell you right off the bat that this is impossible. Unfortunately, physics has some pretty hard rules about anything happening instantaneously. Okay, but look: any speed-of-light transmission from one point of the Earth's surface to another is close enough to instantaneous as to not make any practical difference. Even hypothetically bouncing a signal to geosynchronous orbit and back would have a lightspeed delay measured in seconds. We're splitting hairs here. Information has to travel through space just like everything else, and the fastest anything can travel in this universe is the speed of light. Really, the speed of light should have been called the “speed of information” or “the universe’s speed limit.” It’s baked into relativity and the very idea of cause and effect, which are at the heart of physics. All of this is true, but so what? We're supposed to be talking about teleportation, not that other Trek-popularized technology, warp speed (or FTL travel). That's a different discussion. The speed of light -- or information, whatever -- has little to do with whether we could build a transporter or not. Still, I will grudgingly admit that this part of the article is good for people who need a primer on the universal constant known as the speed of light. If that’s the case, then there are two options for making a teleportation machine work: Your teleportation machine could transmit you to your destination at the speed of light. Your teleportation machine could somehow shorten the distance between where you are and where you want to go. Option No. 2 is what you might call the “portal” type of teleportation. In movies, it would be the kind of teleportation that opens up a doorway, usually through a wormhole or some kind of extradimensional subspace, that you step through to find yourself somewhere else. That's more associated with the Stargate series, though Trek has certainly used wormholes as plot devices. Sadly, both of these concepts are still very much theoretical. By which is probably meant, "there have been no practical demonstrations." Much more interesting to talk about is Option No. 1, which, as it turns out, might actually be something we can do in the near future. And I think that's optimistic, analogous to how practical nuclear fusion has been 20 years away for the last 60 years. To do that, you might imagine a machine that somehow takes your body and then pushes it at the speed of light to your destination. Unfortunately, there’s a big problem with this idea, and it’s that you’re too heavy. The truth is that you’re too massive to ever travel at the speed of light. This is true for some of us more than others. But seriously, though, that's an oversimplification. Photons can only move at the speed of light, for example. They have no mass. Particles with mass cannot move at the speed of light, only below it. I mean, the article does say this, but I feel like some of it may be misleading. But does that mean teleportation is impossible? Not quite! There is one way it can still happen, and that’s if we relax what “you” means. What if we didn’t transport you, your molecules, or your particles? What if we just transmitted the idea of you? And this is where things start verging on metaphysics. Here’s a basic recipe for speed‑of‑light teleportation: Step 1: Scan your body and record where all your molecules and particles are. Step 2: Transmit this information to your destination via a beam of photons. Step 3: Receive this information and rebuild your body using new particles. I mean, that's kind of how Trek handwaves the technology. Though I think they pretend the particles themselves are somehow converted to photons and then back again at the destination. Oddly, that is not the most questionable science in Star Trek. So it’s not hard to imagine that one day we might be able to scan and then print whole bodies. No, it's not hard to imagine -- until you really think about the amount of information being processed. The real limitation, though, might not be technological but philosophical. After all, if someone made a copy of you, would it actually be you? I'm not going to say this isn't a legitimate discussion to have. And people have talked about it. The problem is, as with cloning, first you have to agree on precisely how the technology works. And since we don't yet have the technology, the discussion remains in the realm of ideas. At base, though, I think any such discussion ends up getting mired down in the question of what exactly consciousness is. It's not the physical particle replacement that's at issue, in my opinion -- none of us contain the same particles we did when we were born (except maybe tooth enamel, if you're lucky enough to still have some) -- but the matter of consciousness, which we might not solve until after we figure out teleportation, warp drive, and synthehol. Anyway, the article does delve into these questions somewhat, and at a level geared toward people without a lot of science background. I just wouldn't consider any of it as settled science. After all, how much can you believe someone who starts out asserting that the destination is more important than the journey? |
| I'd heard about these fools way back in the 1980s. For most dieters, his shopping list on that fateful day in 1983 (chicken pot pie, chili and biscuits) would be, at worst, an embarrassment. But Brooks was no average weight-watcher. He was the founder of the spiritual and pseudoscientific movement known as Breatharianism, famous for spreading the gospel that humans could live on air alone. They can. Just not for very long. He claimed he hadn’t eaten in 19 years. To his followers, the binge was an unforgivable sin — as if God himself had taken a bite out of the forbidden apple. Some people simply believe what they want to believe, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. Breatharianism wasn't even the worst example. Yet that very public scandal didn’t stop Breatharianism. Instead of dying out, the movement spread around the globe, fracturing over the decades into stranger, more dangerous forms. It’s even helped shape health and wellness culture as we know it today. And sometimes, evidence to the contrary, against all rational expectations, actually strengthens one's beliefs. “Breatharianism is a philosophy that believes that the human body, when it’s in perfect harmony with itself and nature, is a perfect Breatharian — you know, all the constituents that we need is taken from the air we breathe,” Brooks told Snyder, in front of a studio audience that seemed both amused and entranced by his words. And this leads to what is perhaps the most insidious conclusion: that if you fail in whatever you're doing (in this case, fasting), then the problem is you not being pure, resolute, or spiritual enough. This can easily spiral into dangerous territory... and it even happens in more mainstream religions. He went on to make other strange, spurious claims, including that Breatharian mothers don’t need to feed their babies, who are born able to survive on air and sun. He also said that hunger strikers who die are killed by their death wish, not from starvation. Part of me doesn't care what happens to people who fall for this shit, but the baby shouldn't suffer for its mother's idiocy. His logic shifted again in 1993, when he told the Seattle Times that he no longer believed food was an addiction. Though he still believed food was a poison, he also believed it could serve as “medicine,” a salve for low-quality city air. He himself occasionally balanced his aura with orange juice, honey and Twinkies, he said. Breakfast of Champions. In 2009, the official gospel of Breatharianism was updated again, this time with a convoluted explanation of how a McDonald’s cheeseburger meal and a Diet Coke can help keep a Breatharian healthy. In a fifth-dimensional universe, apparently, the “base frequency” of the meal aligns with the needs of man. You gotta wonder if the company paid him for the advertising. Hell, if I were him -- assuming I could live with myself after fooling all those gullible people -- I'd be taking bids from food manufacturers. Highest bid gets the "best vibrational energy" spiel for that week. Even though Brooks was widely ridiculed in the media, it’s easy to see why his ideas found a foothold in the ’80s and ’90s. Low-fat and low-calorie junk foods like Lean Cuisine and Diet Coke filled Americans’ fridges and minds, turning food into a deep source of shame. The idea of self-restriction as the essence of health and beauty was shamelessly promoted in books and daytime television. "If you're sick it's YOUR FAULT. You're doing something wrong. Stay neurotic. Keep buying our fix!" Wellness culture, like Brooks, tells us to fear aging and detest weight gain, as if these things are moral failures rather than an inescapable part of the human condition. Whether through nutritional deprivation or immortality-through-technology, transcending the body and its flaws is all the rage right now. And what comes after humanity but holiness? The only moral failure involved here is in believing the bullshit. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a box of Twinkies to inhale. |
| Today, I'm going to talk about something I have very little experience with. Spoiler: it's not actually scientific. Motivation is a powerful, yet tricky beast. Sometimes it is really easy to get motivated, and you find yourself wrapped up in a whirlwind of excitement. Other times, it is nearly impossible to figure out how to motivate yourself and you're trapped in a death spiral of procrastination. Death Spiral of Procrastination is my 80s hair cover band. Instead, we're going to break down the science behind how to get motivated in the first place and how to stay motivated for the long-run. For one thing, we can stop misusing "science." So what is motivation, exactly? The author Steven Pressfield has a great line in his book, The War of Art, which I think gets at the core of motivation. To paraphrase Pressfield, “At some point, the pain of not doing it becomes greater than the pain of doing it.” That's actually been my working definition for a while. I can only stop procrastinating when the pain of ignoring something exceeds the pain of fixing it. This rarely happens. What can we do to make it more likely that we cross this mental threshold and feel motivated on a consistent basis? Something tells me the answer to that question, sadly, isn't "Drink." You don't need much motivation once you've started a behavior. Nearly all of the friction in a task is at the beginning. After you start, progress occurs more naturally. In other words, it is often easier to finish a task than it was to start it in the first place. This actually also tracks with my experience. Once I start writing, I write, for example. It's getting myself to start writing in the first place that's hard. Setting a schedule for yourself seems simple, but it puts your decision-making on autopilot by giving your goals a time and a place to live. Nah. I've been known to set schedules and then utterly ignore them. If there's no one else involved, the only person I can let down is myself, and I'm used to doing that. It makes it more likely that you will follow through regardless of your motivation levels. And there are plenty of research studies on willpower and motivation to back up that statement. Actually, willpower has little to nothing to do with it. See my blog entry from a couple years back: "Good Willpower Hunting" "I begin each day of my life with a ritual; I wake up at 5:30 A.M..." Normally, this is where I'd simply stop reading and move on to playing video games or watching shows. The concept of willingly waking up at 5:30 am on a daily basis is so foreign, so anathema to me, that it's utterly inconceivable. Hell, I sometimes don't go to sleep until then. Maya Angelou rented a local hotel room and went there to write. She arrived at 6:30 AM, wrote until 2 PM, and then went home to do some editing. She never slept at the hotel. 6:30 isn't really any better. Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon writes five nights per week from 10 PM to 3 AM. Now, see, that's more my speed. It should come as no surprise that Chabon is a major writer for Star Trek these days, and I like those shows. Anyway, I skimmed the rest of the article after that. Who knows? Maybe someone reading this will find it useful. All it does for me is increase my dissatisfaction. But not enough to do anything about it. |
| Speaking of pizza (see yesterday's entry), it's time now for one of the most polarizing arguments in the world, courtesy of Cracked. No, not the pronunciation of ".gif" (it has a hard g, end of argument). Not mentioned: why a New Yorker would care about anything someone from Chicago says. New York vs. Chicago. A rivalry that's pretty lopsided in favor of Chi-city when it comes to basketball and good public transit, but when it comes to food, both cities have real claims of being among the culinary capitals of the world. And right there is exactly why we should dismiss anything this author has to say out of hand. I don't know or care about basketball, but NYC absolutely has good public transit. If by "good" you can ignore the filth, rats, and panhandlers. Those are all just part of the charm. And Chicago has no such claim on culinary capitalism. Both cities are also known for specialty pizzas: New York for massive, foldable slices of thin crust; Chicago for big ol' cast iron-cooked deep dish. And that's the debate that's liable to get some passionate pie lovers throwing fisticuffs in an airport. I'm not saying that the Chicago deep-dish stuff is bad. I've had some that I've really liked. What I'm asserting, and I will brook no argument on this, is that it is not pizza. You can't just add cheese and tomato sauce to a casserole and call it a pizza. No, what it is, is a pot pie without an upper crust. Calling it pizza is like calling yourself a car when you're lying down in a parking spot. I mean, just go to the article and look at the pictures. And hey! Come here. Lean in closer. Shhhhhh, don't tell anyone, but … it doesn't reheat well (unless you want to take 20 minutes to do it in an oven, which you won't). Putting deep dish in the microwave is for people who are at their most hungover or who truly hate themselves – so college students. Reheating actual pizza in a microwave is an unholy abomination against all that is good and pure in the world. This is not just me being snobby; it was proven by SCIENCE!. See my entry from back in October on the subject of reheating pizza: "What Do You Mean, "Leftover Pizza?"" I went to Loyola University Chicago, and right across the street from the student union was a spot called Carmen's Pizzeria that had a lunch special of two deep dish slices and a soda for $5. Two slices! Absolute heaven, but go ahead and rule out dinner that day. I mean, that may have been about 15 years ago based on this author's timeline, but that was absolutely not bad for circa 2007. Cheap enough, in fact, that it makes me wonder about fronts for money-laundering. Does anything I just described imply healthy behavior? No! I was in college! 34-year-old me actually can't remember the last time I had deep dish. It is a *sometimes* food. If a Chicagoan is actually ordering pizza, they're getting tavern-cut. What's tavern-cut, you ask? A thin crust, usually pretty crunchy, cut into (preferably asymmetrical) squares. Dibs on the corners and at least two middle pieces, by the way. I occasionally get a tavern-cut pizza delivered here. It is indeed delicious. It does count as pizza. Chicagoans don't always want a mountain of knife-and-fork pizza; we want easy-to-consume, belly-filling food that doesn't cost much. Deep-dish is a unique experience; tavern-cut is a light snack/street food that is actually the most popular. And I have no argument with that. It's different from New York Pizza, but it's still pizza. The "battle" has already been won. The standard for pizza — from Domino's to CPK to Paulie Rizzioli's Gabagool And Mutzarell on the corner of 47th street next to the bodega with the cat that goes "HEY, I'M FELINING OVA' ERE!" or whatever — is thin crust, tomato sauce, cheese. Yet Jon Stewart had a famous rant about deep-dish not being pizza … Domino's is shit, CPK is California, where they also don't know how to make a fucking pizza, and that's absolutely what a New York City bodega cat would say. I do know that the last time I was in New York (last month), I got to eat something very like the One True Pizza, down in SoHo, and that made my whole day. Speaking of which, it occurs to me that Chicago should be my next place to visit. In February, I went to NYC, and then at the turn of the month, I went to Los Angeles. Those are, in order, the two most populous cities in the US, and then the third is Chicago. I've never been closer than the suburbs, so I should probably just go. I guess I'll need a car, first. Houston is next after that, by the way. I've gone there before, but it's been a few years. Anthony Bourdain enjoyed deep dish on camera while being unable to bring himself to call it pizza, only to later call it "an abomination." Why do New Yorkers feel the need to defend so fiercely their precious, plain folding slices? Because they are PIZZA. As we've established, Chicagoans just want to eat pizza, like, all the goddamn time. But we also like to bloviate about how much our city rules. That's what happens when you're #3 and don't even have the movie industry to crow about. It's like some comedian once said (can't be arsed to look it up): "Chicago, right? It's like a bunch of New Yorkers got together and said, 'You know, I really like the crime and overcrowding, but it's just not cold enough.'" Or something like that. Honestly, I pity New Yorkers. Your lives would be so much improved if you had a more open mind about pizza. And a functioning public transit system. And a functioning Streets and Sanitation Department. And a good basketball team. Yep. Gotta go to Chicago and see this for myself. Still don't give a shit about basketball, though. Helpfully, this article lists a few places to go to eat pizza in Chicago. Now I just need to find some brewpubs there (and probably buy a car) and I'm all set. |
| Here's an article about a thing I don't think I've ever tried. How Bagel Bites Took a (Tiny) Bite Out of Snacking History What happens when a simple, innovative idea meets two hardworking families who will do anything to follow their dreams? A miniature, delicious pizza-bagel, of course I don't know why I've never tried it. I love pizza, and of course bagels are part of my culture. I think, probably, I always assumed that they aren't real bagels (which they're not) or real pizza (which they're not), so I didn't want to be turned off from either or both by consuming this horrid abomination. I have no problem eating pizza toppings on naan, though. “You won’t believe this,” Stanley Garczynski, the co-creator of Bagel Bites, says with a pause, “but I hate pizza.” I have a cousin who worked at a pizza place in high school. He couldn't eat the stuff for years. Still, the article may be a puff piece (that's a joke, as bagels are anything but puffy), but it's still an interesting look at the business. It all started sometime around 1982, when 30-year-old Garczynski moved to Fort Myers, Florida in search of a fresh start. Along with that, he needed a new tennis partner, which is how he met Mosher, a caterer at the time. The two became fast friends, and they and their respective girlfriends would get together often to party, drink and shoot the breeze about everything from their dreams for the future to humankind’s near-universal love for pizza. It was during these casual get-togethers a simple, yet innovative idea was born, one that would not only make Garczynski a millionaire, but change American snacking habits forever. Now, that's a bit of a stretch. One of the reasons I've never tried bagel bites is simply that no one I know has ever produced them at a party I was at. To be fair, though, few people ever invite me to parties. In 1982, I had been a teacher for seven years in Londonderry, New Hampshire. I loved teaching and I loved the kids, but there was no money in it. I was getting restless living in New Hampshire, so I moved to Florida and began working in marketing and sales. I hate that "marketing and sales" pays better than teaching. What people earn is supposed to be proportional to their value to society. Hey! Stop laughing! So we got to talking about coming up with some kind of hors d’oeuvre or appetizer that would be fun for kids — something we could put pizza toppings on, like toast, bread or English muffins. Around this time, bagels had become very popular. In the past, they’d mostly been big in Jewish areas of New York City, but Lender’s Bagels out of Hartford, Connecticut was making them more common everywhere. I'm sure if the only bagels you ever eat are Lender's, you have a warped idea of what those toroidal carbohydrate modules are. Go to New York. Eat a real bagel. You'll never eat Lender's again. One of the early challenges was that we had to figure out where to get our ingredients. We already decided on the Lender’s mini-bagels, and for the cheese, we got Sargento. For the sauce, we used Heinz, who would end up buying Bagel Bites some years later. Still, if you're going for mass-production, you could do worse than those suppliers. People would see our booth and say, “Bagel Bites? What is a Bagel Bite?” and then see these little pizzas. They’d pick them up, turn them over and see that dimple. “Oh, they’re bagels!” they’d say. “Wow! Pizza on a bagel!” We’d serve thousands of them. Bagels shouldn't have dimples. Bagels should have holes. The holes in a real bagel would make it somewhat awkward to put pizza toppings on them. More edges for shit to fall off of. So yeah, a pretty standard success story, and a one-sided one at that. It often amazes me how things that, by all rights, should not exist become popular and profitable. History is littered with them. Chicken wings, for example. Bottled water. I mean, whoever first came up with the idea: "Hey, you know what the world needs? We take the parts of the chicken that usually become dog food, and we market them as sports-watching snacks." This is why I'd never be a successful businessman. I'd be too focused on what should be to try to sell something that should never be. |
| As you know, sometimes I like to address the Big Questions in here. Why do cats—and so many other animals—look like they’re wearing socks? The possibilities of pigmentation are endless. This is one of those times. Grumpy Cat. Lil Bub. Maru. What do all of these internet-famous cats have in common? From ankle down, their paws are as white as the trendy marble countertops vying for attention in the very same Instagram feed. I don't know about Instagram feeds, but I do have some experience with trends. Those marble countertops? One day, y'all will look back on those and they will seem just as outdated as Formica, or wooden wall paneling. All of those things that you laugh at now from the 70s and 80s? Yep, that's the fate of marble countertops, eventually. The phenomenon of pigment mixed with white splotches can occur in pigs, deer, horses, dogs, guinea pigs, birds, and, in rare cases, humans. But it’s particularly prominent in cats, as evidenced by the fact that Socks consistently ranks in the top names for felines. Me, I always wanted to name a pet Spot. Not just in honor of Data's cat from ST:TNG, but because when they start to annoy me I can open the door and go, "Out! Out, damned Spot! Out, I say!" If the melanocytes are evenly distributed, the cat could have a unicolor coat, like Sabrina the Teenage Witch‘s all-black cat, Salem, or the all-white Hello Kitty. Right, because the Evil Feline is totally a biological entity and not the product of some Japanese person's nightmare. Piebaldism isn’t the only genetic quirk that can alter an animal’s fleece, according to the UC Davis Veterinary Genetics Lab. The tabby cat’s signature look is served up by the agouti gene, which determines the distribution of black pigment. Another common name for a cat is "Tiger," because some cats have stripes, like tabbys. I remember reading somewhere once that back when there were a lot of tigers, before they were hunted to near-extinction by homo sapiens, they had the capacity to possess a calico coat, like the ones you find in domestic cats sometimes. I have no idea how true this is, but I find it hard to believe that it would have been conducive to survival. Maybe the next meme-worthy cat should be named for a geneticist. Gregor Meowndel, anyone? No. One of my first forays into science was a high school project wherein I looked into cat genetics. Cat coat color isn't Meowndelian. Er, I mean, Mendelian. That is, sometimes you get strange results from breeding cats, as with calicos. But as it turns out, apparently, that's because the cat's pattern isn't strictly genetic, but also a matter of gene expression and conditions in the kitty womb. Kind of like with our fingerprints. All very interesting, but you have to wonder what the point is, when it's well-known that whatever their fur patterns, they'll still knock things off of tables, beg for food, and try to fit into boxes. Perhaps that last bit is because their genetic inheritance doesn't fit neatly into boxes. |
| I don't have a horse in the race on this one, but I'm sharing it anyway in the interest of reducing nonfictional drama in the world. Family estrangement: Why adults are cutting off their parents Polarised politics and a growing awareness of how difficult relationships can impact our mental health are fuelling family estrangement, say psychologists. You'll pardon the British spelling, as the article is from the BBC. It was a heated Skype conversation about race relations that led Scott to cut off all contact with his parents in 2019. His mother was angry he’d supported a civil rights activist on social media, he says; she said “a lot of really awful racist things”, while his seven-year-old son was in earshot. Right away I can see someone arguing, "Isn't that just like cutting off your kid if you find out he's gay?" No. No, it is not. Gay isn't a choice. Being a racist is most definitely a choice. Besides, you have an obligation to your kids to at least raise them to adulthood. One could then argue that we also have obligations to our parents. I disagree, but I can see both sides of that argument. In my opinion, you have no obligation to be around anyone whose values are trash, family or otherwise. Despite a lack of hard data, there is a growing perception among therapists, psychologists and sociologists that this kind of intentional parent-child ‘break-up’ is on the rise in western countries. Good. The survey showed more than one in four Americans reported being estranged from another relative. Similar research for British estrangement charity Stand Alone suggests the phenomenon affects one in five families in the UK, while academic researchers and therapists in Australia and Canada also say they’re witnessing a “silent epidemic” of family break-ups. "Epidemic" is a loaded word, especially now. It implies that there's something wrong with the practice. While individual circumstances vary, sometimes you have to withdraw for your own mental health. On social media, there’s been a boom in online support groups for adult children who’ve chosen to be estranged, including one Scott is involved in, which has thousands of members. You have the freedom to choose your own family. I know this goes against the grain of long-standing tradition and maybe even some evolutionary drive, but I stand by this assertion. One of the most common reasons for this is past or present abuse by the parent, whether emotional, verbal, physical or sexual. And that's absolutely a valid reason. Both experts believe at least part of the context for this is increased political and cultural polarisation in recent years. In the US, an Ipsos poll reported a rise in family rifts after the 2016 election, while research by academics at Stanford University in 2012 suggested a larger proportion of parents could be unhappy if their children married someone who supported a rival political party, which was far less true a decade earlier. This is my shocked face. “Not needing a family member for support or because you plan to inherit the family farm means that who we choose to spend time with is based more on our identities and aspirations for growth than survival or necessity,” he explains. “Today, nothing ties an adult child to a parent beyond that adult child’s desire to have that relationship.” One of the questions often asked of the childfree is: "But who will take care of you when you're old?" Listen, bringing another life into the world, this world, the way it is now, is ethically questionable at best. If you're only (or mostly) doing it so someone will change your Depends when you're 90, well, I can't think of anything more self-centered. And then they have the chutzpah to call us "selfish." Of course, all of this also has an impact on the parents who have, often unwillingly, been cut out of their children’s – and potentially grandchildren’s – lives. “Most parents are made miserable by it,” says Coleman. As well as losing their own footing in the traditional family unit, they typically “describe profound feelings of loss, shame and regret”. If you're racist, if you're abusive, if you support racist and abusive policies... you should feel bad. But he’s unlikely to reconcile with his own parents, unless they recognise they’ve been racist. “The whole ‘blood is thicker than water’ - I mean, that's great if you have a cool family, but if you're saddled with toxic people, it's just not doable.” There has been some argument about what "blood is thicker than water" really means (though not usually the kind of argument that results in cutting people out of your life). Usually, it's taken to mean that genetic family is more important than any other kind of relationship. If that's the interpretation, the saying never sat right with me, perhaps because I was an adopted child. My relationship with my parents -- the people who raised me -- was mostly fine, though with the same kinds of friction you see in any family. I don't give a shit about trying to find biological relatives, and all the movies and TV shows where people have this terrible urge to do that always piss me off. It always leads to more drama, which is great in a story, and a massive pain in the ass in real life. Like I said, family is who you choose. You'll still have arguments, but as almost any parents of an adopted child will tell you, we make our own bonds. |
| And now... science. 11 epic mysteries scientists totally can’t solve What is the universe made out of? When did the anus evolve? Can humans live to 150 years old? And more! Yet. Can't solve... yet. To investigate some of the biggest mysteries in science, you have to venture to some pretty far-out places: the bottom of the oceans, inside the human brain, the tops of mountains, and even the end of time. And sometimes the internet. Here, we rounded up 11 questions that astounded us the most. This is not Cracked, so no countdown list this time. I'm skipping a few, but not because they're not interesting; it's because I can't be arsed to make jokes about them. What is most of the universe made out of? It’s a simple question that’s also bafflingly unanswered: What makes up the universe? It's made out of universe. Duh. The dark matter thing is definitely annoying. Personally, I think they'll find out it's even weirder than we've imagined, like maybe gravity leaking over from another dimension. Like, literally another dimension, and not some alternate universe. Or, I suppose, that would be weird too. Anyway, the whole thing kind of reminds me of when, back in the 1800s, scientists figured that since light was a wave, it had to wave in something, so they figured out what the properties of that something would have to be to match observations. They called it the luminiferous ether, which honestly would make an awesome band name. But as it turned out, their basic assumption was wrong, and it was weirder than they could have possibly imagined... until someone imagined it. What lives in the ocean’s “twilight zone”? As you dive deeper into the ocean, less and less sunlight shines through, and about 200 meters beneath the surface, you reach an area called the “twilight zone.” Sunlight fades almost completely out of view, and our knowledge about these dark depths fades too. Sea monsters, of course, as shown on those old maps. Seriously, though, it seems to me that this could be figured out. Eventually. Just like we didn't use to know the shapes of all the continents on Earth, until we did. What killed Venus? “Hellscape” is the most appropriate word to describe the surface of Venus, the second planet from the sun. At 900 degrees Fahrenheit, it’s the hottest planet in the solar system, thanks in part to an atmosphere of almost entirely carbon dioxide. Clouds of highly corrosive sulfuric acid are draped over a volcanic landscape of razor-sharp lava flows. Most crushingly, the pressure on the surface of Venus is about 92 times the pressure you’d feel at sea level on Earth. Clearly, the civilization there was fooled into thinking global warming didn't exist by their fossil fuel corporations. Everything was going fine, until it wasn't. “Venus and Earth are planetary siblings,” Andrews says. “They were made at the same time and made of the same stuff, yet Venus is apocalyptic and awful in every possible way. Earth is a paradise. So why do we have a paradise next to a paradise lost?” I needed to post this quote because I keep seeing breathless articles about astronomers finding "Earth-like planets" around other stars. This gets people thinking there's all number of places we could fuck off to when we use up this planet, because we're used to fiction like Star Trek where what they call M-class worlds are an isik a dozen. Point is, to an astronomer, Mercury, Venus and Mars are Earth-like, and good luck landing on any of them and surviving more than 30 seconds without lots of life support that you brought with you. We have not yet found a planet, extrasolar or otherwise, that any normal person would consider to be anything at all like Earth. Chances are we will, eventually -- it's a big galaxy in a big universe -- but let's not count on it being reachable. What will animals look like in the future? It’s impossible to completely predict how evolution will play out in the future, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try. The way things are going? Two heads, tentacles, and extra limbs. Radiation from nuclear fallout can do that. Or so I've heard. What causes Alzheimer’s? There is no cure for Alzheimer’s, a neurodegenerative disease that causes dementia, and no highly effective treatments, despite decades of research. Live long enough, you'll get Alzheimer's. It just strikes some people earlier than others. Some are lucky enough to die before that would have happened. Why do we have anuses — or butts, for that matter? This is a question we never even knew we wanted to answer — until we heard the Atlantic’s Katherine Wu explain that “the appearance of the anus was momentous in animal evolution.” Before the appearance of the anus, animals had to eat and excrete through the same hole. This has been a subject of a serious blog entry or two here in the past. Here's one from last Christmas: "Evolution, My Ass" Personally, I think it's because people love fart jokes for some inexplicable reason, so we developed assholes for the sake of lowbrow comedy. And then there’s a whole other question: Why is the human butt so big, compared with other mammals? I thought that was pretty much settled; it has to do with being bipedal. Perhaps I'm wrong, though. I'm no asspert. What the heck is ball lightning? For millennia, people have been telling stories about mysterious spheres of light that glow, crackle, and hover eerily during thunderstorms. They’ve been spotted in homes, in rural areas, in cities, on airplanes, and even passing through windows. I remember seeing that once when I was a kid. Freaked me right out of my shoes. I'd been hearing all those stories about alien abductions and whatnot, and I was sure that I was about to get anal-probed (see previous header). Then I found out about ball lightning. Come to think of it, that might have been when I started to really get interested in science. But hey, maybe it is aliens, and they just weren't interested in my butt. After all, if you can't explain it, it's gotta be space aliens, right? |
| Sometimes I actually get to talk about writing in here. What Irony Is Not A handy guide to distinguishing the notoriously slippery concept from its distant cousins coincidence, satire, parody, and paradox. It's a book excerpt, but a fairly long one, and I'm only going to share a few highlights here. The short summary is right there in the subheading; to determine what irony truly is, it's helpful to define what it is not. “Irony” is a term that everyone uses and seems to understand. It is also a concept that is notoriously difficult to define. Much like Winona Ryder’s character in the 1994 rom-com “Reality Bites,” whose inability to describe irony costs her a job interview, we know it when we see it, but nonetheless have trouble articulating it. I never saw that movie, but I doubt most of us would face utter failure for getting the concept wrong. At worst, we'd get dinged by pedants. Since I'm a pedant, though, I want to know. And following your mother’s advice — to look it up in the dictionary — is liable to leave you even more confused than before. Looking something up in the dictionary is a child's way of gaining basic understanding. There's nothing wrong with it, but as I've noted before, dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. A more complete, nuanced view requires wider readings. Like this one. A song about irony is mocked because its lyrics contain non-ironic examples. I'm assuming they're talking about the infamous Alanis Morissette "Isn't It Ironic?" which would be better titled "Doesn't it suck?" Because none of her examples that I can recall are actual irony. Coincidence In everyday conversation, the term “coincidence” is often used as a synonym for situational irony. For example, someone might rhetorically exclaim, “Isn’t it ironic that the rain stopped just as I was finishing my morning run?” In many such instances, “coincidence” would probably be a better descriptor, particularly when no greater meaning or import connects the two events. And even if you believe that the rain stopped right after your run because the Universe is clearly out to get you, that's still not irony; that's paranoia. Doesn't mean you're wrong. A good example of this subjectivity can be found in “Brain Droppings,” by the comedian George Carlin. He argues that the concept of irony has to do with opposites and has “nothing to do with coincidence.” He provides a number of examples to make his point, including the following: “A diabetic, on his way to buy insulin, is killed by a runaway truck. He is the victim of an accident. If the truck was delivering sugar, he is the victim of an oddly poetic coincidence. But if the truck was delivering insulin, ah! Then he is the victim of an irony.” The older I get, the more I realize that comedians should be running the world. And not just one country of it. Paradox As with coincidence, irony is often conflated with the concept of paradox. I'm not sure I've ever made that connection. The coincidence one, sure -- I'm hardly an expert, which is why I read articles like this one. But to me, paradox is pretty obvious. The crucial issue that separates verbal irony from paradox is that the apparent contradiction can, in fact, be resolved. If someone mutters, “What lovely weather we’re having!” as they crouch in a tornado shelter, the statement would appear to stand in stark contrast to the true state of affairs. See, I always figured that was sarcasm, not irony or paradox. Satire Satire may feel like a relatively new and subversive form of humor, but in reality it has existed for millennia. Well, yeah, anyone who knows anything about Roman history and literature knows that. Also, I insist that Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet was intended as satire. The satirist has many weapons at her disposal, including parody, a form that I discuss separately. She may also employ outlandish exaggeration, blatant falsehoods, and sly innuendo. And virtually all satirists use verbal irony and sarcasm extensively, since these devices are especially well suited to the twin goals of being humorous and critical at the same time. Satire is something I should really work on. I have next to no practice with it, even though one of the first writings I got published (without pay) was a satirical article in the April Fools' issue of the student paper. I've mentioned that one in here before. Hm. April Fools' is coming up. I wonder where I'm going to hide this year? A prime example can be seen in “The Colbert Report,” in which Stephen Colbert played the role of a bloviating conservative pundit, rarely breaking character. Progressive audiences enjoyed his outlandish claims and proposals as a sophisticated rebuke of perceived excesses by pundits of the far right. However, some conservatives also enjoyed the program and believed that Colbert genuinely meant what he was saying. This is a perfect example of Poe's Law , which has nothing to do with that Poe. (This article does mention Poe's Law, later on in the text.)Parody As we have seen, pretense is an essential component of many forms of irony, and this holds true for parody as well. At its heart, a parody is an intentional imitation of something else, although the goals of the parodist vary. At one extreme, the intent may be to gently poke fun at the original work or its creator. At the other extreme, however, it may involve full-throated condemnation. The more aggressive forms of parody liberally use exaggeration, satire, and sarcasm to ridicule the authentic work and, by extension, the person who produced it. Parody, on the other hand, is something I've done quite a bit of. I could still work on upping my parody game. Some of my favorite movies and songs are parodies. The lack of shared context in online communities makes users less likely to recognize nonliteral language as such. Someone once observed that "there is great need for a sarcasm font." This is because, without visual or auditory cues, it becomes difficult - not impossible, but difficult - to state or understand a sarcastic comment. I've proposed the use of Comic Sans for that purpose, because everyone loves Comic Sans and sarcasm. (That was sarcasm.) Parody can also be difficult to express online, since it requires an audience to recognize that some prior work is being imitated. It's not just online. I had occasion, recently, to re-read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which is in the public domain and available online (just don't try to pirate Disney's version or you face the Wrath of the Mouse). In it, Carroll included several poetic parodies of works that would have been well-known when he wrote them -- but few today recognize them as such, because the fame of Alice has far surpassed that of the works that he parodied. Is that irony? I don't think so, not technically. But it certainly makes me smile. So, this is going to require a bit of background. Yesterday, I went to Alamo to see an old movie. I mean really old -- from 1924 -- and it was a black and white silent film made in the newly formed USSR. The film had been restored, apparently frame-by-frame, and a modern soundtrack added. I wanted to see it because I love science fiction, movies, and the perspectives of other cultures. One-Sentence Movie Review: Aelita, Queen of Mars (Scored by Chris Bullock): A fascinating insight into 1920s-era Soviet Russia, wherein, true to form, you invade Mars; it features remarkable sets and costumes, and a twist ending that, really, we all should have seen coming considering the movie is nearly 100 years old. Rating: 4/5 |
| Feeling lucky? If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance. The most successful people are not the most talented, just the luckiest, a new computer model of wealth creation confirms. Taking that into account can maximize return on many kinds of investment. I gotta start off by saying I'm not completely on board with the methodology here, at least not how it's presented. It doesn't mean they're wrong, and it's worth looking at it either way. The distribution of wealth follows a well-known pattern sometimes called an 80:20 rule: 80 percent of the wealth is owned by 20 percent of the people. Indeed, a report last year concluded that just eight men had a total wealth equivalent to that of the world’s poorest 3.8 billion people. I've often hypothesized, without evidence, that if we were to distribute all the things we think of as "wealth" evenly, within a few years things would go right back to where they are now. Maybe not with the same people, but the same sort of distribution. But the distribution of wealth is among the most controversial because of the issues it raises about fairness and merit. Why should so few people have so much wealth? I always figured it was because they figured out how to game the system to exploit the most people. The conventional answer is that we live in a meritocracy in which people are rewarded for their talent, intelligence, effort, and so on. Just a moment while I laugh. Ha. But there is a problem with this idea: while wealth distribution follows a power law, the distribution of human skills generally follows a normal distribution that is symmetric about an average value. For example, intelligence, as measured by IQ tests, follows this pattern. Average IQ is 100, but nobody has an IQ of 1,000 or 10,000. They haven't met me. What factors, then, determine how individuals become wealthy? Could it be that chance plays a bigger role than anybody expected? And how can these factors, whatever they are, be exploited to make the world a better and fairer place? More importantly, how can these factors be exploited to make the world a better and fairer place for me? Their simulations accurately reproduce the wealth distribution in the real world. But the wealthiest individuals are not the most talented (although they must have a certain level of talent). They are the luckiest. One of my issues with this article is: how does one quantify talent? Wealth is easy: add up how much assets someone has, subtract debts. IQ may be problematic, but it's still quantifiable to an extent. But talent? What kind of talent? And how is it measured? For example, someone with a lot of talent for, say, singing, who doesn't use their voice very much, might still not be as good a singer as someone with less talent who just works hard at it. The computer model charts each individual through a working life of 40 years. During this time, the individuals experience lucky events that they can exploit to increase their wealth if they are talented enough. However, they also experience unlucky events that reduce their wealth. These events occur at random. Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200. When the team rank individuals by wealth, the distribution is exactly like that seen in real-world societies. “The ‘80-20’ rule is respected, since 80 percent of the population owns only 20 percent of the total capital, while the remaining 20 percent owns 80 percent of the same capital,” report Pluchino and co. Which tracks with my intuition. That may not be surprising or unfair if the wealthiest 20 percent turn out to be the most talented. But that isn’t what happens. The wealthiest individuals are typically not the most talented or anywhere near it. “The maximum success never coincides with the maximum talent, and vice-versa,” say the researchers. This also tracks, actually. I've said before that if hard work were all it took to be financially successful, sharecroppers would be billionaires. So if not talent, what other factor causes this skewed wealth distribution? “Our simulation clearly shows that such a factor is just pure luck,” say Pluchino and co. Another issue I have has to do with how broadly "luck" is defined. In most cultures, "luck" would have to include being born into the majority demographic (though obviously it's not limited to that). Also, it's well-known that sometimes, people who win the lottery go on to have a shit life. Winning the lottery is the Platonic ideal of "luck," but if you're already not financially savvy (as is the case with many people who play the lottery in the first place), it's easy to go broke. Note that it doesn't always happen. Not even most of the time. But media sources seem to love pointing out when it does, while ignoring those who win the lottery and actually go on to lead a peaceful life of leisure. Clearly, more work is needed here. What are we waiting for? Funding from people who have already succeeded in life, probably. Since they have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, I don't see that happening anytime soon. |
| I've had an interest in astronomy for as long as I can remember. Today, I'll talk about one of the things that got me started. Readers Love Curious George. I Fell in Love with the Author’s Astronomy Books. H.A. Rey recreated star maps with wit, grace, and accuracy. I read these books before I'd even heard of Curious George. Apparently, the same was true for this author. The little book that really got me hooked on the night sky was called Know the Stars, adapted from a longer work, Know the Constellations. The author was H.A. Rey. As for me, I don't really remember the names of the books, or even much of their content. Just that they were about astronomy. Hans’ first astronomy book, The Stars: A New Way to See Them, was published in 1952; Find the Constellations, aimed at younger readers, appeared in 1954. Although both books are monkey-less, there are clues they came from the same hand that brought George to life. I also remember that by the time I got my grubby paws on those books (whichever ones they were), some of the information in them was already outdated. While the stars don't tend to change much in a human lifetime, and especially not in the 15 or so years between their publication and my curiosity, science continues to find out new things, and information about, say, solar eclipses and planetary conjunctions does have an expiration date. Hans first took an interest in the stars while serving in the German army as a young infantryman during World War I... At night, during breaks in the fighting, Rey looked skyward. What he saw looked nothing like the fanciful pictures in the popular astronomy books of the time. In one early 19th-century textbook, Leo the lion is drawn with a full mane of fur and a looping tail; with paws thrust forward, it seems ready to pounce. Only with great effort do we see the “backward question mark” (also called “the sickle”) at the lion’s front end—the only part of Leo that’s relatively easy to spot in the springtime sky—with the bright star Regulus marking the “dot” of the question mark. As these were probably my first encounter with astronomy texts -- though my dad had taken me out on cold, clear nights and pointed out a lot of the stars and constellations -- I didn't have that prior experience with the "fanciful pictures." Hans’ diagrams, in contrast, are almost breathtaking in their simplicity. He drew the constellations with clean lines, almost like stick figures. And, remarkably, they look like the people and animals that the ancients imagined, and they look like what you actually see when you look up at the sky (far from city lights, hopefully). Constellations are not, of course, immutable. Stars move, albeit slowly in our limited perspective, and of course they'd look different from other places in the galaxy. And they don't have any innate meaning (not even the ones in the zodiac). They're basically pareidolia: images from our imagination projected on the semirandom distribution of visible stars. Other cultures saw different pictures up there, which is fascinating in itself -- a window into the things important to those cultures. The ones we're familiar with are, of course, from a European tradition (there are exceptions for some of the southern hemisphere constellations, because, as you might be aware, Europe is not in the southern hemisphere). But they -- star patterns such as Orion, Canis Major, Aquarius, Ursa Minor, etc. -- are used by astronomers to describe the relative locations of other astronomical objects, even those not visible to the unaided eye. Incidentally, it might have been these books by the Reys that introduced me to the phrase "naked eye," which of course sent Kid Me into giggle fits. As another aside, the Big Dipper isn't a constellation; it's a small part (an asterism) of the larger constellation Ursa Major, the other stars of which aren't as bright. But again, it's pretty arbitrary and based on Western mythology. Importantly, the star positions are accurate: Yes, he connected them with lines; but the stars are precisely where they’re supposed to be. Hans taught himself celestial cartography for this purpose, and to create the sky-view maps that appear in both The Stars and Find the Constellations. He uses larger dots to indicate brighter stars, and explains the “magnitude” system that professional astronomers use to denote the brightness of stars. I vaguely remember that, too. I think the ranges they use for magnitude have changed slightly since then, but it gave me a baseline. The Reys’ story is a remarkable one, and I’m embarrassed to admit that I only learned about it recently, through Louise Borden’s 2010 book, The Journey That Saved Curious George: The True Wartime Escape of Margret and H.A. Rey, and the media coverage that her book sparked. And it's a very interesting story, one which has been echoed many times: Jewish couple fucks off out of Europe when they see the shitstorm coming. Unfortunately, it was not echoed enough times. How much other cool shit has never happened because some asshole wanted to commit genocide? You'll have to read it at the link, though. When I went to the opthalmologist to get my eyes fixed, I had a choice for cataract surgery: standard lenses, which I was told would keep my distance vision but require me to wear reading glasses; or the fancy kind that allows for both distance and close-in viewing. The doc told me the pros and cons of each. Option A, he said, would result in clear distance vision, and furthermore are covered by insurance. Option B would give me relatively clear full-range vision, with the downside being that, at night, light sources would have a diffraction pattern. "Not usually a problem unless one of your hobbies is astronomy," he said. "Well, actually..." I replied. And yet I chose Option B because I like to read and use the computer. I don't regret the decision. But indeed, lights at night have these annoying halos. Streetlights, headlights, stars, the moon, whatever. So my interest in astronomy is limited mostly to books and websites now, albeit those geared to adults and not the fun children's astronomy books such as the ones by the Reys. Still, it's been nice, this winter, to be able to look at the stars, even if they do look a little blurry -- it's definitely an improvement over having cataracts. Just the other night, I looked up on my way home from the movie theater, and I stopped to gaze at Orion for a bit. I saw the constellation, even through the haze of the city lights... and I remembered. |
| Now it's time to once again talk about one of my literary spirit guides. How to Deal with Rejection (and Get Revenge) Like Edgar Allan Poe Catherine Baab-Muguira on Doubling Down on Your Ambitions Before we get into it, this is essentially a book ad. I've already stated, numerous times, my opinion on that. But for those with other opinions, I issue this disclaimer. When Edgar Allan Poe was 17 years old, he and John Allan loaded up the family station wagon with all his clothes, posters, and books, and made the 70-mile trek west to Charlottesville, Virginia. In the interest of clarity, I will point out that this journey was 200 years ago. These days, I make that trip pretty regularly (or did, in the Before Time, when I had a car) and it takes about an hour. The author here is being deliberately modern, I think, but I'm pretty sure horses were involved in the journey, a "station wagon" was something else entirely, it was probably muddy, and it took a bit more than an hour. Also, it's northwest, not west. Look at a map. Among the rolling hills of that town, Thomas Jefferson had recently founded a university meant to serve the sons of the state—at least, those sons who could afford to spend a few years drinking, gambling, goofing off, and, on occasion, attending the odd lecture, maybe sitting an exam or two. Not much has changed in 200 years. More out-of-state students, but the rest is pretty much the same. Writing to Poe’s brother Henry in 1824, John Allan pointedly referred to Rosalie as “half your Sister,” adding piously, in case his point was somehow missed, “God forbid my dear Henry that We should visit upon the living the Errors & frailties of the dead.” I consider that fairly progressive for the time. Considering that at the time, some people owned other people. You know how it goes. You’re on your own for the first time. You don’t want to admit how lost you are, don’t want to beg or turn back the way you came. And so, to cover the widening gap between your means and your expenses, you start to borrow. If there had been, in those days, credit-card company reps loitering outside the UVA student union with their quills and free waistcoats, Poe would have signed up on the spot. Those bastards helped me fuck up my twenties. Notice how I accept the brunt of the blame. But they enabled. After a few hands, he found himself in an even bigger hole, so he just kept on playing and losing, and losing, and losing, until he was $2,000 in hock—some $50,000 in today’s money. Now he really couldn’t stay in Charlottesville. There was nothing for it but to trudge home, tail between his legs, creditors nipping at his heels. You can still visit the room where Poe stayed while at UVA. It's a couple miles from where I'm sitting. As with so many other historical sites, given that he wouldn't achieve fame for many more years, it's uncertain whether the official room is the actual room. But whatever; it's worth a visit anyway. Anyway, that's even more debt than I had incurred. And that's without credit cards. The excerpt goes on to detail Poe's return to Richmond and rejection by his foster father, which caused him to once again leave Richmond and become... well... Poe. Yet all of us will face rejection at some point. No one is exempt, which makes it all the more important that you understand how to have the right response—that, no matter your age or exact situation, you harness the gut-searing motivation that rejection can provide you, and make an ardent resolution like Poe himself made. “If you determine to abandon me,” he ranted to Allan in another letter later that year, “I will be doubly ambitious, & the world shall hear of the son whom you have thought unworthy of your notice.” Translation: The best revenge is living well, and, as per the old Klingon proverb, "Revenge is a dish best served cold." (Gagh, on the other hand, is a dish best served still squirming.) But you don’t have to mirror Poe’s exact playbook, which involved hopping a ship from Richmond to Boston, Massachusetts, assuming an alias, and, while starving and struggling to find work, paying out of his own pocket to publish his first book of poems, Tamerlane. You just need to nail the larger moves, outlined below. Boston? Hell no. It's cold in Boston. Even colder than Richmond. Even colder than the shoulder John Allan turned to Edgar. Step 1. Decide on revenge-via-success You’re gifting yourself a huge sense of purpose at a moment when you might otherwise be floundering, rudderless. So screw your heart up tight. Suck in your breath. Swear to yourself that one day they—whoever “they” are—will rue the day they doubted you. Yeah, I don't know. The old "find dirt on them and leak it to the media" trick is satisfying, too. Step 2. Change addresses in a big way Think of those who’ve come before you and take heart. Generations of theater kids, queer kids, artists, intellectuals, freaks, and dissidents of all stripes have all left their hometowns for bigger arenas. Buddha did it, so did Jesus. Poe too. Why not you? Because I'm not Buddha, Jesus, or Poe? Still, I can't help but recommending travel for anyone who wants to write, or even just experience something new. And that's about it for the excerpt. Mostly, I just wanted to share the link. I don't know if I'll buy the book, but it seems well-written. Just remember, follow all of this advice and you, too, can be found dead on the streets of Baltimore someday. Speaking of Poe, I went to see a movie that owes a lot of its existence to him. One-Sentence Movie Review: The Batman Battinson is a more effective Batman than I'd expected, the set designs and costumes are excellent, and the action is terrific; however, the plot is unnecessarily convoluted, and like so many other movies, it's probably longer than it really needed to be -- but my lifelong crush on Catwoman continues, so I'm glad I saw it. Rating: 3.5/5 |
| I wanted to talk about generational warfare again, but fortunately, I don't have to, because this author is doing it for me. Now, again, I don't hold a lot of stock in the whole generations thing. While there's some use to defining cohorts, in practice, you get what this article describes: yet another way to keep us fighting each other instead of the real enemy (spoiler: it's the system, man). Masking insult with humor wasn’t funny then, and it’s not funny now. You aren’t funny, and you aren’t joking. There’s a problem with masking insult as humor. Two problems. First, it dodges responsibility. The person making the “joke” doesn’t even have to cop to their prejudice. Secondly, when you mask insult as humor, it reassigns blame on the person being insulted. Say the magical “it’s a joke” words and you don’t even have to cop to being rude. Or ignorant, or uninformed, for that matter. There's a term for this: Schrodinger's Asshole . Which has nothing to do with the nether regions of a famous physicist, and everything to do with deciding whether or not you were kidding after you make an insensitive "joke."Show me someone who says “ok, boomer” and I’ll show you a dyed in the wool woke person, complete with rainbow flag on their Facebook every June. Somehow, they get #BlackLivesMatter and #metoo. They believe in gender equality, climate change and every other social issue. Except ageism. Because, boomers screwed them. Right? I've had in mind for a while now that there's something about human nature that absolutely requires that we have a group to look down on. No matter how shitty your life is, no matter how the world has screwed you, you can at least take comfort in not being one of those people. We're running out of groups to shit on, though. Even with those perennial scapegoats, the Jews, you're still going to get called out for ragging on them. But some groups are still fair game. The fat, for instance. And the old. Young people today have been screwed out of a future. That part, they got right. If you’re a young person today, here’s what you’re facing. — You can’t afford to buy a house. — You’re going to have at least 13 jobs in your life, if not more. — There’s not going to be a gold watch or retirement party — There’s not going to be any pension left for you. Oh, it's worse than all that. Unless the world ends first, because the entire planet is burning and flooding and the insects and animals are dying and and too many people think their uneducated hot take is equal to the opinion of someone who is educated. Because freedom of speech! This author is way more optimistic than I am. You think you’re woke, but the truth is you have no clue. No idea how we got here, much less who to blame. You see how f — cked up the world is, and blaming boomers is easy. You didn’t invent that, either. Ever heard of hippies? Back in the 60’s, hippies wore love beads and peace signs and screamed about global warming and fat cats and insisted you can’t trust anyone over 30. Yes, the generation you're ragging on now is the one that protested Vietnam, fought for civil rights, and tried to push the Equal Rights Amendment through the states. Pretending the problem can be blamed on a generation is delusional at best and destructive at worst. You can’t fix what you can’t see. The problem needs fixing. Very, very badly. Ain't nothin' gonna happen. The problem is corporate wealth hoarding at the expense of the worker. And right now you've lost half your readers who have just snorted, "SOSHULIZM" Anyway, the rest of the article goes on like that, pointing the finger where it belongs. Not just "the rich," but the whole exploitative system. Because it was never an age. To the rich, your poverty isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. If you can understand that, maybe you can begin to affect change. Effect. Maybe you can begin to effect change. But bad grammar isn't really the problem; it just annoys me. Not only do we have to have some group to use as a scapegoat, but I'm leaning more and more to the idea that the system -- not just capitalism, but every economic system ever developed -- has to have people to exploit. People desperate enough to do anything to get by. If everyone had a real choice in where they worked, how many would become sanitation workers? How many would choose to do the grunt work, the low-paid, mostly ignored, necessary things to keep society functioning? No, you take a shitty job only when there's no other choice. That's why they call it a shitty job. Anyway, maybe people are finally waking up to that. What it's going to be replaced with, I don't know. But we have to have our cogs in the machine, so I'm pretty sure it's not going to be very nice. Won't affect me much. I missed the cutoff for Boomers by a year or so; my defined cohort hasn't been blamed for anything yet. But I'm old enough that I'm just not going to fight anymore; it's not my war. So, once again, I end with the rallying cry of my generation: Meh. Whatever. |
| Yes, I'm running a little late today. Yesterday, because of *gestures vaguely at everything* I mixed spiced dark rum and ginger beer in copious quantities and drank it. It was a Dark and Stormy day. Consequently, I passed out completely, for several hours. I don't have a link, or a prompt. I suppose I could just wait until later, but where's the fun in that? I'm not sure if I'm hung over or still drunk. I do know that, thanks to the ginger beer I suppose, I'm feeling pretty good, all things considered. Now, a proper Dark and Stormy also includes lime. But I didn't think ahead like that. Sometimes I'll buy limes, then not use them, and find them later, hard and shrunken, tucked way back in the fridge. Most of the time, though, I'll get it in my head to drink something that requires lime, such as a gin and tonic, and naturally, those times, there are no limes in the house. I wish someone would invent stasis fields so that limes can keep fresh indefinitely. Forget warp drive, communicators, transporters, replicators, and world peace; the most important invention from Star Trek would be the stasis field. Okay, it's actually from Niven, or possibly some SF writer before him, but my point remains. Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah, Dark and Stormy. Technically, only Gosling's Black Seal rum can be used in a Dark 'n Stormy. Fortunately, I wasn't making a Dark 'n Stormy; I was making a Dark and Stormy. The rum I used was Kraken, which helpfully has a drawing of a multi-tentacled sea monster on the label, and is apparently made in Indiana; the ginger beer was from Stolichnaya, which, no, is not Russian; it's Polish, so don't give me shit about virtue signaling. So even those ingredients were nonstandard; a proper Dark and Stormy should be made with Caribbean rum and Caribbean ginger beer. At this moment in history, though, I don't give a shit. Even in the depths of a binge, though, I'm still doing science: what, I wondered, is the best ratio of rum to ginger beer? I think most recipes give a proportion of 1:3 or 2:5. I tried 1:2, 1:3, and 1:1, among other mathematically in-between attempts. Admittedly, by the time I was done, I was finding it hard to do proportions. In the end, I suppose it's a matter of taste: do you want more spiced rum, or do you want more of the spicy, tingly taste of ginger beer? 1:3 seemed to do it for me, but like I said, I was lacking the cooling, tart effects of lime in the drink. So that was my day. Very productive. How was yours? |
| And now, a few words about movies. The article talks about the recent Spider-Man movie. It's still showing in my local theater, so I deem this piece from December still relevant. You’d think the mind-blowing box-office performance of Sony’s Spider-Man: No Way Home this past weekend would be good news for just about everybody. And like I said, it's still going, like a certain battery-powered rabbit. I gotta say, though, I was starting to get a little pessimistic about the article's thesis, when there was hardly anything worth watching (besides that, and I saw it twice) in the theater in January and February. Now The Batman has joined it, so there's the fairly rare occurrence of both major comics publishers having a big movie in the theater at the same time. No, I haven't seen the Batmovie yet. Maybe today. More likely, Thursday. Superhero-movie fans, of course, were happy. Theater owners, who’ve had a rough couple of years, were definitely happy. “Hey prophets of doom,” Adam Aron, CEO of the much-beleaguered AMC Theatres chain, tweeted Monday to those who’d claimed streaming would kill movie theaters. “#CHOKEonTHAT.” Another reason to hate AMC Theatres: The CEO twoots and uses pound signs (I refuse to call it the H-word). For those who’ve watched the slow death of movies made for adults over the past decade-plus, the problem wasn’t so much that a superhero flick was making so much money but that other big releases were crashing and burning all around it. If by "made for adults," you mean "mind-stunningly boring," sure. Here, in seemingly stark and undeniable terms, was the pop-cultural dystopia many had feared: comic-book tentpoles obliterating anything that isn’t a comic-book tentpole out of the marketplace. If by "many," you mean "culture snobs," sure. I'm an adult, I like many different kinds of movies, and I'll watch the hell out of superhero flicks. I gave Spider-Man a lousy review, but even I’m happy to see it doing so well. This is my shocked face. I've said it before: you like what you like. It's also good to have different opinions to look at. At least this writer isn't all "stop liking what I don't like." And on a micro level, there are glimmers of hope all over the cinematic landscape. Throughout the summer and fall of 2021, I found myself floating from theater to theater in New York, surprised at the level of turnout. Sure, it's nice to have streaming services. But there's still something compelling about being in the theater, engaged, unable to put it on pause, among other people who wanted (for whatever reason) to see the same movie. And I say this as an introvert. I think the author here and I can agree on the attraction of the cinema: When screenings of Casablanca are selling out (as they did this year at Film Forum during its Humphrey Bogart festival, another big hit), it’s about more than people wanting to see Casablanca; it’s about people wanting to be around other people as they watch Casablanca together. Believe it or not, this is somewhat analogous to the phenomenon of people coming out in droves to see Spider-Man and a nostalgic assortment of old, recognizable villains. But I really wish people would stop ragging on "nostalgia." Admit you like it. Admit it's a draw. Besides, I've been hearing rumblings about streaming services wanting to go to an ad-supported model. This would make me cancel a few subscriptions, because if I'm paying for something, I don't want to see ads (movie and show trailers get a pass). This is why I've never had cable. Meanwhile, the new-release landscape has been more uneven. But even on that front, just two weeks ago, you could come across any number of sold-out screenings in New York of Licorice Pizza or Drive My Car. I'm still mad I missed Licorice Pizza in the theater. I have no desire to stream it. But I wanted to see it at the drafthouse. Anyway, you can't rag on nostalgia and wax poetic about that movie, at least from what I saw in the trailer. In the early months of the pandemic, sizable groups of allegedly smart people thought that movie theaters were not only doomed but that they maybe even deserved to die. Who were these people? I'm thinking Netflix, Disney, Paramount, and Amazon shills. On the other hand, it's true I wouldn't be as keen on going to the movie theater if the local one was, say, AMC or Regal (are they even different?) instead of a cinemaphile's drafthouse. The whole overpriced-popcorn-and-coke thing doesn't do it for me. If we can’t be around each other anymore, we are no longer a society, a country, a civilization. We’re just pod people jacked into the Matrix. Oh, look, a lowbrow movie reference. And cinema cannot survive without theaters. Without them, it becomes TV, a completely different art form. I'd like to believe that, but that's an assertion without evidence. Rather than movies becoming TV, I've seen TV shows becoming more like movies. Disney is excellent at this, what with Loki, The Mandalorian, etc. Of course, you could argue (and you'd be right) that those shows are based on theater movies, but my point is that the six-episode mini-series format is more of a six-hour movie now than a traditional TV show. Even Star Trek has gotten into that act, and while it had movies, it was always a TV show first and foremost. Well, we’ll be hitting two years of pandemic in less than three months, and almost nobody is spewing this streaming-über-alles nonsense anymore — at least not in public. Maybe because after trying it out for a while, we’ve come to realize that a lifetime spent on our couches is neither feasible nor desirable. Maybe because losing things sometimes makes you appreciate them. Maybe because 2020 and early 2021 were an inadvertent test run for our theaterless, benevolent-cocoon future … and it was fucking horrible. I can agree with this, too. Back in 2020, I decided, in a rare moment of making a New Year's Resolution, to see one movie a week at the Alamo. That lasted until mid-March, when they closed for a few months. Nothing made me happier than coming back to watch a movie, even if it did suck (Tenet). Lesson learned: don't make New Year's resolutions. And families have yet to return to theaters at the rates they once attended. That’s why a film like Disney’s Encanto, which in the Before Times would likely have been a big hit even if it were terrible (it’s not — it’s delightful), has made less money than freaking Free Guy. The theater I go to isn't exactly family-friendly. I mean, they don't exclude brats, not really, but their focus is on adult beer-swilling movie lovers: in other words, I'm their demographic, even if I'm older than some. There are strict rules about talking and texting. No one under 18 is allowed without an adult, regardless of the movie's rating (there are some exceptions). As an aside, I'm glad to see more people adopting "the Before Time(s)." I'm under no illusion that I started this trend, but shortly after the pandemic started I was early on in my quest to re-watch all of Star Trek (I'm up to Disco now), and that phrase comes directly from an Original Series episode. So I started using it. Now if I could only get more people to refer to the first decade of this century as the Noughties. Also, Free Guy was awesome; shut up. Anyway, there's a lot more in the article that I didn't quote here, and if you like movies, it's worth a read, even if the author does come across as a highbrow snob. Whatever brow you have, low, medium, high, uni -- I think it's good that theaters seem to be bouncing back. |
| I have mixed feelings about this one. This Is Why; You Should Always Properly—Punctuate Your Social Media Posts’ An incorrectly punctuated Facebook post has brought on a potentially high-priced defamation suit. Mixed, because on one side, I want to incentivize proper grammar, spelling and punctuation; on the other, I don't think the Grammar Police should use their power to screw the little people. An Australian judge may make an example of sloppy punctuation, to the tune of over $117,000 USD in legal fees. This article is from back in October, so it may have been settled by now, one way or the other, but that's irrelevant to the larger discussion. Also, it wasn't punctuation that was at issue. Several outlets have reported that real estate agent Anthony Zadravic is now being sued for defamation for typing “employees” rather than “employee’s” in a Facebook post last year. The original quote: “Oh Stuart Gan!! Selling multi million $ homes in Pearl Beach but can’t pay his employees superannuation,” meaning an employer-subsidized pension fund. “Shame on you Stuart!!! 2 yrs and still waiting!!!” There are, of course, several other problems with this post: there should be a comma after 'Oh.' Multi-million should be hyphenated. The $ should be written out as 'dollar.' There's another comma missing between 'you' and 'Stuart.' Starting a sentence with a digit is questionable, but most style guides specify that anything less than 11 should be written out; in this case, as 'Two.' How hard is it to spell out 'years?' This is Failbook, not Twatter. I'd be willing to excuse the triple bangs (two instances) as a casual stylistic thing meant to convey extreme shock. But the actual point of contention, 'employees,' could be: employees, employee's, or employees'. Each has a different meaning in the sentence. As written, it implies that he can't pay his employees their superannuation. Awkward, and it's pretty clear on a casual reading that it's meant to be a possessive. But there are two possibilities for the possessive: The second option asserts only a lack of funding for a single employee, presumably the author but that's not as clear as it could be. And the third projects the idea that he couldn't pay the fund for ALL his employees. So the grammar police are right: something needs to be done. Last week, Judge Judith Gibson reportedly ruled that Zadravic’s employer Stuart Gan would be allowed to proceed with the suit because “employees” could suggest a “systematic pattern of conduct” of shortchanging staff, whereas Zadravic claimed he was only speaking for himself. Gibson also reportedly said that the suit might cost Zadravic up to $250,000 AUD, or roughly $180,000. However, I'm not sure that even the most hardcore Grammar Cylon would consider $180K to be a reasonable penalty for even the most egregious error in forming a possessive. Well, maybe the most hardcore. There is the temptation to also string the offender up by his toenails until he learns the difference between it's and its; there, their, and they're; and you're, your, and yore. Temptation, but still, probably too far. After all, you can't practice your grammar if you're hanging upside-down. You'd be too busy howling in agony. Though the pooling of blood in the brain could cause you to lapse into a comma. Another Australian court has lately gone off the rails with social media defamation policy. Is it really "going off the rails?" Or is it enforcing some level of needed accountability? Last month, the High Court of Australia upheld a ruling in favor of a former teen detainee who sued media companies over commenters’ ridicule under news posts showing him hooded and strapped to a chair in a detention center. The court found that media companies (or anyone who so much as runs a Facebook page) for commenters’ speech; as a result, some outlets and the Tasmanian premier have restricted comments, and CNN has blocked Australian readers from its Facebook page. Bit of both? Seems more reasonable to hold the people making the speech accountable, and not those merely providing a platform. But maybe it'd be too much work to search out the true identity of OzMan69, only to find that they're hiding behind seven proxies and besides, they live on a troll farm in Kazakhstan. Amusingly, that last quoted paragraph contains a grammatical error; it's missing a phrase. Sue them in Australia! Props for correct use of the semicolon, however. And now, maybe some unfortunate soul goes to apostrophe jail. Where they'll be mercilessly teased by a whole gang of purveyors of fine fresh produce. Now, Waltz's First Rule of the Internet states that any post correcting someone's spelling, grammar, and/or punctuation will itself contain spelling, grammar, and/or punctuation errors. So I've tried to go through and proofread this entry, eliminating any of my own mistakes. Did I succeed? Well see. |
| I want to help make the world a better place. Okay, well, that's not entirely true, but I want to at least not make it a worse place. Articles like this one make me stop giving a shit, though. Americans love their gas stoves. It's a romance fueled by a decades-old "cooking with gas" campaign from utilities that includes vintage advertisements, a cringeworthy 1980s rap video and, more recently, social media personalities. The details have changed over time, but the message is the same: Using a gas stove makes you a better cook. I couldn't care less about those ads, rap videos, or especially social media personalities. Gas stoves are simply superior. But the beloved gas stove has become a focal point in a fight over whether gas should even exist in the 35% of U.S. homes that cook with it. Let's just use less efficient electricity instead. Some of which comes from gas. If you have an electric stove, the energy for cooking may come from fossil fuels, but the combustion happens at a power plant far away, Kephart says. "When you have a gas stove, that combustion is actually occurring right in your kitchen — you can see the blue flame down there," he says. "There is no smoke-free combustion." And? This reminds me of the whole California Proposition 65 thing. I'm sure it means well. But as with "this product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer," there are problems. First, say you have Substance A, which has a 0.0001% chance of causing health issues, and Substance B, which has a 10% chance of causing health issues. You lump these two together, and it's misleading as hell. Sure, you can say "But I only want products that have a 0% chance of causing health issues," but you can also say "I want a pet unicorn." Second, if you put a warning label on everything, pretty soon it's going to be utterly ignored. It becomes background. Point is, I don't care if the combustion comes from my gas stove or a gas-powered plant, it's still going to happen, and I don't run the gas stove 24 hours a day. Well, my local power mostly comes from nuclear, so I guess that's better somehow? (Keep in mind you have to consider waste disposal in the equation). There is no hood over Kephart's stove to vent the pollution outside. Instead, like many Philadelphia row houses, there's an old room fan high up in a wall. It vents outside, but even after Kephart turns it on, NO2 levels remain high. Kephart says that's because the fan is about 6 feet away. This is an argument for venting gas stoves, not for eliminating them. These days, houses are way more insulated than they used to be, in order to save on energy in general. When I was a kid, the house was drafty as fuck. No chance for NO2 or CO2 or our farts to accumulate inside. In the absence of federal oversight, California is taking action. Because of course. To encourage more people to ditch natural gas, environmentalists are focusing on the gas stove. At first it may seem like an odd choice because other gas-burning devices in the home consume more fuel, notably furnaces. I'm going the other direction. I'm putting in more natural gas appliances. I bought the house with a gas furnace nearly 30 years ago. When it came time to replace the water heater, I switched to gas. Then I changed the electric stove to gas, which of course improved my overall quality of life. I put in a gas fireplace. Then I added a gas-fired emergency generator, which required upgrading my gas meter. Now, I want gas lights for my deck. They'd look cool. I'm sure my idiotic city council will pull some shit about increasing the price or cutting me off, but until they do, I'm going to live in my own little methane utopia. I'm not going to rant too much more about this, but I will point out the major flaw in the "anti-gas" movement, which is that right now, they burn that shit off at the source because there's a surplus and they can't sell it fast enough. Burn it in Oklahoma and waste it and still warm up the climate, or burn it here and at least make me warm before it contributes to climate change? Hm, tough choice. In other words, you can pry my natural gas from my cold, dead fingers. And they will be cold. I saw a movie in the theater on Thursday but I keep forgetting to review it. So here it is: One-Sentence Movie Review: Cyrano Part stage play adaptation, part 80s music video, part Renaissance painting, this film celebrating the utter foolishness of humans is about 45 minutes longer than it needs to be. Rating: 3.5/5 |
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