Scott Sumner, an economist at George Mason University, offers a case about why economics education shouldn't push behavioral economics so hard at an early stage of economics education.
"Behavioral economics" is apparently a blending of some basic economic theory with social science concepts that, at least as Sumner sees it, tends to dilute some of the essential economic information a basic econ course needs to teach. Instead, he said, the basic course should show students how data demonstrates that a lot of things that seem like they should make sense and work actually don't, and how economics can give someone a better idea of what really goes on.
I don't have nearly enough knowledge of the field to know whether or not all of the fallacies Sumner lists in his article are indeed fallacious, although I suspect he could offer some good data that show they are. What does resonate a little is that a big part of educating people is helping them unlearn things they know that aren't true. A person in my field spends a significant amount if his or her time doing exactly that -- probably more than once, and probably upon himself or herself as much as anyone else.
As in so many other fields, it's not that we don't know things. It's just that we know so many things that aren't so.
Monday, December 31, 2018
Sunday, December 30, 2018
Superhero TV
Note: This piece will contain spoilers for both the first season of Titans and the third season of Daredevil. If you are waiting to watch either of those in order and learn of their plot developments the old-fashioned way, stop reading and come back after you have done so.
DC's digital television series Titans presents a bit of an irony. The way the characters are shown in this version of the story presents some intriguing possibilities and some people you might want to get to know better in more episodes. But this first season of episodes they are in will need some significant retooling in order to give those characters some stories you would want to spend time watching.
Titans is the story of a group that in comics has often been called the "Teen Titans." It began in the 1960s with some of the teen sidekicks to main-character heroes, giving them their own organization and adventures. The team has changed over the years -- the TV show is not the only one to portray all of the team members as actual teenagers, nor to label them simply "Titans" without regard to their age. The show begins with Dick Grayson, better known to many comic fans as Robin, the first sidekick to Batman. Grayson is no longer the Boy Wonder at the side of the Caped Crusader but is instead a police detective in Detroit. He rarely dons his trademark suit and has left Gothan and his former guardian, Batman/Bruce Wayne, because he sees the violent holy war that Batman wages against criminals to be a slippery slope to becoming too much like them.
Robin meets Rachel Roth, a young woman who's got troubles corporeal and otherwise. She seems, when her emotions are strong enough, to have the power to work magic. But a group hunts her with an eye towards ending a threat they say she poses by ending her. Meanwhile, a woman named Kory awakens with few memories but an awful lot of power, and a green-striped tiger proves to be a boy named Gar who can morph into different animals. Over the course of the season the four will come to depend on each other as they learn who Rachel and Kory really are and try to keep Rachel safe. "Kory" is the Tamaran princes Koriand'r, sent to Earth to somehow stop Rachel, aka "Raven," from becoming the doorway into this dimension for her father, the demon Trigon. Along the way they encounter costumed crimefighters Hawk and Dove as well as Donna Troy, the former Wonder Girl, who aid them in their efforts.
The story is part of the problem -- the Trigon-Raven relationship holds no surprises for anyone who's ever followed any version of the Titans in comics or animation. This version of the tale brings nothing new and leaves the season's overall narrative arc with a weak and hollow core. And too much of what we see subscribes to the notion that "darkness" is automatically the path to meaningful, intelligent storytelling. So we have darkness mistaken for depth, but much of the time Titans also mistakes grimness for darkness and brutality for grimness, leaving us three degrees deep into hackery masquerading as narrative. The early fridging of Dick's new partner, Amy Rohrbach, is an example, as is the history of Hank Hall as Hawk. Trigon's illusionary fantasy temptation of Dick that closes out the season is another.
Should showrunners be able to shed their own illusion that they have to try to tell dark stories in order to tell meaningful ones -- or even manage to actually tell a dark story instead of investing in brutality and grimaces -- then Titans might manage to craft a story that builds on these interesting characters and portrayals instead of weighing them down.
Netflix's Daredevil season three gets back on a lot of right tracks that season two jumped. It ditches all of the supernatural foofooraw of "The Hand" organization. There's no Stick. There's no maddeningly inconsistent Elektra overwhelming whatever acting ability Elodie Yung may have commanded. There's no Punisher. The story falls back on the strengths of Charlie Cox's Matt Murdock as a person and a hero when he is connected to his friends Foggy Nelson and Karen Page, as well as his weaknesses in both areas when he tries to work alone. Rather than waste time humanizing the villainous Wilson Fisk we see him brilliantly manipulative and ruthless, his hand in matters exposed only after it's too late to try to thwart his move.
So naturally Netflix canceled it.
The business reasons for doing so seem clear -- Disney now owns the Marvel studios which license the character of Daredevil and they are likely to want to bring their own version of him and his universe into production as soon as their Netflix deal is up, so why waste money building something you're going to lose anyway? And from generalized reports, viewership of nearly all of the Netflix/Marvel shows has declined from their initial outings, which makes continued investment in the properties even less likely.
But there are creative reasons as well. Some of them have plagued the entire partnership project -- seasons that should have been significantly shorter with less sagging in the second half. Or poor narrative decisions, like killing Mahershala Ali's Cottonmouth halfway through the first season of Luke Cage. Or including Iron Fist, a character whose powers derive from ancient mystical arts, in an environment of what are supposed to be "street level" heroes instead of cosmic avengers (or Avengers).
Season three of Daredevil, despite its welcome back-to-basics approach, carries several of these same burdens. It's once again too long. An entire episode apiece is devoted to telling us the backstory of Benjamin Poindexter, the rogue FBI agent who will become the assassin Bullseye and of Karen Page herself. Sure, the former is interestingly done in a semi-surreal minimalist flashback vision -- sort of an Our Town of the damned. And it's about time for the latter, since Page has played major roles in three seasons of Daredevil, and a season of The Punisher and showed up in The Defenders. But Bullseye's past is unnecessary and Page's could be told in about two scenes of conversation and neither requires anything like the screen time they get. Plus, Bullseye's own tale really just serves as a basis for yet another female character introduced solely for the purpose of her murder being used for its impact on a male character -- the tired fridging trope referenced above.
But they bog down the forward progress of the overall story, which is Vincent D'Onofrio's Fisk character manipulating events to get himself freed from prison and have Murdock's Daredevil discredited in the process. Murdock's loss of faith, already weakened by the events of Defenders and the losses it meant for him, produces a ruthless and calculating fighter who is willing to cross almost any line in order to stop Fisk, even if it makes him a criminal himself. Foggy Nelson and Page each try their own routes to get to Fisk and the three learn that they are unable to counter his strategy and ruthlessness on their own. Peter MacRobbie as Fr. Paul Lantom and Joanne Whalley as Sr. Maggie push Murdock to examine whether or not his abandonment of his faith is as big a mistake as his abandonment of his friends.
Season three of Daredevil shows that the creators of the Netflix Marvel shows could learn from their mistakes, as they shed many of the elements which made the show's second season nearly unwatchable all the way through. But it seems they didn't learn enough, or at least way too slowly, so now fans of the great work done by Cox, and co-stars Elden Hensen and Deborah Ann Woll and a strong supporting cast will have to wait and see whether or not these versions of the characters have a future. Unfortunately, tuning in next week won't help us answer that question.
Titans is the story of a group that in comics has often been called the "Teen Titans." It began in the 1960s with some of the teen sidekicks to main-character heroes, giving them their own organization and adventures. The team has changed over the years -- the TV show is not the only one to portray all of the team members as actual teenagers, nor to label them simply "Titans" without regard to their age. The show begins with Dick Grayson, better known to many comic fans as Robin, the first sidekick to Batman. Grayson is no longer the Boy Wonder at the side of the Caped Crusader but is instead a police detective in Detroit. He rarely dons his trademark suit and has left Gothan and his former guardian, Batman/Bruce Wayne, because he sees the violent holy war that Batman wages against criminals to be a slippery slope to becoming too much like them.
Robin meets Rachel Roth, a young woman who's got troubles corporeal and otherwise. She seems, when her emotions are strong enough, to have the power to work magic. But a group hunts her with an eye towards ending a threat they say she poses by ending her. Meanwhile, a woman named Kory awakens with few memories but an awful lot of power, and a green-striped tiger proves to be a boy named Gar who can morph into different animals. Over the course of the season the four will come to depend on each other as they learn who Rachel and Kory really are and try to keep Rachel safe. "Kory" is the Tamaran princes Koriand'r, sent to Earth to somehow stop Rachel, aka "Raven," from becoming the doorway into this dimension for her father, the demon Trigon. Along the way they encounter costumed crimefighters Hawk and Dove as well as Donna Troy, the former Wonder Girl, who aid them in their efforts.
The story is part of the problem -- the Trigon-Raven relationship holds no surprises for anyone who's ever followed any version of the Titans in comics or animation. This version of the tale brings nothing new and leaves the season's overall narrative arc with a weak and hollow core. And too much of what we see subscribes to the notion that "darkness" is automatically the path to meaningful, intelligent storytelling. So we have darkness mistaken for depth, but much of the time Titans also mistakes grimness for darkness and brutality for grimness, leaving us three degrees deep into hackery masquerading as narrative. The early fridging of Dick's new partner, Amy Rohrbach, is an example, as is the history of Hank Hall as Hawk. Trigon's illusionary fantasy temptation of Dick that closes out the season is another.
Should showrunners be able to shed their own illusion that they have to try to tell dark stories in order to tell meaningful ones -- or even manage to actually tell a dark story instead of investing in brutality and grimaces -- then Titans might manage to craft a story that builds on these interesting characters and portrayals instead of weighing them down.
-----
So naturally Netflix canceled it.
The business reasons for doing so seem clear -- Disney now owns the Marvel studios which license the character of Daredevil and they are likely to want to bring their own version of him and his universe into production as soon as their Netflix deal is up, so why waste money building something you're going to lose anyway? And from generalized reports, viewership of nearly all of the Netflix/Marvel shows has declined from their initial outings, which makes continued investment in the properties even less likely.
But there are creative reasons as well. Some of them have plagued the entire partnership project -- seasons that should have been significantly shorter with less sagging in the second half. Or poor narrative decisions, like killing Mahershala Ali's Cottonmouth halfway through the first season of Luke Cage. Or including Iron Fist, a character whose powers derive from ancient mystical arts, in an environment of what are supposed to be "street level" heroes instead of cosmic avengers (or Avengers).
Season three of Daredevil, despite its welcome back-to-basics approach, carries several of these same burdens. It's once again too long. An entire episode apiece is devoted to telling us the backstory of Benjamin Poindexter, the rogue FBI agent who will become the assassin Bullseye and of Karen Page herself. Sure, the former is interestingly done in a semi-surreal minimalist flashback vision -- sort of an Our Town of the damned. And it's about time for the latter, since Page has played major roles in three seasons of Daredevil, and a season of The Punisher and showed up in The Defenders. But Bullseye's past is unnecessary and Page's could be told in about two scenes of conversation and neither requires anything like the screen time they get. Plus, Bullseye's own tale really just serves as a basis for yet another female character introduced solely for the purpose of her murder being used for its impact on a male character -- the tired fridging trope referenced above.
But they bog down the forward progress of the overall story, which is Vincent D'Onofrio's Fisk character manipulating events to get himself freed from prison and have Murdock's Daredevil discredited in the process. Murdock's loss of faith, already weakened by the events of Defenders and the losses it meant for him, produces a ruthless and calculating fighter who is willing to cross almost any line in order to stop Fisk, even if it makes him a criminal himself. Foggy Nelson and Page each try their own routes to get to Fisk and the three learn that they are unable to counter his strategy and ruthlessness on their own. Peter MacRobbie as Fr. Paul Lantom and Joanne Whalley as Sr. Maggie push Murdock to examine whether or not his abandonment of his faith is as big a mistake as his abandonment of his friends.
Season three of Daredevil shows that the creators of the Netflix Marvel shows could learn from their mistakes, as they shed many of the elements which made the show's second season nearly unwatchable all the way through. But it seems they didn't learn enough, or at least way too slowly, so now fans of the great work done by Cox, and co-stars Elden Hensen and Deborah Ann Woll and a strong supporting cast will have to wait and see whether or not these versions of the characters have a future. Unfortunately, tuning in next week won't help us answer that question.
Saturday, December 29, 2018
Emphasis
A friend posted a link to a personal inventory exercise she planned to do at the end of the year, in which she tried to list all of the things she had done right in 2018, as well as all of the things she thought she had done wrong. The purpose is to help a person look at their accomplishments as well as failures, in order to both see what went wrong as well as remind himself or herself of what they did well. Doing this can help us maintain skills and strengths and recognize what might need to be changed in the coming year.
Interestingly, one of the sentences I would write about what I did right this year uses the exact same words that would show up in a sentence that describes what I did wrong.
Right: "I deleted almost every political Facebook post I saw, no matter who it came from.
Wrong: "I deleted almost every political Facebook post I saw, no matter who it came from.
As you can see, the question of emphasis matters a great deal. But I certainly know where -- and how -- I can improve in 2019.
Interestingly, one of the sentences I would write about what I did right this year uses the exact same words that would show up in a sentence that describes what I did wrong.
Right: "I deleted almost every political Facebook post I saw, no matter who it came from.
Wrong: "I deleted almost every political Facebook post I saw, no matter who it came from.
As you can see, the question of emphasis matters a great deal. But I certainly know where -- and how -- I can improve in 2019.
Friday, December 28, 2018
Far Out
No matter what you or I do to ring in 2019, it will just not be as cool as the New Horizons spacecraft, which will celebrate the day by doing a flyby of a ball of ice 6.5 billion miles away from Earth.
The object is in our solar system's Kuiper Belt, an region of small bodies that surrounds the solar system beyond Pluto. The best pictures of KB Objects or KBOs have so far revealed little, but New Horizons will zip past 2014 MU69 at a distance of just under 2,200 miles, or three times closer than it came to Pluto in 2015. So it should get some great detail, unless 2014 MU69 has a moonlet or rings or some other nearby pal that scientists didn't see before plotting the course. The six-hour communications delay means that if there is something out there to hit, the probe will have smacked it long before mission controllers know about it.
2014 MU69 was given the nickname "Ultima Thule" a Latin phrase from antiquity referring to a place beyond the edge of the known world. As a KBO, it's probably leftover material from the early planetary disk that orbited our sun before eventually clumping into planets. This means that any data returned by New Horizons will show us things about the earliest days of our solar system.
After buzzing Ultima Thule, New Horizons is scheduled to be steered around a few other KBOs to investigate them. During that time, it will be downloading its gathered data from this flyby to scientists, a process that could take up to a year because of the distance and necessarily reduced download speeds.
Just in case you thought your old dial-up service was slow.
The object is in our solar system's Kuiper Belt, an region of small bodies that surrounds the solar system beyond Pluto. The best pictures of KB Objects or KBOs have so far revealed little, but New Horizons will zip past 2014 MU69 at a distance of just under 2,200 miles, or three times closer than it came to Pluto in 2015. So it should get some great detail, unless 2014 MU69 has a moonlet or rings or some other nearby pal that scientists didn't see before plotting the course. The six-hour communications delay means that if there is something out there to hit, the probe will have smacked it long before mission controllers know about it.
2014 MU69 was given the nickname "Ultima Thule" a Latin phrase from antiquity referring to a place beyond the edge of the known world. As a KBO, it's probably leftover material from the early planetary disk that orbited our sun before eventually clumping into planets. This means that any data returned by New Horizons will show us things about the earliest days of our solar system.
After buzzing Ultima Thule, New Horizons is scheduled to be steered around a few other KBOs to investigate them. During that time, it will be downloading its gathered data from this flyby to scientists, a process that could take up to a year because of the distance and necessarily reduced download speeds.
Just in case you thought your old dial-up service was slow.
Wednesday, December 26, 2018
Laugh While You Can, Primate
Science fiction author Larry Niven includes among the peoples of his Known Space series the Kzinti, a race of intelligent felines that act a lot like terrestrial felines in that they tend to want to conquer and/or eat other species whom they encounter.
Should anyone ever decide to try to make a movie set in the Known Space universe -- and it's unlikely that anyone will, because it's complex and Niven is a quirky writer who makes a quirky world -- there will be no need to build CGI to represent the Kzinti. Just take some of the pictures below of Maine Coon cats, snapped by Robert Sijka, stick Andy Serkis in that motion-capture suit that's made him a millionaire and map the pictures onto the suit footage. Voila!
See the four below to get an idea of what I mean -- at the link you can see others, as well as the usual pictures of ridiculously cute kittens.
Should anyone ever decide to try to make a movie set in the Known Space universe -- and it's unlikely that anyone will, because it's complex and Niven is a quirky writer who makes a quirky world -- there will be no need to build CGI to represent the Kzinti. Just take some of the pictures below of Maine Coon cats, snapped by Robert Sijka, stick Andy Serkis in that motion-capture suit that's made him a millionaire and map the pictures onto the suit footage. Voila!
See the four below to get an idea of what I mean -- at the link you can see others, as well as the usual pictures of ridiculously cute kittens.
Tuesday, December 25, 2018
Numbers
Berlinksi assigns the basic mathematical functions the group name "AEM" or Absolutely Elementary Mathematics. The four major functions of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division are outlined as the building blocks of far more complicated functions and equations. Berlinksi also digs even deeper, offering ways to think about even the idea of "number."
Berlinski holds doctorates in philosophy and mathematics, so he is a good choice to explain math concepts in terms that don't lean too heavily on equations. His purpose in One, Two, Three is to suggest answers for these simplest and most basic questions about AEM and to show how such answers can be deduced via logic from some very simple assumptions.
One, Two, Three is both aided by and labors under Berlinksi's habit of breezy and almost flippant writing. On the one hand he largely succeeds in getting complex ideas boiled down to terms that most people can understand, and presents his arguments in ways that can be followed without specialized knowledge. But on the other hand, his tone sometimes crosses over into flippancy in ways that can slow readers down while they finish rolling their eyes.
He too often sacrifices some clarity and direction in order to make a witty observation and in more than one place sticks in some jokes for their own sake rather than explanatory value (yes, O Tolerant Reader, this blog does the same thing quite often. However, it's the product of some moke running his mouth and not someone explaining a potentially difficult subject. Judge for yourself what kind of damage that can do to explaining an idea). Whether or not Berlinksi is actually all that impressed with his own wit, he gives a good enough imitation of being so to make several parts of One, Two, Three way more annoying and way less useful than they could have been.
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So-called "imaginary" numbers describe the square roots of negative numbers, which are impossible to calculate using plain integers. The square root of 1, for example, is 1 because 1x1=1. But the square root of -1 seems impossible to figure, because the only way to get to -1 is to multiply two different numbers together. A negative number multiplied by another negative number leaves a positive number, not a negative one. At some point, mathematicians decided that there would be a square root of -1, and it would just be a 1 that was on another "axis" than the regular positive-negative line. But since the number didn't seem to have any real-world analogue like positive and negative numbers did, it somehow got hung with the tag, "imaginary." So today we say that the square root of negative 1 is i. The square root of -4 is 2i, and so on.
Retired electrical engineering professor Paul Nahin outlines some of the development of i through the history of mathematics in An Imaginary Tale. Some early cultures refused to acknowledge the existence of a quantity that could be squared to form a negative number, and even into the Renaissance and enlightenment years the so-called "imaginary" numbers were considered at best unimportant. They were not useful except in specialized cases and it seemed even mathematicians had reservations about dealing with numbers that didn't represent any real quantity.
Today, i and its counterparts find widespread use in many areas of math, and the only reservations that seem to continue deal mostly with the use of the word "imaginary." Nahin explores how important i is in many fields of engineering, especially his own. This part of the book -- about the latter two-thirds -- is heavily laden with equations and formulas and is going to be beyond most non-mathematician or non-engineer readers. He probably would have had to lengthen the book considerably to bring that subject matter within the grasp of the lay reader, but that doesn't make the string of equations and engineering language any easier to navigate.
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Luke Heaton's A Brief History of Mathematical Thought skims through history and sketches some of the thinking that accompanied the ciphering. He begins as close to the beginning as possible, offering some ideas on how our stone-age ancestors may have begun to progress beyond the simple counting of objects into understanding the numbers behind the counting had relationships that could be regularized and predicted. At what point, for example, did some forgotten genius figure out that two of anything added to three of that same thing would always make five of that thing? If you had two rocks and were handed three, you did not need to count all five of them over again -- you could add the three to your two and know you had five whether you counted them or not. And once people had developed this understanding, how did it change their civilization and culture?
History is better in the earlier sections, such as the one mentioned above and others that deal with numerical development among the ancient Greeks, ancient Indians and other civilizations. It's also a good overview of how the switch to Arabic numerals and the use of the zero as a place-keeper propelled scientific thought far beyond what had been possible with cumbersome systems like Roman numerals. Later sections, though, deal with more esoteric subjects within math and their impact seems less obvious. Heaton offers reasons to spend some time pondering non-Euclidian geometry, for example, but has fewer explanations about how this particular wrinkle affects the way we live and work. Still, History is a good primer on what kind of thought can come from dwelling on even the most mundane of numerical tasks, as well as how that thought has shaped who we are today.
Monday, December 24, 2018
Tidings of Comfort and Joy
May the day be so to you. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!
Sunday, December 23, 2018
Big Blue Marble
A day in advance, because Christmas Eve marks the 50th anniversary of astronaut Bill Anders' famous "Earthrise" photo -- the Earth as it was seen rising over the moon.
This Astronomy Photo of the Day site also has a link to a recreation of what a video of Earthrise would have looked like, as well as a colorized version of the actual first Earthrise photo, taken in black and white.
This Astronomy Photo of the Day site also has a link to a recreation of what a video of Earthrise would have looked like, as well as a colorized version of the actual first Earthrise photo, taken in black and white.
Saturday, December 22, 2018
Got to Admit It's Getting Better
I'm a person who enjoys sunlight and some of my favorite times of the year are when it stays light late into the evening. So today, the first day after the Winter Solstice, is the day things start to get better because every day from now until June 2019, we will have a little more sunlight than the day before.
Plus, there are only 95 days until Opening Day, so I've got that going for me.
Plus, there are only 95 days until Opening Day, so I've got that going for me.
Friday, December 21, 2018
Genre Puzzle
Mena Massoud, who has the title role in the upcoming live-action remake of Disney's Aladdin, says the new version of the animated classic will not be a comedy or a musical.
Massoud says the movie will have elements of comedy and definitely some singing and dancing, but it can't really be pigeonholed into either genre. Which makes sense. Because it's already a part of another genre entirely, the "shameless cash grab." You might think that's not really a genre, since most of the movies that get made today seem to qualify, but I'm finding it hard to imagine this movie being grouped any other way.
Massoud says the movie will have elements of comedy and definitely some singing and dancing, but it can't really be pigeonholed into either genre. Which makes sense. Because it's already a part of another genre entirely, the "shameless cash grab." You might think that's not really a genre, since most of the movies that get made today seem to qualify, but I'm finding it hard to imagine this movie being grouped any other way.
Thursday, December 20, 2018
The More Things Change...
A friend recently posted an interesting observation about morning news in the first day or so after President Trump announced the United States would pull its troops from Syria. The interesting thing was that CNN -- a network which is, we might charitably say, ambivalent whether or not the president should be impeached or impaled -- had heavy coverage and commentary on the pullout. But during the period my friend watched, Fox News -- an outlet which is, we might charitably say, ambivalent about whether to bow or to scrape to the president -- had very little coverage at all. Apparently a news event was a news event only as it suited the distinct purposes of the network.
I gave my own long-held response, which was that if the verb people used to describe their primary method of newsgathering was "watch" instead of "read," they would have a hard time convincing me they were well-informed. I'm a softy these days -- when I first said that I allowed for no such possibility.
Anyway, it stirred my memory of a Bloom County comic from 1985, which this journalism major enlarged and put on his desk:
Opus' soliloquy highlights how even thirty years ago the image-centricity of television news had a firm hold on its broadcast. Even though all three men who anchored the major networks' nightly newscasts had solid journalism backgrounds -- for all of their flaws each of them was more reporter than any 20 TelePrompTer muppets who torment airport travelers and waiting room patients today -- they were also each carefully crafted for their respective images.
If Berkeley Breathed were drawing this strip today, it would probably have a couple dozen panels to illuminate the wide range of choices Opus faced. And his closing panel might have had our intrepid penguin reading from a tablet instead of an actual dead tree newspaper.
But the outcome remains the same. The less work our brains have to do to acquire content, the less worth the content has -- be we primates or flightless waterfowl.
I gave my own long-held response, which was that if the verb people used to describe their primary method of newsgathering was "watch" instead of "read," they would have a hard time convincing me they were well-informed. I'm a softy these days -- when I first said that I allowed for no such possibility.
Anyway, it stirred my memory of a Bloom County comic from 1985, which this journalism major enlarged and put on his desk:
Opus' soliloquy highlights how even thirty years ago the image-centricity of television news had a firm hold on its broadcast. Even though all three men who anchored the major networks' nightly newscasts had solid journalism backgrounds -- for all of their flaws each of them was more reporter than any 20 TelePrompTer muppets who torment airport travelers and waiting room patients today -- they were also each carefully crafted for their respective images.
If Berkeley Breathed were drawing this strip today, it would probably have a couple dozen panels to illuminate the wide range of choices Opus faced. And his closing panel might have had our intrepid penguin reading from a tablet instead of an actual dead tree newspaper.
But the outcome remains the same. The less work our brains have to do to acquire content, the less worth the content has -- be we primates or flightless waterfowl.
Wednesday, December 19, 2018
Not Getting It
This story in The New Yorker by Osita Nwanevu is about a welcome development -- steps towards trying some different ways to keep criminals from re-offending have passed through Congress. But it misses so much of the important material in an effort to keep President Trump in the middle of things by talking about stupid stuff he's said about criminals.
Mr. Nwanevu, like most journalists working today, can't seem to understand that there are things in this world that aren't about Donald Trump. It's possible to leave him out of entire paragraphs, although it seems like no one wants to.
Funny thing, for all that the press and the president despise each other, they find themselves in agreement about the desire to make him the center of everything. You'd think they'd figure out they were on the same page and one of them change their ways, but I guess not.
Mr. Nwanevu, like most journalists working today, can't seem to understand that there are things in this world that aren't about Donald Trump. It's possible to leave him out of entire paragraphs, although it seems like no one wants to.
Funny thing, for all that the press and the president despise each other, they find themselves in agreement about the desire to make him the center of everything. You'd think they'd figure out they were on the same page and one of them change their ways, but I guess not.
Tuesday, December 18, 2018
Strange Visitor & Stuff
-- Last year's funky flying rock, ‘Oumuamua, that visited our solar system, has turned out to be even funkier as scientists have studied it. This article in Scientific American outlines some of the oddball things about our strange visitor from another star.
-- If you're curious about where some of the different scenes in old silent movies were filmed, you can explore them here at Silent Locations. You can see how many different scenes were filmed on the same spots, where those spots are on a map and in some cases an overhead photograph, and some pictures of what they look like today. No audio.
-- Once again the good folk at Mental Floss have found some words we used to use that we ought to use again, this time related to winter and Christmas. My favorite is quaaltagh, a Manxian Celtic word that describes the first person you see on Christmas or New Year's morning (or the first guest to enter your house on those days). This person was supposed to have some bearing on what kind of year you will have after seeing them. I have never been so grateful to not have a single news channel on my TV. That way I can avoid all of the over-stuffed egos displaying their devotion to apolausticism.
-- If you're curious about where some of the different scenes in old silent movies were filmed, you can explore them here at Silent Locations. You can see how many different scenes were filmed on the same spots, where those spots are on a map and in some cases an overhead photograph, and some pictures of what they look like today. No audio.
-- Once again the good folk at Mental Floss have found some words we used to use that we ought to use again, this time related to winter and Christmas. My favorite is quaaltagh, a Manxian Celtic word that describes the first person you see on Christmas or New Year's morning (or the first guest to enter your house on those days). This person was supposed to have some bearing on what kind of year you will have after seeing them. I have never been so grateful to not have a single news channel on my TV. That way I can avoid all of the over-stuffed egos displaying their devotion to apolausticism.
Monday, December 17, 2018
Right Stuff
As we approach the 50th anniversary of the first time human beings left Earth's space for another locale (Launch Date: 12/21/68), Astronomy has a nice interview with the 90-year-old Jim Lowell, the pilot of Apollo 8's command module.
Lowell is better known as the commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission and was played by Tom Hanks in a movie about that incident. But he was the one who first had to figure out how to fly around the moon when it came time for later missions to do more than just orbit a few months later. The nautical fiction buff in me enjoyed him mentioning he had to learn how to use a sextant in order to properly navigate his way around the moon and back to Earth.
Lowell is better known as the commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission and was played by Tom Hanks in a movie about that incident. But he was the one who first had to figure out how to fly around the moon when it came time for later missions to do more than just orbit a few months later. The nautical fiction buff in me enjoyed him mentioning he had to learn how to use a sextant in order to properly navigate his way around the moon and back to Earth.
Sunday, December 16, 2018
Matching?
At The Columbia Journalism Review, Cherie Hu writes about how the importance of placing music on streaming platforms has served to homogenize it -- would-be pop stars write not from the heart (or elsewhere) but to the algorithm.
Given that CJR's purview is journalism, Hu also brings in what the ephemeral nature of Algo-Rhythmic music does to music magazines or music reviewers: What do you write about when a trend in music barely lasts long enough for you to print an article about it? Hu says that many of the magazines are writing more now about recording or playing sessions and the like instead of offering a critique or even a review of a song or album.
Supposedly "give the people what they want" is a formula for success. But in this instance, what the people seem to want is less and less inventive, less and less appealing and more and more generic. Ephmera, meet ephemera. I just know you two will become good friends.
Given that CJR's purview is journalism, Hu also brings in what the ephemeral nature of Algo-Rhythmic music does to music magazines or music reviewers: What do you write about when a trend in music barely lasts long enough for you to print an article about it? Hu says that many of the magazines are writing more now about recording or playing sessions and the like instead of offering a critique or even a review of a song or album.
Supposedly "give the people what they want" is a formula for success. But in this instance, what the people seem to want is less and less inventive, less and less appealing and more and more generic. Ephmera, meet ephemera. I just know you two will become good friends.
Saturday, December 15, 2018
Internet Justifies Its Existence
Every now and again we find something in the online world that can make the ordinary run of pain-in-the-rear content and tone subside, because the something is just that cool.
Such a site is Animagraffs, which collects animated diagrams of the way several things work. You can see how an electric guitar creates sound when the strings are played, how a sewing machine works and several other mechanical objects. Some diagrams show non-mechanical processes, like the way our eyes work to process images or how a cheetah's skeletal structure, interior organs and even fur color patterns combine to make it the speedily efficient hunter that it is. One even shows you how you can moonwalk properly.
There might be a question about one or two explanations, though. One diagram claims to show how credit scores work, but it contains no reference to chicken entrails or the blood of one's firstborn. I'm suspicious.
Such a site is Animagraffs, which collects animated diagrams of the way several things work. You can see how an electric guitar creates sound when the strings are played, how a sewing machine works and several other mechanical objects. Some diagrams show non-mechanical processes, like the way our eyes work to process images or how a cheetah's skeletal structure, interior organs and even fur color patterns combine to make it the speedily efficient hunter that it is. One even shows you how you can moonwalk properly.
There might be a question about one or two explanations, though. One diagram claims to show how credit scores work, but it contains no reference to chicken entrails or the blood of one's firstborn. I'm suspicious.
Friday, December 14, 2018
Atmosphere
Attended a basketball game at my old high school tonight along with my father. Although the school has a shiny and spectacularly appointed new field house, each year they hold a throwback game in the old gym -- the one where middle-aged grumps like me used to watch the games.
I did not have a decibel meter with me so I can make no scientific observations, but I am pretty sure the roar when a young lady sank the game-winning three-pointer with less than five seconds left was much louder in the old building than it would have been in the new one. Sometimes improvement doesn't improve everything.
I did not have a decibel meter with me so I can make no scientific observations, but I am pretty sure the roar when a young lady sank the game-winning three-pointer with less than five seconds left was much louder in the old building than it would have been in the new one. Sometimes improvement doesn't improve everything.
Thursday, December 13, 2018
Ships of All Seas
Military space opera has been a great beneficiary of this trend, for better or worse. It seems like a lot of its devotees fancy themselves able to put together an interesting space navy yarn and the now lower bar allows more of them to do so. The smaller expense of an e-book or Kindle purchase -- smaller, that is, except in cases when authors think waaay too highly of their work -- nudges the reader towards a buy. As you might expect, a lot of the product is dreck. But not all of it, and so comes now Siobhan Dunmoore of the Commonwealth Space Navy as she battles invading Shrehari forces in front and her own sometimes corrupt, sometimes incompetent chain of command behind.
Eric Thomson introduced Dunmoore in 2014's No Honor in Death, as she tried to rehabilitate her own shattered soul and the proverbial "worst ship in the fleet," the Stingray. By book 4, 2017's Victory's Bright Dawn, she commands the Q-ship Iolanthe, designed to lure raiders into range with its clumsy appearance before unmasking mighty weapons and destroying opponents. An unscheduled refueling stop brings a shocking discovery, as both an out-of-the-way colony and its naval depot have been attacked and nearly destroyed. Some clues point the way to the raiders, so the Iolanthe will try to hunt them down aided by soldiers from the colony. But several things about the raid itself seem off to Dunmoore and her perceptive crew, so they keep an eye open for trouble. The only problem is that they may be looking in the wrong direction when it crops up.
Thomson has several novels set in his Commonwealth space universe under his belt, so he's developed a good sense of pacing and character building. His own experience in the military gives those aspects of the story solid founding, and he makes his heroes likable and villains nasty. He lays his in-crew banter on a little thick and makes his narrative more self-aware of it than it really should be.
But his smartest idea is to build each Dunmoore novel around a central mystery. In some cases it's a literal whodunit, in others the need to reconstruct events; either way it puts a lot more gas in the motor than just a string of battles and confrontations. The Shrehari antagonists don't show up in every book, but even they get enough backstory to make us respect Dunmoore's primary nemesis, Brakal.
Thomson has two other series set in this universe, but so far the five Dunmoore novels have them both beat. They also help set Siobhan among the ranks of fine space skippers worth spending a few afternoons with.
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Enough such novels arrive that the reader might think His Majesty's Navy was crewed by none other than fictional officers, so a wise writer might shift his scene a little in order to stand out from the rest. Chris Durbin does exactly that, setting his "Carlisle and Holbrooke" series during an earlier iteration of the Anglo-French conflict: the middle of the 18th century. There is no heroic Nelson, no magnificent Trafalgar victory and no Napoleon overshadowing things -- in fact, this is the time that will produce those men and events and its interesting to see the foreshadowing crop up.
Durbin also makes one character, post-Captain Thomas Carlisle, a Virginian. The insular closed society of naval command isn't entirely sure what to think of this colonial outsider, and is often not at all welcoming to him. His First Lieutenant, George Holbrooke, began the series not particularly committed to the Navy as a career except he had failed at most others but has grown in stature, authority and wisdom by the time we open The Jamaica Station, the third book in the series.
Carlisle and Holbrooke, aboard HMS Medina, rescue a Spanish colonial governor while patrolling the waters around Jamaica in a search for pirates and French privateers. Although superficially friendly and obviously thankful, the Spanish official is clearly hiding something. With the help of Lady Chiara, Carlisle's wife, the secret is uncovered, but it still has heavy consequences. When Carlilse is wounded, Holbrooke takes command of Medina to continue the cruise and await the chance to raid an enemy convoy, striking a bold alliance with two English privateers to do so.
In Station, Durbin gives Holbrooke center stage for much of the book, as he did with Carlisle in an earlier series volume. It's a wise choice, allowing the series to unfold a little more deliberately and giving us two different points of view during similar events. The experienced Carlisle handles combat one way while the younger and more impetuous Holbrooke acts differently. Thus a ship-to-ship action is not just a cut-and-paste of the thunder of guns and flying splinters but is given a different life when seen through different eyes.
Durbin is also a deft hand at character sketching, bringing Carlisle, Holbrooke, Chiara and others to life with realistic interior thoughts and winsome manners. He knows how and when to wax witty in a manner matching his time period and its people, and if the whole geography and history of who is one whose side and where sometimes seems cloudy in The Jamaica Station, it was probably more than a little blurred from time to time for those living the events, as well. Durbin has published three Carlisle and Holbrooke novels in just more than a year, so those hooked on the pair's adventures will probably not have to wait long to set sail with them again.
Wednesday, December 12, 2018
Yuletide Tunes
Recently in a conversation about music, I was unable to stop my eye-roll when the conversation turned to Christmas music. "What's the matter?" I was asked. "Don't you like Christmas music?"
Well, that depends on what we mean when we say Christmas music. If the list is "Angels We Have Heard on High," "Sweet Little Jesus Boy," "What Child Is This?" and the like, then yes, I very much like Christmas music. But if we're talking about "Winter Wonderland," "Let It Snow," "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts)," "All I Want for Christmas Is You?" and such, well, then I suppose I have to start an argument because those are not Christmas songs. They are seasonal songs, to be sure, and a lot of them reference the Christmas season in particular, but they are not about Christmas.
As you may gather from my profession and my frequent references to being mired in orthodox Christian theism, I believe Christmas to be about the birth of Jesus Christ. Songs which focus on that event and its meaning are "Christmas songs." We'll stretch the definition here a little bit to include Advent songs that concern the time leading up to Christmas itself, but the key is the presence of Jesus, either by name or implication.
So there's no way "Winter Wonderland" is a Christmas song. In fact, Richard Smith's lyrics never mention Christmas at all. Yes, it gets played all of the time at Christmas. Its Wikipedia article suggests it's been covered more than 200 times -- which is one of the reasons I can't stand hearing it anymore. Modern recording artists whose ranges and styles don't match it try to sing it more or less as written and fail, and others try to re-arrange it to suit their style and wind up with messes that make you want to stay away from any version of the song at all because you're so sick of it.
"The Christmas Song," which is also sometimes labeled as "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire" after its first line, is probably even more ubiquitous and is an example of songs that are about the Christmas season instead of Christmas. The focus is on a few Rockwellian Christmas images and some Santa Claus-ery but nothing that roots Christmas in its originating event. Not even the great Nat King Cole could make this slice of Mel Tormé's schmaltziest syrup sound good and it is a reason to leap for the radio station button at the first hint of its first notes, no matter who's smothering to death under its lyrics.
Those two, plus multiple offenders "White Christmas" and "I'll Be Home for Christmas" might have been marginally acceptable on initial release but the fact that no one covers any other Christmas songs means that no matter where you go, you'll hear three or four nearly identical versions of them within 30 minutes. The same goes for the shudderingly awful "Jingle Bell Rock," "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" or Mariah Carey's more recent, "All I Want for Christmas Is You." The latter is a fine little pop song but has been covered to death.
If I'm going to listen to some Christmas season music, why not check out some stuff that's way more fun, like the Kinks' story of a charity Santa getting mugged in "Father Christmas?" Or the Waitresses' spunky "Christmas Wrapping," which I cannot believe has not become a Hallmark Christmas movie. Or for that matter, AC/DC's "Mistress for Christmas," which I cannot believe has not become a premium cable Christmas movie.
Modern artists have done some interesting covers of real Christmas songs, such as the Rondelles cover of "Angels We Have Heard on High." Billy Idol has an entire album of Christmas and seasonal music, with "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" being the standout. Patty Smyth commits the sin of covering "The Christmas Song" but redeems herself with a lovely "Do You Hear What I Hear?" cover. Most people know Bruce Springsteen's "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town," but fellow heartland rock giant Bob Seger makes the "Little Drummer Boy" a mighty percussionist indeed.
Those stand out because usually the modern performers stick to the seasonal music, like X covering "Jingle Bells."
The real problem with today's rotations of "Christmas music" are the painfully limited playlists and cookie-cutter covers of the lightest-weight tunes in the holiday catalog. So I suppose I'm going to be lumped in with the Christmas music Grinches who would rather listen to just about anything than what gets pumped out of store stereos and adult contemporary radio stations between Nov. 15 and Dec. 31. That's OK -- we can agree to disagree.
Unless you bring up anything involving Alvin or a chipmunk. Then you're facing a huge load of ye olde bitumen in your stocking, and I will rat you out to Santa myself.
Well, that depends on what we mean when we say Christmas music. If the list is "Angels We Have Heard on High," "Sweet Little Jesus Boy," "What Child Is This?" and the like, then yes, I very much like Christmas music. But if we're talking about "Winter Wonderland," "Let It Snow," "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts)," "All I Want for Christmas Is You?" and such, well, then I suppose I have to start an argument because those are not Christmas songs. They are seasonal songs, to be sure, and a lot of them reference the Christmas season in particular, but they are not about Christmas.
As you may gather from my profession and my frequent references to being mired in orthodox Christian theism, I believe Christmas to be about the birth of Jesus Christ. Songs which focus on that event and its meaning are "Christmas songs." We'll stretch the definition here a little bit to include Advent songs that concern the time leading up to Christmas itself, but the key is the presence of Jesus, either by name or implication.
So there's no way "Winter Wonderland" is a Christmas song. In fact, Richard Smith's lyrics never mention Christmas at all. Yes, it gets played all of the time at Christmas. Its Wikipedia article suggests it's been covered more than 200 times -- which is one of the reasons I can't stand hearing it anymore. Modern recording artists whose ranges and styles don't match it try to sing it more or less as written and fail, and others try to re-arrange it to suit their style and wind up with messes that make you want to stay away from any version of the song at all because you're so sick of it.
"The Christmas Song," which is also sometimes labeled as "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire" after its first line, is probably even more ubiquitous and is an example of songs that are about the Christmas season instead of Christmas. The focus is on a few Rockwellian Christmas images and some Santa Claus-ery but nothing that roots Christmas in its originating event. Not even the great Nat King Cole could make this slice of Mel Tormé's schmaltziest syrup sound good and it is a reason to leap for the radio station button at the first hint of its first notes, no matter who's smothering to death under its lyrics.
Those two, plus multiple offenders "White Christmas" and "I'll Be Home for Christmas" might have been marginally acceptable on initial release but the fact that no one covers any other Christmas songs means that no matter where you go, you'll hear three or four nearly identical versions of them within 30 minutes. The same goes for the shudderingly awful "Jingle Bell Rock," "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" or Mariah Carey's more recent, "All I Want for Christmas Is You." The latter is a fine little pop song but has been covered to death.
If I'm going to listen to some Christmas season music, why not check out some stuff that's way more fun, like the Kinks' story of a charity Santa getting mugged in "Father Christmas?" Or the Waitresses' spunky "Christmas Wrapping," which I cannot believe has not become a Hallmark Christmas movie. Or for that matter, AC/DC's "Mistress for Christmas," which I cannot believe has not become a premium cable Christmas movie.
Modern artists have done some interesting covers of real Christmas songs, such as the Rondelles cover of "Angels We Have Heard on High." Billy Idol has an entire album of Christmas and seasonal music, with "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" being the standout. Patty Smyth commits the sin of covering "The Christmas Song" but redeems herself with a lovely "Do You Hear What I Hear?" cover. Most people know Bruce Springsteen's "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town," but fellow heartland rock giant Bob Seger makes the "Little Drummer Boy" a mighty percussionist indeed.
Those stand out because usually the modern performers stick to the seasonal music, like X covering "Jingle Bells."
The real problem with today's rotations of "Christmas music" are the painfully limited playlists and cookie-cutter covers of the lightest-weight tunes in the holiday catalog. So I suppose I'm going to be lumped in with the Christmas music Grinches who would rather listen to just about anything than what gets pumped out of store stereos and adult contemporary radio stations between Nov. 15 and Dec. 31. That's OK -- we can agree to disagree.
Unless you bring up anything involving Alvin or a chipmunk. Then you're facing a huge load of ye olde bitumen in your stocking, and I will rat you out to Santa myself.
Tuesday, December 11, 2018
Test Pattern
Again, O Tolerant Reader, I must beg your forgiveness that the blogging portion of my day was taken over by other things.
Monday, December 10, 2018
Uh-Oh
As Dan Piraro notes in Sunday's Bizarro comic, the thin atmosphere we find on other planets is going to make some very important activities much more difficult to do. Meanwhile, philosophers Avicenna and David Hume discover that even when people take completely opposite views about the same set of evidence, they may still find areas in which they agree.
Sunday, December 9, 2018
Myst-ery
Evan Nicole Brown, writing at Atlas Obscura, catches up with Robyn and Rand Miller on the event the 25th anniversary of their ground-breaking video game Myst.
Reading the duo's talk about the development of the game -- something which up to that point was like no computer video game that anyone had ever seen -- is interesting. They detail some false starts, some curious features, and delve a little into what current gaming culture derives from Myst.
Much less noticeable is that, aside from Microsoft Solitaire and Words With Friends, Myst is the last video game I've ever owned or purchased. Apparently I'm left behind.
Reading the duo's talk about the development of the game -- something which up to that point was like no computer video game that anyone had ever seen -- is interesting. They detail some false starts, some curious features, and delve a little into what current gaming culture derives from Myst.
Much less noticeable is that, aside from Microsoft Solitaire and Words With Friends, Myst is the last video game I've ever owned or purchased. Apparently I'm left behind.
Saturday, December 8, 2018
Evidence
Yet another reason why baseball is better than football. This year's Heisman Trophy winner, Kyler Murray, is already signed with the Oakland Athletics for $5 million and will head for spring training in 2019.
Some might think it uncharitable to view Murray's win as an example of a baseball player winning the top college football award for what is basically a spare-time hobby. Others will instead think of it as simply accurate.
Some might think it uncharitable to view Murray's win as an example of a baseball player winning the top college football award for what is basically a spare-time hobby. Others will instead think of it as simply accurate.
Friday, December 7, 2018
Sunset
The death of former U.S. President and World War II veteran George H.W. Bush puts a slightly different spotlight on this Dec. 7, which is sometimes called Pearl Harbor Day. At the United States Navy base in Hawaii, ceremonies will proceed this year without any survivors of the USS Arizona, the battleship which sustained the heaviest crew losses in the Dec. 7, 1941 attack.
About 300 of the Arizona's 1,100 crew survived the attack and sinking of their ship. This year, five men, all in their 90s, remain. None of them, though, are able to make the journey to Hawaii.
A couple of the people in the story are concerned that the loss of World War II veterans will somehow distance us from those events and cause them to fade in national memory. It will indeed be sad when the last WWII veteran passes away and we lose direct contact with an event that changed the world forever.
But on the other hand, that's the way of things. As the men who fought in World War I passed away, the impact of the Armistice signed on November 11 lessened. So we got Veteran's Day. Succeeding generations interpret event anniversaries in ways that connect to and affect their own times rather than just do the exact same things by rote that were always done. I recognize the importance of November 22 in our nation's history, as the assassination of then-President John F. Kennedy had an impact on society and culture that in many ways still echoes. But I was born after it happened, so I have no direct connection to it and it does not affect me like it did those who can remember it.
On Sept. 12, 2019, people will become eligible to vote who will have lived their entire lives after 9/11. It will have shaped the world in which they live, but it will still be something they did not experience and did not live through. Whether that kind of turning of time's wheel is for the best or not, it's not open for debate or change. The day will come when those last five crewmen rejoin their shipmates, and no one living can tell visitors to the Arizona memorial why it's there the way that they could. Those visitors -- us, and those who come after -- may wonder. There's nothing wrong with that. The only wrong will be if, after wondering, none of them ask. That's the part that worries me.
About 300 of the Arizona's 1,100 crew survived the attack and sinking of their ship. This year, five men, all in their 90s, remain. None of them, though, are able to make the journey to Hawaii.
A couple of the people in the story are concerned that the loss of World War II veterans will somehow distance us from those events and cause them to fade in national memory. It will indeed be sad when the last WWII veteran passes away and we lose direct contact with an event that changed the world forever.
But on the other hand, that's the way of things. As the men who fought in World War I passed away, the impact of the Armistice signed on November 11 lessened. So we got Veteran's Day. Succeeding generations interpret event anniversaries in ways that connect to and affect their own times rather than just do the exact same things by rote that were always done. I recognize the importance of November 22 in our nation's history, as the assassination of then-President John F. Kennedy had an impact on society and culture that in many ways still echoes. But I was born after it happened, so I have no direct connection to it and it does not affect me like it did those who can remember it.
On Sept. 12, 2019, people will become eligible to vote who will have lived their entire lives after 9/11. It will have shaped the world in which they live, but it will still be something they did not experience and did not live through. Whether that kind of turning of time's wheel is for the best or not, it's not open for debate or change. The day will come when those last five crewmen rejoin their shipmates, and no one living can tell visitors to the Arizona memorial why it's there the way that they could. Those visitors -- us, and those who come after -- may wonder. There's nothing wrong with that. The only wrong will be if, after wondering, none of them ask. That's the part that worries me.
Thursday, December 6, 2018
Scarecrow, Please Call Your Office...
At The Great Courses, the site's "Great Courses Daily" blog transcribes some of a lecture from Dr. Indre Viskontas about the common understandings of the way that the hemispheres of the brain interact with each other.
Most of us have probably heard people describe themselves as "left-brain" or "right-brain," emphasizing whether or not our first tendencies are to handle the world analytically or aesthetically. Dr. Viskontas traces the history of how we first began to learn that different regions of the brain tend to handle inputs differently, and how there's some correlation between areas that handle and respond in a more fact-based way and others that seem more active when a person is being creative or artistic.
But the kind of hard divisions we're used to talking about, he says, are mostly bunk, or at least very exaggerated. For one, some of the first experiments that showed the hemispheres tending to handle different sets of responses were conducted on people who had the connections between the two brain hemispheres severed. This commissurotomy was done on patients with severe epilepsy and often produced good results in limiting seizures, but today those patients are far more likely to be treated with medication.
In any event, the experiments were done on people who had two sides of their brains that couldn't talk to each other -- a condition that most of the human race does not endure. So even if one side or another of our brains tends to be a center for one kind of information processing and activity it doesn't matter, since for almost all of us both sides of our brains talk to each other. Which means the suggestion that behavior, responses and the like can be sort of predicted depending on which hemisphere is active in people is not really accurate either, because most of us will use both halves of our brain in handling most situations.
Except, of course, for modern politicians, most media folks and celebrities who think they should bother us with their thoughts on important matters. These people tend to use neither half of their brain most of the time.
Most of us have probably heard people describe themselves as "left-brain" or "right-brain," emphasizing whether or not our first tendencies are to handle the world analytically or aesthetically. Dr. Viskontas traces the history of how we first began to learn that different regions of the brain tend to handle inputs differently, and how there's some correlation between areas that handle and respond in a more fact-based way and others that seem more active when a person is being creative or artistic.
But the kind of hard divisions we're used to talking about, he says, are mostly bunk, or at least very exaggerated. For one, some of the first experiments that showed the hemispheres tending to handle different sets of responses were conducted on people who had the connections between the two brain hemispheres severed. This commissurotomy was done on patients with severe epilepsy and often produced good results in limiting seizures, but today those patients are far more likely to be treated with medication.
In any event, the experiments were done on people who had two sides of their brains that couldn't talk to each other -- a condition that most of the human race does not endure. So even if one side or another of our brains tends to be a center for one kind of information processing and activity it doesn't matter, since for almost all of us both sides of our brains talk to each other. Which means the suggestion that behavior, responses and the like can be sort of predicted depending on which hemisphere is active in people is not really accurate either, because most of us will use both halves of our brain in handling most situations.
Except, of course, for modern politicians, most media folks and celebrities who think they should bother us with their thoughts on important matters. These people tend to use neither half of their brain most of the time.
Wednesday, December 5, 2018
Tariff Riff
I'd thought about using my fairly limited knowledge of economics -- ably assisted by Thomas Sowell -- to explain why President Trump's labeling himself a "Tariff Man" shows he don't get the trade thing very well.
But then Samford University professor Art Carden dreamed up some new words set to the tune of Billy Joel's "Piano Man," and I realized I didn't have to. Which was good, because that Sowell book is kind of heavy.
But then Samford University professor Art Carden dreamed up some new words set to the tune of Billy Joel's "Piano Man," and I realized I didn't have to. Which was good, because that Sowell book is kind of heavy.
Monday, December 3, 2018
No One Told Thee Life Wouldst Be This Way
In case you had the idea that coffee-houses originated in 1990s Seattle, or 1950s New York, or somewhere else in our supernally hip modern era, check out this article at Building History, which notes that Sir Henry Blount, traveling through Turkey in 1634, found that the Turkish folks would sometimes spend "two
or three hours in cauphe-houses, which, in Turkey, abound more than inns and
alehouses with us."
No word on whether he found one that housed a group of six young adults who seemed to have a surprising amount of time during the day to lounge about one of those establishments instead of going to work.
No word on whether he found one that housed a group of six young adults who seemed to have a surprising amount of time during the day to lounge about one of those establishments instead of going to work.
Sunday, December 2, 2018
Saturday, December 1, 2018
Public Official
Mikhail Gorbachev has been known to say that only then-President Ronald Reagan could have "won" the Cold War through the determination and strategy he used both in negotiating with the Soviet Union and the hard line he took against it. If so, it's probably also true that few, if any, people could have managed the actual collapse of the USSR and its satellites with as little bloodshed as Reagan's successor, George H.W. Bush. Bush passed away today at 94.
Bush's knowledge of foreign policy and his experience in both intelligence and diplomatic areas, plus his cool head in times of stress, outpaced just about everyone else who vied for the Republican presidential nomination in 1988. Senators Bob Dole and Jack Kemp probably had the leadership qualities needed, but neither of them could match Bush's foreign policy résumé. And neither they nor any of the rest of the "Why did you bother?" list had Reagan's endorsement.
Bush is sometimes considered a failed president because he only served one term before being defeated by Bill Clinton. Critics suggest his ability to step on his own tongue at any given moment, his failure to capture the national momentum he drew during Operation Desert Storm and his reversal of his clear pledge not to raise taxes weakened him against the younger, hipper and most definitely smoother Clinton. I don't know that any of those things were his greatest mistake. Nor, would I suggest to the snickers of many, was it the selection of Dan Quayle as his running mate. The list of other candidates he'd beaten in the primaries included men like Al Haig and Pat Robertson, so going way outside the box wasn't the worst idea.
Looking back at the 1992 election, it seems like Bush's biggest mistake was in not finding a way to quell or pacify quirky Texas businessman Ross Perot. Perot won no electoral votes but did rack up almost a fifth of the national popular vote, probably drawing more from Bush than from Clinton.
In any event, Bush wasted little time grieving his loss, staying active in public life in several areas of interest to him and partnering with Clinton to help raise funds for victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The last U.S. President to have fought in World War II and the last from the "Greatest Generation," his presidency and foreign policy achievements could be seen as following the path of that generation in handing off to their children the world they had carefully shaped and worked hard to improve.
And much like they did with everything else, those Baby Boomer children made a mess of things. Probably should have listened to their elders.
Bush's knowledge of foreign policy and his experience in both intelligence and diplomatic areas, plus his cool head in times of stress, outpaced just about everyone else who vied for the Republican presidential nomination in 1988. Senators Bob Dole and Jack Kemp probably had the leadership qualities needed, but neither of them could match Bush's foreign policy résumé. And neither they nor any of the rest of the "Why did you bother?" list had Reagan's endorsement.
Bush is sometimes considered a failed president because he only served one term before being defeated by Bill Clinton. Critics suggest his ability to step on his own tongue at any given moment, his failure to capture the national momentum he drew during Operation Desert Storm and his reversal of his clear pledge not to raise taxes weakened him against the younger, hipper and most definitely smoother Clinton. I don't know that any of those things were his greatest mistake. Nor, would I suggest to the snickers of many, was it the selection of Dan Quayle as his running mate. The list of other candidates he'd beaten in the primaries included men like Al Haig and Pat Robertson, so going way outside the box wasn't the worst idea.
Looking back at the 1992 election, it seems like Bush's biggest mistake was in not finding a way to quell or pacify quirky Texas businessman Ross Perot. Perot won no electoral votes but did rack up almost a fifth of the national popular vote, probably drawing more from Bush than from Clinton.
In any event, Bush wasted little time grieving his loss, staying active in public life in several areas of interest to him and partnering with Clinton to help raise funds for victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The last U.S. President to have fought in World War II and the last from the "Greatest Generation," his presidency and foreign policy achievements could be seen as following the path of that generation in handing off to their children the world they had carefully shaped and worked hard to improve.
And much like they did with everything else, those Baby Boomer children made a mess of things. Probably should have listened to their elders.