The Chinese Curse is devastatingly simple: may you live in interesting times, and-- unless the Chinese Curse is a Chinese Hoax-- there is no question that we have entered The American Era of the Chinese Curse . . . and I've exhausted myself thinking about the implications of this, and I've been trying to process and digest everything I've seen, read, heard, and thought before I posted on the election, but now that I've heard Trump's pick for Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, things have hit close enough to home and I need to vent about it all . . . and so here are some of my thoughts:
1) Betsy DeVos is a union-busting proponent of charter schools and vouchers, and she'd like nothing better than to privatize the most venerable community democratic institution in America, the public school . . . this causes me a great deal of anxiety, both for my job and the future of funding for the public school my children attend . . . and DeVos has ties to Amway . . . yuck;
2) I live in a wonderful liberal enclave where the kids walk to school, play in the streets (and occasionally get hit by cars) and enjoy a fairly safe, often wonderful, multi-cultural, friendly community . . . in my town, the vote tally was 3900 for Clinton and 1100 for Trump, and most of the Trump support seems to have come from the Orthodox Jewish population, who held a Trump rally at a synagogue, and who were probably voting for Trump for the reasons outlined in number one-- they pay Highland Park taxes, but they send their kids to private schools, and Trump would be their best bet on saving some money in this regard;
3) I was excited by Trump's infrastructure promises because I thought I might get air-conditioning in my classroom, but since Trump's infrastructure plan is to incentivize private companies to do infrastructure work and he'd like to appoint someone who wants to dismantle the public education system, I'm not going to hold my breath;
4) Clinton didn't get people out to vote the way Obama did-- perhaps because she was an establishment candidate in an anti-establishment campaign, and the Ohio and Pennsylvania counties that flipped are the ones plagued by heroin and opioid epidemics, so while I thought America was Pretty Great and Addressing Some Issues So It Might Get Greater, the people in these towns really think America Sucks-- they are uneducated, jobless, angry, and addicted to drugs or surrounded by people addicted to drugs, or working a crappy job, or working a decent job but surrounded by people working crappy jobs and addicted to drugs and watching their town go to shit-- and so while I liked some of the policy tweaks Clinton was proposing . . . maybe they would make college cheaper, or provide more pre-K and childcare, or help working mothers, maybe she would strengthen Dodd-Frank, etcetera-- and while she wasn't overtly proposing things I really care about-- she wasn't promoting unionization and radical environmental protection and carbon taxation, at least she wasn't completely opposed to them . . . but my life is generally great, and so while I fear massive change from the status quo, a bunch of people that I don't know or live near were really angry and wanted any kind of change, especially one that would make things worse for immigrants and minorities and terrorists and women, because if you can't find a way to improve your life, the best way to feel better about yourself, is to make someone else's life worse;
5) the best best case scenario of Trump's term (which will probably be eight years, unless he does something really really egregious, because he'll be able to create some short-term-- but very costly-- windfalls in the economy in order to get elected again) is that he fosters some diplomatic ties with Russia, remains a bit isolationist and doesn't get involved in some awful militaristic adventure, doesn't go too nuts with the wall and immigrant thing, and doesn't dismantle too much of the Clean Air and Water Act and other environmental regulations, figures out a way to revise Obamacare without making 22 million people lose healthcare, and basically doesn't get much done . . . but the more typical scenario is that moderate Republicans like John McCain reign him in a bit and we just have a typically terrible Republican term . . . so you can expect tax cuts that will drive up the national deficit, cuts in government programs, a stupid purposeless expensive adventure in the Middle East, a weakening of organized labor, a super-conservative Supreme Court, the return of torture, environmental deregulation and devastation, but a bit of a windfall from tearing all the coal from the mountains and fracking all the gas out of the earth and drilling for oil everywhere, financial deregulation followed by a financial bubble followed by a recession . . . for more on this, just read about the eight years under George W. Bush . . . yuck;
6) Myron Ebell, the climate change contrarian leading Trump's EPA transition team, is a scary motherfucker . . . while the education stuff hits close to home, nothing scares me more about Trump than his belief in conspiracy and hokum, and his lack of understanding of the scientific method . . . he's an anti-vaxxer, for Christ's sake;
7) if you're a guy like me, and just can't understand why anyone would vote for Trump, and would consider him a populist here, then you need to read this great post my friend John sent me . . . it's written by a guy who grew up in a white Jesus-fearing red community, and he says stop trying to understand the rural Christian voters because they don't understand themselves-- they are angry and brand loyal and would never let any "facts" or "critical thinking" or argument or logic sway them otherwise . . . Clinton is a socialist crooked politician and God is a white guy with a beard who controls the weather and the best news source is the post that makes you happiest on Facebook-- whether it's fake or alt-right propaganda and white people are superior and no elitist coastal bastard is going to tell you otherwise . . . and these people have been voting against their best interests for quite a while, Thomas Frank fully explains it in his masterpiece What's the Matter with Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America . . . it's a moral choice that's about brand loyalty, not critical thinking or policy, and if you're brand occasionally talks about grabbing women by the pussy, well, you can put up with that;
8) even if Trump said the things he said purely in order to win the election, the hate and vitriol he spewed against women, Mexicans, immigrants, and Hillary Clinton should never be forgotten and the pussy grabbing remark should be mentioned at every press conference . . . despite blind conservative brand loyalty, I'm surprised that any father with a daughter or any woman at all voted for this crass idiot, and I am ashamed for them . . . and I know that these people who voted for Trump hate me because I pity them for their ignorance and provincialism, it's an ugly dynamic;
9) worst case Trump scenarios are really scary: he's capable of bullying, intimidating, and coercing the press; he might really screw up banking regulations and trade deals; he might hurt the U.S. diplomatically for many years to come; he might start a nuclear war; he might intern all Muslims; the First and Second Amendment will be under attack; he might spend tons and tons of money building a wall; he's angry, petty, and he's been the butt of the joke for decades and now, in the ugliest and weirdest "underdog" victory ever, the butt of the joke-- the Ugliest American-- has become the most powerful man in the free world . . . it's best not to think about these situations and just concentrate on the stuff he will definitely fuck up, and scrutinize him constantly;
10) the press really dropped the ball-- they were vetting Clinton as if she won, and not doing story after story about Trump's crazy conspiracy theories, his lack of core principles, his corrupt business practices, his lack of tax information, his insane business conflicts, and the very real possibility that he might end up running an autocratic kleptocracy . . . he won't be doing political favors for people, he'll be directly enriching himself with his policy moves . . . this one is too depressing to continue;
11) I was trying to explain to my wife why we still have the electoral college, and I was really having trouble-- I know the Founding Fathers wanted to give rural states enough power to have some say and they wanted to promote a more stable two-party system, and the electoral votes make this possible, but it's gotten to the point where there are two Americas . . . and there are a lot more of us progressive city folk, who would like parks and good schools and clean air and water and green energy and multicultural tolerance and more Northern European style policy such as single payer healthcare and better family leave and help with college education and a progressive Supreme Court, and then there are these smaller states that are holding us hostage, and I'm not sure what they want-- and I don't think they know what they want either-- and I don't want to be stereotypical, so I'll refrain from speculating, but if there are any red state Trump supporters who read this blog (not a shot in hell) then please explain in the comments what policy you expected from Trump . . . anyway, we're getting to the point where we should be two separate economic entities, which would be nice, because the blue states are far less reliant on the federal government, and would do much better without the baggage of the red states-- who are incredibly thankless for the money we send to subsidize them;
12) some folks voted for Trump because he'd be tough on terrorism and ISIS, but I can't understand why people in rural America-- the least likely place for a terrorist attack-- are far more fearful of Muslims than the folks on the coasts, and some people voted for Trump because they see him as a bastion of law and order, a voice of reasonable justice wearing "the mantle of anger" amidst the gun violence, flood of immigrants, city riots and kowtowing to minority groups like Black Lives Matter . . . and while I don't agree with any of this, and think these people received their information from fake news on Facebook, at least it's a reason;
13) I'm not saying Trump is like Hitler . . . that would be hyperbolic, plus Hitler was organized, a compelling speaker, and Hitler actually had a plan of action-- joke stolen from David Cross-- but Hitler promised jobs, Hitler promised revenge for the deals that Germany had made with the world (The Treaty of Versailles) and Hitler was an intimidating bully who hated immigrants and promised to make Germany great again . . . those are just some interesting parallels, but I'm not comparing the two leaders because I don't want to get put on leave, like this teacher;
14) and so that's what it's come down to . . . the majority of the country, myself, included, can't believe what has happened, and many of us would have no problem leaving the red states to fend for themselves-- I would gladly vote to secede from the crap that's going to happen in the next 4-8 years . . . the red states can pollute themselves to hell, cut all the government services, privatize everything, dismantle the schools, ban gay marriage, make kids study Creationism, do lots of heroin, carry semi-automatic weapons everywhere, refuse to vaccinate, insult women and the disabled, deport immigrants, build walls and do whatever insane shit they want to do, with a spray-tanned game-show host as their beloved daddy-leader . . . just don't touch my America, because my America is Pretty Great . . . it could use improvements, but it's certainly never been better than this . . . so all I can hope for is that the political forces in my town and state can keep the political forces of Donald Trump and his ilk at bay, and maybe that's why we have the electoral college and why we are a loose federation of states . . . and readers who voted for Trump, perhaps you could explain yourselves in the comments, because you folks are an angry apocalyptic cipher to me . . . I still haven't gotten to have an actual conversation with a real Trump supporter, which makes me pretty sheltered-- I guess I live behind my own wall of elitist coastal intellectualism, which I've erected out of brain cells and books, but maybe someday soon some folks from Trump's America will make their way over my wall and explain things to me.
Tim Wu Tang Claim Part II
Once in the English Office, our old boss once pronounced her love of email, because it saved her so much time, but my sagacious friend Mike reminded her that it didn't save as much time as not using email at all . . . and if you're my age and you still remember a work environment without email, things worked just fine-- I occasionally have faint recollections of how much less stressful and anxiety free those days were: I'd see you when I saw you, and if you didn't see me, you could tell me the information next month at the meeting.
The Wu Tang Claim Helps Dave Understand the Election and More
I'd like to assure Zman that yes I am working on a post about the election results, but I'm taking my time and trying to process and digest everything before I put it on wax, and-- oddly-- one of the things that's helping me think about what happened is Tim Wu's new book The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads . . . the book is ostensibly a history of advertising in America, from snake-oil salesmen pitching addictive spurious cure alls to the first fake news stories created purely to garner attention (my favorite is a report in the New York Sun that Sir John Herschel had discovered four foot tall hairy bat men on the moon . . . people were surprisingly willing to accept this as fact) to Lucky Strike's brilliant campaign proposing that the secret ingredient in their brand of cigarette protected your throat from cough and irritation (It's TOASTED!) and then Wu moves on to things more recent and familiar: radio advertising, product placements, TV commercials for the masses, TV commercials for the unique individual, email, Oprah, clickbait, data harvesting, Google Adwords, Twitter, Facebook, ad-blockers, etcetera . . . as advertising gets more modern, more data-driven, more insidious, and more fragmented, Wu gets more severe in his warnings-- he frames the epic battle to get our attention as a series of technological leaps, which the advertisers soon harness for their own purposes, followed by a revolt of the masses against that particular kind of advertising . . . but we may have reached the end of the road: Wu sees Buzzfeed, essentially clickbait on "the fourth screen," and social media sites like Facebook as the purveyor of "news" as particularly egregious forms of media and while there is hope once more-- for those willing to find it, Netflix and HBO offer some of the best ad free content ever created-- but you've got to pay for it . . . and if you want to learn about it, you can find something of quality on Youtube or in the podcast universe . . . if you're willing to do some research; now I'd like to bring this back to the election and make my Tim Wu Tang Claim: that the media-- driven by clicks and views-- totally dropped the ball with their coverage . . . they focused on speculative poll clickbait instead of doing on the ground journalism-- talking to Trump supporters and doing in depth coverage of the policy and issues that these supporters desired and imagined could Trump deliver, and contrasting this with Clinton policy promises . . . but instead they focused on scandals and silliness; of course, there is a better alternative to mainstream media: I'm quite proud of how I analyzed the race and what I learned about the issues; I avoided internet clickbait for the most part and listened to high-quality long form podcasts like The Weeds, Slate Money, Waking Up With Sam Harris, Radiolab, Common Sense, This American Life, and Planet Money, and I even did my due diligence and listened to Dan Levin and Rush Limbaugh (who were both repetitive blowhards pushing the mainstream media to be less about policy discussion and more about clickbait scandal) and I became something of an expert on the major issues and policies: healthcare and jobs and trade agreements and immigration (and even the spurious email "scandal") and if you like, you can find media that is not fragmented and not totally driven by clicks and views-- there is an alternative to the Facebook/Twitter style news platform, which propagated fake news and bite-sized weirdness (and while some would argue that the podcasts I've listed have a left-leaning slant, if you listened to the many many episodes about the election, they took a much more empathetic and sincere analytical look at the Trump phenomenon than anything on the right di with Hillary Clinton . . . Dan Levin simply chanted "crooked Hillary" and "lock her up" on his show . . . so the mainstream media went right along with this internet model, casting the election as a horse race, with this scandal or that scandal affecting the polls, someone is up, someone is down-- the kind of reporting that could be done without getting out of bed-- and there was no discussion of global warming-- an existential threat-- or the actual implications of repealing NAFTA, or the pros and cons of allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices, or how unionization might help the jobs we still have in America or anything of substance) and Wu ends with a quotation from William James, who believed that "our life experience would ultimately amount to whatever we paid attention to" and I believe this too, which is why I make my students park their cell-phones at the door and pay attention to me . . . because I truly believe I'm paying attention to and what I'm making them pay attention to is better than the things the vast majority of the American people pay attention to, and that might be elitist and judgmental, but it's also true . . . I spend my attention reading books written by people smarter than me and listening to long, intelligent podcasts presented by experts in various fields; Wu also reminds us of this by quoting the ironically named James Williams: "Your time is scarce, and your technologies know it," and I think the ultimate lesson here is that we all need to remember this (myself included, while I generally use my attention for critical thinking and creative enlightenment, I still occasionally get sucked in to my stupid fantasy football team, which is great on paper and finally peaking, but it's too late . . . I'm 2 - 9 and I could have spent that time reading or practicing the guitar, instead of shuffling players around an imaginary line-up).
Dave Learns What Women Really Want . . . And It's Sick
After suffering a wicked twenty-four hour stomach virus, I returned to work yesterday, tired but noticeably lighter, and no less than three people-- all women-- expressed their jealousy and wished that they could suffer a twenty-four hour bout of feverish and violent intestinal evacuation, in order to strip off a few pounds before all the holiday gluttony; I told them they were crazy, and this was not a good way to lose weight, but despite my description of the general awfulness of the condition, one woman still insisted that I should have kissed her good-bye on Friday, on the lips, because then she would have lost weight over the weekend.
Two Signs of the Impending Apocalypse
It is no secret that I am past my prime-- on the bell curve of life, I am on the other side of the peak, every day I slide a bit more towards the bottom of the curve, towards senility, dementia, ineptitude, befuddlement, disease, fragility, and decay; on the other hand, my children are on the groovy side of that inevitably morbid roller-coaster ride, and here are two recent anecdotes that illustrate my theme:
1) we played tennis Saturday morning, and Alex and Ian beat me in a game of mixed doubles, and I was trying to win; then Ian played me one-on-one and he beat me to five and decided to continue playing to eleven, for the pound of good chocolate (the running bet is that if Alex or Ian can beat me at ping-pong or tennis in a game to eleven, I'll buy them a pound of chocolate from the good chocolate store in town) and I had to play my ass off to beat him 11-9 . . . I generally I hit the ball hard when I play Ian-- he's good-- but I try to get it back near him so he has a chance to hit it, but he was killing me-- he hit three perfect backhand lobs and was whistling his forehands down the lines, despite the fact that I was running him side to side; I finally got him at the net and put the game away, but this doesn't bode well for the future . . . though right now we play without serving, instead we rally three times to begin the point, so once we start playing with serves, I should enjoy a brief bump in tennis prowess . . . and I think I'm safe for a while with ping-pong, as it doesn't require as much running;
2) Alex was very excited about a National Geographic special on Mars, but the show was on Monday nights at 9 PM, which is past his bedtime (and my bedtime) and so I told him he could read in bed until 9 PM and then, if he was able to stay awake, he could go downstairs and watch the show . . . and he succeeded both times, and though the rest of the house was fast asleep (Ian tried to stay awake as well, but fell asleep reading and Catherine-- who stays up a bit later than me-- was on the school camping trip) and so I've reached the point when my child can and will stay up later than me, and I've given him permission to do so . . . the rest is all downhill.
1) we played tennis Saturday morning, and Alex and Ian beat me in a game of mixed doubles, and I was trying to win; then Ian played me one-on-one and he beat me to five and decided to continue playing to eleven, for the pound of good chocolate (the running bet is that if Alex or Ian can beat me at ping-pong or tennis in a game to eleven, I'll buy them a pound of chocolate from the good chocolate store in town) and I had to play my ass off to beat him 11-9 . . . I generally I hit the ball hard when I play Ian-- he's good-- but I try to get it back near him so he has a chance to hit it, but he was killing me-- he hit three perfect backhand lobs and was whistling his forehands down the lines, despite the fact that I was running him side to side; I finally got him at the net and put the game away, but this doesn't bode well for the future . . . though right now we play without serving, instead we rally three times to begin the point, so once we start playing with serves, I should enjoy a brief bump in tennis prowess . . . and I think I'm safe for a while with ping-pong, as it doesn't require as much running;
2) Alex was very excited about a National Geographic special on Mars, but the show was on Monday nights at 9 PM, which is past his bedtime (and my bedtime) and so I told him he could read in bed until 9 PM and then, if he was able to stay awake, he could go downstairs and watch the show . . . and he succeeded both times, and though the rest of the house was fast asleep (Ian tried to stay awake as well, but fell asleep reading and Catherine-- who stays up a bit later than me-- was on the school camping trip) and so I've reached the point when my child can and will stay up later than me, and I've given him permission to do so . . . the rest is all downhill.
Dave Successfully Eats Honey-Drizzled Toast . . . Yes!
The honey-drizzled toast I ate twenty minutes ago seems to be content inside my body, unlike all the other food I consumed in the past twenty-four hours . . . that non-honey-drizzled-toast food kept me up all night, as it couldn't get away from the virus in my stomach fast enough.
The Test 67: One for the Slacktivists
Despite her bronchial infection, Stacey presents a smart and topical quiz on political terms and issues . . . this one is short and sweet-- Terry's dream-- but, amidst the political jargon and the juvenile and canine intrusions, we still manage to cram in a few laughs . . . so give it a shot, keep score, and if you're not careful, you just might learn something (even if you're a slacktivist . . . or a cracktivist or a hacktivist).
Dave Falls Prey to the Sequential Contrast Effect
The new episode of Freakonomics Radio: How to Make a Bad Decision is a lesson in how subjective we are in all our judgements; major league umpires fall prey to the "gambler's fallacy" and are more likely to call a "ball" on a close pitch after they've called two previous close pitches "strike" . . . this is the same psychological effect that makes many people think that tails is more likely to come up on a fair coin toss after someone has tossed ten heads in a row-- they think a tails is due to happen, despite the fact that every toss is an independent 50/50 event; I don't think the gambler's logical fallacy affects me when I'm grading essays, but the episode also details the perils of the "sequential contrast effect," and I know this can influence my evaluation of an essay-- so much so that I've often told the class, after we've heard an especially excellent piece of writing by a student, "Wow . . . you don't want to be next in the pile after I read that one," and while I was kidding, of course, there's no question that reading something really amazing (or really awful) resets the grading bar a bit higher or a bit lower . . . the solution is to take frequent breaks when grading (or doing any task where the previous work can influence the current decision-- like approving loan applications or determining asylum or parole) and recalibrate your internal judgement meter: remind yourself exactly what criteria you are looking for . . . this is easier said than done, of course, especially when you're umpiring a baseball game in real time.
The Apple Ruins Everything
As a parent, it's wonderful when you see a trait in your child that you possess yourself, especially if it's something you consider essential to your character . . . one of those "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree" moments; Wednesday night my son Alex introduced me to a show called Adam Ruins Everything-- and he revealed that he's watched nearly every episode . . . I'm not sure exactly when and where he's done this-- his friend Gary, who is super-smart, recommended it and I think he consumed most of them when he was at my parents' house, but I'm not going to investigate exactly how he binge-watched the program, because if this is the kind of thing he's binge-watching on the sly, then I'm all for it, as this is exactly the kind of thing I'd want him to binge-watch; the show scientifically debunks commonly held misconceptions, and individual episodes have titles like "Why Weddings Are a Total Rip-Off" and "The Awful Truth About Salmon" and the best thing of all is that Adam is essentially a more annoying version of me-- and Alex thinks Adam is really funny and smart, which made me happy-- and I knew my assessment of Adam's character was accurate when my wife said, "It's an interesting show, but I don't like that it's so negative."
Dave Votes For Burnt Up Bugs
Yesterday morning at school, I noticed that the hallways and cafeteria smelled weird (and if I noticed it smelled weird, then it really did smell weird-- because I have no sense of smell) and though I noticed the weird smell, instead of alerting the authorities, I went around and asked random students if they thought it smelled weird . . . and they all agreed that it did indeed smell weird (one kid insightfully and precisely described the smell as "inside a hair salon") and then, right when I had settled in at my duty in the weird smelling cafeteria, the fire alarm went off and we all evacuated the building and the fire department came and inspected things-- at first people suspected a gas leak, but I also heard someone say that it might be dead animals, and my favorite theory, which was presented as definitive by a teacher who shall remain nameless (because I don't know her name) was that the odor was caused by "burnt up bugs in the radiators," which was patently false, but incredibly evocative nonetheless-- something right out of Snowpiercer-- but the truth turned out to be fairly mundane: a battery was left on a charger for too long, and started to burn up (the only mildly interesting thing I heard about the cause of the smell-- and this is hearsay-- was that the battery was for a Harley Davidson).
Dave Wins a Presidential Debate!
I am not a great debater . . . I tend to forget what want to say mid-argument, I am easily confused and side-tracked, I'm capricious and change positions when confronted with new evidence, and I'm always willing to go meta, but I am pleased to announce that Monday afternoon in the English Office I ended a dispute with resounding finality-- I actually said the thing I needed to say exactly when I needed to say it, not forty-five minutes later, to myself, in the car; so here is the situation: we were in the English Office, chewing the fat before our faculty meeting, and I was prognosticating about Trump and how he was going to reenact the same terrible things that happened during the George W. Bush administration: environmental deregulation and devastation, military misadventures, the use of torture, profligate defense spending, tax cuts for the rich and a resulting massive deficit, deregulation of banking and economic policy and the inevitable bubble and recession-- but Stacey and Cunningham barely remembered this, and they said that George W. was "so cute," because he's been doing portraits of wounded warriors and I told them they were nuts, and Stacey said, "How bad could he be? He's a painter" and I triumphantly slapped the table and I said, "So was Hitler!" and they conceded my authoritative victory, and we went down to the meeting.
Stuff With Manasquan in the Name
The Manasquan Dog Beach (Fisherman's Cove) is a bit smaller than I expected (and you're supposed to keep your dog on a leash, although no one does) and fairly underwhelming, but Manasquan Reservoir is WAY bigger than I expected: I thought we could walk the 5.1 mile perimeter trail in a little over an hour, but apparently-- according to the map-- it takes "twenty minutes to walk a mile on the trail, traveling at a brisk pace," which was about right-- it took us over two hours and we were NOT traveling at a brisk pace . . . if we would have seen the time caveat on the map sooner, we would have either walked at a much brisker pace or not walked around the entire perimeter; so we started at a leisurely pace, we stopped and investigated an eerie beach studded with numerous blackened and protruding dead trees, the kids climbed on the rock levy, and then we decided to start covering some ground, until Alex got a blister and had to take his boots off and walk in his socks, and Ian's legs got tired-- he had run himself out at soccer the night before-- so the three of us (Ian, the dog and I) lagged far behind (Ian did catch a snake, however, which was fun-- although it pooped on him) and by the time we finally got back to the parking lot, everyone was ravenous (I left the snacks in the car because I thought it would be a much shorter walk) and we drove to Pete and Elda's for some thin crust pizza, but the place was packed because veterans get 30% off their bill on Veteran's Day (but the service was still fast and we inhaled our thin crust pizza in record time).
The Test 66: TV Theme Song Escapism
Despite our collective election hangover, Stacey, Cunningham and I got together on Wednesday, November 9th in order to record three episodes of The Test . . . and while we were a bit less chipper than usual, Cunningham did her best to cheer us up with a brand new, totally mindless, completely entertaining TV Theme Song quiz--which the ladies oddly refer to as a TV Theme Show quiz-- so if you're sick of pondering the future, chill out and see if you can identify the seven clips (with the added bonus that you just might learn something . . . and no one will try to grab your pussy).
Desert Truffles
During our three year stint in Damascus, my wife and I thoroughly enjoyed a short period of time in the spring-- just after the desert rains-- when the Bedouins would come into town with sacks of white truffles; they were dirt cheap, as far as truffles go-- four dollars a kilo (and that was the price for a white guy who spoke rudimentary Arabic and was a notoriously bad haggler) and a recent episode of Planet Money: A Trunk Full of Truffles inspired me to do some research about these "desert truffles," which are called "kimmay" in Syria . . . they are not nearly as expensive as Italian truffles (which can cost up to $2200 per kilogram) but white and brown desert truffles do fetch much higher prices than we paid on the streets of Damascus . . . anywhere from $80 to $270 per kilogram; I should point out that truffles are not very dense, and so a kilogram of truffles is a LOT of truffles: we baked them like potatoes, sauteed them like onions, and sliced them thin and put them in salads . . . this is not how you're going to eat truffles in the States, as they are very expensive and the market for them is quite strange-- I highly recommend this episode of Planet Money, as you'll learn about truffle smuggling, truffle depreciation, and why people like the smell of old socks.
Leeroy Jenkins Edges Out Crazy Eddie Antar
If the Bourne Identity series and Good Will Hunting had a child, it would be The Accountant-- a fairly absurd (but also fairly entertaining) thriller about an autistic tax expert who not only has super-numerical abilities, but can also kick some serious ass (thanks to his overbearing, rather hokily insane dad) and while I'm not going to seriously analyze the plot and characters of this convoluted, highly improbable story, I will give the film credit for having the runner-up to the coveted SOD Allusion of the Year . . . Ben Affleck's character Christian Wolff has an epiphany about the bad guys, inspired by his memory of Crazy Eddie Antar's insane attempts at stock manipulation.
Dear President Elect Trump: If You Really Want to Build That Wall, Here's How To Do It . . .
Here's a fun possibility in Trumperica:
Trump scraps NAFTA, the peso tumbles even lower, causing a terrible recession in Mexico, and illegal immigrants actually start flooding across the border to America (despite Trump's baldfaced lies, there's been a net loss of immigration from Mexico in the past few years, but Trump could self-fulfill his own prophecy) and this massive influx of illegal immigrants gets so bad that we actually have to build a wall to curtail the human deluge; I'm sure someone smarter than me has thought of this possibility already, just as the Simpsons imagined that Trump would become president (and bankrupt our country) sixteen years ago . . . but if not, someone should pass this sentence along to the oval office once Trump takes over (and perhaps I'll obtain a cabinet position for my good work).
Bill Bryson Makes Me Nostalgic For Britain
Bill Bryson's new book The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain has dislodged some memories from my own brain . . . sometime after Catherine and I lived in Syria (which is well documented in a series of rambling email updates) and before I started writing this blog, in the sleep-deprived haze of having a new child, I went to England with some English teachers (in lieu of the teacher workshop days that were being held at school, this was back when those sorts of things were permissible) and stayed in the "charming old wool merchant's town" of Chipping Campden, which is located in the heart of the Cotswolds-- an especially scenic part of Britain that has thatched houses, honey colored limestone buildings, and wonderful walking paths; my memory is shit, which is why I now write this blog, but I do vaguely recall a few things from the trip, besides the endless pints of beer at The Volunteer Inn;
1) on the ride from the airport, everyone was tired from the flight except me-- I had taken dramamine, and used a neck pillow, earplugs, and a blindfold to block out all stimuli, and I slept like a baby, and so I bravely volunteered to drive the rental car from Heathrow to our cottage-- I assured the crew that I had some experience driving on the left, which was technically true, but I did not tell them that my experience consisted of driving a motor-scooter in Thailand, and I did a poor job at that (and I have enough trouble driving a car on the right in America) and so when we were driving through a roundabout under construction in Oxford, and I got distracted by some licorice, I ripped the passenger side mirror off the car . . . I can't remember how this was resolved in the end, it might have cost Allie a few bucks at the rental car place;
2) on one of our hikes-- Broadway Tower, Stow-on-the-World . . . I can't remember-- I got us very lost and off-the-map, and I nearly killed Linda, one of the teachers accompanying us, as she's a diabetic-- it was getting dark and we couldn't find out way out of the woods, but the funny thing-- in retrospect-- is that I thought she was in desperate need of insulin, and that I would be brought up on manslaughter charges, because I deprived a diabetic of her insulin due to my poor orienteering skills, but she actually needed food, to increase her blood-sugar . . . and as she was about to lapse into a coma, just as we were finally approaching the end of the hike, I comprehended this and told said: "Food? I've got plenty of food, right here in my bag . . . I always carry lots of snacks and bars and chips when I'm on a hike" and if she wasn't so weak from diabetic shock, then she would have punched me;
3) we confidently participated in Trivia Night at the local pub, assuming five English teachers would crush all comers . . . but we were completely unprepared for the depth of English trivia, and couldn't answer any of the questions-- except one about Iron Maiden . . . I think we also may have resorted to cheating, and getting some answers from one of our local pub friends;
4) we visited Oxford, Bath, Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare's house, and . . . Cropredy . . . the oldest teacher in the group, John, insisted we go to the Cropredy because it hosts the Fairport Convention, a folk festival that he loves . . . and the town was lovely;
5) we ate lunch at pubs and dinner in our stone cottage-- this was long before Brexit and the pound was very strong-- everything cost twice as much as in the States;
6) we made many local pub friends-- the town plumber and the town carpenter and lots of other blue collar types, and they were fun and informative and out at the bar every night-- we learned that only honors students read Shakespeare in England, and we also learned that the pub owner's daughter-- a barmaid-- had married an American man, moved to North Carolina, and then returned to England once she learned that his business trips weren't for business at all, they were to meet a male lover . . . he was gay; Sean and I learned this from the pub owner one night, but his accent was very thick, so it took us a while to comprehend what he was telling us;
7) despite the accents, I found it astounding that we were in a foreign country and people spoke English-- remember, Catherine and I had just gotten back from three years in Syria and so met with daily struggles trying to speak a very difficult language-- and so I talked to everyone about anything, on one of our hikes I asked a pretty British lass directions, occasionally gawking at her and the horse next to her, but mainly looking at my laminated fold-out map of the region, and I thought she was blowing me off a bit and the rest of the group was awkwardly laughing . . . apparently I had interrupted her while she was shoeing this large beast and she was trying to concentrate on affixing the shoe to the horse without being kicked and not on how to give directions to the stupid inconsiderate American;
anyway, enough about me-- the new Bryson book is nearly four hundred pages of rambling anecdotes like this, as Bryson traverses Britain from the southern tip to Cape Wrath, the northernmost point in Scotland, and there is history and description, accounts of beauty and anger at modern development, plenty of getting lost and of difficult travel-- I never knew there were so many places in England, especially so many seaside resorts (in varying states of grandeur and decay) and there is plenty of grouchiness and fairly frequent use of the f-word, much drinking of pints and eating of spicy food (with the usual consequences) and a general appreciation of the small things that make life wonderful and the big things trying to destroy this . . . he mainly basks in the wonder of Britain, it's astounding mass of history and historical sites, all situated in on a small island : "there isn't a landscape in the world that is more artfully worked, more lovely to behold, more comfortable to be in than the countryside of Great Britain . . . it is the world's largest park, its most perfect accidental garden" but-- and he is a man of my own mind, as I like nothing more than getting up early, taking a hike, having a beer, and then going to bed and doing it again the next day-- and so he describes his vision, which is so appropriate after yesterday's election results, as I concur so completely with this, that I am reproducing here-- with periods!-- while conceding that if any American politician said this, they'd be labeled a radical communist:
May I tell you what I'd like to see? I would like to see a government that said "We're going to stop this preposterous obsession with economic growth at the cost of all else. Great economic success doesn't produce national happiness, it produces Republicans and Switzerland. So we're going to concentrate on just being lovely and pleasant and civilized. We're going to have the best schools and hospitals, the most comfortable public transportation, the liveliest arts, the most useful and well-stocked libraries, the grandest parks, the cleanest streets, the most enlightened social policies. In short, we're going to be like Sweden, but with less herring and better jokes."
and Bryson admits that this will never happen, and he's mainly happy with the parts of Britain that are like this . . . I will do the same in America, and enjoy the pleasant parks, good schools, and enlightened people of my town (and enact my vacation dollar ban on all the states that voted for environmental devastation and Trump . . . that leaves plenty of coast, New Mexico and Colorado as western outposts, and Vermont for snowboarding . . . plenty of wonderful places, I just hope they don't get destroyed in the oncoming storm of deregulation).
1) on the ride from the airport, everyone was tired from the flight except me-- I had taken dramamine, and used a neck pillow, earplugs, and a blindfold to block out all stimuli, and I slept like a baby, and so I bravely volunteered to drive the rental car from Heathrow to our cottage-- I assured the crew that I had some experience driving on the left, which was technically true, but I did not tell them that my experience consisted of driving a motor-scooter in Thailand, and I did a poor job at that (and I have enough trouble driving a car on the right in America) and so when we were driving through a roundabout under construction in Oxford, and I got distracted by some licorice, I ripped the passenger side mirror off the car . . . I can't remember how this was resolved in the end, it might have cost Allie a few bucks at the rental car place;
2) on one of our hikes-- Broadway Tower, Stow-on-the-World . . . I can't remember-- I got us very lost and off-the-map, and I nearly killed Linda, one of the teachers accompanying us, as she's a diabetic-- it was getting dark and we couldn't find out way out of the woods, but the funny thing-- in retrospect-- is that I thought she was in desperate need of insulin, and that I would be brought up on manslaughter charges, because I deprived a diabetic of her insulin due to my poor orienteering skills, but she actually needed food, to increase her blood-sugar . . . and as she was about to lapse into a coma, just as we were finally approaching the end of the hike, I comprehended this and told said: "Food? I've got plenty of food, right here in my bag . . . I always carry lots of snacks and bars and chips when I'm on a hike" and if she wasn't so weak from diabetic shock, then she would have punched me;
3) we confidently participated in Trivia Night at the local pub, assuming five English teachers would crush all comers . . . but we were completely unprepared for the depth of English trivia, and couldn't answer any of the questions-- except one about Iron Maiden . . . I think we also may have resorted to cheating, and getting some answers from one of our local pub friends;
4) we visited Oxford, Bath, Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare's house, and . . . Cropredy . . . the oldest teacher in the group, John, insisted we go to the Cropredy because it hosts the Fairport Convention, a folk festival that he loves . . . and the town was lovely;
5) we ate lunch at pubs and dinner in our stone cottage-- this was long before Brexit and the pound was very strong-- everything cost twice as much as in the States;
6) we made many local pub friends-- the town plumber and the town carpenter and lots of other blue collar types, and they were fun and informative and out at the bar every night-- we learned that only honors students read Shakespeare in England, and we also learned that the pub owner's daughter-- a barmaid-- had married an American man, moved to North Carolina, and then returned to England once she learned that his business trips weren't for business at all, they were to meet a male lover . . . he was gay; Sean and I learned this from the pub owner one night, but his accent was very thick, so it took us a while to comprehend what he was telling us;
7) despite the accents, I found it astounding that we were in a foreign country and people spoke English-- remember, Catherine and I had just gotten back from three years in Syria and so met with daily struggles trying to speak a very difficult language-- and so I talked to everyone about anything, on one of our hikes I asked a pretty British lass directions, occasionally gawking at her and the horse next to her, but mainly looking at my laminated fold-out map of the region, and I thought she was blowing me off a bit and the rest of the group was awkwardly laughing . . . apparently I had interrupted her while she was shoeing this large beast and she was trying to concentrate on affixing the shoe to the horse without being kicked and not on how to give directions to the stupid inconsiderate American;
anyway, enough about me-- the new Bryson book is nearly four hundred pages of rambling anecdotes like this, as Bryson traverses Britain from the southern tip to Cape Wrath, the northernmost point in Scotland, and there is history and description, accounts of beauty and anger at modern development, plenty of getting lost and of difficult travel-- I never knew there were so many places in England, especially so many seaside resorts (in varying states of grandeur and decay) and there is plenty of grouchiness and fairly frequent use of the f-word, much drinking of pints and eating of spicy food (with the usual consequences) and a general appreciation of the small things that make life wonderful and the big things trying to destroy this . . . he mainly basks in the wonder of Britain, it's astounding mass of history and historical sites, all situated in on a small island : "there isn't a landscape in the world that is more artfully worked, more lovely to behold, more comfortable to be in than the countryside of Great Britain . . . it is the world's largest park, its most perfect accidental garden" but-- and he is a man of my own mind, as I like nothing more than getting up early, taking a hike, having a beer, and then going to bed and doing it again the next day-- and so he describes his vision, which is so appropriate after yesterday's election results, as I concur so completely with this, that I am reproducing here-- with periods!-- while conceding that if any American politician said this, they'd be labeled a radical communist:
May I tell you what I'd like to see? I would like to see a government that said "We're going to stop this preposterous obsession with economic growth at the cost of all else. Great economic success doesn't produce national happiness, it produces Republicans and Switzerland. So we're going to concentrate on just being lovely and pleasant and civilized. We're going to have the best schools and hospitals, the most comfortable public transportation, the liveliest arts, the most useful and well-stocked libraries, the grandest parks, the cleanest streets, the most enlightened social policies. In short, we're going to be like Sweden, but with less herring and better jokes."
and Bryson admits that this will never happen, and he's mainly happy with the parts of Britain that are like this . . . I will do the same in America, and enjoy the pleasant parks, good schools, and enlightened people of my town (and enact my vacation dollar ban on all the states that voted for environmental devastation and Trump . . . that leaves plenty of coast, New Mexico and Colorado as western outposts, and Vermont for snowboarding . . . plenty of wonderful places, I just hope they don't get destroyed in the oncoming storm of deregulation).
Alec Baldwin Wins!
My sources tell me that Alec Baldwin is incredibly thankful to the American people, for providing him four more years to lampoon a self-professed presidential pussy-grabbing anti-vaxxer on SNL . . . Tina Fey is also hopeful, as she believes Trump is just the right kind of stupid to resurrect Sarah Palin's political career, and nobody is easier to ridicule than Sarah Palin: Joseph de Maistre said "every nation gets the government it deserves" and this election has proved that true, but let's look on the bright side . . . we're also going to get the comedy we deserve and it will be very very funny . . . here's to four years of absurd satire, plenty of sentence material for Dave, and a big beautiful Pink Floydian wall!
Last Ditch Effort
This will be my last political post about the presidential election (unless have a Bush/Gore situation) and I already did my best to summarize the policy positions of each candidate, and now I must concede that if you are one of four kinds of people-- listed below-- then you should stop reading this and just vote Trump, but if you are NOT one of those four kinds of people, and you are still on the fence and might vote for Hillary Clinton, but feel some trepidation because of the email "scandal," then please take the time to listen to the new This American Life: "Master of Her Domain . . . Name" or, if you're feeling more ambitious and want something more nonpartisan and much more comprehensive, then go ahead and read "What the FBI Files Reveal About Hillary Clinton's Email Server" in the magazine Politico . . . Garrett Graff read 247 pages of interview summaries of the FBI investigations about Clinton, and while there is some incompetence and some technological bumbling, there is absolutely nothing scandalous in the entire narrative . . . I've decided that Clinton's policies are in line with things I want in our country, and so I'm not going to throw my vote away and support Jill Stein (although my heart is with the Green Party) and so this is it, my sad last ditch effort to convince all you swing voters . . . as I stated earlier, disregard this you are one of the following four types of people, as nothing is going to change your (narrow) mind:
you should vote for Trump, if . . .
1) you are greedy rich person who wants a tax windfall . . . just make sure you're rich enough that you won't need any of the social services that will be cut to generate this handout;
2) you are an angry white racist and/or misogynist; who is also scared of immigrants and thinks we should build a wall to keep them out;
3) you are someone who truly believes Trump will bring back shitty non-unionized manufacturing jobs from China, isolate the U.S. economically and diplomatically, so that-- like North Korea-- we are forced to buy our own crappy products, and this will Make America Great . . . Just Like North Korea is Great;
4) you are a crazy conspiracy theorist who believes everything is rigged: the election, the FBI, and even the scientific method-- which is why you also don't believe in vaccines and would prefer the return of the plague rather than a society based on rational thought, logic and progress;
happy voting!
you should vote for Trump, if . . .
1) you are greedy rich person who wants a tax windfall . . . just make sure you're rich enough that you won't need any of the social services that will be cut to generate this handout;
2) you are an angry white racist and/or misogynist; who is also scared of immigrants and thinks we should build a wall to keep them out;
3) you are someone who truly believes Trump will bring back shitty non-unionized manufacturing jobs from China, isolate the U.S. economically and diplomatically, so that-- like North Korea-- we are forced to buy our own crappy products, and this will Make America Great . . . Just Like North Korea is Great;
4) you are a crazy conspiracy theorist who believes everything is rigged: the election, the FBI, and even the scientific method-- which is why you also don't believe in vaccines and would prefer the return of the plague rather than a society based on rational thought, logic and progress;
happy voting!
Man Juice
My wife stole some hot peppers from a unkempt plot in the community garden-- she said they were going to go to waste if no one took them-- and while I couldn't definitively identify them-- they were wrinkly, red and pointed, possibly Devil's Tongue or Carolina Cayenne or Hot Paper Lanterns . . . but I did conduct a taste test and they were incredibly hot . . . and I like hot peppers, but these were inedible, and so I infused them in some Espolon Tequila Blanco; I cut up six of them (wearing gloves) and deseeded them, then left them in a mason jar with the tequila for two days, then strained the peppers out, funneled the tequila back into the original container and put it in the fridge (they internet said this would better preserve the vegetal component of the infusion) and then I tried some on the rocks; my lips went immediately numb, I choked, and I nearly spit the stuff out-- but once the ice melted it tasted sort of delicious (although at one point I couldn't figure out what the white strand was in my drink, until I realized it was mucous, which had dripped out of my nose) and now I know how to use this super-powered manly juice: you pour some regular tequila on the rocks, add a bit of water and/or seltzer and then just put a little bit of the infused stuff in-- it's still plenty hot and you still feel plenty manly when you drink it, but then mucous doesn't come sliding out of your nose into your drink (which isn't really a problem anyway, as the tequila sterilizes the germs in the mucous and makes it safe to consume).
Just The Policy, Ma'am
Though I know this is a stupid waste of time, because most people are voting based on what scandal has piqued their ire more-- mishandling email or pussy grabbing-- and apparently network TV has all but abandoned policy discussion . . . but for those few, very silly folks that actually care about what might happen to the country once the scandals are over and done with, I've tried to summarize Trump and Clinton's actual visions for America; I listened to The Weeds episode The Massive Policy Stakes of 2016, and though the folks at The Weeds lean liberal, they are also total policy wonk-nerds, and do a good job of discussing Trump's plans and promises as rational thought, unlike how my friends view his opinions (the random demented rants of a stupid crazy clown-haired racist/misogynist menace) and I also refer to the recent NPR interview with George Packer, who wrote The Unwinding (an incredible account of the gradual unraveling of America's political and financial systems) and now on to the main event:
1) you should vote for Trump if you are anti-immigration, worried about Syrian refugees and Mexican racists and various brown people stealing your job, he's also up your alley if you would like a libertarian deregulation of banking, business, and environmental rules inside our country, and less free trade and more regulations and tariffs for doing business outside our country, you'll probably also like Trump if you're rich, as he's proposing massive tax cuts, mainly for the rich, and a consequential scaling back of social programs for the poor, he also promises to bring back the blue collar factory and manufacturing jobs, which will make his special interest minority group (white folks without a college degree) the backbone of America again, because Trump loves "the poorly educated" and though George Packer thinks his promise to the less-educated white folks is fraudulent and impossible, he also wonders whether Clinton's promise to spend money retraining these workers would work either . . . and nobody is proposing unionization, which makes me sad;
2) if you're a dual earner family, you'll like the fact that Hillary Clinton wants to make our childcare, maternity, and family leave policies more like Northern Europe . . . because America has the worst family leave policies of any developed country, and Clinton wants to bolster our pre-K program and generally make it easier for women and families to work . . . Clinton is tougher on banking regulations than Trump-- though, ironically, she has closer connections with the big banks (I've heard speculation that Trump, who has been denied loans in the past, doesn't want this to happen in the future) and she wants to provide free state college tuition for lower middle class families; reform healthcare and provide it to more people; enact comprehensive immigration reform that provides a path for immigrants to obtain citizenship; she promises she won't raise taxes on the middle class; and she wants to invest tremendous amounts of money into infrastructure, both to create jobs and provide avenues for economic growth . . . Clinton's policies and white papers are detailed and wonky, Trump's are broad, vague, and very short, and while Trump is a typical product of our fragmented media-driven echo-chamber, a polarizing figure that George Packer views as "catastrophic," the problem with Clinton is the reverse, she's a classic backroom politician who wants to make deals and compromises between the two parties using her knowledge and connections, but the country has moved beyond any sort of good-natured diplomacy between the Republicans and the Democrats; the Republicans vow to block all Democratic legislation, deny all Democratic Supreme Court nominees, and to investigate Clinton forever, to obstruct her power-- and the Democrats, view Trump supporters as a basket of deplorables, and can't consider the perspective of this special interest group-- uneducated white blue collar voters-- a group that was once unionized, galvanized and potent, and is now marginalized and lost . . . so whatever happens on Tuesday, half the country is going to be incredibly unhappy, and the other half will be more relieved than inspired, and that's not going to change any time soon.
1) you should vote for Trump if you are anti-immigration, worried about Syrian refugees and Mexican racists and various brown people stealing your job, he's also up your alley if you would like a libertarian deregulation of banking, business, and environmental rules inside our country, and less free trade and more regulations and tariffs for doing business outside our country, you'll probably also like Trump if you're rich, as he's proposing massive tax cuts, mainly for the rich, and a consequential scaling back of social programs for the poor, he also promises to bring back the blue collar factory and manufacturing jobs, which will make his special interest minority group (white folks without a college degree) the backbone of America again, because Trump loves "the poorly educated" and though George Packer thinks his promise to the less-educated white folks is fraudulent and impossible, he also wonders whether Clinton's promise to spend money retraining these workers would work either . . . and nobody is proposing unionization, which makes me sad;
2) if you're a dual earner family, you'll like the fact that Hillary Clinton wants to make our childcare, maternity, and family leave policies more like Northern Europe . . . because America has the worst family leave policies of any developed country, and Clinton wants to bolster our pre-K program and generally make it easier for women and families to work . . . Clinton is tougher on banking regulations than Trump-- though, ironically, she has closer connections with the big banks (I've heard speculation that Trump, who has been denied loans in the past, doesn't want this to happen in the future) and she wants to provide free state college tuition for lower middle class families; reform healthcare and provide it to more people; enact comprehensive immigration reform that provides a path for immigrants to obtain citizenship; she promises she won't raise taxes on the middle class; and she wants to invest tremendous amounts of money into infrastructure, both to create jobs and provide avenues for economic growth . . . Clinton's policies and white papers are detailed and wonky, Trump's are broad, vague, and very short, and while Trump is a typical product of our fragmented media-driven echo-chamber, a polarizing figure that George Packer views as "catastrophic," the problem with Clinton is the reverse, she's a classic backroom politician who wants to make deals and compromises between the two parties using her knowledge and connections, but the country has moved beyond any sort of good-natured diplomacy between the Republicans and the Democrats; the Republicans vow to block all Democratic legislation, deny all Democratic Supreme Court nominees, and to investigate Clinton forever, to obstruct her power-- and the Democrats, view Trump supporters as a basket of deplorables, and can't consider the perspective of this special interest group-- uneducated white blue collar voters-- a group that was once unionized, galvanized and potent, and is now marginalized and lost . . . so whatever happens on Tuesday, half the country is going to be incredibly unhappy, and the other half will be more relieved than inspired, and that's not going to change any time soon.
The Nix: A Big Book with a Lot of Stuff Inside (Except Leeroy Jenkins)
Nathan Hill's new novel The Nix is a tour-de-force decade defining portrayal that does for the post-recession twenty-tens what Tom Wolfe did for the '80's with Bonfire of the Vanites, the '90's with A Man in Full and the aughts with Charlotte Simmons, but it's more than hyper-realistic literary fiction-- the multiplicity of tone, from and structure pays homage to David Foster Wallace . . . and you also get plenty of John Irving-like anecdotal flashbacks to the 1968 Chicago demonstrations and riots, which is a hell-of-a-lot to do in one book and a hell-of-a-lot of story to tell, so the book checks in at over 600 pages and while it's often hysterically funny, especially the opening chapters, which detail a satirical World of Warcraft type game and the unlikely players, and an entitled and very persistent college student who has blatantly plagiarized a paper and is attempting to argue her way out of the punishment, and after that compelling and incredibly entertaining kick-off so much happens and there are so many plot strands, that the actual ending feels tacked on and too easy-- but the thing has to come to an end (or does it? War and Peace is over a thousand pages . . . maybe Nathan Hill just needed more pages to get the ending right) and while the actual plot sort of fizzles in its conclusion, the meta-ending is more compelling: a lesson gleaned from video game design . . . people are either "enemies or obstacles or traps or puzzles" and while the characters begin the novel as enemies and then often treat each other as obstacles to success or traps that lead to an existential abyss, by the end, the fictional author in the novel and the actual author realize that everyone is a puzzle, but that solving the puzzle of everyone takes many, many pages and you have to see things from many, many perspectives, from many times and places, and even then it's not enough to understand everyone's motivations and desires, and, as if to further develop this theme, after you finish the last page, if you turn to the Acknowledgments-- and after reading that many pages, I figured I could read two more-- then Nathan Hill does something wonderful to the puzzle of his novel: he lists all the books and articles and radio shows that helped him flesh out all these many many ideas-- Chicago '68 by David Farber and Folktales of Norway and "Microstructure Abnormalities in Adolescents with Internet Addiction Disorder" by Kai Yuan and lots of others-- and so he essentially lays the puzzle of the book bare, a brave thing to do . . . although he doesn't mention being inspired by this event, which he certainly was, as it's almost as infamous as the most notorious World of Warcraft moment: Leeroy Jenkins (which Hill definitely should have alluded to, because, when you have the opportunity, you should always allude to Leeroy Jenkins).
The Groundhog Killer Can't Handle Gum
Here is what I learned about my dog today: if I snap my gum while I'm walking him, he turns into a shivering shell-shocked lump of jelly, and has to return home-- in a painfully slow manner-- so he can hide under the desk.
Sometimes Hard Boiled, Sometimes Runny . . .
It comes from a chicken, not a bunny, dummy . . . and, when I do the boiling-- or when I did the boiling-- more often than not it came out runny . . . sad to say, but until a few days ago, I could not successfully cook a hardboiled egg-- I had read this and that on the internet, but the numbers never took hold in my brain, and I often boiled the egg too long and the shell cracked, spitting white solar flares of egg-white into the bubbling water, or once I boiled the egg, when I tried to peel it under cold running water, chunks of egg came away with the shell, and the final product was a cratered, pock-marked mess, or-- what happened most often-- is that I would crack the shell and the egg would still be gelatinous and slimy and I would toss it . . . but those days are over: my wife learned a simple recipe in her cooking class, and not only does it work, but I've figured out a mnemonic device so that I can actually remember what to do, which is equally as important as the fact that the technique works . . . here it is:
1) put the egg in water;
2) boil the water;
3) once the water boils, turn off the heat and cover the pot;
4) let the egg sit in the covered pot for 12 minutes;
5) remove the egg from the water;
and this not only cooks the egg to perfection, but-- for whatever reason-- this method makes the egg very easy to peel, and it's easy to remember because when you buy eggs, they come in packs of twelve, and the number of minutes you need to leave the egg in the water is twelve . . . so as long as you're at sea level (maybe even if you're not at sea level) this is the method . . . buy a dozen eggs, boil the water, turn off the heat, cover the pot, and let the dozen eggs sit in the water for a dozen minutes.
1) put the egg in water;
2) boil the water;
3) once the water boils, turn off the heat and cover the pot;
4) let the egg sit in the covered pot for 12 minutes;
5) remove the egg from the water;
and this not only cooks the egg to perfection, but-- for whatever reason-- this method makes the egg very easy to peel, and it's easy to remember because when you buy eggs, they come in packs of twelve, and the number of minutes you need to leave the egg in the water is twelve . . . so as long as you're at sea level (maybe even if you're not at sea level) this is the method . . . buy a dozen eggs, boil the water, turn off the heat, cover the pot, and let the dozen eggs sit in the water for a dozen minutes.
The Miracle of Norman Who?
Those of you familiar with the life and times of Dave know that I am often at the nexus of miraculous activity (which is odd, because I'm not a spiritual person, nor do I believe in fate, mysticism, or any powers greater than my own intellect) and so, I humbly present to you The Miracle of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named-Because-No-One-Can-Remember-His-Name; for the past few years, at the end of the Philosophy unit on relative and universal ethics, I've played a short video of the acclaimed cognitive scientist Steven Pinker explaining how technology often solves seemingly impossible moral quandaries . . . and while Pinker acknowledges the value in moral crusaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., he reminds us, that in a utilitarian sense, there are far greater heroes-- and then he mentions one of these heroes in particular-- the father of The Green Revolution-- and he points out that no one knows this guy's name, and I've played this video a few times in the past, and I still can't remember the guy's name . . . but then Steven Pinker says the guy's name and I vow to remember his name from this time forward and I make the class swear to remember his name as well, and then I showed my students the lead article in Wired Magazine, which is written by President Obama and is titled "Now Is The Greatest Time to Be Alive" and I pointed out how similar Obama's piece is to Pinker's video . . . an odd coincidence, because I happened to read the article the night before doing the Pinker lesson-- but not a miraculous coincidence, just a coincidence-- but then, as we were reading through the article, which I had projected on the giant screen at the front of the class, I noticed that Obama mentioned the same guy that Pinker referenced . . . but I didn't notice this on Sunday night when I was reading the article, because-- as Steven Pinker pointed out-- no one can remember this guy's name . . . so, with no foresight or planning, in my class on Monday, both Steven Pinker and President Obama mention the Father of the Green Revolution, who--unfortunately-- doesn't have a very catchy name, but deserves to be remembered as a great savior of humanity . . . as Obama eloquently puts it: "without Norman Borlaug's wheat, we could not feed the hungry."
This Halloween Goes to Eleven
I generally like to rant and rave about the idiocy of Halloween, but my son Ian made this year's sugar-laced festivities a bit more tolerable; we shaved his head Sunday night, so he could be Eleven from Stranger Things . . . I did have to bribe him with a small sum of cash, but it was worth it, because he really is the spitting image of Millie Bobby Brown, and I think he was just as excited to slip into the pink dress Catherine bought at the thrift store as I was to see him in it . . . and, he noted this was a one-shot opportunity: "I can only do this once because next year I'll probably have pimples and a mustache."
Dave Should Be a Future Leader (According to Obama)
I was pleased to learn that Hillary Clinton agreed with me on the importance of Robert D. Putnam's new book Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, but President Obama trumps her with his reading list for future leaders . . . I've read four of the ten:
The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert;
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman;
Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo;
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari;
and these were definitely some of the best books of the past decade (read my reviews if you're in need of some hyperbole) and so Obama either really loves to read, or he reads my blog and respects my reviews, or perhaps he's got really good reading advisers-- it's probably a combination of the three-- and I realize that this is a political "signal" to release this list, as it indicates that the President values high quality non-fiction, just as Donald Trump could never admit that reading books is necessary, as it would alienate his constituency and mark him as an elitist intellectual communist, which is why he gets his information from "the shows."
The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert;
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman;
Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo;
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari;
and these were definitely some of the best books of the past decade (read my reviews if you're in need of some hyperbole) and so Obama either really loves to read, or he reads my blog and respects my reviews, or perhaps he's got really good reading advisers-- it's probably a combination of the three-- and I realize that this is a political "signal" to release this list, as it indicates that the President values high quality non-fiction, just as Donald Trump could never admit that reading books is necessary, as it would alienate his constituency and mark him as an elitist intellectual communist, which is why he gets his information from "the shows."
Diving Header > Brain Damage
My son Ian scored his first header goal yesterday-- he launched himself into the air to connect with a line drive corner kick, headed the ball just inside the far post, and landed on his stomach . . . the goal was a big one-- it allowed us to tie a much better team 1-1, and judging by the celebratory jig that Ian did after he got back onto his feet, it was well worth the loss of brain cells.
A Solemn Vow
I hereby declare that next year I will NOT participate in fantasy football, which is not fantastic at all and actually wallows in its mundanity-- the tenderness of Dez Bryant's knee and the merits of Coby Fleener and the injury status of Eric Ebron-- and so I will NOT let these minor thoughts aggravate my valuable and limited consciousness, and, instead, during the time I would have spent shuffling my digital line-up around, I will brush up on my Spanish or learn to play the xylophone or train my dog to skateboard or even simply take a nap, but next fall, I will be doing something slightly more fantastic than fantasy football . . . you hear this Alec?
Dave Loves the Gas Tax (and So Do Economists)
Planet Money Episode 387: The No-Brainer Economic Platform may be four years old, but it's more relevant today than ever-- the show presents a "six plank" platform on which economists from across the political spectrum agree, but the problem is that no presidential candidate will ever espouse these things, as they are political poison; here they are, no particular (or political) order, and I've paraphrased the arguments from Planet Money and added some of my own:
1) get rid of the mortgage interest deduction . . . readers of this blog, who I am guessing are mainly educated, middle class homeowners, will NOT want to hear this one at all, but it's true-- the interest deduction distorts housing prices, it subsidizes mansions and second homes, it encourages people to take risky loans, it doesn't help renters (who are vital when there is a recession because they can move and adjust to changing job markets) and it's generally unfair in its distribution of wealth;
2) reform the tax code . . . eliminate all the loopholes and deductions and, like Thoreau said, simplify, simplify, simplify . . . this would put all the accounting firms out of business, but allow the government to do a much better and more equitable job of collecting taxes;
3) eliminate taxes on corporations . . . progressives hate this one, but it behooves the country to allow corporations to reinvest tax free income into things such as hiring more employees, improving product lines and R&D, instead of hiding it overseas or distributing it as dividends to rich people;
4) decriminalize drugs . . . it's extremely expensive to fight the war on drugs, and it's even more expensive to let underground criminal syndicates collect all the drug revenues . . . plus, it's costly on many levels to keep people in jail for nonviolent drug offenses;
5) stop subsidizing health care . . . health care is not taxed as income for the user, nor is the provider taxed . . . so people who are given health care by their job are incentivized to use as much of it as possible (I have NOT been taking advantage of this, stupidly-- I should be getting acupuncture, going to the podiatrist, getting check-ups and physicals, and generally spending this money that is part of my salary) when there should be various plans, some more expensive, some less expensive, some with higher co-pays;
6) we should stop taxing good things and start taxing things we want to discourage . . . so end the payroll tax and income tax-- because creating jobs and working is good-- and increase taxes on cigarettes and pollution and carbon emissions . . . which is why I'm totally in favor of New Jersey's gas tax increase-- cheers!-- because it might discourage driving, and should help with infrastructure;
sadly, the only candidate who supports several of these measures is Gary Johnson, but he's not into taxing carbon emissions and he doesn't know what's going on in Aleppo . . . and I have an inordinate fondness for Aleppo . . . so I'm not voting for him; anyway, listen to the episode, it's fantastic, especially the fake presidential speeches introducing all these wonderful new reforms, and remember: no one actually wants to fix anything, they just want to act sanctimonious when their candidate trounces the opposition.
1) get rid of the mortgage interest deduction . . . readers of this blog, who I am guessing are mainly educated, middle class homeowners, will NOT want to hear this one at all, but it's true-- the interest deduction distorts housing prices, it subsidizes mansions and second homes, it encourages people to take risky loans, it doesn't help renters (who are vital when there is a recession because they can move and adjust to changing job markets) and it's generally unfair in its distribution of wealth;
2) reform the tax code . . . eliminate all the loopholes and deductions and, like Thoreau said, simplify, simplify, simplify . . . this would put all the accounting firms out of business, but allow the government to do a much better and more equitable job of collecting taxes;
3) eliminate taxes on corporations . . . progressives hate this one, but it behooves the country to allow corporations to reinvest tax free income into things such as hiring more employees, improving product lines and R&D, instead of hiding it overseas or distributing it as dividends to rich people;
4) decriminalize drugs . . . it's extremely expensive to fight the war on drugs, and it's even more expensive to let underground criminal syndicates collect all the drug revenues . . . plus, it's costly on many levels to keep people in jail for nonviolent drug offenses;
5) stop subsidizing health care . . . health care is not taxed as income for the user, nor is the provider taxed . . . so people who are given health care by their job are incentivized to use as much of it as possible (I have NOT been taking advantage of this, stupidly-- I should be getting acupuncture, going to the podiatrist, getting check-ups and physicals, and generally spending this money that is part of my salary) when there should be various plans, some more expensive, some less expensive, some with higher co-pays;
6) we should stop taxing good things and start taxing things we want to discourage . . . so end the payroll tax and income tax-- because creating jobs and working is good-- and increase taxes on cigarettes and pollution and carbon emissions . . . which is why I'm totally in favor of New Jersey's gas tax increase-- cheers!-- because it might discourage driving, and should help with infrastructure;
sadly, the only candidate who supports several of these measures is Gary Johnson, but he's not into taxing carbon emissions and he doesn't know what's going on in Aleppo . . . and I have an inordinate fondness for Aleppo . . . so I'm not voting for him; anyway, listen to the episode, it's fantastic, especially the fake presidential speeches introducing all these wonderful new reforms, and remember: no one actually wants to fix anything, they just want to act sanctimonious when their candidate trounces the opposition.
Sometimes You Need a Moon Safari
For once Google Play Music recommended exactly what I desired-- though I had no clue that I desired this thing-- an album by the French electronica band Air called Moon Safari; I especially love the first track: "la femme d'argent" . . . and while there doesn't seem to be any straightforward way to translate this song title from French (it seems to mean "silver woman" or "woman of silver" or a "gold digger" or perhaps something less insidious) but since I don't know French, I'm going to pretend the song is eponymous with the album, because this song took me on a moon safari: I was walking the dog in the park and the next thing I knew, I was on the moon, wearing a pith helmet, which is just what I needed, because I couldn't listen to any more election podcast shit . . . and usually Google Play Music just recommends some ersatz band in place of the last thing you listened to, e.g. you like Lemon Jelly . . . so why don't you listen to Mr. Scruff (this is an actual example, and I did NOT take Google Play Music up on the offer to listen to Mr. Scruff) and perhaps the algorithm is slowly learning my taste more and more, and there will be excellent recommendation in my future (unless my wife and kids get on it and sabotage all my carefully cultivated selections).
Ira Glass, Futility, and Politics
The new episode of This American Life preaches to the choir, and will definitely not be heard by people that need to hear it (like the people who live behind me-- they are proudly displaying a Trump/Pence sign on their lawn, the only one I've seen in Highland Park) but the candid sincerity in which Ira Glass investigates the lies propagated by the Trump campaign and sad, almost futile conclusions he arrives at will make you wonder what happened to facts, the truth, and the general knowledge of your average American; the show starts with Trump's claim that Hillary Clinton started the birther movement and he ended it, which is so patently ridiculous that it seems to belie further exploration-- aside from the fact that now 1/3 of Americans believe this "fact"-- and worse than this is Trump's assertion that NAFTA was the worst trade agreement in the history of the universe, because before Trump both Democrats and Republicans believed that trade agreements were good for the economy, created new markets, put money in everyone's pockets (because of lower priced goods) and strengthened diplomatic relations between countries . . . but now, despite the fact that 95% of economists (polled by the University of Chicago) believe that NAFTA is good for our economy and 5% are undecided and zero point zero percent of economists believe that NAFTA is bad for our economy, despite this, Clinton has backpedaled on trade agreements and has entertained the idea that manufacturing jobs might actually return to the U.S. (and I'm sure this is just a public position for debating Trump, but it's still disturbing that he could have that much influence over a policy discussion that anyone with any expertise regards as a no-brainer . . . certainly trade agreements cause some specific economic pain, but it's actually far cheaper to pay-off and retrain the people who lost their jobs than it is to punish the entire economy) and so now you've got both major parties taking a contrary position on trade agreements, when that was usually only a radical maneuver-- remember the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle? . . . anyway, the episode doesn't even get into the email "scandal" and the fact that the Bush administration lost five million emails (or 22 million . . . it doesn't make it right, but politicians get rid of emails and politicians use private emails to communicate to avoid the public records act, so unless you're going toss George Bush and Dick Cheney and Colin Powell and lots of other people in jail, Hillary Clinton does not belong in jail) and the episode also didn't discuss the thing that out-trumps all the other Trump stuff, his anti-vaccine stance: this indicates a complete disbelief in the scientific method, peer reviewed experimentation, and logic in general . . . and while disbelief in global warming is typical right wing silliness (Dan Levin just said that there is NO proof whatsoever that there is global warming . . . pretty bold and incredibly dumb, but who cares) not vaccinating children is extremely dangerous and a possible return to plague times is as good a reason as any not to vote for Trump; I'm considering voting for Jill Stein, despite the fact that the Green Platform is against trade agreements, but that's for environmental reasons-- which just might be the right reason to be against trade agreements (despite the fact that trade agreements help foreign countries, though they often use environmentally unsound methods of manufacture, and while helping foreign economies doesn't make America great, that doesn't mean it's an awful thing) but then I heard that Jill Stein is an anti-vaxxer, but it seems the accusations that she's against vaccines were taken out of context so she's still a viable choice for me . . . I don't think I'm going to decide until I get behind the curtain, but the super sad thing, the thing that made Ira Glass so depressed in this episode (especially when he's talking to his Uncle Lenny, an 81 year old plastic surgeon who has consumed a whole host of right wing conspiracies and lies about President Obama and thus will vote for Trump) is that even if Trump is crushed in this election, it isn't going to help the cause for truth, logic, the scientific method, and the facts . . . social media and niche journalism have made it so people on the left and the right (and everywhere in between) can find exactly what they want to hear and then believe it.
Late Adopter
Sometimes, when I'm bopping around, I get really happy and think: "My phone plays music!"
Some Stuff on Creativity
I did an assignment in Creative Writing called "Where Do Good Ideas Come From?" and my students had four reading/listening options; I'll list them here, but since you're not taking my class, I'll also give you the thesis of each-- they are fascinating if you're into this kind of thing:
1) "Groupthink" by Jonah Lehrer: a New Yorker article on how traditional brainstorming does NOT work, and how good ideas are usually formed through debate, criticism, and the random collaboration of the right kinds of people;
2) Slowing Down: TED Radio Hour, especially the segment "Can Slowing Down Make You More Creative" by Adam Grant: this podcast examines the links between procrastination and creativity, and the problems and pitfalls with efficiency and getting things done early;
3) Song Exploder: Weezer . . . Rivers Cuomo reveals his songwriting process and it is nothing like you'd imagine, especially for the front man of an emo band-- definitely worth listening to, whether you're a fan of Weezer or not;
4) Flash Forward: The Witch Who Came From Mars . . . an investigation on the future of creativity, and how collaboration with computers might boost our creative powers and send our writing process hurtling into unknown domains.
1) "Groupthink" by Jonah Lehrer: a New Yorker article on how traditional brainstorming does NOT work, and how good ideas are usually formed through debate, criticism, and the random collaboration of the right kinds of people;
2) Slowing Down: TED Radio Hour, especially the segment "Can Slowing Down Make You More Creative" by Adam Grant: this podcast examines the links between procrastination and creativity, and the problems and pitfalls with efficiency and getting things done early;
3) Song Exploder: Weezer . . . Rivers Cuomo reveals his songwriting process and it is nothing like you'd imagine, especially for the front man of an emo band-- definitely worth listening to, whether you're a fan of Weezer or not;
4) Flash Forward: The Witch Who Came From Mars . . . an investigation on the future of creativity, and how collaboration with computers might boost our creative powers and send our writing process hurtling into unknown domains.
The Test 65: Peppered
I'm going to go out on a limb here: this is the best episode of The Test we've ever done . . . it contains the most brilliant question ever written in the history of quizzes, a culmination of everything we've learned on this podcast (the question quite possibly ties everything in the entire universe together, an enormous version of Lebowski's rug) and not only that, but we cooperatively solve a pepper-related mystery AND the ladies fall into my cunningly laid pepper-related trap-- and refuse to be extricated--this one is funny, informative, and bizarre: you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll shoot mucous from your nose, and if you're not careful, you might actually learn something (pepper-related).
Which is Scarier: President Trump or a Creepy Clown?
While reality has been scary enough recently: I just learned that Trump is an anti-vaxxer, which is more disturbing than the racism, the sexism, the "grab them by the pussy" and the "nasty woman" and the "Mexican rapists" because it indicates outright ignorance and poses a far greater threat to our country then generally gauche and classless behavior-- the possible resurgence of plagues and epidemics . . . but despite the combined looming threat of President Trump and killer clowns, the English teachers still got together last night for our Seventh Annual Scary Story Contest, and I think we are actually getting better and better at writing these things (which would make sense) as all of this year's stories were terrifying and consistently well-written; the prompt was "The Cellar" and the stories were various in plot and theme: giant worms, uxoricide (by use of giant worms), a changeling baby with a man-sized nose, a Nazi surgeon/wine connoisseur, a grand Gatsby-esque gala, a haunted house and a complicit landlord, an indigenous tribal ghost payback, and much suffering by children, who were drained, dragged to hell, possibility molested, shoved into an oven and a dryer, burned in fires and generally tortured and neglected; Stacey and I took second, which made us quite proud-- it was a tough field-- and Liz K, always the bridesmaid and never the bride, finally took first place . . . Stacey and I were also pleased that for the second year in a row, our story was deemed the most horrific, and we now know that our combined voice is the only one that is easily identifiable: Cunningham described it as "sort of fucked up and funny."
Use Your Allusions?
Tuesday, a student played a song by Twenty One Pilots in class for a presentation, and this was the first time I heard the band and I told the students that Twenty One Pilots sounded a lot like Neutral Milk Hotel and the class said, "What?" and I had to explain to them about Neutral Milk Hotel and Jeff Mangum, and the next day one of the students, in preparation for "improv night," was dressed all in white: white shirt, white socks, white shorts, white tennis sneakers and a white headband and I told him he looked ready for Wimbledon and, once again, the class said "What?" and I had to explain to them about Wimbledon: the grass courts, the strawberries and cream, the fact that it's a tennis tournament . . . and I think I'm going to stop alluding to things in class, because it's too exhausting.
Dave Commands the Weather Gods to Ameliorate His Foul Disposition
I've got nothing to offer today, I'm still recovering from yesterday's unseasonably warm weather-- which, combined with proctoring the PSAT in a hot classroom to a bunch of angry 12th graders who were being made to retake the test for graduation requirements; a meeting with thirty English teachers in an even hotter classroom, and an un-airconditioned bus ride with a bunch of middle school soccer players, has put me in a sour mood, which will not dissipate until the weather becomes seasonable again . . . so listen closely, weather gods, you need to get your act together and change summer to fall, or I'm going to lose my shit (and take everyone down with me).
Dave = Man?
It was a manly day: I bullied my friend Rob for tweeting this silliness, ran a morning soccer practice, then I took the dog for a bike ride-- without wearing a helmet-- and when I got home, though I was tired, I installed a ceiling fan-- alone and with much profanity-- and I didn't use a grounding wire, after a short nap, I made chili, and then drank some beers and watched some football and ate that chili, and topped it all off by watching the Keith Hernandez Seinfeld episode with the kids . . . in the annals of machismo, this day would have have gone down as an eleven out of ten on the masculine meter . . . had I not pulled a stomach muscle because I was overly vigorous using my new hula hoop.
Rest in Peace, Robert Peace
The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace by Jeff Hobbs is true story of grit, determination, and social class, and -- oddly-- one of the most interesting plot twists occurs within the narration, but I won't spoil that, just promise me you'll read the book . . . it's a gripping account of why you can take the boy out of Newark, but you still might not be able to take the Newark out of the boy, and while you can obviously enjoy this if you're not from New Jersey-- The New York Times, Amazon, and Entertainment Weekly named it book of the year-- but familiarity with Newark, Sharpe James and Cory Booker will make you appreciate the milieu even more; this is a story for the ages, epic in scope, picaresque in a Tom Jones/Breaking Bad fashion, and a revision of the American Dream that Fitzgerald would have appreciated . . . ten Sour Diesels out of ten.
My Wife Has No Respect For My Cup Holder
I was driving my car, learning about the architecture of the human brain (apparently the difference between the human brain and a desktop computer is that the hardware and software of a desktop computer are separate and discrete, while in the human brain, the hardware is the software, that tangled collection of networked synaptic wires is the whole shebang, nothing is writ large controlling it, the brain simply is itself, hardware and software combined) and while I was thinking these deep thoughts, I tried to put my coffee back in the cupholder, and if anyone appreciates the cup holder, it is I . . . but this time there was something amiss, there was something wrong when put my cup back in the holder, the cup wouldn't go all the way in, and it sat lopsided, leaning precariously, full of hot coffee; so I lifted the cup up and out, put it in the cup holder next door, and then blindly reached down to find the culprit, the thing that was making my driver-side cup holder malfunction, but I kept my eyes on the road, of course, and so when I felt something slimy, I was quite surprised-- I thought I might find a quarter or a miniature golf pencil, not something slimy . . . that was something I should not have felt, and when I lifted this surprisingly slimy thing up for closer inspection, I recognized it as a half of a strawberry, someone had eaten the good part and left the bit with the leaves . . . yuck . . . not only do I detest slimy things, but I also don't really like strawberries all that much, and so I wrapped the offensive parcel in a napkin and drove on, wondering how it got there-- at first I assumed it was one of the children, because they like strawberries and they often leave strawberry halves around the house, but this half-strawberry was in the front left cup holder, which was odd spot for one of the kids to leave trash, unless they were driving the minivan without permission or one of them tossed the half strawberry up from the back seat, which would have drawn attention from my wife, so I decided that she was the most likely suspect, and accused her by phone and she texted back "Can't I blame one of the kids?" which was quite fishy, and she later admitted, under interrogation, that after she had gone to Costco, she dropped a package of strawberries, and they spilled out onto the floor of the van, so she pulled over to clean them up, but she was so hungry that she ate one of them (five second rule, she claimed, which is insane-- I wouldn't eat anything that even grazed the floor of my minivan) and then she tossed the leafy half into my cup holder, knowing that it would not only turn to a mushy pulp, but also make it impossible to place a cup properly into the holder.
Alex Does His Impression of David Dunn
When you're napping on the couch on a beautiful fall afternoon, but you want to get motivated, so you can enjoy the day, one of the fastest ways to get upright is to hear your wife say: "Alex got hit by a car . . . he's okay . . . but he got hit by a car"; I went from sleeping to very very awake in a matter of seconds, and I'll spare you any of the anxiety we suffered in the short drive up 5th Avenue to the intersection with Benner Street and assure you that Alex is okay, and lucky for it; anyway, we arrived at the scene and there were police and a crowd of kids-- he was at a birthday party at a friend's house and they were taking a walk to town-- and Alex was sitting upright on the curb, being questioned by an EMT, and the car that hit him was still there, a gray Honda Civic, and it was the typical story: Alex wanted to catch up with his friends and he took a cursory glance in either direction on Benner, but didn't see a car turning from 5th (there's a tall set of bushes that obstructs the view) and he darted across and this guy turned right, so luckily the car was moving fairly slowly, and even more luckily, it was a small car with a rounded hood and not an SUV, so Alex got hit on the right hip, bounced off the hood and fell on his left side, he scraped up his left hip, abdomen and both his wrists-- but he didn't hit his head-- and after a couple hours in the emergency room, Dr. Pepper pronounced him good to go (I'm sure they placed Dr. Pepper in pediatric emergency because his name is a surefire way to cheer up nervous parents) . . . no broken bones, no blood in his urine, and no head, neck, or spine trauma . . . while they were checking him over, Dr. Pepper asked my son about this particular wound and that particular wound, trying to ascertain what he sustained when he got hit by the car, and Alex had to explain that some of the abrasions were from when he recently was attacked by a swarm of yellowjackets, as he had picked at some of the scabs, and a cut on his hand was from when he fell on a sharp pencil at school, and his ankle hurt from the accident but also when he got cleated at soccer, and I realized that he's taken a real beating this school year, practically auditioning for the Bruce Willis role in Unbreakable . . . and that kids can be really tough, much tougher than their parents-- because I had nightmares last night and didn't sleep very well, but Alex took some ibuprofen and is still sleeping like a baby as I post this . . . the doctor said he'll probably be a bit sore today, especially his hips, and he'll probably skip his soccer game, and I hope he'll look both ways twice now before he crosses the street (and I think the group of his friends who witnessed this will also be a bit more cautious) but in the end, he was excited to have a great story for school on Monday -- I got hit by a car!-- and maybe when he's older, I'll have him listen to The Modern Moloch and try to explain to him how lucky he was, but for now I'll just have to believe that he learned his lesson, and will take his time crossing in the future (and we had plenty of time to think about this and discuss it in the emergency room, because things move fairly slow there, and this also made me realize that we spent the bulk of this beautiful fall day waiting around, because that morning I took the kids to the ski shop for their seasonal ski and snowboard rentals, which is a long and boring process, and the thought certainly crossed my mind in the emergency room that renting snowboards and skis could very well be setting up future visits to emergency room and future discussion about making good decisions and taking your time when you're doing something dangerous . . . but what are you going to do: keep your kids inside all the time?)
Ian Following Instructions . . . With Alacrity
If You Measure It, It Will Come
This SNL Skit is not nearly as funny (and not nearly as infuriating) as the real story behind Wells Fargo's fraudulent account scandal . . . Planet Money offers a synopsis that will not only make you indignant, but also make you laugh at the absurdity of Wells Fargo corporate culture, and be prepared for reality to nearly triple hyperbole-- the Wells Fargo huckster in the SNL skit tries to get everyone to sign up for three accounts, but the actual slogan pushed by the executives was "eight is great," and so the bank burned through its young employees, forcing them to call everyone they knew: friends, family, acquaintances, in order to create as many accounts per person as possible--and demonstrate to the shareholders that Wells Fargo was robust and growing-- and I've often mentioned Campbell's Law here, which insured that these underpaid, harried employees eventually started cheating to make their quotas-- and then, of course, the executives labeled them as "bad apples" instead of apologizing for the culture they created . . . there's a lovely moment in the podcast when a district manager urges the young bankers to continue cold calling customers during a botched bank robbery, even while the cops are swarming the lobby and place reeks of shit because the robber crapped his pants . . . and, of course, I'd be negligent to mention the fact that the same thing is going on in schools right now-- we're all "accountable" because we administer common assessments that must correspond to Student Growth Objectives (SGO) and if we don't make the SGP number (Student Growth Percentage), then we get a low score on our summary evaluation, which is in complete disregard for Campbell's Law and the Law of Large Numbers . . . if you want to learn how kids are doing, you don't take tiny samples and attach them to individual evaluations and then upload them to some expensive software-- which is exactly what Wells Fargo did, because they wanted a certain result, and so they learned that if you measure something in that way, then the results will come-- by hook or by crook-- and while Wells Fargo didn't care how it happened because they wanted to encourage fraudulent behavior in order to bolster stock and portfolio values, you'd think that educators would be smarter, and realize the way to look at student success is to measure large and meaningful numbers, like the entire student body, and make the results completely detached from teacher performance, so that experiments with curriculum and implementation could be attempted and assessed . . . anyway, I'm going to switch banks in order to punish Wells Fargo for their misdeeds, and I encourage you to do the same.
Where Are the Children? The Medium Children?
From a distance, it looked purposeful and malevolent-- so many tennis balls hurtling over the fence-- but upon closer inspection, it turned out that the kids in Period 4 PE class were absolutely terrible at tennis, and the multitude of balls flying over the fence were mishits and botched serves . . . the irony is that East Brunswick often wins the county at tennis, and always has some players that are top in the state, but I think this is a consequence of the fact that young people are never medium at stuff anymore, they've either been trained since birth, taken the right lessons with the best teachers, and devoted many hours a day to their passion-- whether it be tennis or dance or violin or robotics-- or they're so daunted by the talented experts, kids their own age but with a skillset so advanced that it makes starting as a novice seem futile, and so they never try at all, resulting in a bunch of high school kids that can't hit a decent wheelhouse forehand, let alone a backhand, a serve, or an overhead smash.
The Test 64: Tattoo You, Me and Everyone Else
This week on The Test, Stacey opens a crazy can of worms and we take a journey through time, space, and permanent body art . . . as a bonus, Cunningham reveals where they've got Jesus, and technology provides us with a real-time crisis that leads to a dramatic ending . . . so tune in, keep score, and if you're not careful, you just might get roofied and end up with a bad tattoo.
Overreaction, Underreaction, or Just Right?
Last week on our day off, Ian and I went for sushi, and when we entered the restaurant we saw a photographer set up at the window table in the front nook of the restaurant, and then while we were waiting for our food, we saw a plate go by, on the way to the photographer, who then placed the plate on the sunlit table, in between a couple of white screens, and took a photo . . . and then I noticed that one of our rolls went for a trip up to the photographer's little studio and then returned, to be placed on our plate, and then they took our Dragon roll up there, on the actual serving plate, and the photographer handled our plate and then the waiter brought it to our table, so I said to the host guy, "Hey you shouldn't really do that with our food" and he said, "Oh, sorry, I'm so sorry . . . we'll make you new food, we didn't want to waste it" and I said, "You don't have to make us new food, but you really shouldn't take someone's plate to a different location, that's kind of weird" and he agreed and gave us ten percent off the check . . . and I'm not sure if my reaction was appropriate because I never had this happen to my food before, but it kind of weirded me out (despite the fact that when I waited tables, I had no problem eating food off plates that had been bused back to the kitchen).
Brangelina: Fair and Balanced?
While it might be difficult to find fair and balanced reporting on last night's debate-- when it comes to Trump and Clinton it's hard for anyone, including the media, to remain unbiased-- but that doesn't mean that it's impossible to find multiple perspectives in mainstream publications; in fact, I was pleased to discover that my local Rite Aid is offering a fair and balanced impulse-buy-register-display on Brad and Angelina's divorce . . . although if you read from left to right, top to bottom (as I did while I was waiting in line) then you can see that the employee who put the magazines on the rack clearly favors Angelina, and allowed her to end with a rhetorical flourish about saving her children.
It Will Be Harder (But Not Impossible) to Read About Zombies During the Zombie Apocalypse
When the zombie apocalypse comes, one of the many things I will miss is the convenience of Hoopla, a free digital media platform which runs through the library, and allows me to download the newest issues of The Walking Dead on our iPad . . . you can download five books a month, so if you like the show, see if your library has this feature and read the comics-- they're darker and more expansive than the show, and as far as graphic novels go, they're easy to consume: you could real all twenty-six in six months, using Hoopla; I also recently read Ghosts, which is written and illustrated by Reina Telgemeier, and despite my vehement skepticism towards the spirit world, I enjoyed this graphic novel as well (and it's perfectly appropriate for kids, unlike The Walking Dead series, which is appropriate for no one).
Required Reading (Especially for the NJDOE)
Cathy O'Neil's new book Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy is a must read for anyone living in our digital age; she's uniquely qualified to write this book, as she's an academic mathematician who earned her Ph.D from Harvard, worked for a hedge fund on Wall Street, analyzed big data for marketing start-ups and then became a political activist because she realized that a number of dangerous discriminatory algorithms are opaque, affect enormous numbers of people, and do unseen damage . . . she nicknames these WMDs . . . Weapons of Math Destruction, and she explains how these black box formulas evaluate creditworthiness, college rankings, our employability, our Facebook and Twitter feeds, and-- most significant to me-- teacher evaluations . . . and she spends a good portion of the book on just how irrational, absurd, and insanely unsound the models are that assess teacher performance-- the formulas might work if teachers taught ten thousand kids at a time, but for a class of 30 students, measuring how a kid did on a standardized test from one year to the next is essentially random (all the teachers know this, of course, even those of us who do not possess a math Phd. from Harvard, but it's nice to hear an expert explain the logic of why this is so) but apparently the NJDOE hasn't figured this out, and at the start of this school year, they increased the weight of standardized test scores in the evaluation model from 10% to 30% . . . so now, if a teacher works in a tested grade-- such as my wife-- one third of a teacher's numerical assessment is random . . . even if she teaches math and and can point out the many problems with the algorithm (a sociologist would cite Campbell's Law, of course, and also present a valid argument for why this change is absolutely inane) and I can't explain (without long strings of profanity) how incensed this makes me-- how utterly stupid the people at the NJDOE must all be, to enact this increase-- but I'm hoping that this book indicates a sea change in how we view these algorithms and formulas, and that people will learn enough math to understand how screwed up this is . . . and if the NJDOE changes the algorithm and writes a personal apology to me, confessing that they were totally ignorant of all math and logic, then I'm willing to forgive them, because even Bill Gates got it wrong with his charter school funding, he ignored the Law of Large Numbers and came to the conclusion that small schools were better than large schools, when the fact of the matter is that small schools have more statistical variance than large schools, because they have less students in them . . . so more of them will be better and more of them will be worse . . . but, of course, people may learn the truth and still not do anything about it-- we know that a later start time will improve test scores in high school, but the bus schedule prohibits this, and so kids show up at 7 AM, in a building without AC, ready to learn AP Physics . . . everyone knows this is not the best way to teach kids, but no one does anything about it, instead we purchase new software platforms so we can upload all the spurious data and crunch the numbers-- and there may be enough people in the NJDOE and other administrative capacities who love this idea so much, the idea that we're generating loads of numbers from standardized tests and evaluation algorithms, and they don't care that all the numbers are bullshit, because it's fun to have loads of "evidence" to evaluate and all this data perpetuates the idea that we need to pay people to look at it . . . anyway, I could go on and on, but read the book, it's revelatory . . . and if you don't feel like reading it, you can listen to her discussing it on Slate Money.
The Allusion of the Year!
My children celebrated Rosh Hashanah by inviting a bunch of kids (mainly Gentiles) over to play a two day marathon of "Star Wars Dungeons & Dragons," an exponentially nerdy D&D milieu that my son Alex created; Alex is also the dungeon-master and this drives his younger brother Ian crazy, and so-- as usual-- Ian was simultaneously causing trouble both in the gameworld and the real world: Ian claimed that Alex was discriminating against him, but Alex countered that Ian was "blowing random stuff up" and "pouring random liquids on people" in the game, and Ian also poured actual real juice on his friend Tibby's character sheet and also pushed his actual brother down the actual basement stairs; after a time-out, Ian returned to the game and immediately went rogue attacked the Death Star, alone, and then attempted to kill the Emperor, without any help from the other players, and he got himself killed for his moronic bravado . . . and so I was recounting this silliness at work and my buddy Mike said: "Nice . . . he pulled a Leeroy Jenkins" and though it's a bit premature, his reference was so apropos that I've decided to award him with the coveted SOD Allusion of the Year Award.
Fantasy Coach of the Year
I finally got a win this week in my fantasy football league, and I attribute this victory to the bulk email I recently sent to all the players on my team:
"Congratulations . . . you have the privilege to be playing for the South Side Locusts fantasy football team this season, and if you perform well enough statistically and I designate you the team MVP, then you'll be rewarded with ten percent of my winnings . . . somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty dollars . . . which I know is a rather small percentage of your actual NFL salary, but still, every little bit helps, especially because you're probably not going to play competitive football for very long, due to concussions and injuries, and, realistically speaking, it's not as if playing for the South Side Locusts and playing for your NFL franchise are mutually exclusive: padding your stats can certainly help when contract time rolls around, and so when you're debating whether to run out of bounds or go for that extra yard, just remember, there might be fifty dollars in it for you . . . but don't act like an idiot either, because if you get injured, you're really going to let both of your teams down."
"Congratulations . . . you have the privilege to be playing for the South Side Locusts fantasy football team this season, and if you perform well enough statistically and I designate you the team MVP, then you'll be rewarded with ten percent of my winnings . . . somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty dollars . . . which I know is a rather small percentage of your actual NFL salary, but still, every little bit helps, especially because you're probably not going to play competitive football for very long, due to concussions and injuries, and, realistically speaking, it's not as if playing for the South Side Locusts and playing for your NFL franchise are mutually exclusive: padding your stats can certainly help when contract time rolls around, and so when you're debating whether to run out of bounds or go for that extra yard, just remember, there might be fifty dollars in it for you . . . but don't act like an idiot either, because if you get injured, you're really going to let both of your teams down."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)