Bonus: Daryl Bem Owes My Fraternity A Citation!

If you are interested in scientific studies on clairvoyance and a stunning revelation on the true origins of the "genius" Daryl Bem's supposedly seminal paranormal experimentation, head over to my post at Gheorghe: The Blog.

We Convince Ourselves That We Are Improving

My adult league soccer team remained undefeated after a hard fought 1-1 tie on last Monday night, and we convinced ourselves that we were improving with every game, but we all know that this is a bald-faced lie and that any improvement in play pales in comparison to the looming unstoppable juggernaut of our collective ages . . . old age is advancing upon us like a glacier that may occasionally recede a foot or two, but then inexorably slides forward, cold and massive, destroying all in its path, tearing up trees, moving mountains, carving holes into the earth, pushing a moraine of boulders, dead trees and stone and grinding the green and youth from our bones; the team felt the glacier Wednesday night, when we finally lost our first game to a younger and faster team (but I was in Washington D.C., so there is a certain satisfaction, despite the loss, that I wasn't there and therefore, was not to blame . . . or, in another sense, was to blame since perhaps we needed me there to win . . . either way, I am still undefeated, even if the team is not).

It's Hard To Get Angry When I Would Do The Same Thing

My six-year-old son Alex recently lost his two front teeth and while this has caused him no problems at meal-time (he can still eat an apple) we have run into an unexpected distraction; unlike Count Dracula, our fanged child can see his reflection, and it amuses him so much that if he catches a glimpse of himself in anything reflective-- tinted glass on the Metro, the window across from him at the dinner table, a store mirror, the side of a polished car-- then he starts laughing demonically and making various vampirical faces until we drag him away.

Arcimboldo is the Winner!

During our whirlwind four day tour of Washington DC, our kids walked us into the ground: we visited the Baltimore Aquarium, The Lincoln Memorial, The Air-Space Museum, The Museum of the American Indian (best cafeteria on The Mall!), The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, The Smithsonian Castle, The Museum of Natural History, The National Geographic Museum, The National Zoo and the Washington National Cathedral, but our favorite thing might have been a serendipitously discovered exhibit of "surrealist" Renaissance painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo's major works in the National Gallery; he was the official portraitist of Maximilian II, despite the fact that his portraits are totally bizarre amalgamations of objects piled together as visual puns . . . they are completely arresting, and our family favorite, Water, is both a Renaissance bestiary of fish and sea life, as well as a surreal collection of puns weirder than any Dali painting.

Comment Away . . . You Might Become Slightly Famous

I was poking around the software that monitors visitors that come to this blog, and I noticed that several people had googled the words "residual glee" and ended up at Sentence of Dave, but I did not remember writing those words and it turns out I didn't write those words-- my friend Eric (who is an award winning writer) wrote those words in a comment, and somehow that comment became the top search entry on Google for the phrase "residual glee," and although this only lasted for a few hours, it's still weird to think that you could write a comment on my third-rate blog and end up tops on Google-- something companies pay marketing firms loads of money to accomplish-- and now, what is even stranger (and more meta) is that Eric's post about his comment is now the top search when you type "residual glee" into Google (and, also, on an unrelated note: I think Residual Glee would make a good name for an indie band).

Dueling Definitions

Kevin Kelly juxtaposes two definitions in his new book What Technology Wants; the first is Alan Kay's: "Technology is anything invented after you were born," and the second is Danny Hillis's: "Technology is something that doesn't quite work yet," and the first definition makes me think of that awesome yellow first down line that appears on the television screen during football games, and the second definition makes me think of FoxTrax, television's failed attempt to animate a glowing hockey puck.

A One Sentence Summary of the New Testament

While we were standing in front of an impressive bas-relief tableau of Christ on the Cross in the Washington National Cathedral, my five year old son Ian told me: "They killed Jesus because he was too nice."

Warning: This Post May Contain Toilet Humor

One of the original motifs of this blog is how much I cherish when my wife screws up, but this doesn't happen very often (thus the cherishing) and last week was a memorable one, so enjoy it: I was fast asleep when Catherine woke me up to tell me that Ian had left some bloody stool in the toilet and she got me out of bed to look at said stool and it did seem bloody, but red blood, which I knew wasn't internal bleeding, and after a quick internet search we determined he either had hemorrhoids or anal fissures, neither of which was life threatening, so I went back to sleep, but then Catherine woke me up again at 4:00 AM to tell me that it wasn't bloody stool at all, it was old vitamins leaking red dye-- she had cleaned the hall closet out earlier that day and had forgotten she tossed them into the toilet.

Almost Forgot To Post!

Just arrived home and this is all I have to say: I was in Chevy Chase and you weren't.

Invictus is Pretty Good . . . But It's No Ruck and Maul

Clint Eastwood's movie Invictus is just as much about rugby as it is about Nelson Mandela, and although the film doesn't try to explain the rules of the game or make a coherent narrative out of game play (which was smart . . . and if you watch highlights of the actual Springbok/All-Black Final, you'll see the film does a fantastic job of capturing the look and feel of rugby, including the "haka," New Zealand's pre-game Maori war dance) it is a sports movie first and foremost . . . about two underdogs, the inspirational Mandela, who survived a twenty seven year training camp breaking rocks on Robben Island, and the Springboks, a mainly white team (with a token black), upon who Mandela bestows the responsibility of bringing honor and reconciliation to South Africa . . . it is well filmed and well-acted but it definitely sticks to the sports genre: nearly every scene is inspirational in some way, and-- as I am a sucker for sports movies-- it had me near tears multiple times (even a scene of the team running in the early morning before the big game got me choked up . . . but show me a movie where some mom dies of cancer with her kids around her deathbed and it has no effect) but it still portrays the characters with a hagiographic sheen that will make the movie ultimately forgettable . . . unlike The Wrestler, a film that I will never forget . . . and all this rugby and film discussion reminds me of "Ruck and Maul," a rugby screen-play that Whitney and I wrote many years ago which was certainly closer in theme to The Wrestler than Invictus . . . perhaps now is the time to pull it back out and pitch it.

F#@%* The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

I'm going to give Guy Deutscher's new book Through The Language Glass: Why The World Looks Different In Other Languages a perfect ten gender-neutral pronouns out of ten; first of all, I love how worked up Deutscher gets about things like linguistic relativity-- otherwise known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis-- which is the idea that the "character" of a language somehow indicates the philosophy of the culture that uses it (and he quotes from the American Journal Philosophy Today . . . "if English thought is in some ways more open to ambiguity and lack of system, it might be attributed in part to the relative variability and looseness of English syntax," and then he comes down heavy on this idea; here is Deutscher's rebuttal: "It might. . .  It might also be attributable to the irregular shape of hot cross buns. More appropriately, however, it should be attributed to the habit of English language journals to allow the likes of Mr. Harvey free range. . . ") and Deutscher also refutes the venerated Stephen Pinker in several places, but the main reason I like the book is it really does live up to its title in some very specific ways: you learn about the Guugu Yimithirr, a tribe who use no egocentric directions (right/left/behind you/in front of you) and instead only refer to the directions of the compass-- as in: "Can you pass the butter to the North?" and they learn this from an early age because that's the only way to speak, so they always know which way everything is facing-- whether they are in a dark room with no windows or recounting a story several years later, and they do not rely on the sun, they use other clues (and the children master this long before our kids master left and right!) and Deutscher also explains how nouns with gender (as in Spanish and Italian and French) have an influence on our associations about the object and he also answers that age old question: "Do you see the same blue that I see?" or at least he sort of answers it, and the answer is that you might see it slightly differently if you don't have a word for green . . . if you have a word for green then greens are greener, and if you don't then you might refer to the sea as "wine-dark," like Homer did, but what is important is that it is the language influencing the sensory perceptions and not vice-versa . . . if you start making generalizations in the other direction then he's going to go Sapir-Whorf on your ass!

My Time Is Near

The English Department has been hosting some creative parties lately: we had a Minute to Win It Party at my house (this was all Catherine, but still, the party was in the place that I live) and Liz and Eric hosted a Who Can Write The Scariest Story Party (and the stories were quite good and I feel bad for Stacy, who created a beautiful multimedia Case File, which was handed to me to read, but the complexity of the different documents-- fake newspaper articles, photos of a severed hand and a dead cat, an IM conversation, a medical report, etc.-- made me go into an over-stimulated coma, and so Liz had to take it from me, and I probably would have voted for it, if it hadn't stressed me out so much . . . and I couldn't figure out who wrote the other stories and I thought my story was well disguised but someone remarked that only Dave would have the main character eaten by a "series of animals" but I was glad I pulled a vote because the competition was stiff) and Jeryl Anne is hosting a Chili Cook-Off in a couple of weeks and this makes me think that I need to strike while the iron is hot . . . I need to organize my two great party ideas, which I have offered to the world free of charge, and which have been roundly ignored: I am talking about, of course, my YouTube and Survivor Parties, which I once again, offer to the on-line universe, free of charge, and which I expect to see implemented by close friends in the very near future.

My Attention Span is Wack

I didn't make it through The Wackness but that doesn't mean it's a bad movie, it's just a little slow and melancholy and repetitive for my taste, but the '90s hip-hop soundtrack is fantastic (think De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest and Biggie Smalls) and the dialogue replicates and parodies a time when everyone was trying to infuse some rapper chic into their lexicon, leading to the moment when the cool rich indie girl Stephanie gives the dope smoking and dope dealing main character, Luke Shapiro, some advice about how to live life: "I just look at the dopeness . . . but you, it's like you just look at the wackness, you know?"

Denial Ain't A River in Egypt

Most of us are happily in denial (I forget about my receding hairline each and every day, but a look in the mirror shocks me back to reality . . . the hair I had on my head in college has migrated to my chest and back) but here's an example from the new Slavoj Zizek book that will make you feel better about your own mild delusions; the Shindo Renmei, a Japanese terrorist organization that existed in the 1940's in Sao Paolo Brazil, refused to believe the news that Japan surrendered at the end of World War II, and used violence against those that did believe, but, of course, as Zizek points out, "they knew that their denial of Japan's surrender was false, but they nonetheless refused to believe in Japanese surrender" and I am sure they got plenty of other people that knew that the news was factual to believe otherwise, because when the alternative is a violent death, what's wrong with a little denial?

Zizekian Aphorisms

I started watching Michael Moore's documentary Capitalism: A Love Story, but it seemed anecdotal in its evidence, without any real theory behind it (although I did like when Vizzini from The Princess Bride-- "Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line!"-- talks about how the American free-market has evolved into something far different than what Adam Smith envisioned) but if you want to tackle something a bit meatier, try Slovenian super-brain Slavoj Zizek's Living in the End Times; here are two of his thoughts on modern capitalist society: "However once we accept that the economy is always a political economy, a site of political struggle-- in other words that its de-politicization, its status as a neutral sphere of 'servicing the goods,' is in itself always already the outcome of a political struggle-- then the prospect of repoliticization of the economy . . . is opened up," and "Today, since workers can increasingly be replaced by machines or by outsourcing the entire productive process, striking-- where it occurs at all-- is more a protest act addressed primarily to the general public rather than owners or managers, its goal being simply to maintain jobs by making the public aware of the terrifying predicament that awaits the workers if they lose their jobs."

High Concept Check-Out

The burly cashier at Stop and Shop told the dude in front of me that his total, $8.68, was a "palindrome," and that sometimes-- once in a rare while-- the total and the change are both palindromes . . . and I should point out that this guy is coaching a youth soccer team; the last time I ran into him he told me there are two kinds of bars: 1) the kind where you look for trouble 2) the kind where you don't look for trouble; he is a font of wisdom.

A Sacrifice I Will Make For My Children

For the next ten years I am going to exclusively listen to jazz and classical music-- no rock or punk-- so that my kids have the opportunity to disparage my lame and antiquated ways, and so that they have something to rebel against . . . you can't really enjoy Black Flag and The Misfits and AC/DC if your dad likes them too.

Ali's Favorite Story About Dave

Here is Ali's contribution to the incredibly popular recurring series I like to call Your Favorite Story About Dave (Fit to Print on a Relatively Tame Blog): we have to travel back to what I call pre-Sentence of Dave . . . it was summer vacation and I was pushing my six month old son Alex from Highland Park to New Brunswick, where I was meeting my wife and brother for lunch, but on the way I saw my friend's grandmother and she wanted to get a closer look at the baby, so I took Alex out of the stroller so she could hold him, and then we blithely continued on our way up Third Avenue and along Route 27 towards the bridge to New Brunswick-- it was sunny so I put up the little awning on the stroller and Alex was quiet, watching the traffic, and I was in that oblivious zone of serenity that you occasionally enjoy as a new parent when your child is content and needs nothing-- when something at my feet startled me-- someone had left a doll on the sidewalk, and I ran over the doll with the stroller and nearly stepped on it, and who would leave a doll on the sidewalk like that?-- but, unfortunately, it wasn't a doll, it was my son Alex, I forgot to strap him back into the stroller after I showed him to my friend's grandmother, and he had slid down the front of the stroller, but my vision was blocked by the awning, so not only did he slide out of the stroller onto the pavement, but he also endured a mild crushing, and after I recognized that this was my son and not a doll, I picked him up to assess the damage: he had skinned knees, and skinned hands and arms, and a skinned nose, and he was crying, but the injuries were all superficial (and superficially ugly) and I didn't have a cell phone and I didn't know what to do, so I pushed him to the restaurant, and I got some odd looks on the way there, but I knew that the only person who would know what to do was my wife, and she was at Makeda, so that's where I went, and I entered in a frantic state but my wife cleaned him up and he stopped bleeding and crying and we ended up having a fairly pleasant lunch.

Paradoxical Activity

When we begin Hamlet in my English classes, I like to assume the role of the skeptical scholar Horatio; I force my students to ask me if I believe in ghosts-- "Go ahead . . . ask me if I believe in ghosts . . . ask me!"-- and when they comply, just to humor me, I chastise them and reply angrily: "Of course I don't believe in ghosts! I'm a teacher! A man of logic and reason! Not a purveyor of fantasy and superstition!" and in a sense there's a grain of truth to my schtick, as is evident here, but an old student pointed out an apparent contradiction in my outspoken doubt of all things spooky: the fact that I found this movie incredibly scary suggests that my words may not accurately reflect my subconscious.

No Surprise Ending Here

This article makes the new anti-addiction drug sound pretty great (no urge! no craving!) but what happens when the addictive people who need to take this anti-addiction drug get addicted to their anti-addiction drug?