Barrett vs Tolstoy

Lisa Feldman Barrett begs to differ with the opening premise of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way," as she believes that happiness-- like every emotion-- defies categorization and is much more variegated and complex in form (and much simpler than was once thought in content, controlled by two factors: valence and affect) and she points out that "you can smile in happiness, sob in happiness, scream in happiness, raise your arms in happiness, clench your fists in happiness, jump up and down doling high fives in happiness, or even be stunned motionless in happiness . . . your eyes might be wide or narrowed, your breathing rapid or slow . . . you can have the heart-pounding exciting happiness of winning the lottery or the calm relaxed happiness of lying on a picnic blanket with your lover" and this idea connects to Barrett's central thesis, that emotions aren't set pieces waiting to be triggered, they are created on the fly, thus the title of her book: How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain . . . and if don't feel like wading through the text, you can listen to Invisibilia "Emotions Part One."

Ode to Talcum

I've just finished showering the dirt and grit and sweat and talcum powder off my body, accumulated from hiking twenty plus miles-- the exact distance is still being computed; our intrepid gang of ten dads hauled our asses through through Montclair, Glenridge, Verona, West Orange, Eagle Rock Reservation, Mills Reservation, Montclair State Campus and a bunch of places I can't remember, on an urban/suburban/dirt trail adventure, we walked from 9 AM to 6:00 PM-- and I walked over a mile to the train station at 7:00 AM; we saw a fox and Yogi Berra's mansion and the top of Eagle Rock and Thomas Edison's lab; in the middle of the day, we got soaked in the downpour, but we finally made it back to Montclair, had a delicious meal at Le Salbuen, took an Uber home, and-- because of an emergency baby powder purchase mid-hike and very liberal application of said powder, in many public locales-- including along busy roads-- I am happy to report that there was no chafing.

Old Dog = New Tricks

Not only did I eat at a pizza place that I had never tried before (Pasquales . . . delicious, thin chewy crust and they put a bit of pesto sauce on the grandma slice) but I took a shortcut that I never used before to get there (Stratford!) and I attribute my two new tricks (for an old dog) to my students, who advised me both on the pizza place and how to get there as quickly as possible (I had to monitor two exams in a row, so I was really hungry).

Not Quite the Second Coming . . . But Close

Testify and praise the good lord above, because I prayed and my prayers were answered-- that is correct: I found Jesus last night . . . he appeared to me during travel soccer tryouts, and just in time, as my team is in dire need of players (we are switching to 11 v 11 next fall) and no one born in 2005 came to the first tryout, but last night Jesus showed up-- he's born in 2005, his brother was an excellent player for the high school, and he just might be the savior (for our U13 team, not all the sinners on earth).

A Very Important Quiz

I gave my students a final quiz on Shakespeare's comedy "Much Ado About Nothing" this morning; I told them to use all the knowledge they had acquired from the play to answer this multiple choice question:

my wife was arriving at Newark International Airport from San Francisco at 2 AM last night, and she had been gone for five days . . . what method of transportation did she use to get home?

A) Uber

B) I picked her up

and the answer-- which is obvious if you've read the play-- is that I went to sleep at 7:30 PM last night, woke up at 1:00 AM, picked her up, got a little shut-eye, woke up at 5:45 AM, walked the dog, and went to work . . . because all women want is for you to do difficult stuff for them-- that's the true proof of love; in the play, as soon as Benedick professes his love for Beatrice, she immediately asks him to challenge his best friend Claudio to a duel (because he slandered her cousin Hero) thus making him choose between his friends and his lover, and he does her bidding and challenges him to a fight to the death-- thus proving his love to Beatrice-- but luckily it's a comedy and things get sorted out before it comes down to Benedick having to kill his best buddy . . . anyway, I'm very tired now but the satisfaction that I finally understand what women want outweighs my fatigue.

I Did It!

Catherine comes home from San Francisco tonight, and while the house is a bit of a mess, I think she'll be pleased that both her gardens are watered and thriving, and the children are alive, nourished, and (relatively) intact . . . Ian has some ugly bruises on his arm from "birthday punches," but other than that, both boys look the same as when she left.

How To Make a New Ultra HDTV Look Shitty (Like It Should)

We finally got a new TV . .  a 55 inch Ultra HD LG; to break it in, we watched Poltergeist and I had an odd complaint: the picture was too sharp . . . my kids didn't mind, but I felt like everything looked like a movie set (which, of course, is true . . . but you don't want to notice) and the special effects looked cheesy, the spooky tree looked plain silly-- but I learned how to fix this "problem" of too much clarity-- you have to shut off both the motion smoothing (called Trumotion on the LG) and the sharpness enhancement . . . basically, shut off the computerized algorithms that the TV uses to make things sharper than they actually are supposed to be, and Saturday night we watched Raising Arizona with the new settings in place and the film looked properly gritty, much improved by the decline in picture quality . . . the imagery should be a bit fuzzy when folks are saying dialogue like this: when there was no meat, we ate fowl, when there was no fowl, we ate crawdad, and when there was no crawdad to be found, we ate sand . . . you ate what? . . . we ate sand).

Bonus Update: Geeks > Freaks

All this scene needs is for James Franco to show up.

Like Dungeon Master Like Son

I've been really proud of my boys the past week-- it seems they've forsaken the behaviors that dominated this school year: fighting, insubordination, vandalism, candy smuggling, not looking both ways when crossing the street, getting ISS, losing all their shit (Ian lost five lunch coolers!) and forgetting to do homework . . . this week has been different; Alex has managed to organize a large Dungeons and Dragons game with a number of his friends . . . and he included his brother . . . they've been cooperating, planning, setting things up together, and Ian contributed to the game by getting a game mat and some mini-figures for his birthday and while there's been six or seven 6th and 7th grade boys in my house quite a few times lately, they've been really focused and well-behaved and they sound super-smart, they're talking probability (Ian figured out that opposite sides of the twenty sided die all add to twenty-one) and poring over arcane tomes, learning crazy vocabulary (mace, flail, druid, laying hands, melee, etc.) and speculating about very weird stuff-- can a human have sex with a dragon?-- and while there's been the occasional argument, they've been battling each other in the game more than in reality . . . the thing I like the best about the today's session is that my son Alex-- who is the dungeon master-- made a "phone bin" and forced everyone to turn off their phones off and put them in the bin, so they could focus . . . the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

This Needed to be Said

The US1 Flea Market, for those of you who have never been, was the living embodiment of Ebay.

Dave Discloses His Personal Business (for the Good of Future Scientists)

I used my last personal day yesterday, and I'm going to document what I did with it, so anthropologists in the future have an example of what a middle class homeowner and family man might do with a random day off . . . it's lame stuff, by any standard, but the document might become incredibly important for this very reason, for the extraordinary mundanity, so here it is, in chronological order:

1) I walked the dog and listened to Planet Money;

2) recorded some music;

3) wrote a post for this blog about Planet Money;

4) assembled a fold-out futon . . . this took nearly three hours and the finished product is certainly imbued with this psychological fallacy;

5) did NOT remove the basement refrigerator door and straighten it because I was so tired from building the futon . . . took the dog for a bike ride instead;

6) fixed the side screen door, which wasn't fully closing, by pounding selected portions of the metal lip on the side of the door with a rubber mallet;

7) took all the cardboard packaging from the futon and mattress to the recycling dumpster;

7) tried to take a nap, but couldn't sleep because of the jackhammer . . . our neighbors are putting in a deck;

8) signed the delivery slip for our new TV-- this was the actual reason I had to take the day . . . the only window for delivery was 8 AM to 1 PM;

9) assembled and hooked up our new TV . . . it's smart;

10) ate some sushi for lunch;

11) went to Costco for wine, beer, and easy to cook food . . . Catherine is headed to San Francisco-- Amazon is flying her out there for some educational software summit-- so the boys and I are on our own for the weekend;

12) purchased two pairs of pants at Costco . . . this really worries me-- more than the fact that I went to Costco of my own volition-- because once you start purchasing clothes at Costco, it's the beginning of the end (and the worst part is they're nice pants . . . Tommy Hilfiger, and they fit perfectly . . . this indicates that soon enough I'll spending two or three days a week roaming the aisles, pushing that giant cart at a snail's pace along with all the other geriatrics, buying random bottles of vitamins and ugly walking shoes, feasting on the free samples, and wondering if I could use more razors).

Three? Why Not Four?

There's a cottage industry of journalism that operates by taking the absurd shit that Donald Trump says seriously and then spinning out the policy that could make it happen . . . the latest iteration of Pretending-Trump's-Words-Actually-Mean-Something-Journalism analyzes Trump's promise to grow the economy three percent per year (or even four percent! why not? if you're just saying completely unfounded bullshit, why not ramp it up?) and the new episode of Planet Money is a perfect place to start investigating this great great beautiful premise; here is a fast and loose summary of the some of the ways we could spur our economy to three percent growth and beyond:

1) we take in 40 million immigrants . . . essentially take in the same number of immigrants the country has absorbed in the last 80 years, but we do it in ten years  . . . more people means more workers, more stuff, more consumption . . . but Trump and his supporters would probably find this antithetical to Wall politics . . . he'd have to switch his rhetorical symbol to a giant Water Slide across the border;

2) incentivize people to work longer; America is aging-- the cohort that brought us all the growth, the Baby Boomers, are retiring and that is costly and a major impediment to economic growth-- if we could get old people to stay in the workforce longer, making money, consuming, and not taking their pensions and social security and retirement benefits, that would help . . . especially if they died before retirement!

3) make everyone work . . . zero point zero unemployment-- but this means no stay at home moms, no stay at home dads, no lazy people, no one can stay home to take care of a sick or elderly relative, and rich people and incarcerated people will have to work full time as well . . .

4) America invents something so groundbreaking and essential that everyone needs it . . . like the computer or the electrical grid  (and the appliances that go with it) or the highway system . . . but the problem is we've grabbed all that low-hanging fruit and there doesn't appear to be some groundbreaking invention on the horizon, just incremental advances in the technology we have (but one can always dream of teleportation and nano-assemblers)

5) we just pretend we have three percent growth and accuse anyone who says otherwise of being part of a liberal media conspiracy designed to bring the President down.

Put Your Bugs Where Your Mouth Is

Every spring, our house gets invaded by these tiny little ants, and while this really bugs my wife-- she does her best to eradicate them with traps-- I try to embrace the little fellas, and refer to them as "nature's cleanup crew" and so when I noticed that there were a bunch of these ants in the bristles of my toothbrush this morning, I decided that I had to roll with it, and so I rinsed them off and brushed my teeth . . . but perhaps I should have left them on the brush . . . if I could train a bird to live on my body and eat ticks, then perhaps I could also train a bunch of little ants to live in my mouth and eat all food decaying between my teeth.

The Test 88: Fear the Reaper

Despite the proximal whirling scythe of grim-visaged death, we prevail and present you with this podcast full of grim shit; special guest Mike gets the last word in (actually a number) and Cunningham breaks new ground in depression therapy . . . as a thematically related bonus, Stacey threatens to kill Dave.
 

The Shawshank Inspiration (for blood-sucking parasites)

I need to train a bird (like Brooks had in Shawshank) to patrol my body and eat the many ticks that end up residing on me after I run in the orchard.

Sooner = Meta-cheater

Perhaps you're a clueless on this topic as I was yesterday, but "Sooners" is a more offensive nickname than "Redskins" . . . the University of Oklahoma nickname celebrates jumping the gun in one of the most infamous land grabs in American History . . . it's bad enough that men and women were trampling, shooting, knifing, and generally denigrating their fellow man in a mad rush to be the first to one of 42,000 parcels of Indian Territory . . . this was enough of a disaster for the Cherokee, Choctaws, Cheyenne and Apache, but a "sooner" is someone who tried to sneak across the boundary line early-- so they could claim a prime parcel before anyone else-- so a "sooner" is another level of cheating, where you're trying to cheat the people who are cheating the Native Americans . . . sooners are meta-cheaters, and apparently, a few people recognize what the name signifies and are taking action, but I would have never known the meaning of the nickname "sooner" if I hadn't started reading Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, a fascinating account of Indian land rights, oil, and murder; the book is by David Graham, who also wrote The Lost City of Z, which I highly recommend.

Someone Should Have Told Me This Two Months Ago

It's so much easier to shave when you use a new razor.

Never Mind What It's Called . . . Eat This Food!

This is a bit local, but there's a great authentic Mexican restaurant right across Route 18 from East Brunswick High School, and I want it to survive . . . but it has a lot going against; it's tucked in a small strip mall that's difficult to turn into off the highway (but you can access it from the side streets) and I'm not sure what the place is called . . . it might be called La China Poblana (which probably means "the porcelain dishware from the Puebla state of Mexico," but you shouldn't have the word "china" in the title of a Mexican restaurant) or it might be called Mary's Mexican Grill or it might be called Mary's Grill Pizza . . . anyway, the food is inexpensive and delicious-- the tamales with green sauce are crumbly and light, with white meat chicken inside; the chorizo is tasty but not greasy at all; and the al pastor is loaded with spices and pineapple . . . plus they give you an excellent little black bean dip with your gratis chips and green salsa . . . so if you have a chance, pull in and try the food so that this place stays afloat until it can figure out a better name.

Dave Gets Extra About Extra!

I'm often amused by the slang words high school kids sprinkle into their lexicon; I enjoy hearing them use "swag" and "lit" and "salty" and "ratchet" in context, but I rarely use these words myself (except for comedic effect) because there's nothing sadder than an old man trying to be hip to the young folks . . . however, despite my general dictum on avoiding the vernacular of the youth, I have adopted one new term because it works so well in so many spots, and it doesn't sound particularly absurd when I say it: recently, when kids want to say something is melodramatic, they use the word "extra," as in Keanu Reeves is so extra when he fights Agent Smith in The Matrix or just because you failed the physics test doesn't mean you have to get all extra about it . . . I'm hoping this one sticks around, it's especially useful for Shakespeare, where folks like Hamlet and Iago and Don John get extra about all kinds of things.

The Singularity vs. Nightfall

Ian Morris begins his massive history of Eastern and Western social development, Why the West Rules-- for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future, at the very beginning --15,000 years ago, deep in prehistory-- and he runs through the typical Guns, Germs, and Steel stuff (with more details about Chinese history) but he comes at this massive scale of time from the perspective of an archaeologist, and on the "maps vs. chaps" debate, he's firmly on the side of the maps (unlike someone like Paul Johnson, who goes more for the chaps) which might be offensive to some because he takes the humanity out of history, and views the span of human achievement as something of a Civilization computer game, with an algorithm for social development based on energy capture, urbanization, information technology, and war-making capacity . . . so you're going to get a lot of numbers, as societies advance, which is sometimes disconcerting but it all eventually makes sense and if you can't figure out how to break through the hard ceiling-- perhaps this occurs at a social development index of 24-- then you don't get to stagnate at whatever glory you have achieved, instead things tend to spiral out of control and your civilization collapses . . . you can't turn away the four horsemen of the apocalypse: climate change, famine, state failure and migration (occasionally, there is a fifth horseman: disease) and you need particular resources to defeat these horsemen, and of your geographical and technological situation doesn't possess them, then you're screwed . . . no matter who is making the decisions . . . but with great collapse comes great resilience and great recovery-- so you might as well embrace the impending apocalypse, because while a few good decisions might head off or postpone a collapse, if it's going to happen, no individual human-- brilliant leader, scientist, thinker, moral crusader, or whatever-- is going to defeat the lazy, scared, concerned masses . . . you might be able to temporarily plug the dike, but you're not going to stop the flood . . . and Morris doesn't see any inherent superior value to Western culture-- there's no cultural bias here-- the East surges ahead of the West at times (541 AD to 1100 AD in particular) and then hits a hard ceiling and it takes the Industrial Revolution for the West to make the big move ahead and it really didn't matter who invented what or when (Stigler's Law of Eponymy) and then, finally, Morris gets to now and that's when the book really takes off-- he explains the economic marriage of America and China (we buy Chinese products and China buys our debt, making the America dollar more valuable and the Chinese renminbi less so and if we stopped buying Chinese products, they could dump all the US dollars they own on the market, thus totally devaluing our currency . . . so we're stuck with each other) and how we are headed towards an uncharted future as far as social development-- we might hit 5000!-- which could result in cities of 140 million people or more, but we're hitting a hard ceiling around 1000 points, and we can't go on this way-- all the citizens of earth can't live the way the richest countries live-- we're burning too much fossil fuel, contributing to what Morris calls "global weirding" and as the world becomes smaller and flatter, developed nations are becoming more concerned with immigration (a prescient prediction of Trump's victory and Brexit . . . the book was published in 2011) and because we are at such a technological high point, the stakes are infinite . . . we may see a transformation in the next fifty years that makes the Industrial Revolution look like the domestication of the goat, a singularity situation where AI and energy capture make the world so small that geography and nations are meaningless . . . or we may be staggering towards a collapse like no other, where-- as Einstein pithily predicted-- we fight World War IV with rocks . . . the scary thing is that, with the technology we now possess, it only takes one thing to go wrong and then we are shrouded in nuclear winter or enduring the desert of the real, while it will take incredible diplomacy and cooperation to make everything go right, so that we break through the next hard ceiling and propel ourselves into a phenomenal future . . . I'm rooting for humanity to do it, but I'm not sure we've got it in us, but if we don't succeed, there's always the hope that some other life form-- cockroaches? rats?-- will step up to the plate and eventually swing for the fences . . . anyway, this is a must read, but when you get bored of the ancient Chinese history, skip a bit brother, and get to the conclusion (which a good hundred pages in itself).