I read the book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness way back in 2009 and-- like much of rational liberal America, I decided I was a "libertarian paternalist" and bought in-- this was a kinder gentler time in politics, the years of hope and economic recovery from the subprime economic crisis-- which seemed to be a technical crisis more than anything, based on technocratic choices and rules gone wrong-- and now it seemed if we got those technocratic rules right, then solutions and progress could be made by smart little tweaks to choice architecture-- technocratic solutions instead of partisan political chaos and conflict-- but after listening to Mike Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri revisit this book and all the "nudge-like" ideas on their fantastic podcast If Books Could Kill, I realize-- like Mike Hobbes-- I bought into something very silly-- and so I have changed my mind-- especially since the main anecdote supposed to hammer home their thesis is not true-- changing organ donation box default from opting in to opting out does NOT greatly affect the organ transplant system of a nation-- Spain has best organ donation program because of the structural system they put into place-- and when Mike and peter break down, debunk, run the numbers, and point out the illogic and in the rest of the nudge-like examples-- then none of them work or seem to even fit the description of a gentle choice architecture nudge-- aside from the one very simple example-- putting the desserts below eye level in a cafeteria line and promoting fruits and vegetables to a better placement promotes slightly healthier eating-- more telling examples are things like "we know how to fix gay marriage . . . just make ALL marriages a private legal affair-- so essentially burn down the institution of marriage instead of letting gay people take part in it" and "we know the problem with healthcare-- let people opt out of litigation if care goes wrong and then it will be cheaper because all these lawsuits are what's wrong with the US healthcare system" . . . so just downright stupid stuff that I was probably too sleepy to parse back then (because I had two very young children) and in part two of the episode, they really dive deep and point out that co-author Cass Sunstein ended up riding this "nudge" wave to a government position on the creepy Reagan-created Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, an office designed to sit on regulations and block regulations and essentially murder people in a slow methodical deliberate bureaucratic manner-- a real detriment to Obama's legacy and technocratic slow walking of anything against big business-- check out what happened to silica regulations under Sunstein's reign; co-author Richard Thaler kind of rescinded his ideas about the ubiquitous wonder of nudging, realizing that many nudges were scams-- and we are surrounded by scams in America-- and when it comes down to it, the nudges just never seemed to be neutral-- anyway, listen to both parts of the podcast, wonderful and funny and logical and eye-opening-- but the only scary thing is this kind of breakdown makes me not want to read these fun non-fiction books anymore because they play so fast and loose with facts and numbers, and these books have to fill pages with stuff that won't hold up to academic scrutiny-- and I'm not doing academic research in the fifteen minutes before I drift into REM sleep at night so I can succumb to these ideas quite easily (as can entire administrations of the US government . . . and many other governments, who formed "nudge units").
Artificial Intelligence Does My Job . . . and More! So Much More . . .
Yesterday in Public Speaking class, a student asked if AI could grade an essay and I said "sure it can" and then I took his speech-- which was in an incipient stage (read lousy) and I asked Bard (Google AI) to grade it (as Chat GPT is blocked at our school) and Bard said a bunch of nice things about this fairly lousy informative speech about the student's five favorite animals-- so then I asked Bard to grade it like an old angry English teacher and I got some better results-- Bard said it was disappointed with the student because the speech was disorganized and had grammatical mistakes-- and then I had a stroke of genius and asked Bard to grade the essay like "Al Pacino in Scarface" and Bard said "this thing is a D . . . a D" and then there was a parenthetical that said "points gun at student" and I was like "wow, this thing is getting serious and pretty fucked up" and then I had Bard grade the essay like The Dude from the Big Lebowski and Bard basically said, "I'm not going to judge this, man, but I like what you're going for" and I told my Creative Writing class about this today and they were having a field day with it . . . someone had Bard grade their story by a "drunken Joseph Stalin" who called the piece of writing " a disgrace to Russia" and said the student should be "taken outside and executed."
Tennis Tennis Tennis Tennis
We finished out the regular tennis season with a couple of wins over Colonia and Bound Brook and now we just have to wait and see what happens with the state tournament brackets-- it was nice to play a small Group I school like us today, just so my players could remember we're pretty good at tennis-- we beat Bound Brook soundly and Ian actually won quickly at first singles (6-0, 6-0) which was a nice treat for him-- to get on and off the court quickly-- because every other match this season has been brutal-- he played well yesterday against a good player but lost the first set in a tiebreaker, after a very long bus ride to Colonia because there was a truck on fire on Route 1 . . . anyway, the real season starts next week for us, with the single elimination State Tourney-- and it's going to be a real roll of the die determining who we face in the first few rounds.
We Defy Augury . . . Hamlet Style
Tennis season has really slowed down my podcasting output-- I am becoming downright Hamlet-like in my indecisiveness and aversion to action, but I managed to squeak out a new episode (although you might want to wait a day or two to listen because I forgot to include an audio clip so if I get motivated I'll wedge it in somewhere . . . one of the great things about podcasting is that you can go back and revise your audio for an episode) and one of the reasons I took so long is that this episode tackles some very complicated topics about belief, the morality of whistleblowing, and the existence of Deep State surveillance; it's called "Reality Loser" and it is based on thoughts (loosely) inspired by Kerry Howley's book Bottoms Up and The Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State and Jeff Sharlet's book The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War.
Last Period Ideas
The last 82-minute block is brutal to teach-- especially when you're trying to educate fourth-quarter seniors, but we did come up with a few good ideas today:
1. when a student suggested I get a funny Shakespeare t-shirt (we're doing Hamlet) I said, "I don't wear t-shirts with funny stuff on them . . . I'm the funny one, not the t-shirt" and then we decided that "I'm the funny one, not the t-shirt" would make a great novelty t-shirt;
2. we also decided that words that sound opposite to what they mean-- like "restive" which means fidgety and "enervate" which means to drain energy-- should be banned from the English language.
GMC Monday
Yikes, quite a long GMC Tourney Monday-- we left the school at 7:45 AM (because Jakob was late) but there was no traffic so we made it down to Veteran's Park in Mercer County in record time-- all of our players won their prelim matches (a superset to eight) including-- notably-- Ethan Chen against another HP kid (Jack Shannon, who goes to a magnet school) and my son Ian against a kid from New Brunswick coached by Highland Park alum Felix Rojas-- so some fun small world stuff-- and then Ian advanced another round because the four seed (Edison Academy) dropped due to a hamstring pull and then he was dismissed by an excellent player from J.P. Stevens and our second doubles team also advanced to the second round- Theo and Akhul played the longest possible tournament match you could play, losing the first set in a tiebreaker, then wining the second set 7-5 and then winning the 10 point tiebreaker 10-8 . . . so they got to play the Monroe second doubles team-- a powerhouse school-- but they avoided the double bagel and lost 6-1, 6-1 . . . though they were very very tired-- a fun day had by all . . . nine hours of tennis (the only major error was that I forgot to bring the vinegar and oil for the Tastee Subs we bought last night).
Real Friday Continued . . .
So . . . I finally had a real Friday without tennis and I certainly made use of it (to the chagrin of Saturday) because after happy hour with the ladies at B2 Bistro, I headed home and Catherine and I went to our friends' house for some drinks and corn-hole . . . first corn-hole of the season!-- and we had a good time-- especially since our friends' 23 year old daughter Liz played-- she's a great athlete and very competitive so I took great joy in kicking her butt-- but the drinking continued for a while, along with some gossip, which I will not repeat-- but it led to a walk, led by the youngster, over to this party on our side of town-- and our goal was to crash the party-- really? it seems we're a bit old for that but we were fairly hammered and while Ann and Craig turned back at the last possible moment, they saw their daughter walk in and decided they'd hightail it home, but Liz saw her friend tending bar at the shindig-- a vast and very well-stocked bar-- and Catherine and I wandered in with Liz and got some drinks from her friend-- who we also knew-- and then we saw some people we knew and integrated ourselves into the crowd and then eventually we met the host-- who Catherine had some connection with so we were not asked to leave-- plus I think everyone was drunk-- and then we did some dancing? and then we wandered home-- where I passed out on the couch eating pizza-- and then the kids got home at some later time period and they said I didn't even rouse a bit when they walked in and out of the living room, turned the lights on, etc etc . . . so quite a real Friday but a very fuzzy, uneventful, and unreal Saturday-- I'm too old for that kind of nonsense.
Sandwich Choice
Apparently, if your wife makes you a sandwich for lunch-- especially if she very rarely makes your lunch-- and then you go to work and your boss has purchased a spread of really really good sandwiches from the Italian deli in Middlesex (Sapore) and you make an executive decision and eat the better sandwich (actually sandwiches, I had two) then you should throw away the sandwich your wife made and never tell her you didn't eat it-- this is what my wife suggested when I told her the truth about the sandwiches-- as she was rightfully annoyed that she made lunch for me and I didn't eat it . . . next time I will prevaricate and dispose of the evidence of my sandwich infidelity.
A Real Friday!
After four tennis matches in a row-- Monday through Thursday-- we all took a much needed day off today . . . and I got up and played Friday morning 6:30 AM hoops-- the games were especially intense and I think my deep squatting stretching exercises paid off, as I felt fairly quick (and had to cover some young folks) and while my outside shot wasn't exactly on, it wasn't totally off either-- and then I covered PE class, so I had 15,000 steps by 10 AM . . . and then, as a rare treat, I got to attend happy hour with the ladies (and the ladies asked me last period if they thought working with so many women made me a better husband and I said, "absolutely" because I learn things like don't enumerate all the hard work you've accomplished in a day because ladies "don't need a fucking list" . . . which is upsetting because I love enumerating all the hard work I've done in a day, even if it's things like "I did my summative evaluation meeting AND I covered a half period and made fifty bucks!" because, as my wife pointed out, "EVERY teacher does a summative evaluation meeting, you're not special."
All Kinds of Shit
You may have seen this video where John Stewart lambastes Oklahoma State Senator Nathan Dahm about the hypocrisy of "protecting" children from "drag show readings" while not protecting children from the leading cause of death-- guns-- and while I certainly agree with his sentiment, this little clips are the problem with social media, polarization, and how discourse is conducted today-- because the real discussion is about what people value-- and obviously conservatives value the Second Amendment and the right for manly men (and women) to bear arms and protect their traditional families-- and that's fine-- and they value that more than they value the continuum of gender and sexuality-- but no one wants to come out and actually say what they value-- even though it's inherent in legislation-- for example, New Jersey (and a number of states) value the liberty to get stoned over the mental health of children-- because the legalization of marijuana, long overdue for many reasons, definitely solves one problem-- that of incarcerating people for an absurd crime, but it does cause another problem-- a ubiquitous flood medical grade marijuana products -- and the research shows that marijuana before the age of 24 (or more than twice a week after the age of 24) can have some serious consequences on mental health-- and cause anxiety, schizophrenia, and other mental disorders-- so people need to start having serious and measured conversations about the costs and benefits of what we value-- less rhetoric and more utilitarian logic-- and while I'm rambling, the other things we need to have serious conversations about are cell phones and social media-- there's a great new Shortwave podcast on the deleterious effects of this shit-- psychologists are starting to coordinate causal data about how social media for teens leads to depression, self-harm, suicide, anxiety, and loneliness-- and we need to think about large language model AI-- and I heard this basic premise on the Ezra Klein podcast-- how we might start valuing the product more than the process, especially in writing- when the process is where you figure out that you should be writing about a different topic or you see the holes in your logic-- while Chat GPT can produce a coherent piece of writing about any topic, it's a product more than a process-- and it's the process where we think, revise, create and grow-- the product is just the cognitive journey polished up a bit . . . it would be a shame to lose that.
Here's a Leak to Make You Freak
Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State by Kerry Howley is a book that will make you reflect on the power, pragmatism, risk, and reward of whistleblowing . . . of leaking some information for moral reasons-- the book focuses on Reality Winner and the document she leaked in order to show Americans that there really was Russian meddling in the 2016 election and the blowback from the Trump administration (and the use of the Espionage act) and the book has persuaded me that whistleblowing and leaking are just another check and balance of our government-- because the government (and corporations, of course) can engage in highly secretive and illegal activity that might need to see the light of day before it is unclassified-- and we need to remember these whistleblowers and the price they pay for releasing information-- and let's not forget Daniel Hale, either, who leaked information about the Obama administrations many errant drone strikes . . . while I'm not privy to any compelling government secrets, I did snap a couple of screenshots of this "Pest Issues" spreadsheet, which paints a vividly pestilent portrait of our rather dilapidated and porous school building (and perhaps this will encourage the town to pass the budget in order to build a new high school).
A Fun Wedding (Sort of)
My wife and I almost had a fun and relaxing time at my wife's niece's wedding yesterday afternoon . . . almost . . . the wedding was down the shore in Asbury Park at the Asbury Hotel and we were sleeping at my brother-in-law's house in Long Branch-- a beautiful spacious place with an ocean view (and we pretty much had the run of the place because Bob and Wendy were staying at the hotel-- father-of-the-bride stuff) and it was a beautiful day and we read our boys the riot act-- we wanted to have a relaxing time without incident-- Ian was supposed to help Alex move out of his dorm-- drive the minivan over and help him clean out his room- and then Ian was supposed to go to a sleepover and Alex was going to take care of the dog and then return to his dorm for the night-- but during the wedding service-- which was lovely and happening on the rooftop of the Asbury Hotel-- we got a call from Alex . . . he was getting some of his girlfriend's stuff on College Ave and then he needed to come over Landing Lane Bridge-- a skinny bridge full of traffic and he cut the turn too sharply and hit something on the edge of the bridge and popped the tire and so then he drove the van into the park on the flat tire and parked it but the spare was at home in the storage area-- we gave up on trying to get the spare back to where it belonged because the 2008 Toyota Minivan has the most inaccessible spare tire contraption known to man-- we've already had our problems with this thing-- and we had the spare in the back of the van for a while but then when tennis season started I removed it because it took up too much space-- and we didn't want Alex waiting forever in the park for roadside assistance so he walked back to his dorm and then biked home to take care of the dog-- which-- if he communicated with Ian-- he didn't need to do because Ian's sleepover was cancelled-- Ian was home and now going to a party around the block and we weren't all that happy about this development because we knew that party would be out-of-control and it seems it was-- but what could we do? we were down the beach . . . anyway, everyone survived their ordeals (although we're pretty sure Ian had too much to drink at this party) and the wedding was wonderful and the band was great-- so we had a good time, despite worrying about the kids and the state of the van-- and we rushed home in the morning, headed straight to the park, found the van, removed the warning ticket, managed to change the tire-- despite some very tight lug nuts (next time bring a rubber mallet!) and get the van to Mavis, where they replaced three of the tires but could not do the fourth because Alex bent the rim so badly that the car needs to go to an actual mechanic tomorrow to get that fixed-- so now we are driving it on the spare and hoping we can finish this project tomorrow (we did need new tires so this expedited that purchase -- yuck) and the moral is just because your kids are in college (or nearly in college) doesn't mean that they are smart.
Rain Redux Broom Dementia Redux
It's been raining all week at 3 PM . . . tennis got canceled earlier in the week but today I was able to sweep away the puddles with my big push broom and we were able to play the match-- but I left the fucking push broom at the courts again-- I am an idiot.
Million to One Shot, Doc . . .
Rainy Round Trip
Yesterday, we had an away match against JFK (Iselin) who slaughtered us 5-0 last time-- and we were scheduled to have four matches this week, so I told my players to treat the match like a practice and just work on one thing-- hitting backhand winners, drop shots, big first serves, whatever-- because I didn't want them to get worn out in a match we couldn't win-- my son Ian was playing an excellent player, maybe the best in our division (and the seven or eight seed in the county) so I made a point to not watch him because I tend to make faces that annoy him when he hits dopey shots-- and when I passed him by in the second set (which he was losing) all I said was "have fun, you're first serve looks great" and then I found out from the other coach that Ian had WON the first set 6-4 and meanwhile our third singles won because JFK was missing a player and second singles was doing well (doubles were getting smacked) and Ian lost the second set 6-3 (but he had never taken a set off this kid before) and then in the third Ian took the lead-- he was crushing his first serve-- so he was up 5-4 -- but he eventually lost 7-5 . . . he ran out of serves-- but still, a great outing for him-- first singles is no joke-- so he was very sore today for North Brunswick-- a match we could win-- but we took a ride over to my hometown and while it wasn't raining in Highland Park, it was raining in North Brunswick-- so we pulled up, I got out and chatted with the coach for a minute, and then we turned around and headed home . . . very annoying but you can't play tennis in the rain-- so now we have four matches in a row next week.
Hey Books . . . Stop Trying to be 100 gecs
I can't get a break lately with the mystery books I've been reading lately-- I'm done skewering books on my podcast (If Books Could Kill does a better job and I just want to read things that are smart-- I don't have the time and energy to debunk idiotic stuff) but I keep reading mysteries that turn into weird shitty sci-fi/horror/paranormal adventures (notably The Quiet Boy and The House Across the Lake) and not only is Adam Hamdy's The Other Side of Night a mystery gone wrong (that starts with typical mystery tropes, a tough female cop, dismissed from her job because no one witnessed a chase gone wrong-- but it wasn't her fault-- and she gets involved in a weird case because of a cryptic note in a library book, a possible suicide -- or possible death by misadventure, as they say in England-- and an abandoned child with a secret) but then turns into a shitty sci-fi novel with time travel and a total misunderstanding of the "block universe" theory-- the narrator, a physicist, writes "I embrace the block theory of the universe, because if time doesn't pass, if all moments exist simultaneously, my son and his love are out there right now, somewhere in the gathered multitude of moments"-- but obviously the author is NOT a physicist and normally I wouldn't have thought much of this sentence, just chalked it up to sci-fi mumbo jumbo, but I have been serendipitously listening to the new Sam Harris episode, which features a REAL physicist-- Tim Maudlin-- who explains some misunderstandings about this block universe theory- and the fact that time still passes within this theory and within this four dimensional space of the block-- all four dimensions means is that you need four coordinate points to locate an event-- the outlier being time-- and so I'm going to implore these genre writers to stop treating books like 100 gecs songs-- songs can mix genres easier than books because songs are shorter and you have less time to think about what's happening-- but if you have a moment to contemplate, then going from realistic crime fiction to ridiculous oversimplified time travel and sci-fi appears very silly and absurd.
Monday is the Day You Forget Shit
I keep a big push-broom in my car so that before tennis matches, I can sweep water and/or tree catkins (green fuzzy pollen shit) and samaras (helicopters) off the court-- I had to sweep quite a bit of tree debris today and then I put the broom in the corner and promptly forgot about it-- but one of the friendly adults who always plays on the courts once the match is finished reminded me to take the broom home and I thanked him for the reminder, and then in the midst of cleaning up all the other tennis equipment, I forgot the broom and I had to drive back to the park-- and then when I got home for the second time I noticed that my son Alex's glasses had arrived -- and his dorm is back in that direction but still, I'm not driving out there again.
gecs!
The Mysteries of Your Musical Taste . . . Part Two!