Jeff Madrick's book Seven Bad Ideas: How Mainstream Economists Have Damaged America and the World pits Keynesian economics-- the idea that markets can be extremely erratic and inefficient, especially in times of recession and/or economic chaos, and so active and aggressive financial policy decisions are essential and important-- against the ideas of Milton Friedman (and what those ideas have evolved into . . . a moralistic narrow-minded worship of the beauty and unerring accuracy of the Invisible Hand, free markets, and EMT) and while Madrick keeps it fairly intellectual-- this is not an easy read and certainly not a polemic, it's a point-by-point academic debunking and dismissal of much of what mainstream economists pass for fact (if you want something in this vein that is a little more entertaining, I recommend the writing of Ha Joon Chang) and while you might get bogged down in the chapters about Say's Law and the mathematics of inflation, it's still easy enough to read between the lines and realize how much economic conservatives-- and this includes Bill Clinton-- have fucked things up, by thinking that the abstract elegance of the Invisible Hand means that the axiom (mentioned once by Adam Smith) is the absolute be-all-end all in economics, some universal truth like the Golden Rule (and we all know that Golden Rule has a loophole-- which is analogous to economics because it deals with irrationality-- you should do unto others as you would have done unto you . . . unless you love a good knife fight . . . if you love a good knife fight and wake up each morning hoping, praying to get into a knife fight, for no reason at all other than you love violence and blood and honing your boot knife and so-- since you love knife fighting-- you do this unto others that you meet, assuming they would love a good knife fight as well, most people would say that's a flaw in the Golden Rule and you're totally irrational . . . it's the same with economics: it would be lovely if markets and people within them were totally rational and all wanted the same thing and had the same information and motivation, but that's not how it works, people move in herds, they panic, they operate without perfect information, in markets that aren't large enough to be statistically accurate, etcetera, etcetera) and the important thing to remember is that economics is NOT math and it has a moral component . . . it has a real effect on people's lives and there are no commandments from on high-- even if they're from the IMF-- that are universally right . . . you'll need to read the book to get the fine points but near the end Madrick summarizes things:
"Economies of scale, the growth of trade, the availability of natural resources, educational attainment, the quality of financial institutions, military spending, the rise of wages, the establishment of unions, welfare programs, the optimism of a people, varieties of attitudes toward materialism, the sense of community, marriage and families, the broadening of freedom-- these are major factors contributing to growth and it is hard to separate one from another . . . there are no adequate universal theories of growth because the nature of growth on a country-by-country basis and over time is too individual and involves too many factors . . this does not stop economists from insisting on a scientific-like one-note explanation of growth"
and so those who propose orthodox supply-side EMT free market economics in the face of every problem-- whether it be a moral, philosophical, sociological, or psychological-- are "profoundly responsible" for what has happened to the American economy and need to realize that these simplistic models are only hypothetical, and have very little empirical factuality . . . this is a must read for politicians and free market advocates, and if our leaders and legislators could be a little more open-minded and creative about economic policy and reform (this can happen, even in the face of lobbyists . . . New Jersey just completely reformed it's corrupt bail system) and realize that markets occasionally work but they are not some universal truth inscribed on a tablet, they are just another economic game with rules and regulations and consequences and incentives, and just like any game, the rules can be massaged and adjusted and outright changed to allow fairer play and better results for all participants and other outcomes . . . football did it with the forward pass (and then pass interference and quarterback protection rules etc. and look at all the scoring) and basketball introduced the three-pointer so that little guys like Stephen Curry could profit as well as big men . . . economics can adapt the same mentality, if people can get beyond this universal acceptance of orthodoxy . . . it ain't religion, it's money.
Kids and Sports . . . Highs, Lows and Digressive In-Betweens
This was supposed to be yesterday's sentence but after coaching soccer in extreme heat and humidity last night, my brain melted out of my head . . . so here it is, better late than never: my younger son Ian and I have been playing a lot of tennis lately-- all spring and summer-- and to make sure I taught him everything correctly, we watched a lot of YouTube videos on proper technique; this helped both of our games, and we've been improving in lockstep, hitting and serving better and better-- and my older son Alex comes out and plays occasionally, and he's quite good but just didn't practice enough to keep up with Ian (who was has been near obsessed with it) and both boys and their friend have been attending tennis camp this week, it's run by Ed Ransom, a trainer of some repute around here, and he took one look at Ian and moved him into the highest group and when my wife picked up the kids he asked her who Ian's private instructor was and said he was really talented and my wife told him that Ian's private instructor was his dad (Dad of the Year! this is a high point in the story . . . I was so proud that I had taught Ian to play tennis correctly) and for the next few days, Ian was the talk of the camp-- I was getting texts from other parents about how Ed had talked to them about this young phenom and it turned out to be Ian-- when I took my turn picking up the kids on Wednesday, Ed told me that Ian really had a talent and it needed to be "cultivated" and I told him we played all the time-- I was cultivating the hell out of it-- but he was also a soccer star and a pretty good basketball player and Ed frowned and said that Ian was going to have to choose and that he couldn't play everything or his talent would be "diluted" and I scoffed at this because I'm a big proponent of playing different sports in different seasons-- you make new friends, develop new skills, and don't burn out-- and so we went home and the kids rested, it was insanely hot, and then we headed to the high school gym (no A/C) for our summer basketball league, I help coach with my friend John-- a great basketball player-- and both boys play; tonight was supposed to be just seventh and eighth graders playing, but the other team had two ninth graders, so we matched them with two of ours, which made for a wide variety of body types on the court . . . Ian is heading into seventh grade and weighs 80 pounds and he stepped in front of a pass and grabbed it from a two hundred pound ninth grader-- a giant flabby kid who could play hoops but hadn't grown into his body yet-- and the kid toppled over on Ian, landing on Ian's ankle and knee and Ian's leg bent backwards and I thought something was broken (this happened to another one of our players in the winter and he was in a cast for a couple of months) and Ian was crying and clutching his leg and I had to carry him off the court to the bench and while nothing was broken, he had hyperextended his knee and couldn't walk and I had to carry him to the car after the game and now I had a stomachache and Ed Ransom's words were ringing in my ears-- this was crazy to try to play every sport . . . maybe Ian needed to focus, though he just turned twelve and hadn't hit puberty yet-- and maybe coaching soccer and basketball, and also trying to train tennis was making me crazy as well . . . but the boys finished watching Unbreakable and then went to bed and some of David Dunn must have rubbed off on Ian, because he woke up the next morning and though his knee was a little sore, he was fine, a rubber band, and he went off to tennis camp with barely a limp, which got me a little choked up, because sports stories where the scrappy little underdog prevails always do (I was crying like a baby the other day at the end of the Netflix series GLOW, if you haven't seen it, it's a wonderful show . . . empowering and athletic and funny and moving-- the total opposite of The Handmaid's Tale, which is just brutal) and I'm not sure what the future will bring, maybe some private lessons for Ian-- but he definitely wants to pursue some serious tennis instruction . . . or maybe I'll just keep watching videos and cultivate him . . . and we also have my brother as a resource-- he played tennis in college and he's still quite good . . . he hit with Ian last Sunday and he was really impressed, and though he only mentioned it once, I think he was impressed with the improvement in my game as well . . . so this is a double underdog story, because while I was a serviceable tennis player, I'm not an expert, but I think I can figure it out . . . anyway, I'm hoping to get Alex out with Ian a lot more, we've got courts right by our house and if the two of them start really playing together, they could end up like Serena and Venus, and I'm also still hoping that they can prove Ed Ransom wrong, and excel at several sports because while tennis is awesome, it's a lonely game, and doesn't compare to the fun and drama of soccer, basketball, and professional wrestling.
Something to Look Forward To
The right to free speech contains its inverse-- inside of itself-- and so it will eventually collapse, like a black hole, sucking in everything good and just and logical, destroying that information and spewing it out the other end, scrambled and worthless.
The Test 92: Letters of Recommendation?
This week on The Test, Cunningham winds us up and lets us go . . . see if you can keep up; as a bonus, Dave hashes out some immigration policy, Cunningham begins with a bang, and Stacey suggest something filthy.
Nerds Unite!
I drove down the block this morning to toss the cardboard into the recycling bin, and a number of folks-- mainly Asian-- were sitting on the corner, phones in hand, staring up the giant hill, and so after I tossed my cardboard over the fence into the bin (the gate is never open) I asked them if something exciting was about to happen; I assumed someone was going to longboard down the giant hill and do a trick, as I had seen skaters doing this from time to time, but an Asian girl said, "Yes, but on our phones" and she explained that a rare Pokemon had shown up in this location, but it was going to take a large number of people to "take it down" and as she told me this another person drove up and got out of his car, and then I took off, so I don't know if they got enough people or not, but if you see a random group of nerds, waiting around anxiously, they're probably not waiting for a partial eclipse or birdwatching, they are most likely assembling in reality to defeat something virtual.
The Victorian Age: Unbuttoned and Muddy
On nearly every page of The Essex Serpent, a dense and lengthy novel by Sarah Perry, ideas clash-- but in the civilized manner of the late-Victorian age, in fact, much of the weightiest discourse takes place by letter; science and faith; myth and reality; love and friendship; the monstrous and the absurd; city life and country living; politics and society; feminism and the male hegemony; poverty and wealth; sickness and vitality; medicine and quackery; etcetera, etcetera . . . and all this juxtaposition is couched in the language of the time period, so it's not exactly a beach read, but the prose is beautiful and gothic, and picks up in pace later in the story . . . many of the events are based on real happenings of the the time, and Perry lays her sources bare at the end; this book will change your view of the 1880s (if you had one) as it paints a picture of a world just on the edge of modernity, one boot in the 20th century and the other pulling out of the sucking mud of antiquity.
I Drink Your Milkshake!
If the world were a fairer place, when you beat someone younger than you at tennis (or in a fistfight or armwrestling or any other one-on-one physical challenge) then you would swap ages with them . . . you'd suck up all their youthful energies and become instantly younger and they would assume the burden of your years and become instantly older (and we're talking about consenting adults here-- no chucking an infant out on the court and whacking balls at them).
Ham-handed Dilemma (in Honor of Alec)
Is it wrong to pretend to be friends with someone solely because he smokes (and distributes) his own bacon?
It's Summer! Make Your Kids Watch Movies!
My kids and I don't watch much TV during the school year, but now that it's summer, we are making up for lost time-- and I'm very lucky to have two excellent (and captive) movie watchers . . . one of the great joys of fatherhood is forcing my kids to watch films that I want to see; and the rule is, if you don't want to watch what dad has chosen, then go read a fucking book . . . here's a few of the things we've watched lately:
1) Song of the Sea . . . 2D and proud of it, a little slow, but visually stunning;
2) American Werewolf in London . . . best pub scene ever at The Slaughtered Lamb, a lot of awkward seventies nudity, and if they had just listened and stayed off the moors . . . a great movie and streams for free on Amazon Prime;
3) Caddyshack . . . still holds up and my kids loved it as both a comedy and a sports movie-- the dialogue is a lot weirder than you remember, especially Chevy Chase's seventies mystical guru bullshit . . . Bill Murray is often incomprehensible, and may have been drunk/stoned during production;
4) Goodfellas . . . this is one of my favorites and the kids really appreciated the dialogue and the lesson . . . Alex said in school they told him not to do drugs, but he though a better approach would have been to simply show the last twenty minutes of Goodfellas, the deathly pale Ray Liotta having paranoid freak-outs while being chased by helicopters, and the class would have gotten it more clearly;
5) The Shawshank Redemption . . . Ian sat silently during the entire film and then at the end turned to me, astonished, and said, "That was a great movie!"
6) Saving Private Ryan . . . this one struck a chord with Ian as well, making him want to watch another war movie, and we realized you can stream this film on Amazon . . .
7) Apocalypse Now . . . I was really impressed that my kids dug this movie, it's long and trippy and slow at times-- although punctuated with some of the greatest scenes of violence and horror ever filmed-- I hadn't watched it in a long time and forgot how astounding it is-- you couldn't make a movie like that today: slightly plotless, surreal and psychedelic, chock full of stars, and tragically abject at the end . . . the boys were riveted, even during the interminably long and weird Kurtz portion . . . warning though, animals ARE harmed during the production of this movie, especially a water buffalo . . .
8) 30 Rock . . . we all love this show and it's a great thing to watch right after you finish Apocalypse Now, in order to wind down and not have nightmares;
9) Raising Arizona . . . kids loved this one as well, especially the fight between John Goodman and Nicholas Cage in the trailer home, and Randall "Tex" Cobb as Leonard Smalls;
10) Poltergeist . . . fairly scary, especially the clown, and very important for kids to see, so they understand jokes about building houses on top of ancient Indian burial grounds.
1) Song of the Sea . . . 2D and proud of it, a little slow, but visually stunning;
2) American Werewolf in London . . . best pub scene ever at The Slaughtered Lamb, a lot of awkward seventies nudity, and if they had just listened and stayed off the moors . . . a great movie and streams for free on Amazon Prime;
3) Caddyshack . . . still holds up and my kids loved it as both a comedy and a sports movie-- the dialogue is a lot weirder than you remember, especially Chevy Chase's seventies mystical guru bullshit . . . Bill Murray is often incomprehensible, and may have been drunk/stoned during production;
4) Goodfellas . . . this is one of my favorites and the kids really appreciated the dialogue and the lesson . . . Alex said in school they told him not to do drugs, but he though a better approach would have been to simply show the last twenty minutes of Goodfellas, the deathly pale Ray Liotta having paranoid freak-outs while being chased by helicopters, and the class would have gotten it more clearly;
5) The Shawshank Redemption . . . Ian sat silently during the entire film and then at the end turned to me, astonished, and said, "That was a great movie!"
6) Saving Private Ryan . . . this one struck a chord with Ian as well, making him want to watch another war movie, and we realized you can stream this film on Amazon . . .
7) Apocalypse Now . . . I was really impressed that my kids dug this movie, it's long and trippy and slow at times-- although punctuated with some of the greatest scenes of violence and horror ever filmed-- I hadn't watched it in a long time and forgot how astounding it is-- you couldn't make a movie like that today: slightly plotless, surreal and psychedelic, chock full of stars, and tragically abject at the end . . . the boys were riveted, even during the interminably long and weird Kurtz portion . . . warning though, animals ARE harmed during the production of this movie, especially a water buffalo . . .
8) 30 Rock . . . we all love this show and it's a great thing to watch right after you finish Apocalypse Now, in order to wind down and not have nightmares;
9) Raising Arizona . . . kids loved this one as well, especially the fight between John Goodman and Nicholas Cage in the trailer home, and Randall "Tex" Cobb as Leonard Smalls;
10) Poltergeist . . . fairly scary, especially the clown, and very important for kids to see, so they understand jokes about building houses on top of ancient Indian burial grounds.
Freedom?
In the spirit of Independence Day, I cut the cord on our cable and home phone; we now only have Verizon FIOS internet-- they're sending us a prepaid shipping box so we can mail back the set-top cable receiver, so no more weird fees to "rent" that stupid thing (no taxation without representation!) and they are also sending us a new router . . . at first the lady on the phone wanted to charge me 84.99 a month for internet, but once I mentioned the opposing deal from Optimum, she "noticed" that if I signed up for two years, it would be 44.99 a month--- and that's it, no fees or anything-- I think I now need to get a digital antennae for local stations (apparently there are more than you think) and I'm a little hazy about the rest-- I'm still a Verizon customer, so I can login to ESPN3 and other channels-- and in place of the home-phone, I used Google Voice and got a Google Phone Number . . . yesterday I actually called my son and the computer in the kitchen "rang" and he answered the call . . . and he was able to reciprocate and call my cell from the computer with Google Voice . . . to celebrate the new digital revolution, we watched Apocalypse Now last night, it's streaming for free on Amazon if you have Prime.
The Test 91: Looking Through the Looking Glass (Menagerie)
Another brilliant and creative quiz from Stacey on this week's episode of The Test, but this time-- as I've always suspected-- she didn't think of the idea herself . . . you'll understand once you navigate the steep and thorny path through seven ethical dilemmas-- with an added layer of mental gymnastics-- plus, as a bonus, listen all the way until the end to hear us laugh and laugh at Cunningham's anguish.
Trump and Scott Pruitt Want to Contaminate Our Precious Bodily Fluids
If you're worried about the state of our nation, forget about the tweets and the faux-Time magazine covers and the Russia investigation and the posturing with North Korea . . . the Trump administration is dismantling the Waters of United States Rule, which extended the EPA's authority to regulate large bodies of water, such as the Chesapeake Bay and the waterways, streams, and wetlands that flow into these bodies of water . . . this is also called The Stream Protection Rule, and it fleshes out the laws that prevent mining companies from doing "material damage" to the waterways and streams, and it took many, many years to enact . . . fifteen, in fact; Scott Pruitt-- Trump's pro-coal nutjob EPA administrator-- just signed a proposal to rescind the rule, and return the power in these pollution issues back to the states, which makes no logical sense, because waterways do not observe state borders (nor can water be gerrymandered) and if you're upstream-- whether you're a farmer or a miner or work in some other industry-- then you can pollute away, and let the state downstream worry about it . . . and if we've learned anything from Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, the best way to start World War III is to taint our fresh pure water, which we need to replenish our precious bodily fluids, so that we can engage in the physical act of love without a loss of essence.
Parallel Gluttony with a Dash of Surrealism
Friday, I got home from my four hour workshop on how to teach the Rutgers Composition class, ate some lunch and crawled into bed for a nap-- I was all tuckered out from Thursday night . . . we took a tour of the Cypress Brewery-- which involved much sampling of the wares-- then went to the pub (I dropped a dart on my foot and, unfortunately, I was wearing sandals, there was some blood) and then ate a bacon cheeseburger and some fries at White Rose . . . an epic evening for middle-aged men-- meanwhile, as I slept through the afternoon, my kids and their friend Tibby were out on the town, determined to spend their allowance; they walked all the way to White Rose for lunch-- which is quite a haul, especially in the heat-- and on the way they found a wallet in the street, and they looked inside and ascertained the address of the owner from her ID . . . she lived on the North Side, by the Middle School, and she also happened to be a little person (dwarf also seems to be okay when describing someone very short, but the "midget" is politically incorrect) and they decided they should return the wallet to the little lady, but first they would follow a rule of thumb very close to my heart: Eat first, then do a good deed . . . so they ate their burgers, then walked across town and delivered the wallet back to the little lady, who Ian described as very kind and thankful, but slightly witch-like, with a boil on her nose and some green cupcake batter on the side of her face . . . and she was so pleased with the return of her wallet that she gave the boys a twenty dollar reward, and they applied another commonly used heuristic to that situation: Found Money? Spend That Cheddar! and so the three of them went straight to Baskin Robbins and spent twenty dollars on ice cream (they ordered elaborate sundaes that sounded more like bowls of candy with a dollop of ice cream tossed in for good measure) and then, to finish the adventure, they went to the comic book store . . . so a gluttonous twenty-four hour cycle for all the males in my household, but while I needed a nap to recover, Alex and Ian said they had no ill effects from throwing a shit-ton of ice cream and candy on top of a greasy burger and fries . . . the joys of youth.
Drinking and Tossing
Playing cornhole without beer feels a bit childish-- especially if you're playing with other adults-- you quickly realize that you're just tossing around beanbags in public (we learned this lesson at the Stress Factory, the local comedy club . . . they have cornhole outside and you can play while you wait to get in, and while the hostess insisted we'd be able to get beer out there while we waited, that was patently false . . . cornhole was fun at first, but then, without beer, the realization dawned on us what we were doing; at least with horseshoes, if you don't pay attention, you can get a concussion).
The Intrepid Adventures of Dave's Headphone Wire
I was about to go for a run, wearing my headphones, the cord dangling-- I hadn't attached the headphone jack to my phone yet-- when I realized needed to change my underwear from boxers to boxer-briefs, to avoid chafing, and during the underwear exchange, while I was pulling them up, the headphone cord fell into the briefs, and then-- propelled upward by the new underwear-- ended up threaded between my thigh and right testicle, the final six inches of the cord looping back upwards and wedged right between the crack in my ass . . . so my only option was to pull the cord back to daylight, flossing my nether regions, hoping the metal jack didn't lodge itself anywhere sensitive, and while everything worked out fine and the cord didn't sustain any permanent olfactory damage-- I checked-- I'll be a little more careful the next time it's hanging loose, now that I know the potential hazards.
Inside Out is a Great Movie But . . .
Lisa Feldman Barrett's new book How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain is psychologically groundbreaking-- it upends intuition, debunks, assumptions, and overturns the classic way psychologists and laypeople alike view emotions-- you should read it, but if you don't feel like wading through (and I had trouble, I often had to read paragraphs over and over again) here are a few highlights:
1) your brain makes a model of the world through prediction and correction, and if things don't work then the brain tries to construct a new prediction to resolve errors;
2) therefore you don't have set emotional circuitry, that you share with all other people . . . so Inside Out isn't all that accurate;
3) your upbringing, your culture, your genetics, all your experiences and stimulus and all sorts of other things influence these models and predictions, so no emotion is the same;
4) some cultures and people lack emotions that other cultures and people possess . . . and knowledge of these emotions and granular analysis of common emotions can cause people to experience emotions differently . . . just knowing the word for a particular emotion, such as schadenfreude, can cause someone to have that emotion;
5) emotions aren't triggered, they are constructed;
6) there is no battle between the logical, conscious brain and the emotional "side" of the brain-- the brain isn't cerebral rationality wrapped around primitive emotional response circuitry;
7) we are neither blank slates nor hardwired circuitry, though this is the caricature of each position;
8) our "body budget" has a profound impact on how we view the world, so sometimes emotions are the result of lack of sleep, lack of food, or lack of exercise;
9) your memories are "highly vulnerable to reshaping by your current circumstances";
10) mental inferences about emotion are often wrong, and facial expressions are not hard-wired or indicative of much . . . behaviorism is not a great predictor of emotion;
11) at the core we feel valence and affect . . . we feel aroused or calm, and we feel pleasant or unpleasant . . . the rest can be determined by a number of factors;
12) we have more control over our emotions that previously thought-- which appeals to the conservatives: you are responsible for your actions, but-- and this appeals to the liberals-- culture and experience literally create our prediction models, so emotions are more relative than universal;
13) "the dividing line between culture and biology is porous";
14) this revision from essentialist emotions to a more interoceptive model will probably be considered equally primitive in 100 years;
anyway, if you read this book and The Nurture Assumption by Judith Harris, you'll have a whole new view of psychology, which might make you feel liberated or ignorant or empowered or pedantic or-- if you're reading this stuff on a couch in a supine position-- sleepy.
1) your brain makes a model of the world through prediction and correction, and if things don't work then the brain tries to construct a new prediction to resolve errors;
2) therefore you don't have set emotional circuitry, that you share with all other people . . . so Inside Out isn't all that accurate;
3) your upbringing, your culture, your genetics, all your experiences and stimulus and all sorts of other things influence these models and predictions, so no emotion is the same;
4) some cultures and people lack emotions that other cultures and people possess . . . and knowledge of these emotions and granular analysis of common emotions can cause people to experience emotions differently . . . just knowing the word for a particular emotion, such as schadenfreude, can cause someone to have that emotion;
5) emotions aren't triggered, they are constructed;
6) there is no battle between the logical, conscious brain and the emotional "side" of the brain-- the brain isn't cerebral rationality wrapped around primitive emotional response circuitry;
7) we are neither blank slates nor hardwired circuitry, though this is the caricature of each position;
8) our "body budget" has a profound impact on how we view the world, so sometimes emotions are the result of lack of sleep, lack of food, or lack of exercise;
9) your memories are "highly vulnerable to reshaping by your current circumstances";
10) mental inferences about emotion are often wrong, and facial expressions are not hard-wired or indicative of much . . . behaviorism is not a great predictor of emotion;
11) at the core we feel valence and affect . . . we feel aroused or calm, and we feel pleasant or unpleasant . . . the rest can be determined by a number of factors;
12) we have more control over our emotions that previously thought-- which appeals to the conservatives: you are responsible for your actions, but-- and this appeals to the liberals-- culture and experience literally create our prediction models, so emotions are more relative than universal;
13) "the dividing line between culture and biology is porous";
14) this revision from essentialist emotions to a more interoceptive model will probably be considered equally primitive in 100 years;
anyway, if you read this book and The Nurture Assumption by Judith Harris, you'll have a whole new view of psychology, which might make you feel liberated or ignorant or empowered or pedantic or-- if you're reading this stuff on a couch in a supine position-- sleepy.
It's Got to be the Water
Yesterday, I bought my first ever "growler" of beer, from a local brewery a couple miles from my house; Cypress Brewing Company is located down a bosky side street in an industrial park in Edison, New Jersey, amidst auto body shops and computer firms, near the community college, and while I didn't ask, I'm fairly sure that the brewers use the flavorful and pungent waters from the Lower Raritan Watershed . . . despite this hurdle, several prominent beer drinkers (Ashley, Connell and Alec) agreed that the beer is delicious-- the Knobbed Whelk Amber Ale specifically-- and I will definitely visit this diamond-in-the industrial-park soon to refill my growler (four dollars to buy the 64 oz growler and twelve dollars to fill it with beer).
The Test 90: Consume This
This week on The Test, I quiz the ladies (including special guest Little Allie Hogan) on all the various things we consume; the numbers are weird, wild, and wonderful, and -- if you're a modern American-- a little embarrassing . . . there's also an erotic reading and a cannibalistic interlude (and the audio quality is fantastic . . . no more sounding like this guy!)
Dave Fixes His Car! With Tape!
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| Before |
If you've been following my life lately (which you should) then you know that I tore a hole in the side panel of my Toyota Sienna; I caught the lip of a guardrail while trying to squeeze out of a tiny parking lot adjacent to the Landing Lane Bridge (and I was in this lot for good reason: I was going for a run with the dog on the towpath, and this lot has the quickest access to the path . . . if you park in the lot on the other side of the bridge, in Johnson Park, then you have to walk across the bridge and the bridge walkway is covered with glass shards, so I was worried about my dog's paws) but I got some Auto Body Repair Tape (eleven dollars on Amazon) and my van is as good as new.
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| After! |
On the Nature Front, Tough Losses, Strange Gains
Sadly, the baby dove that my two sons were trying to resuscitate back to life died yesterday-- they were hand-feeding it, Brooks-style, and kept it alive for a couple weeks before it succumbed to the anti-stork, but despite the end result, I was proud of their efforts, they cooperated in a noble fashion-- one holding the bird and gently opening the beak, the other squeezing a concoction of minced chicken baby food (feeding chicken to a dove, yuck) and baby cereal out of the corner of a plastic bag . . . and today while walking the dog, Ian found a new addition to the family-- not exactly a replacement for the bird, but another nature project . . . it seems he found a small meteorite at the park, and it has passed a few of the internet litmus tests-- it made the right color streak, it's very heavy, it looks like a meteorite, and it's attracted to magnets-- but we'll have to take it to a real geologist to be certain of the origin.
This Happened? In America? Less Than 100 Years Ago? Yikes
David Grann's book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI is a tough story in more ways than one; it's a detailed account of two dozen (or possibly more) murders of Osage Indians, who relocated from the Cherokee territory in south Kansas (the ending point for many tribes after enduring the Trail of Tears) to a hardscrabble land of rocks and hills in Oklahoma because they thought the white man would never bother them in such lonely wicked country . . . but once oil was discovered under the Osage land, the white man came in droves, the Osage got filthy rich with headrights to the Osage Mineral Estate, and the atrocities followed one after another-- many of the murders masterminded by William King Hale-- who took advantage of the fact that some of the Osage married outside the family . . . it's impossible to summarize the rest, as the book has a huge cast of characters and also delves into the birth of the FBI, the methods of J. Edgar Hoover, and the storied biography of Tom White, who eventually ran Leavenworth Prison, and while the plot might be a bit byzantine for beach reading, the images of the richest Indians in America-- riding in chauffeured limousines to pow-wows, flying private planes to campfires, and sending their children to the finest European boarding schools, while still being under the corrupt auspice of government guardians and managers-- and these same Indians falling prey to a compromised criminal justice system, while being fleeced and often killed by number of greedy and conniving white men, with the lure of black gold looming in the Oklahoma hills, this all makes for an epic and embarrassing story from recent American history, and there's some new findings at the end, that Grann uncovered in his copious research-- so while this book isn't as fun as The Lost City of Z, it's much more significant, and in the end you will agree that-- as God told Cain-- "the blood cries out from the ground."
Dave is Never Too Old to Learn Stuff (but He'll Never Have a Nice Car)
I went for a run with the dog this morning on the towpath (the narrow park between the Raritan River and the Delaware and Raritan Canal) and I learned several valuable lessons:
1) if you are several miles out on the towpath, and your dog poops, and you bag the poop and then put a plastic bag filled with poop in your pocket (because the canal is a watershed, so you don't want to leave poop near it) and you then run several miles, you'll forget you have poop in your pocket (it cools down) and you'll eventually stick your hand in your pocket to see what's in there-- luckily I tied the bag shut, so I didn't end up with a hand full of poop (although I did smell the bag, in the name of science, and despite the fact that the poop is sequestered inside plastic, it still smells like poop);
2) it's not worth parking in the tiny Landing Lane lot, right next to the towpath, because it's an extremely sharp turn out of the lot and there is always traffic on the other side of the road . . . I cut it a little too sharp and caught the lip of the guard rail and tore a hole in my van . . . I'm going to attempt to fix this hole with some auto body repair tape-- ten bucks on Amazon-- which leads us to lesson number three . . .
3) I am a terrible car owner-- fans of this blog know the stories of my infamous Jeep Cherokee, and I am doling out the same kind of abuse to my Toyota Sienna . . . when it comes to cars, I just can't have nice things.
The Test 89: Music From the Past (for the Future)
Another clever thematic music quiz from Stacey this week on The Test . . . so listen to the song clips, identify the artists, contemplate the lyrics, compile the clues, and then-- in the timeless style of Archimedes-- jump out of the tub, shout "Eureka!" and run through the streets, buck-naked and dripping wet, proclaiming your answer . . . only to find it is wrong (and you are without clothing, in public).
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.
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).
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.
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).
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.
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).
Is Sloth Contagious?
Senior-cut-day has infected my brains and robbed me of my initiative . . . hopefully we'll all be back in gear tomorrow.
Dave Embraces the Future
In honor of finally finishing Why the West Rules-- for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future, a monstrous tome of massive erudition by Ian Morris that I purchased over two years ago on my Kindle, I embraced the culture that will probably supersede our own (if there's not a nuclear apocalypse first) and after a truly epic Sunday-- I played pick-up soccer in the morning, then built a gate for our fence, then coached a soccer game, then went kayaking in a tiny kayak that I barely fit into and which spun in circles if I didn't paddle with perfect synchronicity (difficult to do while drinking a beer) then switched out of the aforementioned kayak because my legs were cramping up inside the tiny hull, and attempted to stand-up on a very small paddle board, designed for folks 150 pounds or less, toppled into Farrington Lake several times, finally got my balance and stood up and slowly paddled it back to the put in, navigating a stiff breeze with the tail end of the paddle board underwater-- so when I got home I was cold and wet and really really hungry and Cat and I decided to go to Chef Tan, the fairly new upscale authentic Chinese place right in town, so I could scarf some food down; we've been several times before and so we got some of our favorites: the Dan Dan noodles-- which come in a spicy peanut sauce with minced pork; the scallion pancakes; the dumplings-- homemade and crispy; and then we decided to try something new . . . Minced Pork with Mustard Greens, a heaping plate of chopped greens and tender lean pork chunks, but very spicy, just loaded with chopped skinny red hot peppers, and Catherine ate a reasonable amount and then waved the white flag and admitted defeat but I was really hungry-- I had an epic day!-- so I soldiered on, until my lips were numb and my nose was running and I couldn't take another bite . . . but it was so tasty and there was that weird amount left on the plate-- too little to take home but too much to leave-- so I finished it . . . and my stomach was pretty beat up this morning, along with the rest of my body because of my epic Sunday, and so I decided to go to the Chinese massage place in town, where I had once told the proprietress that "strong" was fine, and so now every time I go there, she does it a little stronger, and I'm not sure if this is authentic and I'm embracing the culture, or if the chef at Chef Tan and this lady are just giving me a taste of future Chinese domination, but either way, I'm preparing myself.
Butt Dial Plus
Thursday night at the bar, I had to confirm to a friend that I had butt-dialed him, and he sent back a text that said, "I thought I heard your ass" and while I assume he was speaking metaphorically, I had consumed a fair amount of beer, so he might not have been speaking metaphorically . . . and even if he hadn't literally heard my ass, and was only joking, I am sure there has been-- at some point in the history of cellular phoning-- a flatulent butt-dial, and that is wonderful.
Watching the Matrix Inside the Matrix
We were watching The Matrix last week in my senior composition class, and we had already covered the philosophical implications of the film: we connected early scenes to Plato and Camus (The Allegory of the Cave and "The Myth of Sisyphus") and so all we had left to discuss was the ending, when conflict and drama inside and outside the matrix build in masterful intertwined lock-step . . . Neo appears to be dead in the simulation, the sentinels have breached the hovercraft, Morpheus is about to detonate the EMP, and Trinity finally uses her oracular knowledge and some tongue to resolve things; this is when I used my brilliant analogy-- and analogy almost as brilliant as Plato's cave . . . I explained that the final structure is analogous to when they are in class-- the matrix-- pushing the rock and trying to live and succeed in the false reality of academia, and their cell-phone is buzzing, bring them information and messages from the real world, the world outside the matrix-like environment of school, the world which they desperately want to learn about and enter . . . but they're not supposed to be using their cell-phones in the school, they're supposed to ignore the outside world, stay inside the cave and focus on the shadows on the walls, but they want to graduate and see the light and fly around in the sky with cool sunglasses to awesome heavy techno music (and they're going to be sorely disappointed).
Ballsy Bootlegger
When we got home from soccer practice last night, Catherine greeted Ian with the statement: "I found something in your bookbag" and Ian immediately went with the classic contraband trope-- he threw his friend under the bus and said, "I was just holding it for X so he didn't get in trouble with his parents" and I said, "Okay, no problem, we'll just call X's parents and straighten it all out" and after a moment of reflection, he walked over to my wife and told her the two giant bags of gummy candy were his-- he had bought them at Rite-Aid-- and, after the usual web of lies, he finally admitted they were just for his own gluttonous consumption-- so we confiscated the bag, gave him the perfunctory lecture about sugar-- we had just been to the dentist the day before!-- and then I advised him that if he had just bought a little bag of candy, consumed it, and threw away the evidence, no one would have been the wiser, but three pounds of candy was rather excessive-- dealer level weight-- and then we thought we were in the clear with parenting dilemmas, as the long weekend was almost upon us, but today Ian used his green hair paint to spray a giant pair of green genitals in the boy's locker room (the frank and the beans) and he not only had to clean the school locker rooms but he also did a bunch of manual labor around the house to atone for his profane vandalism . . . I guess I shouldn't have let him watch Superbad last weekend (although he did nice job weeding and mulching . . . not that I want him to get in trouble, but it is a big help with the chores when he does).
Manchesters Fictitious and Real
Although it is well-acted, impeccably structured, and beautifully filmed, watching Manchester by the Sea is about as much fun as following the Manchester Ariana Grande bombing . . . but since Manchester by the Sea didn't actually happen, why put yourself through unnecessary tragedy?
Did I Finish This Book?
If you're a fan of big data, breezy writing, fun facts and sex and sex and sex and sex, then you'll certainly enjoy Seth Stephens-Davidowitz's new book Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are . . . his theories and information are extracted from the digital confessional, the place where people are the most honest, the place where people think no one else is listening . . . he studied massive troves of Google and Pornhub searches; here are some of the things you'll learn about:
1) how racist America really is . . . and where the racists live (closer than you think)
2) the truth about Freudian slips and phallic dream imagery (neither means shit)
3) the six most popular story structures (as determined by an algorithm)
4) why 99 percent of teenagers who reported having artificial limbs on academic surveys were pulling the researchers' legs (pun provided by Dave!)
5) why parents wonder if their son is a genius and their daughter is overweight;
6) why were not as polarized as we think (Stormfront users love the NY Times)
7) how we are lying about how much we want to judge and keep up with our friends, how much we care where and how products are produced, how much we want to watch midgets having sex with porn stars, and how much we want to learn about political policy;
8) how most people are overestimating the amount of sex they are having per week (male and female estimations don't add up, and even more damning, the condom sales don't add up)
9) the ethics of using all this data . . . we don't want to end up like Minority Report, with precogs predicting crimes before they happen and then pre-crime units preemptively abrogating people's rights-- or . . . if we could avert something like the recent Manchester bombing . . . maybe we do;
10) why non-fiction conclusions don't matter (most people don't finish non-fiction books).
1) how racist America really is . . . and where the racists live (closer than you think)
2) the truth about Freudian slips and phallic dream imagery (neither means shit)
3) the six most popular story structures (as determined by an algorithm)
4) why 99 percent of teenagers who reported having artificial limbs on academic surveys were pulling the researchers' legs (pun provided by Dave!)
5) why parents wonder if their son is a genius and their daughter is overweight;
6) why were not as polarized as we think (Stormfront users love the NY Times)
7) how we are lying about how much we want to judge and keep up with our friends, how much we care where and how products are produced, how much we want to watch midgets having sex with porn stars, and how much we want to learn about political policy;
8) how most people are overestimating the amount of sex they are having per week (male and female estimations don't add up, and even more damning, the condom sales don't add up)
9) the ethics of using all this data . . . we don't want to end up like Minority Report, with precogs predicting crimes before they happen and then pre-crime units preemptively abrogating people's rights-- or . . . if we could avert something like the recent Manchester bombing . . . maybe we do;
10) why non-fiction conclusions don't matter (most people don't finish non-fiction books).
Decisions in Basketball Have No Bearing on Decisions in Life
Pick-up basketball night is all about making quick decisions with the ball, and my son Alex is certainly getting better at that-- he made a couple of nice outlet passes and is getting better at catching and shooting the ball in one motion-- but his decision making off the court has improved not so much . . . before we left for the gym he was hungry so he put a bunch of cereal in his pocket, so he could eat it when necessary-- and when my wife and I questioned the rationality of this strategy, he told us: "these are clean shorts!" and when he got home, he filled a cup with cereal and milk, and went into the living room while drinking his concoction-- and he's got terrible allergies right now-- so he ended up choking and spitting cereal and milk all over the place (and he's got poison ivy on his face because he fell in a bush during Nerf wars and he also nearly asphyxiated at his soccer game on Sunday because his allergies were so bad-- we had to take him at half-time and the doctor gave him a steroid shot-- not that he can control his allergies . . . but he's quite the thirteen year old trainwreck right now).
The Test 87: Brothers From Another Mother
Another brilliant and creative test idea from Stacey this week, and she thought of it all by herself . . . without the help of a man . . . astounding; first you'll have to endure our tales of curing cancer and Cunningham's perplexity about a disgusting mystery of the human body, but this is a sun-dazed episode the whole family will enjoy (and kids might perform better than adults) so give it a shot, keep score, and see how you fare.
Applying the Bard to the Beautiful Game
We had a low turnout for this morning's travel soccer game in Flemington; we were missing several key players and had only one substitute-- who was not only sick, but had a sore quad from Saturday's game-- and we were playing a team with several big, fast players and an eleven year old goalie the size of an adult (he could punt the ball nearly the length of the field and he caught everything cleanly) and we were down 1 - 0 at the half so I paraphrased Shakespeare's St. Crispin's Day speech from Henry V to inspire them: I began with the mathematical division of glory . . . the fewer the players, the greater the share of honor, and then reminded them that they had showed up and and if they did something remarkable then those players who were not in attendance "should think themselves accursed they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap" and then my very tired crew went out for the second half and immediately gave up a goal, so we were down 2 - 0 and things looked hopeless, and then they got inspired by something-- whether it was my speech we'll never know-- but they came back and tied the game and came damned close to winning it . . . if it wasn't for that giant goalie, but it was certainly a David vs. Goliath performance . . . the other team had eighteen players and we had nine and a half, and I was very proud of their effort.
It's Saturday and It's Raining . . . Again
Last week one of my students said, "It rains every weekend" and I pedantically pointed out how irrational her logic was-- how the weather does not possess consciousness and can't possibly be aware of what day of the week it is-- although it is Saturday and it's raining again, and we have a soccer game and I need to build a new gate for our fence and my wife is getting soaked at a bike rodeo and so my evidence may be anecdotal and also suspect to confirmation bias, but I'm starting to believe her.
R.I.P Grunge
I am usually unmoved by celebrity deaths but Chris Cornell's death is more symbolic . . . grunge is now truly dead: Cornell joins Kurt Cobain, Scott Weiland, and Layne Staley-- and while I've seen the meme about protecting Eddie Vedder at all costs, as he is the last remaining frontman of grunge, I never considered Pearl Jam a real grunge band, they're more of a pop act and most of their songs annoy me-- anyway, the age of grunge was the last time I could listen to pop radio and enjoy it (my friends and I saw Soundgarden and Circus of Power in Asbury Park in the late 80s-- the Louder Than Love tour-- and it was as billed, so LOUD, we couldn't hear for days afterwards and in a few short years grunge was everywhere-- Nirvana was ubiquitous and in 1993, the fantastic, extemporaneous and acoustic Alice in Chains album "Jar of Flies" reached number one on the charts . . . signifying something awesome about that time period . . .Dave was 23 and Kim Thayil said, in some interview in a guitar magazine, "It doesn't matter if you're playing a major or a minor chord when your sound is this loud and distorted" and all that is over now, especially for me, as I can't take loudness these days and if grunge resurfaced I wouldn't be able to tolerate it).
The Sixth Grade Scoop
I'll warn you at the start, this is hot stuff, salacious even, so put on your oven mitts and handle it with care: last night my son Ian and I went to the sushi place for dinner together-- Catherine and Alex went to the Asian place a few doors down-- so it was just me and my younger son, a sixth grader who is 11 going on 12, and while usually his older brother Alex dominates the conversation, this situation gave Ian a chance to air some things that were baffling him . . . he mentioned the fact that some people in his grade were "going out" and that "these things usually didn't last long, only a week or so" and that his buddy "wasn't doing that well" because he had a fight with his girlfriend, and so I asked him what they were fighting about and he said, "Shoes" and so I pressed him and he explained,"You know, if his shoes were cool or not" and I said that sometimes women cared about fashion-- that wasn't uncommon-- and Ian said the consensus among the sixth graders was that girls are "a complicated species"-- he used those exact words-- and I said that was certainly true, and he said that kids are also using the term "third wheel" for someone who is hanging around a couple, trying to get in on the action, they called it "third wheeling" and I said that isn't so uncommon either, and sometimes it's okay to be the third wheel and sometimes it isn't and then he said that his friend had "hugged his girlfriend when he was over her house' and her parents brought the hammer down and banned all hugging and hand-holding and Ian said he was not interested in partaking in any of this stuff in any way, shape, or form and I told him that was fine and that he had plenty of time before he needed to get involved with the "complicated species."
That's Recycling!
I haven't put together a will and last testament yet, so this sentence is going to have to suffice: when I die, I want to have a sky burial . . . I had never heard of this practice until yesterday, when a student of mine who had been to Tibet and seen it firsthand described it-- apparently, after you die they drag your corpse up onto a mountain, put you on a slab of stone, and let the scavenging birds eat you, so that your immortal soul and your decomposing flesh get to fly around in the sky for a while (and then get defecated back to earth, I suppose) and this environmentally friendly, chemical and flame free burial really appeals to me . . . if you want to see a video-- and warning, it is very gross, click here-- otherwise, when I shuffle off this mortal coil, someone needs to make this happen (and if you do, you can have my CD collection).
Thucydides Saw It Coming . . .
The South China Sea may end up being a battle between the submarines and the "slum encampments on stilts," between China and the rest-- and American Cold War dominance, relatively simplistic national game theory, will "likely have to pass . . . a more anxious complicated world awaits us" a world where, according to Thucydides, the real cause of the Peloponnesian War was the build-up of Athenian sea power, which made Sparta very nervous . . . so read Robert Kaplan and try to sort out Asia's Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific . . . you're going to have to understand the Law of the Sea and how it applies to land masses and the nine-dashed line, and how we should react to the nine-dashed line and the domestic politics that the countries affected by the nine-dashed line (Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, The Philippines, China, etc) and how they will react to our reactions and so on . . . the book may make you throw your liberal ideals out the window and start thinking in Realpolitik terms like Kissinger and it will certainly make you aware of the complexity that is modern southeast Asia (plus it has a few good maps at the start of the book, which I needed to look at constantly . . . there's a lot of countries and islands packed into a small area!)
Rationalize This
The home mortgage income deduction: a ridiculous subsidy to upper middle class and rich folks that will probably never go away because upper middle class and rich folks-- myself included-- will bend over backwards to rationalize it (although Britain managed to phase theirs out over a twenty year period).
The Test 86: Movies in Five (That's Three Sir)
This week on The Test, Stacey presents a brilliant set of cinematic puzzles, but despite the high quality of the quiz, a peeing dog, low batteries, and my newfound psychic abilities send this bad boy into uncharted waters.
Dave Uses the Scientific Method
Thursday night, I was offensively flatulent, and I blamed this-- by process of elimination-- on something in the taco meat; Friday, my wife and kids took off on an overnight band trip, leaving me alone in the house with the dog, and so after going to happy hour with some teachers at Bar Louie (at the mall . . . absurd) where I only drank Guinness, which never gives me gas, I decided to conduct an experiment and finish the leftover meat and see if my intuition was correct . . . and it was . . . something in that meat-- perhaps extra garlic in the spice packet?-- wreaked havoc on my stomach, and due to my inspired scientific zeal and endeavor, I am now close to certain that my hypothesis was correct (and my gassiness has subsided and my wife and kids won't be home until 7 PM so the only people to experience discomfort because of this experiment were me and the dog).
Adrian McKinty Does It Again
Mercury tilt bombs, Castle Carrickfergus, Jimmy Savile, the Troubles, Belfast, Coronation Road, atrocious scandals, a locked room murder, copious pints of beer, plenty of illicit substances, Steve Reich and other obscure minimalist music . . . this all adds up to another excellent Sean Duffy crime novel: Rain Dogs.
Robert Kaplan: More Analogies!
When my wife and I lived in Syria, it made sense for me to read a lot of Robert Kaplan: Balkan Ghosts, An Empire in Wilderness, The Coming Anarchy, Arabists, The Ends of the Earth . . . then we returned stateside, bought a house, had children, and our travels to exotic overseas locales ended . . . as did my obsession with the most literary of geopolitical analysts-- because reading Robert Kaplan takes a lot of concentration, it's not like breezing through a Thomas Friedman book-- but just because I forgot about Robert Kaplan, doesn't mean he stopped writing, and I've decided to catch up: I picked up Asia's Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific in a used bookstore in Vermont and I'm wading through it, trying to sort out analogies like this: "Whereas Hanoi is Vietnam's Ankara, Saigon is Vietnam's Istanbul."
Deer Beer Diary . . .
The lady at the beer store in Ludlow said I should start a beer diary so I could better remember what I like . . . but Gary Taubes told me beer contains quite a bit of sugar, in the form of maltose, and apparently sugar is the enemy-- which makes me very sad-- but now I understand why I gained eight pounds over spring break in Vermont . . . anyway, here are some of the beers I sampled, the remains of which are still hanging about my midriff:
Idletyme Joy and Laughter . . . delicious;
Fiddlehead IPA . . . hoppy and delicious;
Trout River Rainbow Red Ale . . . smooth and delicious;
Farnham Red Ale . . . even better than the Trout River;
Terrapin HI-5 . . . typical;
Idletyme Zog's American Pale Ale . . . another good one;
Uncanny Valley Burlington Beer Company . . . weird cloudy grapefruit juice;
Whetstone Big 'stoner . . . awesome;
Whetstone Down South . . . way too smoky;
Whetstone Off the Rails . . . black but not heavy;
Farnham Double India Pale Ale 78 . . . a better version of the Uncanny Valley cloudy grapefruit juice;
Miller64 . . . nope.
Idletyme Joy and Laughter . . . delicious;
Fiddlehead IPA . . . hoppy and delicious;
Trout River Rainbow Red Ale . . . smooth and delicious;
Farnham Red Ale . . . even better than the Trout River;
Terrapin HI-5 . . . typical;
Idletyme Zog's American Pale Ale . . . another good one;
Uncanny Valley Burlington Beer Company . . . weird cloudy grapefruit juice;
Whetstone Big 'stoner . . . awesome;
Whetstone Down South . . . way too smoky;
Whetstone Off the Rails . . . black but not heavy;
Farnham Double India Pale Ale 78 . . . a better version of the Uncanny Valley cloudy grapefruit juice;
Miller64 . . . nope.
The Enemy is Delicious
Fat is fine, but that's the only good news: the enemy is everywhere, and the enemy is addictive and the enemy is sugar . . . if you want to know why, then listen to the new Sam Harris podcast (but it might be better if you didn't).
The Miracle of the Missing ID
Friday when I got home from work, I unloaded the car-- beer and ice for our Cinco de Mayo party-- and then I took off my windbreaker and noticed that I was still wearing my school ID lanyard . . . but there was no school ID attached to the metal loop-- my ID had fallen off somewhere between school and home-- so I checked the house and my car, but no luck . . . and then Cunningham and Stacey arrived, to do the podcast, so I had to end my search (and I was pretty upset-- we had to sign our life away for this thing, because it's also an electronic card key, and I didn't know if I needed to tell someone at the school that I lost the card, since now anyone who found it could get into the building and I had just gotten in trouble for another security breach: I propped a door open with a chair so i didn't have to keep opening it for late-in seniors) and so an hour later when I received a phone call from the lady at Buy-Rite Liquor, informing me that someone had found my ID on the sidewalk outside the store, I was overjoyed (and told her so, and also might have recounted most of this sentence to her, which my wife and the ladies found very amusing . . . they told me I gave her way too much information, but I was just trying to explain how appreciative I was for the call).
The Gastro-Inevitable
I thought this batch of jalapeno infused tequila I whipped up for Cinco de Mayo was fairly mild (and it was certainly milder than this first attempt) and while some folks at the party disagreed, people liked it enough to finish the bottle . . . which made me think I should step it up the next time-- I can't be making spicy tequila that people can actually consume without clutching their throats and spitting up mucous . . . the only problem is that my stomach thought the mild stuff was more than spicy enough, and no matter how good it tastes, your stomach still has to deal with it later . . . and my stomach is getting old and fed up with stupid shenanigans like that.
Drones: Miniature Paranoia
1990s paranoia was all about unmarked helicopters-- they loomed, they surveilled, they indicated the presence of a mysterious authority-- but you could run from them and you could hide from them . . . Goodfellas and The X-Files come to mind-- but the 2010s are all about the drones: constant, persistent, ubiquitous . . . and there's nowhere to hide; the surveillance and paranoia are constant, so much so that we are inured to it.
Thank You, Stupid Meat Brain
I can't find a specific name for this logical fallacy, but I'm sure you'll understand what I'm talking about: sometimes people desire variety simply for the sake of variety without a perfectly logical rationale . . . and while this is illogical, there's no question that our stupid meat brains fall for this trick time after time-- this is the irrationality that causes trends in fashion and the 24 hour news cycle and the allure of social media . . . everyone knows that they should just buy some quality clothes that will last a lifetime, read Brothers Karamazov instead of an endless slew of stupid tweets, and stop following the daily political morass . . . but we enjoy the constant change, the shiny allure of the new . . . and while I think this is cognitive glitch is generally a swirling time suck, an environmental disaster, and a recipe for prodigality, I will descend from my high horse and admit that sometimes this desire for variety can be beneficial; Pitchfork, the arrogant, judgey, annoyingly opinionated and generally spot-on music site named the David Bowie/Brian Eno collaboration "Low" as the number one album of the 1970s and when I stumbled upon this last week, at first I found the pronouncement to be fairly humorous and completely absurd-- could this album really be better than Led Zeppelin IV and Exile on Main Street and London Calling and Dark Side of the Moon?-- could it even best Ziggy Stardust?-- but despite the silliness of the choice, the probably underserved number one position convinced me to listen to the album and I love it . . . I've been listening to it on repeat for a week straight; it's full of moody instrumentals that combine funk guitar and bass with ethereal synth washes (and limited saxophone, thank goodness) and when Bowie does sing, the lyrics are spare and ambiguous . . . sometimes the album feels like the soundtrack to Lord of the Rings; apparently this is Bowie in detox, after all the excess and abuse, and while I don't think it's genuinely better than Exile and Dark Side, I've played those albums out and would have no problem never listening to them again, so this variety-for-variety's-sake logical fallacy, while an obnoxious move by a hipster critic, got me listening to something I would never have discovered otherwise . . . so thanks Pitchfork, you giant douchebag and thank you stupid meat brain, for falling for this rather obvious cognitive ruse..
Let's Get Ready to (Logically) Bumble!
In honor of logical fallacy week here at SoD, I oversimplified things yesterday and I'm going to make an unfounded, imprecise analogy today: my generation's JFK moment was February 11, 1990 . . . when undefeated heavy-weight champion Mike Tyson lost to underdog Buster Douglas; I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news (the third floor of my fraternity house) and the absolute shock and disbelief that accompanied this information . . . my perception was forever altered: I now understood that nothing was certain, nothing was deserved, and the future was a wicked morass of variability and change.
Operation . . . for Realsies
I hope you are enjoying vintage commercial/logical fallacy week here at Sentence of Dave, and I will begin this episode with an example of an excellent analogy: Saturday morning, I was about to leave the dog park with Sirius, and I noticed something bulbous beneath his eye-- a dog tick had attached itself to his lower eyelid-- so we hurried home and when I entered the house, I called to my wife: "Catherine? Can you get the tweezers? We're going to play Operation . . . for real" and the next sequence was perfectly analogous the old board game, except the punishment for a miscue wouldn't be a buzzing red light, it would be a one-eyed dog; I held Sirius steady, and after a couple of tentative failed attempts, Catherine nabbed the tick (without damaging the dog's eye) and then I found an old commercial for the game and showed it to my kids-- as I was so proud of my analogy-- and there's a really weird logical leap in the first moments of the ad, when the mom overhears her children say the word "operation" . . . she immediately assumes they are vivisecting the family dog . . . so my question is: what happened in the past to make her think this is the case?
The Straw Ham Argument
In my composition class we're reviewing common logical fallacies, which helped me finally put my finger on the exact reason this commercial (above) has been bothering me for over thirty years-- the wacky uncle hard selling the A-1 uses the "straw man argument" to convince his nephew to use steak sauce on his burger; first, he creates a hollow and idiotic premise (no one actually believes a hamburger is chopped ham) and then he knocks down this moronic argument (of his own invention) with apparent ease . . . a hamburger isn't chopped ham . . . no, it's chopped steak! . . . but, of course, there's no mention of what a hamburger really is: cheap beef parts, laced with E. Coli and salmonella, minced and padded out with pink slime . . . the whole thing goes down so quickly that the rest of the family never questions the uncle's slick (but ham-handed) rhetoric.
The Test 85: Going with the Flow
Please join us this week for a very special episode of The Test . . . I promise you mysteries and surprises, the revelation of a new superpower, and a whole lot more . . . a whole lot more.
Quest for Pizza . . . The Best Tomato Pie?
Alex had a game out in West Windsor today, so we got pizza from DeLorenzo's in Robbinsville . . . it is supposed to be the best "tomato pie" in New Jersey and while I've never had a tomato pie before, so I've nothing with which to compare it, it's damn good stuff: crispy, thin, chewy crust; sweet and delicious sauce, and light on the cheese (which is under the tomato sauce and condiments).
Am I Dave?
I am nearly finished with Dan Chaon's novel Await Your Reply-- which Jonathan Franzen calls "the essential identify-theft novel"-- and while I won't spoil anything about the plot, other than to say the book is suspenseful and thrilling and illuminating on identity-theft, I will share this Anais Nin quote that makes it's way into the consciousness of one of the characters:
We see things not as they are, but as we are . . . because the "I" behind the "eye" does the seeing
and I'd also like to note that no one has written the essential "Romeo and Juliet" of cell-phone courtship yet.
We see things not as they are, but as we are . . . because the "I" behind the "eye" does the seeing
and I'd also like to note that no one has written the essential "Romeo and Juliet" of cell-phone courtship yet.
Happy BYCTWD! Sort of . . .
Happy Bring Your Child to Work Day . . . or, as we like to call it, Happy Bring Your Child to Work Day Because He Got Suspended From School For Two Days For Getting in a Fight in Gym Class and So My Wife Is Taking Him to Her Elementary School for the Day So He Can Do Manual Labor and Tutoring to Punish Him For His Stupid Decisions Day.
False Advertising or Just Desserts?
When I pulled onto Woodbridge Avenue on my way home from work today, I noticed that the Honda CRV in front of me sported a vanity plate that read "QT JILL" and so when I passed the car, I glanced over-- because I wanted to check out this Jill and determine if she possessed enough cuteness to warrant a celebratory license plate-- but the driver was a middle-aged Indian man with a plaid shirt and thick glasses . . . I assume he's either abducted QT JILL, borrowed her car, or has an amazing sense of humor and dreamed up the best vanity plate prank ever.
Extra Life
I finished Tom Bissell's book Extra Lives today and the last chapter-- a meditation on a short period of his life when he was addicted to the combination of cocaine and Grand Theft Auto IV-- is worth the price of admission; I liked the rest of the book, and honestly felt that maybe, by eschewing video games, I had missed something valuable in the last twenty-five years, but while Bissell finally boils his love of gaming down to the fact that he cherishes these in-game experiences, real experiences, visceral and like no other, they are experiences that take a tremendous amount of time, and this time must be spent at the expense of other things-- athletics, music, literature, family, sleep, sex, podcasts, etcetera-- and while I missed out on the actual adventure of GTA IV, I got to read about it, which was fairly exhilarating and slightly bizarre, and instead of spending 80 plus hours investigating the world, I got to hear about it secondhand, without giving up my own life . . . but perhaps when I near retirement, when my body breaks down but my mind craves excitement and adventure, perhaps then, when I take up golf again (another time consuming habit from my youth) I will also take up serious gaming, and perhaps by then, video games will be regarded as high art, like the graphic novel as compared to the comic book.
Cromulent?
I'm halfway through Tom Bissell's critical analysis of the aesthetics, rhetoric, and narrative structure of modern epic video games, Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter, and it's pretty weird to read about all these games I've never played (I stopped playing video games after I conquered Road Rash on the Sega Genesis . . . although I do enjoy an occasional game of MarioKart 8 on the WiiU with my kids) and it was even weirder to stumble upon the word "cromulent" in the book, a word which sounds both made-up and vaguely familiar . . . and that is exactly how it is supposed to sound.
The Test 84: The Six Degrees of Canine Flatulence
This week on The Test, we explore the limits of human cognition, i.e. if it's possible for three people asphyxiating from dog farts to make random connection between various celebrities . . . it's a very special episode, starring Vin Diesel as Jesus Christ and everyone else as themselves; check it out, keep score, and see how you fare (although to truly replicate the testing environment, you'd need to stuff yourself into a tiny room full of methane filtered through the anus of a terrier).
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