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 |    Not for the faint of art. |
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Complex Numbers A complex number is expressed in the standard form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers and i is defined by i^2 = -1 (that is, i is the square root of -1). For example, 3 + 2i is a complex number. The bi term is often referred to as an imaginary number (though this may be misleading, as it is no more "imaginary" than the symbolic abstractions we know as the "real" numbers). Thus, every complex number has a real part, a, and an imaginary part, bi. Complex numbers are often represented on a graph known as the "complex plane," where the horizontal axis represents the infinity of real numbers, and the vertical axis represents the infinity of imaginary numbers. Thus, each complex number has a unique representation on the complex plane: some closer to real; others, more imaginary. If a = b, the number is equal parts real and imaginary. Very simple transformations applied to numbers in the complex plane can lead to fractal structures of enormous intricacy and astonishing beauty. ![Merit Badge in Quill Award
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| Hey look, a midnight posting. Helps that it's only 9pm here. One oddity (of many) about the L.A. area is the prevalence of astronomy observatories here. By my count, there are at least three: Mount Wilson (from yesterday's blog), Palomar (which I understand is currently closed) and Griffith, which is kinda sorta near some place called Hollywood. That's where we went yesterday. Griffith, that is, not Hollywood. As an aside, y'all know I love movies. So, probably, you'd think I'd be interested in seeing the movie part of L.A. But I'm not. I mean, I wouldn't turn it down or anything, but it's way too touristy and kitschy for me. I'm happy to watch the movies back on the other coast and then do other stuff in L.A., which is, after all, a really large area with lots of other stuff to do, including the reason I travel in the first place (breweries). Still, I couldn't resist getting lots of pictures of the famous HOLLYWOOD sign from various points in Griffith Park. But the cool thing, to me, was the observatory itself. I don't think they do actual science there anymore, but the history is impressive, as is the building itself. They've converted it into a museum. One thing that struck me was seeing just how goddamned busy it was. Crowded, even. This usually annoys me; crowds just get in my way, even disregarding the whole germ-spreading thing. But then I thought about it for half a second (I hadn't started drinking yet, or it would have taken two or three seconds), and realized: here are people jamming into a monument to SCIENCE on a Sunday afternoon. Some of them might even learn some shit. Some of them might even decide to learn more shit later. If there is a later... After Griffith, then we went to breweries, which were of varying quality but overall had delicious beer. Consequently, I'm just drunk enough to post this, after finally receiving yesterday's damage report upon returning to my hotel room. Let us dance in style, let us dance for a while Heaven can wait, we're only watching the skies Hoping for the best but expecting the worst Are they gonna drop the bomb or not? Let us die young or let us live forever We don't have the power but we never say never Sitting in a sandpit, life is a short trip The music's for the sad men Can you imagine when this race is won Turn our golden faces into the sun Praising our leaders, we're getting in tune The music's played by the, the mad men Forever young, I want to be forever young Do you really want to live forever, forever and ever? Forever young, I want to be forever young Do you really want to live forever? Forever young Some are like water, some are like the heat Some are a melody and some are the beat Sooner or later, they all will be gone Why don't we stay young? It's so hard to get old without a cause I don't want to perish like a fading horse Youth's like diamonds in the sun And diamonds are forever So many adventures couldn't happen today So many songs we forgot to play So many dreams swinging out of the blue If we let them come true Forever young, I want to be forever young Do you really want to live forever, forever and ever? Forever young, I want to be forever young Do you really want to live forever, forever and ever? Forever young, I want to be forever young Do you really want to live forever? |
| Since I'm traveling, I'm just going to try to post some daily updates instead of the usual stuff. When I'm at home, it's rare that something happens that's worthy of blogging about for more than one or two sentences. Like maybe I'll see a movie, and then I deliberately do a one-sentence review. Of maybe my cat does something funny, but I don't want to waste space here on an image item so it's not something I can usually blog about. Anyway, so, yesterday, I drank. Okay, I know, big surprise. Another big surprise was that, after the major departure delay I've already discussed, both of the flights I took left on time and arrived early. This offended my sense of reality, because I was sure that something else was going to go wrong. It had to. Maybe, I thought as I waited by the baggage claim at LAX, maybe the airline sent my checked bag to Cleveland. I mean, this would suck, of course, but at least it would vindicate my view of the universe. But no, my bag was about the sixth one off the carousel. Several years ago, I flew out to Vegas. Similarly, I was waiting at baggage claim, figuring either my bag had taken a left turn to Albuquerque or fell off the carrier and was broiling on the hot McCarran tarmac. But no, behold, the very first bag off the conveyor was mine. "Well," I thought. "This will never happen again." So that's what I was thinking of when I pulled my suitcase off the baggage claim, because nothing else had gone wrong: "I was right. Mine wasn't the first bag off the belt." Anyway, I spend the rest of the day hanging out with NaNoNette  and her family. We went up to Mount Wilson Observatory, for starters, which won't mean much to you unless you're an astronomy nerd, but for us astronomy nerds, that place is a Pretty Big Deal in terms of the history of astronomy. For example, it holds the telescope that Edwin Hubble used to figure out that galaxies were galaxies and that the universe is expanding, which was one of the most massive paradigm shifts in the history of science.When we got back to L.A., then I drank. |
| Flight has been delayed until today, so I'm doing one more midnight entry... Don’t Be So Quick to Stereotype Generations  A new book shows how wrong-headed our assumptions are about different generations and promotes understanding and connection. Yes, it's a book promotion. As always, that's not going to stop me from posting it here, on a site for writers. We’ve all heard the stereotypes before. The Greatest Generation is “responsible and hard-working”; Baby Boomers are “selfish”; Gen Xers are “cynical and disaffected”; Millennials are “entitled and lazy”; Gen Zers are “civic-minded.” To be fair, I'm cynical and disaffected. Hell, whenever some article comes up about the war between Millennials and Boomers, I'm just glad Gen-X is overlooked. As has always been the case. But, while characterizing generations is a common practice, it’s often counterproductive, says Bobby Duffy, director of the Policy Institute at King’s College London and author of a new book, The Generation Myth: Why When You’re Born Matters Less Than You Think. Duffy argues that assigning cohorts of people particular traits misses the importance of outside factors affecting their attitudes and actions. Yes, important things like your sun and moon signs. Plus, it takes us down a fruitless path of pitting one generation against another, creating division. This is the part I have the biggest problem with. Don't we have enough artificial separators? Political leanings, sports team support, nationality, race? “Although it is possible to learn something invaluable about ourselves by studying generational dynamics, we will not learn these lessons from a mixture of manufactured conflicts and tiresome clichés.” I missed "invaluable" the other day when I was talking about words that seem to mean the opposite of what they do, but don't, the other day. "Invaluable" is like "inflammable," even though the "in-" has a different meaning for each: it's not a negation of the rest of the word. No, "invaluable" is basically a particularly intensive form of "valuable." A synonym is "indispensable," which is indeed an antonym of "dispensable." Another synonym is "priceless" which is the surprising opposite of "worthless." English is weird. But I digress. As a course corrective, Duffy provides longitudinal data on a multitude of issues—from obesity to views on pre-marital sex to car ownership and much more—showing how generations respond to different social, health, and economic trends. I can accept that there are differences between older and younger people. Always have been, probably will be until we wipe ourselves off the planet. The problem, as I see it, is taking those differences and assuming they apply to everyone. Let me provide a related example. Genetically, as I've noted before, I'm as Euro-American as one can be. Pale skin, blue eyes, light straight hair, etc. There's a common stereotype that white people, especially those born in the American midwest as I was, simply cannot abide any spice stronger than mayonnaise. This has led to me visiting, for example, a Thai restaurant, specifically ordering the highest spice level possible, and receiving the culinary equivalent of a few flakes of black pepper. As far as racist stereotypes go, I realize that's a tame one, but like I said, it's just an example, and one that hopefully doesn't start yet another war. Point is, by applying the "white people can't handle hot spice" stereotype to me, it misses the simple fact that I love me some really hot peppers. My favorite hot sauce is a habanero thing from Belize, and I've also been known to add ghost pepper to dishes. As an aside, the spice we know as "pepper" that's a staple on restaurant tables across the country (at least before people started worrying about fomites, which, as it turns out, isn't as big a deal as was first thought), isn't closely related to the vegetable fruit known as "pepper." They're not even from the same freaking continent. English is weird. Part of what drives generational stereotyping is uncertainty of the future and worry that our children will not do as well as we did in life, says Duffy. It is clear that, as a group, they will not. Which is one reason I've been so adamant against having kids myself: I saw the writing on the wall as early as 1980. In other words, our generational stereotypes of selfish Boomers and caring Gen Zers can be misleading. Plus, they can cause people to put too much faith in younger generations, thinking they will solve climate change rather than all of us stepping up to do something. You want to know how to solve climate change? Well, I've been saying for years that the obvious solution to global warming is nuclear winter. But seriously, though, climate change is human-caused, and making more humans is only going to make things worse. Another persistent myth—that Gen Xers and Millennials are lazier, more materialistic, and less willing to act responsibly than other generations—obscures more important changes that are happening in society. When you look through the data, it becomes clear these stereotypes are ignoring long-term trends in rising wealth inequality, income stagnation, the need for more (and more expensive) education to compete in today’s economy, and devastating market crashes. While it's true that I'm lazy and materialistic, that's one data point, and nothing can be learned from that concerning anyone except me. I did want to say one thing about "market crashes" though: my parents both lived through the Great Depression, and every market crash since then, including recent ones, have been peanuts compared to that. Also, at some point, the US stock market became disconnected from the general economy. I can't pinpoint exactly when that happened; I'm sure if you ask six economists, you'll get ten answers. To solve the problem, Duffy argues, we need to get away from blaming the victims and prioritize affordable housing and rent control for vulnerable young people. The housing thing is complex and those solutions are probably too simple, but they'd be a start. Of course, they're not going to happen. Another thing to consider as a partial solution is to stop stigmatizing living with others, as roommates or in an extended family situation. The latter has been pretty normal for most of human history, until at some point they decided that virtue meant going off on your own at 18 or so. My inner cynic (you know, about 95% of me) believes that this was pushed on us in order to boost the economy by selling more houses and building more apartment buildings. It was very effective; people still mock 40-year-olds who live with their parents, even if said adults are taking care of their elderly relatives. In any event, while it's a good thing to have and stick to a budget, no one today is going to be able to buy a house solely by foregoing their $5 Starsucks lattes in favor of making coffee at home. Take the current media frenzy over social media’s impacts on Gen Z. This follows a well-worn pattern: Each successive generation has found some kind of new media or technology to blame for the woes of youth, including books, radio, comics, TV, and now social media. I keep seeing bullshit about people stuck to their phones. When I was in high school, the moral panic was about Walkmans (Walkmen?) -- for my younger readers, it's the thing from Guardians of the Galaxy that Star-Lord always used (this, incidentally, was the most unbelievable part of that movie; a Walkman lasted, at best, two years, and a cassette tape had a lifespan of maybe ten). Older people had the same kind of complaints: "Kids these days and their headphones, tuning out the world around them." Now that the Walkman generation has become older, they're saying "Kids these days and their smartphones, tuning out the world around them." Incidentally, the "-phones" part of "headphones" and "smartphones" has a different meaning in each. English is weird. Anyway, I guess I'm more aligned with the younger people in that regard; there's no difference, to me, between talking to someone online and talking to someone in person -- though it is rude to do the former while also doing the latter. And being an introvert, I tend to limit both. Though stereotyping is wrong, Duffy does find actual generational differences in attitudes and behavior that might be instructive. For example, older generations attend religious services more regularly than younger generations, with each generation attending less often than the previous one. I consider this a good thing. With every successive generation, drinking alcohol has decreased, too—one of the most consistent cohort effects discussed in the book. I consider this a bad thing. All in all, if we want to make the world a better place and see thriving future generations, we need to get away from stereotyping and stop pitting generations against each other, which serves no one. Instead, we must find more ways to be together and connect, sharing the necessary work of making the world a better place for current and future generations. And one way to do that is to promote more connection on the internet -- preferably outside the boundaries of the cesspool that is social media. |
| It's been a while since I've ragged on tipping articles. Sadly, I don't have a lot of time today because I'll be getting on a plane later. Hopefully I won't have to tip the pilot. Our Easy Tipping Etiquette Guide Tells You How Much to Tip in Every Situation From manicurists to movers and beyond, we've got you covered. Unfortunately, the solution doesn't seem to be "go live in a sane country that doesn't require tipping." According to Swann, the word "tip" was first used as an acronym for "to insure prompt service" in the early 17th century, when ladies commonly took tea in gardens. With the kitchen so far from the table, lukewarm tea was a problem—at least until clever guests began leaving coins to encourage servants to bring their hot water more quickly. The practice thrived and spread, becoming standard in many parts of the world. And with that, we know we can safely ignore anything else the article has to say. That particular bit of backronymage has been so completely and thoroughly debunked that anyone writing an article on tipping should have immediately known it was bullshit. Worse, this Swann person is presented as an "etiquette expert." While that doesn't translate to "language expert," if you present yourself as an expert on tipping and you don't know the really quite very simple fact that TIPS did not start out as an acronym (neither did shit or fuck, by the way), then nothing else you can say can be believed. But I'm going to excerpt some things from the article anyway, and it turns out that even a stopped clock is right twice a day. There's a bunch I'm leaving out because, as I said, not a lot of time today. There are a few exceptions to the tipping rule, like baristas or people working in sandwich shops, who as Swann notes, are making an hourly wage. "Most importantly, those tip jars are something that business owners have created to share with their staff members as a perk," Swann says. "You are not required to tip them, although if they have gone above and beyond—maybe you had a large order, or had a situation that was very complicated—then you are welcome to extend your graciousness by giving a tip." This is probably going to get me some hate mail, but I agree with the first part. The first time I saw a tip jar at a coffee shop (I do go to them sometimes to socialize and maybe get a tea), I nearly lost my shit. "Wait. You want me to stand in line, give you my order, pay in advance at the counter, wait some more while you make the bloody thing, go and try to find a table amidst all the wannabe writers with their cheap-ass laptops, then bus my own table AND YOU WANT A TIP? Bite me." I would no more tip a barista than I would tip a cashier at McDonald's. It's not that I don't value them; it's that, unlike restaurant servers, they're being paid at least minimum wage. It's almost never necessary or advisable to tip people in the educational, medical, or professional fields. So stay away from tipping teachers, life coaches, doctors, dentists, veterinarians, contractors, large business owners, and cable installers. I mean, I thought that was obvious. Tipping is usually done on the post-tax amount, but technically, there's nothing wrong with tipping on the pre-tax amount. Splitting hairs here. Technically, there's nothing wrong with tipping a server 10%. If you tip on the pre-tax amount, they're going to think you're a lousy tipper. Maybe that doesn't matter. Whatever. We all know (or we should know) to tip servers 15% to 20%, but how about those working at a buffet? Even if they aren’t serving your food, they're still bringing you beverages and clearing your dishes. Etiquette dictates you should tip about 5% to 10% of the bill. I can't argue with that. Unlike baristas, they're actually doing services. Tipping pizza delivery drivers can get a little confusing, says Swann, "because they’re delivering food, and we might be thinking about the 15% to 20% we tip servers in a restaurant. But that isn’t the same thing because delivery drivers make an hourly wage." A 10% tip is sufficient on food deliveries. Yeah, no, even if they're making an hourly wage, it's a shitty hourly wage, and unlike baristas, they're using their own car, which means a lot of that wage is going to fuel, insurance, wear and tear, maintenance, inspections, whatever. Uber gives riders a chance to tip from the app. "If you do choose to leave a tip, you can select the option that you feel that is most appropriate based on the ride that you just had," says Swann. Meanwhile, the standard tip for cab drivers is still about 10% to 15%. Uber: I have no problem with tipping them according to how much I had to bounce around during the ride. What I dislike most about Uber is that you're expected to give each other 5 stars for, basically, not being a total dick. To me, three stars should mean "got me to destination close to estimated time, didn't get into an accident, no road rage." Five stars should be reserved for if they've hired a hooker to give me a handy in the back seat while doing all the above. One star would be only if they drove me off a cliff. But that's not how it works. Uber penalizes drivers for anything less than a perfect 5, and that's bullshit. As for tipping them, see above re: delivery drivers. Taxis are a bit different. These days, their credit card machine provides pre-set tip amounts. I've seen the following: "35%" "40%" "50%" as options. This is why I don't use taxis anymore. Anyway. Off to pack for the trip. As I said, updates for the next week will be at odd times. |
| Please note: I will be traveling for a week, starting Friday (for fun this time). Consequently, blog entries might appear at different times than usual. That's if World War 3 doesn't start in the meantime, of course. Meanwhile, let's wrap up this month's "Journalistic Intentions" [18+] with a quote, selected at random, that is nevertheless relevant to the world situation right now:"It is clear now that we live in precedented times." Another fun thing about English (see entry from two days ago) is that there are words that sound like they should have similar antonyms, but don't. Such as "nonplussed." It means to be perplexed, bemused, floored, flabbergasted, etc. (Yet another fun thing is how some ideas have so many synonyms). But the only time you hear about someone being "plussed" is when someone is commenting on how weird it is that the word "plussed" isn't actually a thing. Apparently, that one comes from the Latin "non plus," which translates to "no more," so I guess the sense is that you have no more fucks to give to react to whatever some idiot is doing or saying. The opposite of plus in English is minus, but no one's ever nonminused, minused, or plussed. One can give one's undivided attention, but can't be nondivided, and I won't even get into multiplication or exponentiation. Similarly, we're never gruntled or chalant. This is distinct from some words that seem to form antonyms but don't, such as flammable and inflammable which, to the consternation of kids and ESL students everywhere, actually mean the same damn thing. (This actually makes sense because "inflammable" is kind of similar to "inflammatory.") Which leads me to "unprecedented." No one actually uses it like the author of the above quote, but it's clear that they were trying to riff off of "unprecedented." And it's weird that it's not used, but no weirder than the exclusion of "chalant" from the dictionary. You want to make a point and have it be remembered? Use a thing that should be a word, but isn't, and that can be instantly understood by the reader. This is a lot harder than it sounds. I think it was Mark Twain who said that history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. I mean, that sounds like something Twain would have said. All due respect to the great man (if indeed it was he who said it, which is unclear), but I say it doesn't repeat itself or rhyme, but it echoes. Some people take the philosophical viewpoint that time is a circle; that, to quote Battlestar:Galactica, "all of this has happened before; all of this will happen again." Well, it's pretty clear to anyone who is actually paying attention that time is linear, no matter how many cycles we try to impose upon it, but there are certain things that reverberate through the ages: wars, uprisings, invasions, economic recessions, philosophy itself, and so on. All very different from each other, but all with echoes of the ones that came before. As they say in the Fallout games: War. War never changes. The Book of Ecclesiastes asserts that "there is nothing new under the sun." Arrant nonsense, of course; you're not going to convince me that smartphones, for instance, aren't "new" (as compared to the technology of, say, 50 years ago). But when you break down what we use smartphones for, well, at base it's about communication. And communication has been going on for at least as long as there have been humans; only the means have changed. But to think that nothing changes at all? No. The details are always different. And yet we find commonalities, because that's what we do. There's precedent for that, too. |
| Inflation has always been worse than the official numbers indicate. The article, from NPR, is dated back in October, but I don't think much has changed about what they're discussing. Despite reopening more than six months ago, Disney World and Disneyland have yet to restart their tram services to and from parking lots, forcing visitors to walk nearly a mile to enter and exit the parks. Nearly a mile? Horror! (I have to walk more than a mile to get to the nearest bar.) Some Disney fans are acting as though the company is a kind of greedy Cruella de Vil, willing to slaughter cute puppies and turn them into coats for a profit. To be fair to Cruella, she wasn't targeting the dalmatians for profit, but because... well, it depends on whether you count Cruella as canon or not. "Customer service is gone at Disney," says commenter James E. on Facebook. "It's all about maximizing profit now." News flash: Disney is a publicly traded corporation. It's been all about maximizing profit from the beginning. That's what the company is for. They do this by providing (usually) quality entertainment through movies, TV shows, and theme parks, and sales of merchandise. If your life has been enriched by Disney's products, that's great, but they created those products for money, not for some altruistic reason. That said, it's usually in a corporation's best interest to provide good customer service (unless they have a captive audience, like some cable companies I won't mention by name). "They haven't brought back the trams because it's saving Disney money!" writes Daniel P. "Trams need to be driven by multiple drivers." "Can we make a bigger profit by keeping the trams running?" "No." "Then don't do the trams." It's all about "GREED," says Harry Z. "It has nothing to do with COVID at this point." Of course it's about greed. Why has it taken these people so long to figure that out? A couple of weeks ago, amid mounting online fury over Disney's transportation issues, the company announced it was finally reopening its famous monorail system. I was in the Toronto Zoo on the day they stopped running the train there. I didn't know at the time that it would be the last run of the service, but last time I checked, they still haven't replaced it, and it's been over 25 years. All I knew was one of the trains was running backwards, downhill, too fast, and then there was a crash. That's a story for another time, though. What's happening in the Magic Kingdom is happening across the entire economy. Domino's is taking longer to deliver pizzas. Airlines are putting customers who call them on hold for hours. Restaurants, bars and hotels are understaffed and stretched thin. The quality of service seems to be deteriorating everywhere. And there have been heated arguments about why that is. I'm not going to participate in those arguments here, except to say: if you can't pay your people a decent wage, don't be surprised when they look elsewhere for their money. It's not just big companies that want money. We've all heard about rising inflation. The price of stuff is going up. And if you read this newsletter, you've heard of shrinkflation. That's when the price of stuff stays the same, but the amount you get goes down. As a rule, I despise portmanteaux. "Shrinkflation" is no exception. Whatever it's called, though, it's been going on for way longer than the pandemic. Candy bars lose mass while keeping the same price; you get less cereal in a box; that sort of thing. There's absolutely nothing new about it, and it floors me that they're just discovering this shit now. The economywide decline in service quality that we're now seeing is something different, and it doesn't have a good name. Assumes facts not in evidence: the idea that "shrinkflation" is a good name. We propose a new word to describe this stealth-ninja kind of inflation: skimpflation. No. It's when, instead of simply raising prices, companies skimp on the goods and services they provide. Again, nothing new there; it might have accelerated recently, but I've been aware of it for some time. A related example would be if the company you work for suddenly announces that, to save money, you're going to have to bring in your own coffee. A more pertinent example would be, like, if you call your bank to dispute some charge or something, your hold time increases because they have fewer employees. Many businesses, especially small businesses, are struggling to cope with surging costs and pandemic-related expenses. They're having a hard time finding workers at the wages they used to pay. Good. On his way back from Vermont, he stayed at a hotel in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. The morning after his stay, he woke up to a "sad and pitiful" breakfast that consisted of a plastic-wrapped, mass-produced pastry, prepackaged Raisin Bran and lukewarm milk. The hotel was now skimping on its hot-breakfast buffet as well as maid service for guests who stayed for more than one night. I just want to address this bit, kind of as an aside. I've stayed in hotels and motels ranging from fleabag interstate lodging all the way up to the Ritz-Carlton and beyond. Even the shittiest motels used to provide maid service every day, service that included (in theory anyway) sheet changing, bed making, towel swapping, loo roll refilling, and general cleaning. And I've always felt that was too much. Hell, at home, I don't change my sheets every day, and I certainly don't make my bed on a regular basis, because it's a massive waste of my time. So they could have cut back on that from the get-go, only providing such services upon request. In theory, this should make lodging cheaper. In practice, they just pocket the difference. For most of his economics career, he says, he had believed that official government statistics actually made inflation seem worse than it really was. He had thought they didn't fully capture improvements in the quality of products and services when quantifying changes in prices. Okay, fine, this guy's an economist. I've often said that if you ask six economists a question, you'll get ten different answers. It's not an exact science by any stretch. I can accept that this guy has more training, knowledge and experience than I do, but I've noticed the precise opposite: that the government's official inflation figures underestimate the actual increase in cost of living. This goes back to Greenspan, at least, who, as I understand it, started calculating inflation based on the idea that if someone is accustomed to eating sirloin, and the price of steak goes up, then they'll switch to strip. If it goes up again, they'll switch to chuck. If it continues to rise, they'll switch to hamburger. The obvious problem with that? There's only so low you can go. From hamburger to dog food, and then you maybe decide to swear off meat altogether, except while you were running that little race, the price of vegetables has skyrocketed. Mismeasuring inflation has important implications. For example, it's common to hear people argue that the real, or inflation-adjusted, wage of the typical American worker has stagnated in recent decades. But if the government has been overstating inflation in its statistics, this means American workers' paychecks actually go further and living standards have gotten better than official statistics say. Which again is the polar opposite of what I've been seeing for thirty years. Sure, there's been an increase in our quality of life, as presented by this article, largely driven by access to the internet. But at the same time, everyday costs such as housing and tuition have gone into orbit. For their part, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department say the weird, inflationary economy we're seeing right now is transitory. You'll forgive me if I don't accept anything an economist says as gospel truth. And they're probably right. No. They may be right. But I wouldn't count (pun intended) on it. |
| It's been a while since I talked about the weirdness of English. This Cracked article delves into a particular linguistic idiosyncrasy that's bugged me for a while now. No countdown-numbered list this time; just a straightforward discussion, though with the usual humorous twists. The article itself is from last month. We asked readers their least favorite thing about traveling for the holidays. We received a wide variety of answers. Martha C. said, "People." Kurt W. said, "People." Crystal H. said, "People," while James F. Michael H, and Dwardo L. all said, "PEOPLE." Graham H., on the other hand, said, "Other people." I must concur. Some readers offered different answers, however. Fred F. said, "Traveling." Tim K said, "Traveling." John K. said, "Traveling," Edwin O. said, "Traveling," and Dwight C. said, "Traveling, lol." Aimee M. and Alan K. said, "Traveling." Brendan D. and Jim D. said the worst part about traveling for the holidays is "Traveling for the holidays." "Having to travel for the holidays," said Robyn M., while Michael R. said, "Traveling for the holidays." There's a simple solution to all of this, you know. It's tough even for me, but all you have to do is... not travel. So, instead of talking about travel, let's move on to something that does interest readers: grammar. Worst segué ever. Recently we talked about how An Injured Teen Sneaked Back Into WW1 By Cross-Dressing As A Nurse At A Dance and A Woman Sneaked Her Boyfriend Out Of Prison In A Dog Crate. Both times, readers wrote to us, saying that "sneaked" is not a word—the word we were looking for is "snuck." Again, I concur. Sneaked is correct; all dictionaries and grammarians agree on that. Snuck has also become acceptable. As I've mentioned numerous times, dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. That is, dictionaries reflect common usage, rather than dictate from on high what the common usage should be (we're not French). Part of the fun of being a writer is coming up with one's own words. If you're lucky, they'll catch on. Just stop trying to make "fetch" happen. Merriam-Webster describes snuck as originally a "dialectal and probably uneducated form" of sneaked. When I was a kid, teachers tried to correct us every time we used "ain't." "Ain't ain't in the dictionary," someone once told me. I don't think anyone these days would bat an eye if someone said "ain't," but it used to be a big deal. This proscription was slightly racist and definitely classist; no one's going to use "ain't" in a research paper (unless it's researching oddities of language), but at least here in the American South, we use it in conversation quite often. Snuck makes sneak an irregular verb, and while English has lots of irregular verbs, it nearly always evolves the opposite way: Irregular verbs gain regular forms, which eventually edge out the irregular form. That's because people (including those supposedly uneducated ones who first came up with snuck) find regular forms easier. I found out fairly recently (considering that the word was only coined fairly recently) that the past tense of "yeet" is "yote," not "yeeted." This makes that lovely linguistic gemstone even more shiny to me. It's worth noting here that Urban Dictionary contains the following analysis of "yeet:"When you apply 80%+ of the relative maximum possible impulse to an object upon propelling it from your hands. Notes: -The maximum possible impulse is RELATIVE to what your maximum is (if you were to use the general maximum, any impulse would be ~0% of the maximum, as the maximum is now infinity). Your maximum is defined to be the largest impulse you can exert on the object. -Any object propelled with less than 80% of the maximum possible impulse is considered to be thrown, and not yote. My notes: 1) They should be using "force," not "impulse." Impulse is the integral of force over time and I just lost half my readers. 2) In order to reach infinite force, one must apply infinite acceleration (because no amount of acceleration will budge infinite mass and the formula is force = mass * acceleration, according to Newton). Good luck with that. 3) Note the proper use of the past tense of "yeet" in the explanation. But of course I digress. Back to snuck. They can't be confusing it with some other word similar to sneak that takes a past tense of -uck, since none exist. Though, we can think of some similar words like stink and sink that have past participles with that form. Close enough. Though, if the pair wanted to argue further, Jennifer could have said that dictionaries are descriptive not prescriptive... Good to have my assertions validated by a comedy website. ...and just because a dictionary records a certain usage doesn't mean it's right. Truth. No amount of arguing will, for example, convince me that the word "bromance" should exist at all, let alone be acknowledged by a dictionary. Sadly, the Cracked article doesn't delve very deeply into the question of exactly why "snuck" is a legitimate conversational past tense of "sneak." My personal theory? Like most words ending in -uck, it's just plain fun to say. Still, no one uses "puck" as the past tense of "peak," as in "He puck in high school and it's been downhill for him ever since." Now if someone could explain to me about "dreamed" and "dreamt," that would fill another gap in my knowledge. But I have a limit on how much I can be arst to look up in one day. |
| And now for something else from "Journalistic Intentions" [18+] -- with a movie review at the bottom, coincidentally, because I finally made it back to the theater: "Remember what the MPAA says; Horrific, Deplorable violence is okay, as long as people don't say any naughty woids! That's what this war is all about!" Of all the quotes in this month's list, this is the only one that's the least bit familiar to me, but I can't for any price recall where it's from. Doesn't matter. People freak out over the weirdest shit. Like the word "shit," for example. And for a long time I haven't understood why it's perfectly okay to have violence in a movie, but not sex. Like, unless it's an R rated movie, you can depict someone sticking a sword into someone else, but not a penis. When, generally, the former is about violence and the latter is about love. Of course, it isn't, always, I know. Sometimes it's about sexual assault. And that's still more okay to show in a movie than mutually pleasurable sex. Which can only lead me to the conclusion that our society is fundamentally backwards. But we already knew that, didn't we? As far as I can tell, other countries don't have this perversion. French movies, for example. All the ones I've ever heard of have involved someone trying to doink someone else and eventually succeeding. As far as I've been able to tell, that's the actual purpose of French cinema; everything else is extraneous. Whereas the purpose of American cinema is to have one side beat the hell out of the other side, usually the "good guys" and the "bad guys" respectively. Anyone following along here already knows that one of my favorite shows is Star Trek. Has been for as long as I can remember, from way back when there was only one series and it only lasted three seasons. Since then, of course it's had its ups and downs, and certain gatekeepers love to bitch about some of the new series, going "That's not Trek!" Well, whatever, they're entitled to their opinion of course, but not everything is going to follow the formula from the Original Series, and not everything can be as awesome as Deep Space Nine was. Point is, though, Star Trek has never been about violence. Sure, it's sometimes depicted, but the philosophy of the show has always put diplomacy and other means of conflict resolution first. So when the series Discovery came out, I watched it with great interest, and for the most part I liked it. But one of the things that stuck out for me with Disco, as I like to call it, is that in (I think) the first season, one of the characters actually said "fuck" out loud. I cheered. Words are just words. If you're horrified by that word being uttered on a TV show, there's something wrong with you, not with the TV show. "But kids watch that stuff!" So what? Better they hear people cussing, or even see them boning, than watching them dismembering each other. Let's get our priorities straight, okay?   One-Sentence Movie Review: Uncharted: Spoiler: the good guys beat the hell out of the bad guys (as noted above); this is a fun movie, the cinematic equivalent of a frozen pizza: filling, but without much in the way of substance, and that's okay -- I never played the video games it was based on, so it's likely I missed a lot of in-jokes, but it's enough to watch Tom Holland be something other than Spider-Man and go haring off on a classic stunt-heavy, scenery-chewing treasure hunt quest. Rating: 3/5 |
| I've never been a big fan of this source, but whatever... this article seemed interesting. How 'Gamification' of Everything Is Manipulating You (and How to Recognize It) Companies are using gamification to manipulate you. Here's how to see it and fight against it. "The only way to win is not to play?" “Gamification” is the practice of adding game-like elements to non-game contexts. It isn’t new, nor it is always a negative, but it is being aimed at consumers and employees more and more frequently, whether to keep you addicted to an app, motivated at work, or inclined to spend your money on something. And I'm usually okay with it if they're up front about it. Duolingo, for instance, uses psychological tricks from gaming to try to keep people motivated. They make no attempt to hide it. It works for me. There’s nothing wrong with gamifying our lives. We do it all the time, like when we promise ourselves a reward for cleaning the garage, or work out extra hard to get a little higher on Strava’s leaderboards. Who? No, I can't be arsed to look that up. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with making consuming a product or doing a job “fun,” but when marketers and employers are hacking our pleasure centers in ways we don’t fully recognize, that’s manipulation, and that’s not really a game. Marketers have been manipulating us forever. I rarely watch stuff with commercials, so I'm not exposed to them on a regular basis -- hence, when I do see a commercial on someone else's TV, I'm generally amazed at how blatant the manipulation is. I get the impression people who are used to it just take it in stride. Behaviorists’ studies of rats and humans prove that both species are more motivated by intermittent, unpredictable rewards than anticipated ones. Only rats are probably smarter about it. I used to think Twitter just loaded a little slowly because that’s how long it took, but it turns out that it’s a feature not a bug. Twitter, Instagram, and other social media sites reportedly artificially lengthen the time between when you click on the app and when the content shows up in it as a way to increase the sense of anticipation—and keep you coming back again and again. For whatever reason, this little tidbit -- if true; I haven't checked it out -- pisses me off way out of proportion. I'm on the internet because I want instant gratification. When I click on something, I want it to load right the fuck away, not spin the cursor. That doesn't build anticipation for me; that makes me close the window. When I get sent a YouTube video, I have a simple rule: if you spend more than 5 seconds on logo or other extraneous bullshit before getting the damned content, I don't watch. And that's me being generous; if the video is formatted vertically, I don't even give it that long. Fortunately, I'm not on social media so I haven't experienced these supposed artificially extended load times, myself. In any case, the rest of the article describes some other game-type techniques used to maintain engagement. As noted, not all of these things are inherently bad, but it doesn't hurt to be aware of how you're being manipulated. I'll only note one more thing from the article: A streak offers nothing beyond the streak itself. The longer a streak goes, the more you’ll be motivated to keep it going, mainly because breaking it would cause you some tiny amount of disappointment. *Looks at my 26-month daily blogging streak* *Saunters off whistling innocently* |
| And now for today's example of why one should read science reporting critically. The article references some study that had been making the rounds late last year, prompting smug responses from dog people and indifference from cats. But the headlines keep coming: “Is Your Cat a Psychopath? Probably, Researchers Say,” “Is Your Cat an Actual Psychopath? Take This Test and Find Out,” and so on. As usual, the answer to a headline question is "No." But people fell for this crap, so I'm sharing the article that helps to explain exactly why it's crap. But sometimes a study is actually misleading or potentially even harmful, especially when it perpetuates faulty ideas about cats. There has been a thing circulating around the internet for a while to the effect of "your cat wants to murder you." Some people seem to think it's funny. Having known assholes who go out of their way to kill cats because they hate them, though, this sort of thing can only add to their desire to eradicate cats from existence. Also, your cat doesn't want to murder you. Unless you forget to feed it, of course. Rather than explore typical cat behavior in search of things that might indicate a maladaptive response or problematic behaviors, the researchers start with a human-biased concept: looking for psychopathy in cats. Which is not to say there aren't feral cats. They're much closer to being wild animals than dogs are, so yeah, if they're not socialized, they use their natural defenses. This is called "being a wild animal" and no one expects, say, bears not to do it. The authors propose that there has been a lack of research on feline psychopathy because there’s no available questionnaire for exploring these traits in cats. (I might instead argue that there’s no point in studying something that doesn’t really exist). We already have an excellent, validated tool for assessing cat behaviors (including ones that might be considered problematic) in the Fe-BARQ, a 100-item survey that started with a full range of feline behaviors (not just “negative” traits). Fe-BARQ? Look, if you're going to force an acronym for something related to cats, make it MEOW, not BARQ. Come on, a three-year old could tell you that. Anyway, the article goes on to provide examples of clear bias in the methodology used in the study, and I'm not pasting the whole thing here. Words matter. Labeling a cat as a psychopath instead of describing their behavior does not help cats, humans, or the cat-human relationship. It does not advance our scientific understanding of cat behavior or personality. Cats are cats. People are people. Of course cats exhibit traits that would be undesirable in a fellow human. If my housemate came up to me twice a day and said "FEED ME! FEED ME NOW!" I'd find a new housemate. For that matter, if your friend licked your face, sniffed your ass, and made you pick up their shit, they wouldn't be your friend very long (well... depending...) but you put up with that crap from your dog because it's a dog and that's what dogs do. So as much as the original reporting on this study tickled the confirmation bias of ailurophobes, it's bad science and bad reporting on bad science. Fake mews. I tried. I really tried to go through this whole entry without making a cat pun. I failed. |
| Back home, tired, but I have time to do a prompt from "Journalistic Intentions" [18+]: "If I learn one lesson, count your blessings, look to the rising sun, and run run run." And all I know from the prompt is that it's in the "Lyrics" category. Is that first couplet supposed to rhyme? Because it doesn't. Not unless you're a Southerner and you force "blessings" to become "blessin" with maybe a secret "s" subvocalized at the end. I get that songs don't always have meaningful lyrics. Even some songs I like. Hell, when Springsteen was starting out, he'd just sit on his bed with a guitar and a rhyming dictionary, then fit a bunch of other words into the rhythm. Well... mostly into the rhythm. He was much better at rhyme than rhythm. Even so, he ended up with something resembling poetry: Madman drummers bummers and Indians in the summer with a teenage diplomat In the dumps with the mumps as the adolescent pumps his way into his hat With a boulder on my shoulder feelin' kinda older I tripped the merry-go-round With this very unpleasing sneezing and wheezing the calliope crashed to the ground Internal rhymes abound in this, and there's even connections between the lines: "teenage" and "adolescent" in the first couplet; "merry-go-round" and "calliope" in the second. Nonsense? Sure. But nonsense with some internal consistency. Those lyrics are from "Blinded by the Light," which was the first song on his first released album, so it was what introduced Bruce to a weary world; the rest is... the opposite of silence. Even today, some people are under the misguided impression that the song was by Manfred Mann. Nothing against that version, but it was, indeed, a cover, and lacked Springsteen's frenetic energy. (Comments about the pronunciation of "cut loose like a deuce" therein will be summarily ignored.) That doggerel in the prompt, though? Let's just say I hope that whatever song it's from has other redeeming qualities. A decent bass line, maybe, or at least a melody, one that doesn't all hover around one note like so many of today's songs do. Meaningful lyrics apart from those lines. Something. The temptation to look up the lyrics is real; I might be ragging on a performer I actually like. Well, if so, so be it. Even Bruce had some dogs in the wolf pack. But I'm not going to do it. Not until I'm done here. And I'm not done. "If I learn one lesson" -- Oh, surely some lyrical wisdom is to follow; let's keep listening... "Count your blessings" -- Or maybe not; my mom used to use that line on Teen Me in a failed attempt to make him less angsty. "Look to the rising sun" -- Mama always told me not to look into the sights of the sun.* "And run, run, run" -- Um. Couldn't think of two other syllables besides those first two instances of "run?" *Also a line from Blinded by the Light Perhaps I simply still harbor resentment over having my really quite very real teen drama complaints (none of which I now remember or care about) minimized, so anything that includes the line "count your blessings" just triggers me. If so, oh well. Also just to be clear, it doesn't matter to me how old or new a song is. Sure, a lot of new music sucks. A lot of old music sucked. You know why people don't often rag on the old music that sucked? Because people got tired of it, it went away, and they forgot all about it. So. If I learn one lesson, use a chord progression; make the lyrics be fun, and don't stare at the sun. ...okay, so that's three lessons. Whatever. |
| Last day of being away from home... until next week. Even Rainbows Have a Dark Side Humans were once united by the belief that you should never, ever point at one. I find that extremely difficult to believe. Not because it's a silly superstition, but the idea that "humans were once united by" anything. Both had learned as children that if you broke the taboo, your finger would become bent like a rainbow. Right, and if you keep making faces, your face will freeze like that; if you crack your knuckles you'll get arthritis (to be fair, you might, but not from cracking); and if you watch too much porn, you'll go blind. *looks at medical bill for cataract surgery* ...okay, so that last one might be true. The first hint that he was on to something bigger, something truly boggling, came from a report of a prohibition on pointing to rainbows in India. “It did not take long for the shock to set in,” he wrote. The report suggested “the rainbow taboo”—as he would come to call the phenomenon—was not confined to Southeast Asia. Oh, it's in Southeast Asia and India? Wow, it must be all over the world. He would soon amass evidence for the rainbow taboo—in some form or another—in 124 cultures. The prohibition turned up in North America, among the Atsugewi of northern California and the Lakota of the northern plains; in remote parts of Australia and isolated islands in Melanesia; among the Nyabwa of Ivory Coast and the Kaiwá of Brazil. Okay, okay, jeez, I get the point. You make one joke... The belief was not found in every culture, according to Blust’s search, but it was present globally, across all inhabited regions. See? I told you we weren't united. Less commonly—such as in parts of New Guinea and Australia—the ill effects would befall your mother. When I was a kid and my mother made me do something I didn't like, or scolded me for doing something I did like, I'd deliberately stomp on the cracks in the sidewalk. I was an asshole kid. This, by the way, took significant effort and patience on my part, because where I spent my childhood there were no sidewalks for miles, so I had to wait until someone let me ride with them into town. If it was my mom, I'd leap onto a crack, look back at her, jump to another one, look back, stomp, look... getting more and more disappointed each time (never mind that if I'd been successful, no one would have been able to drive me back home). As her back never broke, I lost all faith in kid lore. But later, when I learned about how concrete (such as that in sidewalks) works, I discovered that as concrete cures, it develops microfractures throughout its matrix. You can't see them (hence, "micro") but if you're walking on a sidewalk you cannot avoid stepping on dozens of cracks with each and every pace. The relative lack of mother's back breakage in the world should be enough to put people off such taboos, but apparently not. A final recurring idea was that, should you accidentally point to a rainbow, there were remedies. You could wet the offending digit; or put it into a bodily cavity like your mouth, anus, or belly button; or, according to the Javanese version of the taboo, plunge it into a pile of buffalo dung. Or any of the above, in random order? Anyway. No, the article isn't about fact-checking the taboo; it's about the very interesting widespread nature of the belief and speculation about the reasons for it. And while even that didn't unite humanity as one shining, glorious people singing under the rainbow, it's a fascinating glimpse into peoples' beliefs. |
| I'm still in NYC, so another short one (this post, not the article) today -- one I don't quite know what to say about, but I'm going to try anyway. Article is from last year, but I doubt there's much contextual difference now. Like most of these kinds of articles, it opens with an anecdote of sorts. Which isn't bad in itself; I think it's a great way to hook a reader. It just doesn't have a lot that I can quote here, so I'm skipping it even though it's kind of important. I thought about this passage this week, while working on the chapter in the new book on the history office tech that promised to make workers’ lives easier, but usually just created the compulsion to do more work. Much like the digital technologies of today, these technologies — from “24 hour computer lieutenants” in a GE dishwashing factory to word processors — were sold to workers as a means of making their work simpler, more predictable, safer. You know what I remember from the 70s, maybe on into the early 80s? Someone promised we would have a three-day work week, or something to that effect, because computers and automation would help us get our jobs -- for various definitions of "our" -- done faster, leaving us more time for fishing. Imagine my shock and dismay when not only did that not happen, but employers started demanding more time out of us than during B.C. (Before Computers). In other words, not only were we compressing what used to take a week into a day; not only were we then expected to do five weeks' worth of B.C. work in a week, but we had to push it to add overtime and weekends. Of course, we were also promised flying cars, so I suppose I should have known better. Anyway, the article doesn't address that directly, I think, but it has a lot more to say than I'm going to relate here because, as I implied, I have a lot of other stuff to do today. This is the dystopian reality of productivity culture. Its mandate is never “You figured out how to do my tasks more efficiently, so you get to spend less time working.” It is always: “You figured out how to do your tasks more efficiency, so you must now do more tasks.” Sometimes, if you’re a Wall Street investment banker, you can complete infinitely more tasks until you have so much money that you don’t even need it anymore — you’re productive for the thrill of it, but also because you don’t know how else to gauge your own self-worth. My motivation was never productivity, though I did derive some satisfaction from completing a project. No, I only worked for one reason: to accumulate enough money such that I wouldn't have to participate in the productivity hamster wheel. Obviously, different people are motivated by other things, and I'm not ragging on them here. Just on the culture that tries to squeeze more and more out of its workers until, like an empty tube of toothpaste, they just have nothing left. The vast majority of people are not paid enough for the productivity that is demanded of them. More money can be stabilizing — and quiet the financial stress that interferes with productivity. But it doesn’t solve the fundamental problem: human productivity has a ceiling. Technology attempts to modify that reality, but it can only do so much. The body, and the mind, begins to falter. And now, I'm off to be unproductive some more. |
| Just because I'm out of town doesn't mean I'm not going to do another prompt from "Journalistic Intentions" [18+]... "If you can't handle me at my worst, imagine how I feel." Of course, I'm very familiar with the quote that riffs off: "If you can't handle me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best." In my mind, it's printed in cursive on a stained pink T-shirt worn by a cigarette-smoking, Pabst-swilling single mother of five. In other words, a Giant Red Flag. Other common bits of folk philosophy are also Giant Red Flags. For example, "Live, Laugh, Love." Really, this is just the upper-middle-class counterpart to the worst/best quote. Oh, sure, it seems innocuous, but think about the kind of person who has to remind herself to live, laugh, and love instead of, you know... just doing those things. Anyway. None of that has to do with the quote in the prompt, and probably has some of you ready to come after me with a gun, which in truth would only prove my point. Twisting it to the prompt quote demonstrates a refreshing level of self-awareness. You know you're in a bad mood, maybe spiraling, lashing out... and instead of insisting that really, it's worth putting up with this from you to get to the good parts, you realize you're not fit company and nope out of there. At least that's how I see it. Of course, it's often when we're at our worst that we most need other people. Not to give us what we think we want, but to smack us upside the head with what we actually need -- whatever that might be. A joke. A truth. A helpful lie. But they have the choice to put up with us when we're in that condition. We don't. We're stuck with ourselves no matter what. Which, I suppose, is why drugs were invented. As with the other prompts from this month, I haven't looked it up to determine the source. Whoever it was, though... nice twist. |
| As a reminder, I'm traveling most of this week, so updates may be at irregular times. Since I still have to pack, this one will be blessedly short. Article is from last October, which is when people actually remember that Poe existed, but anything about him is always timely as far as I'm concerned. In the early hours of January 19, a shadowy figure glides into the Westminster Hall and Burying Ground through a side-gate and makes his way to a cenotaph. In the biting Baltimore night, the black-clad stranger — in wide-brimmed hat and a long scarf obscuring his face — stands staring at the raven engraved upon the cenotaph. He pours himself a glass of cognac and raises a toast. He bends down, places three roses and the unfinished bottle by the monument, and wafts softly away into the fog. And already I'm getting a headache. The Poe Toaster (or, if you will, Poester -- okay, you won't, and neither will I) is a wonderful story, but I thought we were going to talk about actual Poe. To be fair, the rest of the article does get to the point, or points, if circuitously and with precious prose unbecoming of a tribute to Edgar's own style. Poe famously traipsed all up and down the East Coast, and lots of cities claim him: Boston, where he was born; Baltimore, where he died; Richmond, where the oldest extant building in the city is now a Poe museum; Philadelphia, for reasons expressed in the article. And less than two miles from my house is the dorm room where he briefly lived while attending the University of Virginia, so we get a claim on him as well. But he really belongs to everyone, and to no one. Anyway, I won't quote more from the article, partly because it's all hooked together in typical epi-pseudo-post-après-modernist (or whatever they're calling the style these days) fashion (I can't resist the temptation to coin Poe-modernist), and partly because despite my personal grievances with the writing style, it's still worth reading. And though I brought this article up at random, I find it darkly appropriate that it happened to arrive on Valentine's Day. For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride, In her sepulchre there by the sea, In her tomb by the sounding sea. |
| Old article is old, but I just found it recently. How To Become A Genius Whether you’d like to admit it or not, you probably have an average IQ. Luckily, there’s a lot you can do to increase your intelligence. Right. Even if that's true, if everyone does it, we're right back where we started. You probably think you’re pretty smart. No, but I think you're pretty smug. Most people believe they’re smarter than the average American, according to a study from YouGov. In fairness, most people worldwide are smarter than the average American. Yet when it comes to IQ, most of us are indeed average, falling in the 80-119 point range. While this number peaks in our late teens to early 20s and remains relatively stable as we age, that doesn’t mean your potential is fixed. Wasn't the whole point of IQ tests to measure a fixed value? Leaving aside for the moment the controversies over implicit bias in the tests. “Those who claim that IQ is fixed for life are in fact referring to our IQ test scores, which are relatively stable–not to our intelligence levels, which are constantly increasing.” Uh... okay, I guess I'm too stupid to know the difference. Apparently Intelligence Quotient is not a measurement of intelligence? Or is the person who is quoted there making the unintelligent but common mistake of conflating knowledge (which of course is usually gained over time) with intelligence? Let's read on to find out. David Shenk, author of The Genius in All of Us, says it’s virtually impossible to determine any individual’s true intellectual limitations at any age; anyone has the potential for genius or, at the very least, greatness. Who says greatness is related to genius? In science or philosophy, maybe, sure. But there have been great sportsball players, great actors, etc., many of whom would not score high on an IQ test. Also, intelligence is hardly the truest measure of a person. There have been many highly intelligent people who were also complete dickwads, or who simply have no desire for greatness of any sort. If you want to be smarter than the average American, it’s not only possible; it’s within reach. Sure. Just be something other than American. Intelligence is the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills, and includes the ability to reason, solve problems, remember information, and be creative. Just for the hell of it, I looked up the dictionary definition of intelligence. I normally avoid doing this, because dictionary definitions are descriptive, not prescriptive, and I find resorting to a dictionary in order to support one's point to be the last refuge of a pedant. But guess what my first search result (Oxford) found? "The ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills." Fucking article quoted directly from the dictionary. And also added some stuff that's only tangentially related to intelligence. While taking a class and reading a book are two ways to learn something new, here are six surprising tasks that boost your brainpower, make learning easier, and put you on the road to greatness: Learning new shit doesn't automatically increase one's intelligence; it just means you have a good memory. Intelligence is the ability to make connections between the shit you've learned. That's not in the dictionary; that's my interpretation. 1. Train Your Memory While a professor at the University of California, Irvine, Susanne Jaeggi found that an activity known as the n-back task increases fluid intelligence, which is the ability to reason and solve new problems independent of previous knowledge. Regardless of whether or not you can, or want to, increase your intelligence (however it's defined), an exercise like that couldn't hurt. 2. Open Yourself To New Points of View Another way to increase your intelligence is to expand your network and consider other people’s points of view. The exercise will open your mind to new opportunities and promote cognitive growth. Hey look, another good idea not necessarily because of its effect on intelligence. If more people did this, maybe we wouldn't be so dug in to our own thought trenches. “Open your mind and listen to arguments that make no sense to you–and try to find some sense in them,” writes Roche. I mean, I try to do that. I don't always succeed. 3. Find Motivation Uncommon achievement takes a source of motivation, says Shenk. “You have to want it, want it so bad you will never give up, so bad that you are ready to sacrifice time, money, sleep, friendships, even your reputation,” he writes in The Genius in All of Us. Well, I'm out. I'd rather have time, money, sleep, friends, and a reputation that's not terrible. That's what motivates me. 4. Do Cardiovascular Workouts Cardiovascular fitness can raise your verbal intelligence and improve long-term memory, according to a study from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. I think there are plenty of other reasons to do this, too. And one good reason not to: they take time that I could use to play video games. 5. Play Video Games Hey, look at that. While it looks like a good way to waste time, video gaming can actually stimulate the growth of neurons and promote connectivity in the regions of the brain responsible for spatial orientation, memory formation, and strategic planning. I'm no scientician, but it seems to me that the benefits would vary greatly depending on the game. 6. Meditate Mindful meditation can increase the neuroplasticity in the brain, according to a study from the University of Oregon and Texas Tech University’s Neuroimaging Institute. Nope, all it does for me is increase the sleep levels in my brain. But as I said, I do like my sleep, so that's fine. In summary, I think the main point of the article verges on bullshit, but I can't argue with most of the advice for other reasons. |
| A quick note: My last remaining aunt suffered a stroke this week. She survived, and they think she'll even improve (remarkable considering her age), but my cousin (her son) and his wife want me to go to NYC next week to see them all anyway. So I'm going; in the Before Time, I used to visit once or twice a year, but I haven't been since November of 2019. Therefore, some entries next week will post at odd times. Oddly enough, this is kind of related to the prompt that came up at random today from the list over at "Journalistic Intentions" [18+]..."The process of racial triangulation—of which the MMM [model minority myth] is a prime example—essentially places Asian Americans in a racial bind between whites and other people of color." As usual for this month's prompts, I'm not looking up the quote for context. Which is kind of difficult to do in this case; whenever someone talks about race or culture issues, it seems important, these days, to get the racial and/or cultural affiliation of the source so we know whether they're saying something racist or not. But I'm not doing that, so I have to take the quote at face value. While I think that, in general, lived experience is damn near worthless when it comes to things like risk assessment ("I wasn't wearing a seat belt and I survived the wreck, so seat belts are useless"), when it comes to prejudice, lived experience is pretty much all we have to go by. I have no known Asian ancestry, so I can't speak to the subject in the prompt except to say that this is not the first time I've heard a similar sentiment. But I come from another (formerly) "model minority," so maybe I have some relevant lived experience anyway. Or maybe not. I'll talk about it anyway, and risk getting called names. I pass for white, so that's how people treat me -- until they find out my actual ethnic heritage, which I don't always divulge unless it's relevant. When that happens, some people take it in stride. Others clam up and go away. Still others just can't resist making Holocaust jokes (in all fairness, some of those are pretty funny). And some people who pride themselves on not being the slightest bit racist start talking about the Palestine situation, as if I have fuck-all to do with what the government of Israel is doing over there. I have my own views on the subject, of course, and they boil down to "both sides are bad." But it would be like if you found out that someone's great-grandfather immigrated from Tsarist Russia, and you started giving them shit about what Putin is trying to do with Ukraine. Don't get me started on space lasers. Which brings me to my aunt (I told you that would become relevant). No, she doesn't have a space laser, either (dammit). Her brother was the one I talked about a few entries ago, who went to war in the US Army and was one of the people who liberated Dachau, and it basically destroyed his mind. It wasn't just him, though. My mom was the oldest; this aunt (I'll call her E for this entry) was the youngest. My mother kept her religion as best she could, marrying my father (also Jewish) but eventually ending up living in rural Virginia, hence my rare upbringing. Their other sister stayed single and devout. But E, having seen what her brother went through, renounced religion (though not ethnicity), married a goy, and went to live in the Midwest. In that way, I take after E more than I do my mom. Hence one reason I'm close to that side of the family. Oddly enough, we never got along all that well, perhaps because we're more alike than is comfortable. Point is, she fit in, as did her two sons (one of them lives in California, so I don't see him as often). And that, to me, is the essence of the "model minority" - the ability to fit in to the majority culture. Things go south around here, as they're doing, and no one has to know what our ethnocultural heritage is. Other minorities are more obvious. But for Asian-Americans, I suspect that it's not about looks; it's about cultural values. Thing is, though, racism is not "better" if you're praising the target of it. I know there's a perception that people of Asian descent do better in school, and while on the surface that seems like a good thing, it can still be tinged with a sense of jealousy and "otherness." And that might even be borne out statistically, but again, when it comes to issues like this, it's lived experience that matters. At one point, I was at a blackjack table in Vegas, a rather attractive woman of obvious Asian descent a couple chairs away. Some drunk white guy came by and leaned over toward her. "Settle a bet for me? Where are you from?" Or some words to that effect. "Los Angeles," she replied. "No, no, where are you from from?" I mean, shit, dude, she says she's from L.A., she's from L.A. Period. I'd learned prior to that to never ask that question of people who seemed to be from other cultures, because it can be perceived as rude. I'd done it, meaning it with the best of intentions, but the other person would usually go stone-faced and say something like "I'm an American, just like you." That wasn't what I was asking, but apparently they'd encountered enough prejudice that the question itself is offensive. If you're from Queens, tell me you're from Queens; then we have something in common (that's where my other aunt lived). And how did you know I'm American, anyway? The accent, I suppose. You don't usually get that from white folks. "Where are you from?" "Ottawa." I digress. What I'm trying to say is that it can be a minefield. Thing is, there are racial differences. Otherwise, it wouldn't be such a touchy subject. Some of the differences are physical and thus meaningless except as an identifier; others are cultural. The problem comes in when we ascribe to all members of a culture the common stereotypes of the culture. You're Scottish? You must be frugal. You're African-American? You must love watermelon. You're Jewish? You must be stingy (never mind that this means the same thing as "frugal" but with different connotations). You're Asian? You must be pretty smart. You're Irish? You must love to drink and fight. And so on. Honestly, I wish we could find a way to move past this "racism" thing. I think we've made some progress, but there's still a lot of it out there. It's one thing to be proud of one's heritage, it's quite another to let it fool you into thinking it makes you better or worse than anyone else. Your actions can do that, but not your ancestry or your skin tone. There are good people and assholes in every group (except for the groups of "good people" and "assholes," of course), and I don't think it serves humanity very well to assume that every member of a group has the same values. I know people like to take shortcuts sometimes when getting to know someone, but some of those shortcuts can be hurtful. So don't be an asshole. And if you screw up and act like one, which you probably will, accept it and apologize when someone calls you out on it. |
| I can't draw. That is not completely true. I started out my career as a draftsman -- putting together technical drawings, plans to be used for construction. We transitioned later to CAD, but at first it was pencil, ink, compass, straightedge. Those skills don't really translate to sketching or artwork, though. And my attempts at those more free-form styles have usually ended in abject failure. I have no sense of proportion, and almost nothing I've ever drawn has had any kind of aesthetic value. Drawing is a powerful tool of communication. It helps build self-understanding and can boost mental health. Insofar as becoming good at anything can provide a boost to mental health, I won't argue with that. But our current focus on productivity, outcomes and “talent” has us thinking about it the wrong way. Too many believe the myth of “I can’t draw”, when in fact it’s a skill built through practice. Pretty much everything is a skill built through practice. Writing, for example. But while I think I can write, that came to me with relative ease, whereas drawing is something that I've practiced and never been able to quite "get." We're all good at different things, but the two things I wish I were better at are music and drawing. I wanted to take art classes, but all of them required some basic knowledge before they'd teach you anything -- which is a like expecting me to know quantum physics before I take a class in quantum physics. And those popular "learn to draw" tutorials were worse than useless to me. "It's as easy as 1-2-3!" For example: Learn to draw: a duck 1) Draw an oval. 2) Draw a smaller oval. 3) Add bill, eyes, feet, and detailed feathers. I could do 1 and 2 just fine. And then I'd give up in frustration because I had no idea how to do 3. Devoting a little time to drawing each day may make you happier, more employable and sustainably productive. I don't know about that. I'd doodle when I was bored in class, which was most of the time. One time I drew a face with horns in the corner of a notebook. The teacher came by, glanced at it, and took me aside. "Explain this," he demanded. It was only then that I realized that I'd quite accidentally drawn a passable likeness of him, only with the added horns. That was the only time I've ever been able to draw a recognizable face, and, as I said, it was completely by accident. Perhaps my subconscious had different ideas, but consciously, I actually liked that teacher and hadn't intended to disrespect him. Point being, if anything, it made me less happy. While I'm at it, fuck productivity, especially sustainable productivity. The article goes on to list a few supposed benefits of drawing, which is the kind of thing that usually annoys me. One should not need "reasons" to learn things. "When are we ever going to use this stuff?" is a question that means I could never be a teacher, because anyone asking it would be escorted out of the classroom. I'd love to learn to draw. And I don't need a reason other than the satisfaction of creating something visually interesting. Upon reading the article, I think it's likely that I do have a mental block. As I said, the one time I drew something recognizable was pretty much subconscious. I have my issues with what's written there, but there might be some good ideas. Perhaps it's not too late to give it another shot. By the way, remember yesterday when I ranted about the sportsball game being scheduled for the day before Valentine's Day, and how that might affect grocery shopping? And how I said "it's a good thing they're not predicting snow here?" Guess what's now in the forecast for Sunday morning. Go ahead. Guess. Hint: remove one of the spaces in the first sentence in this current paragraph. Can I use this power for good instead of evil? Let's find out: "At least Halle Berry won't come to my door, wearing the catsuit, carrying two growlers full of fine craft beer." |
| A recent addition to my queue, and I'm already sharing it -- just in time for other people who are not me to prepare for Valentine's Day. In my town there is a chocolatier called Gearhart's. They make absolutely delicious chocolate, some of the best I've ever had. The headline, however, is referring to the bigger, mass-produced chocolate that does, indeed, taste like garbage. In this way, chocolate is much like beer: the big guys have deluded people into thinking that the shit (or piss) they squeeze out is how it's supposed to taste, whereas nothing could be further from the truth. Oh, and it's a Cracked link. I need to mention this because some people have reported browser issues on that site, which I don't experience because I have browser extensions that make my world much more peaceful. In case you didn't know, the entire rest of the world mocks American chocolate as pukey, powdery, waxy garbage, and they're completely right to do so. Yes. Yes, they are. We're supposed to be the greatest country on earth—why can't we get something we love as much as chocolate right? Not only that, but it comes from this continent. ("Greatest country on earth" still debatable.) 4 Blame Hershey It might seem like a cop-out to point fingers at any one chocolate company just because it's the biggest, but it really is impossible to talk about American chocolate without heading up the Hershey highway. An apt metaphor. Again, this is much like how Big Beer managed to convince people that the watered-down, nearly flavorless, low ABV pisswater that they sell is actually good, which it is not. The miracle of the process is that the milk remains safe for consumption and won't spoil further, but it does have the unfortunate side effect of producing butyric acid, the substance that makes rancid butter, parmesan cheese, and human vomit all smell alike. That's the reason why American chocolate has a slightly sour, pukey taste—at least to people who aren't used to it. I'm not sure I'd be that generous in describing the taste of Hershey's milk chocolate. Stop ragging on Parmesan, though. It's awesome. 3 Americans Hate Change Basically, in the grand American tradition, in order for everybody to have something, we had to ruin it just a little. It's not just chocolate and beer, either. Most things made for mass consumption aren't made so that a whole lot of people like them; they're made so that a whole lot of people find them inoffensive. Other food examples include white bread, American "cheese," and the sugary stuff that passes for peanut butter. And then people with functioning taste buds end up being left out in the cold. But we're in the minority, and they don't give a fuck about minorities; they just want to sell the most product they can, which means making them tolerable to as many people as possible. Think about it. Every time there's a New Coke, there's a virulent backlash. The company presumably put the product through a battery of taste tests to ensure it was truly superior, but because it doesn't taste "the same," a new formula can be the death of a business. By the time new preservation methods were available, "vomit" was simply the taste of American chocolate. And again, watered-down tasteless "beer" was the result of Americans getting used to the inferior product before and during Prohibition, and it stuck around because we don't want to change. 2 American Regulations Are More Lenient Also the American way? Not telling anyone what to do with their business even if it sucks. European and American regulations on exactly what a product must contain and how much in order to call itself chocolate are so wildly different that they result in fundamentally different foods. Like I said, there exists good American chocolate, mostly from small artisanal confectioners. It is, however, more expensive, because quality costs. And yet even the cheaper European chocolates are pretty good compared to the plastic crap that comes out of Pennsylvania. While I'm ranting, "white chocolate" isn't chocolate. I have spoken. 1 Hershey Controls More Than You Think Okay, but just because one admittedly giant company decided to make trash chocolate, why does that mean all American chocolate sucks? Believe it or not, Hershey is so protective of its formula because American chocolate companies largely seek to emulate the Hershey taste, even long after better preservation methods became available. The last time I linked to Cracked, they were ragging on another secret formula, that of Coca-Cola. The difference there is that Coke actually tastes good. Look, I know that tastes are different; I accept that. But when it comes to chocolate, there's real and then there's fake, and the big ones in the US are absolutely fake. Untold numbers of European expats must have been overjoyed to find a Dairy Milk bar in a hole-in-the-wall bodega only to be violently disappointed by their first bite into it because even if you find a product supposedly made by Cadbury, a leading European chocolate brand, it won't be the Cadbury you get in Europe. That's right: Hershey's owns Cadbury in America. Hershey's is everywhere. As we say in the home of the brave, tolerate it or be a huge bummer on Halloween. And also on Valentine's Day. Guys (mostly guys, anyway) -- if you really love your partner, you will purchase real, actual chocolate for them. And if you happen to be the recipient of a heart-shaped box of waxy, fake, puke-tasting plastic "chocolates"... well, that ought to be a giant red flag: the person giving those to you is cheap and has questionable taste, presumably apart from their choice of romantic partner, and you deserve better. Buying that crap chocolate is akin to purchasing plastic roses. Don't do it. And while I'm at it, whose brilliant, rocket-surgery-level genius idea was it to hold the Enormous Sportsball Game the night before Valentine's Day? I mean, I don't give a crap about either one, so I find it incredibly amusing, but for the fact that I just had to lay in groceries for a week because of the double whammy coming up (and it's a good thing they're not predicting snow here, or the supermarket shelves would be a vast echoing void all weekend). |
| Time for another one from "Journalistic Intentions" [18+]. "Trauma does not make you stronger. Trauma makes you traumatized. The end." Thinking is fun. That's the basis for philosophy. Literally, "philosophy" means "love of wisdom" where wisdom is assumed to be based on thinking about shit. Historically, every branch of thinking was deemed to be philosophy. Physics, for example, used to be called "natural philosophy," as if other forms of thinking were unnatural or something. Anyone who's been following along in here knows that I'm not above making fun of philosophy that I think is ultimately bullshit. And I have, in the past, railed in particular against a certain quote from Nietzsche, commonly translated as "What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger." Now, I'm not ragging on Nietzsche here. Dude was epic, and I'm not just talking about his mustache. But of all his commonly misrepresented sayings, that one ranks right up there with "God is dead." The sense of the original quote is that it is possible, in certain circumstances, to grow from misfortune. It's probably a better attitude to have than crumpling up into a little ball of tears whenever something doesn't go your way -- but that's not the only alternative. The problem comes in when you start thinking that only the people who grow from suffering are worthwhile, and everyone else is automatically a pussy. I've mentioned my uncle in here before. An American Jew of partially Polish descent, he entered the Army in WWII, and was in one of the Allied crews that discovered Dachau. Before that, per my limited understanding, the full extent of the horrors visited upon the perceived enemies of the Nazis, including but by no means limited to Jews, wasn't really known in the US. There were rumors, of course, but it would have been hard to accept that the arguably most advanced civilization in the world at the time would engage in such atrocities. He found out otherwise, and once the full knowledge of what the concentration camp overseers had been doing hit him... well, he was never the same again. Today, we'd call it PTSD. Back then, it was "shell-shock," and carried its own stigma. And there was no real treatment for it. His health gradually declined, and he eventually died of pneumonia in the early 90s. The irony that the Germans of the time might have been influenced by Nietzsche is not lost on me. The point is, sometimes the shit that doesn't kill you, destroys you in other ways. Trauma isn't something that we just "get over." Some people do, I suppose, but their experience isn't universal, and thinking that it is can only lead to marginalizing those who have real issues. "He just wasn't strong enough." Bullshit. If you're going to sit there and tell me that someone whose life you can barely even comprehend just should have shown more intestinal fortitude, you can fuck right off with that shit. And sometimes, becoming "stronger" means losing empathy, compassion, or some other attribute that is essential for being fully human. I'm curious about one thing, though: in English, "strength" may refer to purely physical strength (which I don't think is the intent of the Nietzsche quote), or mental resilience, or perhaps competence, or several other attributes. Writing in German, Nietzsche proclaimed, without much elaboration, "Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker." I'm just wondering what sense "stärker" has in that language, or maybe had in the late 19th century when he was active. I always assumed the quote referred to mental resilience, but you know what assumptions do. Also ironically, the best counterpoint I can think of to that aphorism comes from the same source, and it's one that, by contrast, I have always considered to be essential life advice -- and I think it's especially relevant to my uncle's experience: Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you. |
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