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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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| Yes, I'm running a little late today. Yesterday, because of *gestures vaguely at everything* I mixed spiced dark rum and ginger beer in copious quantities and drank it. It was a Dark and Stormy day. Consequently, I passed out completely, for several hours. I don't have a link, or a prompt. I suppose I could just wait until later, but where's the fun in that? I'm not sure if I'm hung over or still drunk. I do know that, thanks to the ginger beer I suppose, I'm feeling pretty good, all things considered. Now, a proper Dark and Stormy also includes lime. But I didn't think ahead like that. Sometimes I'll buy limes, then not use them, and find them later, hard and shrunken, tucked way back in the fridge. Most of the time, though, I'll get it in my head to drink something that requires lime, such as a gin and tonic, and naturally, those times, there are no limes in the house. I wish someone would invent stasis fields so that limes can keep fresh indefinitely. Forget warp drive, communicators, transporters, replicators, and world peace; the most important invention from Star Trek would be the stasis field. Okay, it's actually from Niven, or possibly some SF writer before him, but my point remains. Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah, Dark and Stormy. Technically, only Gosling's Black Seal rum can be used in a Dark 'n Stormy. Fortunately, I wasn't making a Dark 'n Stormy; I was making a Dark and Stormy. The rum I used was Kraken, which helpfully has a drawing of a multi-tentacled sea monster on the label, and is apparently made in Indiana; the ginger beer was from Stolichnaya, which, no, is not Russian; it's Polish, so don't give me shit about virtue signaling. So even those ingredients were nonstandard; a proper Dark and Stormy should be made with Caribbean rum and Caribbean ginger beer. At this moment in history, though, I don't give a shit. Even in the depths of a binge, though, I'm still doing science: what, I wondered, is the best ratio of rum to ginger beer? I think most recipes give a proportion of 1:3 or 2:5. I tried 1:2, 1:3, and 1:1, among other mathematically in-between attempts. Admittedly, by the time I was done, I was finding it hard to do proportions. In the end, I suppose it's a matter of taste: do you want more spiced rum, or do you want more of the spicy, tingly taste of ginger beer? 1:3 seemed to do it for me, but like I said, I was lacking the cooling, tart effects of lime in the drink. So that was my day. Very productive. How was yours? |
| And now, a few words about movies. The article talks about the recent Spider-Man movie. It's still showing in my local theater, so I deem this piece from December still relevant. You’d think the mind-blowing box-office performance of Sony’s Spider-Man: No Way Home this past weekend would be good news for just about everybody. And like I said, it's still going, like a certain battery-powered rabbit. I gotta say, though, I was starting to get a little pessimistic about the article's thesis, when there was hardly anything worth watching (besides that, and I saw it twice) in the theater in January and February. Now The Batman has joined it, so there's the fairly rare occurrence of both major comics publishers having a big movie in the theater at the same time. No, I haven't seen the Batmovie yet. Maybe today. More likely, Thursday. Superhero-movie fans, of course, were happy. Theater owners, who’ve had a rough couple of years, were definitely happy. “Hey prophets of doom,” Adam Aron, CEO of the much-beleaguered AMC Theatres chain, tweeted Monday to those who’d claimed streaming would kill movie theaters. “#CHOKEonTHAT.” Another reason to hate AMC Theatres: The CEO twoots and uses pound signs (I refuse to call it the H-word). For those who’ve watched the slow death of movies made for adults over the past decade-plus, the problem wasn’t so much that a superhero flick was making so much money but that other big releases were crashing and burning all around it. If by "made for adults," you mean "mind-stunningly boring," sure. Here, in seemingly stark and undeniable terms, was the pop-cultural dystopia many had feared: comic-book tentpoles obliterating anything that isn’t a comic-book tentpole out of the marketplace. If by "many," you mean "culture snobs," sure. I'm an adult, I like many different kinds of movies, and I'll watch the hell out of superhero flicks. I gave Spider-Man a lousy review, but even I’m happy to see it doing so well. This is my shocked face. I've said it before: you like what you like. It's also good to have different opinions to look at. At least this writer isn't all "stop liking what I don't like." And on a micro level, there are glimmers of hope all over the cinematic landscape. Throughout the summer and fall of 2021, I found myself floating from theater to theater in New York, surprised at the level of turnout. Sure, it's nice to have streaming services. But there's still something compelling about being in the theater, engaged, unable to put it on pause, among other people who wanted (for whatever reason) to see the same movie. And I say this as an introvert. I think the author here and I can agree on the attraction of the cinema: When screenings of Casablanca are selling out (as they did this year at Film Forum during its Humphrey Bogart festival, another big hit), it’s about more than people wanting to see Casablanca; it’s about people wanting to be around other people as they watch Casablanca together. Believe it or not, this is somewhat analogous to the phenomenon of people coming out in droves to see Spider-Man and a nostalgic assortment of old, recognizable villains. But I really wish people would stop ragging on "nostalgia." Admit you like it. Admit it's a draw. Besides, I've been hearing rumblings about streaming services wanting to go to an ad-supported model. This would make me cancel a few subscriptions, because if I'm paying for something, I don't want to see ads (movie and show trailers get a pass). This is why I've never had cable. Meanwhile, the new-release landscape has been more uneven. But even on that front, just two weeks ago, you could come across any number of sold-out screenings in New York of Licorice Pizza or Drive My Car. I'm still mad I missed Licorice Pizza in the theater. I have no desire to stream it. But I wanted to see it at the drafthouse. Anyway, you can't rag on nostalgia and wax poetic about that movie, at least from what I saw in the trailer. In the early months of the pandemic, sizable groups of allegedly smart people thought that movie theaters were not only doomed but that they maybe even deserved to die. Who were these people? I'm thinking Netflix, Disney, Paramount, and Amazon shills. On the other hand, it's true I wouldn't be as keen on going to the movie theater if the local one was, say, AMC or Regal (are they even different?) instead of a cinemaphile's drafthouse. The whole overpriced-popcorn-and-coke thing doesn't do it for me. If we can’t be around each other anymore, we are no longer a society, a country, a civilization. We’re just pod people jacked into the Matrix. Oh, look, a lowbrow movie reference. And cinema cannot survive without theaters. Without them, it becomes TV, a completely different art form. I'd like to believe that, but that's an assertion without evidence. Rather than movies becoming TV, I've seen TV shows becoming more like movies. Disney is excellent at this, what with Loki, The Mandalorian, etc. Of course, you could argue (and you'd be right) that those shows are based on theater movies, but my point is that the six-episode mini-series format is more of a six-hour movie now than a traditional TV show. Even Star Trek has gotten into that act, and while it had movies, it was always a TV show first and foremost. Well, we’ll be hitting two years of pandemic in less than three months, and almost nobody is spewing this streaming-über-alles nonsense anymore — at least not in public. Maybe because after trying it out for a while, we’ve come to realize that a lifetime spent on our couches is neither feasible nor desirable. Maybe because losing things sometimes makes you appreciate them. Maybe because 2020 and early 2021 were an inadvertent test run for our theaterless, benevolent-cocoon future … and it was fucking horrible. I can agree with this, too. Back in 2020, I decided, in a rare moment of making a New Year's Resolution, to see one movie a week at the Alamo. That lasted until mid-March, when they closed for a few months. Nothing made me happier than coming back to watch a movie, even if it did suck (Tenet). Lesson learned: don't make New Year's resolutions. And families have yet to return to theaters at the rates they once attended. That’s why a film like Disney’s Encanto, which in the Before Times would likely have been a big hit even if it were terrible (it’s not — it’s delightful), has made less money than freaking Free Guy. The theater I go to isn't exactly family-friendly. I mean, they don't exclude brats, not really, but their focus is on adult beer-swilling movie lovers: in other words, I'm their demographic, even if I'm older than some. There are strict rules about talking and texting. No one under 18 is allowed without an adult, regardless of the movie's rating (there are some exceptions). As an aside, I'm glad to see more people adopting "the Before Time(s)." I'm under no illusion that I started this trend, but shortly after the pandemic started I was early on in my quest to re-watch all of Star Trek (I'm up to Disco now), and that phrase comes directly from an Original Series episode. So I started using it. Now if I could only get more people to refer to the first decade of this century as the Noughties. Also, Free Guy was awesome; shut up. Anyway, there's a lot more in the article that I didn't quote here, and if you like movies, it's worth a read, even if the author does come across as a highbrow snob. Whatever brow you have, low, medium, high, uni -- I think it's good that theaters seem to be bouncing back. |
| I have mixed feelings about this one. This Is Why; You Should Always Properly—Punctuate Your Social Media Posts’  An incorrectly punctuated Facebook post has brought on a potentially high-priced defamation suit. Mixed, because on one side, I want to incentivize proper grammar, spelling and punctuation; on the other, I don't think the Grammar Police should use their power to screw the little people. An Australian judge may make an example of sloppy punctuation, to the tune of over $117,000 USD in legal fees. This article is from back in October, so it may have been settled by now, one way or the other, but that's irrelevant to the larger discussion. Also, it wasn't punctuation that was at issue. Several outlets have reported that real estate agent Anthony Zadravic is now being sued for defamation for typing “employees” rather than “employee’s” in a Facebook post last year. The original quote: “Oh Stuart Gan!! Selling multi million $ homes in Pearl Beach but can’t pay his employees superannuation,” meaning an employer-subsidized pension fund. “Shame on you Stuart!!! 2 yrs and still waiting!!!” There are, of course, several other problems with this post: there should be a comma after 'Oh.' Multi-million should be hyphenated. The $ should be written out as 'dollar.' There's another comma missing between 'you' and 'Stuart.' Starting a sentence with a digit is questionable, but most style guides specify that anything less than 11 should be written out; in this case, as 'Two.' How hard is it to spell out 'years?' This is Failbook, not Twatter. I'd be willing to excuse the triple bangs (two instances) as a casual stylistic thing meant to convey extreme shock. But the actual point of contention, 'employees,' could be: employees, employee's, or employees'. Each has a different meaning in the sentence. As written, it implies that he can't pay his employees their superannuation. Awkward, and it's pretty clear on a casual reading that it's meant to be a possessive. But there are two possibilities for the possessive: The second option asserts only a lack of funding for a single employee, presumably the author but that's not as clear as it could be. And the third projects the idea that he couldn't pay the fund for ALL his employees. So the grammar police are right: something needs to be done. Last week, Judge Judith Gibson reportedly ruled that Zadravic’s employer Stuart Gan would be allowed to proceed with the suit because “employees” could suggest a “systematic pattern of conduct” of shortchanging staff, whereas Zadravic claimed he was only speaking for himself. Gibson also reportedly said that the suit might cost Zadravic up to $250,000 AUD, or roughly $180,000. However, I'm not sure that even the most hardcore Grammar Cylon would consider $180K to be a reasonable penalty for even the most egregious error in forming a possessive. Well, maybe the most hardcore. There is the temptation to also string the offender up by his toenails until he learns the difference between it's and its; there, their, and they're; and you're, your, and yore. Temptation, but still, probably too far. After all, you can't practice your grammar if you're hanging upside-down. You'd be too busy howling in agony. Though the pooling of blood in the brain could cause you to lapse into a comma. Another Australian court has lately gone off the rails with social media defamation policy. Is it really "going off the rails?" Or is it enforcing some level of needed accountability? Last month, the High Court of Australia upheld a ruling in favor of a former teen detainee who sued media companies over commenters’ ridicule under news posts showing him hooded and strapped to a chair in a detention center. The court found that media companies (or anyone who so much as runs a Facebook page) for commenters’ speech; as a result, some outlets and the Tasmanian premier have restricted comments, and CNN has blocked Australian readers from its Facebook page. Bit of both? Seems more reasonable to hold the people making the speech accountable, and not those merely providing a platform. But maybe it'd be too much work to search out the true identity of OzMan69, only to find that they're hiding behind seven proxies and besides, they live on a troll farm in Kazakhstan. Amusingly, that last quoted paragraph contains a grammatical error; it's missing a phrase. Sue them in Australia! Props for correct use of the semicolon, however. And now, maybe some unfortunate soul goes to apostrophe jail. Where they'll be mercilessly teased by a whole gang of purveyors of fine fresh produce. Now, Waltz's First Rule of the Internet states that any post correcting someone's spelling, grammar, and/or punctuation will itself contain spelling, grammar, and/or punctuation errors. So I've tried to go through and proofread this entry, eliminating any of my own mistakes. Did I succeed? Well see. |
| I want to help make the world a better place. Okay, well, that's not entirely true, but I want to at least not make it a worse place. Articles like this one make me stop giving a shit, though. Americans love their gas stoves. It's a romance fueled by a decades-old "cooking with gas" campaign from utilities that includes vintage advertisements, a cringeworthy 1980s rap video and, more recently, social media personalities. The details have changed over time, but the message is the same: Using a gas stove makes you a better cook. I couldn't care less about those ads, rap videos, or especially social media personalities. Gas stoves are simply superior. But the beloved gas stove has become a focal point in a fight over whether gas should even exist in the 35% of U.S. homes that cook with it. Let's just use less efficient electricity instead. Some of which comes from gas. If you have an electric stove, the energy for cooking may come from fossil fuels, but the combustion happens at a power plant far away, Kephart says. "When you have a gas stove, that combustion is actually occurring right in your kitchen — you can see the blue flame down there," he says. "There is no smoke-free combustion." And? This reminds me of the whole California Proposition 65 thing. I'm sure it means well. But as with "this product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer," there are problems. First, say you have Substance A, which has a 0.0001% chance of causing health issues, and Substance B, which has a 10% chance of causing health issues. You lump these two together, and it's misleading as hell. Sure, you can say "But I only want products that have a 0% chance of causing health issues," but you can also say "I want a pet unicorn." Second, if you put a warning label on everything, pretty soon it's going to be utterly ignored. It becomes background. Point is, I don't care if the combustion comes from my gas stove or a gas-powered plant, it's still going to happen, and I don't run the gas stove 24 hours a day. Well, my local power mostly comes from nuclear, so I guess that's better somehow? (Keep in mind you have to consider waste disposal in the equation). There is no hood over Kephart's stove to vent the pollution outside. Instead, like many Philadelphia row houses, there's an old room fan high up in a wall. It vents outside, but even after Kephart turns it on, NO2 levels remain high. Kephart says that's because the fan is about 6 feet away. This is an argument for venting gas stoves, not for eliminating them. These days, houses are way more insulated than they used to be, in order to save on energy in general. When I was a kid, the house was drafty as fuck. No chance for NO2 or CO2 or our farts to accumulate inside. In the absence of federal oversight, California is taking action. Because of course. To encourage more people to ditch natural gas, environmentalists are focusing on the gas stove. At first it may seem like an odd choice because other gas-burning devices in the home consume more fuel, notably furnaces. I'm going the other direction. I'm putting in more natural gas appliances. I bought the house with a gas furnace nearly 30 years ago. When it came time to replace the water heater, I switched to gas. Then I changed the electric stove to gas, which of course improved my overall quality of life. I put in a gas fireplace. Then I added a gas-fired emergency generator, which required upgrading my gas meter. Now, I want gas lights for my deck. They'd look cool. I'm sure my idiotic city council will pull some shit about increasing the price or cutting me off, but until they do, I'm going to live in my own little methane utopia. I'm not going to rant too much more about this, but I will point out the major flaw in the "anti-gas" movement, which is that right now, they burn that shit off at the source because there's a surplus and they can't sell it fast enough. Burn it in Oklahoma and waste it and still warm up the climate, or burn it here and at least make me warm before it contributes to climate change? Hm, tough choice. In other words, you can pry my natural gas from my cold, dead fingers. And they will be cold.   I saw a movie in the theater on Thursday but I keep forgetting to review it. So here it is: One-Sentence Movie Review: Cyrano Part stage play adaptation, part 80s music video, part Renaissance painting, this film celebrating the utter foolishness of humans is about 45 minutes longer than it needs to be. Rating: 3.5/5 |
| Warning: this one might make you hungry. You're stretching when you have to pull in a word from another language to force alliteration in the headline. But at least that's better than making a cheese pun, which I'll brie trying to avoid here. ‘I hate to dictate to people. I don’t like too many rules,” says Iain Mellis, a cheesemonger of 40 years, with cheese shops bearing his name scattered across Scotland. Before you go "Scotland? Cheese?" keep in mind just how many sheep there are up there. As we enter the season of cheese – and the month during which we will buy (and eat) more cheese than in any other – it is worth debunking some of the more commonly held fictions regarding fromage. Article is from early December, so I guess they're asserting that winter is the season of cheese? I mean, I guess, technically, it was originally created to provide extra food over a long winter, and everyone loves cheese around the winter solstice, but as far as I'm concerned, it is always the season of cheese. Remember, the things mentioned in bold are what this guy considers false. You can cook with cheap cheese “That is a false economy,” says Mellis. “Our cheese might be double the price [of supermarket varieties], but you’ll only need half the quantity.” Blatant ad here, but it's okay because it's about cheese. Right now some of my fellow Americans are thinking about Velveeta or Kraft Singles. Those are cheap, but they are not cheese. Stop it. Pre-grated cheese is fine Grated parmesan, mozzarella or cheddar, for example, are “a terrible addition to your recipes”, says Luca Dusi of the wine and cheese bar Passione Vino in east London. “Once grated, cheese will start oxidising” – meaning it also begins to lose flavour. I don't doubt that, but never underestimate the utter depths of my laziness. Not only is it work to grate cheese, and not only do you then have another utensil to clean afterward, but also there's always that little bit left over, generally covered with blood from where you shredded your fingers instead. The older, the better The “most pernicious myth of all”, according to Dominic Coyte of Borough Cheese Company. “All cheeses have a peak period, during which they are their best, and then they decline. I mean, that should be obvious, if only when taken to extremes. I don't care how excellent the cheese is, anything left of a block of cheese after 100 years is going to be of questionable quality. Yes, I know they've found cheese from longer ago than that. My point stands. And some cheese is simply meant to be enjoyed young. Wrap in clingfilm or keep in an airtight container “Clingfilm is the worst environment for cheese, because it traps the moisture,” says Mellis. The same goes for a plastic container, says Jason Hinds, the director at Neal’s Yard Dairy. Again, don't forget laziness. If I know I'm going to eat the entire block within a week (not a rare occurrence), I'll wrap it in whatever's at hand, which is usually a zipper sandwich bag. You can store it in the fridge door (the space often marked “dairy”) “The fridge is an exceptionally dry environment – and the door is particularly dry,” says Hinds. Ideally, you should avoid the fridge entirely and go for a cellar or larder, says Mellis – but not everyone has that option. If a fridge is your most hygienic choice, Hinds recommends the salad drawer. Which is fine; it's not like I keep salad in there. If it goes mouldy, it’s bad Cheese – good cheese – is a living product. If given a chance, it will develop mould – but that mould is rarely, if ever, bad for you. “Like the rind, it will penetrate in a tiny way and may change the taste of the cheese very slightly,” says Mellis, “but it’s not dangerous.” I mean, sure, for some cheese, mold (American spelling) is the entire point. Stilton, e.g. But I don't care if other cheese is "okay" to eat moldy; it can look disgusting. The temperature of your room is “room temperature” “The biggest mistake you can make is eating cheese straight from the fridge,” says Em Brightman, the head chef at Angela Hartnett’s London restaurant Murano – but it is also worth remembering that “room temperature” in cheese terms “means 14C to 18C. Yes, I speak C, but even the upper end of that range -- 18 -- is entirely too damn cold for me to live in. (It's around 64 in Freedom Units). What they're describing isn't what I would call room temperature, but cellar temperature, also useful for some beer and wine. I keep my house around 23 Commie in the winter, a bit higher in the summer, or else I'm entirely uncomfortable. At those temperatures (mid-70s Freedom), cheese left out indeed starts to sweat, even though I don't. You need specialist cheese knives … “I have a couple of cheese knives, but I don’t put them out,” says Mellis. “I tend to serve cheese with paring knives, which are sharp and small.” The most important thing is that the knife is thin. I mean, sure, if you have 'em, use 'em. If you're on a budget, use whatever else you got. … and a cheese board While lovely to look at, they can leave cheese at the mercy of guests, who might not appreciate the nuances of cutting cheeses or the order in which to eat them. “Be sure to eat your way from the mildest cheese to the strongest in flavour,” advises Brightman. Let's get over the "cutting the cheese" jokes right now: heh. hehhuhheheheh. Okay, with that out of the way, here's my take on this: First of all, having a cheese board or not has nothing to do with what this Brightman person is saying. But here's the thing: your "guests" may be all over the place in terms of cheese knowledge. I certainly can't always identify a cheese by its looks, any more than I can a beer. And people aren't going to learn by, as this article points out, having a lot of rules imposed upon them. In other words, trust your guests and don't restrict them any more than you have to. So they eat cheese out of order; so what? If they do that, they'll figure out the "mild to strong" order quickly enough, just like with beer or wine. Rinds are inedible With the obvious exception of rinds that are made of cloth, wax or plastic, most rinds are edible – even on hard cheeses. “It has its own flavour, and sometimes the best flavours, as the result of mould ripening,” says Hinds. To me, it's not always obvious which rinds are edible and which are not. Usually, but not always. For instance, gouda usually comes wrapped in wax. Some wax is edible. Some isn't. I figure if it looks like it's supposed to be part of the cheese (as with brie), I'll give it a try. Red wine is the best pairing … “The truth is, the tannins in red wine can seriously clash with many cheeses,” says Alan Watson, the head cheesemonger at Funk in London. “I would recommend searching for more sparkling whites and even orange wines.” I have had great luck pairing ordinary white wine with cheese. It depends on the wine, of course. The beauty is not only in the consumption, though, but in the experimentation to find out what works for you. Just as not everyone is going to like every cheese, not everyone is going to be on board with the same wine/cheese pairing. … but beer is a no-go “Beer and cheese were born to go together and share a lot of history,” says Jonny Garrett, the founder of the Craft Beer Channel and the author of A Year in Beer. “For centuries, they were made using local ingredients by women at home. The fact they have always shared the table means they have similar or complementary flavours.” I gotta say, I'd never heard that one shouldn't pair beer with cheese. It is, of course, bullshit. Again, experimentation is key here. I volunteer as tribute. Cheese gives you nightmares Chances are you will have cheese quite late at night at this time of year – and it is eating (and drinking) late that results in poor-quality sleep, which in turn makes you more likely to remember your dreams, rather than an inherent property of cheese. Me, I like remembering my dreams, and sometimes eat before bed to test this theory. Sometimes it works. You can’t eat any cheese if you are lactose intolerant On the contrary, one of the reasons humans developed cheese in the first place was in order to digest the milk of ruminants, argues Ned Palmer, the author of A Cheesemonger’s History of the British Isles and A Cheesemonger’s Compendium of British and Irish Cheese. During the cheesemaking process, bacteria convert the lactose in the milk into lactic acid, which those with lactose intolerance can tolerate. I think this is important to note, so I'm leaving it here. Cheese provides protein, and in a more digestible form than milk. I have a slight lactose intolerance, myself, so I don't drink milk, but I'll eat the hell out of cheese. Just slice any way you like No. While you don’t need a set of designated cheese knives, you do need an array of sharp knives, in order to avoid getting blue cheese on other cheeses or vice versa. The biggest faux pas in fromage is cutting the nose off a cheese, rather than slicing it lengthways – not for reasons of etiquette, but because “the cheese tastes differently from the centre to the outside,” says Hinds. Again, are we just going to tell everyone what to do? Maybe some people like it that way. This can, of course, lead to conflict among you and the guests at your cheese party, however. So I hope you enjoyed learning about Our Lord Cheeses today. I certainly did. And now I think I have part of a block of Swiss wrapped in a sandwich bag in my dairy door; I'mma go eat that sucker. With beer. |
| There's a bunch of new prompts up over at "JAFBG" [XGC]. I haven't decided whether to do any of them or not. I spent all of January doing those, and I ended up spamming the forum. I want to give other people a chance there. Besides, I still have a long list of articles to share. This is one of them, and you might think it would have been more appropriate for last month, but I say it's appropriate at any time. The final human Moon landing took place in December of 1972 - nearly 50 years ago. We (by which I mean the world, not the US or NASA) have sent robots there since then, but humans have been relegated to Low Earth Orbit -- space stations and the like. Every single person -- 12 in total -- who has walked on the Moon has been a white male American. But since then, there has been a bit more diversity in space. On August 30, 1983, Guion (better known as Guy) Bluford was a crew member aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger when it launched from Kennedy Space Station on its third mission, making Bluford the first Black astronaut to fly to space. Here he reflects on the importance of that achievement, the role he filled, and the advice he gives to young people seeking to make their way in the world. I'm not going to copy pieces of the interview here; that's what the link is for. I'll just say that they're still talking about going back to the Moon, something Bluford, along with everyone else who flew after the end of 1972, wasn't able to do. As I understand it, it's not going to look quite so monochrome next time. In an ideal world, things like ethnicity and gender wouldn't be such a big deal, but we don't live in an ideal world. Members of groups that have historically been passed over should have the same opportunities, and sometimes that means deliberately seeking out such people. After all, space belongs to all of us. |
| Been a while since I made words about words. From respair to cacklefart – the joy of reclaiming long-lost positive words We have been bombarded with negativity recently; but the English language is a treasure trove of joyous vocabulary While I want negative words as well, these will do for now. “Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them”: words of positivity from the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. Easy to be positive when you're an emperor, I suppose. As long as you're not dodging assassins. In recent times I’ve made it a mission to highlight a category of English that linguists fondly call “orphaned negatives”. These are the words that inexplicably lost their mojo at some point in the past, becoming a sorry crew of adjectives that includes unkempt, unruly, disgruntled, unwieldy and inept. Yet previous generations had the potential to be kempt, ruly, wieldy, ept and – most recently thanks to PG Wodehouse – gruntled. Some were even full of ruth (compassion), feck (initiative) and gorm (due care and attention). Well, that explains a few things from previous entries. It’s not just these negatives that have been lost. The German schadenfreude – pleasure in the misfortunes of others – is now all too familiar. But how many of us know its near opposite in English, “confelicity”, which is joy in another person’s happiness? Not me. I'll probably forget that word as soon as I'm done with this entry. But if we are pessimists at heart, it has never stopped us having a laugh. I mean, sure, that's pretty much my entire brand. That and science. And drinking. Some of our happiest words are such because they make us smile, and often involve a bit of fun at our own expense. Who can resist such nicknames as “cacklefarts” for eggs, or “bags of mystery” for sausages (because you never quite know what’s in them)? Even the prudish Victorians knew hankies as “snottingers”, and umbrellas as “bumbershoots”. The Victorians weren't nearly as prudish as they're made out to be.Also, I'd never heard of "cacklefart," which is, obviously, a fine word. I've been known to call eggs "cackleberries." And milk becomes "moo juice." I get my groceries delivered now, because I'm lazy (been doing it since before anyone had heard of COVID), and before that I made grocery lists on a note app on my phone. But before that , I'd use the traditional ink on paper. One time, I'd written a grocery list that included cackleberries, moo juice, chick tits (what else are you going to call chicken breasts?), and a few other twisted inventions of my own. By the time I got my groceries to the car, though, I realized that I'd dropped my grocery list somewhere. I can only imagine the look of shock and/or horror on the face of whoever found that thing and read it. And then I laugh. See? I can experience joy. The fact that "cackleberries" is a longer word than "eggs" and thus takes more time to write out is immaterial. It’s true too that other languages dish out positivity a little better than us. They have a splash of what the Italians call sprezzatura, a careless, thrown together nonchalance or indifference to life’s curveballs. As for joy, it would be hard to beat gigil from the Philippines. In a single word it conveys the “irresistible desire to squeeze something cute”. That concept just gave me diabetes. But one English word surely stands above all others from the corners of the dictionary. I mention it all the time, because I’m determined to bring it back. Or bring it anywhere in fact, for it never really enjoyed more than a day in the sun. “Respair” has just one record next to it in the Oxford English Dictionary, from 1525, but its definition is sublime. Respair is fresh hope; a recovery from despair. ...nah. |
| Today, I'm going to talk about politics. By "talk about politics," I mean that I'm actually talking about talking about politics -- I'm not here to start arguments or promote my own point of view (though I can't promise I'll be entirely impartial). Political polarization, or the “violence of faction” James Madison warned of in Federalist 10, is as great a threat to democracy today as it was in 1787, dividing voters and their representatives into diametrically opposed camps that are unwilling to compromise or yield power to their opponents. At some point, it becomes tribal. I've seen people treat politics like they do football, as if it's a spectator sport. The January 6th insurrection on Capitol Hill over one year ago, and the United States’ ongoing struggle to respond effectively to threats such as the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change, warn us of the dangers posed by unchecked polarization. As writers know better than anyone, words have power. Though I agree with the sentiment here, I feel obligated to, in fairness, point out that calling the events of 1/6/21 an "insurrection" already gives away at least some of the authors' bias. The other side is trying to frame it as a "protest." One could also call it a "riot," or a "coup attempt," or "trespassing." Also, at this point, even acknowledging that the pandemic is a "threat" (or, in some cases, even exists at all), and asserting that climate change is a) real and b) a problem (let alone whether it's anthropogenic) also results in pushback from the other side. Given that level of extreme polarization, where some people ignore the existence of certain facts, what hope do we really have? Well, I have the hope that the article will shed some light on that. Our contribution, recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, identifies three key mechanisms for avoiding polarization: (1) increasing tolerance, the range of opinions that individuals find attractive; (2) limiting the radicalizing influence of repulsive extremists; and (3) incentivizing non-extremist policies that align with individuals’ self-interests. So they're stating their findings up front. Good. The rest is commentary, but important commentary. We also find that external shocks—such as wars, economic crises, or climate disasters—can consolidate individuals’ opinions into less polarized distributions, but only if they are very strong or if they occur before patterns of extreme polarization have set in. I should note that this article was published before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which seems to have promoted at least a little bit of bipartisan cooperation here. Low tolerance among actors causes flurries of repulsive interactions and the rapid onset of extreme polarization, while moderate to high tolerance does the opposite. How, then, do we foster greater tolerance to dissimilar and opposing points of view? I still don't see how this can happen the way things are now. And some things simply should not be tolerated -- for example, if group A has the stated objective of killing or enslaving group B, I can't see there being any middle ground. We need look no further than Twitter to see how exposure to a wide range of ideologies does not necessarily increase tolerance; on the contrary, social media interactions often reinforce deep divisions. This is one reason I avoid Twatter. As the saying goes, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Yeah, that worked out well when the US and USSR were both opposing Nazi Germany in WWII. Is polarization mitigated—even temporarily—in the face of external shocks such as war, climate disasters, or economic crises? According to our model, it depends. Of course it does. Our research highlights the importance of fostering tolerance beyond just exposing people to new ideas. Interventions that focus on empathy and connection, like storytelling, may succeed in bridging ideological gaps where others have caused repulsive backlash. Naturally, I don't have anything against storytelling per se. But, again, these days, if you tell a true story about someone's experience, the other side is just as likely to mock it and call it fake news as they are to simply dismiss it. As an example, many, many stories have been told about people who refused to get vaccinated against the 'rona, then got sick and wished they'd gotten the vaccine, then died. This doesn't move some people, whose lived experience is people who got sick and then (to some degree) recovered. As further examples, consider all the people who sincerely believe that a certain school shooting was faked with crisis actors, or who screech about how if someone on their side did something heinous, they must have been acting on behalf of the other tribe to make them look bad. In other words, I think storytelling only works when it aligns with peoples' preconceived ideas. But I'm not a researcher; these authors are. And then there's the thing I've mentioned in here before: that a person's lived experience is relatively useless for making informed decisions. Those rely on statistical analysis, not things like "Well, my uncle wasn't wearing his seat belt and survived the crash." But people in general don't understand statistics, or they think someone's manipulating the numbers to lie to them (to be fair, this has happened), and they don't understand the concept of risk. "You can get in a car accident even if you haven't been drinking!" Yes, this is true, but that doesn't change the fact that drinking increases the chance of an accident. With the 2022 midterm elections on the horizon, it is critical that candidates and the media resist the poison of extremism rather than attempting to gain from it. Yeah... that's not going to happen. Extremism is interesting. It gets views. Whether you agree with the extremists' point of view or not, you're watching the train wreck. News outlets cater to that, on all sides. So, really, I'd suggest reading the whole article; there's a lot more here that I didn't cover. To sum up my thoughts on it, though, I'd have to say that it doesn't matter how much science you do when a) there's a group of people who reject the very idea of science and b) no matter how much you tell people what to do to change, they won't, because they simply won't be told what to do by anyone not of their tribe. |
| A Cracked link today, talking about men, which is odd because its readership demographic is 12-year-old kids... at heart, at least. "What brains?" women who think they're funny are thinking right now. It feels like journalists and YouTubers are legally obligated to talk about how masculinity is in crisis. Funny, this is the first I've heard of the subject in a while. Traditional manhood is supposedly going the way of the dodo, and yet at the same time there’s a huge industry offering me everything from jewelry to body washes that will keep my manliness intact amid my gender’s death throes. Pro tip: jewelry and body washes are incompatible with "traditional manhood." Unless you count my body wash, which is also a shampoo, conditioner, salad dressing, cake icing, and engine lube. 5. The Manliness Industry Has Become Stupidly Huge Cue "stupidly huge" jokes here. Products have targeted men for as long as advertising’s existed. In the '20s, deodorant ads told women it was a necessity but only informed men it was an option, because not smelling like a flop house could be seen as “feminine” and “sissified.” Making yogurt and grooming products look manly was important in getting men to buy them at all. Somewhere in ancient Ur, a market stall owner probably told some gangly dork that he’d look tougher with a leather bracelet. Honestly, I never thought much about it. I always figured that the "for men" products were labeled as such due to different biology, not sociological principles. Which means I've probably been suckered in. 4. That Industry Promotes A Very Specific Worldview The good people at Active Doodie say you need one of their diaper bags because holding a normal one will be even more humiliating than holding your wife’s purse. Huh, and here I thought "real men" made the wimminfolk do all the diaper changing and stuff. Oh, and can we find the person responsible for naming that company and remove him (it was almost certainly a "him") from society? America has a proud tradition of reducing politics to asinine vagaries crammed onto t-shirts, but these companies are all pitching a very specific and isolating vision of masculinity. Nine Line decries that “patriotism and national pride is disappearing daily” and say they want to reverse that trend, but half their product descriptions are about how the “woke” are turning America into an irredeemable hellhole. I know who's turning America into an irredeemable hellhole, and it's not the "woke." It's the people peddling this toxic masculinity bullshit. And people who shoot video in vertical format. Not coincidentally, there’s a whole media ecosystem warning that modern manhood is vanishing. PragerU warns that men aren’t allowed to be masculine anymore, and thus no longer “defend, protect, or provide.” Right, because that's all men are good for. That and getting things down from the top shelf. Which I guess is part of "provide." 3. The Modern View Of Masculinity Is An Aberration I was hoping they'd acknowledge this. Hey, maybe all those videos have a point. Look how this typical soy boy talks to his “male” friend, writing girly crap like “You know my desire to befriend you is everlasting” and “I do not feel my own sorrows much more keenly than I do yours” before signing off “Yours forever.” Why not just have a couple of appletinis and cry about your menstrual cycles? Those are excerpts from letters by noted wimp Abraham Lincoln to his good friend Joshua Speed. And I mean good friend; they shared their deepest anxieties with each other, while also sharing a bed for four years. But no, nowadays any expression of platonic affection between males is smirkingly called a "bromance." I hate that word and want it to die. Flowery language, inspired by the heroic bromances of classical literature, was common. Goddammit, Cracked. But dudes who invoke Sparta’s cool quotes about not having their weapons taken away probably aren’t planning to reclaim their habitual pederasty, lengthy stretches of communal living, total subservience to the state, long braided hair, progressive (for the time) attitude towards women, or the time they surrendered and whined about the enemy’s use of arrows. The more I hear about the past, the more I'm glad I live in the present. But we can still learn from it. Masculinity isn’t a series of boxes to check that were handed down by nature. It’s always varied by time and place, and you can only “reclaim” it in the same sense that you can reclaim bell bottoms. Now, those were the true aberrations. 2. Our Narrow, Modern View Of Manliness Is Taking Us To Strange Places As the pro-gun diaper bags implied, Americans are increasingly told that being a good man means believing that a significant number of other men are waiting for their chance to murder you. Oh, be fair. Lots of women want to murder you, too. But … why? A majority of Americans have, for decades, believed that crime rates are rising. And, for decades, they’ve been wrong. Media and politicians mislead us about how dangerous America is, petty crimes like vandalism lead to the mistaken assumption that serious crimes are also rampant, a high-profile crime across the country can convince us that we’re next, and all while the actual statistics keep improving. America’s no paradise, but it’s safer than it’s ever been and we act like we’re about to erupt into Civil War 2: This Time We’re Angry About Pronouns. To be fair again, a civil war is definitely imminent. The signs are all there (mostly they look like confederate flags because we learn nothing). 1. And So Men Are Now Lonely, Isolated, And Scared But they can't admit that, because that would be unmanly. Between 2019 and 2021 the U.S. Concealed Carry Association, which teaches self-defense and trauma care, saw its membership jump from 300,000 to 600,000. Their success came from their focus on family protection. The USCCA is far less combative than the NRA, and they emphasize that part of being safe is avoiding fighting. You know, I think I've managed to avoid talking about guns in here for all this time, though I don't remember for sure. What I have mentioned is that I spent my childhood on a farm. A gun, out in the country, is a tool, like an axe or a tractor, that provides some sort of benefit while also being dangerous. So I'm not anti-gun, but I don't worship them either. So America is more armed than ever, yet it’s supposedly suffering a manliness nadir. Ironically, the 1950s that are idealized as a peak in American manhood thought they were suffering from a testosterone crisis, because soldiers came home and had to learn how to move on and become family men. Now family men supposedly need to become lone warriors in case radicals seize the local Steak 'n Shake. Again, we’ve been reframing and arguing about manhood forever. I think one of the biggest issues is conflating "gender" with "how you have to act." There was a book out, I think back in the 80s, called "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche." I never read it. Perhaps it was satire; I don't know. But real men -- real people -- do whatever the hell they want so long as it doesn't infringe on others' rights. So if we’re going to cherry pick from yesteryear’s men, hell, let’s pick the part where men went out and tried to make the world a better place. Meh. There are people out there. Shudder. I'd rather sit at home and try to make the world a better place. |
| This is not my usual kind of link, but a friend sent it to me and I figured, why not branch out a bit? Let's leave aside for the moment that this is the first time I've ever heard of, or seen a picture of, this Kat Von D person. I have no idea who she is, what she's done (if anything), or why I should care. And don't be telling me I'm out of touch, either. Obviously, from the title, the article is photo-heavy, so you'll have to click on the link to get the full effect. Warning: face tattoo (which immediately lowers my opinion of the subject to its lowest possible level; so sue me). Kat Von D announced in October that she'd be selling her famous Los Angeles mansion and moving to Indiana. So what? Also, it can't be that famous, as this is the first I've heard of it. Von D has lived in California for years, including when she starred on "LA Ink." I guess that's some sort of "reality" show about tattoos? Which would explain the disfigurement of her face, I suppose. I'd never heard of the show until reading this article. She had previously said that she wanted to move out of California as a result of "terrible policies, tyrannical government overreach, ridiculous taxing," and "so much more corruption." I don't claim to be an expert on California no matter how many times I've visited, but I suspect that the general response of most Californians would be "Well... bye." With maybe a "Bye Felicia" thrown in every now and then, though that wouldn't be true to the sense of the original quote, which was about dismissing someone who didn't want to leave. I can't argue about the taxation, though anyone with a $15M house is going to face property taxes pretty much anywhere. And I know enough about Indiana that I know they have their own brands of "terrible policies" and "tyrannical government overreach;" it's just that they come from a different majority party, and Indiana's presumably suit her better. Indiana is basically the South's giant middle finger, flipping the rest of us off. "We just felt the need to plant roots in a small town where there is nature, where my son can be free to play, and where we can eventually retire one day," she wrote in a December 2020 Instagram comment. Okay, so this is year-old news. That's never stopped me before. Anyway, the concept of retiring to Indiana would never occur to me, and I was born there. The Victorian home has a gothic aesthetic thanks to Von D's renovations. (This is where you really need to look at the pictures.) I gotta be fair, here: I really, really like the look of that house. The exterior, anyway; the interior is far too baroque (I think that's the word for that aesthetic) for my tastes. Of course, given its price and location, I wouldn't buy it either way (I like visiting CA, though I wouldn't want to live there). But like going through an art museum, it doesn't hurt to look and have an opinion. The Victorian home was built in 1896 by Isaac Newton Van Nuys and was later featured in the 2003 film "Cheaper by the Dozen." Which I never saw. If I were in a better mood, I could check to see if this is the same Van Nuys that has a street named after him. But I'm not in a good mood. The three-story home is on a 27,000-square-foot lot. For the math-challenged, that's a bit more than 3/5 of an acre. I'm entirely too hung over to convert it to square meters or hectares, though. The property has 11 bedrooms, 8 1/2 bathrooms, and a massive pool, among other features. Why? Also, pools are nice, but I could never have one; I can't be arsed to do maintenance on it. Though I suppose if you're going to buy a mansion in L.A. (the article doesn't seem to specify which part, or even if it's technically L.A., but it's presumably in a place like Beverly Hills and not Sherman Oaks), you probably have enough wealth to hire someone to do it for you. In general, I don't like "If you have enough money to buy x then you can afford y" arguments, because they're specious, but in this case it seems reasonable. Let me expand upon that, here, as an aside. I think I have a different attitude toward money than most. I figure if you can't pay cash for something (other than maybe a house), then you really can't afford it. Yes, I know most people have car loans, too; my point, however, remains. So let's pretend I want to buy a new Porsche (I don't). And I say, "I really want to buy a Porsche, but the insurance is too much." You might be tempted to think, "If you have enough money to buy a Porsche, you can afford the insurance." Well, no; in this case, I've spent my entire car budget on the Porsche. Say, I don't know, $100,000 (again, this is purely hypothetical). I don't know how much they actually cost, but whatever. That means that (in this fantasy), I have $100,000 earmarked for purchasing a Porsche -- no more. Insurance is a monthly (or yearly) expense, coming from a different budget item. Being able to afford one doesn't mean I'm able to afford the other. It also leads to infinite regression. If you have enough to buy a Porsche, then you can afford the insurance. If you have enough for all that, you can afford to hire a driver. If you have the money for the car, insurance, and a driver, then you can afford to have it repainted every year. And so on. At some point, it becomes absurd. Anyway. Point is, in this case, anyone buying a home in (presumably) Beverly Hills has to be able to pay, not just for the house, but for all the stuff that comes with it: gardening, maintenance, pool stuff (and don't get me started about the profligacy of using all that water in a goddamned desert), etc. Inside, there are multiple places to relax — including a grand lounge. And this is where they lose me. Like I said, I really like the exterior. And that's where my appreciation ends. Now, I could take this opportunity to note that there are houses like this in the L.A. area -- you know there are even more expensive ones -- and yet, as I was riding through that city the other day, I couldn't even count the extraordinarily large number of homeless encampments. I could, but what good would it do, apart from virtue signaling? No one's going to give their mansion to the homeless, and even if they did, the neighbors would freak right out (actually, I would love to see that). But no, instead I'll point out that the same state that she claims to hate so much is the one that presumably enabled her to buy and upgrade such a mansion in the first place. And from what little I know of Indiana, that sort of conspicuous display of wealth won't be nearly as tolerated there. Also, and I mean this with all sincerity, fuck the "art" on the wall of the "formal living room." But when it comes to the bedrooms, Von D went all out. One has a subtle black-and-gold design. "Subtle?" Of all the adjectives that could be used to describe this interior, that one's not even on the same planet. There's also a bedroom that makes you feel as though you've been transported to another world. Another one besides the actual world, and the world the rest of this house's interior lives in. So... yeah, go look at the pictures. You might have an entirely different opinion of the decor, and that's fine, but you can still gawk at the excess. |
| "That's the problem with nature. Something's always stinging you or oozing mucus on you. Let's go watch TV." -Calvin I could quibble about the definition and connotation of "nature." We are absolutely a part of nature, and thus the things we construct are also a part of the natural world. Is a beaver dam unnatural? A termite mound? A bird's nest? Just because it's built by an ape doesn't mean it's not part of nature. And some things that we humans create can be as beautiful or terrifying as a wilderness untouched by hands with opposable thumbs. But, okay, fine, I'll take for the sake of argument the stance that anything created by humans is "artificial" and anything else, including artifacts created by other animals, is "natural." As an aside, though, let's try to remember that "natural" isn't always "beneficial." My cigars contain all-natural ingredients. Poison ivy is natural. Most viruses are natural. And so on. Many of us invest hours each day staring at the screens of our televisions and computers and smartphones. Seldom do we go outside on a clear night, away from the lights of the city, and gaze at the dark starry sky, or take walks in the woods unaccompanied by our digital devices. I like computers and smartphones. TV, not so much, because of the interminable stupid ads. Those get my ire up way more than being in a fluorescent-lit cubicle ever did. Most of the minutes and hours of each day we spend in temperature-controlled structures of wood, concrete, and steel. Goddamn right I do. Okay, so I do like to sit on my deck with the trees around. Yesterday I saw a whole flock of deer cross the yard. But in the past, I've been perfectly content to sit inside, and also always when it's cold. It's cold a lot. Give me temperature control. We developed technology for a reason, and that reason is to be fucking comfortable. We have created a natureless world. That's a matter of opinion and perspective. Like I said above, my painted drywall is no less "natural" than a tree, as it was created and installed by natural creatures. It was not always this way. For more than 99 percent of our history as humans, we lived close to nature. We lived in the open. Yes, and we had the brains to stop doing that shit. Not all early humans were "cavepeople," but what's the real difference between a cave and a house, except most houses at least have windows you can look out of? Over the large majority of our 2-million-year evolutionary history, Darwinian forces molded our brains to find kinship with nature, what the biologist E. O. Wilson called “biophilia.” I think that's misleading. "Darwinian forces" (COME ON) molded our brains to be able to make tools, then tools to make other tools, then tools to construct all the wonderful and terrible things we've built over the millennia. In other words, if [deity] had not intended humans to fly, [pronoun] wouldn't have given us the ability to build airplanes. But okay, fine, perhaps we sometimes go too far with it. In 2004, the social psychologists Stephan Mayer and Cindy McPherson Frantz, at Oberlin College, developed something called the “connectedness to nature scale” (CNS), a set of statements that could be used to determine a person’s degree of affinity for nature... Some of the statements of the CNS test are: And you're damn right I'm going to comment on said statements. I often feel a sense of oneness with the natural world around me. I feel a sense of oneness with my laptop and smartphone. I think of the natural world as a community to which I belong. I think of the natural world as including the things we've built. When I think of my life, I imagine myself to be part of a larger cyclical process of living. Well, okay, I can't argue with that one. I feel as though I belong to the Earth as equally as it belongs to me. Oh... if only the Earth belonged to me. There'd be some changes, lemme tellya. I feel that all inhabitants of Earth, human and nonhuman, share a common “life force.” There is a light side, and a dark side, and it binds the universe together. I mean, again, COME ON. In the more frenzied and tech-heavy times of today, we require more effort to creep out of our close and crowded houses. But the poet Mary Oliver succeeded. In her 1972 poem “Sleeping in the Forest,” Oliver writes that she “slept as never before, a stone / on the riverbed, nothing between me and the white fire of stars / but my thoughts, and they floated / light as moths among the branches / of the perfect trees … By morning / I had vanished at least a dozen times / into something better.” Yeah, I've slept outside, too. Or, rather, tried to. It was cold. The ground was hard. Shit crawled on me. The next morning, I had a massive headache. Don't get me wrong: I appreciate what we're calling "nature" here. I just prefer to appreciate it from a nice warm room. My most intense experience with nature occurred a number of years ago on a small island in Maine. A family of ospreys lived near our house on the island... That's nice. Usually nature's birds just naturally deposit their shit upon me. But I do think that we need to be more mindful of what this technology has cost us and the vital importance of direct experiences with nature. And by “cost,” I mean what Henry David Thoreau meant in Walden: “The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.” Anytime someone tries to convince me of something by quoting Thoreau, I become convinced of the opposite. In summary, it's as if we've built ourselves a splendid mansion, and now you want us to go live in the mud. No, thanks. Oh, sure, in small doses, I agree: "nature" can be beautiful. But I think a lot of the problems supposedly caused by "artificial" surroundings are due to other concerns: when you're in that fluorescent-lit office, for example, you're generally focused on work, which can be stressful, but when you're walking in the forest (unless you're a lumberjack), you're not thinking about work. Other people have other priorities, of course. But as for me, out here sitting on my deck because it's the first midnight in a long while that hasn't been freezing cold (which I define as anything under about 55F), I'm perfectly happy to have my electric patio heater plugged in and keeping me warm while still technically being "outdoors." |
| Well, I did promise "posts of substance;" this came up at random, and it qualifies -- though there's not much for me to say about it. It could be argued that anyone with enough arrogance (however well they might hide it) to run for office is usually going to be evil, even discounting that what one tribe considers good, the other considers evil. Oh, sure, you can find counterexamples if you think for a few minutes, but the exceptions don't change the generality. So choosing between the lesser of two evils is almost always a given. Except, of course, if there's more than two people running, and then it's the least of n evils. As the common adage goes, politics is about addition, not subtraction. As I have never heard that (insofar as I can remember), I already know I'm probably over my head in this article. Political addition is the foundation of a healthy democracy, but unfortunately, our current political system leaves many citizens out of the equation. The structure of elections, especially party primaries, contributes to this disparity. Won't argue with that. Exacerbating the situation is the fact that more than 80 percent of congressional districts are completely safe for one party. That's 'cause they're desigerrymandered to be that way. Anyway, the article spends a few paragraphs explaining the situation better than I ever could. But is there a simple way to change the party primary system to foster more citizen engagement and more choice, without favoring one party over another? I'm guessing they're going to say "yes." An innovative idea that fits that bill is Final-Five Voting, put forth by the Institute for Political Innovation. I must be psychic. Final-Five Voting — this specific combination of top-five primaries and instant runoff-voting general elections — would have a powerful, positive impact on our system. Rather than forcing voters to choose the “lesser of two evils,” we’d infuse healthy competition into politics and help to ensure that candidates are more responsive and accountable to all the voters of the state or district they seek to represent. In the Before Time, when I still had a gym membership, I'd alleviate the incredible boredom of being on an elliptical machine by watching lectures about shit like science, philosophy, and mathematics. This is where you're tempted to comment, "But wouldn't that make it even more boring?" Well, no; not for me. Anyway. I wish I could remember the program I was watching or even the slightest hint of the proof they used, but one lecturer made a convincing argument that there is not only no such thing as the perfect system for choosing leaders, but that there can never be the perfect system for choosing leaders. There will always be a downside, a certain level of unfairness. But just because it is mathematically impossible to implement perfection -- which is usually the case in everything, not just elections -- doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to make something better. As they say, "the perfect is the enemy of the good." If you resist change because the new system won't be perfect, there will never be change. Of course, a lot of people want exactly that. The American system of representative democracy is in dire need of constructive reform that increases participation and avoids tipping the scales toward one party or another. I'm not sure this particular essay has convinced me that this solution is the best of all proposed electoral reforms, but I hadn't heard this one before, so it was worth it to read. I do believe it would be better than our current system in the US. Of course, it would dilute the power of the only people in the position to implement such a system, which means it'll never happen. It's akin to Congress voting to take a 50% pay cut, which of course is unthinkable. But it's good to indulge in fantasy every now and then. |
| Really brief entry today, because I'm playing a lot of catch-up here after coming back from my trip. The flights back were, remarkably, both on time and not too uncomfortable, and they didn't even lose my luggage. Something is definitely off with the universe. The downside is that this gives me nothing to rant about, which makes blogging more challenging. So, what am I supposed to do, rant about having nothing to complain about? Paradox! Tomorrow, very likely, I'll resume midnight posts of more substance, but for today, like I said, just catching up on bills and cat maintenance. And, of course, trying to once again get used to the colder winter days here in Virginia. I don't miss the smog, but damn, the weather was nice in L.A. |
| I realized after the fact that I wasn't as clear as I could have been with yesterday's entry. I can't even blame being drunk. But I was tired. Anyway, point is, I did indeed spend a few hours on Catalina Island on Tuesday. It's a pain in the ass to get there and back, but the boat ride was relaxing and Avalon, the main town there, has some cool little tourist-trappy shops. I can blame a lot of yesterday on being drunk, though. While I stayed firmly on the mainland, the day started to go uphill with lunch, which consisted of sushi and a really quite amazingly large quantity of sake. After visiting several purveyors of fine malt beverage subsequent to that, the final one being within half a mile of my hotel, I ended up stumbling back and passing out. Today, my plane leaves in a few hours, and I doubt I'll be on here for the rest of the day. So I wanted to get my blog entry in to keep my streak going, even though I don't have much to talk about except how generally awesome the breweries in the L.A. area are, and to publicly thank Annette  for being my local guide for these last few days.After this, we'll return to our regularly scheduled programming. |
| As I've noted before, I have the utterly unattainable goal of visiting every brewery in the US (and a few elsewhere for good measure). It's unattainable because those things open and shut down on a weekly basis. By the time you've hit a hundred on your list, some of the ones on the list will have gone out of business, and more will open up behind you. But that doesn't stop me from trying; everyone needs a hobby. Some breweries are easier to get to than others. There was, for example, one on a military base in New York; I haven't checked to see if it's still there, but it's not always easy for civilians to get access to those bases. And there's one on Catalina, that island you see on the map just off the coast of L.A. As far as I can tell, there are only three ways to get there: 1) Helicopter; 2) Boat; 3) Swim 35 miles. (3) is right out, and (1) is probably expensive. (2) takes an inordinate amount of time, but doesn't cost a couple of limbs. By "time," I mean that from where I am it takes 1/2 - 1 hour (L.A. traffic, you know) to get to the dock, which you're supposed to get to an hour early, and then the crossing time is a bit over an hour also. So that's potentially somewhat more than three hours there and the same going back. Just for one brewery that only has two of its own beers. But hey, at least I can cross that one off my list. If another opens up on the island, though, I'll utter a few choice words. (Yes, the title of this entry is an intentional pun.) |
| Still in California for the next couple of days. No more observatories to visit yesterday, but at least there were breweries. One well-known feature of the L.A. area is landslides. We took a drive around a place that's known for its landslides, marveling at all the doomed houses all built to appreciate a view of the ocean. I'm thinking a lot of them will get a much closer view of the ocean at some point. Oh, and did I mention there's also a fault line involved? Fun! I've got a pretty tight schedule today so this entry's not going to be as substantial as usual, but as I wanted to get something in, here's a bit about where I'm hoping I can manage to get to today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Catalina_Island_(California) |
| 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 Annette 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. |
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