November 2008 Archives
I certainly don't ask most people to go the anticonsumerism extremes that, say, Bill McKibben does in asking folks to spend little or nothing on Christmas gifts. If the people on your list already have granola in their souls, OK, but most of us just won't be able to do it. I mean, you can tell people you want to reduce the out-of-control consumption the holiday inspires, and most people will nod their heads and agree, so what usually happens is that you make them a really nice walking stick yourself, you carve a hole in one end for a lanyard, you know, all that, and then on Christmas morning you give the stick and the person gives you a stereo or whatever anyway, after having promised not to, and they tell you about a million times it's fine, they love the stick, on and on, and the whole thing's just a complete fiasco.
I'm a centrist and libertarian on this myself: If you want to buy someone a DVD player, or a coat, or a car, and you can afford to do it, then fine. It would be nice if you chose a gift that really makes the recipient feel you thought about him or her, of course. (For guidelines on this, see O. Henry's The Gift of the Magi.) But really, it's up to you.
That said, I do have to point out that the proper holiday spirit almost certainly is missing if your Christmas preparations involve trampling people to death. Just sayin.'
I'm a centrist and libertarian on this myself: If you want to buy someone a DVD player, or a coat, or a car, and you can afford to do it, then fine. It would be nice if you chose a gift that really makes the recipient feel you thought about him or her, of course. (For guidelines on this, see O. Henry's The Gift of the Magi.) But really, it's up to you.
That said, I do have to point out that the proper holiday spirit almost certainly is missing if your Christmas preparations involve trampling people to death. Just sayin.'
I was flipping through an old New Yorker, reading idly about Alec Baldwin. The big theme of the profile was that despite everything he has, he isn't happy. I got tired of the article, because I'm just not very interested in celebrities' lives generally, and actors in particular. I don't much care what actors think and feel; I mostly care about what they're pretending to think and feel when I'm watching them.
Anyway, I tossed the magazine aside and thought about how I'm actually managing to be pretty happy without Alec Baldwin's money and without very much of my own either. And then I thought maybe Alec Baldwin ought to be reading about me. I was on a fishing trip once and one guy was brooding because he hadn't caught this one species he was after and one morning another guy said, "Why the long face? Wouldja rather be working?" I'd like to commend that same thought to any unhappy celebrities reading this.
Anyway, I tossed the magazine aside and thought about how I'm actually managing to be pretty happy without Alec Baldwin's money and without very much of my own either. And then I thought maybe Alec Baldwin ought to be reading about me. I was on a fishing trip once and one guy was brooding because he hadn't caught this one species he was after and one morning another guy said, "Why the long face? Wouldja rather be working?" I'd like to commend that same thought to any unhappy celebrities reading this.
The way ginkgo trees drop a vivid carpet of yellow leaves around themselves.
The 1957 rockabilly tune "Red Hot" by Billy Lee Riley. Great stuff.
Those black-and-white hounds' tooth check pants professional cooks wear.
The trend toward extreme whimsy in men's shoe styles.
Hellacious thunderstorms.
No ants in the winter.
Zippo lighters.
The shining new era in the United States that has come about because we resurrected our proud traditions and now have breweries making really good beer, like, everywhere.
Roller shoes such as Heelys, especially if they're made for middle-aged people. I've been meaning to check on that.
The way you sometimes see dogs trot down the sidewalk with this preoccupied, frowning expression, as if they were late for a meeting. Where does a dog have to be, that it acts like that?
And the list goes on. If you celebrate Thanksgiving, have a good one, and if you don't, have a good regular day.
The 1957 rockabilly tune "Red Hot" by Billy Lee Riley. Great stuff.
Those black-and-white hounds' tooth check pants professional cooks wear.
The trend toward extreme whimsy in men's shoe styles.
Hellacious thunderstorms.
No ants in the winter.
Zippo lighters.
The shining new era in the United States that has come about because we resurrected our proud traditions and now have breweries making really good beer, like, everywhere.
Roller shoes such as Heelys, especially if they're made for middle-aged people. I've been meaning to check on that.
The way you sometimes see dogs trot down the sidewalk with this preoccupied, frowning expression, as if they were late for a meeting. Where does a dog have to be, that it acts like that?
And the list goes on. If you celebrate Thanksgiving, have a good one, and if you don't, have a good regular day.
Years ago I completely disassembled a .45 automatic and then reassembled it, fired it, and was pleased to see that afterward my hand was not blown off my arm. Hey, I must have done it right! And right now I'm typing on my laptop, in which I just installed a RAM upgrade. It now has more RAM than the desktop I've had for three years. And it works! Phew! It's one thing to blow off your hand, what with the range of prostheses available and so forth, but if I'd messed up my laptop with some bonehead slipup I'd have to spend a bunch of cash for a new one and that would be very inconvenient.
Until the other day, I was convinced that I was not and never would be a trendy person. Some people are—they seem to be wearing the newest fashions before anyone else, or using the latest slang terms or whatever. Not me. I would watch from afar, mulling whether I wanted to participate. Most trends seem not worth it to me—earlobe stretching comes to mind—so I just shrug. Or I'll decide, after about three years, that the once-hot trend is actually worth getting involved in, so I'll sort of sidle over and quietly start doing it.
And that was how blogging was, for me. I was aware of the earliest ones, but I didn't get involved myself until 2005. And when I did, I decided to do things differently—I eschewed the entire media world and just focused on the everyday, the real. I didn't want to talk about Britney or Bush. I wanted to talk about this orchard I go to that has the best Stayman apples anywhere. I wanted to talk about moments when you're hurrying inside on a winter's night and you suddenly notice the stars and just stop, your keys in your gloved hand, looking up at the Pleiades.
And then the other day I'm reading the Times and a headline catches my eye: "Haste, Scorned: Blogging at a Snail's Pace." Seems there's a woman who wanders in the Vermont countryside, collecting her thoughts, and then comes home and blogs about things like the icy impressions left in the snow by sleeping deer. And she's part, says the Times, of "a small, quirky movement called 'slow blogging.'" Small and quirky, OK, but still, I did something and then afterward—afterward, mind you—saw that thing in the paper as a trend story! Booyah!
This slow blogging thing obviously (which is slow talk for "obvs") has a lot to do with frequency—they don't like doing 47 posts a day. Slow bloggers like your honored servant prefer longer, more meditative things. And they consider themselves the blogging equivalent of the Slow Food movement, another small, quirky group effort toward which I'm very sympathetic.
I'm mildly concerned about how many of these people blog more and more slowly to the point that they stop altogether. Nor did I see any indication, no matter how hard I read and reread the article, that we're all going to suddenly become surrounded by millions of adoring, money-throwing fans. Actually, one of my fears is that if I walked too much in the countryside I would notice the icy impressions left in the snow by sleeping readers. (Just kidding; according to the article, the blog you are reading now is well above the "more visible" threshold. Thanks!)
The article made another interesting point: For short "check it out" posts which I do have a certain number of myself, the cool kids are all moving to services like Twitter. I'm mulling that over myself. I don't like to rush into these things.
And that was how blogging was, for me. I was aware of the earliest ones, but I didn't get involved myself until 2005. And when I did, I decided to do things differently—I eschewed the entire media world and just focused on the everyday, the real. I didn't want to talk about Britney or Bush. I wanted to talk about this orchard I go to that has the best Stayman apples anywhere. I wanted to talk about moments when you're hurrying inside on a winter's night and you suddenly notice the stars and just stop, your keys in your gloved hand, looking up at the Pleiades.And then the other day I'm reading the Times and a headline catches my eye: "Haste, Scorned: Blogging at a Snail's Pace." Seems there's a woman who wanders in the Vermont countryside, collecting her thoughts, and then comes home and blogs about things like the icy impressions left in the snow by sleeping deer. And she's part, says the Times, of "a small, quirky movement called 'slow blogging.'" Small and quirky, OK, but still, I did something and then afterward—afterward, mind you—saw that thing in the paper as a trend story! Booyah!
This slow blogging thing obviously (which is slow talk for "obvs") has a lot to do with frequency—they don't like doing 47 posts a day. Slow bloggers like your honored servant prefer longer, more meditative things. And they consider themselves the blogging equivalent of the Slow Food movement, another small, quirky group effort toward which I'm very sympathetic.
I'm mildly concerned about how many of these people blog more and more slowly to the point that they stop altogether. Nor did I see any indication, no matter how hard I read and reread the article, that we're all going to suddenly become surrounded by millions of adoring, money-throwing fans. Actually, one of my fears is that if I walked too much in the countryside I would notice the icy impressions left in the snow by sleeping readers. (Just kidding; according to the article, the blog you are reading now is well above the "more visible" threshold. Thanks!)
The article made another interesting point: For short "check it out" posts which I do have a certain number of myself, the cool kids are all moving to services like Twitter. I'm mulling that over myself. I don't like to rush into these things.
I've got a young-adult novel in the works and I really ought to be revising it right now, but must rise to protest the profusion of people out there who purport to offer writing advice that's just a formula for writing that's formulaic. Yes, all writers should learn about the elements that making writing work. Yes, we should be able to analyze our own and others' work, to see precisely where problems have arisen or improvements could be made. (And by the way, the passive voice is a perfectly useful tool. Saying "Never use passive voice" is like saying "Always yell.")
That said, I'd like to go on to say that I'm getting sick of how every lousy hack writer out there has a to-do list for
every other writer. I was on a blog the other day that was the epitome of this. I won't link to it because I care about people's feelings and my own would be rather hurt if the guy in question sued me. But as far as I can tell, this guy does nothing but read other people's how-to books about writing and then carefully make lists of their advice. He advises us to keep in mind a laundry list of usual suspects: the ubiquitous "selection of details" makes an appearance, as does the (wait for it) "active vs. passive voice." The use of passive voice isn't wrong, this guy says, but he doesn't say when it might be right. Well, here's a hint, Sherlock: Passive voice is pretty damned useful when you want to put the object of the action in the strong position at the beginning of the sentence because you want the object to be the focus of the reader's attention.
Another writing guru is quoted:
OK—clichés bad, got it. We're also warned here against mixed metaphors and "figures of speech that just don't work." Let's review that, class, OK? Avoid figures of speech that just don't work. Got that too? Everyone diligently writing that in their notebooks? Excellent. Let us proceed.
Guru Boy finishes strong here—plowing forward with his simile, he likens the bad effects of badly used S&M (to abbreviate) to the badness of a grenade blowing up in the wrong place. Which is bad! And where will this figurative explosion happen? Please, God, let it be somewhere else but my novel! Please, not that! But no—that's just where it happens! Damn! Bummer! I wish I'd read this guy's book sooner!
(I'll stop soon, by the way.)
Anyway, there are actually two problems here. One is that many of these writing coach people—by no means all, but many—read everyone else's books and regurgitate their trite advice when they themselves do not care enough about language to follow the very rules they shout so loudly from the pulpit.
The other is that if you only focus on their recipes, you end up with a paint-by-numbers approach to writing. So by all means, focus on your craft. Learn those elements. Understand what the tools can and can't do well. But don't take it all too categorically. Passive voice can work sometimes. It's OK to use a modifier now and then. It's even OK to break a rule if that's what gets the job done.
Absorb all that stuff, let it seep in, and then find some materials to work with. Imagine stories, or find stories to rework and make your own. (That's what Shakespeare did, and James Joyce.) Take a walk. Notice things. Stop and look. If you get an impression from a tree or a child or the dust on the pipes in your basement, ask yourself why you got that impression. What words capture the feeling it gave you?
Then keep doing that. In a year, or two, or five—it's taken me a lifetime, and I'm still working at it—you may notice that the search for vivid details we're all exhorted to undertake has attained fruition. You may, and I hope you do, notice that the entire universe is like a vast forest, on every bough, branch, and twig of which vivid details are crowded shoulder to shoulder, as brightly colored as painted tanagers or the jester's motley, each singing as loudly as it can so that you will notice it first. People, cats, lug nuts, stars. Everything is a vivid detail. As Fellini once said, you're free—but you must learn to choose. That's really the only rule I'm ever going to list. Learn to choose.
And now I really have to work on that novel. It's just chockablock with figures of speech that just don't work, and I've recently learned that I should avoid such things. Go and do thou likewise, writer friends.
That said, I'd like to go on to say that I'm getting sick of how every lousy hack writer out there has a to-do list for
every other writer. I was on a blog the other day that was the epitome of this. I won't link to it because I care about people's feelings and my own would be rather hurt if the guy in question sued me. But as far as I can tell, this guy does nothing but read other people's how-to books about writing and then carefully make lists of their advice. He advises us to keep in mind a laundry list of usual suspects: the ubiquitous "selection of details" makes an appearance, as does the (wait for it) "active vs. passive voice." The use of passive voice isn't wrong, this guy says, but he doesn't say when it might be right. Well, here's a hint, Sherlock: Passive voice is pretty damned useful when you want to put the object of the action in the strong position at the beginning of the sentence because you want the object to be the focus of the reader's attention. Another writing guru is quoted:
“Similes and metaphors are like hand grenades—they are two of the oldest and most used descriptive techniques. They’re powerful, but you must use them carefully to avoid clichés, mixed metaphors, and figures of speech that just don’t work. Otherwise, they’ll blow up in the wrong place—your novel.”I'm not sure where to begin here. Guru Boy wanted to say that similes and metaphors are powerful, although what he really meant was effective, so he starts to think: Hmm—what's powerful? I've got it! Hand grenades! The guy never stopped to consider that this wasn't really very apt because hand grenades stand for imprecision if they stand for anything. He then cautions against clichés. All these guys are death on clichés, including our blogger, who I should have mentioned describes himself as an "author of action-packed teen novels."
OK—clichés bad, got it. We're also warned here against mixed metaphors and "figures of speech that just don't work." Let's review that, class, OK? Avoid figures of speech that just don't work. Got that too? Everyone diligently writing that in their notebooks? Excellent. Let us proceed.
Guru Boy finishes strong here—plowing forward with his simile, he likens the bad effects of badly used S&M (to abbreviate) to the badness of a grenade blowing up in the wrong place. Which is bad! And where will this figurative explosion happen? Please, God, let it be somewhere else but my novel! Please, not that! But no—that's just where it happens! Damn! Bummer! I wish I'd read this guy's book sooner!
(I'll stop soon, by the way.)
Anyway, there are actually two problems here. One is that many of these writing coach people—by no means all, but many—read everyone else's books and regurgitate their trite advice when they themselves do not care enough about language to follow the very rules they shout so loudly from the pulpit.
The other is that if you only focus on their recipes, you end up with a paint-by-numbers approach to writing. So by all means, focus on your craft. Learn those elements. Understand what the tools can and can't do well. But don't take it all too categorically. Passive voice can work sometimes. It's OK to use a modifier now and then. It's even OK to break a rule if that's what gets the job done.
Absorb all that stuff, let it seep in, and then find some materials to work with. Imagine stories, or find stories to rework and make your own. (That's what Shakespeare did, and James Joyce.) Take a walk. Notice things. Stop and look. If you get an impression from a tree or a child or the dust on the pipes in your basement, ask yourself why you got that impression. What words capture the feeling it gave you?
Then keep doing that. In a year, or two, or five—it's taken me a lifetime, and I'm still working at it—you may notice that the search for vivid details we're all exhorted to undertake has attained fruition. You may, and I hope you do, notice that the entire universe is like a vast forest, on every bough, branch, and twig of which vivid details are crowded shoulder to shoulder, as brightly colored as painted tanagers or the jester's motley, each singing as loudly as it can so that you will notice it first. People, cats, lug nuts, stars. Everything is a vivid detail. As Fellini once said, you're free—but you must learn to choose. That's really the only rule I'm ever going to list. Learn to choose.
And now I really have to work on that novel. It's just chockablock with figures of speech that just don't work, and I've recently learned that I should avoid such things. Go and do thou likewise, writer friends.
I've been undisciplined in my blogging life lately, and it has resulted in posts that might be charitably called discursive. I shall remedy this as much as possible and will strive to be more cursive henceforth. Thanks for understanding.
An exchange heard just now in a radio piece on how different industries have been affected by the economic troubles:
Expert: "Groceries are holding up..."
Interviewer: "People have to eat!"
I don't insist that every creative person prove his or her commitment to art for art's sake by starving penniless in a garret, even if that seems ever more likely to be my own fate. I would never say someone is a sellout because he or she wrote a book with a good story in it, or painted a painting of an attractive scene.
Not every attempt to please an audience is a case of shameless pandering, in other words. But then there's this. I mean, sheesh.
Not every attempt to please an audience is a case of shameless pandering, in other words. But then there's this. I mean, sheesh.
Good and cold today, gang, a hard frost has gripped the Mid-Atlantic states. It's 27 degrees F. outside at 8:45 a.m., I can't say what it is inside but my feet are slowly going numb. The cat is scrunched up against the heater, and I may scrunch up there with him if this keeps up.
I was just reading about a favorite cold-weather saying on an academic website
(very rude and mostly not that funny, and the website's from 1998,
which is graphically obvious) devoted to "vulgar comparative
metaphors." The saying has to do with the décolletage of a witch. The
one about the brass monkey is there too, although that one's not a
comparative simile or metaphor, we're told. I'd call it hyperbole,
myself, but I really don't know how brittle brass can get when it's
cold.The site says the witch comparison "endures year after year as the most popular VCM" and calls this inexplicable. But why? I love it. It's concise, visual, deeply incongruous, has a satisfying tang of the supernatural, and some nice plosives in the last word that add even more emphasis and finality. There are writers who try to bring the vigor of street language to their writing—David Mamet comes to mind—with elaborately invented VCMs where the thing is extended—"colder than a something something in a something something something" but I think this is overkill. What's that? You insist on, you positively must have, an example? Well, OK. Here's an exchange from Mamet's generally engaging movie Heist:
"I'll be quieter than an ant pissing on cotton."I don't know, man. Maybe you think this is wonderful—I mean, David Mamet did—but I think it has a certain sophomoric pointlessness. "The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter," is how Sam Spade put it. Maybe Mamet himself is ambivalent about this; later in the film the first speaker makes another vulgar comparison during a tense scene, and the second grabs a heavy pipe and raises it, preparatory to smashing the first guy's skull. "All right!" he roars. "You wanna play the dozens?" I'm wondering if Mamet is just getting tired of the way this character talks, you know?
"I want you quieter than an ant not even thinking about pissing on cotton."
Frankly, I think it's a mark of amateurishness to strive too hard for originality, especially when earthiness is really the effect you're after. Avoid clichés, by all means, but I think certain sayings are classics, like the navy blazer, because they just work. Let us be elegantly vulgar, not clumsy vulgarians.
I run the danger of preaching now, so finally, before the benediction, I'd like to leave you with one of the finest examples of describing winter in words—and actually one of the finest examples of describing anything—that you're ever going to read. It is, of course, Shakespeare's "When Icicles Hang by the Wall." Enjoy.
Evidently today's pirates get along well with each other—there's too much at stake to fight, since they get ransoms of two million pounds or so. Personally, if I were involved in a lucrative endeavor like that I'd try to pull my weight and not create trouble. So the reports of a shootout on the supertanker currently hijacked by them aren't true: "Pirate spokesman Sugule Ali told the BBC Somali Service at the time: "Everybody is happy. We were firing guns to celebrate Eid."
Eid ul-Fitr is the end of Ramadan, of course. They may be pirates—who among us is perfect?—but they're not, you know, atheists or anything.
By the way, if any pirate groups need a spokesman, I'm available. I know the media, I present a mild, calm demeanor (and wear glasses), and seasickness is something I hear other people describing but have never experienced for myself. I'm eager to help people get a rounded, nuanced view of what pirates are all about. Just leave a message for me in the comments area. And thanks for your time!
Eid ul-Fitr is the end of Ramadan, of course. They may be pirates—who among us is perfect?—but they're not, you know, atheists or anything.
By the way, if any pirate groups need a spokesman, I'm available. I know the media, I present a mild, calm demeanor (and wear glasses), and seasickness is something I hear other people describing but have never experienced for myself. I'm eager to help people get a rounded, nuanced view of what pirates are all about. Just leave a message for me in the comments area. And thanks for your time!
Tomorrow my poky little local writers' group is having a speaker, so I checked out his website today just for larfs and I saw this listing of his nonfiction books:
Hmmm.
Personally I don't put much credence in the existence of the undead and there's lots of actually living people I have my doubts about as well. But the guy's widely published and he's mostly talking about book marketing so it should be interesting. You have to be open-minded in the writing world, or at least willing to go along with the gag, because you meet a lot of characters. I'll say that.
• Vampire Universe: The Dark World of Supernatural Beings that Hunt Us, Haunt Us and Hunger for Us (Citadel Press, 2006)Nonfiction.
• The Cryptopedia: A Dictionary of the Weird, Strange, and Downright Bizarre (Citadel, 2007—Winner of the Bram Stoker Aware for Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction)
• Zombie CSU: The Forensics of the Living Dead (September 2008)
• Vampire Hunters and Other Enemies of Evil (2010)
Hmmm.
Personally I don't put much credence in the existence of the undead and there's lots of actually living people I have my doubts about as well. But the guy's widely published and he's mostly talking about book marketing so it should be interesting. You have to be open-minded in the writing world, or at least willing to go along with the gag, because you meet a lot of characters. I'll say that.
Years ago, during a long nighttime flight over the Atlantic, I was looking straight out into the sky, level with the plane. Perhaps it was right at dusk, but at any rate I saw a blinking light, miles and miles away, and realized that a plane like ours was flying on a parallel course. We were both five miles above the ocean, separated by more miles of thin, frigid air, but inside that other plane there were people sleeping, reading, eating, holding hands, walking up and down the aisle, talking, thinking about the next day, flipping idly through magazines. A couple hundred people, settling down for an evening, like a distant village, the fires of which I could just barely see. It was comforting to see it out there, that little village, like mine—it was company of a sort, an island of warmth and humanity amid the vast expanses of water and air and blackness.
I won't say that's exactly how I felt when I heard this week that the Hubble telescope had taken an actual photograph of a planet circling a distant star. The photo is grainy, and you can't really see the planet in question, but the first photos of objects on the Earth were pretty damn grainy too, and I'm not inclined to find fault. This is visual confirmation of planets out there—previously the planets were all there by implication. This is the real deal.
On Star Trek, they used to talk about Class M planets, which had two main characteristics: They could support human life without the need of breathing or protective gear, and they could be simulated with cheap, tacky-looking sets. This new planet we're hearing about isn't a Class M—it's more like Jupiter, and it's hard to imagine humanoids or any other kind of critter living on a planet that's composed mostly of liquid metallic hydrogen. But if there's one planet, for real, then there are almost certainly billions more. I mean, really, for real. And there's probably life on them. And maybe intelligent life, and maybe life we could communicate with. Way, way, off over there, across a much wider ocean than the one I was crossing that night.
So anyway, if there is, and this particular message can get through somehow—uh, hi!
I won't say that's exactly how I felt when I heard this week that the Hubble telescope had taken an actual photograph of a planet circling a distant star. The photo is grainy, and you can't really see the planet in question, but the first photos of objects on the Earth were pretty damn grainy too, and I'm not inclined to find fault. This is visual confirmation of planets out there—previously the planets were all there by implication. This is the real deal.
On Star Trek, they used to talk about Class M planets, which had two main characteristics: They could support human life without the need of breathing or protective gear, and they could be simulated with cheap, tacky-looking sets. This new planet we're hearing about isn't a Class M—it's more like Jupiter, and it's hard to imagine humanoids or any other kind of critter living on a planet that's composed mostly of liquid metallic hydrogen. But if there's one planet, for real, then there are almost certainly billions more. I mean, really, for real. And there's probably life on them. And maybe intelligent life, and maybe life we could communicate with. Way, way, off over there, across a much wider ocean than the one I was crossing that night.
So anyway, if there is, and this particular message can get through somehow—uh, hi!
The last time I held a car loan bill in my hands, it said I had one payment remaining. Fair enough, says I, I have to make one more payment. Logical, no? So the other day I get an envelope from good old Toyota and I open it up and there it is, the title to the car. So I'm assuming at this point the one payment remaining was the one in my hands that last time. I mean, technically, given the new circumstances I have to assume that once I made that last payment there were zero payments remaining, if you want to think of it that way. But I suppose if you send people one last bill that says there are zero payments remaining, lots of them will say "Goodie!" and not pay that last one. People are optimists, including me, and will tend to put the most favorable construction on things. It does seem to me that this could be made clearer—honestly, I thought I had one more payment—but then again, I've never run a car company and at this point probably never will, so maybe it's harder than I suppose to make things clear on a car payment bill.
I do love Wikipedia generally, but I have a few minor quibbles, and one is with the "Did You Know" section on the home page of the English version. (In French it's "Le saviez-vous?" There was one today that said, "Did You Know...that Charles Taylor was the first of thirteen Welsh international rugby players to die in action during World War I?"
The feature almost always offers some incredibly obscure fact like that, something nobody would ever know, guess, or, frankly, care about, and I don't think things like that work so well. I've never previously thought about how many international rugby players were likely to have died in action during World War I. I had no preconceptions about the subject, and thus the fact offers me no opportunity to be surprised, to revise my thinking. I mean, if you drop a damn artillery shell on an international rubgy player, he's going to end up just as dead as anyone else. Why wouldn't he? I think a better "Did You Know" approach would be to marry an obscure fact to a very familiar one, like this: "Did you know...that Winston Churchill, before he became Prime Minister of Britain during the Second World War, spent several years as a professional teacher of cha-cha-cha dancing?" See what I mean?
The thing about Churchill and cha-cha-cha is little-known because it's not, in fact, true, but if it were it would totally rock as a DYK. I just looked up, without success, how many cells there are in a potato. That would be pretty cool too. You'd have this huge number, like the number of stars in a galaxy, juxtaposed with a potato, which is a commonplace thing if anything is. Get it? It's like a joke—you're playing off the incongruity of it.
And finally: Did you know...I've got to get some damn work done? Bye!
The feature almost always offers some incredibly obscure fact like that, something nobody would ever know, guess, or, frankly, care about, and I don't think things like that work so well. I've never previously thought about how many international rugby players were likely to have died in action during World War I. I had no preconceptions about the subject, and thus the fact offers me no opportunity to be surprised, to revise my thinking. I mean, if you drop a damn artillery shell on an international rubgy player, he's going to end up just as dead as anyone else. Why wouldn't he? I think a better "Did You Know" approach would be to marry an obscure fact to a very familiar one, like this: "Did you know...that Winston Churchill, before he became Prime Minister of Britain during the Second World War, spent several years as a professional teacher of cha-cha-cha dancing?" See what I mean?
The thing about Churchill and cha-cha-cha is little-known because it's not, in fact, true, but if it were it would totally rock as a DYK. I just looked up, without success, how many cells there are in a potato. That would be pretty cool too. You'd have this huge number, like the number of stars in a galaxy, juxtaposed with a potato, which is a commonplace thing if anything is. Get it? It's like a joke—you're playing off the incongruity of it.
And finally: Did you know...I've got to get some damn work done? Bye!
A friend writes:
Just got a call from a would-be client. He asked advice and I gave it. Then he informed me he’s talked to a few lawyers already and they all gave the same advice. He was hoping for something “different”. “Call someone other than a lawyer,” I replied. I thought this very funny. He did not.
Is there such a thing as saving too much energy? Just a minute ago I had a fleeting impulse to put gloves on because my hands were painfully cold, and the thing is, I was in my living room. I think it's probably above freezing in the house but it's fairly chilly—about the temperature, I'd say, that would be perfect for long-term cheese storage or the like. Just doin' our part here in Casa fría. And if you've got any cheese you're concerned about the future of, bring it over.
Michel de Nostredame, also known as Nostradamus, was some guy. So anyway, this guy wrote a bunch of stupid stuff like this:
At this point my attitude toward Nostradamus is, I hope, clear. So I was taken aback to be reading an article in Slate about the recent election where I saw a reference to this celebrated bonehead. "In some of the weirder realms of the Internet, you can already find verses from Nostradamus allegedly predicting that Obama's election heralds the end of the world, and someone out there probably believes them," it read.
Yes, Anne, there probably are people who believe that. And there are probably people who believe that if you step on a crack, you will, in literal fact, break your mother's back. Many people are credulous; they believe the stupidest things you could imagine and many you can't. You wanna know what I believe myself? I believe that the Enlightenment is sagging a bit, slowly dying like Tinkerbelle, and we've got to clap for it to bring it back to glowing health. If you look at the night sky, or contemplate your own death, or feel overcome with the vastness of the human experience, well, fine, resort to whatever beliefs work for you. But in dealing with the world, in trying to accomplish goals in our lives, can we just sort of stick to reason and logic and evidence? I know, I know, magic is easy, and reason is hard, and I have the pathetic math and science grades from my youth to prove it. But reason and science work, see, and magic doesn't. Penicillin works, and eye of newt doesn't.
Where was I? What's that? How to handle Nostradamus? Oh, that's easy. Just tell anyone who brings him up not to be stupid because it's been 400 years and he hasn't predicted a damn thing. Because, you know, he hasn't. That's how to handle Nostradamus.
To the enemy, the enemy faith promisedHe made his living being an apothecary. Apothecaries were druggists whose drugs didn't work because apothecaries lived before anybody knew anything. Over the years, people with some sort of intellectual or psychological deficit would read the stupid stuff Nostradamus wrote and think it meant something because when stupid people read stupid things it sort of resonates with them. It just sounds right, somehow.
Will not be kept, the captives retained:
One near death captured, and the remainder in their shirts,
The remainder damned for being supported.
At this point my attitude toward Nostradamus is, I hope, clear. So I was taken aback to be reading an article in Slate about the recent election where I saw a reference to this celebrated bonehead. "In some of the weirder realms of the Internet, you can already find verses from Nostradamus allegedly predicting that Obama's election heralds the end of the world, and someone out there probably believes them," it read.
Yes, Anne, there probably are people who believe that. And there are probably people who believe that if you step on a crack, you will, in literal fact, break your mother's back. Many people are credulous; they believe the stupidest things you could imagine and many you can't. You wanna know what I believe myself? I believe that the Enlightenment is sagging a bit, slowly dying like Tinkerbelle, and we've got to clap for it to bring it back to glowing health. If you look at the night sky, or contemplate your own death, or feel overcome with the vastness of the human experience, well, fine, resort to whatever beliefs work for you. But in dealing with the world, in trying to accomplish goals in our lives, can we just sort of stick to reason and logic and evidence? I know, I know, magic is easy, and reason is hard, and I have the pathetic math and science grades from my youth to prove it. But reason and science work, see, and magic doesn't. Penicillin works, and eye of newt doesn't.
Where was I? What's that? How to handle Nostradamus? Oh, that's easy. Just tell anyone who brings him up not to be stupid because it's been 400 years and he hasn't predicted a damn thing. Because, you know, he hasn't. That's how to handle Nostradamus.
Normally I'm less a dog person than a cat person. When I see a cat, I feel a certain bond with it, like the cat and I both belonged to the Masons or something, and the cat would have to go out of its way to alienate me. Dogs I regard more the way you might a job applicant: The dog might be OK or might not, we'll just have to see, and the onus is on the dog to prove itself.
But I saw a fox glide across a suburban yard the other day, and I was instantly full of admiration, the way I usually am when I see a fox. A kind of dog they may be, but I love the way they move and carry themselves. People often call cats graceful, and they are, but the grace of their movement is filled with stealth and tension; you are reminded of a lion stalking a Cape buffalo calf, aware that the adult animals could kill it if it makes a mistake.
But the fox came in filled with the jaunty confidence you see in people who have about three times the intelligence they need to deal with most situations. Verve, élan, brio, it had all that. Its tail, as buoyant as a balloon, seemed like its flag, its standard; it was the neatly tucked pocket handkerchief of a merry gigolo. I got to thinking later that cats move with grace, but it's a Gene Kelly-style grace, muscular and wary. But foxes, for all they are dogs, move more like Fred Astaire, hardly seeming to touch the ground as they go, and evidently enjoying their lives immensely.
(Photo courtesy of the U.S. National Fish & Wildlife Service)
From a slide show in Slate about an exhibit of Joan Miró pieces at New York City's Museum of Modern Art:
"I have to tell you," Miró wrote a friend in 1927, "that I look at real things with increasing love—the fuel lamp, potatoes."
I was out and about Wednesday morning, and I saw right away that the morning papers were getting snapped up. What, even today? The daily paper is fading away like the Cheshire Cat, but on this particular day, it was a hot commodity. And of course, I was hardly surprised.
Clearly there are some messages for which a certain medium is preferable. Years ago, working for a reading teachers' professional group, I wrote an article about calligraphy. I was inspired to do that because some weeks before I had been looking for something at the supermarket, and noticed there were calligraphy pens available there. Calligraphy pens! Evidently they were a commodity that people might want any day, like cornflakes or lightbulbs. Why?
Well, I soon found out that people used them for wedding invitations. And they used them to write mottos and sayings to frame and put on the wall. In short, people were using those calligraphy pens for messages they felt were important. And it dawned on me that we've seen a vast explosion in ways to communicate, but most of those new media are utterly ephemeral—the messages can go poof, just like that. Years ago, if someone wrote you a love letter, you could put it in a drawer, and if the house didn't burn down you would have it pretty much forever. An e-mail on a hard drive? Not the same at all.
The things we really think are important are literally written in stone, of course, or metal. Then there's print—less permanent, but at least concrete, and durable enough if treated well. And then you have the electronic media. For those of us who've adapted to the new media environment or never really knew the old one in the first place, the electronic media do fine most of the time. But Wednesday, as historian Simon Schama said in The Telegraph, people wanted a newspaper because "you can't frame a digital image and a printout doesn't say 'History' in the way a print headline does."
It's strange. I used to work for newspapers, and hated to watch them fade, but I'm used to it now. I don't get a newspaper at home, and only rarely buy them. I learn about the world beyond my senses via the Web. But we all wanted a paper Wednesday morning, to hold a tangible object in our hands and feel that in doing so we could slow time, we could linger over a moment that felt special and important. I know the daily newspaper is soon to be history itself, and I've embraced the new world of information management and the many, many benefits it offers. But once newspapers are gone, what will we do the next time we sense history in the making, and feel the impulse to go out and buy a paper? I honestly have no idea.
Clearly there are some messages for which a certain medium is preferable. Years ago, working for a reading teachers' professional group, I wrote an article about calligraphy. I was inspired to do that because some weeks before I had been looking for something at the supermarket, and noticed there were calligraphy pens available there. Calligraphy pens! Evidently they were a commodity that people might want any day, like cornflakes or lightbulbs. Why?
Well, I soon found out that people used them for wedding invitations. And they used them to write mottos and sayings to frame and put on the wall. In short, people were using those calligraphy pens for messages they felt were important. And it dawned on me that we've seen a vast explosion in ways to communicate, but most of those new media are utterly ephemeral—the messages can go poof, just like that. Years ago, if someone wrote you a love letter, you could put it in a drawer, and if the house didn't burn down you would have it pretty much forever. An e-mail on a hard drive? Not the same at all.
The things we really think are important are literally written in stone, of course, or metal. Then there's print—less permanent, but at least concrete, and durable enough if treated well. And then you have the electronic media. For those of us who've adapted to the new media environment or never really knew the old one in the first place, the electronic media do fine most of the time. But Wednesday, as historian Simon Schama said in The Telegraph, people wanted a newspaper because "you can't frame a digital image and a printout doesn't say 'History' in the way a print headline does."
It's strange. I used to work for newspapers, and hated to watch them fade, but I'm used to it now. I don't get a newspaper at home, and only rarely buy them. I learn about the world beyond my senses via the Web. But we all wanted a paper Wednesday morning, to hold a tangible object in our hands and feel that in doing so we could slow time, we could linger over a moment that felt special and important. I know the daily newspaper is soon to be history itself, and I've embraced the new world of information management and the many, many benefits it offers. But once newspapers are gone, what will we do the next time we sense history in the making, and feel the impulse to go out and buy a paper? I honestly have no idea.
Awesome journalist James Fallows notes awesome-at-everything Michael Crichton's death in an interesting appreciation today. In it he mentions that Crichton "removed complications from his life while writing by having exactly
the same food at every meal, so he never had to waste time deciding
what to eat." Personally I don't spend that much time deciding what to eat most days. I enjoy variety. And I like to write about food, so you can see this just isn't going to work for me.
To be honest, Fallows says that Crichton said he did that. It could have been a joke, I suppose. But maybe not. Crichton was married five times, which suggests that he had to cut down on complications wherever he could.
To be honest, Fallows says that Crichton said he did that. It could have been a joke, I suppose. But maybe not. Crichton was married five times, which suggests that he had to cut down on complications wherever he could.
Happy days are here again,
The robocalls are at an end
They were driving me around the bend
Happy days are here again!
The robocalls are at an end
They were driving me around the bend
Happy days are here again!
Well, it's Election Day in the good old U.S. of A.—you may have heard about this elsewhere—and one reason I'm delighted we're finally here is that soon I won't have to listen to people's opinions nearly as much. Let's face it, most people are astonishingly bad at critical thinking, and I sometimes wonder how it is that most of them manage to get through the day without causing eleven or twelve major disasters like Mrs. O'Leary's cow and leaving their entire communities a smoking ruin. I suppose that with certain exceptions—air traffic controllers and surgeons come to mind—you can be pretty lousy at your job and really terrible at making sound judgments on reliable evidence generally and still get by. I mean, I get by myself, and believe me, I don't do a lot of bragging about my thinking abilities. But honestly, if you sit next to someone on a plane or in a bar and ask his or her opinion about any topic you could think of, you're probably going to hear a profoundly unsound judgment based on little or no evidence. Opinions, the old saying has it, are like a certain body part—everybody has one.
But I have a couple of friends who are pretty on the ball. This one I'm thinking of is a pretty bright guy, trained as a scientist, and given to cultivating his own observing and judgment-making ability. He hardly ever says anything negative about people—which is one more example of his good sense—but one day we were rolling toward a trout stream and we got talking about public opinion.
"I'm not really interested," he said off-handedly, "in what most people think about things."
I've chuckled about that many a time since. And after today, I can start to ignore the public more and more myself. I'm looking forward to that.
But I have a couple of friends who are pretty on the ball. This one I'm thinking of is a pretty bright guy, trained as a scientist, and given to cultivating his own observing and judgment-making ability. He hardly ever says anything negative about people—which is one more example of his good sense—but one day we were rolling toward a trout stream and we got talking about public opinion.
"I'm not really interested," he said off-handedly, "in what most people think about things."
I've chuckled about that many a time since. And after today, I can start to ignore the public more and more myself. I'm looking forward to that.
Some weeks ago I was shopping at a new supermarket and saw, by the far wall, a bin full of dry ice being offered for Halloween purposes. Yes! I immediately thought that I could get a tub of water, put something in the middle, sit my jack-o'-lantern on that and feed chips of the dry ice into the water. And it was everything I'd hoped:
Lots of people commented, the best being this one kid who asked what made the smoke. When I said "dry ice," she got mildly annoyed with herself for not recognizing what it was immediately. "I'm in middle school," she said briskly. "I should know that." I laughed, and in the laugh was a certain admiration for her tart sense of standards and a rueful recognition that I, myself, am well past middle school and am still learning things I really ought to have learned before. But I've taken my jack-o'-lantern stagecraft up a notch, and in my personal value system that counts for something.
Oh, and here's something from icanhascheezburger.com:
more animals
