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That suggests that The 40 Year Old Virgin is not so much about Andy and his difficulty getting laid, as it is about women like Trisha who have a past they're not proud of and are trying to better themselves by giving guys like Andy a shot, hopefully resulting in a steady marriage for once in their lives. It's hard to t... |
That's all well and good, but again, it's pretty hard to swallow given how old and how much baggage Trisha has. It would have been more convincing if, as in Knocked Up, the female lead had been in her mid-20s (and the male lead suitably younger as well). It would have been more believable because basic personality trai... |
July 20, 2007 |
No one cares if you don't watch TV, you're still a lazy blockhead |
-- Steve Jobs, in Macworld Magazine, February 2004 |
I know, try hard not to laugh. But we've all run across someone like this or a website like this. |
Perhaps when television first became widespread, it might have been worthwhile to warn of its potential to numb the minds of smart kids -- you don't want to end up like Mike Teavee from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, do you? That book was published in 1964, and an update in the spirit of the original would properly... |
But for at least the past 20 years, it should be a given that intelligent people won't watch much TV, if at all. Boasting of one's disinclination to stare at the idiot box can, therefore, imply only one of two things: 1) the person prefers the company of numbskulls, among whom TV abstinence would actually be noteworthy... |
In reality, the greatest threat to the intellectual lives of college graduates -- at least those whose minds have not irreparably rotted from studying literary theory or women's studies -- is internet pseudo-learning, exemplified by an addiction to Wikipedia and to blogs. I'll admit that a few years ago, I too was trap... |
A responsible person will then grow out of this phase and, pace Jobs, strive to remain disconnected from the internet as much as possible. Of course, Wikipedia and blogs do make useful references if you need a quick refresher of some important idea, or if you want to stay up-to-date on important ideas from professional... |
However, I've noticed an unsettling tendency for reading blog entries and discussing ideas on blogs to replace actually reading the work under discussion. I can't say how bad this is in other parts of the idea-world, but bad science articles (usually from the social sciences) now not only have the mainstream media outl... |
Briefly, I'll note that I do not have in mind articles on Creationism, Intelligent Design, astrology, and similarly retarded ideas. They're out there, but they do not persuade much of the elite in any developed country -- their ridiculousness needs no comment -- and the elite are the ones who run things, and thus whose... |
Nevertheless, there is a promising partial solution to Wikipedia-style learning -- namely, Open Access media. Trying to better oneself through Wikipedia or reading blogs is doomed to failure for the simple reason that such media can provide only the most superficial hints of what the subject matter is. Unlike most refe... |
Like all tools, the internet has no inherent quality that makes it harmful or beneficient (a hammer can be used by a carpenter or a mugger). If the larger culture that creates it and periodically expands on it takes a permissive attitude toward pride, sloth, and lust, then a preponderance of the content will consist of... |
So, I don't expect that the more frivolous websites will disappear totally, nor even become unpopular, and most people will be incapable of benefiting from Open Access media. Still, it's entirely reasonable to expect that the better blogs will inform increasingly more of the non-elite public on important matters that m... |
[1] The 2005 movie version at least shows Mike Teavee as a video gamer, although that too is about 10 to 20 years out-of-date. Fortunately for those who'd agree with the Jobs quote, the story does not focus on early and late adolescents, in which case the internet would assume an even more central role in depictions of... |
[2] According to the entries at Dictionary.com, which are based on the 2006 Random House Unabridged Dictionary. |
[3] To consider just the ones I have most direct knowledge of, from having contributed to debunking them: |
- A brief self-esteem intervention allegedly boosted academic performance among Black but not White students (purportedly an instance of "Stereotype Threat"). |
- Girls with more feminine names supposedly performed worse and had less interest in the sciences. |
- An all-over-the-place article by Ben Barres suggested a variety of silly causes for the overrepresentation of males in math, science, and engineering. |
In the first case, much of the hard data was sequestered in "online supplemental files," which is like placing the footnotes for one book in another, so that few who even bothered to read the original article (already few in number) would be able to judge for themselves whether the authors' interpretations followed fro... |
[4] It's true that, in their infancy, these Open Access sources do not contain all, or even a majority, of what an interested person may want. Still, PLoS contains several of the pioneering articles that document natural selection in human beings within "recent" time periods. And MIT's Open CourseWare site features ful... |
July 16, 2007 |
The anti-Duke rape -- and murder |
[Updated below, 7/17] |
I was just browsing through the NYT's Education section, and found this notice that "The president of Eastern Michigan University was dismissed Sunday night, following a scandal involving the university's handling of the rape and murder of a student in her dormitory room..." In short, he gave the public the impression ... |
This notice is barely six paragraphs long and contains no information whatsoever on who investigators believe the perpetrator is, nor even about the young victim. Here is an article from the Seattle Times that shows what the victim looked like, and here is a mugshot of the alleged rapist, thief, and murderer, of whom t... |
...[S]chool police were interviewing four men as suspects, including Taylor [pictured in the link above], who told campus police he previously had roamed through dorms to steal electronics. |
As the investigation progressed, seminal-fluid samples taken from Dickinson's body and her bed matched Taylor's DNA, police said. Surveillance cameras showed Taylor sneaking into Hill Hall early Dec. 13 and leaving 90 minutes later, carrying a gift bag, police said. |
Dr. Bader Cassin, the Washtenaw County medical examiner who conducted Dickinson's autopsy, issued his final report: She likely died of asphyxiation. |
So, here is a harmless young White college student who has been raped and murdered by a fellow Black student, and how much outrage did this interracial rape and murder manage to stir up at the NYT, which so shamelessly slandered the preppy lacrosse players at Duke? Zero -- despite the fact that, again, the present case... |
UPDATE 7/17: The NYT has now expanded the original article, so that at least the suspect's name appears. However, there is still no mention of interracial rape and murder, and the focus from the headline onward is on the firing of the university president for covering up the crime -- not on the barbaric crime itself. T... |
In fact, the article now does include a picture, but it is of the university regents showing consternation at the president's conduct. You can be sure that were the victim Black and the rapist-murderer White, the picture would show the victim's family and friends erupting in tears -- and rightly so. That's what would c... |
July 15, 2007 |
Best cities for young professionals |
As if you couldn't guess, Forbes has ranked the Top 40 cities for young professionals. At the outset, let me register my frustration over the term "professional" -- the article surveyed elite college graduates, and I know from personal experience, anecdotes from those I knew in college, as well as just looking around, ... |
I know, I know, in time these people will own a private medical practice, receive tenure at their university, or what have you, and they deserve encouragement in the meantime. But immediately bestowing upon them all the positive connotations of the term "professional" when they are pretty clueless and powerless as far ... |
A city is only as enjoyable as the people who live in it. Anyone who has traveled to or lived abroad in cities with great architecture and a cornucopia of nightclubs and bars -- but where the 20- and 30-somethings are more likely to be mature and humble, as opposed to eternal bratty adolescents -- knows how frustrating... |
Curiously, one of the handful of factors that the Forbes ranking considered is, well you read it: |
Of course, even the most driven young professionals need to let off steam. With that in mind, the final metric was measured which cities had the highest share of never-married people in their 20s and 30s. Never married is an important qualifier. For example, of the 40 largest cities, Salt Lake City has the third-highes... |
I would be in favor if the factor were "never-married people 25 or younger," but for this measurement to take into account people in their 20s and 30s gives you quite a different picture from simply "good nightlife" -- it's more of an indication of how immature, self-absorbed, and off-putting the people are. If you hav... |
At some point in your life, you have to grow up -- or else face the consequences that the Boomers do (and perhaps half of Generation X -- they're more heterogeneous in this respect).* Fundamentally, growing up is about more than just having a job or even doing it well -- all but the unemployed will have a job, and stud... |
Before the revolution of the youth in the late '60s and early '70s, these milestones probably correlated strongly with the true markers of maturity, which have more to do with one's character and behavior. Now, however, they have become uncoupled, and not a few 30-somethings resemble Tom Hanks' character in Big in thei... |
That presents some trouble for recent college graduates who are enthusiastic about moving to one of the top 10 cities in the Forbes ranking: it may be fun for a few years, but if there aren't larger social pressures that will push you toward adulthood, it's easy to get stuck in your early 20's. Now, if you could freeze... |
* It's a cop-out to suggest that growing up per se stifles one's creativity and sense of wonder -- for one thing, most people are not particularly creative or curious at all. Those who are creative but seemingly immature, for example the mathematician Paul Erdos, are more aptly described as "child-like" than "adolescen... |
July 13, 2007 |
Clueless rewind |
Just saw this movie for the first time in 8-10 years, and though I remember liking it when it came out, I like it even more now. |
That's the protagonist Cher explaining why she's still a virgin at age 16. It's the kind of thing you'd expect would alienate a lot of the teenage guys watching the movie, but I don't recall feeling a huge disappointment upon discovering that her character didn't put out (not that I recall cheering either). Not putting... |
I don't know what effect Cher's virginity had on the female viewers, but it is a relief to see a strong female lead who isn't either a slut, a bitch, an obnoxious gender warrior, or some combination thereof. And although superficially superficial, she shows a concern for the well-being of others and enjoys helping othe... |
Cher: Oh how fabulous. Getting Marky Mark to take time from his busy pants-dropping schedule to plant trees. |
The movie was a huge hit among adolescents, which is fortunate because White popular culture in 1995 was transitioning from grunge to skanky girl bands and solo singers. Hopefully Clueless served somewhat to convince girls that being a virgin didn't keep them from being cool, before the full onslaught of skankiness hit... |
So okay, I don't want to be a traitor to my generation and all, but I don't get how guys dress today. I mean, come on, it looks like they just fell out of bed and put on some baggy pants and take their greasy hair - ew - and cover it up with a backwards cap and like, we're expected to swoon? I don't think so! |
She doesn't let the previous phase of White popular culture get off so easily either. Grunge didn't focus on identity politics or sexual liberation, which were making a huge resurgence in the early '90s, and I think grunge worked out nicely to the extent that it diffused or co-opted what could have easily become anothe... |
It's a sign of a diseased culture when girls tolerate guys who make zero effort to impress them, and the quasi-hippies of the early '90s really were the White version of slobs from the ghetto who felt like "keepin' it real" by not holding down a job / working for The Man. It's amazing to see that most guys, even in aff... |
I remember before I started to put any effort into how I look, and I was probably not the only one to think that an overly casual style was intended to show my disdain for conformity, snobbishness, and so on. Four years later, I now realize that that was all a load of horseshit. The current trend of uber-casualness is ... |
Finally, only someone with the most unjustifiably inflated view of himself would shout to everyone else, "I'm too cool to have to impress you!" Well, you'll excuse me if I don't take your word for it and instead look up your name in any list of eminent artists, scientists, or whatever you are. Typically these are brats... |
Again, I'm not trying to be too harsh on slobs, since I was one too. Some of them could clean up well if they bothered. What gets under my skin is their disdain for doing well in anything outside of their narrow pet interests. This goes for one's living space as well: the losers profiled in this NYT article have no rig... |
In retrospect, that's part of what makes Clueless so refreshing: it deflated a lot of the self-absorption of those perpetually adolescent Boomers (who were roughly 40-45 when it came out), while not coming off as fussy and prissy. Indeed, it was one of the defining cool movies of the time, starring two stunningly beaut... |
July 8, 2007 |
Babes in classical music |
Cellist Ani Aznavoorian |
Dennis Mangan has put up a few pictures of attractive violinists, and although he went through the formality of including verbal praise of their musical talent, I'm in a rush. I just looked through a list of classical pianists at Wikipedia, and found the following pulchritudinous pianists: |
Naida Cole, Ingrid Fliter, Katrine Gislinge, Alicia de Laroccha, Anna Gourari, Helene Grimaud, Ambre Hammond, Valentina Lisitsa, and Gabriela Montero. |
In my search, I stumbled upon the website Beauty in Music, which catalogues attractive classical musicians more broadly. I don't think there's anything objectifying about lists like these -- and if so, then females who go ga-ga over violinist Joshua Bell are as guilty as we are. For one thing, as long as the individual... |
Attraction based on physical appearance will never go away, so it's futile to try to deny this aspect of your being. At the same time, we shouldn't let physical attractiveness monopolize our attention, unless we're only focused on short-term gratification (which we hopefully are not). Publicizing girls who are both bea... |
The only caveat here is that such women tend to be found only in the performance-based areas: music, acting, and so on. A quick Wikipedia / Google Image search turned up plenty of attractive pianists, and I could find as many violinists or flautists, probably. But if I'd searched for female composers, I would've come u... |
As for the other half of the arts and sciences, I can say that finding a pioneering research scientist who is also beautiful is pretty tough.* I'll bet, though, that if you looked at the analogue of pianists and actresses, you'd find many more attractive females: these would be lab technicians, research assistants, or ... |
* I know of at least one well-cited scientist who, if I were 5 or 10 years older, I would totally fall in love with, but I won't embarrass her and myself by saying who! (Note: if you provide a guess in the comments, I will delete your entire comment, whether the guess is correct or incorrect. I've kept this in a footno... |
July 5, 2007 |
WASP vs Jewish elitism |
One aspect of Metropolitan that I obviously left out in the post below is that the college freshmen characters belong to what one of them calls the "Urban Haute Bourgeoisie," a humanizing term for WASPy preppies. Fascinated by this movie (and by Barcelona, which I just saw), I've been reading lots of commentary on Stil... |
Another famous director who writes "talky," witty dialogue for privileged upper-middle class Manhattanites is Woody Allen, but he doesn't seem to draw the ire of as many critics with his own brand of "classism." In interviews, he readily admits that he is only capable of depicting well-off Manhattanites because that's ... |
But regardless of what one thinks of the movies themselves, and focusing as some critics do only on which elite ethnic group and class is being depicted -- whose characters are more clichéd by now? Well-to-do Jewish professionals inhabiting the expensive Upper West Side have been a staple in movies and TV shows for sev... |
(Warning: any chauvinist comments will be deleted, whether anti-Semitic or "pro-Semitic.") |
July 1, 2007 |
Whit Stillman, the anti-John Hughes |
I finally got around to seeing Metropolitan, and since there are already good reviews of it here and here (the latter covering other of Stillman's movies as well), I won't expound on the plot much here. It's about the tension a group of 20 year-olds senses, as conventions that promote social cohesion begin to break dow... |
To continue some points I touched on in two previous posts (here and here) on how well teen movies manage to capture reality, one recurrent theme in bad coming of age movies -- as exemplified by John Hughes' The Breakfast Club -- is that much of the conflict in the characters' lives stems from clashes with their parent... |
In case you forgot, most teenagers don't bitterly resent everything their parents stand for, but instead pay them no mind, as though their parents were clueless and thus had little valuable advice. And that's true for a lot of things: a 40-something is (fortunately) incapable of putting themselves in the shoes of their... |
Incidentally, one cause of the greater breakdown of guidance of youngsters is the prevailing generation-time among well-off people, many of whom tend to have kids when the mother is about 35, so that the parents are 50 by the time their kid is in high school -- talk about non-overlapping worlds. This delayed age-at-fir... |
So, why all the melodrama about evil, overly demanding parents in "real life" teen movies like The Breakfast Club? For one thing, most of these movies were created by Baby Boomers, including Hughes (b. 1950), and theirs was the first generation in recent times to view any demand that a kid push themselves to excel as a... |
This produces, on the one hand, vapid nobodies like Cynthia, and on the other ineffectuals like Charlie who are stuck in theorizing about their own impending doom. Those in the top percentile of work ethic may not need a kick in the ass, but that's what conventions like pushing kids are for: to get the other 99% of you... |
Another key scene involves a game similar to Truth or Dare, which the conservative Audrey objects to on the basis that revealing your intimate secrets could be dangerous. Sally, the party host, says she doesn't see what the big deal is, and Audrey responds that it's not important whether you see it or not -- keeping so... |
Finally, there are no sappy Kumbayah moments in Metropolitan (or Heathers) as in The Breakfast Club or Mean Girls, wherein all individuals from all social cliques share their feelings and realize how much they have in common -- get real. In the former two movies, Cynthia is a hopelessly one-dimensional slut; Rick Von S... |
The only thing I worry about is whether high schoolers or even college students will easily appreciate Metropolitan's message, in the same way that they instantly get Heathers and Mean Girls. I doubt it could reach and instruct the group being depicted (college freshmen), but it could reach slightly older viewers who a... |
* At the Rotten Tomatoes website, it seems that while most critics enjoyed Stillman's movies, those from San Francisco reliably detested them. No surprise from the City of Eternal Bratty Adolescence. |
** As a personal aside, at my tutoring center, I came this close to successfully bullying three students into taking pre-calculus during the summer in order to get more done by the end of high school, but their schedules wouldn't permit it. One in fact felt disappointed, like he'd let down the coach (he is a smart jock... |
*** I'm reminded of the scene in Bowling for Columbine in which Marilyn Manson responds to the question "What would you have told the killers?" with "Nothing. I would've listened to what they had to say, and that's what nobody did." (I'm closely paraphrasing.) Yeah, that's all it takes to cure violent sociopathy -- a l... |
Sunday, October 23, 2016 |
The One in Which a Hurting Mama Tries to Help a Hurting Son |
I wanted to get out of bed today. I did. It had been my plan all along. But when the time came, I couldn't lift my head. It was too heavy. Thoughts, maybe, or just the anchor of sorrow. Sometimes that happens... everything will be lovely... and then everything stops for no reason. An anchor dropping, the boat trying to... |
Tomorrow will be hard. I planned on that. It will be the 4th year of Avery's death. I took the day off of work. It's hard to sit there and pretend to be normal when you're not. It's hard to commiserate with someone bemoaning the fact they can't remodel their guest house when your thoughts focus on an appropriate headst... |
Anyway, I planned for tomorrow to be utterly difficult so today threw me for a loop. |
It started last night, really. |
Matt had left to watch horror movies with his buddies. I tucked Brody into bed then made myself comfortable on the couch to watch another documentary, a lovely gardenia candle burning and a prayer shawl given to me after Avery passed away on my lap. Thirty minutes into the documentary, Brody stumbles into the room with... |
He threw his long lanky body into me, arms trying to get tight around me, and just started sobbing. |
"Buddy! Buddy, hey! Hey, what's wrong? Talk to me?" |
Tears streamed down his cheeks in spite of the fact his eyes were squeezed shut. He was trying everything in his power to stop them from forming. His shoulders started shaking. There was nothing to do except hold him until he could speak. |
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