Best recommendation ever, from O’C’s comment on Star Trek: Into Darkness, Part 2, The Reboot, Continued, Will it Never End: “It was predictable, hackneyed, and derivative. It wasn't very good. Yet somehow, I enjoyed it, and I suspect you'd enjoy it, too.”
Well, that’s got me rushing out to a theater nearby.
I was going to write up a whole thingie on Hollywood’s creative vacuum, but that’s about as imaginative as, well, Hollywood’s creative vacuum. You don’t need me to tell you that it’s nothing but rehashes except on those occasions when it’s the exact same hash. Fortunately good work still occasionally gets through, and there is some entertainment for grownups. I don’t mind popcorn pictures, but I need them to be good popcorn pictures. The thing is, though, as there are fewer and fewer good films making it to theaters nearby the proverbial chez, I fall more and more out of the habit of going and, more to the point, less and less interested in movies, period. I mean, I can watch them as videos easily enough, and I don’t even do that much anymore. I’ve been catching up on last year’s big films, and there were a handful of good ones and interesting ones, but I’ve gone through that handful pretty quickly, and the interruption to my not watching movies at home is over and I’ll go back to the default. I used to watch two or three movies a week, old and new. It was a habit, even an addiction, and like any user, I enjoyed it in mindless absorption. Not so much anymore. There’s yet another reboot of Superman coming out this Summer. for instance. How many does this make? How many versions of Superman can one person live through before they lose interest not just in Superman movies but movies in general? And let’s face it: most of the looked-forward-to pictures disappoint, the latest Star Trek being a good example. The hype going in was beyond the beyond, with all the Cumberbitches going into the ether at the thought that he might be Khan. (For all I know, he is Khan, but Khan was a villain from the original TV show who livened up the second feature film over 30 years ago. That’s exciting?) The reviews when it was finally released, like O'C's, were less than ethereal. On to the next tentpole.
I’m not trying to put down O’C here. He is a true scholar obviously well aware of the contexts and subtexts of his film interests, and no one who has seen Willow that many times is unaware of his personal ironies. I will probably watch the new Star Trek on video, just out of curiosity, as I am a fan of the franchise in general. It’s just that franchises as a whole have come to have less and less interest to me as time goes by, and certainly not enough interest to motivate me to go to the theater unless they come surrounded by incredibly positive reviews. In fact, the progression of franchise installments is positively enervating. And this saddens me because I used to be in love with movies. All movies. Now, I can just look back at movies as an old love affair with occasionally a flame licking up out of the embers. Tis a pity.
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Eurovision 2013
We seem to be nearing the finals!!! Who knew that another year had passed in pop hell?
Go to this video for links to everything. Strong recommendation: watch with the sound muted.
Go to this video for links to everything. Strong recommendation: watch with the sound muted.
Monday, May 20, 2013
Otherwise engaged
Everybody seems to be ridiculously busy in the debate world, despite there being only a couple of tournaments left. The tweets from those two venues alone (i.e., Catholic Forensic League and Non-Catholic Forensic League) are starting to fill up the page with posts like “Oh the tournament is coming, booga booga,” or “We’re ready for the tournament,” or “There are restaurants in Philadelphia that won’t poison you.” This does not bode well for awards ceremonies coming in under two hours…
Meanwhile the busyness I’m talking about is non-forensical. JV is running mini-marathons with Sara S, O’C is turning his critical thumb up on the new Star Trek film (which was a fairly predictable response from the man who took over a decade to admit he was in Star Wars Prequel Denial), and Kevin T is now halfway between being a brother and a father (which I guess makes him an uncle). Alums are graduating like crazy all over the place; CLG got her doctorate marked by a diploma the size of downtown Cleveland, and everyone on Facebook seems to be wearing a cap and gown. Sailor alums Nicole and Ben are counting down to their wedding in a couple of weeks, but I think they’re more nervous about not being able to tweet for a couple of hours than they are about pulling off the party (unless they’re just planning on going on tweeting throughout, which wouldn’t surprise me).
As for me, I was just walking down the street today, minding my own business, and as I was doing so I got a text from Ari with my picture walking down the street, minding my own business. Fortunately, I wasn’t picking my nose, which is how I mostly spend the off season.
I need that vacation I was talking about.
Meanwhile the busyness I’m talking about is non-forensical. JV is running mini-marathons with Sara S, O’C is turning his critical thumb up on the new Star Trek film (which was a fairly predictable response from the man who took over a decade to admit he was in Star Wars Prequel Denial), and Kevin T is now halfway between being a brother and a father (which I guess makes him an uncle). Alums are graduating like crazy all over the place; CLG got her doctorate marked by a diploma the size of downtown Cleveland, and everyone on Facebook seems to be wearing a cap and gown. Sailor alums Nicole and Ben are counting down to their wedding in a couple of weeks, but I think they’re more nervous about not being able to tweet for a couple of hours than they are about pulling off the party (unless they’re just planning on going on tweeting throughout, which wouldn’t surprise me).
As for me, I was just walking down the street today, minding my own business, and as I was doing so I got a text from Ari with my picture walking down the street, minding my own business. Fortunately, I wasn’t picking my nose, which is how I mostly spend the off season.
I need that vacation I was talking about.
Friday, May 17, 2013
Treading water
So, where are we? I’ve drifted away from debate almost completely, I hate to admit. I did just send some Academy thoughts up to Montwegia, also known as the Venice of Sullivan County (but only to people who have never been either to Venice or to Sullivan County), and there has been the odd email about this and that, like venues and dates for MHLs and the like, but mostly, if you’re still in it you’re thinking of CatNats and NatNats, and if you’re not in it, you’re not thinking about it. Then again, the Pups are keeping me up to date on this and that, so it’s not as if the 13-14 season isn’t already being worked on. But it’s not real work yet. Not until August, at which point we wonder where all the time went.
I hate to admit it, but I do sort of wish I was going CatNats. It’s always a bit of a grueling experience, but I have this inexplicable fondness for the event. It might be because it’s one of the few tournaments of the year when the weather is nice. Around here we pretty much put away the Hawaiian shirts and the huaraches and the woodies on Labor Day, and the odd nice day after that is pleasant but not meaningful, whereas in Spring, every nice day is a blessing and we don’t want to miss a minute of it. Given the weather this recent season, any day with winds under a hundred miles an hour is a blessing, come to think of it. CatNats is also a valedictory moment in many ways, my normal end of the year. I just seemed to peter out starting around March this season, what with the young team that is the Sailors. And since I’m still on golf sabbatical (and enjoying every minute of it), I need to throw a few logs on my idle mind to keep the fires banked until reentry. (What?)
Of course, there is trip planning. At this point, actually, it’s trip detailing. What exactly needs to be packed, for instance? I don’t worry so much about clothes—I’ve got some, and I’ll bring them—as much as, say, entertainment on the iPad. There’s a lot of travel time to account for. Are the right books on the device? And a decent variety of movies? Do I have the right chargers? Should I bring the Kindle? Internationalize or turn off the iPhone? And don’t get me started on playlists. Podcasts? Audiobooks? And then there’s magazines (aside from the collection of New Yorkers building up on the old Newsstand). The bind moggles.
And considering that we’re going first to France, there’s the question of who’s going to be on strike. We know that, it being France, someone will be trying to bollix up life for all and sundry. On our first trip way back when, it was the trains. As in, who needs trains? After a while we started deliberately visiting Paris in August because, since everyone was on vacation, there wouldn’t be any strikes because there’s no one left working within a fifty mile radius of the Eiffel Tower. And then there’s London, where security cameras catch your every move and everybody sounds really posh even if they’re picking your pocket and throwing a gypsy baby at you. You call this a vacation? Don't they have any openings at Guantanamo?
Oh, well. We’ve still got some time Stateside, including the long Memorial Day weekend sans CatNats. We’ll keep busy one way or the other.
I hate to admit it, but I do sort of wish I was going CatNats. It’s always a bit of a grueling experience, but I have this inexplicable fondness for the event. It might be because it’s one of the few tournaments of the year when the weather is nice. Around here we pretty much put away the Hawaiian shirts and the huaraches and the woodies on Labor Day, and the odd nice day after that is pleasant but not meaningful, whereas in Spring, every nice day is a blessing and we don’t want to miss a minute of it. Given the weather this recent season, any day with winds under a hundred miles an hour is a blessing, come to think of it. CatNats is also a valedictory moment in many ways, my normal end of the year. I just seemed to peter out starting around March this season, what with the young team that is the Sailors. And since I’m still on golf sabbatical (and enjoying every minute of it), I need to throw a few logs on my idle mind to keep the fires banked until reentry. (What?)
Of course, there is trip planning. At this point, actually, it’s trip detailing. What exactly needs to be packed, for instance? I don’t worry so much about clothes—I’ve got some, and I’ll bring them—as much as, say, entertainment on the iPad. There’s a lot of travel time to account for. Are the right books on the device? And a decent variety of movies? Do I have the right chargers? Should I bring the Kindle? Internationalize or turn off the iPhone? And don’t get me started on playlists. Podcasts? Audiobooks? And then there’s magazines (aside from the collection of New Yorkers building up on the old Newsstand). The bind moggles.
And considering that we’re going first to France, there’s the question of who’s going to be on strike. We know that, it being France, someone will be trying to bollix up life for all and sundry. On our first trip way back when, it was the trains. As in, who needs trains? After a while we started deliberately visiting Paris in August because, since everyone was on vacation, there wouldn’t be any strikes because there’s no one left working within a fifty mile radius of the Eiffel Tower. And then there’s London, where security cameras catch your every move and everybody sounds really posh even if they’re picking your pocket and throwing a gypsy baby at you. You call this a vacation? Don't they have any openings at Guantanamo?
Oh, well. We’ve still got some time Stateside, including the long Memorial Day weekend sans CatNats. We’ll keep busy one way or the other.
Thursday, May 16, 2013
What's in the daily news? I'll tell you what's in the daily news. Etc.
Pajamas W’s comment yesterday coincides with a little poll on my DJ intranet homepage, asking where people get their news. The possible choices are TV, radio, internet, mobile device and word of mouth. (Word of mouth?) What’s wrong with this picture?
When it comes to debate, I consider New York Times absolutely essential for the daily intake of information one needs as a general starting point for any specific research when a topic is released. Better to have been following the subject of drones for years, for instance, rather than starting from scratch a month before your first round on the subject and not knowing whether they’re the size of shoe boxes or 737s. It’s like playing a musical instrument: you practice all the time so that you when you perform you internalize the mechanics and concentrate on the music. Or you can use the analogy of sports drills, if you prefer. I tell the Sailors that if they don’t read the paper every day they might as well accept that they’ll always lose to debaters who do, just like the pianists who practice all the time play better than the ones who haven’t touched a keyboard since their last concert. If that isn’t a fact of life in high level PF, I don’t know what is. (In LD, where avoiding the resolution is highly regarded in some circles, it may not quite be so true anymore, but building a well-rounded individual is one of the goals of debate coaching, so I apply it to all.)
I have to admit that I have updated my talk about how to read the newspaper and offer a digital as well as an analog approach. I’ll be honest: when I read the Times on my iPad I do tend to read a little more thoroughly than when I do when I read the physical paper. (I don’t like the Times app, and just use the website version of the day’s paper.) I used to think that the serendipity of news intake required the paper version, but I don’t believe that anymore. While the lack of photos might keep me from looking at something fanciful, the full reading of all the headlines is easier on the tablet. Overall the difference when I finished is marginal, but my real point is that there’s nothing wrong with the digital experience, if one prefers. The serendipity of news, the opening of one’s mind to whatever is offered and attempting to take it all in before filtering down to the articles of interest is there either way.
The point of doing the Times is that one sits down and spends some time doing the news, however one does it. I’m sure that most people do not get their news via newspaper these days (although it not even being a possibility in the DJ poll is ludicrous), but spending some time getting news in some depth is important. Listening to NPR news is a great thing to do, but it takes way more time that I don’t see most students having. Our bus drivers do not play “All Things Considered” on the way to school, more’s the pity. We have a local channel, fifty bazillion watts strong, that is the default, playing that stuff people refer to as “pop,” which is a substitute for music much like artificial sweeteners are a substitute for sugar. If our drivers play anything, they play that, a station where ear worms live forever. So although I recommend NPR news radio, I don’t expect too many people actually get the opportunity to listen to it.
Once upon a time, most people got their news from the hourly one-minute news updates between shows on primetime television. That is a fact. It’s also, at most, two minutes of news. In an internet world, of course, news is redefined insofar as it’s not what happened anymore but, to a great extent, what’s happening. The immediacy is the internet’s great strength: who didn’t follow the Boston bombings on Twitter? The idea that you don’t get news until the next morning, you read it, and no more news happens until the morning after this one, is outdated. But the idea that you spend some time going over the events of the day (and associated commentary) is not outdated. So it’s not a question of getting the news per se as much as devoting time to doing so. I am going to set aside this much of my day to a private briefing on current events, so to speak. There are a few good ways to do this, but not doing it is a recipe for ignorance. Which is why, I guess, so many Americans are ignorant. Not dumb. No, not dumb, just empty-headed. No matter how smart you are, if you don’t put stuff in your head, your head is going to be empty. And if your head is empty, you will indeed act in an empty-headed manner.
Oh, well. I will continue to lecture Sailors every year on why they need the news and a few good ways to get it, and I will point out the themes of each day of the week that inform feature coverage (like tech on Thursday and media on Monday in the Times business sections), and I will repeat my standing offer of financial reward to anyone who can beat me at the crossword or even complete one. Whether or not it takes will, as always, depend.
(You know what really shocked me recently? Not only don’t kids read the papers, they don’t even read what I have always referred to as the funnies. They don’t read the comics! What’s wrong with these kids nowadays? My lawn gets busier every day.)
When it comes to debate, I consider New York Times absolutely essential for the daily intake of information one needs as a general starting point for any specific research when a topic is released. Better to have been following the subject of drones for years, for instance, rather than starting from scratch a month before your first round on the subject and not knowing whether they’re the size of shoe boxes or 737s. It’s like playing a musical instrument: you practice all the time so that you when you perform you internalize the mechanics and concentrate on the music. Or you can use the analogy of sports drills, if you prefer. I tell the Sailors that if they don’t read the paper every day they might as well accept that they’ll always lose to debaters who do, just like the pianists who practice all the time play better than the ones who haven’t touched a keyboard since their last concert. If that isn’t a fact of life in high level PF, I don’t know what is. (In LD, where avoiding the resolution is highly regarded in some circles, it may not quite be so true anymore, but building a well-rounded individual is one of the goals of debate coaching, so I apply it to all.)
I have to admit that I have updated my talk about how to read the newspaper and offer a digital as well as an analog approach. I’ll be honest: when I read the Times on my iPad I do tend to read a little more thoroughly than when I do when I read the physical paper. (I don’t like the Times app, and just use the website version of the day’s paper.) I used to think that the serendipity of news intake required the paper version, but I don’t believe that anymore. While the lack of photos might keep me from looking at something fanciful, the full reading of all the headlines is easier on the tablet. Overall the difference when I finished is marginal, but my real point is that there’s nothing wrong with the digital experience, if one prefers. The serendipity of news, the opening of one’s mind to whatever is offered and attempting to take it all in before filtering down to the articles of interest is there either way.
The point of doing the Times is that one sits down and spends some time doing the news, however one does it. I’m sure that most people do not get their news via newspaper these days (although it not even being a possibility in the DJ poll is ludicrous), but spending some time getting news in some depth is important. Listening to NPR news is a great thing to do, but it takes way more time that I don’t see most students having. Our bus drivers do not play “All Things Considered” on the way to school, more’s the pity. We have a local channel, fifty bazillion watts strong, that is the default, playing that stuff people refer to as “pop,” which is a substitute for music much like artificial sweeteners are a substitute for sugar. If our drivers play anything, they play that, a station where ear worms live forever. So although I recommend NPR news radio, I don’t expect too many people actually get the opportunity to listen to it.
Once upon a time, most people got their news from the hourly one-minute news updates between shows on primetime television. That is a fact. It’s also, at most, two minutes of news. In an internet world, of course, news is redefined insofar as it’s not what happened anymore but, to a great extent, what’s happening. The immediacy is the internet’s great strength: who didn’t follow the Boston bombings on Twitter? The idea that you don’t get news until the next morning, you read it, and no more news happens until the morning after this one, is outdated. But the idea that you spend some time going over the events of the day (and associated commentary) is not outdated. So it’s not a question of getting the news per se as much as devoting time to doing so. I am going to set aside this much of my day to a private briefing on current events, so to speak. There are a few good ways to do this, but not doing it is a recipe for ignorance. Which is why, I guess, so many Americans are ignorant. Not dumb. No, not dumb, just empty-headed. No matter how smart you are, if you don’t put stuff in your head, your head is going to be empty. And if your head is empty, you will indeed act in an empty-headed manner.
Oh, well. I will continue to lecture Sailors every year on why they need the news and a few good ways to get it, and I will point out the themes of each day of the week that inform feature coverage (like tech on Thursday and media on Monday in the Times business sections), and I will repeat my standing offer of financial reward to anyone who can beat me at the crossword or even complete one. Whether or not it takes will, as always, depend.
(You know what really shocked me recently? Not only don’t kids read the papers, they don’t even read what I have always referred to as the funnies. They don’t read the comics! What’s wrong with these kids nowadays? My lawn gets busier every day.)
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Not to mention GPS...
I made an impassioned plea ages ago at the DJ that we not look at the world through multi-app glasses. IOS apps were all the rage, and people were running around at the DJ trying to parlay everything we owned into something we could sell for ninety-nine cents, although they were thinking that maybe they could get five bucks, and I was telling them that even free would be asking too much. My belief was that the bloom would quickly be off the app rose, and that while people would find a handful useful and would no doubt always keep their eyes open, the market was crowded and getting more crowded and there were other ways of succeeding with out content. Now the statistics show that 60% of all the apps in the App Store are never downloaded, and a quarter of those that are downloaded are quickly discarded.
Right again, Cassie.
One thing that amazes me is the number of people who are so plugged into Facebook that, if I even breathe over there, I get a comment or a like. As a matter of fact, almost everyone I know is on Facebook, and to be honest, I’m hard-pressed to distinguish old use versus young use. There are farts every bit my age who are as active as the kids on my team. There may be an initial age-related buy-in algorithm, but I’ve met as many kids who refuse to join Facebook as I have lawn-yellers, and for roughly the same reasons, a mix of misunderstanding, autonomy and general crankiness. The point is, start with possession of a portable device that allows you to be virtually 24/7 in touch with everyone in the universe, and throw in a playing field (FB) where that touching can take place, and you’ve got what most people are doing instead of buying the latest apps. I’m not saying that FB is it, as there are variations on the theme in Twitter and simple texting and Foursquare and the like, but in general, users have decided that mobile devices are social tools. Everything else is secondary. (By the way, businesses today, looking to succeed in the mobile marketplace, have all decided that they must be “social,” so there is a Facebook page for every product known to man. In the earliest days of the web, there was a homepage for every product known to man. Same concept, different medium. The fact that every man, woman, cat and dog up and down the line mostly have better things to do than “like” Heinz Baked Beans, and even if they do “like” Heinz Baked Beans, they will hardly be dependable repeat visitors except insofar as beans do repeat in their own musical way, does not deter businesses from taking the paths of the least resistance. Don’t they realize that Disney faked that lemming footage?)
So all these apps are all well and good, and everyone no doubt finds a few useful beyond the social arena, as well as a game or two to pass the time and maybe something to read, but in essence, mobile devices have become communications instruments in ways that could never have been imagined by someone of my generation. It’s a wondrous thing. Think about it. When I was little, we had a telephone in our house. It was a party line, which meant that if you picked it up, there was a chance that someone would already be having a conversation on it. If you wanted to make a call, you gave the number to the operator. If the call was any distance away, you had to use a special operator. The arrival of our first dial phone, with our very own number, was a step into the modern age. Phones developed in all sorts of ways, but until you could carry one in your pocket, here was the bottom line: if you called someone up, you had no expectation of always reaching them. In the earliest days, it would ring until you gave up. Later, you might have a message machine, which at least meant that your call wasn’t totally in vain. But at the moment when you put the phone in everyone’s pocket, you are now in a world where there is an expectation that, if you call someone up, they will answer.
That’s a big change in our social existence, and you can perm this change across all the other forms of mobile communication, they all being more or less the same thing, and certainly all derived from the same thing. In my lifetime, we have gone from the potential ability to communicate with people at any distance to the omnipresence of communication with everyone everywhere. We have gone from a world of missed connections to a world where connections are unmissable. We are always available, and some of us are not merely available, but literally on. Facebook shows who of my friends are logged on at any time, and I can communicate forthwith, but that doesn’t matter, because if I call them or text them, I know with certainty that they will know it, and more to the point, if they don’t respond immediately, they have chosen not to respond. How dare they!
This is not a small change in our existence. As social creatures in the most basic sense, this transcendent sense that communication is guaranteed at all times in all places changes the basic sense of our socialness. For one thing, everyone you’ve ever met is now linked to you forever. You can’t move on from your friends in high school because they’re your friends online and they keep up with you and you keep up with them. Relatives can’t sort of fade off into the distance because when they announce that they’re “in a relationship” everyone from Uncle Mort to Auntie Minnie knows it immediately. They also know when you were in town and didn’t even stop by for a cup of coffee. Husbands checking into the No-Tell Motel on Foursquare will be immediately discovered by their unsuspecting wives, and vice versa. “I called you but there was no answer” is a thing of the past, because it becomes “I called you and you didn’t answer.” Before, there was a chance you were elsewhere; now, you got a beep on your mobile, so you knew I called, so why didn’t you answer, you crud!
I offer no value judgments on any of this. I’m just writing down some thoughts that were bothering me after reading Connie Willis’s Doomsday Book, where in her future 40 years or so from now, everybody has trouble calling people up on the telephone. The tech of the book hardly matters (and I loved it, don’t get me wrong), but that story could never be written as it is today because if everyone had been able to get everyone else on the phone, much of the narrative would have been pointless. The nature of the world has changed dramatically because of the existence of mobile communications devices. And we have taken to those devices with omnivorous enthusiasm.
Interesting times.
Right again, Cassie.
One thing that amazes me is the number of people who are so plugged into Facebook that, if I even breathe over there, I get a comment or a like. As a matter of fact, almost everyone I know is on Facebook, and to be honest, I’m hard-pressed to distinguish old use versus young use. There are farts every bit my age who are as active as the kids on my team. There may be an initial age-related buy-in algorithm, but I’ve met as many kids who refuse to join Facebook as I have lawn-yellers, and for roughly the same reasons, a mix of misunderstanding, autonomy and general crankiness. The point is, start with possession of a portable device that allows you to be virtually 24/7 in touch with everyone in the universe, and throw in a playing field (FB) where that touching can take place, and you’ve got what most people are doing instead of buying the latest apps. I’m not saying that FB is it, as there are variations on the theme in Twitter and simple texting and Foursquare and the like, but in general, users have decided that mobile devices are social tools. Everything else is secondary. (By the way, businesses today, looking to succeed in the mobile marketplace, have all decided that they must be “social,” so there is a Facebook page for every product known to man. In the earliest days of the web, there was a homepage for every product known to man. Same concept, different medium. The fact that every man, woman, cat and dog up and down the line mostly have better things to do than “like” Heinz Baked Beans, and even if they do “like” Heinz Baked Beans, they will hardly be dependable repeat visitors except insofar as beans do repeat in their own musical way, does not deter businesses from taking the paths of the least resistance. Don’t they realize that Disney faked that lemming footage?)
So all these apps are all well and good, and everyone no doubt finds a few useful beyond the social arena, as well as a game or two to pass the time and maybe something to read, but in essence, mobile devices have become communications instruments in ways that could never have been imagined by someone of my generation. It’s a wondrous thing. Think about it. When I was little, we had a telephone in our house. It was a party line, which meant that if you picked it up, there was a chance that someone would already be having a conversation on it. If you wanted to make a call, you gave the number to the operator. If the call was any distance away, you had to use a special operator. The arrival of our first dial phone, with our very own number, was a step into the modern age. Phones developed in all sorts of ways, but until you could carry one in your pocket, here was the bottom line: if you called someone up, you had no expectation of always reaching them. In the earliest days, it would ring until you gave up. Later, you might have a message machine, which at least meant that your call wasn’t totally in vain. But at the moment when you put the phone in everyone’s pocket, you are now in a world where there is an expectation that, if you call someone up, they will answer.
That’s a big change in our social existence, and you can perm this change across all the other forms of mobile communication, they all being more or less the same thing, and certainly all derived from the same thing. In my lifetime, we have gone from the potential ability to communicate with people at any distance to the omnipresence of communication with everyone everywhere. We have gone from a world of missed connections to a world where connections are unmissable. We are always available, and some of us are not merely available, but literally on. Facebook shows who of my friends are logged on at any time, and I can communicate forthwith, but that doesn’t matter, because if I call them or text them, I know with certainty that they will know it, and more to the point, if they don’t respond immediately, they have chosen not to respond. How dare they!
This is not a small change in our existence. As social creatures in the most basic sense, this transcendent sense that communication is guaranteed at all times in all places changes the basic sense of our socialness. For one thing, everyone you’ve ever met is now linked to you forever. You can’t move on from your friends in high school because they’re your friends online and they keep up with you and you keep up with them. Relatives can’t sort of fade off into the distance because when they announce that they’re “in a relationship” everyone from Uncle Mort to Auntie Minnie knows it immediately. They also know when you were in town and didn’t even stop by for a cup of coffee. Husbands checking into the No-Tell Motel on Foursquare will be immediately discovered by their unsuspecting wives, and vice versa. “I called you but there was no answer” is a thing of the past, because it becomes “I called you and you didn’t answer.” Before, there was a chance you were elsewhere; now, you got a beep on your mobile, so you knew I called, so why didn’t you answer, you crud!
I offer no value judgments on any of this. I’m just writing down some thoughts that were bothering me after reading Connie Willis’s Doomsday Book, where in her future 40 years or so from now, everybody has trouble calling people up on the telephone. The tech of the book hardly matters (and I loved it, don’t get me wrong), but that story could never be written as it is today because if everyone had been able to get everyone else on the phone, much of the narrative would have been pointless. The nature of the world has changed dramatically because of the existence of mobile communications devices. And we have taken to those devices with omnivorous enthusiasm.
Interesting times.
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
And so we bid a fond farewell to sunny something or other
While I like the Apple environment, where my IOS and OSX happily play together like novices in a nunnery (and okay, I admit, I still don’t get that line in “Modern Major General”), there is the problem of having more IOS and OSX devices in play than I can actually keep track of. I’ve been getting phantom iCal alerts for weeks and just today realized that they’re from my DJ OSX calendar. When did I think it was a good idea to make entries on a calendar I never use? The DJ has its own DJish calendar software, and I tend to run the rest of my life of my iPhone. I really couldn’t figure out where these phantoms were coming from, which I’ll admit is pretty dumb but no less frustrating for all of it. Anyhow, I just cleaned them off simply by opening the app. Finally. Meanwhile, the spouse is apparently weaning herself off of her PC and purchasing a Macbook Pro today, which will no doubt be quite enlightening for her. Her iPhone and iPad won’t be lonely anymore. The 50-pound Dell laptop with the screen that doesn’t work that I think is running Windows 3.0 will finally go to doggy heaven. (Hmmm. Sounds like maybe I should use it to run Bump…)
We’re traveling next month beyond the borders of this fine country, which raises the question of phone use on foreign shores. I’ve looked at what AT&T has to offer, for a price, but given that there will be wireless in both places we’re staying, and I really don’t need to communicate with anyone all that immediate, because worst-case scenario Google Voice will pick up any incoming calls, I can’t see spending the money. I’ll hardly be severing myself from human connection, just from telephone calls that I don’t make anyhow. And, of course, GPS services, which could come in handy, but I’m sure I can live without my phone in my hand for two weeks. It’s Paris and London, by the way, both cities I know well enough to realize that if I’m heading to the West End and suddenly come upon the Eiffel Tower, I’ll know that I should have made that left turn at Albuquerque.
When it comes to travel, we have changed our approach over the years. We used to plan things out to within an inch of their lives, and we’ve become much more go-with-the-flow in our dotage. As a rule, we’ll plan one major thing a day, and then just explore that neighborhood at the conclusion of that major thing. Obviously seeing art plays a big part in any trip, and it’s hard to walk past the Louvre without popping in for the odd peek or two, for instance. Plus I’m curious about the pickpockets that shut the place down recently. I have had my wallet stolen in a crowded subway, making me extra cautious ever since. My favorite pickpocket story is the one about the gypsies in Barcelona, who distract you by throwing an infant at you. As you catch it, they grab your wallet. Which means that not only do you get your wallet stolen, but now you have to figure out what to do with the new infant you’ve acquired. What I don’t know is where the gypsies get all these infants in the first place, so many that they can just toss them away at tourists. I do know that on the immigration lines to get back into the country at JFK, it seems as if every American returning from Barcelona has at least one extra infant in their carryon. Strange business.
Anyhow, I will no doubtbore you to tears regale you with great tales of planning and subsequent adventure as the spring and summer progress. I mean, is there anything more exciting than someone else’s vacation? At least the clock is still clicking away over there on the right. DisAd14 is the one vacation you probably do want to hear about. “It’s a world of laughter, a world of tears…”
We’re traveling next month beyond the borders of this fine country, which raises the question of phone use on foreign shores. I’ve looked at what AT&T has to offer, for a price, but given that there will be wireless in both places we’re staying, and I really don’t need to communicate with anyone all that immediate, because worst-case scenario Google Voice will pick up any incoming calls, I can’t see spending the money. I’ll hardly be severing myself from human connection, just from telephone calls that I don’t make anyhow. And, of course, GPS services, which could come in handy, but I’m sure I can live without my phone in my hand for two weeks. It’s Paris and London, by the way, both cities I know well enough to realize that if I’m heading to the West End and suddenly come upon the Eiffel Tower, I’ll know that I should have made that left turn at Albuquerque.
When it comes to travel, we have changed our approach over the years. We used to plan things out to within an inch of their lives, and we’ve become much more go-with-the-flow in our dotage. As a rule, we’ll plan one major thing a day, and then just explore that neighborhood at the conclusion of that major thing. Obviously seeing art plays a big part in any trip, and it’s hard to walk past the Louvre without popping in for the odd peek or two, for instance. Plus I’m curious about the pickpockets that shut the place down recently. I have had my wallet stolen in a crowded subway, making me extra cautious ever since. My favorite pickpocket story is the one about the gypsies in Barcelona, who distract you by throwing an infant at you. As you catch it, they grab your wallet. Which means that not only do you get your wallet stolen, but now you have to figure out what to do with the new infant you’ve acquired. What I don’t know is where the gypsies get all these infants in the first place, so many that they can just toss them away at tourists. I do know that on the immigration lines to get back into the country at JFK, it seems as if every American returning from Barcelona has at least one extra infant in their carryon. Strange business.
Anyhow, I will no doubt
Coachean Feed: convict organ donors, sexy Merida, boring American Girls, grumpy Ayn, high school philosophy
- Should convicts be allowed to trade their organs for leniency? Whoa! Bring back Jan-Feb! The Exchange of Inmate Organs for Liberty: Diminishing the 'Yuck Factor' in the Bioethics Repugnance Debate
- Merida, a wonderfully feisty adolescent, sadly becomes something of a sexpot: Disney gives Brave princess a body makeover. Another roll model lost.
- American Girls Aren't Radical Anymore "Jennifer Hires an SAT Coach"? Not quite, but the golden age (?) of the American Girl products would seem to be over.
- Ayn Rand didn't like C.S. Lewis (or as she calls him, the abysmal bastard). Whatever. The thing is, her marginal comments on his writing are, perhaps, her best work! Ayn Rand Really, Really Hated C.S. Lewis
- I like the course outline: An impressive high school philosophy course. Not being in the school business, however, means that when I looked at the textbook (new), I immediately felt the need to grab my wallet for protection. I'd forgotten how much textbooks cost, even when the content is mostly public domain. Yikes!
Monday, May 13, 2013
In which I say nothing about important stuff
It’s funny that I’m having trouble getting my mind around some things that I want to write about, and I’m not quite sure why. Seeing Claire’s comment to my CF posting on women in philosophy and computer science makes me want to write about feminism, but I’m not quite sure if I have anything to say beyond the obvious. Hearing that there is controversy in debate over the use of race theory brings me to the same point. I’d like to say something, but everything I have to say strikes me as belaboring the obvious. Every time I’ve attempted to put down a few words, I’ve eventually given up in frustration. It’s not like me to be what you might call tongue-tied.
While I normally see debate as one of the great solutions to social ills, in that we’re endlessly creating an army of intelligent and articulate young people trained in political philosophy and, presumably, well-prepared to address social injustice, maybe I’m deluding myself. Possibly at the point where social issues are reduced to competitive game-playing we start to lose focus. Shouldn’t the existence of racial and sexual bias be a given in any discussion rather than a debating issue? Our American culture demonstrates gross inequalities every day; more to the point, cultural inequities, by virtue of their being cultural, are if not necessarily built into the system, awfully hard to break out of it. We treat boys differently from girls from day one, because it’s built into our culture. Whites are treated differently from non-whites because it’s built into our culture. Being openly gay in the public arena can be front-page news, because it’s built into are culture. Pick your group: Asians, Mexicans, Moslems. These are people, these are cultural groups, and our (mis)treatment of individuals in those groups is built into our culture.
Maybe the problem for me writing about this stuff is that I find cultural biases profoundly disturbing because I have no idea about how to go about changing them, short of one day at a time, one act at a time, one person at a time. And one at a time is too damned slow. Which is why I’ve thrown my lot in with debate, to have, I hope, a greater effect. If I can process more students who believe as I do, who are conscious of their personal limitations and the limitations of the society in which they live, and who act to remove those limitations as best they can, then we are that much closer to eliminating cultural biases. All that stuff I said I believed in back when I was their age, well, I really did believe in it. I still do.
So I am left at sea on situations where we can proceed in our public forums as if the ills of our society are not a given,where racial/gender/religious/cultural injustice is not a problem to be solved but a piece on the game board to be moved in whichever direction wins the game. How can we possibly be arguing about this stuff? I just don’t know. Maybe I just don't understand what's going on. Which is why I can’t seem to come up with anything to say beyond the obvious.
Sorry about that.
While I normally see debate as one of the great solutions to social ills, in that we’re endlessly creating an army of intelligent and articulate young people trained in political philosophy and, presumably, well-prepared to address social injustice, maybe I’m deluding myself. Possibly at the point where social issues are reduced to competitive game-playing we start to lose focus. Shouldn’t the existence of racial and sexual bias be a given in any discussion rather than a debating issue? Our American culture demonstrates gross inequalities every day; more to the point, cultural inequities, by virtue of their being cultural, are if not necessarily built into the system, awfully hard to break out of it. We treat boys differently from girls from day one, because it’s built into our culture. Whites are treated differently from non-whites because it’s built into our culture. Being openly gay in the public arena can be front-page news, because it’s built into are culture. Pick your group: Asians, Mexicans, Moslems. These are people, these are cultural groups, and our (mis)treatment of individuals in those groups is built into our culture.
Maybe the problem for me writing about this stuff is that I find cultural biases profoundly disturbing because I have no idea about how to go about changing them, short of one day at a time, one act at a time, one person at a time. And one at a time is too damned slow. Which is why I’ve thrown my lot in with debate, to have, I hope, a greater effect. If I can process more students who believe as I do, who are conscious of their personal limitations and the limitations of the society in which they live, and who act to remove those limitations as best they can, then we are that much closer to eliminating cultural biases. All that stuff I said I believed in back when I was their age, well, I really did believe in it. I still do.
So I am left at sea on situations where we can proceed in our public forums as if the ills of our society are not a given,where racial/gender/religious/cultural injustice is not a problem to be solved but a piece on the game board to be moved in whichever direction wins the game. How can we possibly be arguing about this stuff? I just don’t know. Maybe I just don't understand what's going on. Which is why I can’t seem to come up with anything to say beyond the obvious.
Sorry about that.
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