From Elections to Season 6 of Curb Your Enthusiasm

Now that the political season has gotten to the grim part, where nothing is discussed and it becomes a personality/slogan focused attack fest, Obama saying McCain is Bush, a flat out lie, and McCain portrays Obama as the fairy tale Bill Clinton asserted, we decided to rent Season 6 of Curb Your Enthusiasm. If Obama had actually followed through and engaged in a series of cross-country debates, as both candidates had agreed, it might have been a truly interesting and useful presidential election season.

Curb Your Enthusiasm has always been uneven but Season 6 unusually so. From a great episode in the middle of the season to real clunkers involving therapists. However, the whole season was worth the finale, directed by Larry Charles, brilliantly. The ending was a real surprise — absolutely perfect. Seamlessly Larry David was able to take a cynical, slightly annoying, often uncomfortable to watch show, and turn it around, with wit and a roundness the show had yet to attain. The final montage was an entire season in itself. Do another season Larry.

The bonus features have a very funny outtake video and an HBO documentary that has the usual “oh he is so great” showbiz stuff, but also interesting snippets about David. David said his mother had said to him, “You are not so special”, which caused the audience to laugh — out of the momentum of a live interview before an audience. But it wasn't funny. It did make David, for a change, a sympathetic figure.

John Legend's beautiful rendition of “You Don't Know Me” in the final episode is only topped by this version by the great Ray Charles.

We Are The World

Six Degrees from Kevin Bacon is true for all of humankind. Scientists were precise in a very large sampling, determining how connected we are: “They found that the average length was 6.6 steps and that 78 percent of the pairs could be connected in seven hops or less.”

The database covered all of the Microsoft Messenger instant-messaging network in June 2006, or roughly half the world's instant-messaging traffic at that time, researchers said…”To me, it was pretty shocking. What we're seeing suggests there may be a social connectivity constant for humanity,” said…a Microsoft researcher…”People have had this suspicion that we are really close. But we are showing on a very large scale that this idea goes beyond folklore.”

The researchers didn't explain how we could act on this affirmation of our common humanity.

Fun LHC

DId I mean Run-D.M.C.? No, really, it is not a typo, I meant Fun LHC. It's a YouTube vid, it's a phenom.

Well, what it is, is, as Bill Clinton would say, a science writer rapping, with a bunch of scientists dancing(?) on site in the background, about the new Large Hadron Collider about to go online and maybe discover the Higgs boson (which is not a bad name for a rap group) — or not — or maybe the LHC will create a black hole that will swallow the universe. Well, some are afraid of that, but probably not. It would be a funny end though — neither Eliot's bang, nor whimper, not fire nor ice as Frost postulated, but an idea that Mel Brooks might propose: a sucking sound you wouldn't believe vacuuming away this vale of tears.

This Large Hadron Collider rap, written by a clever science writer and “performed” by some of the scientists involved, is surprisingly informative.

You can go to the above link at YouTube or see it here:

Here is a link to the full text of the rap online

A snip:

We see asteroids and planets, stars galore
We know a black hole resides at each galaxy’s core
But even all that matter cannot explain
What holds all these stars together – something else remains
This dark matter interacts only through gravity
And how do you catch a particle there’s no way to see
Take it back to the conservation of energy
And the particles appear, clear as can be

Obama's Sister Soljah Moment

Obama couldn't script things better. He is currently running in the general election, no longer playing to the Democrats alone, and there are doubts about him. He has got the nomination but what does he need? Rejecting someone laying claim to his values via identity politics, to show Obama serves no defined constituency. Obama needs to show he is for the country. Obama needs a Sister Souljah moment. If Hillary were in his place identity politics is probably all we would hear (judging by the way she ran her campaign when things got rocky) but Obama with some troubling slips has been pretty good about leaving race off the table. (The counter argument being that it percolates there without comment and need not be mentioned to achieve pc criticality.)

So Obama appears in Florida and behind him a demonstration about something (it was a brief TV clip) - some complaint by a black group claiming Obama isn't sensitive to their needs as blacks. Obama has them removed but allows an emotional question; he responds, don't vote for me if you don't like me. The partisan crowd might be silenced by confusion as to correctness: what to do? They applaud Obama's response. Perfect. All of it. The timing. The response. The calculation of a permitted interchange. The guy was born under a lucky star. Let's just hope some of that luck rubs off on the country after, in all probability, he is elected. Luck is a fragile reed in the uncertain gusts of history.

Words, Words, Words: Reading the OED

The editors of the NYT Book Review made a wise choice of reviewer in this review by Nicholson Baker of a book about someone who set to reading the OED from beginning to end.

Baker's fastidious wit and the appealing subject of words, magical words — defining the elusive complexity of experience — is a perfect fit. From what Baker says, the author Ammon Shea, is himself very funny.

The author says, “I feel as though I am eating the alphabet,” to which Baker comments: “This is the 'Super Size Me' of lexicography.”

Acnestis — the part of an animal’s back that the animal can’t reach to scratch… bespawl — to splatter with saliva…deipnophobia, the fear of dinner parties… kankedort, an awkward situation….There’s hypergelast (a person who won’t stop laughing), lant (to add urine to ale to give it more kick), obmutescence (willful speechlessness) and ploiter (to work to little purpose).

Words are so grounded in the day to day but seek to contain the metaphysical; words are unique, yet common in what they observe; words are acute with etymologically witty associations and so deeply connected to our common heritage; words sometimes reach to insight in defining the amorphous — and even higher still at times, in pointing to the poetical mystery of things.

They say each word is at first a stroke of genius.

The Distracted Mind

[via Denis Dutton]

In a way this article about the distracted character of modern life seems obvious — obviously true.

…a chronic distractee like the rest of us, noticed that he was finding it increasingly difficult to immerse himself in a book or a long article – “The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.”

Instead he now Googles his way though life, scanning and skimming, not pausing to think, to absorb. He feels himself being hollowed out by “the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self – evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the ‘instantly available’”.

How could we not be all devolving into a shallower state derived from our own volition? We buy the stuff that later distracts us and feel affection for all the features which often amounts to additional forms of distraction. TS Eliot is quoted in the article: “Distracted from distraction by distraction”.

How can you compare with earlier times? What another time was like — if there were more emotional or intellectual depth, more continuity of thought? Surely people seem to read and write the more they use the internet. I do wonder about the level of that writing and thinking though. There is a common tendency to seek agreement rather than reach deeper for the ambiguities and the web and Google make it easier to find those who agree accreting into the extremes of crowd behavior — the dumbest among them driving the lead, most evident in politics.

You could say that Rauschenberg's work with its woven images made evident the changes in modern consciousness early on. Or go back to Abstract Expressionism to make a similar point. Picasso's fractured cubist images might also tell us something about the previous century, where that which was broken wasn't attention but continuity of belief. Freud, Einstein, Marx, all questioned what were thought to be verities — they did more than question; they forever loosed conceptual certainty from the shore. With it our peace of mind drifted ceaselessly out to sea.

But hasn't the contemporary distracted mind an additional etiology? Isn't it the decades of commercials and advertisements that truncate thought and sense, often offending by their occurrence after emotionally trying dramatic moments in the shows they are slicing into? Aren't they responsible for what might indeed be a dumbing down, but most assuredly is a deadening — a dissociation. Virtual reality might not be all it is cracked up to be.

Unboxing Videos and the Nikon D700

The unboxing videos are so curious. A new product arrives and ineluctably YouTube videos follow of the product being taken out of the box. It seemed to start with Apple products which are elegantly swathed in minimalist packaging material. Minimalism doesn't work in art but it does in industrial design.

I guess you could consider these unboxing videos a logical extension of fetishized product photography. Especially car ads and fashion spreads. In fashion photography women and men are objectified with the clothing and shiny accessories bestowed the charismatic appeal.

The unboxing itself is fetishistic — the extreme consumer, devolving into cult member. These videos are the Japanese tea ceremony without the tradition and caring. Ideas take u-turns in contemporary life (and to no notice): materialism becomes spiritualized; in this instance, a cargo cult without prayers for anything more than the object itself.

This video is of the unboxing of the new Nikon D700.

Full frame cam. Looks very cool.

How the Germans See Obama

This interesting op-ed says the Germans may seem to be enthusiastic about Obama but are too jaded to empathize with his message. Susan Neiman says that there is a disdain for his rhetoric and a private cackling at his putative Messiah aura.

Conflating what appears to be the theme of her book — to judge from the title, “Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists.” — and Obama's ideas, she says,

The mocking undertone that accompanies most descriptions of Mr. Obama in the European news media signifies a trans-Atlantic divide…the neoconservatives…were right about one thing: Europe is gripped by a world-weariness that resists American dreams….Mr. Obama’s speech gave Europeans a chance to hear the difference between optimism and idealism. Optimists [her view of European sensibilities] refuse to acknowledge reality. Idealists [her take on Obama] remind us that it isn’t fixed.

It is a Procrustean endeavor to fit a national mindset to a singularity of viewpoint — just doesn't quite feel right — even if it is provocative.

Obama's Caravan of Unity

Well it is nice the Obama Caravan Of Unity included in all the network anchors because they really don't travel enough. And it gave those anchors a chance to sanctify by their presence their Chosen One. When was the last time a presumptive candidate got this kind of blanket coverage? Never.

So while McCain talks about the past and seems unable to focus an agenda the public can get behind, Obama talks about nothing really, and the photo ops show us that the Europeans are waving American flags. They like us, they really like us. That isn't so bad. It's just hard to know what is going to happen after the Obama coronation because Obama doesn't confront issues, he sidles past. Like Bush, Obama has never been wrong — he is always confident he is right.

Furman, Obama's economic adviser, was on Fresh Air, and he sounded solid — a good choice as an adviser. Obama is going to need to vet and re-vet his advisers because he clearly is in over his head and has never shown the inclination to be proactive about inevitable outcomes: the likelihood that something won't go right for Obama and he won't be enabled out of it by a mind meld of herd-think with jive oratory. Of course, Reagan was called the Teflon president and that may be true about an Obama presidency. The problem with that sort of leadership is that the stuff that doesn't stick to the leader is still a sorry detritus for the country to clean up.

Randy Pausch

“Hip is short term. Honest is long term.”

I had never heard of Randy Pausch. Now I am about half-way through his “Last Lecture”; it was an internet phenomenon according to Wikipedia — a million views in the first month of its appearance. In a rare case of media status being well conferred he was on Oprah and spoke with Charlie Gibson. He was told he had 3 to 6 months when the lecture was given in September 2007. His pancreatic cancer had metastasized.

Bringing art and technology together via virtual technology was the man's focus. His real achievement was in the positive aura you can practically see as he speaks; a born teacher. He clearly was loved — the audience reaction is with him, really with him, from the beginning — a loving individual. His parents did a great job raising him. No small feat. Without the fear and doubt and brittleness of ego that keeps people from growing and learning — Pausch was extroverted in the best sense — he brought people together.

I can't say I feel an enthusiasm for the projects themselves although I can appreciate the accomplishments. But that really doesn't matter. What does is the model Pausch provides of the creative, affirmative, energetic, confident spirit exploring the possibilities and overflowing with the need to share his enthusiasm.

Randy Pausch died today.

“Never lose the child-like wonder.”

A Funny Thing

The funniest thing about this review, panning a book about jokes, is the chosen reviewer's regular gig:

William Grimes writes obituaries for The New York Times.

A Joke, A New Tree of Life

First, a question: What did the snail say when he took a ride on the turtle?
Answer: Wheeeeee!

The tree of life has been revised. The picture is referenced in Carl Zimmer's blog, in which he provides an explanation.

Things are getting more complicated. So complicated the purpose of diagrams in explaining things is adding to the confusion. Is science moving towards a unification or dissonance-via-data saturation? Understanding only a machine can parse. A new graphic is needed to help provide clarity.

Si Newhouse

I'd never heard the name Si Newhouse until he was mentioned as the money behind Larry Gagosian's reseller's model for a gallery. Gagosian as the public figure would approach people with blue chip art and then find a buyer with Newhouse providing the in-between cash. That was how it was portrayed, at least as I remember from an article only mildly interesting, read years ago. I'm not that interested in the art market, certainly not the gallery reseller market — a tomb-haunting enterprise if done solely for bucks; it is like reading about the trading of stock certificates; has nothing to do with art.

This article about Si Newhouse suggests he is an appealing figure:

When asked what motivates Mr. Newhouse, people who know him rarely mention power or money. They talk about his devotion to his work, his penchant for arriving at the office before dawn, his intense interest in design details and his curiosity about Hollywood, politics and art.

Newhouse is not a fud; he enjoys the fun of pop culture:

More than almost anything else, acquaintances say, Mr. Newhouse delights in the buzz his magazines routinely create. He welcomes controversies, like the recent brouhaha about the Obamas-as-terrorists cover of The New Yorker. What tickles him often challenges convention, often embraces the new or novel, and often sells.

When Mr. Newhouse offers advice on Vogue, “he’s always made the surprising choice rather than the safe choice,” Ms. Wintour says. “He likes the buzz, there’s no question. If you have lunch with a celebrity or political figure, he’s thrilled to hear about it.”

…His greatest passion is movies — the only topic besides his magazines, his colleagues say, that can make him almost chatty. He recently sent a DVD of the film noir classic “D.O.A.” to some of his editors, eager to discuss it afterward. Graydon Carter, editor in chief of Vanity Fair, says his annual Hollywood issue was the chairman’s idea.

Newhouse is portrayed as an old style (with the exception that he is shy), hands-on, engaged, proud of his product, admirable business guy:

Mr. Newhouse (a k a Samuel I. Newhouse Jr.) defies the image of the media baron driven by love of limelight, political influence or money. But largely because of him, Condé — an arm of his family’s privately held Advance Publications — is unlike any other major publisher.

Witnessing DIY

One thing I noticed when in art school was that when, over the summers, I would go outside to do landscape painting, there was an inclination for people to watch. Sometimes they would make a brief remark, cautiously testing the possibility of some conversation. It was a very natural and convivial way for people to make contact. When you do something people feel more comfortable approaching you — if you are giving out vibes that contact is okay and they hold up their end, which they almost always do, of being respectful.

I think that is part of the fascination with DIY shows, beyond the proximate learning opportunity. The compelling instinct to watch people do things. An extension of our interest in observing, laughing at, admiring, being intrigued by, behavior. The clever use of tool and materials is engrossing. The making of things — it is fascinating; witnessing positive change.

…Amy Matthews, a shapely blond contractor who handles a nail gun like Annie Oakley … before my unbelieving eyes, solved the “two-flush toilet” problem with nothing more than a piece of wire clipped from an ordinary coat hanger. Poking and probing under a toilet-bowl rim, she cleared out mineral deposits, thereby speeding up the water flow.

Vincent

In my workout music mix is Don McLean's Vincent. It is such an unusual song. So deeply felt.

The song refers to Van Gogh's timeless The Starry Night. A great painting, iconic now; its simplicity and enthralled vision persist.

The lyrics are over the top but just right. They conflate a “died for your sins” idea with a yearning for understanding that is almost childlike. The plaintive music reflects the need to be understood and the lyrics underline that need. Somehow, lyrical excess, a perfect melody and the tremendously personal quality of the performance merge into something larger than itself. This one will last.

Here is a brilliant use of YouTube — an exegesis on American Pie :

Why People Hate the NYT

This Vanity Fair article asks why people hate the New York Times.

The responses go from self-righteous disdain for any who would dare to criticize to claims of envy. One of the commentators said what seems to me true — it is a familial thing. If you read a paper everyday, or watch a broadcast, or pay attention to one person or thing a lot, you can be sorely disappointed. More deeply disappointed than you would be with a figure or institution outside of your day to day experience.

The news so often has strong moral forces expressing themselves in people's lives, where attitudes can often lead to catastrophic action. So you want to feel that they, the NYT, does get it right on a moral plane if they are going to play a subtextual ideological game. You don't want ideology, of course — a form of patronizing arrogance — you want them to tell the truth with all its messy ambiguities. If the Times stuck to that sole task, of trying to tell the truth and being open to mistakes in the narrative they would insulate themselves.

Because the NYT has often chosen to express itself subtextually as an ideological player, they open themselves to the critical grief they have received. Often the NYT has failed on the moral plane — in the days of Howell Raines it was a self-parody. But it is a huge newspaper with tremendous scope and impossible to categorize, certainly impossible to excoriate without many exceptions, of the journalists, and of decisions made by the editors.

The NYT can often be disappointing but it is not a suitable target of hate. You can hate an intentional lie but it is foolish to hate the clueless.

Unification

Well, the dream of unification is about to be tested. Nope, I'm not talking Obama. The LHC, the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland is about to go online and the world is at stake. At least that is the irrational fear: a black hole wiil be created that will swallow the universe. If a teeny black hole is created it would confirm String Theory but it wouldn't of itself cause a disturbing suction. All the dissing of the String Theorists would be at an end as they celebrated — no longer cultists masquerading as scientists.

First they will test the Standard Model. They will see if the collider can replicate the already proven and add a few decimal places of precision. Then they will get into the real stuff. They will start looking for particles never before seen and if they find such then String Theorists will rejoice. The idea is that the forces of Nature appear to converge at 10 to the minus 34 and so maybe all the forces of nature come from one simple force and condensed out into the reality we now live within, upon and along side of.

This was all taken from a SciAm podcast. And the odds from common sense? Not that common sense has much to do with it — just that maybe a little more confusion will be added to the mix as unexpected outcomes occur; along with some ambiguities that will require theorizing for another two decades. Just a guess.

The Obama Cartoon

This Newsweek blog post about the umbrage-fest evoked by the New Yorker Obama cartoon cover made a good point:

This line of reasoning—i.e., don't satirize something stupid because the people who believe it might be stupid enough to take you seriously—strikes me as painfully paternalistic.

Chris Hayes offered the insight that usually satire is directed at the figure pictured, but in the New Yorker cover it is the credulous audience for the absurdist subject matter attributed to Obama that is the object of satire. Satire at one remove, a little too much for the pop culture to handle, and certainly the media, which was all pursed lips and tut-tutting; all those Cotton Mathers of the media aka TV journalists.

In general the whole issue seems a foreshadowing of an Obama presidency. Obama could have put an end to it before it began by simply laughing it off — but his supporters took their cue from his non-reaction. There was an academic at Lehrer yesterday chattering about “signifying” — signifying nothing but his incoherence. He didn't seem to like the cartoon; he didn't approve. We'll see more of his type in the next few years.

The writer of the New Yorker article which the cover promoted was on Fresh Air. He was as indistinct as Terry Gross often can be and you wondered when you were done listening to the library whisper interview if anything useful had been said. The writer was fact laden — it could be given another interviewer there was more there — but little insight about Obama was provided. The writer mentioned, seeming to want to speed through it, that Obama had one devastating political loss in Chicago in his born-under-a-lucky-star career; the writer said Obama lost because there “was a lot of black attacks on Obama as not being black enough and anti-Semitism about Obama being controlled by Jews” — a striking and revealing look at the nature of Chicago politics. This is a familiar dance: a community exquisitely sensitive about racial offense expressing anti-Semitism without conscience. Gross had nothing to ask about that subject — her moral compass once again lost as she focused on her worse self, as advocacy interviewer — she was more interested in the cover.

It still seems apparent to me that Obama is more a sociological phenomenon rather than a figure of inherent interest. The groups, ideas, advocacy, around Rorschach Obama, are more a fascinating subject of study than is Obama, the conventional politician, without core beliefs, who seems a bit more narcissistic than most of his political class, if that is possible, and confident that whatever he says or does will be enabled by his long frustrated supporters.

Michelle Rhee and Education

This discussion with the impressive Michelle Rhee, Chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools, has a lot to recommend it. Rhee is a remarkable figure, engaged, focused on quality in education, confident but without attitude. She is doing enormous good in DC public schools but her skills probably would be put to better use running the Department of Education.

Rhee dismissed what she called “front end” qualifications — resumes, titles and degrees. She opted for value — how good a teacher was, how well they did their job. Sounds obvious, but as in previous posts about expertise, ( post 1, post 2 ), it is a true paradigm shift to force gatekeepers to look at what is in front of them, and thereby be responsible for their choices, rather than go with a “me-too” approach — the classic formula for bureaucratic mediocrity.

Beinart and Goldberg, Liberal and Conservative

This discussion between Peter Beinart and Jonah Goldberg has more substance than one would expect in this kind of “battle of the…” set piece. Both Beinart and Goldberg are serious thinkers and made many interesting points:

• About patriotism: they discussed the feeling on the left that patriotism is dissent while on the right it is viewed as a familial/neighborhood affirmation.
• Goldberg emphasizes the genius of the American Revolution — the specialness of it. He also pointed out that the socialist dream of non-particularity is a dividing line between conservatives and liberals.
• Beinart emphasized the original sin of slavery as inextricably tied to the founding of America. He describes slavery as “the most grotesque of human evils”, ignoring its long sorry history in human affairs, from all cultures and far greater evils witnessed in mid-twentieth century Europe or the 1915 Armenian genocide. Goldberg points out that it is the very “dead white male” power structure that finally put an end to slavery. In general, Beinart sounded familiar in his all or nothing formulations about patriotism and the glass-half-full mentality about America — unwilling to acknowledge the growth in the system; Beinart's “Whiggish historicism”, as Goldberg put it — imposing current liberal standards on another age — is a tiresome tactic (often seen in academia).
• The most interesting point Goldberg made was about the patriotism of the left, which is really a trans-American patriotism — an attempt to bypass locale and neighborhood for the satisfying simplicity of elite argument: cosmopolitanism.
• About national service: Goldberg felt it an onerous demand but Beinart approved, as does Obama. Goldberg feels the forced volunteerism of national service undermines the enormously robust volunteerism and already in place ethos of charitable contributions in America — forcing the government into the mix.

Therapists to the Rich

The rich are different than you and me. They are sicker. Well, not really, but many of their anxieties look trivial compared to the reality based existential fears of adequate food and shelter and personal safety of the poor, or the middle class angst of losing in the rat race and falling out of line.

This article about therapists who treat the wealthy has a lot in it that is not surprising, but it is still fascinating.

Things you might expect as being issues for the rich: low tolerance for frustration, viewing everyone as a member of their privileged entourage (King Ludwig Syndrome), status anxieties within their group, fears derived from their insulated existences…

The Gilded Age narcissism of the young self-made wealthy is almost comical; in trying to reschedule an appointment… “Dr. Karasu said the only time he had available that week was at 7 one night. The executive’s assistant said: “He’s having dinner then. How about 10 p.m.? He’s flying out to the Hamptons, but we’ll send a car for you and you can ride with him and do therapy on the helicopter, and then we’ll send you home in the morning.”

A section of the article had me guessing who the patient might be — Does this sound like Donald Rumsfeld to you? :

The politician would not listen to his therapist.

In fact, nobody — not the Harvard-educated foreign policy specialist who was supposed to be advising him, and certainly not Dr. Karasu — could persuade him that he was wrong. About anything.

It was anxiety that had brought the man to therapy, and both the cause and the symptoms followed a pattern. “He had learned how to maneuver everyone to come around to his point of view,” Dr. Karasu said. “He had removed the foreign policy consultant from his circle after the man had disagreed with him.”

Dr. Karasu saw this as an opportunity to press the patient. “But this person knows more than you,” he told the elected official, a wealthy businessman who had turned to public service, yearning for a greater challenge, after quickly making a fortune in the private sector.

“But I’m his boss,” the patient insisted.

“The issue wasn’t foreign affairs; it was control,” Dr. Karasu recalled. “That was his attitude to me as well: ‘I know what is best because look at who I am.’ ”

posted by Ira Altschiller at 01:37 PM | permalink