I've long maintained that the American right doesn't have a hive-mind, it has a hive-ass from which it pulls out bullshit talking points. The current crop of crap is the assertion that Eric Garner's death can be blamed on high cigarette taxes, not a chokehold forbidden to police officers. The usual suspects, such as repulsive Rush, crackpot Rand Paul, ghoulish Ann Coulter, idiotic Jonah Goldberg and most likely your goofball right-wing uncle/cousin/in-law, are all poop-parroting.
I imagine that Jon Stewart will have quite the montage of right-wing creeps spouting this nonsense about "liberals" and the "nanny-state" cigarette taxes being responsible, never mind what the goddamn video tape shows. The crazy thing is that the mainstream media won't be calling any of them out about their patent-falsehoods.
UPDATE: Tengrain has this covered!
Sunday, December 7, 2014
Saturday, December 6, 2014
Low-Key Nights
For the next few weekends, we'll be having a nice, low-key fundraiser, compared to the madness that is October. My running joke about the attendance at these events is a cheery greeting: "Welcome NPR listeners!" Being an NPR listener myself, it's an affectionate jest, not a put-down at all. I have some vacation time I need to use before year's end, but I'll be working on the weekends because my department is overextended. No worries there- work sure beats dealing with holiday shopping traffic!
It'll be nice to have people onsite after a few weeks of quiet, and it'll be even nicer at the end of the month to settle in for a nice, long winter of peace and quiet. Over the years, I've come to know quite a few of our regular visitors, and they are all lovely people. It'll be nice saying "thank you, goodbye, enjoy your holidays and we'll see you in the spring" to them.
It'll be nice to have people onsite after a few weeks of quiet, and it'll be even nicer at the end of the month to settle in for a nice, long winter of peace and quiet. Over the years, I've come to know quite a few of our regular visitors, and they are all lovely people. It'll be nice saying "thank you, goodbye, enjoy your holidays and we'll see you in the spring" to them.
Friday, December 5, 2014
Happy Birthday, Sweetums!
It's that time of year that I wish my older brother Sweetums a happy birthday. Last year, I had the great good fortune to celebrate his birthday with him at his home in the Greater Zürich Metropolitan Area. This year, the Europe trip just wasn't in the cards. One of these days, I'll have to try to get the photos out of the memory of my old phone, which met its demise shortly after I returned from Europe- I had had the thing for almost seven years and broke the damn thing while I was contemplating the fragility of the shiny new company iPhone.
Anyway, happy birthday to Sweetums and love to the fam!
Anyway, happy birthday to Sweetums and love to the fam!
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Current Earworm, Courtesy of NPR
This morning, local NPR 10AM-Noon personality Brian Lehrer hosted a show with a bunch of time-related topics. One of the songs that he used as a musical bumper has embedded itself in the auditory centers of my brain:
I don't know much about the singer- apparently she opened for Miley Cyrus on a leg of her tour... I'll forgive her that. She also seems to be a "Pitchfork" darling... I'll forgive that:
It's the producers at WNYC I won't forgive for infecting me with this earworm.
I don't know much about the singer- apparently she opened for Miley Cyrus on a leg of her tour... I'll forgive her that. She also seems to be a "Pitchfork" darling... I'll forgive that:
It's the producers at WNYC I won't forgive for infecting me with this earworm.
Wednesday, December 3, 2014
Secret Science Club North Lecture Recap: Sense of Style
Last night, I headed down to the scintillating Symphony Space for the third Secret Science Club North lecture, which featured the triumphant return of Harvard psychologist and linguist Dr Steven Pinker. Regular readers will remember that Dr Pinker presented a lecture last April at the Bell House concerning the decline of violence over the course of history. Last night's lecture touched on topics covered in Dr Pinker's new book, The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century. In this book, Dr Pinker, the chair of the American Heritage Dictionary's usage panel, analyzes writing style manuals through the prism of cognitive science and linguistics.
The Sense of Style is a modern answer to the hoary old Strunk and White. He began the lecture by asking why writing is so hard, and why bad writing is so common, joking: "Bad writing is a choice!" He singled out "legalese" and "academese" as particularly egregious examples of bad writing. Bureaucrats use gibberish to evade responsibility, nerds use jargon as "revenge" on mundanes, and pseudo-intellectuals use gobbledegook to bamboozle their readers in order to seem smart. Being a kind man, Dr Pinker quickly followed these assertions with an acknowledgement that even good scientists and earnest people engage in bad writing.
Dr Pinker then took on the assertion that digital media are undermining the language. He had a very funny slide which addressed the limitations of Twitter's hundred-and-forty characters:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Ri
He quickly torpedoed the "Dumbest Generation Theory" by displaying various quotes concerning assertions like this dating back to 1785, following these with a relevant cartoon. He then quoted Darwin on the difference between speech and writing: “Man has an instinctive tendency to speak as we see in the babble of our young children while no child has an instinctive tendency to bake, brew or write.” Speech is instinctive, writing is hard, and there is no feedback from the readers (readers are imaginary and can't interrupt during the writing process for clarification). Writing is both an act of pretense and an act of craftsmanship.
The talk then shifted focus to improving the craft of writing, whereupon Dr Pinker brought up Strunk and White's The Elements of Style While generally praising the book, Dr Pinker opined that language style manuals are largely collections of a particular stylist's preferences and peeves, not an understanding of how language works. He characterized some of the book's advice as "baffling" and asserted that we can produce a better approach to writing style by using science and modern scholarship. Much of the old stylistic advice was based on Latin grammar (not splitting infinitives is a perfect example of this- it can't be done with the one-word Latin infinitives). He also stressed the use of cognitive science to help determine whether a sentence is easy to read or difficult.
Dr Pinker made an argument for using "classic prose style", which involves showing an object, not describing the act of studying it- prose should be a window on reality, and should credit the reader's intelligence without apology or hedging. He also brought up the topic of the overuse of cliches, which can lead to mixed metaphors (with some particularly hilarious examples) and joked about membership of "AWFUL: Americans Who Figuratively Use Literally"
One particularly amusing example of bad stylistic advice was Strunk and White's admonishment to not use the passive voice, which uses the passive voice:
The habitual use of the active voice, however, makes for forcible writing. This is true not only in narrative principally concerned with action, but in writing of any kind. Many a tame sentence of description or exposition can be made lively and emphatic by substituting a transitive in the active voice for some such perfunctory expression as there is, or could be heard.
Dr Pinker defended the use of passive voice in the sciences, where an emphasis must be made on replicability (anyone should be able to replicate an experiment, this is encouraged by use of passive voice). He also noted that passive voice is useful to place emphasis on particular words- the word order in English is important due to the lack of case endings such as Latin or German have.
Dr Pinker also discussed the various approaches to acting as custodians of the language. Should there be a central authority determining proper usage (this has been attempted in countries such as France) or should changes in style occur naturally in a "bottom-up" fashion.
Since Dr Pinker is currently on a book tour supporting his new authorial endeavor, he has been delivering lectures on this topic all over the U.S. Here's a recording of one of his lectures, if you want to listen to the whole thing rather than my rehash of the topic:
Dr Pinker's talk blended humor, theory, and policy prescription. His criticisms were gentle and good-natured, his proposed solutions sensible. All-in-all, it was a lovely lecture which contained good advice for writers. Myself, I like to engage in wordplay... I like ambiguity and an occasional touch of grotesquerie in my writing. In the Q&A, I asked how one should differentiate between "plain bad" and "so bad it's good" writing, and Dr Pinker noted that exaggeration or an intentional misuse of language can be employed to comic effect, but that much of this is subjective.
Once again, my friends Dorian and Margaret of The Secret Science Club curated a fine lecture. The main hall of Symphony Space was packed for the lecture, and many attendees were new to the S.S.C. There was a hint about further Secret Science Club North lectures- hopefully, now that the word is out, the events will all take place in the main performance space (Dr Pinker is a celebrity- he has appeared numerous times on Stephen Colbert's show- let's hope there will be a "coattails" effect on future lectures). Kudos all around!
The Sense of Style is a modern answer to the hoary old Strunk and White. He began the lecture by asking why writing is so hard, and why bad writing is so common, joking: "Bad writing is a choice!" He singled out "legalese" and "academese" as particularly egregious examples of bad writing. Bureaucrats use gibberish to evade responsibility, nerds use jargon as "revenge" on mundanes, and pseudo-intellectuals use gobbledegook to bamboozle their readers in order to seem smart. Being a kind man, Dr Pinker quickly followed these assertions with an acknowledgement that even good scientists and earnest people engage in bad writing.
Dr Pinker then took on the assertion that digital media are undermining the language. He had a very funny slide which addressed the limitations of Twitter's hundred-and-forty characters:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Ri
He quickly torpedoed the "Dumbest Generation Theory" by displaying various quotes concerning assertions like this dating back to 1785, following these with a relevant cartoon. He then quoted Darwin on the difference between speech and writing: “Man has an instinctive tendency to speak as we see in the babble of our young children while no child has an instinctive tendency to bake, brew or write.” Speech is instinctive, writing is hard, and there is no feedback from the readers (readers are imaginary and can't interrupt during the writing process for clarification). Writing is both an act of pretense and an act of craftsmanship.
The talk then shifted focus to improving the craft of writing, whereupon Dr Pinker brought up Strunk and White's The Elements of Style While generally praising the book, Dr Pinker opined that language style manuals are largely collections of a particular stylist's preferences and peeves, not an understanding of how language works. He characterized some of the book's advice as "baffling" and asserted that we can produce a better approach to writing style by using science and modern scholarship. Much of the old stylistic advice was based on Latin grammar (not splitting infinitives is a perfect example of this- it can't be done with the one-word Latin infinitives). He also stressed the use of cognitive science to help determine whether a sentence is easy to read or difficult.
Dr Pinker made an argument for using "classic prose style", which involves showing an object, not describing the act of studying it- prose should be a window on reality, and should credit the reader's intelligence without apology or hedging. He also brought up the topic of the overuse of cliches, which can lead to mixed metaphors (with some particularly hilarious examples) and joked about membership of "AWFUL: Americans Who Figuratively Use Literally"
One particularly amusing example of bad stylistic advice was Strunk and White's admonishment to not use the passive voice, which uses the passive voice:
The habitual use of the active voice, however, makes for forcible writing. This is true not only in narrative principally concerned with action, but in writing of any kind. Many a tame sentence of description or exposition can be made lively and emphatic by substituting a transitive in the active voice for some such perfunctory expression as there is, or could be heard.
Dr Pinker defended the use of passive voice in the sciences, where an emphasis must be made on replicability (anyone should be able to replicate an experiment, this is encouraged by use of passive voice). He also noted that passive voice is useful to place emphasis on particular words- the word order in English is important due to the lack of case endings such as Latin or German have.
Dr Pinker also discussed the various approaches to acting as custodians of the language. Should there be a central authority determining proper usage (this has been attempted in countries such as France) or should changes in style occur naturally in a "bottom-up" fashion.
Since Dr Pinker is currently on a book tour supporting his new authorial endeavor, he has been delivering lectures on this topic all over the U.S. Here's a recording of one of his lectures, if you want to listen to the whole thing rather than my rehash of the topic:
Dr Pinker's talk blended humor, theory, and policy prescription. His criticisms were gentle and good-natured, his proposed solutions sensible. All-in-all, it was a lovely lecture which contained good advice for writers. Myself, I like to engage in wordplay... I like ambiguity and an occasional touch of grotesquerie in my writing. In the Q&A, I asked how one should differentiate between "plain bad" and "so bad it's good" writing, and Dr Pinker noted that exaggeration or an intentional misuse of language can be employed to comic effect, but that much of this is subjective.
Once again, my friends Dorian and Margaret of The Secret Science Club curated a fine lecture. The main hall of Symphony Space was packed for the lecture, and many attendees were new to the S.S.C. There was a hint about further Secret Science Club North lectures- hopefully, now that the word is out, the events will all take place in the main performance space (Dr Pinker is a celebrity- he has appeared numerous times on Stephen Colbert's show- let's hope there will be a "coattails" effect on future lectures). Kudos all around!
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
Coming Out of the Closet, So to Speak
Yesterday, I published a post about my fifth-year blogiversary. Today, I want to ask everybody out there who's blogging, do you tell your family and friends that you are a blogger? A handful of co-workers, a handful of family members, and a handful of friends of mine know that I have been writing this blog... but it's not general knowledge. I've had a couple of cousins post comments here, and occasionally the subject of a post will discover it and post a comment. It's kinda weird, though, telling people that you rant on the internet, and it's especially weird telling them that you've been doing it for five years. How do you casually bring that up in conversation? Do you? It's kinda like telling people that you're a novelist without having anything published... at what point does someone become a novelist rather than someone who's just waiting tables?
So... anybody out there have any stories about coming out of the blogging closet? Any "I think you should know this about me before we get too serious" narratives? How about breaking the news to your parents that you've posted about, let's say, frog voyeurism or the dangerous allure of hoochie-coochie LaRoucheys?
To what extent do you allow "meatspace" and your online activities to intersect? Are you "outies" or "innies", people?
So... anybody out there have any stories about coming out of the blogging closet? Any "I think you should know this about me before we get too serious" narratives? How about breaking the news to your parents that you've posted about, let's say, frog voyeurism or the dangerous allure of hoochie-coochie LaRoucheys?
To what extent do you allow "meatspace" and your online activities to intersect? Are you "outies" or "innies", people?
Monday, December 1, 2014
Five Years of Bastardy
Five years ago, I started this blog with a somewhat unauspicious post, figuring that the hardest part of blogging was starting the whole endeavor. Ultimately, the inspiration for this blog was the Sadly, No! community, both headliners and commentariat. The immediate inspiration for the blog came from Thunder, zrm, Substance McGravitas, M. Bouffant and the antipodean genii at "Riddled"- I needed a Blogger profile to post comments at their blogs, and their blogs were so entertaining that I just had to join in on the fun.
Regarding the 'nym... I've always considered it a tongue-in-cheek jab at "machismo", which I consider a "toxic cult of failed masculinity". That being said, the "Big Bad Bald Bastard" is a character that mild-mannered Mr _________ of the City of Y______ can readily slip into when it is to his advantage- I admit that I can be somewhat fierce on those rare occasions on which fierceness is called for. I chalk a lot of the "Bastard" character's traits, and my traits which I exaggerate when I have to be the Bastard, to the tutelage of this departed gentleman. Regarding the "Bad", I've always meant that in the non-pejorative slang sense... I am a generally law-abiding, responsible individual. For the record, my parents were married when my four siblings and I were born, so the "Bastard" is a self-deprecating bit of slang. Also, I'm a sucker for alliteration, being a fan of Old Norse Poetry.
Early on, most of my posts were short, pithy bits of snark, written to amuse me on the cold nights after the jobsite had closed to the public for the winter months. I had a lot of quiet solitude on the job to crank out short posts that were mainly personal observations of little consequence.
Soon after starting the blog, I put up my first short "political" piece, but I really didn't realize the potential of blogging until I put up my first (woefully skimpy- I've since taken to bringing a memo pad to lectures) recap of a Secret Science Club lecture. The lecture recaps quickly became a regular feature of my blog and the recaps actually became kinda good sometime in 2010. Besides the SSC recaps, I also had the privilege of writing up a recap of a lecture by Ned.
Speaking of Ned, I had the pleasure of meeting him in person back in ought-nine and we get together every so often, but not often enough. I have also had the honor of hanging out with Substance McGravitas, Actor212, Major Kong (who I took to my workplace on one occasion), and Thunder (who let me hang out on his famous deck).
In 2011, I finally realized that the second biggest reason for the internet is posting cat pictures, so I got smart and started regularly featuring my co-workers Fred and Ginger, who I met shortly before starting this blog. I also posted about our dear, departed Moses, but I didn't post more about him because he had a higher profile than Fred and Ginger, and I'm leery about revealing too much about the job.
Perhaps my single most unusual blogging achievement was my 24 Posts in 24 Hours stint, which took place on Sunday, June 19, 2011, when I was working a split double shift (midnight to 8AM, 4PM to midnight). This day also saw the birth of Objectivist Morrissey, who desparately needs a revival. Thunder, being a trouper, commented on each and every one of those posts. Maybe my single greatest blogging achievement was my recap of the post-Sandy Secret Science Club lecture- that lecture had scientific, political, and social pertinence. Another big achievement, in 2012, was being invited to join the snarky geniuses at Rumproast (I'm overdue for a post there). Also in 2012, I began to get some serious linky love from all-around great and good guy Tengrain, who recently put up a post similar to this one.
If I were asked about any regrets I might have had in the course of my blogging career, I'd have to say that my only big regret is not starting this blog in time to cover the entire run of Secret Science Club lectures. One minor regret is neglecting to label any of my posts, but that's a minor thing.
Over the course of my five years of blogging, my blogroll has expanded to seventy-seven blogs owned by diverse people from all over the planet. I am very proud of everyone in the "bloggerhood" and I love you all. Thanks for all of the support you've given me over my five years of bastardy. Writing this blog has always been a great pleasure, in large part because of you. I am looking forward to the next five years with you. Thank you for everything!
Regarding the 'nym... I've always considered it a tongue-in-cheek jab at "machismo", which I consider a "toxic cult of failed masculinity". That being said, the "Big Bad Bald Bastard" is a character that mild-mannered Mr _________ of the City of Y______ can readily slip into when it is to his advantage- I admit that I can be somewhat fierce on those rare occasions on which fierceness is called for. I chalk a lot of the "Bastard" character's traits, and my traits which I exaggerate when I have to be the Bastard, to the tutelage of this departed gentleman. Regarding the "Bad", I've always meant that in the non-pejorative slang sense... I am a generally law-abiding, responsible individual. For the record, my parents were married when my four siblings and I were born, so the "Bastard" is a self-deprecating bit of slang. Also, I'm a sucker for alliteration, being a fan of Old Norse Poetry.
Early on, most of my posts were short, pithy bits of snark, written to amuse me on the cold nights after the jobsite had closed to the public for the winter months. I had a lot of quiet solitude on the job to crank out short posts that were mainly personal observations of little consequence.
Soon after starting the blog, I put up my first short "political" piece, but I really didn't realize the potential of blogging until I put up my first (woefully skimpy- I've since taken to bringing a memo pad to lectures) recap of a Secret Science Club lecture. The lecture recaps quickly became a regular feature of my blog and the recaps actually became kinda good sometime in 2010. Besides the SSC recaps, I also had the privilege of writing up a recap of a lecture by Ned.
Speaking of Ned, I had the pleasure of meeting him in person back in ought-nine and we get together every so often, but not often enough. I have also had the honor of hanging out with Substance McGravitas, Actor212, Major Kong (who I took to my workplace on one occasion), and Thunder (who let me hang out on his famous deck).
In 2011, I finally realized that the second biggest reason for the internet is posting cat pictures, so I got smart and started regularly featuring my co-workers Fred and Ginger, who I met shortly before starting this blog. I also posted about our dear, departed Moses, but I didn't post more about him because he had a higher profile than Fred and Ginger, and I'm leery about revealing too much about the job.
Perhaps my single most unusual blogging achievement was my 24 Posts in 24 Hours stint, which took place on Sunday, June 19, 2011, when I was working a split double shift (midnight to 8AM, 4PM to midnight). This day also saw the birth of Objectivist Morrissey, who desparately needs a revival. Thunder, being a trouper, commented on each and every one of those posts. Maybe my single greatest blogging achievement was my recap of the post-Sandy Secret Science Club lecture- that lecture had scientific, political, and social pertinence. Another big achievement, in 2012, was being invited to join the snarky geniuses at Rumproast (I'm overdue for a post there). Also in 2012, I began to get some serious linky love from all-around great and good guy Tengrain, who recently put up a post similar to this one.
If I were asked about any regrets I might have had in the course of my blogging career, I'd have to say that my only big regret is not starting this blog in time to cover the entire run of Secret Science Club lectures. One minor regret is neglecting to label any of my posts, but that's a minor thing.
Over the course of my five years of blogging, my blogroll has expanded to seventy-seven blogs owned by diverse people from all over the planet. I am very proud of everyone in the "bloggerhood" and I love you all. Thanks for all of the support you've given me over my five years of bastardy. Writing this blog has always been a great pleasure, in large part because of you. I am looking forward to the next five years with you. Thank you for everything!
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