Centrist

One of the really tough things for me to do (I shan't generalize to the entire species -- I'll just recognize this in myself and if you see a shadow of it in your life, maybe you will think about it as well) is to recognize my centrism.

I live, for now, in the USA. I sort of like it here. Things haven't been great recently and I fear for the future, but I owe a whole heckuva lot to America. But one thing that living in the greatest country, state, city etc is the sense that everything else is second tier. And it is true. I'm guilty of that, of seeing New York as the center of the universe and for seeing the US as the single bastion of human culture that all others have to follow.

I know that this isn't true but it is so engrained in my head. I see other country's music as an imitation. I consider a foreign film to be a Marvel superhero movie with subtitles. I don't understand why other languages are even necessary. I'm American-centrist. That's not a bad thing but it limits my understanding. I go into a store and immediately compare it to the Shop Rite in Englewood. I see a TV show and try to categorize it by associating it with "real" shows, meaning shows in the US.

This also has an interpersonal consequence: I expect all other people to have the same values and behaviors as an American. So when I get a book about the social practices of different cultures, instead of celebrating each one as a unique expression of a history, I see everything in comparison to the transcendent norm of "America." I think we do that as a nation, seeing other countries as pale photocopies of the US, so we impose on their actions our sensibility. We assume that because we would react in a particular way to a stimulus, anyone else would also. This is troubling. We look at the media in other countries and complain about infringements on the "right to free speech" as if that is a universal, and not American construct. We mistake our approach to international relations as the best if not only one, so local codes of hierarchy, dominance or such don't register and we walk into a fan blade without knowing that it is we who are the foreigners.

I was watching the weather report and the forecast for this week came up. Apparently, later this week, we will be having a "heat wave." The term "heat wave" refers to 3 successive days of 90+ temps. But it only means that to an American audience. Maybe elsewhere, anything over 80 is a heat wave. Maybe in some places, they don't think of heat waves, but successive days of anything below 90 is a cold snap. I don't know -- I have always taken it as gospel that 3 90+ days equals heat wave. I forgot to put the qualifier "here" into my consideration because I assume a default American-centrism.

Maybe that's normal. Maybe we have to be trained to look beyond our local biases and see other paths as valid and equal, not a echoes or childish attempts to copy. And maybe we should be familiar with other paths before we decide that ours is the only and best, and before we expect that everyone thinks and does as we do in all cases.

The US is great. Our movies are great. Our music, our food, our highway system, our air conditioning, all great. But looking down on any place else because they refuse to be America-wannabees is not so great.

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so it is tough to see a different iteration of "professionalism" and "customer service" and be satisfied by it if my American-centric standards are "higher." I wonder if I should adjust to acept the local norm or impose my American expectations and hope that the entire system rises to meet me what i think of as reasonable expectations.

In Which I Catch a Ghost

I'd like to address this to my two shining stars -- my kids. Guys, I hope that this little bit of chizuk lasts you for a while because something like this is the exception, not the rule. But here's the truth of it -- you are some how, in some part and some way, psychic.

Here's how I figure it -- I figure with all the times that I feel like I heard or saw stuff, I must be somewhat psychic and so with all the genetics these days, odds are my children and I would be connected somehow.

I have felt my psychic-nessness (the second one is in Hebrew) for years but have never had the proof. Today, I caught it by the tail. I was watching the Mets game and the announcers, at the end of a clean first, noted that a certain pitcher was slated to pitch in the second. There is a practice called a "bullpen game" in which a team uses a long slate of short relievers to fill the game with fresh arms that need work, giving a starter spot a break.

A quick conversation with an AI or two revealed that according to popular thinking, this started in 2018. I recall having thought of this strategy before then. But hey, that's just my off-the-charts narcissism so what evs. So is this another in a ghost-cadre of vague recollections of my prescience? I did a quick check of Facebook and found this post:

In this post, dated May of 2017 I mention that I had an idea of running the bull-pen out there in an "earlier" plan. Even though I don't know where that earlier plan is, it shows that I had the idea well over a year before the league. And since soon after, the league started using it, I feel it is well within my rights to expect a piece of that, there action. So what profit has been generated by the implementation of this approach?

But seriously, this pretty much proves that I'm being monitored.

P.S. this is the stuff you should be pointing to when you are questioned by the authorities and you say something vague like "wellsir, he did seem to be getting a touch, y'know, funny in the head, thinking that everybody from here to Sunday was out to get him.

I Got Taken for a Ride

 No, this isn't about my shameful episode of "buying from a fake website and getting defrauded" so let's just move on, shall we?

Today, my friend and daughter* traveled over the river and through the Englewood** to meet me at the Bean. Our plan? To give blood. I am due to give, as is the kid so she came on out to NJ and we figured on a daddy-daughter breakfast and bleed. We left my car in its spot and she drove me to the blood-taking-place-building.

Well, the car drove me and she sat there and looked very nice.

Never have I ever, up to this point, been on a fully autonomous car ride out in nature. It was unnerving to say the least. But don't worry -- I'll say more:

At times, it was harrowing
and often confusing;
its logic of lane changes,
speed above cruising.

I'll start again.

I didn't really notice it much until the car, after completing an on-merge fairly well but overly-cautiously, moved out of the right lane (which is not a designated "slow lane") in to a middle lane directly behind an ambulance. It fell back a little and then moved into the left lane and drove 6-7 miles above the speed limit. In my rental, I get a red light on my Heads-down-display when I am driving over the locally posted limit. The Tesla has no such safeguard I guess, freeing the AI up to find its level of lawlessness.

It moved into the right lane when we were 1.1 miles away from our exit and there was yet another exit, plus a strip mall before our exit. I question that decision as well.

Then, out of nowhere, the car squirted windshield wiper fluid. Yes, the wipers were going, on the intermittent setting, but there was no cause for the fluid spray. Riddle me that one!

I watched it figure out traffic flow (meh to a meh-ploos) and avoid pedestrians (meh-meenoos and that's generous). I still got distracted by the huge color monitor which is constantly bombarding every thing around us with invisible rays that allow us to record their every move. Do they record that stuff for training purposes? Is every Tesla driver's driving like the textual source for a robot using real world experiences to populate its LLM-equivalent pool of potential? The Tesla would then approach any intersection and pick the movements most likely to appear next based on the database created by analyzing the actions of all other Teslas, everywhere and ever.

Anyway, we got to the blood place on West Ridgewood**** and I was told that my appointment had to be pushed off by an hour and the kid couldn't come in as a walk-in because they had 3 techs call out sick (which is a contraction of "call in to call out sick") and were therefore woefully understaffed. Mmmmm woefuls

So back into the Tesla for another trip as we return to the scene of the chrome. This time, the young person told the AI to take the route which was 2 minutes shorter. It did and this put us on a toll road. Therefore the going rate for time is $.45 per minute.

Overall review: not bad. Unnerving as I said -- the entire idea of being a passenger is anathema to me, but when there is no driver, I don't just feel like I am not in control -- I feel like NO ONE is in control. The claim that a computer can consider options and exercise judgment that will dovetail perfectly all the time and with every other driver on the road? I can't buy it. Learning to anticipate specific drivers based on recent observations isn't part of what I want computers to do. Acting counter-intuitively because of some human based reason is part of driving. Yes, I know one can instantly jump on and assume control and do all the stuff that has stayed in the human domain, but the human is separated from the driving experience and will always have to get "up to speed." The active driver is already at speed. I am floored by the technology and how well it does work but I'll always trust myself just a tiny bit more.

*that's one person...get it? I LIKE my kids and I am honored to have the audacity to consider them as cherished friends. So stop laughing) 

** In all my years, I don't think I have ever written the name "Englewood" correctly on the first go unless I stop and think about it for a few seconds -- this is because many years ago, I had a student named Justin Engel and the "spell" setting*** got stuck on Engel and now I can't get out of that pattern. Thanks Justin.

*** For some words, it seems that my brain simply assimilated them wrong so the default spelling is stuck in the wrong place. I cannot spell the word "friend" without pause. The wrong spelling was Eprommed on.

**** Sometimes I do stop when writing Ridgewood to reconsider if there is an E after the 'dg' or if that's just in England but mostly I remember.

In Praise of Val Kilmer

I watched Top Secret! last night. It has been many years since I have seen it and I wonder if I ever really sat through it beginning to end before, or if I only saw scenes out of order. But this time, I paid attention.

The movie is surprisingly good in many ways. Though Airplane! was great, it was a coopting of Zero Hour, using the over-seriousness of the original become the mode of humor in the spoof. Top Secret! is not based on a specific, earlier text -- it is as original as any other Hollywood mass-market movie. So the fact that the A-Z's created and wrote a storyline elevates this movie. This also freed them up to use comedy that wasn't available for Airplane! (as it was, to some degree, limited by the Ur-text). While Airplane's humor was broad and often overly literal, T-S got to mess around with sight, sound, foreground and back and a whole lot more.

The movie is designed to be a spot on take off of an Elvis Movie, a Cold War spy thriller and who knows what else. So it serves many thematic masters and hits all the right notes along the way. The Elvis angle isn't just about certain physical mannerisms, or a cosmetic approach, but about the structure and the embedded surrealities. The music piggybacks on Elvis music and the entire surf lifestyle (and IMHO, the parody music, both of specific tunes or of genres, was really good) but then the look of individual scenes lends itself to association with war movies. It works as so many things and on so many levels. The music is good for what it is and what it does but the contemporary satirical power is in the intertwined gun play reflecting a take on American culture that is both different from ours and yet eerily echoic of it. Unlike the linear humor approach in Airplane, where jokes wait in line to be delivered, set up, punch, set up, punch, in T-S they step on each other. Repeated viewings are necessary so you can listen carefully to the words spoken while trying to read the ones in the background and all that is happening while the sound-bed is somehow wrong. It is a very demanding movie because of how full and rich it is.  I am sure Yiddish speakers and readers laughed loudest because I only know a little and I heard a lot in there. I can only imagine how much I missed.

Expectations are constantly subverted but that never becomes predictable. Val Kilmer's acting is fantastic - the physical skills needed (underwater fighting?) the constant body awareness and affect. I feel he was always underrated as an actor; he has a presence that leads you to see him in this 2-D hero role (and so, yeah his Iceman was spot on) but he also has the cheeky charm which paved the way for a generation of quipping action heroes brought up on smarmy Bill Murray snark and Chevy Chase subtlety. The Swedish bookshop scene is brilliant. Think about the effect and the method, and then the movements that had to be choreographed and actually performed. There is precious little editing which means they got a lot done without errors in a single shot. The conversation while dancing makes fun of the trope in a way that demands that you pay attention to the dancing as primary for itself qua DANCE, not as a background to the humor.  Show passionate kissing and defuse it with the tongue movements. And then a fireplace. You buy in to the passion and then see the "acting" aspect. Impressive. You realize you are watching a movie and that it knows it is a movie, but you also care about the characters as if it was not just a movie.

And,  yes very puerile and the excessive raunchiness is very (maybe too much)  in-your-face or maybe I'm just being overly sensitive. 

Watching it demands close attention - references, running gags, writing in the background, cultural snippets. It is a very "rich" play with very little wasted effort.

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so I wrote about 90% of that last night after watching the movie. I worked on it briefly today. While I did, I looked up some details of the movie and find this article from 2014. I had never read it. I'm glad that I got a lot of what they were doing, and I don't think they give themselves enough credit for what they accomplished.

https://screencrush.com/top-secret-30/

Words *3

 I am going to write a semi-political post which focuses on something i am passionate about -- words. I use 'em, I teach 'em and I study 'em so I'd like to talk about them.

Words have meanings. That's a fact. However, words sometimes change their meanings over time. We all know the origin of the word "nice" and how it changed from an insult to a nicety. But that doesn't mean that we should burn all the dictionaries because words keep evolving; words still have intended meanings. So now I get to the heart of the matter -- here is a word "genocide."

Words exist in a variety of contexts and often, their meanings shift depending on context, and one of the most basic forms of miscommunication is caused by the speaker and the listener not sharing a common contextual-definition. If we import a meaning from another context, we run the risk of not being understood. In regular American conversation, one can use a word like "murder" and not mean it in the strict legal sense. It might be used hyperbolically, or it might be used loosely (that is, not confined to a strict meaning but can be used to refer to a larger category which is somewhat connected to the core meaning).

"Genocide" has a meaning under international law. It is a technical term defined in the legal (Geneva Convention) context as "any of five specific acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group"

But the word has been used much more loosely during its history. The word has been used to refer to any type of cultural erasure, or even to atrocities which are horrible and tragic, but not, strictly-legally speaking, genocides. The problem arises when people using the term loosely think that, because the word has commincative value, it can be imported into the legal definition and the loose definition can be used to qualify for the legal consequences. That's not how things work. If I call a particular baseball line up as "murderer's row" that doesn't mean that their actions are now what qualifies for the legal title "murderer." Seeing someone who committed manslaughter and calling him a murderer might feel acceptable but it doesn't change that the legal definition would not apply.

The same holds true for "antisemitism." The word was coined to mean a specific thing. It wasn't a construction which took a known noun and stuck a convenient prefix on it. People have taken the technical word and deconstructed it because they see it in loose use and because they are under the belief that the word is simply the result of gluing its parts together. The Daytona 500 is a race but someone who dislikes it isn't a racist even though the root word is there.

But, you say, the word can grow and evolve and can now mean something different.

Well, yes and no. You can call a potato an onion if you want, and if the people around you agree to that, they will understand the intent behind your use of the word "onion." But anyone in the cooking schools of the world will not because they do not subscribe to your forced evolution of the word. And that locally recognized understanding cannot then be applied to pre-existing cook books and other texts which use the word accurately. Until the authority that enshrined the definition agrees to change the legal definition, any individual's use of the word in another context is at least somewhat inaccurate. Misusing it then impacts others who hear the word used and assume that it is being used accurately. Twisting words and inserting a personal understanding is much larger consequences.

Genocide isn't just any war. Zionism refers simply to the right of a group to self-determine. Antisemitism doesn't mean "being against someone who calls himself a semite". These words mean specific and intentional things. Respect them as technical terms and don't water them down by using them loosely and expecting the world to sign on to your particular interpretation.

Let's write a joke!

Why yes, today's task is to procrastinate and not write a college recommendation. So instead, I'm going to over analyze the construction of a joke I thought of this morning and you are just going to have to be satisfied with that.

The basis of the joke, as for many, is self-deprecation and the mode is a subversion. Start with the bare bones setup:

1. I get confused for a celebrity

2. That celebrity is not one to whom it is flattering to be compared

Mix in some tone and language to make it seem informal/conversational.

That's the easy part. So the basic iteration would be

"People stop me on the street all the time and say I look like a celebrity. But who is Joseph Merrick?"

that has a reference in it which some will get and some won't, and it plays off my ignorance so I don't know I am being insulted.

I could have said "but why is it always Joseph Merrick?" This would have meant I was not ignorant, just insulted -- different mode of humor. It would still not be understood by some.

I could change to any pop-culture reference as long as that referent is unattractive (and that would affect the balance of the humor).

A subtler formulation might be a pop culture reference with no explanation. Consider the following options:

"People tell me I look like Vic Tayback" (he is ugly)

"People tell me I look like Vic Tayback in 1989" (when he was old and uglier)

"People tell me I look like Vic Tayback in 1992" (2 years after he died)

Mixing and matching setups and adding in the bells and whistles, we could end up with

"so the guy got me mixed up with a celebrity. He said I looked like Vic Tayback..."

"That's nice of him to say"

"...in 1992."

Note the broken-up delivery and the use of the date after the confirmation. Similarly I could have constructed

"I don't mind being confused for a celebrity but does it have to be Vic Tayback?"

or

"Hey you look like Vic Tayback!"

"Thanks, but isn't he dead?"

"yes."

The only thing we have to fear is everything

I recall having a conversation with my dad about the world. I complained that I couldn't let my kids out of my sight and he insisted that the world was no less scary when I was younger, but that we weren't aware of all the bad in the world because we didn't have the internet etc. He didn't see the world as grown scarier, but our awareness as out of control.

The fact is, things were different. Maybe there were fewer bad guys, or we were just blissfully ignorant of life beyond our neighborhood. I saw an online video crowing about how special my generation is. It posited that those of us who grew up in the 70's had a unique balance of unstructured freedom and technological simplicity and emotional resilience and maturity. I assumed it would be one of those "rah-rah" videos which spouted generic platitudes about one era so those people can feel special, but then it can be easily tweaked to celebrate another era. I likened it to those shirts that have the "Only the coolest people were born in _________" and the consumer can buy a shirt listing any year. 

But the argument actually bore itself out well. I did leave the house in the morning, not to return for hours. I did bike miles away with no phone or plan. I did have to fill up the time left to my own devices. And none of these are skills that my kids have had to develop or behaviors that I would allow. I kept much closer tabs on my kids -- they couldn't ride around the block without my knowing exactly when to expect them to make the turn back onto our street. I didn't let them go somewhere unless there was a plan for the end as well. Am I more worried than I need to be? Maybe, but better safe than sorry. So I over compensate, reversing the way I was brought up and encouraging my kids to live in fear of the world.

Is the world scarier? Do children need to be kept closer? Is this an expression of love that I didn't see from my parents so I'm trying to break a cycle? Is it the result of the craziness I ran into while unsupervised, as a child?