Plymouth High School, Nov 27, 2019, 10:35 AM

Thank you all, please settle down. Let's go -- find your seats and quiet down, please. Thank you.

OK. Sorry that we had to have this assembly -- some of you are missing gym, but this is important. We need to discuss this as a community so let's just...please, Mr. Evans, sit down and- EVANS meet me in my office after this assembly! Now will the rest of you just pipe DOWN!

Thank you.

Before you go away for the Thanksgiving break I'd like to remind you of our school code of conduct and what we will not tolerate either in school or at home. We all know about the practice of "Pilgrimming" and it is, as it always has been, unacceptable. If we find that you have been involved, directly or not, there will be consequences. This school's administration finds the practice repugnant and we have a zero-tolerance policy about it. Yes, there will be pressure. Yes, it seems like innocent fun. But no matter what the "cool kids" say, taking a square-rigged merchant ship out on the water, landing at some unsuspecting person's dock and having a turkey dinner on his lawn is no laughing matter. The kinds of damage it does cannot be quantified and there are, though you may not see it, long term consequences. Yes, we were young once and sure, we were tempted by the allure of the hats and muskets, and even if a few of your teachers whisper to you about how much fun it is to say grace while a home owner waits, terrified in his den, lest he anger your God, this should serve as no excuse. There are ways that you can express your thanks properly, without terrorizing your neighbors with stuffing and yams.

And please, don't think that this is some "innocent activity". Studies have shown that pilgrimming serves as a stepping stone to even more troubling behaviors. Wassailing, hoarding Easter eggs and even, dare I mention it, spontaneous recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance are all tied to people who couldn't get their "fix" just by -- as you young people say it -- "Passing the Cornbread."

Local police will be on the look out for ships of all configurations. Last year a student claimed, after he was caught joyriding in a 2-masted schooner that he wasn't pilgrimming. Subsequent searches revealed a hidden cache of pumpkin pie in the forecastle and 14, yes, 14 pairs of buckled Victorian loafers. He was looking to deal, kids, and who knows what might have happened. He is no longer welcome here, and I don't want you to suffer the same fate.

So spend some time with family, and if your parents allow it, under their watchful eye, you can try some green-bean casserole -- in a safe environment with adults standing by. But we will be testing students for gravy...shhh, quiet please, gravy, and, yes, possession of open containers of cranberry sauce in public will get you suspended.

Thank you -- now please go back to 4th period for regular classes.

spoiler alert: I'm alive

The things we learn and the things we do

I'm sitting here at 26 thousand feet battling vague nausea and constant dread as we fly towards Chicago for a family celebration. The dread is about the flight not the event and only tangentially about Chicago. Broad shoulders they say. Just another reason for me to feel bad about my own physique. Even the city is in better shape than I am. 

But between the "chop" (that's airplane talk for turbulence that induces both vomiting and prayer) and the cramped seats I have already had an interesting morning. Here's what I have learned:

You can say morning prayers on a 737 if you are nice to the flight staff and are willing to get sidelong glances from most everyone. As I'm used to people looking at me all weird and such this was not really a challenge. The hardest part was the timing - when the seat belt light was off but the attendants were busy moving all around and needing the galley for the galley-type activities.

The headphones that American Airlines gives out seem to trigger the Google assistant on my phone so trying to watch a show which I downloaded on Netflix is impossible as the assistant keeps kicking in and minimizing the video. I thought that playing music would be a good backup plan but I did not download the AA app so while I can recognize and supposedly connect to the plane's wifi, I cannot actually connect to anything internet related so my music remains in the cloud, just not the one I'm flying through. For those of you keeping score, I didn't download the app when told to because, knowing I had no earphones, I didn't plan on using the phone. But then, hey, free earphones so I'm thinking, yeah, I'm back. Apparently not.

It is nice, though, to be able to type this while this metal tube navigates the bumpy air separating me and O'Hare airport. Now to locate the emesis bag...

2 things as we hurtle earthward - first us that I get angry when people don't sit down after the attendants and Captain say to. It isn't that I'm a blind rule follower, I just don't want some scoff law's arm smacking me as he is tossed about because his buckle is uncomfortable or he has to rearrange his pockets. Second is that when they announce that the flight attendants have to forego the safety check and just sit I worry. I'm worried.

Is there a type of terror beyond sheer terror? Because that's what I got. 

The flight crew is back in the aisles so I'd like to think that the worst is past. I also would like to think that I'm going to win the lottery so maybe just thinking isn't going to be enough.

I note a strong positive correlation between when I think I'm going to die amdst the turbulence of a plane flight and the times when I am on a plane flight. The course of action seems clear. I'm going to walk to Israel.

We landed. Let us never speak of the shortcut again. 

Streaming of consciousness

OK, it's a bad habit but one I come by honestly -- I analyze stuff in the media. Not the worst habit, I understand, but it makes people not want to talk to me because I over explain and anticipate stuff that most people could care less about. Or couldn't. Both work. Anyway, I'm sure that there are other reasons that people don't want to talk to me but I would prefer to assume it is because of my d obsession with media studies.

I bring this up because I just want to put down in words some thoughts about a major shift or two in the TV industry so I want you all to understand that this is how my brain works. That said, here we go.

I just finished binge watching a TV series. I decided that I wanted to watch the show this week so I did, bam: 4 days and done. This got me thinking about two ways in which streaming services are changing the industry and the impact these changes will have. To wit --

1. There is no sense in making cliff hangers between episodes, but more sense in making them between seasons. When shows had long pauses between episodes, it made sense to keep the viewers on pins and/or needles. Force them to wait til sweeps, get them to watch an episode up against someone else's breakout hit. Do whatever it takes to get that appointment television to pencil in your show. So a show ends on a sharp intake of surprised breath and you wait a week, alternately persevorating on and avoiding trailers and previews. Now, no longer. Once episode X is over, I can jump right to X+1. No wait, no wonder. This shifts the entire structure of the writing of a show -- the act 1, 2 and etc progression is unnecessary so the writers can pace their story telling in a much more natural way. No longer does the one-hour mark require a major edge-of-the-seat event. In fact, the show can be only 45 minutes long if the writer wants! The natural break can be the natural break! Writers, change your gears -- you are no longer slave to that clock. But once that entire season is consumed in a weekend, the particular time between new seasons is completely arbitrary, so a streaming service can pick a date and make everyone wait until the new season drops. Drag it out and pump up the anticipation.

2. There are no longer any reruns. If I can watch a show whenever I want, I will. Or I won't -- I'll find something else. I'll watch it again when I want or I will look for another way to spend my time. The idea of seasons died a few years ago, and the summer "season", historically where failed shows get some air time, has become as valid a time to release a show as any. The entire calendar of TV releases has been affected. There is no place to hide bad shows, but on the flip side, because new content is constantly needed, mediocrity gets included. If it doesn't get watched, then we move on to something else, but that show isn't a stop gap while a "real" show recharges. Standard programming practices like tent-polling and such are meaningless. A show lives and dies on its own numbers. No lead ins.

I'm sure that there are other implications but these jumped out at me. I'll post more when I feel like it. So there.

More On the Internet

Related: This one, and this one.

I was standing amidst a throng of high school students (that's an occupational hazard, as I work in a high school, and we often have throngs) and I noticed a student wearing a hoodie which was half black and half white ( https://www.zaful.com/contrast-patchwork-casual-hoodie-p_541938.html?currency=USD&lkid=615976&gclid=Cj0KCQiAtf_tBRDtARIsAIbAKe3XY9MFCGjsxZ5HqnVeeFZls8QJaemErsOb-Pr7jiYBMy_aVDhl0KoaAq1eEALw_wcB ). I was tempted to go up to him and ask him if he was being chased by someone with a a hoodie that was half white and half black. Funny, right?

I stopped myself, though, once I realized that there is no way that he would understand the reference. I could have said "You know...Star Trek? Frank Gorshin? Let that Be Your Last Battlefield?" but it wouldn't have triggered anything. For those of you currently befuddled, here. How is it that in this day and age of the internet, people seem to know so little?

Here's what I figured -- historically, the measure of wisdom hasn't been what a person knows, but what a person knows he doesn't know. There must be room for inquiry. Therefore, in a universe where all information is constantly available, everyone is, by default, an idiot. And welcome to our world! We NEED to have people with actual knowledge and experience because only they can see the gaps, because they appreciate their own limitations. In a world where everyone CAN know anything, no one actually has to know anything. Once we are complacent, thinking that we can find whatever we need, we lost the ability to anticipate our needs! Cultural knowledge, experiential knowledge, common sense all go out the window because we think that all the info is a Siri away. Do you remember that trip we went on and you took that pictuer of...? No, because all the pictures are uploaded and we can go through them. In fact, I don't have to remember that we went on the trip because the experience is not necessarily resident in my brain.

This is a problem. We stop walking through life asking questions when we know that the answers are already waiting. We aren't troubled by anything and nothing has to trigger any other ideas -- long term memory is dead because we can store all of our memories in the cloud. We don't know our family's phone numbers. We don't know our own history. We don't worry about the trivia and factoids which give life spice and put the random things we see into a context. If you know X, so when you write, comment or otherwaise create content, referencing X, I stand less chance of knowing X because there was no reason for me to know it. I need to be followed by an algorithm or a person who can see that (To be or not to be" is a thing which hearkens back to something else, and can express the use's significance to me. We are inventing a new profession, that of the context keeper, who specializes in knowing stuff without a computer and will be the one whose job it is to prompt us when there is a background that we should be made aware of.

There is a meme going around (meme being a unit of memory with a built in half life) which expands on an old saying (attributed to Miles Kington in Philip Sheldrake The Business of Influence: Reframing Marketing and PR for the Digital Age, Chichester: Wiley, 2011, p.153): "Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad." The new (at least 4 years old) version adds in "philosophy is wondering if ketchup is a smoothie."

My understanding of it is "Facts are stored, knowledge is through access but wisdom is knowing what to access, and when, and how to access." Sure, it isn't smarmy but in about 2 months, very few people will know that it reflects Kington's earlier quote.