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February 28, 2007
N-WORD RUN OUT OF TOWN TODAY
Wait, the headline came out all wrong. What I meant to say is that the New York City Council symbolically banned the racial epithet with a long and ugly history.
The nonbinding measure, approved unanimously, calls for New Yorkers to voluntarily stop using the word, which comes from a long past as a derogatory epithet against blacks but has more recently been adapted among entertainers and youths as a term of endearment.
"People are using it out of context," said Councilman Leroy Comrie, the sponsor of the bill. "People are also denigrating themselves by using the word, and disrespecting their history, disrespecting the history of a people and a country and also putting themselves in a negative light that we need to correct."
With a touch of irony, NY1's online version of the story is accompanied by a picture of an anti-N-word t-shirt that is actually emblazoned with three separate spellings of the word, but they're in a red circle with a slash through it. That type of parsing makes for some dicey distinctions.
I just listened to a cut off Public Enemy's Apocalypse 91 . . . The Enemy Strikes Black called "I Don't Want To Be Called Yo Niga". Pen in hand, I counted Flava Flav say the N-word 56 times in three minutes and 20 seconds. That's not counting the backing vocals, which I estimate repeated the word about 200 times.
Tagged:Posted by Lexiphane at 4:50 PM | NYC | Comments (0) | TrackBack
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCKING ON HEAVEN'S--OR YOUR--DOOR
I thought this picture was amusing because it seemed to present the opportunity of knocking on Mormons' door and asking if they'd like to talk for a few minutes. It's from an article in The New York Sun about a new Mormon church that opened recently on East 87th St. While Mormons normally proselytize by travelling door to door in pairs, asking residents if they've heard of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, there's been a wise adaptation for the NYC market in building their 39,000 square foot, five-story structure.
The multimillion-dollar, Gothic-style structure, which opened to worshippers in October, houses two wards, or congregations: One is composed largely of young families, and the other is made up of singles ages 18 to 30. The brick church was built with ambitious expansion plans in mind — it could easily accommodate at least two more wards, each made up of 300 or more people.
Offering affordable housing in Manhattan almost seems like dirty pool for gaining converts.
While Mormonism is primarily associated with Utah, the religion (and I'm going to classify it as a separate religion apart from Christianity) actually got its start in New York. When Joseph Smith's foray into selling magic stones petered out, he was fortunately visited by an angel who told him the whereabouts of some buried golden plates. No one but Smith ever saw the plates but he translated them into English and came up with The Book of Mormon. Mormon's were generally persecuted in the early 19th Century and locals around the Eastern U.S. eventually chased them all the way to Utah, where they attempted to form their own sovereign territory. There were multiple scuffles with the law, a massacre of passing-through pioneers, and stand-offs with federal troops, but eventually everyone settled down and now the Mormons are the respectable people you might find on your front doorstep today.
For a hilarious but fair account of Mormonism's founding and its current practioners, see this episode of "South Park".
Tagged:Posted by Lexiphane at 7:25 AM | Religion | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 27, 2007
APOLOGIES TO THE MTA. BOO ON THE SUN
Let me begin by saying that I'm occasionally an idiot with lapses in reading comprehension ability. Not often, but occasionally, so that is me over there in the dunce cap. I will deflect some of the blame, however, to whoever wrote this piece for The New York Sun on which I based the entry below. Upon close examination, it appears to be a textbook example of a wanting piece of reporting: full of mathematical non sequiturs, lacking complete information for evaluation and context, and oversimplified to the point of being misleading.
A fellow web publisher and metrophile, Jen, was nice enough to point me towards the article the Daily News ran on the same stats release from the MTA. Its article included an actual breakdown of delay numbers and causes:
Delays in one month (December 2006)
1. Track work/work crews –– 1,640
2. Signal trouble –– 532
3. Guard-light trouble –– 415
4. Sick customers –– 392
5. Customers holding doors –– 346
6. Emergency brakes triggered/no cause found –– 332
7. Broken rail –– 316
8. Unruly customers –– 313
9. System maintenance equipment –– 262
10. Emergency brakes triggered by cause –– 229
(Total: 4,770)
Right away one can see where my subway article jumped the rails. When I read:
A 45% increase in delays caused by customers who got into verbal or physical altercations on the trains brought December's total up to 313 incidents from an average of 195 per month in 2006.
I thought 313 was the total number of delays during December. I didn't associate it with the unruly passenger category because 313 is not a 45% increase over 195; it's a 61% increase. That's what led me to estimate the number of unruly passenger incidents; because I thought that figure was unstated. Also, the reporter used the phrase "December's total up to 313" (emphasis mine). What definitely was unstated is highly relevant: if unruly passenger incidents (UPIs) spiked to 313 during December of last year and the monthly average was 195, does that average include December? If so, the disparity between December and prior months is being understated. Excluding December, 2006's monthly average is 184 UPIs, not 195.
Let us turn to The Sun's original figures though. December 2006's 313 UPIs was a 45% increase presumably over December 2005, which means there were 216 UPIs the prior year. What this shows me is that the real story behind these numbers isn't that UPIs increased 45% year over year, but that there may be an annual spike in UPIs over the monthly average every December. Is this some sort of Christmas Effect in reverse, where tired grumpy shoppers laden with bags and packages, sick of lines and crowds, and perhaps with a few eggnogs in them are more likely to get into it with their fellow passengers?
The Daily News also points out that blocked door incidents (BDIs) were the real gainers. UPIs may have cracked the top 10 for the first time, but BDIs have risen from 20th place to 5th over the past five years, totalling 346 in December 2006.
About the only thing I had correct in my prior piece [see BLAMING THE VICTIM, 2/27/07] is that there seems to be an awfully strong focus on system delays being the fault of passengers. But while UPIs may have been up 45% year over year in December, they still only accounted for 6.6% of delays. This percentage is overstated of course, because the total I used was only the sum of the top ten categories, not the actual total number of delays, which was not released. Without seeing the figures for 2005, it is difficult to judge the magnitude of this change on the whole, but it still seems like a rather small-fry figure to be focusing on. I wouldn't mind seeing some serious clarification regarding this whole issue in The Sun soon.
Followup: I recently received some strong constructive criticism from someone who works the transit beat for an area news outlet letting me know that my original story about subway delays [see BLAMING THE VICTIM, 2/27/07] was very wrong and completely mischaracterized the MTA, as well as the press's treatment of the story. And he is correct, as this piece admits. Perhaps I'll put the self-admonishing disclaimer in bold for future readers. My constructive criticizer also noted that an MTA spokesperson specifically contacted reporters via an e-mail emphasizing that the MTA was in no way trying to blame riders for service delays. I appreciate his insight into the matter and thank him for setting me straight.
Tagged:Posted by Lexiphane at 8:09 PM | Journalism | Comments (0) | TrackBack
BLAMING THE VICTIMS
NB: Following the publication of this article, it was brought to my attention that the numbers I was using were totally misassigned and not at all representative of the actual statistics released by the MTA. Also, I was unfair in implying that the MTA was attempting to deflect blame for service delays to riders themselves. Please see APOLOGIES TO THE MTA. BOO ON THE SUN, 2/27/07, for apologies, clarification, and extended griping.
Ah, the beautiful uses of selective statistics and their release with no context by which to evaluate them! One has to love it. A good example can be seen in today's New York Sun, although I have to say I'm surprised they ran what is essentially an MTA press release with little critical analysis. The paper's normally better than that. The article in question is titled 'Delays by Rowdy Riders Soar on Subway Delays'. It's short, so I'll just give you the three paragraphs in their entirety:
Unruly riders on subway trains were among the top causes of train delays last December, new statistics from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority show.
A 45% increase in delays caused by customers who got into verbal or physical altercations on the trains brought December's total up to 313 incidents from an average of 195 per month in 2006. [First off, comparing a single month's delays versus a year's monthly average is fairly meaningless. A meaningful comparison would compare December 2006 with December 2005.]
"Accounting for the rise would take a sociologist," an MTA spokesman, Charles Seaton, said. Track work was the number one cause of delays, followed by signal trouble, guard light malfunctions, and sick passengers. Unruly riders ranked eighth.
It's the last line that is laughable. Subway delays for the month of December were up 61% from the monthly average and the one figure that MTA's spokesman releases to the press is the eighth-ranked cause of delays? Mathematically speaking, if overall delays are up 61% and customer-caused delays were up 43%, there must have been another category or categories that were a much more significant contributors to the increase. Why break out that one category? Because then the MTA can blame riders for the hardships they themselves are enduring.
I did some back-of-the-envelope figuring and am betting that since there were 313 delays in December 2006 and customer disruption was only the 8th-ranked contributor, that category probably grew from 22 to 32 incidents* (a 46% increase). I guess the MTA figures that ten additional incidents by customers are worth blaming for an abysmal individual-over-average monthly comparison.
This is speculation of course. I searched high and low and couldn't find any press release mentioning these statistics or how they broke down by category. I contacted the MTA earlier today about the numbers, but the fact that there is a ready link to make a Freedom of Information Act request on the MTA's site does not augur well.
*Originally, I wrote that customer-caused delays likely would have increased from seven to ten. That is based on customer-caused delays being the 8th-ranked source of increase, not overall incidents. That makes no sense as I was then figuring the increase in increase. The current figures reflect the increase of customer-caused delays as portion of total delays.
Tagged:Posted by Lexiphane at 4:12 PM | NYC | Comments (0) | TrackBack
OBLIGATORY ONE-TIME-ONLY A.N.S. POST
[sigh] I was really hoping I could side step this altogether, but I will say one thing about the Anna Nicole Smith fiasco. If you're not familiar with the situation, here's a quick recap: weeks after losing her son to an overdose and days after giving birth to a daughter, drugged-out blonde bombshell and former Playmate dies of a likely OD in her hotel room. Said woman was embroiled in a legal battle with the family of a deceased oil tycoon she married when he was a wheelchair-bound nonagenarian. As the infant daughter is the heir to any multi-million dollar legal resolution, men are coming out of the woodwork to claim paternity. And weeks after her death, her body remains decomposing in a Florida morgue as multiple parties argue over where she should be buried. Got all that?
This morning, MSNBC aired an interview it conducted with one of the men who allegedly slept with Anna Nicole Smith and is now claiming paternity to her daughter Danielynn. Larry Birkhead was openly emotional as he described how in love he was with Anna Nicole Smith and gave his account of seeing her for the last time in a Florida morgue:
Birkhead became the most emotional when he described saying his final goodbye while viewing Smith's body in a Florida morgue last week.
“There was something she made me say every night before she went to sleep,” Birkhead said, tears spilling down his cheeks. “I said, ‘Good night my sweet Anna baby.’ That's what she wanted me to say to her every night before she went to sleep.”
That's pretty sweet. Enough so that it rang a bell; more like a gong. In the 1996 movie Beautiful Girls, a relatively small film directed by Ted Demme that did around $20mn in business, there is a scene where Tommy (Matt Dillon) is asking about Andera's (Uma Thurman) relationship with her boyfriend back in Chicago. She assures him that it is very good and says:
Andera: You know there are fours words I need to hear before I go to sleep. Four little words. "Good night sweet girl." That's all it takes. I'm easy, I know, but a guy who can muster up those four words is a guy I want to stay with.
People who start lifting quotes from movies (or closely paraphrasing them) without attribution incline me to believe that they are total frauds. It might not seem like a big deal, but out of the whole interview, that is the quote that MSNBC pulled for the headline: "Good night, my sweet Anna baby".
Tagged:Posted by Lexiphane at 4:19 AM | Total Jackassery | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 26, 2007
MILITANT ISLAM IS THE PROBLEM
Indonesia is the fourth most-populous nation in the world and a majority of its inhabitants are Muslims, the majority of which are likely peace-loving people. As Islam has peacefully co-existed in the region for generations, however, neighboring nations are finding that new militant Muslim inhabitants proselytize by the sword and, G.W. Bush notwithstanding, have little interest in a Religion of Peace as the President described it. In Thailand, approximately 2,000 people have been killed in a religious war waged by Muslim zealots. The Thai government is beginning to throw up its hands in helplessness, as even conciliation only encourages its attackers.
It is a conflict the government admits it is losing. A harsh crackdown and martial law in recent years seem only to have fueled the insurgency by generating fear and anger and undermining moderate Muslim voices.
A new policy of conciliation in the past four months has been met by increased violence, including a barrage of 28 coordinated bombings in the south that killed or wounded about 60 people on Feb. 18.
“The momentum of violence is now beyond the control of government policy,” said Srisompob Jitpiromsri, a political scientist at Prince of Songkhla University here.
The militant Islamists of Thailand are quite unapologetic about waging an explicitly religious war, not just against Buddhist communities in the south, but fellow Muslims who care to continue peacefully co-existing with their neighbors. Nearly half of the attacks in recent years have been against Muslims viewed as cooperative with the Thai government.
Now the insurgents seem to be taking their war to a new stage, pitting local Buddhists against Muslims by attacking symbols of Buddhism with flamboyant brutality.
The two religions had coexisted through the years here, often in separate villages. That mutual tolerance is breaking down now, and there are fears of a sectarian conflict that could flare out of control.
“Buddhist monks, temples, novices,” said Sunai Phasuk, a political analyst with the monitoring group Human Rights Watch. “Buddhist monks have been hacked to death, clubbed to death, bombed and burned to death. This has never happened before. This is a new aspect of violence in the south.”
Where are the voices of moderate Islam? Why are so many organizations acquiescent to the butchery by their co-religionists?
Tagged:Posted by Lexiphane at 10:50 AM | Religion , War | Comments (0) | TrackBack
GET 'EM A SUITE
The New York Sun looks today at the costs and benefits of a program designed to escort homeless people from the subway system and into shelters or rehab centers. The primary problem with the program is that homeless people do not want to go to shelters where rules are restrictive and safety is questional. In addition, it is not illegal to be homeless and subway workers and cops tend not to care whether homeless people spend their nights riding the train or hanging out in a station. The end result is that the MTA is spending an average of $2,000 for each homeless person they escort to a shelter. Bear in mind, that is not the cost of the shelter and services received once there. The $2,000 is simply the cost of escorting a homeless person from Point A to Point B.
The MTA this year renewed its $1.5 million contract with the Bowery Residents' Committee, a nonprofit social service provider, to fund the program for outreach workers to visit subway stations and try to convince homeless people to accept escorts to city-run shelters or detox centers.
But station agents, vagrants, and straphangers interviewed over the past three weeks at stops popular among the homeless said they knew little or nothing about the program, and had rarely or never observed these outreach workers in action. Even after almost 20 years in existence, the MTA-funded outreach program is little known.
The outreach program carried out 875 escorts last year, according to statistics provided by the MTA. Outreach workers estimated that they were re-escorting the same homeless people back to the shelters from subway stations about 25% of the time. "It's a tough sell," the program director, Robert Rumore, said. "The largest portion of people we escort is back out again."
While the outreach program director for the Bowery Residents Committee says that the majority of its efforts are concentrated on a small number of stations favored by the homeless. When The Sun questioned station agents at these stations, few had ever even heard of the program. This seems to be one of those intractable problems. The MTA is certainly doing everyone a service with the program. There is a humanitarian component that identifies the necessity of getting homeless people shelter. Removing these people from the subway also serves to improve the mass transit experience for all other customers. The weak link seems to be the non-compulsory nature of the outreach. Some people prefer to be homeless than in the shelter system. Perhaps some thought should be given to improving or compromising the shelters. If one's immediate interest is in protecting the physical well-being of homeless people, maybe they should allow drinking in shelters when it is bitterly cold. Are we trying to save homeless people from the elements or from themselves? Both would be nice, but the MTA does not have limitless funds.
One of the most interesting things in the story involves strategies for getting in out of the cold. Many homeless people just flag down a cop or call 911, claiming illness. They then get an ambulance ride to an ER, where they spend the night. The accumulated costs of a single one of these incidents must surely even outstrip the $2,000 the MTA spends on each escort. The cops would be better off dropping the homeless person off at the nearest Manhattan hotel for $300 a night.
Tagged:Posted by Lexiphane at 10:08 AM | NYC | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 25, 2007
CELLULOID TOWER: ACADEMY AWARDS
Didn't get to see a lot of movies this year, so predictions coming out of Lexiphane.com HQ are going to be a little light regarding tonight's awards ceremony. Here's a smattering of notes, observations, and opinions about statuette distribution.
Actor In A Supporting Role
People love foul-mouthed old people who do inappropriate things like take drugs. They're funny! I'm inclined to tilt towards Alan Arkin in this category. On the other hand, Dreamgirls fell well short of its expected crop of nominations so I expect voters will go out of their way to favor Eddie Murphy in this category. The Academy seems besotted with black comedic actors who can manage any transition to a serious role (think Jamie Foxx.) It's rather condescending, but I expect that if Martin Lawrence could pull off a serious role in a period costume drama, he'd be on his way to at least a nomination. I enjoyed Mark Wahlberg in The Departed, but it was a rather one-note performance and I'm not sure if it's enough for a win.
Actress In A Supporting Role
This is a tough one. Jennifer Hudson has got that whole winning-"American Idol"-thing going for her and her performance in Dreamgirls was apparently enough to shove Beyonce Knowles out of the movie's limelight, a difficult thing to do given the latter's musical talent and drop dead good looks. There is the very young Abigail Breslin from Little Miss Sunshine. While her dancing skills may not rival Hudson's vocal abilities, she did play a strangely self-possessed little girl surrounded by manic adults very well. I would leave this one up to a coin toss, but am going to root for Breslin in the hopes that she accepts her awards with the shortest acceptance speech of all time: "In your face Dakota Fanning!" Still, I gotta give it to Hudson.
Actress In A Leading Role
Did not see any of these movies. Assume it will be Helen Mirren, who seems to have had a banner year that also includes an acclaimed performance in a BBC series where she plays an aged, but slutty and drunken police inspector.
Actor In A Leading Role
This is a brutally competitive category for a number of different reasons. Let's begin by discarding Ryan Gosling in Half Nelson, though, for the reason that no one saw it. Hollywood can't let an Oscar near a film that grossed only $2.7 million; they just can't do it. Unfortunately, that would also torpedo Peter O'Toole's chances, as Venus only grossed $1.2 million. That is only 20% of what the widely panned Gigli grossed in 2003. O'Toole is a beloved actor and nearly dead, while having never won an Academy Award. Sentimentality is his only saving chance, but I don't think it'll be enough. The conventional wisdom is that Forest Whitaker will win for The Last King of Scotland. I haven't seen it, but am inclined to agree in theory. Whitaker is a superb actor. Still, to stick with my prior theory, his film only did $9.6 million in box office. If most Americans haven't seen it, there's little reason for me to think Academy Members have given it significantly more attention (I hold them in very low esteem). That leaves us with two heavyweights: Leonardo DiCaprio and Will Smith, whose films did $54 million and $157 million, respectively. Smith has that whole black-comedian-turned-serious-actor thing going for him that I mentioned earlier. He's also been nominated before, so his winning would not be unprecedented. Plus he played a homeless single parent--that's triple bonus points. On the minus side, he overcame adversity to find financial success as a . . . stockbroker. Oooh, that's what takes him out of the running. Everyone knows that people in the financial industry are only capable of stealing money from widows and orphans, callously laying people off, or murdering people. That leaves us with Leonardo DiCaprio. I didn't see Blood Diamond, but I'm betting that voters give him the final nod for several reasons. They feel bad about passing him over for a Best Actor Oscar two years ago in The Aviator. He also played a lead role in the Best Picture-nominated The Departed. And Blood Diamond is about a socially conscious subject: conflict diamonds, but still is filled with beautiful actors and actresses and a shitload of violence. It's the trifecta that Hollywood can't say no to.
Best Director
This is where gamesmanship starts to come into play. Babel is going to win Best Picture and no one's heard of its director, so we can eliminate it. I think it's almost a dead heat between Martin Scorcese for The Departed and Clint Eastwood for Letters From Iwo Jima and I'm giving the nod to Eastwood for the win. Scorcese is certainly the sentimental favorite, but he will be declined. No one believes that Scorcese is going to stop making fantastic movies so there's always another day for him. Plus, his movie is a taut psychological thriller about cops and robbers? Not even the proximity of Jack Nicholson can convey the gravitas that Academy voters feel the need to convey, which is that they're doing important things. I haven't seen Eastwood's film, but I gather the film is about how war is a tragedy and even the enemy--no matter how genocidal or homicidal--is actually just like us on the inside. Awwww! Plus, an anti-war movie presents a perfect opportunity to give the metaphorical finger to the Bush administration, something Hollywood feels difficult passing up. And Eastwood is a crotchety but beloved Hollywood icon. No one will fault voters for handing him this accolade, or at least that's what they'll tell themselves as they avoid eye contact with Scorcese at the after parties.
Best Picture
Whoops, already gave this one away. It's going to be Babel for the reasons listed above regarding Blood Diamond (violence, beautiful actors and actresses, socially conscious). Also, Hollywood seems infatuated with the intertwining story line model that made the thoroughly mediocre Crash Best Picture last year. It allows Academy voters to mistake story structures that range from clever to absurd as profound, which makes them feel good about themselves for getting it. Little Miss Sunshine is a huge favorite in this category, but the writer/directors are Hollywood newbies. They'll be given the consolation prize of Best Original Screenplay. This is ironic, because there's little original about Little Miss Sunshine. I certainly enjoyed it; it was a cute picture with a talented cast. The story, however was hackneyed, shopworn, and executed better in my opinion in the very recent past. Come on, a roadtrip movie of funny quirky dysfunctional characters that becomes a journey of discovery and personal redemption? Didn't anybody see Pieces of April, The Daytrippers, or even National Lampoon's Family Vacation?
To recap in short:
Best Supporting Actor: Eddie Murphy
Best Supporting Actress: Jennifer Hudson
Best Actress: Helen Mirren
Best Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio
Best Director: Clint Eastwood
Best Picture: Babel
Bear in mind that these are not my personal picks, but a purely cynical analysis handicap of expected results.
Tagged:Posted by Lexiphane at 4:11 PM | Film | Comments (0) | TrackBack
MARSHMALLOW MISE EN SCENE
The Washington Post is happy ("with glee") to announce a reader contest today to see who can construct the best diorama populated by marshmallow Peep characters. It is the paper's inaugural Peeps Diorama Contest:
We want you to make a diorama of a famous occurrence or scene. It can be a historic or current event, or it can be a nod to pop culture. The one rule is that all the characters in the diorama must be played by Peeps.
(Our ideas? "The Peeple v. Larry Flynt." Or Penelopeep Cruz in "Volver." Or a scene from MTV's "Peep My Ride.")
So, to recap: Think of a scene. Buy the appropriate number of Peeps. Make your diorama using a shoe box or comparable item. (Dress up the Peeps, if you want. Give them pipe-cleaner arms or jelly bean feet.) Take a couple of photos of the diorama. E-mail them in JPEG format to sundaysource@washpost.com with "Peeps" in the subject line. Include your name, daytime phone number and home town, plus the diorama's title.
If your diorama is chosen as one of five finalists, a courier will be sent for it and it will be photographed professionally and featured in The Washington Post. Contest guidelines don't say so explicitly, but that indicates to me that entries wishing to advance may have to come from the DC metro area.
Tagged:Posted by Lexiphane at 7:48 AM | Food & Drink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
I'LL NEVER READ THIS , BUT I GET THE PICTURE
The New York Times had a piece yesterday about what may be the most ironic book ever written. Currently only published in France, negotiations are underway for British and American rights to How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Parisian literature professor Pierre Bayard. The aim of the book is to allay readers' (or rather, non-readers') guilt or embarrassment at not having read books they felt they should have, either out of vanity or insecurity.
“I am surprised because I hadn’t imagined how guilty nonreaders feel,” Mr. Bayard, 52, said in an interview. “With this book, they can shake off their guilt without psychoanalysis, so it’s much cheaper.”
Mr. Bayard reassures them that there is no obligation to read, and confesses to lecturing students on books that he has either not read or has merely skimmed. And he recalls passionate exchanges with people who also have not read the book under discussion.
Remember, this is a professor of literature at the university level. His book is essentially a primer on fatuous disingenuousness.
Having demonstrated that non-readers are in good company, Mr. Bayard then offers tips on how to cover up ignorance of a “must-read” book.
Meeting a book’s author can be particularly tricky. Here, Mr. Bayard said there was no need to display knowledge of the book, since the author already has his own ideas about it. Rather, he said, the answer is “to speak well of it without entering into details.” Indeed, all the author needs to hear is that “one has loved what he has written.”
Domestic life is another potentially hazardous zone. People often want their spouses and partners to share their love of a particular book. And when this happens, Mr. Bayard said, they can both inhabit a “secret universe.” But if only one has read the book, silent empathy may offer the best way out.
Students, he noted from experience, are skilled at opining about books they have not read, building on elements he may have provided in a lecture. This approach can also work in the more exposed arena of social gatherings: the book’s cover, reviews and other public reaction to it, gossip about the author and even the current conversation can all provide food for sounding informed.
One alternative, he said, is to try to change the subject. Another is to admit not knowing a particular book while suggesting knowledge of the so-called “collective library” into which the book fits.
But Mr. Bayard’s most daring suggestion is that nonreaders should talk about themselves, using the pretext of the book without dwelling on its contents. In this way, he said, they are forced to tap their imagination and, in effect, invent their own book.
“To be able to talk with finesse about something one does not know is worth more than the universe of books,” he writes. [emphasis mine]
I'm not sure how to respond to that other than to caution with the aphorism "It is better to keep one's mouth shut and thought a fool than to open one's mouth and prove it." Frankly, I don't see what's so difficult about admitting you haven't read a book. I read a lot, but still consider myself generally ill-read. Present me with a list of the 100 most essential works of the Western canon and I can assure you that I haven't even read one in five. Am I sometimes embarrassed to admit that I've never read any of the Russian novelists? Sure, but I'd be a lot more embarrassed of and to myself if I tried to pretend that I had. If anything, I know there's always something good to read out there that I just haven't gotten around to yet.
This Bayard's book sounds like almost the exact opposite of Maureen Corrigan's Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself In Books or Harold Bloom's How To Read And Why. Both books are meditations on the pleasure of reading for pleasure's sake. They entail a viewpoint that literature is better used as a source of intellectual enjoyment than intellectual embarrassment. At least I think they do; I didn't finish either book.
Tagged:Posted by Lexiphane at 6:49 AM | Books | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 24, 2007
HOLY ROCK & ROLLERS
As I write this, I'm listening to a recording of Arcade Fire's February 17th performance at The Judson Memorial Church near Washington Square. It was originally broadcast live on NPR and the station is generously making it available for download on its site (Right-Click on the Download The Arcade Fire Concert link [or this one] and select Save Link As). The sound quality is middling, but a fun recording nonetheless.
Arcade Fire is promoting its sophomore effort Neon Bible. I don't have that album yet, but if it's near as good as the band's debut Funeral, it'll be a must have. The band is actually the musical guest tonight on Saturday Night Live.
NB: Neon Bible won't be released until March 6.
Tagged:Posted by Lexiphane at 9:49 PM | Music | Comments (0) | TrackBack
MAN OVER MACHINE: LEXIPHANE.COM RETURNS
Sometime between 7th Grade and 8th Grade, Shop Class became Technology. In 7th Grade, I took Wood Shop and made a pen holder that was essentially a sanded block of wood with a piece of acrylic glued to it and a pen receptacle screwed on to the top. 8th Grade was supposed to be Metal Shop, but instead it was replaced with Technology. Our teacher that year had been teaching metal shop for approximately 30 years and seemed alternately bemused and resentful that after three decades of successfully keeping kids from maiming themselves with power tools and soldering guns, he was now supposed to teach a new curriculum: Technology.
"What is Technology?"
That is what he would ask over and over again, sitting at his desk and gesturing to the word on the chalkboard behind him without looking at it. Then he would lean back in his creaky chair and click-clack his dentures with half-closed eyes. At first, the class assumed that he was looking for some type of definitive answer. After about two weeks of the question repeated with vague assertions punctuated by long contemplative silences, we realized it was more of a rhetorical question: one posed to stimulate a Socratic exploration of the concept of tools and knowledge from the dawn of man and through the ages. Either that, or our teacher was simply marking time in 40 minute increments until he could retire at the end of the year without cracking his Technology class guidebook. I don't think we wound up making anything in Metal Shop--sorry, Technology class--that year.
That was about 20 years ago, but my old teacher's question came to mind recently, over and over again, as I wrestled with a crashed site, database corruption, platform upgrades, and a configuration labrynth that I was beginning to suspect had no actual exit. I now know what technology is though. Technology is a huge pain in my ass. I'm sure my somnolent metal shop teacher would agree.
Nonetheless it is here with us to stay. And this morning I made it my bitch. Sorry for the weeks offline. I hope regular readers will return to the site and continue to enjoy frequent updates to Lexiphane.com. I'd like to extend special thanks to my brother Tom for offering guidance and practical assistance throughout my tech travails.
Tagged:Posted by Lexiphane at 12:55 PM | Lexiphane , Science & Technology | Comments (0)
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