Those Who Can’t, Teach/Gatz
May 25th, 2010
books, theatre
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1. Those Who Can’t, Teach
It was funny (great lines!), entertaining, touching (wept buckets) and it restored me to my good mood. Later, however, I thought there were too many messages in the play (which resonated with the audience the night) about NIE, about scholars being teachers, teachers as role-models, about good students, bad students, about over-worked teachers. It seemed to me, a mouth piece than a story of the character’s lives.
There is a POV that I think is outmoded ie, academic success = success in life and somehow the characters seem to expect it.
The one who comes to mind most is someone who at his 25th reunion seemed stumbling along as a seventh grade teacher, so his income was one of the lowest in the study, and instead of being a famous writer he was just helping his seventh grade students write their own papers. It was true he had a nice family and enjoyed sailing, but I didn’t think anything of him. And when it came time to re-interview him at 75, he was leading the most wonderful life and it was a function of, for 75 years, having done everything right. He still was neither powerful or rich, but he lived in a lovely family compound, which he largely built himself. He was devoted to teaching his grandchildren sailing, he had a perfectly wonderful marriage and the inside of the home was beautiful, both from tasteful decoration but also the piles of laundry that reflected the harmonious living together of three generations. Read more
2. Gatz
I didn’t know it was going to be a 7 hour show experience. I might not have bought tickets if I read the sistic website carefully. I bought show tickets more than a month ago and by the time the lights darkened and Mark Barton (as Nick Carraway) began reading the starting of The Great Gatsby in a very old office, I thought, hang on, I know this book. I like the slow build up of activity. He begins reading it, doing the voices of the characters in the book. Gradually, the people in the office begins to do the things as described in the book, saying the lines. It surprises Nick but he continues. By the start of part two, the office setting has faded from my mind and I am watching Jay, Daisy, Tom, Josephine, Nick, Wilson and I completely believe them all.
I have forgotten much of the story now – I read it more than 10 years ago – and yesterday’s show brought back interesting memories. As I was watching it, I was also thinking how Gatsby reminded me of Darryl van Horne (Witches of Eastweek) and Brown (The Comedians). I remember quoting from the book angrily once, complaining about careless people, about working so hard for orgiastic futures and yet borne ceaslessly into the past. How angsty I was! I’ve outgrown the book. Nick was excessively judgemental of Daisy and Tom – they were no more careless (self-absorbed) than Wilson’s wife, Wilson, Gatsby or himself.
Crap
May 24th, 2010
Uncategorized
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Since we can’t all just medicate our loneliness away, it’s time for that part of the book that tells you exactly what you don’t want to hear. Just as losing weight is a matter of eating less and exercising rather than cutting out carbohydrates or taking the new over-the-counter drug, “once loneliness becomes chronic,” the authors of Loneliness write, “you cannot escape it by merely ‘coming out of your shell,’ losing weight, getting a fashion makeover, or meeting Mr. or Mrs. Right.” You’re going to have to be nice to people and stop your destructive thought patterns. Volunteer at an organization that saves puppies. Stop expecting that everyone will reject you. Or you could spend a little time each day with a baby monkey, which is how the researchers at Goon Park helped the monkeys coming out of isolation return to a normal state. There is an action plan in the back of Loneliness to help. Follow it and you’ll eventually turn into one of those treacly people on eHarmony.com commercials — “Feel the good feeling, mark it down on your life list and move on” — but I’m sure you can stop the program before your blood turns into sugar water.
From here It might be easier for me to find a monkey.
Note taking
May 19th, 2010
atwork
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This conversation (on yahmdallah’s blog) could easily take place in my office.
…I came across this idea using Microsoft’s wonderful OneNote application and fell in love with the paradigm of being able to rearrange notes taken on the fly into a more cogent form later. With a pad of notebook-like post-its, you can do the almost the same thing. And if a page is meaningless, you can discard it.
Well, that was apparently the offense I gave with my note-taking style: I was observed (again, creepy creepy creepy) throwing away some of the pages from amongst my notes right after a meeting. This (as reported) gave the impression that my notes were “too ephemeral”, “too disposable”.
*nod* *nod* I would be told I’m wasting post it notes.
Oh, and one of the reasons I use paper notes at all is I used to use my blackberry, because I’m a decent miniature keyboard typist (though most teens type circles around me), and I’d use the note feature to take my notes. However, this prompted the first unsolicited commentary on my note-taking, which was: it gave the impression (and that phrase was used both times: “gave the impression”) that I was texting and not listening, so bring a pencil and paper next time. Which means I have to spend cycles transcribing paper notes into electronic form.
*nod* *nod* I would be asked to pay attention.
NearFar on Overcoming Bias
May 18th, 2010
atwork
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I’ve been reading NearFar am fascinated by it. It makes sense – distancing (and not just time) requires more abstraction. With that different level of details, a problem now has a different frame and a different solution. In a discussion, I can’t see your point of view and I discount it immediately because I have more detailed ‘near’ information of my own point of view. Plus, both parties in the discussion assume that we have accurately assessed ‘far’ information when we usually haven’t.
I was reading this and thinking about happiness at work.
You hear this sort of thing in a lot of articles. I remember Gabe Sherman’s New York magazine piece that quoted a banker saying, basically, I deserve this money — I’m answering my BlackBerry at 2 a.m.
The question is what’s the answer? Can you cut everyone’s pay and hours in half so people are happier and you have more reasonable salaries? That’s tough. Certain people really are crucial. But it’s a bit odd when someone says they deserve to get paid so much because they answer their BlackBerry at 2 a.m. and the guy at my convenience store doesn’t get to go home until his shift ends at 3:30 a.m. People on Wall Street work very hard and they feel they chose this path because there was a reward promised to them. And now, when it’s being taken away from them, they get very angry. If the reward hadn’t been offered to them, they feel they would’ve followed their passion and become a journalist or something.
Happiness is a far goal – it requires a little abstraction and self-control to discount present desires. If people working in a place is not miserable (by taking certain actions to provide the place with a minimal level of happiness), and perhaps won’t demand as much money as a substitute of them being less than happy, and IT might actually fix your PC instead of asking you to reboot until it works. The problem with trying to persuade everyone to think far is the presence of near thinking incentives: yearly bonuses, uncertain job/economic conditions, half yearly appraisals, dynasty changes. I can’t come up with any far thinking incentives at all. Does this mean misery in the workplace is inevitable? (I remember reading that woman have become as unhappy as men after they have entered the workforce.) That this misery is actually self-control to achieve a happiness of the individual (family, hobbies/indulgences)?
A Map Of Love (by Donald Justice)
May 12th, 2010
books
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Your face more than others’ faces
Maps the half-remembered places
I have come to I while I slept—
Continents a dream had kept
Secret from all waking folk
Till to your face I awoke,
And remembered then the shore,
And the dark interior.
Hiromi’s Place To Be
May 10th, 2010
music
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I love this album! It’s fun, it’s interesting, and incredibly impressive! I feel restored after a month of glumness.
Emotional Brain
May 7th, 2010
popscience
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From Here
In non-psychopathic patients emotion attribution was associated with increased activity of the mirror neuron system, the bilateral supramarginal gyrus and the superior frontal gyrus. In contrast psychopathic patients showed increased activation of regions associated with outcome monitoring and attention, such as the orbitofrontal cortex, the medial frontal cortex and temporo-parietal areas.
More on Moral action and reasoning.
IT Crowd S3
May 2nd, 2010
screen
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I have been loving every episode of IT Crowd. I just saw S3E2 last night – the one were Moss kissed Roy. OH MY GOD MY OH GOD. This cracked me up: “I want to go back to being weird. I like being weird. Weird is all I’ve got. That and my sweet style.”
On Graham Lineham’s blog, he said they wrapped S4!
Short notes
May 2nd, 2010
screen, theatre
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Tempest
Liked how Stephen Dilliane did Prospero: watchful, yet tired and human. I like the interesting contrast: he, the human magician, controls everything on stage to get his revenge, yet, he is not drawn into the events: he’s outside, watching, observing, almost uninvolved. He’s suppose to be interested in revenge but it is almost as if he lost interest in it halfway through and he’s just doing whatever he’s doing out of curiosity. Also very much liked how the actors don’t ever leave the stage, they remain at the side, sitting quietly or reading – involved but not involved.
Dear Doctor (Film Festie)
I think the movie focused excessively on the goodness of the doctor – makes the person somewhat 2 dimensional.
Frisky and Mannish
Jim Smallman, the warmup was a little too angry for my liking. I liked his “things done while drunk” which was funny in an oh-my-god way. Most shows I’ve been, the audience were too polite to heckle but oddly he thought we were fully capable of heckling and warned he was ready to fight back. Frisky and Mannish’s school of pop was clever-funny. Songs were mashed up to bring out their true meaning: songs written while doped up (What if God Was One of Us), crazy stalker songs (Eternal Flame), sexy children’s songs (Wheels On The Bus), googling (replacing ’search’ with ‘google’), horror songs (Total Eclipse of the Heart), historical songs (No Scrubs as history lesson). Love the stalker songs and Songs Written While Doped Up (HILARIOUS!). They are so accessible I thought it might become a sing-along session but it didn’t. V funny duo!
Karl Marx on seeing Stalin
May 1st, 2010
radio
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(from Old Harry’s Game)
Marx: You recognise me comrade?
Stalin: Your face rings a bit of a bell
Marx: I’m Karl Marx!
Stalin: Karl Marx…Karl Marx…no, don’t tell me…
Marx: You totally discredited Marxism. Have you no compunction for the misery you caused? Have you any idea how cold it was in the sodding museum library? I froze my arse off for years working on that theory! All that time! Wasted! I could have been dating women! Taking nice holidays! I could have learnt to play the saxophone!
Stalin: People always say that.
