I hope that all you blog readers won’t hate me for this posting, but the fact is that I don’t think I will ever be able to post anything on this site unless I get this confession off my chest first. So you can call me a little old-fashioned, but I’ve been struggling with this “Mirth & Matter” blog concept.
I like writing and philosophical/ interesting conversations. I enjoy blogging and making various website-postings, so my friends and family can read about my life at their own convenience. Zach has been as inclusive as any blog could be- we all experience tons of “mirth & matter” daily. Additionally he’s been patient and so kindly encouraging- “if the urge ever strikes you to write...”
I’ve been wondering where my hesitations about posting on this blog are coming from? I really feel a little squeamish and guilty at the same time. I’m sure nobody else has noticed my feelings, but the fact is that I have been thinking about posting something for months. I can’t even get myself to COMMENT, let alone post my own writing. What is my problem?!
I think my problem is that I have never met most of the writers who contribute. At least in creating my own websites, I have the illusion that only people I know will visit them, so I don’t feel like I am sharing with complete strangers. I like to know who my audience will be. I feel a little strange about online interactions with people who I’ve never met face-to-face, and I get that creepy “online-stalker feeling.” I’m very visual and I like to picture people’s faces in my head when I communicate with them. Virtual people don’t have faces in my head. It freaks me out a little bit (although I’m sure you all have nice faces). I wonder, “Doesn’t anybody else feel this way?!”
Apparently not because my husband posts thoughtful things on this blog without any internal struggle what-so-ever. He doesn’t feel compelled to meet everybody on the contributor list, and I don’t think he has met anybody except two people- Zach and Chris.
What’s changed this time? Well first of all, I got Google Reader. This is a wonderful little program that allows me to read all my friends’ blog updates in one place. It looks like e-mail with new postings appearing in an “inbox” of sorts. I don’t feel like I am constantly catching up on blog entries because I’m notified whenever I check my e-mail if something new has been posted. So, I’ve acquired a new sense of empowerment.
Second, I decided that this blog needs my perspective. For example, there are only a few female contributors, so it’s a pretty “manly” blog right now- that’s definitely not an insult, and it’s a bit sexist of me to say. But just look at that list- 45 posts about politics and 1 about food (ZERO about chocolate)! And only a few posts in my main areas of interest- 3 about health, and 1 about religion. I like all the other topics too, but maybe I have something different to offer that would be good for the variety of mirth & matter.
Finally, I am pretending that I know you right now. The last few posts have been made by people I really do know. And I discovered that I can see little photos of many of you when I click on your names (AHA!) and read two sentences about who you are (and would the rest of you PLEASE post your photo and show me who you are because the empty box is so disturbing). I’m trying to convince myself that the world is small so maybe someday I’ll meet you and you won’t be virtual people anymore. And besides, you all know Zach somehow, right? So you must be nice people.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
What Corporate Tax Rate?
A new report from the GAO finds that two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005.
Also from Time.com, John McCain's response to this question:
Also from Time.com, John McCain's response to this question:
Kind of begs the question: what does it matter what the corporate tax rate is if U.S. corporations never pay it?TAXES: Should Bush's tax cuts for families making more than $250,000 be eliminated?
Wants to keep Bush's tax cuts. Would kill the alternative minimmum tax and lower the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Lilya 4-Ever Review
It’s really rare to find a film that attempts to speak for millions of people who have no real voice of their own. It’s even rarer to find a film that does an excellent job telling their story. But I think director Lukas Moodysson generally succeeds in his film, Lilya-4 Ever. He is a fairly new Swedish director, and I haven’t seen any of his other films, so I’m not sure how good they are, but I was impressed by the simplicity and realism of Lilya 4-Ever.
The sad reality is that probably hundreds of thousands of women from
False Flags
I hate to venture down conspiracy theory lane, but the revelations regarding Ivins and the anthrax scare have really raised a red flag with me. To reiterate what Zach just posted:
1. First, we have Bush's proposal to paint an American surveillance plane in U.N. colors in an attempt to draw fire from Iraq, thus starting a war.
2. Next, we have Cheney with a "dozen" ideas on how to start a war with Iran, including disguising some ships as Iranian PT boats, load them with armed U.S. soldiers disguised as Iranians, and starting a fire fight between those boats and our Navy in the Strait of Hormuz.
3. Finally, we have Suskind's recent revelations that Bush order the CIA to forge a letter linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda.
Throw in the Niger yellowcake uranium forgeries, and you potentially have four. Ivins and anthrax make five.
Yes, you say, but these allegations are both denied by the administration and unproven. True, but look at where the information is coming from. Enterprising investigative journalists have such as Suskind and Hersh have had to do all of the work on these issues, because they are the only people (besides bloggers) who have been following these revelations. As Zach pointed out, the rest of the media has taken a pass on any form of comprehensive coverage.
Congress can and should thoroughly investigate what went wrong in the run-up to the Iraq war, and how a war was started on false intelligence. They have both the power and the duty to answer that question. The trouble is, both Congress and the media were negligent in the run-up to the Iraq war, and any behavior that implicates the administration in a way implicates themselves.
Someday we may know the full story. The fact that we have to ask how our country got duped into an aggressive war of choice shows how far our country has fallen.
The anthrax had nothing to do with Iraq; instead, a government agency was responsible for 1) sending the anthrax in the first place, framing Iraq, and 2) claiming that only the Iraqis could have done such a thing. This story, then, is much bigger than just that of a psychopathic renegade scientist committing suicide. We're bogged down in Iraq today because of the long campaign of government misinformation and fear-mongering in which the anthrax scare played a key role. Greenwald's post documents the pundits who encouraged the administration to invade Iraq based primarily on Saddam's ties to anthrax. This was a big piece in the puzzle, and to think that the threat was generated by none other than the US government? The implications are jaw-dropping.The implications are jaw-dropping, but perhaps not entirely surprising. This administration has had a history of contemplating/executing false flag operations. I count three to date.
1. First, we have Bush's proposal to paint an American surveillance plane in U.N. colors in an attempt to draw fire from Iraq, thus starting a war.
2. Next, we have Cheney with a "dozen" ideas on how to start a war with Iran, including disguising some ships as Iranian PT boats, load them with armed U.S. soldiers disguised as Iranians, and starting a fire fight between those boats and our Navy in the Strait of Hormuz.
3. Finally, we have Suskind's recent revelations that Bush order the CIA to forge a letter linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda.
Throw in the Niger yellowcake uranium forgeries, and you potentially have four. Ivins and anthrax make five.
Yes, you say, but these allegations are both denied by the administration and unproven. True, but look at where the information is coming from. Enterprising investigative journalists have such as Suskind and Hersh have had to do all of the work on these issues, because they are the only people (besides bloggers) who have been following these revelations. As Zach pointed out, the rest of the media has taken a pass on any form of comprehensive coverage.
Congress can and should thoroughly investigate what went wrong in the run-up to the Iraq war, and how a war was started on false intelligence. They have both the power and the duty to answer that question. The trouble is, both Congress and the media were negligent in the run-up to the Iraq war, and any behavior that implicates the administration in a way implicates themselves.
Someday we may know the full story. The fact that we have to ask how our country got duped into an aggressive war of choice shows how far our country has fallen.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
The Grass is Always Greener.....
Latley, my co-workers and I have created a list of jobs we would WANT to do if we weren't in the business of writing technical manuals. Included on this list are jobs such as dog walker, photographer, lawyer (yes we dream big) and rare book finder. We even have a list, hidden from HR, of course, titled "Plan B." What is it that keeps us from pursuing these ventures? Well let's see: job security, medical/dental insurance, free office supplies, of course (kidding), and the camaraderie of complaining about your job to your co-workers.
Does one ever really stop their job search? It seems that lately, everyone I know is exploring their options, searching for jobs on career sites or coming up with their own business ideas, even if they aren't 100% serious about changing their career or job. They would have to be dissatisfied at some level however to at least look at other options.
So which is better, job security or loving what you do? The answer should be obvious, so why do we allow ourselves to stay in the workplace rut? So if anyone needs a dogwalker/photographer/lawyer/rare book finder, give me a call.
To China, With Love
Journalists like to talk about "time pegs," by which we mean periods during which the general public might suddenly be interested in a particular subject. Anniversaries are good ones, as are seasons, festivals, and big cultural events. Like, oh, the Olympics, for example. I'd like to throw down the gauntlet and solicit stories of, or reflections on, China (or Chinatown, perhaps?) from my fellow M&M writers. Let's all exploit this time peg.
The short woman in the passenger seat of the green minivan kept talking as we narrowly avoided colliding with a VW taxi. The traffic rushing past on the Beijing highway was, oddly, an ideal accompaniment to the barrage that was coming out of her mouth. For the uninitiated (like myself), Mandarin sounds like a four-car-pileup of syllables, rather than a language. Nonplussed by either her verbal onslaught or the motorcycle that had almost taken a chunk out of our bumper, the tall, balding man behind the wheel just grunted, and drove faster. Outside, neon signs advertising everything from canned tuna to digital cameras lit the night sky.
Leon, my British traveling buddy, looked over at me and remarked, "You know, Beijing is the same size as Belgium." A statement which did very little to reduce my sense of panicky awe at the whole situation, even though later research revealed he was wrong: Beijing is smaller and has more residents.
And this was only the ride from the airport to the hotel. This was only the beginning.
Way back in 2005, I told someone that I wanted to stand on the Great Wall of China on my birthday. It was an offhand statement, without much thought behind it save the grand An Affair to Remember romance of the idea. But the idea lodged in my brain and sat there gathering steam for months until I took a week's vacation from my job teaching English in rural Japan and boarded a plane to Beijing with a tourist visa and a three-word Mandarin vocabulary (none of which I could pronounce correctly).
This week, as the world turns its gaze to the Olympic-rings bedecked Middle Kingdom, I find myself thinking often of my own Chinese odyssey three years ago. My time in Japan, I remember, formed a strange, clever little buffer zone between life in the U.S. and travel in Asia. Japan, in many ways, is Diet China. Without my experiences there, things like illiteracy and squalid squat toilets and the wide range of animals available for dinner would have been unimaginably foreign.
But I was ready: I can talk with my hands, I carry my own toilet paper, and Leon, could be counted on to eat anything I found too utterly repulsive. Still, full-calorie original China exceeded my expectations. It raised the "I can deal with anything big-city Asia can dish out" bar to new and dizzying heights. Our attempts at Mandarin resulted in nothing a cabdriver could even recognize as language, the menus offered swallow gizzards and carp heads, and you really don't even want to know about the toilets.
A Chinese proverb says, "The past must depart in order for the future to arrive." But Beijing seems to be balancing between the two, caught up somewhere between pride in its history and the dream of a shiny capitalist future. The man selling Chairman Mao-bedecked watches beneath the huge countdown-to-the-Olympics billboard hung outside the National Art Gallery made that much clear.
Yet only ten minutes' walk away from all that well-swept civic grandeur, an old woman was squatting in the doorway of her dirt-floored house and chatting with a strawberry vendor, who was peddling his pale-red wares up and down the narrow street from a wooden cart that looked as if it had been in daily use long before the Cultural Revolution. It seems that the future is arriving in China, but the past has yet to depart.
Like the good cultural tourists that we are, Leon and I took in the quintessential sights of Beijing: the Summer Palace, an evening of Chinese opera, and Tiennamen Square (largest city square in the world, though of course that's not why anyone remembers it). There was a much-anticipated plate of Peking Duck, and a tour of the Forbidden City with Roger Moore murmuring facts and historical tidbits into our ears—definitely the best audio guide narrator ever.
"Look at this ceiling," 007 instructed me at one point. "Isn't it fabulous?"
"Oh Roger," I gushed. "Tell me Moore."
(Leon groaned, and walked faster.)
What I remember about the city, however, are things that Roger Moore and Lonely Planet don’t mention. There is always a rush of acute observation that accompanies any new place or situation. It's something that fades with time and experience as we begin to know what to expect, and soon only take note when those expectations are challenged. But during those first few days in a new place—and as a traveler, it seems you are always just arriving or just departing—the richness of detail swallows me up. Nowhere is this more true than in China, where there is always something, and usually too much all at once, going on.
Tune in next week for a Great Wall adventure and Part 2 of this column.
The short woman in the passenger seat of the green minivan kept talking as we narrowly avoided colliding with a VW taxi. The traffic rushing past on the Beijing highway was, oddly, an ideal accompaniment to the barrage that was coming out of her mouth. For the uninitiated (like myself), Mandarin sounds like a four-car-pileup of syllables, rather than a language. Nonplussed by either her verbal onslaught or the motorcycle that had almost taken a chunk out of our bumper, the tall, balding man behind the wheel just grunted, and drove faster. Outside, neon signs advertising everything from canned tuna to digital cameras lit the night sky.
Leon, my British traveling buddy, looked over at me and remarked, "You know, Beijing is the same size as Belgium." A statement which did very little to reduce my sense of panicky awe at the whole situation, even though later research revealed he was wrong: Beijing is smaller and has more residents.
And this was only the ride from the airport to the hotel. This was only the beginning.
Way back in 2005, I told someone that I wanted to stand on the Great Wall of China on my birthday. It was an offhand statement, without much thought behind it save the grand An Affair to Remember romance of the idea. But the idea lodged in my brain and sat there gathering steam for months until I took a week's vacation from my job teaching English in rural Japan and boarded a plane to Beijing with a tourist visa and a three-word Mandarin vocabulary (none of which I could pronounce correctly).
This week, as the world turns its gaze to the Olympic-rings bedecked Middle Kingdom, I find myself thinking often of my own Chinese odyssey three years ago. My time in Japan, I remember, formed a strange, clever little buffer zone between life in the U.S. and travel in Asia. Japan, in many ways, is Diet China. Without my experiences there, things like illiteracy and squalid squat toilets and the wide range of animals available for dinner would have been unimaginably foreign.
But I was ready: I can talk with my hands, I carry my own toilet paper, and Leon, could be counted on to eat anything I found too utterly repulsive. Still, full-calorie original China exceeded my expectations. It raised the "I can deal with anything big-city Asia can dish out" bar to new and dizzying heights. Our attempts at Mandarin resulted in nothing a cabdriver could even recognize as language, the menus offered swallow gizzards and carp heads, and you really don't even want to know about the toilets.
A Chinese proverb says, "The past must depart in order for the future to arrive." But Beijing seems to be balancing between the two, caught up somewhere between pride in its history and the dream of a shiny capitalist future. The man selling Chairman Mao-bedecked watches beneath the huge countdown-to-the-Olympics billboard hung outside the National Art Gallery made that much clear.
Yet only ten minutes' walk away from all that well-swept civic grandeur, an old woman was squatting in the doorway of her dirt-floored house and chatting with a strawberry vendor, who was peddling his pale-red wares up and down the narrow street from a wooden cart that looked as if it had been in daily use long before the Cultural Revolution. It seems that the future is arriving in China, but the past has yet to depart.
Like the good cultural tourists that we are, Leon and I took in the quintessential sights of Beijing: the Summer Palace, an evening of Chinese opera, and Tiennamen Square (largest city square in the world, though of course that's not why anyone remembers it). There was a much-anticipated plate of Peking Duck, and a tour of the Forbidden City with Roger Moore murmuring facts and historical tidbits into our ears—definitely the best audio guide narrator ever.
"Look at this ceiling," 007 instructed me at one point. "Isn't it fabulous?"
"Oh Roger," I gushed. "Tell me Moore."
(Leon groaned, and walked faster.)
What I remember about the city, however, are things that Roger Moore and Lonely Planet don’t mention. There is always a rush of acute observation that accompanies any new place or situation. It's something that fades with time and experience as we begin to know what to expect, and soon only take note when those expectations are challenged. But during those first few days in a new place—and as a traveler, it seems you are always just arriving or just departing—the richness of detail swallows me up. Nowhere is this more true than in China, where there is always something, and usually too much all at once, going on.
Tune in next week for a Great Wall adventure and Part 2 of this column.
Friday, August 1, 2008
Anthrax Attacks
We all remember the details of those awful couple of weeks. Just days after 9/11, mysterious packages of anthrax started appearing at government offices and media headquarters, turning what could have been an isolated act of terror into a full-fledged contagion of fear in the US. The culprit - complete with the damning evidence of letters praising Allah - were of course Islamic extremists, but the story ran cold after a few months and nothing definitive was thereafter announced about the origins of the deadly powder. We did, however, collectively live in fear of biological/chemical attacks over the next few months as a result of the anthrax packages. Living in New York at the time, the Times ran stories of how Al Qaida might be able to release anthrax into the subway system, and suggested that we be on the lookout for Arabic men with big packages who had recently shaven. America had been spooked, and the boogeyman, then as now, was what Thomas Friedman calls the "super-empowered angry men" - radical Muslims. That was the narrative.
Today's news comes as quite a revelation, then. The lead suspect in the anthrax attacks (we had a suspect?) is none other than Bruce Ivins, a government scientist working at Ft. Detrick, a biological warfare research facility. No beard. No Kalashnikov tossed over the shoulder. Just a civil servant. Earlier this week, Mr. Ivins committed suicide, bringing anthrax back into the news again for one more appearance.
Let's take a moment to examine what this actually means. Instead of the Enemy of Civilization assaulting America, it was most likely a scientist within our own military. A seminal event in the dark chronology of fear that overtook our leaders and citizenry in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq (the ultimate act of lashing out in panic) was falsely attributed. This is a huge story indeed.
Of course, you wouldn't guess the significance of this revelation from the mainstream media's coverage of it. It's gotten coverage today, but the story has been stripped of its explosive power and decontextualized. All we learn is that a key suspect has killed himself, end of story. Case closed. This article is perhaps the most open-and-shut about the whole affair (courtesy Chris), but even NPR's coverage didn't penetrate too deeply into what this actually means. On All Things Considered today, one the Ivin's psychotherapists talked about his "homicidal tendencies" and they essentially left it at that. Indeed, relying on only the mainstream media, one would think that Ivins was simply a "bad seed," much as the torturers at Abu Ghraib were simply a few renegades acting on their own twisted volition. The truth, however, is much more complex and much more appalling.
As is becoming all too common, the blogosphere has been far more aggressive in investigating this story than the well-paid members of the mainstream press. Glenn Greenwald's post today on Salon should be required reading for all discerning and critical Americans. In a nutshell: after Ivins sent anthrax to government and media offices, the powder was analyzed in a lab and ABC began reporting that a compound in the material was a trademark of the Iraqis. This claim dominated ABC's coverage of the anthrax attacks and quickly entered into the administration's case for why Iraq posed a clear and present danger. In his 2002 State of the Union Address, President Bush even talked about the Iraqi regime's development of anthrax.
But here's the catch: the four "well-placed and separate sources" that ABC got their information from were none other than Ft. Detrick officials and scientists. The lab from which the anthrax originated, then, was charged with determining its origin. And the claim that only the Iraqis could have inserted this extra compound was completely spurious. The anthrax had nothing to do with Iraq; instead, a government agency was responsible for 1) sending the anthrax in the first place, framing Iraq, and 2) claiming that only the Iraqis could have done such a thing. This story, then, is much bigger than just that of a psychopathic renegade scientist committing suicide. We're bogged down in Iraq today because of the long campaign of government misinformation and fear-mongering in which the anthrax scare played a key role. Greenwald's post documents the pundits who encouraged the administration to invade Iraq based primarily on Saddam's ties to anthrax. This was a big piece in the puzzle, and to think that the threat was generated by none other than the US government? The implications are jaw-dropping.
This is not conspiracy theory wackiness - it is copiously documented. But the resounding silence in the mainstream press indeed makes it feel like even bringing up the larger context for the Ivins story is engaging in something a little fringy. Congress is not investigating issues like this because congresspeople aren't being pressed by their outraged constituents to do so. And largely, people aren't outraged because they don't know. So, good M&M readers, get the word out on this story. Read the Greenwald article and forward it ahead to your friends. The only thing that can combat this sort of wool-over-the-eyes complacency is a little knowledge.
Chris and I will be following this post up with a short series on related topics. More to come.
Today's news comes as quite a revelation, then. The lead suspect in the anthrax attacks (we had a suspect?) is none other than Bruce Ivins, a government scientist working at Ft. Detrick, a biological warfare research facility. No beard. No Kalashnikov tossed over the shoulder. Just a civil servant. Earlier this week, Mr. Ivins committed suicide, bringing anthrax back into the news again for one more appearance.
Let's take a moment to examine what this actually means. Instead of the Enemy of Civilization assaulting America, it was most likely a scientist within our own military. A seminal event in the dark chronology of fear that overtook our leaders and citizenry in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq (the ultimate act of lashing out in panic) was falsely attributed. This is a huge story indeed.
Of course, you wouldn't guess the significance of this revelation from the mainstream media's coverage of it. It's gotten coverage today, but the story has been stripped of its explosive power and decontextualized. All we learn is that a key suspect has killed himself, end of story. Case closed. This article is perhaps the most open-and-shut about the whole affair (courtesy Chris), but even NPR's coverage didn't penetrate too deeply into what this actually means. On All Things Considered today, one the Ivin's psychotherapists talked about his "homicidal tendencies" and they essentially left it at that. Indeed, relying on only the mainstream media, one would think that Ivins was simply a "bad seed," much as the torturers at Abu Ghraib were simply a few renegades acting on their own twisted volition. The truth, however, is much more complex and much more appalling.
As is becoming all too common, the blogosphere has been far more aggressive in investigating this story than the well-paid members of the mainstream press. Glenn Greenwald's post today on Salon should be required reading for all discerning and critical Americans. In a nutshell: after Ivins sent anthrax to government and media offices, the powder was analyzed in a lab and ABC began reporting that a compound in the material was a trademark of the Iraqis. This claim dominated ABC's coverage of the anthrax attacks and quickly entered into the administration's case for why Iraq posed a clear and present danger. In his 2002 State of the Union Address, President Bush even talked about the Iraqi regime's development of anthrax.
But here's the catch: the four "well-placed and separate sources" that ABC got their information from were none other than Ft. Detrick officials and scientists. The lab from which the anthrax originated, then, was charged with determining its origin. And the claim that only the Iraqis could have inserted this extra compound was completely spurious. The anthrax had nothing to do with Iraq; instead, a government agency was responsible for 1) sending the anthrax in the first place, framing Iraq, and 2) claiming that only the Iraqis could have done such a thing. This story, then, is much bigger than just that of a psychopathic renegade scientist committing suicide. We're bogged down in Iraq today because of the long campaign of government misinformation and fear-mongering in which the anthrax scare played a key role. Greenwald's post documents the pundits who encouraged the administration to invade Iraq based primarily on Saddam's ties to anthrax. This was a big piece in the puzzle, and to think that the threat was generated by none other than the US government? The implications are jaw-dropping.
This is not conspiracy theory wackiness - it is copiously documented. But the resounding silence in the mainstream press indeed makes it feel like even bringing up the larger context for the Ivins story is engaging in something a little fringy. Congress is not investigating issues like this because congresspeople aren't being pressed by their outraged constituents to do so. And largely, people aren't outraged because they don't know. So, good M&M readers, get the word out on this story. Read the Greenwald article and forward it ahead to your friends. The only thing that can combat this sort of wool-over-the-eyes complacency is a little knowledge.
Chris and I will be following this post up with a short series on related topics. More to come.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Warning!
********This blog post contains sweeping generalizations and philosophizations (yes, it's a word...now) based on limited and perhaps insignificant observations.*********
I've notice that my friends have been using the phrase "I feel like" as a replacement for "I think," in everyday speech. For example, instead of saying "I think that media's coverage of this presidential campaign is biased," they would say "I feel like the media's coverage...." It happens in far less intellectual instances as well, for instance: "I feel like we should do the Matterhorn next, not Splash Mountain." It also seems that the phrase is more prevalent in spoken rather than written English.
Is this significant? Does it signal a sea change in how we express convictions? Are Americans becoming more driven by emotional decision making, rather than a reason-based approach? Was it ever reason-based in the first place? Does a emotion/reason dichotomy hold water?
Distinction
One of the perks of being a parent is getting to watch your favorite children's shows on OPB once again. On the cusp of a little Reading Rainbow watching with David I saw a commercial that involves Super Grover writing his initial into an insignia. The message of the commercial was to support your child's progressive endeavors by pinning artwork on the fridge and constantly giving them support and approval. The tag line at the end, the "We are OPB and you need us in your life" message, was something along the lines of "OPB: preparing children for learning and life." It was here that I got lost in the message in that I dared to read into the distinction between the two.
Obviously the message was intended to use alliteration to drive the point in that this brand of television is good for you, but I found the example a little misleading. The first impression I got from this was that life was something different or removed from childhood, or that it was the next step away from childhood. It dared me to ask "Then what is it that children are living now? When does their life begin?" For one it insinuates that children are indeed not involved in life right now, they are instead in secular limbo, waiting for their turn to take rank among us. This, in my opinion, isn't a very constructive sentiment to make. It ignores the children that do have "real life problems," such as AIDS, abuse, hunger, social troubles, or a myriad of other troubles. It also manages to marginalize adults.
The question begging to be asked is "When does childhood end?" Does it end when you become a teenager? At your bar mitzvah? When you turn sixteen? When you graduate high school? What about college? When exactly are you no longer a "children?" Taken in perspective of education I am still a child, one who is two weeks away from entering the "real world." Is it then that my life begins? I've always had such a bleak picture of adulthood, usually painted for me by adults. Now that I'm here I can't say I'm too disappointed. I, for one, like knowing things, and there is no more efficient way of obtaining knowledge than through the passage of time. I also like being developed. I am no longer in a constantly-changing body with raging hormones, constantly circulating wardrobes, and the accompanying discomfort. I am now as I will be for a long time, and I am quite happy with that. It's one less thing to worry about (I'm the guy that shaves his head so that he doesn't have to dedicate brain power to the frivolity of hair styling). At this point in my life I have less interference in my personal freedoms (rather, I have less obvious interference, all of the covert assaults on my freedom are still well in tact and will undoubtedly trickle down to my children), and all things considered I am quite happy where I am.
What then changes? Part of the issue is that we characterize childhood in a certain way: play and education. Children are always at play, meaning they are completely devoid of seriousness, obligation, responsibility, or worry. Childhood is also largely defined by stages of the educational process. As often as children are asked their age they are also asked their grade. Probably more so. Age means relatively little in the face of grade level, which along with a gradated number also implies a certain level of achieved intellect. To me, these views of childhood are inefficient and damaging. I, personally, prefer to see childhood by merely one trait: learning.
If you look at how children play, they do so to learn. Their goal in play is not to torment mommy and daddy into buying them larger quantities of fancier toys. Play is a beautiful and wonderfully efficient mechanism that combines positive emotional reinforcement to acquired knowledge. Kicking a ball a long distance gives the actor a sense of pride or accomplishment that accompanies the knowledge of how to maximize the efficiency of acting upon your physical environment, however that lesson may be an equally profound learning experience if the actor were to kick the ball into a hornets' nest. The same valued learning is the reason we go to school. I will, however, impose a distinction at this point between learning and education. To learn is to adopt knowledge, whereas an education is a systematic approach toward inserting knowledge into the learner. My syntax should give you very little doubt as to which method I prefer and which I would exercise caution towards.
This brings up a socially demeaning concept though. When have I stopped learning? I love to learn. I love to discover things. I love reading books and experimenting and talking things out between friends. I have never abandoned a desire to learn things which, by my definition, must make me a child. But I've already been there, and I came to the conclusion that I've never left childhood. I was sitting in the bath the other day, examining myself (visually, thank you), to discover that I have chest hair. This is nothing new, I've had chest hair for years. But it seemed odd, somehow foreign. I look different, but I don't feel different. Inside, I'm the same person I was when I was ten, and somewhere in time I got big and grew hair. The child is never gone. I don't care what all of those discordant 60's folk tunes say, you never stop being a child. It's the same conundrum that accompanies birthdays. You watch the seconds pass from one day into the next and all of a sudden you are legally able to drink alcohol without the supervision of a parent or guardian. In that one second it is highly unlikely that your body or mind matured to a point that rendered you incapable the prior second and prepared in the next, yet that is the way we distinguish age in our society: through these rites of passage. The same goes for New Year's Day as well. A ball dropping signifies the infancy of a new year, in which case the entire planet undergoes a superficial baptism that will be soiled shortly after the third bottle of champagne is spilled. Such is the consequence for creating artificial boundaries of time. We are not satisfied to let the river flow into the sea, instead we need to dredge the land into a canal that functions by a segmented system of locks.
In the end, it helps to stop making distinctions between childhood and adulthood, as well as abandon the implied superiority of one over the other. For lack of a better word, I still see myself as that child, but I never felt like a child when I would have been considered one. I never felt myself pertaining to the negative connotations of childhood. In that case I would rather just embrace self. When we begin to tear down these notions of superiority through chronology we open ourselves up to learning from those younger than us. The lessons can be as simple as the culinary delight of mixing yogurt and peanut butter, or as profound as learning when to stop being a fascist disciplinarian.
Obviously the message was intended to use alliteration to drive the point in that this brand of television is good for you, but I found the example a little misleading. The first impression I got from this was that life was something different or removed from childhood, or that it was the next step away from childhood. It dared me to ask "Then what is it that children are living now? When does their life begin?" For one it insinuates that children are indeed not involved in life right now, they are instead in secular limbo, waiting for their turn to take rank among us. This, in my opinion, isn't a very constructive sentiment to make. It ignores the children that do have "real life problems," such as AIDS, abuse, hunger, social troubles, or a myriad of other troubles. It also manages to marginalize adults.
The question begging to be asked is "When does childhood end?" Does it end when you become a teenager? At your bar mitzvah? When you turn sixteen? When you graduate high school? What about college? When exactly are you no longer a "children?" Taken in perspective of education I am still a child, one who is two weeks away from entering the "real world." Is it then that my life begins? I've always had such a bleak picture of adulthood, usually painted for me by adults. Now that I'm here I can't say I'm too disappointed. I, for one, like knowing things, and there is no more efficient way of obtaining knowledge than through the passage of time. I also like being developed. I am no longer in a constantly-changing body with raging hormones, constantly circulating wardrobes, and the accompanying discomfort. I am now as I will be for a long time, and I am quite happy with that. It's one less thing to worry about (I'm the guy that shaves his head so that he doesn't have to dedicate brain power to the frivolity of hair styling). At this point in my life I have less interference in my personal freedoms (rather, I have less obvious interference, all of the covert assaults on my freedom are still well in tact and will undoubtedly trickle down to my children), and all things considered I am quite happy where I am.
What then changes? Part of the issue is that we characterize childhood in a certain way: play and education. Children are always at play, meaning they are completely devoid of seriousness, obligation, responsibility, or worry. Childhood is also largely defined by stages of the educational process. As often as children are asked their age they are also asked their grade. Probably more so. Age means relatively little in the face of grade level, which along with a gradated number also implies a certain level of achieved intellect. To me, these views of childhood are inefficient and damaging. I, personally, prefer to see childhood by merely one trait: learning.
If you look at how children play, they do so to learn. Their goal in play is not to torment mommy and daddy into buying them larger quantities of fancier toys. Play is a beautiful and wonderfully efficient mechanism that combines positive emotional reinforcement to acquired knowledge. Kicking a ball a long distance gives the actor a sense of pride or accomplishment that accompanies the knowledge of how to maximize the efficiency of acting upon your physical environment, however that lesson may be an equally profound learning experience if the actor were to kick the ball into a hornets' nest. The same valued learning is the reason we go to school. I will, however, impose a distinction at this point between learning and education. To learn is to adopt knowledge, whereas an education is a systematic approach toward inserting knowledge into the learner. My syntax should give you very little doubt as to which method I prefer and which I would exercise caution towards.
This brings up a socially demeaning concept though. When have I stopped learning? I love to learn. I love to discover things. I love reading books and experimenting and talking things out between friends. I have never abandoned a desire to learn things which, by my definition, must make me a child. But I've already been there, and I came to the conclusion that I've never left childhood. I was sitting in the bath the other day, examining myself (visually, thank you), to discover that I have chest hair. This is nothing new, I've had chest hair for years. But it seemed odd, somehow foreign. I look different, but I don't feel different. Inside, I'm the same person I was when I was ten, and somewhere in time I got big and grew hair. The child is never gone. I don't care what all of those discordant 60's folk tunes say, you never stop being a child. It's the same conundrum that accompanies birthdays. You watch the seconds pass from one day into the next and all of a sudden you are legally able to drink alcohol without the supervision of a parent or guardian. In that one second it is highly unlikely that your body or mind matured to a point that rendered you incapable the prior second and prepared in the next, yet that is the way we distinguish age in our society: through these rites of passage. The same goes for New Year's Day as well. A ball dropping signifies the infancy of a new year, in which case the entire planet undergoes a superficial baptism that will be soiled shortly after the third bottle of champagne is spilled. Such is the consequence for creating artificial boundaries of time. We are not satisfied to let the river flow into the sea, instead we need to dredge the land into a canal that functions by a segmented system of locks.
In the end, it helps to stop making distinctions between childhood and adulthood, as well as abandon the implied superiority of one over the other. For lack of a better word, I still see myself as that child, but I never felt like a child when I would have been considered one. I never felt myself pertaining to the negative connotations of childhood. In that case I would rather just embrace self. When we begin to tear down these notions of superiority through chronology we open ourselves up to learning from those younger than us. The lessons can be as simple as the culinary delight of mixing yogurt and peanut butter, or as profound as learning when to stop being a fascist disciplinarian.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Insightfulness
For many regular M&M readers, the blog is a healthy way to avoid work. Situated on our desktops, only a mouse click away, it provides us with a welcome distraction from what we get paid (or get degrees) to do. However, despite the hours that I've probably dumped into reading and writing on here in short spurts while the work clock is ticking over the last 6 months (yes, we've been online that long!), I've always felt that it actually improves my productivity to have a little online sanctuary like this. That's right. Being able to get away for a few minutes every hour or so is refreshing and allows me - and I hope all of you - to return to the regularly scheduled program with new energy, focus, and insight.
A fascinating article in this week's The New Yorker is such a wonderful validation of the above premise that I have to share the insight on these pages, the very source of my productive distraction. "The Eureka Hunt" examines how and why epiphanies strike us at the neurological level, and it reveals some very interesting things about the way we process "ah-ha!" moments. In a nutshell: epiphanies are a different breed of idea than one arrived at through concerted effort. We don't consciously produce them; they just seem to arrive like lighting bolts, and when they do, there is a sense of metaphysical certitude that they are correct. They don't need to be fact checked - we already know they are right, even as they are just emerging from the electrical storm of our brains.
Most of our rational, linear thought functions come from the left hemisphere of the brain. (I hope we get some comments on this from our resident neuroscientist Ben - I'm getting all this from one article!) Since much of rational thought and language processing originates here, people with damage to the right hemisphere can often seemingly function just fine. But when researchers look closer, it becomes clear that, despite functional use of language, reasoning skills, etc., those with right lobe damage suffer from an inability to read nuance into words and into abstract problems. To really get a metaphor (or a subtle joke), you have to have communication across the corpus callosum. And this abstract interpretive ability is precisely the engine behind insight. In fact, if people try to verbalize what they're thinking in the act of trying to solve a word puzzle, an act that will result in a minor epiphany when the answer comes to you, they do significantly poorer at solving the problem (a phenomenon called "verbal overshadowing"). In other words, focusing entirely with your logical mind on a problem stifles the insight that can crack the code.
A number of recent papers, drawing on experimental research using EEG and fMRI scans of subjects' brains as they attempt to solve riddles, show that very specific cortical areas light up when a "Eureka!" moment is involved. The basic finding is this: the left brain will process a problem as it does - linearly, logically - but the remote association that provides insight originates in the right hemisphere. Thus, if someone concentrates really hard on a problem without relaxing their minds a bit to allow the quiet right lobe to have its occasional say, their chances of genuine creative insight are considerably diminished. This finding, researchers say, is a problem for the stimulant-addicted academic community (stimulants encourage left brain concentration). Relaxation, then, is the key to epiphany.
I've always done my best cerebration at three times: while walking, while in the shower, and early in the morning, just after waking up. Amazingly, researchers have identified both the early morning and hot showers as common triggers for insight. (The positive mental effects of late night neighborhood strolls will certainly be discovered someday.) So next time you're stuck on something, put down the book and hop in the shower. (A coincidence that Archimedes was in the bath at the time of his insight?)
Einstein came up with his most brilliant ideas in moments of insight, not in front of the chalk board doing equations. Richard Feynman, Nobel-winning physicist, always came up with his greatest insights at the topless bar, where he would begin to shape his new ideas mathematically on his napkin. Henri Poincare's seminal reinterpretation of Euclidian geometry came while he was stepping onto a bus. Of course, these stories aren't to say that these famous people hadn't been deeply contemplating their problems well before the koan was answered; in fact, this is why scientists suggest that epiphanies come with a sense of certitude - the left hemisphere has already done the math, it just couldn't come up with the precise solution.
So, good M&M readers, a bit of validation for the day dreaming that has brought you here today. Next time you get distracted and your mind wanders, let it.
A fascinating article in this week's The New Yorker is such a wonderful validation of the above premise that I have to share the insight on these pages, the very source of my productive distraction. "The Eureka Hunt" examines how and why epiphanies strike us at the neurological level, and it reveals some very interesting things about the way we process "ah-ha!" moments. In a nutshell: epiphanies are a different breed of idea than one arrived at through concerted effort. We don't consciously produce them; they just seem to arrive like lighting bolts, and when they do, there is a sense of metaphysical certitude that they are correct. They don't need to be fact checked - we already know they are right, even as they are just emerging from the electrical storm of our brains.
Most of our rational, linear thought functions come from the left hemisphere of the brain. (I hope we get some comments on this from our resident neuroscientist Ben - I'm getting all this from one article!) Since much of rational thought and language processing originates here, people with damage to the right hemisphere can often seemingly function just fine. But when researchers look closer, it becomes clear that, despite functional use of language, reasoning skills, etc., those with right lobe damage suffer from an inability to read nuance into words and into abstract problems. To really get a metaphor (or a subtle joke), you have to have communication across the corpus callosum. And this abstract interpretive ability is precisely the engine behind insight. In fact, if people try to verbalize what they're thinking in the act of trying to solve a word puzzle, an act that will result in a minor epiphany when the answer comes to you, they do significantly poorer at solving the problem (a phenomenon called "verbal overshadowing"). In other words, focusing entirely with your logical mind on a problem stifles the insight that can crack the code.
A number of recent papers, drawing on experimental research using EEG and fMRI scans of subjects' brains as they attempt to solve riddles, show that very specific cortical areas light up when a "Eureka!" moment is involved. The basic finding is this: the left brain will process a problem as it does - linearly, logically - but the remote association that provides insight originates in the right hemisphere. Thus, if someone concentrates really hard on a problem without relaxing their minds a bit to allow the quiet right lobe to have its occasional say, their chances of genuine creative insight are considerably diminished. This finding, researchers say, is a problem for the stimulant-addicted academic community (stimulants encourage left brain concentration). Relaxation, then, is the key to epiphany.
I've always done my best cerebration at three times: while walking, while in the shower, and early in the morning, just after waking up. Amazingly, researchers have identified both the early morning and hot showers as common triggers for insight. (The positive mental effects of late night neighborhood strolls will certainly be discovered someday.) So next time you're stuck on something, put down the book and hop in the shower. (A coincidence that Archimedes was in the bath at the time of his insight?)
Einstein came up with his most brilliant ideas in moments of insight, not in front of the chalk board doing equations. Richard Feynman, Nobel-winning physicist, always came up with his greatest insights at the topless bar, where he would begin to shape his new ideas mathematically on his napkin. Henri Poincare's seminal reinterpretation of Euclidian geometry came while he was stepping onto a bus. Of course, these stories aren't to say that these famous people hadn't been deeply contemplating their problems well before the koan was answered; in fact, this is why scientists suggest that epiphanies come with a sense of certitude - the left hemisphere has already done the math, it just couldn't come up with the precise solution.
So, good M&M readers, a bit of validation for the day dreaming that has brought you here today. Next time you get distracted and your mind wanders, let it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
