Off the Desktop

The Jed Clampett Test

New arrival to the Pittsburgh blogging scene, Pinky, recently posted about a visit by literary critic/lawyer Stanley Fish. An interesting write up, and it made me think about things that I barely understand, especially literary criticism.

I also thought about the realm of literary criticism when I saw an article on technology by Anne Galloway. Galloway posted an abstract of a paper she would be giving. I almost got what she was saying about the relationship of technologies to our everyday life. Then I was laid low by the following:

This is most troublesome when we consider the sometimes fine line between the liberating potential of the carnivalesque and the oppressive tactics of the spectacular—to name just two recurring themes in our myths of pervasive computing.

I don't get what she's saying. I might get what she's saying. Maybe I should get what she's saying.

How to judge and whether to trust literary critics, fast-talkers, intellectuals, and rhetoriticians made me think of one of my favorite characters, the Beverly Hillbillies' Jed Clampett. Jed had a load of common sense and mother wit, and never let things get by him.

Literary critics sometimes remind me of Phil Silvers' character Honest John Shifty Shafer trying to put one by Jed.

If Jed needed to know something, he'd find out. He was hardly ever bamboozled by fast talkers, socialites, and big city bankers. When I hear a literary critic talk I sometimes wonder if they, like Shifty Shafer, would pass the Jed Clampett test.

Remember this is the Jed Clampett test, not the . . .

Granny test - she'd fill Stanley Fish's yankee behind with buck shot (or perhaps the rock salt with which Jed replaced the buckshot) before he could begin his rhetoric-in';

Jethro test - It wouldn't take Jethro too long to become a deconstructionist along with being a short order cook/brain surgeon/secret agent;

Elly Mae test - Disappointed they aren't literary critters;

Milburn Drysdale - No money in the humanities;

Miss Jane Hathaway - Maybe she'd understand it, but she sure wouldn't be able to explain it to Jed.

I tend to think if it were worth understanding, Jed would understand it. He'd furrow his brow, use a down-home metaphor, and a light would come to his eyes. "Displacing the terms of opposition -- the dickens you say."

Beer Me

Pop City just published a story I wrote on local brewers. Scott Smith and Tom Pastorius are very admirable fellows who pursued and attained the dream of owning a brewery. Here's to dreamers!

I Found It in the Sunday Papers

Bloggers Organize -- What if Jane Jacobs had a blog?
Nature in the City -- New York's High Line remains as a tribute to nature's regenerative powers.
Beckett -- A centenary tribute to Samuel Beckett, Joyce stenographer, writer of Waiting for Godot. I have no idea what it means.
Tim Menees leaves Post-Gazette. -- Menee's was the P-G's boomer cartoonist. Not as prolific as Rob Rogers. A little bit more acerbic. I can't think of Allegheny County row officers without thinking of Menees' monikers, Clerk of Quartz, Lamplighter, and Profanitary. I also loved his drawings of State Store officials with Kaiser Wilhelm helmets.

His drawings always seemed to hint that they might at any moment fugue into Ralph Steadman-style chaos. Will miss seeing his words and pictures in the P-G. He's a multi-talented person, though, and I'm sure he'll be turning up all over the place.

(Oedipal) Dream Date

Saw this ad for a dating service in yesterday's paper: "Modern love means your boyfriend graduated the same year as your son." I know the point is to get everyone to loosen up, but my mind couldn't help but complete the picture: "Maybe it means your boyfriend is your son. Maybe your "boyfriend" was in some way responsible for what happened to your husband. Maybe this brings him such pain that he claws his eyes out. Maybe . . . eeeagh." Anyway, I think you could write a nice little blurb for a TV sitcom: "Accidental encounters lead to disagreement with father, swimmingly good arrangements with mother. Hilarity ensues."

What Was I Thinking?

This New York Times editorial expresses some of my feelings about the Lawrence Summers Problem.

Whatever Dr. Summers was doing at the conference, it had nothing to do with serious intellectual inquiry. "I don't think anybody actually has a clue" was one operative phrase. "I don't remember who had told me" was another. It was every woman's nightmare of what a university president thinks privately about equal opportunity.

Granted we should be open. I even think positive inquiry can start with "I don't remember who had told me." I think the problem, though, lies in Summers' arrogance and bullying built on a foundation of half-baked assumptions.

An article in the Boston Globe made me think that Summers' seemingly off-the-cuff statements reflect not a critical and open mind, but a powerful crackpot, according to Harvard physics professor Daniel S. Fisher:

''Several years of Summers' pushing for grandiose schemes, emphasis on hype over substance, and remarkably incompetent 'planning' by . . . task forces, have led to massive chaos and disillusionment," he wrote in an e-mail.

Fisher said he thinks Summers has been uninterested in true dialogue about the future of science at Harvard, even on the proposed new campus in Allston, which the president wants to focus on science. Fisher said that what passes for science planning under Summers is as phony as creationism passed off as science.

If Harvard fired Summers, though, that would look like a PC witch hunt, like that performed on Eason Jordan. Better if a chastened and humble Lawrence Summers remained as president. Then again if he is chastened and humble would he remain Lawrence Summers.

I'm not sure why the Summers story appeals to me right now. Something to do with understanding those who hold power. Surely the transition we're making in regards to sex roles has something to do with it. The whole emergence thing, political attacks coming from left field, as it were, makes this a fascinating story.

Some Other Things to Think About

I try to remember a lot of things, but just as likely I'll forget, and it's a good thing because forgetting is a great defense mechanism. But here's a bit of reblogging in case I forget some of my current fascinations.

No doubt we'll see a lost of "Best of . . ." lists at the end of the year. This list attempts to compile the greatest equations ever. I'm not sure if there's a certain snobbery embedded within the idea, a certain elitism, that if something can't be expressed mathematically, that it can't be encoded and decoded by an elite, it shouldn't be worth considering. But some of the equations like "1 + 1 =2" are simple enough, and simplicity and practicality were some of the considerations that Robert Crease makes for in this Physics Web article. He also mentions the "sunrise equation" which I hope to include in a blog pilgrim entry.

Roger Bailey nominated the "sunrise equation" cos(time) = -tan(lat) x tan(dec), which identifies the time of sunrise or sunset as a function of latitude and solar declination. This, he pointed out, is "fundamental to our sense of time" and it "fits on a T-shirt".

A Boing Boing entry on logic gates built with legos somehow seems useful, but I'm not sure why.

I was looking up other things, when I found this link on 18th Century hacking. Apparently postage was relatively expensive and the cost was borne by the receiver of the message. The workaround was for the sender to somehow send a coded message to the receiver, and the receiver could refuse the letter, and still receive the message. They didn't have Captain Crunch whistles back then but the same ideas applied.

If you like the idea of extreme recycling, check out this Mother Earth News article.

I got listed among other Pittsburgh bloggers on Three Rivers Online. What I like best is that my weblog is categorized as "Personal Science." I'm still getting my head around that. Even though I'm not sure what it means, I will aspire to it.

I See by the Papers . . .

that those old 20th century German scientists, Albert Einstein and Kurt Gödel used to be great chums. The Chronicle article is an interesting, if somewhat choppy read, by Palle Yourgrau. The gist of the article is that Einstein and Gödel used to walk home together from work, and if only we were a little bird following along on the conversation, we'd be much more enlightened about the nature of time.

The P-G's Gretchen McKay writes about new and used vintage appliances. The emphasis is more on buying than on recycling, remaking, or hacking, so I'm not sure if the story is more counter-revolutionary than revolutionary.

Speaking of counter-revolutionary, establishment spokesman Christopher Hitchens reviews books on the history of hippies. Given that he was reviewing three books and only had a couple of thousand words to work with, I shouldn't have been surprised that he gave short shrift to the subject. But the time Hitchens spent making snarky asides and talking about corrupt communes could have been better spent outlining some of the challenges that the people formerly known as hippies faced — and still face.

Of course, the true revolutionaries are in the White House and are putting together the modern day equivalent of street theater. The P-G's Ann McFeatters, who's usually fairly even-handed, has a blistering criticism on what some might call — me included — an attempt to swindle the American public.

Are You Mental?

Maybe you're just a mentalist. The New York Times tells the story of Marc Salem, a man who turned a mental quirk into a side career and eventually into a Broadway show. Salem calls himself an entertainer and not a mentalist or a psychic, but what he does — predict actions, uncover information, read the serial numbers off of distant currency — is approach the world in an unconventional fashion.

he had a certain hypersensitivity that manifested itself in a certain obsession with patterns and empathy to people's emotions. (He blames the same condition for his father's premature death at 41. "He did not know how to have what would you call clinical distance," he said.)

The sixth sense, as I've heard elsewhere, is just a combination of information our other five senses can't use. I'd say there might not be much use for Salem's work beyond the stage, but we've been at war for more than a year based on body language.

Salem, a director of research for the Children's Television Workshop, also has some interesting things to say about entertainment and education.

"One of McLuhan's quotes — such a quotable guy — was anyone who thinks there's a difference between education and entertainment doesn't know the first thing about either," Mr. Salem said. "Because all entertainment, whether you want it to or not, has a curriculum."

Find out more about Marc Salem here.

What's Weirder?

Got a link from boingboing with Terry Zwigoff on how radio killed old time music. But it also started out innocently enough. My own search for old radio commercials led me to directions in radio that are weird enough for me. I just found an aircheck from Pittsburgh's KQV circa August 1968.

Digital Reproduction

On the way to looking up other things I found this online copy of The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin's inquiry into what it means to have unlimited capabilities in producing, distributing, and owning artifacts.

"Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign."

Paul Valery

Feel free to copy the link.

Off the Desktop

I need to get a few links off my desktop. Here goes:
Story on convergence,

that is, the convergence of journalism and political lobbying. Washington Monthly covers James K. Glassman of Tech Central Station. I don't think Glassman is as without peer or precedent as the article makes him out to be. One thing to take away from the article about this author of The Dow at 36,000 is that you can be extremely wrong -- nearly to the point of fraud -- and land on your feet as long as you're optimistic.

Architectural critic Paul Goldberger on cell phones and a sense of place. Pay attention, people.

A snarky article on the Beatles. The reviewer seemed a little bit younger than me, so he probably didn't get the sense of how gutsy the Beatles were for the time. Actually, neither the Backstreet Boys nor 'nSync would have taken the liberties the Beatles did, but they can go a little farther because of the Beatles.

I hope to read and follow the directions on this before I load Panther, OS 10.3.

I'm not sure what photo I want to transfer to a canvas, but I do want to do it.