The Daily Funnel

The Task

2010-12-11T06:55:00.000-08:00

1) From "Pirke Avos," Chapter 2, Mishnas 20-21

Rabbi Tarfon said: The day is short, the task is great, the laborers are lazy, the wage is abundant and the master is urgent.

He used to say: It is not incumbent upon you to finish the task. Yet, you are not free to desist from it. If you have studied much in the Torah much reward will be given you, for faithful is your employer who shall pay you the reward of your labor. And know that the reward for the righteous shall be in the time to come.

2) From "The Middle Years," by Henry James (1893)

“A second chance — that’s the delusion. There never was to be but one. We work in the dark — we do what we can — we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art."

REPOST: A nervous wild thing

2010-07-30T08:22:00.000-07:00

1. From "The Fox," by D.H. Lawrence (1921)

"She lowered her eyes, and suddenly saw the fox. He was looking up at her. His chin was pressed down, and his eyes were looking up. They met his eyes. And he knew her. She was spellbound — she knew he knew her. So he looked into her eyes, and her soul failed her. He knew her, and he was not daunted.

"She struggled, confusedly she came to herself, and saw him making off, with slow leaps over some fallen boughs — slow, impudent jumps. Then he glanced over his shoulder, and ran smoothly away. She saw his brush held smooth like a feather, she saw his white buttocks twinkle. And he was gone, softly, soft as the wind."

2: From “Dictation,” by Cynthia Ozick, 2008

“From the alley below her bedroom window — the flittering panes that sheathed her in a dusky mist of almost-light — Lilian heard a sharp clatter: a metal trash barrel overturned. The fox again, scavenging. A sly fox out of a fable, a fox that belonged in a wood—but there are sightings of foxes in the outlying streets of London, and once, coming home in the winter night from her mother’s, she had glimpsed a brown streak under the lamppost; and then it was gone. And another time, in the early morning — the woman and the animal, both of them solitary, two stragglers separated from the pack, transfixed, staring, panicked into immobility. The fox’s eyes were oddly lit, as if glittering pennies had got into its sockets; its ears stood straight up; its white tail hung low, like a shamed flag; its flanks trembled. A nervous wild thing. It twitched the upper muscle of its long snout—she saw the zigzag glint of teeth, the dangerous grin of ambush. How beautiful it was!"

3: Wes Anderson on Fresh Air, Nov. 23, 2009

“Meryl Streep, she told me that she had a moment just before we started recording this where she saw a fox on her doorstep in England, and the fox looked up and saw her, and they just stared at each other for five minutes. And she sort of had this sort of mesmerizing moment with this animal, and she said she sort of thought about that.”

March toward a goal

2010-07-28T06:51:00.000-07:00

1) From “November,” by Gustave Flaubert (1910)

“What are we supposed to do here on earth? What should we dream of? What should we build? Tell me, then, you who find life entertaining, you who march towards a goal and torment yourself to achieve some particular aim!”

2) From “The Boy with the Thorn in his Side,” by The Smiths (1985)

“And when you want to live, how do you start? Where do you go? Who do you need to know?”

Patchwork

2010-07-21T07:05:00.001-07:00

1) From “Strait is the Gate,” by Andre Gide (1909)

“I have torn up all the pages that seemed to me to be well written. (I know what I mean by this.) I ought to have torn up all those in which there was any question of him. I ought to have torn them all up. I could not.

“And already, because I tore up those few pages, I had a little feeling of pride… a pride that I should laugh at if my heart were not so sick.

“It really seemed as though I had done something meritorious, and as though what I had destroyed had been of some importance!”

2) From “The Way of Man,” by Martin Buber (1950)

“A hasid of the Rabbi of Lublin once fasted from one Sabbath to the next. On Friday afternoon he began to suffer such cruel thirst that he thought he would die. He saw a well, went up to it, and prepared to drink. But instantly he realized that because of the one brief hour he had still to endure, he was about to destroy the work of the entire week. He did not drink and went away from the well. Then he was touched by a feeling of pride for having passed this difficult test. When he became aware of it, he said to himself, ‘Better I go and drink then let my heart fall prey to pride.’ He went back to the well, but just as he was going to bend down to draw water, he noticed that his thirst had disappeared. When the Sabbath had begun, he entered his teacher’s house. ‘Patchwork!’ the rabbi called to him, as he crossed the treshhold.”

A similar vibe

2010-05-08T09:36:00.000-07:00

1) “Reelin’ In The Years,” by Steely Dan (1972)

2) “The Boys Are Back In Town,” by Thin Lizzy (1976)

3) “So It Goes,” by Nick Lowe (1976)

One's best powers

2010-05-01T05:33:00.000-07:00

1) From “The Hound of Heaven,” by Francis Thompson (1893)

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat--and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet--
"All things betray thee, who betrayest Me."

2) Saul Bellow, in a letter to Alfred Kazin, (March 25, 1944)

“The rest is a hash, a mishmash for which I deserve to be mercilessly handled. But it’s so hard now to find a way to use one’s best powers. What can be done? Isaac [Rosenfeld] labors with the same difficulty. He has not reached the level where he can thunder. Like myself he is still somewhere in the trees. In the trees one rustles. You know whence thunder comes.”

3) From “Hounds of Love,” by Kate Bush (1985)

It’s in the trees
It’s coming

When I child
running in the night
afraid of what might be
hiding in the dark
hiding in the street
and of what was following me

A life of its own

2010-04-27T06:07:00.000-07:00

1) David Byrne on Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information (2003)

"I began this project making fun of the iconography of PowerPoint, which wasn't hard to do, but soon realized that the pieces were taking on lives of their own. This whirlwind of arrows, pointing everywhere and nowhere — each one color-coded to represent God knows what aspects of growth, market share, or regional trends — ends up capturing the excitement and pleasant confusion of the marketplace, the everyday street, personal relationships, and the simultaneity of multitasking. Does it really do all that? If you imagine you are inside there it does."

2) Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal on Power Point (2010)

“When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war."

The amazing thing

2010-04-19T04:47:00.000-07:00

1) From “Solar,” by Ian McEwan (2010)

“The silence in the room was not so much stunned as embarrassed. Meredith stared helplessly as Beard brought his fist down hard on the table. ‘So come on. Tell me. Let’s hear you apply Heisenberg to ethics. Right plus wrong over the square roots of two. What the hell does it mean? Nothing!'

“Barry Pickett intervened to move the discussion on.

“That was an isolated discordant note. What was memorable and surprising came every evening, usually late on, in the bright tones of a marching brass band or the sound of massed voices in unison, elated in common purpose and obliterating for a while all disappointment, all bitterness. Beard would not have believed it possible that he would be in a room drinking with so many seized by the same particular assumption, that is was art in its highest forms — poetry, sculpture, dance, abstract music, conceptual art — that would lift climate change as a subject, glid it, palpate it, reveal all the horror and lost beauty and awesome threat and inspire the public to take thought, take action of deamd it of others. He sat in silent wonder. Idealism was so alien to his nature that he could raise an objection.”

2) From “Art Made at the Speed of the Internet: Don’t Say ‘Geek’; Say ‘Collaborator’” by Randy Kennedy in the New York Times (April 18, 2010)

“When Robert Rauschenberg and a buttoned-down Bell Labs engineer named Billy Kluver began thinking, in the mid-1960s, about ways that people from the world of technology could help artists make art, Mr. Kluver surveyed the mighty gulf between the two groups and almost thought better of the idea. ‘I was scared,’ he said once in an interview. ‘The amazing thing was that it’s possible for artists and scientists to talk together at all.’”

A leafy afterlife

2010-04-13T10:02:00.001-07:00

1) “Red Virigina Creeper,” by Edvard Munch (1898-1900)

2) “Creeper,” by John Updike (December 2008)

With what stoic delicacy does
Virginia creeper let go:
the feeblest tug brings it down
a sheaf of leaves kite-high,
as if to say, To live is good
but not to live—to be pulled down
with scarce a ripping sound,
still flourishing, still
stretching toward the sun—
is good also, all photosynthesis
abandoned, quite quits. Next spring
the hairy rootlets left unpulled
snake out a leafy afterlife
up that same smooth-barked oak.

You are in it

2010-04-12T09:10:00.001-07:00

1) From the episode “The Gold Violin,” Mad Men (Sept. 7, 2008)

image by Dyna Moe

Ken:

“I don’t think it’s supposed to be explained.”

Sal:

“I’m an artist, okay? It must mean something.”

Ken:

“Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe you’re just supposed to experience it. Cause when you look at it, you do feel something. Right? It’s like looking into something very… deep. You could fall in.”

Sal:

“That’s true… Did someone tell you that?”

Ken:

“How could someone tell you that?”

Harry:

“This is pointless. Let’s go.”

2) From “Escape Artist,” by John Lahr (April 12, 2010)

"The Red Studio," by Henri Matisse

"For a month in 1949, Rothko went to the Museum of Modern Art to stand in front of Matisse’s 'The Red Studio,' which the museum had newly acquired. Looking at it, he said, 'you became that color, you became totally saturated with it.' Rothko turned his transcendental experience into an artistic strategy; his work demanded surrender to the physical sensation of color. 'Compressing his feelings into a few zones of color,' Rosenberg wrote, 'he was at once dramatist, actor, and audience of his self-negation.' Rothko escaped from the hell of personal chaos into the paradise of color. 'To paint a small picture is to place yourself outside your experience,' he said. 'However, you paint the large picture, you are in it.'"

Paler and Paler

2010-04-04T02:00:00.000-07:00

1) From “The Long Goodbye,” directed by Robert Altman (1973)

2) From “Friends,” by C.K. Williams, Collected Poems (2007)

My friend Dave knew a famous writer who used to have screw-
drivers for breakfast.
He'd start with half gin and half juice and the rest of the day he'd
sit with the same glass
in the same chair and add gin. The drink would get paler and
paler, finally he'd pass out.
Every day was the same. Sometimes when I'm making milk for
the baby, cutting the thick,
sweet formula from the can with sterilized water, the baby, hun-
gry again, still hungry,
rattling his rickety, long-legged chair with impatience, I think of
that story.
Dave says the writer could talk like a god. He'd go on for hours on
the same thought.
In his books, though, you'd never find out why he drove so hard
toward his death.

That notoriously uncomfortable bed

2010-04-03T17:12:00.001-07:00

1) From “On Self Respect,” by Joan Didion (1961)

"To do without self-respect, on the other hand, is to be an unwilling audience of one to an interminable documentary that deals one’s failings, both real and imagined, with fresh footage spliced in for every screening. There’s the glass you broke in anger, there’s the hurt on X’s face; watch now, this next scene, the night Y came back from Houston, see how you muff this one. To live without self-respect is to lie awake some night, beyond the reach of warm milk, the Phenobarbital, and the sleeping hand on the coverlet, counting up the sins of commissions and omission, the trusts betrayed, the promises subtly broken, the gifts irrevocably wasted through sloth or cowardice, or carelessness. However long we postpone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously uncomfortable bed, the one we make ourselves. Whether or not we sleep in it depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves."

2) From “Anything You Want,” by Spoon (2001)

You're at your best you got the guns turned a hundred eighty degrees
and finding out if it adds all up right.
We go through all the same lines or sell out to appease,
but go to sleep in a bed of lies.
I made my own more than once or twice.

The Dance

2010-03-31T15:09:00.000-07:00

1) "Death and Love," by Edvard Munch (1894)

2) "Gaucho," Steely Dan, designed by Suzanne Walsh (1980)

3) "Blue Tango," by Jules Feiffer (2004)

Learn its language and speak it

2010-03-29T16:50:00.000-07:00

1) From “Intuition,” by Feist (2007)

And in came a heatwave/
A merciful save/
You choose, you chose/
Poetry over prose

A map is more unreal
than where you've been
or how you feel.

2) From “70 Million” by Hold Your Horses! (2010)

And it hardly looked like a novel at all.
I hardly look like a hero at all.
And I’m sorry you didn’t publish this.
And you were white as snow. I was white as a sheet.

When you came down in this black dress.
In your mom’s black maternity dress.
And so,
though it hardly looked like a novel at all,
and the city treats me, it treats me to you,
and a cup of coffee for you.
I should learn its language and speak it to you.

3) From "Ever Greenberg," by Richard Brody, The Front Row (March 29, 2010)

"There are two ideal durations for a feature film: sixty-three minutes, which is an hour of setup and a brief tag of a wrap-up; and three hours, of which the first hour of setup is followed by two of working-out. The ninety-minute length (or its modern variety, the two-hour version, which includes more backstory) is constructed on the artifice of a plot mechanism that brings lots of plot threads together in an accelerating dénouement. It worked in an age of abstraction—an age when movies themselves, made largely on studio sets with the help of an unprecedented battery of theatrical paraphernalia, achieved an extraordinary simulation of specifics through remarkably artificial means. The stories that studios set in motion were equally abstract, relying on situations that had the built-in necessities of social conventions that themselves ran along more or less unchallenged. Classic Hollywood storytelling bought its efficiency at the price of all it excluded or filtered out, and its ingeniously constructed stories were less the cause of that exclusion than the effect of a society that was hardly inclusive.

"Romantic comedy has become boiled down to its essence: two people are thrown together and sometimes it’s funny."

All the ones who really love you

2010-03-24T02:00:00.000-07:00

1) "When You Are Old," by William Butler Yeats (1893)

When you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face among a crowd of stars.

2) From “Young Bride,” by Midlake (2006)

My young bride,
Why are your shoulders like that
of a tired old woman?
Like a tired old woman?

My young bride,
why are your fingers like that
of the hedge in winter?
Of the hedge in winter?

Polonaise in winter
Snowshoes and hunters
Carry the goods in for you
Darkness and forest
Grant you the longest
Face made for porridge and stew

My young bride,
why aren't you moving at all,
helps to make the day seem shorter
helps to make the day seem shorter

My young bride,
Why aren't you keeping with you
all the ones who really love you,
all the ones who really love you.

We can change the world, my love

2010-03-23T06:00:00.000-07:00

1) From “Peace Like a River,” by Paul Simon (1972)

Peace like a river ran through the city
long past the midnight curfew.
We sat starry-eyed.
We were satisfied.
And I remember misinformation followed us like a plague.
Nobody knew from time to time
if the plans were changed.

You can beat us with wires.
You can beat us with chains.
You can run out your rules,
but you know you can't outrun the history train.
I seen a glorious day.

2) From “Neighborhood,” by David Byrne (2001)

The people feel so good.
Say boy, say girl.
All in my neighborhood.
Say boy, say girl.

We got peace, love and monkey business
Gonna reach the very top
There'll be pride, hope and Sunday mornings
All the things I'm thinking of.
We could change the world, my love.
In the night while we are sleeping
I was in my neighborhood.

But it's coming

2010-03-22T08:03:00.000-07:00

1) From “Pirate Jenny,” sung by Nina Simone (1964)

You people can watch while I'm scrubbing these floors
And I'm scrubbin the floors while youre gawking
Maybe once ya tip me and it makes ya feel swell
In this crummy southern town
In this crummy old hotel
But you'll never guess to who youre talkin.
No. you couldn't ever guess to who youre talkin.

Then one night there's a scream in the night
And you'll wonder who could that have been
And you see me kinda grinnin while I'm scrubbin
And you say, "What's she got to grin?"
I'll tell you.

There's a ship
The black freighter
With a skull on its masthead
Will be coming in

2) From “Keep the Car Running,” by The Arcade Fire (2007)

There's a weight that's pressing down
Late at night you can hear the sound
Even the noise you make when you sleep
Can't swim across a river so deep
They know my name cause I told it to them
But they don't know where
and they don't know when
It's coming, when it's coming

There's a fear I keep so deep
Knew its name since before I could speak
They know my name cause I told it to them
But they don't know where and they don't know
When its coming, oh when but its coming

Keep the car running

In and of itself

2010-03-16T13:41:00.000-07:00

1.a) Fade out to “Your Love is Like the Morning Sun,” by Al Green (1973)

Love is the morning sun
shining so brightly
it’s me that’s missing your love

I’m tired of being alone
I’m still in love with you
Let’s stay together

1.b) First six tracks of “Al Green’s Greatest Hits,” by Al Green (1975)

1. "Tired of Being Alone"
2. "Call Me (Come Back Home)"
3. "I'm Still in Love With You"
4. "Here I Am (Come and Take Me)"
5. "Love and Happiness"
6. "Let's Stay Together"

2.a) Third verse of “The Beast and Dragon, Adored,” by Spoon (2005)

Where did you get for so long
I been learning my scene
I been watching my friends move away
I summon my love back to me
And I went down by the seawall
That's when I knew, knew they never got you

2.b) Side B tracklisting of “Gimme Fiction,” by Spoon (2005)

7. "I Summon You"
8. "The Infinite Pet"
9. "Was It You?"
10. “They Never Got You"
11. "Merchants of Soul"

On dark invisible wings

2010-03-10T19:41:00.000-08:00

1) From “The Blind Assassin” by Margaret Atwood (2000)

“Now she imagines him dreaming. She imagines him dreaming of her, as she is dreaming of him. Through a sky the colour of wet slate they fly toward each other on dark invisible wings, searching, searching, doubling back, drawn by hope and longing, baffled by fear. In their dreams they touch, they intertwine, it’s more like a collision, and that is the end of the flying. They fall to earth, fouled parachutes, botched and cindery angels, love streaming out behind them like torn silk. Enemy groundfire comes up to meet them.”

2) “Define dancing” from “WALL-E” (2008)

As if you had made your life

2010-03-05T08:10:00.000-08:00

1) Final lines of “The Exile’s Return,” by Robert Lowell (1946)

…You will not see
Strutting children or meet
The peg-leg and reproachful chancellor
With a forget-me-not in his button-hole
When the unseasoned liberators roll
Into the Market Square, ground arms before
The Rathaus; but already lily-stands
Burgeon the risen Rhineland, and a rough
Cathedral lifts its eye. Pleasant enough,
Voi ch’entrate, and your life is in your hands.

2) Final paragraph of “The Happiest I’ve Been,” by John Updike (January 3, 1959)

“When we came into the tunnel country, the flicker and hollow amplification stirred Neil awake. He sat up, the mackinaw dropping to his lap, and lit a cigarette. A second after the scratch of his match the moment occurred of which each following moment was a slight diminution, as we made the long irregular descent toward Pittsburgh. There were many reasons for my feeling so happy. We were on our way. I had seen a dawn. This far, Neil could appreciate, I had brought us safely. Ahead, a girl waited who, if I asked, would marry me, but first there was a long trip; many hours and towns interceded between me and that encounter. There was the quality of the 10 a.m. sunlight as it existed in the air ahead of the windshield, filtered by the thin overcast, blessing irresponsibility — you felt you could slice forever through such a cool pure element — and springing, by implying how high these hills had become, a wide spreading pride: Pennsylvania, your state - as if you had made your life. And there was knowing that twice since midnight a person had trusted me enough to fall asleep beside me.”

The space to say whatever I like

2010-03-03T12:41:00.000-08:00

1) From “The Blind Assassin” by Margaret Atwood (2000)

“The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it.”

2) From “Change Clothes” by Jay-Z (2003)

I ain’t a New Jack
nobody gon Wesley Snipe me
It’s less than likely,
move back
Let I breathe
Jedi knight
The more space I get the better I write
Oh, never I write,
but, if,
ever I write
I need the space to say whatever I like.
Now just change clothes, then go.

Hit the soft spot in my heart

2010-02-27T11:27:00.001-08:00

1) From “The Book I Read,” by Talking Heads (1977)

I’m embarrassed to admit it hit the soft spot in my heart
When I found out you wrote the
book I read so

Take my shoulders as they touch your arms I’ve
Got little cold chills but I feel alright the
book I read was in your eyes oh oh

2) From “Fiction,” by Alice Munro (2009)

“Your name?”
“Just Joyce will be fine.”
Her time is passing so quickly.
“You were born in Rough River?”
“No,” says Christie O’Dell with some slight displeasure, or at least some diminishing of cheer. “I did live there for a time. Shall I put the date?”
Joyce retrieves her box. At Le Bon Chocolatier they did sell chocolate flowers, but not lilies. Only roses and tulips. So she had bought tulips, which were not actually unlike lilies. Both bulbs.
“I want to thank you for ‘Kindertotenlieder,’” she says so hastily that she almost swallows the long word. “It means a great deal to me. I brought you a present.”
“Is that a wonderful story.” The saleswoman takes the box. “I’ll just hang on to this.”
“It isn’t a bomb,” says Joyce with a laugh. “It’s chocolate lilies. Actually tulips. They didn’t have lilies so I got tulips, I thought they were the next best thing.”
She notices that the saleswoman is not smiling now but taking a hard look at her. Christie O’Dell says, “Thank you.”
There is not a scrap of recognition in the girl’s face. She doesn’t know Joyce from years ago in Rough River or two weeks ago at the party. You couldn’t even be sure that she had recognized the title of her own story. You would think she had nothing to do with it. As if it was just something she wriggled out of and left on the grass.
Christie O’Dell sits there and writes her name as if that is all the writing she could be responsible for in this world.
“It’s been a pleasure to chat with you,” says the saleswoman, still looking at the box which the girl at Le Bon Chocolatier has fixed with curly yellow ribbon.
Christie O’Dell has raised her eyes to greet the next person in line, and Joyce at last has the sense to move on, before she becomes an object of general amusement and her box, God knows, possibly an object of interest to the police.

Walking up Lonsdale Avenue, walking uphill, she feels flattened, but gradually regains her composure. This might even turn into a funny story that she would tell someday. She wouldn’t be surprised.

Deliberate Deceit

2010-02-13T09:39:00.000-08:00

1) From “Enduring Love” by Ian McEwan (1997)

“I spent the afternoon in the reading room of the London Library, looking up some of Darwin’s more obscure contemporaries. I wanted to write about the death of anecdote and narrative in science, my idea being that Darwin’s generation was the last to permit itself the luxury of storytelling in published articles. Here was a letter to Nature dated 1904, a contribution to a long-running correspondence about consciousness in animals, in particular whether higher mammals like dogs could be said to have awareness of the consequences of their actions. The writer, one Mr. –––––, has a close friend whose dog favored a particular comfortable chair near the library fire. Mr. ––––– witnessed an occasion after dinner when he and his friend had retired there for a glass of port. The dog was shooed from its chair and the master sat down in its place. After a minute or two sitting in contemplative silence by the fire, the dog went to the door and whined to be let out. Its master obligingly rose and crossed the room, whereupon the pooch darted back and took possession once more of the favored place. For a few seconds it wore about its muzzle a look of undisguised triumph.

“The writer concluded that he dog must have had a plan, a sense of the future, which it attempted to shape by the practice of a deliberate deceit. And its pleasure in success must have been mediated by an act of memory. What I liked here was how the power and attractions of narrative had clouded judgment. By any standards of scientific inquiry, the story, however charming, was nonsense. No theory evinced, no terms defined, a meaningless sample of one, a laughable anthropomorphism. It was easy to construe the account in a way that would make it compatible with an automaton, or a creature doomed to inhabit a perpetual present: ousted from its chair, it takes the next best place, where it basks (rather than schemes) until it becomes aware of a need to urinate, then goes to the door as it has been trained to do, suddenly notices that the prized position is vacant again, forgets for the moment the signal from its bladder, and returns to take possession, the look of triumph being nothing more than the immediate expression of pleasure, or a projection in the mind of the observer.”

2) Fu Manchu, from Radio Lab (01-25-2010)

“In our last episode of Radiolab, Animal Minds, we asked whether it was possible for one animal to know what is going on in another animal’s mind. For us, it was a really about whether we, as humans, can really share a meaningful moment with an animal. In this podcast, we take that question a step further. Can an animal know what’s in our heads so well that they can manipulate and deceive us? To answer that question, reporter Ben Calhoun took us back to the 1960s to tell the story of a showdown between zookeeper Jerry Stones and a wily orangutan named Fu Manchu. Then, to help us get a grip on the science behind animals and deception, Ben talks to primatologist and orangutan expert Rob Shumaker of the Great Ape Trust.”

Times that we met/ Before we met

2010-01-31T07:03:00.000-08:00

1) From “Where or When” by Rodgers and Hart (1937)

It seems we stood and talked like this before
We looked at each other the same way then
But I can't remember where or when

The clothes you're wearing are the clothes you wore
The smile you are smiling you were smiling then
But I can't remember where or when

Some things that happen for the first time
Seem to be happening again

And so it seems that we have met before
And laughed before and loved before
But who knows where or when?

2) From “The Mystery Zone” by Spoon (2010)

Picture yourself
Set up for good in a whole other life
In the mystery zone

Make us a house
Some far away town
Where nobody will know us well
Where your dad's not around
And all the trouble you look for all your life
You will find it for sure
In the mystery zone

Times that we met
Before we met
Times that we met
We'll go there
To the mystery zone
Ah the mystery zone

Shirt cardboards

2010-01-16T07:35:00.001-08:00

1) From "Franny and Zooey," by J.D. Salinger, (1961)

"With his face in his hands and his handkerchief headgear drooping low over his brow, Zooey sat at Seymour's old desk, inert, but not asleep, for a good twenty minutes. Then, almost in one movement, he removed the support for his face, picked up his cigar, stowed it in his mouth, opened the left-hand bottom drawer of the desk, and took out, using both hands, a seven- or eight-inch-stack of what appeared to be — and were — shirt cardboards. He placed the stack before him on the desk and began to turn the cards over, two or three at a time. His hand stayed only once, really, and then quite briefly.

"The cardboard that he stopped at had been written on in February, 1938. The handwriting, in blue-lead pencil, was his brother Seymour's:

"My twenty-first birthday. Presents, presents, presents. Zooey and the baby, as usual, shopped lower Broadway. They gave me a fine supply of itching powder and a box of three stink bombs. I'm to drop the bombs in the elevator at Columbia or 'someplace very crowded' whenever I get a good chance.

"Several acts of vaudeville tonight for my entertainment. Les and Bessie did a lovely soft-shoe on sand swiped by Boo-Boo from the urn in the lobby. When they were finished, B. and Boo-Boo did a pretty funny imitation of them. Les nearly in tears. The baby sang 'Abdul Abulbul Amir.' Z. did the Will Mahoney exit Les taught him, ran smack into the bookcase and was furious. The twins did B.'s and my old Buck & Bubbles imitation. But to perfection. Marvellous. In the middle of it, the doorman called up on the housephone and asked if anybody was dancing up there. A Mr. Seligman on the fourth—

"There Zooey quit reading. He gave the stack of cardboards a solid-sounding double tap on the desk surface, as one taps a deck of cards, then dropped the stack back into the bottom drawer and closed the drawer."

2) From "The Puttermesser Papers," by Cynthia Ozick, (1997)

"Puttermesser went on studying. In law school they called her a grind, a competitive-compulsive, an egomaniac out for aggrandizement. But ego was no part of it; she was looking solve something, she did not know what. At the back of the linen closet she found a stack of her father's old shirt cardboards (her mother was provident, stingy: in kitchen drawers Puttermesser still discovered folded squares of used ancient waxed paper, million-creased into whiteness, cheese-smelling, nesting small unidentifiable wormlets); so behind the riser pipe in the bathroom Puttermesser kept weeks' worth of Sunday Times crossword puzzles stapled to these laundry boards and worked them indiscriminately. She played chess against herself, and was always victor over the color she had decided to identify with. She organized tort cases on index cards. It was not that she intended to remember everything: situation—it was her tendency to call intellectual problems 'situation' —slipped into her mind like butter into a bottle."

There is, nevertheless, a place where you can find it.

2010-01-14T06:40:00.000-08:00

1) From “The Way of Man,” by Martin Buber (1950)

“Rabbi Bunam used to tell young men who came to him for the first time the story of Rabbi Eizik, son of Rabbi Yekel of Cracow. After many years of great poverty which had never shaken his faith in God, he dreamed someone bade him look for a treasure in Prague, under the bridge which leads to the king’s palace. When the dream recurred a third time, Rabbi Eizik prepared for the journey and set out for Prague. But the bridge was guarded day and night and he did not dare to start digging. Nevertheless he went to the bridge every morning and kept walking around it until evening. Finally the captain of the guards, which had been watching him, asked in a kindly way whether he was looking for something or waiting for somebody. Rabbi Eizik told him of the dream which had brought him here from a faraway country. The captain laughed: ‘And so to please the dream, you poor fellow wore out your shoes to come here! As for having faith in dreams, if I had had it, I should have had to get going when a dream once told me to go to Cracow and dig for treasure under the stove in the room of a Jew— Eizik, son of Yekel, that was the name! Eizik, son of Yekel! I can just imagine what it would be like, how I should have to try every house over there, where one half of the Jews are named Eizik and the other half Yekel!’ And he laughed again. Rabbi Eizik bowed, traveled home, dug up the treasure from under the stove, and built the House of Prayer which is called ‘Reb Eizik Reb Yekel’s Shul.’

“’Take this story to heart,’ Rabbi Bunam used to add, ‘and make what it says your own: There is something you cannot hind anywhere in the world, not even at the zaddik’s, and there is, nevertheless, a place where you can find it.’”

2) From “The Nature and Aim of Fiction,” by Flannery O’Connor, published in “Mystery and Manners” (1969)

“We hear a great deal of lamentation these days about writers having all taken themselves to the colleges and universities where they live decorously instead of going out and getting first hand information about life. The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.”

A Day In/Is The Life

2009-12-25T14:57:00.000-08:00

1. From "Saturday," by Ian McEwan, (2005)

"He closes his eyes. This time there'll be no trouble falling towards oblivion, there's nothing can stop him now. Sleep's no longer a concept, it's a material thing, an ancient means of transport, a softly moving belt, conveying him into Sunday. He fits himself around her, her silk pyjamas, her scent, her warmth, her beloved form, and draws closer to her. Blindly, he kisses her nape. There's always this, is one of his remaining thoughts. And then: there's only this. And at last, faintly, falling: this day's over."

2. From "A Day in the Life," by The Beatles (1967)

Found my way upstairs and had a smoke
And somebody spoke, and I went into a dream
...
Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.

Craftsmanship

2009-12-15T13:06:00.000-08:00

1) The Lacemaker, by Johannes Vermeer, c.1669-1671

2) Louis Vuitton advertisement, c. November 2009

A nervous wild thing

2009-11-26T11:50:00.000-08:00

1: From “Dictation,” by Cynthia Ozick, 2008

“From the alley below her bedroom window — the flittering panes that sheathed her in a dusky mist of almost-light — Lilian heard a sharp clatter: a metal trash barrel overturned. The fox again, scavenging. A sly fox out of a fable, a fox that belonged in a wood—but there are sightings of foxes in the outlying streets of London, and once, coming home in the winter night from her mother’s, she had glimpsed a brown streak under the lamppost; and then it was gone. And another time, in the early morning — the woman and the animal, both of them solitary, two stragglers separated from the pack, transfixed, staring, panicked into immobility. The fox’s eyes were oddly lit, as if glittering pennies had got into its sockets; its ears stood straight up; its white tail hung low, like a shamed flag; its flanks trembled. A nervous wild thing. It twitched the upper muscle of its long snout—she saw the zigzag glint of teeth, the dangerous grin of ambush. How beautiful it was!"

2: Wes Anderson on Fresh Air, Nov. 23, 2009

“Meryl Streep, she told me that she had a moment just before we started recording this where she saw a fox on her doorstep in England, and the fox looked up and saw her, and they just stared at each other for five minutes. And she sort of had this sort of mesmerizing moment with this animal, and she said she sort of thought about that.”

No horror, no misery, and no childhood

2009-10-21T19:37:00.000-07:00

1. "Halley's Comet" by Stanley Kunitz

Miss Murphy in first grade
wrote its name in chalk
across the board and told us
it was roaring down the stormtracks
of the Milky Way at frightful speed
and if it wandered off its course
and smashed into the earth
there'd be no school tomorrow.
A red-bearded preacher from the hills
with a wild look in his eyes
stood in the public square
at the playground's edge
proclaiming he was sent by God
to save every one of us,
even the little children.
"Repent, ye sinners!" he shouted,
waving his hand-lettered sign.
At supper I felt sad to think
that it was probably
the last meal I'd share
with my mother and my sisters;
but I felt excited too
and scarcely touched my plate.
So mother scolded me
and sent me early to my room.
The whole family's asleep
except for me. They never heard me steal
into the stairwell hall and climb
the ladder to the fresh night air.

Look for me, Father, on the roof
of the red brick building
at the foot of Green Street --
that's where we live, you know, on the top floor.
I'm the boy in the white flannel gown
sprawled on this coarse gravel bed
searching the starry sky,
waiting for the world to end.

2. from "The Old Country," by Ethan Coen

"I never met Michael Simkin's parents, though I have a vivid false memory of his father standing on the open lot upon which their house is to be built. His hands are on his hips and a pith helmet shades his eyes; he is directing the operations of a backhoe as it digs a trench for the ball return. Though I remember it now, years later, it is something I could have imagined only then. In the beginning there was fear, a deep shadow that goes with the gaudy colors of early youth. It shades Michael's father's face as he stands unmoved while around him heavy machinery roars and the earth trembles; it makes a monster of Slim the Talmud Torah goy; it dwells in the narrow creaking staircase of our own little home. Some forget that darkness, and the silence, and the chaos inside. But despite what Scripture says, it will never be banished, for without it there would be no horror, no misery, and no childhood.”

3. Trailer, "Where the Wild Things Are"

The good old days

2009-07-22T09:42:00.000-07:00

1) From "Learning to Fly," by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (1991)

Well the good ol' days, may not return
And the rocks might melt and the sea may burn

2) From "Ultimate," by Gogol Bordello (2007)

There was never any good old days
They are today, they are tomorrow
It's a stupid thing we say
Cursing tomorrow with sorrow

3) Ecclesiastes 7:10

Say not thou: 'How was it that the former days were better than these?'
for it is not out of wisdom that thou inquirest concerning this.

The process never ends

2009-07-04T09:08:00.000-07:00

1) A Dream, by Jorge Luis Borges, from July 6, 2009 issue of The New Yorker

“In a deserted place in Iran there is a not very tall stone tower that has neither door nor window. In the only room (with a dirt floor and shaped like a circle) there is a wooden table and a bench. In that circular cell, a man who looks like me is writing in letters I cannot understand a long poem about a man who in another circular cell is writing a poem about a man who in another circular cell . . . The process never ends and no one will be able to read what the prisoners write.”

2) The (Multi)verse(s), from Radiolab, August 12, 2008

In this episode of the program, Brian Greene says that if the Universe is infinite and if the particles that form the Universe are finite, then our world and everything we know about it must repeat endlessly and in endless variety. Just like a finite wardrobe can only me mixed- and matched a finite number of times before it must repeat.

He goes on to hypothesize about multiple universes contained within a single system. He compares it to Swiss cheese: the universes are the holes and the system is the cheese. In this model, everything is expanding — both the universes and the substance between the universes. But the system — the “cheese” — is expanding faster than the speed of light, meaning: faster than anything can travel. Therefore, no matter how fast something moves through the “cheese,” it can’t cross the distance from one universe to the next.

In this model, each universe is contained and finite, while the system as a whole is pervasive and infinite. Because our universe is finite, we would theoretically be able to know everything there is to know about it. But we would never be able to know whether the other universes we assume are out there are really out there.

Depends

2009-05-18T11:54:00.000-07:00

1) “The Red Wheelbarrow,” by William Carlos Williams, (1962)

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

2) from “Hand in Glove,” by The Smiths, (1983)

Hand in glove
We can go wherever we please
And everything depends upon
How near you stand to me

Look see the sights

2009-05-05T20:57:00.000-07:00

1) from “Souls on Fire,” (1972) Elie Wiesel quoting the Baal Shem Tov

“The man who looks only at himself cannot but sink into despair, yet as soon as he opens his eyes to the creation around him, he will know joy.”

2) “From the Morning,” by Nick Drake, from “Pink Moon” (1972)

A day once dawned, and it was beautiful
A day once dawned from the ground
Then the night she fell
And the air was beautiful
The night she fell all around.

So look see the days
The endless coloured ways
And go play the game that you learnt
From the morning.

And now we rise
And we are everywhere
And now we rise from the ground
And see she flies
And she is everywhere
See she flies all around

So look see the sights
The endless summer nights
And go play the game that you learnt
From the morning.

As above, so below

2009-04-20T17:39:00.000-07:00

1) “Powers of Ten,” Charles and Ray Eames, 1977

2) Log Lady Intro, “Coma” Episode 9, Twin Peaks, 1990

"As above, so below. The human being finds himself, or herself, in the middle. There is as much space outside the human, proportionately, as inside.

"Stars, moons, and planets remind us of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Is there a bigger being walking with all the stars within? Does our thinking affect what goes on outside us, and what goes on inside us? I think it does.

"Where does creamed corn figure into the workings of the universe? What really *is* creamed corn? Is it a symbol for something else?"

The Creator's Pride

2009-04-05T19:11:00.000-07:00

1) From "The Laboratory," by Wislawa Szymborska

Tell the Boss,
and let him come see for himself!

2) From "The Tyger," by William Blake

Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Surely/ Surlily

2009-03-22T23:00:00.000-07:00

1)
Fine Point (12-22-2008)
by John Updike

Why go to Sunday school, though surlily,
and not believe a bit of what was taught?
The desert shepherds in their scratchy robes
undoubtedly existed, and Israel’s defeats—
the Temple in its sacredness destroyed
by Babylon and Rome. Yet Jews kept faith
and passed the prayers, the crabbed rites,
from table to table as Christians mocked.

We mocked, but took. The timbrel creed of praise
gives spirit to the daily; blood tinges lips.
The tongue reposes in papyrus pleas,
saying, Surely—magnificent, that “surely”—
goodness and mercy shall follow me all
the days of my life, my life, forever.

2)
from “Dialogue” (1929)
by Martin Buber

I no longer know how from that I came to speak of Jesus and to say that we Jews knew him from within, in the impulses and stirrings of his Jewish being, in a way that remains inaccessible to the peoples submissive to him. “In a way that remains inaccessible to you”— so I directly addressed the former clergyman. He stood, I too stood, we looked into the heart of one another’s eyes. “It is gone,” he said, and before everyone we gave one another the kiss of brotherhood.

3)
final verse of “Sugar Baby”
from “Love and Theft” (2001)
by Bob Dylan

Your charms have broken many a heart and mine is surely one
You got a way of tearing a world apart, love, see what you done
Just as sure as we’re living, just as sure as you’re born
Look up, look up - seek your Maker – ‘fore Gabriel blows his horn

4)
from screenplay for “Doubt” (2008)
by John Patrick Shanley

FATHER FLYNN: There are those of you in church today who know exactly the crisis of faith I describe. And I want to say to you: Doubt can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty. When you are lost, you are not alone.

Swelling the Rout

2009-03-14T22:56:00.000-07:00

1) To an Athlete Dying Young, by A. E. Housman (1867)

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.

2) Ex-Basketball Player, by John Updike (1954)

Pearl Avenue runs past the high-school lot,
Bends with the trolley tracks, and stops, cut off
Before it has a chance to go two blocks,
At Colonel McComsky Plaza. Berth’s Garage
Is on the corner facing west, and there,
Most days, you'll find Flick Webb, who helps Berth out.

Flick stands tall among the idiot pumps—
Five on a side, the old bubble-head style,
Their rubber elbows hanging loose and low.
One’s nostrils are two S’s, and his eyes
An E and O. And one is squat, without
A head at all—more of a football type.

Once Flick played for the high-school team, the Wizards.
He was good: in fact, the best. In ’46
He bucketed three hundred ninety points,
A county record still. The ball loved Flick.
I saw him rack up thirty-eight or forty
In one home game. His hands were like wild birds.

He never learned a trade, he just sells gas,
Checks oil, and changes flats. Once in a while,
As a gag, he dribbles an inner tube,
But most of us remember anyway.
His hands are fine and nervous on the lug wrench.
It makes no difference to the lug wrench, though.

Off work, he hangs around Mae’s Luncheonette.
Grease-gray and kind of coiled, he plays pinball,
Smokes those thin cigars, nurses lemon phosphates.
Flick seldom says a word to Mae, just nods
Beyond her face toward bright applauding tiers
Of Necco Wafers, Nibs, and Juju Beads.

St. Sebastian

2009-02-28T21:16:00.001-08:00

1) St. Sebastian, Andrea Mantegna, 1480:

2) April 1968 cover of Esquire, designed by George Lois:

3) Screen shot from 1991 music video for R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion," directed by Tarsem Singh:

4) Cover of Modest Mouse's 2004 album Good News for People Who Love Bad News:

Can it be this sad design/ Could be the very same

2009-02-21T14:44:00.000-08:00

1: Scene from “The Wheel,” first season finale of "Mad Men"

Don

What is the benefit of that thing?

Harry

Uh… it sells projectors to people who already have them?

Don

Yeah. The wheel. Stacks. You store your slides in it and it’s ready to go.

Harry

I took pictures for the paper at Wisconsin; the machinery is definitely part of the fun. It’s mechanical.

Don

What’d you take pictures of?

Harry

Girls, mostly. You could go up, and ask them their names afterward, like you were going to put it in the paper. And some other stuff. Artsy-craftsy stuff. They gave me hell about it.

Don

Artsy, like what, like: relfection of a tree in a pond?

Harry

Uh, worse. I did a whole series that was just handprints on glass. You know the way it fogs up around your heat? Take it off, take a picture.

Don

Black and white, I suppose.

Harry

Of course. I was always fascinated by the cave paintings at Lascaux. They’re, like, seventeen-thousand years old. And then bison get all the attention, but they are also all of these handprints, tiny by today’s standards, with paint blown all around them.

Don

Signature of the artist.

Harry

But I thought it was like someone reaching through the stone, right to us: I was here.

Don bobs his head, falling asleep.

Harry

Are you okay?

Don

That’ll be all.

2: From “First Impressions” by Judith Thurman
June 23, 2008 issue of the New Yorker

“Peoples who practice shamanism believe in a tiered cosmos: an upper world (the heavens); an underworld; and the mortal world. When Clottes joined forces with Lewis-Williams, he had come to believe that cave painting largely represents the experiences of shamans or initiates on a vision quest to the underworld, where spirits gathered. The caves served as a gateway, and their walls were considered porous. Where the artists or their entourage left handprints, they were palping a living rock in the hopes of reaching or summoning a force beyond it. They typically incorporated the rock’s contours and fissures into the outlines of their drawings—as a horn, a hump, or a haunch—so that a frieze becomes a bas-relief. But, in doing so, they were also locating the dwelling place of an animal from their visions, and bodying it forth.”

3: Chorus of “The Caves of Altamira” by Steely Dan

Before the fall
when they wrote it on the wall
when there wasn’t even any Hollywood
They heard the call
and they wrote it on the wall
for you and me, and we undersood

In a ca-a-a-fe, or sometimes on a crowded street

2009-02-13T00:39:00.000-08:00

ONE:

Review of “Jasmin et Cigarette”

by Chandler Burr

For Etat Libre d’Orange, whose store is north of Hôtel de Ville in Paris, Antoine Maisondieu has performed a masterful trick. With Etat’s creative director, Etienne de Swardt, he has taken two radically dissimilar concepts and balanced them so that they are perfectly integrated and astonishingly distinct. The first is a fragile, delicate jasmine (stripped of the dirty indolic heaviness that the flower usually leaves behind). The second is a pitch-perfect cigarette. Not the stink of a filthy ashtray. (That, says Maisondieu, an ex-smoker, is "disgusting”) This is the smell of an elegant Frenchwoman in a cafe whose grayish-white plume mixes with the chic jasmine fragrance she just sprayed on. His perfume is named Jasmin et Cigarette, and it is the quintessential French combination: allure and toxicity, loveliness and poison. I asked Maisondieu how he did it. "It’s simple,” he said with a shrug. "We all know how to do a jasmine: Egyptian and Indian jasmine absolutes, some Hedione” — a molecule that adds light to a perfume — "some benzyl acetate for softness.” He paused. "The cigarette was a bit more complicated.” He used to love unfiltered Chesterfields "in the soft box, which have a slight apricot.” So he used hay essence, tonka bean (a flavoring in tobacco), maté from South America, galbanum (a raw green) and sage. The result is a masterpiece: one hears laughter in the cafe, with the faint sound of music from somewhere else.

TWO:

“My Cherie Amour”

Stevie Wonder

THREE:

Scene from “Ocean’s Twelve”

with Brad Pitt and Catherine Zeta-Jones

Melody Chain

2009-02-09T18:34:00.000-08:00

1) Cab Calloway as Koko the Clown singing “St. James Infirmary Blues”

2) Young woman lip-synching to Mates of State cover of Randy Newman song “Beehive State”

2.1) Young girl watching You Tube video of young woman lip-synching to Mates of State cover of Randy Newman song “Beehive State”

3) Bob Dylan singing “Blind Willie McTell”

Be seeing you!

2009-02-08T13:07:00.001-08:00

1) From “Free for All” Episode No. 4(?) of The Prisoner

“Good morning! Good morning! Any complaints?”
“Yes. I’d like to mind my own business.”
“So do we. You fancy a chat?”
“The mountain can come to Mohammed!”
(Hangs up phone. Door opens.)
“Mohammed?”
“Everest, I presume?”
“I’ve never had a head for heights.”
“How’s Number 1?”
“At the summit.”

At 42:15, after Number 6 wins the election and becomes the new Number 2, he walks out to meet the citizens of village. They stare at him blankly, and the beneath the scene we hear, "For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow/ The Bear Went Over the Mountain."

2) Ending of “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” by Alice Munro

Fiona was in her room but not in bed. She was sitting by the open window, wearing a seasonable but oddly short and bright dress. Through the window came a heady warm blast of lilacs in bloom and the spring manure spread over the fields.
She had a book open in her lap.
She said, “Look at this beautiful book I found. It’s about Iceland. You wouldn’t think they’d leave valuable books lying around in the rooms. But I think they’ve got the clothes mixed up—I never wear yellow.”
“Fiona,” he said.
“Are we all checked out now?” she said. He thought the brightness of her voice was wavering a little. “You’ve been gone a long time.”
“Fiona, I’ve brought a surprise for you. Do you remember Aubrey?”
She stared at Grant for a moment, as if waves of wind had come beating into her face. Into her face, into her head, pulling everything to rags. All rags and loose threads.
“Names elude me,” she said harshly.
Then the look passed away as she retrieved, with an effort, some bantering grace. She set the book down carefully and stood up and lifted her arms to put them around him. Her skin or her breath gave off a faint new smell, a smell that seemed to Grant like green stems in rank water.
“I’m happy to see you,” she said, both sweetly and formally. She pinched his earlobes, hard.
“You could have just driven away,” she said. “Just driven away without a care in the world and forsook me. Forsooken me. Forsaken.”
He kept his face against her white hair, her pink scalp, her sweetly shaped skull.
He said, “Not a chance.”

You Can Always Come Back, But You Can't Come Back All The Way

2009-01-30T10:11:00.000-08:00

1) Home Is So Sad
by Philip Larkin

Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped to the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
Having no heart to put aside the theft

And turn again to what it started as,
A joyous shot at how things ought to be,
Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:
Look at the pictures and the cutlery.
The music in the piano stool. That vase.

2) From Act 1 of “The Cherry Orchard”
by Anton Chekhov

LUBOV. [Looks out into the garden] Oh, my childhood, days of my innocence! In this nursery I used to sleep; I used to look out from here into the orchard. Happiness used to wake with me every morning, and then it was just as it is now; nothing has changed. [Laughs from joy] It's all, all white! Oh, my orchard! After the dark autumns and the cold winters, you're young again, full of happiness, the angels of heaven haven't left you. . . . If only I could take my heavy burden off my breast and shoulders, if I could forget my past!

3) My City Was Gone
by The Pretenders
(slightly different example)

Well I went back to Ohio
But my family was gone
I stood on the back porch
There was nobody home
I was stunned and amazed
My childhood memories
Slowly swirled past
Like the wind through the trees
Ay, oh, oh way to go, Ohio

Like the Hodge Conjecture?

2009-01-24T18:18:00.000-08:00

1) Commercial for the Knowledge Generation Bureau

2) "What Do Women Want?" by Daniel Bergner

“I feel like a pioneer at the edge of a giant forest,” Chivers said, describing her ambition to understand the workings of women’s arousal and desire. “There’s a path leading in, but it isn’t much.” She sees herself, she explained, as part of an emerging “critical mass” of female sexologists starting to make their way into those woods. These researchers and clinicians are consumed by the sexual problem Sigmund Freud posed to one of his female disciples almost a century ago: “The great question that has never been answered and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my 30 years of research into the feminine soul, is, What does a woman want?”

So close

2008-11-14T18:16:00.000-08:00

ONE:

“Me and the Bean”
performed by Spoon
(final two lines):

I am your shadow in the dark/
I have your blood inside my heart.

TWO:

Sonnet XVII
by Pablo Neruda
(final two lines):

so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

As the rain falls/ So does your love

2008-03-09T16:18:00.000-07:00

1) From "Rain" by William Carlos Williams:

Unworldly love
that has no hope
of the world

and that
cannot change the world
to its delight--

The rain
falls upon the earth
and grass and flowers

come
perfectly

into form from its
liquid

clearness

But love is
unworldly

and nothing
comes of it but love

following
and falling endlessly
from
her thoughts

2) Passages from “Nettles” by Alice Munro:

"Stooping, butting his head through the weeds and against the wind, Mike got around in front of me, all the time holding on to my arm. Then he faced me, with his body between me and the storm. That made as much difference as a toothpick might have done. He said something, right into my face, but I could not hear him. He was shouting, but not a sound from him could reach me. He had hold of both my arms now, he worked his hands down to my wrists and held them tight. He pulled me down—both of us staggering, the moment we tried to make any change of position—so that we were crouched close to the ground. So close together that we could not look at each other—we could only look down, at the miniature rivers already breaking up the earth around our feet, and the crushed plants and our soaked shoes. And even this had to be seen through the waterfall that was running down our faces."

"Well. It would be the same old thing, if we ever met again. Or if we didn’t. Love that was not usable, that knew its place. (Some would say not real, because it would never risk getting its neck wrung, or turning into a bad joke, or sadly wearing out.) Not risking a thing yet staying alive as a sweet trickle, an underground resource. With the weight of this new stillness on it, this seal."

3) From “Buckets of Rain” by Bob Dylan:

Buckets of rain
Buckets of tears
Got all them buckets coming out of my ears.
Buckets of moonbeams in my hand,
You got all the love, honey baby, I can stand.

The Laboratory

2008-02-29T10:50:00.000-08:00

Every day when I pass the Frontier Building on A Street going to and from work, it reminds me of the images of galaxies taken by the Hubble Telescope.

Specifically, I imagine the millions of galaxies stuffed inside of a single glass building, which in turn reminds me of the recurring theory of a Hollow Earth, where certain astronomers, starting with Edmund Halley, wondered if the entire universe existed inside the Earth, rather than outside it.

Imagine Earth as a racquetball, with a hollow interior. The entire universe we see above us — the stars, the moon, the sun and the planets — all exists inside this hollowed out space.

We’re in there, too, because the curved surface of the Earth isn’t the outer curve of this ball, but the inner curve. In this theory, if one could fly, this traveler would be able to fly through the entire universe and land on the other side of the Earth, if that makes sense.

Outside the ball is nothing, I suppose. Or God, maybe.

This all in turn reminds me of the atomic nucleus. And then of The Powers of Ten. And then of "The Laboratory," by the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska.

The Laboratory

Did it all
happen in the laboratory?
Beneath one lamp by day
and billions by night?

Are we a trial generation?
Poured from one beaker to another,
shaken in retorts,
observed by something more than an eye,
each one individually
taken by forceps?

Or maybe otherwise:
no interventions.
The transformations occur on their own
in accordance with a plan.
The needle draws
the expected zigzags.

Maybe until now there was nothing interesting in us.
The control monitors are seldom switched on,
except when there's a war, and a rather big one at that,
several flights over the lump of clay called Earth,
or significant movements from point A to point B.

Or perhaps thus:
they only have a taste for episodes.
Look! a little girl on a big screen
is sewing a button to her sleeve.

The monitors begin to shriek,
personnel comes running in.
Oh, what sort of tiny creature
with a little heart beating on the inside!
What graceful dignity
in the way she draws the thread!
Someone calls out in rapture:
Tell the Boss,
and let him come see for himself!

I first read that poem in this book. Weschler connects it to this painting, but the poem reminds me of this movie, released 10 years ago this summer.

Losing Idols

2008-02-07T23:20:00.000-08:00

The Voxtrot song “Brother in Conflict” came on today. The last line of the song caught my attention. Ramesh Srivastava sings — screams, really, several times: “I had to lose my idols to find my voice/ lose my idols to find my voice/ lose my idols/ to find my voice.” Appropriate for someone who channeled Morrissey in early songs.

It reminded me of the Bob Dylan song/spoken word piece “Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie.” Dylan performed this at New York Town Hall on April 12, 1963.

It’s a eulogy, but not for Guthrie, who was still alive at this point. Dylan obvious owed a great deal of his early work to Guthrie. This was Dylan saying goodbye to that influence and moving on to something new.

They’re actually similar, the song and the poem. Both rattle off in lost lists: “And this, And this, And this.” It’s the like “The Exorcist”: “The power of Christ compels you. The power of Christ compels you.” It takes a couple of shakes to get peanut butter off a spoon.

“The music is so much different and much more work-intensive than anything we've ever done before,” Srivastava told “the Austin Chronicle” last year. “You can accept the part of yourself that wants to write really accessible pop songs, and you can also accept the part of yourself that wants to write something a little more complex.”

The last seventeen lines of the Dylan poem:

Where do you look for this lamp that’s a burning
Where do you look for this oil well gushing
Where do you look for this candle that’s glowing
Where do you look for this hope that you know is there
And out there somewhere
And your feet can only walk down two kinds of roads
Your eyes can only look through two kinds of windows
Your nose can only smell two kinds of hallways
You can touch and twist and turn two kinds of doorknobs
You can either go to the church of your choice
Or you go to Brooklyn State Hospital
You find God in the Church of you Choice
You find Woody Guthrie in the Brooklyn State Hospital
And though it’s only my opinion
It may be right or wrong
You can find them both at the Grand Canyon at sundown.

Eric Clapton said this about Dylan and the poem: “He’s a poet. Basically he’s a poet. He does not trust his voice. He doesn’t trust his guitar playing. He doesn’t think he's good at anything, except writing—and even then he has self-doubts. Have you heard that thing he wrote about Woody Guthrie? That to me is the sum of his life’s work so far. Whatever happens, that is it. That sums it up.”

Clapton, of course, being the one who inspired people in London to write “Clapton is God” on subway walls.

All of which begs to reference Exodus 20:19-20: “God said to Moses, “So shall you say to the Children of Israel, ‘You have seen that I have spoken to you from heaven. You shall not make idols of Me; gods of silver and gods of gold shall you not make for yourselves.” Repeated several times (Exodus, Levitacus, Deuteronomy) of course.

You have to lose your idols to find your voice.

The moon in June, crazy as a loon

2007-02-05T21:53:00.000-08:00

Crazy stories from the crazy world of space.

First, a space trash catastrophe in the works as thousands of tiny pieces of debris orbit Earth. When one of these pieces hits something larger — like an abandoned rocket — the collision creates more tiny pieces of debris. If this chain reaction reaches critical mass, space becomes too dangerous for new crafts.

Second, a space trash catastrophe in the works as one astronaut drives 1,000 miles to confront the girlfriend of her astronaut crush: “Nowak — who was a mission specialist on a Discovery launch last summer — was wearing a trench coat and wig and had a knife, BB pistol, and latex gloves in her car, reports show. They also found diapers, which Nowak said she used so she wouldn't have to stop on the 1,000-mile drive. Reports show that after U.S. Air Force Capt. Colleen Shipman's flight arrived, Nowak followed her to the airport's Blue Lot for long-term parking, tried to get into Shipman's car and then doused her with pepper spray.”

Third, Google Copernicus Center is hiring.

Laugh all you want

2007-01-28T00:18:00.000-08:00

NBC does not have a single show with a laugh track in its current line-up.

The laugh track is slowly being replaced by hand held cameras in comedies like “The Office,” a little bit in “30 Rock,” Fox’s now-canceled “Arrested Development,” and the drama “Friday Night Lights.”

This seems like a cultural moment. It’s a shift in the language of television.

The laugh track aids imagination by location. It allows the home audience to pretend to be somewhere else: part of the studio audience, watching actors play characters. The hand held camera effect aids imagination by content. It allows the home audience to pretend to watch real footage in the comfort of their own home.

Where viewers once wanted to be taken to a magical place, they now want to see magical glimpses of the real world, even if they aren’t real.

The next step is “life tracks”: underneath hand held footage would be the sounds of other living rooms. You’d hear people opening cans of soda, whispering about the action, making out, sitting in creaky chairs, gasping at shocking moments. Maybe a phone rings.

Eventually, audiences become sophisticated enough to follow concurrent plot lines: the visual one on screen and the audio one on the life track. The characters in the living room on the life track would have story lines, possibly relating to the shows they watch. Maybe the life tracks would be different from show to show.

The DVD commentary would be maddening: show, topped by life track, topped by commentary, topped by life track commentary. Television fans would be immediately recognizable on the street: they are the ones walking around with one eye off in space, muttering to themselves, trying to unravel that thick knot of information.

Listen to Elvis and Bach. Unless

2006-11-03T09:16:00.000-08:00

For the past few days I’ve been listening to The Writer’s Almanac — a five-minute, daily broadcast hosted by Garrison Keillor featuring a short bit of literary history and a poem. Because I often have trouble concentrating, I often read along as I listen. And lately, I have noticed some really beautiful lessons pulled from the difference between poetry that is read and poetry that is heard.

For instance, today’s poem is “How to Live” by Charles Harper Webb:

How to Live

“I don’t know how to live.”
–Sharon Olds

Eat lots of steak and salmon and Thai curry and mu shu
pork and fresh green beans and baked potatoes
and fresh strawberries with vanilla ice cream.
Kick-box three days a week. Stay strong and lean.
Go fly-fishing every chance you get, with friends

who’ll teach you secrets of the stream. Play guitar
in a rock band. Read Dostoyevsky, Whitman, Kafka,
Shakespeare, Twain. Collect Uncle Scrooge comics.
See Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs, and everything Monty Python made.
Love freely. Treat ex-partners as kindly

as you can. Wish them as well as you’re able.
Snorkel with moray eels and yellow tangs. Watch
spinner dolphins earn their name as your panga slam-
bams over glittering seas. Try not to lie; it sours
the soul. But being a patsy sours it too. If you cause

a car wreck, and aren’t hurt, but someone is, apologize
silently. Learn from your mistake. Walk gratefully
away. Let your insurance handle it. Never drive drunk.
Don’t be a drunk, or any kind of “aholic.” It’s bad
English, and bad news. Don’t berate yourself. If you lose

a game or prize you’ve earned, remember the winners
history forgets. Remember them if you do win. Enjoy
success. Have kids if you want and can afford them,
but don’t make them your reason-to-be. Spare them that
misery. Take them to the beach. Mail order sea

monkeys once in your life. Give someone the full-on
ass-kicking he (or she) has earned. Keep a box turtle
in good heath for twenty years. If you get sick, don’t thrive
on suffering. There’s nothing noble about pain. Die
if you need to, the best way you can. (You define best.)

Go to church if it helps you. Grow tomatoes to put store-
bought in perspective. Listen to Elvis and Bach. Unless
you’re tone deaf, own Perlman’s “Meditation from Thais.”
Don’t look for hidden meanings in a cardinal’s song.
Don’t think TV characters talk to you; that’s crazy.

Don’t be too sane. Work hard. Loaf easily. Have good
friends, and be good to them. Be immoderate
in moderation. Spend little time anesthetized. Dive
the Great Barrier Reef. Don’t touch the coral. Watch
for sea snakes. Smile for the camera. Don’t say “Cheese.”

This poem is very authoritative, but avoids being patronizing through charm and wisdom. Hear it without reading it, though, and you miss a harsh written line like that one is the sixth stanza — “on suffering. There’s nothing noble about pain. Die.” — which is actually part of three separate sentences, but reads on the page like one of the aphorisms that make up the poem.

Read alone, that line would be curt and cruel (you can imagine a colon after, “on suffering” and the word “already” stuck at the end), but reintegrated back into poem, the line is a plea for appropriateness: suffering is a symptom, not a reason for living. And that is what the poem is about, anyway, a measured life where one extreme is tempered with the other: Elvis with Bach, eating vanilla ice cream with staying strong and lean. Work hard. Loaf easily.

Or this one, from October 16:

“Before I Was Born” by Linda S. Buckmaster

Before I Was Born

She waits
on the corner of Broad Street and
Oregon Ave., Benny Goodman’s clarinet
slipping out of the radio at Tony’s
each time a customer opens
the door. They go in
and out again, and still
he hasn’t come. Twenty past
seven and now they’ll never
make the show.
Streetlights blink on.
She bends to straighten
the seam of her stocking.
She doesn’t know that this
will be her life.

Line six — “the door. They go in” — reads like stage directions, but also an imagining (when “he” arrives, “they” will go into the show). Line twelve — “She bends to straighten” — uses opposites to mock the action; bending to straighten equals dressing up for no one.

And then the master, William Carlos Williams:

Poem

As the cat
climbed over
the top of

the jamcloset
first the right
forefoot

carefully
then the hind
stepped down
into the pit of
the empty
flowerpot

A poem that would be almost meaningless without line-breaks.

Top of the Heap

2006-10-22T12:27:00.000-07:00

Someone is sketching me right now, while I work. He’s either sketching me, or the band behind me. Normally, it would be wise to assume that he’s sketching the band; they are far more interesting. However, two or three times I looked up and he was staring at me, and each time, he flashed a devilish grin and quickly looked away.

And now that I can see a bit of his sketch pad, I can tell I’m right: he finished the top of my forehead and it has my characteristic scowl I get while working, a muscular twitch often confused with deep thinking. Many have called it “the dead stare.”

No creative person wants to be the subject; that means someone else has a broader perspective. That’s why I’m writing about him while he’s drawing me. (I’m hoping that one of the dozens of people around with laptops has not noticed this silly game and one-upped the both of us).

Newspapers are like this, too. When a publication effectively and convincingly writes about media, it somehow transcends the muddle in the middle, and comes off as a journal of great authority.

Joan Didion, in The White Album, writes about this perspective while visiting Nancy Reagan at the California Governor’s Mansion. Several television crews keeps rearranging the former First Lady, asking her to fake nipping a bud for a better shot. Didion considers taking one step back, and writing about the whole process, rather than just Nancy Reagan and her flower bed.

In 1999, Frank Rich wrote a long, lead story for The New York Times Magazine — American Pseudo — going behind-the-scenes of The Talented Mr. Ripley for an article about identity. A few years later, The New Yorker published a long piece on a Hollywood power agent, and casually mentioned how the Rich piece came to be, as well as the terms of the agreement.

(Woe that my books are all in boxes, or surely I would have included fascinating quotations from all these essays).

(While I tried to get these sentences readable, the guy stopped sketching and left).

Overheard at the JCC II

2006-09-02T11:21:00.000-07:00

“You didn’t take a steam today.”
(Long pause)
“Eh?”
“I know you didn’t go to the steam room today.”
“You’re a detective, now?”
“You left your gym bag out after your shower. That’s how I know.”
“I have a meeting to get to.”
“What kind of meeting would you have?”

Overheard at the JCC

2006-08-27T14:57:00.000-07:00

“Richard! How are you?”
“Good. Good.”
“Listen, Richard, how did those tests go?”
“They went well.”
“You don’t sound enthused.”
“Well, my doctor said I need to increase my caloric intake. I lost 25 pounds, you know.”
“That’s great. Let’s get lunch.”

The Most Baller Bleep Ever

2006-08-16T13:49:00.000-07:00

There is this commercial for Amp’d Mobile where a young man defends his choice of cell phone by saying, “It just has cooler ‘bleep.’” I use the bleep not out of modesty. That’s how it played, and it was surprising. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that happen on a prime time commercial before. Then, a few days later, I heard it again on a radio commercial, where a girl says, “Oh ‘bleep,’ that’s my jam.”

The bleep started as a genuine response to possible swearing on television and radio, but quickly became something of its own. First, it became a euphemism for other swear words (like the recent movie “What The Bleep Do We Know?”). That is how some people who don’t swear make their point — it ends up sounding wrong, like when sitcoms use “butt” when “ass” is clearly more appropriate.

The Amp’d effect works, though, because it allows the commercial to have it both ways; they can have the character look hip and authentic by swearing, but not actually swear and get the company in trouble. Now, like the Parental Advisory sticker on CDs, or the blank word in pop songs — see Gwen Stefani “It’s my shh.” — the bleep has street cred. It’s self-censoring without having to say “butt” when you mean “ass.”

When South Park started using the bleep, the effect started to lose its value. For a narrative, fictional series — animated no less — to choose a bleep over a script change highlights the word as much as it covers it up. South Park made their intentions even more clear in the episode “It Hits the Fan,” where they lampooned Chicago Hope or NYPD Blue’s use of “shit” in one episode (and the resulting media storm) by using the word 162 times. They also bleep straight characters that say “fag,” but not gay characters. Chappelle’s Show does it too. VHS and DVD sales have allowed South Park to bleep the words on TV and keep them in home sales; which has a result similar to the Amp’d Mobile commercial.

This reminds me of a technique in jazz that also emphasizes through absence. Instead of playing a given note in the melody, the musician will play notes around the note, in the same scale as the note or near that note, but not the actual note.

There is a Bob Dylan song called “Mississippi”” with the line “I was thinking ‘bout the things that Rosie said/ I was dreaming I was sleeping in Rosie’s bed.” I always thought the line was “I was thinkin’ about the things that roses had.” I like my lyrics better — no offense meant — and whenever I hear the song now, I think about petals and thorns (although they never appear in the song).

Jacques Lacan, a French pschyoanalyst, described this as the objet petit a, or “The Little Object,” which is the unattainable object of desire. The trick is that pleasure comes from that objet petit a rather than the actual experience. For instance, he argues, seeing someone in their underwear is more pleasurable than seeing them naked, or the hints of a movie monster are scarier than actually seeing it. Not hearing the “right” note or seeing the “right” word creates a desire for what was never there. Hearing a bleep makes you think about swear words.

The Weight of God

2006-06-26T13:21:00.000-07:00

60 Minutes re-ran a feature last night on musical savants. It explored the connection between blindness, mental disability and musical genius.

The main subject, a young boy named Rex, could not button his shirt or walk through his house, but he could listen to any song and play it instantly on the piano. He’s not alone, either. CBS interviewed two other savants with similar conditions.

Immediately, I thought of an Emily Dickinson poem called “The Brain is Wider than the Sky,” which has the last verse:

The brain is just the weight of God
For heft them, pound for pound,
And they will differ, if they do,
As syllable from sound.

The initial connection was the spiritual one in the first line. Whenever Rex finished playing a piece, he would start shaking his hands violently and craning his neck. It reminded me of the violence of people who claim to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Often, extremely talented people are burdened by their gifts, just as the prophets were often described as being burdened by prophecy. Rex and the others seemed to actually have gifts in the standard definition. It was as if music was given to them as a reprieve. When they played, the “weight” of God was lifted, and only the presence of God remained.

Later, though, I thought about the audible connection in the last line. This was a feature on people who have supreme difficulty with syllables, but extreme comfort making sounds. The poem sites no difference between the two.

I’m not the first person to think of this connection. A Google search of the first line of the poem — “The brain is wider than the sky” — yields a surprising number of sites relating to neurobiology — at least as many science-oriented sites and literature-oriented, maybe more. Most use the poem to summarize the prospects of the brain’s capabilities.

In the 60 Minutes piece, David Pinto, a piano teacher for Rex and other children like him, said, “As a composer I’ve had dreams where I went though a complete concerto that was impeccable, and it just rolled off, as a dream. Obviously, that means that it’s inside of us. Well, these kids can do that dream. There’s just nothing in between it.”

This reminded me of a study on memory I once read, possibly in "The Holographic Universe." When researchers electrically stimulated parts of a patient’s brain, the patient would start to instantly recall very specific and relatively unmemorable parts of their lives, from scenery down to dialogue. These researchers could keep hitting the exact same part of the brain and access the same memory. There were two points. One: The brain naturally stores information, even if most people don’t understand how to access that archived information. Two: “The whole contains every part.” Our brains store information so that it can be found from any starting place.

Maybe these savants can access the music because they cannot access other information, or maybe they cannot access other information because they can access the music.

The opposite of that is a recent story from the Los Angeles Times about how space artists have been challenged by actual NASA images. When Hubble, Voyager and the like starting sending pictures down to Earth, they were more bizarre that space art.

Rex is an example of the strangeness we know but cannot touch. Space Art is an example of the strangeness beyond how strange we assume the universe should be.

Doobee, Dewbee, Dewberries

2006-05-20T15:05:00.001-07:00

http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/state/14621813.htm

On the turntables, drinking a Dr. Pepper...

2006-04-26T18:23:00.000-07:00

The dynamic ribbon is what Coke calls the band that crosses their logo, and the contour bottle is what they call their famous ergonomic glass container. The Contour Bottle and the Dynamic Ribbon are both trademarked.

That would also make for the name of a great hip-hop duo.

Suspicious Minds

2006-04-20T13:51:00.000-07:00

Reading “Calvin and Hobbes” was the premier activity of my youth, and I was very upset the first I time I saw Calvin as a vulgar truck decal. In the most popular version, he stands looking over one shoulder with an arc of pee hitting a Ford or Chevy logo, depending on whether the truck was a Chevy or a Ford. The problem with these decals was how they changed the character. Calvin became sort of evil, and regular readers of the strip know that his rebellion was countered with sweetness. That’s why it works.

Creations take on new lives, though, even bootlegs. Several months ago, I saw a truck decal where Calvin humbly knelt before a tall cross. He was repenting for peeing on that Ford logo, I suppose. Yesterday, I saw Calvin as the logo for an electrical company. After finding Jesus, he went straight and got a job.

In “The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book,” creator Bill Waterson writes that the bootlegging began after he won a battle with his syndicate against licensing: “[W]hen I didn’t license, Calvin and Hobbes merchandise sprung up to feed the demand. Mall stores openly sold T-shirts with drawings illegally lifted from my books, and obscene or drug-related shirts were rife on college campuses. Only thieves and vandals have made money on Calvin and Hobbes merchandise.”

In “Dead Elvis,” Greil Marcus writes about the explosion of Elvis bootlegs and images and recreations that appeared after his death, when legalities become more lenient. At first it was Elvis products, followed by hundreds of tiny tributaries: Elvis/ Jesus hybrids and then Elvis/ Hitler hybrids, for instance.

Marcus writes about the “myth” of Elivs: country boy makes good, but loses himself in the process.

“Such mythologizing predated Elvis’s death, but it’s gathered irresistible force since. A dead person is vulnerable in ways a living person is not, and it’s not simply that you can’t libel the dead. When the subject of a book is living, he or she can always make that book into a lie by acting in a new way. A dead person can be summed up and dismissed.”

The Dreamer

2006-03-16T10:57:00.000-08:00

Talking narrative, Joseph is the most fleshed out character in Genesis and, excluding Moses, maybe the whole Torah.

In the past few weeks I’ve had three different interactions with Joseph.

1) My father is a graphic designer, and sees Joseph as a businessman and as an outsider relating to the world. As a freelancer, my father’s work places him both deep within companies and at their margins. He supplies ideas, consultations and overhauled images, but he is always an independent contractor. The power of Joseph for him is the power of being second in command, a returning concept in Jewish history from Maimonides, to Albert Einstein, to Joseph Lieberman.

Read this way, the Joseph story is a very conservative one — that through smarts and personality, anyone can get themselves from the pit to the tower. There is a flip side, though. The consultant is always accepted and treated with skepticism at the same time. Ultimately, Joseph’s success in Egypt creates the foundation for the Jews to become enslaved under a new Pharaoh. In other words, the consultant can often make greater changes than those in power, but the ground is always less stable and the future is harder to see (even with prophetic dreams).

2) Dr. Owen Cosgrove is a minister at the Northside Church of Christ in Waxahachie, and in interviews with him over the past few weeks, he cited Joseph as a favorite character in the Old Testament. He mentioned how Joseph embraced forgiveness and eschewed envy and lust. In expanding his thoughts — my words, not his — I think Cosgrove sees Joseph as a New Testament figure, specifically in avoiding the seven deadly sins: 1) Lust, by turning down Potiphar’s wife, 2) Gluttony, by setting up the storehouses, 3) Avarice, by remaining second in command, 4) Sloth, by getting out of the prison and his work ethic once free, 5) Wrath, by refusing to take revenge on his brothers, 6) Envy, in opposition to his brothers, who envy him, and 7) Pride, well, this one is tough. Joseph shows pride throughout his life. Actually, it’s the first trait we find in him. But before he reveals his identity to his brothers, he weeps so loudly the Egyptians can hear him. Perhaps that moment is so cathartic because he has sloughed the last of his vices: that’s when he credits God with pulling the family apart and darwing them back together.

3) J.J. Keki is a politician and coffee farmer in Uganda, and is also a Jew. He is part of the
Abayudaya, a community of Jews in Eastern Uganda that began in 1918, when a British missionary decided the New Testament did not add truth to the Old Testament. He ripped those pages from his Bible and circumcised his community. At their height, the group numbered 3,000. But Idi Amin gave them the traditional Jewish choice — convert or die — and by the time he was ousted from power in 1979, there were only 300 left. Keki was one. Only 19 at the time, he set out to rebuild the community, which is now 800 strong, and has a school and a synagogue. Over the years, outside Jews learned of the Abayudaya and brought books, Torahs and other Jewish accouterments.

Keki was in Dallas last weekend for an art auction to raise money for a health clinic in Uganda. Speaking with him was enlightening for many reasons, and I hope to return to them in this forum, but the one thing that struck me was Keki’s relationship with Joseph.

One of the largest issues facing the community is how they relate to the world. They have been embraced by some sects within Judaism, and held in skepticism by others — particularly the Israeli government. In 1948, listening to radio broadcasts about the founding of Israel, they went out in the field to wait for airplanes, figuring all Jews would be taken back to the land.

Today, They are making decisions about how to grow into their new knowledge of the Judaism of the West while maintaining their own traditions. For instance, because they had never heard the traditional tunes, their songs are common Jewish lyrics set to African melodies. Do they keep those tunes now, or abandon them?

Keki sees Joseph as a family man in exile. He has written that when other Jews come to Uganda to visit and work, the community feels like Joseph did when his brothers come to Egypt — that moment of weeping for Keki isn’t about sloughing pride, but about finally belonging, about ending isolation. They are outsiders geographically and historically, but insiders in faith. Home is where their people are — be it Dallas or Uganda. Their reuniting isn’t complete — they are still separated from the masses and from the land — but it is completing — because they finally experience belonging. The Abayudaya are the younger brother, just like Joseph. They have to teach themselves about their family, and to learn about their chosen religion in bits and chunks over decades while they create a new version for themselves.

Keki is the first and only Jewish politician in the nation’s history. He works to foster relationships between the Muslims, Christians and Jews in Uganda. Just like Joseph, he is the outsider trying to enact change from much larger groups. Like my father, he understands his role as the consultant, and like Dr. Cosgrove, his righteousness has fueled his success.

Blind To Their Actions

2006-03-11T13:32:00.000-08:00

The Dallas Morning News ran an article today about a father and son sparring over political differences. The father is a strong supporter of the Republican Party. His son is seventeen, and has recently become interested in the Democratic Party. In protest, the father decided he would cut off his son’s college tuition unless the boy switches affiliation. In counter-protest, the son created a Web site called www.onemillionreasonswhy.com, where — similar to others — people can buy ads at the rate of one dollar per pixel. He will use that money to pay for school.

The amazing thing about this, and something the writer did not point out, is how the father and son are flipping ideologies. Originally agreeing to pay the tuition was a fiscally liberal thing to do. On a microcosm, the father essentially created a small welfare state. And the son, faced with an empty bank account and the desire to go to college, is turning a Web page gimmick into a business, thus harnessing the free-market to “pull himself up.”

The Democratic and Republican Party spokesmen quoted don’t seem to understand this at all, perhaps because the argument for them is about Democratic and Republican but the actions are about liberal and conservative — and those two group-sets are becoming less and less aligned.

Strange Effects II

2006-03-09T10:18:00.000-08:00

I previewed the planning and zoning meeting again this week, the only difference being I put a byline on it. Previously, I thought of the preview simply as a way to publish the agenda, and so I figured it should run without a byline. I realized, though, that once I start putting the agenda into sentences I am interpreting the document, and that interpretation demands a byline for accountability.

At the meeting, two people spoke at the public hearing, neither in the 200 foot range the city is required to notify. Last time I wrote about this, my concern was alerting people who had information that might change the outcome of the vote. This time, the residents were concerned about what exactly this development would be.

That means I didn’t adequately describe or research the development in advance. The questions those residents asked the commission were questions I should have asked several days ago and printed. I have previously discussed the virtues of a wider radius. My wider radius worked better this time than last, but ultimately failed. That I reach more people than the city is irrelevant in the face of content concerns. Or: telling a lot of people not enough information doesn’t help any of them.

This reinforces a growing belief I’m acquiring. Investigative reporting is held as the highest example of how a newspaper can change a community. And while I do think it is important to be keep pressure on those in power, to have them know someone is watching, there is another side of the operation that gets ignored. And that is reporting about the processes of powerful entities: government, business, law, science and technology. These entities have become so complicated that regular people cannot access them without outside help.

One great investigative piece can initiate a cycle of great change, but 100 smaller articles explaining how a municipality works creates an educational foundation for people to stop being tricked in the first place. Or: explanatory writing can open up area of knowledge that can become closed to laymen and help break down the world where experts can only talk to experts.

How to Plant a Money Tree

2006-03-06T11:29:00.000-08:00

In my wallet there is a gift certificate from Border’s Bookstore given to me last December from my grandfather, and despite frequent use, I can never seem to spend the last remaining amount.

The reason is interesting.

At $100 it was a sizable gift. I couldn’t spend it all at once, and so every weekend I head over to the store and buy one or two items. When you buy a product at Border’s, your receipt becomes a coupon for the following weekend. The idea, obviously, is to lure customers back.

However, because I have a large gift card, I have to return anyway. By splitting up my purchases over several weekends, my buying power increases. Instead of $100, it has ended up being closer to $125. Border’s is banking on customers both spending and saving more. I am only saving more.

In addition, through various promotions and sales, the cost of my purchases have been reduced. So instead of $125, it’s more like $200.

On the road to California in January, I had a thought about deceleration. If I was driving 75 mph and I was exactly 75 miles from my destination, then it would take one hour to get home. But what if at every mile marker I instantly decelerated exactly one mph, so that at 74 miles away I dropped to 74 mph, and so on? How long would it take me to get home?

A long time.

Calculating in reverse, the last mile alone — where I would be traveling one mph — would take one hour to finish. Getting from mile marker two to mile marker one would take 30 minutes, because I would be drive one mile at two mph. Getting from mile marker three to mile marker two would take twenty minutes, or one-third of a hour. Each preceding mile back to the starting point would be a fraction of a hour. The first mile — going from mile marker 75 to mile marker 74 — would take 1/75 of an hour or 48 seconds.

Fine. I think this is what the “N” does on a fancy calculator.

Then I had another thought. Instead of decelerating only at each mile maker, what would happen if I decelerated constantly, so that I decelerated one mph over the course of each mile?

I would never arrive. At one inch away, I’m moving at one inch per hour. At 1/10,000th of an inch away, I would be moving at 1/10,000th of an inch per hour.

This is the same as the story about a frog crossing a pond. With each hop he covers half the distance remaining. Because space can be infinitely divided, that poor frog never arrives. He just hops less and less until he dies with his long tongue stretched toward the sandy shoreline.

This is similar to Zeno’s Paradox of the Tortoise and Achilles.

The tortoise — who is obviously getting big headed after his race with the hare — challenges Achilles to a race. The tortoise gets a 100 foot head start as a handicap. Whenever Achilles has moved 100 feet, the tortoise has also moved forward a little bit. When Achilles covers that distance, the tortoise has moved again. If space is infinite, then we always have to cover half the remaining distance. The paradox, therefore, states “You can’t catch up.”

Aristotle apparently solved this paradox, which sucks. Otherwise I could spend on my gift card forever.

I Gotta Mind Like A Sieve

2006-02-28T15:48:00.000-08:00

Lucky numbers, in the math world, are a set of numbers created through a specific weeding process. First, start with an infinite list of numbers starting with 1, and remove all of the even numbers. The lowest number remaining greater than 1 is 3. Therefore, remove every third number. the next lowest number that remains is 7, so remove every seventh number. Continue on like that.

The resulting numbers should go: 1, 3, 7, 9, 13, 15, 21, 25 and so on.

The process of creating a pattern to eliminate numbers in math is called sieving. The most well-known sieve is for prime numbers. Because prime numbers are only divisible by 1 and themselves, the sieve is a process of going through each number and removing all future multiples.

Looking up information about sieves lead me to a page about colanders.

Apparently, there is an urban legend about cops who would place a colander on the head of a suspect and wire it to a photo copier. The photo copier had a piece of paper on it that said “Lying.” Every time the police would ask a question, they would press the copy button. When the suspect finally confessed, the cops would switch the paper in the machine.

According to the story, this always got thrown out of court.

There is also a story, that I read in a Robertson Davies book, about a culture that tested the virginity of their young women by having them carry water in a sieve. Only virgins, apparently, could do it. The trick was to grease your sieve, and the oil would keep the water from going through the holes.

Finally:

Pirke Avot is a Jewish ethics guide from the fourth century, and the last chapter is a collection of aphorisms. Number 18 is:

“There are four types among those who sit in the presence of the sages: the sponge, the funnel, the strainer, and the sieve.

‘The sponge,’ who soaks up everything. ‘The funnel,’ who takes in at this end and lets out at the other. ‘The strainer,’ who lets out the wine and retains the dregs. ‘The sieve,’ who removes the coarse meal and collects the fine flour.”

Which doesn’t bode well for this site.

Strange Effects

2006-02-23T09:14:00.000-08:00

When a city is planning a public hearing about the status of a property, Texas requires notification for every property owner within 200 feet. A city can add to that measure, if so desired. Waxahachie, for instance, also notifies the family living in the house as well as the property owner, but does not extend the distance. Often, 200 feet incorporates all the interested parties, and often it does not.

Before a zoning meeting this week, I wrote a very short preview outlining the scheduled public hearings. During one, a slightly larger amount of fairly loquacious citizens chose to speak for a rather long time. What they had in common was living in the neighborhood, but outside the 200 feet. Silently bemoaning their chattering, I realized I had done this to myself. Writing the preview informed a new subset of the population and increased the odds that someone — or several people — would have a problem with the project.

No one brought any issue the commissioned hadn’t already considered, and so our only investment was time. Had one of these protesters brought important information to the table, though, it could have theoretically swayed the vote. This time, though, it did not.

Without going door to door and explaining the zoning request to every homeowner, it is impossible to find the one with that information. The state deems 200 feet as an appropriate radius to find that person. Waxahachie adds a layer with their homeowner clause. We add a layer with the newspaper. Each layer increased the traffic, but not necessarily the effectiveness, in this case.

But newspapers are more about the space between stories than the actual stories, and so our cumulative coverage is more important than single article. Still, my fairly momentary decision directly added about a hour to my work day. And I kept about fifteen people from getting home on time.

With great power comes great responsibility.

Ten Pins and the Truth

2006-02-18T12:50:00.000-08:00

Susie Minshew is a bowling coach, and she uses bowling to teach life. Part of that teaching is direct: she has gotten her students to lose weight or gain self-confidence through bowling. Part of that is more abstract. When we had our mini-lesson, the first thing she asked me was what I hoped to gain from the practice. She will take whatever answer you give, from “I want to average 250,” to “I want to have a good time.” Then the lesson proceeds from there. Ultimately, you are supposed to lose the obsession toward pins without losing competitiveness. I asked to have a good time, and I did, I also got a few strikes. She is considered one of the greatest coaches in bowling.

Minshew also knows a great deal about the mechanics, physics, biology and philosophy behind bowling, and she writes, which makes her perfect for the Funnel Method. If that sentence seems ridiculous, that’s partly bowling’s own fault. Minshew believes that bowling and golf were equally honorable fifty years ago, but that while golf chose to be elite and expensive, bowling chose to be universal and cheap. Bowling provided house shoes, house balls and bumper lanes. As a result, bowling is often thought of as the working-class semi-sport, and golf brings in billions of dollars in television, advertising and in useless office knick-knacks.

Professional bowlers use different balls the same way golfers use different clubs. There is a plastic spare ball that does not hook on the lane. It offers a more direct shot, whereas the regular ball can be spun to curve in on that front pin. This is only one of many examples. Bowling shoes are fairly complicated as well, and come with removable friction pads. Professional bowlers play seven game sets, throwing 15 pound balls. The point is that bowling could have a very different reputation, and there are now 100 million bowlers worldwide.

The point is also that most of us are largely ignorant of many interesting aspects of bowling. The lane is very expensive and complicated. It is made of two different kinds of wood: hard maple up front where the ball hits, and softer pine in the middle where the ball rolls. The grains in the pine can actually be placed to favor right or left handed bowlers.

The lane is oiled more heavily in the middle than near the pins, because bowlers don’t want the same slide near the end. We are talking about very small measurements. No dent in the floor can be more than, if I remember the number, 1/4000th of an inch off the surface plane. The oil is a thin application, maybe three units of oil. It is often applied more heavily in the middle of the lane to create a hump that the ball will glide around, but there are regulations about the ratio between the middle and the edge of a lane.

By looking at a lane up close, Minshew can tell you the thought process that went into creating the lane. Learning how to make practical decisions based on understanding the environment makes good bowlers, it makes people good at anything, and it is very important to the Funnel Method.

Closer, do wa do, let me emit clicking sounds in your ear

2006-02-15T16:04:00.000-08:00

For Valentine’s Day, I received a chocolate bar that combines two of my passions: conservation and candy.

The Endangered Species Chocolate Company donates 10 percent of the profits from each bar of chocolate to help save a different endangered species. This was a dolphin bar, which came with delicious bits of cherry — not dolphin — and was sweetened with “unbleached water-filtered beet sugar.”

There is a little essay about the marvelous dolphin inside the wrapper. Dolphins use a sense called echolocation to identify their surroundings. The dolphin sends out clicking sounds that bounce off fish, rocks and Jacques Cousteau, and return to the dolphin’s jaw and ear bones. Through triangulation, the dolphin can pick up the general size, location and density of the object. Bats and whales also use echolocation.

And so do humans. We are able to tell where a sound is coming by calculating the distance between the near ear and the far ear. The ridges inside our ears help translate the sound waves into information the brain can understand. Apparently, if you place small bits of clay inside your ear — not in the canal, please — to change the shape, it will take a few hours for your brain to relearn the code. During that time you will not be able to accurately judge where sounds are coming from.

Some blind people have become so trained in human echolocation that they can ride a bike using echoes. After becoming attuned enough to the process of translating echoes, every footstep can yield information about the environment.

This reminds me of that moment in “The Matrix” where Joe Pantoliano is reading lines of code and “notices” an attractive woman. The difference is that Joey Pants had just become fully adapted to a process, which is more like fully learning a language, and echolocation involves becoming fully integrated with the environment, which is a beautiful idea if you think about it.

Old Country

2006-02-14T10:02:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I interviewed two sisters in their seventies whose house burned down. They had lived there since 1944. I learned about them through a retired real estate agent/ used car salesman, who drove me from the First State Bank to their aunt’s house, where they are staying during rebuilding efforts. On the drive, he said, “These girls are from another time.”

The property was gone and cleaned up — so I’ve never seen even a picture of what it looked like — but still yielded plenty of secrets. In a pile of burned out metal scrap, I found parts of a victrola. They apparently had a large collection of 78s. I asked about potential artists, and they couldn’t remember.

“A lot of old country,” they said.

“Like Jimmie Rodgers?”

“Yeah, and him.”

So that dates it to before 1933. It’s a real shame that a collection like that is gone. I can only imagine what was in there. They also had a violin from the 1500's that burned up.

Also in the dirt I found several square nails. I put one in my pocket. Immediately, it reminded me off the nails that went up online after “The Passion of The Christ” came out. I started thinking about a report I read saying that severing a certain nerve in the muscle between the thumb and forefinger is considered one of the most intense experiences of pain possible.

This nail is pretty amazing. There are apparently three ways of making nails: hand-made, cut nails, and wire nails. Wire nails are what we used today. This, I think, is a cut nail, meaning it was machine cut from a piece of steel. That probably dates the house before 1900. The nail is exactly four inches long (size 20d in nail terms), and the shaft is slightly v-shaped instead of straight. I don’t know how that wouldn’t split the wood.

The man who cleaned through the pile of scrap also found their class rings from high school, and one was a valedictorian.

On the side of the property was an outhouse. They had never installed indoor plumbing. The closest they allowed pipes was to the front porch, but not inside the house. Next to the outhouse was a chicken coop, and they used to raise chickens for meat and eggs until the wolves and snakes started getting bad.

They lived on 75 acres of cotton and corn growing land, which was unharmed due to wind direction. Every year they rent it out to an 80-year-old farmer who harvests the crop and pays them in money and corn. They have never signed a contract.

All Kethcup Has Is Lycopene

2006-02-12T19:36:00.001-08:00

From our always enterprising creative conservation reporter:

Driving through the Sonoma wine country, one might notice fields of yellow mustard plants growing with the short vines. Mustard is grown near grapes because it has a symbiotic effect on the soil, restoring nitrogen for the grapes to grow.

Mustard is apparently a super food as well.

For eating, the seed provides a wide range of health benefits from omega-3 to properties that help combat cancer and rheumatoid arthritis.

Mustard seed is also at the forefront of bio-diesel technology. The Department of Energy has set out to find the most likely candidate for making bio-diesel, and created a 14-point test based on where and how the crop grows, and how broad geographically, cost-effectively and efficiently it can be grown. Mustard cuts the mustard on all fourteen.

Plus, after the oil is ground from the seed, the remaining meal can then be used as a pesticide.

Small Things

2006-02-10T06:15:00.000-08:00

Fractal geometry is a branch of mathematics that deals with finding recurring patterns on large and small scales. Fractals are based on formulae repeated many times to create patterns. One example of a fractal in nature is a mountain. From far away, the mountain has a jagged appearance. Up close, the pieces of the mountain resemble the general rocky appearance — each rock looks like a small mountain — but also have different qualities.

Fractals make incredible designs that yield discoveries with every magnification.

Richard P. Taylor is an associate professor at the University of Oregon. He teaches what is an apparently very popular course called Physics of Light and Color. He also uses fractal geometry to study the work of Jackson Pollack — examining the paint splatters in high magnification — and has questioned the authenticity of some newly discovered Pollack paintings. He located very precise patterns in 14 genuine Pollacks that did not appear in these new works. That doesn’t make them fakes, it just puts a question mark on the table.

This reminded me criminal tremors, which are method of spotting a forged signature by looking for vibrations at the start of a letter caused by a split second of doubt. Patricia Highsmith wrote a book called “The Tremor of Forgery” (the main character of the book also wrote a book by the same title, I think).

This idea is also similar to micro-expressions — small facial ticks we make while lying. This appeared in “Blink” and also in a New York Times Magazine article last week.

Charles and Ray Eames touched on this with “Powers of Ten.” Nature doesn’t provide a steady stream of content. There are always periods of high activity surrounded or followed by periods of high inactivity. All the fractal drawings have large empty middles and intricate borders, and that pattern is always related regardless of the magnification.

This plays out everywhere from city planning, to the construction of atoms, and from outer space to personal workload.

On living and working

2006-02-09T14:30:00.000-08:00

Neil Young was on Fresh Air today talking about his recent aneurysm and subsequent treatment. In diagnosing the problem, the doctor told Young, “You’ve got nothing to worry about, you’ve probably had this for 100 years. But I’ve got a big problem. It’s very dangerous, and I’ve got to get it out right away.”

That exchange — the patient being fine but the doctor having a problem — reminded me of that line in the last few chapters of “The World According to Garp,” where Garp defines a writer as a doctor that only deals with terminal cases. A patient is a human and guaranteed nothing, and therefore has nothing to worry about. But a doctor is a worker and responsible for another life, and therefore needs to be very careful.

Kinda Sorta Shame On Me

2006-02-09T09:08:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately, the link died on my previous post about Vicki Bier, the professor using game theory to reinforce homeland security. There are other articles, but that one was the most in depth.

It turns out Bier’s research has been published and will continue to be published. This is a classic example of where The Funnel Method would become useful. Her ideas seem very important, but they can really only be found in a $100 textbook written for “Graduate students and academics in probability & statistics, reliability, and survival analysis, industrial & software engineering, operations and applied mathematics research.”

The Funnel Method would pair this study with a dedicated writer to create a version for the masses. Inevitably it would lose a lot of the depth that comes from technical and expertise writing, but it would also dig deeper than the original newspaper article can appropriately dig. A worthwhile compromise, I think.

Game Theory and Homeland Security

2006-02-07T16:16:00.000-08:00

This story has a lot to say and doesn’t get to say a lot, which is the frustrating thing about trying to learn about national security tactics. It’s a bit like describing sea creatures by examining ripples on the surface of a lake.

The Civil War Would Depress Me Too

2006-02-07T16:06:00.000-08:00

Much has been discussed recently concerning Abraham Lincoln’s depression, slightly more interesting than the “was he gay” discussion. I think this interests people because it legitimizes depression, a disease that has struggled not to be considered a trend or a stop on hypochondriacs railway. Because depression is so wide spread, and because the symptoms and triggers are so abstract, it is easy to write depression off as nothing more than a medical excuse for self-pity.

Depression has to be a unique disorder because it is so attached to personality and therefore entirely individualized. A good example is the contradictions in the story above — “Clinical depression is characterized by persistent sadness; sleeping too much or too little; reduced appetite and weight loss, or increased appetite and weight gain.” As a result, the treatments vary from very natural to very synthetic. A great example is two prominent treatment possibilities: mindfulness — solving it through thought patterns — and the vagus nerve stimulator — an implant that shocks nerve ending. Then there are the triggers: If depression is related to a chemical imbalance, then how can an emotional trauma set it off?

But if Lincoln had it... If Lincoln had it in 1860, and had it from emotional triggers, then maybe it’s the real thing. But like homosexuality, depression has always been around. Only the words we use for the discussion are recent.

I’ve heard depression described as a computer glitch already inside the computer. The glitch may never be discovered during the entire life of the computer, but try and run a certain program or open a certain Web site and everything crashes. I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone is susceptible, but the severity of stimuli it takes to set it off ranges from person to person. The reason we hear about it more now is A) people know about it, B) people will talk about it, C) we are processing larger amounts of information than ever before. A friend told me once she thought depression was a tool of nature meant to slow people down. I would add speed people up, because inactivity triggers as much depression as over activity.

Don't throw that away

2006-02-06T13:44:00.000-08:00

Also from our creative conservation department.

I wrote a story in college about the confiscation room in the campus police station. I asked them what they did with the drugs. They told me they put it in a pile and burned it, which was the same answer the open mic poetry club told me when I asked what they did with their drugs. Hmm.

SuitSat Coughs, Rolls Over

2006-02-06T10:02:00.000-08:00

SuitSat had a rough weekend. NASA declared it dead two hours after the International Space Station astronauts set it free. Now, radio enthusiasts are reporting faint signals and the hint of a voice, but it is, apparently, difficult to make out the content of the message. One problem is that SuitSat is spinning, which creates a pulsing signal in and out of reception.

This project excited me for several reasons. Even when I cannot rationalize the spending in the face of domestic (read: Earth) problems, I am drawn to space activity. I’m excited that New Horizons got off in time to slingshot around Jupiter. Anything coming from the International Space Station also has a nice feeling of unity to it.

This project, though, had some special elements on top of that, the first being creative conservation. NASA has been good about reusing items effectively. I’m reminded of that moment in the Apollo 13 affair when the engineers figure out how to fit the rectangular filters into cylindrical slots (by the way, why did they bring the wrong kind on board in the first place?). Making satellites from unusable space suits that will inevitably burn in the atmosphere has to be cheaper than another Sputnik.

Then there was all the attention given to citizen involvement. That I could use the police scanner from work to pick up messages from outer space was exciting. Finding ways to include non-astronauts in the space process will likely be what saves and propels NASA in/to the future. Sending down messages to ham radio enthusiasts is much cheaper and more democratic than sending Lance Bass to the Moon. The site dedicated to tracking the project has already received more than two million hits. There might never be another space event like Apollo 11 to capture the broad imagination, but NASA’s reputation gets better whenever it shows that it cares what regular people think.

A brief explanation before game time

2006-02-04T21:52:00.000-08:00

A funnel accepts a large amount of information and organizes it through a small pipe. A bullhorn takes a small amount of information and amplifies it. Most writing on Internet journals tends to act as a bullhorn, where one person shouts for everyone to hear. In that way, this is a very democratic medium and allows a forum to speak for people who were never heard before.

This journal hopes to achieve the opposite: instead of expelling information, it hopes to accept information. It is the world funneled through the mind of one man. It hopes to draw on resources that tend to be logical and concrete — like math, the sciences, engineering and government (left brain) — and pair them with resources that are more freewheeling — like art, culture, people and daily life (right brain). I have trouble grasping the former categories, but they fascinate me, and so I am trying to engage the latter as a tool for understanding.

Sometimes it seems to me the world has become incredibly large and unnecessarily complicated. Every field consists of experts talking to other experts about their expertise, and any novice with only an interest is brushed aside. Try to read through a Terms of Agreement, a scientific survey or a new bill before Congress. They are very frustrating. We’re told these are important, and yet they appear unapproachable. There is not time to shuffle through it all, and so we rely on other people who are paid to go through it for us and present their findings. Often those people end up being writers: journalists who go through the bills, authors who condense the big concepts, critics who think about art and culture and take a position. The trade off is that ideas are changed with every mind they enter, and so while I get to see the wide mouth of the funnel, you only get to see the narrow bottom. Plus, one person got the idea before me and another will get it after you. This subjectivity used to upset me, and it still does, but as I learn to accept it as inevitable, I’ve found the world opening slightly.

This journal will try to explain difficult concepts — difficult for me, at least [For instance, creating a journal. All of these technical terms mean little to me as of yet. I wanted this to be a straight up Web site, and I own www.dailyfunnel.com. One day I will learn how to make it work]. If you read this journal, you are watching me grapple with ideas both abstract and concrete. If you have been wondering about those ideas, or if watching me wonder makes you wonder too, this will hopefully become an enjoyable read. If not, I will likely bore you once and not hear from you again.

I’m aiming for the former, but I need time. Funneling is a lot slower and more deliberate than a bullhorn; it takes a while for all the information to get through that tiny pipe. Ultimately, this journal is working toward something much larger: 1) becoming a way to connect very disparate ideas to hopefully prove that all branches of thought are somehow related, 2) becoming a voice for people who have exciting and important ideas, but not the skills to verbalize those ideas for a mass audience, 3) promoting a new and different writing curriculum in elementary school education to create a more literate youth, and 4) eventually becoming a global writing system and brand available to people of all viewpoints to promote understanding, compassion and moderation in an entertaining forum through all forms of writing (even poetry).

If that sounds high-falutin’ and all over the place, it’s because I’m suffering from the disease I just described: I’m having trouble putting words on what I’m trying to say. This journal is the very start of a plan, though, not the end. In it I hope to define these concepts, and meet people who agree with the structure I’m creating, even if they disagree with the viewpoints I espouse. This won’t be daily to start, but I wasn’t going to launch The Weekly Funnel and then change it if this thing works. Please don’t hesitate to contact me, and please be patient.