OMG: Krugman vs. Jon Stewart

My two favorite opinionators are fighting. It's like being a child of divorce!

First Krugman suggested the idea - and to my surprise the first time he mentioned it was all the way back in July 2011:

Well, there do appear to be legal loopholes. Jack Balkin gives us the platinum coin option:

Sovereign governments such as the United States can print new money. However, there’s a statutory limit to the amount of paper currency that can be in circulation at any one time.
Ironically, there’s no similar limit on the amount of coinage. A little-known statute gives the secretary of the Treasury the authority to issue platinum coins in any denomination. So some commentators have suggested that the Treasury create two $1 trillion coins, deposit them in its account in the Federal Reserve and write checks on the proceeds.

... These things sound ridiculous — but so is the behavior of Congressional Republicans. So why not fight back using legal tricks?

Wow. But he also brought it up more recently, and the meme spread. So last Thursday, Jon Stewart addressed the idea:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Trillion-Dollar Coin
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And then Krugman struck back:

...Above all, however, what went wrong here is a lack of professionalism on the part of Stewart and his staff. Yes, it’s a comedy show — but the jokes are supposed to be (and usually are) knowing jokes, which are funny and powerful precisely because the Daily Show people have done their homework and understand the real issues better than the alleged leaders spouting nonsense. In this case, however, it’s obvious that nobody at TDS spent even a few minutes researching the topic. It was just yuk-yuk-yuk they’re talking about a trillion-dollar con hahaha.
Hey, if we want this kind of intellectual laziness, we can just tune in to Fox. 

Update: Some people are asking why I don’t go on TDS to explain. Um, first I have to be invited — which hasn’t happened since, I think, 2005.

But it wasn't only Krugman. New York Magazine weighed in:

He’s totally missing the point here. The platinum coin is obviously a ridiculous-sounding idea that is natural fodder for The Daily Show. There are lots of ways to do it. You could try to educate the audience about why people are advocating this ridiculous-sounding idea. Or you could do bits about how the coin is a terrible idea.
But the issue is the premise. Pretending that the plan is to mint a coin and pay off the national debt is just flat out false. The premise is the true part of the story, before the punch line. And when the premise is wrong, you’re just cheating.

Now the Daily Show segment was shown last Thursday, and over the weekend the Treasury Department nixed the idea anyway. So I thought Jon Stewart would drop it - but the first segment of the Monday Daily Show was this:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Paul Krugman & the Trillion Dollar Coin
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So on Tuesday afternoon, Krugman struck back again:

Still lazy. Also, can dish it out, but can’t take it. Sad.

Although I love TDS and Jon Stewart, I have to side with Krugman on this.

The ironic thing is that Krugman already said he thinks it's a silly idea. But Krugman's point is that in spite of the ridiculousness it's a valid action to take because Congressional Republicans are behaving in a ridiculous manner. And what disappoints Krugman (and me) is that we have a high opinion of the Daily Show because it so often DOES go beyond the shallow yucks to find the important point through intelligent analysis. And the bit could have actually been much funnier - not to mention more educational - if TDS had gone that step further to examine why the most important economist of this generation is advocating the idea. Krugman is not just screwing around and he's certainly not being stupid. TDS missed an opportunity here.

The Daily Show needs to invite Krugman on. According to Krugman he hasn't been on the show since 2005. Do we really need some actor pushing some crappy movie on TDS when we could have KRUGMAN?

Maybe the best New Yorker cartoon of all time

This cartoon by Mick Stevens is over ten years old, at least. But unfortunately it's even more relevant now than ever.

More at the Cartoon Bank.

Warm Mid-January

Since the weather was rather temperate this weekend (thank you global warming) I did some hiking in and around Central Park.

I had to take a photo of this new establishment in my friend Val's neighborhood - the Fifty Shades of Pain personal trainer outlet. And as someone who has used personal trainers I can testify that fifty isn't even close to the ultimate number of shades of pain a personal trainer will give you. More like five hundred. But they wanted to be clever and reference the best-selling book.

Here is the fascinating facade of the Joan of Arc High School. This is the first school I've ever seen named of the Maid of Orleans, which seems bizarre - she's one of the most famous Catholic saints by far, depicted in art many times - albeit as a bad guy by Shakespeare - so you'd think she'd get more love from schools. I went to Saint Cecilia's grammar school and there are plenty of other schools named after Saint Cecilia - and she did not kick ass - she's just the patroness of musicians.

If you click on the photo you can see a closeup of the fancy stone work.

And finally here is the Swedish Cottage in Central Park, taken from  Shakespeare's garden. The Park sure looks different in the winter.

Steven Pinker flaunts his shameless hypocrisy yet again

To my amazement, the New York Times published an article that was quite critical of the assumptions and (extremely flawed) studies of evolutionary psychology. I had to laugh at the part where Steven Pinker is asked for his response to the criticisms - I was just saying the other day that Pinker always claims political prejudice is the cause of the criticisms. And here it is again:

Citing the speed-dating study, Mr. Pinker added, “The only reason this flawed paper was published was that it challenged an evolutionary hypothesis ... in particular a sex difference — as the Larry Summers incident shows, claims about sex differences are still politically inflammatory in the academy.” Here, he was referring to the much criticized 2005 comments Mr. Summers made when he was Harvard’s president suggesting that women’s underrepresentation in science and engineering was attributable not to socialization but to “different availability of aptitude at the high end.”

I had to write a comment on the article - I don't know if it will be published on the NYTimes web site or not, but that's OK, it's published here:

Why does anybody bother to ask Steven Pinker his opinion of criticism of evolutionary psychology? He always says the same thing, as this article demonstrates: critics of evolutionary psychology are motivated by politics. 

And this is sheer hypocrisy - when the New Yorker published a critical review of his book "The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined" Pinker linked to Razib Khan for his defense:

"But aren’t you just being defensive? Authors always think that negative reviews of their book are wrong. Has anyone else replied to Kolbert?
Razib Khan has a response in the Gene Expression blog on the Discover magazine Web site: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2011/10/relative-angels-and-absolute-demons/"
http://stevenpinker.com/pages/frequently-asked-questions-about-better-angels-our-nature-why-violence-has-declined

**************
Who is Razib Khan? A conservative who contributes to a blog called "Secular Right", as noted in this NYTimes profile from 2011:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/us/19beliefs.html 

Khan is also a "junior fellow" at the Unz Foundation - Ron Unz is the publisher of The American Conservative. 

But although this information is available for anybody to find, to my knowledge no media outlet has ever called Pinker out on his shameless hypocrisy. 

UPDATE: they did publish it.

In my experience, only the New Yorker has viewed the claims of the Darwinian fundamentalists with the skepticism it deserves. My guess is that other media outlets employ writers who know little about science and have no inclination to learn more and feel that this prevents them from having anything meaningful to say on the subject of evolutionary psychology. But as the New Yorker has demonstrated on several occasions, you don't need to be a scientist to critique the claims of evolutionary psychologists - especially Pinker. All you need is the rudiments of logic, as Louis Menand demonstrated in his classic Pinker evisceration What Comes Naturally:

Having it both ways is an irritating feature of "The Blank Slate." Pinker can write, in refutation of the scarecrow theory of violent behavior, "The sad fact is that despite the repeated assurances that 'we know the conditions that breed violence,' we barely have a clue," and then, a few pages later, "It is not surprising, then, that when African American teenagers are taken out of underclass neighborhoods they are no more violent or delinquent than white teenagers." Well, that should give us one clue. 

Steven Pinker is not a profound thinker - he isn't even a coherent thinker. And he's a Darwinian fundamentalist who is literally incapable of imagining that criticisms of the claims and methods of evolutionary psychology could be motivated by anything other than political considerations.

And the reason for that is likely because he himself is motivated by political considerations and so assumes the other side operates in the same way.

Stephen Colbert's perfect description of Wayne LaPierre

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Gun Control Backlash
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The end of this clip contains the most perfect description of NRA executive vice-president Wayne LaPierre that has ever been uttered.

And bonus - it really pissed off the Breitbart ghouls.

False alarm

Looks like I'm staying on Facebook. The objectionable "recommended" page disappeared. Maybe because I threw a fit on Facebook - or maybe it's a coincidence. It was nice to have various FB friends tell me they didn't want me to go, anyway.

But I will not put up with any shit from you Zuckerberg! Don't test me again!

How Facebook finally drove me to Google Plus

I saw this incredibly offensive "suggested page" on my Facebook timeline tonight, and of course immediately began searching for the delete or spam button.

THERE WAS NONE.

Facebook now feels that it can post offensive "suggested pages" on your timeline with impunity.

Well no.

It's not really a surprise though. First there was Friendster, but their network was too slow. Then MySpace had a faster network, but their interface was bad. Then Facebook, but they became too greedy and controlling. I'm sure Google Plus will screw up in a few years too. By then we'll all probably be communicating directly through chips in our brains.

Razib Khan and his continuing successful quest for respectability

UPDATE: my response to the Jamelle Bouie twitter link: The Triumph of Racist Razib Khan 

All my thoughts on Razib Khan here.

Every now and then I get a visitor to this blog via a search for Razib Khan. For those out of the loop, Khan used to run a web site called "Gene Expression" that is now sponsored by - and given a level of respectability by - Discover Magazine. I've been writing about Khan since the earliest days of this blog.

Of course Razib Khan is also granted respectability by Steven Pinker.

But there is no evidence that Khan has dropped the obsession that drove him ten years ago - the search to prove that blacks and women - but especially blacks - are intellectually inferior.

He's not so blatant about it now as he was in 2003 though. To understand the true Razib Khan, check out this comment he made on Gene Expression ten years ago:

And a book published recently claims to show that American blacks who come from families that have a certain amount of wealth do have the same IQs as whites who come from families with that same amount of wealth

this is chicken or egg now....
what you mean is *asset* levels. income on the other hand is less important, "middle class" blacks do far less well academically than "middle class" (or even working class) whites. this can be chalked up to culture of course. and that is where adoption studies come in, and i tend to think they tilt toward a genetic explanation-though we haven't eliminated all possible variables that could give a cultural explanation.
but as i've noted, the ~ 1 STD deviation difference between blacks & whites persists for a century-despite the fact that blacks are wealthier & healthier (though not AS healthy or wealthy) in relation to whites than they were one century ago.
certainly environmental effects are important, but me thinks we attempt to eliminate the VERY POSSIBILITY of inherent differences of IQ between individuals, and average mean differences between populations, for political, not scientific, reasons.
one reason that black adoptees might do more poorly on IQ tests than white adoptees is that society is racist-and yet, scarr et al. found that genetic markers for "blackness" did not correlate well to intelligence, and Dienekes has posted data which indicates a weak correlation between light-skin & IQ in blacks. what would this imply? scarr tries to argue that this implies race != have a relationship to average IQ, though jensen counters that generations of recombination surely have lead to a decoupling within the black population of more eurpoid phenotype from the alleles that contribute to higher IQ. if, as some, including flynn, have argued, that racism even among adoptees from the parents is what causes the lower average IQ of black children, then the "whiter" looking ones should be subject to less racism and therefore have higher IQs. scarr i believe found that biracial children had IQs intermediate between white and black children, which dovetails well with both the thesis that IQ is genetic, or that social discrimination determintes a child's self-perception and therefore eventual IQ. from jensen's perspective, he would argue that progressive recombination over many generations have not resulted in the linkage equilibrium between multiple genes (assuming random mating, etc.), and so that is why biracial children still exhibit higher IQs than black children....
economic deprivation does not lead to cocomittant low academic performance (to the same degree) among some non-black groups (asians of course i mean here), so the cultural explanation is the catch-all. so you look at kids that are adopted and therefore of "white culture," but if that data doesn't fit, you assert their phenotype sets them off from the population. from the various interpretations you then weight toward the one that argues for environment more than genetics.
from what i see, most people have a conclusion they want to reach, and they will keep positing "plausible" hypothesis after plausible hypothesis until they find something they can hold onto.
Posted by: razib at July 25, 2003 09:14 PM

I bolded the last bit. In a display of his standard lack of self-awareness, Khan suggests that it's others who have a conclusion they want to reach (in this case that there is no evidence for black intellectual inferiority), while he, Razib Khan is pure and unaffected by politics.

Maybe the most telling evidence for where, exactly, Razib Khan is coming from is further down the page:

the numbers cited in AMREN i have seen elsewhere in print (from lynn and a few others). the "asian" population in england has a lot of components. the gujaratis from east africa tend to be well-off and well educated. the sikhs less so, but still OK. the bottom of the heap are bangladeshis and to a lesser extent pakistanis. these last two groups tend to come to work in blue-collar sectors. there is probably some lag in that the lower SES groups are less assimilated/newer to british culture (east africa gujaratis might have showed up in the 1970s, but they tend to come from world-wide cosmopolitan families with a strong command of english and western folk-ways)-but the type of person who comes to work in a mill is going to be a bit different that the Ph.D. sort, at the least, the dumber brothers will go work in the mill, the bright one come to the US.
btw...according to CITY JOURNAL 25% of students in med school in england are south asian-about the same population:med student ratio as the US....
Posted by: razib at July 27, 2003 12:46 AM

The AMREN source Khan is using to bolster his argument is American Renaissance, a proudly racist site. And although Razib Khan doesn't show his love for American Renaissance any more, going so far in 2006 as to refer to them as "the most highbrow of racialist publications" American Renaissance still loves Razib Khan and links to his Discover-branded Gene Expression all the time. He's their hero, of course, because Khan has achieved the kind of respectability in this century that other racists can only dream of.

Khan and Steven Pinker both believe there is a liberal conspiracy to suppress the truth of evolutionary psychology and its message of black/female intellectual inferiority. In a correspondence with me some years ago Pinker claimed that Stephen Jay Gould's opinions on socio-biology (different name but exactly the same as evolutionary psychology) should be discounted because Gould had left-wing political views.

We see Khan doing the same thing recently in reference to Richard Lewontin:

Richard Lewontin’s fame rests in part on his pioneering role in the development of the field of molecular evolution, and secondarily due to his trenchant Left-wing politics.

Actually, as you can see in the Wikipedia entry on Lewontin, his fame does not rest, even secondarily, on his left-wing politics. But for Razib Khan as much as Steven Pinker, the very fact that you have objections to the conclusions of biological determinism proves that you are driven by left-wing politics. Because it is literally unthinkable for them that there might be solid scientific objections to biological determinism. 


Or perhaps they really do see themselves are political players, and understand that the best defense is a good offense - to claim the other side is tainted by political considerations is a good tactic to obscure your own blatant political views.

Razib Khan sees no hypocrisy in complaining about the alleged political leanings of socio-biology critics while contributing to a web site called "Secular Right" - one of its other contributors is John "too racist for National Review" Derbyshire.

And I find it extremely offensive that Khan writes for the site under the name "David Hume." I strongly suspect David Hume would have found Razib Khan contemptible.

Thus spake Krugman

Rage Against the Coin

Krugman proposes his solution:

...clause allowing the Treasury to mint platinum coins in any denomination it chooses. Of course this was intended as a way to issue commemorative coins and stuff, not as a fiscal measure; but at least as I understand it, the letter of the law would allow Treasury to stamp out a platinum coin, say it’s worth a trillion dollars, and deposit it at the Fed — thereby avoiding the need to issue debt.

Your odd predilections

I find this Miracle Whip commercial vastly amusing, especially when the village woman says "nor your odd predilections" - I always have to LOL whenever I hear it.

I keep hoping the expression "your odd predilections" will catch on, so towards that end, I have someone in my BEN FRANKLIN play use the phrase. I'm hopeful putting it in a play will help, but maybe I'm overly-optimistic - the word "senamensing" hasn't caught on yet, in spite of my efforts to popularize it by putting it into my sonnets. Although hopefully more people will see the play than saw my sonnets.

Senamensing isn't my own invention - it's a Lenni-Lenape word that means "sweet water" and it was mangled into "Cinnaminson" which is the name of a township just north of where I grew up in South Jersey.

I repurposed the word into a metaphor for romantic love (which I contrasted with the saltiness of sexual desire in this sonnet), whereas I think the Lenni-Lenape were talking about actual potable water.

The continuing doll housie saga

In spite of my dissatisfaction with aspects of the "Sunday Philosophy Club" series, I find myself on the fifth installment. A few times I almost gave up completely on the series.

One thing that's so annoying is that the author holds back from descriptions of sexual acts - it's almost Victorian. Isabel Dalhousie does go on and on about how beautiful her 20-something boyfriend Jamie is, which is great, but the first time they got together, in book 3, she just asks him: "do you want to sleep with me." And then they are shown in the afterglow phase. I don't expect clinical details and even the best writers have written bad sex scenes, but come on, Smith, give us something.

And then there's the fact that Jamie has aged from 23 in book 1 to 29 in book 5, but Dalhousie has remained in her early 40s. Does Smith think nobody would notice, or did he not pay enough attention himself? The guy is hella prolific, I wouldn't be surprised if he misses a bunch of details.

And Dalhousie herself seems like such an old prissy lady - and it's not only because the woman doing the voice work for the audio books sounds like she's pushing 70. Granted the experience being in your early 40s in Edinburgh might be different from being in your early 40s in Manhattan, but still...

But every now and then there will be a moment of awesome in the series that keeps me coming back. That happened in the fourth book - Dalhousie has been throughout the series the editor of the Review of Applied Ethics, but in the middle of book 4 she finds out that she's been sacked - a coup by a couple of academics named Lettuce and Dove, with Dove taking over her editorship. After some soul-searching she decides against philosophical resignation and instead takes action - she's filthy rich, so she simply buys the Review of Applied Ethics and sacks Lettuce and Dove. You go, Dalhousie.

This is sincere romantic sonnetry?

Well no.

But not even Shakespeare's sonnets were all about how much his beloved is like a summer's day. The "dark lady" got some pretty hard bashings - you can't get much harsher than calling your former beloved "as black as hell, as dark as night."

And I will never believe that the "fair youth" and the "dark lady" of the sonnets did not exist, as some critics believe. Only people who don't write poetry could imagine you can just crank out sonnets purely for the sake of pretty phraseology or even money. To write a sonnet you have to feel it. Sure you have to work on it, but the origin of a sonnet is a feeling, a very personal feeling that you must bring to full expression. And sometimes even men from online dating sites can inspire one.

This is sincere romantic love?

Once again I am asking myself: "what was I thinking?" I went ahead and posted another call for an NYCPlaywrights Play of the Month. I've already received 32 submissions and as usual a good chunk of the submissions don't meet the stated criterion, which reads: 

The theme is "Two Hander in Love." It can be a comedy or a drama, but should not have a bitter, cynical, take-my-wife-please approach. This is about sincere romantic love. The romantic love can be hetero-normative or LGBT, but the script should call for no more than two characters on stage - it should be a two-hander.

I think it's pretty clear that "sincere romantic love" is what is wanted. By what twisted definition do any of these count?

• A young couple who have been together two weeks gets into a fight about pigeons nesting outside their window. They insult each other. The guy climbs onto the ledge and falls off. I think this is supposed to be humorous. Since the script does not specify how high up they are, you don't know if he's dead or just comically maimed. 

• A play that sounds more like a Penthouse Forum (does that still exist?) letter than anything else. A beautiful young woman meets a "nice-guy Wall Street trader" - clearly this playwright doesn't actually know any Wall Street traders - and asks him to impregnate her while her husband is away on duty in Afghanistan. Also because "she's horny." Oh and in spite of this guy being "nice" he's also married but has no problem agreeing within ten minutes to go off and impregnate a random stranger. 

• A 50 year old couple, married for 27 years, and the wife hasn't made breakfast for the husband that week, although every single other day of their marriage she has. And she also does all the laundry and fetches his newspaper. And this play is set in "the present." What the hell is a "newspaper"? So at the end we find out that he forgot her birthday. This cliched cardboard scenario is what this playwright sent to a call for "sincere romantic plays."

And as if these all weren't enough, once again the author of the play about a woman sitting on a toilet during the entire play sent me that play again. I blogged about it the first time I saw this script, almost two years ago.

It's plays like these that really make me hate people. I'm extremely tempted to write back and tell them exactly what I think of their plays - or even just send them one line: "this is what you consider a sincere romantic play?" but then that would give them a chance to send something else - the deadline isn't until January 27. And they don't deserve another chance.

Miss Willow

No time for blogging lately - so here's a picture of one of my cats. Miss Willow has such nice shiny black fur. I finally found a veteranarian who got that Willow and Spike (aka Mr. Fuzz) are named after characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Yay.

Mr. Fuzz's New Year

He likes to sleep in on New Year's Day.

2012 review

So I posted some goals for 2012 last year - did I meet them? Let's see:

• A production of the full-length JULIA & BUDDY

FAIL - thanks to the employment rollercoaster of 2012 I was not able to do this. But on the positive side, by the end of 2012 I had a new full-time permanent job that I like much much better than the job I held from 2008 - 2012.

• PALMYRA NJ - not only first draft but revised, finalized play

FAIL - and there's no excuse for this - I had time, in-between looking for a new job.

• Full-length MISTRESS ILSA, Full-length SODOM & GOMORRAH: THE ONE MAN SHOW

FAIL and FAIL.  I did however make some headway on my play about Catherine the Great, which was one of my goals, although I'm nowhere near finished, and I started a play about Ben Franklin, which wasn't a goal but at least I wasn't just goofing off on Facebook all year.

• More video projects

  WIN - I definitely met this goal. Thanks to being unemployed for part of 2012 I was able to not only interview Carl Forsman, the founder of Keen Company for the NYCPlaywrights' web site (and got a pair of comps in exchange), but I did some pretty ambitious stuff with the NYCPlaywrights Play of the Month videos: I added special effects to the March video; used archival footage (and did voice acting) for the October video; and made, basically three 10-minute movies in February (on the N train), May (in Union Square), and September (my apartment.) 

• Increase NYCPlaywrights web traffic.

WIN - maybe because of the videos, but there were 99,870 visits to the site in 2011 and 165,454 in 2012. And income from Google ads increased 104%. And then there were the banner ads...

In spite of my theater-related fails I did get something done - I had a new production of MISTRESS ILSA with a revised script.

For 2013 my goals are:

• World premiere of the full-length JULIA & BUDDY, finally
• Get at least one of my many half-finished full-length plays up to production-worthy status. At this point it's either BEN FRANKLIN or MISTRESS ILSA. Or CATHERINE THE GREAT.
• Invest in better video equipment to make better videos.

Three is enough for one year, I think.

Blogging indiscretion

I found out recently that my department at work hired the Freakonomics guys to do some statistical work for them. I don't think anybody knows I have a blog and if they did I doubt they'd read it, which is good because something I said about one of the Freakonomics guys on my blog four years ago was, shall we say, less than flattering.

More on the NRA and the courts

Linda Greenhouse, whose NYTimes beat is the Supreme Court and the law, wrote an excellent piece about the outsized influence the NRA wields over the Republicans when it comes to judiciary nominations:

Back in 2009, when President Obama chose Judge Sonia Sotomayor as his first Supreme Court nominee, the White House expected that her compelling personal story, sterling credentials, and experience both as a prosecutor and, for 17 years, as a federal judge would win broad bipartisan support for her nomination. There was, in fact, no plausible reason for any senator to vote against her. 

The president’s hope was Senator Mitch McConnell’s fear. In order to shore up his caucus, the Senate Republican leader asked a favor of his friends at the National Rifle Association: oppose the Sotomayor nomination and, furthermore, “score” the confirmation vote. An interest group “scores” a vote when it adds the vote on a particular issue to the legislative scorecard it gives each member of Congress at the end of the session. In many states, an N.R.A. score of less than 100 for an incumbent facing re-election is big trouble. 

Note that the N.R.A. had never before scored a judicial confirmation vote. Note also that Sonia Sotomayor had no record on the N.R.A.’s issues. (True, she voted with an appeals court panel to uphold New York State’s ban on nunchucks, a martial-arts weapon consisting of two sticks held together with a chain or rope, commonly used by gang members and muggers. The appeals court didn’t even reach the interesting issue of whether the Second Amendment guaranteed the right to keep and bear nunchucks, ruling instead that the amendment didn’t apply to the states – which, before the Supreme Court later ruled otherwise by a vote of 5 to 4, it didn’t.) 

Never mind. The N.R.A. had all the reason it needed to oppose Sonia Sotomayor: maintenance of its symbiotic relationship with the Republican Party. Once it announced its opposition and its intention to score the vote, Republican support for the nominee melted away. Only seven Republicans voted for confirmation.

I wrote about the subject of the NRA and the Supreme Court recently - I had not been aware of the big change in focus from "well-regulated militia" to personal gun rights that happened four years ago - Greenhouse references it in her piece - because I hadn't been paying attention.

The NRA is like Sauron - it never sleeps, just keeps looking, looking for its Precious - which, in this case, is a final victory that would mean the right of any American to own any type of gun and to carry it at all times and everywhere. After purchasing the gun without background checks.

And like Sauron, it cannot be reasoned with - it is just plain evil and must be stopped.

Loser actors on dating sites

I always wonder about a guy on a dating site who claims to be an actor. There are way more straight women than straight men in the acting world - although men get more roles because more roles are written for men, which means that quite a few unattractive men can be actors. But unless his profile picture shows him to be hideous, you have to wonder why he can't find a woman through acting.

Usually it's because he thinks waaay too highly of himself.

I saw a guy today who says he's a part-time actor, makes between 40 - 50 K,  claims to be 47 but with his balding grey hair he looks like he's in his mid-50s at least, and yet he's looking for a woman between the ages of 23 - 39 - and he doesn't even have the excuse that he wants a woman to be a breeder for him - he says he has kids and doesn't want any more. But not only does she have to be no older than eight years younger than him, she can't be even slightly overweight, she has to be white, and in his opinion has an "obligation" to keep her legs shaved.

The best part is that in spite of identifying himself right from the top as an actor, here was his response to the question:  In the line Wherefore art thou Romeo? what does wherefore mean?

Why God bless Google and OKC. I just learned something kinda interesting.

He promotes himself as an actor and yet not only did he get to be age 47 (or so) without knowing that "wherefore" means "why" in this context, he's so stupid he actually admits it. I mean, he's already ruled out his Victoria's Secret model target demographic by being a middle-aged man who makes 40-50K (and in NYC!), but he's even demonstrated what a loser he is to a woman who might have an interest in the theater and low-income actors.

I was so tempted to write to him and ask how the search for a young-beautiful-thin-white-not-a-gold-digger was going, but the answer was found easily enough by doing a search on his user name:

And one more thing - what the hell is the deal with SCUBA?!? I had no idea that so many single men were interested in self-contained underwater breathing apparati until I went on dating sites. Does any woman, unless she is a SCUBA nut too, think this is a big plus? How many women are SCUBA nuts? And most of these men also include a photo of themselves in full SCUBA gear. I guess to prove that he isn't just bragging about the SCUBA - dammit he really does it! Don't contact him all at once ladies!

Christmas travel

Big family party at my sister's place in far South Jersey for Christmas this year. I had a train stop in Philadelphia, and once again marveled at how tiny the city seems now. Philly used to be the big city across the river, when I lived in South Jersey. Now it's like a little doll city.

Case in point, the 30th Street Station, pictured below. It was built probably around the same time as the original New York Penn Station, and unlike Penn, was never razed and covered by Madison Square Garden. So it looks pretty cool and beaux-arts. But I was almost in the center of the waiting area from where I took the picture, so that gives you an idea of how small the whole thing is, compared to Penn Station. The entire waiting area is smaller than just the Amtrak section of Penn Station, and Penn also has bus and subway sections.

Here I am waiting to take a train. I was already aware that my face is very asymmetrical, but only recently have I become aware of how freakishly arched my eyebrows are. The left is more arched than the right, but they're both way more arched than say, the eyebrows of the beautiful model in the giant banner ad behind the Christmas tree in the photo above.  

*sigh*

More evidence that most people don't know shit from Shinola

I was truly aghast over the Random House Modern Library list of the 100 Best Novels.

The first thing that hit me - or anybody with any understanding of what makes a novel good - is that four of the top ten listed in the "Readers List" column are by Ayn Rand and three are by L. Ron Hubbard. The three slots not taken by cult leaders are "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "1984" which are probably there because they are popular school reading assignments and so most people have actually read them, and "Lord of the Rings" which is arguably another cult.

The "Board's List" is better if only because neither Rand nor Hubbard appear on it at all, but it leaves out Twain, Dickens, Jane Austen and the Brontes.

Leaving out the Brontes and Austen wasn't all that surprising: their work is now considered too "chick lit" to be respectable, since the goal posts of all art forms are being moved to hinder growing female participation - now art must be macho and manly for it to be respectable. Hemingway appears on the Board list, twice.

The truly shocking part is that "Wide Sargasso Sea" is on the list. That book is a prequel to "Jane Eyre" and it's not only glorified fan fiction, it's the most boring novel I've ever read. I finished it but only barely, clinging desperately to consciousness.

Who are these Modern Library board people???

Happy Saturnalia!

Famous dark-side Saturn photo -
click to view a very large version.

• Saturn’s Glorious Dark Side

That is Saturn, as seen by the Cassini spacecraft on Oct. 17, 2012. It’s a mosaic of 60 images (taken in violet, red, and infrared light seen here in false color), methodically stitched together to produce this jaw-dropping view, and you absolutely positively must grab the bigger, higher-resolution version. It's stunning.

Saturnalia was an ancient Roman festival in honour of the deitySaturn held on December 17 of the Julian calendar and later expanded with festivities through December 23. The holiday was celebrated with a sacrifice at the Temple of Saturn in the Roman Forum and a public banquet, followed by private gift-giving, continual partying, and a carnival atmosphere that overturnedRoman social norms: gambling was permitted, and masters provided table service for their slaves.^[1] The poet Catullus called it "the best of days."^[2]

The Sunday Philosophy Club

An actor friend, after attending the latest reading of JULIA & BUDDY on Friday (which is  hopefully the last reading before a production) recommended a book series to me, "The Sunday Philosophy Club." The first installment was published in 2004.

Since I was having one of my every-few-months bouts with dry-eye syndrome over the weekend I wanted to avoid spending my usual hours and hours staring at the computer so I downloaded the first two installments as audiobooks and spent the day with my burning eyes closed, listening to the novels.

I have mixed feelings about the novels and the heroine, Isabel Dalhousie. On the one hand I have plenty of affinity for her, being around my age - or was, when the first book was published; an interest in philosophy - she actually is a philosopher with a part-time job as the editor of Review of Applied Ethics. She's also attracted to a younger man, who, when the first book opens, is her niece's ex-boyfriend. A good chunk of the stories are devoted to her various philosophical musings which I enjoy, since many of her observations are pithy, well-reasoned and even sometimes funny. And at one point she slams evolutionary psychology and what's not to like about that?

But she doesn't have to work, living off the fortune she inherited from her mother, and at times she seems like a bit of a ninny, and prissy too. Although part of my assessment of her might be colored by the voice of the audio book reader for the series, which I find irritating.

But then again, on the plus side she lives in Edinburgh, one of only four foreign cities I've visited, which also includes Dublin, London and Montreal and Montreal barely counts because it's Canada and we drove there. And really Dublin doesn't count either because I was there for a job and barely got to see anything outside my hotel room and the office.

Anyway, I have vivid and fond memories of Edinburgh, which I visited with my daughter five years ago to see the Fringe Festival. Various locales, some of which I visited, are described in the novels, which is a nice cozy familiar feeling.

And then there's this - early in the second novel in the series, while Isabel is working in her niece's cheese shop, she observes:

Most people led their lives this way: doing, rather than thinking. They acted, rather than thought about acting; this made philosophy a luxury - the privilege of those who didn't have to spend their time cutting cheese and wrapping bread. From the perspective of the cheese counter, Schopenhauer seemed far away.

Which I found a fascinating coincidence - the passage echoes some lines in my J&B script:

The world has to be maintained. That’s why we get paid. We do something worth getting paid for. Nobody wants to pay actors, trust me. And philosophy professors – hah. Philosophy is not so important when you have a stopped-up toilet. And yet philosophy professors are given so much respect.

And Julia is a philosophy professor specializing in Schopenhaur. The novel passage above is the first time that Schopenhauer is mentioned in the series.

So obviously there's much to recommend this series to me - and when you have to keep your eyes closed there aren't many activity options anyway.

One thing I am sure of - the author, Alexander McCall Smith is gay. I tried to confirm this, but so far have not found anything online, but I'd bet big money on it. I don't think there are any detailed descriptions of young women in the books, and I have no idea what Isabel Dalhousie even looks like - I don't think she's been described yet, and she never looks into a mirror.

But he's gone into detail on how beautiful the young men are - and in fact there is an unusually high percentage of beautiful young men in the books, and the author enjoys putting admiring thoughts in the heads of his female characters. At one point Dalhousie's housekeeper gives detailed instructions to one of the beautiful young men on how he could dress sexier. You would never see this kind of thing from a straight male writer.

So that's another point in favor of the series.

Playbill perspectives

Playbill has re-branded its Broadway database as the Playbill Vault, and it's quite a useful resource. It has information grouped by people, shows, theaters, awards, seasons and grosses all of which are fascinating in themselves and they're all interconnected to give quite a vivid picture of the history of Broadway. The Vault's records go back to the season of 1930-31. And yes my grandfather's cousin Iggie Wolfington is in there. He performed in The Music Man twice, the first time in 1957 as the original Marcellus Washburn (Shipoopie, Shipoopie!) and the second time, in the 1980 revival as Mayor Shinn. Dick Van Dyke was Harold Hill for the 1980 version.

It's interesting, I've never thought of my family as being particularly all-American, but my great-great grandfather fought in the Civil War, for the Union side (thank god!) and Iggie Wolfington appeared on Broadway - and the Civil War and Broadway are about as quintessentially American as you can get. That and three bucks will get you a tall cappuccino at Starbucks, so big whoop, but it's kind of interesting.

But I digress...

While browsing around in the Vault I was quite surprised by how many of the Broadway shows I had never heard of before - and how many shows have had very short runs. I'm not sure how brief a run has to be before a show is considered a flop - not many shows are as notorious as Moose Murders which closed the same night it opened, February 22, 1983.

But take for example the 1980 season which featured The Music Man. I've heard of Your Arms Too Short to Box with God (revival); Amadeus (I saw the 2000 Broadway production - I like the movie better); The Man Who Came to Dinner (revival); Camelot (revival); Brigadoon (revival); The Little Foxes (revival); The Philadelphia Story (revival); and Fifth of July by the dread Lanford Wilson and Pirates of Penzance and MacBeth. But that's about all I'm familiar with and most of them are reivivals.

I've never heard of Fearless Frank nor Perfectly Frank. Fearless is "The life of Welsh author Frank Harris, who chronicled his many affairs in his memoir My Life and Loves" and had 13 previews and 12 performances; and Perfectly is "Songs of Frank Loesser, who wrote for many Hollywood films as well as Broadway's Where's Charley, Guys and Dolls, How to Succeed... and The Most Happy Fella" and had 24 previews and 16 performances.

It's So Nice to Be Civilized is a musical with book, music and lyrics by Micki Grant, who also wrote additional music and lyrics for Your Arms Too Short to Box with God; but while Arms Too Short had 4 previews and 149 performances, Civilized had 23 previews and 8 performances.

Passione ("A wife who abandoned her Italian-American family in Philadelphia returns") had 11 previews and 15 performances in spite of being directed by Frank Langello and starring Jerry Stiller.

The Suicide had 60 performances - I imagine having Derek Jacobi as the lead didn't hurt although I've never heard of the play - this is apparently its first production in spite of being written by Nikolai Erdman in 1928. The plot: "...an unemployed man who fails to learn to play the tuba properly considers suicide, with his neighbor exploiting that suicide to several bidders who want to further their own agendas."

Division Street ("Former 1960s radicals examine their lives from an adult perspective.") had 21 previews and 21 performances. Its author Steve Tesich wrote the equally obscure The Speed of Darkness, produced in 1991.

I've never heard of Lunch Hour ("A group of married couples toy with wife-swapping in the Hamptons.") in spite of the fact that it ran for a respectable 262 performances; it was written by Jean Kerr, author of the smash hit Please Don't Eat the Daisies; and starred Gilda Radner and Sam Waterson. Another "wife-swapping" play Mixed Couples ("Two couples who swapped partners 25 years ago reunite at an airport hanger in New Jersey in 1927") did not do nearly as well with only 7 previews and 9 performances.

I'm very sorry that Onward Victoria was a one-day flop, since it was "A musical biography of the 19th-century feminist icon Victoria Woodhull, who became a millionaire stockbroker and ran for President of the United States on a platform of free love and sexual equality."

Emlyn Williams as Charles Dickens ("Emlyn Williams impersonates the novelist Charles Dickens on one of his famous lecture tours, reading selections from his celebrated novels") is interesting to me since I'm aware that Sam Clemens, who knew a thing or two about performing literary work, was extremely unimpressed by Charles Dickens' stage presentations and wrote "there is no heart, no feeling in it - it is glittering frostwork."

How I Won't Dance found a producer is a complete mystery. The production was a bona-fide flop, closing the day it opened. But not only is the play extremely unpleasant sounding - the synopsis here is "A paraplegic confined to a wheelchair celebrates the recent mysterious murder of his brother and sister-in-law in a diabolic manner" - is there any other manner to "celebrate" a murder? - the author Oliver Hailey already had 2 other bona fide flops under his belt - his First One Asleep, Whistle ("A troubled young mother has a tragic romance with an emotionally immature man.") opened and closed February 26, 1966 and his Father's Day ("Three divorcees bond over their situation and invite their husbands to a cocktail party") opened and closed March 16, 1971. Wow, Arthur Bicknell, author of Moose Murders was never given a second and third chance.

Sidney Michaels, on the other hand had several productions that did well to very well and his Ben Franklin in Paris was nominated for a Tony Award in 1965. He never had a single flop until his Tricks of the Trade which opened and closed on November 6, 1980, in spite of starring George C. Scott. I blame the hideous show logo - I think I owe the New York Neo-Futurist's logo an apology.

Beautiful people with a beautiful idea

Classical music flashmobs are the best

This one is in Sabadell, Spain.

They seem to be singing the Ode to Joy in Spanish.

Happy New B'ak'tun!

This Mayan document, known as the Dresden Codex, shows a sky caiman vomiting water and has been interpreted as suggesting that modern civilization may end on Dec. 21, 2012.

According to some interpretations of the Mayan calendar, the current world, in which humans have flourished, began 13 b’ak’tuns, or 5,125 years, ago, following three failed worlds, the last of which also lasted 13 b’ak’tuns. And some doomsayers have equated the end of this fourth world with the end of civilization.But the consensus among modern Mayanist scholars is that the end of this 13-b’ak’tun period heralds only the beginning of the next.

More at the NYTimes.

Sometimes a vomiting sky caiman is just a vomiting sky caiman.

Theater prospects

The economics are looking good for a 2013 production of JULIA & BUDDY - finally! Part of the reason being that I am almost recovered from the massive debt incurred thanks to my 2008 production of JANE EYRE. That was an expensive goddam lesson I hope never to repeat.

And certainly J&B will be way less expensive than JE to produce: only two actors instead of six, modern, not period costumes and a simple staging.

Although not as simple as a production I saw this weekend: the actor I have in mind for JULIA, Claire Warden performed in her theater group's A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM as Titania. If they hadn't cast her as Titania I would have boycotted on principle. There was some good stuff in this production although I disagreed with many of the director's choices, especially moving the first "rude mechanicals" scene to the beginning of the play. Changing the sequence of Shakepeare's plays seems to be this particular director's thing - he did it to a production of HAMLET too.

One of the consequences of the DREAM scene change is that Titania ends up being "asleep" on stage for twenty minutes. I would never make an actor lie motionless on stage for twenty minutes, it's absurd.

Anyway, their set was just a bunch of blocks. I took a picture during intermission:

I saw a production of Vonnegut's HAPPY BIRTHDAY WANDA JUNE in this same space and they had a massively tricked-out set. What a contrast.

This is the Access Theater on lower Broadway, and I will never do a production there because it's a four-flight walkup and I don't want to do that to the old people who make up a goodly percentage of any professional theater audience in New York.

The Reagan presidency - the gift that keeps on giving

There is a fascinating, creepy part of ANGELS IN AMERICA when Roy Cohn and a fictional Reagan Justice Department official are trying to recruit Joe Pitt to work for Roy, and they talk about appointing conservative judges:

MARTIN

It's a revolution in Washington, Joe. We have a new agenda and finally a real leader. They got back the Senate but we have the courts. By the nineties the Supreme Court will be block-solid Republican appointees, and the Federal bench, Republican judges like landmines, everywhere they turn. Affirmative action? Take it to court. Boom! Land mine. And we'll get our way on just about everything: abortion, defense, Central America, family values, a live investment climate...

Kushner doesn't mention gun control but it appears that the Supreme Court's conservatives have had a more radical-right impact on the interpretation of the Second Amendment than any other issue.

I didn't realize this because I hadn't really paid much attention to gun laws until I got into fights with various gun nuts on Facebook, and ended up doing some research.

I found this fascinating article in the December 17 Bloomberg News:

Gun Debate Must Avoid Crazy Second Amendment Claims

For almost seven decades, the court’s leading decision was U.S. v. Miller. The 1939 case involved a ban on the possession of a sawed-off shotgun. Sounding like Burger, the court unanimously said that the Second Amendment’s “obvious purpose” was “to assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness of” the militia. Without evidence that the possession of a sawed-off shotgun was related to preservation of a well-regulated militia, the court refused to say that the Second Amendment protected the right to have such a weapon. 

For decades, federal courts overwhelmingly rejected the conclusion that the Second Amendment protects an individual right. It wasn’t until the 21st century that lower federal courts, filled with appointees of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, started to adopt the individual-rights position. And, of course, the Supreme Court itself adopted that view in 2008, by a 5-to-4 vote.

The 2008 case that is considered a "landmark decision" is District of Columbia et. al vs. Heller. And so Heller won the right to his handgun by the Court ruling that the "well-regulated militia" aspect did not matter.

According to Wiki:

In a dissent, joined by Justices Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer, Justice Stevens said: 

The Amendment’s text does justify a different limitation: the “right to keep and bear arms” protects only a right to possess and use firearms in connection with service in a state-organized militia. Had the Framers wished to expand the meaning of the phrase “bear arms” to encompass civilian possession and use, they could have done so by the addition of phrases such as “for the defense of themselves”

But the Reagan/Bush conservatives won by one vote. 

Kushner may not have predicted the future, but there's one creepy coincidence here - the  fictional Reagan Justice Department official making the case for a Reagan Supreme Court, which made the pro-Heller decision, is named Martin Heller.

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence

I joined the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

Because sometimes arguing with gun nuts on Facebook just isn't enough.



And I thought The Onion has a pretty good response to the gun nuts:

'Right To Live Life In Complete, Stunned Horror,' Added To Constitution

In the wake of yesterday’s gruesome mass shooting that claimed the lives of 27 people, including 20 schoolchildren, the United States ratified a new constitutional amendment this afternoon guaranteeing American citizens the right to live life in a perpetual state of abject horror. “The provisions of the 28th Amendment will fully protect the right of all individuals to spend every waking moment utterly terrified at the thought of a deranged stranger with a semiautomatic combat rifle gunning them down,” said House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH)...

More at The Onion.

G.B. Shaw's bigger than Jesus moment

I was poking around the NYTimes archives to get something interesting to put into the weekly NYCPlaywrights email blast, Apparently Shaw was at it fifty-five years before Lennon...

Although he didn't have nearly the shitstorm - or any really - that Lennon got. Maybe the fact that the news was still traveling by cable - or "special cable" as it says in this article - has something to do with it.

More Shaviana at the NYTimes.

Breaking Abbey - mashup courtesy of the Colbert report.

Adorable.

It's time for gun control. NOW.

School Gunman Kills 20 Children in Connecticut

This is a start:


Michigan Gun Bill To End Criminal Background Checks Nixed In Senate

A bill pushed by the National Rifle Association to eliminate criminal background checks for many handgun buyers in Michigan was rejected by state lawmakers Wednesday, after a heavy lobbying effort by law enforcement officials, municipal leaders and gun control advocates.
The bill would have repealed a state law mandating all handgun buyers pass a background check program run by the Michigan State Police, designed to block felons, domestic abusers and the severely mentally ill from obtaining a handgun license. Federal law bars felons from obtaining firearms, but does not mandate private sellers conduct criminal background checks on gun buyers.
The bill sailed through the Michigan House of Representatives in June, but died in the Senate after lawmakers voted overwhelmingly in favor of an alternate measure that eased handgun licensing in the state but retained the criminal background checks. Republicans in Michigan control both state houses and the governorship.
State law enforcement officials, municipal leaders and activists against domestic violence came out strongly against the measure eliminating background checks, warning it would allow illegal guns to fall into the wrong hands.

The above story is important for two reasons - first because it demonstrates just what a pack of extremists the NRA is, and second it demonstrates that the NRA doesn't always win. I've been having FB arguments about gun control and in addition to smacking down gun nuts, I had to deal with all the Droopy Dogs who say we should just give up opposing the NRA because the NRA always wins. That is disgusting defeatist bullshit.

What do Objectivists really think of "A Christmas Carol"?

Objectivism is a philosophy invented by Ayn Rand that considers selfishness to be the supreme virtue and altruism to be the lowest vice.

Now it's always good fun to parody Ayn Rand and Objectivists - I did it myself in my short play Christmas Blessing. It helps that Rand's novels are laughably bad.

And Christmas especially, with its emphasis on generosity and fellow-man sentiment is a natural enemy of Objectivism.

Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" with its Objectivist hero Ebeneezer Scrooge has been an excellent source of Objectivism parody as in this book, Ayn Rand's Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

But really there's very little that Objectivists actually say that doesn't sound like a parody. Here is what Capitalism Magazine has to say about A Christmas Carol:

...At the heart of this short story lies an abomination: that man— productive man as sordidly portrayed by Dickens— is a being to be stomped into the dust, a creature to be forced to submit to the whims of others. Indeed the very universe demands it. Man’s values are those imposed upon him by others. Chief among these are self-sacrifice, humility and guilt. An Augustinian view of man as “crooked, sordid, bespotted and ulcerous” pervades the work. Individual man cannot aspire to greatness for the sole reason that he is a hopelessly flawed. He simply must accept his lot as a pack animal.

Here are some highlights from an actual Objectivist discussion of A Christmas Carol:

 I have to admit, I actually felt very sorry for poor Ebenezer Scrooge.That the Three Ghosts could emotionally blackmail him  into sharing his wealth
--------
I have always viewed "The Christmas Carol" as little more than a socialists screed against those who are achievers and producers! 
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My question is simply; do you think there is a redeemable message in " A Christmas Carol " and is Scrooge a miserable bastard?  Or is Dickens ( Known to be a passionate Socialist ) spreading a sick message of Anti-Greed, Anti-businessman propaganda? 
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I believe that "A Christmas Carol" deserves our attention as Objectivists. It is usually presented as one of the most inmoral characterization of altruism ever. Others may think it just speaks about generosity and benevolence. For some it has the germ of British socialism. For others it is just a call to mitigate the inevitable byproducts of capitalism.Maybe it is a mix of many things.
I cherished A Christmas Charol for many years, but after I discovered reason and freedom, I regard it a very toxic product with which, however, we must deal every Christmas season
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There's no doubt this was one of the most evil books I ever had the misfortune of reading. Scrooge indeed represents the most persecuted minority in the US today: big business. This horrible, evil book just sowed seeds of anti-capitalist fervor in the ranks of the so-called intellegentsia and media, and could have been indirectly responsible for the social fascist Obama getting elected. 

----------

Ho ho ho!

Fun Joni coincidence

The day after I wrote a blog post in appreciation of a song by Joni Mitchell, novelist Zadie Smith has a piece in this week's New Yorker about how she came to love the music of Joni Mitchell.

Unfortunately the article is behind the paywall except for this abstract.

Although I would have preferred if Smith had talked more about the music and less about various tangents.

I especially enjoyed this:

...I truly cannot understand the language of my former heart. Who was that person? Petulant, hardly aware that she was humming Joni, not yet conscious of the transformation she had already undergone. How is it possible to hate something so completely and then suddenly love it so unreasonably?