October 2007 Archives

The "Final Cut" edition of my favorite movie, Blade Runner, is playing at the Seattle Cinerama, and I was there to behold it last night on the Very Big Screen in all its digitally remastered and directorially tweaked glory.

I first encountered the movie on cable. I didn't see it on the big screen until the 1992 release of the Director's Cut edition, which eliminated the two most annoying aspects of the theatrical release: the rambling voice-overs and the incongruous happy ending.

Rumor had it that this new Final Cut edition would introduce numerous, more subtle changes that only die hard fans would likely notice. Well, I noticed them all right, and I admit they were mostly beneficial to the film.

Last week, at a leadership workshop, I got up in front of a room full of people to discuss my "leadership journey." I related one point I was trying to make to the experience of watching Ray being born, and I couldn't even get through the damn sentence before I started blubbering. Whenever I even think about seeing him for the first time, I get all.... well, you know.

Then today, I found this, which is billed as "the most popular medical animation on the Internet" by a site called "Street Anatomy."

This is not making me cry so much as it's causing me to squirm around in discomfort. And I don't even have one of those vagina things!

Mad props all over again to Amy.

I've been getting more and more into Facebook lately. A growing number of my friends and colleagues are on it, and I've gotten to know some people better, I think, as a result of observing their online activities and periodic status updates. I also realize that my ass wasn't getting kicked at Scrabble quite enough, so now, thanks to the Scrabulous Facebook app, I can lose multiple games simultaneously!

The one thing that bothers me about it, though, is that the status update form forces you into a particular syntax by hard-coding (a) your name and (b) the simple present form of the verb "to be" (i.e. "is") at the beginning.

There are two problems with this.

First, it means that you necessarily have to refer to yourself in the third-person. If I want to update my status to indicate I am finishing up my work, I have to write "[Jim is] finishing up his work." I remember reading once that serial killers tend to refer to themselves and their victims in the third person ("It rubs the lotion on its skin..."). This practices causes a disassociating effect between the subject and the object or the listener. It is not I that am doing something, it is "Jim."

Second, the verb "to be" has two primary uses that are both faulty, according to linguist Alfred Korzybski: the "is of identity" (e.g. "Jim is a petty complainer") and the "is of predication" (e.g. "Jim is pedantic"). Korzybski advocated for the elimination of the verb "to be" from English to avoid using abstractions of language to attribute identity to individuals. Thus, one could say "Jim complains," or "Jim acts pedantically." The E-Prime method of speaking and writing is attributed to Korzybski's work.

So, with this analysis, one can conclude that Facebook developers are attempting to create an elite legion of strongly identified mass murderers. To what sinister end, we can only speculate....

Now Jim must go tackle the problem of having "OITEEUU" in his Scabulous rack.

Lately, I've been observing more and more people using the punctuating phrase "I mean" with increasing frequency. It was particularly notable during a workshop I just attended; the "I mean" speakers hailed from all parts of the country and included both native and non-native English speakers.

I don't recall having heard "I mean" a lot until fairly recently. I always thought "you know" was the punctuating phrase of choice for English speakers. But the more I pay attention, the more "I means" and the fewer "you knows" I hear.

I am not a linguist, and I have no idea if there's any real connection between these unconscious expressions and their actual semantics. It is interesting to me, however, that both expressions are concerned with the conveyance of meaning, but they have different perspectives. "I mean" is focused on the speaker; "you know" is focused on the listener.

Both phrases, it seems, are involved with the process of making meaning more clear. By employing "I mean," the speaker asserts that there has been a disconnect and strives to make herself better understood by rephrasing her statement. By using the more interrogative "you know," she queries the listener to judge the success of her message and responds or rephrases accordingly.

Perhaps users of "I mean" are more certain of their abilities to detect a possible misinterpretation (or think they are) and take the initiative to correct it, whereas users of "you know" are less certain and need to seek additional feedback to judge if their message has been correctly understood.

How about you, dear readers: are you, you know, a "you know" user, or are you more of an "I meaner"?

I'm obsessed with this song right now.

"Dirty Laundry" by Bitter:Sweet. (The video is static; just listen to it.)

With so many of my favorite movies getting turned into lavish stage productions ("Monty Python and the Holy Grail," "Young Frankenstein," "The Producers"), I figure it's only a matter of time until the American musical theater apparatus sucks more fine films into its downward spiral. I might as well try to make a buck in the process. That's why I've decided to start work on "Blade Runner: The Musical."

After I finished college, I stood at a veritable crossroads. The path I took led to graduate school in film studies at the University of Iowa; the other -- the path not traveled -- to the Western Culinary Institute in Portland, Oregon.

Last night, from a stool at the bar of the Earth & Ocean restaurant, I watched the kitchen crew moving about in a seemingly well-orchestrated dance of pans, cutlery, and platters, deftly piling scallops atop mounds of kohlrabi and artfully drizzling caramel sauce over butternut squash tarts. I recalled my brief interest in the life of the taste-bud, and experienced a strange yearning to revisit the idea.

We were lucky in that we avoided most packaged "baby food" with Ray. He seemed to like actual people food pretty early on, so apart from the occasional jar of Earth's Best mushed-up lentils, we dealt mostly with avocados, fruit, beans, and fish.

Therefore, I had absolutely no context for this. Nay, there is no appropriate context for this. It flies in the face of all that is right and good.

If there's one thing I hate worse than getting "quantified" by some personality test, it's the personality test getting me right.

Over the years, I've reluctantly acknowledged that the Meyers-Briggs/Kiersey Temperament Sorter test pretty much nails me. As an ENTP, I do tend to think of myself as "verbally as well as cerebrally quick," and it's true that I "generally love to argue." I have been known to "cut corners without regard to the rules if it's expedient" and I am indeed "capable of bonding very closely and, initially, suddenly, with their loved ones." Fine. You Jungians get me.

I recently had to take an "Emotional Quotient Inventory," and while most of the results were annoyingly accurate (grrrr), I was really quite surprised by one of them.

Leadership textbooks talk about the need to apply three different "lenses" when analyzing or interacting with aspects of an organization. Typically, the lenses are described as "strategic," "cultural," and "political."

I keep getting encouraged to "pull out the political lens." My glass-is-half-full interpretation of that is that I seem to do well with the strategic and cultural ones. The inverse interpretation (and probably correct one) is that the political lens is valued more than the others.

I also hear quite a bit of praise lavished on those who are "masters" of the political. I can't help but believe, though, that those masters, when they achieve leadership positions, tend to create political situations where none exist, just to perpetuate an environment that supports their own competency. This tends to create both a "political culture" (one obsessed with power and influence) and a "political strategy" (doing work toward a political end). The result is that one "lens" is focusing on the other two and not on the values or objectives of the organization.

How does an organization re-calibrate the three lenses? How can one peel the cultural and, especially, the strategic away from the political? How can one train the lenses onto the problems and proposed solutions instead of from themselves?

These are the questions I have on a sunny autumn afternoon. Please help me....

When I was a lad, one of my family's favorite Monty Python skits was "The Four Yorkshiremen," which the troupe only performed as part of their live show. In it, four wealthy men sit around and reminisce about the good old days when they were poor, and each tries to outdo the others by telling increasingly absurd tales of woe and poverty.

I never knew the origins of the skit, but today I learned that it was originally performed as part of "At Last, the 1948 Show," a 1967 British comedy series that is all-but-forgotten and mostly lost. Metafilter has the story as well as a link to the surviving clips on YouTube.

Here's the original "The Four Yorkshiremen."

My Herman Miller Mirra chair arrived today.

My butt is so happy. I don't want to stand up.

This chair kicks the Aeron's ass.

But is it enough? Do we too often value the brick over the arch?

In thinking through this issue, I was reminded of an article by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker a few years back called "The Talent Myth."

The piece focuses on the then-recent crash of Enron, the leaders of which were major proponents of the so-called "talent mind-set." This philosophy espouses a "deep-seated belief that having better talent at all levels is how you outperform your competitors." Using Enron as a cautionary tale, Gladwell suggests that the company's downfall was in over-emphasizing the value of the "star" to the detriment of organization and systems.

The broader failing of ... Enron is their assumption that an organization's intelligence is simply a function of the intelligence of its employees. They believe in stars, because they don't believe in systems. ... But companies work by different rules. They don't just create; they execute and compete and coördinate the efforts of many different people, and the organizations that are most successful at that task are the ones where the system is the star.

Where I work, there is an oft-discussed phenomenon known as "heroic effort." Such herosim is needed on a daily basis just to make the proverbial trains run on time. The heroes, therefore, become essential. They become stars.

I am encouraged, however, that this culture of heroism is finally being recognized as indicative of an immature organization and that greater emphasis is being placed on fixing the system. It's not that people are unimportant; it's that with the right system in place, everyone can do their job down here on earth -- it's not just the stars up in the cosmos that hold it all together.

My biggest fear is that we try to fix the system simply by moving star "bricks" higher and higher and continue to pay too little attention to the line of the arch.

Sam Harris recently spoke to the Atheist Alliance in which he argued that using the term "atheist" is a mistake.

I think that “atheist” is a term that we do not need, in the same way that we don’t need a word for someone who rejects astrology. We simply do not call people “non-astrologers.” All we need are words like “reason” and “evidence” and “common sense” and “bullshit” to put astrologers in their place, and so it could be with religion.

The problem with this line of reasoning, as I see it, is that using the words Harris lists do not, as he says, "put astrologers in their place." An astrologer, like a theist, is not going to reject -- or even question -- their beliefs just because someone calls bullshit on them. The other problem is that astrology, unlike religion, does not hold any real sway in public discourse. Astrologers are not trying to teach children bad science in classrooms, for example. The astrology column in the newspaper is usually next to the comics; it does not comprise an entire "Faith & Values"-type section unto itself masquerading as real news or legitimate advice.

Like Harris, I would dearly love for religion to be on par with astrology some day, and for those who believe in the imaginary creator in the sky to be regarded the same as those who turn to the zodiac for guidance.

But, we are clearly not yet at that point -- as Harris observes, "240 million [Americans] apparently believe that Jesus will return someday and orchestrate the end of the world with his magic powers."

In his call for atheists to not use any label at all -- not "secularist," "rationalist," or the admittedly cringe-worthy "bright" -- Harris argues that "accepting a label, particularly the label of 'atheist,' ... seems to me that we are consenting to be viewed as a cranky sub-culture."

And that's as may be -- I do feel cranky at how delusional the broader culture is. This term I use to describe myself positions me within the culture in opposition to views and opinions that I believe have no merit and no business being seriously discussed. And it helps me identify my allies in that struggle. If Sam Harris, or his publishers, had never used the term "atheist" to describe him and his writing, I probably never would have found him, and I doubt he'd have been asked to speak at the Atheist Alliance.

Admittedly, use of the term "atheist" (or any similar term, as per Harris' point) may serve to repel those who are not likeminded. But how receptive to rational arguments would they be even if it were served up without a charged and overdetermined label?

To me, therefore, the term is undoubtedly problematic but remains more useful than not.

UPDATE: Upon review, I see that PZ Meyers has a similar, and probably more insightful, reaction up at Pharyngula.

Amy and I never got married because we're all counter-cultural and stuff. But, six years ago tomorrow, we held a "commitment celebration" with family and friends in Capitola, CA. Our friend Adele says that doing so made us "honorary lesbians."

And so, October 6 is the closest thing we have to an anniversary (though we also celebrate "First Date," which I've previously written about here and here.)

According to various sources, the "traditional" gifts for the 6th anniversary are iron and sugar.

This is tough. Let's take iron first. Amy doesn't need an anvil. She doesn't play golf or press clothing. She already has free weights ("pumping iron"). She doesn't need an IBM mainframe. We already have a skillet.

Sugar is easy. Amy likes her sweets. I bought her a bar of dark chocolate last night, so I figure I might be covered on that front.

Then it occurred to me: I can kill two birds with one stone and get her the perfect gift -- something she likes and that combines both iron and sugar in one convenient package:

Let's assume I have a roll of breath mints -- the ones with Retsin. I offer you one.

Do I say "Would you like a Cert?" or "Would you like a Certs?"

Discuss.

Overheard on campus:

Dude 1: Have you heard of Cen-Par?

Dude 2:What?

Dude 1: Center for Nuclear Particle Research, or some shit.

Is it just me, or is the phrase "or some shit" misplaced when referring to a national nuclear research lab?

I can understand: "She was talkin' to me all about Britney Spears, or some shit."

Discuss.