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A quick summary of how Pascal’s Wager fails

This isn’t necessarily original — there are other people and places that do it better — but I’ve long been annoyed by “Pascal’s Wager” as a philosophical approach to religion.  If you don’t know it, PW is simply:

Pascal’s Wager (or Pascal’s Gambit) is a suggestion posed by the French philosopher Blaise Pascal that even though the existence of God cannot be determined through reason, a person should wager as though God exists, because living life accordingly has everything to gain, and nothing to lose. (Wikipedia)

The wager fails for several reasons, as detailed in the Wikipedia article and elsewhere.  Here are the four that make the most sense to me:

  1. Assumes a false dichotomy — that the choice is God (Christian, Catholic God, presumably) and “no God.”  Instead, the choice would be between no Gods, God, Allah, Yahweh, Odin, Zeus, etc etc etc.
  2. Assumes no harm — the decision is predicated on the huge risk if there is a God (terrible torment in Hell) versus no loss if there is not.  But it doesn’t take into account the energy, resources, and other intangibles used up in worship.
  3. Assumes a gullible God — It assumes a God who would be happy with belief out of self interest rather than true devotion.
  4. Assumes one can control belief — I’m of the opinion that we can’t choose what we believe.  We can strive to learn more, and we can become convinced in ways that change what we believe, but at the core I don’t think we can choose to believe something.

This is not to say that any of this addresses the central question of faith, but it does bring into question the idea of believing for expediency’s sake.

2010 02 08 Digital Sextant Ethics
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The Phantom Menace reviewed

A monumental piece of cinema criticism has appeared on YouTube.  RedLetterMedia has posted a 7 part review (with each part getting pretty near the ten minute mark) of episode 1.  It’s excellent and well worth watching.  Part one appears here:

You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video

My favorite line comes from part 4, when he’s talking about the poor strategy involved in deciding who goes to town during the first scene on Tatooine.  (He’s been criticizing Qui-Gon Jinn by claiming that he’s an alcoholic, hence the gin at the end of his name).

The two most effective, clear-minded, logical guys stay on the ship and wait while the clumsy idiot, the slow moving droid, a vulnerable attractive young woman, and a drunk go wandering around the dangerous city.

2010 02 06 Digital Sextant Favorite Things
Movies
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That sneaky ol’ Green Knight

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; trans by W.A. Neilson; narrated by mj for Librivox.org

Sir Gawain arrives for the big chop

Sir Gawain arrives for the big chop

So I’m not much of a reader of medieval poetry or romance.  I’ve read The Song of Roland and Beowulf, of course, but I’d be lying to say I feel confident interpreting the work.  That said, a few thoughts (replete with spoilers):

  • I totally saw it coming that the king was the Green knight.  I probably knew that somewhere deep down in my grad-school memory, but I didn’t actively remember it.  That said, when the Queen offered Gawain her magic girdle, I was like “Booyah!  That’s the Green Knight’s protection.”  Nailed it.
  • The hunting and excitement were amusing, but it made me wonder why everybody thought Gawain was so great.  By my reckoning, the king went out hunting every day while Gawain slept in and fended off the king’s randy wife.  Of course, the whole test was devised by her for, um, no reason at all as far as I can see.
  • Arthur and his round table must have been one badass bunch of dudes.  Picture it, somebody rides in during Christmas dinner and says “Check out my big ol’ axe!  If somebody chops at me with it, I’ll return the blow one year from now.”  The knights take him up on it and, after Gawain chops off his head, are surprised to find him taunting them and riding out.  They laugh about what a great day it is.  I’m sorry, if I see some dude’s head get cut off and then he gets up and says “no problem,” I don’t put that in my “great day” column.
  • There’s an awful lot of space given to preparing Gawain’s horse for the road and the sacrifices and prayers said on his behalf.  I’m reminded of Eric Havelock’s Preface to Plato which suggests that these long passages in poetry are actually bits of instructions, important knowledge embedded into the poem.  Like the advice for card sharps built into “The Gambler.” My Kenny Rogers knowledge tells me when to walk away, and when to run.
  • The Green Knight’s kind of a dick at the end.  First he starts to swing the axe and, when Gawain winces, taunts Gawain about being Chicken.  Then he swings it again and stops just to, um, wind him up some more.  Finally, he gives Gawain a little nick on the neck and then says “FOOLED YOU!”

The Librivox reader, mj, does a fine job with the text, though there are a few fits and starts as she stumbled over a few passages.  Otherwise, well done.

2010 02 05 Digital Sextant 1000 books
Audio
Books I Read
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Asterios Polyp

Asterios Polyp

Asterios Polyp

by David Mazzucchelli

Asterios Polyp follows its eponymous architect through two phases of his life, his late-life career change after a fire and his earlier grim romance with his wife.  The comic also asks about the nature of identity, the world of graphic and architectural design, performance, lust, love, arrogance, and more.  It’s a richly layered work with lovely coloring and twisting, turning art.  It brings in classical literature and youthful rebellion, the vagaries of the universe and the questions of the intellect.

Some additional thoughts:

  • To be honest, the story itself doesn’t fit the usual scope of my interest.  Mid-life crises and restrained love lost don’t usually capture my interest, but the artful storytelling and wealth of detail worked for me here.
  • This is definitely a “re-read it” comic.  I’ll give it a few months and then have another go.  I feel like there’s a lot I missed.
  • The art is particularly compelling, using a variety of textures and styles, from scratchy to architectural to classical.  My favorite passage involves a dream Asterios has in which he becomes Orpheus traveling to the underworld — the underworld looks like something from a Hieronymus Bosch painting.
  • There are lots of great small moments as well.  At one point, Asterios’ wife, Hana, is telling a story and he keeps interrupting to change the details of the tale.  Eventually she says, “Do you want to tell the story?”  and he replies “No, I’m just helping you get it right.”  Jenny and I have a running joke about that same interchange.
  • I feel like I missed the most in the comic’s discussion of design and architecture theory.  While I could often tell that stuff is going on, I feel like it went over my head.
  • I feel like I got the most satisfaction from the sequences of carefully orchestrated panel layouts — there’s one image in particular where Asterios, Hana, and two other characters are all talking about one thing, implying a second, and their overlapping panels imply other relationships as well.

Entertainment Weekly called Asterois Polyp one of the top ten fiction works of the 2009, and I can see why.  It’s an exceptional and masterful comic, in league with comics like MAUS and Jimmy Corrigan: the Smartest Kid on Earth.

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2010 02 04 Digital Sextant Books I Read
Comics
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No harm done

Lighting the Way to Equality, Marriage Equality New York / 20091

Lighting the Way to Equality, Marriage Equality New York / 20091

Check out this awesome excerpt of the transcript from the Prop 8 trial.  Even the lawyers defending prop 8 have no argument about why gay marriage causes harm:

THE COURT: Assume that I agree with that. How does permitting same-sex marriages impair or adversely affect that interest?
…
MR. COOPER: Obviously, my submission here to you is rational-basis standard applies. And so, yes, my here are premised upon –
THE COURT: I’ve given you one assumption. Give me one, for purposes of argument. And that is that this is not rational basis review; this is intermediate scrutiny.
MR. COOPER: Well, then, your Honor, I’m going to be coming back to you with arguments.
THE COURT: Now we’re having a dialogue here. Now assume that you have to have established that this is the minimally effective means of imposing this discrimination between same-sex marriages and opposite-sex marriages. So what is the harm to the procreative purpose or function of marriage that you outline of permitting same-sex marriages?
MR. COOPER: Your Honor, even under a compelling-state-interest standard, I would submit to the Court that the state’s interests in channeling procreative activity into enduring relationships would be vital, and would satisfy a compelling-interest standard. And I would also submit to the Court that there would be no reasonable available way for — for that purpose to be fulfilled and advanced, other than the way the state has chosen — every state has chosen, with five exceptions, and California has chosen through Proposition 8. And, your Honor, that gets to the — to the fundamental, I think, theoretical disagreement that I mentioned earlier between the Plaintiffs and the Defendant-Intervenors here. They say that it’s not enough, as you were suggesting here, for opposite-sex unions to further and advance these vital state interests; that we have to prove, in addition to that, that including same-sex unions into the definition of marriage would actually harm those purposes and interests. That is not the Equal Protection construct, your Honor.
THE COURT: I’m asking you to tell me how it would harm opposite-sex marriages.
MR COOPER: All right.
COURT: All right. Let’s play on the same playing field for once. Okay.
MR COOPER: Your Honor, my answer is: I don’t know.

(link, via BoingBoing)

Of course, the prop 8 lawyers are trying to hide the fact that the prejudice against gay marriage is religious and only religious.  There is no secular reason to disallow gay marriage, and they are trying to hide this fact.  It makes me sick, frankly.  Let’s just review a few of the big canards:

  • Marriage is for procreation: Wrong.  You can get married and never have kids.  You can have kids without getting married.  If marriage were for procreation, the laws would turn on that element.
  • Marriage is a time-honored tradition: Wrong.  As far as the law is concerned, it is a contract.  It’s a binding legal agreement that gives its participants somewhere around 1,400 benefits instantly.
  • Gay Marriage threatens traditional marriage: Wrong.  We already allow divorce, so we already allow the dissolution of marriage.  The implication here is that there are a bunch of married people who would rather marry members of their own sex but didn’t because of the current laws.  So are those people upholding and reinforcing the institution of marriage to begin with?
  • Churches would be forced to perform gay marriages: Wrong. Don’t be stupid.  Churches can already choose who to wed or not.  They can refuse to wed interracial couples; they can refuse to wed couples in which the woman is pregnant, or the man is shorter than the woman, or only one member of the pair wears eyeglasses or the people aren’t members of their church or whatever.
  • Marriage has always been between a man and a woman: Except when it hasn’t, as in polygamous cultures.  But slavery was a time-honored institution, so was the dowry, hangings, beheadings, and polka music.  Tradition doesn’t make something right.

If anyone out there knows a secular reason for prohibiting gay marriage, I’d be interested to hear it.

photo by See-ming Lee, used under CC -attr-sharealike license.

2010 02 03 Digital Sextant Ethics
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Patient Zero

Patient Zero

Patient Zero

by Jonathan Maberry

Patient Zero tells the tale of a terrorist organization preparing to release a hyper-dangerous biological agent, not too dissimilar from the Dawn of the Dead remake virus, on the American populace.  Our main hero, Joe Ledger, is an elite military fighter with the Baltimore police who gets recruited to a secret government organization called the Department of Military Services.  He’s tasked with stopping the plague, with bullets, brains, and lots of punching.

It’s a rocking, rollicking read that zips along, pulling the narrative tighter and tighter.  Delightful.  Full disclosure: though I wouldn’t go so far as to say I know the author, he and I have corresponded a bit in email and we’re both on the board of the Zombie Research Society. A few additional thoughts:

  • The zombies in this book are pretty great, springing from the same branch of the family tree that brought us other raging zombies.  The intensity of the zombie fight scenes works really well, and the wide range of people turned into zombies makes the tale a bit more heartbreaking.  Maberry does a better job than most zombie stories I know of emphasizing the psychological toll this kind of fighting has on soldiers.
  • On that note, this whole tale can be seen as a metaphor for our current Middle East wars which, like Vietnam, array us against an enemy hiding among civilians.  Thinking about the NPR story about a soldier who came home and found himself jumpy around anyone of arab descent reminds me of the creepy nature of this book’s zombies: the infected could be from any walk of life, and often were.
  • The two tidbits above aside, this book focused a bit too much on the tactics and practicalities of the fighting for my taste.  Joe Ledger, too, comes from the super-kick-ass-fighter-and-brilliant-police-detective mold, something I’m less intrigued with as a general rule.
  • I thought the secondary characters are all well crafted in the novel.  The villains and the amoral leader of the DMS are all rounded out nicely and provide our hero some real meat to play with, so to speak.

I haven’t yet decided if I’ll continue reading the Joe Ledger series once zombies are no longer in the picture.  I tend to be less interested in thrillers than other genre fiction, but it was also a cracking good read.

2010 02 02 Digital Sextant Books I Read
Living Dead
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Twin Cities Picture Show

Twin Cities Picture Show

Twin Cities Picture Show

A Century of Moviegoing by Dave Kenney

I received this book as a Christmas gift last year and have been a bit hesitant to dive in, since it looked a bit dry.  Published by the Minnesota Historical society, Kenney’s narrative follows the evolution of cinema show houses in Minneapolis, from the picture palace heyday of the 1930s through the drive-in era, the cineplex seventies, and the recent megaplex boom.  It’s a thorough history that aims more at the casual historian than the casual reader.  I’d say this is a book for libraries more than bookshelves.

That aside, it was an interesting book that helped me see the arc of moviegoing in the Twin Cities as it compared to the rest of the country.  A few other tidbits:

  • The big movie palaces down town used to have a lock on first-run films.  The suburban show houses would get second, third, or fourth run films.  It was the loss of this prime material that doomed the big theaters to osbscurity.
  • Many of the big palaces went through an evolution from Vaudeville/movie houses to Picture palace to dual-screen to porn house to shuttered rattrap to restored fine arts live performance venue.
  • My favorite part of the book were the recurring stories about Minnesota do-gooders who tried to get films banned.  Invariably, a few key decision makers were invited to screen the movie, they decided it wasn’t that bad, it ran and made a lot of money because the protest had caused a lot of publicity.
  • The best chapter tells the story of the rise and fall of the drive-in industry.  Drive ins opened to the consternation of conventional theater owners, who lost business during the hot summer months.  Young people flocked to the theaters for the relative privacy they offered.  As time went by and the industry changed, many drive ins were sold to developers at a great profit, taking advantage of the suburb-boom in the Twin Cities.  Drive-in owners reveal that they didn’t really care about cinema at all; drive-ins were just a way to make some money while they waited for development to reach their area.
  • The movie Airport was filmed in Minneapolis.  I like that movie.
  • When I was in college, a buddy of mine called me up and said he had tickets to a test screening of Great Expectations.  When we got there it turned out to be Titanic.  (On my comment card, I suggested that they cut out a scene which they DID cut out.  I think James Cameron owes me a couple million bucks for that advice.)  Kenney’s book recounted the tale and added two facts that I hadn’t heard before.  First, that Cameron was there doing focus groups — blast!  Why didn’t I get invited to one?  Second, that our test screening was the first test screening of the film; I was one of the first 500 people outside the movie studio to see the completed movie.  Booyah.  Oddly enough, the same friend who invited me to that screening also gave me this book.

Not a bad read — a bit dry, but really interesting if you read it a few pages at a time.

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2010 02 01 Digital Sextant Books I Read
History
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Understanding things

Finn has, sometime since New Year’s, passed the point at which it becomes clear that he understands what we’re saying to him.  Whereas toddlers of a certain age respond to vocal stimuli and delight in your company, after a certain age there’s a clear sense that they know what you’re saying, even if his entire vocabulary consists of ball, mama, dada, bubble, book, and dog.

Yes, I shaved this morning. Why?

Yes, I shaved this morning. Why?

In the last couple weeks, he’s started to respond to phrases like “can you take that to your sister’s room?” by walking to Avery’s room.  He will get the ball or the book without any secondary prompting (like me pointing) and he’s much more oriented toward copying his sister.  This last has caused some problems, as she likes to climb into his toybox; he copies her but then gets stuck inside.

But he reached a surprising level of cognition last Sunday at McDonalds.  We went there to get some exercise (having been to the children’s museum on Saturday and not wanting to go out in the yucky rain), and have some fries.  Finn was playing just fine when he came over, took a couple fries, walked into the play area, and tossed them on the ground.  After a moment, he went back and picked them up.  We tensed, preparing to run over and take them away before he ate them (okay, Jenny tensed); instead, we watched, astonished, as he toddled over to the garbage can, pushed open the door, and threw them away.

It’s a strange age — he clearly understands much more than he can communicate and I suspect this imbalance causes the behavior trouble we’re starting to see.  It will be a fun couple years, I suspect.

2010 01 30 Digital Sextant Familydamily
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Conan got a raw deal

Arg! I got a raw deal

Okay, setting aside the idea of saying someone who just got paid tens of millions of dollars for being fired, I want to suggest that Conan got a raw deal from NBC.  If you were to move this situation into, say, retail businesses, it would be pretty darn evident that the NBC execs screwed the pooch.

Say there’s a really popular dessert restaurant, call it “Jay’s”.  It’s right next door to a popular dining establishment, “The News”, which is right next to an arcade, “Prime Time.”  The businesses all benefit from one another because people go to the arcade, then the restaurant, then grab dessert at Jay’s.  The owner of Jays makes a deal that he will vacate the building in five years, thinking he’ll be ready to be to retire.  But when the lease comes up, he decides he likes the restaurant biz, and wants to keep making his delicious desserts.  But the owner of the building already leased Jay’s restaurant space to a new chef, Conan.  Conan is also a dessert chef, but he’s been on an off-street around the corner and waiting for a slot to open up on this main street.  Jay suggests that he might stay in the restaurant business, and the building’s owner, who also owns the next door buildings, kicks the arcade out and lets Jay lease that space for his new dessert restaurant. Why should anyone be surprised when the business at The News or at Conan’s isn’t as strong as it was before, since the arcade is gone?

Okay, this is a bit silly.  But you see my point.  I’ve seen a number of articles, including one in the Chicago Tribune, suggesting that Conan failed in the Tonight Show slot.  They agreed that Jay’s show didn’t do the kind of business the network was hoping for, but they also repeatedly remarked that Conan underperformed.  But I’ve seen very little acknowledgment that the network, not Conan, is to blame for these low ratings.  When you double the available commodity (in this case, NBC talk/comedy-show hours), it shouldn’t be surprising that you halve the audience.  Conan came in not only competing with Letterman and Nightline and Ferguson and Kimmel, but also with Leno, who it can reasonably be asserted stole away a chunk of the audience who would have tuned in for Conan out of habit.

Sigh.

That said, I haven’t watched either of them in years, so I suppose I shouldn’t complain.

2010 01 29 Digital Sextant Flotsam Comments (0) Permalink

Fragile: “Love Never Dies”

Fragile

Fragile

by Stefano Raffaele

Fragile (2005) tells the story of a post-zombie world in which the few remaining humans are huddled in tiny compounds fending off the living dead.  Working for them are creepy predatory spiky-headed cyborg monsters called disinfectors.  But the zombies in this world have memories and feelings (and really don’t like the living that much).  So they can fall in love too.  And that’s what happens.  A few other thoughts:

  • Raffaele’s art is great, with strong detail and gruesome images.  The decaying bodies of the lovers are particularly well done, and the fight scenes have lots of horrible elements like disfigured zombies.  Well done, sir!
  • The plot is a bit convoluted, with rival groups of scientists competing for a serum that would cure the zombie-ness.  But it becomes more clear as it goes along.  The jump-cuts to backstory are also a little disorienting, but not beyond comprehension.
  • For no good reason, the two main female characters are dressed in almost nothing.  As though anticipating this criticism, Raffaele includes a bit of dialog from the characters about wanting to feel feminine.  Okay okay, but high heels when you’re running from zombies?  Bah.  I look forward to the day when the majority of comic artists understand that Barbie does not model average human anatomy.
  • The decision to make the zombies just dead versions of people (instead of mindless drones) makes the comics quite compelling and really dooms the people.  After all, the one advantage the living have over the dead are our wits.
  • The cover and subtitle highlight the idea of love between the zombies and yes, it’s a major plot point.  But at the same time, it carries less heft if zombies have thoughts and feelings.  I thought it was going to be some sort of love that exceeds normal feelings — but all the zombies keep feeling things, so it makes sense that love would be part of that equation.  Oh well.

A decent read, with interesting twists on the genre.

2010 01 28 Digital Sextant Comics
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Music and my commute

Listening to Music on the Train

Listening to Music on the Train

  1. Riding to work last week, I stepped off the train and started walking up the platform.  Out of the corner of my eye I saw a man, mid-twenties with very closely cropped hair and a black jacket sitting on the train rocking out to his music.  His eyes were closed and he held his MP3 player in his right hand, his left sliding up and down the neck of his air guitar.  He shook and banged his head vigorously, thrashing to his music with abandon.  There was a good four foot radius around him that was empty.  As I looked up, I saw a man well into middle age looking at me from one of the other seats on the train.  He and I both glanced at the rocker simultaneously, then back at one another.  As the train pulled out of the station, he smiled at me and I at him, sharing a moment of delight in the city.
  2. Four strangers in the elevator today, each wearing headphones.  No longer do we stand together in silence, waiting for our floor to arrive.  Now we stand together in separate noise bubbles.  I wonder what the professional woman, the black-leather nouveau fifties greaser, and the knit-hat jumbo earphones hipster were listening to.  Myself?  The history of Pluto.

*image by noise64

2010 01 27 Digital Sextant Flotsam Comments (0) Permalink

Punished by Rewards

Punished by Rewards

Punished by Rewards

The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes by Alfie Kohn

With a new semester starting, it seems appropriate to post comments on grading.

Kohn develops a convincing summary and argument for the case against grades and grading (as well as other Behaviorist rewards and punishment systems).  The root of his argument springs from the studies that show these system to fail at doing precisely what we want them to do.  Reward systems that seek to inspire workers at their places of business do the opposite; grades reduce quality and desire to continue learning; rewards for children teach children to want rewards, not to develop good behaviors.  He addresses many other elements throughout the book, but these are the basics.  Some other thoughts:

  • Kohn explains how thoroughly pop behaviorism infiltrates and influences nearly every facet of our culture.  We have trouble even conceiving of a society that doesn’t run on behaviorist models.  Most people would be appalled by the argument that merit pay systems decrease motivation.
  • “when we are working for a reward, we do exactly what is necessary to get it and no more.” (63)
  • Quoting Ryan and Stiller: “The more we try to measure, control, and pressure learning from without, the more we obstruct the tendencies of students to be actively involved and to participate in their own education…. Externally imposed evaluations, goals, rewards, and pressures seem to create a style of teaching and learning that is antithetical to quality learning outcomes in school, that is, learning characterized by durability, depth, and integration.” (149-150)

The last two chapters start answering the question That’s all fine and good, but what do we do instead? I’ve been wrestling with grading my entire teaching career, caroming back and forth between a pseudo-objective points-based system and the idea of a non-grade class.  I think it’s time to push toward the latter.  Kohn offers several suggestions for minimizing the impact of grading on reducing learning: I’ll be implementing many of them this Spring.

One of the main ideas, though, is collaboration.  Students will feel more ownership and value in grading if they help determine the grading system.  I plan to do this with all three of my classes on the first day.  We’ll discuss what they hope to get out of the class, what kinds of evaluation we should use, and what goals we can use to push toward them.

Kohn also suggests that there are two fronts people concerned with the impact of rewards on learning must fight.  The first is the individual, limiting the damage rewards and punishments cause in one’s own sphere of influence.  The second front is institutional.  I plan to meet with our center for teaching excellence to see what their thoughts are on implementing some of these systems school-wide.

A great book for anyone interested in how people learn, and how we teachers regularly damage that process.

2010 01 26 Digital Sextant Books I Read
Ethics
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Voyage Long and Strange

A Voyage Long and Strange

A Voyage Long and Strange

Written and narrated by Tony Horwitz

What happened in that dark and lonely stretch of years between when Columbus arrived in the “new world” and when the pilgrims “landed” at Plymouth Rock?  Tony Horwitz takes us on a travelogue journey of these locations, scouting them and researching them, telling us about their history with a balanced perspective and a hard eye on the truth.  Some details:

  • The mix of modern day locations with historical research works very well.  I particularly enjoyed the chapter on the Dominican Republic in which Horwitz tastes a local meat from a street vendor that his local guide later warns him will kill tourists.  His conversations with various representatives of long-dead Indian tribes are equally compelling.
  • Horwitz tries to keep balance in the sections about the conquistadors, but the long tally of murder, rape, abuse, murder, rape, slavery, rape, murder, and on and on and on makes it hard to admire the men for their bravery in the face of adversity.  But the section where he visits an history fair and wears conquistador armor for a day is pretty funny.
  • He also underlines the vast importance disease had in helping Europeans gain a foothold in North America.  When the English arrived to settle New England, whole villages were deserted because of the plagues sweeping through the populations.
  • This isn’t a book to read if you value your old timey tourist treasures — none of them come off very strongly.  My favorite old man he revealed behind the curtain was St. Augustine, which claims to be the longest settled town in the modern U.S.  Horwitze reminds us that St. Augustine was founded as a temporary base from which the Spanish could root out the French Huguenots living up stream.  So to give credit to the Spanish is kinda funny.
  • Best line in the book (as best I can recall it), a man discussing why Plymouth (rather than Jamestown) is remembered as the first U.S. settlement to succeed: “Jamestown had too many layabouts too lazy to raise their own food.  And nobody wants to remember a city where a man killed his wife and unborn child to eat them.”

Horwitz does a fine job with the narration and fills in a sorrowful gap in my early American history knowledge.  A decent read.

2010 01 25 Digital Sextant Books I Read
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Found!

Andrew sent me a note he found somewhere and suggested that I send it to FOUND website if I thought it was cool.  I did.  They thought so too.

I Ask That Some Girl Will Open This Up

2010 01 24 Digital Sextant Flotsam
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Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me

Wait Wait Don't Tell Me

Wait Wait Don't Tell Me

I went to a taping of Wait wait… Don’t Tell Me at the Chase Bank auditorium a week ago Thursday.  It was a fun experience, and something that I’ll probably do again.  A few reflections:

  • The setup is pretty cool, kinda like a game show with the call-in listeners being replayed over the house speakers for us.  It’s casual and fun and they give you a pep talk about laughing out loud so that the radio audience can hear them.
  • We got there about 50 minutes before taping and were at the back of the line.  In future we’ll arrive an hour early, I think.  There was a line snaking through the lobby of the auditorium which, oddly, didn’t need ropes to snake.  There was a guy directing us where to stand and we all filed in politely.  Ahhh, NPR listeners.
  • The call-in guests were They Might Be Giants, a nice surprise for an uberfan like myself.  The conversation was funny and sincere and well worth it.
  • After the show, they do a few minutes of error correcting, in which Peter and the other members of the show re-tape short bits of dialogue that they flubbed or coughed or stuttered.  It’s weird to be in the audience as they have headphones and thus sit quietly going “okay, okay, uh huh” and then repeat something they said earlier on.  After that they do a Q&A (I asked Peter how he ended up introducing JoCo at the concert last October.  Peter asked if I was there and when I replied yes, he said I was “truly a nerd”).  Somebody else asked Carl Kassel if anyone ever offers him a chair.
  • The panel was pretty funny, with Moe Rocka, Charlie Pierce, and Faith Seely (?).  When Peter introduced her, he said “Mister Faith Seely,” which spawned many jokes that evening and prompted them to leave the error in the broadcast.    If I were to do a “top three” panel it would be Moe, Paula Poundstone, and Tom Bodett.  But everybody they have on is funny.

I’ll probably go back again.  If you are alert online you can get tickets for half price, so it’s a really good deal when that works out.

2010 01 23 Digital Sextant Flotsam Comments (1) Permalink