The Distracted Mind

[via Denis Dutton]

In a way this article about the distracted character of modern life seems obvious — obviously true.

…a chronic distractee like the rest of us, noticed that he was finding it increasingly difficult to immerse himself in a book or a long article – “The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.”

Instead he now Googles his way though life, scanning and skimming, not pausing to think, to absorb. He feels himself being hollowed out by “the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self – evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the ‘instantly available’”.

How could we not be all devolving into a shallower state derived from our own volition? We buy the stuff that later distracts us and feel affection for all the features which often amounts to additional forms of distraction. TS Eliot is quoted in the article: “Distracted from distraction by distraction”.

How can you compare with earlier times? What another time was like — if there were more emotional or intellectual depth, more continuity of thought? Surely people seem to read and write the more they use the internet. I do wonder about the level of that writing and thinking though. There is a common tendency to seek agreement rather than reach deeper for the ambiguities and the web and Google make it easier to find those who agree accreting into the extremes of crowd behavior — the dumbest among them driving the lead, most evident in politics.

You could say that Rauschenberg's work with its woven images made evident the changes in modern consciousness early on. Or go back to Abstract Expressionism to make a similar point. Picasso's fractured cubist images might also tell us something about the previous century, where that which was broken wasn't attention but continuity of belief. Freud, Einstein, Marx, all questioned what were thought to be verities — they did more than question; they forever loosed conceptual certainty from the shore. With it our peace of mind drifted ceaselessly out to sea.

But hasn't the contemporary distracted mind an additional etiology? Isn't it the decades of commercials and advertisements that truncate thought and sense, often offending by their occurrence after emotionally trying dramatic moments in the shows they are slicing into? Aren't they responsible for what might indeed be a dumbing down, but most assuredly is a deadening — a dissociation. Virtual reality might not be all it is cracked up to be.

Unboxing Videos and the Nikon D700

The unboxing videos are so curious. A new product arrives and ineluctably YouTube videos follow of the product being taken out of the box. It seemed to start with Apple products which are elegantly swathed in minimalist packaging material. Minimalism doesn't work in art but it does in industrial design.

I guess you could consider these unboxing videos a logical extension of fetishized product photography. Especially car ads and fashion spreads. In fashion photography women and men are objectified with the clothing and shiny accessories bestowed the charismatic appeal.

The unboxing itself is fetishistic — the extreme consumer, devolving into cult member. These videos are the Japanese tea ceremony without the tradition and caring. Ideas take u-turns in contemporary life (and to no notice): materialism becomes spiritualized; in this instance, a cargo cult without prayers for anything more than the object itself.

This video is of the unboxing of the new Nikon D700.

Full frame cam. Looks very cool.

How the Germans See Obama

This interesting op-ed says the Germans may seem to be enthusiastic about Obama but are too jaded to empathize with his message. Susan Neiman says that there is a disdain for his rhetoric and a private cackling at his putative Messiah aura.

Conflating what appears to be the theme of her book — to judge from the title, “Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists.” — and Obama's ideas, she says,

The mocking undertone that accompanies most descriptions of Mr. Obama in the European news media signifies a trans-Atlantic divide…the neoconservatives…were right about one thing: Europe is gripped by a world-weariness that resists American dreams….Mr. Obama’s speech gave Europeans a chance to hear the difference between optimism and idealism. Optimists [her view of European sensibilities] refuse to acknowledge reality. Idealists [her take on Obama] remind us that it isn’t fixed.

It is a Procrustean endeavor to fit a national mindset to a singularity of viewpoint — just doesn't quite feel right — even if it is provocative.

Obama's Caravan of Unity

Well it is nice the Obama Caravan Of Unity included in all the network anchors because they really don't travel enough. And it gave those anchors a chance to sanctify by their presence their Chosen One. When was the last time a presumptive candidate got this kind of blanket coverage? Never.

So while McCain talks about the past and seems unable to focus an agenda the public can get behind, Obama talks about nothing really, and the photo ops show us that the Europeans are waving American flags. They like us, they really like us. That isn't so bad. It's just hard to know what is going to happen after the Obama coronation because Obama doesn't confront issues, he sidles past. Like Bush, Obama has never been wrong — he is always confident he is right.

Furman, Obama's economic adviser, was on Fresh Air, and he sounded solid — a good choice as an adviser. Obama is going to need to vet and re-vet his advisers because he clearly is in over his head and has never shown the inclination to be proactive about inevitable outcomes: the likelihood that something won't go right for Obama and he won't be enabled out of it by a mind meld of herd-think with jive oratory. Of course, Reagan was called the Teflon president and that may be true about an Obama presidency. The problem with that sort of leadership is that the stuff that doesn't stick to the leader is still a sorry detritus for the country to clean up.

Randy Pausch

“Hip is short term. Honest is long term.”

I had never heard of Randy Pausch. Now I am about half-way through his “Last Lecture”; it was an internet phenomenon according to Wikipedia — a million views in the first month of its appearance. In a rare case of media status being well conferred he was on Oprah and spoke with Charlie Gibson. He was told he had 3 to 6 months when the lecture was given in September 2007. His pancreatic cancer had metastasized.

Bringing art and technology together via virtual technology was the man's focus. His real achievement was in the positive aura you can practically see as he speaks; a born teacher. He clearly was loved — the audience reaction is with him, really with him, from the beginning — a loving individual. His parents did a great job raising him. No small feat. Without the fear and doubt and brittleness of ego that keeps people from growing and learning — Pausch was extroverted in the best sense — he brought people together.

I can't say I feel an enthusiasm for the projects themselves although I can appreciate the accomplishments. But that really doesn't matter. What does is the model Pausch provides of the creative, affirmative, energetic, confident spirit exploring the possibilities and overflowing with the need to share his enthusiasm.

Randy Pausch died today.

“Never lose the child-like wonder.”

A Funny Thing

The funniest thing about this review, panning a book about jokes, is the chosen reviewer's regular gig:

William Grimes writes obituaries for The New York Times.

A Joke, A New Tree of Life

First, a question: What did the snail say when he took a ride on the turtle?
Answer: Wheeeeee!

The tree of life has been revised. The picture is referenced in Carl Zimmer's blog, in which he provides an explanation.

Things are getting more complicated. So complicated the purpose of diagrams in explaining things is adding to the confusion. Is science moving towards a unification or dissonance-via-data saturation? Understanding only a machine can parse. A new graphic is needed to help provide clarity.

Si Newhouse

I'd never heard the name Si Newhouse until he was mentioned as the money behind Larry Gagosian's reseller's model for a gallery. Gagosian as the public figure would approach people with blue chip art and then find a buyer with Newhouse providing the in-between cash. That was how it was portrayed, at least as I remember from an article only mildly interesting, read years ago. I'm not that interested in the art market, certainly not the gallery reseller market — a tomb-haunting enterprise if done solely for bucks; it is like reading about the trading of stock certificates; has nothing to do with art.

This article about Si Newhouse suggests he is an appealing figure:

When asked what motivates Mr. Newhouse, people who know him rarely mention power or money. They talk about his devotion to his work, his penchant for arriving at the office before dawn, his intense interest in design details and his curiosity about Hollywood, politics and art.

Newhouse is not a fud; he enjoys the fun of pop culture:

More than almost anything else, acquaintances say, Mr. Newhouse delights in the buzz his magazines routinely create. He welcomes controversies, like the recent brouhaha about the Obamas-as-terrorists cover of The New Yorker. What tickles him often challenges convention, often embraces the new or novel, and often sells.

When Mr. Newhouse offers advice on Vogue, “he’s always made the surprising choice rather than the safe choice,” Ms. Wintour says. “He likes the buzz, there’s no question. If you have lunch with a celebrity or political figure, he’s thrilled to hear about it.”

…His greatest passion is movies — the only topic besides his magazines, his colleagues say, that can make him almost chatty. He recently sent a DVD of the film noir classic “D.O.A.” to some of his editors, eager to discuss it afterward. Graydon Carter, editor in chief of Vanity Fair, says his annual Hollywood issue was the chairman’s idea.

Newhouse is portrayed as an old style (with the exception that he is shy), hands-on, engaged, proud of his product, admirable business guy:

Mr. Newhouse (a k a Samuel I. Newhouse Jr.) defies the image of the media baron driven by love of limelight, political influence or money. But largely because of him, Condé — an arm of his family’s privately held Advance Publications — is unlike any other major publisher.

Witnessing DIY

One thing I noticed when in art school was that when, over the summers, I would go outside to do landscape painting, there was an inclination for people to watch. Sometimes they would make a brief remark, cautiously testing the possibility of some conversation. It was a very natural and convivial way for people to make contact. When you do something people feel more comfortable approaching you — if you are giving out vibes that contact is okay and they hold up their end, which they almost always do, of being respectful.

I think that is part of the fascination with DIY shows, beyond the proximate learning opportunity. The compelling instinct to watch people do things. An extension of our interest in observing, laughing at, admiring, being intrigued by, behavior. The clever use of tool and materials is engrossing. The making of things — it is fascinating; witnessing positive change.

…Amy Matthews, a shapely blond contractor who handles a nail gun like Annie Oakley … before my unbelieving eyes, solved the “two-flush toilet” problem with nothing more than a piece of wire clipped from an ordinary coat hanger. Poking and probing under a toilet-bowl rim, she cleared out mineral deposits, thereby speeding up the water flow.

Vincent

In my workout music mix is Don McLean's Vincent. It is such an unusual song. So deeply felt.

The song refers to Van Gogh's timeless The Starry Night. A great painting, iconic now; its simplicity and enthralled vision persist.

The lyrics are over the top but just right. They conflate a “died for your sins” idea with a yearning for understanding that is almost childlike. The plaintive music reflects the need to be understood and the lyrics underline that need. Somehow, lyrical excess, a perfect melody and the tremendously personal quality of the performance merge into something larger than itself. This one will last.

Here is a brilliant use of YouTube — an exegesis on American Pie :

Why People Hate the NYT

This Vanity Fair article asks why people hate the New York Times.

The responses go from self-righteous disdain for any who would dare to criticize to claims of envy. One of the commentators said what seems to me true — it is a familial thing. If you read a paper everyday, or watch a broadcast, or pay attention to one person or thing a lot, you can be sorely disappointed. More deeply disappointed than you would be with a figure or institution outside of your day to day experience.

The news so often has strong moral forces expressing themselves in people's lives, where attitudes can often lead to catastrophic action. So you want to feel that they, the NYT, does get it right on a moral plane if they are going to play a subtextual ideological game. You don't want ideology, of course — a form of patronizing arrogance — you want them to tell the truth with all its messy ambiguities. If the Times stuck to that sole task, of trying to tell the truth and being open to mistakes in the narrative they would insulate themselves.

Because the NYT has often chosen to express itself subtextually as an ideological player, they open themselves to the critical grief they have received. Often the NYT has failed on the moral plane — in the days of Howell Raines it was a self-parody. But it is a huge newspaper with tremendous scope and impossible to categorize, certainly impossible to excoriate without many exceptions, of the journalists, and of decisions made by the editors.

The NYT can often be disappointing but it is not a suitable target of hate. You can hate an intentional lie but it is foolish to hate the clueless.

Unification

Well, the dream of unification is about to be tested. Nope, I'm not talking Obama. The LHC, the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland is about to go online and the world is at stake. At least that is the irrational fear: a black hole wiil be created that will swallow the universe. If a teeny black hole is created it would confirm String Theory but it wouldn't of itself cause a disturbing suction. All the dissing of the String Theorists would be at an end as they celebrated — no longer cultists masquerading as scientists.

First they will test the Standard Model. They will see if the collider can replicate the already proven and add a few decimal places of precision. Then they will get into the real stuff. They will start looking for particles never before seen and if they find such then String Theorists will rejoice. The idea is that the forces of Nature appear to converge at 10 to the minus 34 and so maybe all the forces of nature come from one simple force and condensed out into the reality we now live within, upon and along side of.

This was all taken from a SciAm podcast. And the odds from common sense? Not that common sense has much to do with it — just that maybe a little more confusion will be added to the mix as unexpected outcomes occur; along with some ambiguities that will require theorizing for another two decades. Just a guess.

The Obama Cartoon

This Newsweek blog post about the umbrage-fest evoked by the New Yorker Obama cartoon cover made a good point:

This line of reasoning—i.e., don't satirize something stupid because the people who believe it might be stupid enough to take you seriously—strikes me as painfully paternalistic.

Chris Hayes offered the insight that usually satire is directed at the figure pictured, but in the New Yorker cover it is the credulous audience for the absurdist subject matter attributed to Obama that is the object of satire. Satire at one remove, a little too much for the pop culture to handle, and certainly the media, which was all pursed lips and tut-tutting; all those Cotton Mathers of the media aka TV journalists.

In general the whole issue seems a foreshadowing of an Obama presidency. Obama could have put an end to it before it began by simply laughing it off — but his supporters took their cue from his non-reaction. There was an academic at Lehrer yesterday chattering about “signifying” — signifying nothing but his incoherence. He didn't seem to like the cartoon; he didn't approve. We'll see more of his type in the next few years.

The writer of the New Yorker article which the cover promoted was on Fresh Air. He was as indistinct as Terry Gross often can be and you wondered when you were done listening to the library whisper interview if anything useful had been said. The writer was fact laden — it could be given another interviewer there was more there — but little insight about Obama was provided. The writer mentioned, seeming to want to speed through it, that Obama had one devastating political loss in Chicago in his born-under-a-lucky-star career; the writer said Obama lost because there “was a lot of black attacks on Obama as not being black enough and anti-Semitism about Obama being controlled by Jews” — a striking and revealing look at the nature of Chicago politics. This is a familiar dance: a community exquisitely sensitive about racial offense expressing anti-Semitism without conscience. Gross had nothing to ask about that subject — her moral compass once again lost as she focused on her worse self, as advocacy interviewer — she was more interested in the cover.

It still seems apparent to me that Obama is more a sociological phenomenon rather than a figure of inherent interest. The groups, ideas, advocacy, around Rorschach Obama, are more a fascinating subject of study than is Obama, the conventional politician, without core beliefs, who seems a bit more narcissistic than most of his political class, if that is possible, and confident that whatever he says or does will be enabled by his long frustrated supporters.

Michelle Rhee and Education

This discussion with the impressive Michelle Rhee, Chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools, has a lot to recommend it. Rhee is a remarkable figure, engaged, focused on quality in education, confident but without attitude. She is doing enormous good in DC public schools but her skills probably would be put to better use running the Department of Education.

Rhee dismissed what she called “front end” qualifications — resumes, titles and degrees. She opted for value — how good a teacher was, how well they did their job. Sounds obvious, but as in previous posts about expertise, ( post 1, post 2 ), it is a true paradigm shift to force gatekeepers to look at what is in front of them, and thereby be responsible for their choices, rather than go with a “me-too” approach — the classic formula for bureaucratic mediocrity.

Beinart and Goldberg, Liberal and Conservative

This discussion between Peter Beinart and Jonah Goldberg has more substance than one would expect in this kind of “battle of the…” set piece. Both Beinart and Goldberg are serious thinkers and made many interesting points:

• About patriotism: they discussed the feeling on the left that patriotism is dissent while on the right it is viewed as a familial/neighborhood affirmation.
• Goldberg emphasizes the genius of the American Revolution — the specialness of it. He also pointed out that the socialist dream of non-particularity is a dividing line between conservatives and liberals.
• Beinart emphasized the original sin of slavery as inextricably tied to the founding of America. He describes slavery as “the most grotesque of human evils”, ignoring its long sorry history in human affairs, from all cultures and far greater evils witnessed in mid-twentieth century Europe or the 1915 Armenian genocide. Goldberg points out that it is the very “dead white male” power structure that finally put an end to slavery. In general, Beinart sounded familiar in his all or nothing formulations about patriotism and the glass-half-full mentality about America — unwilling to acknowledge the growth in the system; Beinart's “Whiggish historicism”, as Goldberg put it — imposing current liberal standards on another age — is a tiresome tactic (often seen in academia).
• The most interesting point Goldberg made was about the patriotism of the left, which is really a trans-American patriotism — an attempt to bypass locale and neighborhood for the satisfying simplicity of elite argument: cosmopolitanism.
• About national service: Goldberg felt it an onerous demand but Beinart approved, as does Obama. Goldberg feels the forced volunteerism of national service undermines the enormously robust volunteerism and already in place ethos of charitable contributions in America — forcing the government into the mix.

Therapists to the Rich

The rich are different than you and me. They are sicker. Well, not really, but many of their anxieties look trivial compared to the reality based existential fears of adequate food and shelter and personal safety of the poor, or the middle class angst of losing in the rat race and falling out of line.

This article about therapists who treat the wealthy has a lot in it that is not surprising, but it is still fascinating.

Things you might expect as being issues for the rich: low tolerance for frustration, viewing everyone as a member of their privileged entourage (King Ludwig Syndrome), status anxieties within their group, fears derived from their insulated existences…

The Gilded Age narcissism of the young self-made wealthy is almost comical; in trying to reschedule an appointment… “Dr. Karasu said the only time he had available that week was at 7 one night. The executive’s assistant said: “He’s having dinner then. How about 10 p.m.? He’s flying out to the Hamptons, but we’ll send a car for you and you can ride with him and do therapy on the helicopter, and then we’ll send you home in the morning.”

A section of the article had me guessing who the patient might be — Does this sound like Donald Rumsfeld to you? :

The politician would not listen to his therapist.

In fact, nobody — not the Harvard-educated foreign policy specialist who was supposed to be advising him, and certainly not Dr. Karasu — could persuade him that he was wrong. About anything.

It was anxiety that had brought the man to therapy, and both the cause and the symptoms followed a pattern. “He had learned how to maneuver everyone to come around to his point of view,” Dr. Karasu said. “He had removed the foreign policy consultant from his circle after the man had disagreed with him.”

Dr. Karasu saw this as an opportunity to press the patient. “But this person knows more than you,” he told the elected official, a wealthy businessman who had turned to public service, yearning for a greater challenge, after quickly making a fortune in the private sector.

“But I’m his boss,” the patient insisted.

“The issue wasn’t foreign affairs; it was control,” Dr. Karasu recalled. “That was his attitude to me as well: ‘I know what is best because look at who I am.’ ”

posted by Ira Altschiller on Wednesday, July 9, 2008 @ 01:37 PM | permalink

Wimbledon

I'm not much of a tennis fan. But like basketball when Michael Jordan was playing, I'll watch tennis if Federer shows up. People who know say he has all the shots — no weak points. Federer's demeanor is unusually self-contained. Closest thing might be a boxer.

He is also, unlike the earlier punk tennis stars, a gentleman. Always gracious and balanced. His loss at Wimbledon was dramatic — it is called the greatest match ever. Although I only saw the last part, starting after the rain, when in the fifth set it was 2-2, the drama was there from first look.

Nadal, in the win, was himself very gracious, calling Federer “the greatest”. McEnroe's after match interview with the two of them had tremendous appeal: Federer's withheld distress, Nadal's youthful delight and understanding of the moment, and McEnroe, once one of the young-punk tennis jerks mentioned earlier, now greying and more thoughtful himself, applauding the winner with genuine emotion and empathizing sincerely with Federer. It was a fantastic match, ending like a movie, with twilight descending as the players emerged from the tradition bound stadium.

Ed Burns

Although David Simon got most of the attention, the less extroverted Ed Burns was co-creator of The Wire. Now the muckraking duo is about to have another mini-series on HBO. In this piece Burns comes across as an admirable and special man. He has retained his concern about society — after working as a cop he became a schoolteacher — a real contributor, he walks the walk.

As an interesting extension of my previous post about expertise,

Mr. Burns said he was surprised by all the attention “The Wire” received from policymakers who were piqued by the show’s gritty civics lessons — the very sort of people, he said, who more or less ignored him when he worked in the public sector.

“The irony is that you have to be somebody before anybody listens to you,” he said. “I wasn’t an expert when I was an expert, and now that I’m not an expert, I’m an expert. It’s kind of curious.”

Expertise Shmexpertise, Think For Yourself

It's no surprise to learn that experts often aren't; especially when they predict. Louis Menand in a 2005 review of a book on the subject has written a fine piece of itself about the expert prediction game.

…people tend to see the future as indeterminate and the past as inevitable. If you look backward, the dots that lead up to Hitler or the fall of the Soviet Union or the attacks on September 11th all connect. If you look forward, it’s just a random scatter of dots, many potential chains of causation leading to many possible outcomes…And, like most of us, experts violate a fundamental rule of probabilities by tending to find scenarios with more variables more likely. If a prediction needs two independent things to happen in order for it to be true, its probability is the product of the probability of each of the things it depends on.

I said at the beginning that “experts aren't” because even if much effort has been made to acquire knowledge, the use of that knowledge is not an automatic. An alphabet soup of degrees, or an appearance at guild-approved venues aggregated on a resume, don't tell you how competent, thoughtful, even smart, the putative expert is, let alone wise. For that, like everything else, you have to figure out for yourself, with some critical intelligence, how credible the expert's assertions are. Just as, at the end of the article, Menand counsels to think the issues themselves out for yourself.

When expertise conflates with ego, personality and a desire for attention, often driven by the intoxicating blaze of media focus, the audience has to be especially discerning. The way things are said, the assumptions made, the track record, all have to be taken into account.

…experts routinely misremembered the degree of probability they had assigned to an event after it came to pass. They claimed to have predicted what happened with a higher degree of certainty than, according to the record, they really did…experts violate a fundamental rule of probabilities by tending to find scenarios with more variables more likely.

The article indicates that people unschooled in a field often do as well or better than the experts, who as in the above description, entangle their ego in their pronuncimentos. Menand points out, “Human beings who spend their lives studying the state of the world, in other words, are poorer forecasters than dart-throwing monkeys, who would have distributed their picks evenly…” The outcome is defensiveness from the expert and reflexive enabling by the society, which wants its experts to be expert 'cause you got to turn to someone to figure things out — there is just too much going on and someone has to be in front of the microphone.

…serious commentators differ from the pundits only in the degree of showmanship. These serious experts—the think tankers and area-studies professors—are not entirely out to entertain, but they are a little out to entertain, and both their status as experts and their appeal as performers require them to predict futures that are not obvious to the viewer. The producer of the show does not want you and me to sit there listening to an expert and thinking, I could have said that. The expert also suffers from knowing too much: the more facts an expert has, the more information is available to be enlisted in support of his or her pet theories, and the more chains of causation he or she can find beguiling. This helps explain why specialists fail to outguess non-specialists. The odds tend to be with the obvious.

A Book of Drawings

Although some regard drawing as a destination, done with polish and finality, drawings have always seemed to me to be very personal and familiar. Drawings are at root expressive and meant to get something down; the most unaffected of the visual arts. Hopefully paintings extend that mindset, but drawings are the seed and singularity.

A new catalog of drawings

PaintedMatter Bookstore