Man: Yeah, so basically, the Dunning-Kruger effect is, the stupider you are, the smarter you think you are.
Girl: How smart are you?
Man: Oh, pretty sm… oooh. I see what you did there.
Girl: Heh.
Yearly Archives: 2009
Careers in Science: Zoosemiotics
The cat was chirping.
She was telling the zoosemiotician something, but it was heavily contextual, so he had to stop what he was doing, whatever that was, something with a pen and a Moleskine that looked like a guy fisting a wasp while Juliette Binoche watched, and observe the cat more closely.
The cat was chirping and looking at the front door, so the zoosemiotician opened the door and the cat went out. Three more came in, so he fed them.
It was like a story problem. One cat goes out, three come in, how many are eating? Two, because one has a thing whereby he won’t eat with the other cats unless you watch.
Obviously not hungry enough, was the zoosemiotician’s diagnosis. He was depressed. He had been reading about how stupid people are. That is, he had known it for a long time, that people are stupid, but god. He had made the mistake of reading about Fox news pie charts that were nonsense and Fox news survey results that added up to 120%, and he had watched that video where that guy interviews Palin supporters and not a single one can name a single actual Palin policy. Even accounting for bias and editing, it was a chilling thing to watch.
The zoosemiotician thinks, the Dunning-Kruger effect goes further towards explaining modern society than any other single explanation of anything.
The zoosemiotician’s wife comes into the kitchen. He offers her coffee.
“WTF is that in your journal? It looks like a guy fisting a wasp.”
The zoosemiotician chirps. His wife opens the front door.
A cat comes in.
Posted in Careers in Science, Metamorphosism
Tags: Careers in Science, zoosemiotics
Careers in Science: Stomatology
The stomatologist’s wife gave him a tongue scraper.
Blue.
Molded plastic handle branching, curved, with a single scraping blade at the end. All in one piece. The stomatologist wondered how long it would be until the razor blade companies got involved, after which scrapers would be molded with the scraping blade at a more efficient angle, and finally manufactured with multiple scraper blades; first two, then three and more.
The tongue scraper spent several days in the stomatologist’s cabinet before he gave it a try.
Wow!
The stomatologist thought.
He wished he had a microscope, because, wow!
No wonder the dog didn’t want to kiss me anymore, thought the stomatologist, even though he didn’t have a dog.
The stomatologist wonders why everything is blue. His toaster, his coffee maker, his teawaterboiler, his shampoo and toothpaste.
The stomatologist just got the old kitchen table back from the carpenter, who refinished it. He is happy at how it turned out. He tells his daughter a story about one time when his dog shat plastic army men, then spends 15 minutes trying to work out what motivated him to tell the story.
The stomatologist hopes he isn’t turning into one of those guys who travel in clouds of malapropisms, like when you roll down the car window on the freeway and receipts fly all over.
Winter?
Despite the – on average – unseasonal warmth this month, hibernation is looking better and better. Or, if I could draw better, I’d invent a new insect. Something really kickass.
Slow
My cello teacher told me to play the tune I’m working on faster. I’ve got the intonation down more or less, just need to work on the bowing (as always) and the tempo. My learning process is this sort of global bringing all the millions of elements into focus thing.
So, I will work onthis. That, and making it actually sound like actual music. Unfortunately that comes last with me. It’s as if I can’t relax and play something (somewhat) musically unless I know everything else is working. Also, serious coordination deficits, I suspect.
God.
I blame the amalgam fillings.
I am wondering, though, whether it might also be adviseable to seek, or compose, tunes more in line with my character, or nature – which is it? – and whether that might involve something extremely slow and drone-like, at least at the moment (a moment that has lasted, so far, decades).
Something slow, and procrastinating, but also persistent and perseverent.
Zoe Keating has a neat number on what I believe is her latest album, which plays at I think one-quarter the speed it was originally recorded at.
At.
It sounds real neat.
Also, I am totally at sea in my quest to find the right combination of effects pedals for my electric cello. Jacob has been very helpful with his patient advice, but in the end it comes down to, I guess, carting the thing to a shop and trying some out. Or carting it somewhere else and trying some out. And I suck so badly that I have serious inhibitions about trying anything out in public.
So I have been killing time watching demos on youtube of various pedals I have googled or otherwise found. I am, on the one hand, looking for something to add a little grit and character to the instrument’s sound, and on the other hand looking for something with a maximum of flexibility re: the parameters one can adjust and change.
I bought a cheap distortion pedal on ebay a while back, I have mentioned it before, and discovered that what works for a guitar works differently for a bowed instrument. It makes a fun noise, but is not adjustable enough, in the end, although I do love its ability to receive Russian short-wave transmissions when plugged into the theremin. It’s like ET phoning home.
I’ve been looking at moogerfooger demos, but due to the guitar/cello discrepancy and their expense am at something of a loss since local shops stock only a few of the models and not usually the ones I’m most interested in, so even if I did find the guts, and time to try them out, the actual ones I’m interested in would not be available.
Meh.
Bleat.
The Wreath
The Man woke himself up coughing, and touched the Child to make sure she was still breathing. She had been coughing all night too. It would be morning soon, the Man knew in minutes the faint glow would spread like the weak shine of a sputtering tallow flame across a gray flowstone floor, but right now the horizon was still as cold and dark as a dead cannibal’s frying pan in the dead gray ashes of some dead campfire.
The Man put some distance between himself and the Child so she wouldn’t hear him coughing. Sometimes she lay awake at night making sure he was still breathing, this he knew. The morning was cold, this he knew because the Cats fell over each other rushing into the house when he opened the door, the red Cats and the ash-gray Cats. Still discalced, he fed them and washed out their mylar food envelopes and washed the catfood sauce from his fingers, wondering why catfood couldn’t just come in simple cans.
Maybe someday society would collapse for reasons unknown and Cats would be happy to eat from cans again.
He looked at the bare table. He looked at the calendar. He had to get a wreath today. The Wreath had to be simple, with simple red candles and simple red ribbons and Nothing Else, and cost €15 which is what the simple Wreath would have cost at school where the Child ordered it, if they hadn’t messed up her order.
He ate some cereal, coughing. The Child was watching him from the doorway. The Man wondered how long the Child had been standing there. Do you want some cereal, the Man asked. The Child said okay.
Okay.
The Man and the Child ate their cereal.
Driving down the gray wet macadam through a scabland of strip malls, wipers set to a 5-second interval against the depressing cold mist, the Man bemoaned the difficulty of finding a simple Wreath and why did the school have to fuck this up every year it was like a traditional thing. The Man refused to consider the possibility that the Child might have fucked up the order somehow. The first florist they tried had only fancy wreaths. Black candles? Who needs those? Do Goths buy wreaths nowadays? Black candles with fake black birds on them!
The advent market in the newly-remodeled town square had more punch than you could shake a stick at, but also no wreaths, not even fancy ones. The second florist they tried after another detour also only had wreaths starting at forty euro. The Man coughed.
The Child watched the Man coughing. Then the Child coughed.
You coughed, said the Man.
So did you, said the Child.
Okay.
Okay.
The Man and the Child got back into the car and left that florist and drove to a nursery that had advertised an Advent market Sundays, but it turned out the Man had no idea where the nursery was, at least, that is, he had an idea, but it proved to be absolutely wrong. The Man could feel his heart growing granitic and crozzled. But there was another nursery not far away so they went there. Secretly, the Man resolved to buy a wreath, no matter what, assuming they were open.
The other nursery was open. The Man and the Child wandered around inside, coughing. The Man could feel a fever rising, and was shakey.
The Child found a table full of wreaths near the cashier. Two tables, in fact. The Man said, this is not the Wreath we were looking for, since it costs €22 and not €15, but our time on Earth is finite, you know what I mean.
The Child coughed as if in response.
Then the Man coughed. It was almost like the thing with yawning, where when one person yawns then everyone else has to as well.
After buying the Wreath the Man and the Child went to the supermarket to buy groceries because the Man had forgotten to buy sufficient groceries the day before because he had miscalculated. They got a shopping cart. Usually we get a shopping cart at the doorway, said the Man, but this time I want to get one out in the lot, because last time I was here the guy selling the homeless newspaper had a new moneymaking scheme, where he would give people carts at the door, and so if you were a nice guy you felt obligated to give him the Euro coin as a tip that you had planned to use as a deposit for the cart, which sucks in a way because you don’t get it back like you’d get a deposit back but on the other hand of course is good because you want to help the guy out, but if say ten people give him a Euro per hour out of the hundred he gives carts to, then that’s an hourly wage of ten Euro, and probably 20 people give him a Euro, which means maybe I’ll start doing this somewhere. You want to help the guy out, but all I have today is a two-Euro coin and that’s more help than I can afford to give, said the Man, and coughed a hacking cough that shook him to his spine.
Okay, said the Child.
The Man and the Child said good morning to the guy selling the homeless paper. Then the Child pointed and said, look. The Man looked, and saw a table near the doorway, full of simple Wreaths selling for €14.50.
The Child looked at the Man. The Man laughed. The Child Laughed. Next year we’ll come here first after the school messes up our order, the Man said.
We’ll come here first, said the Child. Okay.
The sky was no longer black, it was the gray of an elephant beaten cruelly with cold lead pipes. And the mist had not stopped.
Well that’s that, then
Just shipped the last of the first edition of “Little-Known Facts About Various Marine-Dwelling Animals”. If it’s not asking too much, please let me know when your orders arrive. Comments also welcome on the flickr thing. Recipients of complimentary booze included in orders of 5 or more also of course let me know if bottles break in transit and ruin books, still wondering if that was a good idea.