JOLLY DAYS, an artist's journal

Fu Dog

2009-11-07T06:07:25Z

Ira Altschiller

A Fu Dog — a Chinese guardian dog (that is really a lion, sort of)...

...........................................................................................................................................

Or, see it @YouTube

Al Gore on Charlie Rose

2009-11-05T21:41:39Z

Ira Altschiller

When Al Gore ran for president it seemed like a no-brainer. He was over qualified, and Bush wasn't. Bush was only a little more qualified for the presidency than Obama really.

But Gore had the election stolen from him by a Supreme Court that didn't do its job. I remember designing a tee shirt, "Re-Elect Gore in 2004". It was enraging the way the election resolved. A lot has happened since then — Gore seems a more dubious figure now. He won the Nobel Prize — in the surreal way Obama did. Well, maybe not quite so absurdly. At least Gore had been advocating something he seems to really believe and wants to believe. He is a true-believer.

Gore was on Charlie Rose today. We had the TV sound off, with subtitles enabled, humorously suggesting what he was saying. Like Google translation, the gaffs in transcription are an entertainment in themselves. Gore, in the captions, was saying something about "gasyfaction", which made me think of him as the Great Gasyficator.

Gore was scowling deeply when he wasn't purring in wonderfulness. He is a man on a mission. He is going to save the world. This reminded me: before Larry David's breakup with his wife, David said on an interview that, "she used to be a Long Island narcissist and now she is going to save the world." David's wife had gotten the Green Bug, and was up early each day to work for a better tomorrow. Or she just might have liked hanging out with Sheryl Crow. I guess we will never know.

According to Gore, global warming is fact and it is "birthers" and "radio talk show hosts" who disagree. Why, they are worthy of contempt, those naysayers. Gore doesn't belong to that realm of infallible consensus science of course. He isn't a scientist. Freeman Dyson had pointed out that if you have celebrities visiting your lab, the tendency of a scientist would be to say what the celebrity wants to hear. The ambiguous fact becomes concrete fact. "Scientists are human beings," is the way Dyson put it.

With the TV sound off Gore was a study. He has an ego as big as all outdoors. It was manifest, he reeks of ego; Gore possesses an earnestness that is not postmodern enough for the room. Irony isn't allowed as he grimly predicts disaster and grows misty at the technological discoveries that will save us. Gore is an extremely wealthy man and is on a book tour that has a carbon footprint bigger than the Sudan. If he could list his houses, his travels alone and with his family, his possessions, and the energy use of those he visits — the wealthy celebrity types — we would have a better idea about the man. There is a reason religious figures shed all earthly possessions.

Gore's arguments were tendentious and general. His belief system is in technology, statistical analysis, and consensus thinking. Technology will save us, he says. There are no serious doubts, he says. All the scientists say the same thing, he says. Like plate tectonics. All the scientists said it was an absurd idea. Or the Big Bang, which all the scientists, for the first half of the 20th century, thought a joke. So much so they derided the idea as the "Big Bang" theory. But Gore rolls on, selling his book, using straw man arguments, not engaging a single concrete idea. He wants to lead. Gore just doesn't want to be troubled by the on the ground messiness. Charlie Rose suggested in his final questions some of those doubts, but he was unprepared to counter Gore, and had no critical thinkers in a panel to question Gore skillfully about Gore's cocksure ideas.

Meanwhile global warming has morphed to global climate change in public discussions. This Gore seems to have missed. There have been ten ice ages in our planet's recent geological past. Interglacial periods of 10,000 years occur after each ice age. We are currently 12,500 years into the current interglacial period. That's what Freeman Dyson says. Dyson, a former colleague of Einstein's, has more credibility for me than Al Gore's parsing of what he wants to hear from the scientists with whom he chooses to speak.

No doubt green technology, freeing ourselves from a dependence on oil, eliminating waste, being responsible about consumption, are all worthy and moral. You don't need to involve scientific disputation. You don't need a preacher to tell you. Especially, a dubious preacher.

Ebooks, Libraries, A New PDF

2009-11-04T01:50:13Z

Ira Altschiller

We were just at the library the other day and the shelves were sparse. The branch was remodeled recently but it is still an airless, hot, uncomfortable environment. The days of wandering the shelves for surprises, and thereby gaining a physical sense of the variety and depth of human knowledge, is gone. Instead computer carrels and magazines dominate. There is a good third of the library devoted to children's books and a third of that is for "activities".

This article says a librarian thinks ebooks will save libraries.

Fiona Marriott, at Luton Libraries, said: "In recent weeks the number of ebook downloads has been increasing fast, and there are people emailing us from all over the country and even abroad asking if they can join as members online."

She said there had been a sharp increase in members, as a result, with more than 250 new users signing up, even though only local residents could join the service. Other librarians agreed more people had become members since e-books became available, though no official figures are yet available.

Ebooks do allow insta-distribution — a truly democratizing trend. Why can't we have both? Libraries, books, ebooks — they resolve to the future.

Speaking of ebooks, here is a PDF of 25 Secrets of the Muse — a book of creative strategies.

The (Halloween) Mask

2009-10-31T21:16:27Z

Ira Altschiller

≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡

Or, view the video @YouTube

Botany of Desire / Uncanny Valley / Halloween

2009-10-30T21:01:49Z

Ira Altschiller

Harvey Weinstein, Hollywood mogul, declared that celebrities supported Polanski ("it's not rape-rape"), because they "have more compassion" — then the unwashed, I guess. That is an affectation of the extreme Left — they wear their misbegotten compassion on their sleeve. I think that might be called pride rather than compassion. But compassion on the Left, individual freedom on the Right. That's the debate. For the Right, individual freedom somehow is conflated with corporations, which are legal entities, not individuals at all. Go figure.

Anyway, I thought about that as I listened to parts of PBS' Botany of Desire, the Michael Pollan book made into a most righteous show. It has all those elements of compassion. Compassion for the smart plants and implied derision for the duped humans who serve those plants. We are so dumb plants can jerk us around. I tried reading Pollan's book but found the premise so cute and tendentious that it hardly seemed worth the trouble. The PBS version however had probably what the book contained, but without quite so heavy a dose of the goodness of the New Age Pollan. Lots of interesting facts, a sympathetic view of organic farming — real shocker there, as middle America has fully embraced the idea already — but without the messy practicalities of whether organic gardening can produce enough food for everyone. I'd like to think so, as we pretty much eat at least as politically correctly as Pollan or any New Ager. You don't have to wear it on your sleeve though, I mean organic food tastes better and is probably better for you.

The hypocrisy of the Left is in full bloom in the PBS piece. You have an audience that would deride Creationism, as their leader, The Cackling Richard Dawkins does — all filled with fundamentalist evangelical belief in his non-belief — yet the PBS show reverentially shows Peruvian's performing ceremonies to their gods as part of their planting rituals.

Coffee table thinking is characteristic of New Age / PBS / NPR mindset, inherited from long ago New Yorker readers, who wanted to be open to all ideas, but sophisticated; a simple transmutation of dorm room bull sessions into high thinking. Well, nothing wrong with compassion. It is better though when compassion is served with critical thinking and a desire to embrace the idea and not the wonderfulness of Self.

≡≡≡≡≡≡

On the other hand, there are interesting ideas in the not exactly scientific, but in hypotheses that generate an arena of philosophical / psychological inquiry. One such is the "uncanny valley" hypothesis of a roboticist who was trying to explain the revulsion people feel at "almost human" robots. People think robots are cute, but once they approach human-like appearance, people are repelled, as witness the CGI representations in Polar Express, or the baby in Toy Story. People were disturbed. The roboticist however noted that once the robots become truly human-like — hard to define, with a world of philosophical / psychological investigation requisite — those "truly lifelike" robots are accepted and elicit empathy.

It's not science, but it is something. Look at the theories about why this revulsion might occur on Wikipedia — absolutely fascinating:

A number of theories have been proposed to explain the cognitive mechanism underlying the phenomenon:
▪ Mate selection. Automatic, stimulus-driven appraisals of uncanny stimuli elicit aversion by activating an evolved cognitive mechanism for the avoidance of selecting mates with low fertility, poor hormonal health, or ineffective immune systems based on visible features of the face and body that are predictive of those traits.

▪ Mortality salience. An "uncanny robot elicits an innate fear of death and culturally-supported defenses for coping with death’s inevitability.... [P]artially disassembled androids... play on subconscious fears of reduction, replacement, and annihilation: (1) A mechanism with a human facade and a mechanical interior plays on our subconscious fear that we are all just soulless machines. (2) Androids in various states of mutilation, decapitation, or disassembly are reminiscent of a battlefield after a conflict and, as such, serve as a reminder of our mortality. (3) Since most androids are copies of actual people, they are Doppelgaenger and may elicit a fear of being replaced, on the job, in a relationship, and so on. (4) The jerkiness of an android’s movements could be unsettling because it elicits a fear of losing bodily control."

▪ Pathogen avoidance. Uncanny stimuli may activate a cognitive mechanism that originally evolved to motivate the avoidance of potential sources of pathogens by eliciting a disgust response. “The more human an organism looks, the stronger the aversion to its defects, because (1) defects indicate disease, (2) more human-looking organisms are more closely related to human beings genetically, and (3) the probability of contracting disease-causing bacteria, viruses, and other parasites increases with genetic similarity.” Thus, the visual anomalies of android robots and animated human characters have the same effect as those of corpses and visibly diseased individuals: the elicitation of alarm and revulsion.

▪ Sorites paradoxes. Stimuli with human and nonhuman traits undermine our sense of human identity by linking qualitatively different categories, human and nonhuman, by a quantitative metric, degree of human likeness.

▪ Violation of human norms. The uncanny valley may "be symptomatic of entities that elicit a model of a human other but do not measure up to it." If an entity looks sufficiently nonhuman, its human characteristics will be noticeable, generating empathy. However, if the entity looks almost human, it will elicit our model of a human other and its detailed normative expectations. The nonhuman characteristics will be noticeable, giving the human viewer a sense of strangeness. In other words, a robot stuck inside the uncanny valley is no longer being judged by the standards of a robot doing a passable job at pretending to be human, but is instead being judged by the standards of a human doing a terrible job at acting like a normal person.
▪ Western constructions of human identity. The existence of artificial but humanlike entities is a threat to human identity as socially constructed in the West and the Middle East but not in the Far East, partly because Western philosophy and religions (e.g., Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) emphasize human uniqueness as compared to Eastern philosophies and religions (e.g., Buddhism, neo-Confucianism, Taoism, Shinto, Japanese adaptation of biological materialism). An example can be found in the theoretical framework of the western psychologist Irvin Yalom. Yalom explains that humans construct psychological defenses in order to avoid existential anxiety stemming from death. One of these defenses is "specialness", the irrational belief that aging and death as central premises of life apply to all others but oneself. The experience of the very humanlike "living" robot can be so rich and compelling that it challenges humans' notions of "specialness" and existential defenses, eliciting existential anxiety.

So on Halloween, you will now know why Zombie's are repellant and Werewolves aren't.

Biden @Gallup

2009-10-27T20:42:23Z

Ira Altschiller

Biden is drooping in the polls like an unwatered Lily. Biden is Obama's firewall, the static attracted to him, derived from what are now established defaults: to deflect, ignore, make excuses, for Obama. People want Obama to succeed because the country is in a bad way, and they want to like Obama. They want to see themselves as without prejudice and "tolerant". It is silly, but it is the public square. So Obama is given a pass. Critical thinking: not allowed. Biden, as he presents, manifests the derisive characterizations that were unfairly ascribed to McCain.

After peaking at 59% last November, Vice President Joe Biden's favorable rating continues to decline and now stands at 42%. That barely exceeds his 40% unfavorable rating, and is easily his worst evaluation since last year's Democratic National Convention.

Given Obama's disposition, that of convivial detachment —the "blank screen" as Obama described it, where people project onto him, an unmarked landscape, all their prejudice and hopes, their denials and affirmations of self — it resolves well for Obama, poorly for Biden; How well it works for the country, well let's hope.

Philip Roth and Tina Brown

2009-10-22T21:11:03Z

Ira Altschiller

I love sports clips but interviews with writers are the best. They are unrelated, except in my level of interest. People who write fiction for a living are forced to establish a value based world and elucidate its reality. Even nihilistic works provide a moral framework to consider.

Like all art, novels give you a chance to get inside another life, another mind, another consciousness. That is, art gives a chance to, in that horrid phrase, truly escape, but in a productive, imaginative way, that tells you about yourself as you learn about the world. Sometimes art is presented as something that is "good for you", like health food, and you should have at least a little to keep your Self substantial. But art is really an invitation to an interior journey, and that is functionally useful: the unexamined life is not worth living.

In this video Tina Brown talks with Philip Roth. Roth, even with the mollifying effects of age, is dour as ever, in the way serious people can sometimes come across. Roth has run the gauntlet of a life lived as an artist in our time. Brown, as interviewer, is something of a contradiction: both flakey and down to earth. She has had a knack for stirring the pot successfully: a pop culture talent for gaining attention, with top-10 thinking and a what's-hot-what's-not-sensibility, but winningly, with a built-in appreciation for talent, even it needs be pre-approved. Brown is, like the popular culture, values-free.

Roth has always been interesting when he appeared on Fresh Air, but the combination of Roth and Terry Gross was like listening to a deeply withheld father and daughter painfully trying to communicate. Roth always seemed on the verge of getting ticked off, but over the years came to trust Terry, so the interviews worked pretty well. Brown's approach, very different, is contemporary and quotidian. She evoked quite a bit from Roth, so here are some random thoughts and notes to self that might interest others:

Roth feels the novel is dead — a cultic artifact, which even the Kindle cannot save. The "screen wins" over print, he says. He really means the attention span and willingness of the audience to engage have been eroded. An unexamined product of popular culture. The screen is a passive thing — yes, even touch screens. Touch screens substitute mental and emotional engagement for physical movement. Stories, well told, well written, as only serious writers can create, will never be dead. We need stories, and create our own, called our life.

He loves writing and wants to spend the rest of his life doing it. He is in his 70s and, as I have heard many times from those in that decade, can hardly believe it. Health, he says, is the big issue in aging. But it is also the big issue in living, for all.

I compared Roth's speaking style with that of Mailer. Mailer had a flair with language; it was exciting to hear him entangle surprising ideas with brilliant language junctures. Even thrilling. Roth is more methodical, thoughtful, cautious to the point of being ungiving. There is no poetry in the man. He leaves the impression of someone who knows how to play the game — although, I don't think it is cynical, it is just his nature.

Roth started his recent book with a first line, an actor having lost his "magic". He wanted to follow that idea and discovered the story as he went. That is, the journey is not only for the reader, but for the artist as well, in any truly creative work.

Roth says that he writes a rough draft to discover the story; what Tina Brown called a "vomit draft", where you put anything down — he liked that phrase. He says he tries to get the story down first and then, and only then, does he begin a serious rewrite. That is the point at which, he says, "the book becomes alive".

Roth regards his fourth book, Portnoy's Complaint, as a "youthful indiscretion". He said he would avoid re-reading it. He has written thirty books and is more productive as the years have gone on.

Roth's success, beyond his talent and imagination, is something very American. It is a success borne of subject matter. Roth has a shrewd sense of subject and festoons his works with "realism", another American obsession, although the idea of realism is, well, relative. Roth talked to actors to understand what an actor who couldn't act anymore might face. But that hardly gives Roth the credit that is due him for a lifetime spent elucidating the world, with seriousness and wit, as the gift for all that art can be.

Studies: Outlier

2009-10-21T22:59:27Z

Ira Altschiller

A smaller version here:

≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡

Or see this video @YouTube

Leno, CBS News, Smallville

2009-10-18T21:46:10Z

Ira Altschiller

Sampling a few shows that we had pretty much written off, it turned out they were all pretty good in a second look.

CBS Evening News has improved a lot. Couric has given up being a star, at least in front of the camera. CBS is providing more news stories than the other networks, with more substance, covering international news more regularly. Couric could probably start to let herself smile again. That would be okay.

Smallville has become a real production. The TV show looks like a well-produced movie. The plots are uneven, but it is an entertaining show, with real comic book type stories — just what it should be.

Even Leno — I'm no fan — had a very funny show the other night. The best segment was of his interviews of school kids. The writers probably were prompted by Kimmel's regular segment where kids talk to Kimmel in a gorilla suit. But they are young kids, so they think they are talking to a gorilla. Premise good, often it doesn't payoff though. But with Leno it was better; he had a computer hookup with a school. Two kids would appear and he would talk to them. One duo, two boys, were hysterical. Both children had enough personality for four adults, with the focus on the younger irreverent kid. The dynamic between the two kids involved the younger one saying something wacky; then the older kid would crack up, lean back in his chair, and say, still laughing, "You didn't have to say that."

When Leno asked the two which of their parents were smarter, the younger kid said, "My father, because he is a computer brainiac and he can download illegal music."

Obama And Art

2009-10-18T18:43:15Z

Ira Altschiller

From an NEA director who thinks art is the same as propaganda, and then is fired when his abuse of office comes to light, encouraging Obama enabling creations, to a White House art collection that includes a plagiarized Matisse, to an illustrator who does a heavy handed copy of a photograph for an Obama poster, and then lies about the source material, Obama is really giving art a shot in the arm. Republicans want to restrict art, Democrats want to use it.

To many on the Left, art is nothing more than another vehicle for advocacy. This is particularly embarrassing given the affectation on the Left that they are more sophisticated than, as they see it, the money-grubbing Right. Republicans seem to like photorealistic, sentimentalized work, with lots of shiny things, and the Left seems to like ideologically-heavy poster-like images, or, just advocacy with any image, or none at all — typefaces are fine. This may be something of an exaggeration, but not much. If you want to engage with art, you have to be, as a predicate, an independent thinker.

It is revealing the way some of the more clueless in the art establishment are attempting to enable the Matisse plagiarism with claims of postmodernist meta-commentary. The argument, in other words: the work is too cool for the room. This line of reasoning is paradigmatic of the insubstantial, value-challenged nature of much of theoretical postmodernism. There is a clear distinction between influence and copying — it just takes the most basic aesthetic understanding.

It is also revealing the way Republican critics are dissing not only the copied Matisse, but exploiting the occasion to disparage works by Diebenkorn, Ruscha, and the original Matisse itself (?!) — serious works, worthy of respect. There is a discomfort about art in America — people don't know what to make of it, from either end of the political spectrum.

About the ghastly Obama poster, which Obama "liked" — it is a portrait of Obama, so what's not to like? — here are the details,

The AP intends to vigorously pursue its countersuit alleging that Fairey willfully infringed the AP’s copyright in the close-up photo of then-Sen. Obama by using it without permission to create the Hope and Progress posters and related products, including T-shirts and sweatshirts that have led to substantial revenue. According to the AP’s in-house counsel, Laura Malone, “Fairey has licensed AP photos in the past for similar uses and should have done so in this case. As a not-for-profit news organization, the AP depends on licensing revenue to stay in business.” Proceeds received for past use of the photo will be contributed by the AP to The AP Emergency Relief Fund, which assists staffers and their families around the world who are victims of natural disasters and conflicts.

The Third Man

2009-10-17T01:15:41Z

Ira Altschiller

The Third Man — not a movie, but a concept — feels correct. People in dire circumstances, some people, find there is a helper presence, leading them to safety.

This article, an excerpt from a book about the subject, tries to ground this "angel" figure in science. And so it might be. Or not.

We all have it — that capacity: a feeling, a voice, in difficult times, that says, "you can get through this." The implied question: Will we listen?

An account of a survivor of 9/11:

He felt that he was being guided: “I was led to the stairs. I don’t think something grabbed my hand, but I was definitely led.” He resumed his descent down the stairwell and soon saw a point of light. … he encountered flames. He recoiled from the fire. But still someone helped him. “There was still danger, so it led me to break through, led me to run through the fire.… There was obviously somebody encouraging me. That’s not where you go, you don’t go toward the fire.…” He covered his head with his forearms and continued down, now running. He was singed by the fire. He believes the flames continued for three stories. Finally, he reached a clear, lit stairwell below the fire, on the 76th floor. Only then did the sense of a benevolent helper, one who had been with him for five minutes, end… “I think at that point it let me go.”

We are such fragile creatures, subject to absurdist fates. But we also have a fierceness of spirit that has probably, as much as cleverness, been the reason we have been able to survive.

Speaking of Laughter: LaughingMan

2009-10-15T23:10:46Z

Ira Altschiller

≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡

See it larger @ YouTube

Twain: The Community Of Laughter

2009-10-11T19:44:27Z

Ira Altschiller

A YouTube video called "Bodhisattva in metro":

≡≡≡≡≡≡

Mark Twain said,

Laughter which cannot be suppressed is catching. Sooner or later it washes away our defences, and undermines our dignity, and we join in it — ashamed of our weakness, and embittered against the cause of its exposure, but no matter, we have to join in, there is no help for it.
—From "Indiantown"

Mark Twain also said, "Man is the only creature that blushes, or needs to."

Play, Nonsense, And Blessed Freedom

2009-10-11T17:28:54Z

Ira Altschiller

Nonsense is a very high order of cognition. People who play with words, with sounds, whose art has that element of energy and nonsense which we call play, are close to some basic truth, plugged into the universe. We are talking here about serious, engaged play, not fooling around.

This article says that studies have shown that people exposed to "nonsense", here defined as a Kafka story, when later tested, were better at pattern recognition. After reading Kafka,

…the students studied a series of 45 strings of 6 to 9 letters, like “X, M, X, R, T, V.” They later took a test on the letter strings, choosing those they thought they had seen before from a list of 60 such strings. In fact the letters were related, in a very subtle way, with some more likely to appear before or after others…The test is a standard measure of what researchers call implicit learning: knowledge gained without awareness. The students had no idea what patterns their brain was sensing or how well they were performing…But perform they did.

It is as though the rousting of convention by the "nonsense" in Kafka's story allowed the mind a blessed freedom. That things became new. Zen mind, beginner's mind, was the way one book title described that state — a whole discipline devoted to achieving that freedom, which is what we all yearn for, whether we know it or not.

This book, something of a classic, also affirms, in a philosophical way, the "play element in culture"; the way play informs the fabric of society.

Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize (?)

2009-10-09T19:57:13Z

Ira Altschiller

Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize . For what? For "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."

…For what? The remarkable mass delusion about Obama keeps marching on.

The Nobel Committee, to fully affirm its folly, should have made Obama and Ahmadinejad co-recipients for their contributions to world peace. After all, they are talking. Well, Obama is talking. Ahmadinejad is making a bomb. (CBS News a few nights ago reported that Iran is turning western Afghanistan into a new killing field and the Obama administration wants the news about Iranian depravity suppressed. Obama is trying to make peace. Obama doesn't want anyone to be distracted by the facts.)

The Nobel Committee is good on science and medicine, but humanitarian awards, not.