Category: Arts and Culture

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Wishful Drinking

Fisher About a year ago, we won a pair of tickets to the Berkeley Rep at an auction. Suddenly realizing they were about to expire, Amy announced a few days ago that we were going to see Carrie Fisher‘s one-woman show, Wishful Drinking. The fact that our house has been filled with Star Wars talk for three months running did not exactly have me enthused about the prospect, but I had heard she’s had an interesting life, and what the hey – why not open up a few new circuits?

Prepared to be underwhelmed, but both of us were blown away by how good the performance was. It would be hard for anyone to spend two hours talking about their own life – no matter how surreal – without it coming off self-indulgent or egocentric. But somehow, Fisher managed to be both hilarious and humble about… everything: Her marriage to Paul Simon, her plunge into mental illness, her substance abuse, her relationship with Hollywood (her mother is Debbie Reynolds, her father was the singer Eddie Fisher, who left his mother for Liz Taylor (she did a great extended segment called “Hollywood Inbreeding 101”)), her magical ability to turn men bald and gay, the comic book collectors and sci-fi fans, who stalk her from the wings, the strange grandmother who locked her in the closet, yelling “Go ahead, cry all you want – you’ll pee less!” The whole thing was endearing and charming and full of silly wisdom that somehow seemed life affirming, despite all the tragedy.

Somehow we missed “the juicy stuff about making out with the actor Harrison Ford” (New York Times), but she did get 10 minutes of good Star Wars gossip into the mix, e.g. remembering George Lucas telling her she wouldn’t be allowed to wear a bra under her white robes in Star Wars. “Umm… OK… why not?” “Because there is no underwear in space,” Lucas deadpanned back, with that face that knows only one expression. “Ah, right. Lucas has been to space, looked all around, and didn’t see any underwear. He knows!”

Kind of tough to get across just how compelling the show was. If it comes to your area, just go.

If, on the other hand, you’re in the mood to throw up a little bit in your mouth, re-live the saccharine, Hallmark-y 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special: Happy Life Day (warning: includes cute baby wookies). Glutton for punishment? This 5-minute condensation of the two-hour boondoggle includes Bea Arthur and The Jefferson Starship, together at last on one stage! Looking at these now, it’s amazing she didn’t spend half the show talking about the shame this one TV special must have caused.

Thanks grahams for the Holiday Special links.

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Moon-Walking Bear

Awesome U.K. ad promoting bicycle awareness:

Sad truth: No amount of psych tricks will raise driver awareness. Not when those drivers are on cell phones. Bluetooth won’t help.

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Easter Billboard

Free speech is one thing, but come within a mile of religion and people are going to get tweaked. In Orange County, FL, a week before Easter, a billboard suddenly appeared, reading simply: “All religions are fairy tales.” Almost overnight, a nearby restaurant watched business drop by 2/3. People started calling the media. I’m imagining the reports went something like this: “Hello, media? Someone is expressing an opinion and I have to be exposed to it when I drive by!”

I think the business angle is especially interesting – it provides an instant concrete measurement of public opinion. What is it about religion that strikes so deeply? I can hardly imagine another opinion being expressed on a billboard – no matter how controversial – that could impact local businesses on such a broad scale. It’s just weird.

The billboard company claims the signage was not paid for, but put up in the middle of the night by anonymous pranksters.

Update: The article has been removed from WFTV’s site without explanation. Google for coverage elsewhere.

via Sean Graham

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What Makes Finnish Kids So Smart?

Wall Street Journal: In the international PISA test, Finnish students rank as among the smartest in the world. Yet they don’t start school until age 7, have no classes for the gifted, no standardized testing, have plenty of “fruittari-hoppari,” and don’t agonize over college (since it’s free).

Finland’s secret? Not much. Basics. Pride. And, oh yeah – small class sizes and teachers with masters’ degrees. Another interesting difference – a much narrower gap between the highest- and lowest-performing students (4% in Finland, 29% in the U.S.) That’s because in Finland, none of the students move on until the slower students have caught up. Rather than pushing advanced students forward, they’re invited to help the slower ones. The thinking is that they can do so without harming their own progress.

“In most countries, education feels like a car factory. In Finland, the teachers are the entrepreneurs.”

There are good reasons (see article) why it would be hard for the U.S. to emulate Finland’s educational performance, but surely we can learn something by observing? Let’s start with smaller classes, better teachers, and and end to No Child. That seems pretty fundamental.

Music: The Hold Steady :: Cattle And The Creeping Things
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Shift Happens

This video’s projections re: the capabilities of a $1000 personal computer exceeding the capabilities of the human brain by 2023 and that of the entire human race by 2049 remind me of one of the most jaw-dropping books I’ve ever read, Ray Kurzweil’s The Age of Spiritual Machines.

You are a speck, flitting briefly through an inky void…

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Creationist Diorama-Rama

1Stplace Utne Reader, on a Creationist Science Fair that recently took place inside a shopping mall in Roseville, Minnesota, including a diorama explaining how a broken motor disproves evolution, plus fossil evidence that people lived at the same time as dinosaurs.

The projects all used classic high school science language: Start with a hypothesis, move on to testing, and then draw a conclusion. The problem was that much of the science was backwards. In good science, you start with a piece of evidence and try to find a truth. With creationist science, you start with a truth (the Bible), and try to find the evidence.

Music: Isaac Hayes :: Going In Circles
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Christian Beliefs vs. Atheist Beliefs

What to do with this information? Christians and atheists really aren’t all that different. But is a list an argument? Perhaps this is just a variant on the Flying Spaghetti Monster approach. But just because we might agree that Angus Og doesn’t exist as a god doesn’t mean that “our” God doesn’t exist. Why have I just capitalized God? Is that a tacit acknowledgement that “God” deserves as much respect as all of these other gods? Is the Christian god as provable as all of the other gods?

Music: Robyn Hitchcock :: Welcome To Earth
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Feed the (HD) Beast

David Pogue at the New York Times, quoting from his surprise encounter with a rare non-clueless Best Buy employee:

Q: Is there a lot of consumer confusion about HDTV?

A: Oh, man, you have no idea. People come in here absolutely clueless. Or furious, because they bought an HDTV set, got it home, and discovered that the picture doesn’t look anything like it did here in the store. Because they don’t realize they need a high-def *signal* to feed that set. For example, they need to replace their cable boxes with digital ones, or put a high-def antenna on the roof.

I admit that we fell into something like this trap when going HD a few months ago. We knew we would need to feed it HD signal for best results, but weren’t prepared for how much worse traditional signal would look. But apparently not everyone notices. Or who notice but don’t care:

[D.P. adds: According to a study by the Leichtman Research Group, 50 percent of HDTV owners aren’t actually watching any high-def shows on them… but 25 percent of them *think* they are.]

Yikes.

Music: Nellie McKay :: Testify
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Earthquake Preparedness and Guns

Over the past year, we’ve mostly filled a large rolling plastic trash bin with earthquake supplies. First-aid kit, blankets, lots of water, hand-crank radio, emergency rations, etc. The wheels on the bin are so we can drag it along with us if our area is evacuated (we live pretty close to a major fault, on soil subject to liquefaction). We’ve got a few more things to add, but are mostly ready.

Recently a friend of ours asked whether we had a gun in our kit. A gun? A friend of his who lived through post-Katrina said that after a couple of weeks of no public services, people who had supplies but no guns were sorry they didn’t.

As you can guess, guns aren’t my bag. What happens when someone with a gun approaches and asks for our water? Am I supposed to have a gunfight with them? I’m more inclined to give them the damn water and drink from the reservoir left over in our home’s water heater. But it’s hard to imagine what actually living through that kind of Mad Max world would actually be like, and how my thinking might change in that kind of situation.

What about you? Is your disaster kit ready? And does it include firearms?

Music: Screaming Headless Torsos :: Smile In A Wave (Theme From Jack Johnson)