SilverJacket

Blogging about Bullshit

I've written some recent posts about bullshit for Brainstorm.

The first one defines bullshit and describes Hunter S. Thompson's use of it on the campaign trail in 1972. And mentions a bullshit lecture on statistics I saw that was actually titled "Not Always Bullshit: A Simple Explanation of Statistics."

The second one relays what Harry Frankfurt, author of On Bullshit, had to tell me about the use of bullshit by Hillary and others on the campaign trail in 2008.

The third describes a bullshit music review in Maxim magazine, asks whether I committed the same sin in Psychology Today, and ties in material from the book How to Talk about Books You Haven't Read.

The Copycat Unconscious

Considering how lazy many e-daters are, and how clever many other e-daters are, it should come as no surprise that plagiarism runs rampant in the online dating world. On Friday the Wall Street Journal reported on copycat personal profiles, mentioning that in one survey 9% of respondents admitted to lifting material from someone else, and that lines from some sources appear on dozens of people's profile pages. In some cases people cop to lack of imagination, but I suspect in others people subconsciously appropriate the sentiments behind the words so as to justify their claims of authorship.

Read the full post at Brainstorm.

Just Say Maybe

Focus on Hallucinogens: This is a little gem I've held onto since my friends Ken and Glen mailed it to me as part of a care package when I was working in Alaska after high school. It's from 1991 and out of print but still in near-perfect condition. I wrote children's science books for two years but never wrote one as fun or useful as this. It explains to 9-year-olds everything from neurons to shamans. Rad!

It's basically a My First Reader version of D.M. Turner's The Essential Psychedelic Guide, minus the special section on how much ketamine to inject when you're on DMT and nitrous. The prose is lucid, but the pictures crack me up. Take the cover. Look kids, in a drug free zone, you can do all kinds of things, like play tic-tac-toe. Or even watch people play tic-tac-toe! And remember, friends don't let friends wear non-footie pants.

In some cases the book might be counterproductive: "Have you ever looked at yourself in an amusement park mirror? Look what happened to you! Now, try to imagine that the whole world looked that way to you." Awesome! Where can I get some?

The best pictures are in the chapter on LSD.

The text above this one reminds me of an Ali G interview with a drug expert:

Ali G: And what is its effects?
Guy: You can go paranoid, which means you think people or things are coming at you. It makes your heart race. Your blood pressure can go low, so you can feel a bit woozy sometimes. It’s got a lot of medical effects on the body.
Ali G: And is there any negative effects?

Ali G: Which is the type of acid that actually make you fly?
Guy: No acid makes you fly. Acid can make you think you fly.
Ali G: But ain't there one, cause me mate Dave said that he took this type, and he flew all around the room and then his mum told him to get some ciggies from the shop, and he actually flew there and flew back and was back in like five seconds or whatever, but he'd forgotten to buy ciggies.

This picture just makes me wonder what's wrong with this dude's friends. I mean, he's obviously flipping out about something, and they're just standing there waving at him with those shit-eating grins. Seriously kids, that is your brain on tic-tac-toe.

New York is Fun. You Should Come.

I'm not really one to get starstruck. I'm of the "they're just human; do they have anything interesting to say to me" variety. But there's still something enervating about close encounters with celebs in the wild, like watching a comic book character (say, Mystique) come to life and shake your hand. I think there's some evolutionary psychology behind that.

Two nights ago I went to a book party hosted by a dealer of rare tomes. Not typically a breeding ground for action figures, but follow along. At one point I introduced myself to a woman with funky glasses who looked interesting to talk to. Her eccentricity didn't end with her accessories, which I soon noticed also included analogs of raver beaded bracelets clogging up her her sleeves--they had little trinkets on them, at least one of which was a unicorn. She noted that she bought the same designer glasses for her husband, but in green, and kept talking to me, and the woman I'd been talking with earlier, about Montauk, noting that she had never worked a summer in her life. When she asked where we went in the summers (though thankfully without using summer as a verb) we were like, uh, we live in the city. We work. At this point I thought I had her pegged. A wealthy artist or designer. Then she drops it like it's hot and reveals she's a retired school teacher. Recalculate.

She goes on to ask how long my chat buddy and I have known each other. Since about 8pm we say. She does not believe us, noting our casualness. We're casual people, we say. For the next 30 minutes Jessica and I try to convince her that we are not married. I think she still believes we're pranksters.

At this point I'm thinking I would love for her to be my crazy old aunt, so I could have lunch with her once a month. And then the full reveal. Jerry O'Connell (Stand By Me, Jerry Maguire), who'd been standing by me, introduces himself and thanks us, as if in apology, for talking to his mom. Jessica thinks this is weird, as she does not know who he is. I think that is weird.

Then his fiancee introduces herself. I'll give you a hint. Her first name starts with "Rebecca," and her last name starts with "Romijn" (but does NOT end in "-Stamos," mind you.) Celeb introductions always seem weird to me. It's slightly tempting to play dumb and respond with, "I'm sorry, what's your name again?" just to see if it elicits any kind of interesting microexpression before they dutifully repeat themselves. (An actual tantrum would be hilarious.)

I think when I'm a household name I will crib a line from a Fabolous [sic] jam "Hello, my name is/ Fuck that, I'm famous." You know, just as a psychology experiment.

In a eugenic world...

This would not be a book.

Hapless Self-Help

In the book review section of Psychology Today we have a page called Road Test. A writer takes a self-help book out for a test drive and reports the results. Last month a man named Sheraton G. Munford sent us his book, Confirming Theories. The brief intro ends with: "please read with an open mind and give serious thought to the theories of Sheraton G. Munford." The book's not quite right for PT, so I decided to road test it for SJ!

Confirming Theories is a list of 35 theories, each about a page long, and each followed by a page with blank lines for answering three questions: "How was the research on the theory completed?" "What were the results of the research?" "Please explain why you do or do not support the theory." Munford lays out his theories and we get to test them for him! Awesome! Let's get to work.

On the Money

A review of the new biography of Timothy Leary appearing in the Times today includes the following paragraph:

In a twist that could have occurred only in 1970, a consortium of drug dealers paid the Weather Underground to spring Leary from the California Men's Colony at San Luis Obispo — he pulled himself along a telephone cable over the fence, then was picked up by a car — and transport him to Algeria. He duly issued a press statement written in the voice of the Weathermen, the money line of which was: "To shoot a genocidal robot policeman in the defense of life is a sacred act." [emphasis mine]

The last time I recall seeing someone use that terminology in reference to a piece of writing's spunkiest moment was in my own hand, aimed at an article I wrote in 2003 for a national physics lab's magazine. Sending the link to a fellow writer, I wrote, "Be sure to read the final graf for the money shot."

What was it?

[LA Times science journalist K.C.] Cole proudly told me what Dava Sobel, author of Longitude and Galileo's Daughter, said of her once. "'K.C. Cole is our ambassador to the realms of the exceedingly strange.'" Couldn't one say the same of 60's psychonaut Timothy Leary, the Harvard scientist who explored the far reaches of experience with psychotropic drugs in search of insight? Cole laughed. "But my exceedingly strange realm is the universe," she said. "It's the real stuff. That's what's so amazing about it. The universe itself is much more amazing than anything Timothy Leary ever saw. I don't care what he was on."

And personally, I think the money shot in the Times piece was its title: "The Nutty Professor." Ahem.

Frozen Dinner

Last night PBS broadcast an episode of NOVA titled "Deadly Ascent." The NOVA crew climbed Denali (Mt. McKinley) in Alaska with a team of researchers and mountaineers to figure out why our bodies break down at high altitudes and low temperatures.

The team carried lots of extra food in their packs, because a storm could pin them down for days. To make matters more volatile, the team included one Dr. Howard Donner. I could see it in their eyes: no one wanted to run out of munchies in the wilderness with a Donner.

Of course, their fears may have been unfounded. Last week a pair of archeologists revealed that they could find no evidence of cannibalism among the Donner Party. Using electron microscopes and DNA tests, they analyzed thousands of bone fragments at the Alder Creek campsite where the Donners spend 4 winter months in 1846-1847, but, alas, none of the bones belonged to people. The undramatic findings do not bode well for the archeologists' negotiations with CBS regarding the upcoming series CSI:Alder Creek.

Even without people eating people, the NOVA episode contains some level of adventure. But my favorite Denali account remains Art Davidson's autobiographical tale of the peak's first winter ascent. Even the book's title gives me the chills: Minus 148 Degrees. (That's with windchill, but still...)

[I feel somewhat odd categorizing a post about the Donner Party under "Travel" and "Food and Drink," but what's done is done.]

Voyage to Uranus (For Adults Only)

Ever wanted the inside scoop on the NASA shuttle program? This month, astronaut Mike Mullane, who's gone spaceborne three times, reveals some of the dirty details in his new book, Riding Rockets. Reuters published an interview with him today.

On the business side of things, he claims the shuttle is "the most dangerous manned spacecraft ever flown, by anybody." (Obviously he hasn't experienced Captain Whizbang's Olde Time TNT Caboose to the Stars.) On the whimsical side of things, he provides TMI regarding the depth of his preparation for astronaut selection. "I was determined when the NASA proctologist looked up my ass, he would see pipes so dazzling he would ask the nurse to get his sunglasses." Hallelujah.

Today, that level of preening might designate Mullane a metrosexual. But in close quarters, internal hygiene is not so trivial. In an account by astronaut Harrison Schmitt of his 1973 trip to the Moon, Schmitt describes a stinky side effect of lunar life support:

All of us had to live with hydrogen gas in the water used to reconstitute various foods (basically the same as today's trail foods)... Although the convenience of having a continuous supply of fresh water should be obvious, hydrogen going into our guts with the food had to come out, much to the discomfort of crew mates.

(Overall, accommodations suited Schmitt better than some of the camps on his geological field trips in Norway and Alaska. "Certainly you had no black flies or mosquitoes to bother you on the Moon," he told me recently.)

On Mullane's website, we find the following bold announcement: "Riding Rockets is written for adult readers. It is inappropriate for children." For a more tame tale, check out Sally Ride's To Space & Back, written for young readers. (Full disc: I work for her.) But, as it turns out, kids are interested in poop too. (Who knew?) Sally's book has a full-page photo of a shuttle shitter. And when she speaks to kids, the most popular question is, "How do you go to the bathroom in space?" Very carefully.

To Sleep, Perchance to Kick Some Ass

Sunday's New York Times Magazine carries an essay by D.T. Max on literary Darwinism, the use of evolutionary psychology to analyze the behavior of characters in literature. Near the end, it takes a moment to ask, "What can the purpose of literature be, assuming it is not just a harmless oddity?" Some possibilities: