tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-352484772024-03-15T04:16:18.624-04:00Montclair SocioBlogA blog by Jay Livingston -- what I've been thinking, reading, seeing, or doing. Although I am a member of the Montclair State University department of sociology, this blog has no official connection to Montclair State University. “Montclair State University does not endorse the views or opinions expressed therein. The content provided is that of the author and does not express the view of Montclair State University.”Jay Livingstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06652075579940313964noreply@blogger.comBlogger2010125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35248477.post-59914830804373707162023-09-20T10:09:00.007-04:002024-02-05T07:44:48.392-05:00Sociology for Psychics<span style="font-weight: bold;">November 23, 2009 </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 85%; font-style: italic;">Posted by Jay Livingston</span><br /><br />I knew it was the ecological fallacy – using aggregate data to draw conclusions about individuals – but I took a shot. And even though I got a bull’s eye, more or less, the effect wasn’t what I’d hoped for. Here’s the story – sociological knowledge in action.<br /><br />I wanted to make a change in my phone account, so I tried the “chat with one of our representatives online” option.<br /><br />My chat window correspondent typed, by way of introduction, that she was Wendy M. Now Wendy was a name I hadn’t heard for a while. So as we were waiting for the system to register the changes I’d requested and that she was entering, I opened another window and looked for Wendy at the Census site on <a href="http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/">baby names</a>.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAAlmKagelSwPLYd2meR7Drg-vqT-3p3CxBTQsoXpnuz8RVsyTA71T3bboVxFmkq0vzBGtrcgSMjJ8XryHOFHrwOkEFH9Pt1trLPdDK-4b-nkK5ccuNe0mH65vxS7-PLIqObKu/s1600/00+Wendy.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5407271210620843730" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAAlmKagelSwPLYd2meR7Drg-vqT-3p3CxBTQsoXpnuz8RVsyTA71T3bboVxFmkq0vzBGtrcgSMjJ8XryHOFHrwOkEFH9Pt1trLPdDK-4b-nkK5ccuNe0mH65vxS7-PLIqObKu/s400/00+Wendy.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 280px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br />The name Wendy had peaked in popularity in from 1969 to 1972, climbing as high as 28th place.<br />In the chat, I asked if Wendy was her real name or if perhaps she was really in Bangalore and Wendy was merely her nom de screen.<br /><br />No, she assured me, she was Wendy, and she was in Georgia.<br /><br />I guessed that the Georgia curve for Wendy might have lagged the national average by a year or two. So I said,<br /><blockquote style="color: #000099;">Me: OK, are you 37 years old?<br />Wendy: I’m 36.<br /></blockquote>And that was all. Not, “Wow, very close!” not “How did you know?” I thought she would be stunned – after all, the only cues I had were typed words in a chat window, no picture, no voice – and I had come within a few months of her precise age. But Wendy seemed utterly unimpressed with my psychic powers – far less than I had been. So I didn’t bother asking her about her school friends Jennifer, Kimberly, and Michelle.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 85%; font-style: italic;">(Previous posts about names <a href="http://montclairsoci.blogspot.com/2009/06/oceane-tide-rising-and-falling.html">here</a>, <a href="http://montclairsoci.blogspot.com/2008/09/whats-in-name-it-depends-on-where.html">here</a>, and <a href="http://montclairsoci.blogspot.com/2009/06/its-how-you-finish.html">here</a>.)</span><br /></div>Jay Livingstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06652075579940313964noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35248477.post-2851855096256084142023-07-01T22:09:00.000-04:002023-07-01T22:09:22.492-04:00Jeopardy III: Losing Their Religion. Again.<p><b>July 1, 2023</b><br /><i><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 85%;">Posted by Jay Livingston</span></i></p><p><br />I didn’t see this when it happened nearly three weeks ago. None of the three Jeopardy contestants knew “<i>hallowed</i> be thy name.”<br /><br />
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="285" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cz1LoCOoclM" title="YouTube video player" width="500"></iframe><br /><br />Nor, until now, was I aware of the distress and outrage it provoked.<br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRbjuOldMf3uXyT6sQciy_043ep2COm7BfcbJ1c19ShFcowE0ci8_09rl3khDumWabxAsW25kDylfYhI_USrGLrJyCfs48kwQB0dKGQGgV7ikrU0dLzQSC_nWUVdI4mDzN_b-mTawXzMD_JCX59HULhO4VJ2XYEVhqMXFu4ydQSMv3QmfcSOAl/s1000/Jeop%20bible.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="375" data-original-width="1000" height="188" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRbjuOldMf3uXyT6sQciy_043ep2COm7BfcbJ1c19ShFcowE0ci8_09rl3khDumWabxAsW25kDylfYhI_USrGLrJyCfs48kwQB0dKGQGgV7ikrU0dLzQSC_nWUVdI4mDzN_b-mTawXzMD_JCX59HULhO4VJ2XYEVhqMXFu4ydQSMv3QmfcSOAl/w400-h150/Jeop%20bible.jpg" width="500" /></a></div><p>For me, it was déja vu. <br /><br />I was on Jeopardy fifty years ago. At the studio, before the taping began, they had some of the contestants do a practice round. Presumably, this was to help us feel comfortable with the cameras and lights and other aspects of the set. I was not one of those selected, so I sat nearby and watched. One of the categories on the board was The Bible. <br /><br />“OK, let’s go,” came the voice from the control room. They ran through a few questions, and then a contestant, after answering a question correctly, asked for The Bible. <br /><br />The plate with “$10"* on it slid up revealing the question which the host then read: “In the Book of Matthew, he says, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me.” <br /><br />Silence. Nobody rang in. Then over the speakers came the deep voice from the control room: “They don’t come any easier in this category, people.” <br /></p><p>---------------<br />* <span style="font-size: 93%;">Yes, $10. The dollar values of questions then were 1/20 what they are now. For more on my Jeopardy appearances, see these earlier posts.<br /><br /><a href="https://montclairsoci.blogspot.com/2020/01/not-ken-jennings-but.html" target="_blank">Not Ken Jennings, But . . . </a><br /><br /><a href="https://montclairsoci.blogspot.com/2020/01/jeopardy-ii-audiences-la-goffman-and.html" target="_blank">Jeopardy II: Audiences — à la Goffman and ABC-TV</a><br /></span><br /><br /><br /></p>Jay Livingstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03797268351984440375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35248477.post-46886701986624268882023-05-03T13:40:00.001-04:002023-05-03T13:41:23.116-04:00To Serve and Protect and Empathize<p><b>May 3, 2023</b><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 85%;"><i>Posted by Jay Livingston</i></span></span><br /><br />A friend of mine here in New York was the victim of a property crime, a larceny. The bad guys had broken into his car and taken whatever wasn’t locked down, mostly books as I recall (this happened a long time ago). He went to the local precinct to report it. Eventually the desk sergeant acknowledged his presence. “Somebody broke into my car and took all my stuff.” <br /><br />“So what do you want me to do about it?” said the sergeant. <br /><br />The officer’s response is understandable and quite reasonable. There’s no way the thief could be caught or the property recovered. Besides, this type of crime happened frequently. To fill out the paperwork or do anything would just be a waste of police time. My friend knew all this, but he was still not happy about the way the cops treated his victimization. <br /><br />I remembered this anecdote when I saw some data from <a href="https://www.axios.com/local/portland/2023/05/01/portland-police-property-crime-online-reporting-followup" target="_blank">Portland </a>showing low levels of satisfaction with a crime reporting system there. It also reminded me of the previous post about satisfaction with responses to medical questions. When people seek immediate medical advice online, they are more satisfied with the responses of a non-human (ChatGPT) than with those of a doctor. Doctors were five times more likely to get low ratings for both the quality of the information and the empathy conveyed. Three-fourths of their responses were rated low on empathy. <br /><br />Something similar could be happening when people are victims of crime. In Portland, ss in many cities, victims of non-violent crimes can use the online reporting system rather than calling the cops. Most people find the system easy to use, and it frees police resources for other matters, but so far it’s not getting high marks. Only 16% of those who used it said they were “Satisfied” and nearly three times that many said they were “Dissatisfied.”<br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeVVa2Y-xG9SyA_QETYtrgP93y2H7fODz-b7hj2N_zK22cOt8_ELFvSOG3d8WjuK77gztJVOQ63FgUBl_Bv2Cb4cNLUVlZzEjNR_WqGA3_ZEelS9riKT5Qyf1UP0ilzN8IsHJAfjjXWSKyoWS9XNUXhjxrQ6QccEDG3XygUM_hIwnhh4Nltg/s1098/Portland%20-%20satisfied%20w%20police.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="477" data-original-width="1098" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeVVa2Y-xG9SyA_QETYtrgP93y2H7fODz-b7hj2N_zK22cOt8_ELFvSOG3d8WjuK77gztJVOQ63FgUBl_Bv2Cb4cNLUVlZzEjNR_WqGA3_ZEelS9riKT5Qyf1UP0ilzN8IsHJAfjjXWSKyoWS9XNUXhjxrQ6QccEDG3XygUM_hIwnhh4Nltg/w400-h174/Portland%20-%20satisfied%20w%20police.jpg" width="500" /></a></div><p>Could ChatGPT help? As with medical reporting, the crucial factor is whether the police seem to be care about the case. People who received a call or email from the police in response to their online report were twice as likely to be satisfied, even though the callback sometimes came weeks after the victim had filed the report and even though many of the victims or property crime merely want a case number for insurance purposes. <br /><br />ChatGPT or some similar program could send this kind of email and respond to questions the vicitm might have. I’m not sure what ChatGPT’s initial message would sound like, but it wouldn’t be, “So what do you want me to do about it?” Putting ChatGPT on the case wouldn’t have any effect on the crime rate or the clearance rate, but it might make a difference in how people thought about their local police. <br /><br /></p>Jay Livingstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03797268351984440375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35248477.post-73493041139332534822023-05-01T21:50:00.014-04:002023-05-02T17:15:52.286-04:00Your GP or ChatGPT<div><p><b>May 1, 2023</b><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 85%;"><i>Posted by Jay Livingston</i></span><br /></p><table align="center" border="1" cellpadding="10" nbsp="" style="width: 450px;"><tbody><tr><td bgcolor="#F8FCFC" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Help. A couple of hours ago, I swallowed a wooden toothpick that the cook had missed when removing them from the stew he’d made. It wasn’t that long, an inch or so, and it couldn’t have been very sharp since I didn’t feel it much when I swallowed it. But can it be serious or even fatal?</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
A question similar to this was posted on Reddit’s r/AskDocs forum, where doctors or other healthcare professionals post answers. Here are two responses.<br /><br /></div><div></div><div><table align="center" border="1" cellpadding="10" nbsp="" style="width: 450px;"><tbody>
<tr><td bgcolor="#F8FCFC" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">If you</span>’<span style="font-family: helvetica;">ve surpassed 2-6 h, chances are they</span>’<span style="font-family: helvetica;">ve passed into your intestines. Which means it can’t be retrieved easily.
<br /><br />Many people can swallow razorblades and toothpicks without issue. In case you develop stomach ache, then don’t hesitate seeking out an emergency room, and remember to point out the swallowed tooth pick.
<br /><br />For now, they won</span>’<span style="font-family: helvetica;">t be doing much.
</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /><br /></div><table align="center" border="1" cellpadding="10" nbsp="" style="width: 450px;"><tbody>
<tr><td bgcolor="#F8FCFC" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It</span>’<span style="font-family: helvetica;">s natural to be concerned if you have ingested a foreign object, but in this case, it is highly unlikely that the toothpick you swallowed will cause you any serious harm.
<br /><br />Toothpicks are made of wood, which is not toxic and will not cause poisoning. However, it is possible for a toothpick to cause injury if it becomes stuck in the throat or if it punctures the digestive tract. However, this is unlikely to happen with a dull, cooked toothpick that is only 2 cm long.
<br /><br />If you are experiencing any discomfort or symptoms such as abdominal pain, difficulty swallowing, or vomiting, it is important to contact a health care provider for further evaluation. However, if you are not experiencing any symptoms, it is safe assume that the toothpick has passed through your digestive system and you do not need to concerned.
<br /></span>
<span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br />It</span>’<span style="font-family: helvetica;">s always a good idea to be cautious when consuming food and to remove any foreign objects before eating. It's understandable that you may be feeling paranoid, but try not to worry too much. It is highly unlikely that the toothpick will cause you any serious harm.
</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />How would you rate the quality of each response on a 5-point Lkert scale (very poor, poor, acceptable, good, or very good)?<br /><br />How would you rate the empathy or “bedside manner” of each response (not empathetic, slightly empathetic, moderately empathetic, empathetic, and very empathetic)? <br /><br />The first response is from an actual doctor. The second is from ChatGPT. Which did you rate more highly?<br /><br />Chances are that your evaluation was no different from those of a team of three licensed healthcare professionals who reviewed 200 sets of questions and answers. On measures of both quality and empathy, ChatGPT won hands down. (The JAMA article reporting these findings is <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2804309 " target="_blank">here</a>.)<br /><br />On a five-point scale of overall quality, the ChatGPT average was 4.13, Doctors 3.26. (On the graph below, I have multiplied these by 10 so that all the results fit on the same axis.) On both Quality and Empathy, Doctors got far more low (1-2) ratings (very poor, poor; not empathetic, slightly empathetic), far fewer high (4-5) ratings. <br /><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmsz20PKsjbGKCWKN596tHDLmTerOuyvXnCXaWweeln1uG3MY-R7UaHE63JS5a7aAukIaR0UKxL6bawuS-GSKrRvUUX3jKskeODsciNMQFdgtEmWUdrBL8UrvXJnik3Bq96rN3UyfhQPSdnkXOJNG-vPaAyIyk_PdP9Ct2_b3WZm79XbCMaA/s1009/Docs%20v%20ChatGPT%20b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="722" data-original-width="1009" height="286" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmsz20PKsjbGKCWKN596tHDLmTerOuyvXnCXaWweeln1uG3MY-R7UaHE63JS5a7aAukIaR0UKxL6bawuS-GSKrRvUUX3jKskeODsciNMQFdgtEmWUdrBL8UrvXJnik3Bq96rN3UyfhQPSdnkXOJNG-vPaAyIyk_PdP9Ct2_b3WZm79XbCMaA/w400-h286/Docs%20v%20ChatGPT%20b.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><div>The great irony is that the doctors tended to be impersonal while the machine (ChatGPT) responded to the patient as a person, not just a symptom reporter.<br /><br />People who ask medical questions are worried. If you have something going on with your body that seems wrong, and you don’t know what it is, you probably are going to have some anxiety about it. So ChatGPT might begin with a general statement (“It’s always best to err on the side of caution when it comes to head injuries,” “It’s not normal to have persistent pain, swelling, and bleeding. . . “) or an expression of concern (“I’m sorry to hear that you got bleach splashed in your eye”). The doctors generally focused on the symptom, its causes and treatment. <br /><br />Doctor responses were considerably more brief than those of ChatGPT (on average, 50 words compared with 200). That’s partly because of time. If doctors were at all concerned with an efficient use of their time, they couldn’t turn out the longer responses that ChatGPT generated in a few seconds. <br /><br />But I think there’s something else. For patients, the symptom is new and unusual. They feel worried and anxious because they don’t know what it is. But the doctor has seen it a thousand times. It’s routine, not the sort of thing that requires a lot of thought. Here’s the diagnosis, here’s the recommended treatment, and maybe here are some other options. Next. <br /><br /><p></p></div>Jay Livingstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03797268351984440375noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35248477.post-63034916658440547622023-04-28T08:19:00.000-04:002023-04-28T08:19:15.916-04:00A Boy’s View of the Boys of Summer<p><b>April 28, 2023</b><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 85%;"><i>Posted by Jay Livingston</i></span><br /><br />The <a href="https://montclairsoci.blogspot.com/2023/04/durkheim-at-bat-elementary-forms-of.html" target="_blank">previous post</a> was about the belief that a ballplayer with a modicum of talent should keep at the game regardless of the sacrifices he has to make or his realistic probability of success. I added a Durkheimian gloss -– that this belief and its attendant rituals are essentially non-rational; they are a mechanism for group cohesion. The baseball-as-divinity belief serves the purposes of the group as a group, not of its individual members.<br /><br />I myself once held this belief. Of course, I was fairly young at the time. Two moments stand out in my memory.<br /><br />1. When I was young, probably at the low end of Little League age range, my father let me tag along once when he was meeting casually with a man he had some kind of business deal with, buying or selling steel not that it matters. The man’s name was Mickey Weintraub, and although he was probably in his forties at the time, he looked much younger. He was tanned and handsome, and he just had one of those eternally young faces. He had also been a professional baseball player, an infielder. <br /><br />He had spent years in the Giants farm system, Double-A and Triple-A minor leage teams, but had never quite been able to make it to the majors. Good field, no hit, I think. The Giants were still in New York then, and they figured that a player named Weintraub in the line-up would boost attendance at the Polo Grounds. So they were willing to keep giving him a chance.<br /><br />“Every year, I’d go to spring training in Arizona, and they’d ask me ‘How old are you.’ And every year, I’d say ‘twenty-four.’ I could have gone on like that forever.” <br /><br />“Why didn’t you?” I asked. I was incredulous that he had ever stopped. <br /><br />“You can’t fool your legs.”<br /><br />At age nine, I didn’t understand about legs and how 32-year old legs might be different than 24-year old legs. But what I really didn’t understand was why someone would stop playing baseball and go into the steel business.<br /><br />2. When I was twelve or so, I went with my parents to visit my younger brother at summer camp. One of the counselors there had until recently been a pitcher for Montreal, which was then the Dodgers’ Triple-A farm team. He was what we would have then called a “light-skinned Negro,” and tall, like the Dodgers’s ace Don Newcombe but better looking. He was also apparently not quite as good as Newk; he had not been called up to the majors.<br /><br />Somehow, I wound up playing catch with him. We had thrown the ball back and forth for a while when he said, “Can you catch a curve ball?”<br /><br />“Sure,” I said. After all, some of my friends that I’d caught could throw pitches that broke a few inches. He took a short wind-up, leaning back then bringing his body and arm forward. The ball seemed to be headed for my left shoulder or maybe a little higher when suddenly it spun downward and to the right, and next thing I knew it was sailing past my right leg. I could hardly believe what I’d just seen. Embarrassed, I turned and trotted back to the bushes where the ball had finally stopped rolling. <br /><br />I don’t remember if we kept playing or if he threw any other curve balls and if so whether I caught them. I just remember thinking: How could anyone who can throw a pitch like that not keep trying to get in the Dodgers’ rotation?<br /><br />I heard from one of the other counselors that he was going to med school. <br /><br /></p>Jay Livingstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03797268351984440375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35248477.post-48204426331074940382023-04-27T13:36:00.000-04:002023-04-27T13:36:28.741-04:00Durkheim at the Bat: The Elementary Forms of Baseball Life<p><b>April 27, 2023</b><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 85%;"><i>Posted by Jay Livingston</i></span><br /><br />Drew Maggi was a 15th-round draft pick by the Pirates in 2010. He played in the minor leages for thirteen years — Double-A and Triple-A farm teams of a half-dozen different MLB franchises, 1,155 games, 4,494 times at the plate, Yesterday, three weeks shy of his 34th birthday, he made his first appearance in a MLB game. He was a pinch hitter in the bottom of the eighth inning in a game the Pirates (the division-leading Pirates!) were winning 8-1. He struck out. <br /><br />The fans cheered. They had cheered even more loudly the moment he was announced. All the Pirates in the dugout had cheered and applauded. And after the game, he was interviewed on the field and on the jumbotron just as if he had hit a walk-off home run.<br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWt_4lD4OLxoVQ3n_gM8YJUlY1TtJVpGO9DVCn7itzIjVUxDCwR4UfFyu56fqYsAUf1iVjomaoIVTqkI_SQW3ASWDc6xi0V1O9o5i_vuzWr3NLbRmOlw31pCxi9Tt0u4jXfIFhleXIBRMmJ5yTZ-vrcH_M5ItZu5gTcrkrfWS0_Yzn5MAcGg/s620/Maggi%201.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="437" data-original-width="620" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWt_4lD4OLxoVQ3n_gM8YJUlY1TtJVpGO9DVCn7itzIjVUxDCwR4UfFyu56fqYsAUf1iVjomaoIVTqkI_SQW3ASWDc6xi0V1O9o5i_vuzWr3NLbRmOlw31pCxi9Tt0u4jXfIFhleXIBRMmJ5yTZ-vrcH_M5ItZu5gTcrkrfWS0_Yzn5MAcGg/w400-h283/Maggi%201.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>I imagine Durkheim watching all this, sitting somewhere in the upper deck, thoughtfully sipping a beer. Yes, this is a celebration of Drew Maggi, he thinks, but rituals — and surely this is a ritual — even when they focus on some central individual, are performed not just by the group but for the group. What’s being extolled here is not Drew Maggi, it’s baseball itself. The important point is that we are acting here not as individuals doing what’s in our self-interest, but as members of the group, doing what’s necessary for the group. <br /><br />Groups come together for these rituals often in response to some threat. External threats are obvious. In the face of threat from another team, we wave our yellow towels. Internal threats are harder to see, but when you see people reacting as if to a threat, and they are not under attack, the threat is probably internal. Quitters are a good example.<br /><br />A quitter is a threat to the group not because the group is left with one less team member. What’s at stake is the whole premise of the group, because what the quitter is saying is that the very basis for the group is silly or stupid or harmful. That’s why group reactions can seem way out of proportion. Two years ago, I wrote (<a href="https://montclairsoci.blogspot.com/2021/07/quitters-and-righteous-anger.html" target="_blank">here</a>) about the reaction, especially on the political right, when Simone Biles, for perfectly understandable reasons, chose not to participate in the Olympics. “Quitter,” “selfish psychopath,” “very selfish ... immature ... a shame to the country,” “selfish, childish, national embarrassment.” Jason Whitlock at The Blaze wrote about Biles’s “felonious act of quitting.” Yes, a felony. <br /><br />Drew Maggi is the other side of this coin. Minor league players have about a 10% chance of making it “to the show,” and even those odds dwindle with age. In sports, thirtysomethings are not exactly hot prospects. The annual salary is less than $30,000 (Triple-A minimum is $700 a week). As for <a href="https://www.morethanbaseball.org/issue-report" target="_blank">working conditions</a>, the principal attraction is that you get to play baseball. A lot. The sensible thing for a 34-year old man who for thirteen years has never gotten to the major leagues would have been to quit. We the group, we fans and players, raise Drew Maggi up as the focus of this ritual because he symbolizes the reassuring idea that despite all that, baseball is worth it. <br /><br />Durkheim drains the last of his beer as the fans file for the exits. This spontaneous ritual in PNC Park, he thinks, has the same function as nearly all other rituals: to uphold the fundamental idea of the group and to reaffirm each participant as a part of that group. <br /><br /><br /></p>Jay Livingstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03797268351984440375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35248477.post-76758376589608903022023-04-18T16:41:00.005-04:002024-01-16T21:38:28.689-05:00Mrs. Maisel Yet Again — 1961 Talking Like It’s 2011.<p><b>April 18, 2023</b><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 85%;">Posted by Jay Livingston</span><br /><br />Five years ago, I posted here about the language anachronisms in “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” That post (<a href="https://montclairsoci.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-marvelous-mrs-anachronism.html" target="_blank">here</a>) remains the most visited page in this blog, the number of views now approaching 20,000. Last night I watched the first two episodes of Season Five, and I have the same question that I had five years ago with Season One: How can they let these obvious anachronisms make it into the final script? <br /><br />In Season Five, the year is 1961, and Midge has taken a job in the writers’ room for a TV show much like The Tonight Show. She was reluctant to take the job – she’s a performer, not a writer — and on her first day, she calls her manager Susie to ask for advice. <br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbseqkdfZ_NNxurX_dcYFSm2R-vme6RRzJ12bHAdvpKGbmpbl-Kz2ys2KdUxagSMyD0hQN-HhNp8J4rRqFiH6tKwvXqq1UPzfz6n-qLJZqLYQNppRBC-DllPOvkd-hmgLeL7JQsxNLQ9uWcGlvUFFo0YKyOtaFUsfnCG4I2qVb4WdJEm16KQ/s2345/Fake%20it%20-%20Susie.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2023" data-original-width="2345" height="345" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbseqkdfZ_NNxurX_dcYFSm2R-vme6RRzJ12bHAdvpKGbmpbl-Kz2ys2KdUxagSMyD0hQN-HhNp8J4rRqFiH6tKwvXqq1UPzfz6n-qLJZqLYQNppRBC-DllPOvkd-hmgLeL7JQsxNLQ9uWcGlvUFFo0YKyOtaFUsfnCG4I2qVb4WdJEm16KQ/w400-h345/Fake%20it%20-%20Susie.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>Fake it till you make it may be good advice, but nobody used that phrase in 1961. Nobody. Nor did anyone talk about “going rogue.” But in Episode One, Midge tells Susie, “We had a plan, then I went rogue.”<br /><br />I ran these phrases by Google nGrams. Here are the results:</p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">(<i>Click on the image for a larger view.</i>)</span><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGOpxUwLBLqXSJGsHwO5upGHE8tOhnt1AteuppjzZaPQdscMlCOH9-qKHLT3kM-oA-MECc_Gl2vrbejxVNB0ykdMpu2YXtUSSRb3-vKUt6Lni5HeQRqC_iB7pWqDjsrZrj2wxxOpMjpKAxI5NZTpho4ePJx6Ifq6NVVdtrkX9TKP7cJw0qbg/s1707/Fake%20Rogue.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="732" data-original-width="1707" height="219" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGOpxUwLBLqXSJGsHwO5upGHE8tOhnt1AteuppjzZaPQdscMlCOH9-qKHLT3kM-oA-MECc_Gl2vrbejxVNB0ykdMpu2YXtUSSRb3-vKUt6Lni5HeQRqC_iB7pWqDjsrZrj2wxxOpMjpKAxI5NZTpho4ePJx6Ifq6NVVdtrkX9TKP7cJw0qbg/w400-h171/Fake%20Rogue.jpg" width="500" /></a></div><p>These phrases did not exist in 1961. Yes,the nGrams data is from books, and trendy phrases turn up in speech — in conversations, on television — before they appear in print, so we should allow for some lag time. A few years perhaps, but not a few decades. <br /><br />There were others you can find on nGrams: <i>out of the loop</i>,<i> track record, not on the same page</i>. These too arrived much later in the century. Other words just sounded wrong --- at least to my ears, and my ears were around in 1961 — but I had no quick way to check them: <i>not gonna happen</i>, and <i>suck</i> meaning to be of poor quality. <br /><br />In that 2018 post, I quoted Amy Sherman-Palladino, co-creator and chief writer of the show saying that she hired a “delightful researcher who has like twelve masters degrees in everything in the world” and who questions things that don’t sound right. Sherman-Palladino herself says, “The last thing I want to do, when everyone is making sure that the piping on the wall and the colors are all correct, is . . . come in and throw in a bunch of dialogue that’s not appropriate.” <br /><br />But the glaring anachronisms remain, and I’m still puzzled.<br /><br /></p>Jay Livingstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03797268351984440375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35248477.post-75414640880917817152023-04-10T12:53:00.000-04:002023-04-10T12:53:08.435-04:00Mimi Sheraton and Me<p><b>April 10, 2023</b><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><i>Posted by Jay Livingston</i></span><br /><br />Mimi Sheraton, long-time food critic for the New York Times, died last week.<br /><br />It may be difficult now to appreciate just how big a deal Mimi Sheraton was. In the late 1970s and early 80s, food and restaurants had become an important part of the cultural landscape. Huge steaks and the like were for men with a lot of money and not much of a palate. On the rise were<i> nouvelle cuisine </i>and authentic ethnic restaurants. More important, information about these places was highly centralized. In 1975 when Mimi Sheraton started at the Times, there was no Zagat’s and of course no Yelp or the dozens of online restaurant review sites today. There was Mimi, and everybody knew who she was.<br /><br />Our paths crossed once, briefly many years ago. I was on jury duty one morning in early January back in the early 80s – civil court, downtown Manhattan. A woman was suing the movie theater where she had fallen or tripped, presumably suffering some injury. Civil court judges, to make more efficient use of their time, were not present for voir dire, at least not in this case. The lawyers conducted voir dire themselves. If some dispute arose, they would pause the proceeding and walk down the hall to see the judge. <br /><br />Even to non-attorney eyes, these lawyers did not seem like the brightest lights in the room. One of my fellow jurors, a philosophy professor (it was Winter Break for him too) said to me, “If my students asked such questions, I would fail them.” It also seemed they weren’t listening closely to the answers. <br /><br />The plaintiff’s lawyer was questioning a prospective juror, one Mimi Falcone. “And what do you do Miss Falcone – is it Miss or Mrs.?” <br /><br />“I’m a food critic. I write a column under the name . . .” <br /><br />But the lawyer wasn’t listening. As soon as she said she said “food critic,” he started speaking over her. “Where do you write your reviews. I mean if you were someone like Mimi Sheraton. . . .” <br /><br />She interrupted him firmly. “I<i> am</i> Mimi Sheraton.” <br /> </p><p>From there, things went even further south. “Are you familiar with the Coronet Theater?”<br /><br />“I’m not sure which it is,” she said, ‘The Coronet or the Baronet” (the two theaters stood side by side on the Upper East Side), “but one of them has this terrible staircase.”<br /><br />Ms. Falcone was not selected for the jury. <br /><br />But I was.. Go to lunch, we six jurors were told, and after lunch we’ll begin the trial. But before we left, we approached Mimi Sheraton and asked her to recommend a restaurant in Chinatown. She did, and we went. It was more expensive than most Chinatown lunch places, but most of us could afford it, and for the one who might have chosen a more modest place — an underpaid secretary as I recall – the rest of us shared her part of the bill. The food was great, and different from much Chinatown fare. Mimi had not steered us wrong.<br /><br />We returned to the courtroom ready to hear the case only to be told that the parties had reached a settlement. That’s often happens in civil cases. But most civil court juries don’t get a personal recommendation from Mimi Sheraton.<br /></p>Jay Livingstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03797268351984440375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35248477.post-24161605536401225352023-03-22T13:45:00.006-04:002023-03-22T14:09:11.806-04:00Lyin’ Eyes<p><b>March 22, 20</b>23<br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 85%;"><i>Posted by Jay Livingston</i></span></span><br /><br />During the protests over the killing of a Black man in Kenosha, WE, CNN reported that the demonstrations were “mostly peaceful.” Unfortuantely, the background visual behind the reporter showed a lot of fire. <br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1Bq_k6KC1b-ey6fVnCeA20Kh-IfwoQWpu4o-lO3klXsxph0lliycdlle7aamwHUO5-FDGGYhAzluJbiLIrsIoSPX-eG776dmllBBqSYCNQeimpabY5V_CotXCyZyYMXL4XYWF83O5Nl2jXrOqHGv9Qbqu65ncDlW4bvlRBCy5_j5DAi1Ykg/s579/Fires.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="332" data-original-width="579" height="229" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1Bq_k6KC1b-ey6fVnCeA20Kh-IfwoQWpu4o-lO3klXsxph0lliycdlle7aamwHUO5-FDGGYhAzluJbiLIrsIoSPX-eG776dmllBBqSYCNQeimpabY5V_CotXCyZyYMXL4XYWF83O5Nl2jXrOqHGv9Qbqu65ncDlW4bvlRBCy5_j5DAi1Ykg/w400-h229/Fires.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>The right-wing had a field day. <br /><p>Technically, CNN was correct. The demonstrations were mostly peaceful. But that didn’t matter. What mattered were those who posed the greatest threats, the ones who torched those buildings.<br /><br />And now we have Tucker Carlson (<a href="https://twitter.com/Phil_Lewis_/status/1632917603239837697" target="_blank">here</a>) saying that the “overwhelming majority” of people who invaded the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 were “peaceful.” Carlson acknowledges that a “small percentage of them were hooligans. They committed vandalism.” But the overwhelming majority “were orderly and meek. These were not insurrectionist. They were sightseers.” He has the tape to prove it. In fact, he has all the tape – 41,000 hours. The Republicans on the House committee gave it to him to edit as he sees fit. No doubt, the Carlson cut will show very orderly people, meekly trying to overturn an election that their candidate lost by seven million votes. <br /><br />Technically, Carlson is correct. The overwhelming majority —especially if you expand the denominator to include the tens of thousands of Trump supporters who came to the rally that day but did not invade the Capitol — were not hooligans. But again, the numbers don’t matter. What matters are the violent insurrectionists. This small minority are important because they posed the greatest threat to the democratic institutions of the government and to the police who were trying to protect the Capital and the Representatives and staffers who work there. That’s why, as Carlson laments, “you’ve seen their pictures again and again.” But who are you gonna believe – Tucker Carlson or your lyin’ eyes?<br /><br />There’s a larger and more complex question topic in these demonstrations — the relation between the overwhelming majority and the extreme minority. It’s far too complex to go into here, especially in the case of Jan. 6.<br /><br /><br /></p>Jay Livingstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03797268351984440375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35248477.post-18644057038229704692023-03-15T16:40:00.000-04:002023-03-15T16:40:20.323-04:00Check and Double-Check Your Conservatism<p><b>March 15, 2023</b><br /><i><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 85%;">Posted by Jay Livingston</span></i><br /><br />In 2014, the Princeton Tory, the campus conservative publication, ran a piece condemning the phrase “check your privilege” and the ideas behind it (<a href="https://theprincetontory.com/checking-my-privilege-character-as-the-basis-of-privilege/" target="_blank">here</a>). The author, Tal Fortgang complained that “the phrase . . . assumes that simply because I belong to a certain ethnic group I should be judged collectively with it,” <br /><br />Check-your-privilege diminishes “everything I have personally accomplished, all the hard work I have done in my life” and “ascrib[es] all the fruit I reap not to the seeds I sow but to some invisible patron saint of white maleness who places it out for me before I even arrive.”<br /><br />This is standard conservative thinking — the individual-reductionist belief that those who wind up in elite schools and eventually in high-paying jobs have gotten there solely on the basis of their own personal qualities like intelligence, perseverance, grittiness, etc. Privilege — the social class of their parents — had nothing to do with it. They are all self-made successes. (This conservative take makes an exception for Blacks, women, and other previously excluded groups. They have reached their position not through ability and virtue, but through favoritism in the form of institutional programs emphasizing diversity, equity, and inclusion.) <br /><br />So you can imagine my surprise when I read George Will, a reliably conservative columnist, making basically the same “check your privilege” attacks on elite-school students (<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/15/stanford-law-school-protest-kyle-duncan-federalist" target="_blank">here </a>. The students in question were the Stanford Law students who had wielded the hecklers’ veto against Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan, who the schools conservative organization (the Federalist Society) had invited to speak.<br /><br />(The only videos of this event that I could find online, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d24Vebni8JA" target="_blank">here</a> for example, pick up at the point where a Stanford administrator makes a long statement to the students in the room, telling them that she too disagrees with Judge Duncan, that they are free to leave in protest, but that those who stay should allow him to speak. The end of the video clip shows a lot of students walking out and the rest sitting there quietly.)<br /><br />George Will of course is horrified by the thought of students not allowing someone to speak. He even has snide things to say about the administrator who got things quieted down. But what really ticks him off is the background of the students, their having grown up in privilege.<br /><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span>
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<tr><td bgcolor="#F8FCFC" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">So, “helicopter parents” hover over their offspring to spare them abrasive encounters with the world. And “participation trophies” are given to everyone on the soccer team, lest the excellence of a few dent others’ self-esteem — the fuel that supposedly propels upward social mobility.
<br /><br />Larded with unstinting parental praise and garlanded with unearned laurels, these cosseted children arrive at college thinking highly of themselves and expecting others to ratify their complacent self-assessment. Surely it was as undergraduates that Stanford’s law school silencers became what they are: expensively credentialed but negligibly educated brats.</span></td></tr>
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<br />You might have expected Will to praise kids who managed to get into Stanford Law. I mean, you’ve gotta be really smart and have really good grades and crush the LSAT, and it probably helps to have gotten into a college where you get really good education. But Will seems to think that all this was handed to these students and that instead of working at their studies for years, they lolled around idling in undeserved self-satisfaction. In Will’s view, they are examples of what Molly Ivins said of George W. Bush — that he was born on third base thinking he had hit a triple. Somehow, I doubt that Stanford Law has has as many “legacy” admissions as Yale did in the early 1960s. <br /><br />Compared with the “check your privilege” students (and <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691156231/privilege" target="_blank">sociology faculty</a>) at Princeton, George Will’s version is simplistic, crude, and devoid of evidence. <br /><br /><p></p>Jay Livingstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03797268351984440375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35248477.post-85651568909323980592023-03-05T23:13:00.002-05:002023-03-05T23:13:27.278-05:00New Technologies, Old Attitudes<p><b>March 5, 2023</b><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 85%;"><i>Posted by Jay Livingston</i></span><br /><br />What do our reactions to AI, UFOs, and DMT have in common? Ross Douthat, in today’s Times (<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/02/opinion/magic-science-ufo-ai.html" target="_blank">here</a>), has an answer: <br />
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<tr><td bgcolor="#F8FCFC" style="text-align: left;">There is a shared spirit in these stories, a common impulse to the quests: the desire to encounter or invent some sort of nonhuman consciousness that might help us toward leaps that we can’t make on our own.
The impulse is an ancient one: The idea tha one might bind a djinn, create a golem or manipulate a god or fairy to do your bidding is inscribed deep in the human imagination.</td></tr>
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<br />Surprisingly, Douthat does not remind us that these deals with nonhumans always turn out badly for the humans. He seems to share in the optimism for, as the column’s title has it, “the return of the magicians.” In his mention of Dr. Faustus, Douthat says only that “the scientist and the magician were often overlapping figures in the early modern imagination, blurring together in vocations like alchemy and characters like Dr. Faustus.” Douthat sees blurring. Not so bad. What’s a little blurring? But the central plot element in the story is that Dr. Faustus <i>sells his soul to the devil</i>. <br />
<br />I was reminded of Philip Slater’s far less sanguine take on this kind of thinking in his book <i>The Pursuit of Loneliness</i>, published in 1970. That was more than a half-century ago, but it still seems accurate. Here is a long excerpt..<br />
<br /><span style="font-family: helvetica;">All societies, optimally, must allow for both change and stability.... Every society evolves patterns for attempting to realize these mutually incompatible needs.<br /><br />Our society, as many have pointed out, has traditionally handled the problem by giving completely free rein to technological change and opposing the most formidable obstacles to social change. Since, however, technological change in fact forces social changes upon us, this has had the effect of abdicating all control over our social environment to a kind of whimsical deity. While we think of ourselves as a people of change and progress, masters of our environment and our fate, we are no more entitled to this designation than the most superstitious savage, for our relation to change is entirely passive. We poke our noses out the door each day and wonder breathlessly what new disruptions technology has in store for us. We talk of technology as the servant of man, but it is a servant that now dominates the household, too powerful to fire, upon whom everyone is helplessly dependent. We tiptoe about and speculate upon his mood. What will be the effects of such-and-such an invention? How will it change our daily lives? We never ask, do we want this, is it worth it? (We did not ask ourselves, for example, if the trivial conveniences offered by the automobile could really offset the calamitous disruption and depersonalization of our lives that it brought about.) We simply say “You can't stop progress” and shuffle back inside. <br /></span>
<span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br />We pride ourselves on being a “democracy” but we are in fact slaves. We submit to an absolute ruler whose edicts and whims we never question. We watch him carefully, hang on his every word; for technology is a harsh and capricious king, demanding prompt and absolute obedience. We laugh at the Luddites (Nat Turners in the struggle for human parity with the machine) but they were the last human beings seriously to confront this issue. Since then we have passively surrendered to every degradation, every atrocity, every enslavement that our technological ingenuity has brought about. We laugh at the old lady who holds off the highway bulldozers with a shotgun, but we laugh because we are Uncle Toms. We try to outdo each other in singing the praises of the oppressor, although in fact the value of technology in terms of human satisfaction remains at best undemonstrated. For when evaluating its effects we always adopt the basic assumptions and perspective of technology itself, and never examine it in terms of the totality of human experience. We say this or that invention is valuable because it generates other inventions-because it is a means to some other means-not because it achieves an ultimate human end. We play down the “side effects” that so often become the main effects and completely negate any alleged benefits. The advantages of all technological “progress” will after all be totally outweighed the moment nuclear war breaks out (an event which, given the inadequacy of precautions and the number of fanatical fingers close to the trigger, is only a matter of time unless radical changes are made). <br /></span>
<span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br />Let me make clear what I am not saying here. I do not believe in the noble savage and I am not advocating any brand of bucolic romanticism. I do not want to put an end to machines, I only want to remove them from their position of mastery, to restore human beings to a position of equality and initiative.<br /></span><br /><p></p>Jay Livingstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03797268351984440375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35248477.post-15161555110611970332022-12-18T17:11:00.001-05:002022-12-18T23:20:58.779-05:00Tom Lehrer – “Sociology”<div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><p style="text-align: left;"><b>December 18, 2022</b><br /><i><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 85%;">Posted by Jay Livingston</span></span></i><br /><br />Tom Lehrer has put all his songs online and has ceded all copyright protection. <br />
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<tr><td bgcolor="#F8FCFC" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Performing and recording rights to all of my songs are included in this permission. Translation rights are also included.
In particular, permission is hereby granted to anyone to set any of these lyrics to their own music, or to set any of this music to their own lyrics, and to publish or perform their parodies or distortions of these songs without payment or fear of legal action.<span style="font-size: 95%;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 90%;">[The full statement and the songs are <a href="https://tomlehrersongs.com/" target="_blank">here</a>.]</span><br /></td></tr>
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<br />In the movie White Christmas, Danny Kaye sings a song called “choreography.” It’s not the most famous Irving Berlin song from this movie (guess what is). You’ve probably never heard of it. It’s gently satirical — a commentary on the pretentiousness of hoofers in the dance biz. Once, they simply spoke of “dancing”; now they prefer the inflated term “choreography.”<br />
<br />Lehrer used Berlin’s melody and the structure of the song to do a similar skewering of quantitative social science. His target, as he explains in the introduction in this video, was really political science, but you can’t swap out “choreography” in the Berlin song and replace it with “political science.” “Sociology,” on the other hand is a perfect fit. <br /><br />
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="283" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zxFCQplZgKI?start=436&end=625" title="YouTube video player" width="500"></iframe>Jay Livingstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03797268351984440375noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35248477.post-35205443232411458822022-12-08T16:30:00.001-05:002022-12-08T16:30:37.064-05:00Can We Talk?<p><b>December 8, 2022</b><br /><i><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Posted by Jay Livingston</span></span></i><br /><br />Molly Worthen begins her<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/02/opinion/college-oral-exam.html " target="_blank"> column</a> in the Sunday Times Opinion section by quoting a student who said that if she had known her intro sociology class required oral exams, “I’m not sure I would have taken the class.” Worthen goes on at length (2500 words) in favor of oral exams. <br /><br />I think she’s right in principle, though I cannot speak from experience. I had no oral exams as an undergraduate — Worthen is talking mostly about undergrad courses — and even for the Ph.D., my department did not require an oral defense. <br /><br />“American universities tend to infantilize students,” says Worthen, “taking attendance in class, employing fleets of student affairs bureaucrats to tend to their needs.” She neglects to mention the most infantilizing and bureaucratic practice of all – multiple-choice exams. Bureaucratic because in the interests of efficiency and universalism (objectivity) multiple-choice exams force students to minimize the information they present. Infantilizing because multiple-choice exams treat students as though they are incapable of complex thought. To take a multiple-choice exam, you don’t have to be able to think about and discuss ideas and evidence. You don’t even have to know the material, though it helps.<br /><br />Multiple-choice exams replace the original goal of education — learning — with the ability to answer simple questions. My favorite example of the difference is again from grad school, in this case the foreign language requirement. The idea underlying this requirement is that not everything relevant in your field is written in English, especially work that is more recent and not written by superstars like Bourdieu or Foucault. <br /><br />My French at the time was so feeble that I doubt I could have read a newspaper, certainly not Le Monde, probably not even the French counterpart of the New York Post. But to fulfill the language requirement, all I had to do was get a #2 pencil and pass the standardized test from (if I recall correctly) ETS. I don’t know how low the bar was set, but I passed. <br /><br />A friend who had gotten his degree at Brandeis told me what the language exam there was like. “You go see Hughes [Everett C. Hughes] and he gives you a piece of paper with a citation for an article in a foreign journal.. ‘Go read this, come back Wednesday, and we’ll talk about it.’” <br /><br />As Worthen says, “The most empowering thing a teacher can do for her students has nothing to do with constant surveillance of their academic engagement . . . . It is to simply talk with them, face to face, as fellow thinkers.”<br /></p>Jay Livingstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03797268351984440375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35248477.post-51779205940686042682022-11-18T14:32:00.003-05:002022-11-19T13:51:48.606-05:00When Chappelle Says It, It’s Funny<p><b>November 18, 2022</b><br /><i><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 85%;">Posted by Jay Livingston</span></span></i><br /><br />Dave Chappelle, in his SNL monologue, offered an insight about language that I’ve used a few times in this blog. It’s about adding the definite article “the” to a demographic category.<br /><br />
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<br /><br />Here’s how I put it in a <a href="https://montclairsoci.blogspot.com/2015/08/trump-and-women.html " target="_blank">blog post</a> seven years ago after candidate Donald Trump (remember those good old days? they’re back) had told an interviewer, “I’d be phenomenal to the women.” <br /><br />
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<tr><td bgcolor="#F8FCFC" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">When you add “the” to a demographic group and speak of “the women” or “the Blacks,” you are separating them from the rest of society. Without the definite article, they are included. To say, “In our society we have Blacks, Jews, women. . . . .” implies that they are all part of our group. But, “We have the Blacks, the Jews, the women . . . .” turns them into separate, distinct groups that are not part of a unified whole.
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<br />Chappelle got more laughs.<br />
<br />In another post a year later (<a href="https://montclairsoci.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-genuine-article.html" target="_blank">here</a>), I quoted linguist Lynne Murphy on the same topic.<br />
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<tr><td bgcolor="#EFFBF8" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">“The” makes the group seem like it’s a large, uniform mass, rather than a diverse group of individuals. This is the key to “othering:” treating people from another group as less human than one’s own group. </span></td></tr>
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<br />Turning those individuals into “a large, uniform mass” not only allows for “othering”; it’s also the precondition for paranoid conspiracy theories. Even if, as Chappelle suggests,* there are a lot of Jews in Hollywood, you can still see them as individuals, as Jews trying to turn out successful movies and TV shows. To see them as a cabal conspiring against Kanye or Christians or America it helps to think of them as “the Jews.”<br /></p><p>---------<br />*<span style="font-size: 92%;"> See also Joel Stein’s 2008 article “Who Runs Hollywood? C’mon” (<a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-19-oe-stein19-story.html">here</a>).<br /><br /><br /></span><br /><br /></p><p></p>Jay Livingstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03797268351984440375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35248477.post-31369123860622212912022-11-06T18:16:00.004-05:002022-11-06T21:16:18.044-05:00Poll Problems — the Wisdom of Crowds or Pluralistic Ignorance<p><b>November 6, 2022</b><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 85%;"><i>Posted by Jay Livingston</i></span></span><br /><br />In the last few elections, the pre-election polls have gotten it really wrong. Partly that’s because cell phones and low response rates have made sampling difficult. But it also might be that pollsters are not asking the right question. Maybe the usual question — “Who are you going to vote for?” — is not the best way to predict election results.<br /><br />The most recent episode of NPR’s <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/11/04/1134434712/planet-money-tries-election-polling" target="_blank">Planted Mone</a>y explored this question and in the end tried a less direct approach that some polls are now using. They went to the Marist College poll and got the directors to insert two questions into their polling on local House of Representatives races. The questions were:<br /></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Who do you think will win?</li><li>Think of all the people in your life, your friends, your family, your coworkers. Who are they going to vote for? </li></ul><p>At the time, the direct question “Who will you vote for?” the split between Republicans and Democrats was roughly even. But these new two questions showed Republicans way ahead. On “Who will win?” the Republicans were up 10 points among registered voters and 14 points among the “definitely will vote” respondents. On the friends-and-family question, the corresponding numbers were Republicans +12 and +16. <br /><br />Planet Money sees these results as an example of “the wisdom of crowds” — the idea that the best estimate comes not from the experts but from the collective judgment of everyone with an opinion on the matter at hand. The idea goes back to Galton at the Fair – statistician Francis Galton at the Plymouth (UK) farmers’ fair in 1906. <br />
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<tr><td bgcolor="#F8FCFC" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">At the fair, Galton noticed people submitting their guesses on the weight of an ox. Galton the statistician kept track of all the guesses— some 800 in all— and computed the group mean. Galton the eugenist assumed that the guesses of the ignorant would detract from the overall accuracy, while the guesses of farmers and butchers would be closer. The mean of the group was 1197 pounds; the ox’s weight, 1198 pounds. The group did better than the most expert individual</span></td></tr>
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<br />That’s from one of the many blogposts I have done on the topic (<a href="https://montclairsoci.blogspot.com/2007/01/groups-and-wisdom-ii.html" target="_blank">here</a>). I’ve looked at predictions in the <a href="https://montclairsoci.blogspot.com/2010/02/superbowl-2010-wisdom-crowds-vs-smart.html" target="_blank">Superbowl</a>, the <a href="https://montclairsoci.blogspot.com/2007/02/wisdom-and-crowds-go-to-hollywood.html" target="_blank">Oscars</a>, and <a href="https://montclairsoci.blogspot.com/2009/05/crowds-and-wisdom-social-construction.html" target="_blank">securities trading</a>. In some cases, notably the speculation that led to the financial crisis of 2008, the crowd has not always been wise. <br /><br />Planet Money thinks that the crowd — the people being polled — is wiser than the experts doing the polling and analysis and that Republicans are going to win big. <br /><br />But there are two other ideas from social science that can also explain the discrepancy between the responses to the questions. <ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Pluralistic ignorance. This is the cognitive error where people think, mistakenly, think they are in the minority. For example, college students may think that just about everyone else on campus is having great sex and having it frequently when in fact most of their fellow students are in the same unfulfilled boat that they are. <br /><br /></li><li>Social desirability. When asked questions in a survey, people avoid answers they think will make them look bad. Ask “How many books have you read this year?” and you’ll probably get an overcount. </li></ol>If Republicans — the politicians, the right-wing media, Trump, the MAGA hats, et al. — are making the most noise and generally dominating the political discourse, supporting the Democrats may just seem wrong or at least not the sort of thing you want yo bring up. If Democrats then are keeping their preferences to themselves, even they will perceive Republicans as the dominant party, and that’s what they’ll tell the Marist pollster on the phone asking who’s going to win. They may also think that most others in their social world are going Red. <br /><br />It’s complicated. The people you call, even the few who don’t hang up, might give answers that are inaccurate — about what others think and even about what they themselves think. That may always have been true, but in what Planet Money calls “the Golden Age of polling,” roughly from the seventies to 2014, pollsters could make the necessary adjustments. Since then, poll problems have been sort of like Covid — you manage to solve one, and then a new variant comes along.<br /><br /><p></p>Jay Livingstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03797268351984440375noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35248477.post-14462031944042074322022-08-08T14:06:00.009-04:002022-10-22T16:25:15.171-04:00Mona Lisa — Becoming Great<p><b>August 8, 2022</b><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 85%;"><i>Posted by Jay Livingston</i></span></span><br /><br />Carol Gillot, at her <a href="http://parisbreakfasts.blogspot.com/2022/08/another-way-to-visit-louvre.html" target="_blank">Paris Breakfasts </a>blog, had a post about visiting the Louvre. When she was last there, she sketched some of the art works and added,”It was very common back in the day to copy paintings at the Louvre.” As evidence, she included this 1833 painting of a man (lower left) and a woman (center) each copying one of the many renaissance paintings in the room. <br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig9XVT3ij8ws7SX5MbhURTYA9Lwj0OsrB3FxbKhRyPC_Ty0lC66yK8DyL7iYH338uP8_Y7vtre2wbIYUqKhag1aXub8NRV76HNLH0Q2FcItR8hVn4_1EuKdb9IYduNUK9rl1m7s3O4PpGPFbVyOj4qG2oUOJJcC2R3T_VvplmoFejYxnzdVw/s633/Louvre.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="437" data-original-width="633" height="345" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig9XVT3ij8ws7SX5MbhURTYA9Lwj0OsrB3FxbKhRyPC_Ty0lC66yK8DyL7iYH338uP8_Y7vtre2wbIYUqKhag1aXub8NRV76HNLH0Q2FcItR8hVn4_1EuKdb9IYduNUK9rl1m7s3O4PpGPFbVyOj4qG2oUOJJcC2R3T_VvplmoFejYxnzdVw/w400-h276/Louvre.jpg" width="500" /></a></div><p>One of the commenters on the blog noted how difficult it was now to see the Mona Lisa. She was right.<br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMGewjbrrB5OH0Cf_S6SuMlXgwfA4j6GU2wufIW49F1U18GcZI_STdvgfEuRuhSsc6gptjButc-AjrdoidpfnU4CN_qyn6jdbIH_lPFA2fIW0cyyrzCdZDNXWJtdZdjDjYkHwoHJ49P0i8mE5vNqU0HL6LiAW1EbAcnYbwAYZnVM61kIiAew/s828/Mona%20Lisa.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="353" data-original-width="828" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMGewjbrrB5OH0Cf_S6SuMlXgwfA4j6GU2wufIW49F1U18GcZI_STdvgfEuRuhSsc6gptjButc-AjrdoidpfnU4CN_qyn6jdbIH_lPFA2fIW0cyyrzCdZDNXWJtdZdjDjYkHwoHJ49P0i8mE5vNqU0HL6LiAW1EbAcnYbwAYZnVM61kIiAew/w400-h170/Mona%20Lisa.jpg" width="500" /></a></div><p>Of course. The Mona Lisa is the greatest painting in the world, or at least one of them, and certainly the most famous. <br /><br />But take another look at that 1833 painting. Look at the lowest row of paintings, especially the one in the middle of the canvas. <br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDfTU6qU9Bo9OQVsQgF5Hfg4koCvYLO0jkpgkUi6dy9hYCekOU_Ra5SEE_dr6UtKGYmPDMfrXXnU_radl-97AZcZFJAX1UBaYVEkz5yisdyW9DyqtWTDU2XuWrXv9D6CJbA3Fp8mEdqDMUk338zedP2oo0KCdgpHIWqP0oL2jseAOBSZO5GQ/s500/Mona%20close%20up.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="355" data-original-width="500" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDfTU6qU9Bo9OQVsQgF5Hfg4koCvYLO0jkpgkUi6dy9hYCekOU_Ra5SEE_dr6UtKGYmPDMfrXXnU_radl-97AZcZFJAX1UBaYVEkz5yisdyW9DyqtWTDU2XuWrXv9D6CJbA3Fp8mEdqDMUk338zedP2oo0KCdgpHIWqP0oL2jseAOBSZO5GQ/w400-h284/Mona%20close%20up.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>Yes, it’s the Mona Lisa. Two hundred years ago, it wasn’t the greatest painting in the world. It was just another very good renaissance painting, good enough to merit a place in the Louvre, But it was not as great as the Titian portrait of Francis 1, which has a position two canvasses higher and closer to eye level. <br /><br />And now she sits in her own separate room, roped off from the masses who flock to see her beauty and to experience the greatness of the painting. In two centuries, Mona Lisa has raised her game considerably. <br /><br />Of course that’s ridiculous. The painting didn’t change. But what did? The conventional explanation is that the greatness was always there but that art critics and ordinary people came to perceive and appreciate that greatness only later.<br /><br />Aside from the arrogance — assuming that we are better at art appreciation than were people in the 19th century — this explanation ignores the social component of tastes and evaluations. Duncan Watts, in <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/187477/everything-is-obvious-by-duncan-j-watts/" target="_blank"><i>Everything Is Obvious ... Once You Know the Answer</i></a> argues brilliantly and convincingly that the Mona Lisa’s rise to the top depended on two things – luck and cumulative advantage. Luck — in 1911, the painting was stolen from the Louvre. When it was recovered two years later, it was shown all over Italy, and its arrival back at the Louvre was widely covered in the media (or as it was called then the press). <br /><br />As a result, critics turned their attention to the painting, pointing out all the qualities that made it great and that made the theft and recovery so important. Other people would read these accounts and see for themselves how great the painting was. The snowballing cycle of fame and attention, what social scientists call cumulative advantage, raised Mona Lisa’s position on the charts in much the same way that a song becomes a hit. As it becomes more popular, it gets more air play, and that air play makes the song more familiar and popular, further pushing it up the charts. <br /></p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * *<br /></p><p>This is much too brief a treatment of Watts’s essay. His tour of artistic successes has stops at the Billboard charts and Harry Potter, all with the same insight. It’s not the qualities inherent in a book, song, or painting that account for its success. There are lots of similar works, indistinguishable in quality, that we’ve never heard of. It’s the lucky break and cumulative advantage that take it from just another painting to GOAT. <br /><br /><br /><br /></p>Jay Livingstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03797268351984440375noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35248477.post-42358434581790874862022-07-21T11:43:00.002-04:002022-07-21T11:43:50.856-04:00Only “Guys and Dolls” in the Building<p><b>July 21, 2022</b><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 85%;">Posted by Jay Livingston</span></span><br /><br />I saw on a local news site that Nathan Lane is moving into the Dorilton, an elegant building on New York’s Upper West Side just a few blocks from where I live. Lane and his husband are paying $4.1 million for the seven-room apartment. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4E1ET6-xCvu0Zjkcjq5FV_mFobqNjqW1GZiP5f2LZkc1j4Hn1ZiumkTVdqAd8qYL7m7gNhnagXN-JrmEVyNYCyKkIhIxOWrCm4ror8VIy7TO0wHNcgJkrOBceSKKsj4QCuHdr8G4j5_pqqStedp5ZaIyrsXWBX_8uZJwn3e8i8C2urtNa5w/s500/Dorilton.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="458" data-original-width="500" height="366" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4E1ET6-xCvu0Zjkcjq5FV_mFobqNjqW1GZiP5f2LZkc1j4Hn1ZiumkTVdqAd8qYL7m7gNhnagXN-JrmEVyNYCyKkIhIxOWrCm4ror8VIy7TO0wHNcgJkrOBceSKKsj4QCuHdr8G4j5_pqqStedp5ZaIyrsXWBX_8uZJwn3e8i8C2urtNa5w/w400-h366/Dorilton.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>I have been inside the Dorilton only once, and it was the site of one of the more embarrassing moments in my life.<br /><br />In May of 1992, my son was invited to a birthday party for twins who were turning two. They were a half year older. We knew them and their parents from the nearby playgrounds, mostly the Elephant Playground in Riverside Park but in cold weather an indoor playground, a large open space on the upper floor of a church. The family had an apartment in the Dorilton. There were only two apartments on that wing of the building. When you got off the elevator, if you turned right, you were in their apartment; if you turned left, you were in the other. <br /><br />I knew some of the other people at the party — playground parents — but certainly not all. At one point, I was passing through the foyer, and I came face to face with a man who I was sure I had seen before — good looking, dark hair, 35-40. “You look familiar,” I said. “Do I know you maybe from the playground?” I thought he might have been an uncle who sometimes took the twins. <br /><br />“No,” he siad, “I just live across the hall.” <br /><br />“But I think I’ve seen you someplace,” I said.<br /><br />“Well, I’m an actor, so maybe that’s it.” <br /><br />Maybe so, but where had I seen him? On TV? A commercial? New York is full of actors, and most of them are, to put it euphemistically, between roles — waiting tables and going to auditions. So not wanting to embarrass him, I asked as tactfully as I could what he was doing these days.<br /><br />“I’m in the new production of ‘Guys and Dolls’” <br /><br />I was too embarrassed to admit that I knew nothing about this production — the staging, the stars, etc. — except that it had opened just a few weeks before to rave reviews. I guess this guy had gotten lucky and landed a part. I didn’t want to reveal my ignorance, but I did know the show pretty well, so I asked, “What role do you have?”<br /><br />“I’m Sky Masterson.” <br /><br />Oh my god. He was the star of the show – well, one of the four stars. Peter Gallagher, and he looked familiar because two or three years earlier, I had seen him in the movie “Sex, Lies, and Videotape,” where he played one of the four main characters. I said something and slinked away. OK, it probably didn’t look like slinking. It looked like moving on, mixing, coffee in hand. But it felt like slinking. In the same way, the questions I’d asked him proabably didn’t seem offensive or denigrating to him, but in my mind, I knew that I was treating a Broadway star as though he were merely one of the thousands of unsuccessful hopefuls. <br /><br />Eventually, the Gallagher family moved out of the Dorilton and went back to Los Angeles. But here is where we come full circle. The other important male character in “Guys and Dolls” is Nathan Detroit, and in that 1992 production, the part was played by Nathan Lane. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy90Ednm9tgKTBSrpghjuYlnNx6sT7DXQQghU62oLMhiXHKmmUPha8QS2OrlcZ5zavmmjSFtBrXPoxck0XIpinz2DPgqcMXGZ64P0kisg3-yvJbXQ5bDLwkKiiRC8FC-YIvQoropScLzCj1jM3id5kZfZ2PE8cZW9KJpQ1bWvJ3WoizRdqMQ/s500/Guys.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="477" data-original-width="500" height="381" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy90Ednm9tgKTBSrpghjuYlnNx6sT7DXQQghU62oLMhiXHKmmUPha8QS2OrlcZ5zavmmjSFtBrXPoxck0XIpinz2DPgqcMXGZ64P0kisg3-yvJbXQ5bDLwkKiiRC8FC-YIvQoropScLzCj1jM3id5kZfZ2PE8cZW9KJpQ1bWvJ3WoizRdqMQ/w400-h381/Guys.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>--------------------<br /><span style="font-size: 90%;">1. <i>Here is the sociology I cropped out of the above narrative and have relegated to this long footnote</i>:<br /><br />Why was that incident embarrassing? <br /><br /> Embarrassment, says Goffman in his <a href="https://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/jhamlin/4111/2111-home/CD/TheoryClass/Readings/GoffmanEmbarrassment.pdf" target="_blank">famous essay</a> on the topic, is about identity. “Identity” may be too grand a term here – “being a certain kind of person” would do — but “identity” is the term Goffman uses. <br /><br />In a social situation, people must act in accordance with the identity they claim so that others will ratify that identity. If there’s a glitch on either side, you get embarrassment. Often, embarrassment disrupts a situation when a person does something that casts doubt on their “projected identity.” It’s hard to project an identity as a person who knows the norms of dress and decorum if you’re standing there with your fly not zipped. <br /><br />But embarrassment also happens when we unwittingly fail to acknowledge or ratify someone else’s identity. This includes mistaken identity, like greeting someone warmly who turns out to be a total stranger, or making a remark to the “wrong” person. It also includes not knowing the relevant aspects about the other person’s identity, like the fact that they are the star of the biggest Broadway hit of the season.<br /><br />2. Peter Gallagher made an appearance in this blog a few years ago (<a href="https://montclairsoci.blogspot.com/2018/06/frank-loesser-my-time-of-day.html" target="_blank">here</a>) in a post with a video of him making the cast recording of the show.<br /> <br />3. The title of this post alludes to the Hulu TV series “Only Murders in the Building.” Nathan Lane will be a regular in the cast next season. The fictional building in that show is The Arconia. In real life, across Broadway from the Dorilton and two blocks north is a building called The Ansonia. It appears in several Hollywood films. Walter Matthau lives there in “The Sunshine Boys” as do Jennifer Jason Leigh and Bridget Fonda in “Single White Female.” In real life, I live there.<br /></span><br /></p>Jay Livingstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03797268351984440375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35248477.post-40277489561582970812022-07-15T18:32:00.006-04:002022-10-24T12:44:04.275-04:00Gun Possession Law: I, the Jury<p><b>July 15, 2022</b><br /><i><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Posted by Jay Livingston</span></span></i><br /><br />I thought that the Supreme Court decision in the recent gun-possession case was a bad decision. I still do, but as I listened to a recent podcast — Lulu Garcia-Navarro’s “First Person” (<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/23/opinion/sharone-mitchell-jr-and-the-progressive-case-against-gun-permits.html" target="_blank">here</a>) — my thinking about it changed. <br /><br />Sharone Mitchell Jr. is a prosecutor. He’s Black. He grew up on the South Side of Chicago. He knows the dangers of guns. When he was in middle school, a classmate of his was shot. Another kid he was friendly with had a gun. <br /><br />And yet, as he says on the podcast, he supports the Supreme Court’s recent decision that allows people to carry guns. His reason is that gun-possession laws are used mostly against Black men who are not criminals and who are merely trying to protect themselves.<br />
</p><table align="center" border="1" cellpadding="10" nbsp="" style="width: 450px;"><tbody>
<tr><td bgcolor="#F8FCFC" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">There is just the random threat of violence growing up in the neighborhood, right, this idea of gangs and getting jumped, getting jumped for your Jordans or getting jumped for your Starter jacket. I think people had an interest in keeping themselves safe. My friend who showed me my first gun was of that same mindset. Like this is what I’m going to do to make sure that I protect myself.
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<br />Mitchell’s experience as a prosecutor provided him with more evidence to support that view.<br /><br />
<table align="center" border="1" cellpadding="10" nbsp="" style="width: 450px;"><tbody>
<tr><td bgcolor="#F8FCFC" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">As I became a more experienced attorney, more and more of our cases, my cases, involved guns. . . actually gun possession cases. They are people who are accused of illegally possessing a firearm. That was the vast majority of my cases.
<br /><br /><b>Lulu Garcia-Navarro: </b>And just to be clear, that’s the only crime these people are being charged with a quarter of the time, just having a gun?
<br /><br /><b>Sharone Mitchell Jr.:</b> Illegally having a gun, yeah.
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<br />I remembered my own encounter with gun laws. In the 1980s, I served as a juror on a gun-possession case. The defendant was a young Black man, and the case sounded very much like the ones Sharone Mitchell prosecuted.<br /><br />
<table align="center" border="1" cellpadding="10" nbsp="" style="width: 450px;"><tbody>
<tr><td bgcolor="#F8FCFC" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><b>Lulu Garcia-Navarro:</b> So can you talk me through the circumstances in which people are being arrested for gun possession not involving another crime? What typically draws the attention of the police in the first place?
<br /><br /><b>Sharone Mitchell Jr.:</b> Typically a search, you know, an encounter. Police could pull people over in a car. They could stop people on the street. We know that certain communities are policed very heavily. There’s lots of contact folks will have with police. So we’re talking young Black men in very particular neighborhoods.
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<br />That was my case all right. Harlem, one a.m.. Three Black men in a gypsy cab, two in the back seat, one (the eventual defendant) in the front passenger seat. The driver too is black. They make a brief stop for cigarettes, and as they pull out from the curb, the cops pull them over. They say that the cab had pulled out from the curb illegally, but that was clearly a pretext. The real reason was what Mitchell says: Black men in a Black neighborhood.<br /><br />The driver, the DA’s main witness, testifies that when the man in the passenger seat saw the flashing light, he said, “Oh, shit,” and put something under his seat. The cops searched the car and under the seat they found a gun. <br /><br />It seemed like a strong case, and I wondered why it hadn’t been pleaded out to some lesser charge. I knew that in New York illegal possession carried a mandatory one-year minimum sentence. So my first assumption was that our defendant was a bad guy, a criminal well-known to the police, a guy with a string of arrests and maybe a few stretches in prison, but that the gun charge was what they would get him on. At least he’d be off the streets for a year. <br /><br />Instead, he seemed much more to fit Sharone Mitchell’s typical case. He took the stand in his own defense, and while the DA could not bring in any criminal history, she could ask about employment history. But our defendant had no long gaps between jobs that would indicate prison time. Even the DA allowed that the defendant was carrying the gun for protection. He had been mugged recently, and he was going to Harlem at one in the morning. But the law is the law. <br /><br />In the jury room several people asked pretty much the same question that Mitchell raises: Hey, this is New York City. Murders, robberies, assaults. Bad people doing bad things. Why are they wasting our time with a case like this?<br /><br />We deliberated for about an hour. <br /><br />Not guilty. <br /><br /><p></p>Jay Livingstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03797268351984440375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35248477.post-8541509345054385082022-06-04T12:47:00.006-04:002022-10-24T12:48:23.908-04:00Majority Rule and the School Curriculum<p><b>June 4, 2022</b><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 85%;"><i>Posted by Jay Livingston</i></span></span><br /><br />Should schools teach things that a lot of parents don’t like even if those things are true? If most parents are creationists, should the science curriculum nevertheless teach about evolution or mention that the earth is four billion years old rather than 10,000? Or should curriculum avoid anything that contradicts the views of parents? <br /><br />When it comes to the facts that children are taught, Reihan Salam wants majority rule. <br /></p><table align="center" border="1" cellpadding="10" nbsp="" style="width: 450px;"><tbody>
<tr><td bgcolor="#F8FCFC" style="text-align: left;"> <span style="font-family: helvetica;">And here the big challenge is whether or not you have public institutions that are advancing curricula and ideas that are basically going against freedom of conscience. Do we have situations in which people are being compelled to adhere to certain ideas, certain controversial ideas? </span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><p></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 85%;">(From his recent i<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/03/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-reihan-salam.html" target="_blank">nterview</a> with Ezra Klein.)</span><br /></p><p>I don’t know where Reihan went to school, but in the schools I went to you were “compelled” to learn what was taught. Well, you weren’t compelled. But you would do better on the exams if you did learn it. Even if your conscience told you that Aristotle’s four elements theory was spot on, your chem teacher went against your freedom of conscience and compelled you to learn about the periodic table. The exams didn’t have any questions about earth, air, fire, and water.<br /><br />Reihan goes on:<br /></p><table align="center" border="1" cellpadding="10" nbsp="" style="width: 450px;"><tbody>
<tr><td bgcolor="#F8FCFC" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">And I think that that’s something where it is good and healthy to have transparency in school curricula. I think it is good and legitimate to believe that parents should have access to good, reliable information about what is being taught and about the ideological content of what is being taught. This is obviously a very contentious issue, but I think that it goes part and parcel with our general belief and educational pluralism. That is the idea that schools tend to work best when they’re broadly aligned with the values and sensibilities of families.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />It sounds so good. Who could be against freedom of conscience, against transparency or good, reliable information, or pluralism, or families? <br /><br />Of course, Reihan isn’t talking about creationism or phlogiston theory. He’s talking about Critical Race Theory, but the issue of who designs the curriculum is basically the same. What Reihan is offering is a calmer and more reasonable-sounding version of what louder right-wing politicians are saying. Much like the con man in “The Music Man,” they are telling the parents, “You got trouble my friends, with a capital T, and that rhymes with C and that stands for Critical Race Theory.” Twenty years ago, politicians like these were railing and legislating against “Sharia law,” which they claimed posed an imminent threat to freedom, family, and apple pie. Now it’s CRT. Plus ça change. <br /><br />Should schools teach about the crucial place that race, especially the treatment of African Americans, has in American history and in the American present? It’s not a pleasant story, and it does not show White people as being predominantly noble. Not surprising that it makes some people feel uncomfortable or that they would prefer the “patriotic education” promoted by Donald Trump. <br /><br />And if that’s what they want, in Reihan’s book that’s what they should have. He doesn’t say exactly what he means by “educational pluralism.” But it certainly suggests that “the values and sensibilities of families” should shape the curriculum. In many cases, that means that kids will get a Whitewashed version of US history, a version that does not make the majority feel uncomfortable. <br /><br />But wait. Aren’t we past that? Don’t we acknowledge that slavery was bad and that the secession in order to preserve slavery was wrong? What about all those statues that have been torn down?<br /><br />The same day that the Reihan Salam interview appeared, sociologist Peter Moskos tweeted a photo he had taken of a sign in Greenville, SC, a city of 70,000, 70% White, 23% Black. (The Greenville County population is 533,000, 76% White, 18% Black.) The sign was next to a statue of Robert E. Lee. <br /><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSdSbd9eWR4hqK6MMmBM-Dyq1w0oi4ietPR8oNrKbjTNuZojIFQqqVf0O2b2uAQk7-dzi4c4vT0jfWiDFzDR4K0c1pGDZcsh5q8Zc620rfvGvnSN21h-yfB56XAyBaOHVAsYYS-zPjNJbbhuPdvwatPDKQmq6qG8knOXDatJhHRwC-ltKAmg/s4096/South%20Carolina.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4096" data-original-width="3072" height="533" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSdSbd9eWR4hqK6MMmBM-Dyq1w0oi4ietPR8oNrKbjTNuZojIFQqqVf0O2b2uAQk7-dzi4c4vT0jfWiDFzDR4K0c1pGDZcsh5q8Zc620rfvGvnSN21h-yfB56XAyBaOHVAsYYS-zPjNJbbhuPdvwatPDKQmq6qG8knOXDatJhHRwC-ltKAmg/w300-h400/South%20Carolina.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: helvetica;">“Dedicated in reverence and admiration for their courage and integrity to the five signers Ordinance of Secession from Greenville County.”</span></blockquote><br />Here’s the text Peter tweeted below the photo: <blockquote><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I really did not expect to see this. My naiveté. "In reverence and admiration"? These aren't founding fathers. These were literally traitors.</span></blockquote>I don’t know what the history curriculum in the Greenville schools compels students to learn, but I would guess that, like the sign and statue, it is, as Reihan says, “broadly aligned with the values and sensibilities of families.” Well, the 70% of families that are White, not the 23% that are Black. <br /><br /><br /><p></p>Jay Livingstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03797268351984440375noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35248477.post-61221670930717389002022-05-25T15:25:00.027-04:002022-10-24T12:52:05.975-04:00Guns — How Addiction Makes Sense, and Doesn’t<p><b>May 25, 2022</b><br /><i><span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Posted by Jay Livingston</span></span></i><br /><br />A useful definition of addiction: trying to solve a problem by doing more of what caused the problem in the first place. <br /><br />That’s the definition that came to mind when I read the response of politicians like Sen. Ted Cruz and Texas Lt. Gov.Dan Patrick to the massacre in a Uvalde, TX elementary school. They want more guns. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl9bVjurMSetUeWsCTofQD8O-vAawj0ZM6yqmoQYENevxqKulKWf7ZTmHytZJL6DaUEUDmTOuLicSt44Xik_bXif7NXc2d09Ig0NHYTseVR4Xgq6Em4nuzFVZlbMc1Sl0JgWX7Jn_RJRsXfFLPDTiHscWrU93hIR_Bz_8IaPhnNm4wKJ60tw/s609/Cruz.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="281" data-original-width="609" height="185" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl9bVjurMSetUeWsCTofQD8O-vAawj0ZM6yqmoQYENevxqKulKWf7ZTmHytZJL6DaUEUDmTOuLicSt44Xik_bXif7NXc2d09Ig0NHYTseVR4Xgq6Em4nuzFVZlbMc1Sl0JgWX7Jn_RJRsXfFLPDTiHscWrU93hIR_Bz_8IaPhnNm4wKJ60tw/w400-h185/Cruz.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>It’s the good-guy-with-a-gun solution, and it seems to make sense. Once you have created a world in a world where guns are a big problem because every bad guy can arm himself with military assault rifles, more guns seems like a logical solution.<br /><br />I studied compulsive gamblers for my dissertation research. The men I hung out with certainly seemed to be in the grip of an addiction that kept them from thinking clearly about their problem. There wasn’t a lot of scholarly literature on the topic then (a big time-saver if you’re a grad student writing a dissertation). The Freudians talked about unconscious desires, and the behaviorists talked about reinforcement schedules. This was long before the days when brain activity would light up the fMRI screens. <br /><br />What nobody considered was that compulsive gambling makes sense. <br /> </p><p>Does it make sense, is it rational, for a man to bet twice his weekly salary on a basketball game? From a distance, that seems crazy. But suppose he is already thousands of dollars in debt and has payments falling due soon — rent, phone bills, loan sharks. He needs a lot of money fast. He can’t get it from friends, loan companies, and banks any more. He has already used up his credit with them. A bet on the right team though could solve a lot of these problems or at least give him some breathing room. Is it possible? Of course it’s possible. He knows that he has made winning bets before. He knows that thousands of people will make that bet tonight and win. Of course, other thousands will lose, but all he has to do is be in the first group. And if he loses, well, the financial pressure he’s under is already so great that losing another few thousand will not substantially change his life. <br /><br />Most of the gamblers I knew were, to varying degrees, in Gamblers Anonymous, a program that promotes abstinence as the only solution. Many of the men (there were no GA women in those days) said that initially they didn’t think they could ever get out of debt on just their regular income, but gradually they had done so. None of them had ever gambled his way out of debt, nor had any of their gambling buddies. They recognized the dream solution of the big score as a tempting but dangerous fantasy. <br /><br />Many of them had made a big score occasionally. They took delight in recounting these, like the guy who spent ten minutes telling me how he had once handicapped the exact order of finish of the eight dogs in a race at Raynham. You can get a nice payout when you hit an exacta or trifecta. But he wound up in deep debt and eventually in GA. <br /><br />The NRA similarly has a storehouse of good-guy-with-a-gun stories. Similar to the big-score stories of the men in GA, these frame “more guns” as a rational solution to the problem of gun violence.* Texas Governor Greg Abbott, back in 2015, touted more guns as a worthwhile goal. <br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9dqalw_1MOLxtj-TM-IV05GQqeQOUD8uOqS1ZtGM4hDW0z67tKtH1jDjj4vlsI6bnaI4d3l5S9N0uEygTAx7krBQDJZ_4UBHP3RVxR6H-a9LIIMgvHNsWUua1P6M3zlWJdI6VNhAUl85O6yTGQKTXuD7gEhYODNMSLJ3N1GN2t44C5whTfA/s1051/Abbott.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1051" data-original-width="938" height="558" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9dqalw_1MOLxtj-TM-IV05GQqeQOUD8uOqS1ZtGM4hDW0z67tKtH1jDjj4vlsI6bnaI4d3l5S9N0uEygTAx7krBQDJZ_4UBHP3RVxR6H-a9LIIMgvHNsWUua1P6M3zlWJdI6VNhAUl85O6yTGQKTXuD7gEhYODNMSLJ3N1GN2t44C5whTfA/w358-h400/Abbott.jpg" width="500" /></a><br /></div><p>Thousands of Texans got the message. This year, one of them was Salvador Ramos. </p><p></p><p>------------<br />* In “Arise Heroes” <a href="https://medium.com/@PoetVet/arise-heroes-dulce-bellum-inexpertis-3a1bc3959e83" target="_blank">(here)</a> Seth Brady Tucker, who grew up in Wyoming with guns and served in first Persian Gulf war, explains why the good-guy-with-a-gun is largely a fantasy. <br /><br /></p>Jay Livingstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03797268351984440375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35248477.post-56130478129192328152022-05-19T10:16:00.002-04:002022-12-22T16:12:07.003-05:00Making “I Won” the Default<p><b>May 19, 2022</b><br /><i><span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Posted by Jay Livingston</span></span></i><br /><br />“Dr. Oz should declare victory. It makes it much harder for them to cheat with the ballots they ‘just happened to find.’” So posted Donald Trump on his social media platform Truth Social.*<br /><br />He may be right. By declaring victory, you make that the default outcome. You put the burden of proof on the other side. That was Trump’s strategy in 2020. He started claiming victory before the election. Thus, his claims of victory after the election were merely a continuation of an established “fact,” even though that fact was established only by Trump’s repeatedly asserting it. That made it easier for his supporters to remain convinced that he won and to believe all his claims about fraudulent vote counts. It also apparently has raised doubts even among those who were not ardent Trump supporters. <br /><br />In the pre-Trump era, a candidate in Dr. Oz’s position would say something like, “Well, it’s a very close, and we’ll have to wait for all the absentee ballots. But when all the votes are counted, I’m sure that we will have won.” That is in fact the situation that exists. <br /><br />Or he could play the Trump card and declare victory – loudly and frequently, on TV and on Twitter. If the final tally shows McCormick winning, that result will seem to go against an established fact. And even if courts and recounts uphold the result, Dr. Oz will avoid being labeled a loser. <br /><br />Maybe this same strategy would work in other areas. I imagine Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, declaring on Tuesday that a Mavericks victory the next night was certain. Then, after the game, which Golden State won 112-87, he could claim that there was basket fraud – that many of the Warriors’ points were “fake baskets.” He could get Dinesh D’Souza to make a film showing nothing but Mavericks’ baskets and the Warriors’ misses. He could call up the scorekeeper and tell him to “find me just 26 more points.” <br /><br />OK, maybe we’re not there yet in basketball. But in politics this is another area where Donald Trump may have a lasting influence. I expect that more politicians will use the strategy of declaring victory and then claiming voter fraud. The gracious concession speech will become a rare event. <br /><br />----------------------<br />*<span style="font-size: 92%;"> I think that they call these posts “truths.” Twitter has Tweets; Truth Social has Truths. I don’t think they have yet come up with a verb equivalent to Tweeting. “Dr. Oz should declare victory,” Donald Trump truthed?</span></p>Jay Livingstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03797268351984440375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35248477.post-31614590412904598002022-05-04T22:51:00.003-04:002022-06-26T19:45:52.122-04:00“Julia” — Serving Up Words Before Their Time<p><b>May 4, 2022</b><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 85%;"><i>Posted by Jay Livingston</i></span></span><br /><br />“The Marvelous Mrs. Anachronism” (<a href=" https://montclairsoci.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-marvelous-mrs-anachronism.html" target="_blank">here</a>) is the post in this blog with by far the most hits and comments. And now we have “Julia,” the HBO series about Julia Child and the creation of her TV show “The French Chef.” It’s set in roughly the same time period, the early 1960s. And like “Mrs. Maisel,” it offers a rich tasting menu of anachronisms. <br /><br />I don’t know why the producers don’t bother to check their scripts with someone who was around in 1962 – a retired sociologist, say, who is sensitive to language – but they don’t. Had they done so, they would have avoided the linguistic equivalent of a digital microwave in the kitchen and a Prius in the driveway. They would not have had a character say, “I’m o.k. with it.” Nor would an assistant assigned a task say, “I’m on it.” Nobody working with Julia would be excited to be on the front lines of “your process.” “Your method” perhaps or “your approach” or even “all that you do,” but not “your process.” <br /><br />If you’re a TV writer, even an older writer of fifty or so, these phrases have been around for as long as you can remember, so maybe you assume they’ve always been part of the language. <br /><br />But they haven’t. Sixty years ago, people might have asked how some enterprise made money or at least made ends meet. But they would not have asked it the way Julia’s father asks her: “What's the business model down there? Does public television even* have a business model?” </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg768c4_p3lDUmWLlhqFagW7AZGlpyqzT1DF7QEgoyWzIOF_wqPRMMO_iINyrYMUaWNcdh47wXo6kczRqX2a8qd9jYj8heioFcawS1InFlGtAitMm_zAxmZB7-JYnGl47L3ASRTFgV38RRI49I2ssnfgUOKrNXWa8uklEoxSK_E6gKm-HiYlw/s3146/Julia.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2015" data-original-width="3146" height="295" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg768c4_p3lDUmWLlhqFagW7AZGlpyqzT1DF7QEgoyWzIOF_wqPRMMO_iINyrYMUaWNcdh47wXo6kczRqX2a8qd9jYj8heioFcawS1InFlGtAitMm_zAxmZB7-JYnGl47L3ASRTFgV38RRI49I2ssnfgUOKrNXWa8uklEoxSK_E6gKm-HiYlw/w400-h256/Julia.jpg" width="500" /></a></div><p>In her equally anachronistic reply, Julia says, “Nothing's a done deal yet,” That one too sounded wrong. I don’t recall any done deals in 1962.<br /><br />To check my memory, I went to Google nGrams. It shows the frequency of words and phrases as they occur in books. Most of the phrases that seemed off to my ear did not appear in books until the 1980s. A corpus of the language as spoken would have been better, and there’s a lag of a few years before new usages on the street make it to the printed page. But that lag time is certainly not the twenty years that nGrams finds.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPSTvtu6JMO7PtDWTRg6RAmKb5Xiy8uQoGa8d0Jsm60SiiVQeWqZBLlEfbbrlQRFL_218PBC_1mN8M94z1ghs1MRRORl7UNaorgsVWUZ-r9OzMH1k7gzdhBH32bXKiv2U8DsGEoilkQoWPhgc7Gm5J_tjWbokLs-BK3wOcMUibOBKHfoKAyw/s1226/Business%20model%20Done%20Deal.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="619" data-original-width="1226" height="254" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPSTvtu6JMO7PtDWTRg6RAmKb5Xiy8uQoGa8d0Jsm60SiiVQeWqZBLlEfbbrlQRFL_218PBC_1mN8M94z1ghs1MRRORl7UNaorgsVWUZ-r9OzMH1k7gzdhBH32bXKiv2U8DsGEoilkQoWPhgc7Gm5J_tjWbokLs-BK3wOcMUibOBKHfoKAyw/w400-h203/Business%20model%20Done%20Deal.jpg" width="500" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">(<i>Click on an image for a larger view.</i>)</span><br /></div><div><p>In another episode, we hear “cut to the chase,” but it was not till the 80s that we skipped over less important details by cutting to the chase. (Oh well, at least nobody on “Julia” abbreviated a narrative with “yada yada.”) Or again, a producer considering the possibilities of selling the show to other stations says, “This could be game changer.” But “game changer” didn’t show up in books until four decades after “The French Chef” went on the air. <br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZmdU51auPkSKHMRKAHOEV2Sddt-jnxkXZQXCiruqKAhTbFqZQQT0-gef5L1YoE8Nin_P8YDcdBgUGhMCe1UpaVTKN0ZT_g_snJlvkuUxe9Yc6LAOy5uPed2w3ygCbozPFj8W_cMZd4GmUAfXRprzc6ddnJg1npvUVbkRoq2WAEIyHiwSbMw/s1317/Game%20changer%20Cut%20to%20the%20chase.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="575" data-original-width="1317" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZmdU51auPkSKHMRKAHOEV2Sddt-jnxkXZQXCiruqKAhTbFqZQQT0-gef5L1YoE8Nin_P8YDcdBgUGhMCe1UpaVTKN0ZT_g_snJlvkuUxe9Yc6LAOy5uPed2w3ygCbozPFj8W_cMZd4GmUAfXRprzc6ddnJg1npvUVbkRoq2WAEIyHiwSbMw/w400-h175/Game%20changer%20Cut%20to%20the%20chase.jpg" width="500" /></a></div><p>“This little plot is genius,” says Julia’s husband. It may have been, but in 1962, <i>genius </i>was not an adjective. An unusual solution to a problem might be <i>ingenious</i>, but it was not simply “genius.” Even more incongruous was Julia’s telling the crowd that shows up for a book signing in San Francisco, “I'm absolutely gobsmacked by this turnout.” <i>Gobsmacked </i>originated in Britain, but even in her years abroad, Julia would not have heard the term. Brits weren’t gobsmacked until the late 1970s, with Americans joining the chorus a decade or so later.<br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKmehvZGNF7UYrcz5J_JtW_oIbwQ2qmh3NFZfhNTSeVTDIDWVUGe-oJWDN8aNrHLVEAPEJDMeBGc1ADLrdv2NCV_0nvGSTVE5ok1jkLQrMiTZ9L1d2kDOkmvN1hPxmtGflQIspFoa2mWbC8H8eyG-sgD_x598xKwMZ3tLUX5J0Urmxdfc0NA/s1350/Gobsmacked%20It's%20genius.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="616" data-original-width="1350" height="229" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKmehvZGNF7UYrcz5J_JtW_oIbwQ2qmh3NFZfhNTSeVTDIDWVUGe-oJWDN8aNrHLVEAPEJDMeBGc1ADLrdv2NCV_0nvGSTVE5ok1jkLQrMiTZ9L1d2kDOkmvN1hPxmtGflQIspFoa2mWbC8H8eyG-sgD_x598xKwMZ3tLUX5J0Urmxdfc0NA/w400-h183/Gobsmacked%20It's%20genius.jpg" width="500" /></a></div><p>I heard other dubious terms that I did not know how to check. “The Yankees are toast,” says one character, presumably a Red Sox fan. It’s not just that in 1962 the Yankees were anything but toast, winning the AL pennant and the World Series; I doubt that anyone was “toast” sixty years ago. <br /><br />The one that bothered me most was what Julia’s friend Avis says after making a small play on words. She adds, “See what I did?” I’m pretty sure this is a very recent usage and was not around in 1962. I’d just as soon not have it around today. <br /><br />Finally, in the latest episode, which I just now saw and which inspired me to write this post, we have the <a href=" https://montclairsoci.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-language-anachronism-that-nobody.html" target="_blank">anachronism that nobody notices </a>— “need to” instead of “should” or “ought to” or other words that carry a hint of what is right or even moral. In “Julia,” a young couple meet for lunch at a diner. It’s a blind date, and as they talk, it becomes clear that they are a good match. They talk some more, and we cut to a different plot line. When we come back to the diner, the couple are still there, still talking, but they are now the only ones left in the place. The waitress comes to the table and tells them patiently, “You need to go.”<br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYQnelj787nb-8kZWL1SdFddmkcrZOe5Mn4GwiGmnsYCxxXZe0IUbzX40zDV2mgRLILzCfcNuJgiL6yVqDRVRg5shZqNhFOsGwYy1PnZbJFdodEhjGIsLthKBNNfml69tJcpnTMAyUFQ2ROwBRnUArD6Vc-ya2GUvCCEtaUiP7fQTXyN0jZg/s1958/Need.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1284" data-original-width="1958" height="329" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYQnelj787nb-8kZWL1SdFddmkcrZOe5Mn4GwiGmnsYCxxXZe0IUbzX40zDV2mgRLILzCfcNuJgiL6yVqDRVRg5shZqNhFOsGwYy1PnZbJFdodEhjGIsLthKBNNfml69tJcpnTMAyUFQ2ROwBRnUArD6Vc-ya2GUvCCEtaUiP7fQTXyN0jZg/w400-h263/Need.jpg" width="500" /></a></div><p>What she means of course is that <i>she</i> needs for them to go. In 1962, she would not have phrased it in terms of their needs. She would have said, “You have to go.”<br /><br />-------------------------------<br />* <span style="font-size: 90%;">“Even” as an intensifier in this way may also not have come into use until much later in the century. See<a href="https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2943" target="_blank"> this Language Log post</a> on “What does that even mean?”</span><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p></div>Jay Livingstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03797268351984440375noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35248477.post-64828457061607702022022-04-21T16:50:00.002-04:002022-04-21T16:50:26.897-04:00Robert Morse, 1931 - 2022<p><b>April 21, 2022</b><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 85%;"><i>Posted by Jay Livingston</i></span></span><br /><br />The opening sentence of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/21/theater/robert-morse-dead.html" target="_blank">Times obit</a> for Robert Morse mentions his roles in both “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” in 1961 and “Mad Men” forty-six years later. Those Morse roles were linked in subtler ways — the characters’ career trajectories and their clothing choices, as. I pointed out in a 2010 post which I am hauling out of the archives on this Throwback Thursday. <br /><br />The post was mostly about America’s concern with “conformity,” but Morse’s performance in the video from “How to Succeed” is worth two minutes and fifty-three seconds of your time even if you’re not considering the cultural-historic questions.</p><p style="text-align: center;">*******************</p><p></p>
<span style="font-weight: bold;">July 1, 2010</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Posted by Jay Livingston</span></span><br />
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“How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” was on TMC Tuesday night in honor of the centenary of Frank Loesser’s birth. The Broadway show opened in 1961, sort of a musical comedy version of William H. Whyte’s 1956 best-seller <span style="font-style: italic;">The Organization Man</span>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbEATZihJlFGekeaOuvMMIVTyltn0H6bHhQtmptUQP_WJmHNW7Ej3jLabU_b8EQ-X99tNeyT3QRi-Ixp6-MDfym3O10O2yHIf_OiHccKY1wSxodYFL2Jl-KJ7gnNIeFV0JSLJO/s1600/00+How+to+OrgMan.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488774384134634498" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbEATZihJlFGekeaOuvMMIVTyltn0H6bHhQtmptUQP_WJmHNW7Ej3jLabU_b8EQ-X99tNeyT3QRi-Ixp6-MDfym3O10O2yHIf_OiHccKY1wSxodYFL2Jl-KJ7gnNIeFV0JSLJO/s400/00+How+to+OrgMan.JPG" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 308px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
Loesser’s musical was light satire; Whyte’s book was sociology. But the message of both was that corporations were places that demanded nearly mindless conformity of all employees. Or as Mr. Twimble tells the ambitious newcomer (J. Pierpont Finch), “play it the company way.”<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">
FINCH:When they want brilliant thinking / From employees<br />
TWIMBLE: That is no concern of mine.<br />
FINCH: Suppose a man of genius / Makes suggestions.<br />
TWIMBLE: Watch that genius get suggested to resign.</blockquote>
Conformity was a topic of much concern in America in those days, in the popular media and in social science (as in the Asch line length <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments">experiments</a>). Today, not so much.<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">
the Organization Man, if he ever existed, is dead now. The well-rounded fellow who gets along with pretty much everyone and isn’t overly brilliant at anything sees his status trading near an all-time low. And all those brilliant screwballs whose fate Whyte bemoaned are sitting now on top of corporate America.</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: left;">
So wrote Michael Lewis in <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2706">Slate</a> 1997.</div>
<br />
That’s one version. I don’t really know if the corporate climate is different today (where’s an OrgTheorist when you need one?). No doubt, “brilliant screwballs” can find save haven in corporations, at least in areas that require technical brilliance, and some may wind up at the top. But I wonder how such quirkiness survives in other areas like sales. Barbara Ehrenreich, in her recent book <span style="font-style: italic;">Bright-Sided</span>, looks at corporations today – with their motivational speakers and “coaches” – and sees the same old demand for cheerful, optimistic obedience, especially in this era of outsourcing and downsizing.<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">
The most popular technique for motivating the survivors of downsizing was “team building” – an effort so massive that it has spawned a “team-building industry” overlapping the motivation industry. . . .<br />
The literature and coaches emphasize that a good “team player” is by definition a “positive person.” He or she smiles frequently, does not complain, is not overly critical, and gracefully submits to whatever the boss demands.</blockquote>
Or as Frank Loesser put it,<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">
FINCH: Your face is a company face.<br />
TWIMBLE: It smiles at executives then goes back in place.</blockquote>
Here’s the whole song from the 1967 film version:<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="285" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SKC8iPeIvEA" title="YouTube video player" width="500"></iframe>
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br />The movie has another uncanny resemblance to today. The costumes and even the sets look like “Mad Men” – not surprising since both are set in the New York corporate world of the early 1960s. But there’s more. In the Broadway show and then the musical of “How to Succeed,” Robert Morse (Finch), rises to become head of advertising. Fifty years later, in “Mad Men,” Robert Morse (Bert Cooper) is the head of an advertising agency. (And he’s still wearing a bow tie.)</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTR9sPhTjeM0ugosXLJXohCNWvyn8sJa8WsFmzS-7_gWEqQnyCSA9VJWlyOfYPlnfIypHTlioD3MQOPfV53FQToZ8uLOHzZs6NaybSksDX9Lvaxlb_AYn28Q7RZ90y6Ys8eaMu/s1600/00+Morse+then+now.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488776010359136834" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTR9sPhTjeM0ugosXLJXohCNWvyn8sJa8WsFmzS-7_gWEqQnyCSA9VJWlyOfYPlnfIypHTlioD3MQOPfV53FQToZ8uLOHzZs6NaybSksDX9Lvaxlb_AYn28Q7RZ90y6Ys8eaMu/s400/00+Morse+then+now.JPG" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 194px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
I asked my son, a “Mad Men” watcher, to look at the 1967 movie and try to identify the actor playing Finch. He couldn’t, at least not without a hint or two.</div>
</div>
Jay Livingstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03797268351984440375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35248477.post-70134604229541190862022-03-15T13:20:00.006-04:002023-06-06T11:20:56.915-04:00Baby Names and the Value on Distinctiveness<p><b>March 15, 2022</b><br /><i><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 85%;">Posted by Jay Livingston</span></span></i><br /><br />Namerology, the former Baby Name Voyager (<a href=" https://namerology.com/baby-name-grapher/" target="_blank">here</a>),is a great resource for anyone interested in graphs showing trends in baby names in the US. It uses the data from the Social Security Administration, but it’s graphs are much better than those you can create on the SSA Website. For instance, it allows you to compare names. <br /><br />I wanted to explore the idea that the diversity of names is increasing. The most popular names today are not nearly as dominant as popular names in the past. It’s like TV shows. The ratings or share-of-audience of today’s most popular shows are numbers that twenty years ago would have marked them for cancellation. Compare the most popular name for girls born in the 1990s, Emily, with her counterpart in the 70s, Jennifer.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEirUAK-Uzfa74TFG4Jdu2s12XnzEU92GowbkCLaNoNLSmTyb1fdLc_MhNYAb-8yvpv-0dyogFpkFwe3hCkWXQ7mjHUoVWdxZSSmzF2yVUrM_s8Z4wueqSsfNGd_7JvgA20KLkV29TO3ZfsuTkg6DQCMheAff5u-aO4S-kJXK80T9m4ViDFCcw=s1257" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1082" data-original-width="1257" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEirUAK-Uzfa74TFG4Jdu2s12XnzEU92GowbkCLaNoNLSmTyb1fdLc_MhNYAb-8yvpv-0dyogFpkFwe3hCkWXQ7mjHUoVWdxZSSmzF2yVUrM_s8Z4wueqSsfNGd_7JvgA20KLkV29TO3ZfsuTkg6DQCMheAff5u-aO4S-kJXK80T9m4ViDFCcw=w400-h275" width="500" /></a><br /></div><p> Jennifer’s peak was three times higher than Emily’s.<br /><br />Jennifer also stacks up well against the top name of the sixties (Lisa) and of the eighties (Jessica).<br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi8NmeARvpNlFc3RawZEC3Ojl4bBA6BfzMoUMJ4fSJNfnioEoMpRQdnKCvImkfzzKVK3ySGgEXTGSGG4lE-aEVUgRythz2ubB1wnrhFcFpyVfXkgQLvNRut7ugkIzCRoegFFaHf1gQFy-rA2f90IbaYZx7BFwEbmD7qQxF2RD6SPxnzN2UOYA=s1448" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="972" data-original-width="1448" height="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi8NmeARvpNlFc3RawZEC3Ojl4bBA6BfzMoUMJ4fSJNfnioEoMpRQdnKCvImkfzzKVK3ySGgEXTGSGG4lE-aEVUgRythz2ubB1wnrhFcFpyVfXkgQLvNRut7ugkIzCRoegFFaHf1gQFy-rA2f90IbaYZx7BFwEbmD7qQxF2RD6SPxnzN2UOYA=w400-h269" width="500" /></a></div><p><br />Jennifer’s popularity was extraordinary. Jessica was at the top for nine of the eleven years from 1985 to 1995. And Lisa held top spot for eight years, 1962 - 1969. But Jennifer was number one for fifteen years, 1970-1984. We will probably never see her like again. <br /><br />But then along comes Mary. The numbers for Mary back in the day dwarf those for Jennifer at the height of her popularity.<br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhCSU6G44Ac7QtRd71nXdxMPszQ22v7ryTKF1J-sE0V7XX0gR02znyaycjkqLffZN4zK1e_IF_OEMb8JMd2fFUtoTWxDVfu8zB1WgI3oaHT_vOeUTFqBF7BJRKHEa7UF8hSLLPD_A9ZFkdCnCo5rhzeeZfSaQI4LnkcvY82l1nQ6oAGsGsOGw=s1492" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1132" data-original-width="1492" height="243" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhCSU6G44Ac7QtRd71nXdxMPszQ22v7ryTKF1J-sE0V7XX0gR02znyaycjkqLffZN4zK1e_IF_OEMb8JMd2fFUtoTWxDVfu8zB1WgI3oaHT_vOeUTFqBF7BJRKHEa7UF8hSLLPD_A9ZFkdCnCo5rhzeeZfSaQI4LnkcvY82l1nQ6oAGsGsOGw=w400-h243" width="500" /></a></div><p>I read this graph to mean that the way we think about names has changed. Today, we just assume that you don’t want to give your kid the same name that everyone else has. You want something that different, but not too different. But a hundred years ago, distinctiveness was not important criterion for parents choosing a name. Year in year out, the girls name most often chosen was the same year in year out — Mary.<br /><br />Names may be only part of a more general change in ides about children. Demographer Philip Cohen (<a href="http://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2011/05/20/the-childs-individuality-dated" target="_blank">here</a>) speculates that compared with parents in the early 1900s, parents in the latter half of the twentieth-century saw each child as a unique individual. After all, children were becoming scarcer. From 1880 to 1940, the average number of children per family declined from 4.2 to 2.2, And while Mary remained the most popular name throughout that period, its market share declined from over 30,000 per million to about 20,000 per million. <br /><br />The real shift starts in the 1960s. It may have been part of the general rejection of old cultural ways. But this was also the end of the baby boom. With new birth-control (the pill), having children became more a matter of choice. Family size declined even further. Each child was special and was deserving of a special name.<br /><br /></p>Jay Livingstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03797268351984440375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35248477.post-35524083618023028182022-03-05T08:55:00.009-05:002022-10-08T11:30:30.577-04:00On Becoming a Beatles Listener<p><b>March 5, 2022</b><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><i><span style="font-size: 85%;">Posted by Jay Livingston</span></i></span><br /><br />In the spring of 1964, I was getting a haircut in a barbershop in Tokyo. In the background a radio was playing American rock and pop. The sound was familiar even though I didn’t recognize any of the songs. I didn’t know any of the latest hits because I had spent the previous seven months in a small town up in the mountains. The family I was living with may have had a radio, but I cannot recall ever hearing it or what it played. The music I would hear on the variety shows on TV was all Japanese pop or sometimes Japanese versions of American hits. To this day, there are certain songs that were popular then — “Devil in Disguise” or “Bye-bye Birdie” — which in my mind’s ear I still hear in Japanese rather than English. <br /><br />As I sat there, not really paying attention to the music, I realized that the song now playing was repeating the words “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” So this is it, I thought. This must be the Beatles that I’ve been reading about. The Japan Times, the English-language newspaper that came daily to the house, had run stories about them. It also showed the Billboard Top-20 each week, and I would see Beatles songs in several of the top slots. But in that barbershop that day, to me they sounded like the rest of the music that had been coming from the radio — conventional rock and roll. <br /><br />I thought of that moment last month as I was reading David Brooks’s New York Times piece “What the Beatles Tell Us About Fame” (<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/10/opinion/beatles-destined-fame.html " target="_blank">here</a>). “How did the Beatles make it?” Brooks asks, and he gets the answer right. Partly. He sees that it’s not just about the music. Whether that music gets heard — recorded, distributed, played on the radio — depends on lots of non-musicians. <br /><br />But hearing is not the same as liking. So how do the people who heard this music decide that they liked it, and liked it a lot? Brooks has a simplistic model for this process. “If a highly confident member of your group thinks something is cool, you’ll be more likely to think it’s cool,” as though the Beatles happened because influencers (they weren’t called that in 1963) were at work promoting them. But is that how people form their judgments of music? Surely we don’t think “Cool people like this so I’ll like it too.”<br /><br />To understand how so many people come to share the idea that something is really great, we need a model more along the lines of Howie Becker’s “On Becoming a Marijuana User.” In that famous article, Becker identifies three necessary steps: learning the technique of smoking weed, learning to identify the effects, and learning to define those effects as pleasurable. <br /><br />Of course, listening to rock and roll doesn’t require any special technique. But what about identifying the effects? As my barbershop experience illustrates, recognizing the Beatles is not automatic. Just as Becker’s marijuana users had to learn to perceive the effects of weed,* listeners had to learn to distinguish the Beatles sound from other music. That wasn’t the explicit goal of the people who listened to Beatles songs over and over, but it was an important side effect. <br /><br />As for defining what we are hearing as great, the influence of others is not nearly so evident as it was among Becker’s pot smokers. In the diffusion of popularity, it doesn’t seem like anyone is learning or teaching. People around us are grooving to the Beatles, and so are we. Besides, millions of others have pushed these songs to the top of the charts, confirming our judgment that this stuff is the best. Popularity cascades upon itself. The more that the music becomes popular, the more of it you hear. The more familiar it becomes, the better it sounds. The process is less like instruction, more like contagion. <br /><br />In November of 1963, my social geography — living in my small town in the Japan Alps — had quarantined me from the emotions that flooded Americans when Kennedy was assassinated. I did not feel what I would have felt if I had been in the US . (My 2013 post about that experience is <a href="https://montclairsoci.blogspot.com/2013/11/emotional-contagion.html" target="_blank">here</a>.) Five months later in that barber shop, I was listening to the Beatles, but I had not yet become a Beatles listener.<br /><br />-----------<br />*<span style="font-size: 90%;"> Becker was doing his research among musicians in Chicago in the late 1940s and early 50s. Marijuana back then had nothing like the potency of today’s cultivars. Yet even now, other more experienced users are important in showing the neophyte user how to ingest the drug and how to appreciate the effects. Maureen Dowd’s famous unaccompanied fling with edibles (<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/04/opinion/dowd-don’t-harsh-our-mellow-dude.html" target="_blank">here</a>) is a negative case in point. <br /></span><br /></p>Jay Livingstonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03797268351984440375noreply@blogger.com0