You can do anything, but you can't do everything

When I was younger, teachers would sometimes reminded us not to answer questions to tests in a way that they coined the "shotgun method," which is just writing down everything you can think of relevant to the question and hoping that somewhere in there is the right answer. Apparently, this was nefarious and teachers weren't going to get pushed around by a bunch of little kids screaming, "but look! I have the answer right there!"

Aside from the obvious flashback fear it gives me to think of prepubescent kids being told about how a shotgun works, the whole phenomenon frustrates me to this very day. Whose to say that there is only one right answer? Clearly, if an answer contradicts itself it isn't as good, but an answer that approaches all side of the issue should be valued, perhaps valued even above the conventional one-sided approach.

Anyway, I've come to like the idea so much that I've decided to adopt it as my new approach to thinking about stuff. The shotgun approach. Chuck Klosterman once talked in Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs about how he believed in everything. I don't agree with him completely, but there's definitely something appealing about that; something so appealing that it just might be worth society considering you a hypocrite. Many of us have been told our whole lives that we can do anything. I've taken that to heart, and I still do. But implicit in that advice that you can do anything is the slightly condescending warning that you can't do everything.

But why not? So what if I don't study enough for the test to know exactly what the supposed "correct" answer is? It might be easier for a teacher to grade, but there's no reason we have to continue to impose those restrictions on ourselves once we leave school. What's wrong with the shotgun approach to life?

Entourage

Everybody likes HBO's Entourage. It's a big hit here at Vassar, and just about everybody that's seen it regards it as a "good" show. But here's the thing: nobody knows why.

I too also really had no idea why I liked it, until last night, at the end of a very long day, when I heard Mims' hit "This is Why I'm Hot." One of the most famous lines is his lyric, "I don't even need to rap//I could sell a mill saying nothing on the track." That's when I realized that people like Entourage because it is the television equivalent of a cocky rapper.

Think about it. From the very first show, the show took it as granted that Vince was pretty much a massive star. Sure, he might not have busted out yet with the highest grossing film of all-time, Aquaman, but he was already successful and famous. But in reality, nobody knew who Adrian Grenier (the guy that plays Vince) was. He certainly didn't have enough cash to support a whole entourage with such a lavish lifestyle, and he certainly didn't have enough money to live in such a sweet crib. But the show pretended that he did anyways, and everybody bought it.

The same thing goes for Mims before he busted out with, "This is Why I'm Hot," which hit #1 on the iTunes most downloaded list and was once famously played 40+ times one night at one of our basketball parties. Before he recorded the song, Mims wasn't shit. Maybe he was big with his friends because he had signed on with a record label, but he certainly wasn't big enough to justify rapping that he could sell a mill without saying anything on the track. Claiming that you are big before you really are is probably the most intriguing rapping paradigm because while it's possible that they will one day make it big, they were not big when they first said it. You're betting that you will become successful. If you succeed, you'll be even more revered because you somehow knew that you would. But if you fail, you'll lose all credibility whatsoever because now are you not only not popular, but none of your songs even make sense.

Entourage went the same direction with their TV show, claiming that they were really big and just exploring the problems that an entourage would endure once they had reached that point. And here's the kicker, which explains why both of them do it: people love to hear that other people are making it. As much as America loves the underdog, what we really love to see is people having success, basking in it, and just generally living it up. We don't really care about the irony of Mims saying that he was hot before he really was, what we care about is the fact that he is hot now, he knows it, and he's loving every minute of it. Vince and his entourage are attractive for the same reasons.

This is not to say that you and I gullible for falling for the ploy, America. In fact, you could aruge that our tastes are simply now more refined. All entertainers have at least a touch of cockiness to them. Perhaps it's just that in our never-ending search for legitimacy and transparency, we're starting to like the ones who admit it.

Solve this problem quickly, using your basic instincts

A baseball bat and a ball combined cost 1 dollar and ten cents. The bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

####

You should give your answer before you have time to read this sentence, and if you already have read it, you have completely ruined everything and and you are an absolute waste to society.

ANYWAY, if you did answer the question quickly, like I did today when it was posed to me, and apparently like 55% of Harvard grads did as well, you probably answered incorrectly. You probably said that the ball costs 10 cents. But this is not an algebra question. The issue the question raises is whether we can ever really trust our own reasoning. If we make simple computational errors like this all the time, which we probably do, then how can we be so sure that any conclusions we come to are ever objectively right?

Third Eye Blind explains existentialism

Wikipedia tells us that the San Francisco based-band got its name because lead singer Stephan Jenkins had just read a book about the metaphysical idea of a third mind's eye, and the rest of the band apparently agreed that the name didn't suck. But this has nothing to do with why their music helps me to understand a relatively obscure philosophical form of thought. Nor does my understanding have anything to do with Stephan Jenkins at all, who by all accounts is a loud-mouthed prick. Instead, it has to do with turning 16, getting my license, and having to commute to the city every day. 

 I think that we can all agree that we don't really have much choice over what kind of music that we listen to until we start to drive. When you're in the house, you either listen to the kind of music that the rest of family listens to, or the opposite of the kind of music the rest of your family listens to. This applies in all situations with some generational gaps; for example, if your parents listened to The Rolling Stones, our generations logical equivalent would be Nirvana, The Eagles probably correlate with Fall Out Boy, and Marvin Gaye probably leads to Jay-Z. Then again, if you choose to react against the music the rest of your family listens to, that could potentially lead to the awkward situation where the mom that grew up listening to The Beach Boys walks in to her son's room while he's blasting the Wu Tang Clan's "Gravel Pit." 

 But the thing is, all of this changes once you turn 16 and start to drive. Suddenly you technically have control over the radio, you have control over the volume, and you have control over what CD is blaring at any specific moment. Which brings us back to existentialism, which is (grossly simplified) the idea that we control each of our own universes and as such ought to take accountability for our actions. The classic example that is posed to explain the theory is that anybody who worked for the Nazis in WWII made a choice to do so, despite what kind of pressures they may have been facing to take part. But we all know that it would be unfair to apply this theory to anybody too young, because they have been proportionally influenced by their parents. 

So, what better cut off date than when you turn 16 and start to drive? Your parents might not like it, but when you get behind the steering wheel and put the pedal to the medal, you can go wherever you want. And listen to whatever kind of shitty music you'd like to. And when I was 16 I started to listen to Third Eye Blind heavily. For the longest time, I rationalized my liking of the band whenever anyone questioned me by saying that my brother stored all of their CDs in the car anyway or that I was obligated to support them since they hail from San Francisco. But when I heard two months ago that they were coming to Poughkeepsie for a show, I faced the theoretically existential but very real dilemma of whether I was obligated to drop everything and go see them. Does listening to their stuff for such a long time mandate that I am a fan, or can I just right it off to mere circumstance that I ended up hearing so much of their music? Do you blame everyone that participated in the Holocaust, or just those with a certain degree of autonomy? 

Sitting at the Chance Theater last Wednesday, with its overpriced drinks but surprisingly clean bathrooms, I realized that it doesn't really matter, and I realized that it really matters a lot. It doesn't matter why I was there because I was there anyway, but it matters why I was there a lot because I would have to explain to everybody why I went. Which, in a way, is a lot like Third Eye Blind's music: if you really listen, it's not that deep, but if you don't expect anything and just listen, it's really deep. So, best of luck to Third Eye Blind as they continue on their tour across the country. I hope they bust out again in 2007 with their fourth album. They are from San Francisco, after all.

The Warriors in the Playoffs?

I've been both a basketball and a Bay Area sports fan my whole life. That's why it has always been so sad for me to deal with the perpetually downtrodden Warriors, a team that for as long as I can remember have been absolutely terrible. And when I say terrible, I mean terrible. The team hasn't made the playoffs in thirteen years, and considering that more than half of the teams make the playoffs each year, that number appears to be borderline statistically impossible. Yet I've watched year after year as we've overpaid slow and overrated players (Adonal Foyle, Troy Murphy, Mike Dunleavy... the list continues) to go out and lose ballgames.

Finally, this year they seem to have gotten their act together to a certain extent. They traded two of the slowest players in the league and got back some youth and excitement from the Pacers. We've rattled off 15 out of 20 games, and if we win tonight, we're in the playoffs for the first time ever. It's hard not to get excited. But I've been let down by anybody in life, it's been the Warriors, and with every national media source seemingly handing them the playoff spot, I'm not exactly overzealous with confidence. If the Clippers win and we lose tonight, they have the tiebreaker over us, so they'll get into the playoffs instead.

That said, I believe in the Warriors. It's been too long, and now it's our time. Give 'em hell, boys. You've got supporters all across the country.

Andy's tips on how to make a paper look longer than it really is

One of the reasons that it's weird for me to do a blog is because I have nothing really that this blog is "about." But the problem with this criticism is that I want to blog, and I don't really have an area of expertise, so my only real option is to write about a lot of random stuff. But if there were to be something that I could definitively claim expertize on, making papers for school seem longer than they really are would be it. So, on the eve of just writing two long papers for school, I'm inspired to share my knowledge. I've split it up into three sections for your viewing convenience, a beginner level (middle school), an intermediate level (high school), and an advanced level (college). The key to remember is that this post is not about trying to cheat or gain an edge over your fellow student, it's about beating the system against an archaic rule (page minimums), and generally bringing down the man.

Beginner:

- One of the most obvious tricks is to change the font. If you want to be obvious about it you can go with Century Gothic or Arial Bold, but the classy move is to change it to Palatino Linotype. It makes the characters a little bit longer vertically without making it look comically large. Some teachers even think it looks better. What they don't know won't hurt them, right?

- Make the margins smaller. Not much too to it here. Once you get out of middle school, teachers will start checking for this kind of stuff, but when you're this young, everything still thinks you're innocent. Please, I haven't been innocent since the first grade when I used to cheat in kickball.

- Use tons of quotes, and if you can, include block quotes where you make the margins smaller. Once you get to the intermediate level teachers will start telling you that you need to "analyze the text" and other liberal bullshit like that. For now, take advantage of the fact that people are just happy to see that you've done the reading.

Intermediate:

- If the beginner method was to make the margins narrower, then the intermediate method is to make the pages shorter. Primarily this should be done at the bottom, because the way that word documents auto-format the paragraphs is always weird and it is easy to claim innocence if your page is a little too short. This is in the intermediate section, however, because it requires slightly more tact.

- Once you've reached the intermediate level, you've probably already begin to understand the beauty that is Google images. What you probably haven't realized is how these images can be your best friends in papers. Simply add a map of Paris in your paper about the French Revolution, or a picture of a typical 18th century bachelor in your essay on Pride and Prejudice, text wrap it, and you're good to go. Whoever said that a picture is worth a thousand words was a wise man indeed.

Advanced:

- Make the periods bigger. The teacher can tell by this point if you make the font size of most of the paper much larger, but just by making the periods font size 16 or 18, you can increase the length of the paper (by making the length between lines longer), and no one will be the wiser.

- People seem to have an idea that you can only put footnotes on history research papers. But who made up that rule? Footnote words from urbandictionary.com in your english papers, some existential thinker in your philosophy papers, and Keynesian thought in your econ papers. Not only does the footnote lengthen the line it's on, it also adds the descriptive line at the bottom of the page, and the useful black line separating your text from your footnote descriptions. This is why endnotes are for dorks and footnotes are for the cool kids.

All these tips are legit, tried and true. If any teacher calls you on one of them, good. Calmly explain to them that page minimums are a joke and that most geniuses weren't understand as children anyway. If possible, swipe the evidence from their clutches and run like hell. Happy lengthening!

Farming in the Snow

I've been doing field work this semester at the Vassar Farm this semester because I wanted to a) get my hands a little bit dirty, b) be outside more often, and c) see what it is like to work at a farm. Of course, all three of those desires have backfired because my hands have gotten a lot dirty, I've subsequently realized that I could have just as easily gone outside to throw a frisbee, and discovered that I not only would get to see what it is like to work at a farm, but I would actually have to do the work.

Luckily, I've been sort of enjoying it in an ironic "I deserve this" self-masticating kind-of way, and that's something. This Thursday was a prime example, when we were measuring out the fields and pounding stakes into the ground. Suddenly, white specks began to fall from the ground. Some of them hit me on my sweatshirt, and I had to push them off. It became apparent that they weren't going to stop falling anytime soon, and I wondered what we were going to do about it. Would we seek refuge somewhere? "It's snowing, Andy, in case you haven't noticed," Asher, the guy I was working with, finally remarked. I guess people don't stop being hungry when it's cold out. And that was when I found that it's much easier to count your blessings when they are staring you in the face.

Lee Yearly's lecture on the Toaist idea of useless wandering

Lee Yearly, professor at Stanford University and teacher of my current philosophy professor, was the philosophy department's main speaker this year. Flushed with curiosity, I attended. Some random thoughts from his presentation:

1) The best orators all seem to all include tons of stories when they talk. I think we all love stories because they are such a good way of showing ideas without having to explicitly explain them. I want to make a point to learn more stories. I think that the practice has been looked down upon because it may not the best way to construct a persuasive argument, but there is lots of upside to telling a short story.

2) One of his main points was that society seems to have a way of using up "useful" people, and that we all seem to have a good idea of the use of being useful, but we don't have a very good idea of the use of the useless. I don't really understand the idea, but at the time I found it quite profound, because his prime example was pre-medicine students taking organic chemistry for the sole purpose of becoming a doctor in the future, even though they hated the class. Everyone always enjoys a good pre-med joke. Stupid pre-med students.

3) One point that did resonate with me was that we shouldn't take things in the present so seriously, because we have no way of knowing whether or not they will be "good" or "bad" in the long run. That point sort of reminded me of a refrigerator magnet I once saw that said something along the lines of, "Things will work out okay in the end. If they aren't okay, then it's not the end." As was the motto of our junior year basketball team, "indeed."

I still don't love philosophy, but if it's growing on me it's because it really has a way of getting you to think. I mean, the use of the useless? That's ridiculous. But somehow, if you start to think about these things for way longer than you should, they start to grow on you. And it's pretty money.

The phenomenon that is imdb.com

I just saw Children of Men at a Film League screening here at Vassar last night, and it was an excellent movie; I highly recommend it. But the thing was, I knew it was going to be good before I even saw it. How? Because of it's high rating on the imdb.com, the world's largest compilation of reviews from people all around the world. 40,000+ people had already seen the movie and liked it; in fact, they even liked it enough to rate it the 145th movie of all-time (you can check out the whole list here). 

Think about it. If a couple of your friends tell you that they like a movie, you'll think about watching it. If 20 of your friends tell you that they liked a movie, you'll probably head down to your local movie store and rent it. But imagine if 40,000 people gave you their opinion, and the majority of them really liked it. You'd make watching the movie a very high priority, right? That is essentially what imdb does. And yet some if not many people still don't take the site seriously, debunking it's importance for various uninformed opinions. Well, I'm here to set you all straight. Here are the most common criticisms that I have heard: 

 - "I don't like it because they didn't rate movie x or movie y high enough and that's my favorite movie of all time blah blah blah." The problem with having a movie review site, or with having a "best ever" list in general, is that not every movie can be #1. Nobody ever claimed that the whole world was going to have the exact same taste as you. But the general idea about the site is that the good movies will be rated high and the bad movies will be rated low. Of course, some people disagree with that idea too, which brings me to my next point. 

 - "I don't like it because my taste is just so unique and nobody understands me." The problem with this mentality is that you have to understand the nature of people voting on these movies. They aren't interested in playing favorites, they just vote on which they think are the best movies for the same reason that you or I would: they thought it was funny, interesting, had beautiful camera work, etc. Of course, some people still want to cling to the belief that they are special unique snowflakes, and admitting that their taste is essentially like other people's would hurt their self-esteem. I suppose that those people cannot be saved. But for the rest of us rational people, making this leap and admitting that our taste is similar to others is very rewarding because then we start watching better, more entertaining movies. Good looks all around. 

 - "I don't like any of those online voting sites because somebody could just vote 902384 times and screw up the voting." While the other points could probably be argued for (incorrectly, but argued for nonetheless), this one is flawed beyond comprehension. If you want to vote, you have to create an account, which takes a certain amount of time, and you have to have your account verified with a valid e-mail address. On top of that, you have to vote for at least 10 movies and be considered a "regular voter" before your vote will be taken into consideration for the top 250 list. So while I suppose that it would be possible to skew the voting, one would have to do it literally full-time for a good amount of time to make any sort of statistical difference. 

 Now, I'm not saying that you have to (or should) base every movie you see completely on this site. But if you want to find a cool movie and don't know where to start, imdb.com can be a sweet resource. Happy watching.

The One-Year Anniversary

I've been jingling around the idea of doing a one-year anniversary post in my head for awhile now, and my anticipation of it has been palpable. My intention was to have the anniversary coincide with my 100th post, but alas, I was too giddy about writing those last couple of posts to stop myself from writing them. Luckily 101 is debatably (did you know that's not technically a word?) a cooler number, so it's gravy.

Anyway, now that I am 1 year and 100 posts in, I think it's fair to actually begin to consider myself a blogger (I hadn't really before because, eh, I didn't really know enough about it to say so). A few observations along the way:

-Blogging is a mentality. I find myself constantly searching my day for blog-worthy moments, typing myself notes in the datebook on my phone (which is bootleg since I can only type 55 characters), and generally being more curious about what's going on around me, because you never know, I could want to write about it later.

- The more you blog, the less importance you place on each individual post. I used to not post as much as I have been in the last two or three months, and I found it much more difficult to post. Each thing I wrote had more pressure on it because I wasn't doing many of them and it was likely going to stay at the top of my page for awhile. That problem no longer exists. If one of my posts is sub-par, I can just bury it by prolific updates until it is safely archived (I suppose I could delete it, but that seems like a cop out if I have ever seen one).

- Blogging creates communities. The main reason for this, I find, is that people who blog tend to be the people that read other people's blogs. They probably do this because a) they are more likely to be on the internet and generally reading articles to blog about themselves and b) they are more likely to respect the amount of effort that goes into your average post (OK, it's not all that much, but the idea is there). So when I tell somebody that they should start a blog, it's not only because I think they would enjoy it, it's also because they will be more likely to read mine and my friend's blogs. The blog community is a very real phenomenon.

Anyway, if this was my one year test, then count me in for the real thing. I enjoy it too much now to let go. Thanks for everyone that encourages me to keep doing it also, because while I often claim that I write mainly for myself, I love reading and responding to everyone's comments and I love the support. You all keep me on my toes. Here's to another year!

"Science is only about truth"

Coming back from a lecture the other day my friends and I were discussing how the speaker would have been more effective if he had been more dynamic and engaging. While I was interested enough in the subject matter to pay attention anyway, I could see why somebody would have been distracted by the somewhat bland manner of presentation.

Anyway, while we were walking, somebody walking behind us and unabashedly eavesdropping jumped into the conversation (which is money, btw, I completely respect the move) to make his point. His problem with our criticism was that to him science shouldn't need to engage the reader, because, in his own words, "science is only about the truth." While it was pretty funny to hear him say that, he's not the only one who shares that conviction. Listen, I realize that scientists can't explain every point using 5th grade terms, and that they need to be able to communicate efficiently with their colleagues. But I don't see any reason why they can't strive to be engaging to their audience and present their material in an interesting fashion. Many scientific articles and lectures are already presented in this manner, but there are still a certain subset of people that don't appear to believe that it matters, and it does. Science isn't only about the truth, it's also about making sure that people actually care enough to pay attention to it.

Climate change lecture

A couple of days ago Wally Broeker, Columbia University professor and leader in the fields of geology and earth science, came to speak at Vassar. He is widely respected for his work among his colleagues: he's written 9 books, 400+ scientific papers, and was awarded the national medal of science. Naturally, he has lots of ideas on global warming, and some of them were pretty interesting:

- Like most scientists I have heard on the subject, he agrees that the big question is not whether or not adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere will increase the temperature, but instead how the earth will react to additional heat. Apparently there really is no precedent because the earth has never been this hot in recent eras.

- While he admits that at some point we will run out of oil, he told us that fossil fuels can be made out of coal too, so it will be a long time before we run out of fossil fuels. Given that 85% of our energy right now comes from fossil fuels, it is evident that we're going to have to find something to do about our fossil fuel problem.

- He claims that right now we are in a position where it will be nearly impossible to stop the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere from doubling, but it is of the utmost importance that we stop it from tripling.

- While he advocates all sorts of alternative energy sources, the idea that he stressed was CO2 removal. Apparently, carbon dioxide can be liquefied at a pressure of 14 atmospheres. If it is liquefied, it will obviously be much more difficult to get into our atmosphere. According to Broeker, scientists right now are working on a prototype machine that will be able to do this, and they are going to announce it in a few months. They have not gone public earlier because they are worried that they won't get the patents. If this worked, we could find a way to release this liquid (which there would not be that much of) in a safe manner, such as at the bottom of the ocean where 85% of it would ionize.

Obviously, this last idea of Broeker's was the most interesting. I certainly hope it works, because based on the rest of his speach, we can use all the help we can get.

Life of Meaning vs. Life of Happiness

On NBC's Heroes last night (an awesome show) one of the characters gave a speech about how it is impossible to live both a life of meaning and a life of happiness. His argument was that in order to live a life of happiness, you must be totally focused on the moment, but to live a life of meaning, you must obsess about the future and are forced to fret about the past. He then asked the aspiring politician who he was giving the speech to whether he wanted a life of meaning or one of happiness.

His answer? He wanted both, much like I do, and much like most people probably do. The Buddhist argument is that in order to achieve enlightenment, you must rid yourself of worldly desires. That would seem to exclude the possibility of living a life of meaning. I don't know what the answer to this quandary is, but I do know that Heroes is a stimulating experience and that that speech is an example of why watching select TV shows isn't as bad as many "intellectuals" stereotype it to be.

Philosophy is Dying

The more and more we learn about the brain and how it works, the less and less importance the old philosophers we read about (Descartes, Kant, etc.) will have. We won't need people to speculate how our mind works or how we form ideas if we have the science to be able to explain it in plain terms.

Think about all of the old medical texts that exist from the 15th century or so, attempting to explain how to cure diseases without the knowledge of microorganisms. Nobody cares about those anymore except as a tool to examine history. The same slow death will strike most types of philosophy. Nobody will care what some old geezer thinks about how we obtain knowledge when we actually have the scientific knowledge to see what really happens. Perhaps some moral philosophy will still have its place, but the intellectual masturbatory period that seems to have dominated philosophy is doomed.

And no, this has nothing to do with my philosophy paper on Hume that I'm agonizing over. Why would you think that.