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[ Is it weird that Jessica Alba's is by FAR the most attractive one? Is it that she hired a design consultant where the other guys went looking for glitter and glue sticks? Really, just awful guys. Elijah, what the hell is that crap? -k]

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flynn23 wrote:

I wouldn't think of it as sad. In fact, I find it a bit beautiful. I don't see the need for specialization that you reference. I think the world needs both types. Successful organizations need both types. Marriages need both types. A damn good band needs both types. It's the ability to do wonderful things when you have the hyper curious and the hyper focused working well together that makes for some truly magical moments. I spend most of my time and personal effort figuring out ways to cultivate those relationships.

Actually, you're quite right. I was imprecise in my earlier writing, but I absolutely see the value inherent in both types of person working together. The comments I made were from the standpoint that the pressure to specialize is increasing rapidly and that the result will be too few generalists. The referenced article points in that direction, and it's been a supposition of mine, but perhaps neither us are correct... I don't know. Another concern is the very fact that highly focused people often disdain any knowledge or information outside their well defined purview, which, I posit, tends to marginalize the generalist. I certainly feel like I have a lot to learn from highly focused people (and have in the past), but I fear that too many of them don't feel like I have much to offer them.

[ I use "me", but I don't mean to imply that I'm the best example of general knowledge. I'm just using myself as a standin for similar (and often more adept) indviduals. ]

-k

RE: Lack of curiosity is curious

From the Foreign Affairs review:

This is a pathbreaking study of how historically, Japanese personal networks, both vertical and horizontal, operated to establish powerful norms of beauty, propriety, and good manners, which in turn gave a distinctive dimension to Japanese political behavior. The powerful, and those aspiring to power, had to take seriously group participation in composing poems (haikai) according to rigorously defined standards; they had to display refinement in reacting to art and music, elegance in carrying out ordinary tasks such as pouring tea, and exact discipline in their dress and social manners. It is standard in most cultures to associate dignity with authority, but the Japanese carried the linkage of aesthetics and power well beyond mere dignity. Ikegami, a sociologist, traces the evolution of the various strands of Japanese aesthetic standards as they developed in the key cities where government officials and merchant leaders interacted. The result is a rich and detailed cultural history from medieval times to the Meiji period.

From the excerpt:

When networks based on aesthetic activities intersected the rapidly expanding social, political, and economic networks of the Tokugawa period, a set of unforeseen complex social and cultural dynamics emerged in Japanese society.

The rise of aesthetic Japan is not simply the story of elite intellectuals who created a national myth. Rather, it was the accumulative effect of largely unplanned actions of originally unrelated people who began to network with each other. They did this in order to search for ways of socializing with each other and, in doing so, to trespass feudal boundaries and limitations.

The central focus of this book is the fluid dynamics and unexpected consequences of what might be called “the Tokugawa network revolution.” As I see it, a critical moment of cultural history in any society occurs when communicative networks suddenly expand in scale, density, and complexity. The resulting patterns of communication influence both the form and the content of the discourse conveyed through the networks. The kinds of cultural resources that are available at the time of network expansion will determine the range of content in the resulting cultural identities of that society. Thus, the extension of a society’s communicative networks and the alteration of its cognitive maps are reciprocally influential.

Bonds of Civility

Over dinner a few weeks ago, the novelist Lawrence Naumoff told a troubling story. He asked students in his introduction to creative writing course at UNC-Chapel Hill if they had read Jack Kerouac. Nobody raised a hand. Then he asked if anyone had ever heard of Jack Kerouac. More blank expressions.

"I guess I've always known that many students are just taking my course to get a requirement out of the way," Naumoff said.

In our increasingly complex world, the amount of information required to master any particular discipline -- e.g. computers, life insurance, medicine -- has expanded geometrically. We are forced to become specialists, people who know more and more about less and less.

In this frightening new world, students do not turn to universities for mind expansion but vocational training.

When was the last time you met anyone who was ashamed because they didn't know something?

[ I've been talking about this for years, and thinking about it since a very early age. Growing up has given me the acuity to define my early unease and express the issue in words, but I have felt this way for as long as I can remember.

For whatever reason, I'm a naturally curious person. I make no claims of expertise in *any* subject, and get by in work by being sufficiently intelligent and attentive to do a competent, and often a good, job, despite not being anything like a specialist. It's been a contant source of tension in my life -- on the one hand admiring people who are at the very pinnacle of their field, and on the other hand being surprised and annoyed at the things people, particularly these very smart people, don't know a thing about. And, as the article says, the most troubling aspect for me is not that they don't know something, but that they express no interest in learning it. We've become such pragmatists that anything which doesn't further our qualifications in one or two narrow focus areas is unwanted, undesired... perhaps even a distraction.

I don't deny that my lack of focus, my broad interests, are probably detrimental to me in the long run. I think it's probably true that the specialization requirements will not abate. I onlt hope that I can continue to coast on intellect enough to make a decent living and enjoy my life. I can say for certain, any life in which I must turn away from the vastness of knowable things, discard fiction and biology, religion, politics, and all the rest so that I can focus all my energies on one thing is not a life worth living, for me. I think it's a pity, with so much available to us, that we can't grasp it, for fear of losing the race, not being successful. It's sad. -k]

Lack of curiosity is curious

Rove also denounced last year’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling Roper v. Simmons in which five justices ruled that convicted murderers under the age of 18 could not be put to death. Rove noted that 20 states allowed capital punishment for those under 18 and argued that the high court was depriving those states of the right to self-government.

Minors can't vote and they don't have much money and they don't really read the paper anyway, so the papers run sensationalistic stories on youth crime because it speaks to their target market. Local corrupt politicians want to speak to that market too, so they pass laws cracking down on young people and especially young criminals. They crack down and crack down and crack down, year after year although it really doesn't have any effect. It makes good press. It keeps people elected.
Karl Rove wants to electocute people who are too "immature" to buy a beer or vote in an election or be outside after 11PM. When Breyer mentioned the fact that we're one of the only places left in the world that does this he was simply trying to prove that he isn't crazy. However, I view this in a slightly different light. I think this is one area in which the United States, up until Roper, could be viewed as primitive and backward. There is a reason that everyone else on the planet thinks this is immoral. It IS immoral. It is a brutal and primitive practice that most societies have outgrown. By leading the charge back to this Rove bares the banner of immorality.
When the federalist society talks about "limited government" what they mean is "limited (federal) government." The fact that the "federal" part is silent is the big lie of the right. They don't want individual liberty. They want unlimited state government, so their networks of old boys who are too corrupt or too stupid to make it on a federal level can oppress the crap out of people back home without any interference from those damn feds.

Rove re-emerges at conservative lawyers' group - Tom Curry - MSNBC.com

"If it weren't for it, I think the chances of me having committing suicide would have been greater," he said. "Having a place where you can write those thoughts, get them out of your head. It can be very therapeutic."

But Suzanne's dad thinks otherwise.

"That's not pro-choice," Mike Gonzales said of the site. "That's brainwashing. And they are not being held responsible."

Responsibility? How the hell did he not know that his daughter had been thinking about suicide for two months? What the fuck kind of parenting is that?

We should throw his ass in jail for even suggesting that freedom of speech be so controlled that people can't express anything other than "normal" thoughts and behaviors. That just what the internet needs...to become fucking "Friends" from end to end.

-janelane, angrily

[ Agreed. I'm not saying there's no line at which speech becomes dangerous, but at the same time, parenting *is* hard. No one denies that. What parents should be doing is working and voting to establish a culture that makes their jobs easier to do right. That is not, emphasize *NOT*, the creation of new laws and new forms of censorship. -k]

CNN.com - Parents: Online newsgroup helped daughter commit suicide - Nov 10, 2005

This is an uncomfortable issue for copyright scholars, who, if they are anything like biologists, presumably disagree with intelligent design. But we have to call the game fairly. After complaining so loudly when Disney, Diebold and NBC used copyright as a weapon, it's hypocritical to stand by and watch as others use it to bring the Kansas Board of Education into the scientific fold.

[Hear hear! Copyrights won't win that battle. This ploy will probably only hurt the students more. No, the way to win is to reinforce the *actual* meaning of science in those places still intelligent enough to grasp it, and leave religion to the social scientists who analyze it in the context of culture and history. -k]

Intellectual Property Evolutionists Are Wrong!

But they also declare that basic Darwinian theory — that all life had a common origin and that natural chemical processes created the building blocks of life — has been challenged in recent years by fossil evidence and molecular biology.
In addition, the board rewrote the definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena.

They also redefined math so it is no longer limited to the quantitative assessment of problems.

[ Sadly enough, I couldn't tell if the math comment was sarcasm or not at first.

I feel that this decision is bad for everyone. I have nothing against educating kids to be skeptical... in fact, the scientific method embodies that principle already. I don't even have a problem with educating kids about the variety of religious beliefs in the world. Personally, I wouldn't consider it a violation of church and state to have a section of the social studies (or whatever it's called these days) curriculum dedicated to comparative religion. I think it'd be healthy for kids to know something about other cultures' religious beliefs. That assumes, of course, that the curriculum is fair and even-handed, which is possibly a big assumption in certain places.

The truth of the matter is that any good science curriculum will teach skepticism as part and parcel of what is meant by "doing science". It's all about challenging assumptions, looking for unconsidered possibilities. If these people were serious about making science classes better, they'd encourage those things. They're *not* interested in making better scientists, but in discrediting the very nature of science, in order to dilute it with vague and untestable beliefs. It's the first step in a campaign to cause enough doubt in the scientific process that the confused masses will turn to the only apparent bastion of certainty available, which is the false certainty of the Church.

I'm not so foolish as to think any mention of religious principles in school violates rights. But I don't believe for one second that the proponents of ID have any interest in promoting science. They're destroying it, and for them to succeed will do signficant and irrevocable damage to the nation. -k]

Evolution Critics Score Win in Kansas - Yahoo! News

Two NASA astronauts have figured out a way to create a real-life version of a "Star Wars" "tractor beam" to keep an asteroid from crashing into Earth.

By hovering nearby for perhaps a year, the astronauts say, the spacecraft's own gravity could minutely slow the asteroid's progress or speed it up, a process that 10 or 20 years later would cause the rogue rock to miss Earth by a comfortable margin.

[Uh, not *exactly* a tractor beam, but still an ok idea. -k]

A New Path for Asteroids

The unemployment insurance system is expensive and fails to create the right incentives. It's easy for people who don't need it to collect and lie on "looking for work" statements without seriously pursuing a job. It only exists for a short time period that is not taylored to individual circumstances.

Solution: Replace unemployment insurance with unemployment loans that must be repaid.

My second idea.

[ What do you do when people default? Put them in jail, i guess? Of course, that's 10 times as expensive as just giving them money, so that's not gonna work. I think the biggest problem with this is that the people who are likely to care about the difference between a loan and the current system aren't the ones gaming the system now. Those that are gaming the system, who have very little to lose probably, won't care about any penalty cheap enough to be applicable here.

I don't deny that some effort needs to be made to reduce cheating, but I'm playing devils advocate, i guess, to draw out more detail on this plan. -k]

Unemployment Loans | SinceSlicedBread.com