Marks of Genius

The Solipsist is shamefully behind in his reading.  This morning he just read the November/December (2008, that is) issue of Mental Floss.  He's striving to catch up.

At any rate, this issue was dedicated to the "New Einsteins," those creative thinkers in a variety of fields who are reinventing the world, or at least their little corners of it.  The Solipsist was a bit taken aback by the inclusion of Billy Beane, General Manager of the Oakland A's.  Not that he isn't a "baseball genius"--he is.  But, frankly, he's old news.  Beane, by way of background, achieved a certain degree of fame outside of baseball several years ago as the subject of the book Moneyball (Michael Lewis), which chronicled the GM's rise to the top of the baseball-executive pantheon.  His innovation?  While running the Oakland A's, Beane has managed to keep a fairly low-market, low-revenue team at or near the top of the standings every year.  He's done this by making shrewd deals, focusing not on the spectacular big-name types (think, Alex Rodriguez or Barry Bonds), but on the slow-but-steady, unspectacular professionals who do the little things (like get on base) right.  The "Moneyball philosophy" has since been adopted by general managers throughout the major leagues, who have to greater or lesser extents achieved Beane-like success.  Still, this has been going on for years.  Why hail Beane as a genius at this point in time?

And more to the point, what is "genius"?  This question was posed to several of Mental Floss's "New Einsteins," and their responses indicated their belief that "genius" is best described as some sort of non-linear approach to problem solving, an ability to see new connections.  So the mark of genius is, for example, not putting two and two together and getting four, but putting two and two together and getting five, or 63--or putting two and mango together and getting electricity.  No, we don't know what it means either, but maybe that's because it's just too ingenious.

Huge in Australia!

A headline on Yahoo!: "Indian woman sets record by rubbing 24 chilies in her eyes." How do you think the guy who rubbed 23 chilies in his eyes feels?

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About a week ago, the Solipsist set up an account on "Google Analytics" (clickworthy).  This is a service provided by Google (duh), which allows one to track usage on a website or, in this case, a blog.  You get all kinds of nifty information, like how many people have viewed your page, how many times, when the site's been viewed, etc.

If you drill down further into the report, though, you uncover all manner of statistical riches.  For example, did you know that the Solipsist's "Bounce Rate" is 89.47%?  89.47%!  Not too shabby, eh?  Well, OK, YNSHC has no idea what that means.  Furthermore, a cursory examination reveals that "bounce rate" is actually like a golf score, i.e., the lower the better.  So maybe that's not something to brag about.

But here's something: Since April 4, NINETEEN people have visited this site!  Big deal, you say?  Well, OBVIOUSLY it's like an odometer!  The counter must have reached its highest point--probably 999,999,999,999--and then turned over again.  So, over a trillion visits in just four days?  Top THAT YouTube!  Similarly, there have been ELEVEN "Absolute Unique Visitors," which is at least ten more than YNSHC was expecting.  (Yes, thank you, he CAN account for the first trillion visitors!  Smartass!)

But all kidding aside (well, relatively speaking), here's where things get really interesting.  Google Analytics allows you to do a "Map Overlay" of your visitors.  The majority of the Solipsist's readers come, not surprisingly, from California, with a smattering from New York and Florida.  But there was ONE visitor from Virginia.  And one from, wait for it, Australia!

Well, put a shrimp on the barbie and come say g'day!  Do you know what this means?  THE SOLIPSIST HAS GONE GLOBAL!!!  And not just pseudo-global, like Canada, but real global!  An actual foreign country on the other side of an ocean!  Of course, we all knew that this was going to happen, but, still, this is an auspicious moment that must be marked with, well, auspicion!  Formally, then, the Solipsist would like to extend his virtual hand in friendship to this intrepid Aussie, whoever he or she may be.  (And, y'know, you come all the way from Australia, and you don't even leave a comment?  One knows that Australians are a shy, retiring sort of people, but this is ridiculous!)

Today Canberra, tomorrow, the world!  (Or, at least, Perth.)

The Quest for the Perfect Sentence

Have you ever considered the expression, "To have your ducks in a row"? It's very important to have all your ducks in a row. What threat to national security and/or personal well-being is posed by misaligned ducks?

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The Solipsist occasionally tasks his students with finding a "perfect sentence." He provides no more guidance than that, the better to annoy his charges and, of course, to see what they come up with. What do people consider a perfect sentence?

Sure, they COULD come in with "I like cheese"--a perfect sentence in its own right. They don't though. They seldom (if ever) realize that "perfection" in prose has many different meanings. Still, the Solipsist is glad they strive to find sentences with a bit of flair. It makes it easier to engage them in a discussion of what makes good writing good.

It is in this spirit that YNSHC would like to share with you this gem of a sentence from this past Monday's New York Times. It's from an article on advances in neurocognition that may one day allow scientists to "block out" specific memories from a subject's mind. A cool (and more than a little scary) idea, and probably blogworthy in its own right. But for now, just consider the following:

Artists and writers have led the exploration of identity, consciousness and
memory for centuries. Yet even as scientists sent men to the moon and
spacecraft to Saturn and submarines to the ocean floor, the instrument
responsible for such feats, the human mind, remained almost entirely dark, a
vast and mostly uncharted universe as mysterious as the New World was to
explorers of the past.

--Benedict Carey

Dig the alliteration in the second sentence: "scientists sent. . . spacecraft to Saturn. . . submarines." Nice without being overly "cutesy." And then "the human mind" sits in apposition to "the instrument," and is further "appositived" (?) by "a vast and mostly uncharted universe" before the sentence concludes with a reference to New World explorers, which is an echo of the "exploration" mentioned in the sentence before it.

Now that's craftsmanship! Well played, Carey.

And, yes, the Solipsist knows he's a nerd.

Spoilers

During the Olympics, particularly when they are being held in a non-network friendly time zone, sportscasters warn viewers before they announce the day's results. This gives the audience the opportunity to look away or stick their fingers in their ears and go "LA LA LA" if they plan to watch the games later and wish to remain oblivious. In print media the warning takes a more textual form--perhaps large block letters screaming, "SPOILER ALERT!!!!"--a sort of verbal skull-and-crossbones cautioning unwary readers that they are about to stumble across information they may not want to read.

This is necessary because, when it comes to words, you can't NOT read them once you see them. Go ahead. Try it. Try LOOKING AT but NOT READING the next line.

I told you you couldn't do it.

It's because we're reading animals. Reading is instinctual. We see words, we decode them. So when a writer refers to things of which readers may want to remain unaware, it behooves him to tell them this well in advance of the revelation; otherwise, sheer momentum will carry the reader along to the unwelcome knowledge that in "Citizen Kane," for example, Rosebud, the object of the movie's quest, is in fact Kane's childhood sled. Or that in "Psycho" Tony Perkins is his own mother. Or that when Haley Joel Osment tells Bruce Willis that he "sees dead people," he's actually seeing a dead person RIGHT THEN AND THERE. The Solipsist has stuck to classic examples in the assumption that his readers are all familiar with the films under consideration. If not, well . . . it's the price you pay for functional cultural illiteracy!

As an English major, the Solipsist became somewhat inured to spoilers. After all, most professors will assume that you know the endings to everything. Everybody dies at the end of Hamlet; Elizabeth Bennett marries Mr. Darcy; Moby-Dick wins. In fact, literary scholars find something positively de classe about reading a book for the plot! If you're worrying about plot, how can you appreciate the homoeroticism in the relationship of Huck and Jim?

If you're wondering why the Solipsist is going on and on about spoilers, it's because he himself was victimized the other day. (Need he say "Spoiler Alert"?) See, YNSHC watches "House." Like so many people, however, in this day of DVR's and DVD's and "self-programming," he rarely if ever watches "House" on the night it's broadcast. It's so much more pleasant to save it for a time when he has nothing else to do and can just zip through the commercials. Anyway, yesterday, when the Solipsist went to Yahoo! to check his mail, he saw a picture of the actor Kal Penn, who plays one of House's assistants. Penn, it seems, has been hired by the Obama administration as a liaison to the South Asian community. Well, good for him. But as YNSHC read the article, he was helpless to stop himself from decoding the information as it scrolled along under his eyes, telling him that Penn's character had, on the previous evening's episode (stop now if you don't want to find out what happened) committed suicide.

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Now, THAT's disappointing. Not that the character dies--the Solipsist has nothing invested in the character one way or another. But surprising moments are so few and far between in mainstream fiction, that missing an opportunity to experience one is upsetting. Sure, you're probably thinking it's Solipsist's karmic comeuppance for attempting to cheat the networks out of their advertising revenue (you can be so petty like that!). Maybe you're right. But would it have killed Yahoo! to slap a spoiler alert across their front page?!?

First among Ladies

How do you think Michelle Obama feels? At this time last year, she was simply the wife of the man who (by that time) had not even clinched the Democratic nomination for the presidency. Now, she's the first lady. She seems to be handling the day to day stuff with aplomb. What's striking, though, is how she's become a de facto style icon. One can hardly log onto Yahoo! without getting an update on Mrs. O's wardrobe. Today the talk was on her hits and misses from her recent European trip. What did she wear?!? Was it chic? Tacky? Too revealing? Not revealing enough?

Has the press and the blogosphere stopped obsessing about the buffness of her arms yet?

The Solipsist is too young to have experienced it firsthand, but he wonders, Was this how people talked about Jackie Kennedy? And if so, what does this say about how far we've come? Let's face it, Jackie was a beautiful woman, and certainly intelligent and charming in her own right. But she was also, essentially, something of a prop. If she hadn't been married to John F. Kennedy, was she going to be some kind of high-powered career woman? Probably not.

Michelle Obama, on the other hand, is an accomplished lawyer in her own right. As, of course, was another much ballyhooed recent first lady. And it is this that makes one wonder how she is feeling. Is she happy to be seen as a fashion plate? Does she feel that she is being condescended to? Or is she just trying to maintain the distance of her image from that of the more controversial Hillary?

In splitting the difference between Mrs. K. and Mrs. C., will Mrs. O. create a new model for first ladies to come?

One-Hundred Days of Solipsist

Well, as we look back today over the last 100 posts, it's time to take stock.  Wow, what a long, strange trip it's been.  You remember?  It seems like just three months ago, give or take, that this blog was launched.  Who could have imagined then where we would all be just 100 short days later.

It's all you, loyal Sloppists.  Without you, this blog would be nothing more than the nonsensical ravings of an egotistical lout.  But with you!  With you, it's the nonsensical ravings of an egotistical lout being heard!  Dare we say, worshipped?  We do!  We do dare!  Worshipped!

(WOS is telling Solipsist to shut up.  Hmmph!  Don't worry, she'll get hers!  Ouch!  Honey, stop that!  Heeeellllp.)

Anyway.  And they said it wouldn't last!

Why, it seems like only yesterday that the Solipsist was blathering on about his love for baseball.

Oh, wait.  That was only yesterday.

But still!  Look at the effect!  Just one day later and the New York Mets are in first place in the NL East!  Coincidence?  Not bloody likely!

So who's to say where this blog goes now?  Well, the Solipsist for one. But he is a magnanimous leader.  He will take suggestions from his loyal flock.  If you have ideas about where this blog should go, what topics should be solipsized, please place them in the comment section.  Your ideas might even be considered.

For now, though, the Solipsist is off to his 100th anniversary party at the Four Seasons.  We've been told that President and Mrs. Obama have arrived, and it would be rude to keep them waiting.

'Til tomorrow!

The Joys of Summer

Ah, the eyes are watering, the nose is congested, and the brain is woozy from antihistamines.  It can all mean only one thing:

Baseball season!

Yes, little darling, it HAS been a long, cold, and lonely winter, but no matter.  The boys of summer are about to take up arms once again.  Tonight, the Braves and Phillies (yawn) launch the season, and tomorrow, at 1:10 eastern time, Johan Santana takes the mound for the Mets, and the real excitement begins.

It never ceases to bewilder longtime friends of the Solipsist.  They have trouble understanding why a witty, sophisticated, urbane and erudite (to say nothing of blindingly handsome) fellow such as he deigns to waste so much mental energy on sports in general and baseball in particular (and the Mets in obsessiveness).  It's a fair question.

Sports first became an interest in the mid-1980s when the Mets featured the likes of Dwight Gooden (before he was "Doc"--and before he was docked by drug use), Gary Carter, Keith Hernandez, Darryl Strawberry, and, of course, everyone's favorite, wearing number one and leading off, Mookie Wilson.  (Yes, yes, Lenny Dykstra, too, but Mookie was the soul!)

In fact, it was in 1985 that the real love affair started.  The Solipsist was experiencing a dreary summer of personal trauma and minor disappointment, and the Mets gave him something to look forward to every day.  Several times a week, after work at a local book and comic emporium, the Solipsist and one or two co-workers would hop on the Number 7 train (since re-christened the "International Express") for the 15 minute trip to Shea Stadium.  In those days, you could get a decent upper-deck seat for $6.00, and a ballpark dinner (two hot dogs, a pretzel, a Coke) for about the same price.

That was a great season.  No, the Mets didn't triumph in the end.  They fell just short of the NL East pennant, edged out by the surprising St. Louis Cardinals (someday the Solipsist will regale you with THAT story).  In its own way, though, that season was even better than 1986--the World Series championship year, forever immortalized in the image of a ground ball skittering through the legs of Bill Buckner.  In '85 the team clawed its way through the summer, never giving up, thrilling the city.  And if you want to know why the Solipsist is a baseball fan, it all comes down to a choice made in April 1985--a choice to hitch one's heart and soul and dreams to a bunch of sweaty guys in polyester costumes.

As a sports fan (as opposed say, to a citizen or a family member), you choose your allegiances.  You follow your team, and they become a part of your life.  An important part.  Because following a sports team allows you to experience all of life's emotions in a smaller and safer place.  There is the joy of winning--ultimately transitory even if you win the World Series--set alongside the more common frustration and despair of losing.  Sports prepare us for the real tragedies we're all going to face.

And if all this sounds a little heavy for someone who claims to be looking forward to the opening pitch, YNSHC apologizes.  But don't worry: He is legitimately happy.  Let's face it: A chance to confront mortality by proxy from the comfort of one's living room is nothing to sniff at (those Solipsistic sniffles are solely attributable to allergies).  And maybe this will be a year where the good guys (the Mets) defy death and live on in the semi-immortality of a championship.  Seriously, who needs organized religion when you have the church of the national pastime?

Play ball!