The Solipsist Picks the Oscars! (Mostly by Copying Nate Silver)

It's Oscar-time again!  Once more, I have seen almost none of the contending films, but I won't let a little thing like that stop me from prognosticating.  After all, I've never read a book, but that doesn't stop me from writing this thing every day.

This year, for help in making my calls, I turn to Nate Silver, the New York Times' guru of statistical prognostications, who has taken his talents for predicting electoral outcomes and turned them to the even more politically charged field of the Hollywood awards circuit.  Silver applies a fairly logical method to picking the Oscars.  Essentially, he looks at various awards that have already been distributed, and uses these results to "weight" the likelihood of films winning an Academy Award.  Since "Argo," for example, has been racking up awards left and right, and since many of the people who voted for "Argo" to win these other awards are also among those who will vote on the Oscars, it makes sense to pick "Argo" as the winner for "Best Picture," which Silver does, and so will I.

Best Director gets tricky.  Generally, the director of the Best Picture is a solid bet to win Best Director.  Of course, Ben Affleck, who directed "Argo," was not even nominated.  I'm not entirely sure why he was snubbed.  Some might say he wasn't snubbed at all.  Simple math means some deserving directors will not receive nominations. When the Academy expanded the field of Best Picture candidates from five to as many as ten, it did not expand the number of nominees for Best Director (or actor or any other categories).  So with nine films competing, at least four directors will go un-nominated.  Whether you consider Affleck's non-nomination a snub depends largely on how likely you consider it that "Argo" would have been nominated in the old days of five nominees.  I consider it very likely, and thus a serious snubbing.  Not sure why.  Ben Affleck seems like a perfectly likable guy and at least as capable as other middling actors-turned-directors who have previously been nominated.  (I'm looking at you Kevin Costner!)  The other big snub, by the way, would be Kathryn Bigelow ("Zero Dark Thirty"), but we can attribute that to her less-than-condemnatory representation of torture, which will be frowned upon by Hollywood liberal types.

So, getting back to the actual nominees: Silver gives a VERY slight edge to Steven Spielberg ("Lincoln"), but I'm going to go ahead and take his close second, Ang Lee ("Life of Pi").  My reasoning?  "Life of Pi" was nominated for a ton of awards, so the Academy will want to give it one of the "biggies."  It won't win Best Picture, and it wasn't nominated for any of the other "Big Six."  (Why the computer-generated tiger didn't get a nod for Supporting Actor escapes me, but there it is.)  Spielberg's already won twice, and "Lincoln" will win in the Best Actor category.

Best Actor is a total lock.  Daniel Day-Lewis is the male Meryl Streep, and if she could win last year for playing Margaret Thatcher in a movie that nobody bothered to see, he's effectively guaranteed his third win for transforming himself into Abraham Lincoln in a movie that was actually a hit.

Jennifer Lawrence is Silver's pick for Best Actress. I'm almost positive this has nothing to do with the fact that she's in a film called "SILVER Linings Playbook."  I'll accept that pick.

This category has a couple of interesting storylines: There is Quvenzhane Wallis ("Beasts of the Southern Wild"), who would be the youngest winner in history, and Emmanuelle Riva ("Amour"), who is very very old.  As DOS pointed out, giving Wallis the award would be ridiculous: A five-year-old does not study a script and create a character; she listens to a grown-up (the director) who tells her to make believe she's doing whatever it is he wants her to do.  She's not acting: She's playing.  As for Riva, I know nothing about her, and I'm sure she's wonderful.  Some think she could contend simply based on her longevity (I guess she's big in France)--that this will be sort of valedictory moment in a successful career.  But the fact that she is old and has never won an Oscar is insufficient reason to give her one now.  To put it another way, if Peter O'Toole's never won an Academy Award, why should she?

Best Supporting Actress is another absolute lock: Anne Hathaway will win.

Best Actor, on the other hand, is the real toss-up.  Even Silver is more or less stymied on this one.  He gives a slight edge to Tommy Lee Jones ("Lincoln") over Philip Seymour Hoffman ("The Master") and Christoph Waltz ("Django Unchained").  "Django," incidentally, is the one nominated film I HAVE seen, and I will attest that Waltz is--to use the technical term--fucking awesome.  He did, however, just win an Oscar three years ago ("Inglorious Basterds"), and I doubt he'll win another one so soon (and for another Tarantino film at that).

(DIGRESSION: Honestly, if I were to give anyone an acting nomination for "Django," it wouldn't have been Waltz, good as he is.  And, no, it wouldn't have been Jamie Foxx or Leonardo DiCaprio, either, good as they both were.  No, the truly remarkable performance in that film belongs to none other than Mr. Samuel L. Jackson, who plays a--I believe the polite-ish term is "House Negro," with a perfect combination of Uncle-Tom sycophancy and pure malevolence.  Tasty! EOD)

As for Philip Seymour Hoffman (who, I was under the impression, was actually more of the lead in "The Master"), I'm sure he, too, was terrific.  Let's face it, though, there are too many Scientologists in the Hollywood elite to expect an award to go to someone who essentially played L. Ron Hubbard--and not in a flattering way.

I think this award will go to Robert De Niro ("Silver Linings Playbook").  Silver gives De Niro only the slightest chance of winning, but I think he's got this one wrong.  In a field where there is no overwhelming consensus, no obvious choice--and in which all the nominees have previously won Oscars--I think this award WILL be a valedictory for a man who has long been a Hollywood icon and who hasn't won an award in thirty years.

So there you have it, folks.  Who will do better, the Solipsist or the Silver Man?  And, if I do better than Silver, do I get the job calling the next presidential election?  Only time will tell.

A Better Snake-Trap?

The South Pacific island of Guam is infested with brown tree snakes.  Gazillions of them.  The snakes have decimated the island's bird population, they bite, and they have even caused power outages by slithering along electrical lines.  Not to fear, though, the US military has come up with an ingenious solution: Dead, acetaminophen-laced neo-natal mice will be dropped from helicopters.  The snakes, which are susceptible to Tylenol poisoning, will eat the mice and helpfully die off.  Horrific?  Kind of, but here's the kicker:

"U.S. government scientists have been perfecting the mice-drop strategy for more than a decade with support from the Department of Defense and the Department of the Interior."

Now, you may think, ten years an inordinately long time to spend perfecting the art of dropping mice. I certainly thought so.  Until, that is, I got my hands on the classified reports of the unit assigned this vital task.  Herewith, a selection:

7 August 2003--Had the first meeting of Special Forces troops assigned to Operation Mouse Droppings. (For the record, we would like to reiterate our objection to this code name and would resubmit for your consideration Operation Fuzzy Hailstorm.) After briefing the troops on the vitality of the mission, we began basic training.

8 August 2003--While we remain optimistic that this mission will have the desired effect of eradicating the brown tree snake infestation on Guam, we are concerned that the original timetable--to begin dropping mice by year's end--may be optimistic.  Of the four team-members assigned to the crucial mouse-selection brigade, only two demonstrated satisfactory aptitude on the initial Mouse Identification Exam (MIE), correctly selecting "dead mice" from an array of objects on a neutral field: Sgt. Wollensky mistakenly pointed out a hamster, while Sgt. Jackson selected a 1983 edition of the World Almanac.  We will continue training.

17 February 2005--All troops are now able to identify neo-natal mice with an average 70% proficiency.  We will begin Phase II training in two weeks.  The hiatus is undesirable but inevitable, as Dr. Shipley and I have been selected to present a keynote speech on the rodent ballistics at a conference in Rotterdam.

31 March 2006--Setback! After more than a year of high-intensity physical training, we have suddenly had to replace Sgt. Masterson! He became distressed when we explained our intention to drop mice on snakes: Explaining that he didn't realize we were talking about "actual snakes," Masterson backed out due to his paralyzing fear of reptiles!  I must confess, I had assumed the recruiters had done a better job of psychological screening.  Fear of snakes!  I guess we should be thankful that none of the recruits have a fear of flying!

3 April 2006--Sgt. Wollensky must be replaced due to his paralyzing fear of flying.

9 May 2007--A good day of mouse-drop drills: The squad all showed satisfactory proficiency in the ability to release neo-natal mice from their hands.  Tomorrow we begin helicopter training.  Once we have ascertained the team's ability to ride in a helicopter, we will begin the most significant portion of the testing, determining whether it is possible to ride in a helicopter AND drop mice at the same time.

16 October 2010--We finally managed to get airborne.  All went well until we gave the order to commence mouse dropping.  Only Sgt. Taylor successfully dropped his "payload."  Jackson and Morrison failed to open their hands, and Peterson dropped a handful of mice INSIDE the helicopter.  Chaos ensued, and we were lucky to escape with our lives.  The adage "Mouse dropping is Hell" has never seemed truer.

8 November 2012--After an extended period of uncertainty, the re-election of President Obama has assured us that sufficient resources will continue to be directed to Operation Furry Hailstorm (once again, thank you for rethinking the name). The last six months of inactivity have no doubt dulled the skills of out mouse-droppers, but we feel confident that we can once again be ready to go by early spring 2013.

Advice to New Teachers: Ignorance Is Bliss

I always tell my tutors that three of the most beautiful words in the English language are "I don't know"--right up there with "three-day weekend" and "bacon double cheeseburger."  So many problems arise out of a misplaced sense of certainty that it's refreshing to hear people admit their own sense of doubts, even if those people are ostensibly experts--perhaps especially if those people are ostensibly experts.  New tutors--and, by extension, new teachers--often lack confidence: They're not used to being in a position of authority, and it's easy to become nervous when posed a question to which they do not immediately know the answer.  Just about the worst thing a tutor can do in this situation is try to fake his way out of the situation.

Doesn't an educator undermine his own authority, though, by admitting ignorance?  Not necessarily. 

Of course, there are certain things a tutor or teacher should know.  I would look askance at a math teacher who didn't couldn't add fractions or an English tutor who didn't know what a thesis statement was.  But for the most part, when a teacher doesn't immediately know an answer, there's a reasonable explanation: Maybe a student has worked with another teacher who uses a method with which you are unfamiliar; maybe you're being asked to apply a formula you haven't had occasion to use in years; maybe you're really hung over it doesn't matter!  The point is, feel free to admit your own ignorance!  Proudly declare that you. Don't. Know.

But. Don't STOP with "I don't know."

After you explain that you don't have the answer to a question, help your students find the answer themselves.  If you've attained a high enough level of education that you can call yourself a teacher, then you are obviously not someone who just throws up her hands when stumped by a challenging question.  You crack open a textbook, search the Web, even--gasp!--ask somebody else!

The most valuable thing teachers can impart to their charges has very little to do with course content--after all, nowadays the answer to any question is just a mouse-click away.  No, the most important thing thing students acquire in school is the habits of mind associated with inquiry,  the knowledge of how to seek knowledge.  Any time you, as a teacher, have the chance to model these habits, look upon it as a golden teachning opportunity.

Money Keeps Talking

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case challenging the current limits on the amount of money an individual can contribute to political campaigns.  If the Court's decision in Citizens United--which effectively eliminated limits on corporate contributions--provides any hint as to how this new case will be decided, we can expect that laws limiting contributions will be severely weakened, if not eliminated outright.

I deplore the influence of money on politics, but given the logic--or "logic"--employed by the Supreme Court in previous cases, I see no hope for any other outcome.  Previous decisions have built upon the premise that money equals speech, so any restrictions on a person's ability to spend his or her own money amount to unconstitutional restrictions on one's freedom of speech.  Money, of course, does not equal speech: The fact that candidates cannot reasonably expect to communicate effectively in our current political atmosphere unless they have access to large amounts of cash suggests that money facilitates speech, but facilitation is not identity.  Money should more properly be considered an amplifier of speech: It's a microphone.  And clearly, it should be illegal for a private citizen to provide the candidate of his choice with an overabundance of microphones.

Wait, I just confused myself.

Should it be illegal for a private citizen to provide his or her favored candidate with an overabundance of microphones?  After all, microphones themselves are not illegal.  If we assume (naively, of course, but let me go with this for a moment) that donors simply want to enrich the body politic by supporting people that they (the donors) feel would best serve the public--that, in other words, they are motivated solely by a sense of public-spiritedness--why accept laws that prevent such expressions of citizenship?

Of course, we are not so naive as to believe that sizable donations are given purely out of a sense of citizenship.  Common citizens worry that one-percenters who contribute small (or not so small) fortunes to political actors expect something in return--access, at the very least, if not outright sycophancy.  And it is out of this fear that reform-minded legislators have imposed contribution limits.

Again, if money (under our current judicial regime) equals speech, then limitations on such speech almost of necessity will be struck down.  But assume for the moment that the justices step away from this false equivalency: Would it then be constitutional to impose contribution limits?

Short answer: Yes.

I can't help but think, though, that we will never solve the problem of undue influence until we approach the question from another angle.  Once the debate becomes about spending limits, the fundamental battle has already been lost.

Current law states that the maximum contribution one can make to a federal candidate in an election cycle is $2,500: I suppose the thinking is that a candidate would not be unduly influenced by a donation of $2,500 (or less).  I don't know about you, but, to me, $2,500 is a sizable chunk of change.  At any rate, what is it about $2,500 that divides respectability from corruption?  Someone who donates $2,499 is a concerned citizen, but someone who gives $2,501 is the guy in the trenchcoat demanding that Higgins take a dive in the 6th?  Arbitrariness is no hallmark of solid legislation.  Once we acknowledge that money is a corrupting influence, it seems disingenuous to haggle over an "acceptable" amount of corruption.

We need to change the discussion.  If people truly want to eliminate the corrupting influence of money on politics, there surely are ways this can be done without running afoul of constitutional rights or establishing arbitrary limits that defy common sense.  Public financing of political campaigns would be a good place to start.  A mandated amount of television airtime devoted to public affairs/political broadcasting--with strict enforcement of a "fairness doctrine"--would also help.

If individuals truly want to donate to political campaigns, they should have every right to do so--but how about just mandating that ALL donations go into one gigantic public pool to be distributed equally among all candidates (obviously, there would need to be a way to establish qualifications for receiving these funds, but that's a logistical hurdle to work out later)?  At the very least, all candidates for public office should be required to disclose the names of each and every individual contributor--and corporate donors--whether for-profit or non-profit--should similarly be required to reveal the names of all their funders, as well.

Of course, all these proposals presuppose that anyone in a position of authority truly wants to eliminate--or at least reduce--the influence of money on politics.

So, y'know, never mind.

Whatever Happened to Dodgeball?

"Writing Across the Curriculum" (WATC) has been an intermittently popular practice in the field of higher (and, I suppose, not-quite-so-high) education.  As you might expect, WATC calls on teachers in all manner of subjects--not just English--to incorporate writing assignments.  Some subjects lend themselves more readily to writing assignments than others.  History, of course.  Most of the other liberal arts--psychology, sociology, underwater basket weaving--also allow teachers to generate writing assignments without too much difficulty.  Science classes require lab reports.  When you get to subjects like math, though, things can get complicated.  Not that students can't write about math--the very existence of math textbooks (unreadable though most are) suggests that mathematics can be a fruitful subject for writers to explore.  But math teachers might protest--rightly, I think--that they have enough work to do just getting students to understand that a negative times a negative equals a positive (which I'm still not buying, by the way); expecting them also to help their students express themselves clearly in writing might be a bit much.

I thought of this today when I read an article in the Times discussing efforts to teach literacy and math skills in, of all places, gym.  Gym teachers encourage students to count by fours as they work their way through a series of calisthenics!  They incorporate vocabulary words into their inspirational exhortations!  ("Yes, Johnny, that disk in your back is now herniated! Can you spell 'herniated'?")  "Mother May I" provides ample teachable moments on the subject of Zeno's Paradox!

As a writing teacher, I would like to say to all those staunch advocates of WATC, "Thanks, but no thanks."  I'm all for having students write as much as possible, but I don't expect non-English teachers to teach writing, any more than I would want to be held responsible for teaching math or--God help us all--gym!  Believe me, if you need your kid to learn how to do a proper push-up, you do NOT want him to learn it from me. 

Advice for the Next Pope from Your Friendly Neighborhood Jew

As cardinals begin to gather in Rome for the imminent Papal election, much is being written about what the next Pope will need to do to address the challenges faced by the Catholic church.  While I understand that the papacy is not something one openly campaigns for, I would like to offer a bit of unsolicited advice--something that would prove a highly popular plank in any campaign platform and that would immediately elevate a candidate to front-runner status in many people's eyes: Priests who sexually abuse children (or, frankly, anyone) will be defrocked, excommunicated, and turned over to the police.

What astonishes me--and, I suspect, many others--is not so much the apparent per capita prevalence of sex offenders among the clergy, but the sheer unwillingness of church authorities to deal with the problem.  I will not go so far as to say that the cover-up is worse than the crime; in this case, the crime is pretty much as bad as it gets.  But the cover up--the apparent indifference--is kind of inexplicable.

Because here's the thing: My understanding of Catholic doctrine, admittedly imperfect, states that the Pope is infallible: He literally answers to no one--no earthly authority, at any rate.  In that regard, he is more powerful than the most powerful corporate CEO, more powerful than any head of state (who can always be removed either by the electorate or by military overthrow).  His word is law.  For a Pope, therefore, to countenance in any way the depredations of his priests--his employees--is inexplicable.

The Catholic church, as mentioned above, faces many challenges: declining membership, archaic attitudes about women and homosexuals, competition from other faiths.  But a clear, uncompromising, zero-tolerance statement from the highest of the holiest would be a big step in the right direction--and might even help with some of the other challenges as well.

Cardboard Gold

Today's New York Times features an essay by Ann Beattie, in which she discusses her lifelong infatuation with boxes.  She speaks of an irresistble desire, whenever she finds a halfway decent box discarded on the sidewalk, to salvage the container for future use--whether for moving supplies or storage (or both).  I can relate.

Since I permamnently (knock wood) moved out of my parents' home, I have changed residences some 12 times--or, on average, every two years.  Indeed, at four and a half years, my stay in my current abode marks the longest period of relative immobility since that first relocation some 23 years ago.  The first several moves were between locations within New York City.  Invariably, one of the most stressful aspects of the move was gathering a sufficient number of boxes in which to pack things.

You must understand that, in New York, one had to be resourceful in locating suitably sturdy (and relatively uninfested) containers.  One factor working in my favor was the city's strict recycling laws, which made of box disposal a rather onerous undertaking: One could not simply dump boxes in the trash or on the sidewalk; one had to break the boxes down, flatten them, and tie them up in tidy bundles.  Many a store owner would gladly pass along boxes to anyone who requested them simply to avoid such chores.

Liquor stores were usually a good source.  Their boxes, usually built to hold about a dozen bottles of wine, were of an ideal size for packing books: Big enough to fit a decent number of volumes (particularly paperbacks), but not so big that a full box was unliftable.  The only catch was that these boxes included cardboard dividers (to hold the bottles), which were essentially useless and necessitated a moderate amount of recycling activity on the part of the box recipient.  A small price to pay for such vital supplies.

Of course, once one moved, then one had to deal with the recycling issue on the arrival end: Remember, for a budget-conscious New Yorker, as I was throughout my young adulthood (oh, who am I kidding--as I still am today despite no longer living in New York), apartments were small, space was at a premium, and storage space was virtually non-existent.  As much as I would have liked to hold on to my hard-won box-stash for the inevitable next move, I had to discard boxes as quickly as they were unpacked--breaking them down, flattening them, tying them up with sturdy twine. . . . Not AS unpleasant a task as finding the boxes in the first place, but certainly less enjoyable than naked jello wrestling. . . or a colonoscopy, for that matter.

I had what I thought was a great idea for a website: BoxExchange.com.  On this site, people could post the date they were moving, the area to which they were relocating, and the approximate number of boxes they would be using.  Then, other people who were moving could contact the poster if they were in the market for lightly used boxes, thus saving people both the stress of acquiring and the aggravation of breaking down and recycling boxes.  This website never took off, mainly because I couldn't convince FOS--the only person I know with programming skills--that it was a worthwhile endeavour.  His loss.  We could have been the Larry Page and Sergey Brin of the box-acquisition search-engine industry.

I imagine the website would have been popular only in New York and perhaps a few other heavily urban areas.  Since moving to California, I have taken the easy way out, heading down to the ubiquitous public storage spaces, where one may simply purchase boxes of all different sizes, shapes, and personalities.  But despite the fact that finding them is relatively simple now, I maintain my lifelong appreciation of the sturdy, well-proportioned box.