After more than a year of unemployment, I have a job again. A real copyediting job with a paycheck and everything. If you want to know how I’m feeling, look up ecstatic in a thesaurus: euphoric, elated, rhapsodic, joyful, thrilled…
We’re still working out a few final questions, and I haven’t officially signed the contract yet, so I’ll refrain from posting full details just now. In the next week or two, probably.
In the meantime, my new editing responsibilities already have me very busy, so I don’t have time for my usual Monday transcendence post. Blog posts in general may be shorter and/or sparser than normal for a while as I get up to speed.
In nearly fifty years, in over seventeen thousand strips, there’s only one Peanuts strip where we actually get to see the Little Red-Haired Girl – and then only in silhouette. The date is May 25, 1998, less than two years before the end.
A couple years ago I was drinking rather heavily, mainly as a reaction to my good friend Señor Depresión. Not to the point of alcoholism, but certainly more than was healthy. To halt this worrying trend, and for a few other reasons, I gave up drinking entirely for about nine months. Then I tried re-introducing a small, controlled amount: one drink per week.
That worked very well. And yesterday, after talking to my psychiatrist, I’ve decided to increase my weekly allotment to two.
Not coincidentally, yesterday evening Betsy and I finally tried the Brennivín.
Brennivín is the national liquor of Iceland, and we brought home vast quantities from our trip last October. (If you can’t tell from the photo, each bottle is a few inches tall; total quantity: 100 mL, or 3.3 oz.) But we had never gotten around to actually drinking the stuff, in part because I was still operating under my personal Prohibition at the time.
Also, I really, really didn’t think I would like it. I hate the taste of almost all hard liquor (especially vodka), and Brennivín has a reputation for being especially nasty (and supposedly tastes like vodka). Witness a typical reaction to trying it for the first time: those are the kind of faces you make when someone says they’re voting for Donald Trump. Not to mention, I can tell you from personal experience that cuisine ranks at the very bottom of reasons to visit Iceland.
But I am all about trying new things, especially foreign things, and we’ve had this stuff sitting around for eight months now, and I wanted to celebrate. So I did a whole shot – almost the entire bottle – and Betsy had a sip.
Betsy’s reaction was similar to the woman’s in the video – and Betsy enjoys liquor more than I do. So imagine my surprise when I did the shot and liked it.
I mean, it wasn’t fabulous or anything, but better than any vodka or whiskey I’ve ever had. A curious taste, not actively unpleasant. A nice burn going down.
So: try new things! There’s a small chance you will like them. And if you don’t, you can always record your disgust and post it on YouTube for the amusement of others.
As all readers know, I am a soft-hearted tree-hugging hippie liberal (except that I’m not a hippie and I rarely hug trees). So it may not surprise you that our house runs a catch-and-release program for most invaders.
Spiders, in particular, are captured and ushered outside; the same clemency is generally extended to centipedes, beetles, and (when possible) even flies. Mosquitoes, bees, and wasps forfeit their lives on account of their biological weapons. You see the boundaries of my beneficence.
This week, though, Nature raised the ante. We had a mouse.
I went to the kitchen around midnight on Sunday to see what was making the noise. I found it there on the stove, frozen. For a minute we watched each other. Finally I approached, and it dashed behind the microwave.
No sightings Monday, but then yesterday it dashed across the kitchen floor and ended up in the basement. I knew what I had to do.
I already had a no-kill mousetrap from an earlier, unsuccessful attempt to capture a visitor (it ended up finding a way to die on its own). This time, however, I had better luck. I baited it with peanut butter and went down every couple hours to check. By the afternoon, I had a mouse.
He was a cute little guy, tiny, smaller than I had thought when I saw him in the kitchen. Wide black eyes, gray fur, twitchy whiskery nose. I put on gloves to pick up the trap, in case he tried to bite me through the air holes (which he didn’t). He acted calmer than I expected, though I claim no particular expertise on the interpretation of rodent body language.
I took him out back behind the fence and opened one of the little trap-gates.
He didn’t notice right away – I had to tap and tilt to get his attention. When he did come to the gateway to freedom, he didn’t dash off instantly like I expected. He slowly, cautiously sniffed his new environment, half in the cage, half out. For all I know, he had never been outdoors before.
Finally he took his first careful steps out of the trap – and made a beeline for the nearest cluster of weeds, and disappeared.
Who knows, maybe an owl ate him last night.
Some people hate mice (and spiders, too) and I don’t blame them for that. But personally, I don’t get that much interaction with Nature. So when Nature comes visiting me, I find it awfully convenient.
This past weekend, Betsy’s grandmother celebrated her 90th birthday. Betsy and I gave her an mp3 player we had loaded with the #1 hit song for every year from 1925 – her birth year – to 2014. (For the most part, I used Tsort to tell me which song was #1.)
Reading the list is like stepping in a time machine, only without all those pesky paradoxes. You can, of course, hear any of these songs by searching for them on YouTube.
1925 – Ben Bernie – Sweet Georgia Brown
1926 – Gene Austin – Bye Bye Blackbird
1927 – Hoagy Carmichael – Stardust
1928 – Jimmie Rodgers – T For Texas (Blue Yodel No 1)
1929 – Eddie Cantor – Makin’ Whoopee
1930 – Ben Selvin – Happy Days Are Here Again
1931 – Cab Calloway & His Cotton Club Orchestra – Minnie the Moocher
1932 – Fred Astaire & Leo Reisman – Night and Day
1933 – Ethel Waters – Stormy Weather (Keeps Rainin’ All the Time)
1934 – Benny Goodman – Moonglow
1935 – Fred Astaire – Cheek to Cheek
1936 – Bing Crosby – Pennies From Heaven
1937 – Benny Goodman – Sing, Sing, Sing (With A Swing)
1938 – Artie Shaw – Begin the Beguine
1939 – Judy Garland – Somewhere Over the Rainbow
1940 – Glenn Miller – In the Mood
1941 – Glenn Miller – Chattanooga Choo Choo
1942 – Bing Crosby – White Christmas
1943 – The Mills Brothers – Paper Doll
1944 – Bing Crosby – Swinging on a Star
1945 – Les Brown & Doris Day – Sentimental Journey
1946 – Perry Como – Prisoner of Love
1947 – Francis Craig – Near You
1948 – Dinah Shore – Buttons & Bows
1949 – Vaughn Monroe – Riders in the Sky
1950 – Nat King Cole – Mona Lisa
1951 – Nat King Cole – Too Young
1952 – Jo Stafford – You Belong to Me
1953 – Les Paul & Mary Ford – Vaya Con Dios (May God Be With You)
1954 – The Chordettes – Mr. Sandman
1955 – Bill Haley & His Comets – Rock Around the Clock
1956 – Doris Day – Que sera sera (Whatever will be will be)
1957 – Elvis Presley – Jailhouse Rock
1958 – The Kingston Trio – Tom Dooley
1959 – Bobby Darin – Mack the Knife
1960 – Elvis Presley – Are You Lonesome Tonight
1961 – Chubby Checker – Let’s Twist Again
1962 – Pat Boone – Speedy Gonzales
1963 – Elvis Presley – (You’re The) Devil in Disguise
1964 – Roy Orbison – Oh, Pretty Woman
1965 – The Rolling Stones – (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction
1966 – Frank Sinatra – Strangers in the Night
1967 – Procol Harum – A Whiter Shade of Pale
1968 – The Beatles – Hey Jude
1969 – The Beatles – Get Back
1970 – The Beatles – Let It Be
1971 – George Harrison – My Sweet Lord
1972 – Don McLean – American Pie
1973 – The Rolling Stones – Angie
1974 – Carl Douglas – Kung Fu Fighting
1975 – Billy Swan – I Can Help
1976 – ABBA – Dancing Queen
1977 – Eagles – Hotel California
1978 – Bee Gees – Stayin’ Alive
1979 – Blondie – Heart of Glass
1980 – Pink Floyd – Another Brick in the Wall (part 2)
1981 – Kim Carnes – Bette Davis Eyes
1982 – Survivor – Eye of the Tiger
1983 – Irene Cara – Flashdance (What a Feeling)
1984 – George Michael – Careless Whisper
1985 – USA for Africa – We Are the World
1986 – Berlin – Take My Breath Away
1987 – Whitney Houston – I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
1988 – Phil Collins – A Groovy Kind of Love
1989 – Madonna – Like a Prayer
1990 – Sinead O’Connor – Nothing Compares 2 U
1991 – Bryan Adams – (Everything I Do) I Do it For You
1992 – Whitney Houston – I Will Always Love You
1993 – UB40 – Can’t Help Falling in Love
1994 – Ace of Base – The Sign
1995 – Coolio – Gangsta’s Paradise
1996 – Los Del Rio – Macarena
1997 – Elton John – Candle in the Wind
1998 – Celine Dion – My Heart Will Go On
1999 – Britney Spears – Baby One More Time
2000 – Madonna – Music
2001 – Kylie Minogue – Can’t Get You Out of My Head
2002 – Eminem – Lose Yourself
2003 – OutKast – Hey Ya!
2004 – Usher – Yeah!
2005 – Madonna – Hung Up
2006 – Shakira & Wyclef Jean – Hips Don’t Lie
2007 – Rihanna & Jay-Z – Umbrella
2008 – Leona Lewis – Bleeding Love
2009 – Lady Gaga – Poker Face
2010 – Eminem & Rihanna – Love The Way You Lie
2011 – Rihanna & Calvin Harris – We Found Love
2012 – Gotye & Kimbra – Somebody That I Used to Know
2013 – Robin Thicke, T.I. & Pharrell – Blurred Lines
2014 – Pharrell – Happy
Bring back any memories? I love “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” “Let It Be,” “Kung Fu Fighting,” “Lose Yourself,” and “Poker Face.” Draw your own conclusions.
Each week, we’ll look at another example of what I call a “moment of transcendence” – a scene from a show, a passage from a book, or anything else, that I find soul-piercingly resonant: joyful, sad, awe-inspiring, terrifying, or whatever. These moments are highly subjective, so you may not feel the same way I do, but nevertheless I’ll try to convey why I find the fragment so powerful. I hope we can enjoy it together.
Star Trek: The Next Generation was my favorite show in the world when I was a kid. These days, honestly, it’s not even in my top five. A host of awful and mediocre episodes (especially in the early and late seasons), a near-total lack of continuity, an oddly sterile view of the future, an over-reliance on technobabble: these flaws, which hid in my child self’s blind spot, are painfully apparent to me as an adult.
Yet TNG will always hold a hallowed place in my heart, and not just because I loved it as a child. Because when TNG is bad, it can be really, really bad; but when it’s good, it can be really, really good. It deserves its reputation as one of the greatest sci fi shows ever made.
That reputation rests, in large part, on episodes like “The Offspring” (3.16).
Lieutenant Commander Data, an android, builds another android – similar to himself, more advanced, less experienced – a daughter named Lal. Most of the episode is about Data learning to be a father, and Lal learning to be human (ish). The whole story is beautiful, and I had to resist the strong temptation to re-watch it all the way through as I was writing this post.
But the fame of “The Offspring” as an emotional wrecking ball comes from its final scenes, when Lal unexpectedly experiences her first emotion, and her positronic brain spirals into a cascading system failure. Data works beside Admiral Haftel (a one-off character) in the lab, trying to save her.
Finally, Haftel emerges and tells Data’s friends the result of their efforts. Throughout the episode, Haftel has been a pompous, seemingly heartless antagonist, trying to wrest Lal from Data’s care so that Starfleet can study her. It isn’t until his final lines that you realize he has a heart after all.
I wasn’t able to find a good video clip of his lines, so audio will have to suffice.
Transcript:
She won’t survive much longer. There was nothing anyone could have done. We’d…repolarize one pathway, and another would collapse. And then another. His hands…were moving faster than I could see, trying to stay ahead of each breakdown. He refused to give up. He was remarkable. It just…wasn’t meant to be.
Out of context, the lines may seem melodramatic. I’m not sure; I’ve never heard them out of context. As for me, I’m not going to lie, I cried just now as I watched the scene to record the audio.
It’s the part about the hands that gets me.
Data, of course, can’t feel emotion. Many people take that to mean that Data can’t love; in fact, the episode itself says precisely that. I disagree. Love has an emotional component, of course. But love is not, itself, primarily an emotion. It is a state of being, a connection, a way of relating. It is even, at times, a decision. It is the cord that binds parent to child, husband to wife, sister to brother, heedless of joy or anger or boredom or grief. It is deeper than feeling and infinitely stronger.
This is the love that Data has for his daughter, which she feels and he cannot. Like all profound forces, it lies hidden most of the time, behind the android’s polite mannerisms and bland exterior. It isn’t until something happens – something like the death of his daughter – that the mask falls away, and we glimpse the full magnitude of Data’s superhuman skill and power. His love manifests in ways that no human could hope to match. His hands move faster than the eye can see.
In typical TNG fashion, Lal is barely mentioned again after this episode. The fans, however, remember.
A little over a week ago, Sir Tim Hunt, a 72-year-old Nobel Prize-winning biochemist, made the following remark at a public talk in Korea:
Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab. You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them, they cry.
So, Mr. Hunt made some comments that were sexist, insensitive, and potentially hurtful. (He has since apologized.)
What he did not do was sacrifice a kitten to Beelzebub whilst reciting Mein Kampf, which is what you might think, based on the general reaction:
According to Hunt and his wife, University College London (UCL) told Hunt less than twenty-four hours later that he must resign or be fired from his position as Honorary Professor. He resigned. (Admittedly, UCL’s official statement tells a different story, claiming they received his resignation before they were able to contact him for discussion.)
Hunt also resigned from the European Research Council (ERC), also – evidently – under pressure.
He has been widely pilloried in the news. CNN began their story with the words: “It’s safe to say few tears have been shed by women in science over the resignation of Nobel-winning scientist Sir Tim Hunt after his now infamous comments regarding his experience of ‘girls’ in laboratories.”
Hunt’s comments, as well as the man himself, have been the target of the #distractinglysexy Twitter campaign, in which (mostly) female scientists post mocking and sarcastic comments and pictures to demonstrate that they are not distracting to their male colleagues. (To be fair, the comments are – for the most part – lighthearted rather than malicious.)
At the moment, it appears that Hunt’s career has been effectively ruined.
Look, I get it. Sexism in math and science is a big issue, and comments like his are a potential setback to the progress toward equality that has been earned only with great effort and at great cost. He shouldn’t have said it. Nobody – least of all Hunt himself – is arguing that point.
But there is such a thing as proportional response. You correct the error publicly, you make sure it won’t happen again, and you move on. You don’t tarnish a lifetime of accomplishment because of a brief, well-meaning but ill-conceived joke.
Physicist Athene Donald, who knew Hunt personally – and who has devoted enormous energy to promoting gender equality in science – wrote a wonderfully sane and insightful response. She says, in part:
I was naturally appalled by his remarks, but I think it is worth asking what damage they have caused and whether the response actually helps the situation…My impression is firmly of a man who genuinely supports people, whatever their gender, background or specific interests.
Now, perhaps we can get on to the issues that really matter. Like Donald Trump’s campaign.
Brian D. Buckley 