You Write Like a Girl

Okay, we're probably all old enough that the old playground insult, "You throw like a girl," isn't that big of a deal. I know it doesn't bother me . . . much . . . anymore. You've probably never cared much if someone said you WROTE like a girl (especially if you are one). Regardless, I've just discovered the amazing Gender Guesser. Paste in a sample of your writing and it will attempt to determine whether you are male or female.
Should it concern me that I usually come out as a "Weak Male"? It really doesn't bother me. Really.

George Fredrickson--Writer and Change Agent

You've probably never heard of George Fredrickson, the 73-year-old historian who died last week. That's understandable. He never made quite the headlines of such truly important figures as Paris Hilton or Kanye West. Still, Fredrickson managed a few useful things in his life, notably writing six books. But more important than a handful of books was the impact those books had. George Fredrickson, over a long and productive career, made a difference for the better on racial understanding in the United States. No, he didn't win a Grammy and few people asked for his autograph, but this man took pen in hand and helped people to understand one of the most intractable issues of our lifetimes. That's a life well spent in my book. You can read a remembrance of the man in the New York Times.

Post Hoc Ergo Coffee Hoc

One of my favorite logical fallacies is the one called "post hoc ergo prompter hoc." Translated from the Latin, it means, "after this therefore because of this." The fallacy involves assuming that because something happens after another thing it was caused by it. For a ridiculous example, I might note that the phone rang just now, immediately after I launched FreeCell on my computer. Did FreeCell make my phone ring? If I'm committing that fallacy, then yes it did.
But let's be a bit more reasonable. Today in Kansas City, it's snowing. If my daughter calls me to say she's had a car wreck, I'll probably assume that the weather contributed to the wreck. In reality, though, just because she had the wreck after the snow started doesn't mean that the snow caused the wreck. She might have been hit by someone who ran a stoplight.
So along comes this brilliant person who seems to suggest that the philosophical upheaval we call the Enlightenment came about because of coffee. You introduce coffee into European society in the 17th century. The Enlightenment kicks in during the late 17th and 18th centuries. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the connection.
But what this theorist neglected to see was the great potato connection. Potatoes--which come originally from South America and not from either Idaho or Ireland--arrived in Europe around the same time as coffee, around 1700. And many historians and philosophers date the beginning of the Enlightenment to the same time. Coincidence? I think not!
Perhaps what both coffee- and potato-Enlightenment theorists neglect is the much larger current that these two agricultural products were a part of. When the New World opened up to Europe, an incredible amount of wealth began flowing from the Americas to the Old World. That wealth provided for education, leisure time, and a period of great philosophizing.
Nah, it must have been the coffee.

Valley Girl or Gangsta Girl?

Apparently, the new chic thing is fake memoirs. With megabucks available from publishers, why should anybody allow something as simple as truth get in the way of a contract. According to various sources, including this New York Times article, Margaret B. Jones, a supposed drug-running, half-white/half-Native American girl from South Central LA, the author of a critically acclaimed memoir, Love and Consequences, is in reality Margaret Selzer, an all-white, affluent child of the San Fernando Valley.
This has me wondering who these critics are, loving a book that hasn't a shred of truth to it. You have to wonder about a publisher who could be taken in by such a pack of lies.
What does this teach us as students? I guess there are a couple of lessons to learn. First, if you're going to fake your way to fame and fortune, make sure that you can cover your tracks. Second, when you're considering a source, look long and hard at it. Apparently neither the critics nor the publishers will do the job for you.

The Importance of Style

If you saw The Incredibles, then you might remember the title sequence, an homage to the great graphic designer, Saul Bass. Some enterprising person with a Youtube account decided to speculate on this question: What would the credits sequence for Star Wars have looked like had Saul Bass done the job?
Watch this and then tell me that style doesn't matter.

Built Green? No, Black

The top news on CNN's website at present--at least for the next five minutes until Hilary Clinton jaywalks or Britanny Spears leaves her kids at Saks--is an account of five $2 million-dollar homes burning in Seattle, apparently an act of eco-arson.
The ELF or Earth Liberation Front, it seems, decided that the most environmentally sensible way to deal with the insane land use represented by these houses was to burn them down. I'm curious how much carbon dioxide these fires released into the atmosphere.
I mention this event because I carry a certain amount of sympathy for these whack-jobs who torched these monuments to conspicuous consumption. Nobody on earth needs a $2 million house, just as nobody needs a Hummer. Food from South America isn't really cheaper than food from close by when we factor in all the costs of production and the effect that these foods have on our health. We live in a world with an unsustainable, indefensible way of doing a great many things. However, the way to change the world does not begin with burning down houses.
Of course, the ELF hasn't really thought things through from the outset, have they? What are they liberating earth from? Humans? Isn't there something paradoxical about human action serving to liberate the earth from human domination. Just yesterday, I thought I heard a tree in my yard say, "Gee, I wish some enlightened human would burn down the homes of some of the benighted types who are doing bad stuff to the earth."
Like so many people in our society, this brand of activist has opted for a lazy (and criminal) approach to effecting change. Rather than doing the difficult work of engaging people's minds and risking some questioning of their beliefs, these people just start burning. They're right up there with those who blew up government installations during the '60s or murdered abortion doctors in the '80s.
Such action is no more the mark of educated people than is living in ostentation and excess along Seattle's "Street of Dreams."

[Citation Needed]

This is a two-fer. Not only do you get to read an amusing tale of people going around graphically calling for sources on unfounded claims, but you get to read a reasonable defense of Wikipedia. Who could want more than this article offers?