The prescience and quick wit of Norm Macdonald


The prescience and quick wit of Norm Macdonald
May 16, 2020, FrankPoliat©2020

One of the most celebrated incidents in the history of TV has to do with Norm MacDonald and film criticism, on “Conan” in 1997. His comment might serve as the most succinct doctoral thesis in history on comedic content and timing.

Conan + Norm Macdonald + Courtey Thorne-Smith, FILM CLIP, 1997
MOVIE CLIP w Carrot Top
https://youtu.be/aqhrPa_7LVA?t=229

“Chairman of the Board” (1997) stars Conan’s other guest, Courtney Thorne-Smith and co-stars Carrot Top. This was her first (second?) movie effort that Courtney starred in after leaving “Melrose.”

I’m a big fan of MacDonald and Conan. I have NEVER watched “Melrose Place” or, until watching this clip, never seen/watched/heard of Thorne-Smith. The clip has become a viral immortal. At this point, in the 1997 video-clip, she is responding to Conan’s meat and potatoes questions to her about why she had quit “Melrose Place” (1992-1999) in 1997 and also gives her a chance to plug her latest movie, “Chairman of the Board.” Meanwhile, Norm’s little mental cogs and wheels go to work. 

Norm’s zinger is immortal. It’s plain, it’s obvious and it stops the show (figuratively).
But not only that, the movie being discussed may well be THE low point of Courtney’s possibly bumpy (I would not know) but financially rewarding career. 

Herewith, the clip in question and proof that Norm’s quip/prediction was dead-on, you can see movie’s ratings and production cost below. Maybe it has garnered a few more bucks since this rating, but that’s probably mostly because of Norm’s feedback stirred interest. “COTB,” sank to the bottom of Hollywood bombs stockpile. Apparently, only Ed Wood and Russ Meyer could have made anything lower. I question whether Norm had even watched this movie, his comment is solely based on his opinion of Carrot Top’s brand of comedy.

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It’s Lyin’ Time Again


Well it’s lyin’ time again, you’re gonna peeve me
I can see that scheming twinkle in your eyes
I can tell because I see your lips are moving
That it won’t be long before it’s lyin’ time

Now they say narcissism is a disease
(disease)
And it’s apparent that it dominates your life
(your life)
Well you’re tearing down your country, won’t you stop please?
And go back to pestering your wife?

Oh it’s trying crime again, you’re gonna grieve me
I can see the dollar signs behind your eyes
I can tell by your hateful policies and lies
That it won’t be long before you turn again to crime

Now you say that you are smarter than your yes-men
That you’re gonna fire another one today
But you’ve got a golf date down in Mar A Lago
Lyin’ time for us is here to stay

Frank Poliat, July 11 2018

Anti-Facebook


Instead of posting one item of interest at a time in Facebook and other social media, I will post and link items here. Each entry is dated with the most recent posts will be toward the top of each category. I’m tired of making Media giants richer, this should save time.

 Fascinating stuff

Home Economics

 Progressive Action & News

Screen Shot 2018-02-23 at 3.46.35 PM

Politics, History

Trivia

 

“Have a blessed (blech) day…”


I’ve just become really conscious of the fact that in only the last three years, business contacts that I call (which is what I do at work) at least 20% hang up with “have a blessed day.” Realizing this sends a Big Chill up me. I’ve been around a looong time, and this is creepy as hell. And no it is not regional.bullshit

Heathcote Williams


Shareable URL FOR THIS PAGE http://bit.ly/heathcotewilliams

I only learned about Heathcote Williams by seeing his obit today in The Guardian. What a remarkable man and mensch, polemicist, artist, author, and poet. I can’t believe that I did not know about him.

JULY 2 2017
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathcote_Williams (complete text at this link)

“Heathcote Williams (15 November 1941 – 1 July 2017) was an English poet, actor, political activist and dramatist.He wrote a number of book-length polemical poems including Autogeddon, Falling for a Dolphin and Whale Nation, which in 1988 became, according to Philip Hoare “the most powerful argument for the newly instigated worldwide ban on whaling.”.Williams invented his idiosyncratic ‘documentary/investigative poetry’ style which he continues to put to good purpose bringing a diverse range of environmental and political matters to public attention. In June 2015, he published a book-length investigative poem about the ‘Muslim Gandhi’, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, ‘Badshah Khan’.

YouTube
– https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=heathcote+williams
– Heathcote Williams, by and about https://www.youtube.com/user/Babylonroyal
– Babylonroyal 144 videos > https://www.youtube.com/user/Babylonroyal
Exploring polemics through poetry and montage. Primarily inspired by Royal Babylon: The Case Against The Monarchy by Heathcote Williams

The Guardian, obit
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jul/02/heathcote-williams-radical-poet-playwright-actor-dies-aged-75
Heathcote Williams, radical poet, playwright and actor, dies aged 75

His poems blasted the arms trade, consumerism and the tabloids, and he was also an accomplished painter and sculptor

Sunday 2 July 2017 08.54 EDT Last modified on Sunday 2 July 2017 17.00 EDT

Heathcote Williams, the radical poet, playwright, actor and polymathic English genius, has died at the age of 75. He had been ill for some time and died on Saturday in Oxford.

He was the author of many polemical poems, written over four decades in a unique documentary style. They included works about the devastation being wrought on the natural environment – Sacred Elephant, Whale Nation and Falling For a Dolphin – and Autogeddon, a grim and majestic attack on the car.

Williams also wrote several successful stage plays including AC/DC, which premiered at the Royal Court in 1969, and The Local Stigmatic, commissioned by Harold Pinter and revived in 2014 at the Old Red Lion Theatre in London on its 50th anniversary. His most recent play, Killing Kit, was about the life and death of Christopher Marlowe.

Scruffy on screen and off, Williams appeared in several films, often in cameo roles. He was a notable Prospero in Derek Jarman’s 1979 production of The Tempest. Other credits were Sally Potter’s arthouse Orlando, based on Virginia Woolf’s novel, and Hollywood’s Basic Instinct 2.

Williams was a very talented figure. He was an accomplished painter – his vivid works hung at the Oxford home he shared with his partner, Diana Senior – and sculptor. He was an impressive conjuror and a member of the Magic Circle. One of his TV plays, What the Dickens!, featured Dickens performing magic shows for children.

His literary output was prolific. It included a book on Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park, published when he was 23, and in later life he wrote several poems a month, driven by news and current affairs. As mainstream publishers dried up, these appeared online as YouTube video montages, often narrated by the actors Alan Cox and Roy Hutchins.

At heart, Williams was a revolutionary. The historian Peter Whitfield placed his work in a “great tradition of visionary dissent” stretching from William Blake and John Ruskin to DH Lawrence and David Jones. His poems – blasting the arms trade, consumerism and the tabloids – were “wonderfully innocent” and at the same time “wonderfully streetwise”.

There were comparisons with Percy Bysshe Shelley, the subject of one of Williams’s later long poems, Shelley in Oxford, published in 2012. Both were rebels who wrote with passionate social anger. Like Shelley, Eton-educated Williams didn’t finish his Oxford degree.

In his 60s and 70s, Williams found it difficult to walk any great distance. This confinement did nothing to diminish his creative energies nor his anger at the direction in which society was going in the hucksterish era of Brexit, Boris Johnson and Donald Trump.

Williams retained his principled fury to the end. In 2016 he published Boris Johnson: The Blond Beast of Brexit – A Study in Depravity, an excoriating attack reprising the foreign secretary’s lies, evasion and adultery, sold as a pamphlet from the London Review of Books bookshop. Another work, Royal Babylon, lambasted the Queen.

His last volume of poetry about Trump, American Porn, was published in January. Williams wrote that Trump’s real name – Drumpf – “suggests dumbness, even the passing of wind/ As well as the merciful transience of fame.”

 

James Comey, oh the humanity

The irony is staggering beyond all comprehension. James Comey violated the most basic of tenets of the FBI twice. And that rule reminds one of the first rule of Fightclub: you do not discuss ongoing investigations publically.


CoverStory-Blitt-Comey-872x1200-1494533319

[June 2017] The irony is staggering beyond all comprehension. James Comey violated the most basic of tenets of the FBI twice. And that rule reminds one of the first rule of Fightclub: you do not discuss ongoing investigations publically. And Comey himself emphasized that himself recently (listen to the podcast). That alone should open the door to an investigation and, most likely, the censure and firing of Comey. By defying this rule, Comey may very likely have essentially put Trump in office. But given the timing, as mentioned in the aforementioned podcast, it’s obvious that Trump summarily fired him for his own reasons and did so in his inimitable egregious way. I’m losing count of just how many ironies there are in this tragicomedy: he should be fired, but not like that, he’s a threat to Trump for many reasons, but he helped put him in office but… I need a drink.
PS. check out this article.

 

What is the future of email as far as business communication is concerned?


Answer by Phil Wolff:

Let’s start from what computing and communications in general will be like in 20 or 30 years. I assume they’ll be:

  • more pervasive (seamless connectivity, internet of things, etc.),
  • more wearable or built-in (contacts, cochlear implants, dermal displays, etc.),
  • and we’ll have new services to help us bring that universe from overwhelm to whelm.

One more assumption: Natural Language Processing will completely blur the lines between spoken and written language, and even which language (Hindi,  Pirate, American Sign Language) you use. So you’ll be able to choose how you want to communicate.

So, in that hypothetical future, email is part and parcel of the whole mix of conversational media. Conversational media have several basic events:

  • discovery,
  • conversation initiation,
  • consumption (reading, listening, watching, feeling, smelling, haptic senses), and
  • expression (speaking, drawing, singing, writing, gesturing, etc.).

Discovery. How do you find who to talk to? In the 2010s, work-persona directories (LinkedIn (website)) and enterprise discovery services help find the person or group of people to contact for a given purpose. Since we’ll be awash in personal data long before 2040, we’ll have more than “white pages”, “yellow pages”, or “social networks” to find people. People Match systems, serendipity services, topic networks, reputation networks like Connect.me, tribal event networks like Meetup (company), and location services will help you discover the right person to work with or talk to at the right time.

Initiation. In thirty years your software agent/proxy/broker will field offers of new conversation before they reach you. Think spam filter meets alerting service meets professional assistant. Services will compete on how well they interact with you, how accurately their filters reflect your preferences for interruption and notification, and how well they negotiate a mutually agreeable blend of time and media. These “inboxes” will have a wealth of data to use to calculate whether, when, and how to notify you or to start a conversation: social proximity (you’re both friends of your ex-husband), prior interactions with you and others, affiliations (works for x, belong to y) and endorsements (your mentor says you should take this call), verification of identity, commercial offers (will pay 元10 for nine minutes in the next hour or a Starbucks cup of coffee), alternative ways to spend your time (you’re in line for a concert), your interest in the subject, whether you’re on company/personal/family time, etc. In 2013, Facebook decides which updates of thousands from those you trust fit into the fewer than 100 updates the average person reads in a day; in 2040 you’ll have more control of what shows up in your inbox.

[Side bet: Microsoft or Google will be better than you at choosing which ‘inbox’ items are the most interesting to you by 2020 based on user satisfaction tests.]

Consumption. One of the things people like about Skype is it’s easy to throttle up and down a ladder of intimacy. At the low end are slow-changing mood messages and presence indicators. IM lets you throttle up from asynchronous messaging to live back-and-forth chats. When that’s not enough you can add voice. And when you need to see faces and body language, you move up to video. In thirty years we’ll have more UI presentation methods to choose from like holographic avatars or Rapid serial visual presentation or having your tweets sung to you in the style of Taylor Swift. You’ll have new metaphors and design surfaces for consuming asynchronous conversation. And we’ll find it smooth to rapidly switch among any media and any visualization paradigm.

Expression. Thirty years’ ago in the early 1980s we didn’t have Internet, smartphones, electric cars, free video conferencing, private spacecraft or nanotechnology. We’re now in the 1980s of 2040, the subject of costume dramas and kids ironically 3D Printing our fashions. By 2040 we should have at least a few more billion people connected to cyberspace, some very intimately. The range of available connectivity, devices, and media will continue to diverge with haves and have-nots.

When talking human-to-human you’ll be able to toss original content – data from what you say or perform – into the conversation flow. The channel should take care of converting it from how you choose to express yourself (longhand, typing, talking, foxtrot) into forms preferred or needed by the other other person; consider this automation of the interpreter relay services provided for the visually impaired or the deaf on phones today.

Your channel will let you play “live streaming producer” on your part of the conversation, feeding media objects into the conversation as you like. You’ll even be able to merge and fork live threads/streams (think git for live conferences).

You’ll also have some control or influence about other attributes of your conversation. Who has the right to share the record of this conversation? How much? With whom? Can records of this conversation be destroyed in real time the way some email services delete email after expiry? Can we have this conversation permanently archived in public? How much anonymity or pseudonymity will you accept?

Toasters and insulin pumps. But email is not solely the province of people. We’ve been hooking up machines to email for decades. By 2040 we’ll have trillions of sensors and devices engaging in conversation with people and each other. Notifications from our bodies (Quantified Self), our things, and our places will be in our Personal Clouds. Our inboxen will test Inquiries from stranger devices just like inquiries from strange people: Is this notification from the bus you’re riding worth your attention now? If so, what’s the best context and form for engaging with it given you’re in a space where it’s impolite to talk and you’re using your hands to hang on for dear life? Some conversations just don’t need words, after all. You may just need to see a chart or hear a message; you may just need to grunt or wave in response. Remember to buy a premium personality for your pacemaker: for an extra two percent, the Bollywood star of your choice will be its living avatar.

Personal vs. Work. Do you remember when you had separate email accounts for each job, for your personal life, from your school, and for volunteer gig? Umpteen mailboxes? Whilst it keeps your peas from touching your potatoes and your boss from talking with your mistress, the actual act of juggling mutliple accounts is painful. You’ll have one queue, one spew of inbound offers to talk from every part of your life. You may offer different faces/handles/personas for each context the way you hand out personal and business email addresses now, but your single, seemingly self-aware “inbox” will let you wear the appropriate mask and project the appropriate identity for each. New legal constructs, like The Limited Liability Persona, will support this.

Work vs. Talk. You asked specifically about email for business. Email and other electronic media are part of how labor markets work today and how workers get things done together. So let’s talk about the Future of Work for a moment. Thirty years from now, on the other side of wars, famines, depressions, disruptions, and alien invasions, many elements of work will be the same: many of us will rent our time to people or organizations that will pay us. But expect much of that work, to be done with, if not through, your communication channels. There will be no need to have separate toolkits for conversation vs. metawork (work about work, like scheduling, to-do lists, project management, budgeting, etc.) vs. collaboration. Context providers will let you “skin” your full-body-browser to add the features that blend work, metawork and conversation together. Think of it as Bring Your Own Inbox/Phone/Reality. So whether you’re sortieing with your squad for work, tweaking your bots for fun, or negotiating a contract for your family, you’ll use the same conversational media.

Somewhere in 2040, email as we know it in 2012 will continue to flow. But we’ll be thinking about “email” then the way we think about teletype consoles and punch cards now: antiques that paved the way.

What is the future of email as far as business communication is concerned?

“ABC News: Russia warns it could halt foreign arms checks over ‘unfounded threats'”


Shortlink: http://wp.me/p4njL-dH

Crimea River“ABC News: Russia warns it could halt foreign arms checks over ‘unfounded threats'”

(Note: please reproduce only with attribution, doing otherwise is plagiarism, thank you.

Frank Poliat

Oh! If Neville Chamberlain were only alive today, he’d know what to do!

1. Power mad,legally elected oligarch seeking power under the guise of saving his country from further humiliation and economic disaster = Ditto, revenge for treaty of Versailles.
2. Nuclear capability = the rearming of Germany, against treaty dictates.
3. Olympics = olympics.
4. Fuck the homosexuals = fuck the jews (and gypsies and homosexuals).
5. Invasion of “former territory” with threats of much worse if the world interferes = ditto.
6. Pussy Riot = Book Burning.
7. Posturing, narcissistic delusional psycho personality = ditto.
8. Powerless puppet figurehead (Medvedev) = Kaiser.
9. No funny mustache = funny mustache.

Is Apple Fifth Avenue’s glass cube able to withstand thrown rocks and other physical vandalism?


Answer by Brian Roemmele:

If a rock was thrown at this glass house, little to no damage would occur.

The instantly iconic and artistically beautiful Fifth Avenue Apple store stands like a glass oasis amongst the almost century old granite and cement buildings in this area.  This is an architectural marvel.

Stronger Than Your Average Glass

The 32 foot perfect cube is far more sturdy then it would appear to be.  Apple uses a patented process that creates some of the strongest Industrial Grade Structural Glass in the world.  This is the masterful collaboration of Apple, including Steve Jobs directly working with architect Bohlin Cywinski Jackson working for Eckersley O’Callaghan.  Up until just recently, there was only one company in the world that could produce this Glass for Apple: Seele GmbH & Co. in Gerthofen, Germany.

During the design, tests were carried out using “Nastran” and “Lucas” FEA software, designed to calculate stresses and deformations in complex geometrical structures. The results of the FEA is a color-coded diagram that focuses on load limits of the glass.  The lamination process is similar to the glass you would find in an Automotive window, but far, far stronger. Not only is the glass supporting the vertical load of the entire structure, it also completely supports the horizontal loads created by the structure itself and external forces such as high winds with the aid of 25 Glass Fins that run the height of the cube.

The Apple Cube Almost Stops A Speeding Bullet

There are no doubts that a thrown rock at most distances would simply bounce off the Glass panels in most cases.  At worse case if hit on a support or corner, there would be some small chips expelled.  The Glass can take a rather hard hit with a hand hammer and not offer up anything more than a few external chips.  A Bullet from a typical hand revolver would cause a small entry hole, but certainly would not shatter the glass.  This is not “Bullet Proof” glass, but in some circumstances a bullet will be deflected by the glass.  It is the flexibility the Lamination process creates for the glass that really is the secret to it’s strength.  A wonderful presentation on the structural efficiencies of Laminated Glass by the Institute Of Structural Engineers, can be found here:

The Cube is Changing

Just when the the world has gotten used to this amazing structure, Apple is changing it for the better.  This process will actually make the cube stronger and more amazing to look at.  Apple is in the process of replacing the 90 Glass Panels for just 15!

There are a number of reasons for the change. One of them was a few very minor flaws in the original design that was causing a little more horizontal stress then what was projected, although it would not have caused a failure of the structure.

The new design will have far less connectors and about a 20% increase in panel strength in comparison to the older manufacturing process. Apple found that North Glass Safety Glass Co. in China was able to produce better structural support in comparison to Seele GmbH & Co.  Apple tested this process with curved glass at the Sanlitun store in Beijing.  Thus, Apple’s remodeling will be complete later this fall.

Apple is far from done with its use of Structural Glass in its stores and at the proposed new headquarters.  In the end, glass is still glass– but as technology keeps improving, the strength is being pushed to rival other traditional building materials.

View Answer on Quora

What is the oldest lightbulb in continuous use?


Answer by Brian Roemmele:

The Beautiful 110 Year Old Light Bulb That Never Turned Off

Installed before the Wright Brothers took to flight, 110 Years old and she is still beautiful.  It is perhaps the oldest electrical device in continuous use.  Take a moment and contemplate just how much the world has changed around this amazing device.

Beautiful glow of the Shelby Incandescent lamp.

It was a hot summer evening in Livermore, California in 1901 and the band concert across the street was just about to conclude, but the fire captain had an announcement.  The Fire Department Hose Cart House on L Street had just installed a new modern technological marvel, one of the first electric carbon lightbulbs in town and invited anyone curious to stop by and witness this new  invention.   This was the “Improved Incandescent Lamp” was the lightbulb of choice and it was an incredible design.  In many cities the Fire Departments were motivating people to consider using this relatively new invention for safety.  And of course this came by years of heartbreaking experience.

A lost era when companies had so much pride about who they were, where they were and what they built.

Genius Inventor

This amazing light bulb was invented by Adolphe A. Chaillet and manufactured by the Shelby Electric Company. The beautiful handblown glass bulb with a uniquely shaped carbon filament beamed a consistent ~10 watts (perhaps more).  This light bulb has been turned on ever since, over 40,150 days.  The only rest she took was for about 7 days during a renovation and the random power outages over the decades.  She always woke up.

Showing her unique curves, what stories she could tell about how the world changed around her.

You can check in on how she is doing, still proudly casting her light and reporting for duty for the last 110 years at this live webcam:

A Lightbulb That Lasts Forever Is Not Good For Business

Know as the Centennial Light (http://www.centennialbulb.org/), the Livermore Fire department is really quite proud of the bulb and the built to last American engineering and manufacturing that went into it. Sadly  Adolphe’s superior lightbulb design and the Shelby Electric Company did not survive for a number of reasons.

One of the many reasons tweets would not work in 1901.

Some suggest that it was a plan of planned obsolescence that was taking over the industry that finally drew the end of Adolphe’s design.   Some may suggest that the Shelby technology did not survive because in some way it was inefficient or high wattage or bright light was not possible. This is not the case at all. When the Shelby bulb was installed in 1901 it was brighter then a standard Edison bulb.  Shelby also had bulbs of up to 60 watts in 1901 with color tonality of light orange to almost bright white this was far better then any other product.

Shelby was sold in a roll-up of a vast majority of Lightbulb companies in the United States.  The National Electric Lamp Association a division of the General Electric Company purchased the Shelby Electric Company and with-in a year stopped all production on Adolphe A. Chaillet amazing design.

Still Thinking

I have sat here and tried to think of any electrical device that I use that could weather 110 years of “always on” use. I am still thinking.

“I am still here”

The many advancements Adolphe made are lost to the sands of time.  The exact processes may not have been saved, his knowledge is gone.  Although there were three tantalizing patents issued in his life, they do not explain how he made his amazing carbon filament.  What Adolphe really created was almost erased from popular history.

Yet this 110 year old light bulb is proof of what one person can achieve.  It’s very existence proudly states, I am still here. It is proof that there is far more to all technologies then we can ever imagine.  It is proof that true history matters.  If only to pay tribute to the genius that got us so very far.

This proud 110 year old girl elegantly reminds us of all of the past, present and future Adolphe A. Chaillet’s of the world.

My deepest wish is that this light never goes out and can be contemplated  perhaps a thousand years from now. May she serve as a living reminder of how we can make even the most simple useful things heroically beautiful.

The world may change and still she glows…

At 110 years old, she is spectacularly beautiful to behold.  I see so much character and individuality.

View Answer on Quora

Putin out the Olympic torch. How the Greeks invented culture, sports and homosexuality.


Feel free to share, but give me credit. Thank you.
NOTE: this is not an irony-free blog.


The Greek Dialogs

Let’s legalize prostitution now, here’s how to force the issue.


SHORTLINK: http://wp.me/p4njL-c8

I’ve been meaning to do something about this for maybe twenty years, and I’m not going to waste another minute putting it off. For now, this post will be the barest outline.

Progressives mostly agree that marijuana is still illegal in most states in order to keep the alcohol, paper and timber industries happy. Of course the law and defense enterprises benefit as well, all at taxpayers’ expense. We know that prohibition does not work, and it’s a moot point whether these anti-pot laws will finally crumble before global warming crumbles us.

Anti-prostitution laws are wrong for similar reasons. The foremost reason being that PROHIBITION DOES NOT WORK. Most first world countries “get this,” but USA always has to drag up the rear (no pun intended).

The consequences of anti-prostitution laws are similarly heinous and expensive, financially, ethically and socially (i.e. human suffering etc) as the anti-drug laws. How any of us “feels” about non-prescription drug use or prostitution is irrelevant. We are not talking about prohibitions against child abuse here.

Again, this is just a very broad outline, with much more to come, Ford willing.

Here is how we can force the issue. The first amendment protects porn film participants at every level, actors, directors, producers, film techs and so on, from any kind of prosecution because the first amendment protects their freedom of expression. So all sex-workers need do is set up a computer with video capability  and some simple software (or heck, a smart phone with an application), and a printer. Even most smart-phones have video capabilities.

When the sex-worker (SW) and the john (or jane, as the case may) arrives at the designated place where the allegedly illegal act will take place, the following occurs first. Just as cops read arrestees their Miranda rights, the SW informs the client that they are producing a porn video. The SW is the producer, the client is the distributor with COMPLETE CONTROL of distribution. The software or app then produces all the legal verbiage that must be part of a formal commercial film product. The client signs a print out of an agreement confirming the production of this video. As sole distributor, the client has the right to not distribute the video.

Voila, case closed. The SW performs the service (and is named as actor in the video, as is the client), the act is taped. The client gets a dvd (or the video is sent to a designated email address) and signs that he has “received,” the product. Oh, and the software will blur the faces of the participants, if so desired.

At this point, the transaction is 100% legal in all fifty states.

Try to find a hole in that! Again, no pun intended.

The Psychology of Climate Change Denial


“Grim warnings about climate change may prompt more skepticism than action, simply because they seem unjust.”

From:
Feinberg, M., and R. Willer. Apocalypse soon? Dire messages reduce belief in global warming by contradicting just-world beliefs. Psychological Science

http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/2011/2/in-the-news-32

“Climate Psychology

Grim warnings about climate change may prompt more skepticism than action, simply because they seem unjust. Portraying children as innocent victims, for instance, conflicts with common assumptions that the world is fair—a clash that might trigger doubt and inaction. Indeed, a recent survey showed that the stronger one’s belief in a just world, the greater one’s skepticism after reading a grim global warming article (but not an optimistic one that also presented solutions). Researchers found they could reduce participants’ skepticism—and increase their willingness to act—by tweaking their worldviews with statements such as “Often, justice will not prevail.” Environmental organizations may want to take note.”

So here we discover one source of denial; one of many, I daresay; but not the evolutionary roots of this behavior. Perhaps nurture trumps nature as I seem to have been born without this “denial gene,” as is, by my reconing, 1% of the population.  I’m not going into my personal enviro/nurture histology at this point, however.

Elsewhere, I’ve read about the possible correlations between intelligence and depression. More recently, I read about the correlation between intelligence and fondness for drink.

Indeed, ignorance is bliss.

I’m disturbed, but not surprised by the mild Panglossianism implied by the syntax of the last sentence in the above quote, about environmental activists incorporating this in their  climate education endeavors.

Shit man, this implies a lot more than that. If progressives of all stripes want to make significant impact on the majority’s inherent ostrich-head-in-the-sandicity, here’s a major key. No pun intended.

We act against our well being


Listening to a “This American Life” episode this morning, focusing on global warming. This addresses two of my favorite interests: humility and denial.

I was seven when I began to grasp some of the issues that have always concerned that small band of unhappy few who actually care to use more than 5% of their on-board computers; issues such as suffering, war, disease and as of the last 50 years, global warming.

For now, I’ll just cut to the chase. My father relentlessly abused my mother and me from the time I was six, and almost always behind closed doors. It was probably a lot earlier than that for Mom, but that’s when it started for me. Bottom line is that it was some combination of sociopathy, PTSD brought on by childhood and adult trauma, OCD and male Jewish anger. I only saw a relatively normal father in the last two years of his life. At that time he was put on a daily dose of an antipsychotic starting the very first day that he was admitted to a nursing home.

My point is that David (Dad) was convinced that my mother and I were deficient in various ways that necessitated regular exposures to his dictates and wisdom. He even went so far as to take us together to a venerable psychiatrist ( as I recall, a classic Viennese old-school Freudian) to get an evaluation of us two. We only went once and D made it clear that it was we two who were to be scrutinized, not him.

I won’t have time to finish this this morning so I will tie this all together this weekend, inchallah, but for now my point is that, in general, pride and denial rule human affairs, and now they rule our global environment. Most of us never seem to be able to make the tiny mental leap from witnessing the sheer craziness all around us to understanding that we can all easily fall prey to the illusion that everyone else may be fallible but we ourselves are the soul of sanity and realistic thinking.

(To be continued)