I just finished Furious Cool, a book that argues that Richard Pryor was a genius. Before I read the book I knew he was funny, and a brilliant performer, but a genius? The guy from Superman III and Brewster's Millions?
But he was a genius, and the book shows how, as well as a book can for demonstrating the genius of a live art like stand-up. (Surprisingly well because stand-up is about words.) The fact that Pryor's work didn't translate to Hollywood is a general rule. The best stand-up comedians have always had a hard time transitioning to TV and movie screens, and this is true for this century's comedians as well.
The Procrustean box of the screen doesn't just cut off the top, bottom, and sides of the comedian's act. It is a Procrustean cube that erects an impenetrable 4th wall between the performer and audience, severing the ties and feedback loops between the two. Because TV is sanitized, you know that it's not true that anything can happen, and the best comics like Pryor and the others mentioned in that article thrive on that unpredictability and connection to the audience. The best comedy is a relationship, even if the direct manifestation of that relationship is the duration of the laughs and the occasional heckler. The audience is always in on the joke.
TV desperately tries to compensate for this disconnect with laugh tracks and live stunts like Carrie Underwood's Sound of Music -- viewers tuned in not for the perfection, but for the imperfection of a stumble or stutter. Audience voting in something like American Idol also attempts to break down the wall of the Procrustean cube, but the more successful the show, the more the 4th wall slams shut against any illusion that you have an actual say in what happens next.
The most successful TV compensates for the impenetrable 4th wall not through comedy but through drama. A long story arc can show a character developing (like Breaking Bad or George Clooney back when ER was good). Even more, it can set up long philosophical mysteries like those on LOST, even if delivering on those mysteries is a debatable point (which I have debated earlier on this blog, I'm mostly in the pro-LOST camp). The audience participates when it empathizes with the growth of the characters, and chatters about what might happen on next week's episode. This is what an episodic form of spectacle like TV can do.
And this is why MOOCs are doomed if they intend to become anything but supplemental, vocational education.
Teaching is like stand-up. Even on a day when the lecturer is lecturing non-stop, there is still student participation and feedback. I even get a laugh once in while, and I can tell you that the best jokes are not the ones that are deliberately funny, but the personal ones or the ones that personalize something else (like giving emotions to a protein). This is what Richard Pryor did so well, and why no one could steal his jokes. He wasn't about jokes, he was about observing and inhabiting everything else around him. A teaching professor should do that, too, but focused on a single subject and bringing centuries of knowledge together to intensely dissect that subject and challenge the students to a new level.
So taking a teacher and putting her in a screen for a MOOC is like throwing a script at Richard Pryor and expecting him to rekindle his stand-up magic on a screen. It can happen, but it takes more than a camera and a routine and a genius. It takes specific work to make the MOOC work for that medium, and even then, I'm convineced that real learning, like real laughter, requires a real connection that cannot be replicated through a screen. Online comments are different from conversation. Even multiple choice testing is different in person.
I think MOOCs are very useful for topics where the student has a direct interest in making money from the information given, or for direct low-level instruction that can be reduced to the resolution of a video screen. I hope to use them myself to expand my knowledge in a few fields. But lasting upper-division education is about the person and about the relationship, just like stand-up is about the whole environment and music is about the performance. MOOCs have their place but they can never supplant the Biochemistry class.
Monday, March 17, 2014
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Book Review: Furious Cool by David and Joe Henry
This is an excellent book about Richard Pryor, one that describes his genius and his work about as well as can be described, tying it to the larger changes of the 60s and 70s. The language is lush and the scenes are well-selected so that it's on the short side rather than the long side. It doesn't hurt that one of the authors (Joe Henry) is an excellent musician as well, which lends itself to an especially haunting final scene.
The real puzzle for me is Richard Pryor himself. The book lays out how his comic genius coincided with, and probably caused, his extreme meanness and insecurity. Why does such incredible performance and on-stage empathy cause off-stage antipathy? Must it? The book only lays out what this looked like but leaves it to the reader to go deeper.
By the way, I was a little wary of listening to this as an audiobook, but Dion Graham does as good of a job at projecting Richard Pryor as Richard Pryor did of ... everyone else. I listened to some of the Pryor routines that Graham read through and heard what Dion said -- he really captured Pryor's delivery. The audiobook is what truly elevated this book for me.
The real puzzle for me is Richard Pryor himself. The book lays out how his comic genius coincided with, and probably caused, his extreme meanness and insecurity. Why does such incredible performance and on-stage empathy cause off-stage antipathy? Must it? The book only lays out what this looked like but leaves it to the reader to go deeper.
By the way, I was a little wary of listening to this as an audiobook, but Dion Graham does as good of a job at projecting Richard Pryor as Richard Pryor did of ... everyone else. I listened to some of the Pryor routines that Graham read through and heard what Dion said -- he really captured Pryor's delivery. The audiobook is what truly elevated this book for me.
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
The Chemistry of Ashes
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish’d by.
-- Sonnet 73, Shakespeare
Today is Ash Wednesday, in Latin, "dies cinerum," the Day of Cinders.
How long can you sit and watch a fire? The constant motion of the flickering flames fascinates and nearly hypnotizes. The live flames tell a story, whispering kinship. That's true at levels that run as deep as chemistry.
You warm yourself with the same reaction that makes fire burn. Carbon chains + oxygen = steam and carbon dioxide gas. You exhale the exhaust of fire. The structures so carefully built and pieced together in the growing limb are fuel for the flame, vaporized into a gas that slips away like so much vanity. Gas comes from the same root as "chaos." The old order melts away.
Yet there is something left when the fire is complete. Some elemental carbons sit solid in the fireplace, a residue only suitable for marking a line that soils a forehead.
Along with the carbon, if there was anything metal, especially one of the larger metals like iron, nickel, copper, silver, gold, these are too heavy to become gas and would be left behind as well, indistinguishable from the black carbon but assuredly there, broken in tiny bits. The constructed chains, the facade, it all burns away but the heavy metals stay. The elements may melt with the fervent heat but they persist. What is scattered can be gathered and used again.
What can take ashes and put them together into new life? You would need to reverse the reaction, to pull down the heaven above, catching carbon dioxide and water vapor, then shaping it like a potter shapes clay. The second law of thermodynamics says, rightfully, that this is very hard to do.
What you would need to reverse the reaction is an exhaled breath from another life. You would need to take in what another fire breathed out. "Breath" in Hebrew is "nephesh" which also means "soul." You would take in this exhaled soul and you would inhale, and if it was reorganized and reborn in the right configuration, you would live. Exhaust would become new life.
The second law of thermodynamics says that this is very hard to do. It is extremely improbable in a closed system. But it is not impossible. And we do not live in a closed system.
Today we watch the fire burn and draw stick figures with the ashes, crosses, plus signs, made from the elements of lost life. Any life, no matter how well lived, ends in ashes. All intentions, whether selfless or selfish, all the piecing together of the puzzle, all of it burns, igniting from the pressure of its own useless weight. Your mitochondria, where you burn all your carbon chains and run the combustion reaction that warms your skin, are also the direct cause of the poison molecules, the reactive oxygen species and the runaway electrons, that careen out of control and break apart your cells, aging your body and shattering your DNA. All fire has its exhaust. This can be papered over for a day, but it can never be avoided. Thanks be to God.
The next forty days are the age of carbon, of soot and charcoal, of smouldering vapors, a time to wait in the ashes, continuing the slow burn, sitting in the broken pieces, waiting for a breath from above.
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish’d by.
-- Sonnet 73, Shakespeare
Today is Ash Wednesday, in Latin, "dies cinerum," the Day of Cinders.
How long can you sit and watch a fire? The constant motion of the flickering flames fascinates and nearly hypnotizes. The live flames tell a story, whispering kinship. That's true at levels that run as deep as chemistry.
You warm yourself with the same reaction that makes fire burn. Carbon chains + oxygen = steam and carbon dioxide gas. You exhale the exhaust of fire. The structures so carefully built and pieced together in the growing limb are fuel for the flame, vaporized into a gas that slips away like so much vanity. Gas comes from the same root as "chaos." The old order melts away.
Yet there is something left when the fire is complete. Some elemental carbons sit solid in the fireplace, a residue only suitable for marking a line that soils a forehead.
Along with the carbon, if there was anything metal, especially one of the larger metals like iron, nickel, copper, silver, gold, these are too heavy to become gas and would be left behind as well, indistinguishable from the black carbon but assuredly there, broken in tiny bits. The constructed chains, the facade, it all burns away but the heavy metals stay. The elements may melt with the fervent heat but they persist. What is scattered can be gathered and used again.
What can take ashes and put them together into new life? You would need to reverse the reaction, to pull down the heaven above, catching carbon dioxide and water vapor, then shaping it like a potter shapes clay. The second law of thermodynamics says, rightfully, that this is very hard to do.
What you would need to reverse the reaction is an exhaled breath from another life. You would need to take in what another fire breathed out. "Breath" in Hebrew is "nephesh" which also means "soul." You would take in this exhaled soul and you would inhale, and if it was reorganized and reborn in the right configuration, you would live. Exhaust would become new life.
The second law of thermodynamics says that this is very hard to do. It is extremely improbable in a closed system. But it is not impossible. And we do not live in a closed system.
Today we watch the fire burn and draw stick figures with the ashes, crosses, plus signs, made from the elements of lost life. Any life, no matter how well lived, ends in ashes. All intentions, whether selfless or selfish, all the piecing together of the puzzle, all of it burns, igniting from the pressure of its own useless weight. Your mitochondria, where you burn all your carbon chains and run the combustion reaction that warms your skin, are also the direct cause of the poison molecules, the reactive oxygen species and the runaway electrons, that careen out of control and break apart your cells, aging your body and shattering your DNA. All fire has its exhaust. This can be papered over for a day, but it can never be avoided. Thanks be to God.
The next forty days are the age of carbon, of soot and charcoal, of smouldering vapors, a time to wait in the ashes, continuing the slow burn, sitting in the broken pieces, waiting for a breath from above.
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Book Review: Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
This is really a play review, but I read it as a book so I'll review it like a book.
Like most Stoppard plays, Arcadia jams a lot in and seems to be a bit like Pontius Pilate, "always asking what the truth was and never waiting for an answer." (Bill Mallonee's lyrics) After the end, you can provide your own answers, so I have no problem with that, but it's that aspect that keeps this from the top of the list.
The play is set in a single room in an English estate, with half the scenes in the early 19th century and half in the late 20th. There's fractals and Lord Byron and garden history and academic jousting among professor types and affairs and a duel and thermodynamics. I admire how Stoppard mixes it all together, and the point of this play is more the synergy between the disparate components than, say, the hilarious wit of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (still my all-time favorite Stoppard).
A few passages say some interesting things about science but I'm still left feeling that the play is not really about science or how things come together, but it's more about how things fall apart. I could wish Stoppard had taken it in another direction but there's enough pieces on the table that the "other direction" is still open to the reader and this could provoke a fascinating conversation if seen as a play rather than read as a book. That's probably the point, but without someone to put it on around here, I'm left with the book.
It is thrilling how the elements whirl around each other by the end of the play, and probably worth a second reading to see more of the structure behind that motion. There's got to be some recurring motifs that serve as fractals in the play itself that I didn't detect the first time through. I would just prefer a play that was definitely worth a second reading to one that was probably worth one, and if you're going to be provocative about the nature of scientific discovery and the heat death of the universe, be provocative and bring that aspect out a little more. More science, less garden.
Like most Stoppard plays, Arcadia jams a lot in and seems to be a bit like Pontius Pilate, "always asking what the truth was and never waiting for an answer." (Bill Mallonee's lyrics) After the end, you can provide your own answers, so I have no problem with that, but it's that aspect that keeps this from the top of the list.
The play is set in a single room in an English estate, with half the scenes in the early 19th century and half in the late 20th. There's fractals and Lord Byron and garden history and academic jousting among professor types and affairs and a duel and thermodynamics. I admire how Stoppard mixes it all together, and the point of this play is more the synergy between the disparate components than, say, the hilarious wit of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (still my all-time favorite Stoppard).
A few passages say some interesting things about science but I'm still left feeling that the play is not really about science or how things come together, but it's more about how things fall apart. I could wish Stoppard had taken it in another direction but there's enough pieces on the table that the "other direction" is still open to the reader and this could provoke a fascinating conversation if seen as a play rather than read as a book. That's probably the point, but without someone to put it on around here, I'm left with the book.
It is thrilling how the elements whirl around each other by the end of the play, and probably worth a second reading to see more of the structure behind that motion. There's got to be some recurring motifs that serve as fractals in the play itself that I didn't detect the first time through. I would just prefer a play that was definitely worth a second reading to one that was probably worth one, and if you're going to be provocative about the nature of scientific discovery and the heat death of the universe, be provocative and bring that aspect out a little more. More science, less garden.
Book Review: Catching Fire
I hear that the movie of Catching Fire is better than The Hunger Games, but I think it's the other way around for the books.
Because it holds the intermediate place in the trilogy, Catching Fire is Act II of the story, and while the overall plot is satisfying enough in how it points toward Act III, it seems to have structural and pacing issues taken on its own. The main event is not telegraphed until halfway through the book, and the plot depends on Katniss being awfully dense at times to miss things that are blindingly obvious. I understand that she's distracted by a few things (and I also understand that the very title of the third volume gives away some significance to the Mockingjay, which she understandably doesn't know!), but keeping her in ignorance seems to serve suspense while detracting from her as a heroine.
Still, the point of this is to revisit the Games and point the way to the third book, and I have a feeling that the third book will be like the seventh book of Harry Potter, which would be OK if I trusted Collins to be as creative as Rowling in deviating from the expected script. Ultimately I want more of the Games, which have never really seemed game-like to me, but then again, you can only have so many fights to the death in a series. If the third book is like the first half of Catching Fire, I'll be slightly disappointed, but if it's like the second half, I'll be slightly ... what? ... appointed?
Because it holds the intermediate place in the trilogy, Catching Fire is Act II of the story, and while the overall plot is satisfying enough in how it points toward Act III, it seems to have structural and pacing issues taken on its own. The main event is not telegraphed until halfway through the book, and the plot depends on Katniss being awfully dense at times to miss things that are blindingly obvious. I understand that she's distracted by a few things (and I also understand that the very title of the third volume gives away some significance to the Mockingjay, which she understandably doesn't know!), but keeping her in ignorance seems to serve suspense while detracting from her as a heroine.
Still, the point of this is to revisit the Games and point the way to the third book, and I have a feeling that the third book will be like the seventh book of Harry Potter, which would be OK if I trusted Collins to be as creative as Rowling in deviating from the expected script. Ultimately I want more of the Games, which have never really seemed game-like to me, but then again, you can only have so many fights to the death in a series. If the third book is like the first half of Catching Fire, I'll be slightly disappointed, but if it's like the second half, I'll be slightly ... what? ... appointed?
Friday, February 21, 2014
Book Review: Winter's Tale
How can I review this book? I have to give it four stars because depending on the moment I could give it five stars or three stars. It's a sprawling, Dickensian work that jumps across time from the early 20th century to the turn of the 21st, as lush and romantic as any novel ever was, yet ultimately a love letter to the city of New York and the wonder of mechanism. There's a flying horse and a mysterious giant ship in the Hudson. There's hard-nosed suffering and celestial perfection and dare I say virtue. And it made me laugh out loud more than any book I've listened to. On the one hand, you just have to experience it. On the other hand, I think that for all its complexity there is some complexity that it leaves out. It's an account of faith that is solid and wondrous except for holes and inconsistencies that I think real faith fills in. But I can read this and fill in the gaps for myself. It's almost like natural theology in that sense.
If my review seems incoherent it's because the book itself whirls manically about and verges on incoherence itself. I think it steps over the line just a few too many times to get five stars. On the other hand, some passages, such as my absolute favorite when Virgina writes newpaper columns (for that to be my favorite is strange in such a vividly concrete book, but, yes, it is), inspire my work and my entire stance toward life. And I think Helprin even thinks about thermodynamics although I'm not entirely sure.
Winter's Tale is a deeply moral work, and though at the end I think it frays just a bit in this regard, there's still absolutely nothing like it. I think the movie may fail because it keeps the surface events but 1.) the interior balance of the book is edited out in favor of exterior, visual, movie cliches, 2.) the morality and virtue of the book are subsumed as poster slogans such as those mocked in The LEGO Movie, and 3.) the main thrust of the book is the power of the written word which cannot be adequately portrayed in a medium where most of the written words scroll up the screen as the audience walks out, read as closely as a Genesis geneology.
As the saying goes, don't judge a book by its movie. This book is an amazing experience and has to be read by any lover of books. It does have flaws but there is nothing else like it, and it is both beautiful and hopeful in an age that prizes ugliness and pessimism. So can I give it four and a half stars? Please?
If my review seems incoherent it's because the book itself whirls manically about and verges on incoherence itself. I think it steps over the line just a few too many times to get five stars. On the other hand, some passages, such as my absolute favorite when Virgina writes newpaper columns (for that to be my favorite is strange in such a vividly concrete book, but, yes, it is), inspire my work and my entire stance toward life. And I think Helprin even thinks about thermodynamics although I'm not entirely sure.
Winter's Tale is a deeply moral work, and though at the end I think it frays just a bit in this regard, there's still absolutely nothing like it. I think the movie may fail because it keeps the surface events but 1.) the interior balance of the book is edited out in favor of exterior, visual, movie cliches, 2.) the morality and virtue of the book are subsumed as poster slogans such as those mocked in The LEGO Movie, and 3.) the main thrust of the book is the power of the written word which cannot be adequately portrayed in a medium where most of the written words scroll up the screen as the audience walks out, read as closely as a Genesis geneology.
As the saying goes, don't judge a book by its movie. This book is an amazing experience and has to be read by any lover of books. It does have flaws but there is nothing else like it, and it is both beautiful and hopeful in an age that prizes ugliness and pessimism. So can I give it four and a half stars? Please?
Monday, February 17, 2014
Book Review: Complexity and the Arrow of Time
Collections of essays on meta-level aspects of science are like attending a conference (and many times originated that way): everyone gets equal time and some chapters/presentations drone on while some are so interesting that you wish they had more time. The collection Complexity and the Arrow of Time has more entries that I wish had more time, so that counts as a win in my book. It helps that the topic at hand is inherently multi-disciplinary and the many perspectives in the book ultimately reinforce each other even when they disagree. The last essay in particular, about how complexity will always be complex (surprise!), gives a narrative form to the book. I could argue that, for example, Michael Ruse's historical essay should come first, and in fact, I wish there was more on history in general, but the bottom line is that this collection does what collections should do and was an accessible and pretty much comprehensive view of what people are thinking about when they think about the development of complexity. Given the diversity of disciplines and authors there does seem to be a decent, coherent theme throughout the book and so I consider it a success. My favorite chapters were 4, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, and 14.
Chapter by Chapter quick thoughts:
2. Directionality principles from cancer to cosmology Paul C. W. Davies: One interesting idea, that cancer is more complex (yet also more primitive) than its originating cells.
3. A simple treatment of complexity: cosmological entropic boundary conditions on increasing complexity Charles H. Lineweaver: Concept of gravitational entropy still doesn't fit with the others, but that may be because we don't know enough about it to make it fit.
4. Using complexity science to search for unity in the natural sciences Eric J. Chaisson: The most universal yet most succinct of the entries, and my vote for the best single mathematical approach to quantifying complexity, very interesting.
5. On the spontaneous generation of complexity in the universe Seth Lloyd: The quantum computer argument, which I didn't find convincing and seemed more setup than payoff.
6. Emergent spatiotemporal complexity in field theory Marcelo Gleiser: Some good thoughts about energy landscapes in general and how dynamics can create order but could have been summarized more succinctly/applied more specifically.
7. Life: the final frontier for complexity? Simon Conway Morris: Vintage Conway Morris, rapid-fire examples of convergence with a wit usually absent from scientific discourse.
8. Evolution beyond Newton, Darwin, and entailing law: the origin of complexity in the evolving biosphere Stuart A. Kauffman: Too much emphasis on physics and biology without enough emphasis on chemistry; Kaufmann makes a big deal about noncomputability and nonpredictably but the middle to the argument goes missing; directly engages Conway Morris which I'd like to see more of.
9. Emergent order in processes: the interplay of complexity, robustness, correlation, and hierarchy in the biosphere D. Eric Smith: This had some good original thoughts for how things go together and categories for comparing across disciplines; one of the better essays.
10. The inferential evolution of biological complexity: forgetting nature by learning to nurture David C. Krakauer: Cultural evolution, kind of par for the course in my opinion.
11. Information width: a way for the second law to increase complexity David Wolpert: Not as much about information width per se but the underlying argument has legs (and fits with Chaisson's and Gleiser's in productive ways)
12. Wrestling with biological complexity: from Darwin to Dawkins Michael Ruse: Helpful "two kinds of people" argument and application from history, but doesn't really get down to the heart of the difference between Darwinians and Spencerians -- still, the categories seem to have legs for further reflection.
13. The role of generative entrenchment and robustness in the evolution of complexity William C. Wimsatt: Generative entrenchment has aspects that make sense but wasn't clearly defined enough; other essays approached similar ideas more clearly but the fact that someone else has similar ideas is worth the time for this.
14. On the plurality of complexity-producing mechanisms Philip Clayton: excellent philosophical summary and plea for true discussion rather than verbal brickbats thrown back and forth, takes a stand on not taking a stand but, given the state of the speculations, I think it's the best way to end this book and suspect that Clayton's right, no overarching "law" for complexity will work, although ideas like Chaisson's should still help understand some aspects, even a majority of aspects.
Chapter by Chapter quick thoughts:
2. Directionality principles from cancer to cosmology Paul C. W. Davies: One interesting idea, that cancer is more complex (yet also more primitive) than its originating cells.
3. A simple treatment of complexity: cosmological entropic boundary conditions on increasing complexity Charles H. Lineweaver: Concept of gravitational entropy still doesn't fit with the others, but that may be because we don't know enough about it to make it fit.
4. Using complexity science to search for unity in the natural sciences Eric J. Chaisson: The most universal yet most succinct of the entries, and my vote for the best single mathematical approach to quantifying complexity, very interesting.
5. On the spontaneous generation of complexity in the universe Seth Lloyd: The quantum computer argument, which I didn't find convincing and seemed more setup than payoff.
6. Emergent spatiotemporal complexity in field theory Marcelo Gleiser: Some good thoughts about energy landscapes in general and how dynamics can create order but could have been summarized more succinctly/applied more specifically.
7. Life: the final frontier for complexity? Simon Conway Morris: Vintage Conway Morris, rapid-fire examples of convergence with a wit usually absent from scientific discourse.
8. Evolution beyond Newton, Darwin, and entailing law: the origin of complexity in the evolving biosphere Stuart A. Kauffman: Too much emphasis on physics and biology without enough emphasis on chemistry; Kaufmann makes a big deal about noncomputability and nonpredictably but the middle to the argument goes missing; directly engages Conway Morris which I'd like to see more of.
9. Emergent order in processes: the interplay of complexity, robustness, correlation, and hierarchy in the biosphere D. Eric Smith: This had some good original thoughts for how things go together and categories for comparing across disciplines; one of the better essays.
10. The inferential evolution of biological complexity: forgetting nature by learning to nurture David C. Krakauer: Cultural evolution, kind of par for the course in my opinion.
11. Information width: a way for the second law to increase complexity David Wolpert: Not as much about information width per se but the underlying argument has legs (and fits with Chaisson's and Gleiser's in productive ways)
12. Wrestling with biological complexity: from Darwin to Dawkins Michael Ruse: Helpful "two kinds of people" argument and application from history, but doesn't really get down to the heart of the difference between Darwinians and Spencerians -- still, the categories seem to have legs for further reflection.
13. The role of generative entrenchment and robustness in the evolution of complexity William C. Wimsatt: Generative entrenchment has aspects that make sense but wasn't clearly defined enough; other essays approached similar ideas more clearly but the fact that someone else has similar ideas is worth the time for this.
14. On the plurality of complexity-producing mechanisms Philip Clayton: excellent philosophical summary and plea for true discussion rather than verbal brickbats thrown back and forth, takes a stand on not taking a stand but, given the state of the speculations, I think it's the best way to end this book and suspect that Clayton's right, no overarching "law" for complexity will work, although ideas like Chaisson's should still help understand some aspects, even a majority of aspects.
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