1 Thing About Hotel Life

I hear the heavy footsteps of the person who lives above me. Boots bang on the floor.

She sings in the shower.

1 Piece of Advice

Don't look at your iPhone when you're walking across the Bridge Street Bridge.

You may drop it into the White River.

You may drop it on the sidewalk and crack the screen.

You may miss something happening around you.

4 Things About the Nahda

Tarek El-Ariss                                               DARTMOUTH NEWS

        The Nahda was (is) the renaissance in Arab intellectualism that began, roughly, in the late 19th Century. For historical purposes, it encompassed the early 20th Century, but artificially limiting either its inception or duration is an iffy proposition.
      So says Tarek El-Ariss, a Dartmouth professor who compiled The Arab Renaissance: A Bilingual Anthology of the Nahda and in so doing, revamped academic and practical theory about what the Nahda is, its genesis and its place in its heyday and in the modern world.

1. The Nahda was a response to Ottoman monarchic and absolute rule in a large swathe of Europe, Asia and Africa. Ottoman rule provided governance, jobs, culture and societal structure in exchange for the freedom of its subjects. Sounds familiar.

2. We think Arab, we think Muslim. Arabs are primarily Muslims but are also Christians, Jews, other smaller sects, and secularists - secularism is perhaps a critical part of the Nahda.

3. Kahlil Gibran. yeah, that guy who is most familiar to  Westerners, is part of the Nahda.

4. A key feature of the Nahda is the reconceptualism of time: the idea that there is a past, present and future, which we affect by our present thoughts and actions.

3 Things About Pamela Z

I saw Pamela Z at Dartmouth's Faulkner Hall, which is in the bowels of the Hopkins Center. It's a fitting venue, intimate, acoustically outstanding, and to get there, you think, as you wander a maze lined with rows of lockers, practice rooms, closets and Exit signs, "Surely, I am in the wrong place."

1. Pamela Z most reminded me about Martin Mull's saying, "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture."

2. I can only compare what she does to others, none of whom capture Pamela Z, but who might give you an idea:
       The ethereality of Enya; the experimentalism, especially with her voice, of Yoko Ono; the artistry, delight and straightforwardness of Penn & Teller.

3. Imagine if the theremin, which you know from the Beach Boys' Good Vibrations, were updated to 2019 technological standards. Besides her voice, clear boxes with optical readers (hope I have that right) inside respond when Pamela Z moves her hands or fingers in intricate ways. She has an unerring sense of time.

Here is Breathing, which she performed Thursday night.

2 Guys; One Was a Little Cranky

Know who they are? Phrase your answer in the form of a question.

4 Things About Cyrus Farivar

1. He was voted off Wikipedia. He created an entry about himself which is a no-no. For revealing a person can be voted off Wikipedia he deserves to be reinstated in Wikipedia.

2. He's a funny guy. Maintains his sense of humor despite being a lonely voice advising us that the law can't keep up with all the ways data about us can be collected. That  data collection, by the way, is encouraged by federal grants to YOUR TOWN for surveillance technology, which is often implemented without thought about how the collected information will be used.

3. His new book is

which is about, among other things, how the legal definition of  "the reasonable expectation of privacy" is diminishing as, for instance, people know and expect that they're tracked everywhere they go with their phones.

4. At Dartmouth, he told an anecdote about how he never imagined that his Flickr photos would be used as training tools for facial recognition software. That's the whole ball of wax, isn't it? We can't imagine the ways all the data collected about us can be used.

        4a. He said it's a short leap for the body cameras that police wear to have facial recognition software, so that every time you interact with police (or pass an officer on the street), your face will be scanned to see if you're in any law enforcement data base. Like Tom Cruise in Minority Report. Here are 2019 examples of exactly that.

5. He pronounces his name Sir-RUSE. 

Even The Avengers Weren't Indestructible

I put the scanner in the baler.

+

=

This was hideously expensive.

Nailed It

Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

Tiger Woods rallied from two shots back entering the final round of the 2019 Masters at Augusta National to capture his 81st PGA Tour title. 

3 Reasons Why Tiger Will Win the 2019 Masters

 David Cannon/Getty Images

1. He won't.

2. Let's be fair to the guy. He's great copy. The years he was on top, golf's popularity soared. So sticking with what they know, TV and the sports commentariat keep sucking that thumb.

Examples:

Opinion: Tiger Woods says he can win Masters, and that doesn't sound ridiculous at all

Christine Brennan, USA TODAY

Sorry Christine, it is ridiculous. (Golfweek has the exact same headline, by the way. Just to cover my bases, to Golfweek I say, "No, it isn't ridiculous at all." This follows the reporter's rule of spelling last names. If you don't know, spell it different ways. One of them is bound to be right. This method isn't a big hit with editors.)

Will Tiger Woods win the Masters? (a poll from Tylt).

Voters are slightly on the yes side. Sorry voters. There is a better chance that President Trump will invite refugees to the White House to give them the tickets to Disneyland he says they want.

CBS Sports:

2019 Masters: 14 years removed from his last, can Tiger Woods win another green jacket?

As he approaches his mid-40s, is it safe to rule out Woods at the Masters?

No and yes.

Kyle Porter writes:

I don't know if it will be this year, but we will have a real moment in the near future where we say, If Tiger makes this putt or sticks this shot (or whatever it is), he's going to win the Masters.

To be fair, Kyle thinks the above won't happen in 2019. It will never happen, Kyle.

3. Keegan Bradley will win the Masters in 2019.

I Didn't Think Led Zepplin Would Still Be So Popular - I Mean, It's Not Beethoven

(This is Beethoven.)

Things I predicted wrong.

I thought Amazon would have crashed under its own weight by now.

I didn't think there would still be three white guys telling different versions of the same joke on TV at 11:30 (and Conan) in 2019.

My Radiator Had a Little Space Heater

She looks just like mom.

One Thing I Am Getting Sick of Doing Already

This.

Two Things About A Black Professor in White Vermont

I saw 'Black is the Body" author Emily Bernard speak in Norwich the other night. Bernard's most recent book is a collection of essays, 'Black is the Body," about her experiences with pretty much everything - motherhood, work, relationships and being stabbed.

Bernard digests the things that happen to her and that she makes happen. She waited and waited and waited (Her friends said, 'You write about everything that happens to you. You were stabbed! Write about it!) to write about being stabbed until she could figure out what the story was really about. (It's part of the essay.)

It's amazing how much information she provides while still letting the reader, or in the case of her talk, the listener, draw his or her own conclusions. That must be the professor in her. 

One Thing About Seth Parker Woods

From DaybreakUV by Rob Gurwitt: 

Seth Parker Woods was inspired to take up the cello after seeing the film version of The Witches of Eastwick. “There’s this scene with Susan Sarandon’s character playing her cello until the instrument bursts into flames,” he once explained. “I was five at the time I saw the film and that seemed like exactly what I wanted to do.”

Seth Parker Woods at Top of the Hop               - GENE CASSIDY

Went and saw him tonight. From Beethoven to far-out modern music accompanied by tape to mournful counterpoint to Haitian women's folk music.

One Thing I Will Do From Now On

Maybe.

Lists suck me in every time.

How do you find your moral center in a

world that doesn't seem to have one?

10 ways to shine your shoes.

7 things you should know about Martin Mull.

Five favorite vegan barbecue recipes.

Yep. I would read 'em all. (These are all fake but I would read 'em.)

So from now on (maybe) all the Cracked Dome headlines will start with a number.

While looking for art for this post, I found this cool thing.

What if You Don't Have $50 Million To Lose?

       As reporter Ken Doctor writes in the preface to this terrific Newsonomics interview, Patrick Soon-Shiong works at curing cancer, making next-gen batteries, and now reforming the news industry.

      Soon-Shiong is smart and innovative. He has great insight and suggestions for early 21st Century news organizations. But he's able to try his insight and suggestions because he made his money elsewhere.

       Could someone innovate and gut it out with newspaper money? (Newspaper money is an oxymoron.)

Rep's Prayer Precedes First Muslim Taking Seat in Pennsylvania Legislature; Speaker Grabs Her Elbow or Who Knows How Long This Would Have Gone On

https://whyy.org/articles/the-pa-houses-only-muslim-woman-spent-her-first-day-addressing-offensive-invocation/

The Effect Effect, the Mere Exposure Effect, Kardirga, Saricik, Biwonjni, Nansoma and Iktitaf

      

        After a March 24 entry about different kinds of effects, I Googled 'the effect effect.' Besides a lot of lessons on grammar, I got The Effect Effect by Daniel Engber in Slate. Here's an excerpt:

       In 1969, the psychologist Robert Zajonc published an article about a curious study. He’d posted a silly-sounding word—either kardirga, saricik, biwonjni, nansoma, or iktitaf—on the front page of some student newspapers in Michigan every day for several weeks. Then he sent questionnaires to the papers’ readers, asking them to guess whether each word referred to “something ‘good’ ” or “something ‘bad.’ ” Their answers were consistent, if a little strange: Nonsense words that showed up in print many times were judged to be more positive than those that appeared just once or twice. The fact of their repetition, said Zajonc, gave the words an aura of warmth and trustworthiness. He called this the mere exposure effect.

Lawyering While Black

From The Root's Anne Branigan, March 28, 2019:

Rashad James

In Harford County, Md., the local sheriff’s office finds itself the subject of a complaint after one of its deputies detained a black attorney, insisting that he was impersonating a lawyer.

Outstream Video

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The complaint was filed by Rashad James, a legal aid attorney, who was at Harford County District Court on March 6 to expunge a client’s record. His client wasn’t at the courthouse that day, reports WBAL TV.

After successfully arguing for the expungement, a deputy stopped James in the courtroom and questioned whether he was really a lawyer or just impersonating one.

As James told WBAL-TV, the officer referred to him by his client’s name. After telling the deputy that he was, in fact, the client’s lawyer, the officer then asked James for ID, which James provided.

Now, that should have been the end of the story, right? But the deputy wasn’t convinced, asking James for further proof he was actually an attorney—despite just seeing him do his job in the courtroom.

James didn’t have his state bar card or business cards on him, bringing the deputy to an important crossroads: take James at his word or escalate the situation.

You know which path the deputy chose.

According to a statement by James’ attorneys, the deputy took James to an interview room where he detained the young lawyer for about 10 minutes. Only after James had the cop call his supervisor was he allowed to leave.

Again—because this can’t be repeated enough—this was after the deputy saw a judge accepting, on the record, that James was an attorney and his client was absent, as James’ attorney Chelsea Crawford pointed out during an on-camera interview.

In a written statement, Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler told WBAL TV that James’ complaint was forwarded to his department’s Office of Professional Standards for “a complete and thorough investigation.”

Andrew D. Freeman, who is also representing James, said, "If Mr. James were white, the officer would not have doubted that Mr. James was an attorney, would not have questioned his identity, and certainly would not have detained Mr. James after seeing his driver’s license. There is no plausible explanation other than racial bias.”

Stopper Stumper

Sink at South Royalton Library                         - GENE CASSIDY

       It looks like the sink stopper next to the soap is much too big to fit in the sink drain, BUT, it has a small flange under the wide top that fits in the drain perfectly. I don't know what you call that small flange. I couldn't word the question in a way that Google would give me an answer. If it has a name at all.

European Internet

       

                                                   

It's hard to get a concrete feel on this but, from reporter Casey Newton for The Verge, here's the gist:

       "The internet has previously been divided in two: the open web, which most of the world could access; and the authoritarian web of countries like China, which is parceled out stingily and heavily monitored."

       But, Newton says, a new European Union law (the General Data Protection Regulation) adds a third divide. Essentially, the GDPR prevents large information disseminators  such as Google, other search engines and news aggregators from using snippets of new stories without paying the original publishers. This will have the effect of killing free news. Good for publishers, bad for news consumers.

       (There is the argument that without revenue, there will be no news publishers.) But the bottom line is, people without means will more and more be people without reliable information about events of the day. Bloggers, Twitter and Facebook, among others, will have to step up. As laughable as the ideas of fairness, impartiality and facts have become, things sound about to get worse.

Love Carrots?

- GENE CASSIDY

My friend Taylor in the Produce Dept. at the White River Co-op showed me this. I asked her if she thought these carrots would be internet stars. She said she didn't care at all.

Let's You and Him Fight

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Image from goodsommbadsomm.com

SOCIAL MEDIA

Now comes snitch-tagging

Digital confrontation turns up a notch with Twitter tattletaling

By JESSICA ROY

Los Angeles Times

First came Twitter.

Then came Twitter fights.

Then came Twitter passive aggression: Insults that don’t explicitly identify the person being criticized are so pervasive they have a name, the subtweet.

Now that subtlety is being punctured by a rising Twitter behavior — snitchtagging.

A snitch-tagger is essentially a Twitter tattletale. He or she sees a tweet criticizing another user and chimes in with that person’s Twitter handle — flagging the insult for the target to see.

It’s a move that pulls both the critic and the criticized into a digital confrontation that neither of them asked for.

It reminds Mark Marino, an associate professor of writing and the director of the Humanities and Critical Code Studies Lab at USC, of drama-hungry kids egging on a schoolyard fight. “It’s hard not to think of the middle-school version where you’re waiting for the sparks to fly.”

Social media opens everyone up to criticism. For anyone, famous or otherwise, social media can turn into an onslaught of unsolicited reviews and judgments. As one might imagine, those are not ideal circumstances for good mental health.

A Pew study published in 2017 found that being subjected to severe harassing behavior on the internet was bad for people’s mental health, and that the effect could be similar to experiencing a traumatic event.

- Published in the (West Lebanon) Valley News 3/17/19

The Streisand Effect, the Backfire Effect, the Affect Effect

1966

From Wikipedia:
The Streisand effect is a phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely, usually facilitated by the internet. It is an example of psychological reactance, wherein once people are aware that some information is being kept from them, their motivation to access and spread it is increased. (Some guy took a picture - one of thousands of photos he took of beachfront properties - of Streisand's house as part of a project on coastal erosion. She sued to have the photo removed from the project saying it invaded her privacy. Hundreds of thousands of people downloaded the photo because of the resulting publicity.)


The Affect Effect is a book about how emotions interact with politics. (Who could believe such a crazy idea?)

Will Jeff Bezos Be a Trillionaire Someday? (with an aside on HH Rogers)

Here's why I ask:

Gates joins Bezos in $100 billion club

By TOM METCALF and DEVON PENDLETON (24 March 2019)

Bloomberg

Now, the world contains two centibillionaires simultaneously.

Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, once the world’s richest person, has again eclipsed the $100 billion threshold, joining Amazon. com’s Jeff Bezos in the exclusive club, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Gates’s fortune, now $100 billion on the nose, hasn’t reached such heights since the dot-com boom, when Bezos was only beginning his march up the world’s wealth rankings. The Amazon founder is now worth $145.6 billion, having added $20.7 billion this year alone, while Gates has gained $9.5 billion.

The Gates and Bezos mega-fortunes may not last long. Gates has donated more than $35 billion to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and said he intends to give away at least half of his wealth. Bezos, meanwhile, may be about to cede some of his fortune for a different reason: he and his wife, Mackenzie, are divorcing.

The Bloomberg Billionaires Index ranks the world’s 500 wealthiest people. The combined net worth of the group has surged $505.8 billion this year to $5.3 trillion.

Speaking of rich people, google Henry Huttleston Rogers, who tour guides in Fairhaven, MA, say 'had more money than Bill Gates, measured in today's dollars.'

Here are three buildings Rogers donated to his hometown:

Fairhaven Town Hall

Fairhaven High School

Millicent Library (named for Rogers' daughter who died at age 17)