Month: September 2013

What’s the “lesson” of 9/11?

The feds tell web firms to turn over the encrypted user account passwords, just in case they need them, but they’re not going to use them without cause, and a (rubber stamp) court order. Of course.

Photo credit: PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images

Every year, I hear, especially since the 10th anniversary, “Remember 9/11! Never forget!” If we somehow forgot, we’d cease to be ‘vigilant’. I remember September 11, 2001, amazingly well, thank you. Just this summer, I was at a highway rest stop on I-87, the Northway, not far from Albany, when I saw a memorial for three people who worked for the Department of Transportation, one of whom I knew not very well, who died on that day.

Even my daughter, who wasn’t even born then, knows about 9/11. Her third-grade teacher made a point of making sure those eight-year-olds knew about it. It even got covered on the local cable channel, YNN.

But what is it that we should not forget? Since then, the United States has had two of its longest wars, including with a country that had nothing to do with the tragedy.

We have had a series of laws – such as the so-called USA PATRIOT Act, which was passed less than six weeks after the tragedy, suggesting it was already in the hopper – that has directly led to the surveillance of Americans. OK, not on Americans, just our “metadata” involving our snail mail, and phones, and e-mail. The feds tell web firms to turn over the encrypted user account passwords, just in case they need them, but they’re not going to use them without cause, and a (rubber stamp) court order. Of course.

Whether or not soldiers have been fighting for our freedom in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s abundantly clear that freedom is being stolen at home by secret courts and executive overreach, against the wishes of most Americans. If the lesson of 9/11 is that we’ll do anything to be safe, that would be yet another tragedy.

I is for Inherently good?

“But if babies have positive feelings for the similar puppet, do they actually have negative feelings for the one who’s different?”

Watching CBS News 60 Minutes this summer, I noted that they repeated a story Born good? Babies help unlock the origins of morality. I found it fascinating, as I watched it for a second time.

“It’s a question people have asked for as long as there have been people: are human beings inherently good? Are we born with a sense of morality or do we arrive blank slates, waiting for the world to teach us right from wrong?”

There were a series of experiments done on children six months old at a clinic associated with Yale University: “In offering babies this seemingly small, innocuous choice — graham crackers or Cheerios — [researcher Karen] Wynn is probing something big: the origins of bias. The tendency to prefer others who are similar to ourselves.

“So will [baby] Nate, who chose Cheerios over graham crackers, prefer this orange cat, who also likes Cheerios — over the grey cat who likes graham crackers instead? Apparently so.

“But if babies have positive feelings for the similar puppet, do they actually have negative feelings for the one who’s different? To find out, Wynn showed babies the grey cat — the one who liked the opposite food, struggling to open up the box to get a toy. Will Gregory here want to see the graham cracker eater treated well? Or does he want him treated badly? Gregory seemed to want the different puppet treated badly.”

Reporter Lesley Stahl notes that the child went with his bias.

“And so did Nate and 87 percent of the other babies tested. From this Wynn concludes that infants prefer those ‘who harm… others’ who are unlike them.”

I can’t help but wonder if most people, including adults, react similarly, depending on whether they relate to different individuals in a dispute.

But there are also positive outcomes in this study. Especially as children get older, altruism develops, a sense of fairness.

Here is the video, and here’s a bonus feature, Is your child fair when no one is watching?


ABC Wednesday – Round 13

The Flying House by Winsor McKay, adapted by Bill Plympton

The FantaCon 2013 program is now available on Kindle.

I knew of the early 20th Century American cartoonist Winsor McKay from his Little Nemo strip, which has been collected in books. However, I was less familiar with his other work. “Dream of the Rarebit Fiend was a newspaper comic strip by… McCay which began September 10, 1904. As in McCay’s signature strip, Little Nemo, the strip was made up of bizarre dreams… Rarebit Fiend was printed in the Evening Telegram, a newspaper published by the Herald. For contractual reasons, McCay signed the strip with the pen name ‘Silas’.

“The strip had… a recurring theme: a character would have a nightmare or other bizarre dream, usually after eating a Welsh rarebit (a cheese-on-toast dish). The character would awaken from the dream in the last panel, regretting having eaten the rarebit. The dreams often revealed the darker sides of the dreamers’ psyches… This was in great contrast to the colorful, childlike fantasy dreams in Little Nemo.”

McKay’s 1921 film The Flying House fits into the rarebit category. You can see the first half of it on the right-side panel adjacent to the Wikipedia article. In 2011, animator Bill Plympton restored the film, using Kickstarter to fund the project. The film was colorized, and actors Matthew Modine and Patricia Clarkson provided voices.

The short film is, oddly, timely for a pre-Depression piece. The man says at one point: “I want to pay my debts but I’ll be hanged if I will let those money sharks grab my dough.”

I participated in the Kickstarter and got a copy of the DVD. Plympton and his team first cleaned up the original film, so it’s not scratchy. Then not only did they colorize it, using the palette of McKay’s work, they removed the word balloon but added the music. One can compare the two versions. There are also some extras. Animation critics talk about McKay and the specific work; unfortunately, they are credited on the DVD but not on the packaging, so the only one I can mention without looking it up is Leonard Maltin.

I was happy to help something that would not have existed if not for supporters like myself. If you’re interested, you can order it here.

Gene Kannenberg Jr notes that this 1989 video of Tom Petty’s Runnin’ Down A Dream was a tribute to “Little Nemo in Slumberland” by Winsor McCay. Odd, too: I like this song (and LOVE the album from which it comes), but I have zero recollection of seeing it before.

Speaking of comics-related material, the FantaCon 2013 program is now available on Kindle. I put together the bibliography of FantaCo publications, 1979-1988, which is why I’m listed as an author on the item.

Grandparents Day: my grandmas, and one of my daughter’s

Curiously, this picture triggered a memory of some kind about my OTHER grandmother.

One of those holidays I think WAS created by Hallmark is Grandparents Day. Well, technically not, but it FEELS that way.

Here’s another picture my sister Marcia found, taken at some point in the 1940s; no idea where, when or why. The woman in the top row, second from the right is my great aunt Charlotte and the guy next to her in the sweater is her husband, Ernie Yates. Ernie died while his kids Raymond (directly in front of Charlotte), Frances (sitting on the floor), and Donald (on the blonde girl’s lap) were still young, but Charlotte had grandchildren, as Fran, Donald, and Robert (either not yet born, or an infant) all had children. Fran and Donald now have grandchildren.

The woman behind the blonde girl, partially obscured, is my grandma, Gertrude Williams, Ernie’s sister. She had three grandchildren, including my two sisters. And the young woman in the back row next to Ernie is my mother. I don’t know who she was holding hands with, but it was not my father. She too had three grandchildren, as my sisters and I each had a daughter.

This picture was posted on Facebook, and a cousin suggested that it was taken on the second floor of something called the Interracial Center at 45 Carroll Street in Binghamton. The only people I recognize are my mother and her mother in the front row.

Curiously, this picture triggered a memory of some kind about my OTHER grandmother. A guy named John wrote, “I worked with your Grandmother Agatha Green in the Sunday School as a teacher at Trinity A.M.E. Zion Church Binghamton NY at the earlier location on Sherman Place & the church moved to Oak St. in 1960. Yes, I of course also recall your Mother and VERY artistic Dad, Les … A GREAT encouragement, motivation to me was knowing your Grandmother … (& I do mean “Grand”)…one fine Lady who made a HUGE difference in [my] life to the extent that she did NOT, sadly live to see. God Bless Her Soul!!!”

What Your Reading Rules Reveal About Your Personality

Maybe I like my fiction with pictures and my non-fiction without.

OK, is that a pretentious title, or what? My “personality”? My preferences, maybe.

Anyway, the meme comes from Jeanette at Book Riot. Then Jaquandor did it, and added questions (after #5). SamuraiFrog did it, and added #9.

1. Always stop at the end of a chapter. Always.

Well, I’m not hung up on that.

Certainly, I want to have a good jumping-off point, so I’ll see if there’s a natural section break.

2. Use specific bookmarks.

Oh, goodness, no. Whatever I find that’s thin enough I’ll use. A ruler, a bus schedule, the envelope from a bill, a Post-It note. It’s not that I don’t OWN bookmarks; it’s that I’m not organized enough to FIND them when I want them.

2a. No dog-earing, bending, or folding of pages.

I HATE dog-eared books; I find them inherently ugly. As a page (clerk) at the Binghamton Public Library many years ago, I noticed how people would do that, and it rather ticked me off.

2b. Weirdly enough, spine-breaking is fine, just don’t get too crazy with it.

And I REALLY hate that! I’ve had books come apart in my hand in two or three sections, held together by some strands. It was not just aesthetically unpleasing, it made the reading experience too much work. Not to mention a cost to the taxpayers.

Re: a comment on someone’s blog, no, I can’t use a book as a drink coaster, either!

3. Always read two books at once.

Depends. Generally, I get so engrossed in one book that I’ll just finish that one, then forget where I left off with the other, not physically, but emotionally.

4. No (or minimal) writing in books.

I tend to agree with this, except for some used textbooks I once had to buy back in my college days. Sometimes the previous owner even used a highlighter, and that was sometimes OK too. But in general, for most purposes, no.

5. Rereads must be earned because there are too many great books out there to read an okay one twice.

It’s been so long since I reread a book, can’t really speak to it. In my teens and twenties, I did all the time, and they weren’t necessarily “great” books, but ones that resonated with me. It’s more that I don’t have time to get through all the books I want to read, but that “earned” stuff seems like elitist snobbery to me.

Now, there are sections of books I’ll read. A Grimm fairy tale or a Shakespeare sonnet or a particularly nice passage But most of the books I have are comic books in hardcover form – Mr. Frog has been reviewing the early Marvels, BTW – or reference books on movies, TV, music, sports, and general knowledge, some of which I have NEVER read (though some histories of programs such as The Twilight Zone and The Dick Van Dyke Show, I have). In some ways, the vast majority of books I have I consider reference books, even if you would not.

6. Not finishing a book is OK.

I had a REALLY hard time with this for a LONG, LONG time. But after I passed 50, I got less driven about that. Too many books to worry about THAT one, even if I’M “supposed” to have read it to prove how well-rounded I am. Partly it’s that I don’t care to meet that amorphous expectation.

7. It is always better to take more books on a trip than you think you’ll possibly have time to read.

Seriously, it’s only in the last two years that I took ANY books on trips. It was usually periodicals I took because if they get lost/damaged, I don’t care as much. I once left a book at a motel, and to get it back, it cost more than it would have I just purchased it again. That said, I don’t get much reading of any type done on a trip, except in the car, and that HAS to be a magazine, where I can navigate and read at the same time.

8. Having a favorite genre is fine. Getting stuck in that genre is bad.

Meh. Several times I’ve tried to read fantasy, and most of the time, it just didn’t take. Indeed, most of what I read is non-fiction, and the only fiction I read last year, 11/22/63, was based on a real event. Yet, I read comic-related material for years. Maybe I like my fiction with pictures and my non-fiction without?

9. Reading on a tablet is still reading.

Well, sure. I mean I don’t do it, not likely to do it, have no interest in doing it, but I don’t find anything wrong with it. I’m more bothered that they are leasing the book to you, essentially, rather than you owning it, but that’s commerce and ownership issues, not reading issues. (Jaquandor answered this question of mine on this topic recently.)

I just listened to the Bat Segundo Show podcast with author Norman Rush. About 45 minutes in, Rush noted that what he likes to do when he visits people’s houses is to look at what’s on their bookshelves. That would be lost with the adoption of the tablet, though I suppose Good Reads, or other online reading lists, can be inadequate substitutes.

Books on tape are also reading, I decided. I mean, how else, save for braille, can the blind read? There’s REAL snobbery in this arena. If one is actively listening, as opposed to having on the background the way some people play music, then it’s reading. Love this short but sweet story.

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