Conservative Cognitive Dissonance

Lately I've been gathering more and more examples of cognitive dissonance-- the state of holding conflicting beliefs, values, or emotional reactions simultaneously-- among American conservatives.

One such example was during the GOP primaries when Mitt Romney kept trying to appeal to the NASCAR demographic by pretending to be just a regular guy, and not a Very Rich Man who had nothing in common with them.  (His efforts seemed painful to me, like watching a dog walk on its hind legs.) 

It was ironic that although Romney was trying to win the nomination of the party that openly serves the interests of the Very Rich, he had to pretend that he wasn't one himself. 

Another example was served up to me this morning when the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act as constitutional.  Immediately a slew of conservatives tweeted that they were so mad about Obamacare they were moving to Canada.

Seriously?  

You do realize that Canada's nationalized health care system is way more comprehensive than anything Obama has ever proposed, right?  (And it's also very popular among Canadians, I add snarkily.)

In fact, I can't think of a single other country that offers less nationalized health care than the U.S.-- at least not one that conservative Americans would want to live in.

(Full disclosure: after some investigation, it appears that some of the people who tweeted about moving to Canada were joking.  Others, well, were just idiots.  It's probably not fair to use them as samples of conservative thought.  Still, it kinda shows you the stupid shit that Obama is up against.)   

    

  

My John Irving Story

I once wrote John Irving a letter. 

Young John Irving

Since he's one of my favorite novelists, I told him how much I've enjoyed his writing, then pointed out that three recurring themes in his books feature the unlikely combination of three passions I've had in my life: wrestling, German, and sex.  As I explained in my letter: I was a wrestler in high school, I have a Master's in German, and sex... well maybe my interest in that is not so unusual.  

I was impressed and flattered when he actually answered my letter, and said something like, "Well, if we ever met in a gym or a bar I'm sure we would have a lot to talk about!"  I don't know if he wrote that himself or a had an assistant do it, but it still made me feel warm and fuzzy that a talented famous person such as him paid some attention to me (or pretended to.) 

Old John Irving

+++++

So this weekend I was listening to one of my favorite radio shows, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, and John Irving was their celebrity guest.  (I happened to be driving around running errands at the time, but during Irving's segment I had to sit in a parking lot in my car until it was over. Another celebrity guest on the show was Carl Hiaassen, another favorite author of mine. I happen to currently be in the middle of books by each writer, so that was a weird coincidence.)

When Peter Sagal, the host of WWDTM, interviewed Irving, he pointed out that on his Wikipedia page, there is a chart of all the themes in Irving's novels.  The themes were: New England, sex workers, wrestling, Vienna, bears, deadly accidents, absent parents, and writers.  

In the WWTDM interview, Irving calls these "superficial details," but I can't tell if he's being facetious or not.  He had a very dry sense of humor and a morose presence on the show.  

This chart is awesome, and shows that it's not just wrestling, German, and sex that occupies Irving's brain.  Although German is not listed, Vienna is, which is where I think most of his German comes from.  And although "sex workers" is a theme, one can't deny there's a whole lot of sex and sexual issues in his books.  In fact, another entire column in this table that I cropped out (for space) is one titled Sexual Variations, which lists such things as: adultery, swinging, menage a trois, asexuality, rape, pedophilia, transsexualism, incest, homosexuality, lesbianism, bestiality, buggery, cross-dressing, and "older woman/younger man."

It's nice to know that others have noticed some of the same themes that I have in Irving's books.  But it appears that I have underestimated my favorite novelist.  He's about much more than just German, wresting, and sex.  (Note to self: Never EVER do a Google image search with those three words again.)

Pusher

In tennis, a "pusher" is a pejorative term for someone who gets to everything and returns it, keeps the ball in play, but doesn't hit winners.  AKA a "human backboard."

I've been accused of being a pusher.  In some contexts I am.  I'm definitely a defensive player and I do get to everything.  But given the opportunity, I will come to the net and hit winners.  I just often don't get that opportunity against power hitters.

I'm a different kind of pusher: I push people to their limit.

Then I lose.

+++++


It happened again this week.

In my first singles league match of the summer outdoor season, I played a young kid just out of college who was playing in his first adult league match.  He'd played in high school and hit the ball very hard, and it was all I could do to keep up with him.  But keep up with him I did, in a first close first set.  Although I had two chances to win it (I was up 5-4, 40-15), I blew it and he squeaked by me, 7-5.

The first set lasted longer than an hour on a hot humid summer night.  I could already tell that he was having problems.  He took a really long break between sets to stretch his legs.  Then, as the second set continued, with lots of long points and games, he took longer and longer breaks on the changeovers, always stretching his legs.  

We were tied at 3-3 in the second set when I finally was able to wear him down enough to win three straight games.  Near the end he had several instances of leg cramping. I won the set 6-3, so we'd have to play a third set.  By this time the guy was in real agony.  He spent the entire (long) break between sets sitting down and stretching his legs. I gave him much longer than he was entitled to.  He could barely walk and I thought there was no way he'd be able to compete in the third set. I asked him if he was okay to play and he said yes.  

In lieu of a full third set-- which I most surely would have won because his legs would have fallen off-- we played a 10-point tiebreak, which follows the rules of this league.  (Actually, the rules were not entirely clear.  During the indoor season we do play 10-point tiebreaks, but our league coordinator did not actually spell this out for the summer league, so it was up to our discretion.  Before the match even started, we both agreed to play a 10-point tiebreak if it came to that.)
  

He jumped out to a 5-1 lead and never looked back. He won 10-5, and I was so frustrated I threw my racket against the fence.  I was really annoyed during the tiebreak because he took so much time between points, then ran around and bashed these winners against me.  Every time we'd have a long point, he'd have to stop and stretch a long time after it.  My best chance at beating a power hitter is to make them work really hard early in a match so that they don't have enough energy later.  Early on he was really crushing the ball and I was getting everything back, so my strategy was working.

It doesn't seem fair that late in the match he can take all the time he needs between points without a penalty.  You're only allowed so much time between points/games/sets.  And fitness is part of the game.  But I didn't want to be a jerk.  The guy was in real pain.  

After the match he pretty much crumpled to the ground and could hardly walk.  I would feel bad for him, but fuck him-- he just beat me.  I was tired too, but I was a tired loser. If he was in so much pain he shouldn't have tried so hard to beat me.  He's almost half my age, I'm not going to feel guilty for being in better shape. 

I looked at my phone.  We had played for 2 hours and 45 minutes.  Final score: 7-5, 3-6, 1-0 (10-5)       

+++++

I like to joke that my purpose in tennis is to push people to their limit and then lose to them.  But this isn't funny anymore.  I'm tired of losing.  

Similar incidents have happened several times before.  People cramp up against me, I give them more time than they're entitled to because I'm nice, and then they end up beating me.  I know it's my own fault for thinking they're done when they're not.  I let down my guard and let them back into the match.  I choke.


It's really frustrating, and I just don't know how to fix this.  If my strategy is to wear people down, but then I can't finish them off when they get wore down, what good is it? 

Somehow I have to push through this.  Then I can be another kind of pusher. 

+++++

UPDATE: After thinking more about this phenomenon, I realize that the problem isn't that I always choke when I wear people down.  People often fade against me late in the match.  The problem is those rare instances when my opponent cramps up when he gets tired, instead of just missing shots.  That's how a tired opponent is supposed to act!  It's these stubborn people who don't show the normal symptoms of tiredness.  Still, I should be able to beat someone who's cramping up that bad.  In the end, it's still my fault.

UPDATE #2: I played another marathon match a week later.   Two and a half hours, pushed my opponent to the limit, but lost a close one in the end.  Final score: 7-5, 6-7(2), 1-0 (10-8). This opponent didn't cramp up on me, but also didn't fade like I wanted him to.  One interesting thing, though, is that he told me afterward that I hit more winners against him than most people do.  No one's ever told me THAT before.  A "pusher" definitely doesn't hit winners, so I must not be a very good one.   

Breaking Back Into Bloomington

I think it's annoying that when I tell people around here that I'm going to Bloomington, I have to add "Indiana."

Around these parts when someone says, "Bloomington," they're usually referring to the lame one-- the one in central Illinois that is the home of State Farm Insurance and Beer Nuts.

But where I come from-- and for people who live a scant 45 miles east of here-- Bloomington has a way cooler meaning: the small college town in southern Indiana where the main campus of Indiana University lives.

For six years in the 1990's I called Bloomington home.  I earned two degrees there, worked four different jobs, met dozens of people and collected a lifetime of stories.  I learned, grew, and changed.       

+++++

So on a recent nostalgia trip to Bloomington, my girlfriend (and traveling companion) asked me, "Have you ever seen Breaking Away?"

Have I ever seen Breaking Away?!  I'm from Indiana!  I could recite that movie!
 

 ("Oh, Fellini, get off the table!"  "That's my cat and I named him Jake!  Your name's Jake, not Fellini!  I won't have any eeny in this house!!")

I then decided that we absolutely had to watch the movie while we were there.  Not only was Breaking Away about Bloomington (and won the 1979 Oscar for Best Screenplay), it was filmed entirely in Bloomington, so watching it is a nice time capsule of what the town and university looked like in the late 70's. (If you're not familiar with it, read Roger Ebert's review from 1979:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19790101/REVIEWS/901010308/1023)

But the first challenge was to see if we could find a copy of the movie on a Saturday night on Kirkwood Avenue (Bloomington's main drag.) 

View down Kirkwood from the main gates of campus

We stopped at the Tracks record store, where I used to go to all the time to buy cassette tapes, but today mostly sells IU t-shirts and paraphernalia.

They had a bunch of used DVD's in bins outside, but after rifling through them, we couldn't find the movie. I went inside and asked the college kid behind the counter, "Would you be able to tell me if you have a specific DVD?"

"Oh, not really, but what is the title? Maybe I remember seeing it."

I said Breaking Away, and he pointed to the counter in front of me.  A dozen new copies of the movie sat wrapped in cellophane before me.  Duh!  Of course-- this is Bloomington! 

Thirty-four years after it was filmed here, not only could you find new copies it, but they also sold replicas of the white Cutters t-shirts from the movie.

As my gf pointed out, that t-shirt would have a totally different connotation for kids these days.

Watching Breaking Away at our hotel in Bloomington was a nostalgia spiral.  Here I was watching a movie about Bloomington that captured the time before I moved there, seeing places I remember from my own college days, and places I would be walking past the next day.

The movie holds up well.  It does a great job of illustrating sociological issues (i.e. "town vs. gown") through individual perspectives.  As Roger Ebert says, it is "a wonderfully sunny, funny, goofy, intelligent movie that makes you feel about as good as any movie in a long time."  But as an older adult I did notice some plot holes I hadn't seen before.  Like how some random nonathletic kid who wins a new racing bike could suddenly become so successful at bike racing, or why he needs to tape himself to the bike in the last race.  It also struck me that this is basically a xenophobic movie-- all the villains are outsiders: the college kids, the Italian bicyclists, etc.

But these are quibbles.  On the whole, it's still a great movie.  And just like I said in college 20 years ago, if you haven't seen it, you HAVE TO!!

+++++

If you were to ask my girlfriend (and traveling companion) about her impressions of Bloomington, she would probably say, "95 degrees, limestone, 95 degrees, some more limestone buildings, and 95 degrees."  They were having a heat wave when we visited, and indeed, there are a lot of limestone buildings.

Indiana limestone is not only ubiquitous and pretty-- it is famous.  It's what the Empire State Building is made of.
 

True fact: this was built with limestone near Bloomington

That's the problem with taking someone on your own nostalgia trip.  Where I see memories at every turn, she just sees pretty buildings and a scenic campus.  This is where I lived!  This is where I took a class! This is where I walked!  And here's the scenic campus from a different angle! And here's the place where I had lunch!  

When we got to Showalter Fountain, I had to tell the story of a hot summer night, one of those nights when it was humid and 95 degrees at midnight, so my roommates and I decided to go play in the fountain.  We walked all the way across campus at midnight and jumped in the fountain to cool off. When we got there, there were other groups of students also enjoying the fountain that night.  It was an impromptu party.

Showalter Fountain: we partied with the naked fish lady

That seems like the epitome of a college story.  The kind of thing you did before you have jobs and homes and children.

Maybe that's why everyone has a special place in their heart for their college town.  It was the first (possibly only) time in your life you jumped in a fountain at midnight.    

Puzzling Skyline

I believe my skyline obsession has hit its peak, or rather its top floor.

Probably because there's a model of the Chicago skyline sitting on my kitchen table, and I can't imagine geeking out any more than that.

Getting to that point took quite a bit of work and dedication.

At a tourist shop on Michigan Avenue, I bought a "4D Cityscape Time Puzzle" for Chicago.  I'd been seeing these around for some time, and after much pining, I finally bought myself one.

The "4D" refers to the fact that the puzzle is three-dimensional-- it includes little model 3-D buildings-- plus the fourth dimension, time.  You can build up your skyline based on what year each famous building was erected.

So here's a 4D rendering of my puzzle:

The first step was doing a regular two-dimensional puzzle of a map of downtown Chicago.  This phase took the most work.  The puzzle itself is pretty crappy-- the pieces are all kinda generic so it often looks like there's a fit when there isn't.   Especially the water pieces that were solid blue, it was sometimes impossible to tell whether a piece was in the right spot.

The next step was putting together a second, thicker layer of foam pieces onto the part where the buildings would go.  Then I had to punch out all the little holes where the buildings would fit snugly into place.

Then I had to go through each of the buildings-- there were 89 of them-- and figure out where they go on the map, based on numbers assigned to each one.

   

 Here are the first 10 buildings, the oldest ones. 

From there, I just kept adding buildings chronologically...

Until I got to the final product, the current skyline:

One interesting thing about this puzzle is that is also includes future buildings: things that are planned but not built (or finished) yet.

In this case, something called the Chicago Spire is included.  This is a massive spiraling tower at the mouth of the Chicago river that was planned, but has since been scrapped.  You can see how ridiculously huge it is here.

Although it would have dominated the Chicago skyline, it was never supposed to be THAT huge in relation to the rest of the buildings.  Which brings up two important limitations of this 4D Cityscape.

Not all the buildings are to scale.  The Willis Tower (nee Sears) should be way taller than it is.  This is a travesty.  How hard is it to make the tallest building in the city-- the tallest building in the whole fucking country!-- the right proportions?! Same thing for the Hancock Tower.  A lot of the buildings are the wrong size.  Some are way huger than they should be, and some are way tinier.  I don't get it, and it's a real disappointment.  Also, the map is a little off.  It's an approximation, so many of the buildings are not in the right place.

 The other issue is color.  On the box, they have prominent buildings like Sears and Hancock in their trademark black, but in reality all the pieces are one of two colors: gray or bronze.

It makes for a rather dreary skyline (despite the morning sunshine.)
  

The cat that ate Chicago!

So to dork out to the highest degree, I bought some model paint and touched up the skyline.  I used black, white, sand, blue gray, dark green, and rust to add some color to a handful of buildings. Not all of the colors took very well to the gray base, but it definitely improves the overall feel:
 

The three future buildings. I decided not to add those until they're actually built-- if I'm still into skylines by then.

"Death" to Pluto

When I was a kid in school I learned about the nine planets in the solar system.  They didn't make much of an impact on me, so as an adult I couldn't tell you much about them.  I knew Venus and Mercury were closer to the sun, Mars was our neighbor who kept invading, Jupiter was the big one, Saturn was the one with rings, and Uranus was a gold mine of juvenile jokes.  (Q: How is the Starship Enterprise like toilet paper?  A: They both fly around Uranus and pick up Klingons.)    

Pluto wasn't really on my radar.  It was just one of the planets.  I didn't pay attention to the fact it was the smallest, or the most distant, or the "newest" (in terms of our discovery of it), or the only one discovered by an American. 
 
So when I heard in the news a few years back that Pluto was no longer a planet, it didn't much bother me.  Oh, isn't that interesting, I thought.  They found things bigger than Pluto out beyond it, so they either had to include those new objects as new planets or demote Pluto.  That's only fair.  Scientific progress and all.  When my mom was born there were only 48 states.  Now there are 50.  Things change.

But people were really, really upset when the astronomers in the International Astronomical Union (IAU) voted to demote Pluto to the status of a "dwarf planet."  They didn't understand how scientists could just "kill" Pluto like that.  Who gave them that power?

 Science isn't about emotion or tradition or protecting those cherished memories from your school days.  It's about cold hard facts, and changing those facts based on new evidence.  But people really don't seem to like that aspect of science.

Seriously?  A protest for the classification of a celestial object?  It's not like baby asteroids are being clubbed to death.

+++++

I was reminded of the whole Pluto controversy by an awesome book I just read, How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming by Mike Brown.

Brown is the astronomer who discovered Eris, the planet-like thing out beyond Pluto that was larger than our ninth planet.  He also discovered a lot of other objects about the same size.  It was these discoveries that led to Pluto's "death" as a planet.  As the blurb on the book jacket says:

Mike Brown is the funniest, smartest, and most surprisingly poetic Caltech astronomer who ever made my daughters cry.  Certainly their happy nine-planet childhoods were worth sacrificing for this truly fascinating and engaging read.

I couldn't agree more, although it stuns me that someone would actually cry over Pluto's fate.  Although the book is funny and liberally uses the metaphor of Pluto dying or being killed, Pluto is no more dead or alive than it ever was.  It was just re-classified based on new data.  No one "killed" it.

The book is indeed a fascinating read.  It mixes discussions of planets and our solar system (I should have been an astronomer!) with Brown's own life-- the sweet courtship of his wife, the amazing birth of their daughter, and the professional triumphs and setbacks that accompanied his planetary research.  He tells a good story.  There's even controversy and intrigue and-- get this-- an evil astronomer nemesis from Spain who tries to steal credit for Brown's discoveries! 

The idea that there's an evil astronomer is as funny as the idea that there are evil cartographers or meteorologists.

 The book is the perfect mix of science, human experience, and controversy.

+++++

Brown spends a lot of time in the book trying to define what a planet is.  Most of us probably couldn't give a precise definition of a planet.  At the end of the book Brown says that planets are a concept, not a definition:  "when people say 'planet,' they mean, I believe, 'one of a small number of large important things in our solar system.' "

In the early 19th century, a few new planets were discovered between Mars and Jupiter.  For a while the solar system had 12 planets.  But when 15 more of these planet-like objects were found in rapid succession, astronomers realized they couldn't all be planets.  It turned out that scientists had simply discovered an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.  (This must be why Martians always attack Earth instead of Jupiter-- no asteroid belt to get in the way.)

So after they sorted out the whole asteroid belt thing, scientific progress required that they re-classify the solar system based on new knowledge.  The same thing has happened with Pluto.  When we thought Pluto was just a lone object at the edge of our solar system, perhaps it made sense to think of it as the ninth planet.  But now that we know there are a lot of Pluto-like objects out beyond it, that it is merely a part of a larger belt of objects (known as the Kuiper Belt) on the rim of the solar system, it makes sense to re-classify it.

As Brown says, "Going from nine planets to eight planets would be scientific progress."

As kids learning about the solar system, we like to have simple facts.  The Earth is the third planet from the sun.  The sun is 93,000,000 miles away.  There are nine planets in the solar system.  But after reading this book I realize it's much more complicated than that.  The solar system, as we now understand it, is broken down into terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars), the asteroid belt, giant planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus), and the Kuiper Belt (Pluto, Eris, and dozens other "dwarf planets.")              

Ironically, Brown had as much to lose as anyone by "killing" Pluto.  Since he was the one who had discovered the "tenth planet," he could have received much fame and notoriety for that honor.  Instead, he chose scientific logic over personal gain.  He did the right thing, and for that I am deeply impressed.   

The famous astronomer.  Just kidding. That's Neil Degrasse Tyson, who's on The Daily Show all the time.

 

 Mike Brown: honorable scientist