jasonswadley.com

The Great Migration

Faithful readers,

I’ll be transferring my blog from its current home (at TypePad) to its own server over the course of the next week or so. That means that there might be a few days that the website is down while everything is transferred over. Those of you who subscribe via RSS or email shouldn’t notice any difference.

Never fear, though, because I’ll be back with an improved page and a lot more time to write. My thesis is almost finished, too, so be looking for that soon.

North to Alaska

Whew… what a whirlwind few months. Thankfully, all my final papers are now submitted, I’ve got the summer to recuperate and slowly build a thesis, and I now have time for non-academic fun like life and blogging.

I’ll be in Alaska next week on a cruise with my grandma, but expect some dispatches upon my return.

The Coolidge Effect

In short, animals do not choose their mates randomly. They identify
and reject those with whom they have already had sex. Scientists know
this reflex as the "Coolidge Effect." It earned its name many years ago
when President Coolidge and his wife were touring a farm. While the
President was elsewhere, the farmer proudly showed Mrs. Coolidge a
rooster that "could copulate with hens all day long, day after day."
Mrs. Coolidge coyly suggested that the farmer tell that to Mr.
Coolidge, which he did.

The President thought for a moment and then inquired, "With the same hen?"

"No, sir," replied the farmer.

"Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge," retorted the President.

[via kottke]

1968

To the present generation, the 1960s and all it represented seem like nostalgic snapshots from a bygone era. Yet despite the placidity of our own prosperous times, the radical assaults of the 1960s are not confined to the past. Its ideology has insinuated itself, disastrously, into the curricula of our schools and colleges; it has significantly altered the texture of sexual relations and family life; it has played havoc with the authority of churches and other repositories of moral wisdom; it has undermined the claims of civic virtue and our national self-understanding; it has degraded the media, the entertainment industry, and popular culture; it has helped to subvert museums and other institutions entrusted with preserving and transmitting high culture. It has even, most poignantly, addled our hearts and innermost assumptions about what counts as the good life: it has perverted our dreams as much as it has prevented us from attaining them.

Roger Kimball (who, oddly enough, looks like a grown Harry Potter) rebuts Tariq Ali on the value of the sixties.

The smartest thing Bill Clinton ever said: "If you look back on the Sixties
and think there was more good than bad, you’re probably a Democrat. If you think there was more harm than
good, you’re probably a Republican."

I’m not sure about the party split, but it says much about one’s general outlook.

Stuff I read during spring break

Here’s what kept me busy during my week off:

Books

The Brothers Karamazov
I had hoped to finish Dostoevsky and read Rawl’s Theory of Justice while resting back home. I can’t finish Brothers before I return to Chicago, but it’s excellent. Like Hume for Kant, Dostoevsky awoke me from my dogmatic I-love-fiction-but-don’t-know-what-to-write slumbers.

Articles

Factory-Sized Deception
The backstory behind one of Obama’s protectionist ads.

New Age Nuclear
Potential breakthrough for energy production.

New Limits to Growth Revive Malthusian Fears
Short on resources, long on people.

Better the Second Time: Would We Be Smarter Voters If We Did It Twice?
Michael Walzer questions voter’s remorse.

A Nation of Givers
Americans are, on the whole, a charitable bunch.

On Borrowed Time: Urban decline moves to the suburbs
Suburbia, notably in Chicagoland, is struggling.

Can’t Buy Me Love

I’ve learned two things from Paul McCartney.

1. All you need is love.
2. Always sign a prenup.

Video movies!

Bored? Enjoy.

But are we too busy twirling through the songs on our iPods — while checking e-mail, while changing lanes on the highway — to consider whether we are giving up a good thing? We are most human when we feel dull. Lolling around in a state of restlessness is one of life’s greatest luxuries — one not available to creatures that spend all their time pursuing mere survival. To be bored is to stop reacting to the external world, and to explore the internal one. It is in these times of reflection that people often discover something new, whether it is an epiphany about a relationship or a new theory about the way the universe works. Granted, many people emerge from boredom feeling that they have accomplished nothing. But is accomplishment really the point of life? There is a strong argument that boredom — so often parodied as a glassy-eyed drooling state of nothingness — is an essential human emotion that underlies art, literature, philosophy, science, and even love.

Experiencing Experience

Ericsson’s primary finding is that rather than mere experience or even
raw talent, it is dedicated, slogging, generally solitary exertion —
repeatedly practicing the most difficult physical tasks for an athlete,
repeatedly performing new and highly intricate computations for a
mathematician — that leads to first-rate performance. And it should
never get easier; if it does, you are coasting, not improving. Ericsson
calls this exertion "deliberate practice," by which he means the kind
of practice we hate, the kind that leads to failure and hair-pulling
and fist-pounding. You like the Tuesday New York Times crossword? You have to tackle the Saturday one to be really good.

Take figure-skating. For the 2003 book Expert Performance in Sports,
researchers Janice Deakin and Stephen Cobley observed 24 figure skaters
as they practiced. Deakin and Cobley asked the skaters to complete
diaries about their practice habits. The researchers found that élite
skaters spent 68% of their sessions practicing jumps — one of the
riskiest and most demanding parts of figure-skating routines. Skaters
in a second tier, who were just as experienced in terms of years, spent
only 48% of their time on jumps, and they rested more often. As Deakin
and her colleagues write in the Cambridge Handbook,
"All skaters spent considerably more time practicing jumps that already
existed in their repertoire and less time on jumps they were attempting
to learn." In other words, we like to practice what we know, stretching
out in the warm bath of familiarity rather than stretching our skills.
Those who overcome that tendency are the real high performers.