Thursday, August 31, 2006

Bernie Gets the Job Done

A woman brought her piano to Bernie to have the finish touched up.  She also brought her favorite houseplant.  "Please change the piano's color so it matches my favorite plant," she instructed.

Bernie worked to clean up and prepare the surface of the piano.  He also remembered to water the plant so it wouldn't die.  Finally, days later, Bernie got out his cans of colored lacquer and commenced spraying.

It was quick work at first.  He was able to get a close match, but it wasn't quite right.  He tried adding a little more of this, a little that, but it still wasn't right.

"I know what I'll do," he muttered.  He picked out another color, and sprayed the plant.

"It's perfect!" cried the customer when she came to inspect the work.  She took her plant home, and Bernie delivered the piano.

About a week later, the customer was back in the store to buy some music.  "The piano's beautiful, but you know that favorite plant of mine?  It died soon after I got it home.  Funny - did you remember to water it while it was here?"

Oh I sure did," replied Bernie.  "But you know plants - they'll die on you no matter what you do."

BC

Sunday, August 27, 2006

Fear as Entertainment

With the recent scares about airline safety, the discussion has come up (again) about the use of fear as a way to manipulate and exploit people.  Here's an example of such a discussion from Glenn Greenwald's blog:
Personally, I don't blame anyone for having irrational thoughts and fears prior to flying.  Our brains generate irrational fears in all sorts of different situations, and particularly with the fear-mongering and relentless media hyping of every rumored terrorist threat, it is hardly surprising that people will have these thoughts.

But the point here is best illustrated by analogy.  "Courage" is not the absence of fear, but is instead the taking of action notwithstanding that fear.  Identically, "rationality" is not the absence of irrational fears or thoughts, but is instead the choice not to allow those fears and thoughts to dictate behavior.  The blame lies not with those who entertain such fear, but with those who allow it to govern their conduct, and more so, those who purposely stoke and exaggerate those fears due either to their own fears and/or because doing so is to their advantage.

Why does it seem so easy to agitate people, thoughtful, well-meaning people, with fear?  One explanation is often overlooked – fear is entertaining.

Actually, any strong emotion can be entertaining.  People enjoy the stimulation of a strong emotion even if the emotion (or the event that triggered it) is regarded as negative.  This is, of course, a built-in attribute we share with many animals.  My dog once quite dramatically charged a plastic lawn deer until she realized it wasn't going to move.  I was pretty embarrassed (my vicious little doggie!) but she wasn't.  She wagged her tail and was obviously invigorated and pleased by the whole event.

We are entertained by fear when we watch a scary movie, or ride a roller coaster, or imagine terrorists sitting next to us on the plane.  Television provides such a wealth of entertaining fear, especially on the news, that I call it The Fear Machine.  We seek out such entertainment, and actually invite specialists (entertainers, salesmen, politicians) to entertain us.  If we train ourselves (through, say, daily television viewing) to expect constant entertainment, we can become obsessed.  We can actually believe that something isn't important or serious or necessary unless it is entertaining.  We work to extract entertainment out of our most mundane, or most sublime, experiences, and in the process miss out on more subtle, important benefits.  You can eat candy for dinner – it entertains your mouth plenty, but don't expect any nutrition.

So yes, fear mongers can manipulate and exploit us while we are occupied by our fear, but don't discount our own role in accepting and asking for fear mongering, and in maintaining an environment where fear is valued for its entertainment quality.

BC

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

The Ghost of Planet X

Update Below

Recently, a group of astronomers met to begin deciding a weighty question - should the planet Pluto really be called a planet?  (Background here.)  At the end of the day it was clear that nobody was ready to demote Pluto.  Instead, a new definition of "planet" was proposed, a definition specifically designed to include Pluto (without including too many other planetoids orbiting the Sun).  So much for scientists being rational and unsentimental.  I don't care about Pluto's scientific status, but I am fascinated by the sentimentality.  We appear to be haunted by the ghost of Planet X.

Percival Lowell was a wealthy Bostonian who occupied himself as a "gentleman scientist" in the late 1800's.  He had enough wealth to build and run an astronomical observatory in Arizona.  He also had enough money to widely publicize his thoughts and observations, and thus it was that he planted his first ghost in the American psyche - Martians.

Lowell was aware of the observations of Mars by Giovanni Schiaparelli, who had published drawings showing surface details, including what he labeled "canali."  Lowell took the word literally to mean canals, something deliberately built, and convinced himself that there must be canal-building Martians.

Now, the idea of Martians is so imbedded in our culture that it can seem odd that 1) we are unique in this regard, and 2) one person started the whole idea of Martians.  Of course, in the 21st century, no one really believes that there are Martians, but just to be sure, we have been sending spacecraft to Mars for some time now, looking for them. As I write this, there are two rovers ranging about the surface of Mars looking for signs of water.  Why water?  Water supports life, and life means Martians.  Maybe the life is just microbial, or maybe we'll just say that Mars could have supported life in the past, but we're still looking for Martians.

During Lowell's life the planet Neptune was discovered.  Neptune is invisible to the naked eye, and its existence had to be inferred.  Locations were calculated, and eventually the planet was spotted by telescope.  There also seemed to be evidence that maybe there was one more planet out there, and Lowell took the bait.  The great American astronomer would attempt to find Planet X.

Lowell did not find Planet X in his lifetime.  The task was passed on to Clyde Tombaugh, who never once questioned the existence of Planet X in spite of nobody ever finding it where it was supposed to be.  To be fair, no one knew then what we know now - the evidence was flawed, and there is no Planet X.

But what about Pluto?  When Lowell envisioned Planet X, he pictured a giant gas planet like Uranus or Neptune. He had calculated where it should be, and it wasn't there.  Tombaugh gave up this particular search, and just systematically started looking everywhere remotely possible.  It was almost miraculous that he was able to find a tiny ball of ice smaller than our Moon, and of course he assumed it was Planet X.

So the idea, the ghost, of Planet X, a great planet out in the unknown, just beyond our seeing and our calculating, infiltrated our imaginations.  When it became clear, over time, that Pluto was not the Planet X Lowell had hoped for, the idea of Planet X still remained.  If Pluto, a small planet, was all we had for now, well then all right.  When Michael Brown discovered the planetoid he calls Xena, and it turned out to be bigger than Pluto (by a hair), wasn't all the tenth-planet excitement really about the unfulfilled promise that there must be a Planet X?

To demote poor Pluto further would be almost admitting there is no Planet X, and that would be like denying Martians.  How many other ghosts comfort us like this in the night?

BC


Update: 24 Aug 06

A larger international body of astronomers have decided that Pluto is not a planet after all.  However, in deference to Pluto's former status, they have created a category called "dwarf planet" to which Pluto now belongs.


Here's Mike Brown's homepage where you can read his reaction to all this, plus his op-ed for the NYT.
And here's Wikipedia on Planet X.

(My friend Mike has alerted me to the possibility that Rhode Island might now be classified as a dwarf state.)