The Grapes of Wrath

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I’ve often observed that a lot of people have an almost hostile cynicism to anything more sophisticated than ordinary. Whenever a movie tries to be a intelligent, whenever it tries to pass up the common banal snarky dialogue and obligatory shots, whenever it tries to use camera work and writing to tell a more profound story, these people will roll their eyes and say, “That director’s full of himself.” Or, if an actor is acting his part with power to reflect the intended power of the scene, they’ll say, “That actor’s full of himself.” If a novelist tries to pretty up her writing style, and to adopt a tone beyond mere storytelling, they will say, “That writer’s full of herself.” If an artist sculpts a creature that doesn’t exist, if a songwriter creates a beautiful harmony with a new instrument, if a painter paints something in a different color to symbolize sadness, they will roll their ways and say, “Those people are so full of themselves.” Anything that these people believe is “high-falootin'” they denigrate and treat with scorn.

I am not like this. If anything I’m the opposite: I’m cynical of the ordinary, or rather, of contentment with the ordinary. It doesn’t mean I respect anything out of the ordinary (I’m looking at you, people who cast simple cubes out of iron and claim that it represents the suffering of Bengali farmers), but whenever a work tries to be something more profound than ordinary, I respect it, even if it doesn’t quite succeed.

John Steinbeck’s novel, The Grapes of Wrath is a work that does try to be sophisticated like this. The chapters of The Grapes of Wrath alternate between an ordinary narrative style, and a non-narrative style that Steinbeck uses to highlight the deeper meaning of his work. And all I have to say about it is this: John Steinbeck is full of himself.

He’s a great narrative writer, and I enjoyed the narrative chapters quite a bit. The best of his non-narrative chapters were the “essay” chapters, the ones where he used full sentences and spoke directly to the reader. Especially good is Chapter 25, the chapter where the words “the grapes of wrath” appear a metaphor for growing discontent among the working class.

But for the rest of his non-narrative chapters: wowsers. They were bad. It seemed as if he had this idea that he would alternate between narrative chapters and essays, but it turned out that there much more story to be told than there were lessons to be learned, and so he had to find aw way to tell the story in a non-narrative style. And the result was not good.

The chapter where the car salesman keeps wishing he had more jalopies was probably the worst thing I’ve ever read. It was the stream of the car salesman’s thoughts, and I don’t think Steinbeck used a complete sentence once in the whole chapter. I guess the point was that evil salesmen don’t think complete thoughts, or something like that, but it was poorly done and pretentious. To make matters worse, its storytelling function was confused, since you don’t know if the people he’s bargaining with are the Joads or not, since you never know if Steinbeck is talking specifically or in general.

Besides the ridiculous quasi-narrative chapters like these, there was another thing Steinbeck used to get his non-narrative chapter count up, an old classic: filler. Such as the whole chapter devoted to a turtle crossing a road. Now, of course the turtle’s trek was really a metaphor, and can credit Steinbeck for finding a creative solution to technical problem, but let’s not kid ourselves into thinking this wasn’t filler.

Overall, the book was a good read and Steinbeck has written a profound work that makes us think about how we treat our fellow people, but when it came to the non-narrative chapters he was totally full of himself.

While we’re at it, we might as well deconstruct one of the “lessons” from The Grapes of Wrath a little. In the story, after the Joads have had some trouble with the law in some of the labor camps, they find a government-run camp that treats them like actual human beings. The Joads are even introduced to amenities they never had in better days in Oklahoma, like toilets.

Now, it’s clear what Steinbeck was trying to suggest here. But let’s look a little more deeply at this. In the government camp, the people were treated with dignity, but no one had work. And once the Joads’ money ran out, they had to hit the road, and find work with the dehumanizing corporate plantations. But then, though they weren’t living well, they at least got to eat, and even had a little leftover to small luxuries (Cracker Jack).

So. Capitalism treats people as much like dirt as it can get away with, and it requires the Socialism to force it to treat people like human beings. But in a Socialist utopia, there is no production so no one eats. So the lesson here is: if you want dignity, you need Socialism. If you want to eat, you need Capitalism. And if you want both… well you can figure it out. I think it’s a great (if simplified) lesson. I just don’t think it was the lesson that Red commie socialist Steinbeck intended.

Many Worlds interpretation is crap

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The universe, to the best of our scientific knowledge, is non-deterministic. This pisses a lot of scientists off.

The field of quantum mechanics studies many situations where particles seem to behave as if they were in two places at once, or (equivalently but a lot more weirdly) where the same event happens at two different times. Scientists can infer this behavior by observing effects like interference patterns [1], but they never actually detect the particle in both places: whenever they try to observe the particle, they only ever detect it in one place. And here’s the kicker: which of the two places the particle is observed is indeterminate, there’s no way to predict it. All you can do is make statistical observations (such as: it’ll zig 40% of the time, and zag 60% of the time [2]).

Erwin Schrödinger tried to explain this paradox as “wave function collapse”. What he suggested was that the particle is in both places at once, but when the particle is “observed” (meaning: when it directly interacts with another particle) its existence collapses into a single location. The wave function is a probability of which location it will collapse to.

However, most scientists (Schrödinger included, who gave us a tongue-in-cheek large scale consequence of that explanation) don’t like not being able to predict things. Albert Einstein was perturbed by this explanation; he once said “God does not play dice with the universe”.

In the years since Einstein and Schrödinger’s heyday, another explanation has come into fairly wide acceptance, one that eliminates the indeterminacy (and, thus, the scientists’ own sense of inadequacy). What they claim is that, yes, the particle does exist in two places at once, but when the particle is observed, the wave function doesn’t collapse. Instead, the universe splits: and in one universe, the particle is observed in one location; in the other universe, the other location. This supposedly happens every single time a particle with multiple quantum states interacts. This is known as the Many Worlds interprtation.

I’ll cut to the chase. Scientists should run away screaming from this explanation because what they’ve done is asserted the existence of universes where where God demonstratably exists, which is a no-no for any respectable scientist [3].

You see, although quantum effects are small, they do have large scale consequences. If all quantum possibilities are realized, then there is a universe somewhere where all the particles zag in such a way that their cumulative effect results in demonstratable benefits to people who pray to a certain god, and scientists in that universe measuring this effect will have to conclude that that god exists.

Not only that, but there are universes like that that will branch off this one. If Many Worlds is true, then there is a universe branching from this one where scientists will wake up to discover that a plague has appeared that attacks everyone but Christian fundamentalists. Richard Dawkins, Steven Jay Gould, and Carl Sagan will have to eat their crow in that universe. (I realize that last two have died, but they aren’t dead in that universe. Although the universe we’re talking about did branch off this one, various quantum effects combined in such as way so as to restore life to their bodies, and they rose from the grave, just in time to see a plague attack everyone but Christian Fundamentalists.) They can at least take solace in the fact that there’s another universe out there with a plague that attacks only Christian Fundamentalists.

According to Many Worlds, universes have been branching off in the past. So it might comfort you to know that in some world out there you did ask that girl to the prom, but it probably wouldn’t comfort you to know that in some other universe out there you were hit by a car and spent your whole life living as a quadriplegic.

It’s also likely, accoring to Many Worlds, that you’re immortal. Many theories on aging put at least part of the blame on the gradual chemical breakdown of molecules in the body. If all quantum possibilities are realized, then in some universe those chemical breakdowns will not occur, and you’d live forever, or at least until the world ends. Which sounds nice, perhaps, but that forever could be in a dungeon.

Enough silliness. I believe Many Worlds is crap, for various reasons, including some which are personal to me and can’t rationally be demonstrated to others. But the Many Worlds interpretation should be rejected by science as well.

The fact is, Many Worlds is not a scientific theory or hypothesis, because it can be neither verified nor falsified (apart from falsifying quantum mechanics altogether). Whether the Many Worlds interpretation, or some other interpretation, such as the Copenhagen interpretation that Schrödinger wrote of, is “correct”, has no bearing on science. Either interpretation results in the same observable predictions. Whether the wave function collapsed, or you are observing from Universe A, you are going to observe the same result.

The simple truth is, Many Worlds is a philosophical statement and not a scientific one. And philosophically it is the interpretation most opposed to science, because it asserts the existence of worlds where science is worthless. That is far, far worse than an interpretation that allows for mere indeterminacy.

Footnotes:

[1] Interference happens when two similar waves interact. If the waves line up in certain ways, they will cancel out in some places and reinforce each other in other places, and create moire patterns on much larger scales than the waves themselves. The strange thing about interference at quantum scales is that particles—which are just tiny waves—seem to interfere with themselves. For example, a single electron passing through a barrier with two closely spaced slits will show an interference pattern as if the electon had passed through both slits simultaneously.

[2] Because quantum scales are so small, most of these quantum indeterminacies are smeared out at our familiar human scales. If you know that 40% of electrons will zig, and 60% will zag, and you have 10 quadrillion electrons, you pretty much know what the large scale effect will be, even though the behavior of individual particles is random.

[3] This is sarcasm, or would be if it weren’t more or less believed by most scientists, despite what they may say.

Cupcakes

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When you were in grade school, do your remember those two girls who were know-it-all brats? Those two girls who would do things like invent words to insult you with? You’d be standing behind them in line for recess, and they’d turn to you and say, “You’re glooble”. And you’d be like, “What does glooble mean?” And they’d say, “We’re not telling you”, and then they’d giggle to each other. You know those two girls?

Well, in my grade school one of those girls had a mother who was always signing up to assist the class in some way, and you could see where her daughter got her annoying personality. This woman had matured past the point of inventing insults, but had the same know-it-all personality. She was also at every field trip, every class party, every play not matter how small, and oftentimes she was in class doing something for no apparent reason at all, thinking that her presence and wisdom was making the classroom a better place.

About every month she baked cupcakes and sent them to the class. They were probably the worst thing I’ve ever eaten, and not one time did she vary the recipe even slightly. The best way I can describe the cupcakes is a hellspawn offspring of fruitcake and cornbread. The cake was dry and crumby, and it was baked with disgusting, soggy fruit (which tasted like a cross between circus peanuts and prunes). I’m pretty sure it was made with four-year-old whole wheat flour, because it was rancid, and it might have had ground flaxseed mixed in or something. And then, to top it off, she would mix some disgusting candy into the icing, based on the current month’s theme (like on February when it was those Valentine heart things, ick).

I wasn’t allowed to refuse to eat the cupcakes, because that would be “disrespectful”. Some people in the class would lick the icing off and discreetly hide the cake part to throw away later, but the teachers always kept their eyes on me and forced me to eat every single one of those things.

Well, needless to say, ever since I’ve hated cupcakes. And, since this was maybe around the 20th worst experience I had in grade school, I kind of forgot the reason.

Well, it’s not like my hatred of cupcakes was a crippling problem in my life, since adults, and teenagers for that matter, rarely eat cupcakes. So it happened that nearly 25 years after my horrid experience with cupcakes, I was sitting in Swinger’s Diner in Santa Monica, which had delicious-looking cupcakes on display right in front of me. I knew I never ate cupcakes and I couldn’t recall why at the time, but I figured it probably wasn’t a good reason, so I ordered one. Damn that thing was good; it was much, much better than a regular cake. I think the high surface-to-volume ratio has a subtle effect on the cake dough as it’s baking; the heat penetrates it better meaning that you can achieve the optimal doneness over a larger percent of the cake.

I think I also have to add cupcakes to the list of foods endemic to the culture of Los Angeles. There are bakeries in LA devoted just to cupcakes and I’ve never seen that anywere else. The list of foods is:

  • Hamburgers
  • Tacos
  • Cupcakes

(Some people say to add sushi to this list but sushi seems to be a bigger source of civic pride down the road in San Diego.)

Anyway, in the last couple weeks I’ve eaten a few cupcakes and they were all very good, so I am now a true fan of cupcakes. I am also happy to finally be getting over some of the hang-ups I developed in grade school. I better be careful or I might end up liking tomatoes….

Its—the possessive form of it—should be spelled with an apostrophe

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It’s supposed to be simple. The word “its”—the possessive form of it—is spelled without the apostrophe because it’s a pronoun, even though it is a regular possessive. That’s the rule: nouns spell their possessives with an apostrophe, pronouns don’t. Simple and sensical, isn’t it? Do you agree with this rule? I bet you do, because every single person I’ve had this discussion with has thrown this argument at me. “‘Its’ is a possessive pronoun,” they say, “so it should be spelled without an apostrophe like all other possessive pronouns (my, your, his, her, our, and their).”

Problem is, the rule’s wrong. Most pronouns do spell their possessives with an apostrophe. To wit:

Someone's hat is on the chair.
One's mind must always be focuses.
Whoever's coat is in the hall better pick it up.

By the rule above, these possessive pronouns should be spelled without apostrophes.

“Oh”, but you say, “it’s not any pronouns; it’s just personal pronouns you don’t use the apostrophe with. All other pronouns you use the apostrophe. It’s still a simple rule.”

And it’s still wrong. It doesn’t account for the word “who”, which is not a personal pronoun yet spells its possessive (“whose”) without an apostrophe. The only way to account for both “it” and “who” is to make a complex rule, one with at least two conditions.

“Ok,” you argue, “but it’s still a pretty simple rule: don’t use an apostrophe for personal pronouns or interrogative pronouns.”

Don’t forget that “who” can also be a relative pronoun.

“…or relative pronouns.”

Now it has three conditions, and it’s still wrong. To wit:

The computer that's turned on is wasting power.

True, it’s probably not the best style, but it’s perfectly intelligible and would not ever be spelled without the apostrophe. (And don’t give me any Chomsky bull about “that” being a relativizer here and not a relative pronoun; if it were a relativizer this sentence wouldn’t be intelligible.)

“Ok, fine”, you say, “everything except ‘it’ and ‘who’ uses an apostrophe.”

Now you’ve forgotten about the other personal pronouns.”

“Everything except personal pronouns and ‘who’ uses an apostrophe.”

Ah, finally we have a rule that works. It’s a little ugly because one condition is a class of words and the other is a singular exception, but it’s relatively simple and no actual reader or writer would have difficulty applying it. It’s not the end of the universe. But the thing is, it’s needlessly complex. If we could spell “its” and “whose” with apostrophes, then we would only need a simple rule with one condition: a word who’s possessive is regular spells it’s possessive with an apostrophe.

But, English orthography, being what is is, has to make things complex for us, even simple things like spelling possessive pronouns.

Proof the economy is struggling

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I recently made my resumes public on Monster.com and Dice.com. (I am not looking for another job at the moment. It’s just that my company annouced that it would soon be laying off 500 employees. I don’t expect to be one of them but if they’re laying off, I can activate by resume. C’est la vie in the aerospace industry.)

I’ve ignored all the messages so far (except for one guy who was kind enough to have read by Open Letter to Recruiters so I figured I should at least write him back to tell him I wasn’t interested).

  1. I’m only getting about one message a day instead of five or so.
  2. When I ignore their messages, the recruiters don’t follow up asking me why I haven’t responded to them.
  3. I’ve actually gotten a few solicitations for jobs I’d be a perfect fit for. That has never happened, not once, in all my job hunts.

Point is, with less demand for workers, the recruiters are taking the time to screen and deliver good candidates to the customer, rather than shoveling in large quantities of them. And when business chooses quality over quantity, you know the economy is not doing well.

Let’s stop this urban nuisance

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I want to talk about a problem, a problem that exists everywhere, but is a problem especially prevalent in certain urban areas, one of the worst being my home, Santa Monica.

Walking around downtown Santa Monica, I encounter an insidious nuisance seemingly every day. They stand there on the street, lurking, eyeing you up, waiting for you to pass. Then they strike, they confront you, they ask if you can spare something, and if you don’t they run a guilt trip on you.

Now, I personally never give these people a damn thing. In fact, I don’t even acknowledge or look at them, when they greet me I walk right by them as if they didn’t exist. This is the only effective way to combat these people. Giving them what they ask for only encourages them, and rewards them for being a nuisance.

Unfortunately, the law can’t help us here. It’s politically incorrect and possibly unconstitutional to ban this nuisance behavior, although many communities have enacted laws to limit it. Therefore, the only way to stop this is by a concerted community effort.

And that’s why I am calling all people, especially my fellow residents of Santa Monica: let’s put a stop to this. Let’s stop rewarding these people for being a nuisances. Let’s stop being enablers. Ignore them. Just walk past them. Don’t sign their petitions. Don’t even lift your hands to accept the literature they’re trying to hand you. Let’s show these activists they’re not wanted. Let’s….

Wait, you thought I was talking about the homeless, didn’t you? Oh, no, no, no. The homeless are kind of a nuisance, yes, but that’s because they are mentally ill or mentally handicapped, or both, and feel forced to live that lifestyle because of the way our cruel world treats them. I don’t give then any change, becase it doesn’t really doesn’t help them, but I do pledge a dollar to homeless charities every time a homeless person hits me up for change.

Activists, however, are a nuisance because they’re assholes. So, yeah, to hell with them. Pay them no heed. Or if you can’t ignore them, tell them shove their hemp coffee mugs somewhere.

States I’ve visited

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Map of the of states I’ve been to, color coded according to how often:

I’ve been to every state in the continental US except Rhode Island and Delaware. The state I’ve spent the least amount of time in are Michigan (just a layover at the Detroit airport) and Idaho (train ride across the panhandle).

Besides these states, the only other places I’ve visited are the Province of Ontario in Canada, and the Mexican State of Sonora. I’ve been all around the United States but don’t get to other countries much.

Most extreme compass point locations for me (not counting time aboard airplanes, though I’d guess that wouldn’t make a difference):

  • North: a point near Glacier National Park in Montana
  • South: Miami, Florida
  • East: Portland, Maine
  • West: Portland, Oregon

Medium risk fourth down play

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One of the things about football that I always thought could be improved upon was the limited options for fourth down.

If it’s fourth down, and you are too far away to kick a field goal, there are only two options:

  1. Low risk: punt
  2. High risk: attempt to convert

Problem is, there’s a big gap between the options. Roughly speaking, a punt will give your opponent the ball around 40 yards downfield but you give up the possibility of a conversion (not counting turnovers). Going for it on (say) a 4th and 3 is going to be converted about 50% of the time, but if you fail to convert the opponent gets the ball right there.

Right now, head coaches go for the low-risk option (punt) probably 95% of the time on fourth down. That’s pretty boring. Having a medium-risk option might encourage coaches to take more risks on fourth down, leading to much more excitement. For instance, say it’s 4th and 5 on the 50. Most coaches will punt in this situation. But what if there was an medium risk option? You have a 25% chance of converting, but if you don’t the opponent gets the ball maybe 20 yards downfield, on their 30. I think some coaches might try that in that situation.

But what would such a medium-risk play look like?

When I asked this question in rec.sport.football.college, I got an interesting suggestion in this thread: the person who receives the snap could roll out and bat the ball downfield with something like a volleyball serve, and it would be played more or a less like a fumble. I think there would have to be some limits on when a team could recover a batted ball (the ball should not peak higher than ten feet above the field, and would it have to hit the ground first).

The following table summarizes the risk tradeoff for these three options.

OptionRisk LevelTypical Conversion RateWhere opponent gets the ball if conversion fails
PuntLow0%40 yards downfield
Go for itHigh50%Right there
BatMedium25%20 yards downfield

Anyway, I’m not sure there wouldn’t be drawbacks to this sort of volleyball bat play (like maybe too much risk of opponent returning the bat, or too much injury risk), but a play that could add a medium-risk option to fourth down I think would really add to the excitement of the game.

Finished the Divine Comedy

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Every so often I’ll see a little clip or summary of some work that will evoke some sort of deep interest in me, and not merely grab my attention. Somehow from that small bit of information I know this will be a work I’ll appreciate, and I am usually right. Such was the case for the Divine Comedy by Dante. As soon as I learned what it was about I pretty much had to read it someday.

It’s really tough reading, however, and I didn’t finish my first couple attempts at it. I finally got a good verse translation (I can’t stand prose translations) to read on my Amazon Kindle (John Ciardi), which is not to say it was any easier reading. But this time I pushed through. (This was facilitated, in part, by my car being out of order for three months. I had plenty of reading time busing to work every day.)

I don’t think the overall style of the poem could match me better. Pretty much everything in it was something I enjoyed. The structured, well-thought-out hierarchy of the world, the breadth of cultural allusions (although all the Florentine allusions were a bit too much), the allusions to science and astronomy, the fantastic imagery, and a lot of deep symbolism (about half of which I missed, and the other half I was only alerted to by footnotes). It lacked some of the annoyances many poems have, like wailing self-pity (except for one small part in Earthly Paradise).

But my favorite aspect of the poem was Dante’s willingness to break form. In fact, it seemed like he broke form an optimal number of times, just enough so that one couldn’t make any sort of sweeping generalizations. Every location he went was like the other locations, yet unique in its own way. This gave the poem an uncanny aura of realism in spite of the fantastic setting.

My favorite such diversion happened in Purgatorio, on the terrace where the Saved souls did their pennance for Sloth. Throughout the poem, Dante and his guide (Virgil or Beatrice) would stop to talk with the people wherever they went, and those people generally had a lot to say. But when Dante arrived at the Terrace of Sloth, the souls didn’t stay to talk, since their pennance was to run around the terrance non-stop. The souls would only run by, identify themselves, and run off. So, Dante and Virgil spent their time on that terrance talking between themselves. Dante the Poet wasn’t afraid to break the form of his story, even though talking to people in the next world was one of the most important aspects of the story.

All in all a very good read. If you’re in a mood for some really tough reading I highly recommend it.

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