Whose Faulty Vision

Poem: Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
by Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

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Quote of the Whenever

Quote of the Whenever:

Bart: “Look at me, I’m a grad student. I’m 30 years old and made six hundred dollars last year.”
Marge: “Bart, don’t make fun of grad students. They just made a terrible life choice.”

-The Simpsons

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Interesting Factoid of the Whenever

Americans claim to be happier than Europeans:

Americans tend to score better than Europeans on most happiness surveys. For example, according to the 2002 International Social Survey Programme across 35 countries, 56% of Americans are “completely happy” or “very happy” with their lives, versus 44% of Danes (often cited in surveys as the happiest Europeans), 35% of the French and 31% of Germans.

Via Greg Mankiw’s blog, which would be on my short list of blogs to choose if I could only keep reading one blog.

I wonder if it’s that Americans really do feel happier, on a day-to-day basis, than Europeans, or whether there’s some bias in the way they answer survey questions? Even if the questions were identical, culture might affect how you answer the questions–for instance, in a country where you’re expected to try not to stand out, you might be inclined to give answers on the middle of the scale.

I’ve seen research suggesting that people have a happiness “set point” that they return to almost regardless of life circumstances, which makes me skeptical of the claim that Americans really are happier than Europeans. But I don’t know enough about the studies to judge, really.

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Computers of the Future

One of those things that you always see in futuristic movies and TV shows is computers that can understand plain English questions and answer them immediately, so Captain Picard says, “Computer, what was that movie with Orson Welles and the ferris wheel”, and the computer instantly answers.

I would have thought that that sort of thing would require reasonably intelligent AI and would therefore be fairly far off, but actually, we’re pretty much there today. Okay, the voice recognition isn’t quite in place yet, but you can do a Google search on the words “that movie with Orson Welles and the ferris wheel” and the first hit is the correct answer. Technology’s pretty amazing.

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Link: Father’s Day

A nice Father’s Day post from one of my regular blogs.

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“Shaft” Ending

(SPOILERS for the 2000 remake of “Shaft.” Possible spoilers for the original as well–I haven’t seen it in so long that I don’t remember how it ended, so it may or may not end the same way.)

I watched the 2000 remake of Shaft (with Samuel L. Jackson) last night. Decent movie overall, but the ending was terrible–it completely invalidated the entire plot of the movie.

Here’s the storyline: This rich guy is accused of murder. There’s an eyewitness to the murder, but the rich guy has paid her to hide. She’s hidden herself so well that even the bad guy doesn’t know where she is. Shaft has to track her down and convince her to testify. But once he’s on her trail, the bad guy decides to track her down too, to kill her before she can testify. Eventually Shaft finds her, protects her and gets her to court. On the first day of the trial, the rich guy is coming up the courtroom stairs, and the mother of the murder victim shoots him.

And that shooting throws out the entire rest of the movie. If Shaft had stayed at home and watched TV through the whole movie, it would have ended exactly the same way. The trial would still have gone forward–a bit of dialogue between the rich guy and his lawyers earlier on made that clear. So the mother would still have gotten her chance to shoot the rich guy. So all of the running around trying to find the witness was a complete waste of time.

I assume the writers threw in that shooting to provide a nice clean ending, so that the audience didn’t have to wonder whether the rich guy found some way to get off or not. But it’s still really stupid.

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Idea File: Year in a Day

Idea File: Someone takes a drug that so thoroughly alters his sense of time that one day in his life feels like it lasts a year. The book (or whatever) would be a diary of that year, chronicling all of the experiences and sensations that you normally never think about because they go whizzing by.

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