Showing posts sorted by relevance for query 2008. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query 2008. Sort by date Show all posts

Saturday, October 10, 2009

What I Read (12)

Date: June 10, 2008
Title: The Great Divorce
Author: C. S. Lewis
Thoughts: “What concerns you in the nature is the nature of choice itself: and that ye can watch them making” (quote from the book).

Date: July 2, 2008
Title: The Gospel of Luke
Thoughts: “Then He said to them, ‘Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sin should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning in Jerusalem. And you are witnesses to these things” (Luke 24:46-48).

Date: July 12, 2008
Title: Walking with God
Author: John Eldredge
Thoughts: “The reason we are morally obligated to be happy is that people have to live with us” (quote from the book).

John Eldredge also wrote Epic.

Date: July 27, 2008
Title: Undaunted Courage
Author: Stephen E. Ambrose
Thoughts: How could someone as extraordinary as Meriwether Lewis come to such a sad end?

Date: August 2, 2008
Title: One Small step Can Change Your Life
Author: Robert Maurer
Thoughts: “To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization” (quote from the book).

Date: August 3, 2008
Title: Red Harvest
Author: Dashiell Hammett
Thoughts: More crime than you can shake a stick at.

Date: September 28, 2008
Title: Book of Lies
Author: Brad Meltzer
Thoughts: Thrillers aren’t my thing, but this book was okay. I read it mainly because of the Jerry Siegel/Superman connection.

Date: October 21, 2008
Title: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization
Author: Anthony Esolen
Thoughts: A look at the good and the bad from ancient Greece to today and how we’ve forgotten so much of the good and embraced so much of the bad. The book is a call to let history be a corrective to the excesses of modern society.

Other parts of What I Read:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5,
Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10,
Part 11

Saturday, October 3, 2009

What I Read (11)

Date: February 3, 2008
Title: Changing for Good Author: James O. Prochaska, John C. Norcross & Carlo C. DiClemente
Thoughts: I would like to make some changes in my life. I thought I might end bad health habits or passivity. Now I see I have issues with distress. I know a lot of my problem behavior is rooted in distress. That may be a good place to start.

Date: March 1, 2008
Title: The Physics of Superheroes
Author: James Kakalios
Thoughts: A fund way to brush up on physics I don’t think about every day. I enjoyed the tidbits of comics history.

Date: March 30, 2008
Title: The Once and Future King Author: T. H. White
Thoughts: Sometimes funny, even silly, though very tragic and sad.
There is original sin and men are depraved, as the Bible teaches. God is doing good always and seeking people to join Him. The world needs people who will faithfully try.

Date: April 3, 2008
Title: The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril
Author: Paul Malmont
Thoughts: This was the most fun book I’ve read in quite a while.

Date: April 8, 2008
Title: Gratitude: Affirming the Good Things in Life
Author: Melody Beattie
Thoughts: “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life” (quote from the book).

Date: April 27, 2008
Title: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Author: Michael Chabon
Thoughts: I heard a lot about this book being about comics and popular culture. It is more about identity. The superheroes and their alter egos are escaping the conventional to be their true selves, as the characters in the book are striving to be.

Date: May 25, 2008
Title: God Wants You to be Rich
Author: Paul Zane Pilzer
Thoughts: For some time I’ve shared the thought that the goodness of God results in abundant providence. I’m interested in the concept that technology unlocks supply for our limitless (ever changing) demand.

Other parts of What I Read:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5,
Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10

Thursday, April 1, 2010

What I Read (End)

Date: November 27, 2008
Title: His Excellency
Author: Joseph J. Ellis
Thoughts: A readable and balanced biography of a great man.

Date: December 25, 2008
Title: The Spirit
Author: Darwyn Cooke
Thoughts: Great, fun detective stories.

Date: December 28, 2008
Title: Wisdom from the Batcave
Author: Cory A Friedman
Thoughts: A fun way to look at serious ethics.

Date: January 3, 2009
Title: Blink
Author: Malcolm Gladwell
Thoughts: The good, the bad and the hope of snap judgments.

Date: January 5, 2009
Title: The Unfinished Game
Author: Keith Devlin
Thoughts: It’s comforting that someone as smart as Pascal had trouble grasping probabilities, though he was handicapped by having to invent the idea first.

Keith Devlin also coauthored The Numbers behind NUMB3RS.

Date: January 15, 2009
Title: The Water Room
Author: Christopher Fowler
Thoughts: An interesting and enjoyable detective story, but he main draw to me was the underground rivers of London.

Date: January 22, 2009
Title: The Joy of Supernatural Thinking
Author: Bill Bright
Thoughts: A very challenging book.

Date: January 31, 2009
Title: The Big Necessity
Author: Rose George
Thoughts: It’s amazing how many people could have better lives if they could just dispose of their shit, and how hard it seems to be to accomplish it.

Date: February 24, 2009
Title: Why Good Things Happen to Good People
Author: Stephen Post & Jill Neimark
Thoughts:
“The generous soul will be made rich,
And he who waters will be watered himself” (Proverbs 11:25).

Date: March 1, 2009
Title: How to Write Mysteries
Author: Shannon OCork
Thoughts: Lots of good ideas. Now to put them to use.

Date: March 17, 2009
Title: The Emotional Energy Factor
Author: Mira Kirshenbaum
Thoughts: “Worry never comes up with good ideas. It never yields comfort. It never brings your ship to any safe harbor” (quote from the book).

Date: March 26, 2009
Title: Mastering Fiction Writing
Author: Kit Reed
Thoughts: “You’re going to have to write a lot of crap in your life before you write anything good, so you might as well get started” (quote from the book).

Books I Want to Write
Goal Setting that Works
A hardboiled, science fiction crime story
The Prodigal
Phin

Other parts of What I Read:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5,
Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10,
Part 11, Part 12

Monday, February 18, 2013

Dr. Horrible, the Hamlet of Nerds

Okay, comparing Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog to Hamlet, one of the greatest plays in the English language, is the type of hyperbole writers, especially on the Internet, use to draw in a reader.  I presume it worked on you.


There are points of comparison. Both are tragedies. Both feature lead characters giving themselves over to being people they might not really have wanted to become, at least not at the beginning. Both carry a sense of terrifying inevitability.

Having hooked you with Hamlet, I’m going to carry on about Dr. Horrible.  The film plays on concepts of nerdiness, jocks, and what is the potential tragedy of a world in which nerds can’t find a place for themselves (though they seem to be everywhere). It does so in the nerdy context of superhero films and musicals, the mash up of these genres being geeky itself.

About the Film

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog was produced as a serial for the Internet.  The film was written by Joss Whedon, his brothers Zack and Jed, and Maurissa Tancharoen to produce something during the 2007-2008 strike by the Writer’s Guild.  It appeared on the Dr. Horrible Web site in three parts in July 2008 and is now available on DVD.


The familiar star of the film is Neil Patrick Harris, who plays Barney on How I Met Your Mother. I don’t enjoy that show much, but fortunately Harris has found other outlets for his performing talent. It is unfair to say Dr. Horrible launched her career, but I think it helped Felicia Day achieve a new level, especially on the Internet.  She is everywhere now and produces the Geek & Sundry YouTube channel.

Plot Summary

Dr. Horrible (Harris) is an aspiring supervillain.  He is seeking entry into the Evil League of Evil, but his prospects are threatened by superhero Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion).

The pursuit of supervillainy is complicated by Dr. Horrible’s double-mindedness even more than his nemesis.  As his alter ego Billy, the doctor is smitten with Penny (Day), a girl he meets at the Laundromat.  She meets and begins to date Captain Hammer. Hammer recognizes his enemy and flaunts the affair.

Dr. Horrible retreats from the situation and focuses on the League.  They are not impressed with his recent failures, but he can prove himself by killing someone in one of his capers.  He plans to kill Hammer. Things go wrong when Horrible sees Penny at the event where he plans to exact his revenge and begins to experience a change of heart.  Hammer gains control of Horrible’s death ray, which is overloading. In spite of Horrible’s warning, Hammer uses the weapon, which explodes, causing him pain but no apparent injury. Fragments of the death ray hit the crowd and kill Penny.

In one stroke, Horrible loses his love and gains his dead victim.  He is admitted to the League. He abandons hope and embraces evil.  It’s dark stuff for a musical comedy.

Dr. Horrible: Protagonist, Villain, Nerd
Dr. Horrible is a nerd.  As support of this notion, if it isn’t readily apparent, I turn to the characteristics of nerds identified by Benjamin Nugent in American Nerd.  He suggests that people associated nerds with machine like qualities. Nerds seem machine like in that they

  • like working with machines, having interest in technical subjects or complex hobbies, and
  • prefer direct, logical, rule-bound communication to indirect, emotional communication.

In his first appearance, Dr. Horrible is recording a vlog entry in his lab. Throughout the film, he talks about his inventions and uses them. He is clearly at home in the realm of technology. Not only that, he identifies himself with science and technology with his costume: long white (lab) coat, long rubber gloves, and goggles.

While comfortable with technology and talking about it, he is uncomfortable with emotional communication. He has trouble expressing his feelings to Penny, and he has trouble reading the signs that she might be attracted to him. In light of this, he is oddly eloquent on his vlog.  In Quiet, Susan Cain noted that introverts often communicate a lot through social media, and rise to leadership in online communities.  They communicate very well when relieved of the pressures and distractions of face-to-face communications. Nerdiness and introversion aren’t synonymous, but I think it strengthens the case for Dr. Horrible’s nerdiness in his preference for technologically mediated communication that is formalized through a script (an unscripted vlog would not be eloquent) and music (with rules for rhythm, pitch, and rhyme).

Captain Hammer: Antagonist, Hero, Jock

Captain Hammer is the antithesis of a nerd: a jock.  I turn again to American Nerd to help make this diagnosis. Nugent notes that the nerd image was at one time associated with immigrant communities that were rising in population and status. Immigrant pursuit of New World opportunities was shaped by their Old World perspective, so they sought upward mobility in artistic and intellectual professions.

The established upper class wanted to both maintain its dominance and distinguish itself from lower classes, especially immigrants. They adopted a preference for athleticism and a suspicion of excessive intellectualism. Book-learning had its place, but a boy who would take his place as active leader in business, political, and military affairs needed to learn how to win. Sporting fields and athletic competitions were seen as the classroom for these skills. Athleticism as associated with a certain class (because such vigorous leisure required time and resources).  This magnified the upper class sense of superiority.

We can see this in reflected Captain Hammer. His superhuman physical superiority seems to be a justification for his overall sense of being superior to others, especially the weaker and physically cowardly Horrible. Even his activities as a do-gooder seem to lack a moral motivation outside a vague noblesse oblige. He seems more interested in establishing and maintaining his status. For instance, his support of Penny’s campaign to end homelessness is motivated by the positive publicity he receives, not by love of his fellow man—he does not perceive value in homeless people.

The Tragedy of Dr. Horrible

Dr. Horrible, then, is a classic conflict between a typical nerd and a typical jock, except they are a supervillain and a superhero in a comic book-style world where such people exist. Where is the tragedy?

We’ve already noted the death of Penny. That is enough to make the film a tragedy, but not necessarily a nerdy one.

The tragedy of the nerd is to be trapped in alienation. Admittedly, nerds seem to be increasingly popular nowadays, but the more traditional image of a nerd is of one alienated from popular society because his machine-like qualities are not valued in a culture that sees emotional display and sensitivity as more worthy and human.

Nerds are not naturally loners, though. They have a long history of building their own communities. Science fiction fandom is a good example. Long before the Internet, sci-fi fans built communities of letter writing and zines around popular magazines. Before long, they began gathering at clubs and conventions. This culture carried over into comic book fandom (for more on this check out Men of Tomorrow by Gerard Jones). Nugent notes how a similar community of nerds, also readers popular magazines, formed around ham radio, where technological skill and rule-bound communication were prized.

We’ve noted that Dr. Horrible also seeks connection to a community. He specifically identifies his desire to be part of the League.  His quest for world domination is also motivated by a desire to connect with the wider community of humanity. He wants to take over the world not because he hates people, but because he longs for a logical meritocracy that would rid the world of all the trouble cause by emotionalism, celebrity culture, and doublespeak. In his fantasy, he would naturally rise to the top of such a society.

Captain Hammer frustrates these efforts at connection. He reinforces a culture of athleticism and emotional communication that Horrible cannot participate in. When he finds a sympathetic soul who may be able to help him make that connection, Hammer sweeps her away. At last, Horrible wins entry into a community, but the League is evil and inhumane, and can only serve to further dehumanize its members. The cost to Horrible to finally belong is high; he must turn his back on the rest of humanity and give up the hope of ever loving or being loved by another. He is completely alienated, cut off from meaningful and fulfilling connections to others.

The Sequel

A sequel is reported in the works and expected to be released this year.  I would expect most of the major characters to return.

I imagine many fans would like to see Day reprise her role as Penny, though the character died in the first film.  Because this is a superhero movie, there are several ways around this: time travel, cloning, robotic or holographic doubleganger (it’s a word, and it doesn’t need an umlaut), or reanimation (no zombies, please).  Maybe Dr. Horrible will try all of these things, each effort going more wrong than the last. He could be forced to team up with Captain Hammer to fend off an army of time-travel replicated, cyborg zombie Pennies, but I probably wouldn’t watch it because I’m creeped out by the walking dead.

Making Your Connection

You may be nerd seeking connection, too.  I’ve provided a little information below where you can find out about the people behind this film and the books I mentioned. They’re involved in other things and you may find that work interesting. Please do not cyberstalk them.  I don’t want that on my conscience.

Susan Cain
Facebook: AuthorSusanCain
Twitter: @susancain

Felicia Day
Facebook: Felicia Day
Google+: +Felicia Day
Twitter: @feliciaday
Web site: feliciaday.com
YouTube: Geek & Sundry

Nathan Fillion
Twitter: @NathanFillion

Neil Patrick Harris
Twitter: @ActuallyNPH

Gerard Jones
ComicBookDB: Gerard Jones
Red Room: Gerard Jones

Benjamin Nugent

Maurissa Tancharoen

Jed Whedon
IMDb: Jed Whedon
Twitter: @jedwhedon

Joss Whedon
Web site: whedonesque.com

Zack Whedon
Twitter: @ZDubDub

Google

Monday, November 14, 2016

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

Prior to reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, I had seen it referenced by others in relation to the so-called “10,000-hour rule.” This is the concept that mastery of a complex skill takes about 10,000 hours of practice. This idea is not original to Gladwell, but his book popularized the concept.

That is not at all the point of Outliers. Instead, Gladwell takes on myths of success, especially the myths of genius and the self-made man. Certainly people of extraordinary achievement are intelligent and hard-working, but Gladwell shows that they also the beneficiaries of opportunities provided by their culture, sometimes very unique opportunities.

To start, Gladwell tackles our enchantment with intelligence (or talent). He describes research that shows that intelligence matters very little after it reaches some threshold. Once someone has enough intelligence to succeed at something, whether he succeeds for the degree of his achievement is not determined by intelligence. Other things are more important.

One of those other things is the amount of work someone puts into improving a skill (going back to the 10,000-hour rule). Even for a very motivated person, it is hard to put 10,000 hours into learning and improving any complex skill, especially while relatively young. Drawing from many cases (including Bill Gates and Mozart), high-achievers were enabled by opportunities provided by the culture (family, economic situation, law, technological development, etc.). In addition, they gained their mastery at a time when those abilities were highly valued (another cultural contribution that is often time-limited).

After establishing this foundation, Gladwell looks at other aspects of culture and success. Culture can contribute to success and hinder it. Cultures are persistent, yet some have found ways, at least in certain contexts, of overcoming limits to opportunities and opening the doors to success.

Culture matters. We like stories of the lone genius or plucky rag-to-riches go-getter. Without discounting their talent or effort, Gladwell shows that these stories typically veil the many opportunities and lucky breaks that were available to these successful people that very often were not available to others.

The implication is that we rely on luck to produced highly successful people, and luck doesn’t strike often. We could create cultures that provide more opportunities for more people. There are plenty of smart-enough people. Many of them are willing to work hard at something meaningful (itself something that is a cultural heritage). We might have many more successful people, and even more of those extraordinary performers, if we got serious about providing opportunities for everyone.

Malcolm Gladwell also wrote

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in


Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: The Story of Success. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008.