Fallen Hero

Posted on 26 March 2011 by Larry Russwurm

I’m a bit of a polymath so of course Leonardo da Vinci has long been one of my idols. In fact the more common phrase “Renaissance man” is used instead of polymath despite its sexism. The popularity of this sexist phrase is due in large part to Leonardo da Vinci and his many, diverse accomplishments.

So I was pleased one Christmas to receive from my brother a book entitled The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. The first thing I did was peruse the table of contents. One of the headings was entitled Comparison of the Arts. Who better than Leonardo, I thought, to contrast and compare diverse subjects. I was shocked at what I found when I turned to the section.

It begins ignobly: “How painting surpasses all human works…”. Further down it gets more to the crux of its arguments, “And if the poet serves the understanding by way of the ear, the painter does so by the eye, which is the nobler sense.”

It’s a comparison between the art of painting and the art of poetry. And Leonardo is slandering poetry heavily while praising painting. The section then gets into sculpture and Leonardo claims painting is more intellectual than sculpture. But let’s get back to poetry and painting. Leonardo went down a few notches in my estimation with his bile.

First of all I gather that Leonardo wasn’t considered to be good at poetry. So we have a chink in his armour of being totally rounded. And secondly it seems so immature to praise something you are good at while simultaneously dismissing something you are not so good at. Don’t get me wrong, Leonardo could write. The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci runs over one thousand pages, so obviously he could write. But it seems he had no place for poetry.

I’m kind of like Leonardo in that I’ve never picked up a book of poetry on its own. Still I love music and in the present age that also means a love of lyrics. You can see this leads to a healthy respect for the poetry that shaped and forms the basis of lyrics. And, indeed I think my way led me to think no art is superior to another or inferior.

I see you people who are bringing up mimes. Some fine arts have more breadth than others but I stand by the superior/inferior thing.

So probably my biggest hero has fallen. He’s not down to nothing, there are some brilliant things in this book. Like everyone else I’ve known, there is a weak spot in Leonardo where the average person can look slightly down. And here I am surrounded by fallen idols. Guess I’ll just have to continue thinking for myself. There won’t be that one magic person who I can always defer to.

Yes Pink Floyd I traded my heroes for ghosts. I thought that was safe when ghosts included the likes of Leonardo da Vinci. And now I find that today’s standards surprise, surprise, aren’t being met by these long ago heroes.

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All Psychologists are Lazy

Posted on 24 March 2011 by Larry Russwurm

Let’s look at birth order as handed down to us from the psychologists. There are two methods of divvying up birth order.

Both theories take the only child as separate and have some things to say about this position. It is of course closest to the eldest born in both theories because let us not forget, the eldest child was an only child for some time.

In the first theory, there is a distinct personality to the 2nd born, 3rd born and 4th born. Then an unexplained miracle occurs and the 5th born is exactly like the 1st born with no time spent being an only child. The 5th born can only dream of being an only child. The cycle inexplicably repeats with the 6th born being like the 2nd born and the 7th born being like the 3rd etc.

In the 2nd theory of birth order, the oldest is differentiated from the youngest and the middle children. There can be as high as 15 middle children in some extreme families, but none of these children are seen to be much different.

I think birth order psychologists are lazy and the aforementioned helps to prove this. Full disclosure, I am a 6th child and a middle child. As well I also have step family.

The first theory claims I should be like my oldest sister, the 2nd born in my family. She is no longer with us, may she rest in peace, but I don’t think any in my huge family have said I’m much like her. Comparison is more likely to be drawn between me and our 1st born or 3rd born since the three of us are heavy readers. So, I sincerely believe that when the psychologists came up with this birth order theory, they very lazily said it just repeats after 4 kids.

These psychologists could easily have said they don’t know or even that it just gets too expensive to continue the studies past 4 children because they are rare and becoming scarcer in our modern world.

But they didn’t say this so I say they are being lazy. Making all middles the same is blatantly lazy, too.

So with me being 6th, middle, and step I think psychology is saying to me I am a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a conundrum.

Not only that, but saying the cycle repeats itself as in the first theory, I think they have overzealously generalized just to ‘complete’ a theory. This is like me generalizing that since birth order psychologists are lazy, that all psychologists are lazy.

Posted in Pseudo Science, Science, Social Science, Wee Bit O' Humour | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Just Say No To Chemical Muses

Posted on 21 March 2011 by Larry Russwurm

It’s ingrained in our culture that many authors abuse alcohol. Right from the beginner, the creative writing student in a post secondary institution, to the top echelons of writing- a Stephen King or even an Ernest Hemingway, alcohol seems to play a part in writing.

And the visual arts community seems to have this idea that red wine and fine art go together. My brother and sister are both visual artists and joke how red wine is always around at an opening of a show and other social events for that medium.

Then there are the illicit drugs. LSD is largely pointed at for the whole psychedelic scene of the sixties that was big in music and other fine arts.

So it has gotten to the point that certain creatives think that drugs are a necessary part of the fine arts. I don’t think drugs are necessary they just offer a mind altering experience.

To look at where I’m going with this, just think of creatives with language. Young kids are especially creative when they can’t quite form words. And Republicans George W. Bush and Sarah Palin routinely invent words. I guess all I had to do was say “Dubya” and you could have figured out where this leads. I’m saying that stupidity could be behind quite a lot of creativity.

You see, getting things wrong is a mind altering experience, too. As well, drugs can also make you stupider. That might be their true power in creativity.

But great artists are often referred to as geniuses. How can their muse be stupidity, then? I think the people who are calling the fine artists geniuses are other fine artists. Or fine art critics who have much of the same training. Obviously these can’t be compared with the non fine art geniuses. Would you want a world renowned surgeon performing with drugs? No and to be quite honest there would be sanctions against that surgeon after such a large mistake.

“But,” you might say, “aren’t you a creative, creating this blog and inventing the term “creatives”? And if creative is just another word for stupid then…”

Why do my theories always bite me in the rear?

And if  I’m stupid then my theory is no good. Which would make me smart and my theory would be good. Which would make me stupid… Whoa! Just don’t give me  surprise drug test.

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Is it Moral to Name Your Child for the Sake of a Comedy Bit

Posted on 19 March 2011 by Larry Russwurm

A: Mo or Les, which is the better name?

B: Which?

A: The supernatural has nothing to do with it. Mo or Les which is the better name?

B: Who? What?

A: This isn’t some Abbot and Costello sketch. Mo or Les which is the better name?

B:Oh! You mean Morris or Lester, don’t you?

A: They do sound kind of good together. Maybe I’ll name my kid both names.

B: Morris Lester. Sorry. I didn’t realize you were having fun with the short forms.

A: Like Morris Les.

B: And Les is more – iss. I get what you’re doing.

A: And Mo Lester.

The seed of this was from a conversation with my niece (She’s an adult!). Never name your son Morris Lester. As for Morris Lester for a daughter…

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A Celebrated Douche

Posted on 17 March 2011 by Larry Russwurm

Celebrated douche, John Edwards, made an appearance on the Dr. Oz show. He appeared in all his douchey glory and even cautioned that visiting a medium such as himself should be a lower priority than getting counselling for grief. How magnanimous of his doucheyness. Perhaps this concession made John Edwards palatable to Dr. Oz.

The tipping point for Dr. Oz allowing Edwards on the show, I think, was given in the stat he threw out. 74% of people believe in life after death. Perhaps that got Oz to thinking he could gain more market share in the daytime doctor game by appealing to the majority. I personally doubt that 74% of people believe in the lies John Edwards spreads. I doubt it’s even over 50%. His douchery has been exposed quite well on South Park.

If you’ve never seen John Edwards‘ act, here’s a clip of him on YouTube. As you will notice, the things he says he’s “hearing” aren’t that common. But when you do this act in front of 100 people, someone’s going to know a deceased loved one that his guesses fit. Notice he gets a no for half of his guesses. The idea is to leave on a yes. “I’m getting an “R”. Statistically he should get 4 yeses and maybe even more if you consider each audience member probably knows more than one deceased person. You can probably reason out the rest of the tricks performed by his doucheyness.

So if you want to catch a doctor show, might I suggest The Doctors. Dr. Oz isn’t just considering providing a stage for total flakiness, he’s outright embracing it. The pressure of competing against not just one, but four doctors has finally gotten to him.

So let’s hope that his royal doucheness, John Edwards doesn’t influence Dr. Oz unduly. Or else we’ll have two douches with a platform. Here’s hoping Oz remains just skeptical enough to keep doucheness out of his higher thought processes. And if anyone out there is still regarding John Edwards in a positive light, might I recommend seeing the South Park episode concerning this.

Update: I am really talking about John Edward. Note to self, when the first name is as common as John, be extra careful on the last name. I hope the profession of medium clued in most people.

Posted in Pseudo Science, Wee Bit O' Humour | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Bubble Wrap Addiction

Posted on 15 March 2011 by Larry Russwurm

You know you’ve felt that hold once in your lifetime. Popping the bubbles in bubble wrap brought it on. Now perhaps your sheet was too small to turn into a full blown addiction. This is not so with everyone.

Some say it was a Harper Collins type company with planned obsolescence that originally brought about the addictiveness in bubble wrap. Perhaps it is the gas released from popping a bubble that is the truly addictive thing. I can see the company meeting where they realized that the bubble wrap they sold could be used over and over again until there was a shipping mistake.

Not liking those odds, top executives could have suggested that if only bubble wrap popping was addictive then they would have no such problem.

Perhaps there is a coating on bubble wrap that when squeezed becomes addictive.

Some have even suggested popping the bubbles alone is addictive. But where is the company culpability in that? Imagine a company happily going about its merry way and accidentally managing to produce one of the most addictive substances known to mankind. This site does not buy such “coincidences”.

Regardless, there is obviously a problem. Haven’t you noticed that panhandlers near to post office outlets keep multiplying? And these very outlets sell bubble wrap. And if you were to observe the transactions in store, you would find that some people buy the wrap and don’t wrap anything. They just take the bubble wrap and leave. To perform their sick, horrifying habit in privacy.

I wish to warn concerned parents in advance to be careful of any bubble wrap they may receive through the mail. Or else they may hear a disturbing, “Pop. Pop. Pop.” This could be the only cry you hear from a loved one in trouble.

It’s hard to gauge what is a safe amount of bubble wrap as some get addicted with the very first pop. With more hardy souls, it might take a giant roll. This condition is hard to treat and subject to relapse. The easiest way to control it is to never start in the first place.

Some of you are thinking that it is legal and thus not a big deal. For shame. Already the District of Keewatin in Canada has made bubble wrap illegal and there are efforts starting in some of the provinces of Canada.

Much myth surrounds bubble wrap popping, but it remains an addictive behaviour. Do not fall prey to this addiction. I wish good mental health to all of you out there.

Posted in Business, Humour, Politics | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Ethnic Diminishing

Posted on 12 March 2011 by Larry Russwurm

I apologize for using the phrase “ethnic cleansing” in my last post. Thinking about it now, I object to that phrase which makes it seem like something positive is being achieved. Cleansing is usually a positive word (unless you are obsessive/compulsive about cleaning). This does not fit with the definition of ethnic cleansing, that is getting rid of an ethnic group in a particular area be it by genocide or expulsion.

This phrase was used over and over again in the newspapers to explain what was happening in Bosnia in the 1990’s. The phrase was the norm.

That’s the decade where I picked up the offending phrase. Because of all the resentment about political correctness at the time, I assumed that everything the official media used had been vetted by some sensitive people. That obviously was not the case. In fact, let me now push for more political correctness.

The phrase I used for the title, ethnic diminishing, is to my ear more neutral than ethnic cleansing. Similarly ethnicity lessening could also be used.

But still, I think that what was done in the nineties in Bosnia needs to have a more negative ring. How about ‘ethnicity crimes’? But this doesn’t fully make the perpetrators own up to their deeds. How about ‘full spectrum of ethnic crimes’?

In Bosnia they used genocide and the threat of genocide to make people leave. They also raped and assaulted you if you happened to be of the wrong ethnicity. And of course, when you left you couldn’t take everything with you so theft and other property crimes resulted. I stand by the ‘full spectrum of ethnic crimes’ tag.

Or how about the tag ‘total loss of humanity’ to refer to the Bosnian crisis of the nineties? That’s more like what really happened.

Hopefully I’ve managed to tip the description naming rights away from the perpetrators and more toward the victims. And that is how it should be.

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The Scourge of the Nineties

Posted on 10 March 2011 by Larry Russwurm

Some say the scourge of the nineties was Kim Jong Il or maybe ethnic cleansing, either Rwandan or Bosnian. I have a different thing to nominate and this will hit home to anyone who lived in the developed world in the nineties. Especially in city limits.

For my scourge, let’s look inside a small church somewhere in the developed world. It’s probably a Saturday because at the front of the church is a pastor with what can only be a bride and groom and a wedding party.

Everyone in the church is resplendent in fine clothes, clothes which may even be too good for Sunday wear. The pastor goes “I now pronounce you…”

This is followed by a loud “WEE OOH, WEE OOH!” that although it is coming from outside the church, drowns out anything inside.

The bride and groom try to stumble through the rest of the ceremony despite the continuous “WEE OOH, WEE OOH!” that drowns everything out. Guessing the pastor is done the groom pushes his head forward an inch before he realizes the bride is staring at the pastor. Unable to stop completely the groom’s nose touches the brides cheek.

The unexpected touch makes the bride pull back and turn to her man. She mouths an “Oh,” then finally the kiss comes. But it is not as pretty as prepared. The “WEE OOH, WEE OOH,” continues.

As the couple pull away from the kiss, a tear mars the bride’s face. A flash of realization is seen on the bride and she turns to the camera which is filming on VHS. Everyone can see her mouth ‘the video!’. She slumps and the groom and others of the wedding party make sure they catch her and take her to a bench.

The “WEE OOH, WEE OOH,” goes on for many more minutes. Finally the car alarm is silenced. If the alarm belongs to anyone at the wedding they do not show it.

The bride gets up and shouts “My whole wedding… ruined!” This time she does slump to the floor.

“$20 000!” Yells the groom who also faints.

Now some of you may say that this all sounds so contrived, the nineties didn’t happen like that. I say that car alarms were that bad.

Just imagine watching a favourite show on TV, perhaps a mystery. What do you do if, at the reveal, a car alarm goes off and you miss it. This was serious. TV seasons weren’t available on DVD back then. You’d find the odd show, packaged with one or two more episodes for the price of a new movie. So they sold horribly and were hardly available. Odds are you couldn’t find the reveal you missed anywhere.

Early in the nineties people would pass a car and if the car alarm turned on were worried they’d be attacked by the owner. But as that decade progressed it became common knowledge that the lightest breeze or even less, could set off these alarms. Guilt eventually passed on to the owners.

Seinfeld, that icon of the nineties, even commented on this. Jerry said the car alarm sounded like a crazy person in full blown distress. He preferred a car that would be more subtle and say something like a throat clearing “Ahem.”

This nineties answer never caught on. Even a couple of ahems followed by the full alarm if signals kept coming, wasn’t tried.

The real answer seemed to come sometime in the oughts. Apparently most alarms could be made to work fine, it’s just that people had been installing them incorrectly. That’s right, there are as many alarms in cars as in the nineties it’s just that they are now (mostly) working properly.

So if you are a youngin who has made it this far through this post, now you have something to say if you hear us older people talk about the good old nineties. Now you can say “Isn’t that the decade where people didn’t know how to install car alarms?”

All we’ll be able to say is “Yes. Yes it was.”

Posted in Geography, History, Humour, Science, Stage and Screen | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Crippling Ourselves

Posted on 8 March 2011 by Larry Russwurm

There are anti bullying shows sometimes on television or in other media. Dr. Phil, for instance has made a couple of schools sign a pledge to intervene if someone is being bullied. The net outcome might be in a positive direction, but I don’t think bullying will end so easily.

Which is too bad, really because some of those who die might directly be the next great artist or scientist. Some might think the living bullied might become stronger because of the old saw ‘what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger’. I take offense at this statement because it is patently untrue. Some of the bullied might have been a great architect or engineer and end up craving obscurity and become a dishwasher in a restaurant.

I think that we are years behind in the arts and sciences and fine arts because we have let some bullying go.

It might be most obvious in technology where civilization could have taken us already. Space elevators might already exist to get us out of Earth’s gravity well. And if we were in a hurry, private rockets would take us into space that much faster.

Anti gravity belts might make us lighter than a bird so flapping our arms (in the correct way) would allow us to fly. Maybe this wouldn’t be as Utopian as we think, now having three dimensions to avoid having an accident in.

Invisibility articles already litter some of the science literature. By now maybe we’d have perfect invisibility for one and all. There might be downsides to this as well. Most magic tricks could be done with someone in an invisibility suit so this art (science?) might go down the crapper. Plus we would have many more ways to have accidents with a large percentage of the public invisible. True anonymity might be nice.

Obviously I know there will be downsides with almost every breakthrough technology. I still think the advantages will outweigh the downsides. Even if they cancel each other out, future technology will make the world more interesting.

So fast forward the future by taking a bite out of bullying (or the bullies!). And if the sciences change everything, imagine what the new marvels in the arts and the fine arts will be.

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Of Wolves and Coyotes

Posted on 5 March 2011 by Larry Russwurm

The coyote problem has been in the news in my area (southern Ontario) for awhile. The news outlets have said coyotes are nuisances that kill farm animals and might even one day kill a child.

It didn’t used to be this way. My area, much as the rest of North America, was originally inhabited by wolves. The wolves kept the coyotes out of much of North America excepting the deserts.

But European expansion into North America brought with it a hatred of wolves. Dirty tricks were used such as killing bison and lacing the dead body with poison to get the wolves. So all the densely human settled areas got rid of wolves.

Wolves generally do not attack humans. They might attack dogs or livestock but only a rabid wolf will attack a human. There has been grumbling that Eurasian wolves will attack humans but I don’t think it has been ruled out that these wolves are dog/wolf hybrids.

The theory about why dog/wolf hybrids can be dangerous is simple. Dogs are not afraid of humans but are tame. Wolves are afraid of humans but wild. When a dog/wolf mating has offspring, they might not be afraid of humans and be wild. So these offspring can be dangerous.

So we managed to get rid of wolves, an animal that avoids human contact and certainly does not stalk us. Instead we now have coyotes which will attack children.

A quick peek over at Wikipedia reveals that there have been non rabid attacks by coyotes on children, one resulting in death. And the fear of more child attacks has raised the cry, ‘Destroy the coyote.’

But if we decimate coyotes, what will take their place, and will it be more dangerous?

Perhaps Sasquatches will move into a new niche if the coyotes disappear. And I think that this will be mega dangerous. Why? Because Sasquatches are smarter than humans.

Obviously Sasquatches have managed to hide from us ubiquitous humans for thousands of years. The only explanation is that they are smarter than us and cover their traces.

Will humanity be able to survive the onslaught from the much smarter Sasquatch? I doubt it. Perhaps they’ll leave a small breeding population of humans in the deserts of the world, much as the wolves used to leave the coyotes a place a to live.

Posted in History, Politics, Pseudo Science, Science, Wee Bit O' Humour | Tagged , , , , , , , | 5 Comments