Why Make Race an Issue When It Isn’t One?

I’d like to write about something annoying (if only brief) that happened Saturday. I was walking through Central Square on my way back from Chinatown and listening to music through my earphones when a man holding a binder came up beside me and started talking.

“Do you mind if I talk to you for a second?”

“Sorry,” I said, shaking my head and smiling. I continued to walk and he followed.

“C’mon, can I talk to you?”

“No thanks,” I said, shaking my head again and still smiling.

“Please?”

Again a smile.

“What, you don’t talk to black people?”

I stopped and pulled my earphones off.

“No, man, I’m just trying to enjoy myself while I’m walking.”

“I can walk with you and talk with you at the same time.”

“Fine,” I said.

Then he stuck his hand out and grabbed mine and started shaking it.

“Hi. I’ve been HIV positive for two years, and I’m trying to get some donations—”

“I’m sorry,” I said, cutting him off. “I actually have no cash, I just spent all of it on my food.” I raised the smiley-face bag up so he could see. And it was true, my 3 orders of fresh spring rolls and 1 order of Vietnamese rice noodles with Vegan chicken cost $22 flat, and that was everything I had with me.

Without another word (though with a nasty look) he turned and walked away.

So I have several issues with this encounter.

1. I strongly believe that everyone has the right to walk down the street in peace, without being harassed or bothered.
2. No one should touch anyone else without their consent. In this case, an unknown person came up to me in what is a pretty crappy area and grabbed my hand.
3. I don’t owe anyone anything financially. I do my duty paying taxes, and in the past have given plenty of money to people on the street, which I had no problem with at the time. But I no longer have the resources to do that, so except for my immediate family and the IRS, I have no financial obligation to anyone.
4. Don’t bring race into an equation in which it’s not a variable. I didn’t want to talk to you because I didn’t feel like talking to anyone. The fact that you are black is irrelevant. I have kept plenty of black friends in the past, and when that’s the first card you reach for, I find it hard to take any claim of discrimination seriously (see the James Sherley reference in the last post as well).

Am I cranky or what?

 

I almost forgot about this webpage. But I figure I can use it as a place to store my thoughts for future reference or when my mind is all by its lonesome.

So yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk by Norman Chomsky. The talk was meant to be about the Arab Spring movement, but touched more broadly on the American (and British and French) response to democratic movements since the end of World War II. It was a good history lesson, and had good, witty analysis. No pictures because I had a good seat (second row, center), and you can’t really take a picture of someone from that close when they’re looking right at you and still maintain your dignity. It ain’t right.

On a tangentially related note (both to Chomsky and myself), I’d like to note these two articles I came across, both written about the same topic (the James Sherley tenure case), and from very different perspectives.

*From The Scientist
*From Boston Magazine

I am not a fan of self-victimization, and the Boston Magazine article—especially the end of it—makes it clear how easy this is to do.

I’ve finally updated my joke articles. It’s been a while. The last year hasn’t been so productive for me, and I probably used my thesis as an excuse, but it isn’t. I’ve got several more joke ideas coming, and have written 3 songs in the last week (“Good Friday”, “For Mona”, “Cesare Borgia”), all of which I quite like, though the last two are probably more song material, the first being more of a poem. I’m envisioning a collection to be called “For Mona”; after all, there are only really only ever two good times to write songs, and this is one of them. So I’m looking forward to getting back to that and my drawing compositions.

I have been listening to a lot of nice songs lately. Some from random places, some from the California yesteryear: “You Ain’t Alone” by the Alabama Shakes, “You Keep Me Hanging On” by the Supremes (Motown killer), “Praise You” by Fatboy Slim, “Wrong Way” by Sublime, “She’s Got Issues” by The Offspring. The last is one of those I wish I could’ve written.

I found myself watching a lot of Star Trek over the holiday. Can I just say that T’Pring is hot? Also, I came across this.

Speaking of the holidays, I spent a wonderful 3 weeks at home in California. It was warm (it’s always nice when you can go into the ocean without wetsuit), relaxing, and fun. It’s lame coming back freezing cold and wind and rain. When I finish up my quals, I’d like to go somewhere similarly nice, relaxing, and warm. I’m thinking somewhere in the South Pacific (Tahiti maybe) or South East Asia (perhaps Bali).

Another cool article. My cosmology professor from last semester has done a lot of work with SDSS.

I came across this guy’s webpage the other day, as well. He suffers from many of the classic symptoms of the crank (see here, courtesy of John Baez, and here, courtesy of Warren Siegel). Another interesting example here (see his account of an interaction with Steve Weinberg here and his responses to those who disagree with him here). Cranks often display delusions of grandeur, compare themselves to folks like Einstein, and self-victimize, in addition to typically displaying fundamental misunderstandings of the fields they try to tackle. It seems perhaps some level of mental illness to be blamed. I would also like to add that, while it is common for cranks or quacks to deride the “scientific mainstream”, being a part of that in no way means that one is kowtowing to convention or is unoriginal. On the contrary, to be a good scientist, one must be extremely creative and original.  Things become an acceptable part of science because they give predictions that can be independently verified by anyone and hence be established as scientific truth.

Cranks often like to compare themselves to Einstein to make the point that work initially considered out of the mainstream can eventually be acknowledged as a work of genuine talent (interestingly, Einstein’s work seems, too, to be a most common target of such folks). But I can promise that work that is genuine science will always be recognized as such after not too long since it will provide testable hypotheses and predictions or be verified by others.

Finally, I spent some time with my grandma (whom we call “Baa”) during the holiday, as she developed pneumonia. She’s 82, so we obviously got concerned, but she is now in a senior home and she seems to be doing fine (we gave her a DVD player, and she watches religious programming nonstop, which makes her very happy). My dad went to see her more frequently, and he mentioned to me that, during one visit, she asked him if I was getting married soon. My dad’s response was, “He’s waiting for the right person.” Well, yes and no. If there was, then maybe I would consider, but finding out if that’s the case is awful tricky. Right now my thoughts are, “Why would I be stupid enough to tie myself down legally to someone else?”, especially when someone can go off the rails at any time? I’ve seen enough unpleasant marriages in my life, and the thought makes me quite literally nauseated.

 

Blonde on Blonde (The Pizza)

Today, I took my weekly train ride up to Harvard Square to get dinner at Veggie Planet. I got the Peanut Curry on pizza dough, the Chips and Dip, and a root beer float with vegan vanilla ice cream from Toscanini’s. Last time, I got the Blonde on Blonde on pizza dough, the Garlic Knots, and the same float. The food takes some getting used to, and the presentation isn’t meant to mimic anything on the non-veggie side. The setup it pretty unique, and I like that. It’s quite good (though maybe a bit heavy-handed on the salt on both the Peanut Curry and the Blonde on Blonde, and they really mean tofu croutons…), and it’s worth the trip. Can I give a rating? Is that arrogant? I’ll give it a B+. Maybe I’ll do Grasshopper sometime, too.

 

For the Sake of Completeness

This past weekend was one of those weekends my dad came into town. In the course of four days, we drove a lot and ate a lot:

Wednesday

After trying (and failing) at making one of those Tofurkey meals for lunch (due mainly to my lack of proper cooking utensils, I promise), we made our way to Maine. We drove up to Portland, stopping at a few villages on the way up, and made our way back down to Boston. We ate dinner at Peace o’Pie Gourmet Vegan Pizza. Meal at Peace o’Pie: Classy Calzone, MD Calzone, Breadsticks. Peace o’Pie is the best vegan/vegetarian place in the Boston area, and I always stuff myself to the point of nausea with enough food for two or three people. This place is an A+ in my books.

Thursday

Thanksgiving meant that most restaurants were closed. We made our way up Cape Cod, through the end to Provincetown. For dinner, we ate at the hotel restaurant, substituting meaty stuff with non-meaty alternatives. It was still good.

Friday

Friday rained all day, meaning we stayed in Boston and watched football. For lunch, however, we made our way to Red Lentil Vegetarian and Vegan Restaurant in Watertown. I ate the Soy Chicken Strips and Zen Veggie Burger, while my dad ate the Gobi Manchurian. I’ve eaten better soy chicken strips and veggie patties, though my dad was very enthusiastic about his Gobi. I’d give this place a B probably.

We planned on going to a comedy club in the evening, and before that, we went to My Thai Vegan Cafe in the Chinatown section of Boston, just two blocks from our hotel. This place had a good variety of Southeast Asian style food, and I ordered two main dishes: ginger chicken and one of the duck things. The TVP here was of high quality, complete with the legged duck carcass, and I’d give the place an A.

The comedy club, on the other hand, was terrible. Having been to a good number of comedy shows and clubs, I thought Dick Doherty’s Beantown Comedy Vault on Boylston was the worst. The first two acts were terrible, the second actually being the girl that worked the door at the place. In a meandering three or four or five minute act about being from an Italian family, she elicited about five chuckles. The third and fourth acts were okay, especially the fourth, a young guy from the Boston area named Taylor Connelly. The headliner was a guy named Dick Doherty, who may or may not make an entire act out of insulting members of the audience. I wouldn’t know since we left about five minutes in, after he insulted a fat guy in the audience (telling him to “get a fuckin’ neck”), accused two women of being lesbians and told them he wanted to “strap them to the back of a Harley”, told one man his wife was better looking than the woman he usually brought in, called four different guys gay, and made about a dozen jokes about how large his penis was.

Here’s the thing: it’s fine to make fun of people during a comedy act, that’s kind of the point. But when you spend your time insulting members of the audience, that’s no fun. You pay money to go to a club to have fun and feel good about yourself, not to be made to feel rotten in front of dozens of people. The material ought to stand on its own. If you’re gonna reference people, it ought to be cultural figures or people that are in on the act, and not broad attacks on paying customers. I’m glad I made my way outta there soon enough: he was making his way to my side of the audience, and my dad and I were probably the only people in the club that weren’t ostensibly Caucasian. This place gets a D.

Saturday

Saturday, we decided to make our way to Western Massachusetts. My dad and I like to visit college campuses, so we made our way to Amherst College, passing on the way Springfield and South Hadley. For food, we ate at a vegan place in Florence, Massachusetts called Cafe Evolution. With its laid-back, local coffee shop atmosphere, this was a nice, peaceful place to eat in what’s practically the middle of nowhere. The food wasn’t all that different (if at all) from what I’d make at home using ingredients from Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s, but the presentation and taste was still good, as was the choice of desserts (I had the peanut butter chocolate cupcake). I’ll give this place a B, partly because of the good food and good atmosphere, but also because they had Blonde on Blonde playing in there.

Saturday ended with my dad and I driving down to Rhode Island, continuing our thing of college campus visits at Brown, and visiting the Rhode Island State Capitol. Ultimately, it was a nice Thanksgiving weekend with good food and lots of nice, new places visited.

 

Mechanisms for Humor

The strongest mechanism for humor is apparent contradiction, usually the appearance of something unexpected in an otherwise predictable environment. In this way, the logical basis for humor is almost always stereotype, since it lures the audience into a sense of security they are too willing to accept. Ultimately, the stronger the sense of security (often achieved by length and depth of set-up), the funnier the joke.

My own personal favorites, such as Seinfeld, Father Ted, Coupling, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Fawlty Towers, and Monty Python’s Flying Circus were all successful because they managed to introduce bizarre situations against what are the very banal circumstances of everyday life. This is particularly true with the British shows since the apparent class rigidity–particularly a generation or two ago– afforded a way of life that seemed too easily vapid and obstinate, and so the contrast in that case is even stronger.