or Powell's or me• • •
"Mike and Jon, Jon and Mike—I've known them both for years, and, clearly, one of them is very funny. As for the other: truly one of the great hangers-on of our time."—Steve Bodow, head writer, The Daily Show
•
"Who can really judge what's funny? If humor is a subjective medium, then can there be something that is really and truly hilarious? Me. This book."—Daniel Handler, author, Adverbs, and personal representative of Lemony Snicket
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"The good news: I thought Our Kampf was consistently hilarious. The bad news: I’m the guy who wrote Monkeybone."—Sam Hamm, screenwriter, Batman, Batman Returns, and Homecoming
May 04, 2007
Racrecir Wins!
As I mentioned, there's a line in a recent Noam Chomsky conversation with evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers that perfectly described the genesis and motivations of this website. Racrecir is the first person who came up with it:
TRIVERS: We find repeatedly now—in wasps, in birds and in monkeys—that when organisms realize they're being deceived, they get pissed off. And they often attack the deceiver. Especially if the deceiver is over-representing him or herself. If you're under-representing and showing yourself as having less dominance than you really have, you're not attacked. And the ones that do attack you are precisely those whose dominance status you are attempting to expropriate or mimic.
Not flattering to me, but there it is. And embarrassingly enough, I didn't wholly comprehend this about myself until reading the interview. As Trivers says, "we're aware of the fact that when we're watching something on stage, so to speak, we have a better view than the actors on the stage have."
Now, to be fair to me, the situation's more complex than this. My motivations are more nuanced than those of an enraged wasp. Nevertheless, I am an organism like other organisms.
Racrecir, if you want to claim your copy of Our Kampf, please email me a mailing address.
AND: A special Jury Appreciation Prize to Doug B for "I'm trying to understand these phenomena at the individual level and also put them together in groups, since at times institutions act like individuals in the way they practice internal self-deception."
Posted at May 4, 2007 01:20 AM | TrackBackAn old carnival saying, feed that bullshit to the marks don't swallow it yourself. That's the problem with this Administration, the reason for the constant failures, the infuriating backfiring over the little lies, the plans that go astray, THEY BELIEVE THEIR OWN BULLSHIT, THEY TRUELY BELIEVE THEIR OWN BULLSHIT.
Posted by: Mike Meyer at May 4, 2007 02:42 AMso you're a moe?
Posted by: osama -- err -- sam at May 4, 2007 12:32 PMWell...not a Moe, exactly, but with certain vestigal Moe tendencies.
Posted by: Jonathan Schwarz at May 4, 2007 12:53 PMTrivers needs to be on meds.
He won the big Craaford prize, then soils it by writing this uncollegial screed in the WSJ actually threatening another academic:
Wall Street Journal Letters to the Editor Wednesday, May 23, 2007In regard to Alan Dershowitz’s commentary “Finkelstein’s Bigotry” (editorial page, May 4): In it he asserts that “He [Norman Finkelstein] has encouraged radical goons to email threatening messages; ‘Look forward to a visit from me,’ reads one. “Nazis like [you] need to be confronted directly.”
But all of this is untrue. I wrote the letter in question (April 15, 2007), but without Prof. Finkelstein’s knowledge, interest or approval. The key sentences had nothing to do with Prof. Finkelstein: ‘Regarding your rationalization of Israeli attacks on Lebanese civilians, let me just say that if there is a repeat of Israeli butchery toward Lebanon and if you decide once again to rationalize it publicly, look forward to a visit from me. Nazis – and Nazi-like apologists such as yourself – need to be confronted directly.
As for being an academic goon: I am late responding because I was in Europe lecturing after receiving the Crafoord Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Robert Trivers
Professor of Anthropology and Biological Sciences
Rutgers University
Somerset, NJ
According to Wikipedia:
Robert L. Trivers, (born 19 February 1943) is an American evolutionary biologist and sociobiologist...Trivers originally went to Harvard to study mathematics, but wound up studying U.S. history in preparation to become a lawyer. He took a psychology class after suffering a breakdown, and was very unimpressed with the state of psychology. He was prevented from getting into Yale law school by his breakdown, and wound up with a job writing social science textbooks for children (never published, due in part to presenting evolution by natural selection as fact). This exposure to evolutionary theory led him to graduate work with Ernst Mayr at Harvard 1968-1972 (he never got a bachelor's degree anywhere). He was on faculty at Harvard 1973-1978, then moved to UC Santa Cruz.He met Huey P. Newton, Chairman of the Black Panther Party, in 1978 when Newton applied (while in prison) to do a reading course with him as part of a graduate degree in History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz. Trivers and Newton became close friends, Newton was godfather to one of Trivers' daughters. Trivers joined the Black Panther Party in 1979. Trivers and Newton published an analysis of the role of self-deception by the flight crew in the crash of Air Florida Flight 90 (Trivers, R.L. & Newton, H.P. Science Digest 'The crash of flight 90: doomed by self-deception?' November 1982, pp 66,67,111).
The Black Panthers bit show really bad judgment. The failure to get into Yale law makes me wonder if the guy is jealous of Dershowitz, the famous Harvard lawyer.
In any case, with scientists conducting themselves like this, it's no wonder the public has lost its trust in scientists.
Posted by: Eris at May 23, 2007 06:34 PM
