Tag: technology

SubscribeStar Saturday: Smash the Smartphones

The Portly Politico4 Comments

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I read an interesting piece in The Morning, a little newsletter The New York Times e-mails out every morning.  Now, before you think I’ve lost my conservative bonafides for reading the NYT, consider the following:

  1. It’s good to keep up with what the enemy is writing and thinking and
  2. Even a stop clocked is right twice a day.

In this case, I’m considering one of those rare “stopped watch” moments.

Now that I’ve reassured you of my commitment to conservatism (perhaps engaging in another kind of ideological purity test), let’s consider why I’m softly endorsing this particular piece.  It’s a report about the growing trend of banning cellular telephones in schools.  These bans are sometimes based in individual schools or districts, but in a few cases they’re bans instituted by State law.

The writer of the newsletter makes an excellent point:  if smartphones had been around when he was in high school, he wouldn’t have learned anything:

From my perch behind the students, I can see how many of them are scrolling through sports coverage, retail websites, text messages or social media, looking up occasionally to feign attention. It’s not everyone, of course. Some students remain engaged in the class. But many do not.

I would have been in the latter group if smartphones had existed decades ago; like many journalists, I do not have a naturally stellar attention span. And I’m grateful that I didn’t have ubiquitous digital temptations. I learned much more — including how to build my attention span — than I otherwise would have.

Yours portly agrees.  I flunked the first quarter of AP Calculus BC as a senior because I somehow missed how to do derivatives:  the fundamental basis of calculus and a very easy calculation to perform (although if you asked me to do it now, I’d be at a loss—that was twenty-two years ago!).  I wasn’t scrolling through Instagram—it didn’t exist yet—or watching YouTube—it also did not exist.  I didn’t even have a cellphone until I was 21, and only got one because it was cheaper than maintaining a landline in my crummy grad school apartment.

So even without the endless distractions of an infinite digital world, I somehow missed the ten minutes of the class in which Mrs. Grooms explained how to do derivatives.  Who knows what I was doing; I was probably doodling, or just zoned out (my family knows that I have a tendency to do this regularly).

Imagine if I’d had even my Gameboy at school—and was allowed to play it, overtly or otherwise, in class.  I would have learned nothing.

One giant leap forward:  imagine if I’d had a smartphone, with access to endless entertainment and information.  Sure, I might have learned something from the latter, but I was an unusual kid who liked reading encyclopedia entries.  Even I would have succumbed to the siren song of mindless apps.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Showtime!

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It’s the busy Christmas season for yours portly, and last night I made it over the first of two major humps before Christmas break:  the Middle School Christmas Play.  The next hump is the Christmas Concert for my own students, which is this Friday, 8 December 2023, in the morning.

There is a tremendous amount of work that goes into the play, as our school particularly loves to stage light-hearted musical comedies.  You wouldn’t think that a musical would involve substantially more tech setup than a typical play, but it makes the work exponentially more challenging.

The Drama teacher this year did a fabulous job, and created one of the most tech-heavy productions I’ve been involved with so far.  It was a multimedia extravaganza:  songs, choreography, videos, backing tracks, lights, around twenty-five microphones (stationary/hanging mics, floor mics, individual headset mics, wireless handhelds, etc.), and more.

Here is a panoramic view of my sound booth about ninety minutes before the play:

MS Christmas Play 2023 Panorama

The astute observer will note two sound boards/mixing consoles, plus a lighting controller, as well as my $80 refurbished laptop, which does fine if I’m just cuing backing tracks, but otherwise runs like a potato powering a lightbulb.  There’s also the spotlight, two lighting trees with around ten lights each, and a projector screen.  During the production my student assistant and I had to move a projector into place, along with a auxiliary cord running to a DI box, which fed via XLR (microphone) cable to a “snake” onstage, which ran all the way back to us at our booth.  We also had to move a baby grand piano (don’t worry—it was on wheels)!

Setting all of this stuff up is stressful, because it’s usually done in fifty-minute snippets of planning periods.  But the finished product is worth it.

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Coffee Glasses

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Years ago I read a series of pieces about the greatest inventions in human history.  While I don’t remember the author or the publication, one essay stuck out to me.  The author argued that glasses were a major invention, as they allowed the visually impaired to see normally for the first time ever.

I am highly myopic (not just in my political and social views, but physically—my eyes are shaped in such a way that I have horrendous eyesight).  Thinking about living in a time before readily-available lenses really made me think.  If I don’t wear glasses, I pretty much can’t function.  Faces look like pinkish or dark blobs with two darker blobs in the middle.  Reading is only possible if I hold the text a couple of inches from my face.  Driving would pretty much be impossible—or, at best, extremely dangerous for myself and other motorists.  I can see—I’m not blind—but life would be a struggle.

Fortunately, I pop on a pair of glasses, and boom!—everything is clear (beyond the occasional smudge) and I can see!

My life is rife with humorous incidents involving my glasses, often when they get lost or misplaced.  The best was when I was floating on an innertube down at Fripp Island.  For whatever reason, I hadn’t taken my glasses off before going into the water (optometrists everywhere are screaming at their computer screens).  As I laid there, lazily drifting on the mild sea, my older brother—ever the prankster—came up from beneath me, capsizing me.  My glasses and I fell into the murky depths of the Atlantic Ocean.

Fortunately—by what had to be a minor miracle from God—my right foot landed precisely on my glasses.  It was enough force to pin them to the ocean floor without crushing or breaking them.  My brother, realizing how awful the rest of the vacation would be if I didn’t have corrective lenses, dove down and retrieved them, as I was too afraid to lift my foot, lest they wash out to see.

Had Neptune seen fit to take my glasses that day, I’d have either a.) spent the rest of the weekend miserably running into things or b.) someone would have had to driven me back to my home to get a backup pair (another major error—I didn’t bring a backup pair with me!).  My eyesight is so terrible, I can’t just pick up a set of readers from Walmart; I have to have specially-crafted super lenses.

But I digress.  Glasses have been a net boon for untold billions (I imagine) of people.  I’m one beneficiary.

So it was with great interest that I read a piece from news aggregator Latest Soup about glasses made from one of my other favorite innovations:  coffee.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Feelin’ Musky

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It’s official:  Elon Musk owns Twitter!

After months of wrangling and negotiating, including Musk incorporating some dread game and walking away from the deal, it’s finally done.  Musk walked into Twitter headquarters last week carrying a kitchen sink, in a fun visual pun. It’s the kind of lighthearted whimsy for which the innovative billionaire is known.

The Left is melting down, thinking that a man who not long ago supported the Democratic Party is suddenly going to turn the platform into a recruiting site for Neo-Nazis (all four of them that actually exist).  No Leftists panicked when Jeff Bezos—a far less lovable, far more tyrannical—figure purchased The Washington Post, turning it into a propaganda organ for Amazon.

Ah, but Elon Musk supports free speech—or, at the very last, far freer speech than any progressive wants.  Free speech is anathema to the Left, because their ideology doesn’t hold up to the scrutiny of daylight.  Free inquiry undermines the carefully constructed narratives of the Left—human-caused climate change; diversity, inclusion, and equity (DIE); systemic racism—and, therefore, represents a major threat to their political power and control.

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TBT^2: Hungry Like the Wolf

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Seeing as yesterday was my dog’s birthday, I figured I’d throw back to a piece that I seem to come back to each June, “Hungry Like the Wolf.” Tech magazine Gizmodo ran a piece some years ago that poses the question (in its title) “What Happens to Wolves When They’re Raised Like Dogs?”

My thinking on dogs has done nearly a 180-degree turn—maybe a 150-degree turn?—over the past few years.  I’ve always liked dogs (so I was already thirty degrees in their favor), but I disliked dog people.  I still would not classify myself in that way, though I do serenade my dog, so maybe I’m just in denial.

Regardless, what chapped me was the way people would use dogs as surrogate children, or would invest huge amounts of their personal identity in their dog.  Again, perhaps I’m in denial, or blind to reality, but as much as I love my dog, I’d like to think I’m not pouring misdirected paternalism into her.

But dogs do provide wonderful companionship, and can be a great deal of fun.  Murphy does something comical or amusing just about every day.  And her adenoidal snoring and “talking” crack me up.  I actually sleep better when Murphy is snoring her brains out—she’s like a living white-noise machine.

Pretty crazy these chunky furballs used to be wolves, eh?

Here’s 24 June 2021’s “TBT: Hungry Like the Wolf“:

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TBT: Hungry Like the Wolf

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After writing about whales yesterday, I thought I’d look back at some animal-related posts.  I stumbled upon this post from last June, in which I waxed scientific on the origins of dogs, and how we are all the descendants of the people the wolves didn’t eat.

My entire perspective on dogs has changed dramatically in the past year.  I used to think dogs were fine, but I didn’t see what all the fuss was about.  After dating a woman who was clearly using her poorly-trained dogs as surrogate children, I swore I would never date a single woman with dogs again.

Indeed, when my current girlfriend and I started dating, she had recently adopted her puppy, a German Shepherd.  According to her, whenever she mentioned the dog, I immediately changed the subject.  That sounds about right.

I was skittish around the dog initially, but now I love that critter.  Sure, I still find it a bit sad when single women approaching The Wall start channeling their unfulfilled maternal instincts into a four-legged fur ball, but I can now appreciate these wonderful creatures for the positive qualities they possess.  As Gavin McInnes—no lover of dogs—often says, we bred dogs to love us unconditionally, so it’s little wonder that they do.

Nevertheless, it’s nice to be loved.

Here is 29 June 2020’s “Hungry Like the Wolf“:

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TBT: Populists and Elites

The Portly Politico3 Comments

One of the blessings of the Trump administration was that Trump reminded us how fun regular people are.  Sure, I love the symphony and all that stuff, but a representative government should be basically populist—it should care about the people it governs, and look out for their interests.  Leaders should reflect the people, not set themselves against the people.  At most, our officials should strive to set examples for how a good life can be lived.

The thrust of this piece—written one year ago today—is that elitism is shockingly ignorant:  it presumes that anything that does not interest the elitist is somehow barbaric and simplistic.  That our own elites embrace the vulgar and raise up vice as a virtue suggests their elitism is supremely misguided—or lacking entirely.

Few remember now Michael Bloomberg’s disastrous run for the Democratic primary last year—it was so long ago!—but it was the political embodiment of clueless elitism against Trumpian populism.  Bloomberg had the resources and the softly center-Left stance to buy himself into the White House, or at least the Democratic nomination, but he bungled it so badly, even his supporters were in awe of his ineptitude.

Well, now we have a senile, fraudulent feebster leading a puppet regime, so it seems gross incompetence is no longer a barrier to entry to the highest office in the land.  Perhaps a healthy dose of elitism is needed after all.

Regardless, here is 18 February 2021’s “Populists and Elites“:

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Lazy Sunday C: Valentine’s Day

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It’s Valentine’s Day—and the one-hundredth installment of Lazy Sunday!  Because I did the “Best of Lazy Sunday” prematurely due to The Great Misnumbering, I decided to take a look back at Valentine’s Day posts.

Unfortunately, I only have two posts for Valentine’s Day, which I don’t celebrate with the same gusto as Halloween or Christmas.  So I’m also going to toss in a sales pitch for one of my albums, which you’re welcome to ignore.

That’s it for this very special Valentine’s Day edition of Lazy Sunday.  Snuggle your sweetie today—even if she is a robot.

Love,

TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

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More Tech Censorship

The Portly Politico6 Comments

Another round of tech censorship is upon us.  The Trump campaign has been banned from streaming service Twitch (which I thought was just for gamers and girls with big boobs).  A bunch of conservative and Right-leaning personalities have been banned from YouTube, including Gavin McInnes, who built his own platform at Censored.TV.  Immigration patriot website VDare may lose its domain registrar, forcing the website to the Dark Web and TOR browsers.

Probably the most shocking is the digital defenestration of Stefan Molyneux, the grandiloquent Internet philosopher.  Molyneux’s Freedomain Radio touts itself as “the world’s number one philosophy show,” and Molyneux’s output is ponderously prolific.  Within hours of major news events, Molyneux will have long “The Truth about [Insert Controversial Figure or Event Here]” videos uploaded, meticulously researched and supported with fact-filled PowerPoints.

Lately, though, Molyneux has been posting videos of his daughter’s tadpole pool, or of the two of them building a turtle garden.  He’s also been livestreaming Doom—controversial in the Tipper Gore era of schoolmarmish censorship of video games and music, maybe, but not thirty years later, and certainly not grounds for deplatforming.

So why did the Left decide to destroy Molyneux’s livelihood?  The simple answers:  because he’s Right-wing, and because they could.

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Hungry Like the Wolf

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I’m puppy-sitting today, watching my parents’ ten-week-old rat terrier while they’re working and attending various doctors’ appointments.  I pray that the day I go to the doctor and various specialists as frequently as my parents do is still decades away.

Dogs are interesting critters.  It’s kind of amazing that our ancient ancestors domesticated wolves and bred them to hunt on behalf of humans, instead of merely hunting humans.  It’s even more interesting how breeding for selective traits led to various breeds.  There’s a whole art and science to animal husbandry that is fascinating.

The rat terrier, for instance, is the result of various combinations of terriers (for hunting), greyhounds (for speed), and chihuahuas (for compactness—the rat terriers had to be small enough to get into rat holes).  According to my dad, who has become something of an authority on the breed since getting the puppy, rat terriers used to be very common in the United States—most farmers had one or two to help kill pests.  Theodore Roosevelt kept one named Scamp around the White House to kill mice (although Scamp may have been a different variation of terrier).

Of course, the question that interests me is thus:  if we domesticated dogs once, couldn’t we do it again from their cousins, wolves?  Naturally, there’s no need to do it again—it was surely a long process—but doing so would help us to understand how difficult domestication was, and why our ancient ancestors thought it was worth the effort.

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