Alvy Singer Wants to Stop Your Kids from Killing Aliens

A recent Wired Science article compared two bodies of research on the possibility of a link between violent video games and violent behavior. Quick summary of the story: A recent California court case examined the constitutionality of a law outlawing the sale and rental of violent video games to minors. Group X of scientists submitted a brief claiming that such games lead to aggressive behavior. Another Group Y submitted a brief disputing the claim to a link between game play and aggressive behavior. (Note: I myself am agnostic as to whether such a link exists.)

The court ruled the law unconstitutional. One could say that Group Y won and Group X lost, although it's not clear from the story what role the briefs played in the decision. I don't know what other evidence was presented; I don't even know necessarily that the judges even read the briefs.

But here's the other part of the story. The Northwestern Law Review later published an article suggesting that the court should pay more attention to the claims of Group X than Group Y because Group X had published more articles and had published more in "top-tier" journals.

There is a venerable term for this type of argument: ad hominem.

The article doesn't claim to have found an error in the analysis in Group Y's brief, or pick bones with the way Group Y collected their data. No, the argument presented is we're bigger big shots than the big shots on the other side, so the court should have believed us instead of them. This is by definition an ad hominem argument because the identity of the disputants is made an issue rather than the content of the argument.

The Northwestern article includes this amusing footnote: "In the interest of full disclosure, note that we disagree with much of the information contained in the Millett [i.e., Group Y's] Brief." This is amusing because a full disclosure would have mentioned that not only do the three article authors "disagree" with the Millett Brief, but two of them were actually members of Group X that authored the opposing brief. Instead they present themselves as merely concerned bystanders.

With this in mind, I can't help but be reminded of the ending of the movie Annie Hall, wherein Woody Allen's Alvy Singer rewrites his real-life break-up with his girlfriend Annie as a play, only changing the ending so that Annie comes back to him. To be fair, the authors might be less concerned with stewing over past losses than influencing the upcoming Supreme Court review of the case. I still think their time would be better spent in coming up with more persuasive data and analysis than attacking the reputations of their opponents.

Starved for Irony

Picture shows a notice posted in a college restroom in Japan. Translation runs as follows:

USE OF THE TOILET

• Thanks to you, the toilet is always maintained in a clean condition.
• Let's continue to use the toilet in such a way that the next person can feel good about using it.
• Let's avoid wasting toilet paper and water.
• Smoking is prohibited in the toilet.

We request everyone's cooperation.

[In the lower-left corner, next to the drawing of the toilet, surrounded by little stars, is one of those peculiarly Japanese expressions which serves as a sound effect for something that doesn't really have a sound: pika-pika, or in other words, "sparkle sparkle."]

The only thing that could make this any more Japanese would be a cute cartoon animal pointing to the text.

Now consider hypothetically a similar notice (but in English, of course) posted in a restroom on an American college campus. What would be the effect? For the assorted reading audience, standing at the urinal, surely reactions ranging from befuddlement to raucous laughter. Is this for real? Within a matter of hours, defacement by some sort of crude graffiti. Within a matter of days, the notice is flung to the ground and trampled upon, and most likely soiled with a selection of bodily fluids.

So here we see an interesting aspect of Japanese society (or perhaps it is an interesting aspect of non-American society): the incredible sincerity. Japan is a place where you can actually say things like "It's a shame that a few bad apples have to spoil a good time for everyone by breaking the rules" and no one will snicker.

As an American of the sarcasm-prone variety, I am acutely conscious when in Japan of the need to watch what I say. Sarcasm is still possible, but must be carefully calibrated. Otherwise leads to befuddlement on the part of others, or in the worst cases, offense.

The advantages of the sincere society are pretty much what you would expect. The restrooms are in fact remarkably clean. As are the streets—all the more remarkable when you consider there is hardly a trash can to be found. Properly disposing of a plastic soda bottle entails separating it into three components—the bottle, the cap, and the label—and putting them in three separate locations.

I can't help but feel, however, that sarcasm and cynicism have their advantages as well. Life in Japan has provoked a lot of introspection. Why do I feel a frequent urge (by no means always indulged in) to play the devil's advocate, particularly if I can flavor my cynicism with a little humor? There are two obvious justifications:

1: I get to show off my sparkling wit.

2: I get to brighten the day of those around me.

But I think the real basis for American cynicism is something more philosophical. We recognize that no one is perfect, that even the most virtuous among us have a guilty secret or too. And therefore, when we hear someone or something praised extravagantly our automatic reaction is oh yeah? Well, what about....

Japanese people, if pressed, will admit that everything has its dark side. But they don't share our compulsion to point it out constantly.

Lest anyone misunderstand, my intent here is not to claim that America is better than Japan, or vice-versa. I think of different societies as representing different strategies for social organization, and am rather fascinated by the many different possible approaches to solving the same problems. Somewhat in the spirit of Arrow's Theorem, I rather think every approach is going to have serious drawbacks some of the time.

Hello, Kitty!

I got off of writing for awhile...been on the road—still on the road, actually—in Japan, that is. It's been seven years since I was here last The place has changed a lot, and I myself have changed even more. I find myself little interested in going to the "Japanese" places that I used to put on my list and am far more interested in seeking out the little Japanese things (without the quote marks) that open at least a small window into what is going on.

I was rather stunned to see the obvious difference in atmosphere between Tokyo and Osaka, and marvel at my own obtuseness in not noticing it on earlier visits. In Tokyo, a goodly proportion of the women seem to have taken the inspiration for their dress from the pages of a manga book (quite enjoyable for the onlooker) and everyone walks extremely fast—though I've heard there is a strong correlation between city population and walking speed. Tokyo is at the extreme end of the spectrum by both measures.

There is also something of a fad for wearing surgical masks. So you get the incongruous sight of a young woman dressed to the nines in a frilly microskirt and seven-inch heels, elaborately applied make-up and hair ribbons, and then gilding the lily with a surgical mask. I myself would die a premature death rather than wear one of those things.

In Osaka, on the other hand, about half the people on the street dress like refugees from a homeless shelter. The difference was obvious the instant I hit the sidewalk. And the taxi, was by no means meticulously clean like those in Tokyo. The trunk was half filled with the driver's own weird crap.

There was a thought-provoking scene in Osaka. A girl, obviously profoundly hard of hearing, was trying to get service in a shop and the guy behind the counter was wearing one of those damn masks. You're really screwed in this country if you rely on reading lips to get around.

The lights are out in the big cities—at least the big neon advertising signs—reflecting the ongoing power crisis in Fukushima. But the cities are still far sparklier than any place I ever lived.

Practical Joke #10

1. Get a friend and drive down the road together.

2. Keep driving around until you see someone standing by the side holding a sign that says "Honk 4 Jesus."

3. Drive a further 50 yards.

4. Park the car and stand by the side of the road holding a sign that says "You should have honked."

5. Your friend stands yet 50 yards further down with a sign saying "Now you're going to hell." Make sure both signs are lettered in bright colors.

6. Remember to smile and wave at all the cars!

Language Learning Tip: Avoiding the Embarrassment of Gender Confusion

Photo by garryknight

Not your problem, you say? I don't mean the problem of wandering into the wrong restroom. Wait until you undertake to study one of the world's many languages which arbitrarily assign genders to inanimate objects. This includes most European languages (English being the most prominent exception) and others besides—Arabic, for example. Swahili has "noun classes" which work like a multivalent version of gender.

I have heard that French schoolchildren, for example, can predict with uncanny accuracy the genders of objects they have never seen before. This seems hard to believe (what about the case where two different words denote the same object but have opposite gender?). And by what possible logic is a spoon masculine, a fork feminine, and a knife neuter (as is the case in German)? Another argument against the inherent character of grammatical gender is the lack of consistency across languages: for example, "the moon" is la lune (feminine) in French but der Mond (masculine) in German.

Some languages, like Russian, or Arabic, make it fairly easy to predict the gender of a word, not by the nature of the object but by the form of the word (does it end with a?). Others, like German, have essentially no connection between the form of a word and its gender. In such cases we have no alternative but to remember the gender of each word.

This is a perfect situation in which to apply the techniques of memory training, as I have previously described. The key is to use vivid mental images to impress the gender of an object on the mind.

For a language like French, or Italian, with (only) male and female genders, an obvious approach suggests itself: visualize the object with a sex characteristic: a phallus for masculine objects, a large pair of breasts for feminine objects. (To forestall an avalanche of hostile comments, let me declare that I have nothing against small-breasted women—this merely reflects the principle that vivid, exaggerated, sexual, and even scatological images stick better in the mind).

Once you get into more than one language, you need a distinct set of visual tags for each to avoid confusion. For that matter, some languages have more than two genders: German, Russian, or Sanskrit have three, and Swahili has sixteen (though sadly, these do not reflect sixteen distinct varieties of human sexuality—that would be fun).

Let's take German as an example, which has three genders. How about the tags chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry to represent the three? Chocolate is feminine and vanilla masculine, of course (because that's yin and yang), which leaves strawberry to be neuter. Eventually, you'll need to remember these three on your own.

So let's take lists of nouns of various genders:

Masculine: Mond (moon), Hut (hat), Brief (letter)

Feminine: Sonne (sun), Jacke (jacket), Wand (wall), Maus (mouse)

Neuter: Haus (house), Hotel (hotel)

We could certainly go with longer lists, but this post is getting long enough as it is. The conclusive step is to form a vivid mental image linking each object with the appropriate flavor.

Start with moon and vanilla (masculine). Picture yourself eating a vanilla ice-cream cone, only the scoop of ice cream is actually a miniature moon. There's even a tiny spacecraft landed on it with astronauts waving a tiny flag, while the tiny command module buzzes around your head like a fly.

Now hat and vanilla: You are wearing a hat made of vanilla beans. Make sure to see it in your mind's eye.

Letter and vanilla: You receive a letter printed on vanilla ice cream. You struggle to read it before it melts.

Sun and chocolate (feminine): The sun in the sky is a huge ball of chocolate. The rays are covering you with a brown, sticky coating.

Jacket and chocolate: You are wearing a jacket made of chocolate bars—a little gooey, but oh so stylish.

Wall and chocolate: The wall of your room is an enormous chocolate bar, still in the wrapper.

By now you see, I hope, that it takes no special creativity to come up with these images. There are a few standard tricks.

Mouse and chocolate: You open a chocolate bar wrapper, and a mouse scampers out.

Now house and strawberry: Imagine returning home one day and finding your house has transformed into a giant strawberry, still with doors and windows.

Finally, hotel and strawberry: You are waiting in line to check in at a hotel and you notice all the other guests are giant ambulatory strawberries, each holding his or her suitcase.

Now it's quiz time. Keeping in mind the code (chocolate=feminine, vanilla=masculine, strawberry=neuter), what is the German gender of each of these words?

Brief (letter)

Haus (house)

Hotel (hotel)

Hut (hat)

Jacke (jacket)

Maus (mouse)

Mond (moon)

Sonne (sun)

Wand (wall)

With practice, you will find this works as well for a hundred words, or five hundred, as with the nine given here.

An alternative way to select a symbol to represent a particular gender (or other grammatical categories) is to pick one example word from the class—let moon represent masculine and sun represent feminine, for example

Memory Training Crash Course, Part II

Okay, so it's been two years since Part I. Super-quick review: images are easier to remember than symbols or words, and you can help yourself recall images—by making them absurd, outrageous, or offensive. I'm still weaker than I want to be at remembering people's names (notwithstanding theoretically having learned the secret years ago), but I have noticed it works better if I allow my brain to indulge in childish impulses that I had left behind. As George Carlin says, "I always felt sorry for guys whose names were Dick and Peter." Next time you meet a Dick or Peter, recall this comment and allow yourself a (secret) mental snigger at the image it brings to mind. See if the name doesn't stick in your mind.

For abstract information such as numbers or playing cards, more sophisticated tools must be brought into play as well. The Major system is a simple but powerful tool for translating numbers into words—and hence into concrete images—that can then be memorized by other means.

It is simplest to explain by starting at the reverse end—translating words into numbers. One must invest the time to memorize the following phonetic code:

s, z become 0

t, d, th become 1

n becomes 2

m becomes 3

r becomes 4

l becomes 5

ch, sh, j become 6

k, (hard) g become 7

f,v become 8

p,b become 9

Anything not on this list—w, h, y and any vowel sounds—is ignored. Any word or phrase can be translated into a unique sequence of digits using the code. Take the word "fan", for example. F becomes 8, a is ignored, and n becomes 2, so "fan" becomes the number 82. Keep in mind these are sounds, not letters—so "phone" also becomes 82. This example also shows that a single number can correspond to more than one word (or phrases). On the other hand, (a crucial point) two different numbers will never correspond to the same word.

The game gets more interesting when you play it the other way around: find a word or phrase to correspond to a sequence of digits:

0 becomes s, z
1 becomes t, d, th
2 becomes n
3 becomes m
4 becomes r
5 becomes l
6 becomes ch, sh, j
7 becomes k, (hard) g
8 becomes f,v
9 becomes p,b

This can test your vocabulary. Consider for example the number 102. This translates into dsn or dzn or tzn or tsn. We could use the single word "dozen", but this has the drawback of being difficult to visualize (as well as inviting confusion with the number twelve). I prefer "hoatzin". I just happen to know what this is (an atavistic species of bird with claws on its wings) thanks to my abnormal predilections in childhood reading. Every two-digit number can be expressed as a single word (usually in several ways); most three digit numbers have single-word equivalents; with four digits or more it's hit-and-miss. I have, by the way, found the 2Know freeware program to be an extremely useful tool—it allows you to enter any sequence of digits and searches a rather deep dictionary for equivalents or partial equivalents.

So, for example, if you want to memorize the first several digits of Pi:

3.1415926535897932384

you can convert it to the phrase:

moderately paunchy, lamely phobic bahamian amphora.

Of course, this is nonsensical, but as explained in Part I, that hardly interferes with committing it to memory.

By the way, I see that this code was devised in almost the same form by Gregor von Feinagle in 1808. I would have thought it was some person named Major, but there you go. This leaves the name of the system as something of a mystery.

Most who make frequent use of this system use a set of "peg words": standard terms representing the numbers up to 100. This spares even a moment's hunting for a suitable word in the easy cases, and also allows one to associate particular items with each of the numbers up to 100 and reliably recall them later. For example, for me, the number 56 is always "leech" (unless I have a specific reason to choose something different). I can associate anything with the number 56 by mentally connecting it to the concept of "leech." That wouldn't help if the next time I think of 56 I convert it to "eyelash"—but I won't, because by now when I think 56 I instantly think "leech." In a future post, I'll give my own list of peg words for numbers from 00 to 100.

Of all the various self-help gimmicks I've tried over the years, I think memory training must be the best in terms of cost-benefit ratio. I routinely use this to remember phone numbers, account numbers, and so on.