“These go to eleven.“
I know people who feel the funniest moment in all of film is the bit in This is Spinal Tap about the volume knobs that go to 11. It does seem clear that the bit has become a well-known cultural meme. Just about everyone (who’s anyone) knows exactly what you mean when you refer to turning it up to eleven.
For those of you just exiting the cave (Plato’s or otherwise), here’s the bit:
Sidebands are 10; a full hand; a (very small) odometer moment.
The accident of genetics and evolution that gives us ten fingers (and ten toes) causes us to count in tens and celebrate things that occur on tens boundaries.
Turning 30, 40 or 50 years of age is viewed as cause to bring out the black balloons and mocking birthday cards. Yet celebrating 30, 40, 50 or 60 years of marriage is cause to celebrate (especially these divorce-prone days).
In earlier Sidebands I have tried, as our English teachers used to say, to “compare and contrast” related pairs of concepts that are sometimes mistakenly conflated. The first pair, Truth and Facts, are similar enough to make distinctions between them debatable. Even the language can twist you up once you start talking about true facts and false facts. The next two pairs, Good vs Like and Ignorant vs Stupid, are well-defined and distinct.
In all three cases, there are similarities and differences (hence “compare and contrast”), but a key difference between those and the current topic, Analog vs Digital, is that none of them are really opposite pairs. There is no Yin and Yang aspect to them; one does not exclude the other. I’ve already mentioned true facts. Something can be both good and liked (or neither). Someone can be both ignorant and stupid (being neither is both good and likeable).
Not so with analog and digital! They are true Yin-Yang pairs; one excludes the other.
Readers of this blog may have noticed by now that a lot of the links in what I write lead to Wikipedia.
I don’t work for Wikipedia, and I’m not even a contributor to its content. I am a big fan of that site (for several reasons), and I’d go so far as to say I think it’s the best site on the internet.
I mean, come on, how cool is it having a free online encyclopedia that doesn’t assault your senses with those increasingly annoying ads that infest just about every other site out there.
I completely forgot to rant about 3D when I wrote about the Green Lantern movie. Part of the reason I did forget is that I didn’t see it in 3D.
Except for certain special cases — basically occasionally checking to see the state of the art — I will never willingly see any movie in 3D.
Number me, along with film critic Roger Ebert, as a hater of 3D.
In the Green Lantern post I mentioned “The Rocky Syndrome.” That’s what I call the common American trope where a single hero prevails after having the living crap beat out of him (or her) and being at the edge of defeat. (I’m going to assume you’re all familiar enough with the Rocky films to know what I’m talking about.)
A more modern example is one of the first (and greatest) action films of its kind: Die Hard. (Obviously, I’m talking about the first one. The others are… okay, but that first one is a classic. One of those films you can watch many times and still enjoy.)
In fact, that’s such a great film that one of these days I’ll have to write a post about it, but for now I want to talk about what I call, “The Boston Syndrome.”
Have you noticed how blogs and emails are training us to read backwards? Or if you want to read forwards, you have to go to the bottom and read upwards?
Blogging sites post your most recent post first and the oldest (that fits on the page) at the bottom. If you come to a site for the first time and read posts from top to bottom, you’re reading backwards in the order of their posting.
If you wanted to read them in chronological order, you’d have to find the oldest and read upwards.
One last very important distinction: there’s a big difference between being ignorant and being stupid.
To be ignorant is to not know something.
We are all ignorant. In fact, given how much there is to know, we’re all far more ignorant than not. Granted, some more than others, and if there is any crime, it is in remaining willfully ignorant in the face of knowledge.
That’s stupid.
While we’re on the topic of important distinctions, let’s also try to draw a line between the idea of liking something and the idea that something is good.
Very often people conflate the two. For example, that a “good” movie is a movie they liked.
In fact, good and like are different measurements, and I wish more people understood the difference.
A bit of Haiku:
A Thing is rarely
The whole or the only Truth.
Most Things are that way.
It’s useful to break the connection between the idea of fact and the idea of truth. A fact is a datum that stands on its own regardless of opinion, belief or perception.
A truth does reflect the opinion, belief or perception of a person.
Posts pertaining to programming!
Logos con carne 