\ud83e\udd66\u00a0 I was tasked the other day with putting away leftovers, one of which was a serving of Brussels sprouts.\u00a0 Now, I’m not a big fan of Brussels sprouts, or even a medium-sized fan.\u00a0 So when one of the sprouts escaped my spoon and fell into the sink and rolled around and went down the drain, I said to myself, “Oh well,” with little more remorse than when a piece of popcorn falls out of a bag at a baseball game.\u00a0 “It made its choice.”<\/p>\n
\ud83d\ude1f\u00a0 Astute readers will note that I finally got emojis to work on this site.\u00a0 We might \ud83e\uded2 to regret it!<\/p>\n
\ud83d\udc95 Facebook and other social-media sites allow their users to deploy likes<\/em> (expressed by those beloved emojis!) as fast-food substitutes for more fully-formed responses.\u00a0 But likes<\/em> are so vague that they may unintentionally convey any number of ideas:<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0 I have read your post and I agree with it. Bottom line, I wouldn’t dwell too long on picking the perfect like <\/em>emoji, as the recipient may have little idea what you really have in mind.<\/p>\n \ud83e\udd80 There must be an evolutionary reason why our third finger is our longest.\u00a0 Maybe it’s as simple as “one finger has to be longest.”\u00a0 Or perhaps there is a tree-grappling advantage to have a finger just a bit longer than the rest, so it can sense the branch just a fraction of an inch earlier and let us grapple it sooner, thereby escaping that panther.\u00a0 Only our ancestors and predators knew for sure.<\/p>\n \u2763\ufe0f Who have you assigned to be your reality checker<\/em>?\u00a0 By this I mean, the person you are most comfortable sharing your first-draft thoughts with, the person from whom you want to hear, “Hmm, are you sure<\/em> about that?”\u00a0 We should all be so lucky to have one.<\/p>\n \ud83d\udd0e\u00a0 As one who appreciates a good science article, I wish to register a formal objection to almost every piece of science journalism I’ve ever read in the New York Times<\/em>.\u00a0 Not that this indictment spares other prestigious periodicals, but why not start at the top?<\/p>\n I am invariably frustrated by the dumbed-down, off-the-mark analogies that NY Times<\/em> science writers routinely deploy, as if the paper’s readers cannot possibly be trusted to grasp physical facts on their own terms.\u00a0 It is condescending for a publication of its stature to feed its readers scientific baby food, and mostly empty-calorie baby food at that.<\/p>\n An October 2023 article<\/a> by freelancer Robin George Andrews about the planetary core of Mars is an excellent example of the crime in question.\u00a0 His very first sentence tips us off that this will be one of those<\/em> kind of science articles:\u00a0 “In 2021, it seemed as if Mars had a surprisingly big heart.<\/em>“<\/p>\n No, Robin.\u00a0 Mars does not<\/em> have a heart — it has a core.\u00a0 Mars is a planet.\u00a0 It is not a dog or a Salvation Army volunteer or a tin-man whose dream has been realized.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, Robin George Andrews, like a bulldog on a mailman’s leg, will not let go of the heart-core analogy in his article, even though planet cores neither beat nor fibrillate.\u00a0 Instead he takes his strained analogy to the next level:\u00a0 “[Teams have] concluded that Mars\u2019s core is more like our own world\u2019s heavy metal heart than previously suspected.”\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Would Earth’s heavy-metal heart belong to Ozzy Osbourne, Man-O-War, or Tony Stark?\u00a0 (Dare I suggest Freddie Mercury?)\u00a0 This is not scientific inquiry but science devaluation.<\/p>\n When a writer decides to sow cheap cultural references throughout a science article, it only serves to de-focus the reader’s attention and create a fuzzy mindless space, when focus<\/em> is exactly what the reader needs to appreciate the science being presented.\u00a0 But the editors of the NY Times<\/em> don’t see it that way.\u00a0 They would rather their readers consume, comment, and move on to the Style section, even if calls for the writer to sabotage the seriousness of his\/her own work.<\/p>\n Lest you think the Heart-of-Mars article was just a one-off example, may I direct you to the January 2024 NY Times<\/em> article, “The Early Universe Was Bananas<\/em><\/a>.”\u00a0 I would have posted a banana emoji here, but even that doesn’t convey enough satirical contempt.<\/p>\n \u2668\ufe0f After doing this blog for 13-plus years, I have often been tempted to recycle jokes and other bits that I feel were under-appreciated in their time. (Here’s a link<\/a> to one of them.)\u00a0 But that would be like The Archies re-issuing Sugar Sugar<\/em><\/a> and hoping to revive that sweet bubblegum wonder of it all.\u00a0 I… must not… gasp… stoop so low.\u00a0 (Here’s that link again<\/a>.)<\/p>\n \ud83d\udcb2 I have a love\/hate relationship with capitalism.\u00a0 Businesses rise and fall, and when they do fall, their workers usually fall before them.\u00a0 The only reason I could retire at age 57 (which still seems unreal) is that I worked for a company which made tons of money selling photographic products and which had a good pension plan but a bad business plan, and so they offered employees like me a golden fire escape (golden parachutes being reserved for the bigwigs) before Kodak’s house-of-prints finally collapsed.<\/p>\n In my last few years at Kodak, I heard and observed attitudes and practices that seemed predatory and\/or disingenuous rather than competitive, and I started to see the people at the top as testosterone-driven males who saw business as a “tough fight” rather than a race to deliver the best goods at the lowest cost.\u00a0 I lost my innocence about what corporations (not just Kodak but Microsoft, Google, Apple, Sony, Big Pharma, all of them really) will do to make a buck.\u00a0 It was discouraging to see my own naivety and look past my complicity.<\/p>\n In retrospect, I might have felt differently about myself if I had worked for a non-profit or a newspaper.\u00a0 I would have earned less money and no doubt retired far later.\u00a0 But I’ll never know!\u00a0 And that will have to do.\u00a0 I married capitalism right out of college; 36 years later, we had a friendly divorce with a fair settlement.\u00a0 One can’t question things forever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \ud83e\udd66\u00a0 I was tasked the other day with putting away leftovers, one of which was a serving of Brussels sprouts.\u00a0 Now, I’m not a big fan of Brussels sprouts, or even a medium-sized fan.\u00a0 So when one of the sprouts … Continue reading
\n\u2022\u00a0 By clicking like<\/em>, I join thousands of other social-media clickers who want to belong<\/em>.
\n\u2022\u00a0 I read your post and you struck a sympathetic chord but not much more.\u00a0 Good luck!
\n\u2022\u00a0 I have read your post and wanted to let you know I did, but I have no time or interest in formulating a response to what you just shared.
\n\u2022\u00a0 I saw your post and then I read the first few words.\u00a0 I clicked the thumbs-up icon so that The Algorithm<\/em> will direct people who read your posts to my own posts.
\n\u2022\u00a0 I read your post and I really don’t agree with any of it.\u00a0 But luckily, I can click an icon that lets you know I read it, even if it only took a second, and now I can move on to my next friend without you or I feeling like I totally dismissed you.
\n\u2022\u00a0 I see<\/em> you.\u00a0 If this were the 1970s, my like<\/em> would say, let’s meet up for a coffee.<\/p>\n