Outliers (Book review)

Malcolm Gladwell Outliers (2008) This is an important book. It demonstrates that individual success depends on many factors beyond the individual’s control. They all come down to the same thing: you have to be in the right place at the right time, with the right personal and material resources. If you can then exploit the opportunity presented to you, you will be successful.
     One example of a factor that you can’t control is your birth date. The selection rules for players in amateur hockey leagues specify birth dates. If you are born near the beginning of the range of dates valid for you, you will be about one year older than your team mates born near the end of that range. That makes a lot of difference for young players: for 8-year-olds it’s a difference of about 12% in physical maturity, and sometimes more, given different rates of maturation. On average, the boys born in January will be taller, heavier, stronger, and more agile than those born in December. They will outshine their younger team mates, and will be more likely to advance to the next level of play.
     The same consideration applies to children’s school experience. It applies to whole generations: the people who were born in the 1940s grew to working age just as the baby boom got under way, and a huge demand for work ensued. I belong to that generation. It was easy for us to find work because there was huge and expanding demand for it.
     I’ve recently come across a snide remark about Gladwell’s method of framing a thesis, telling an illustrative story, then drawing wide-ranging conclusions. This is certainly a danger in inherent in Gladwell’s method. However, this book includes a lot of data, too, data that support Gladwell’s conclusions.
     In any case, anyone who insists that his or her success is entirely due their own efforts has a rather limited experience of life. There are undoubtedly many other people with the same talents and skills, and the same willingness to work hard, who did not succeed, simply because at some crucial point on their career path the opportunity they needed was not available. This is not to downplay the importance of hard work: there also people of similar skill and talent who did not take advantage of similar opportunities. But all of us have had success in large part because of things we could not have foreseen, people who offered us chances simply because we were there, and factors over which we had no control whatsoever.
     A book worth reading, especially since it prompts questions about how to adjust systemic factors which penalise so many talented people. ***

Irreligion (Book review)

     John Allen Paulos Irreligion (2008) Paulos examines the usual arguments for the existence of  a god, and demonstrates all the ways in which they fail. It’s worth reading for that alone, especially if you are one of those who has an itch to prove that a god exists. Paulos, unlike some of the more strident arguers against a god’s existence, accepts that spirituality is a human trait. I don’t know if psychopaths lack it; if they do, it would suggest why so many people tie good and evil to a god. Paulos admits that he has never had religious feelings, hence he doesn’t want to discuss spirituality more extensively. But his demolishing of the proofs of any god’s existence should comfort those who believe, as I do, that “God exists” is not a theorem but an axiom. What matters is what you derive from that and related axioms. The record of religionists is not good; their attempt to prove the existence of their god(s) doesn't help.
     There is of course a question that Paulos doesn’t deal with: What would be the (theo)logical consequences of a valid proof of a god’s existence? I think it would make that god contingent. The general form of the proof would be, “If this Premise is true, then 'God exists' is true.” But that would make that god’s existence logically dependent on the truth of the premise. Ontologically, that makes that god's existence contingent on the existence of whatever the premise asserts. That should give the God-provers pause.
     I think that we tell stories because that is the primary human mode of making sense of the world. Cause and effect are abstractions based on narrative structure or plot. Stories are models of what happened or what could happen. We demand that they have the ring of truth. Just as the smith knows the quality of the steel by the sound it makes on the anvil, so we know the quality of the story by how it feels when it collides with our experience, our sense of how the world works.
     Science is a communal story, created by the method of hypothesis testing. At any given time, the hypotheses we are capable of proposing are suggested and constrained by what we already know, ie, by what we understand of previous hypotheses tested and found robust enough to pass that test of truth. Our knowledge of how the world works is thus always limited. I believe it will always be limited.
     Myth is also a communally created story. It arises out of our sense that knowing how the world works is not enough. We want a satisfying answer to why.  Myth too must have the ring of truth. It must satisfy our sense of what it feels like to live in the world. We want to feel at home. We want to feel our lives have meaning and purpose. At any given time, our apprehension of a myth’s meaning is conditioned and constrained by our sense of the pattern of our life. This apprehension of meaning is limited. I believe it will always be limited.
     Read Paulos’s book if you want to free yourself from the trap of literalism and simplistic logic. ***

Malala Yousafzai

So the Taliban shot a 14-year-old girl to prove how tough they are. After all, they are fighting against the satanic evils of the world, right? That takes a Real Man, with a Real Man's courage, right? Only a Real Man can withstand those fearful forces of secularism arrayed against him, right?

The Taliban, like fundamentalists of all religious persuasions, are terrified. They are fearful of losing control, unable to face uncertainty, panicked by different beliefs. They make their religion a defence against reality. But religion used this way is mere superstition. It cannot protect from the fearful suspicion that the universe does not align itself with your desires.

In short, the Taliban have no faith. Faith is the confidence to accept people with different beliefs than one's own. Faith is the self-assurance to ground honour in oneself. Faith is the ability to tolerate doubt. Those who lack faith fear that other people think differently, are frantic that other people's behaviour will destroy their reputation, are spooked by the uncertainties of life and panic-stricken that they cannot control the world around them.

So they shoot a 14 year-old girl that wants to learn, to think for herself, to think differently. Who has faith that whatever she learns will deepen her understanding of her world and the people who live in it, and will enable her to do what is best for her and her community. Who wants education for everyone, including girls and women. She has the faith they lack. That's why they shot her.

Two links: Judy Martin and Steven Poole

Judy Martin is a textile artists  whome we admire. We have one of her peices. Her blog is here: Judy Martin

I became aware of Steven Poole when he was interviewed about his annoyance with self-help books that quote and wildly misinterpret neurological studies. Worth reading IMO. Find him here: Poole's web site

Nouvelle Vague (Art Review)

Nouvelle Vague: The New French Domestic Landscape (Art Review) At the Harbourfront Centre, September 29-December 23 2012. Admission free. A collection of furniture from France, where it appears that a generation of new designers has accomplished the kind of critical mass that leads to radical innovation. The pieces are elegant, beautifully crafted or manufactured, and certainly display new thinking and imagining. But, as always, my first question about useful objects no matter how beautiful, is, Do they work? The answer here is, some do, and some don’t.
     Item: a group of what appear to be intended as low chunky stools would I think be unstable, as the lower third forms a cone.
     Item: a couple of billowy, vaguely cloud-like organic shapes of Tyvek over a wire frame mounted on short legs, lit from within, would work well in a large room with minimal furniture. They are lovely, and shed sufficient light to live by.
     Item: a small desk whose legs at one end extend above the writing surface, with a horizontal lamp mounted at the top. This would work very well even in a small apartment. The matching chair uses the same materials and engineering. Unassuming in style, the ensemble would look good anywhere. About the only thing missing is a shallow drawer in which to store a few writing materials. And stamps. The desk begs to be used for written correspondence.
     Item: a coffee table that looks like a melding of two stools of different heights. My first reaction was, Neat idea for a plant stand. I didn’t know it was a coffee table until I read the show brochure.
     Item: a resin chair with cutouts in the back making it look like a skull. Cute idea. Would I buy one? No.
     In general, most of the lamps were successful, the other pieces not so much. I’m sure we’ll see many of the concepts adapted to more functional forms. Overall, worth seeing. **-½

War Horse (review)

War Horse (review) The Toronto version of the play first mounted by the National Theatre in London in 2010. It's based on a children's story by Michael Morpurgo. Arthur's father acquires a horse at a very high price because he wants to defeat his brother. Arthur names him Joey. In order to keep the horse, Arthur must train it pull a plow. He does so. Later, Arthur’s father sells Joey to the army for 100 pounds. Arthur joins up so as to find Joey. He does, eventually, just as Joey is about to be put down because of a foreleg injured on the barbed wire. Arthur rides Joey home. The End.

     But between the beginning and the end we see a play made to look and feel like a movie. Music and special effects, short scenes, split stage, all work to create an impression that sticks with you. One could also call it an opera without arias. There were a couple of singers who sang a ballad-like comment on and narrative of Joey's story, but I found I didn't need to get all the words; the songs were part of the ambiance of the production.

      Everybody must know by now that the horses (and some other animals) are represented by life-

size puppets worked by puppeteers that we see at all times. The puppets are semi-abstract, but their movements are lifelike. The effect is amusing, amazing, but above all moving.

     The war scenes are the most terrifying I've ever seen in a theatre. I don't like war movies, and this play was at times hard to take. I remember enough of the sounds of bombs that the simulations of shell fire made me shake. In many ways the play was depressing, despite the happy ending. Most of the audience around me did not react as I did: they weren't old enough to have had any direct experience of war. They were quite jolly. But a few found the prospect of Joey's life on the battlefield difficult to imagine.

      Do I recommend this play? Yes. Purely as stage craft it's impressive. It reminds me of Les Miserables, another attempt to create a multimedia effect on stage. But War Horse succeeds. It's an anti-war play, with the innocent horses standing in for all the innocent victims of war, including the soldiers, who are after all ordinary men used for terrible purposes by the wagers of war. ****

The Clock by Chris Marclay (Review)

     Chris Marclay The Clock (2010). At the Power Plant, Toronto, until November 25, 2012. Free admission in celebration of the Power Plant's 25th year.

      Marclay spliced together thousands of movie clips, timing them to create a 24-hour movie showing clocks synchronised to running time. You start watching it at 3:15pm, that's the time you'll see on wall clocks, wristwatches, spoken, etc. Clearly the result of obsessive persistence, but worth no more than an hour of one's time, if that. [Update 2012-10-08: Marclay hired a slew of researchers to view and scavenge the movie clips. One is a Paul Smith from Toronto (Canadian Art, Fall 2012, p.192). So a good deal of the credit for the grunge work of making this movie goes to other people.]

      The Power Plant's blurb says that the work ”ruptur[es] any sense of narrative sequence”. Nonsense. As far back as I can remember, movies have used multiple narrative sequences, switching from one to another, most often to create suspense. Will the hero arrive in time to save the heroine as water rises inexorably towards drowning depth? Of course he will. More complex movies show us multiple stories unfolding at the same time, converging, intersecting, diverging again. We are so used to reading movies this way that we automatically read Marclay's movie this way, too. Well, I do. How about you?

     The fact is that narrative sequence is built into our brains; we can't avoid it. So this movie also creates narrative sequences. Marclay can't prevent this effect. In fact his method encourages it, because he has to use clips that themselves are parts of narrative sequences, simply to provide us with the images of clock faces showing us the current time frame. The stories are incomplete, is all, because Marclay wants us to note times, not plots. But time and plot are inextricably linked. Cause and effect may be an illusion, so the philosophers and quantum physicists tell us, but we can't avoid creating the illusion when we watch multiple series of movie clips.

      I don't know what Marclay wanted this work to demonstrate or show. It's a concept work, one presumably designed to present a thesis of some sort. The artist statements I've read in the past usually endeavour to assert that the work will disrupt our normal ways of seeing the world around us. Trouble is, most such attempts have failed: artists are no better than the rest of us in framing a disruptive thesis. In my experience, it takes a heap of scholarship and a weird imagination to see new patterns in the data. There aren't many people who have both a deep knowledge of some aspect of the world and the ability to change their points of view.

      Trouble is, the medium Marclay chose doesn't disrupt our normal way of decoding a movie: it emphasises it. That's probably why I was bored very quickly. I was able to maintain some interest in the clips themselves, playing a game of recognising movies, actors, and genres. As you might expect, action movies predominate.

      Marclay has an impressive c.v. He has been nothing if not busy. Despite the plethora of exhibitions, shows, and prizes won, this is the first time I've heard of him or seen his work. There are just too many artists out there, I guess. And I stopped following artistic fashion a long time ago. Is this show worth seeing? At the price, yes. It's interesting. It may engage you beyond mere interest. It did not do so for me. *