Twelve movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: Criterion Channel, DVDs, Hulu, TCM, YouTube.]

The Breaking Point (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1950). Another reimagining of Ernest Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not, truer to the novel than the Bogart–Bacall picture. A fishing-boat captain goes in with criminals hoping to get money for his family: it’s a grim story, with brilliant acting. John Garfield and Phyllis Thaxter are the captain and his wife; Juano Hernandez is the captain’s partner; Patricia Neal is a promiscuous married woman who pursues the captain; Wallace Ford is a crooked lawyer who weaves in and out of events. I think Key Largo must have had something, or almost everything, to do with the ending. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Christmas Eve (dir. Edward L. Marin, 1947). Weird and strangely enjoyable: wealthy old Aunt Matilda (Ann Harding), determined to resist her no-good nephew’s effort to take control of her estate, issues a public call for her long-lost three wards to come to her aid. And they do: a debt-shedding playboy (George Brent), a broken-down rodeo rider (Randolph Scott!), and a criminal who’s fled to South America (George Raft). Many obstacles, and several good deeds along the way. I think that Aunt Matilda, paying city kids for dead rats and running model trains (holding cream and sugar) around her dining-room table, must have had something to do with the creation of the eccentric oldster played by Donald O’Connor in an episode of Frasier . ★★★ (CC)

*

Pain and Glory (dir. Pedro Almodóvar, 2019). A second viewing of a film I first watched in early 2020 — which now seems a lifetime ago. It remains one of best films I’ve seen. It’s undoubtedly the most Proustian. Here is a master filmmaker showing what it might be like to make sense of one’s life in time and figure out how to go on. ★★★★ (DVD)

*

Smilla’s Sense of Snow (dir. Bille August, 1997). Smilla (Julia Ormond) is a Greenlander in Copenhagen, a solitary, beautiful student of ice and snow who grows increasingly curious about the death of a six-year-old neighbor. But she cannot get good answers to her questions. Her curiosity leads to an ever-stranger mystery and ever-greater danger. When the boat sails (literally), the movie jumps a shark (figuratively), loses its dark, menacing atmosphere, and turns into a semi-ridiculous thriller. ★★★ (DVD)

*

Kiss of Death (dir. Henry Hathaway, 1947). Our household’s favorite year comes through once again. Victor Mature plays a Nick Bianco, a convict who becomes an informant, wins parole, makes a new life with his daughters and second wife Nettie (Coleen Gray), but is required to continue informing. And — uh-oh — he has to get the goods on gangster, giggler, and psychokiller Tommy Udo (Richard Widmark, in his first film). Great NYC location shots, and unnerving scenes in a house, an apartment, a restaurant, and on a staircase. ★★★★ (YT)

*

The Sleeping City (dir. George Sherman, 1950). An improbable premise: when a Bellevue intern is murdered, a detective with some medical experience (Richard Conte) goes undercover as an intern to investigate. Coleen Gray is here as a nurse and love interest, and Richard Taber is a decrepit elevator operator who takes bets on the side. Filmed on location, with considerable inspiration from The Naked City. A prologue spoken by Conte makes clear that nothing like what happens here ever happened at Bellevue or any other New York City hospital — that’s reassuring. ★★★★ (YT)

*

The Story of Three Loves (dir. Vincente Minnelli and Gottfried Reinhardt, 1953). Three stories, told in flashbacks as a ship’s passengers reminisce. “The Jealous Lover” is a predictable story of a ballerina and impresario (Moira Shearer and James Mason). “Mademoiselle” moves to fantasy, with a boy (Ricky Nelson) turning into a man (Farley Granger) and seeing his tutor (Leslie Caron) in a new light. Best of all is “Equilibrium” with Kirk Douglas and Pier Angeli as haunted trapeze artists. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Suspense (dir. Frank Tuttle, 1946). Believe it: a film noir with ice skating. An itinerant ne’er-do-well (Barry Sullivan) joins an ice show as a peanut vendor, becomes the boss’s (Albert Dekker) right-hand man, and makes a play for the boss’s wife, skating star Roberta (Belita). The over-the-top ice sequences put Sonja Henje to shame, and Karl Struss’s cinematography in the delirious final forty-five minutes gives any film noir a run for its shadows. Eugene Pallette’s last film. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Shadow of a Doubt (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1943). Watching for the umpteenth time, I listened for what might be Our Town touches in Thornton Wilder’s screenplay. The brief conversation about coffee — Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten) can’t face the morning without it — made me think of Our Town. The corny, gentle humor about Joe (Henry Travers) and Herb (Hume Cronyn) — “They’re literary critics” — made me think of Our Town. Uncle Charlie’s venom — “You’re just an ordinary little girl living in an ordinary little town” — made me think of some dark spirit coming to visit Grover’s Corners. ★★★★ (CC)

*

Finger Man (dir. Harold D. Schuster, 1955). As in Kiss of Death, a criminal, Casey Martin (the everymannish Frank Lovejoy), is given the chance to go undercover. Casey is to inform on the doings of narcotics and prostitution boss Dutch Becker (Forrest Tucker!), who turned Casey’s sister into an addict. Swank surroundings and the sinister Timothy Carey add value. The voiceover narration by the protagonist makes this movie feel more like a radio drama than a semi-documentary — and gives it away that Casey lived to tell the tale. ★★★ (YT)

*

Nightmare Alley (dir. Guillermo del Toro, 2021). Not nearly as good as the 1947 movie (dir. Edmund Goulding), whose fleet pace suited the cautionary tale of Stanton Carlisle (Tyrone Power), a grinning conman who doesn’t know when he’s being had. This adaptation meanders (two and a half hours), with an invented backstory not in William Lindsay Greshman’s novel (and perhaps inspired by Double Indemnity). This Stan (Bradley Cooper) is merely mean, without that 1947 Dunning-Kruger confidence; his relationship with Molly (Rooney Mara) is nearly non-existent; and Cate Blanchett’s Lilith Ritter is almost a parody of a noir spiderwoman (such cringe-making dialogue). And there’s an awful lot of computer-generated reality here: just stick around for the credits. ★★★ (H)

*

Lili (dir. Charles Walters, 1953). Consider it a chaser for Nightmare Alley — one circus following another. Or consider it just plain weird: Lili (Leslie Caron), a sixteen-year-old orphan, talks to puppets; Paul (Mel Ferrer), a former dancer, now puppeteer (he has a war injury), talks to Lili through puppets. And there’s a magician (Jean-Pierre Aumont) on the make. Best scene: the dance on the road. ★★★ (TCM)

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A John Wayne movie

I was showing a movie in class, something I never liked to do. I preferred to show movies outside of class, all at once, the way they’re almost always meant to be shown. This movie was a documentary about wages and employment. Of the two computers in my office for movie projection, I picked the older one, heavy white plastic, with two switches, like light switches, sticking up from the keyboard.

After starting the movie, I took a seat in a back corner of the classroom. And who came in and sat next to me? One of my worst students. He had appeared on a reality-TV show and had been mocked on social media for his Dunning–Kruger witlessness. In class he liked to lean forward and glare at me.

And then in came John Wayne, wearing an enormous corduroy cap. He took the first seat in my row of desks, blocking the view of the two or three of us behind him. The bad student began talking to Wayne about hunting. Then bad student stood up, walked up to Wayne’s desk, and continued to talk as the movie ran. I told bad student that if he didn’t stop talking and sit down, I’d have to ask him to leave. He kept talking, I asked him to leave, and he did.

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[My (pre-streaming) strategy with movies: get one or two time slots when nearly everyone was free, and reserve a classroom. I would cancel one class in exchange for students’ willingness to show up, and I would lend the videotape (!) or DVD to the one or two students who had to miss. There was always something strange and wonderful about watching a movie at night in a nearly empty building. The bad student in this dream is real. John Wayne, too, is real, but he was never in one of my classes. This is the twenty-second teaching-related dream I’ve had since I retired. In all but one, something has gone wrong.]

Nancy Dunning-Kruger

[Nancy, December 29, 2020.]

For a better 2021, read Nancy every day.

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Dunning Kruger & Associates

Opacity? Come see us!

[Context here.]

Bob Woodward, insightful

Bob Woodward, on CNN just now, commented on the Trump* administration’s response to COVID-19, as explained by Jared Kushner in an interview back in April. Said Woodward, “I honestly think this gets to a point where there’s a moral dimension to it.”

Gosh, ya think? And is there also perhaps a moral dimension to the journalist’s choice to keep his knowledge under wraps for months while a book took shape?

A self-owning comment from Kushner in the interview: “The most dangerous people around the president are the overconfident idiots.” Dunning-Kruger!

A reminder

I was out doing errands this morning. I came home to the news. The news. The news. And now I want to repost this image, which I first posted on May 15:



And to preserve the asterisk, which signifies impeached and carries a bonus Kurt Vonnegut overtone:


[Click either image for a larger view.]

Donald Trump*’s revelations to Bob Woodward are further evidence of the Dunning-Kruger effect at work, made worse by dementia. What did Trump* think Woodward was going to make of these revelations? And how did Trump* think people would respond?

Richard Nixon at least had cunning enough to keep his tapes under wraps, at least until he couldn’t.

*

Yep, Dunning-Kruger. From Kaitlin Collins (CNN):

One reason Trump was so irritated aides didn't tell him about Woodward’s attempts to interview him for his last book [Fear ] was because he thought he could have made himself look better in it.

And from Maggie Haberman (The New York Times):

Mr. Trump gave Mr. Woodward extensive access to his White House and to top officials in the hopes the eventual book would be “positive,” in his eyes. Mr. Trump did not speak to Mr. Woodward for his first book on the Trump presidency, Fear, and the president has maintained publicly and to advisers that it would have turned out better had he personally participated.

Lysol and lightbulbs

Donald Trump*’s irresponsible, dangerous suggestion that disinfectants, used internally, might kill the coronavirus has prompted Reckitt Benckiser, maker of Lysol, to issue a disclaimer:

Due to recent speculation and social media activity, RB (the makers of Lysol and Dettol) has been asked whether internal administration of disinfectants may be appropriate for investigation or use as a treatment for coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2).

As a global leader in health and hygiene products, we must be clear that under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion, or any other route). As with all products, our disinfectant and hygiene products should only be used as intended and in line with usage guidelines. Please read the label and safety information.

We have a responsibility in providing consumers with access to accurate, up-to-date information as advised by leading public health experts. For this and other myth-busting facts, please visit Covid-19facts.com.

Here, “recent speculation” is a euphemism for executive-level Dunning-Kruger freestyling imbecility, unfiltered.

As for Trump*’s suggestion that light might kill the virus in the body, I suggest one old-fashioned lightbulb (the kind Trump* likes) for his mouth, and one for — never mind. Treatment best administered while the patient watches television.

And please, no one, not even a nationally known cartoonist, can convince me that Trump* was talking about “far-UV light catheter technology.” Please.

Here are Reckitt Benckiser’s words as a link: Covid-19facts.com.

*

Trump* today is claiming that his suggestions were sarcasm directed at reporters. He’s lying of course, as the video record makes clear. Dr. Deborah Birx says today that Trump* was “still digesting” new information as he was speaking. Which I think might mean that he threw up.

[The relevant section of the briefing begins at 20:26. Notice that Trump*’s comments immediately followed William Bryan’s comments on light, disinfectants, and their use on surfaces. Notice too that Scott Adams’s evidence for his claim about “far-UV light catheter technology” is a YouTube video uploaded thirteen hours ago, to an account created yesterday, with this one video to its name. As of April 25, the video is gone: “This video has been removed for violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines.”]

Dunning K. Trump*

Donald Trump*, speaking for the cameras about the coronavirus yesterday:

“I like this stuff. You know, my uncle was a great person, he was at MIT. He taught at MIT for I think like a record number of years. He was a great super-genius, Doctor John Trump. I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of the doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.”

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[My transcription. John G. Trump was at MIT from 1936 to 1973. A long run, but hardly “a record number of years.”]

New “words”

Foistered, delegitimitize, apprenti. But I’d spell the middle one delegitimatize.

Apprenti : like alumni ? Come to think of it, The Apprentus would the perfect name for a series about a victim of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Senecan advice for travelers

Wherever you go, there you are:

How can the sight of new countries give you pleasure? Getting to know cities and places? That agitation of yours turns out to be useless. Do you want to know why your running away doesn’t help? You take yourself along. Your mental burden must be put down before any place will satisfy you.

Seneca, Epistles 28.2. Quoted in Ward Farnsworth’s The Practicing Stoic: A Philosophical User’s Manual (Boston: David R. Godine, 2018). Adapted from an unidentified public-domain translation.

Also from this book
Senecan advice for liberal-arts types : Dunning-Kruger Montaigne

Source sans attribution, attribution sans source

Our household has been hit with an improbable double whammy.

The first whammy: some years ago, my university’s student newspaper published a column about how to e-mail professors. The column was the work of a former student and borrowed without attribution from my post How to e-mail a professor. The column began with links to my post and to a couple of other items online. The column went on to present what purported to be the writer’s own considered advice, with three passages following, very closely, the phrasing of three passages in my post, with no indication of a source. The student writer thought I’d be happy to see his effort. Yikes.

I explained to the student and to the newspaper’s advisors in the journalism department why this column was a problem. I cited the responses of colleagues and friends who had read the student’s column. I quoted statements about plagiarism and paraphrase and attribution from the websites of prestigious college-journalism programs. As Schlitzie would say, “Y’see? Y’see?” I was told in response that one can’t copyright ideas. There’s no arguing with Messrs. Dunning and Kruger.

The second whammy: last week, the university’s student newspaper has published a review of Elaine’s recent recital. One problem: the writer included comments from imaginary audience members. A second problem: the writer included comments purported to be from Elaine (identified as a former English professor), about the difficulty of being a woman in “the music industry.” (The music industry! Lordy.) A third problem: the writer did not attend the recital. Why try to build a résumé with such inane fabulation? It’s beyond me.

To its credit, the paper has removed the review from its website. The paper gets just one or two points partial credit for issuing (in print only) an oddly worded correction. The correction does not acknowledge that the audience members were imaginary, that Elaine never spoke to the writer, and that the writer did not attend the recital. The correction says instead that the names of the audience members quoted cannot be verified and that Elaine says that she did not say the words attributed to her. Thus the paper leaves the truth of the article in the eye of the beholder.

The first whammy was a matter of source sans attribution. The second, attribution sans source. Each absurd. Together, absurder.

Dunning-Kruger Montaigne

From Montaigne, “Of Presumption” (1580):

It is commonly said that good sense is the gift Nature has distributed most fairly among us, for there is no one who is unsatisfied with the share he has been allowed — and isn’t that reasonable enough? For whoever saw beyond this would be beyond his sight. I think my opinions are good and sound, but who does not think the same of his own?

Quoted in Ward Farnsworth’s The Practicing Stoic: A Philosophical User’s Manual (Boston: David R. Godine, 2018). Adapted from an unidentified public-domain translation.

Farnsworth’s gloss: “Our limited capacities prevent us from perceiving our limited capacities.”

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You don’t have to be a psychiatrist . . . .

Dunning-Kruger moment of the year, if you’re declaring a “national emergency”: “I didn’t need to do this.”

Dunning-Kruger on the rise

The Washington Post reports on the Dunning-Kruger effect:

During the election and in the months after the presidential inauguration, interest in the Dunning-Kruger effect surged. Google searches for “dunning kruger” peaked in May 2017, according to Google Trends, and has remained high since then. Attention spent on the Dunning-Kruger Effect Wikipedia entry has skyrocketed since late 2015.

I learned about the Dunning-Kruger effect in 2010 from a David Pescovitz post to Boing Boing. D-K helped me understand so much about the perspectives of students with serious writing deficits. In October 2016 I came up with the name Dunning K. Trump.

I don’t know what it means that an article about the Dunning-Kruger effect has an error in subject-verb agreement. Did you catch it in the excerpt?

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“The” four

I’m enough of a snoot to be dismayed when I see the following headline in The New York Times: “The Four ‘Attachment Styles,’ and How They Sabotage Your Work-Life Balance.” I’m less put off by the cliché at the end than by the magic number at the start. The four, the only four. “The” four might be more honest.

But I read on. And for a sentence or two, I thought I could see a sitting president in the description of “dismissive avoidant attachment”:

Individuals with dismissive avoidant attachment at work tend to think they are smart and everyone else is stupid. Well, maybe not exactly stupid, but definitely not as smart as they are. They most likely decide what they should do and then ignore what others want. This leads to conflict and mistrust. This mistrust can lead to others attempting to micromanage and monitor them, which just makes them more annoyed and more likely to dismiss input.

That sounds like President Dunning-Kruger himself. (The Times reports that he calls aides “Fucking idiots!”)

I read on, about “How to tell if this is you”:

From your perspective, the biggest time management issue tends to be working late. Long hours usually arise when you get fixated on doing a particular project really well. Or they can happen because you want to work on what you consider to be important first and then you also have to complete work for others.

Working long hours? Completing work for others? Only if you count watching television and being your own chief of staff.

I jumped back a few paragraphs, and now thought that our president might fit the description of “anxious preoccupied attachment”: “fear of upsetting others,” “a compulsion to check email [or in his case, Fox News] incessantly to make sure everything is ‘O.K.,’” “attention . . . hijacked whenever you experience a perceived ‘threat.’” And: “The idea of saying no may terrify you.” But the president seems to have no problem saying no to reading daily intelligence briefings, &c.

I jumped ahead and decided that one can also see in the president an element of “fearful avoidant attachment”:

You tend to spend most of your time in a state of being overwhelmed because you fear everything and feel very little power to do anything about your fears (much less the work that is also piling up).

Fear of an eleven-letter word beginning with i, for instance.

And one can find in the president at least a trace of the fourth and last style, “secure attachment style.” People with this style “know [think?] they are capable, and they are confident that others will respond well to them.” That certainly sounds like our president: “Nobody knows more about,” &c. “I alone can fix it.” “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay?”

In other words, people can be slotted into “the” four or five or six anything, one slot per person, only if you’re looking to attract eyeballs on the Internets.

It doesn’t surprise me that Elizabeth Grace Saunders, the discoverer of “the” four, also has “the” three, in book form: The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment.

This is one of the two posts I’ve written today.

One related post
Beyond categories (On categories and art)

[Secrets to, not of? Well, I said that I’m a snoot. ]

Twelve movies

[As “Slip” Mahoney might say, “Routine Twelve!” Four sentences each. One to four stars. No spoilers.]

In a Lonely Place (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1950). Ostensibly a murder mystery, at least sort of. But it’s really a character study, because the question of whodunit is supremely unimportant. Humphrey Bogart as Dixon Steele, a screenwriter given to sudden violence, and Gloria Grahame as Laurel Gray, the woman next door, drawn to and then terrified of her neighbor. This film is Grahame’s finest hour: a cool, understated performance in which a single glance or hesitation speaks volumes. ★★★★

*

Odds Against Tomorrow (dir. Robert Wise, 1959). An ex-cop (Ed Begley), an ex-con (Robert Ryan), and a compulsive gambler (Harry Belafonte) team up for a bank robbery that will leave each man set for life, but their perfect plan runs into unforeseen complications. With great location shots from New York City and upstate New York. What makes the story especially unusual is the element of racism complicating the work of the criminal trio — though it’s treated with some heavy-handed symbolism. Also with Gloria Grahame and Shelley Winters. ★★★★

*

Winter Soldier (prod. Winterfilm Collection, 1972). A documentary presenting testimony, interviews, and informal conversations from the Winter Soldier Investigation, a 1971 gathering in Detroit, Michigan, at which Vietnam veterans described war crimes that they had committed or witnessed. For the purpose of this post I’ll leave it at that: war crimes. It's a journey into a true heart of darkness. There’s no healing (that I can see) in the sharing of these stories, only an effort to awaken a sleeping public, an effort by men who seem belatedly awakened to the reality of their own experience. ★★★★

*

Patterns (dir. Fielder Cook, 1956). Life among executives, and great performances all around: Everett Sloane as a merciless second-generation boss, Ed Begley as a kindly old hand, Van Heflin as the new man who learns to his dismay that he is to replace the old hand. Will Heflin’s character play along? Screenplay by Rod Serling, adapted from his 1955 teleplay. This film would pair well with Executive Suite (dir. Robert Wise, 1954), right down to the tolling bells. ★★★★

*

The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (dir. Fritz Lang, 1933). A vast criminal enterprise led by — by whom, or what? I’m not sure what to call Dr. Mabuse. The baffling beginning, quick cuts, and startling images make for an ultra-modern film. Mabuse’s criminal schemes, focused on sheer destruction and terror, also make for an ultra-modern film. ★★★★

*

The Postman Always Rings Twice (dir. Tay Garnett, 1946). John Garfield and Lana Turner star as doomed lovers, smoldering and scheming in a roadside café. My favorite scene is the one I’d call the most disturbing: the jukebox, the dancers, the happy man with the guitar. There should be a name for this kind of film, the kind that turns off in a new direction midway. See, for instance, Vertigo. ★★★★

*

Portrait of Jennie (dir. William Dieterle, 1948). Finally available at Netflix. Joseph Cotten and Jennifer Jones in a mystical romance of artist and subject, one living, one dead. I think the third star of this film is its cinematographer, Joseph H. August, who gives us beautiful dark interiors and a luminous Central Park. Portrait of Jennie would pair well with Miracle in the Rain (dir. Rudolph Maté, 1956). ★★★★

*

Follow Me Quietly (dir. Richard O. Fleischer, 1949). William Lundigan as a police detective searching for a serial killer who calls himself the Judge, Dorothy Patrick as a true-crime writer pursuing the story and its detective. The title must mean that she’s supposed to follow behind, neither heard nor seen. Or is it that they both must follow the Judge quietly? Some good atmosphere (bookstores, diner) and some deeply creepy creepiness (missives from the Judge, and, especially, that faceless dummy). ★★★

*

Loyalty cards

Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (dir. Charles Lamont, 1955). “How stupid can you get?” “How stupid do you want me to be?” It’s Halloween season, and this movie was on TCM: that’s my explanation — that, and loyalty born of hours watching reruns of The Abbott and Costello Show in early youth (thank you, WPIX). Richard Deacon, Dan Seymour, and Marie Windsor are here, everyone making a living. ★★

Ghost Chasers (dir. William Beaudine, 1951). The Bowery Boys expose a séance racket. My friend Chris Sippel and I were Bowery Boys fanatics in middle school (or was it called junior high?), so I watched Ghost Chasers out of loyalty to the past. Doing so let me better appreciate the considerable comedic gifts of Huntz Hall (as Horace Debussy “Sach” Jones) and wonder what people ever saw in Leo Gorcey, whose Terence Aloysius “Slip” Mahoney is an insufferable mess of unfunny Dunning-Kruger self-confidence. With Lloyd Corrigan as a friendly ghost. ★★

*

Island of Lost Souls (dir. Eric C. Kenton, 1932). Charles Laughton has a ball as the evil Dr. Moreau, a whip-cracking, vivisecting experimenter who rules over an island full of his animal-human creations. It’s Heart of Darkness meets Freaks. With Richard Arlen (Wings) and a startling turn by Bela Lugosi. Watch and you too will be able to say, “Oh, so that’s where ‘Are we not men?’ comes from.” ★★★★

*

I,Tonya (dir. Craig Gillespie, 2017). Margot Robbie gives a great performance as Tonya Harding. The politics of class, the politics of gender, and the presentation of the self in figure-skating life, all in a highly inventive bio-pic. “America, you know? They want someone to love, but they want someone to hate.” ★★★★

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Dunning-Kruger geography

Our president, freestyling:

“I have great respect for the U.K. United Kingdom. Great respect. People call it Britain. They call it Great Britain. They call it — they used to call it England, different parts.”

From Garner’s Modern English Usage:

Great Britain consists of England, Scotland, and Wales — all three on the island known to the Romans as Britannia. (Modern usage routinely shortens the name to Britain.) It differs from United Kingdom, which also includes Northern Ireland.

Some people wrongly think of Great Britain as a boastful name. But it’s not: it’s rooted in history. Great Britain was once contrasted with Little Britain (or simply Brittany), in France, where the Celtic Bretons lived. Although the OED’s last citation for Little Britain dates from 1622, the term Great Britain has persisted (though perhaps not without a sense of pride).

Don’t get me started on the Channel Islands, the Crown Dependencies, and the difference between the British Islands and the British Isles. So many parts!

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[The Dunning-Kruger effect: a lack of competence entails an inability to recognize one’s lack of competence.]

Be prepared (?)

““I think I’m very well prepared. I don’t think I have to prepare very much”: Dunning K. Trump, commenting on his upcoming meeting with Kim Jong-un. Yeah, you got this.

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“You got this”

There’s nothing wrong about trying to instill in college students a non-panicky attitude toward final exams. But there is, I believe, something wrong about the reassurance that’s become ubiquitous before finals: “You got this.”

“You got this” presents an exam as a measure not of knowledge but of trust in one’s ability. The reassurance is glib and condescending, and it’s likely to feed inflated self-confidence. Yeah, I got this, says every victim of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Better than empty reassurance: practical advice. Many years ago I worked out such advice for my students, and I later wrote it up in a post: How to do well on a final exam. My students tended to do exceedingly well on final exams. But for anyone intent on going in the other direction: How to do horribly on a final exam.

“Impostor Syndrome”

[“Impostor Syndrome,” xkcd, February 12, 2018.]

The mouseover text: “It’s actually worst in people who study the Dunning–Kruger effect. We tried to organize a conference on it, but the only people who would agree to give the keynote were random undergrads.”