No free will?

Stanford University neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky says that there’s no such thing as free will:

“The world is really screwed up and made much, much more unfair by the fact that we reward people and punish people for things they have no control over,” Sapolsky said. “We’ve got no free will. Stop attributing stuff to us that isn’t there.”

Well, he had to say that, right?

But seriously: if Sapolsky is right, then my agreeing or disagreeing with him is beyond my control. Which, I think, makes it impossible for his assertion to lay any claim to be true. Because if I agreed with him, then I, too, had to say that.

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Another thought: Imagine that someone makes a statment x because of an electrical impulse sent through a wire attached to their body. And imagine that other people then say x or not-x because of wires attached to their bodies. If x and the responses to it are beyond our control, what does that do to the idea of truth?

[I have long leaned toward the idea of truth as contingent — contingent and real. That has something to do with my response to Sapolsky.]

“But he never wore a collar”

Here’s the man who’s helping to move the family.

Katherine Mansfield, “Prelude” (1918).

I can imagine these sentences in one of the early stories of Joyce’s Dubliners. It’s the plainness, and the free indirect discourse, presenting this man as seen by a child. The alogical but really does the trick.

Also from Katherine Mansfield
“Tortoiseshell cats and champagne” : A hair-tidy and pencil rays

In the funnies today

At Mutts : “Throwback Thursday.” I like it when comics assume a reader’s knowledge of comics.

At Olivia Jaimes’s Nancy : a to-do list. In the true Bushmiller spirit, I’d say.

A mother looks at “balanced literacy”

“RIP Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. You helped turn learning to read into a rich family’s game”: Kendra Hurley, the mother of two reading-challenged students, writes about the rise and fall of “balanced literacy” (Slate ).

Hurley makes an especially interesting suggestion about why those on the hard right are so enaamored of phonics — because they seek any opportunity to undermine faith in public schools. There is of course nothing inherently conservative about teaching the sounds that letters make, no more so than there is about teaching the alphabet itself.

Just one related post
To: Calkins, Fountas, and Pinnell (My take on “balanced literacy”)

Carla Bley (1936–2023)

The composer and pianist Carla Bley has died at the age of eighty-seven. From The New York Times obituary:

She was branded an avant-gardist early in her career, but that term applied more to her slyly subversive attitude than to the formal character of her music, which always maintained a place for tonal harmony and standard rhythm.

Ever heard of? Never heard of? Try her composition “Lawns.” Here is a 2018 trio performance, with Bley, Andy Sheppard, tenor; and Steve Swallow, electric bass.

Recently updated

A noir beginning An obscure film noir and the opening credits for Mad Men.

Recently updated

Ebinger’s Casting doubt on the claims of the baker who revived the Ebinger’s name.

Elysium

My copy of Katherine Mansfield’s Stories (1956) is stamped with the owners’ names and address — three times, like a library book. So I looked up the names and found obituaries for Terry and Judy Horowitz. Their name for their Maryland house, included on the stamp: Elysium.

A hair-tidy and pencil rays

The family is moving. A child enters the old house one last time.

Katherine Mansfield, “Prelude” (1918).

One could learn a lot about how to describe from reading Katherine Mansfield. In 2015 Steven Millhauser named Mansfield’s Stories as one of his six favorite collections of short fiction. I wonder if his attention to the effects of light owes something to her work.

Also from Katherine Mansfield
“Tortoiseshell cats and champagne”

A noir beginning

[Two O’Clock Courage (dir. Anthony Mann, 1945). Click for a larger view.]

Ted “Step” Allison (Tom Conway) staggers away from the camera as the movie begins. It’s a good not great noir. I gave it three stars.

The cinematographer: Jack MacKenzie, whose first screen credit was in 1916 and whose last was in 1963 — on Leave It to Beaver.

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A reader noticed the similarity to the opening credits for Mad Men:


Coincidence? Perhaps. But gosh is the composition similar. If it’s not a matter of coincidence, the similarity is certainly not meant to be recognized. Two O’Clock Courage is not a well-known movie.