Inspiration/Perspiration

I read this New York Magazine article a few weeks ago, lost it, then stumbled back onto it yesterday. Ignoring convention, I will identify it by its subtitle, The Inverse Power of Praise. From the article:

The researchers would take a single child out of the classroom for a nonverbal IQ test consisting of a series of puzzles—puzzles easy enough that all the children would do fairly well. Once the child finished the test, the researchers told each student his score, then gave him a single line of praise. Randomly divided into groups, some were praised for their intelligence. They were told, “You must be smart at this.” Other students were praised for their effort: “You must have worked really hard.”

Why just a single line of praise? “We wanted to see how sensitive children were,” Dweck explained. “We had a hunch that one line might be enough to see an effect.”

Then the students were given a choice of test for the second round. One choice was a test that would be more difficult than the first, but the researchers told the kids that they’d learn a lot from attempting the puzzles. The other choice, Dweck’s team explained, was an easy test, just like the first. Of those praised for their effort, 90 percent chose the harder set of puzzles. Of those praised for their intelligence, a majority chose the easy test. The “smart” kids took the cop-out.

The rest of the article explains and expounds on this phenomenon. It's a moderately involved read, but you can do it, because you're such a hard worker!

==

I have almost always been a "smart" kid. I'm trying to retrain myself to be an "effortful" kid.

I'm spelling out something the article doesn't seem to explicitly say; i.e., don't praise something a person has no control over. If I'm naturally smart, reinforcing that sends the message that the praiseworthy thing happens independently of me.

Which sucks because when I want more praise, I can't smarten up for it. All I can hope to do is maintain. This quickly becomes a lose-lose proposition: If I don't try for fear of looking dumber, I look dumber for not trying.

Instead, the trick is to reinforce aspects that people can control: effort, technique, time investment, practice. Then, there's a clear line to improve, and therefore, to get more praise. The natural abilities will kick in anyway, augmenting whatever effort is there.

Off and on, I've been applying this sort of talk to myself (and anyone else praiseworthy) for a few weeks. Meredith and I make kind of a game out of it.

I suspect drastic effects as described in the article are best observed in children. But I'm willing to accept less dramatic returns as long as I improve. All I need to do is keep working at it.

This also dovetails with another idea I've recently fiddled with: The most useful life skill to teach (and practice) is how to handle novelty and strangeness with curiosity. If you have some intelligence and that curiosity, whatever excellence you need will show up eventually. If you don't have it, you can still excel, but it will be a slog rather than a game.

I'd rather play games.

Falwell

So Jerry Falwell died, you probably heard. Three days ago. I'm a daily BoingBoing reader, and the ersatz theologians there and elsewhere on the intertubes have cacklingly committed him to hell.

But here's the fantastically redemptive thing about Christianity: even dicks get to go to heaven.

From what I read in the Bible, it's not my call, or my calling, to figure out who gets the eternal brass ring. I do know that murderers, liars, and thieves can all get the nod. Why shouldn't overbearing, unctuous, self-righteous hypocrites? Granted, it might even be harder for them, because it's the repentant who get the Goods. But that doesn't mean it's impossible.

I don't know about Jerry Falwell's spiritual fate. I fear the number of metaphorical millstones he hitched around frightened people's necks. I watched him do more harm than good, to my friends and to my religion.

But we all get slack if we ask for it. We don't have any way to know whether Falwell genuinely asked for slack from Jesus. But if he did, he's got it now.

That means there's hope for lower-order self-righteous hypocrites like you and me and the BoingBoing bloggers.

Bike To Work Week

What with it being bike to work week, I thought I'd try riding a bike to work this week. This is of course, a hilarious lie. It just so happens that I had no idea it was bike to work week until yesterday, and also, I'm freelancing right now, so my commute is 15 feet down a hallway.

But I do have a semi-volunteer teaching gig about a mile from our house, gas is $3 a gallon, and my newly minted wife has a bike she doesn't use. So today, I biked.

==

I excoriate bikers who disobey laws on their bikes. I hate hearing bikers bitch about how little respect they get on the road from car drivers, then watching them blithely run stop signs, ride on the sidewalk, and weave through traffic.

After all, hypocrisy is one of the last sins we can comfortable judge people on in our country. Even "intolerance" has fallen out of vogue, and everyone seemed to be able to get behind that one. What, are we not going to judge people any more? Ha ha! Of course not!

But we're also not going to stick our necks out and actually call anybody on it. So let's angrily lecture our friends in the car when bikers act like hypocrites! Is everybody with me? YEAH!

==

Bearing this in mind, I resolve to stand still and minimize whimpering when everyone throws rocks at me for the ridiculous things I did on a two mile round trip bike ride today. Highlights:

1. Never signaled. Not even once.
2. Took the "stop" out of "rolling stop."
3. Rode on the sidewalk when the road looked dicey.
4. Cut diagonally across a busy intersection to turn left (also see #1 for extra danger).
5. Did not watch the road when something more interesting was going on.

That's just day ONE! Tomorrow I plan to ride between lanes at a stop light and give drivers the finger when they honk at me. I think I get a sticker for that.

Another Jonathan Coulton Post

Here's a New York Times article about JoCo and the phenomenon of the Internet's effect on B-level creators. The author wants to suggest that the price of putting you in touch with your niche is hours every day of contact with them: answering emails, updating message boards, and appearing at online "events."

This is certainly ONE way to do it, and I am ready to believe it's the best way. But is it the only way? That level of interaction is exhausting.

This is not entirely academic for me right now.

Dog Days

I am co-owner of a dog now, which is nice, but annoying.

I like dogs. But what I really like are other people's dogs. My head is full of things to think about, and dogs are notably outside.

Too bad. Because wherever my head is, the dog is still right here, and still needs attention and food and exercise, and, dare I say, love.

Parents talk about pets as responsibility trainers for children. But no one ever talks about pets as responsibility trainers for would-be parents.

Momentum Mori

My chest has stopped hurting, so that's good.

Getting old holds no special terror for me.* Further, my interior monologue is uncharitable to people who complain about how old they feel. "You have been aging since you were a zygote. There's no surprise in it; you can't say you weren't warned. This is life. Also, you will later die. Let me break that one to you ahead of time."

I'm mostly resigned to aging, but I am interested in growing older, because people tend to know more things and make fewer horrifying mistakes when they are older, which are both attractive qualities to me.

Also, I have never been particularly "cool" which is conquered, occupied, territory of the young. There was a shining moment in the early '90s when grunge appeared, and fashion and I had a moment together, like sharing a taxi. Then we got out at our respective destinations and now... shiny blue ties? Are those still in?

So the chief benefit I saw in being a noticeably young man was the indestructibility. You jump off a 12-foot ledge, land wrong, your foot hurts -- six hours later, it's an editable detail in the hilarious tale of your Croatian friend, Kresimir, losing his keys. Pain was this thing that happened sometimes, and then you ate a bag of Doritos. The end.

I'm still not old, right? But the indestructibility is gone, which manifests in two distinctly horrible ways. First, lack of exercise is much more obvious when you behave strenuously. I used to never exercise and then walk up a mountain for fun and continue not exercising the next day. Easy.

Second, when a pain appears that you haven't had before, you begin to wonder, "What if this doesn't heal right? Is this the new normal? " Six hours, thirty-six hours, seventy-two hours later, it's still there, and you wonder, "Will my chest ache forever when I sneeze or turn sharply to the left? I don't know!"

Because, see, we went to Club Med on our honeymoon. We went to a "Sport" Club Med, which was fantastically entertaining, except that I am not a sportsy person. I am the sort of person who labors over a blog entry in a darkened room. And yet, I was quietly very, very excited at the prospect of learning to swing on a flying trapeze. It was, with no exaggeration, the fulfillment of a childhood fantasy.

Not swinging on a trapeze in a circus. That always seemed remote and not as thrilling as billed. I mean, there's a net below. Big deal. But why would you do it without a net? That's bad judgment. So trapeze as a performance art seemed... untenable.

The childhood fulfillment part was literally swinging on a trapeze at Club Med. I saw it as a child on some exotic travel show, and it seemed like the coolest vacation thing ever. You could go on vacation and learn to swing on a trapeze? Why doesn't everyone want to do that?

One possible reason is because it hurts. The skin on your hands gets ripped off, and in the following days you ache in places you didn't know you had muscles. It's a blast; I had a wonderful time; I'd go back and do it again, but man, ow.

And then it keeps hurting. This morning I noticed my chest hadn't hurt in a while. I stretched and breathed and twisted my torso. No pain. It's not the new normal. It's just the beginning of destructability.

Which helps explain why older people make fewer horrifying mistakes. In addition to experience, they don't have the physical capacity for it.

* Regular terror applies normally, of course.

Knife To See You Too*

Moving some last things out of my old place today. I left a kris on the sidewalk next to my car while I went back for one more box. In less than one minute, two different people walked by and commented:

"Nice sword, man."
"He got a G.I. Joe knife!"

If I'd known I could get mofo respect, I'd have carried it around with me sometimes. Maybe get mugged less often.


*I need a job writing headlines somewhere. I mean, for reals.

Empty Magazines

It's hard not to feel sad and nostalgic at the news that Dungeon and Dragon magazine are ending print publication, passing to a phantasmic online existence at Wizards of the Coast. I gained confidence as a game master too late to get real value out of Dungeon (despite having been published in it), but Dragon has been a part of my life since its double digits, back when Kim Mohan was editor, and Tom Wham games were oddball, gleeful surprises.

However, I am suspicious of nostalgia. Fond memories are cheap friends. It's good times for an evening, but later, you realize you paid the bill, and got nothing to show for it. I prefer to gaze into the searing orb of the future rather than the soothing satellite of the past.

No publisher knows what to do in this awkward technological puberty. Web patrons are accustomed to freebies, and every method of monetization developed so far is too irksome. PDF sales are the zit creme of this adolescence. It'll do, but it doesn't solve the problem. What we want are the deeper voices and clearer skin, not a soothing ointment.

Eventually, we'll pass some societal or technological milestone, and we can all get on with the business of buying and selling intellectual content again. Just nobody knows how yet. My own zero-dollar bet is that publishers will get over their DRM FUD when the money finally dries up, and someone in Asia will begin manufacturing an e-reader in the $30 range that will allow you to look at and mark up text and pictures.

Bill Gates claims that Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are the last great format war, but this is a lie. The next format war will be e-reader formats.

That vague future is ten years away. Maybe less. Until then, Wizards' web team will toss up some new logos on the Web site, maybe reorganize. Their content might become slightly more robust, but really they don't need to do much. They've been producing a magazine's worth of content each month since I worked there in 2001. Soon, they'll just apply their trademarks to it.

For now, Dungeon and Dragon go to long-term parking. Once the mythical "someone" develops a workable business model for publishing, they will lurch into that new format with tinny fanfare.

So, bye Dungeon and Dragon. I'll miss you, but we'll catch up in a few years.

JoCo Show

Because of certain EVENTS in life, I failed to indicate that The Wife and I went to a Jonathan Coulton show in the greater Philadelphia area in late March. Was it everything I hoped for? Yes, except that "JoCo" and I did not have a witty exchange and become fast friends at the end of the evening. I could have hoped for that.

It might have even happened, except that I hamstring myself with certain rules, such as, "When meeting someone whose work I admire, be friendly and complimentary, and avoid pallsy off-the-cuff comedy routines, because that is the domain of lamers and wannabes."

In practice, this rule is occasionally self-contradictory. Jonathan Coulton probably would have been okay with a spirited attempt at ad lib japery.

The emcee before the show said that talking to Jonathan Coulton always made him want to BE Jonathan Coulton. I found it an eerily accurate assessment.

Life, married

I'm a little more married than I used to be.

I don't feel different, it's just everything else that changed.