Open Mike: Video Chautauquas* (OT)

["Open Mike" is the often off-topic Editorial page of TOP. It appears on Wednesdays. Off-topic posts on TOP are labeled "OT" in the title in case you prefer to avoid them.

By the way, I'm feeling a whole lot better today, thankfully. Thanks for all the good wishes! —Mike the occasionally violently non-vertical Ed.]

While I delve into the no doubt delightful comments on yesterday's post (127 of 'em!), which should be fun, I thought I'd share a few of my favorites among recent YouTube discoveries. If you think I'm trying to distract you before you add more to my workload, I take the Fifth.

• A book author whose work I've enjoyed over the years, Alain de Botton, explains Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person. This one's pretty dense but full of insights I wish I'd had while there was still time to do something about it. I can certainly attest to the idea that we're not attracted to partners who are good for us, we're attracted to partners who are familiar. Alain's talk is on zeitgeistminds, and there's a book, too. Both the book and the talk derive from the single most-read article in the New York Times in all of 2016.

• The late "comedian's comedian" George Carlin on why It's Important Not to Give a Sh*t. Successful comedians—maybe all successful artists, but at least comedians—have to "come into themselves" before their work (and their personas) get locked and loaded. I've always been amazed by the fact that the young David Letterman, having been fired from a job and with his life going nowhere, sat down to figure out what his real skills were and concluded that the thing he was best at was making fun of people. That's brilliant, I think—it's not even in a category I would have accepted as being among the legitimate answers to the question. I would have compartmentalized things and been trawling around in my conception of the "job skills" category. You gotta go with your gifts—but, to do so, you've got to have the courage to see your actual gifts clearly. In this short reminiscence from the Archive of American Television, George gives a succinct and useful account of how he modified his dreams and became himself. 

• Another author I enjoy, Malcolm Gladwell, retells the Biblical story of David and Goliath from a rationalist and historical perspective, and I found it just plain fascinating. Turns out it boils down to weapons technology, according to Malcolm, and poor Goliath never had a chance. I like the stories behind myths, like the astonishing truth behind the Johnny Appleseed legend in the 59-page first part of Michael Pollan's beautiful little four-part book The Botany of Desire, a long-ago (and treasured) recommendation from my brother Scott. This "educational and entertaining" TED Talk relates to Malcolm Gladwell's 2015 book about underdogs and misfits.

• Yet another book author I've learned a lot from (sensing a trend here?), the Dutch primatologist and ethologist Frans de Waal, explains The Surprising Science of Alpha Males. The qualities we actually both require and admire in alpha males (and females) are indeed eye-opening. Of course, as always, Frans tells the human story through the lens of chimpanzee and bonobo behavior, as he does in my favorite amongst his books, Our Inner Ape, in which he speculates about some of the more mystifying human behavior patterns from the foundation of what we know about our closest primate relatives.

Enough for now. Please check back later to read the comments on yesterday's post. I'll get another mug of tea and get right to work.

Mike

Oh, and by the way:

*Chautauqua: Colloquially, a chautauqua (shaw-TALK-wah) was a public talk meant to the educational but also entertaining. Merriam-Webster defines it as "Any of various traveling shows and local assemblies that flourished in the U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, that provided popular education combined with entertainment in the form of lectures, concerts, and plays, and that were modeled after activities at the Chautauqua Institution of western New York." If I'm not a chautauqua channel then I don't know what!

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Here’s the situation

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Bruce: "Not again!!! You keep deviating me sideways during my morning coffee to emerge two hours later having to catch up on 'things-that-must-be-done-today.' Your link to George Carlin took me down an extraordinary road into totally unfamiliar YouTube territory. His work was completely new to me and I now realise how far ahead of his time he was. A precious jewel indeed. Perhaps a small sip of George every morning will substitute for lack of Kirk Tuck after you."

KeithB: "Were Chautauquas the first TED Talks?  8^)  "

Mike replies: Very much in the same spirit as public lectures in the 19th century, I think, which were a big deal and well attended. Mark Twain paid off his mountain of debts by touring the world giving lectures.

Comments

[John Camp]

As the comments to Malcolm Gladwell's TED talk indicate, he made a number of mistakes in recounting the David and Goliath story. (He refers to the impact of David's stone to the impact of a "45mm" handgun, when he meant .45 caliber handgun. A 45mm handgun would have a bore of ~1.7 inches, about 2 1/2 times as large as a 12-gauge shotgun. He assumed that Goliath was led into the Valley of Elah because he couldn't see; in fact, the guy accompanying him was a shield bearer, not a seeing-eye guide. And there were other mistakes) But, interestingly, when I was doing archaeology in Israel, I read a book on a flight to Phoenix from Albuquerque, about early weapons, in which the authors claimed that slingers were essentially useless because their missiles didn't have enough impact to be damaging. That seemed wrong to me, because I'd seen all kinds of documentary stuff created at the times slingers were in use, showing them in large formations as essential units of large armies. During the layover in in Phoenix, I bought a cheap calculator and did some calculations, and, interestingly, I came up with about the same conclusion that Gladwell did -- a common slinger's missile (often made of lead, and much larger than a .45 slug) would hit with roughly the same force as a .45 caliber bullet. (I own a .45 and was aware of it's general weight and speed profiles.) I never tried to work out the exact force involved, not only because I satisfied myself that the book I was reading was grossly incorrect, but because the precise numbers were beyond me. But I was well satisfied that using a projectile smaller and much denser than a baseball, that could be hurled at much higher speeds than a baseball, would be deadly -- after all, look what happens when a fastball hits a batter in the face. Gladwell should have been much more careful, though.

[amnesix]

I always love listening to an album named «New Chautauqua», by a Pat Metheny. Seems to correspond to the mood today ... :)

[Bear.]

"Chautauqua" - now that's a word, which brings back memories of my undergraduate days, studying philosophy - I'd better go pull the late Robert Pirsig's, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance of the shelf - the book is written as a chautauqua occurring within the main character's mind (presumably, based on the author) - it has more ideas (some "heavy", some not) stuffed into it than all of Gladwell's books together (reconsideration of Aristotelian philosophy (Yay!) wrapped in 1960s pop personal philosophy (Yay!) with a touch of sociology / psychiatry (mental health) (Meh) thrown in) - and is as easy to read as true philosophy gets; which will be fine for you, if you have not already read it, and I expect you will quite enjoy reading it, if you managed to finish this sentence. Gladwell is easy to read, but I do wish that he did not present his rather ideas as if they were established scientific theories (within the technical meaning of that term) rather than the hypotheses that they are, even if they are excellent and thought-through hypotheses; the Western world presently has enough trouble distinguishing between informed and uninformed opinion as it is. TOP readers excluded by definition, of course.

[John Krumm]

Well, now I know why the nearby Big Top Chautauqua is called Chautauqua, though it's pretty much a performing arts center in a big tent.

I have Pollan's latest book on hallucinogens and psychological health, but I've put off reading it, perhaps because I'm not going to start taking hallucinogens any time soon, at least not until my pharmacy is dispensing them. He's a good writer though, and I'm sure it's interesting.

[c.d.embrey]

Mike, I was lead to believe that you didn’t like watching videos 8-)

My favorite Carliinism: Think how stupid the average person is, and realise that half of them are stupider than that.

As others have mentioned, TED Talks are filled with misinformation. I’ve had to laugh at many of them where I was more of an expert than they were.

Like it or not, extinction happens. No more Dodo, no more Passenger Pidgeon and the world keeps on turning. Would the loss of a famous work of art make any real difference? The demise of humans won’t slow the rotation of the earth.

[Craig Lee]

We have a series of Chautauqua shows locally. They are one-person shows where the performer takes on the roll of a historic person who discusses their life from that person's point of view. The second half of the show is then that performer dropping the character, and then speaking about the subject from a modern point of view. There is usually a question and answer session at the end as well.

We been to a few of them over the years. Samuel Clemmons, Elenore Roosevelt, Benedict Arnold that the ones that I remember the most. My son would usually get extra credit for one of his classes if he attended one of these events.

Here is a link to this year's series: http://www.greenvillechautauqua.org/performances/spartanburg/

[Arg]

I haven't seen the word chautauqua since ZAMM/Pirsig/1970s

[Mike Potter]

Recenty finished re-reading ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenamce’ - a worthwhile activity. I came away with a much less worthwhile view of it in my late-50s as I did in my early 20s, when I first encountered it. The reading, and study of philosophy is a worthy endeavor.