Month: December 2019

Speaking for your Dog

Why do people give their pets–and their babies–human voices–aka ventriloquating?

Deborah Tannen, a linguist at Georgetown University, did a small study on what she calls “talking the dog” in 2004. She had family members record everything they said to one another for a week, and found that when they ventriloquated (a technical term) for their dogs, they seemed to do so for one or more of several reasons: “effecting a frame shift to a humorous key, buffering criticism, delivering praise, teaching values, resolving potential conflict, and creating a family identity that includes the dogs as family members.”

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Middle Aged

James Parker of The Atlantic on Middle Age:

The middle-aged person is not an idiot. Middle age is when you can throw your back out watching Netflix. The middle-aged person is being consumed by life, and knows it. Feed the flame—that’s the invitation. Go up brightly.

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Filed under well-meaning but ultimately wrong, HuffPo on commiserating by bringing yourself up in conversation:

Sociologist Charles Derber describes this tendency to insert oneself into a conversation as “conversational narcissism.” It’s the desire to take over a conversation, to do most of the talking and to turn the focus of the exchange to yourself. It is often subtle and unconscious. Derber writes that conversational narcissism “is the key manifestation of the dominant attention-getting psychology in America. It occurs in informal conversations among friends, family and co-workers. The profusion of popular literature about listening and the etiquette of managing those who talk constantly about themselves suggests its pervasiveness in everyday life.”

I think it comes from an interest to find common ground with your interlocutor, and it’s innocent–but wrong-headed.

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The Joy of a Chinese Clever

Serious Eats’ Daniel Gritzer on rediscovering the joy of a Chinese cleaver:

I am, or at least I had been, well aware of the virtues of the Chinese cleaver because I had used one aevery day for several months while working in a French restaurant about fifteen years ago. I loved that knife, but over time, I reached for it less and less as new knives entered my life… I’ve spent so much time in recent years debating the relative merits of Japanese and Western knives, which tends to be where the conversation is focused among knife enthusiasts in the United States, that I’d forgotten this third option and just how rightly it belongs in the running.

I bought one from amazon for like 12 bucks and use it all the time.

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When Wirecutter Doesn’t Cut It

Via The Loop , “The Problem with Relying on Wirecutter Reviews”:

In truth, if you’re an expert on any single category, such as camera lenses, the “best” pick on these sites is likely to be something you disagree with. The top pick is the choice that’s better for a wide audience, but it might not be the absolute best possible product — because the highest-performing one is too expensive or complicated to use.

The optimal way to approach recommendation sites is simple: If you need a product, like a printer, and don’t have strong opinions on it or want to avoid overspending on a potential lemon, buy the top choice. It’s almost certainly been tested more than any of us could feasibly do on our own, and you’ll save hours of research. But if you are an expert about a device and the pick isn’t what you’d go for, that’s okay! The recommendation probably wasn’t really targeted at you anyway.

This nicely sums out how car enthusiasts feel about Consumer Reports.

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Ben Brooks On Going iPad Only

Ben Brooks on going iPad only:

Drawing to Excel — you name it. There used to be limitations with what you could do on an iPad — but those limitations are melting away, the last vestige being iOS developers looking longingly at a better. These are the people you hear from most, because they are the most likely to write a blog about it, while the rest of the world just switches to an iPad without making a thing out of it (burn).

Excel is not even close to feature parity, so i think it’s a bad example in this case. His larger point resonates, though–with some notable exceptions, I’ve been nearly IPad exclusive at work since iPadOS came out.

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Die Hard

I’ve long considered Die Hard a guilty pleasure. Considering it’s the Christmas Season, I was happy to introduce my younger son to the film today (since it is arguably a Christmas Movie. Coincidentally, the movie was featured on “The Movies that Made Us” on Netflix. Some fascinating reveals:

  • The movie is based on a book titled “Nothing Lasts Forver” by Roderick Thorpe. This book is as sequel to a book by the same author called “The Detective,” whose film adaptation starred Frank Sinatra. Thorpe wrote the book at Sinatra’s behest because Sinatra wished to appear in another film, but it took too long (10 years) to complete, and Sinatra lost interest.
  • One of the terrorists, Karl, was played by ballet actor Alexander Godunov
  • The film was filmed on unfinished sections of a building Fox owned
  • Bruce Willis did some of his own student work, including part of the jump off of the roof just before it explodes.
  • Similarly, Alan Rickman dropped onto a safety bag for Hans Gruber’s drop from Nakatomi; he was released a second early to ensure a look of sincere fright
  • The “good news, bad news” scene, where John McClean avoids the explosion, but is trapped outside, gains entry, but then is almost pulled out the window again is a nod to an older film.

The Movies That Made Us