Instead of working on today's blogpost, I'll simply use something I've already written. It appears in Quora, where one poster asks, "What are some famous writers who have had a negative view of lawyers, like Shakespeare did?" Well ... "as" would work better than "like" there. But that was not the big problem. The problem was ... Shakespeare didn't. So far as we know. This is what I wrote in response to that poster: So far as I know, Shakespeare did NOT have a negative view of lawyers. He does have a character in one play say “First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” But that character is a member of an unruly mob. The Bard clearly did not mean for us to sympathize with the statement. Many writers do have negative views of lawyers. It should not be too difficult for you to find real examples. I suggest you leave Shakespeare out of it. Guess I told HIM. I was about to go on and discuss an equally famous Dickens line, but that might ...
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The online magazine SLATE recently ran an essay "against subtlety." The gist of it is that the idea that a work of art should be subtle is a bit of New-Critical misdirection that has gone mainstream, has become a cliche, and now ought to be retired. Consider Dickens' names! Heavy-handed and wonderful. My own reaction -- I'm all in favor of subtlety. (And Dickens, names notwithstanding, had a good deal more of it than he is generally given credit for). Norman Rockwell once created an illustration of Rosie the Riveter on a lunch break. She was seated with one of her feet resting on a book. The book? Hitler's Mein Kampf , of course! This suggests various distracting lines of thought. Did she bring the same book in every day? Did she have to sneak it past security, or was this regarded as normal furniture for a break room? Didn't Il Duce ever write anything she might have used to rest her other foot, or to rest THAT one on alternating days? Yes, yes, Mr....
Last Sunday I made some fatuous comments about the NCAA basketball tournament in an effort to illustrate the statistical concept of regression to the mean. I did so by inventing a basketball concept of regression to the chalk. As a discussion of the statistical point, that post holds up. As a discussion of the NCAA tournament, I am afraid it already looks pathetic. when I made out my own brackets, as the tournament was getting underway, I ended up with a final four of Syracuse, Iowa State, Arizona, and Michigan. You can judge my b-ball predicting prowess from the fact that not one of those teams is in the final four. The actual line-up is: Florida, Wisconsin, Connecticut, and Kentucky. That's not so embarrassing, really. what is worse is that the results thus far conspicuously fail to illustrate the idea of regression to the mean/chalk. The "regression" should certainly have eliminated the Wildcats and Huskies by now, if it were a fact. As the musical version of...