Author: admin

The second amendment to the U.S. Constitution says:

“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

I’ve been pondering this statement recently. It’s clear that a lot of people in this country like this amendment. The National Rifle Association, which has dedicated much money and effort to defending the “right to bear arms”, has the support of many politicians and citizens in our nation.

But the part that confuses me is this: I keep looking around for that well-regulated militia. The amendment is quite unambiguous that the need for such a militia is the entire reason for this amendment.

Yet as far as I can tell, many people are walking around bearing arms without serving in such a militia. In fact (as hard as this may be to believe), it seems that there is no such militia.

So what the heck is going on here? Isn’t anybody worried about maintaining the security of a free state?

Am I missing something?

In many creative endeavors there is a tension between “compositional” and “performative” thinking. To compose an opera, or write a play or song, you need a certain amount of quiet contemplation, a space to be alone with your thoughts, and time to hear the sound of your muse.

But the performance of an opera, or play, or song, requires a different sort of thinking. You need to be in the present, to commune with your audience, to be able to pivot at a moment’s notice in response to the energy in the room.

It stands to reason that the best creative tools for these two modes of creation are not the same. And this goes for software tools. If your goal is to implement the best software interface for composing music, you will come up with something very different than if your goal is to implement the best interface for playing music.

Yet so much is the same between these to modes of creation — under the hood you will find much in common between these two types of software. It seems to me that there should be a little slider, one that can be adjusted as needed between “composition” and “performance”. In response, the look and feel of the interface might change radically, yet the underlying power would still be there, only in a different form.

Experienced stage magicians will tell you that what matters most is not the cleverness of your magic trick, but the compelling quality of your narrative. A well-executed card trick is an amusing diversion, but a psychologically effective illusion, one that powerfully draws its audience in to suspend its disbelief, can make an impression that lasts a lifetime.

Which leads to an obvious question: If you are fighting for a cause — let’s say a good cause, like fighting poverty or discrimination, or helping to ensure a cleaner environment — to what extent is is ok to employ the principles of effective stage magic?

I’m not talking about making cards disappear. Rather, I’m talking about the ability to draw in an audience, to weave a compelling and emotionally engaging narrative, to move people to action through the sheer power of your performance.

Is it “cheating” to lean on such tools, rather than letting your good message speak for itself? Or is it in fact the opposite: That to effectively fight for a good cause, you need to use every rhetorical trick in the book?

We had a little family reunion today, and at dinner I ended up having a very nice conversation with my mom.

At one point she was describing her childhood, growing up in New York City to Russian Jewish immigrants parents. She explained to me that for their time, her parents were very liberal and openminded, willing to entertain ideas about politics and society in a very forward thinking way.

I love hearing my mom’s stories, but at this point in the conversation I needed to stop her.

“I don’t mean to brag,” I said, “but as cool and liberal as your parents may have been, my parents were even cooler and more liberal.”

On my last day in Dublin, one of my hosts pointed out that both Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde attended Trinity College.

Which of course led me to ask the obvious question: If Count Dracula were to face off against Lady Bracknell in a fair fight, which one would emerge the victor?

As with most questions of this kind, we can never know for sure what the outcome would be. But I suspect the poor vampire wouldn’t stand a chance.

Being in a pub in Dublin, immersed in the sort of ambience of ancient tradition one does not find in New York, it was natural that the conversation with my friend this evening would turn to questions of antiquity.

And at some point I began to describe the 1957 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica that I loved as a child, a cherished set of volumes which my mother had purchased, I believe, because it matched the furniture.

When I was eight, nine, maybe ten years old, I would pour over those volumes for hours at a time. Every evening I would choose one volume pretty much at random and do a deep dive.

My favorite topics where things that were no longer true — the nations that did not exist any more, the inventions that had ceased to be cutting edge, the scientific theories that had become hopelessly out of date.

Looking back on it now, I realize that what I loved most about those articles was the way they embodied a sort of time machine. “This is the way things are now”, they seemed to be saying, in a kind of etherial transmission from the past. They were a timestamp out of history, an up-to-date record of the no longer existent, a voice of Truth from a time now gone.

It is no longer so easy to have such an experience. Thanks to the internet, everything is now up-to-date. Yes, you can dig back through the archives of the Wikipedia, and discover the state of the world from an earlier time. But this is not easy to do, especially if you want a consistent snapshot, across a broad range of topics, from a specific moment in history.

Sometimes I miss my old time machine.

I am staying at Trinity College at the moment. My gracious hosts have put me in a lovely little room that is all old-fashioned old world charm. Looking out my window at the beautiful and ancient campus, I am wondering what academic visitors from an earlier era may have been offered this very room — perhaps using some of this very furniture.

I can picture Charles Dodgson, hard at work on his sequel to “Alice in Wonderland”. Or C.S. Lewis, sitting at this very desk while writing of the adventures of gallant Reepicheep on the Dawn Treader. Or maybe Tolkien, up from Oxford for a seminar, working out Tom Bombadil’s casually metrical banter.

Of course this place goes much farther back than even those esteemed worthies. The University was founded in 1592, an event officially presided over by the first Queen Elizabeth. One of the famed Darnley portraits of Her Royal Majesty hangs in the faculty sitting room where this afternoon I had a spot of tea.

It would be wonderful to be transported back to that time, if only for a day, when this august university was new, when the world was younger, when Shakespeare was only 28.

A friend and I were walking down a Paris street yesterday, looking at all the people, when my friend expressed a sense of wonder at all the unique minds. And of course my friend was right.

Each person’s mind is an entire world unto itself. As far as we can know for sure, each of those minds is as complex and wonderful a thing as we have yet discovered in nature.

We tend to take this for granted. With seven billion people in the world — many of them living in very difficult circumstances — we can forget that each of those individuals is a vast universe of thoughts, memories, perceptions transformed into ideas.

Familiarity can sometimes breed contempt, but just a little reflection can bring us back to the deeper truth: That each individual human mind is a marvel, a true wonder of the Universe.

As I walked around Paris today, a thought came back to me that I’ve had many times about places I know and love well: Their reputation, their place in the world, as it were, is a separate thing from the specifics of their existence.

There are a million little details that come to define a city for you, once you spend any time there. Very few of these details would show up in the movie version. For example, the fact that you go one way on the 4 line to get to Porte d’Orleans, and the other way to get to Porte de Clignacourt. Or that when you walk south on Bd de Sebastopol, you arrive at the Fontaine du Palmier.

New York, Paris, London, Berlin, any city you can name, is full of such details of happenstance. These details add very little, if anything, to the mythic stature of a great city, but to anyone who lives there, they end up being the very soul of the place.

It’s such little details that make a place real. In the grand scheme of things, they may not be important, but if you live there, they are essential.

Ah, Paris. Once more
I can see why they call you
The city of lights.