Join Me in the Fast Lane

Yes, I'm that guy. You're on the highway, approaching a clearly marked construction zone that is going to require that everyone in the two left lanes will have to merge with each other. Per social contract, you move over into the lane that will survive the interchange... and come to a screeching halt. After a few moments of creeping along, someone comes zipping down the vacant left lane, bypassing everyone already who's gotten over, and they breeze along until the barrels force them to finally merge.

Well, that's me. And after you hear my argument as to why I do that, I'm hoping that you all will join me.

Let's kick things off by considering what highways are for. Our great nation has developed a colossal system of roads, from two to five lanes across in each direction, that can (theoretically) take us from one coast to the other, and just about anywhere else in between, without stopping. They're designed to get us all from where we are to where we need to be, as quickly and efficiently as possible.

So, when a portion of that road is blocked, and that efficiency necessarily diminished, why do we then feel the need to make the situation even worse?

Think about it: the most efficient way to keep things moving is for we people to -- within reason -- maintain their speed and utilize all the available road. If you pull over before it's necessary to, you're doing two things wrong. First of all, merely by changing lanes you're making the back-up twice as long as it needs to be. That's just math. If everyone gets over, you're filling one lane with two lanes' worth of cars. Secondly, it's an established fact that most traffic back-ups are caused (or at least made worse) by people either hitting their brakes or changing lanes. And chances are that if you have to figure out where and how you're going to get over, you're doing both of these. This usually causes the person behind you to slow down, and as things progress further back, it's more likely that the next person will have to hit their brakes harder because they don't see the situation that created the need. That's how you end up with standstills.

Now, given that there's inevitably going to be some slowdown as everyone combines lanes, wouldn't the best way to minimize that be having it occur in a pre-specified place? Like the place where the road actually runs out? Some of the scariest traffic situations I've ever seen have been caused by people just starting to realize that everyone else is getting over, so they hit their brakes and try to find a way in, so as not to break the aforementioned social contract, endangering everyone behind them with their seemingly random activity. All this jockeying and tentative "Can I go? Are you letting me over, or do you not see me?" is what creates far more problems than it solves.

So, by getting over "when you're supposed to", which I'm sure varies greatly depending on the situation (but you're intuitively supposed to know anyway), you're actually making the situation *at* *minimum* twice as bad as it needs to be. To me, there's nothing more ridiculous than a line of creeping traffic that is totally ignoring the *completely* *usable* *lane* right alongside it. We're all trying to get where we're going. Let's make the most of what we have to work with to get this to happen.

Believe me, I've completely turned around on this issue from how I used to be. I once was one of the drivers who cursed those who -- in my mind -- thought they were better than everyone else and didn't have to get over until the last second. I likened it to line-cutting, which in my mind is one of the most heinous crimes of modern life. But I've had a lot of time to think about it during the 60 miles a day I've driven to and from my job for the last year. And when you get down to the logic of it, the way we are "supposed" to handle situations like this doesn't make sense.

Say you're standing in line at the grocery store, ready to check out. There are two lanes open, but people are only using one. It's not a matter of the lane just having opened... the register is just open, the cashier standing there idle. Everyone in line for the other register sees this, but still don't get over. How much reluctance would you have in moving over and using that other register?

But still, the social contract persists against logic. I've had people honk at me as I go by -- clearly not because they think it will do anything, just from self-righteous frustration -- and then there are semi trucks that will take it upon themselves to police the closing lane, pulling into it and slowing down to the speed of the clogged lane. This is actually a step up from what usually happens, because people seem to be willing to stay in the closing lane as long as they're not first. Hooray, we're suddenly we're using two lanes again!

Look, we're all just trying to make getting from A to B as small a piece of our day as necessary. There are roads out there designed to help us do just that. But when we start imposing illogical rules on ourselves for using them efficiently, we're just slowing ourselves and everyone else down. So come into the fast lane with me. Let's keep things a-rollin', folks.

Viva La Punctuacion!

I keep coming across a quote by Kurt Vonnegut in which he professes his hatred for semicolons. He calls them "... transvestite hermaphrodites, representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college." Now, as much as I enjoy and respect Kurt's work, on this he couldn't be more wrong. Not just about semicolons either; I think our whole palette of English punctuation is horribly underused. Like most aspects of English, I think people will avoid using a word or punctuation mark rather than run the risk of using it incorrectly. As a result, we end up with one of the most expressive languages on Earth that uses basically only four punctuation marks (,.?!). I say that we should do the exact opposite of what Mr. Vonnegut proposes and use *more* punctuation.

I understand the reluctance to do this. I always point it out when someone uses a word incorrectly in the grammatical sense, and it makes me physically angry when public signs use "'s" to pluralize something, or when people use double quotes when they really just mean to emphasize what they're saying. But if no one uses semicolons, colons, dashes, ellipses, and the aforementioned parentheses out of fear, what will become of them?

There's a balance that people try to strike when they write, a kind of uneasy, simultaneous allegiance to both the way people talk and the way people think. Looking back as recently as Victorian fiction, you can see how ornate the sentences are, running on, changing direction, nesting ideas inside of other ideas. I've always admired that kind of structure. They actually use the shape of the language to add to the feel of what they're saying. Paragraphs about a summer in the country can meander like a river, or a tense encounter can look as clipped on the page as it should sound.

The era where brevity is the most important thing, I think, started with the Gettysburg Address. I've read that the reason it's such a famous speech is because of the way its words are laid out. Up until that fateful day, public speeches were constructed the same as if they were meant to be read, overblown and stuffed with filler. The attitude was that sheer volume added value (or at the least the illusion of value) to the ideas contained in it. Among all the other speakers that day near a battlefield in Pennsylvania, Abraham Lincoln stepped up and gave an almost unbelievably short speech, his ideas neatly parsed out in short sentences, clear and to the point. It caught the ear, emotive and succinct, easily memorizable, and that's why we still remember what he said that day. It was the first step in an evolution that has led us, for better or worse, to the era of the sound bite.

Today, this derivative, journalistic bent has crept even into everyday fiction. The prevailing opinion is that you should walk away from the page knowing everything there is to know. It all has to be explicitly there on the page, no ambiguity or subtlety added. I blame Hemingway for popularizing this style, and James Patterson for perpetuating it in his endless parade of thrillers with half-empty pages in each 500-word-chapter.

I'm much of the mind that we need to retain a place in our psyches for old-style, more long form sentences. But we also need to infuse it with the energy and immediacy of the words that we type with our thumbs. In order to do this, we need every punctuation mark at our disposal. This is why I wonder what Vonnegut was thinking when he disparaged semicolons. He apparently didn't know what to do with them, but they add a layer of subtext that you then don't have to convey with the words themselves. Here's what I do with all these wonderful, various marks:

Semicolons: I use these when what I'm about to say explains what I just said, but I don't want to put them in separate sentences because they're so closely related. "When I was a child, I was constantly climbing trees; I couldn't get enough of feeling the cooler, higher air on my face." Isn't that so much better than splitting these two related ideas apart? If you didn't, you'd think that the writer would get the same feeling by opening up a third-story window. But no, there's something about the fact that he's specifically climbing a tree that makes you think about it differently. A semicolon has a metaphorical and literal hook to it, which links it to the next clause.

Colons: Not only do I use these for introducing lists ("We need three things from the store: bread, baloney, and a gun"), but I also use it to show how one thing leads to another, like an arrow -- which is really what the list-introduction thing is doing too -- ("The thing you have to remember is this: even Vonnegut can sometimes be full of crap.") To me, the mark itself even feels like I'm looking down on the pillars of a gateway.

Parentheses/Dashes: Both of these marks are used to add little extras and asides into the text, but are subtly different. To me, parentheses are like the edges of a hole that reveal something beneath the page, something hidden or not-so-obvious... "Greg refused to eat mashed potatoes, even in restaurants (as a child, his mother had often refused him dessert unless he had eaten them all)." Dashes, though, create a kind of pedestal to lift the words up above the rest of the text... "We ran out of the school doors -- let's go ride our bikes! -- and dashed down the street."

Ellipses: These are my favorite. Three periods in a row, that physically trail off into empty space the way sentences that end with them would if they were spoken. I use them to indicate that there's more to a story than is being told, or a conclusion is being implied that the reader has to divine for themselves: "I wasn't the only one who hated summer camp that year...". I also use it when someone is being thoughtful, and is stating a fact but maybe hasn't figured out all of what it means yet: "Maybe there's a reason people are fascinated by this...". It's the most interactive of the punctuation marks, drawing the reader in and asking them to participate in filling in what's been left unsaid.

I was reading a bilingual children's book with my daughter a few weeks ago, and we started talking about how, in Spanish, there are upside-down exclamation points and question marks at the beginning of sentences, as well as the normally oriented ones at the end. And the concept struck me as brilliant. When you have a sentence that requires being shouted or asked, shouldn't you find this out before you're done reading/saying it? This makes perfect sense. English appropriates words and phrases from other languages all the time... this is one idea we should start using right away.

My point is this: English is a fascinating patchwork of other languages, taking what works (or is particularly insightful) from elsewhere and folding it into itself, always in the process of reinvention. And I'm not just talking about the written language. Our spoken language is expanding in amazing -- and amazingly fast -- ways. At the same time, people are wringing their hands and saying (as they have every time a new form of communication comes along) that we're losing it to the Tweetering and the LOLing and emoji-ing. I say that if we want to keep our written language vibrant and alive, it's got to be able to express what we feel in a way that can also represent the way people think. That's what it's there for, after all. And that process is different now in the 21st century. So let's give English some breathing room. Forget the random rules that Vonnegut, Strunk and White have tried to foist on us, "thou shalt not split infinitives" and all that. Let's allow sentences to flow and breathe and get the hell punctuated out of them. And if an informal, texty sort of English evolves alongside a lengthier, more expressive written version, then so be it. The Japanese have been doing it since their language's inception.

Being bilingual is never a bad thing.

Thermodynamics II: Electric Boogaloo

Let me kick this essay off by saying that I have no inherent problem with Creationism as a belief. It takes many forms, from radical Young Earth believers to micro-evolutionists, and my intent here isn't to try to convince anyone or prove/disprove anything. I don't believe these theories myself, but I live with and love someone who does. So while there's disagreement, I'll defend to the death the right to say what you like, if I might paraphrase.

The one thing I can't abide, though, is misinformation. And I keep hearing the same bit of it from the more outspoken Creationist side of things. Just as there can be evolutionists who are jerks about calling Creationists stupid and wrong, the invective can flow the other way too. And when it does, the old chestnut that states that evolution defies the second law of thermodynamics usually gets pulled out. This might sound like a compelling argument to someone who isn't familiar with this scientific principle before, but it's easy to misunderstand, and this misunderstanding is what's being perpetuated.

So I'm hoping to set the record straight on this one issue, at least. I just can't watch the work of Isaac Newton and some of the other brilliant minds that have contributed to this discovery being misused this way. So here's my counter-argument...

The second law of thermodynamics states that, left to its own devices, order always runs to chaos. It's the basis for the idea of entropy. An example of this is that hot food left on the table will always move toward room temperature. Energy never spontaneously moves in the other direction. Now, some people will take this idea and extrapolate it, saying that this thermodynamic law contradicts the theory of evolution. They will ask: how can something as ordered as life start, not to mention evolve from simpler to more complex forms, all the way up to and including humans, if everything tends toward chaos? Doesn't that have to mean that some kind of divine hand is intervening, adding a counterbalancing force of some kind, in effect making an exception for us?

Well, no. They've got it right that entropy does exist everywhere and without divine intervention, no exceptions are made. But the folks who argue against evolution in this manner forget thermodynamics’ one caveat... that entropy only constantly increases within a closed system. Increasing order is possible, if there's a source of energy being applied. Life, after all, is only the redistribution of energy, changing raw material into structure, then using that structure to turn stored energy into a combination of motion and heat.

But Earth is *not* a closed system. We have a constant energy source, infusing our planet with something like 33 billion watt-hours per square mile every day. The one thing missing from their thought-experiment is the Sun. Absolutely, entropy works. But on the other hand, your food won't cool to room temperature if you keep hitting it with heat lamps. If order always ran to chaos regardless of how much energy you put into it, then we would see exceptions counter to known physics (other divine sparks) in every baby that is born, and every time a seed, dirt and sunlight turns into a blade of grass. However, that just isn't the case.

So that's one point. But it still doesn't fully explain how constantly adding energy makes it possible for life to arise naturally. Other arguments you might hear are that this happening is less likely than throwing the constituent parts of the human eye up in the air and having them land together perfectly, or watching a tornado pass through a junkyard, only to leave an assembled car in its wake.

Again, a compelling-sounding argument, but these are two wildly inaccurate analogies. Neither the human eye nor a car spontaneously came together whole, but incrementally, and every step in their creation led toward the next, more complex, step. Evolutionists believe it's the same with the start of organic life. We're not proposing that a spark of lightning in a murky pool created a little swimming creature. Not at all. What we're suggesting is that, sometime in the billions of years of history of Earth, at least one happenstance combination of organic compounds didn't get broken apart by its violent surroundings quite as quickly as its counterparts.

Those organic compounds had only a slightest of advantages of "survival" over those around them. But that was all they needed. Eventually there were more of these clumps, again found by quintillions of random molecular interactions over the course of hundreds of millions of years. And later on, a variation of this arrangement came along that worked even better. Thus began a constant process of trial and error, favoring the random designs that worked and winnowing out those that didn't. Not only did the sun provide the energy to keep these compounds interacting and floating in liquid water, but its cosmic rays also caused many small random changes that assisted the process (aka mutation). This is where the random-eye/tornado-car analogies break down. It's not a case of nature throwing random stuff together until a perfect form appears. It was a constant refinement of possibilities, building each new step on top of an earlier one. There are at least six kinds of eyes that have independently developed in the animal kingdom, which also shows that there's no one "perfect" way to do anything when it comes to biology.

Maybe part of the anti-thermodynamic crew's problem comes from the use of the word "law", and I agree with them on this one. It always makes me cringe when someone in authority calls anything scientific a "law" -- be it evolution, thermodynamics, or even gravity -- because science should never assume it has spoken the final word on anything. Case in point: One of Isaac Newton's other famous postulations is about the clockwork-like workings of gravity. His formulas worked perfectly well 99.9% of the time, until we realized that it doesn't quite account for objects that have unusually strong gravity, or are moving unusually fast. Einstein stepped in three hundred years later and course-corrected our ideas with special relativity, which solved the remaining .1%. Today we consider the theory of gravity to be complete, but it would only take one verified defiance to tell us that we have further refinements to make. This mutability is one of science's biggest strengths, and has kept us from discarding new discoveries simply because they didn't feel intuitively right. Keep what works, erase what doesn't... A sort of evolution of thought, you might say.

So those are my thoughts on these "scientific" arguments against evolution. True, there are logical ways to attack evolution, just as there are logical ways to promote Creationism, and there are even ways to combine the two. But thermodynamics just isn't one of them.

Although I have one final problem with those who promote this "contradiction", and it's really the most insidious one... who is this particular argument for, exactly? I can't imagine that a person who understands thermodynamics is going to disavow their beliefs after hearing it. This can only mean that people who parrot this argument are, knowingly, using incorrect information to reinforce something *that* *they* *themselves* *believe* to others, who probably already believe it anyway. This is an even worse crime, I think. You shouldn't need to deceive to get your point across if it's a valid one.

Aaron’s Top 10 Friends Moments

Hard as it is to believe, Friends has been off the air for ten years now. And what that fact really drives home for me is just how much television has changed since it was on. The show started in the middle of VCR culture, but tens of millions of people still sat down on Thursday nights to watch it. Today, if two or three million people watch a network comedy over the course of the week after it airs, it's counted as a hit.

Amy and I were definitely one of the many who made it a point of being home on Thursday evenings to watch the latest episode. It kind of became a yearly tradition to tune in to the premiere episode to see if they finally succumbed to outside pressure and changed their theme song (and each year, I thought they couldn't possibly resist Rembrandt backlash again).

I started thinking about making this list, and immediately came up with the list of moments I wanted to put in it. Full disclosure: Amy and I own the DVDs and have cycled through them multiple times, so I think I'm fairly well-versed in the lore. Here, then, are the ten bits that consistently make me laugh, even after more than a decade, in no particular order:

1. Early on in the series, Joey starred in a stage production called "Freud!" and forced his friends to come to it. Not only is the idea of a musical biography of Sigmund Freud funny in and of itself, it contained a song explaining the famous psychoanalyst’s theory of penis envy, accompanied by the most inept soft-shoe routine ever performed. Basically any show that Joey performed in was great (e.g. "I'm gonna get on this spaceship, and go to Blargon-7 in search of alternative fuels."), as you'll see as you get further into this list.

2. Anytime Phoebe yells is hilarious to me, since she's such a laid-back character, but the best one is when she references a so-far-unmentioned roommate named Denise. When no one else knows who she's talking about, Phoebe says she talks about her all the time, and finally storms out of the coffee shop screaming, "NO ONE EVER LISTENS TO ME!"

3. While helping Joey rehearse for an episode of his robot-buddy-cop series "Mack and C.H.E.E.S.E.", Ross and Phoebe try to help him run his lines, and in the process prove themselves even worse actors than Joey himself. Ross, taking the part of the show's villain, over-enunciates his lines, including the immortal "That'll be a neat trick, when you're--" (glances at script) "--when you're DEAD!" Say what you will about Ross being the most annoying character on the show (something I tend to agree with), but as an actor, David Schwimmer consistently makes left-field acting choices that I find really entertaining. Drunk Ross has several moments that just barely avoided making this list.

4. Some moments go by so fast that you don't even notice them until the third or fourth time around. Case in point, the episode where Monica refuses to admit that she's extremely sick. Everyone else can see that she's feverish, lethargic and stuffed up, but she keeps insisting "I'm fine!", completely unable to make that last word sound like anything other than "find". The first time she says it, watch her face as she reacts to what she's just said. For the briefest of instances, she makes what is perhaps the strangest face a human has ever made on television, then goes right back to normal. It's awesome.

5. Another joke that I didn't catch until after multiple views is the episode where Phoebe finds out that her twin sister Ursula has become a porn star, which starts to bring Phoebe a lot of unwanted attention. Later, we get to see a brief clip of one of Ursula's films -- "Bouffay the Vampire Layer" -- which involves a lot of latex, hair spray and black drapes. The dialogue is all hilariously bad, but at one point Ursula calls her vaguely Dracula-resembling co-star "Nosfera-tool". Subtle, but hilarious. (Honorable mention: In this same episode, Chandler can't understand why people cry at sad movies. Given the example of Bambi's mother dying, he sarcastically quips, "Yes, it was very sad when the man stopped drawing the deer.")

6. The only moment I have to include here that wasn't actually enacted by any of the Friends comes from when Rachel goes to get an ultrasound of her and Ross's unborn child (12-year old spoiler alert!). Earlier, Phoebe has contributed two possibilities to the baby-name pool -- "Phoebe for a girl, Phoebo for a boy." Later on, Rachel mentions these names to her obstetrician when asking if they'll be able to tell the sex of the baby. They can't yet, but the doctor deadpans as she leaves, "I know it's not my place, but please don't name your child Phoebo."

7. As I said before, I'm biased toward Joey's acting jobs when it comes to picking out classic moments, and another one is when he auditions for Jeff Goldblum. He inadvertently figures out that the only way he can get the intensity he needs for the scene is to not go to the bathroom for several hours beforehand. It's funny in and of itself, but what really makes the scene is when he gets so flustered he starts reading the stage directions in his script aloud... as in, "Oh, I want to, Long Pause!" We still say that around my house. (We also have been known to mimic his inept Italian accent: "That's-a what I suspected-a-da-da!")

8. Early in the series, Ross takes Rachel on a romantic after-hours date to the natural history museum where he works. More specifically, to the museum's planetarium. He has it all: a picnic lunch to eat under the stars, a blanket to lie on... but he forgets to turn down the volume of the planetarium show's narration as it starts, so it suddenly blares in a tranquil moment: "BILLIONS OF YEARS AGO--" before he can hit the switch.

9. Okay, just one more Joey Acting Moment: Our hapless Friend gives himself a hernia lifting weights, and has to live through a day of shooting a medical drama before he can get his health insurance activated. This actually ends up working in his favor, because he has to play a terminally ill patient saying goodbye to his son. Sweating with pain, he asks the director, "Is it all right if I scream right up until the moment you say 'Action'?" For some reason, the director approves, and we get to hear Joey groan "Aaagghghhahaaatake good care of your momma, son."

10. The last moment I chose is actually a whole episode, which is the one where Monica and Chandler's relationship is finally uncovered by the other characters (appropriately titled "The One Where Everyone Finds Out"). They've been trying to keep it secret that they've seen sleeping together since their London trip, but haven't done a very good job of it. Joey finds out, and almost immediately reveals the information to Rachel and Phoebe... and just as quickly leaks the fact that he accidentally told back to Chandler and Monica. This leads to classic sit-com lines like "They don't know that we know they know!" and a game of sexual chicken as Phoebe pretends to seduce Chandler, knowing that he can't go through with it without spilling that he's in a relationship with Monica. It's convoluted, well-written, and brilliantly acted. I can't think of a more perfectly crafted sitcom episode, from any series.

Let's face it, there just will never be a time again when television will be as communal as it was in the 90s, and thus no show that's as universally remembered that comes after Friends. And now, I'll spend the next week coming up with other moments I'll wish I had included in this list. But I'll leave you with a final word:

Meshuggahnuts!

Introverts Unite! (Separately. In Your Own Homes.)

For the title of this week's entry, I just had to borrow the words of a meme I saw currently, just because it sums up my opinion on the subject perfectly. I've always considered myself a classic introvert. I enjoy solitary pursuits, or things I can do side-by-side with a select group of people I feel comfortable with. It's not that I'm afraid or repulsed by group activities, I just won't go very far out of my way to seek them out.

I gravitate toward situations where I'm working away at some big project on my own, whether it's working to catch up to all the shows I have on my DVR, engineering a huge Minecraft structure, or tracking down and digitizing all my analog works (and by that I mean, handwritten or shot on 8mm film). I often have to remind myself that when I look back at experiences, I won't think of the hassle of getting to wherever it's happening, or the trouble it takes to organize the trip, even though it's all I think about beforehand. If I thought this way consistently, I might never leave the couch. (And incidentally, having a five-year-old is a great way to get yourself to change the way you approach activities... if you were to undertake something only after thinking about how much time it would take to clean up, you'd never do much of anything.)

I've been working at my new job for about nine months now. It's right in my wheelhouse, too; sitting at a computer and ninja-flipping spreadsheet data. It's mentally challenging and detail-oriented, but it still gives my mind some time to roam, listen to podcasts, plan what I'm going to write that day, etc. However, up until recently, I didn't quite know what to make of most of my co-workers. I've been working alongside many of them for the full duration of my time here, but I certainly don't feel like I can start talking to them without some kind of question or agenda. I just don't know them that well.

It started to concern me a little bit that there were several members of the staff who wouldn't make even eye contact with me when we passed in the hall. I was used to the way things were at my other workplaces, where it was kind of expected to at least meet eyes and say hello as you pass a colleague. Even a simple smile and a nod was acceptable. But with some of the people here... you get nothin'.

The explanation for this didn't really hit me until recently, when I had to sit down with a few of them to be trained on a new procedure. And each time, I pulled up a chair, and we started interacting as if we had been collaborating this whole time, and knew each other well. That's when it hit me: I work in the middle of a whole room of introverts.

It was actually a really satisfying feeling, figuring this out. And it made me a little more proud to be an one of their number. In a culture that tends to play up (or at least, tell more stories about) people who would rather go out and *do* *stuff* instead of stay home and read about them, it's easy to feel that the inclination to sit and think is frowned upon in some way, even if it's not true. The discovery that most of the people I work with are quite a bit like me was nice. It's kind of like finding my tribe. Or realizing that I've been among them all along.

I bet I wouldn't have come so late to this revelation if I had worked in a bigger variety of offices in my work life. Really, I'm only working with a sample size of two: Borders, and here. Borders was a much more fully integrated team, now that I think about it. We were all sitting at computers in identical cubicles, yes, but there was a wide variety of types of business being done. In daily activities I stuck with my data folks, but we were sitting right alongside marketing teams and buyers who worked regularly with outside sales reps. We were a heterogeneous mix of personality types. At my new workplace, we're all part of a data team, having similar jobs that run in parallel. No one would be here if they had a burning need to interact with the public. On the contrary, we work with personal patient information sensitive enough that we need to work in a separate room, accessible only by a keycard. Privacy is something that we take seriously, and that attracts a certain type of person.

It prompted me to do a little research about the subject, to see just how well I fit into the modern conception of introvert. And I seem to follow right down the line, starting with Jung's classical definition of the introvert/extrovert dichotomy. He said the introverts are more inclined to pay attention to their (and others') psychic activity, while the extrovert looks for stimulation in the environment around them. Neither state is better than the other, necessarily, for it would be a poorer world if there were no one to build and move and accomplish, just as poor as if there were no one to ponder, extrapolate, or to create an uncompromising, singular vision of something.

There's probably a chemical component to this, too... recent studies have shown that introverts have higher blood flow in the brain's frontal cortices -- the "thoughtful" parts of the brain -- while extroverts' brains are more focused on the senses, and register the dopamine rush of physical reward more strongly. Extroverts appear to have stronger and more positive emotions, but introverts have more temperate moods, which can be a good thing to have in stressful situations.

I've often felt that I used to be more extroverted than I am now. But after some thought (no surprise there), I'm not so sure. I realized that my most extroverted times were during two of my major extracurricular activities as a student: high school drama and college men's chorus. Even now, I can recall how good it felt to be in those environments. I felt like I could literally walk up to any other member and talk to them freely, about almost anything. But what I have to consider is that these were times when I was part of a large group, united in a common cause, over the course of several years. Upon examination, I can see that these were, in actuality, insular groups within the much larger society of school. No wonder I felt so in my element there; I had plenty of time to get acclimated. Even the high school choir I took part in didn't seem as close-knit, because it was an official class, more a part of the outside world. And it wasn't that I didn't have great friends there, I did... but I didn't get that same feeling that I could initiate conversation with any other person.

If anything, thinking about this has helped me understand how other people view me. One of the things that introverts worry about (but not enough to change their natural inclinations, you understand) is that they'll be seen as snobs or stand-offish, when that's really not what they are. We're really just quiet and reserved. The fact that I, classic introvert that I am, thought this about some of my co-workers makes it clear how easily this sort of judgment can be passed.

So let me see if I can explain a little bit of introvert behavior here... both for people who aren't of that disposition, and maybe to get a little self-insight for those who are. I guess it comes down to whether or not you enjoy being a focus of attention. Speaking for myself, I don't, and it doesn't take much to make me feel like I am. Every time there are more than one or two people watching what I'm doing, my mind somehow qualifies it as a performance. This might seem contradictory to someone who has done a lot of drama and choral performances, but those experiences are very different. They're often done within a group, and always with a framework and a clear, rehearsed plan of what's supposed to be done.

So is it a confidence thing? While I tend not to pass judgment on people who make a public mistake, but when one happens to me I tend to replay it and analyze it. The introvert's propensity for self-analysis leads to a highly critical view of the things that they themselves say or do. I'm certainly guilty of this... even with something as informal as Facebook statuses, I often rewrite them several times to make sure my tone and intention are clear and concise, and even then I'll think of a better way I should have said it later on. And as for these blog entries? I put them out on a weekly schedule because I'd endlessly revise them if I didn't give myself a deadline.

But why do I do that? I should at least address that, as long as I'm diving deep about this. What makes tracking the mind's inner workings so irresistible to the introvert? Because we're not just analyzing ourselves, we're also trying to guess how others will analyze us in turn... Maybe the fascination comes from trying to understand a complicated, intricate system with a lot of uncertainty in it. It would be hard to find a better example of that than human psychology. And I do spend a lot of time mentally examining minutiae, whether it's considering the motion of distant stars, or the way the plot of a favorite book is structured, or paying extra attention to the background orchestration of a good song.

All my life, even without actively meaning to, I have found myself taking something that seems random and chaotic and trying to break it down to its simplest elements. And maybe that's the most basic difference (see, I'm doing it right now!) between extroverts and introverts. We're all trying to understand the world around us, a world that seems sometimes to be just barely holding together, with so many unpredictable elements and random occurrences. An extrovert will jump in and take the macro view of things, maybe not caring so much about the inner workings of life, but getting out there and figuring out the broad strokes by participating. The introvert, on the other hand, will take in everything about a particular subject and analyze it until they get it.

Of course, no one is purely one way or the other, so we're all this odd amalgam of sometimes contradictory impulses, focused toward one goal: figuring out just what the hell is going on, and what we should do with that information... if anything. And I've found that not only are there things to be learned from being around people who are nothing like you, there's a lot to learn from those who very much like you, as well.

A Tale of Two Cosmoses*

There are precious few pieces of pop culture that have influenced me the way the original Cosmos series did in 1980. I have no idea how I found out about it, or what motivated me to sit down and watch the first episode, but I do know exactly where you could find me for the next twelve Sunday evenings during the fall of that year. I would be faithfully watching Carl Sagan and his Spaceship of the Imagination soaring through a Universe that was suddenly much bigger, more awe-inspiring and mysterious, than I had ever dreamed it could be, on the wings of the music of Vangelis.

Along this incredible journey, the epic saga of how humans learned this vast, all-encompassing story was embroidered with stories of those who discovered tantalizing pieces of the answers: Copernicus, Kepler, Newton (lots of European white dudes, yes, but hang on, that gets somewhat rectified later)... despite their differences in era and levels of education, these pioneers were curious people like me who just kept asking follow-up questions.

By that time, I had read just enough about outer space to know there was much more to learn. But I already had an inkling that it had some kind of tangible link to my terrestrial life. In fact, my first real brush with the concept of death didn't come with the tragic passing of a relative, but instead with my discovery of a Time-Life photo essay about the life cycle of stars. Knowing that the sun, something that seemed like the ultimate constant, would one day burn out upended my concept of life and its meaning.

Cosmos took me further into these thoughts, taking something as unsettling as that idea and putting it into the largest possible context. I learned how everything in the Universe, as small as atoms or as huge as galactic superclusters, changes on vastly different scales of time. Everything is born, lives, dies, and is born again in some drastically different form. Out of the ashes of stars come planets... from the dust and dirt of planets comes life itself. Something disturbing was transformed into something uniquely comforting.

And that, I think, is the most important part of the whole experience. Our short, human lives are simultaneously exalted and trivialized when you put them in the context of all time and space. When you come to understand that you are a part of a vast tapestry of not only places and people, but worlds, suns, and galaxies, every single one of them brimming with the same potential for wonder that we have here on Earth, it suddenly brings you outside of yourself. This, I could tell even at the age of eight, was what it was all about.

Now, thirty-four years later, I'm watching Cosmos again, a new incarnation that was produced by Seth McFarlane, probably the only creative mind with enough clout to get Fox (Fox!) to air it. Carl Sagan passed away almost exactly at the midpoint between the airing of these two series, but his torch has been picked up by the equally charismatic host Neil deGrasse Tyson. The most vital key to the success of the show, of course, is to have it narrated by a scientist who can bridge the gap between the layperson and the scientifically literate, enlightening and entertaining them both. Both Carl and Neil have the sort of relatability that can pique the general public's interest in the history of the Universe, and in this sense we have to consider that Tyson was perhaps the one that the continuing story of Cosmos was waiting for.

Of course, some time has passed since the original Cosmos aired. There are things in common knowledge that were mere conjecture back then. We weren't quite sure that black holes actually existed in 1980, they were more mathematical concepts that hadn't been actually found yet, never mind that we would soon realize that one formed the heart of many galaxies, including our own! Mysterious dark matter, and the 84% of the Universe that it compromises, was unknown as well. Planets orbiting other stars? Lakes of liquid methane on Saturn's moon Titan? Solid evidence that water used to flow on Mars? None of this stuff was part of the original show, but now can be included to give us a much clearer view of how amazing -- and amazingly weird -- the Universe is.

Going back and looking at the original Cosmos now, I'm stunned by how glacially paced it seems, how drawn out the biographical scenes are. I should point out that, aside from the late Dr. Sagan, the writing team behind the show is actually the same as the original. Carl's widow, Ann Druyan, and Steve Soter, apply the same kind of human's-eye-view and overall sense of wonder of the 1980 version.

One of the many things that the new Cosmos does right is to show that it just wasn't white European men who were figuring out the basic laws of the Universe. Until now, it always has seemed like after the decline of the Greek and Roman empires, no one even thought seriously about science until the Renaissance. In truth, during that time it passed into the hands of their Middle Eastern brethren. Algebra? The numerals that are now used the world over? Those are Arab inventions. And most of the stars are still called by Anglicizations of their original Arabic names. The new Cosmos spends a fair amount of time outlining these contributions, while also suggesting that it was the use of toxic, brain-altering lead in Roman plumbing that led to the European Dark Ages. While they were literally drinking themselves stupid, the Byzantines and Egyptians kept the flame of knowledge alive.

After all that praise, I do have one quibble with the new series... In general, I think it's a mistake to call any scientific concept a "fact", no matter how well established it is. The whole reason that science works as a path of rational thought is that it is never above revision, or even wholesale page-one correction when necessary. Nothing is ever proven definitively, we just keep constructing more and more accurate models of the Universe and the way it works. One unexpected experiment result could prove that any theory is in need of refinement. Even gravity itself isn't a "fact". It's called "the theory of gravity" for good reason... no matter how much Newton and the three hundred years of scientists who came after him considered his version of gravity as gospel, Einstein showed that they didn't have it quite right. Close enough for most practical purposes, but not exactly.

With that in mind, I'm not sure why scientists in the public eye keep saying that things are "facts". Tyson comes flat out in the new Cosmos and calls evolution a fact. Look, I understand why it's good to be clear that there's a near-unanimous scientific consensus about its accuracy, and to not leave a lot of room for ambiguity, but if a slight tweak to our understanding of it were to come along next week, it would definitely undermine that sense of authority.

Case in point: the reason politicians are dragging their feet on climate change is that, while there's a definite consensus that humanity's actions are warming the planet, whenever politicians ask climatologists if they've proven it, or if they have *all* the data, they have to honestly say "no". That sound bite then gets trotted out by everyone who has a vested interest in denying it, and any action gets tabled until some time when we know more than we do. But that's exactly the point... science is in the business of predicting what will happening the future, the only way it can be 100% sure that projections are right is when the predicted future actually happens. We'll *never* have all the data, but at some point you just have to consider that we know what we're talking about.

I say that we should be more focused on educating people on the definition of scientific "fact" and "theory", instead of making it sound like we have the ability to put the finishing touches on anything. In science, as it should be, everything is a work in progress. It's the only way to keep an open mind.

The final episode of the original Cosmos series was titled "Who Speaks for Earth?". The story goes that Carl Sagan wanted to talk about the possibility of intelligent life on other planets (one of his pet projects), but Steve Soter pointed out that what was needed more in the midst of a nuclear-age Cold War was for people to understand that *we* are the intelligent life. The result is a stunning hour-long mosaic of human life on Earth, with Carl presenting the idea that *we*, as far as we know, are the most advanced beings in the Universe, and perhaps we should take some time to remember this, and starting acting like it.

People joke all the time about how intelligent we can really be, considering the way we treat each other and our surroundings, but I think -- and I believe Carl would back me up on this -- that we can never reach our potential if we continually put ourselves down by pointing out our shortcomings. That's as true for mankind itself as it is for us as individuals. Maybe we really are the very first beings who have looked out into space and are able to start comprehending our place in it. Maybe we're the initial generation of a grand, galaxy-spanning civilization... but first we've got to get our house in order. To treat ourselves as less than worthy would be a crime against the Universe itself.

As Carl was fond of saying, we live on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. What Cosmos did for me, and what I hope it will do for my daughter when I share it with her (it will be, after all, only three short years until she'll be my age when I first saw it), is to show simultaneously how utterly insignificant and important we are, and how there's really no conflict in thinking both ways. Ultimately, scale doesn't matter -- there's as much wonder in a single drop of water as in all the vast rings of Saturn. It's right here around us, and it all makes sense, if you just keep asking the right questions.

(*Yep, that's the correct plural of "cosmos", but it seems a little silly to me, because as Carl says at the beginning of the original series, cosmos means "all that is, all that ever was, and ever will be". Who needs more?)

What a Grown Man Learned from Frozen

I'm sure I'll look back and be glad that the first movie my wife and I took our daughter to was Frozen. We started out as a couple who watched movies endlessly in our early dating days, and didn't really slow down until parenthood put the brakes on adult-oriented pop culture consumption, as it tends to do. In truth, I didn't know that much about the movie going into it, other than that it featured two princesses at odds, a talking snowman, and supposedly above-average songwriting.

They say that the best children's entertainment is that which works on two levels. There's the basic storytelling level that kids react to, full of action, adventure, and magic, and then there's the way that the same tales can affect us as adults, who bring along with them a lifetime of experience, not to mention just as much time spent learning the language of storytelling. And that's why I was almost completely unprepared for how good and borderline-subversive it is. It's not just another princess-overcomes-adversity tale, and I'm hoping that by writing this I can figure out exactly what it is that made it all click for me. Because click it did.

The best part of Frozen for adults, I think, is the way it actively upends so many fairy tale tropes that we've been exposed to all our lives. It's deliciously subversive in the way it does this, in a way I'd never really expect from Disney. These are the folks who created the Disney Princess line of products, for crying out loud, which to me is the apotheosis of soul-sucking corporate marketing.

Let me quickly get this off my chest before I continue... There are two lines of toys and products that my wife and I actively steer our daughter away from: Barbie and Disney Princesses. Barbie is one that's managed to weather the backlash that's been directed at it from all corners, mostly concerning the way it portrays unrealistic female body image and promotes materialism. I understand, dolls need dream homes to live in and veterinary clinics to run, but it's all just too much, and is more valuable as nostalgia than a forward-thinking 21st-century toy. We much prefer Lalaloopsy, where the dolls are all different skin tones, have distinct individual characteristics, and don't send mixed body image signals because they're modeled after ragdolls.

Disney Princesses, though, seem like a different animal altogether. The product line began when a Disney executive saw little girls showing up for Disney on Ice shows in homemade character costumes, and wondered why the company wasn't selling them itself. The sight of these mashed-up crossovers still kind of creeps me out. Princesses from all eras, just standing around prettily on a pink background, refusing to look at each other? Eegh. (My problem with "princesses" in general is something for a different post... wanting to be treated as special because of nothing based on merit or character, but because of who your parents are? Don't think so.)

I had heard that Frozen was something kind of different, and I was heartened by already having seen Brave, Wreck-It Ralph and Tangled, which came before it. In them I saw twists on conventions, a glimmer that Disney is realizing that the way to stay relevant is to toy with the established story structures of which they were the architects. And I sat down in the theater with my family with all these expectations running through my head.

What I got to see was an apparently deliberate upending of the whole accepted, Disneyfied princess myth. All you really need to be aware of (and spoilers follow, so fairly warned be ye, says I) is that there are two heroines in this one, sisters who are also princesses. The older one, Elsa, has become queen after the untimely death of her parents, and she harbors a secret (and apparently uncontrollable) magical command of ice and snow. Her sister Anna, who has been kept away from her almost their whole lives because of these dangerous powers, doesn't understand what brought on their estrangement. At least, not until an emotional confrontation between them leads to their kingdom being plunged into a deep winter.

The story really hinges on two prophecies, the first being that Anna, being slowly frozen solid by an accidental blast of her sister's powers, can only be saved by "an act of true love". The second is one that Elsa learns regarding her powers, being told that "fear will be your enemy". She takes this to mean that she must hide her powers from those who would judge her, at least until she can learn to control them.

This is where the convention-breaking starts. As for the first prophecy, the storytellers play it like a straight romance subplot, leading those of us with countless fairy tales under our belts to assume that what Anna really needs is to find her true love. But what saves her ultimately isn't a kiss from her "prince charming", but is her own self-sacrifice, throwing herself in front of an assassin's sword meant to cut down her sister.

The second prophecy has just as much of a twist, because it turns out that the fear that prevents Elsa from being able to control her powers isn't coming from those around her. If you keep track over the course of the film, you start to notice that her powers seem to get out of control when Elsa herself is sad or worried. It becomes (if you forgive the choice of metaphor) like a snowball rolling down a hill... her lack of control keeps her internal fear in a feedback loop, which is what the prophecy meant all along. It's been a long time since I've seen such a successful metaphor for shame and insecurity.

The main thing that everyone remembers from the film is the simple/complex/stunning song "Let It Go", which more than anything else I'm afraid will become an instant cliché. After all, who doesn't remember how jaw-droppingly *good* they thought "My Heart Will Go On" was the very first time they heard it? But while there are kids all over YouTube singing along with Elsa's signature song, the words and intention behind it reveal that it deserves to be remembered as so much more.

Look at it in terms of the story: this girl, who has grown up shut away from everyone -- even her sister -- ever since she was a child because of powers she can't control, accidentally lets her emotions slip and reveals her true nature to everyone. Afraid of what everyone will think of her, she runs away to a distant mountaintop... and there has a kind of epiphany. Over the course of three minutes, she realizes that she no longer has to worry about what anyone thinks. Her secret's out, and there's no longer a reason she shouldn't just own it and become who she really has been all along. There's even one line that's probably the last thing I'd expect to hear in a Disney song: "No right, no wrong, no rules for me!" Moral relativism in a princess song... whoa. (It helps if you know that the songwriters composed it early in the story process, when Elsa was supposed to be a more conventional villain.)

Those aren't the only convention-upsettings, either. A sheltered girl who suddenly finds true love over the course of a boy-girl duet? They've got that, *but* it later turns out that said boy is really just a power-hungry lowlife who's faking it (he later finds out that Anna has a wicked right hook). Even the traditional romantic male lead turns out to be almost totally unnecessary. He's more of a red herring than anything else. At its core, the story really is about two sisters solving the problems between them. What other $300-million grossing movie can you say that about? Frozen definitely plays to a parents' film cliché knowledge, too -- the movie's best laugh, for me at least, is when a riderless sleigh plummets off a cliff, crashes into a snowbank... and then explodes like a 1978 Pinto.

What we come away with is a fairy tale -- which traditionally has taken internal conflicts and made them external in the form of dragon- or witch-shaped metaphors -- and sucker-punched us by re-internalizing its own tropes. The problems, as well as the answers, come from inside. It's a whole new, smarter level of storytelling, and I'm pleased that my daughter is stepping in on the ground floor. And it's shown me that there's still originality out there, and that those in charge of the entertainment our kids will grow up loving really do have something new to say.