Vin Crosbie's Personal Blog

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Esoterica

Comment of Real Expertise

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For nearly 15 years, a loose confederation of New Media pundits who I’ll call ‘techno-utopians’ claimed that because average people can now express themselves online, free of moderation by media companies, the quality of public discussions would improve and the best ideas rise to acclaim. Yet the reality has been quite different than that. he reason why it’s different is the results of what psychologists term the Dunning-Kruger Effect in which too many average people believe their cognitive ability and wisdom is as great, and often greater, than experts about the topic being discussed. A truly intelligent average person will defer to established expertise because it is almost always arduously gained from first-hand knowledge and deep experience. By contrast, the less intelligent a person, the more dumb and unaware he is of what actual expertise entails. He will too often believe that his own opinions about the topic discussed are equal, or even superior, to those of experts’. (The very worst cases of this moreover can be motivated or reinforced by resentment he might feel against experts or other classes of people who’ve achieved more in their careers than he has his.) The overall result is that the participation of so many of the dumber and unaware average people in online public discussions has not just lowered the levels of discourse but too often spewed smogs of miasmic discord and disinformation into those discussions. Unwitting Techno-utopians be damned! As the American biochemist and author Isaac Asimov remarked during 1980, “The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’ ” His remark was about his own nation, but is no less true throughout the online world 40 years later. In social media, I am becoming apocalyptically weary of American plumbers who can expertly unclog a drain but who also purport to have expertise about the macro-economic impact on the EU of BREXIT; of used beer wholesalers who profess Constitutional law expertise; of used car salesmen, who though themselves untraveled, offer insights into the comparative structures of national healthcare systems here and abroad. Et. al. I’ll willingly accept their respective expertise about pipe water flow capacities, about alcohol-by-volume levels of brews, or about the suspension systems of 2003 Toyotas, but not about topics about which they don’t have any actual expertise. What […]

‘Kesari’

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Thanks to streaming video websites such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, and the Criterion Channel, I’m enjoying many of the best films in the world, not just those few available at my local ‘art house’ cinema. Last night’s was Kesari (‘Saffron’), this year’s Bollywood film about the 1897 Battle of Saragarhi, in which 21 Sikhs fighting for the British Raj held off 10,000 to 12,000 Afghan warrior attacking their small fort. As an American, I wasn’t aware of that battle, for which all 21 Sikhs were posthumously award the Indian Order of Merit, that nation’s equivalent of the British Victoria Cross or American Medal of Honor. Kesari, is one of this year’s top ten box office films in India, is reminiscent of other ‘hopelessly outnumbered’ war films, such as the 1964 film Zulu (starring Michael Caine in his first major role) about the 1879 Battle of Rorke’s Drift (150 British soldiers vs. 4,000 Zulu warriors) or the 1962 film The 300 Spartans or 2007 film 300, both of which were about the ancient Battle of Thermopylae (in reality a few thousand Spartans against 70,000 to 100,000 Persian warriors). Good war film, yet with a minor romantic subplot. (And being a Bollywood film, at some point in the 21 Sikhs must dance and sing!) Starring the Canadian Akshay Kumar, India’s highest-paid actor, the fourth highest-paid in the world. Available on Netflix, in Hindi with English-subtitles.

Comic Book Films [2010s] Versus Class Action Films [1950’s]: Part Three

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[Viewing this on a smartphone? If you don’t see the video referenced, here is its hyperlink: https://youtu.be/jGc-K7giqKM ] Finally, here’s a third video comparing the comic book superhero action movies of today against action movies of the past. Again, I’m using Akira Kurosaw films the 1950s to contrast with current movies.

Comic Book Films [2010s] Versus Class Action Films [1950’s]: Part Two

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[Viewing this on a smartphone? If you don’t see the video referenced, here is its hyperlink: https://youtu.be/jZSRxp-dJ-Q ] Here’s a second video comparing the comic book superhero action movies of today against action movies of the past. Again, I’m using Japanese films from the 1950s. In this case, films from director Akira Kurosawa. Hear how the narrator of this video, a different narrator and writer than from my last example , contrasts action films of today versus then.

Comic Book Films (2010’s) versus Classic Action Films (1950’s). The Winner Is …

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[Viewing this on a smartphone? If you don’t see the video referenced, here is its hyperlink: https://youtu.be/jZSRxp-dJ-Q ] No, sorry!  My young friends, the films about Marvel or DC comic book superheroes or the past five ‘Star Wars’ films aren’t — unlike what some of my under age-30 (or even some under age-40) friends tell —  me “the greatest action movies ever made!” I’ve given up watching those films, with their leaden plots, chaotic actions sequences, and think characterizations. And because approximately eight out of the ten top box office hits last year were sequels of those films, this means I no longer go to the cinema as much as I had for decades. You want great actions films, go online and look to the past. Here is the first of three blog posts I’m posting that compare today’s comic book superhero or ‘Star Wars’ films with better actions films of the past. Because the ‘Star Wars’ films themselves are based upon 1950’s Japanese samurai films (known as Jidaigeki films in Japanese, a term borrowed in ‘Star Wars’ as “Jedi”), let’s start there. Compare how the master director Akira Kurosawa directed action in Seven Samurai (1954), considered by most serious critics as the best action film ever made. The narrator of the YouTube video above is himself a little dull, but his points aren’t when comparing the direction of today’s comic book superhero or ‘Star Wars’ films with that of this Japanese classic action film.

My Guilty Pleasure of Zatoichi

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This post is for the benefit of my local friend Rob the Screenwriter whose knowledge of contemporary (say, after 1990) films is broad, but who hasn’t yet discovered most films from the 80 years earlier. Film Comment, the magazine of the Film Society of Lincoln Center, has long had a feature called ‘Guilty Pleasures’ in which famous people from the film industry list favorite films that they’re embarrassed or shy to admit that they like (such as Martin Scorsese love of ‘The Ten Commandments’). Although I’m not inside the film industry, merely work for a media school, my ‘guilty pleasure’ is Japan’s 26-film ‘Zatoichi’ series produced from 1962 to 1989. I’m sucker for extreme ‘high-concept’ films, movies predicated on so simple a concept that explaining it isn’t an ‘elevator pitch’ (i.e., something that can be said in no more than 30-seconds), but what I call a ‘stepladder pitch’. For example, when I heard that the concept of the film ‘John Wick’ was simply that a retired hitman wants revenges after thieves steal his car and kill his dog, I knew I wanted to see that film! Likewise, the ‘Zatoichi’ series, which is based upon the ‘high concept’ idea that the best swordsman in medieval Japan happened to be a blind masseuse. Yeah, you got that right! Except that concept is embellished a bit more than just the dozen words I mentioned. The ‘high concept’ is that the best swordsman in medieval Japan happened to be an itinerant blind masseuse who liked to drink and gamble and was always failing at love.  Got it now?  Zatoichi is an ‘easy come, easy go’, affable sort who just likes a good meal, good drink, good dice game, and good conversation, but woe be those who exceed his patience (as this video shows) by double-dealing or oppressing people! Based upon a character created by novelist Kan Shimozawa (born Umetani Matsutaro in 1892) who was inspired by an actual blind yakuza swordsman from centuries ago, and played for 27 years by the wonderful actor tor Shintaro Katsu (born Toshio Okumura in 1931), Zatoichi (‘low-ranking, blind person number one”) wanders medieval Japan, getting entrapped in intrigue arising from his good nature and love of sake and dice games, requiring him to right wrongs, save kids or kimono-clad damsels in distress, and fight samurai and assassins in the pay of corrupt aristocrats or corrupt bureaucrats. He never gets the girl, […]

The Best Brewery in America?

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At 3:59 p.m. on a former farm 20 miles (32 km) into the woods of rural Massachusetts, 150 people, most between the ages of 21 and 40, and from at least a half dozen U.S. states, queue in the dirt swept by winter winds behind a large, green aluminium shed no more than a decade old. Its door opens for the day at 4 p.m., but only for four hours. By 5 p.m., the queue outside the opened door will be 350-people long.   This is the Tree House Brewing Company of Monson, Massachusetts. Hundreds have traveled to this unlikely location because Tree House is arguably the best artisinal brewer in the United States. In BeerAdvocatecom‘s ranking by thousands of people of the top 250 beers brewed in the U.S., three of the top five ( indeed, seven of the top U.S. 20) are from this shed, including the top beer.   Tree House doesn’t distribute its products to pubs, restaurants, or stores. Its beer can only be gotten here. Yet none of its beer can be drunk here because the brewery doesn’t have a pub license. The first few hundred people waiting in queue will be allowed to buy a limited number of cans of beers (I bought two six-packs for $43), although those towards the back of the queue might be too late. An hour after the door opens, one of three of that day’s fresh-brewed varieties has sold out. By 6 p.m., a second is out. And by 8 p.m., no matter what, the door closes for another day.

The Oncoming Labor Storm

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The rise of ‘right-wing’ politicians in post-industrial countries — politicians such as Donald Trump of the United States of America, Marie Le Pen of France, the late Jörg Haider and his successors in Austria, and others, and similar movements, such as the Tea Party movement in the U.S. — are only the beginning of what will probably be a 20 to 50 years of reactionary protests as major countries (indeed, all countries eventually) now transition from the Industrial Era into the Informational Era. The 2020’s will likely be a particularly tumultuous decade. The Informational Era denotes a period in human history when most economies are based upon performing services rather than manufacturing products. The U.S. have now entered that period and become ‘post-industrial’. Part of that transition has involved low-skilled manufacturing and industrial jobs (such as manufacturing thread or clothing, electronic devices, or simple furnitures and supplies)  migrating to other countries where lower wages are paid. That part of the transition has been occuring during the past 40 to 50 years. However, another major and often overlooked part of this transition from Industrial to Informational involves robotics. For examples, very many manufacturing jobs in the U.S. have been replaced by robotics. An industrial robot controlled by someone who has a master’s degree in engineering can replace anywhere from several to a dozen or more manual laborers. These machines pay for themselves in only a few years. This revolution in robotic has transformed manufacturing in many countries. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps more than a million, industrial jobs in the U.S. have been lost due to robotics replacing workers, yet industrial manufacturing output in the U.S. has risen to record levels, exceeding output during the Industrial Era. Another reason why this new era is being called Informational is that technology has developed machines that can now use information (i.e, their programming) to create actual products in ways light years beyond what the simple Industrial Era mechanical loom could do. Moreover, that robotics revolution has begun to invade those countries were industrial jobs have migrated due to low wages.  Earlier this year, the South China Morning Post of Hong Kong reported that one factory in China’s Jiangsu province used robots to replace 60,000 workers, and that 600 other companies in that province were drafting similar restructuring plans. In Taiwan, Foxconn, which manufacturers computer products for Apple, has spent a total of $500 million on robotics, […]

25 July 2016

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Late July and early August are slow times for me. My consulting practices slows down as clients in the northern hemisphere go on holiday plus I’m on summer holiday from teaching my New Media Business course at Syracuse University’s graduate school (although I annually during August update its eight-year old syllabus for the latest changes and developments in media business).  So, in my spare time, I’m doing cooking and drinking (no, not that type of drinking!) I mention new media, which is all technology-based, and cooking because even the later subject is being changed by technology. I’m not talking about molecular cooking or other esoteric cuisines, but about even such things as simple as outdoor grilling.  Consider the robotic BratWurst Bot, presented at the Stallwächter Party 2016 summer political festival in Berlin where it perfectly cooked more than 200 sausages autonomously. People grilling meats outdoors is neolithic, which you might says means somewhat traditional. On a nice, sunny, summer day, however, I wouldn’t mind having one of these contraption—provided it came with an option that also automatically serves German beers! While on the subject of drinking, the BBC has collected nine famous drinking quotes from Ernest Hemingway. Beans, I say. This past weekend, The New York Times published an excellent guide to cooking beans. By the way, if you get a chance, check out how Humanitas, a retirement home in Deventer, the Netherlands, provides the elderly with the care and social interaction that they need to remain physically and psychologically healthy, by providing free lodging in the retirement home for six students who spend at least 30 hours a month with the 160 elderly residents living there, helping the elderly whether prepare their meals, shopping with them, or teaching them to use computers or even paint street art! Great video about it at this website. Am listening today, via YouTube, to ElectroHouseBangers‘ Best Music 24/7 Live Stream | Best Remixes Of Popular Songs | Summer Dance Charts Mix 2016 | New Pop #  

Bucolic Connecticut

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My native state of Connecticut lacks high mountains and grand canyons, but its scenic wealth is its lush and gently rolling forests and small farms. That is what attracted most of the American Impressionist landscape painters to it a century ago. The tiny state has been one national park, the Weir Farm National Historic Site in the town of Wilton. It’s the 60-acre former home of artist J. Alden Weir (1852-1919), formerly of New York City, who owned homes here and 90 miles (145 km) east across Connecticut in my native town of Windham. Other late 19th Century and early 20th Century American Impressionists, such as  Childe Hassam, Albert Pinkham Ryder, John Singer Sargent, and John Twachtman, also visited Weir and painted here. Weir’s landscapes hang in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and many other museums. My sister-in-law and I’m are fortunate to have inherited two Weir landscapes, one of which the artist apparently gave to my great-grandfather a century ago. Earlier this month while visiting Weir Farm, about 45 minutes from where I now live in Connecticut, I decided to ‘channel’ Weir’s vision through my digital single-lense reflex camera.