Momentary Language

A radical House cleaning?

So Dr. House loses all of his Baker Street Irregulars with one fell swoop? Thank goodness, I say! The show was hemorrhaging interest; an extreme move like this might be just what it needs to bring its dead heart back to life.

P.S. Did you notice House's address? 221? Remind you of anyone else?

Massah and Meribah

Massah and Meribah

She said, I think it’s time we passed the test. The cars were
Backed up along I-95 from the Cross-Bronx to
The Hudson River Parkway. It was noon when we hit
Manhattan. I told James I didn’t know the city
And he smiled; he’d spent a summer here. He wanted to find
A job in a gallery. We headed down the parkway
Toward the island south of Houston. The Hudson glinted dully, black
And unmoving on my right. To my left, beyond
James, grey stone flowed like sludge outside the window, only
Every second arteries of light would pierce the pulsing
Sooty wall which penned the city, grimly thrust toward the water.
I had James drop me off in Washington Square and took the
Subway north back toward Columbia. I had a friend
Enrolled there said St. Luke’s would give the test for free. No
Questions. The subway smelled like urine; I scuffed my foot against
The floor and felt the train slip liquid in its tunneled
Course beneath the concrete dermis of the street. When we
Emerged onto the el I can’t remember. I
Thought the slip of metal under skin was never quite so
Painless, and I felt afraid not only for the loss
Of the surf that hammered gently beneath my ears, but
The loss of something like my innocence. Pneumatic
Doors spat me onto the street. I remembered the
Name Morningside Drive from my father; he’d gone to
Yeshiva somewhere around Columbia, on
125th Street or something. He said he’d been
On the dome of the tower and had seen the city
Pulsing below. I found St. Luke’s as a shadow on my
Face; it swallowed me within its cool stone silences.

Directions and misdirections: each fading form in
Fluorescent rooms a momentary glimpse of the loss of
Life, mixed in with life’s blood, pulsing in some veins. She said,
We’ve done too much together to keep guessing. I think
It’s time we took the test. So she returned home to her
Women’s clinic which gives the test for free, and I went to
St. Luke’s. The corridors swam with motes of light as I
Found the hall, a narrow waiting-room with rows of seats along
The wall hung with drawn, expectant faces. We would not
Find out that day – that much we knew for sure, each heartbeat
Muffled so as not to offend the walking dead. I sat until
The patient flow decreased to a trickle. A woman
With starched skin nodded as her uniform crackled, and led
Me into a bare room with a counter, faucet and
Centrifuge. We sat beside each other at the
Counter, and I clenched my fist as she slapped my vein and drove
The needle home. I thought I felt my skin’s elastic pop as
The needle tunneled, thirsty, into my arm. The nurse said, Pump your
Fist, and crimson raced into the plastic vial of the syringe.
She changed vials three times, each time frenetic to stave each precious
Drop with the rubber tubing with which she’d bound my arm’s
Tides: the blood rushed and receded with each new vial. I turned my head
And gazed at deep red froth reflected in the chrome of the faucet and
Thought about the miracle of water. She’d tapped my arm with just
A toothpick’s length of steel and brought forth a flowing, purpling
Stream. That I was even there was proof enough I’d still dispute
A God who’d bring forth water from a stone, and now would have it
Poisoned as it was consumed: I’d eat of knowledge even unto
Death. I dreamed a woman’s flesh, hidden, mucous-covered and thirsty,
And stirred to find my own inner body bridged with metal to the
Vacuum of the world. The gurgling stopped, my pulse obscured by
The buzzing of the lamps within my ears.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Then the empty
Hall, the wall devoid of faces, and corridor of
Lights alive with buzzing fluorescence. The wind whipped across
The faces of the world as I exited into
New York. I half-expected water to spring up upon
The desert of concrete as each footfall struck the pavement, as
Each siren’s screamed dispute had challenged someone to respond. I might have
Died at any point in my life and it would have been enough,
But I lived to count my pulse in colored vials in a
Room in St. Luke’s. It would be nice to think that spilling blood were
Test enough, that now there’d be no need for proof, or other signs,
Or love, a thought gurgled in corridors within my brain. But
Spilling blood merely became a tidewater for other tests.

On the subway to Soho I dissolved into the
Mass of people merging south. James had looked at art
So long, he failed to notice the bandage on my arm.
We got into his car and slipped into the north-bound stream
Toward home. She’d gotten her results at home, but wouldn’t
Tell me until I’d gotten mine. That night as I lay
Staring at the inspiration of each sleeping breath,
I placed my hand gently on her beating heart. Her pulse
Seemed then as different from the life that pulsed within
My veins as the thick liquid that sat within those vials. That night my
Life called for measures other than the pounding of my tidal heart
Yet I could barely feel the loss of which my blood was the merest part.

Joseph Shieber
New Haven, December 1990

New Days

Nye dager

By Øyvind Rimbereid

Noen dager senere i mai
på vei ned fra Vålandstårnet.
Varmt, luften klar. Vi kunne se langt
forbi øyene. Talgje, Ombo, nesten helt inn
til innerst i Ryfylket. Og enda lenger i vest, utover sjøen
forbi der en bror til min mormor
ble bombet, forsvant. Det var da
jeg tenkte litt på at vi sier
”nye dager”. At vi med det
ikke mener gode dager
eller dårlige. Men bare
at dager skal
komme, dager komme.

© Gyldendal Nors Forlag AS 2000
From: Seine topografiar : dikt
(Oslo: Gyldendal, 2000)

New Days

A few days later in May
on the downward stairs of the Vålands tower.
Hot, the air clear. We could see
far over the islands and beyond. Talgje, Ombo, almost all the way
into the innermost part of Ryfylke. And still farther to the west,
over the sea
beyond the place where one of my mother's uncles
was bombed and disappeared. It was then I thought
a little about how we say
"new days." That with this we
mean not good days
or bad. Rather merely
that days will
come, days come.

Up-to-the-minute review of the special 2-hour episode of Grey's Anatomy

I think I just threw up a little in my mouth.

This just in: NY Times should take stats lessons from Mark Cuban

Tuesday's Times contains a story that reports on the work of two researchers, a Penn professor and a Cornell grad student, in demonstrating through statistical analyses a pervasive racial bias in the calling of fouls by officials in NBA games. The story contains passages that do a good job of explaining the strategy of the study to lay readers, such as the following one:

With their database of almost 600,000 foul calls, Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price used a common statistical technique called multivariable regression analysis, which can identify correlations between different variables. The economists accounted for a wide range of factors: that centers, who tend to draw more fouls, were disproportionately white; that veteran players and All-Stars tended to draw foul calls at different rates than rookies and non-stars; whether the players were at home or on the road, as officials can be influenced by crowd noise; particular coaches on the sidelines; the players’ assertiveness on the court, as defined by their established rates of assists, steals, turnovers and other statistics; and more subtle factors like how some substitute players enter games specifically to commit fouls.

Furthermore, the Times submitted the study to a panel of three experts, all of whom found the research to be sound.
Why, then, did the authors of the Times story pad it with !@#%ing irrelevancies?
They cite two current players, both African American, noting that

each said that they did not think black or white officials had treated them differently.

The authors also note that

Two African-American coaches, Doc Rivers of the Boston Celtics and Maurice Cheeks of the Philadelphia 76ers, declined to comment on the paper’s claims.

Hello?!? The point of the study -- as one of the experts solicited by the Times, Ian Ayres of the Yale Law School, notes -- is that it is reflective of

a growing consensus that a large proportion of racialized decisions is not driven by any conscious race discrimination, but that it is often just driven by unconscious, or subconscious, attitudes. When you force people to make snap decisions, they often can’t keep themselves from subconsciously treating blacks different than whites, men different from women.

Given this fact, it's little wonder that such trends would be invisible to casual observers ... and it should be obvious to anyone with even a passing acquaintance with critical thinking skills that such trends could only be established through sound statistical analysis. Furthermore, it should be equally obvious that the anecdotal reports of a few players or coaches in the NBA, whether African American or not, is not probative in the slightest. Indeed, such reports have no informational value at all.
The level of innumeracy and absence of critical acuity demonstrated by the Times in including this sort of irrelevant information in such stories is appalling -- almost as appalling as the fact that they were out-thought by Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who displayed eminent good sense in noting that

We’re all human. We all have our own prejudice. That’s the point of doing statistical analysis. It bears it out in this application, as in a thousand others.

Bible History #1

In keeping with the theme of yesterday's blog on Hitchens on religion, I thought it worthwhile to provide a link to the Professor Brothers' hilarious take on biblical history, a lecture on the Sodom and Gomorrah tale.