by Nate Sheff

We trained our dog Gemini using positive reinforcement techniques, “clicker training.” She can sit, give handshakes and high fives, roll over, and we never used negative reinforcement to teach her.

That’s all true, but what do I mean by negative reinforcement? A lot of us assume that it has something to do with punishment, whereas positive reinforcement involves rewarding good behavior, but this assumption isn’t strictly true. To reinforce a behavior is to make that behavior more likely. Giving Gemini a treat when she sits after I make a certain gesture positively reinforces the association between my gesture and her sitting, because it makes that behavior more likely next time I make the gesture. I’m introducing something Gemini wants to strengthen a particular connection between my gesture and her response. On the other hand, when I strengthen a connection by removing something she doesn’t want, I’m negatively reinforcing the behavior.

Punishment involves introducing something unpleasant to make a particular behavior less likely. Sternly telling Gemini that she’s not allowed to eat the cat food is my attempt to punish her, introducing something unpleasant (disappointed dad voice) to make a behavior less likely (eating her sisters’ food). This hasn’t worked yet – maybe I’m not doing the voice right – but my point is that punishment isn’t negative reinforcement. Reinforcement is about making a behavior more likely; punishment is about making a behavior less likely.

This is a nice example of how technical terminology can be subtly misleading when we’re not careful. Read more »

by Brooks Riley

by Ed Simon

“Men intoxicated are sometimes stunned into sobriety.” —Lord Mansfield (1769)

Today marks eight years since I had my last drink. Or maybe yesterday marks that anniversary; I’m not sure. It was that kind of last drink. The kind of last drink that ends with the memory of concrete coming up to meet your head like a pillow, of red and blue lights reflected off the early morning pavement on the bridge near your house, the only sound cricket buzz in the dewy August hours before dawn. The kind of last drink that isn’t necessarily so different from the drink before it, but made only truly exemplary by the fact that there was never a drink after it (at least so far, God willing). My sobriety – as a choice, an identity, a life-raft – is something that those closest to me are aware of, and certainly any reader of my essays will note references to having quit drinking, especially if they’re similarly afflicted and are able to discern the liquor-soaked bread-crumbs that I sprinkle throughout my prose. But I’ve consciously avoided personalizing sobriety too much, out of fear of being a recovery writer, or of having to speak on behalf of a shockingly misunderstood group of people (there is cowardice in that position). Mostly, however, my relative silence is because we tribe of reformed dipsomaniacs are a superstitious lot, and if anything, that’s what keeps me from emphatically declaring my sobriety as such.

There are, for sure, certain concerns about propriety that have a tendency to gag these kinds of confessions – I’ve pissed in enough alleyways in three continents that you’d think the having done it would embarrass me more than the declaring of it, but here we are. There’s also, and this took some time to evolve, issues of humility. When I put together strings of sober time in the past, and over a decade and a half I tried to quit drinking thirteen times, with the longest tenure a mere five months, I was loudly and performatively on the wagon. In my experience that’s the sort of sobriety that serves the role of being antechamber to relapse, a pantomime of recovery posited around the sexy question of “Will he or won’t he drink again?” I remember sitting in bars during this time period – I still sat the bar drinking Diet Coke during that stretch – and having the bartender scatter half-empty scotch tumblers filled with iced tea around the bar so that when friends arrive, they’d think I’d started drinking again. Get it?! So, this time around I wanted to avoid the practical jokes, since in the back of my mind I’d already decided that the next visit to the bar wouldn’t necessarily have ice tea in those glasses. Which is only tangentially related to my code of relative silence for the last half-decade – I was scared that the declaration would negate itself, and I’d find myself passed out on my back on that sidewalk again. So, at the risk of challenging those forces that control that wheel of fate, let me introduce myself – my name is Ed and I’m an alcoholic. Read more »

Shadow self-portrait in the raging waters of the river Eisack as it flows through Franzensfeste, South Tyrol.

by Carol A Westbrook

We bought a little house in a development called Timber Trails, Oak Brook, IL in December of 2019. Our house was old and in need of repair, but the lot was very large—almost an acre in size. It was full of ancient oak trees, some almost two centuries old, providing a canopy of some thirty to fifty feet high. Our backyard was immediately adjacent to York Woods, a Du Page County Forest preserve, through which Salt Creek flowed. Soon we felt that we lived in these woods, with woodland animals our nearest neighbors.

There were dozens of chipmunks and squirrels with their funny antics; hungry rabbits to raid the garden; raccoons to raid the trash cans; there even was a fat, grumpy groundhog who lived under the deck, ready for hibernation—we expected to see him in the spring. Were we surprised to find that he was a she, who was followed around the yard by two adorable baby groundhogs! There were a surprising number of birds, even in winter. The non-migratory birds included sparrows, robins, one variety of blue jays, and the rare flash of red with the “purty,purty” call of the cardinal. Of the large mammals, we saw the occasional coyote, and numerous white-tailed deer.

During the spring and summer we’d see deer in groups of two or three does with their young fawns, and an occasional yearling tagging along. They’d browse our garden plants and shrubs, moving along to cross the street, always at the “Deer Crossing” sign. In winter, deer do not hibernate; instead they sleep a lot, minimizing activity and conserving energy. On warmer days they will walk the neighborhood and browse whatever edible plant material they find—usually from the plants in my garden! Many of the lone females who are out in the winter, looking for food, are pregnant, since rut (the mating season) happens in November. Read more »

by Mike Bendzela

The funeral director is a good guy, both sedate and friendly. I wait for him to wrap up his service in advancing rain before driving up to the site to close the grave. The mourners depart the gravesite but do not leave the cemetery. They hang out near their pickup trucks, some talking animatedly.

“Wait around awhile and you might be able to collect some returnables,” the director says. I look over: the mourners have already cracked open beers and canned “cocktails.”

Then I look at the urn, a small squat box made of “cultured marble,” perched on a pedestal over the pit I have dug and covered with plywood and hemlock boughs. “Forty is way too young,” I say. Before coming over, I searched the obituary online. Theoretically, I could have a son that age.

“Fentanyl, I’m pretty sure,” the director says, his tone lowered. “It’s worse than covid now.”

In 2021 and 2022, there were at least three covid victims interred in our cemetery; I know because I had to make out receipts for the families to receive government reimbursements for funeral expenses. I don’t know how many opioid deaths there have been.

“We have at least one of these going at any time now,” he says, meaning funerals for overdose deaths. “It’s that bad.”

As the rain picks up, the mourners scoot into their trucks with their beverages and drive off. No returnable deposits for me on this Day of Our Lord.

I put the urn into its hole in the same plot as the deceased man’s infant daughter. Yes, this place is a veritable garden of sorrow. Read more »

by Martin Butler

What do people want? Not such a simple question as it seems. Tom Turcich, the guy who recently walked around the world passing through 38 countries over seven years, claimed that from what he had experienced people just want to make a little money and hang out with their families, which sounds like a fairly hopeful conclusion, though we mustn’t forget that this was clearly not enough for Tom himself. If true, this simple answer leads on to other important questions. If most people have such modest wants, why would they care about the big political and ethical questions that philosophers agonise about? Might it be the case that equality, human rights, democratic representation and so on are pretty much beside the point for the majority? Why would those with a good enough life need to bother with such wider issues? We need to remember here that, historically, political ideals took off as real issues only when they entered people’s everyday lives rather than as abstract ideals debated by the intellectual few. The important struggles of the past – and present – have been prompted when people, or at least significant groups of them, were unable to enjoy an adequately resourced and secure life with their families which was not dependent on the whim of those in positions of power. So there certainly is a very clear connection between the modest wants that Tom Turcich identifies and the big political questions. He draws the conclusion that while people are on the whole good, he can’t say the same for the systems they often live under.

With the advent of mass media and the internet in particular our whole landscape has changed dramatically. For most of history the vast majority of people lived essentially local lives with little or no knowledge of a wider world picture. Now we  can know of the sufferings of people on the other side of the world as easily as we can the goings on in the next street or village, in fact often more easily. We can gain a sophisticated grasp of the latest scientific information on climate breakdown and the many other negative effects of humanity on the environment. The distinction between our own personal concerns and those issues which might be regarded as more remote and abstract becomes increasingly blurred. Read more »

by Ada Bronowski

It is a truth Disneylandly acknowledged that ‘when the world turns its back on you, you turn your back on the world’. A famous piece of advice given by the little meerkat from The Lion King encapsulates a philosophy that grounds not only the destinies of all the great Disney heroes, from the little mermaid to Pocahontas, but also a certain idea of the Good as a secret garden to be cultivated contra mundum, against and despite the world (and which eventually shall flourish and change it). An idea that perhaps above all others is losing its meaning for the vast majority of us today not only out of wild-capitalist callousness as from a basic instinct for survival which prefers to that Disney catchphrase, another old cartoon chestnut: ‘if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em’.

In a recent act of defiance, a French comedian, Blanche Gardin, whose award-winning one-woman shows have enshrined as one of the most fearless and successful straight-talking satirists of our times (and whom American audiences might have heard of by way of her indelible support and relationship with comedian Louis C.K.), stoked the embers of this dying idea. She publicly and provocatively turned down a job-offer from the TV platform Amazon Prime because the cachet was too high. This rebellious feat of virtue goes far beyond the rebuffing of a job. Gardin rebukes thereby a whole system, our world as it has become, in which big bucks flow senselessly for a select circle with no relation whatsoever with the real life of most people. She received a great deal of backlash from the ‘other side’, those who joined ‘em. If there is nobility in Gardin’s gesture, and if indeed it comes from a certain idea(l) of the Good, it is also suffused with the puritanical fire that Disney fantasies help keep alive but which only in fantasy worlds seem to yield happy endings. Read more »

When Bach was a Busker in Brandenburg

When Bach was a busker playing for humble coin
he’d set up his organ in the middle of a square
regardless of pigeons, ignoring the squirrels who sat
poised at its edges waiting for their daily bread
and work to build its impossible structure of intricacies,
assembling its pipes from the scaffold of arpeggios
of his baroque means, setting its stops and starts,
its necessary rests and quick resumptions,
seeing in his mind’s-eye each note to come
as he’d placed them just so on paper at his desk,
simultaneously hearing them as he knew they’d resonate
against eardrums in potential cathedrals of brains
even before a key was touched,
even before a bow was raised,
even before a slender column of breath
was blown into a flute, or tympani troubled the air,
he’d hear them as he saw them, strung
along a horizontal lattice of five lines
following the lead limits of a cleft,
soaring between and around each other
darting out, in and through, climbing, diving,
making unexpected lateral runs between boundaries,
touching sometimes the edge of chaos but
never veering there, understanding the limits of all,
so that now, having prepped for his street-corner concerto,
this then unknown would descend from his scaffold and share
with the ordinary world how a tuned mind works
in harvesting song from a universe of stars,
collecting their sweet sap, distilling it into a sonic portrait
of a universe that forever lies within the looped
horizon of things.

Jim Culleny, 2/22/22

by Mike O’Brien

I’ve spent the last month-and-some at my favourite pastoral retreat, a family cottage in eastern Ontario. Sitting among the trees and moss and overlooking a lake, it has many of the elements that might make for the ideal antidote to urban nuisances. Except that, with the increasing suburbanisation and peri-urbanisation of previously quaint quarters, the nuisances come to you. Usually on an overpowered boat or, God help me, rented jet-skis. Still, a province half-full of ill-raised barbarians isn’t enough to completely sap the salving powers of starry nights, intriguing critters and lush forests. While this physical environment does wonders for my mind and mood, better yet are the effects of the psychic environment that I create for myself when I am there. The change of location is an occasion to commit to a change of routine, chiefly a disconnection from the constant flow of digital information that usually attends my day. I read books at the cottage not because I don’t have books at home, but because I don’t read them there; instead I read the latest articles, listen to the latest podcasts, and watch the latest videos from dozens of sources.

I could just as easily continue to follow these patterns of consumption in cottage country. Despite what I like to tell people, I do in fact have internet access there (“I won’t use the internet” is close enough to “I can’t use the internet” to serve as not-too-dishonest explanation for why people should not expect me to know about or do about things during this period). Some years ago, line-of-sight wireless transmitter/receivers were installed around the lake, providing internet access to any household that wished to invest the money and bother required to install their own mast. Our household has not bothered to do so, but we are not embargoed from the world of instant information. Instead, the internet arrives through cellphones and janky assemblages of mobile hot-spots and USB cables. Read more »

Jesus Rafael de Soto. Penetrable, at Olana State Historical Site, New York.

Kinetic sculpture.

More here, here, and here.

by Rebecca Baumgartner

In the Black Mirror episode “Be Right Back” (2013), two romantic partners, Martha and Ash, move into Ash’s childhood home together. As they’re settling in for their first night in their new home, Ash finds a photo of himself as a little boy, one of the few left out after his mom had removed all the photos of Ash’s dad and brother after their deaths. “She just left this one here,” he says, “her only boy, giving her a fake smile.”

Martha says, “She didn’t know it was fake.”

“Maybe that makes it worse,” Ash says.

This theme – knowing how to tell what’s authentic and what’s not, the ability to understand the difference between performance and reality – is what the episode proceeds to dig into.

As it turns out, Ash dies in a car accident the day following that conversation. Martha is devastated and heartbroken. At his funeral, a friend says to her, “I can sign you up to something that helps…It will let you speak to him.” This turns out to be an AI service that culls data from a deceased person’s online posts to create a chatbot that can interact with users in the voice and style of the deceased person. The more active the deceased had been on social media, the better the data set, and the more true to life the chatbot will be. “The more it has, the more it’s him,” the friend explains. Initially, of course, Martha is horrified and insulted by the idea.

“It won’t be him,” she protests.

“No, it’s not,” her friend admits. “But it helps.” Read more »

by Barry Goldman

This article is the second in a series. The first is here.

Justice delayed is justice denied. Everyone agrees. Lawsuits should be brought in a timely manner. If too much time goes by before a case is adjudicated, witnesses become unavailable, memories fade, evidence is lost, and it becomes harder to reconstruct events. Also, if there is no timeliness requirement, the threat of a lawsuit hangs over the parties indefinitely, and it prevents them from moving on with their lives. Therefore, many systems have a rule.

The Rule in place at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), where I have arbitrated for many years, is 12206. It says this:

(a) Time Limitation on Submission of Claims

No claim shall be eligible for submission to arbitration under the Code where six years have elapsed from the occurrence or event giving rise to the claim.

So far so good. It’s a simple, clear, reasonable, bright line rule. Or so it appears. Let’s see how it works in practice.

Suppose the following: Old Mr. Murphy dies. Mrs. Murphy has never been involved in any decisions having to do with the family finances. She had her hands full managing the household and raising the kids. Now suddenly, without any background, training, education or experience, she finds herself responsible for a substantial sum of money. Though a friend of a friend she is introduced to Jones the Stockbroker.

Jones is an engaging young fellow, and he appears to Mrs. Murphy to be very knowledgeable with regard to stocks and bonds and mutual funds and variable annuities and real estate investment trusts and similar things. He is associated with a large and well-known brokerage firm.

Mrs. Murphy explains her situation, and young Jones appears to understand perfectly. He’s such a nice young man. Read more »

by Brooks Riley

by Joseph Shieber

If you spend enough time around cognitive psychologists, you’re likely to hear at least one of them complain about the notion of individual “learning styles.” Indeed, psychologists consider the concept of learning style — the idea that some students are visual learners, say, as opposed to auditory learners — to be one of the most enduring neuroscientific myths in education. 

In a recent piece for The Conversation, the psychologists Isabel Gauthier and Jason Chow suggest that one reason why the belief in learning styles is so persistent among educators is that “the evidence against the model mostly consists of studies that have failed to find support for it.” Gauthier and Chow go on to suggest that their research disconfirms predictions of the “learning style” hypothesis.

Gauthier and Chow are experts in studying individual differences in perceptual recognitional abilities. Their first studies involved evaluating people’s abilities visually to match or memorize objects from different categories, like birds or planes.

In that earlier work, Gauthier and Chow “found that almost 90% of the differences between people in these tasks were explained by a general ability [they] called ‘o’ for object recognition. [They] found that “o” was distinct from general intelligence, concluding that book smarts may not be enough to excel in domains that rely heavily on visual abilities.”

Of course, these results — given that they are limited to visual recognition — would have no bearing on the learning styles hypothesis. However, Gauthier’s and Chow’s more recent research has involved testing other perceptual modalities: first touch, and, more recently, listening. Read more »

by Jochen Szangolies

It’s no fun being sad. Indeed, great swaths of our culture seem aimed at fencing our little emotional gardens off against the intrusion of sadness, seeding them instead with what we think will germinate into little joys, grand hopes and profound happiness. ‘The pursuit of happiness’, after all, is enshrined in the American Declaration of Independence, and happiness economics is being touted as a balm for capitalism’s alienation of the working masses. The Kingdom of Bhutan tailors its governmental policies according to a ‘Gross National Happiness’-index, and yearly rankings of the World Happiness Report prompt breathless articles in the press asking what the Nordic countries do better than the rest of us. Clearly, we should strive for happiness, and where the weeds of sadness grow, uproot them and cast them out.

Yet, throughout my life, I have been drawn to the melancholia of sad songs, to a longing for I know not what, the gravity of overcast skies and rainy days. In a world that lionizes the pursuit of happiness, it’s easy to feel as if the strange comfort that sometimes hitches a ride with the oft-invoked ‘bittersweet’ nature of melancholia signals something deeply wrong with you, some malady that sets you at odds with the multitudes who, you’re given to understand, desire nothing so much as to be freed from the oppression of sadness, to emerge liberated into happiness.

I don’t think that’s right at all. Melancholia, to me, is a certain kind of surrender in the face of the unconquerable vastness of the world, and while that sounds negative at first, it at least holds the virtues of honesty and universality. Honesty, because the world really is vast and unconquerable, and you a spark caught up in its blaze, propelled upwards on the winds towards your eventual extinction. Universality, because so is everybody else. Read more »

Side of a very old railway carriage parked on a siding in Franzensfeste, South Tyrol.

by Nils Peterson

On a small paper bag maybe from a bookstore, one side Romeo’s soliloquy, “But soft! What light from yonder window breaks?” On the other side, these words: “Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer’s wife. Their house was small, for the lumber to build it had to be carried by wagon many miles. There were four walls, a floor and a roof, which made one room; and this room contained a rusty looking cook stove, a cupboard for the dishes, a table, three of four chairs, and the beds. Uncle Henry and Aunt Em had a big bed in one corner, and Dorothy a little bed in another corner. There was no garret at all, and no cellar–except a small hole dug in the ground, called a cyclone cellar, where the family could go in case one of those great whirlwinds arose, mighty enough to crush any building in its path. It was reached by a trap-door in the middle of the floor, from which a ladder            the small, dark  hole. When Dorothy stood in the doo                 she        nothing but the great gray…”

The open spaces are where an illustration of the feet of the wicked witch sticking out from under the fallen house, intrudes upon the text. 

No wonder Oz looked so green. I read the book when I was a boy. That’s a lot of years ago. I had forgotten how bleak the opening of the book was. This is what you lose when you just remember the movie and not the text. Oh, yes, the opening of the movie was in black and white, but it was not this black and white. There are no farm hands, no Bert Lahr, Ray Bolger, or Jack Haley giving Uncle Henry a hand. Of course no running water or plumbing, therefore an outhouse. Dorothy likely is an orphan unless her parents had so many children they couldn’t take care of them all. Also, she was a young girl, not yet a teen. That’s why Judy Garland found the role uncomfortable to play. Her breasts had to be bound.  Read more »