Spawn of Spoonfreude

The Devil Is in the Digits

The numbers look suspicious. We find too many 7s and not enough 5s in the last digit. We expect each digit (0, 1, 2, and so on) to appear at the end of 10 percent of the vote counts. But in Iran’s provincial results, the digit 7 appears 17 percent of the time, and only 4 percent of the results end in the number 5. Two such departures from the average — a spike of 17 percent or more in one digit and a drop to 4 percent or less in another — are extremely unlikely. Fewer than four in a hundred non-fraudulent elections would produce such numbers.

As a point of comparison, we can analyze the state-by-state vote counts for John McCain and Barack Obama in last year’s U.S. presidential election. The frequencies of last digits in these election returns never rise above 14 percent or fall below 6 percent, a pattern we would expect to see in seventy out of a hundred fair elections.

Statisticians Bernd Beber and Alexandra Scacco on the Iran vote counts, [here]

The Nine Cliches of Stripper Memoirs

#5.

Our heroine has what she inevitably calls “boundaries.” (Elisabeth Eaves declares, “I realized I had to approach the booth knowing my own boundaries,” and “it was a matter of setting up boundaries somewhere so that one didn’t feel like one’s entire sense of self was oozing away.” Or Lacey Lane: “I quit working in one Sin City strip joint because I refused to prostitute myself like some of the other girls.” Ruth Fowler, again: “How do I find this job tolerable? I don’t kiss.”) Our heroine, in other words, knows how to draw the line. In order to underscore this point, she will discuss at least one girl who does not have boundaries. Unlike our heroine, who is asserting her sexual power over men, this girl is a slut…

This reflection on another girl’s morality is interesting, because however much our heroine revels in her naughtiness—and she does revel—she is at pains to tell us that she is not promiscuous like the other girls. Even in this genre, which is almost explicitly about how we shouldn’t judge the naked girl on the stage, we find the same judgment, the same innate, catty, female dividing of the world into sluts and non-sluts, that takes place in the rest of the world.

[Katie Roiphe for doublex]

Why 3-D Film Still Sucks

Let me go on record with this now, while the 3-D bubble is still inflating: Katzenberg, Quittner, and all the rest of them are wrong about three-dimensional film—wrong, wrong, wrong. I’ve seen just about every narrative movie in the current 3-D crop, and every single one has caused me some degree of discomfort—ranging from minor eye soreness (Coraline) to intense nausea (My Bloody Valentine). The egregious side effects of stereo viewing may well have been diminished over the past few decades (wait, does anyone really remember how bad they were in 1983?) but they have not been eliminated. As much as it pains me to say this—I love 3-D, I really do—these films are unpleasant to watch.

That’s because the much-touted digital technology is not fundamentally different from anything that’s been used in the past. Today’s films, like those of yore, are made by recording and projecting a separate pair of image-tracks for each eye. These are slightly offset from each other, giving what’s called a binocular disparity cue, which in turn produces an illusion of depth. (It’s the same idea as an old View-Master, or an even older stereoscope.) For at least the past 50 years, and across several theatrical revivals, 3-D filmmakers have used the same technique for separating the two tracks: They project the footage for each eye through lenses of different polarizations for an audience wearing polarized glasses with matching filters. (Despite frequent claims to the contrary, the 3-D films of yesteryear were rarely shown in anaglyph with those schlocky red-cyan glasses.) Whatever breakthroughs we’ve seen in 3-D technology have been relative refinements of the same technology. The essential mechanics of the medium—and its essential side effects—haven’t changed at all.

[here]

The Bee Has Thre Kyndis

The bee has thre kyndis. Ane es þat scho es neuer ydill, and scho noghte with thaym þat will noghte wyrke, bot castys thaym owte and puttes thaym awaye. Anothire es þat when scho flyes scho takes erthe in hyr fette, þat scho be noghte lyghtly ouerheghede (“over-highed”) in the ayere of wynde. The thyrde es þat scho kepes clene and bryghte hire wyngez. Thus rightwyse men þat lufes God are neuer in ydyllnes; for owthyre þay ere in trauayle, prayand, or thynkande, or redande, or othere gude doande, or withtakand (scolding) ydill mene and schewand thaym worthy to be put fra þe ryste of heuene, for þay will noghte trauayle here.

þay take erthe, þat es, þay halde þamselfe vile and erthely, that thay be noghte blawene with þe wynde of vanyte and of pryde. Thay kepe thaire wynges clene, that es, þe twa commandementes of charyte þay fulfill in gud concyens, and thay hafe othyre vertus, vnblendyde with þe fylthe of syne and vnclene luste.

Arestotill sais þat þe bees are feghtande agaynes hym þat will drawe þaire hony fra thaym. Swa sulde we do agaynes deuells þat afforces (attempt) thame to reue fra us þe hony of poure lyfe and of grace. For many are þat neuer kane halde þe ordyre of lufe ynence (toward) þaire frendys, sybbe (related) or fremmede (unrelated); bot outhire þay lufe þaym ouer mekill, settand thaire thoghte vnryghtwysely on thaym, or þay luf thayme ower lyttill, yf þay doo noghte all as þey wolde till þame. Swylke kane noghte fyghte for thaire hony, forthy þe deuelle turnes it to wormode, and makes þeire saules oftensythes full bitter in angwys and tene and besynes of vayne thoghtes and oþer wrechidnes. For thay are so heuy in erthely frenchype þat þay may noghte flee intill þe lufe of Iesu Criste, in þe wylke þay moghte wele forgaa þe lufe of all creaturs lyfande in erthe.

North English homily, c. 1340