tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-139700962025-05-31T19:07:00.218-07:00Marcushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10199110239609732534noreply@blogger.comBlogger125125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13970096.post-87294173879713588302011-09-17T10:48:00.000-07:002011-09-17T10:48:34.524-07:00

After a week-long odyssey of trying to understand how JS functions connect to other objects, namely where their prototype, __proto__ and constructor properties point to, I think I've finally achieved enlightenment. Most JS tutorials and books are concerned with how functions connect to objects created by them, not with how they connect with objects that are created before them. I am really

Marcushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10199110239609732534noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13970096.post-3152926173124105742011-08-12T06:34:00.001-07:002011-08-12T07:00:24.587-07:00

Stephen Sondheim just ripped Diane Paulus a new asshole. (NY Times story) Paulus is directing a Broadway revival of "Porgy and Bess," and she -- and her colleagues -- have chosen to adapt the play almost beyond recognition. Sondheim's letter to the "Times" sparked an electrical storm of comments in newspapers, magazines, blogs and in person, about the state of the theatre and directors. A (

Marcushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10199110239609732534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13970096.post-1471161775796608712011-07-17T10:34:00.000-07:002011-07-17T10:34:54.914-07:00

"If you choose to be an atheist, then..." "When you make the choice to believe in God, you..." I get confused when choice and belief cohabitate in the same sentence, because I've never been able to choose to believe (or disbelieve) anything. Yet so many people talk about beliefs as if they're neckties, as if choosing atheist or theism is as easy as reaching into a closet and picking the one

Marcushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10199110239609732534noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13970096.post-11531390624127101072011-07-13T11:13:00.001-07:002011-07-13T11:13:44.792-07:00

Politics breaks problem solving -- or at least severely cripples it. Let's say that Sam is a guy who cares deeply about issues. He doesn't care about parties or elections or Red vs Blue. He just thinks that women should have the right to choose whether or not to have an abortion. Or be believes abortion is murder. It doesn't matter. There point is that there are issues on which he has

Marcushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10199110239609732534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13970096.post-91237997904382545122011-07-13T09:05:00.000-07:002011-07-13T09:05:19.691-07:00

Start with the idea or topic at hand and...1. Step in and step back, step in and step back... For instance, if the topic is abortion, think about its ramifications on a specific 16-year-old girl, maybe an actual girl that you know. Then think about its ramifications for society. Each time you add a new detail to your mental construction, step in and step back again. This is a

Marcushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10199110239609732534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13970096.post-92016183605433973422011-07-13T09:02:00.001-07:002011-07-13T09:02:44.901-07:00

In Fiction Writing 101, we learned that each element must move the story forward. I agree with this, but, on it's own, that dogma is too simplistic. What does it mean to move a story forward? You can move "King Kong" forward by saying "... and then the ape climbed the Empire State building, reached the top and was killed by airplanes." If we can step forward with a sentence or two, why waste our

Marcushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10199110239609732534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13970096.post-42498319099642368602011-05-11T10:30:00.001-07:002011-05-11T10:30:57.898-07:00

To start with, I will define a "story" as a linear narrative: a tale of "one damn thing after another." There are, of course, stories that aren't structured that way. I am not going to consider them here, because, in most cases, I'm don't find them pleasing. (I have some theories that elevate linear narratives above other narrative structures, by which I mean that the linear form will most

Marcushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10199110239609732534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13970096.post-16544467078957638312011-04-27T08:15:00.000-07:002011-04-27T08:15:28.097-07:00

Every once in a while, one of my fellow atheists gets bent out of shape about starting God with a capital G. He -- the atheist not God -- demands to know why I follow this theistic trend. Well, aside from the fact that "God" is the character's name (I don't spell "Alice" as "alice"), I capitalize God because ...1. Communication works best when we follow rules. For instance, the symbol cat&

Marcushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10199110239609732534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13970096.post-15712854311979751812011-04-15T07:33:00.000-07:002011-04-15T07:33:49.753-07:00

The trick is to make it as much like a two-person show as possible. By which I mean that you (in collaboration with the actor) need to figure out who the actor is talking to: is it the audience? an imaginary other character on stage? himself? "Himself" is the hardest, but it's doable. In this case, the actor needs to come up with two characters -- the one who is talking and the other part of

Marcushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10199110239609732534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13970096.post-22898680334711769342011-04-13T19:43:00.000-07:002011-04-13T19:43:54.668-07:00

I will start by boring you with autobiographical details. Philosophies about directing vary widely, so without understanding the kind of person I am -- and how my prejudices and aesthetics congealed into their present state -- my advice will be an arbitrary list of techniques. By knowing something about the person behind those techniques, hopefully you'll be able to position yourself in a

Marcushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10199110239609732534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13970096.post-47587364658003255972011-04-05T12:26:00.000-07:002011-04-05T12:26:41.372-07:00

On quora.com, I got into a discussion about life lessons -- that stuff we all wish someone had told us when we were younger. One of my contributions was the claim that play is vital. This is so important to me, that I often ask friends (or want to ask them), "When was the last time you played in the mud?" Playing in the mud is somewhat a metaphor. If you don't like getting muddy, that's no big

Marcushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10199110239609732534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13970096.post-1524716779479689282011-03-22T10:12:00.000-07:002011-03-22T10:12:15.535-07:00

In my experience, the conversations that work best are not logically causal. They do not entail structures in which person A builds on (or questions) something person A said. Rather, they involve free-associating around a fuzzy, shared idea: A: Books like "The Blah Effect" don't work well, because the author is trying to mix fiction and non-fiction in a clunky way that serves neither genre. B:

Marcushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10199110239609732534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13970096.post-37593160939573077222011-03-05T08:33:00.000-08:002011-03-05T08:34:13.043-08:00

A "Psychology Today" article compared an Abstract Expressionist painting to one made by a chimpanzee. Over at Metafilter, debate raged.  One commenter, known as Astro Zombie, said "With the exception of minimialism, which deliberately sought to make art that had no subtext or metaphoric meaning, but just was whatever it was ... most contemporary art doesn't exist in a vacuum, where you can

Marcushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10199110239609732534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13970096.post-57496660835026843332011-02-13T08:32:00.000-08:002011-02-13T08:32:29.513-08:00

I'm going to slap the wrist of the "Times" writer who blurbed "The Nearest Exit" (a spy novel by Olen Steinhauer). He wrote, "Steinhauer can be legitimately mentioned alongside John Le Carre." First of all, it's floundering in passivity. Steinhauer "can be mentioned"? Mentioned by whom? Why not, "I'm not ashamed to mention" or "you will wind up mentioning" or "readers will feel compelled to

Marcushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10199110239609732534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13970096.post-7561410039545289232011-02-03T07:10:00.000-08:002011-02-03T07:11:50.949-08:00

In a Facebook debate, one friend -- Wendy -- insisted that all Republicans are evil. My reply: I've met people who are fiscal Republicans but not social ones. They are pro gay rights, etc. But they don't believe in big government. They think high taxes, etc. hurt the economy. Some of them are genuinely concerned about the poor (some of them ARE poor). They just think the economy works in a

Marcushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10199110239609732534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13970096.post-66224432740053764562011-02-02T13:35:00.001-08:002011-02-02T13:35:58.908-08:00

I just realized a huge change I went through, starting sometime in my late 20s/early 30s. It's a little hard to explain. When I was a child and teenager, it was often the case that I hadn't made up my mind about some issue. Or I didn't have a strong aesthetic sense about whether some movie or book or actor was good or bad. But I felt it was important that I have -- or seem to have -- a strong

Marcushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10199110239609732534noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13970096.post-8431648444931909232010-12-25T06:47:00.000-08:002010-12-25T06:47:19.297-08:00

Many were upset by the Pope's recent claim: "In the 1970s, paedophilia was theorized as something fully in conformity with man and even with children." Here's some unsolicited advice from yours truly: ignore passive-voice statements. Translate them as "blah blah blah," and then say, "Well, that's meaningless, so I can ignore it." You'll throw some babies out with that bathwater, but most of them

Marcushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10199110239609732534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13970096.post-7187290648872276732010-12-25T06:44:00.000-08:002010-12-25T06:44:49.094-08:00

On a forum I frequent, someone wrote: It does raise an interesting question -- what exactly does a guy like Julian Assange want? What does he want that someone, anyone, can give him? Not celebrity, not money, not power ... What is left? That, to me, is an extraordinary question. And, by that, I don't mean it's a stupid one. It's actually an elegant, pithy wording of a common attitude -- one

Marcushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10199110239609732534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13970096.post-7399643206950753732010-12-24T10:42:00.000-08:002010-12-24T10:53:13.692-08:00

"He who questions training only trains himself at asking questions." "When you doubt your powers, you give power to your doubts." "We are number one! All others are number two, or lower." - The Sphinx from "Mystery Men" By now, I should expect bullshit from academics and critics. Maybe I should be charmed by it: "whatchagonnado?" But I'm not. I can't seem to lose my innocence. I assume educators

Marcushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10199110239609732534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13970096.post-39144777232248220182010-12-11T08:21:00.000-08:002010-12-11T08:22:54.944-08:00

Someone emailed me, asking why I am against required classes. Here's my response:Regarding school, most people are stuck in a mental rut. I was, and it took me years of reading, thinking and debating to claw my way out of it. Thinking clearly about school is like imagining alien life. It's really hard -- impossible? -- to imagine it without picturing human, animal or insect forms. One's mind

Marcushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10199110239609732534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13970096.post-54232882806705639202010-11-25T10:20:00.000-08:002010-11-25T10:23:10.754-08:00

Response to One day, Pablo PIcasso was on a Train... (A Defense of Modern Art):"You cannot just dismiss an entire movement simply because it doesn't look like art. That's the whole damn point of the modern-art movement. You don't get to say what is and what isn't art. Because you don't know. No one does."So there's a thing called "art"?How do we know this thing exists? The philospher doesn't

Marcushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10199110239609732534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13970096.post-58255020101620017492010-09-25T09:36:00.000-07:002010-09-25T09:37:01.849-07:00

Response to: http://www.thesmartset.com/article/article09221001.aspxHi. If you look at your negative space, you'll see me. Your article for "The Smart Set" about "Freedom" clearly stated the opposite of some of my core views about fiction. It was antimatter to my matter. If you and I touched each other, I think we'd explode.We do agree on one thing: there's no canon. The idea that one "should

Marcushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10199110239609732534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13970096.post-67784302738016787332010-09-11T16:13:00.001-07:002010-09-11T16:13:17.204-07:00

A: you're wrong.B: no, YOU'RE wrong.A: no, YOU'RE wrong!B: no, YOU'RE wrong!ME: this isn't solving the problem. You've both used rhetoric, appeals to emotion and (sometimes) sound logic to try to convince each other, but neither of you is budging. A, I think you're just going to have to live with B believing what he believes. B, the same with you for A.B: Stop siding with A!A: Stop siding with B!

Marcushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10199110239609732534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13970096.post-20204921359897656892010-09-10T09:46:00.001-07:002010-09-10T11:35:36.197-07:00

So I've been discussing with various people the challenges of bringing a Irish pub alive onstage -- coping with laws that don't allow smoking in theatres and dealing with ways to fake beer so that (a) it looks real and (b) it has low-or-no alcohol content, so the actors can actually get through the play without falling over.I've gotten lots of great advice. But -- inevitably -- I've also gotten

Marcushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10199110239609732534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13970096.post-11027085398713681362010-09-09T13:28:00.000-07:002010-09-09T13:33:04.773-07:00

In an online discussion about free will and determinism, someone wrote he didn't much care about whether people are to blame for their actions, because "I'm not much of a blamer, myself."He also wrote "You are the 'owner,' of your actions, even if they are predetermined. (Even if you were determined to do them, you still did them. No one else did.) So why aren't you the moral owner as well?"My

Marcushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10199110239609732534noreply@blogger.com0