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Streisand's finger of Guilt points at Monster-In-Law
Sounds seriously traef!— November 29, 2012 3:11 p.m.
Elmo puppeteer resigns from Sesame Street
There should probably be "scare quotes" around the word "resigns." Sounds a bit as though he's being hounded by people who think he has money, which they might do even if he wasn't as much of a disaster as he sounds like...— November 20, 2012 10:46 a.m.
U-T San Diego buys SD on the QT
I'd sell out, too, if I had anything besides the cards I carry....— September 13, 2012 4:37 p.m.
What the @$%& is a Cecchi Gori and Why is it Suing Scorsese?
as we know, two gonifs, three opinions...— August 25, 2012 10:39 a.m.
UCSD prof a behavior manipulation guru
I took the course in operant conditioning given by B.F. Skinner at Harvard in 1961. It featured a new wrinkle, called the "teaching machine." The "machine" had you write answers on a long paper tape, rather like an adding machine roll (who remembers them?); the questions were on another roll, and you got from one question to the next by using a ratcheted lever. The key to learning appeared to be slicing the lesson into thousands of tiny pieces, fed to you one by one by the machine. "Operant conditioning is also called _ _ _ _ _ modification," for example, wanted you to fill in the word "behavior." The next question would be "Operant _ _ _ _ _ _ is also called behavior _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ," and you had to write "conditioning" and then "modification" on the tape. Thus, agonizing step by tedious step, you ended up learning the whole sentence. Except for me. I couldn't focus. One of the readings in the course was Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World." I kept writing "The Nile is the longest river in Africa" on my tape, no matter what the question. Another phrase I repeated came from another of the readings, by Joseph Wood Krutch, an opponent of Skinner's, who came in for a lot of ridicule in the lectures. My failure to modify my behavior adequately got me a C- in the course. But I've dined out on it often in the fifty years that followed, so I think my parents and the National Merit Scholarship Foundation got their money's worth. I became a much more dialectical thinker, but I am grateful to Skinner for showing me how what looks like a nice, liberal vision of a free society is just a hair's breadth away from a despicable vision of a boring and highly unfree monoculture.— June 20, 2012 8:53 p.m.
David Elliott's Final Column
Thank you for helping us all to catch the rare sensations of watching great movies even here in the Jesus-that'll-never-get-on-a-screen-here town of Sandy Burbo. . . saw The Kid with a Bike last weekend at the La Paloma, and all ten or so of us in the audience felt lucky to beat the numbers paradox for a second or two... makes your departure all the more poignant. I hope you'll find greener fields and pastures new, and fare well!— June 14, 2012 9:32 p.m.
Son of Fare Thee Well: David Elliott
David Elliott will be missed. Marks is a great addition. Reader, pay attention: pay the movie critics a living wage. Take it out of the pots of gold you're making from plastic surgeons.— June 13, 2012 9:44 p.m.