Pregret

I thought I’d invented this word. Oh, well.

Have you ever been writing an answer on a test and you’re fairly certain it’s wrong, but you write it anyway because the alternative answer sounds even more wrong?

That happened to me yesterday.

But more importantly, I just realized that I’d unnecessarily recreated a concept.  Last week, when I wrote my Callooh! Callay post, and last year when I invented the concept of an anti-life, I thought I was being bright and making a useful concept.  I didn’t stop to wonder if anyone had thought about it before, I just went with it.

But someone had already created it.  Specifically, Otto Binder and artist George Papp in issue 68 of Superboy.  I’m talking, of course, of bizarro world.

Now, I hate superman for many reasons (some of which Steve will probably point out in the comments).  So I didn’t think about bizarro world when I recreated the concept.  But now that I realize it is the same thing as anti-world, I feel like a guy on Linux in a world of PC.

My only consolation is that bizarro world is the opposite of the DC universe, not our own universe. (Believe me, the metaphysics of this bother me.)  I’m also slightly consoled by the fact that I hate superman and don’t want to be referencing him– however slightly– in even my rarest of posts.

So yeah.  I feel a bit cheated and self-conscious, but silly for feeling that way because it’s a stupid comic. (Not that comics are stupid: just Superman and all associated ‘Super’ superheroes.)

And now I have to think of an awkward end to this post/segue to link to this somewhat related post.

Last Year: Street Smarts vs. Book Smarts (part 1 of 2)
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Book Smarts vs. Street Smarts [part 1 of 2 of (part 2 of 2)]

80. My circle of friends hasn’t really changed since middle school. This alone makes me want to leave New Mexico.

This is Daniel’s long awaited response,

In a recent conversation, Pixel and I argued whether or not “streets-smarts” was anything beyond a made-up term that stupid people used to make fun of the smart. My friend doesn’t think that street-smarts exist, and originally I might have agreed, until my friend “the walking dictionary” decided to start researching the different types of “smarts.”

I’ll play devil’s advocate; this is my defense for the existence of street-smarts. The problem with street-smarts is that it remains nearly impossible to define with any clarity. Furthermore, the examples about the nature of street-smarts create a sliding slope of puzzling interpretations. The difficultly with language and terms is nothing new. The nature of words have always created serious problems for those who study their logical forms. Take the word “chair” for example. The word chair can be easily misunderstood with the simplest of alterations to its form. A chair is something a person can sit on, it often has four legs, and supports the human figure. Yet when does a chair become a seat, bench, stool, place, or settlement? If the legs were removed would it still be a chair? Does a chair need to be made from wood or metal? The truth is that words can become very complex things, but this is nothing we didn’t already know before.

There have been several objections to language and the troubles their terms create, yet language remains one of the most important developments ever made. My friend Pixel doesn’t believe street-smarts exist, I might have agreed before, but I don’t now. Neither does the chair. The importance of words should not be restricted to rigid definitions, because this would make discussions impossible. A chair is nothing more than a word. Like ’street-smarts,’ what matters is what the connection implies. When I tell my brother that my friend Carlos can’t do anything without the direction of a book, this criticism will never appear in the dictionary, but my implication suggest some element the two of us can relate. The term street-smarts only exists because it contains something people can use to relate the implications, these words offer the means to meaning, and are only instruments of our ability to share.

Thus, unless Pixel is willing to toss out the rest of the dictionary, street smarts must stay.

(Editor’s note: Part One can be found here.)

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Street Smarts vs. Book Smarts (part 1 of 2)

66. Even though I usually get in the 99th percentile in standardized tests (both academic and IQ), I don’t believe in standardized tests. At all. They don’t measure anything except for how well the participant can study for them. Believe me, I’ve boosted my scores by hundreds of points at a time without increasing my intelligence or scholarly aptitude in any way. This, of course, means that No Child Left Behind was based on a false premise. Sorry nation’s youth.

I have a secret. I don’t think street smarts exist. I think people came up with that concept to show that smart people can’t be smart about everything. I think they saw some sort of lack of ‘common sense’ among really smart people and came up with a way of describing this: the titular ’street smarts’

These come up fairly frequently when I tell people that I’m going to go for my Ph.D. Somehow, this triggers an association and, sure enough, they end up saying some bull like, “well, I think book smarts are okay, but street smarts are what is important.”

To wit: a few days ago, my friend Daniel and his girlfriend Ana started talking to me about street smarts. And, seeing as I was really interested in what the phrase even meant, I started arguing with them (type 2). These were their positions:

• Daniel seemed to think that street smarts were a way of analyzing things such that you would think of a quick or easy way of doing something that was unfamiliar. He seemed to believe it was something that could not be learned and had to be innate. He saw no contradiction in a person’s possessing both street smarts and book smarts.
• Ana believed that street smarts required a form of physical action and involved a sense of resourcefulness. She felt that people with ’street smarts’ would generally not be educated and gave the example of orphans or street children that grow up learning to hustle tourists. Though reluctant, eventually she admitted she saw no contradiction in a person’s possessing both street smarts and book smarts.

• Both gave the example of a person surviving out in the woods alone using only their wits. They also both gave the example of opening up the hood of a strange car and finding out what was wrong with it.

To me, the differences were irreconcilable. Daniel’s definition seemed to be what I would consider intelligence and Ana’s would be what I would consider learned resourcefulness. Both seemed to have something to do with common sense and no correlative association with book smarts, which we soon defined as general trivia or particular knowledge. This may have been a bit of confirmation bias, but I left unconvinced that the term ’street smarts’ had any value.

If by ’street smarts’ one just wishes to contrast ‘book smarts,’ why not just say that knowledge alone does not make someone intelligent? If ’street smarts’ means common sense, then why not just say that? Ditto for resourcefulness. There seems to be nothing left for ’street smarts’ to refer to that’s not better expressed with another word.

No, instead I think that street smarts are a subtle way to suggest that there is a high degree of correlation between being intellectual about abstract concepts and lacking wits to survive in the concrete world. Otherwise, why would there even need to be a term for it? And why is it always used in contrast to another made up term: book smarts. It’s not true that intellectualness and everyday wits are mutually exclusive, obviously. But as a direct result of this unspoken assumption, people use the term with abandon. As well they should: I’ve never heard anyone take offense.

Not that I’m saying that people that feel they lack ‘book smarts’ are stupid, far from it! I actually think that knowledge and intelligence have a very low degree of correlation. I don’t assume that somebody doesn’t know how to change their oil simply because they’re a professor, but neither would I assume that from a person that works at In-N-Out Burgers.

Stay tuned for Daniel’s response tomorrow.

p.s. Here’s an idea for a good recipe for a Spinach-Artichoke dip.

p.p.s. Today is the National Day of Reason, so take off your aluminum hats, topple a pyramid scheme, and thank a scientist for life-saving cancer fighting bacon candy.

p.p.p.s. How many common words can you name? I got 44.

(Editor’s note:  Part Two can be found here.)

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Are you Okay?

21. I have a birthmark on my leg that’s more of a Rorcharch test than anything. I see the ghost of Mickey Mouse. What do you see?

In civilized conversation, there is no more selfish phrase in the English language than “Are you okay?”

I say this in spite of all the seemingly more selfish phrases you can come up with. “I think I’d rather use these $100 bills as toilet paper than give them to orphans” and “Boy, you’ve all gotten so fat while I remain young and vigorous” are both outwardly selfish, but they are guileless and lack any real impact. The person who would say those is not worthy of consideration purely because he would be the type of person to say those things.

“Are you okay?” on the other hand, has often been spoken by well-meaning folk who know that something is not okay, but have come upon a certain situation. You usually ask if someone is okay for the reasons:

1. As a way to start a conversation with someone who is hurt/sad to show you care/are offering to help.
2. To make yourself feel better. (“I asked her if she was okay!”)
3. To inquire whether the person feels there is any permanent damage.

You don’t ever ask it wondering if someone really is okay, because okay is a default position. When a person could go either way, you ask if they are all right. ‘All right’ means stuff is good. ‘Okay’ means that stuff is acceptable or passable. So if somebody is ‘okay,’ it’s never something to be happy about. It’s just a lack of something to be sad about.

Most of the time, I think this phrase should be avoided in favor of what the person actually means at the time:

1. When a girl is crying in the corner: “Is your crying caused by the lack of strangers offering help for things they don’t understand? Because if it is… you’re in luck!”
2. When your girlfriend storms in, angry: “If you want to tell me what happened and why you’re mad, I’d love to hear it. Otherwise, I’ll just go get the boxing gloves and a cup, so you can just wail on me that way.”
3. When someone has fallen while running a marathon: “Can you go on? Do you need anything? I have speed, if that’s what you want.”

My true problem with the phrase is that I worry people just say it because that’s what you’re supposed to say. And, like kissing someone on a dare, it just isn’t the same. Most of the time you know the person is not okay. You just ask it to start a conversation or to ’show that you care.’ The problem is that the phrase doesn’t do either very well.

And what should the other person even respond? You gave them a yes or no question to an open-ended problem. How selfish is that?

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The Recipe for Really?

I realized some time ago that most arguments (esp. bad ones) can be deflated with a few well-placed words. If they’re really good words, they can also deflate the person’s ego and get a laugh from nearby bystanders.

I found a way to do this all with one word. The titular “Really?”

However, you can’t just say “Really?” in any old way. You have to say it in the particular proportions I’ve discovered. Like any recipe, you can modify it slightly to suite your own needs, but don’t try to work off book unless you know what you’re doing. Okay?

Here goes:

How to make a Really?:

Ingredients:

1. Tone of voice with 60 percent inquisitiveness, 10 percent condescension, 5 percent bewilderment, and 25 percent curiosity.
2. A stare that is simultaneously blank and mock ‘caught-off-guard’
3. A working neck
4. Facial expression with 40 percent grimace in embarrassment and 60 percent sympathetic questioning. Imagine you’re a lawyer desperately trying to defend an innocent person who keeps saying stupid things.

Instructions:

1. Wait until the appropriate moment. Usually this will be shortly after a bad argument escapes the lips of the person you’re debating. For instance, “Buildings can’t fall like that, Bush must have planned 9/11.”
2. Look at him blankly for precisely one moment. It is important for the silence to stretch for one full moment while you seem like you’re momentarily caught off guard by the argument.
3. Tilt your head to the right while simultaneously grimace and scrunch your eyebrows together while raising them.
4. Say “Really?” as if they just embarrassed themselves.
5. If needed, say “Seriously?” Or “you really believe that?” Each time make your grimace more pained.

While I generally hate rhetoric or sophistry, sometimes its the most effective tool in your arsenal. Try saying this sometime today. It’s surprising how well it works.

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