Song of the day: "The Right Regrets" by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman

This is another song from the NBC TV show Smash. In general, I haven't really liked the songs in Season 2, but this is a great one. Debra Messing and Christian Borle did a great job acting this song, too. I like the theme about writing, which is unusual.

A writer has the empty page where he can set the scene
He puts the actors on the stage or on the movie screen
The characters all say the words the writer wants to hear
And then my friend; a happy end

But when the writer steps outside that room where he is king
He can't control when lives collide or what the lovers sing
And so he hides behind his words the one place he belongs
And in black and white he can rewrite the wrongs

Where he can find the strength to say what those he loves should hear
And just erase mistakes she's made then make them disappear
Where he can change the plot so he's a hero not a louse
And when the curtain falls there's not a dry eye in the house

A writer hopes to leave behind a work no one forgets
And when he writes the end to find he has the right regrets
A writer has the empty page where he can use his pen
To mend his heart and try to start again

Link of the day: Three styles for writing a (scientific) paper

My sister alerted me to a nice explanation of how a scientific paper should be written. The author, Prof. Stuart Shieber, describes three styles of writing a paper and which one you should use.

The first is the "continental" style in which you simply state the idea and show the data/proof. I think the name "continental" refers to those continental breakfasts where you choose whatever you want to eat from a buffet. This kind of paper has no motivation and to readers who are not experienced, makes it seem like you are really smart. It's also unreadable.

The second style is the "historical" style. It's kind of like writing a diary where you describe all the mistakes you made, how you changed your research direction, etc. A lot of students fall into writing in this way because they're doing their first big research project, it's all new to them, and they think their work is really important or want to explain how much they suffered during the process. The problem with this approach is that there is a lot of stuff the reader doesn't need to know and also, it might make you look like an idiot.

The third style is the "rational reconstruction" style. It's kind of a middle-of-the-road style between "continental" and "historical." You present an ideal history which only shows the steps that motivate your final result. It's kind of like if you made a movie of your life -- you would want to show the important events and tie them together in a consistent, meaningful manner. Sometimes you might need to embellish or downplay something a little to make the story more coherent or engaging.

---

The concise version:

"Continental" style - you state the idea without any motivation -> makes you look like a genius, at least to those whom you can fool into thinking that unreadable papers are brilliant

"Historical" style - you provide a diary of your research containing all the mistakes and changes in direction you made -> makes you look like an idiot

"Rational reconstruction" style - you give an ideal history, only present the relevant steps and motivate everything properly -> the one you should use

Learning from other fields and cross-training

As I get older, I feel like scientists aren't really good at anything except science. Not that this is entirely surprising or that we should expect scientists to be amazing writers, speakers, etc. But if you're a scientist, you spend all your time immersed in the scientific community, thinking that the quality of writing or presentations that you see there are really the way things should be... well, you should go look at essays in the New Yorker or The Atlantic, or watch TED speakers or theatre performers or standup comics. The professionals of every field tend to have their strengths and weaknesses. If you want to shore up your weaknesses, go look for a field where that particular weakness is a strength, learn from those people, and use them as your inspiration. If you look outside your field, I think you'll have a huge leg up over others.

In sports, we call this cross-training. Athletes have no problem taking up yoga to help their hockey goaltending skills, for instance.

Link of the day: Alex Gansa walkthrough of Homeland's first season

I was delighted to find that AV Club posted an extensive interview with Homeland's co-creator and co-showrunner Alex Gansa. In it, Gansa goes through all twelve episodes of the standout first season. This is part of AV Club's "Walkthrough" series. The site has conducted similar interviews with other showrunners. The Homeland walkthrough was an incredibly interesting read and I came away being even more impressed with the writers. I'll list a few of the particularly interesting remarks.

• Gansa didn't think there was anything positive about doing network TV (as opposed to cable). What about reaching larger audiences??
• Mandy Patinkin was specifically asked to grow a beard. A commenter on the article said that he grew a beard and his wife told him he was much harder to read. "With the beard, you have to read most of his emotions through his eyes and in my opinion it works so well..."
• Gansa regretted killing off characters (e.g. Lynne Reed, Faisel, Tom Walker) too quickly before they had a chance to develop them.
• Gansa said that the riveting scene where Saul puts together the colored timeline was actually shot after the episode had already been wrapped. They realized they needed that extra scene after the fact. Gansa remarks that it's a testament to Mandy Patinkin's skill as an actor that he made the sequence so interesting, the way he tears the paper, etc. I've noticed that about outstanding actors. They can make anything seem interesting, make any line of dialogue seem interesting.
• The writers planned far in advance. They had decided that Dana would be the one to pull her dad back from terrorist activities. And that's why they carefully developed Dana's character and slowly gave Morgan Saylor (the actress who played Dana) more and more to do until she could play the pivotal phone scene in the finale.
• An interesting remark about TV writing:

  One of the things you learn very early in writing for television, especially, is that compressing the story is always a good idea... And what we realized we had to do was, whenever we could, swing for the fences and not save story, but put the cards down.
  
  That was the part of the season where people were like, “Oh my God, what’s going to happen next? What are the writers going to do next? I’m worried. Can they sustain the show? Are they telling the story too fast? How are they going to keep this going?” And, interestingly enough, that’s what people are saying at the end of the first season, too: “Well, where can they go from here? How can they move on from here?” One of the things that I learned from Howard on 24 in terms of plotting out these thrillers is that if you sit in a room long enough with smart people, there is a way the story can be told compellingly.

• More observations about TV writing. The scene discussed here is Carrie and Saul's interrogation of the Saudi diplomat.

  Here’s another example of a scene that everybody’s seen a thousand times, and the question was, “What spin do you put on it? How do you make it different? How do you make it interesting?” The way we chose to make this interesting was, the very thing Saul and Carrie think that they have over this guy [the fact he's gay], and that’s going to be the trump card, doesn’t work. That’s what turned the scene on its head all of a sudden...
  
  If you have more than one thing going on, a scene is always better, so what’s going on in this scene is that Saul has turned over the interrogation to Carrie and trusted her to do it... So the dynamics between Carrie and Saul are just as important as the dynamics between Carrie and the diplomat, and that’s what adds the richness and the complexity to the scene, and makes it feel different and unexpected.
  
  And always, whenever you’re writing a scene, whenever you can do something that comes purely from character but that is unexpected, that’s the gold. That’s when you’ve mined something that’s really worthwhile.

Frankly, I'm amazed by the amount of insider information we get nowadays about TV shows. I really enjoy this open dialogue between creator and audience. Apparently, there is a significant appetite for this kind of thing; otherwise, season walkthroughs, TV critic websites, and people like Alan Sepinwall wouldn't exist. Gansa must really respect AV Club to spend so much time granting this exclusive interview.

Link of the day: Coaching like a creative writing instructor

While in the bookstore sitting out a fire alarm, I picked an issue of Sports Illustrated. I came across the annual Sportsman of the Year issue. This year, the award was bestowed on college basketball coaches Mike Krzyzewski and Pat Summitt. I was especially intrigued by descriptions of Krzyzewski's style of coaching. Writer Alexander Wolff claims that he thinks of coaching his players as writing a story.

For someone who doesn't read, Krzyzewski coaches an awful lot like a creative writing instructor. Two weeks ago, before Duke played Kansas in the final of the Maui Invitational, Krzyzewski gave his inexperienced team a kind of grammar to moot the burden of conscientiousness he feared they'd feel. The shots presenting themselves that night, he told them, wouldn't be their shots. "I told them they were my shots, and that I wanted them to take them," he says. "That they should shoot whenever they felt a shot, and I'd live with the result. Young players, if they thought of shots in a big game as theirs, they might hold back."

Krzyzewski tries to teach his players to see themselves honestly, to see themselves the way he sees them. That truthfulness helps them grow.

"I could recite a definition or quote some famous author on ownership, and they would never feel it," Krzyzewski says. "You tell stories, and you have a chance to feel the word."

Krzyzewski teaches his Blue Devils by arraying things around them that they can see. "If one of my guys can see himself honestly, that's the rite of passage to the place where he and I can have a trustful relationship," he says. "In a moment on the bench, he can see himself through my eyes. I'd say I've had that relationship with most of my players. Sometimes they never give you themselves. But sometimes they give you themselves that first day, and it just gets bigger."

The Sports Illustrated piece recounts a particularly poignant story about US Olympian Kevin Durant.

In August 2010 in Madrid, Krzyzewski gathered the U.S. national team before an exhibition game with Spain. As he addressed his players he noticed forward Kevin Durant staring at the floor. Afterward he took Durant aside to tell him the importance of eye contact.

"Coach," Durant replied, "I'm a shy person."

"Kevin, you can't be a shy person. I need you to be great. We need to be great together."

That night the U.S. beat Spain in the final seconds, and the next morning the team reconvened to view film. When he rolls tape, Krzyzewski often stops the action to make nontactical points—to flag a facial expression or a phrase of body language. And here was Durant in freeze-framed glory, looking like a basketball god come down in vengeance.

"Kevin! That's what I'm talking about!"

Krzyzewski wheeled on point guard Russell Westbrook. "Russell, when Kevin looks like that, how does it make you feel?"

"When Kevin looks like that, it makes me feel like we're gonna win," Westbrook replied.

"Kevin, if you look like that, before you make one shot or grab one rebound or stop one guy on defense, you've created a mood of winning."

Durant went on to dominate the worlds, averaging 33 points over the final three games. In his coach's judgment, no American has ever played better in an international competition. "Kevin had been lumped in with his peers and didn't know how to separate himself," Krzyzewski says. "Sometimes you have to show guys."

Television in the 21st century

I'm amazed by how artistic television has become in the last decade. Critics say that this trend started with HBO's The Sopranos in 1999. This kind of television, with its heavy serialization, deep characterization, and overarching themes, has found its niche on cable TV, especially on HBO, Showtime, AMC, and FX. (There aren't as many network shows of this kind; the outstanding examples are Lost and 24.)

New York Times film critic A. O. Scott argued that TV is just as good as film now and there is really no reason why films should be higher in the pecking order. (Unfortunately, film's prestige still lingers. Compare the coverage of the Oscars to the Emmys.) Some even think that TV is better than film now! Patrick Meaney wrote a very long piece citing the advantages of the TV format over the two-hour film. He pointed out that the length of the TV series allows more creative freedom and time to explore characters. On a TV series, with good material, an actor can showcase his/her diversity and range. More and more big name film actors are jumping into TV. Here's a sampling: Martin Sheen (West Wing), Alec Baldwin (30 Rock), Sally Field (Brothers and Sisters), Glenn Close (Damages), Claire Danes (Homeland). Recently, Dustin Hoffman signed on for HBO's Luck. He told the press that

You cannot get a shot at doing your best work in the studio system. There's committees, there's meetings, they're on the set ... they get involved in a quasi -- at least I think it is -- creative way. They buck heads with people they shouldn't be bucking heads with. And with HBO, once they give a go, there is no committee, there's no meetings, these guys are allowed to try to do their best work and they then give it to us.

Famous film directors are getting into TV, too. Martin Scorsese directed the pilot for Boardwalk Empire and Michael Mann is directing and producing Luck.

The biggest changes have come for writers and their audiences. If anyone is happy about the state of television, it's got to be the writers. Can you name any film script writers? In television, the showrunner (head writer) is truly the boss of everything and (provided that the network doesn't interfere) can realize his/her creative vision. The public has heard of David Chase (The Sopranos), David Simon (The Wire, Treme), Ron Moore (Battlestar Galactica), and the nerd favorite Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Dollhouse). Many playwrights are writing for television, to gain experience (and to put bread on the table, so they can go back to the theatre).

The audience has become a greater, more vocal participant in television. Fans gather on forums to extol the virtues of actors, or trash showrunners for clumsy plotting. By its nature, Serial drama invites discussion and analysis. TV criticism websites have proliferated, for instance, Television Without Pity, AV Club, and HitFix. (Again, TV criticism is still lower status than film criticism, but hopefully that will change.) There are wikis to keep track of complicated plot threads and numerous characters. Writers monitor forums and occasionally go onto boards to personally talk with fans. On learning the audience's reaction, they can adjust the series before the fans revolt. (Some crazy fans have actually become a nuisance for showrunners and networks -- demanding changes as if they own the show.)

Personally, I enjoy watching a great TV series unfold. Every week, I watch an episode, read the critic reviews, and participate in forums. It's a heavy investment of time, but well worth it, for the enrichening experience. I learn so much about the human condition (e.g. endurance in Battlestar Galactica), archane topics (e.g. horse racing in Luck), acting (Claire Danes in Homeland), and writing.

The massive serialization and strong audience participation remind me of the Victorian novel. Back then, authors like Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy wrote in installments. It's hard to remember this, since we read these works as complete (and very thick) novels in our literature classes. Writing in installments meant that the lower classes could afford fiction and that writers had to keep their readers interested. In Dickens's Great Expectations, there's a line of dialogue where one character brings up another character out of the blue in the dialogue. My high school English teacher explained that the reason was so the reader wouldn't forget the named character later. Supposedly, Thomas Hardy inspired the term "cliffhanger"! Nowadays, the cliffhanger is a standard trope in modern television. Large ensemble casts and intricately woven plot threads in TV series like Battlestar Galactica remind me of my favorite novel, George Eliot's Middlemarch (which was also serialized).  The serial television drama really is the 21st century's version of the Victorian novel.

TV isn't the end of the story. New players are emerging in this media game. Felicia Day stars in and produces The Guild, a web series about gamers fully funded by donations. Netflix just committed $100+ million dollars to two seasons of a Kevin Spacey drama without even seeing a pilot. YouTube is trying to become more than just a streaming video site and commissioning several original series.

The only danger now is that we'll have so much good material to watch that the audience will splinter into niches. I actually know a substantial number of people who've watched Battlestar Galactica or The Wire. That's because there were only a few shows of that caliber at the time. It's a little like how everyone watched Walter Cronkite because there weren't any alternatives. In the future, there may be so many good TV shows that everyone will watch their own thing or be desperately trying to catch up on the huge list of "classics." (Exactly the situation we have with books.) The last decade of television has proven that there is no shortage of talented writers, actors, and crew. I look forward to see where we go next.

Thought of the day: Presentations are a form of writing

I've come to realize that presentations are just another form of writing. The critical thinking skills you use in writing words on a page are the same ones you use when you "write" your presentation slides. You need to map out what you're going to say, come up with a logical flow, provide supporting evidence/data for your points, etc. The main difference is that presentations are written to be performed. In that sense, they are similar to plays, movies, and television. A presentation can be a very personal work because you are both the sole writer and sole performer. Since I've started watching television with a critical eye, I want to write a post explaining how you can use ideas from TV writing to improve your presentations. If you are a good writer, you are probably a good presenter and vice versa.

Thought of the day: Character is universal, plot is not

I realized today why the great actors do character driven stories.  It's because

Character is universal, plot is not.

All creative people strive to create something lasting that says something universal about the human condition or nature.  In the end, no one cares about tedious plot details.  Enough with the constant exposition and twists.  It's not that interesting.  Mysteries are so arbitrary; the audience is at the mercy of the writer.  That's why I get sick of TV shows like Lost, 24, and (the later seasons of) Alias.

OK, you need some plot, but just enough to make the story and characters work.

What is good writing?

Good writing has a specific audience in mind and tries to relate to that audience.

Good writing is interesting and engaging. When I read good writing, I come away feeling like I learned something new or read something beautiful. It's fun to read (I think it's possible to make even boring scientific papers at least a little fun to read.)

Good writing provides details, enough to be interesting and instructive, but not details that are irrelevant or inappropriate for the audience. You don't want to overwhelm the reader.

Good writing has a logical flow and a structure that makes it easy for the reader to follow.

Good writing is concise and precise (not the same thing). You want to use just enough words to convey your meaning. You want to be clear in conveying your thoughts (especially important in scientific writing). If you are having trouble writing a sentence and have the choice between being more concise or being more precise, I would always choose precision, because the content of your writing is more important than the style.

Good writing has music and personality in it. Maybe there are a few exceptions, like writing an instruction manual, but I think it's possible to incorporate "music" and "personality" into research papers. It's very hard to be interested in writing that is dry and abstract. I'm no expert on this, but there are ways to make your writing more dynamic. You can vary the lengths of your sentences and the constructions of your sentences. In classical music, you notice that the tempo of the music changes, or the key switches from major to minor. You can do similar things in writing.

Hermit crab metaphor for writing scientific introduction

I've been taking a writing workshop for the past few weeks.  The instructor taught us something really cool.  The introduction to a scientific paper can be thought of as a hermit crab finding its shell.  Swales and Feak [1] call this "moves in introductions."

1. Establish a research territory.
2. Find a niche.
3. Occupy the niche.

I thought this metaphor was really cute and colorful.  I'll think of hermit crabs the next time I read or write an introduction.

[1] Swales, John M. and Christine B. Feak. Academic Writing for Graduate Students, The University of Michigan Press (2004)

Thought of the day: Why is scientific writing so bad

A frequent complaint about scientists is that they are generally bad writers. I was wondering why that is so. One reason is that we simply tolerate bad writing. We let people get away with it. You can imagine that if people's papers were rejected from journals due to poor writing, they would improve their writing in a hurry. The scientific establishment doesn't value good writing enough. Another reason (I speculate) is that scientists don't expose themselves to good writing. They don't read literary works or essays that are the quality of The Atlantic [1].  So they have no idea what good writing is like. The poor quality of scientific writing certainly doesn't help.  I've attended some wonderful writing seminars and they seem to attract people who are already decent writers.  They know what good writing is like.  But where are the people who need help the most?

I think the best way to address this problem is to require students to spend time learning how to write, from a specialized writing teacher. Most advisors are probably bad writers themselves or they have no idea how to teach their students. Advisors have too much work to do; they don't have time to teach people how to write. Frankly, teaching writing is time consuming and tedious. My experience with professors is that their "writing instruction" consists of telling students, "I don't like X. Change it to Y," with no explanation. This is not teaching. Some students who are bright or already good writers will figure out what the professor really meant, but most people need an explanation of "why." Otherwise, they will simply make the same mistake in the future.

[1] The Atlantic is just an example.  I'm not implying it's the best magazine or my favorite.

Anne Lamott on the frustration and rewards of writing and other creative pursuits

Quotes by Anne Lamott from Bird by Bird

Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up. (pxxiii)

All I know is that the process is pretty much the same for everyone I know. The good news is that some days it feels like you just have to keep getting out of your own way so that whatever it is that wants to be written can use you to write it. It is a little like when you have something difficult to discuss with someone, and as you go to do it, you hope and pray that the right words will come if only you show up and make a stab at it. (p7-8)

What's real is that if you do your scales every day, if you slowly try harder and harder pieces, if you listen to great musicians play music you love, you'll get better. At times when you're working, you'll sit there feeling hung over and bored, and you may or may not be able to pull yourself up out of it that day. But it is fantasy to think that successful writers do not have these bored, defeated hours, these house of deep insecurity when no one feels as small and jumpy as a water bug. They do. But they also often feel a great sense of amazement that they get to write, and they know that this is what they want to do for the rest of their lives. (p14)

E. L. Doctorow once said that "writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." You don't have to see where you're going, you don't have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. (p18)

I also remember a story that I know I've told elsewhere but that over and over helps me to get a grip: thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird."

I tell this story again because it usually makes a dent in the tremendous sense of being overwhelmed that my students experience. Sometimes it actually gives them hope, and hope, as Chesterton said, is the power of being cheerful in circumstances that we know to be desperate. Writing can be pretty desperate endeavor, because it is about some of our deepest needs: our need to be visible, to be heard, our need to make sense of our lives, to wake up and grow and belong. It is no wonder if we sometimes tend to take ourselves perhaps a bit too seriously. (p18-19)

I think that something similar happens with our psychic muscles. They cramp around our wounds -- the pain from our childhood, the losses and disappointments of adulthood, the humiliations suffered in both -- to keep us from getting hurt in the same place again, to keep foreign substances out. So those wounds never have a chance to heal. Perfectionism is one way our muscles cramp. In some cases we don't even know that the wounds and the cramping are there, but both limit us. They keep us moving and writing in tight, worried ways. They keep us standing back or backing away from life, keep us from experiencing life in a naked and immediate way. (p29-30)

If you don't believe in God, it may help to remember this great line of Geneen Roth's: that awareness is learning to keep yourself company. And then learn to be more compassionate company, as if you were somebody you are fond of and wish to encourage. I doubt that you would read a close friend's early efforts and, in his or her presence, roll your eyes and snicker. I doubt that you would pantomime sticking your finger down your throat. I think you might say something along the lines of, "Good for you. WE can work out some of the problems later, but for now, full steam ahead!" (p31)

There's an old Mel Brooks routine, on the flip side of the "2,000-Year-Old Man," where the psychiatrist tells his patient, "Listen to your broccoli, and your broccoli will tell you how to eat it." ... It means, of course, that when you don't know what to do, when you don't know whether your chracter would do this or that, you get quiet and try to hear that still small voice inside. It will tell you what to do. The problem is that so many of us lost access to our broccoli when we were children. When we listened to our intuition when were small and then told the grown-ups what we believed to be true, we were often either corrected, ridiculed, or punished. ... So you may have gotten into the habit of doubting the voice that was telling you quite clearly what was really going on. It is essential that you get it back.

You need your broccoli in order to write well. Otherwise you're going to sit down in the morning and have only your rational mind to guide you. Then, if you're having a bad day, you're going to crash and burn within a half hour. You'll give up, and maybe even get up, which is worse because a lot of us know that if we just sit there long enough, in whatever shape, we may end up being surprised. (p110-111)

If you are not careful, station KFKD [K-Fucked] will play in your head twenty-four hours a day, nonstop, in stereo. Out of the right speaker in your inner ear will come the endless stream of self-aggrandizement, the recitation of one's specialness, or how much more open and gifted and brilliant and knowing and misunderstood and humble one is. Out of the left speaker will be the rap songs of self-loathing, the list of all the things one doesn't do well, of all the mistakes one has made today and over an entire lifetime, the doubt, the assertion that everything that one touches turns to shit, that one doesn't do relationships well, that one is in every way a fraud, incapable of selfless love, that one has no talent or insight, and on and on and on. (p116)

Here is the best true story on giving I know, and it was told by Jack Kornfield of the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre. An eight-year-old boy had a younger sister who was dying of leukemia, and he was told that without a blood transfusion she would die. His parents explained to him that his blood was probably compatible with hers, and if so, he could be the blood donor. They asked him if they could test his blood. He said sure. So they did and it was a good match. Then they asked if he would give his sister a pint of blood, that it could be her only chance of living. He said he would have to think about it overnight.

The next day he went to his parents and said he was willing to donate the blood. So they took him to the hospital where he was put on a gurney beside his six-year-old sister. Both of them were hooked up to IVs. A nurse withdrew a pint of blood from the boy, which was then put in the girl's IV. The boy lay on his gurney in silence while the blood dripped into his sister, until the doctor came over to see how he was doing. Then the boy opened his eyes and asked, "How soon until I start to die?"

Sometimes you have to be that innocent to be a writer. Writing takes a combination of sophistication and innocence; it takes conscience, our belief that something is beautiful because it's right. To be great, art has to point somewhere. So if you are no longer familiar with that place of naive conscience, it's hard to see any point in your being a writer. Almost all of my close friends are walking personality disorders, but I know innocence is in them because I can see it in their faces and in their decisions. I can almost promise that this quality is still in you, that you are capable of quiet heroism. (p205)

Malcolm Gladwell book signing

I happened to visit Barnes and Nobles, for the purposes of killing some time and I stumbled upon a special book launch and signing event, featuring Malcolm Gladwell. He just released a collection of his essays called What the Dog Saw.

Malcolm Gladwell is one of my favorite writers, stylistically. He picks interesting topics, tries to find unusual perspectives on them, and writes with an engaging, scientific-curious voice. I'm not a huge fan of his full-length books as they seem to cover too broad a scope, seem disjointed, and lack well-written conclusions. However, I enjoy many of his New Yorker essays.

Gladwell decided to entertain the audience with a humorous recollection of Taro the dog. When he was a beginning journalist, he became the New York area correspondent for the Washingtonian. He got the job because he was the only applicant. As time went on, he realized that no one cared about his stories. They were never picked up. Out of frustration, Gladwell decided he would only write stories about Bergen County, New Jersey, which was near Manhattan. For a short period of time, he only read the news coming out of Bergen County and had no idea what was going on in the rest of the world.

Gladwell said that in retrospect, Bergen County was a good choice because it was as if all the crazy people from the Bronx had moved there. The county had a fragmented political system, with many tiny municipal governments. For example, there were many school districts containing only fifty students. Parents would get nervous that one district was better than their own, so they would fake addresses to get their kids into that district. Consequently, the school districts hired detectives who would spy on the routes that the parents drove when they dropped their kids off.

Eventually, Gladwell had his breakout story. Taro was a 110 pound Akita. Her owner's 9 year old granddaughter got up at night to use the bathroom and accidentally tripped over Taro's slumbering mass. Taro reacted by biting her lip. New Jersey has strict laws about dogs and this act of violence landed Taro in "doggy death row." But that wasn't the end of the story. This incident resulted in five lawsuits. Gladwell proceeded to read various funny quotes from people involved in the case. One lawyer claimed that this case was basically one of the most important ones he had undertaken in his career. The owner said that the cut on her granddaughter's lip was not a big deal. Some lipstick would cover it up or plastic surgery could remove it.

During his investigative reporting, Gladwell went to New Jersey's "doggy death row." He was not allowed to see Taro, which shows that doggy death row is even more strict than human death row. He then drove around to the bag of the building. The prison was separated from him by a deep ravine and he could see barbed wire surrounding the kennel. He (or possibly the owner) shouted Taro's nickname "T" and then Taro appeared from a distance and began barking. Since Gladwell was unable to "meet" Taro in person, he decided to "interview" Taro's mother. In the short time that he had, he was unable to determine if Taro's mother was simply neurotic or if the owner had caused her to become this way.

Gladwell's story was picked up by the New York Post, with the title "Death Row Dog." The public outcry over Taro led to her being pardoned by the New Jersey governor.

After the Taro dog story, Gladwell entertained 20 minutes of questions from the audience. One person asked him to describe his thought-process / workflow for writing a story. Gladwell didn't have any specific formula. He said that you should write about a topic that excites/provokes you, in his words, a topic that "puts a bee under you bonnet." He added that most of his stories are quite long (e.g. his New Yorker essays), so he finds it necessary to include a B-plot. Another person asked him who his favorite authors were and how many books he read a month. Gladwell said he admired Michael Lewis, especially his book Blind Side. Gladwell called Blind Side the "perfect" book. He reads parts of 20 books a month which he said is not "very impressive" considering that it's his job. The final question was somewhat provocative. A man asked (paraphrase) "Do you think that given enough time, anyone can find a way to argue any viewpoint?" The author's response was that yes, he looks at ideas on the fringe of conventional wisdom, but his goal is only to engage the audience, not to persuade or force his opinions on people.

The the hour was up and the book signing began. I estimate that 2/3 of the audience (including me) left. I thought about getting a book signed and putting it on Ebay but since so many people left, I thought that the market for a Malcolm Gladwell probably wasn't that large.

Fountain pens

As if I needed another hobby. I love writing implements, so I guess it was an inevitability that I would discover fountain pens. Thanks to the awesome online store JetPens, I picked up a few items.

The first pen is the Lamy AL-Star. It's regarded as one of the best "cheap" fountain pens. The body is made out of shiny royal blue aluminum and it has a wonderful ergonomic grip. This pen came with the extra fine nib and I used the included ink cartridge (a pretty standard blue). The point was amazingly fine, but a little scratchy. The Lamy is definitely the classiest looking of the three pens.

Lamy AL-Star writing sample:


Lamy AL-Star closeup:


The second pen is the Platinum Preppy with the 03 fine nib. I used it as an eyedropper pen, so it's technically a fountain pen that has been converted. I got one of the Noodler's Ink kits from JetPens. It includes a bottle of Noodler's Ink (in this case, Polar Blue) and a Platinum Preppy modified to be an eyedropper pen. I really liked the color of the ink. It's blue, but not the typical disposable pen blue ink. Noodler's claims that the ink is waterproof and forge-proof. I loved writing with this pen. So smooth.

Platinum Preppy writing sample:


Platinum Preppy closeup:



The last pen I tried was the Kaweco Sport Classic. It was recommended by as a good fountain pen to convert into a eyedropper by Writer's Bloc. There is no size specification on the nib, but it seems like a medium point. It came with a blue ink cartridge, which I inserted. Unfortunately, I had a hard time getting the ink to start. This pen seems the most "buggy" out of the three. I have to draw a bunch of test strokes before I can get the ink flowing reliably. I'm not sure if the pen is defective or if I have to try some tricks, but I find that I have to press down with the nib. Fountain pens are supposed to flow easily without pressure. The nice feature of the pen is that it's so small. I haven't tried converting it to an eyedropper yet.

Kaweco Sport Classic writing sample:


Kaweco Sport Classic closeup:


Here is a comparison of writing with all three pens.


My favorite pen thus far is the Platinum Preppy. Amazing for a $3 pen!

George Orwell on clear writing

George Orwell wrote this nice essay about obfuscated writing and how to avoid it. He was responding to the political writing culture of his time (1946).

I used to worry about my writing on this blog, but nowadays I write crappy first drafts. After using Wordle to look for common words in my blog, I have become more vigilant about excising superfluous words, such as "just." I like how blog writing has made me throw words on a page without worry, but I would like to practice good writing now and then. As Orwell says, bad writing comes from laziness. Eventually bad writing leads to poor thinking, even for bright people. I'd like to avoid that result.

Pithy information

Here's a thought I've been having lately. One of the challenges of communicating dense information is simply remembering it. The human brain is only capable of digesting information in chunks. For example, a US phone number is 10 digits and that's pretty much the maximum the average person can remember. One of the challenges of giving good presentations or lectures is how to package them so that people will remember them the next day. That's why my master's thesis advisor always told his students to tell a story. Stories are the basic coin of art and incredibly effective in making information delivery potent.

One of my favorite artforms is the musical. It doesn't get any better than that. With a musical, you have a compact two hour story with important moments captured in song. An expertly written song (e.g. many Sondheim songs) conveys so much information. The lyrics are like a poem and the music enhances the emotional power of the words. I don't know quite how to describe it, but the music is like a drug that rushes into your brain and turns on your emotional centers and consequently enhances your ability to take in the words. Unlike most songs though, a song in a musical is part of a larger framework - a story made of dialogue and more songs. I suppose everyone has their preference for length: poetry, short story, or novel. Musicals are analogous to short stories and that's the length I enjoy most. (Aside: for written work, I like both short stories and novels.)

I love good songs because you can sing and perform them and because they're so dense and compact, you can carry them in your pocket. When you come across an interesting moment in your life, you can simply pull out the song and use it as a mirror to reflect on the moment. You can say the same things about poetry, but somehow I just haven't developed a taste for poetry... yet.

Work on a schedule

I read a recent post about how you should just write every day (or on some kind of schedule) and not expect inspiration to strike. That's pretty much true of anything in life and applies to common academic activities like research and teaching as well. This simple concept also reminds me of a quote from Dune by Frank Herbert:

Not in the mood? Moods are things for cattle or loveplay or playing the baliset, not for fighting.

Complete notes on Fisher Files, Sequence II

I finally got around to finishing my notes on all twelve episodes of the Fisher Files, Sequence II. Here are links to the notes to each episode.

• Episode 1: Imposter! - Some perspective on why you shouldn't be so hard on yourself.
  
• Episode 2: Screwed! - How to resolve conflicts with colleagues.
  
• Episode 3: Your thesis - How to plan and write your thesis.
  
• Episode 4: Postdoc - How to get a postdoc and how to be a postdoc.
  
• Episode 5: Travel - The cost of travel and how to make travel easier on yourself.
  
• Episode 6: Junior faculty positions - How to look for junior faculty positions and put together your application, how to manage your interview and visit, and how to negotiate offers.
  
• Episode 7: Giving a talk on your work - Some general advice about giving good talks and some specific advice about how to give different types of talks in academia.
  
• Episode 8: Getting tenure - How to go about getting tenure.
  
• Episode 9: Teaching - How to prepare for your first course, how to manage the logistics of the course, and some general advice about good teaching.
  
• Episode 10: Vacation - Why you should take a vacation, what counts as a vacation, and how to plan for one.
  
• Episode 11: What to work on - How to get funding, how to work with collaborations and students, and how to use your department/university as a resource.
  
• Episode 12: Summary - Main points of Sequence II.
  

Notes on Fisher Files, Sequence II, Episode 3 - Your thesis

Here are my notes on the Fisher Files episode entitled "Your thesis."

• For the student, the thesis is their first real attempt at scientific expression
  
  • Time when you stop and summarize what you've done in last few years
    
  • Watershed moment in your career
    
  • Your thesis should be well-written, well-formatted, well-thought out and represent a good piece of work
    
  • Your thesis might not be read much, but that's not the point; the point is the process
    
  • The thesis is an exercise in bringing something to completion in a graceful and elegant manner
• Start writing thesis about 9 months before defense
  
  • Typically work is still in progress at this point
    
  • The intensive stage of writing comes 3-5 months before the defense
    
  • Should have data analysis done before intensive phase of writing
    
  • Advisors and students should decide consciously when the thesis officially starts
    
• Length of thesis
  
  • Length of thesis is debatable; Sam Ting wants 25 pages, Peter starts with a low figure of 40 pages, but his students theses typically end up being 70-80 pages
    
  • The thesis should not be a bloated work that includes everything
    
  • It should be concise and readable with an emphasis on what *you* did
• Steps to planning the thesis
  
  1. Write an outline down to level 2 (level 1 is the chapters, level 2 is the sections of the chapters). If the student writes a good level 2 outline, Peter usually finds that half the battle is won.
     
  2. Figure out how many pages each section will be (typically 15-25 parts which are a few pages long).
     
  3. Make up a writing schedule. Typically encompasses 7 months which may seem long, but that's how long it takes.
• Writing the thesis
  
  • Read Strunk and White to get a sense of what good writing is; you want to write a good thesis so that you end up with something that you are proud of
    
  • Peter's philosophy: the student should minimize explanations or descriptions of work they weren't involved in
    
  • Example: description of L3 detectors. Student would describe each major component, give major numbers describing their performance, give rough dimensions of the components, and provide good references.
    
  • Technical details like construction of hardware should go in the appendix and not the main body
    
  • The thesis should be a story that explains the motivation, design, and execution of the work. However, it should not rely on narrative.
• In physics, professors won't let their student defend their thesis if the content of the thesis is wrong
  
• Peter: won't schedule the thesis defense until he and the student have agreed that the thesis is in its final form (meaning that they know what the result is although the writing of the thesis itself may not be finished)
  
• Advisor's role in thesis
  
  • Key point: good communication between student and advisor early on, otherwise a lot of time can be wasted
    
  • Advisor should guide and not write the thesis, especially in matters of style, how the thesis is worded, logic
    
  • Advisor should allow the student to express things in their own way
    
  • However, the advisor and student obviously have to agree on the conclusion
• How to mitigate the onerous task of writing the thesis
  
  • Set intermediate goals (weekly if possible)
    
  • Give yourself a little treat after you accomplish each goal (e.g. a nice dinner)
    
  • Ask fellow graduate students and postdocs to look at your drafts as you go along
    
  • Postdocs can be extremely helpful because they recently wrote their thesis and they haven't been jaded by reading dozens of theses like faculty
• Senior theses
  
  • Typically shorter than PhD theses
    
  • Not necessarily a scientific statement, can simply be a description of what the student has done
    
  • Peter: will often have students write about instrumentation or a calculation they have done
    
  • Student should finish their research by September of the senior year, spend fall term writing the thesis, and turn in their thesis during spring semester
    
  • This gives the student time to enjoy spring semester of their senior year and avoids the crunch of writing just before graduation
• Summary
  
  • Plan your thesis well ahead of time
    
  • Take it slow (which allows people to make reasonable decisions)
    
  • Talk to lots of people
    
  • Communicate well with your advisor
    
  • Remember the goal of writing the thesis is to have a product that you're proud of
    
  • Remember that the goal of graduate school is to show that you can take command of something
    
  • Often, while in the process of writing the thesis, the student will become enthusiastic about his/her research topic and realize that he/she can be an expert in a difficult topic that few people understand (this can be quite charming from a faculty standpoint)

Link of the day: Incoherently Scattered Ponderings

I found another blog written by a condensed matter physicist at Incoherently Scattered Ponderings. This blog consists of the random thoughts of a junior faculty member at a top research university. Most posts seem to be about the politics of university life with some writing about recent physics research. The author also seems to enjoy lifehacking. Yay, for another condensed matter physics blog!