I'm Learnding

Used under the fair use doctrine for educational purposes.

So, I have a lot to learn.

That’s no surprise. That I knew about the Ophelia Syndrome before I signed up to teach this course doesn’t necessarily mean I don’t occasionally stumble into its pitfalls. But as Lucy said to Charlie Brown in the Peanuts Christmas special, “that I recognize I have a problem means I am not too far gone.” That’s good, right?

I’ve already confessed to Tyler that I’m having a hard time adjusting to teaching this course because, from 2006 to 2009, I was taking online courses with a group of highly-motivated grad students. Now I’m on the other side of the looking-glass and see that the students I’m dealing with don’t quite have that level of motivation. Some do – don’t get me wrong there – but there are some who don’t. And it hurts to see. Not that it’s hurting me, but I hate to see them hurting themselves perhaps without recognizing it.

So what to do? Tyler’s suggestion that we study the language we use as we interact with our students is an apt one, because I’ve seen in all sorts of interactive situations – from the online courses in which I was a student, to email exchanges I have with various SMEs at work and through the sometimes contentious exchanges I have with fellow co-workers at Uncharted, a social media group I’m involved with – that it’s communication and the words we use that sometimes inflame and sometimes calm contentious situations.

This is the part where I start to sound like Uncle Rico from “Napoleon Dynamite,” as if I’m completely legit, like I’ve got all the answers. I don’t. This is just what I’m seeing as important and what I’m seeing I need to work on.

Firstly, Elder Bednar says in his presentation “Seek Learning by Faith” (I’m trying to model good citation format for my students here; gotta keep in practice), “[A]nything you or I do as an instructor that knowingly and intentionally draws attention to self – in the messages we present, in the methods we use, or in our personal demeanor – is a form of priestcraft that inhibits the teaching effectiveness of the Holy Ghost.”

Ouch. Priestcraft. You know, that’s just like, as Steve Martin says, the word ‘hemorrhoid.’ Neither is a word you want to become associated with. But as I read that portion of the article, I recognized myself in it a little. On paper like this, I’m loquacious. Logorrheic, in fact. And I’ve probably stepped on a few toes strutting about in the cockpit of language, making myself sound bigger than I am. So then I read what Elder Bednar says and I’m humbled. I’m also reminded of what one of my writing heroes said:

The intellectual life is not the only road to God, nor the safest, but we find it to be a road, and it may be the appointed road for us. Of course, it will be so only so long as we keep the impulse pure and disinterested. That is the great difficulty. As the author of the Theologia Germanicai says, we may come to love knowledge – our knowing – more than the thing known: to delight not in the exercise of our talents but in the fact that they are ours, or even in the reputation they bring us. Every success in the scholar’s life increases this danger. If it becomes irresistible, he must give up his scholarly work. The time for plucking out the right eye has arrived.

That’s what CS Lewis says in “Learning in War-Time,” a sermon he delivered in Oxford in 1939.

So between CS Lewis and Elder Bednar, I can see I’ve got some humility to learn.

So what am I doing to learn it?

Well, I’m here, virtual hat in hand, hoping to learn from the rest of you. This is my first semester teaching anything outside of Primary or Elders Quorum, so I’m green as bamboo. I’m ready to be taught.

I’m also doing a little self-exploration, thus following one of Elder Bednar’s admonitions: “Learning by faith cannot be transferred from an instructor to a student through a lecture, a demonstration, or an experiential exercise; rather, a student must exercise faith and act in order to obtain the knowledge for himself or herself.”

Here’s what I’ve found out:

Mark Canada, in “Students as Seekers in Online Courses,” offers good advice, as Tyler has already pointed out: “To help students adjust to working effectively as independent learners, professors should emphasize the pursuit of knowledge – perhaps even using words such as “seek” and “explore: -- when communicating with their online students.” I’m trying to do that – my word of the semester is “challenge.” I know each of the students I have in this section are capable of doing the work that’s being asked of them. Over the past two weeks, we’ve spent time together learning, and I’ve learned which students are the eager beavers and which ones need a bit of cajolery. Thus the challenges – dig deeper into the articles, find what you like, what you don’t agree with, and share it with the class. These challenges are calls to action – something Alan Murray, Uncharted’s president, urges us to do all the time as we try to take our creation at www.uncharted.net and turn it into a successful social media platform. We can unfurl the flags and put out the welcome mat and pay jugglers to stand at the doors, he says, but until we ask our visitors to do something – to submit a story, upload some photos, etc. – they won’t feel obliged or encouraged to do so, even if they’ve come to us of their own free will.

Note I use the word cajolery here. That’s for shorthand purposes, not meant to bear the baggage the word brings with it. One of the things I hope to emphasize with my students throughout this semester and, BYU-Idaho willing, further semesters, is that no matter their chosen major, they’ll need to be effective communicators. I plan on pointing them to a paper called “Do Scientists Understand the Public,” written by Chris Mooney for the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Mooney’s thesis is that scientists in general either need to do a better job of communicating with the public in order to convey the import of their scientific research or to solicit the help of professional communicators to do so in a way that leads the public to positive calls for action, rather than leading them to preconceived notions or knee-jerk political opinions of science because the principles haven’t been clearly communicated.

Mooney, in his paper, commends the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission as an example of a scientific agency that has “undertaken new measures to strengthen public support of its activities.” Part of that includes a careful watch that cajolery or condescension doesn’t enter into the picture. Mooney writes: “According to Janet Kotra, head of the NRC’s High-Level Waste Public Outreach Team, these steps include improving the ability of government scientists to engage with citizens in well-designed, effective public meetings. As Kotra put it at the American Academy meeting: ‘I will never forget a former colleague who said, ‘You mean, I have to dumb down my presentation for Ma and Pa Kettle?’ And of course, the answer to that is, yes, if you see it that way. But if you see it that way, I don’t want you talking to them.’”

So as I issue my challenges and calls to action, I’m trying to do it in a manner that encourages my students to act, rather than to be acted upon. “Learning by faith and from experience are two of the central features of the Father’s plan of happiness,” Elder Bednar writes. “The Savior preserved moral agency through the Atonement and made it possible for us to act and to learn by faith. Lucifer’s rebellion against the plan sought to destroy the agency of man, and his intent was that we as learners would only be acted upon.” I hope my choices – and the Spirit – help me avoid such situations.

Time's Almost Up for the Treasury of Laughter

Come the third week of May, the era of the Treasury of Laughter blog will close.

I have officially finished reading the book, written my last post and put the book back on the shelf. It’s about time – the poor book, 65 years old, isn’t in the best of shape, though my wife ran it through her book press.

And like the Cokesbury Party Blog, it kind of goes out with a whimper rather than a bang, due in part to weak end material in the book itself, and also to my desire to finish blogging this book and take a rest for a bit.

Will I find another book to blog about?

I don’t know. I’ve got a few possibilities sitting on the bookshelf. But in the meantime, I’ve started two other blogs which are a little on the neglected side, and I’ve also started teaching part-time as an English instructor at a local university. Whether or not I start another blog depends on time and desire, and both are at a low ebb at the moment. Plus, I’ve got a fantasy novel to edit and farm out to agents before the year is out. I’m swamped. And I can’t even blame Guilder for it.

Used under the fair use doctrine for commentary purposes.

Venus Flytrap Helps Me Write A Thesis Statement

NOTE: Again, something from the basic English course I'm teaching.

I have a video for you to watch – all of about 4 minutes long – that perfectly encapsulates what we’re learning this week.

This video contains a brief, snappy thesis statement that embodies everything in the “Writing a Thesis” presentation (thinking small but covering that small bit thoroughly) and expressing the idea with attitude – clearly answering the question “What do you want your readers to know?”

Here’s the thesis statement:

I can give you the basics of the atom in two minutes.

And here’s the video. It’s a clip from the television show “WKRP in Cincinnati,” which I watched a lot as a kid. Yes, I am old.

Used under the fair use doctrine for educational purposes.

As you’re watching, consider these questions (taken from the “Showing vs. Telling” presentation):

• How does Venus Flytrap make his details do useful work?
• What description does he include?
• How does he let dialogue do the showing, rather than him doing the telling?
• How does he use lists, repetition, and spatial relationships to support his telling?
• And finally – How in the end does his showing help him support his thesis?

As CS Lewis advises: “Let me taste for myself and you’ll have no need to tell me how I should react to the flavor.” Venus Flytrap, in describing the basics of the atom, shows his reluctant pupil everything he needs to know about the structure of the atom in a way that let his pupil taste for himself, rather than being told to react to the flavor.

As you listen to and read the “This I Believe” segments assigned this week and prepare to write your own thesis statement, please keep these questions in mind. As you read and listen, draw out how the authors rely on detail, description, dialogue, repetition, lists, and other elements to show, rather than tell, why they believe what they believe.

Ding-Dong, bin Laden's Dead

So Osama bin Laden is dead.

Buried at sea, with the body handled “per Islamic tradition,” according to the news. Don’t quite sure what that means, but the government has made pains to ensure that was communicated clearly. (Apparently, it has to do with the Muslim belief that a body must be buried within a day of death. The burial at sea, I assume, has to do with US desires that his body not be exhumed and venerated among radicals.)

His death, of course, will be denied by those who supported him, and by others. Per CNN:

One resident in the city of Lahore said Monday she was stunned to hear bin Laden was in the country.

"But was it really him?" the woman said.

A senior national security official told CNN that officials had multiple confirmations that the body was bin Laden's, saying they had the "ability to run images of the body and the face."

That’s a refrain, I’m sure, we’ll hear more and more often as time passes. Some so-called photo experts are already claiming bin Laden's "death" photo is a fake. UPDATE: The deniers have their first A-lister: Cindy Sheehan. And there are things like this, with Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood -- a major force behind that country's revolution earlier this spring -- condemning the bin Laden "assassination." So the circle keeps a-comin' as we all knew it would.

Nonetheless, a victory for the United States after ten years and two wars and a lot of death, not the least of which are the 3,000 or so souls who died in New York City, Alexandria, Virginia, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 11, 2001.

President Obama, of course, was jubilant.

And this time, it’s our turn to cheer in the streets.

Per Time magazine, former President George W. Bush had this to say of the news:

"The fight against terror goes on, but tonight America has sent an unmistakable message: No matter how long it takes, justice will be done."

And maybe Richard Thompson has an explanation as to how he was able to elude capture for so long.

Then there's this guy, Abbottabad resident and IT wonk Sohaib Athar, who live-tweeted the raid on bin Laden's compound without knowing what was going on. Instant celebrity for him, the poor sap.

Shadow Behind

NOTE: Just a poem about a late evening walk. Have a nice day.

Proper night sounds:
Rain Bird sprinkler kicking
crickets telling the temperature
whispers of far away traffic
crunch of roadside gravel
mousy rustlings in the ditches
and vacant lots
Proper night smells:
hot dust and oil from the road
mixed with lofting lilac
purple stinkweed flower
mark skunklike the air
wet gravel
leftover smoke from charcoal briquettes
and something odd
watermelon mixed with auto exhaust
Proper night sights:
Cat's eyes
round in the flashlight
a good rock to kick
underneath
whitewashed moon and stars
Security light
obscure the heavens
warding off evil-doers from
Andromeda
and the Big Bear
Not even starlight
may shine through key-holes
Wet feet walk
lanky shadow behind

Ignorance

NOTE: From time to time, I will post a bit from my FDENG 101 class here. Is for fun.

A good part of our discussion this week has focused on two things:

1) How do we express our ignorance without saying we’re stupid?
2) How do we counteract our own ignorance?

First, ignorance without stupidity.

These are not synonyms.

• Ignorance, per the American Heritage Dictionary, is defined as “The condition of being ignorant; lack of knowledge.”
• Stupidity, per the same dictionary, is defined as “The quality of fact of being stupid, or a stupid act, remark, or idea.”

So we now turn to the root words:

• Ignorant: Without education or knowledge; exhibiting lack of education or knowledge; unaware or uninformed.
• Stupid: Slow to apprehend, dull, obtuse; showing a lack of sense or intelligence.

To me, this implies that when we speak of ignorance, we speak of a lack of education – whether through lost or missed opportunity, laziness, distraction, or what have you. Stupidity, conversely, is a lack of the mental or spiritual means or drive to obtain knowledge. We may be at the same time both ignorant and stupid – we can lack knowledge, of, say, cosmology – the study of the universe – while at the same time lacking the mental or spiritual faculties necessary to attain that knowledge and erase our ignorance.

In contrast, we may be ignorant of cosmology but at the same time not stupid – we have at our fingertips the tools, the guidelines, the raw data, the imagination necessary to convert our ignorance into knowing.

I speak of cosmology because of this wonderful example of an ignorant, but not stupid, man turning his ignorance into a great pool of knowledge:

When the Mount Wilson Observatory was under construction at the turn of the 20th century in the hills above Los Angeles, a man by the name of Milton Humason worked there as a mule skinner, tending some of the many mules used to haul construction equipment and supplies up the mountain to where the observatory was being built.

After the observatory was finished in 1917, he got a job there as a janitor, partly to impress his father-in-law, who looked down on a potential son-in-law who had no formal education past the age of 14 and worked as a ranch hand.

Shortly thereafter, however, he changed jobs at the observatory and became a “night assistant,” or an astronomer’s helper. His patience, skill, and diligence, per Brian Vertrudo, writing for the Christian Science Monitor, brought him to the attention of George Hale, head of the observatory. Recognizing in Humason only a lack of knowledge, evidenced by his stunted education – but not stupidiy – evidenced by his dedication to his new duties – Hale appointed Humason to the scientific staff of the observatory in 1919.

Humason went on, with fellow astronomer Edwin Hubble, to describe the “red-shift” of stars and galaxies, a key component to the Big Bang theory.

There’s a bit more about Milton Humason here, from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos episode “Edge of Forever”:

I recommend you watch the full episode here, but especially the final few minutes, where Sagan, years after the show first aired in the early 1980s, updates the science he spoke of in the show. Here we see a man confessing his past ignorance without expressing a single iota of stupidity.

That brings us to another of mankind’s vices, from stupidity to pride. Do we, then, as educated, non-ignorant people, have the right to brag about our lack of ignorance? Not really. I know some very intelligent people, whose intelligence ranges from knowing how to interact with people to the intricacies of nuclear criticality safety. They have in common something Eliot Butler points out in his essay “Everybody Is Ignorant, Only On Different Subjects”:

I am sorry to say that one cannot always detect whether someone recently met has graduated from a university. But one can soon tell if one is speaking with an educated person. Mark Van Doren points out correctly that nobody who is will ever admit to being educated, but only that he or she is so conscious of many areas of gross ignorance. Will Rogers saw it clearly: “Everybody is ignorant,” he said, “only on different subjects.”

Our Father in Heaven wants us to attain knowledge and imagination and to help those around us. Elder David A. Bednar said in a Sept. 11, 2001, devotional BYU-Idaho:

Each of us must also appreciate the roles of faithfulness and diligence and obedience in the Lord’s pattern for receiving help from heaven. Please turn with me again to 2 Nephi 28:30. “For behold, thus saith the Lord God: I will give unto the children of men line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little; and blessed are those who hearken unto my precepts and lend an ear unto my counsel, for they shall learn wisdom; for unto him that receiveth I will give more; and from them that shall say, We have enough, from them shall be taken away even that which they have.

He goes on to say:

[A]s we mature spiritually, we begin to develop a sound judgment, a refined and educated conscience, and a heart and mind filled with wisdom. It is not just that we have grown older, nor have we simply become smarter and had more experiences on which to draw, as important as those experiences are. Rather, the Holy Ghost has over time been expanding our intellect, forming our feelings, sharpening and elevating our perspective, such that we increasingly think and feel and act as the Lord would under similar circumstances.

Here we see the pattern for counteracting our own ignorance: Humility. We humbly seek knowledge and inspiration and sparks of imagination from our studies, from the books we read, the programs we watch, the thoughts we have individually and as we discuss things with others. Wee see the fruition of what Butler writes of:

[O]ne quickly detects when one speaks with an educated person. Matters learned last evening, and being pondered and developed, books recently read, an essay just encountered, an argument still going on, a book just purchase to be read tonight as soon as another is finished -- one hears of such from an educated person.

Over several years I have spoken with many graduating seniors in one program here: with several there was the pain of learning that not one book had been read since they entered the university except the required books. By others a few had been read. But the educated men and women in the program all had books just finished, others being read, and a growing list of books that they could hardly wait to get into.

Further, author CS Lewis had this to say about humility when he offered his sermon “Learning in War-Time,” in 1939:

As the author of the Theologia Germanicai says, we may come to love knowledge -- our knowing -- more than the thing known: to delight not in the exercise of our talents but in the fact that they are ours, or even in the reputation they bring us. Every success in the scholar's life increases this danger. If it becomes irresistible, he must give up his scholarly work. The time for plucking out the right eye has arrived.

Acknowledging our ignorance is the first step in erasing it. And if we pursue that erasure with humility – expressing thanks to those who have gone on before us, as Albert Einstein says:

Bear in mind that the wonderful things you learn in your schools are the work of many generations. All this is put in your hands as your inheritance in order that you may receive it, honor it, add to it, and one day faithfully hand it on to your children.

we will attain what President Gordon B. Hinckley said:

Anyone who imagines that bliss is normal is going to waste a lot of time running abound shouting that he's been robbed. The fact is that most putts don't drop, most beef is tough, most children grow up to be just people, most successful marriages required a high degree of mutual toleration, most jobs are more often dull than otherwise. Life is like an old time rail journey . . . delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed. The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride.

AREVA Rumors

Rumors and doomsaying about the cancellation of AREVA’s $3.2 billion uranium enrichment plant to be built west of Idaho Falls have certainly been monnaie courant on the complex lately.

Just yesterday on the bus I heard that the company had all but cancelled plans to build the plant, given the tsunami-induced disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, and that folks hired to work for the company in Idaho were being laid off because the bottom had dropped out of the future of nuclear power.

Not so, according to this story from the Idaho Statesman.

Odd that this is the first news story I’ve seen on the rumors – effectively dispelling them – and odder still that it didn’t come from a local media outlet. Oh well. Dan Yurman over at Idaho Samizdat covered this situation adequately well on April 24, having this to say:

Total U.S. demand in 2012 will be about 13 million SWU. Areva's share with a completed plant at Eagle Rock will be about 25% of that number. Both Areva and Urenco have filed with the NRC to double their production capacity by 2018.

So if anyone is running rumors up the flag pole about the firm skipping town, you really don't have to pay attention.

His subhead, of course, says it all: “Companies building multi-billion dollar facilities don’t do things on whims.”

AREVA itself is still pushing the green button on the project.

Privacy and Apple Tracking

I don’t know how much of a private life I have any more. I blog incessantly. I’m on the most popular social networking sites – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn – and have a presence or persona on any number of other sites ranging from the public – Uncharted, of course, and places like Consumerist, the New York Times, Slate – and private, including the places I work, CWI and BYU-Idaho.

There’s also that ethereal detritus of the Internet, ranging from sites I created at the University of Idaho when the Internet was in its public infancy – stored, it seems, in perpetuity thanks to the folks at the Wayback Machine – and some few evidences of my nearly decade-long career as a poor community journalist.

Oh yeah. Then there are the sites where I once was, but am no longer, due to disinterest or whatever. Those sites include Gawker, Second Life, eBay, and others – the first of which e-mailed me a while back because of a security breach at their end. I changed a few passwords and such, and hope for the best.

Thing is we don’t really know who is collecting data on us, or what they’re doing with that data, or what other people could do with their data. The iPhone/iPad “tracking” debacle ongoing right now, along with the plunge into outer darkness of the Sony PlayStation online thingie have got a lot of people worried about their “privacy.” (And what's up with playing games over the Internet? When I was a boy we played alone with our Atari 2600s and we LIKED it.)

But I wonder: Does privacy exist any more?

I don’t think so.

And we’re to blame.

My wife chides me incessantly for oversharing on the Internet. I have cut back on what I share and what I don’t share. But the Internet never forgets.

And here’s one thing about the Apple situation – if that data could be used somehow to track a stolen product, wouldn’t consumers be happy that Apple included such a feature – which they’re now calling a “bug” in its products?

And here’s another thing about the Apple situation – apparently it’s a federal law that cell phones have the ability to track a phone’s whereabouts, per Geek.com. Of course, nowhere in the act does it say that this data has to be recorded for months, but Apple’s most loyal fans, it seems, are grabbing at straws to defend the company in this latest of breathless Internet brouhahas.

Would I be concerned if I discovered my cell phone were tracking my movements and storing that information? Maybe. It wouldn’t reveal all that much, or certainly less than my blogs and Facebook and Uncharted sharings reveal about my movements, and they’re about as real time as any thief would need, I suppose, to go to my house and rob us blind of the possessions it took us a lifetime to shop for.

Apple, of course, denies any nefarious mischief.

The breathless Internet, as Scott Adams so wonderfully points out, doesn’t care what Steve Jobs is saying about the situation. Backpedal, backpedal, blah blah blah bling bling bling blah is all they hear. Even though what Jobs is saying sounds pretty reasonable. He tells All Things Digital:

As new technology comes into the society there is a period of adjustment and education. We haven’t–as an industry–done a very good job educating people, I think, as to some of the more subtle things going on here. As such, (people) jumped to a lot of wrong conclusions in the last week.

Poor communication and people jumping to conclusions. Breathless Internet indeed.

Chernobyl, 25 Years On

I am an advocate of nuclear power. But it is foolish to think that nuclear power is 100 percent safe. Nothing really in this world is, but those who advocate for nuclear power need to recognize that when nuclear power is unsafe, the consequences can be dire (warning: disturbing images).

A lot of things went wrong at Chernobyl, 25 years ago. Above all, the reactor that exploded was poorly designed and clumsily operated.

A lot of things went wrong in Japan – but what went wrong there was outside the control of humanity. Given what happened, I think the Japanese and those assisting have responded as well as could be expected.

Used under the fair use doctrine for commentary purposes.

Excuses and explanations, of course, don’t erase what happened at Chernobyl, nor will they erase what has happened and is happening at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan.

What is clear, however, is that comparisons between the two disasters do not make for an apples to apples comparison, as Joe Colvin explains at the ANS Nuclear Café blog, here.

Here’s what he says in part:

The Chernobyl reactors were a special design using highly enriched uranium in a graphite moderator—and as we learned from studying the event—the accident could only have happened with this type of design. The reactors were created to produce weapons grade plutonium for the Soviet military forces along with electricity for commercial use. They were difficult to operate and required constant adjustment to remain stable. The officer in charge was an electrical engineer who was not a specialist in reactor plants. The sequence of events which caused the accident occurred when operators began an engineering procedure to test the main electrical generator, which was outside of the reactor building.  Delays in starting the test, and management pressure to meet the schedule, resulted in several crucial outcomes that combined to cause the accident.

At Fukushima, from what we know at this time, it’s also plain that situation arose, not from human error in design or operation, but rather from the most extraordinary and unprecedented natural disaster in human memory—and what’s more, it was the tsunami wave, not the earthquake, which occasioned the loss of power and therefore challenged the cooling of the reactors. In fact, the reactors operated as designed and built – they shut down automatically when the earthquake occurred.

Yes, there are lessons to be learned from Fukushima, as Dr. Akira T. Tokuhiro outlines at Idaho Samizdat here.

Perhaps most significant is Dr. Tokuhiro’s call to form an international nuclear disaster strike team, ready to mobilize to tamp down a disaster as soon as possible, rather than waiting the three weeks that were required before international experts were invited and able to come to Japan’s aid. This would, of course, require further cooperation among various nuclear regulatory agencies, power companies, and other bureaucracies, but such cooperation is not impossible.

[Advertise in This Space]

How much am I advertised at?

Well, right now I know I’m wearing Wrangler jeans. They tell me so on the big leather label on the back. I like these jeans. They’re sturdy and comfortable. My Lee jeans, however, less so. So when it’s a Wrangler jeans week, I’m happier.

There’s lots of product packaging in the home. When I go to the pantry, I can see Diet Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, Calidad brand tortilla chips, Life Cereal, Hy-Top soups, all sorts of things. Same in the bathroom.

And on the road. Lots of billboards and signs to read. And lots of advertising, too, on that Information Superhighway.

So that’s a lot. And I don’t even watch television or have a physical newspaper in the house – traditional avenues of advertising – though I do get plenty of advertising in the form of book blurbs and such on the printed matter I do read.

Morgan Spurlock, evidently, wants to find out how much we’re advertised at. And how much advertising we’ll tolerate (answer, way too much).

I’m not sure he’s necessarily saying advertising is good or evil – it’s just there, part of our accepted landscape. Maybe it’s getting more pernicious, and maybe you could say money is wasted on it – but I’m not convinced it’s advertising that drives us to make every purchase we make.

I bought the Wrangler jeans because they were my size, on sale at an outlet. I might go back and buy more Wranglers if I see them there again not because they’re wranglers, but because they feel good. But I’ll keep on trying other pants, on the hope I find something better.

We bought our Honda Pilot because we knew the former owner – my father-in-law – and because the financing plan – 0 percent API, again thanks to my father-in-law – couldn’t be beat.

So watch for an interesting turn at the end of this talk, when in an only slightly backhanded way, he praises the companies that agreed to sponsor his new film by agreeing to take the risk in turning over their brand to him, at least for this film. It’s one I want to see.