Ken Stange

New Year, New Project

It’s not exactly a new project, for I’ve been writing bits and pieces of it for quite some time, but now it’s all coming to together, and I’m working on finishing it for publication this year.

It has gone through a number of tentative, working titles, but I’ve decided on Chicago Days: Growing Up Absurd On The South Side. I feel this describes it best.

I’m afraid it could be call a memoir, a classification that makes me uncomfortable, because it seems memoirs are written by people who have stopped doing anything memorable or of interest to anyone. It also seems egotistical to write about one’s own life—as if anyone cares. I just hope this book doesn’t match my stereotype of this genre.

It’s about growing up on the South Side of Chicago, which was then—and now is even more so—a pretty hostile environment, especially for any kid whose interests and ambitions weren’t shared by hardly anyone. Many writers and journalists have written about youth in this—and similar—rough neighbourhoods, but rarely with an insider’s experience of growing up in such a place.

But I really grew up in two worlds. One was the South Side, but I had another world. I found access to it in the pages of books and in my ‘lab’, which I had put together in what used to be a coal room in the basement. And certainly both shaped who I am now. My wife often responds to something I say or do by shaking her head and saying, “You can take Ken out of Chicago, but you can’t take Chicago out of Ken!”

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Shared Knowledge: Clichés

Writers need to have some idea of what their readers know. Alluding to something is pointless if the reader doesn’t get the allusion. In literature, the “literary canon” refers to important books with which supposedly every literate person should be familiar. Once upon a time (long, long ago, in a place far, far away) for English readers that was Shakespeare, the Bible, and certain “classics”.  But now assumptions about what the average reader has previously read are risky.

However, one knowledge base writers can be confident that most of their readers do share is common clichés. Unfortunately it is problematic to allude to them, because they are by definition trite—and, besides, often blindingly stupid. Been thinking about some ‘truisms’ that so obviously are not true.

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Ya Gotta Love Clichés: Procrastination

My nomination for most dangerously misleading advice: “Good things come to those who wait.”

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Ya Gotta Love Clichés: Causation

 My nomination for most ugly explanation for personal or public misery and tragedy: “It must be God’s will.”

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Your Man Friday’s Ideas: Public Transport Innovation

In this age of traffic congestion and parking problems, ideas are needed for making public transportation more attractive.

Man Friday links here:  http://kenstange.com/yourmanfriday/?p=1544

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Maintaining Credibility

I’m not inclined toward political polemic in my writing, but there are issues I am deeply concerned about, and so I occasionally vent in writing. I think it is extremely important to maintain one’s credibility when dealing with controversial topics. I try to make my arguments logically consistent and check that any supporting sources I cite are reputable.

If your arguments are lame and purely emotional, and your sources are dubious, it only hurts the cause you are supporting. Those in disagreement will quickly spot this and point it out. And those who share your concern and have knee-jerk agreement with anything that supports that viewpoint will share what you write and its questionable sources—giving more ammunition to those in opposition.

Anyone who uses the Internet knows how easy it is to find ‘sources’ that support any crazy idea from homeopathy through the end of the world to aliens living among us. Unfortunately too many sites in support of sound ideas also are so obviously biased, exaggerated in their reporting, and just as questionable as those sites supporting crazy ideas.

And the other sad fact is that if you question an idea that is any part of the party line for some group, you are ignored by them—and often even accused of being an enemy. (I speak from experience.) And those from another party will joyously quote you like crazy!

A good example of balanced, informed, and unbiased writing can be found on Dr. Ben Goldacre’s blog (http://www.badscience.net). (He also has a regular column aptly called “Bad Science” in The Guardian.) He has been sued for calling (with documentation) many ‘alternative' medicine practioners what they are: charlatans! (http://kenstange.com/kenstangeweb/writing-on-the-wall/blog-archive/writings-on-the-wall---4/)

Irronically those ready to condemn and even sue him (if they have the resources) are often the same people who hate “Big Pharma”, although he has been just as critical of the pharmaceutical industry, even writing a book about what is wrong with their practices.

Moral of the story: toe the party line or expect trouble. And be sure to check your supporting sources of information.

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Further Remarks Re Proofing And Writing Tools

In my last posting, I tipped my hat to my wife for her immeasurable help as my unpaid and conscientious editor, and I have written previously that I don’t impose on her for doing it on these blog postings as well. I accept full responsibility for any egregious errors in them. I need to reserve her skills for editing my books and other stuff going out for publication.

But apparently she can’t easily step out of the role of editor. Too many years of doing it for me, and too many years correcting papers for her English composition courses at Nip, have made it hard for her to read anything at all without honing in on any typos or anything she considers poor phrasing or incorrect grammar. When she does it to what I write, I take consolation in knowing I’ve heard her do it to the writing of great writers I respect.

So when she pointed out what should have been obvious typos and problems in my last two posts, I was appreciative, but admittedly very dismayed. The embarrassing irony is that I was partially writing about careful proofreading! And I really do it several times before posting a blog. Really, I do! I swear! (I may be obsessive-compulsive, but I’m just not good at proofing my own stuff.)

I think I’ve fixed the problems, but I know that while correctly something, I often introduce a fresh error.

I shudder to think what is messed up in this one. Be forgiving. Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. (Advice I give, but sometimes fail to follow.)

Erratum: “correctly” should be “correcting”.

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Blog Time Out: Back To Chicago Days 

Enuf blogging! I’m returning to focusing all my attention on my current writing project, a memoir: Chicago Days: Growing Up Absurd On The South Side.

Chapter from the book: “My Gang”.

The Prologue to the book.

(Credit: Image from GQ website): http://www.gq.com/style/blogs/the-gq-eye/2009/11/-yesterday-we-clued-you.html

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Your Man Friday’s Ideas: Pay Attention!

It could be said that everyone has ADD (attention deficit disorder), because we all sometimes fail to focus and keep our attention on what matters or what we intend. For example, most memory problems have nothing to do with memory itself, but rather with not really attending to what we intend to remember. Our memory system is efficiently tuned to only bother storing that to which we are giving our undivided attention. But paying appropriate attention often isn’t easy, as these videos demonstrate.

Man Friday links here: http://kenstange.com/yourmanfriday/?p=1558

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Call It Quasi-Censorship?

Censorship is an attack on a fundamental human right, but one should be careful in applying the term. Censorship is a term that really should only be applied to attempts to completely prevent freedom of expression by suppressing something from any public exposure.

So those silly warnings attached to music or films about “mature content” or “intended for mature audiences” aren’t censorship. (Ironically, a lot of the material so labeled is clearly intended for very immature adults.) And it is egocentric and absurd for writers and other artists to cry “censorship!” when an editor or a curator decides not to use their work. The amount of public exposure something gets is inevitably determined to a great extent by editorial decisions, and these ‘gate-keepers’ do serve a useful purpose, even it their decisions are just motivated by financial considerations. Of course, being able to bypass them is important, and that has become a lot easier than in the past. Just consider YouTube or all the blogs on the Internet. (Unfortunately, amount of exposure here is often determined by the extent of uncritical, majority opinion.)

However, there should be a term for wide spread editorial biases that have tremendous effects and are too often determined less by critical evaluation than by less noble financial or political considerations. (‘Quasi-censorship’ isn’t quite accurate, but I’ll use that term for lack of better one.)

The main stream news media is one example. What makes front-page news isn’t necessarily what is objectively most important or significant. It is largely determined by what will be of popular interest. That is why some good-looking, teen-age, pop singer who indulges in on-stage exhibitionism or behaves like an irresponsible idiot in public shares the front page with world affairs. (Of course, important new scientific discoveries or interesting arts news is relegated to the back pages or special, niche sections.)

One solution is to search out ‘alternative’ news sources, but most of these are so blatantly biased that they are totally untrustworthy. They only exist to please those sharing their biases. They consistently take advantage of what is called ‘confirmation bias’. Whether your political leanings are liberal or conservative, you can find an alternative ‘news’ source that will support that political agenda, albeit sometimes with valid news that hasn’t had enough public exposure, but too often with dubious ‘reportage’. Try to find one that includes any articles contrary to its always-obvious political agenda. It isn’t easy.

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Lies About Censorship: Crying Wolf

It is ironic how much people tend to justify censorship, and yet ridiculous claims about alleged censorship are so often used to sell snake oil—and lunatic ideas.

Think about this ad to sell you some instant cure for a gargantuan belly. Gee, I wasn’t aware that physicians were even enabled to ban videos!

The Internet is polluted with tens of thousands of ads to sell worthless books or snake oil on the basis of claims that doctors (and of course, that evil, corporate behemoth, ‘Big Pharma’) don’t want you to know about their ‘modestly priced’ panacea for all your ills.

One has to wonder why doctors wouldn’t want you to get well. Are they afraid of losing all their ‘clients’ and their livelihood if no one is ever sick? Foolish me, I thought the shortage of doctors was the problem, not the shortage of sick people.

And every conspiracy theorist out there insists that the government is suppressing information about UFOs or Lizard People from some distant galaxy living amidst us.

This isn’t to say that governments are not guilty of suppressing real and vital information from embarrassing public scrutiny. Nor is it to defend the serious ‘quasi-censorship’ by the pharmaceutical industry in not releasing research findings questioning the efficacy or even the safety of their products. These are terrible, harmful abuses that need to be addressed.

However, it is to say that crying wolf when there really aren’t any can only detract from real, justified warnings about actual censorship or its more subtle varieties that I’ve been calling ‘quasi-censorship’.

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Combating Censorship

I’m not a joiner, but I belong to three non-partisan organizations concerned with human rights and have combating censorship as part of their expressed goals. Their mission statements can be found on their websites.

Amnesty International: http://www.amnesty.ca 
Amnesty is one among several organization devoted to protecting human rights, and among those rights is freedom of expression. 

CCLA (Canadian Civil Liberties Association): http://ccla.org 
This is the Canadian counterpart to the American Civil Liberties Union. They are quite willing to support freedom of expression, even when doing so is unpopular or even when it is being exercised by organizations that are clearly lunatic or are expressly devoted to suppressing human rights. An example is defending the right of the Neo-Nazis to parade. They obviously have taken to heart the dictum “I may hate what you have to say, but I will still defend your right to say it.” They have guts—and principles.

PEN Canada: http://pencanada.ca/about/ 
This is the Canadian branch of PEN, committed to protecting the rights of writers to publicly express themselves without persecution by governments or anyone else. Such persecution, legal or illegal, ranging from financial intimidation to imprisonment, is only too common.

Another way to combat censorship is not to self-censor when talking about it with others. However, it is a surprisingly (and dismayingly) way to make enemies—even among the well intentioned. 

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