The Sanity Project

Time to flee Glassdoor

This entry was posted in Commentary Writing as business and tagged Glassdoor Internet privacy on by

Glassdoor is a site which lets employees and ex-employees report anonymously on what it’s like to work at companies. It used to place a high value on user privacy, since people reporting bad stuff about their employers can get them into trouble. Recently, though, it’s not only reversed itself but, in a single bound, become one of the worst websites for privacy.

I’m unusually close to Report Zero on this matter, and I think the person making this report would rather not be too widely identified, so I’ll link only to secondary sources here, such as this Ars Technica article, checking them against the original reports for accuracy.
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Two views on open discussion

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged censorship education on by

Is open discussion with minimal limitations a value or a danger? Here I try to understand the people who are afraid of it and answer their concerns.

The starting point for this post was a Code of Conduct posted by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). It doesn’t specify severe penalties for violation, though groups within W3C could in principle reference it as a basis for draconian rules. It recommends resolving issues by discussion in preference to censure or expulsion. So that much is OK. This code is much less of a problem than some which certain science fiction conventions have proclaimed.

Still, its list of “unacceptable behaviors” is broad, and that raises concerns. Many refer to remarks that have no place in a professional organization, such as “deliberate misinformation,” “personal attacks,” “unwelcome sexual attention,” and so on. Others, though, could be used to discourage or punish unpopular ideas.
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This entry was posted in Administrative on by | Open »

Within the past month, my WordPress site has stopped sending me emails telling me there are pending comments, or at least I’ve stopped receiving them. This will mean longer delays before I notice a comment and approve it (or, in rare cases, reject it). HostGator keeps getting worse. Sorry.

Dubious choices in SFWA scholarships

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged fandom science fiction SFWA on by

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) is offering “scholarships” for “members of underserved communities.” I put the word “scholarships” in quotes because they’re really free memberships in the 2024 Nebula conference, not educational grants. (The deadline to apply has gone by, sorry.) This sounds admirable, but some of their ideas of what constitutes a “community” make the scheme very disturbing. The categories are:

  • “Black and/or Indigenous creators in the United States and abroad.”
  • “Asian creators, Asian American creators, and creators from the Pacific Islands.”
  • “creators with backgrounds in Spanish-speaking and/or Latin American cultures.”
  • “creators with disabilities.”
  • “creators whose financial situations may otherwise prevent them from participating.”
  • “creators who live outside the United States.”
  • “creators who identify as LGBTQIA+.”

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Peer Gynt at Symphony Hall

This entry was posted in Music and tagged Massachusetts music on by

What’s a concert review doing in this blog on writing? Well, it’s increasingly become a blog on whatever I think people will enjoy reading about, so why not? I’ve blogged about accompanying silent movies, and incidental music for a play isn’t that far removed.

Symphony Hall in Boston has been the site of a lot of great experiences for me. Some are faded in my memory. It’s likely that there’s one which, if you could remind me of it, would make me say, “Of course! Nothing could top that!” Right now, though, I can’t name one that was more breathtaking than last night’s presentation of Peer Gynt.
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The Lost World and Gertie the Dinosaur

This entry was posted in Movies and tagged Internet music silent movies on by

My next silent movie night will be on Wednesday, March 13, at 8:00 PM Eastern US time. Once again, I’ll provide live, improvised keyboard accompaniment. Live accompaniment is what makes silent movies special to me. You can react in real time in chat and even (gently!) criticize my playing.

The main feature will be the 1925 The Lost World. It’s based on the Conan Doyle novel of the same title, and he makes a brief appearance at the start, effectively putting his stamp of approval on the movie. The main character, Professor Challenger, is as smart as Sherlock Holmes but his opposite in temperament. Holmes is always calm and analytical, but Challenger has an explosive temper, especially when anyone doubts his claims. His present claim is hard to believe; he says he’s discovered a land in the upper Amazon basin with living dinosaurs. He organizes an expedition to go back there with two aims: to bring back proof and to find the missing member of the earlier party.
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Gallup doesn’t understand set theory

This entry was posted in Commentary Writing and tagged journalism politics polls on by

According to a Gallup Poll article, “Less than a third of Americans say they would be willing to vote for someone nominated by their party who is over the age of 80 or has been charged with a felony or convicted of a felony by a jury.” If that’s true and Trump and Biden are the major-party nominees in 2024, then two-thirds of Americans will sit out the election for that reason alone.

Is that what the poll actually shows? The article goes on to say, “The poll addressed the issues of felonies and candidate age with separate questions each asked of about half of the poll’s respondents.” That makes it impossible to draw the conclusion stated at the top of the article. It’s an issue of set overlap.
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Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill, Jr. 4

This entry was posted in Movies and tagged silent movies silentology on by

This post is my contribution to the Buster Keaton Blogathon on Silent-ology. I like the idea of collaborative blogging, and I’m glad to have a chance to participate. (Updated to link to the new Blogathon post.)

(This post will hopefully attract a lot of silent film fans who aren’t among my regular readers, so I’d like to mention that I regularly present silent films on Twitch with my own real-time accompaniment. The next one will be on March 13 at 8 PM Eastern US time. The movie will be the 1925 The Lost World, preceded by Winsor McCay’s animated Gertie the Dinosaur. I hope you’ll be able to drop in!)

Poster for Buster Keaton and Ernest Torrence in Steamboat Bill, Jr.The Keaton movie I know best is Steamboat Bill, Jr., having accompanied it at the Plaistow, NH library on July 28, 2023. The previous silent I’d accompanied there was Chaplin’s City Lights, and the differences between Chaplin’s and Keaton’s approaches stood out. City Lights tells a story, but it feels like a series of skits put together to comprise a story. The club scene, the robbery scene, and the boxing scene almost stand on their own. Chaplin’s Tramp is pretty much the same from beginning to end. Steamboat Bill, Jr. is more of a continuous story, and Keaton’s character grows a lot during its course. At first he feels out of place, having come from a Boston-area college to a run-down steamboat in the South. By the end, he’s become highly competent and saves four lives. The gags are as important as in a Chaplin film, but they’re more integrated into the plot.
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“Too many notes, Mozart”

This entry was posted in Commentary History and tagged history Mozart music on by

Upon hearing Mozart’s Singspiel The Abduction from the Seraglio, Emperor Joseph II is alleged to have said, “Too many notes.” The claim increased in popularity when Peter Schaffer put those words in his mouth in the travesty Amadeus. Quotations are tricky things, though. If I gratuitously claim someone said something, how do you know they didn’t? It’s the old issue of proving a negative.

The quotation, or something like it, has a source that long predates Schaffer. It’s the 1798 biography of Mozart by Franz Xaver Niemetschek. The full title is Leben des K.K. Kapellmeisters Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart nach Originalquellen beschrieben (life of the music director Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart, written based on original sources). The attribution given there is:
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