Fire and Knowledge

How Einstein managed his inbox

A new study finds that the correspondence of Albert Einstein, as well as that of Charles Darwin, followed patterns similar to modern e-mail communication.

Einstein sent more than 14,500 letters. But he received more than 16,200, and responded to only a quarter of them. Darwin mailed more than 7,500 letters. He responded to 32 percent of the roughly 6,530 letters he received.

That one cold winter night, when he, the boy, was shivering in a doorway near his crossing, the man turned to look at him, and came back, and, having questioned him and found that he had not a friend in the world said, ‘Neither have I. Not one!’ and gave him the price of a supper and a night’s lodging. (Charles Dickens, Bleak House, p. 178)

For the first time (that I remember) it struck me that I have never seen a homeless young boy or girl sleeping outside in America. Never. My wife hasn’t either. When we were in the Dominican Republic, we immediately saw poor homeless children in filthy rags. What a difference compared to here. May we thank God for his kindness and mercy upon the little children who have warm homes and loving families. And let us not forget the little children abroad who have not these comforts and opportunities.

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. (James 1:27)

The writer studies literature, not the world. She lives in the world; she cannot miss it. If she has ever bought a hamburger, or taken a commercial airplane flight, she spares her readers a report of her experience. She is careful of what she reads, for that is what she will write. She is careful of what she learns, because that is what she will know.

—Annie Dillard, “Write Till You Drop” (1989)

The Pearcey Report is now online. It looks like there is a lot of great information here–in fact, it is quite overwhelming! My recommendation is to reduce the links on the homepage by about, say, 150. That would help me know where to begin!

Christine Rosen wrote a good article about The Overpraised American a couple weeks ago. Here are some excerpts:

These and other factors produced the “narcissistic personality of our time,” he said, someone who “depends on others to validate his self-esteem” and who “cannot live without an admiring audience.” Lasch contrasted this narcissist, who viewed the world as a mirror, with the rugged individualist of earlier times, who saw the world “as an empty wilderness to be shaped by his own design.” In the narcissist’s world, he argued, confession and self-absorption become “the moral climate.”

In 1979, Lasch noted, “modern life is so thoroughly mediated by electronic images that we cannot help responding to others as if their actions — and our own — were being recorded and simultaneously transmitted to an unseen audience or stored up for close scrutiny at some later time.” Today, there is no “as if” involved; many more of our mundane interactions are recorded — or have the potential to be so. A contributor to the op-ed page of the New York Times recently wrote about enduring an emergency airplane landing. When the plane put down safely, the first people to come aboard were not emergency workers, but a television crew eager to turn the passengers’ harrowing experience into reality television gold. For this passenger, more disturbing than the emergency landing was the speed with which the passengers’ fears were transformed into a surreal form of entertainment for the masses. Indeed, Lasch’s delineation of the secondary characteristics of narcissism perfectly describes the tenor of most contemporary reality tv: pseudo–self-insight, calculating seductiveness, nervous, self-deprecatory humor. Today, tv is itself a form of therapy, and not merely for those who tune into Dr. Phil or Oprah. Television offers 24-hour-a-day reassurance that our “reality” can be interesting — interesting enough, even, to broadcast to millions. It is not a surprise, in this climate, to find that the ability to win praise and attention has become the marker of success in the culture.

Celebrity begets pseudo–celebrity, which begets reality tv celebrity, and the world has become so full of attention-seeking potential stars and starlets that we must grade them like beef: a-list, b-list, c-list, and so on. At the same time, as the demand for attention has increased, it has become more acceptable to be the object of unflattering attention, as witness the antics of celebutante Paris Hilton, who has, among other things, had a pornographic tape of herself widely circulated over the Internet. Websites such as Gawker and Wonkette skewer the rich, famous, and intellectually pretentious, as do, daily, thousands of personal bloggers. Talking heads on television offer cutting remarks about political leaders and other public figures. The underlying theme of much of this commentary is contempt for genuine achievement. Writing in the Guardian recently, Dylan Evans noted, “Nowadays, if someone is vastly more talented than us, we don’t congratulate them — we envy them and resent their success. It seems we don’t want heroes we can admire, so much as heroes we can identify with.” “If Achilles were around today,” he added ruefully, “the headline would all be about his heel.”

Today, two other types prevail: the porn star, who has taken the prostitute’s art, broadcast it, and in the process become a celebrity, and the reality television star, whose only achievement is his supposed normalcy, which exists only if it is televised. Unlike some other forms of celebrity, pornography and reality television offer the average American the tantalizing idea that he, too, can partake of the glamorous life. In succumbing to this fantasy, however, we fulfill the worst of Lasch’s predictions about the extremes of narcissism.

Spending time with one’s family is clearly the ideal situation if one hopes to raise healthy, well-adjusted children. A Harvard Medical School study whose results were reported in the Wall Street Journal recently found that “the odds of being overweight were 15 percent lower among those who ate dinner with their family on ‘most days’ or ‘every day’ compared with those who ate with their family ‘never’ or on ‘some days.’” Similarly, the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University found that “teens from families that almost never eat dinner together are 72 percent more likely to use illegal drugs, cigarettes and alcohol than the average teen.” A 2002 article in the journal Pediatrics found a “strong relationship” between the amounts of time young men and women were left unsupervised in their homes and sexual activity.

It is not only the time pressure of dual-career families that encourages isolation and a dwindling connection among family members. The architecture of the middle and upper-middle class home has also contributed to the problem. As D. Stanley Eitzen has observed, “These huge houses, built, ironically, at the very time that family size is declining, tend to isolate their inhabitants from outsiders and from other family members. They provide all of the necessities for comfort and recreation, thus glorifying the private sphere over public places. Moreover, the number and size of the rooms encourages each family member to have their own space rather than shared spaces.”

Experts Refute Anti-Bacterial Soap Claims

Antibacterial soaps and washes aren’t any better than plain, old soap and water for fighting illness in the household, says a panel of federal health advisers.

They warned manufacturers they will have to prove their products’ benefits or they may be restricted from marketing them….

Their products have grown significantly in popularity in the last decade, as consumers decided killing germs was better than simply washing them down the drain.

But the FDA said controlled studies found no significant difference in infections in households using antibacterial products and those with regular soap and water.

(via WorldMagBlog)

Eight or Nine Wise Words About Letter Writing

Here is an excellent essay written by Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carrol) in 1898 on letter writing. Especially helpful is “How to Go On With a Letter.” An excerpt:

Here is a golden Rule to begin with. Write legibly. The average temper of the human race would be perceptibly sweetened, if everybody obeyed this Rule! A great deal of the bad writing in the world comes simply from writing too quickly. Of course you reply, “I do it to save time.” A very good object, no doubt: but what right have you to do it at your friend’s expense? Isn’t his time as valuable as yours? Years ago, I used to receive letters from a friend–and very interesting letters too–written in one of the most atrocious hands ever invented. It generally took me about a week to read one of his letters. I used to carry it about in my pocket, and take it out at leisure times, to puzzle over the riddles which composed it–holding it in different positions, and at different distances, till at last the meaning of some hopeless scrawl would flash upon me, when I at once wrote down the English under it; and, when several had been thus guessed, the context would help with the others, till at last the whole series of hieroglyphics was deciphered. If all one’s friends wrote like that, Life would be entirely spent in reading their letters!….

My second Rule is, don’t fill more than a page and a half with apologies for not having written sooner!

The best subject, to begin with, is your friend’s last letter. Write with the letter open before you. Answer his questions, and make any remarks his letter suggests. Then go on to what you want to say yourself. This arrangement is more courteous, and pleasanter for the reader, than to fill the letter with your own invaluable remarks, and then hastily answer your friend’s questions in a postscript. Your friend is much more likey to enjoy your wit, after his own anxiety for information has been satisfied.

In referring to anything your friend has said in his letter, it is best to quote the exact words, and not to give a summary of them in your words. A’s impression, of what B has said, expressed in A’s words, will never convey to B the meaning of his own words.

And, while on the topic of letter writing, here are two other essays on the lost art, both written long ago:

• Youth’s Educator For Home And Society (1896): Letter Writing
• Emily Post: Longer Letters (1922)

Dickens’ war on filth

At the period he was writing Bleak House, sanitary reform - soap for the nation - was an obsession with Dickens - his idée fixe, his hobbyhorse, his mania, one of the few topics on which he could be boring. “In all my writings,” he wrote in his preface to the 1844 novel, Martin Chuzzlewit, “I hope I have taken every available opportunity of showing the want of sanitary improvements in the neglected dwellings of the poor.” Soap fiction, in a word, was what interested Dickens most.