I worked in public health. The most hair-pulling frustration in the field is that funding is almost always cut from (or never even allocated to) program evaluation. So we spend loads of dollars and lots of years on an intervention and in the end we mostly decide if it worked based on feels. Like buying a lotto ticket and never checking the numbers. Usually these wastes are born of the short-term rewards built into democracy and capitalism, but in the most important cases, like COVID, gun violence, and abortion policy, the ignorance is intentional. We COULD figure these things out, but then someone might lose money or a political position, so nah...
Not on the subject, but I can't get it out of my mind. What is the relevance on most papers you fill in with personal date (excepting wills and perhaps other pertinent legal documents) of asking the question if you are DIVORCED as an option and not just, SINGLE? I have been married and divorced twice and now it is only my business. Was there judgement when it was created as a category or a predictor of actions or health? Every morning when I have my coffee by myself, I feel single.
Work you say !? Listen my children and you shall hear of my dalliance with Hollywood in a weak moment, before moving on to more meaningful labor. This is known in polite society as a life "time out." But, I regress. Film executives are congenitally incapable of NOT meddling with a story. This is largely because they "always wanted to be a writer," but making obscene amounts of money got in the way. And of course, with film you also have the "auteurs" to deal with. They stare at you as if through their director’s viewfinder with a look that says, " Understand --- you’re being tolerated. If I weren’t so important to this piece of filmic trash and Western Civilization, I’d write the damn script myself." The worst executives are the haltingly "sensitive" ones. The ones I call the "What ifs…," also sometimes known as the "How abouts…" After a couple of meetings' worth of these hesitatingly sensitive murmurings, it finally dawns that what is oh so diplomatically being "suggested" is a complete rewrite that bears no resemblance whatsoever to the script under discussion — except for the title. “We love that!”
It started with a phone call from someone talking through at least one cigar. No "hello, this is…," but right into, "are you the writer of… ?” (Pause. Sound of sincere shuffling of paper) (Title withheld to protect the innocent). "We’d like you to come out here and do a rewrite.." No mention of who "we" are or, in fact, who "he" and "here" were. I did manage to eventually sort out that "he" was the head of the production company and "here" was Los Angeles and specifically, Beverly Hills.
To make a long and gory story shorter, suffice it to say it went from worse to "are you havin’ a laugh ?" After a gestation period rivaling that of an elephant, it did get made — all 50 chase sequences and crashes and with stellar dialogue like, "Watch out!" and "Look out! He’s comin’ for us again."And the capper to all of this mayhem was that I wound up in arbitration (and prevailed) for the writer’s credit with the director’s brother-in-law who he hired for a script "polish." I’ll leave out the part about various and sundry favor-offering actors constantly asking for a part in the film. They clearly hadn’t heard the classic description of the status of screenwriters by one of the Warner brothers, who called all writers, even William Faulkner, who was once under his command, "schmucks with typewriters."
Sounds like the experience Harlan Ellison had after finishing the first draft of the I, Robot script in the 1970s. The requests he received from the studio exec responsible? Make the robots cute like R2-D2. Make the protagonist someone the audience could root for like Rocky. Through a little careful questioning, Ellison confirmed that the exec hadn’t read the script himself, but was working from an outline by an underling. In typical Ellisonian fashion, he angrily told the exec that the man was being both artistically and financially irresponsible, saying he had the intellectual category of an artichoke.
Of course, not unique to the film biz. Publishing also has its head-scratching "hatchet" jobs. One of my favorites (?) is the story of Robert Heinlein's classic "Stranger in a Strange Land." His editor made him cut some 60,000 words, including just about all references to religion and sex --- from a book written about religion, sex and other social norms. Fortunately, his widow restored them after his death.
I have both editions, and since Robert did the editing himself, I find it difficult to see the differences. He did know how to edit. And as he told many people it was a novel about questions, not answers. We are to provide our own answers.
It was never an issue of how 60,000 words were edited out, but the many references to sex (free love, in particular) and religion which were, because Putnam considered them too shocking for mainstream readers --- mirroring the tenets of the then notorious "hippie" culture. I personally found the unabridged or uncut 1991 version better. In my view, it is fuller and richer in description, although the story arc in both editions is very much the same.
Gary --- I don't think I ever had a list per se. And it's now been a good while since I read (and casually compared) both editions so I can't quote you chapter and verse. I do, however, recall having my opinion confirmed by an academic at some point in the distant past. The unedited or restored version was certainly slower going, as I remember, with a good deal more, let's call it Heinlein "self-involvement" --- but also added depth to his thought-processes and detail to why things happened the way they did which I found enjoyable (at an older age). I do remember an article comparing the two editions in some detail which I tracked down to The Heinlein Society website. You may find it of interest. https://www.heinleinsociety.org/2210/
I created the Let Teddy Win blog, which established itself as the authoritative source of information about the Washington Nationals' presidents race from 2006-2020.
When the race had its brief moment as a national crossover story, my data on Teddy Roosevelt's losses was being cited regularly in major sports outlets like ESPN, politics outlets like The Hill and Politico, every major news network, every national newspaper, and every TV and radio station in the DC area. It's also been cited in a couple of books.
There were reasons to question my data. My tally of Teddy's losses did not match the number of home games the Nationals had played, nor did it match the number of wins by the other racing presidents. Only two outlets ever asked questions to verify the accurate of my data: The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.
Right after I graduated college, I worked on the Dulles Toll Road. The question most often asked was "Where do you go to the bathroom?" Outlying toll booths have a toilet and sink in the back (you can't see them because the toll collector keeps the steel door closed (no wants to spend the day looking at a utilitarian toilet). On the main toll plaza, there is a restroom in the building that toll collectors reach through a tunnel beneath the toll booths, as well as a restroom in the tunnel itself.
Little known fact - the toll collector can see every coin you put into the machine. Dozens of people each day would put a quarter and a nickel, claim it was 50 cents, and we would open the cogs of the toll machine and take out the nickel and show it to them. Some people did this every day, expecting a different result.
Good job - lots of overtime if you wanted it, they provided the uniforms, since you arrived at work before rush hour your shift ended at 1:30 pm or 9:30 pm, two days off in a row for 4 weeks, then three days off in a row for two weeks, time in some booths to read or clip coupons, mostly nice people driving through in their cars.
The bad side was that not all people are nice (assaulting the toll collector was not unheard of and in 6 years it happened to me twice), not all people are good drivers (people are erratic and the toll collector is often the brunt of their careless driving - I still suffer from a shoulder injury that happened in 1986), money is dirty and nasty (and people do awful things with it, the least of which is put it in their mouth, the grossest is using it for sexual gratification before handing it to the toll collector).
I took a occupational diversion in 1965 to avoid the military draft and spent the next ten years working with intelligence matters and then went to library school for my professional occupation. My first year as a librarian paid about $12,000 a year (1976) and my last year with a USA Agency was nearly $40,000. But the secrets I wanted to know at that agency were interesting and nobody would believe me, or even care to know those secrets. Their minds were made up about Vietnam. The facts just confused them. However the point to make is that later as a Librarian, I learned lots of secrets. And really knew more about the places I worked than I did about the Company I had worked at. Who knew?
Surprising thing about my job? I prosecute traffic and misdemeanors. We make up the fines and penalties when we work out plea agreements. Most charges don't have set fines (although they have maximums) so when we negotiate with a defense attorney, we just make up a number. $150, 250... I just spit out random numbers and they usually take them without argument.
One of the years old advice about medicine was never to go to the hospital at the beginning of July because that is when all the new interns start. Internships and Residencies still start the first of July but at least now they get a couple of weeks of orientation so they don't start out being told to get some gauze without even knowing where it is. And they are strictly supervised at first also. Not to mention not being allowed to prescribe anything until its okayed by an attending physician.
Question for Gene: do you have examples of songs where you have woefully misunderstood the meaning of the lyrics? That’s a separate phenomenon from conservatives not even listening to the lyrics of Springsteen’s “Born in the USA.” I have two examples for myself.
1. “Wildfire” by Michael Martin Murphey. The actual meaning is about a sodbuster who’s fascinated by a Native American legend. According to my misunderstanding, the woman riding the pony was the sodbuster’s late wife, and the lonely widower was expecting to die soon and have her spirit take him to the next life.
2. “Cuddly Toy” by the Monkees, written by Harry Nilsson. There seems to be some disagreement about the actual meaning - either an innocent-looking woman who hides her promiscuity, or the narrator simply having a childlike affection for the woman. I wrongly assumed the toy metaphor was about spoiled children who mistreat their Christmas presents and edible gifts and and get them taken away as a punishment. Partly becaus I misheard “ever enjoyed by any boy” as “never enjoyed by a boy.” “Gave up without a fight” sounded like the child was sullenly accepting the loss of the toy.
I recently laughed out loud at a lyric from “The One” by Gaelic Storm - a disagreeable woman described as having a face like “Dwight Schrute” (actual lyric: “dried fruit.”)
There are lyrics in Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” that are NOT “Born in the USA”??? All I hear is him belting out "BORN in the USA, BORN in the USA, BORN in the USA." Maybe I've only heard the short version?
As Bera said "You can observe a lot by watching" we can hear a lot by listening. But not so much with music. It took me years to figure out that "Bah bah bu ran" was "Barbara Ann." And other music from those yeas is still waiting for a translation in my mind. You can Google it.
The father of a friend of mine thought the lead-in lyrics to "Rock the Boat, Baby" were: "Well I'd like to know where you got the nose job." (Rather than "where you got the notion.")
I worked in public health. The most hair-pulling frustration in the field is that funding is almost always cut from (or never even allocated to) program evaluation. So we spend loads of dollars and lots of years on an intervention and in the end we mostly decide if it worked based on feels. Like buying a lotto ticket and never checking the numbers. Usually these wastes are born of the short-term rewards built into democracy and capitalism, but in the most important cases, like COVID, gun violence, and abortion policy, the ignorance is intentional. We COULD figure these things out, but then someone might lose money or a political position, so nah...
Not on the subject, but I can't get it out of my mind. What is the relevance on most papers you fill in with personal date (excepting wills and perhaps other pertinent legal documents) of asking the question if you are DIVORCED as an option and not just, SINGLE? I have been married and divorced twice and now it is only my business. Was there judgement when it was created as a category or a predictor of actions or health? Every morning when I have my coffee by myself, I feel single.
Work you say !? Listen my children and you shall hear of my dalliance with Hollywood in a weak moment, before moving on to more meaningful labor. This is known in polite society as a life "time out." But, I regress. Film executives are congenitally incapable of NOT meddling with a story. This is largely because they "always wanted to be a writer," but making obscene amounts of money got in the way. And of course, with film you also have the "auteurs" to deal with. They stare at you as if through their director’s viewfinder with a look that says, " Understand --- you’re being tolerated. If I weren’t so important to this piece of filmic trash and Western Civilization, I’d write the damn script myself." The worst executives are the haltingly "sensitive" ones. The ones I call the "What ifs…," also sometimes known as the "How abouts…" After a couple of meetings' worth of these hesitatingly sensitive murmurings, it finally dawns that what is oh so diplomatically being "suggested" is a complete rewrite that bears no resemblance whatsoever to the script under discussion — except for the title. “We love that!”
It started with a phone call from someone talking through at least one cigar. No "hello, this is…," but right into, "are you the writer of… ?” (Pause. Sound of sincere shuffling of paper) (Title withheld to protect the innocent). "We’d like you to come out here and do a rewrite.." No mention of who "we" are or, in fact, who "he" and "here" were. I did manage to eventually sort out that "he" was the head of the production company and "here" was Los Angeles and specifically, Beverly Hills.
To make a long and gory story shorter, suffice it to say it went from worse to "are you havin’ a laugh ?" After a gestation period rivaling that of an elephant, it did get made — all 50 chase sequences and crashes and with stellar dialogue like, "Watch out!" and "Look out! He’s comin’ for us again."And the capper to all of this mayhem was that I wound up in arbitration (and prevailed) for the writer’s credit with the director’s brother-in-law who he hired for a script "polish." I’ll leave out the part about various and sundry favor-offering actors constantly asking for a part in the film. They clearly hadn’t heard the classic description of the status of screenwriters by one of the Warner brothers, who called all writers, even William Faulkner, who was once under his command, "schmucks with typewriters."
Was the movie called "Delusions of Grandeur?"
Sounds like the experience Harlan Ellison had after finishing the first draft of the I, Robot script in the 1970s. The requests he received from the studio exec responsible? Make the robots cute like R2-D2. Make the protagonist someone the audience could root for like Rocky. Through a little careful questioning, Ellison confirmed that the exec hadn’t read the script himself, but was working from an outline by an underling. In typical Ellisonian fashion, he angrily told the exec that the man was being both artistically and financially irresponsible, saying he had the intellectual category of an artichoke.
Of course, not unique to the film biz. Publishing also has its head-scratching "hatchet" jobs. One of my favorites (?) is the story of Robert Heinlein's classic "Stranger in a Strange Land." His editor made him cut some 60,000 words, including just about all references to religion and sex --- from a book written about religion, sex and other social norms. Fortunately, his widow restored them after his death.
I have both editions, and since Robert did the editing himself, I find it difficult to see the differences. He did know how to edit. And as he told many people it was a novel about questions, not answers. We are to provide our own answers.
It was never an issue of how 60,000 words were edited out, but the many references to sex (free love, in particular) and religion which were, because Putnam considered them too shocking for mainstream readers --- mirroring the tenets of the then notorious "hippie" culture. I personally found the unabridged or uncut 1991 version better. In my view, it is fuller and richer in description, although the story arc in both editions is very much the same.
Do you have a list? My impression, based on both Heinlein, is that the comments were left in while we lost supporting words. But I may be wrong.
Gary --- I don't think I ever had a list per se. And it's now been a good while since I read (and casually compared) both editions so I can't quote you chapter and verse. I do, however, recall having my opinion confirmed by an academic at some point in the distant past. The unedited or restored version was certainly slower going, as I remember, with a good deal more, let's call it Heinlein "self-involvement" --- but also added depth to his thought-processes and detail to why things happened the way they did which I found enjoyable (at an older age). I do remember an article comparing the two editions in some detail which I tracked down to The Heinlein Society website. You may find it of interest. https://www.heinleinsociety.org/2210/
I created the Let Teddy Win blog, which established itself as the authoritative source of information about the Washington Nationals' presidents race from 2006-2020.
When the race had its brief moment as a national crossover story, my data on Teddy Roosevelt's losses was being cited regularly in major sports outlets like ESPN, politics outlets like The Hill and Politico, every major news network, every national newspaper, and every TV and radio station in the DC area. It's also been cited in a couple of books.
There were reasons to question my data. My tally of Teddy's losses did not match the number of home games the Nationals had played, nor did it match the number of wins by the other racing presidents. Only two outlets ever asked questions to verify the accurate of my data: The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.
Right after I graduated college, I worked on the Dulles Toll Road. The question most often asked was "Where do you go to the bathroom?" Outlying toll booths have a toilet and sink in the back (you can't see them because the toll collector keeps the steel door closed (no wants to spend the day looking at a utilitarian toilet). On the main toll plaza, there is a restroom in the building that toll collectors reach through a tunnel beneath the toll booths, as well as a restroom in the tunnel itself.
Little known fact - the toll collector can see every coin you put into the machine. Dozens of people each day would put a quarter and a nickel, claim it was 50 cents, and we would open the cogs of the toll machine and take out the nickel and show it to them. Some people did this every day, expecting a different result.
Good job - lots of overtime if you wanted it, they provided the uniforms, since you arrived at work before rush hour your shift ended at 1:30 pm or 9:30 pm, two days off in a row for 4 weeks, then three days off in a row for two weeks, time in some booths to read or clip coupons, mostly nice people driving through in their cars.
The bad side was that not all people are nice (assaulting the toll collector was not unheard of and in 6 years it happened to me twice), not all people are good drivers (people are erratic and the toll collector is often the brunt of their careless driving - I still suffer from a shoulder injury that happened in 1986), money is dirty and nasty (and people do awful things with it, the least of which is put it in their mouth, the grossest is using it for sexual gratification before handing it to the toll collector).
I took a occupational diversion in 1965 to avoid the military draft and spent the next ten years working with intelligence matters and then went to library school for my professional occupation. My first year as a librarian paid about $12,000 a year (1976) and my last year with a USA Agency was nearly $40,000. But the secrets I wanted to know at that agency were interesting and nobody would believe me, or even care to know those secrets. Their minds were made up about Vietnam. The facts just confused them. However the point to make is that later as a Librarian, I learned lots of secrets. And really knew more about the places I worked than I did about the Company I had worked at. Who knew?
Surprising thing about my job? I prosecute traffic and misdemeanors. We make up the fines and penalties when we work out plea agreements. Most charges don't have set fines (although they have maximums) so when we negotiate with a defense attorney, we just make up a number. $150, 250... I just spit out random numbers and they usually take them without argument.
You're right, I'm paid much worse than a journalist.
One of the years old advice about medicine was never to go to the hospital at the beginning of July because that is when all the new interns start. Internships and Residencies still start the first of July but at least now they get a couple of weeks of orientation so they don't start out being told to get some gauze without even knowing where it is. And they are strictly supervised at first also. Not to mention not being allowed to prescribe anything until its okayed by an attending physician.
man i so hate when people compensated in the top 25 or even 10 percent of college graduate salaries keep griping how they are underpaid..
Question for Gene: do you have examples of songs where you have woefully misunderstood the meaning of the lyrics? That’s a separate phenomenon from conservatives not even listening to the lyrics of Springsteen’s “Born in the USA.” I have two examples for myself.
1. “Wildfire” by Michael Martin Murphey. The actual meaning is about a sodbuster who’s fascinated by a Native American legend. According to my misunderstanding, the woman riding the pony was the sodbuster’s late wife, and the lonely widower was expecting to die soon and have her spirit take him to the next life.
2. “Cuddly Toy” by the Monkees, written by Harry Nilsson. There seems to be some disagreement about the actual meaning - either an innocent-looking woman who hides her promiscuity, or the narrator simply having a childlike affection for the woman. I wrongly assumed the toy metaphor was about spoiled children who mistreat their Christmas presents and edible gifts and and get them taken away as a punishment. Partly becaus I misheard “ever enjoyed by any boy” as “never enjoyed by a boy.” “Gave up without a fight” sounded like the child was sullenly accepting the loss of the toy.
I recently laughed out loud at a lyric from “The One” by Gaelic Storm - a disagreeable woman described as having a face like “Dwight Schrute” (actual lyric: “dried fruit.”)
There are lyrics in Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” that are NOT “Born in the USA”??? All I hear is him belting out "BORN in the USA, BORN in the USA, BORN in the USA." Maybe I've only heard the short version?
As Bera said "You can observe a lot by watching" we can hear a lot by listening. But not so much with music. It took me years to figure out that "Bah bah bu ran" was "Barbara Ann." And other music from those yeas is still waiting for a translation in my mind. You can Google it.
The father of a friend of mine thought the lead-in lyrics to "Rock the Boat, Baby" were: "Well I'd like to know where you got the nose job." (Rather than "where you got the notion.")