This is Improbable Too Read online

  Smith explains that in a brain scan, ‘the high resolution magnetic resonance image will probably contain a considerable amount [of] eyeballs, skin, fat, muscle, etc’. The image can become more understandable, more useful ‘if these non-brain parts of the image can be automatically removed’.

  Thus a report that gives the heebie-jeebies to some scientists gives, instead, hope and cheer to those who have the specialized brains to appreciate it.

  Smith, Stephen M. (2002). ‘Fast Robust Automated Brain Extraction’. Human Brain Mapping 17: 143–55.

  In brief

  ‘Good Samaritan Surgeon Wrongly Accused of Contributing to President Lincoln’s Death: An Experimental Study of the President’s Fatal Wound’

  by J.K. Lattimer and A. Laidlaw (published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, 1996)

  The authors, who are at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University in New York, explain that ‘When President Abraham Lincoln was shot in the back of the head at Ford’s Theater in Washinton, DC, on April 14, 1865, he was immediately rendered unconscious and apneic. Doctor Charles A. Leale, an Army surgeon, who had special training in the care of brain injuries, rushed to Lincoln’s assistance… thrusting his finger into the brain through the finger hole.’

  Dead mule specialities

  Jerry Leath Mills reigns as the unchallenged authority on the subject of dead mules in twentieth-century American southern literature.

  Professor Mills established his reputation – almost instantly – in 1996, with the publication of a long essay called ‘Equine Gothic: The Dead Mule as Generic Signifier in Southern Literature of the Twentieth Century’. He retired that year after three decades of teaching English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His dead mule treatise appeared in the Southern Literary Journal.

  ‘Equine Gothic’ reads as if the accumulated dead mules had been stewing in Mills’s head, and were at last in a fit state for him to ladle out. ‘My survey of around 30 prominent 20th-century southern authors’, Mills writes, ‘has led me to conclude … that there is indeed a single, simple, litmus-like test for the quality of southernness in literature, one easily formulated into a question to be asked of any literary text and whose answer may be taken as definitive, delimiting and final. The test is: Is there a dead mule in it?’

  ‌‘Drowning – Faulkner’s most commonly employed means of dispatch for the mules in his work’ from ‘The Dead Mule Rides Again’ (drawing by Bruce Strauch)

  He organized his findings ‘coroner-wise’, listing the different causes of southern literary mule death. These include:

  ‘Beating’. In Larry Brown’s novel Dirty Work

  ‘Coal dust and mine gasses’. In Hubert J. Davis’s short story ‘The Multilingual Mule’

  ‘Collision with railroad train’. In William Faulkner’s ‘Mule in the Yard’

  ‘Drowning’. In many works by many authors

  ‘Decapitation by irate opera singer’. In Cormac McCarthy’s The Crossing

  ‘Falls from cliffs’. In Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian

  In Mills’s telling, McCarthy is an impresario of fictional mule slaughter. In Blood Meridian alone, ‘Mules are shot, roasted, drowned, knifed, and slain by thirst; but the largest number, fifty …, plummet from a single cliff during an ambush, performing an almost choreographic display of motion and color.’

  Other mules, in other stories by other southerners, exit by freezing, hanging, gunshot wounds, a ‘fall into subterranean cavity’, rabies, stab wounds, ‘something called vesicular stomatitis’, thirst, overwork or, when all else failed to fell them, ‘unspecified natural causes’.

  Mills expresses wonder at all this belletristic mule mortality. During his own life lived in the American south, he says, ‘I have never laid eyes on an actual dead mule.’

  Through his very bookishness, he came to realize that others shared this particular obliviousness. ‘I have been gratified of late to discover that I am not alone’, he beams. ‘I am pleased to read, in an article in Scientific American magazine, that the British army harbors a proverbial belief that “one never sees a dead mule”.’

  I must report, though, that the Scientific American article goes on to say about the British army: ‘During World War I many men made the acquaintance of mules for the first time, and many mules had their first encounter with partially trained drivers … [This] ended only too often in events belying the tradition.’

  Mills, Jerry Leath (1996). ‘Equine Gothic: The Dead Mule as Generic Signifier in Southern Literature of the Twentieth Century’. Southern Literary Journal 29 (1): 2–17.

  — (2000). ‘The Dead Mule Rides Again’. Southern Cultures 6 (4): 11–34.

  Savory, Theodore H. (1970). ‘The Mule’. Scientific American (December): 102–9.

  ‌Ten

  ‌Soft Is Hard

  May we recommend

  ‘Does Television Rot Your Brain? New Evidence from the Coleman Study’

  by Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse M. Shapiro (National Bureau of Economic Research paper, 2006)

  Some of what’s in this chapter: His proud ‘simplistic view of corruption’ • Narcissism writ big • Dietrich’s doll fetish • The further, two-dimensional, adventures of Jesus • A market for stock metaphors • Baggagial emotion • Oboe danger • The Thatcher cut-off • No yes • A scarcity of bad singers • Nervousness detector • Filthy words from the distaff side • Personality of veg • Benefits of randomness • Double-entry Australadventures • An exacting approach to vagueness • Do not mention the wolves • Wedding rings are wearing • Your discoveries

  The economist who theorized on corruption

  Steven Ng-Sheong Cheung, because of his adventure with the legal system – not despite it – sets a high standard for economists. The economics profession is often accused of concocting clever theories that don’t resonate in the lives of real people. Cheung devised a theory about man’s struggle with corruption and governments. He wrote about his theory, with relish. The US government shone a spotlight on Professor Cheung’s thoughts when it issued a warrant for his arrest.

  Back in 1996, Cheung – who was then head of the University of Hong Kong’s School of Economics and Finance, and an economist at the University of Washington in Seattle – published ‘A Simplistic General Equilibrium Theory of Corruption’ in the journal Contemporary Economic Policy. The very first sentence of that paper says: ‘The author’s simplistic view of corruption is that all politicians and government officials – like everyone else – are constrained self-maximizers. They therefore establish or maintain regulations and controls with the intent to facilitate corruption, which then becomes a source of income for them.’

  Cheung dives deep into the matter. A few pages later he explains: ‘I made the now famous statement that it is no use to put a beautiful woman in my bedroom, naked, and ask me not to be aroused. I said that the only effective way of getting rid of corruption is to get rid of the controls and regulations that give rise to corruption opportunities.’

  A press release issued on 25 February 2003 by the Seattle office of the US Department of Justice bears the headline: ‘ARREST WARRANTS ISSUED FOR ECONOMIST AND WIFE FOR THEIR FAILURE TO APPEAR’ (in all uppercase letters). That press release reported: ‘A federal grand jury returned an indictment against the CHEUNGs on January 28, 2003. STEVEN N.S. CHEUNG was named in all thirteen counts of the indictment, charging him with Conspiracy to Defraud the United States, six counts of filing false income tax returns, and six counts of filing false foreign bank account reports.’

  Previously, an investigative team at the Seattle Times newspaper had alleged that Cheung was linked to an art gallery that sold fake antiques.

  In 2004, Steven N.S. Cheung Inc., the corporation in front of the man behind the corporation, sued the US government for ‘recovery of wrongful levy’ of $1,434,573.76 in taxes. Cheung’s company won, but then lost a court appeal over how much money was involved.

  P
rofessor Cheung retired to China, where he became a newspaper columnist and blogger (blog.sina.com.cn/zhangwuchang), joining a profession that enjoys almost as much public confidence and respect as his former one.

  Cheung, Steven Ng-Sheong (1996). ‘A Simplistic General Equilibrium Theory of Corruption’. Contemporary Economic Policy 14 (3): 1–5.

  US Department of Justice (2003). ‘Arrest Warrants Issued for Economist and Wife for Their Failure to Appear’. Press release, Seattle, 25 February, http://www.justice.gov/tax/usaopress/2003/txdv03cheung.html.

  US Department of Justice (2003). ‘Eminent Economist and Wife Indicted on Tax Charges’. Press release, 28 January, Seattle, http://www.justice.gov/tax/usaopress/2003/txdv03cheung012803.html.

  Wilson, Duff (2003). ‘Economist Tied to Fake Art Faces Tax Charges’. Seattle Times, 29 January, http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20030129&slug=cheung29.

  US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (2008). Steven N.S. Cheung Inc v. United States of America, no. 07-35161, Seattle, 23 September.

  In brief

  ‘Narcissism is a Bad Sign: CEO Signature Size, Investment, and Performance’

  by Charles Ham, Nicholas Seybert and Sean Wang (UNC Kenan-Flagler research paper, 2013)

  The authors explain: ‘Using the size of the CEO signature on annual SEC filings to measure CEO narcissism, we find that narcissism is positively associated with several measures of firm overinvestment, yet lower patent count and patent citation frequency. Abnormally high investment by narcissists predicts lower future revenues and lower sales growth. Narcissistic CEOs also deliver worse current performance as measured by return on assets, particularly for firms in early life-cycle stages and with uncertain operating environments, where a CEO’s decisions are most likely to impact the firm’s future value. Despite these negative performance indicators, more narcissistic CEOs enjoy higher compensation, both unconditionally and relative to the next highest paid executive at their firm.’

  Samples: CEO signatures taken from annual reports

  The fetishized Dietrich’s doll fetish

  ‘The study of Marlene Dietrich’s relationship with her dolls has taken me into some new research territory.’ With these words, Judith Mayne, the Distinguished Humanities Professor of French Studies and Italian Studies and Women’s Studies at Ohio State University, takes many of us into some new territory. Her recent study ‘Marlene, Dolls, and Fetishism’, published in the journal Signs, is an introductory guidebook to this intriguing land.

  Scholars of the German film star Marlene Dietrich have debated many of the contradictions in her screen roles and in her life. Professor Mayne singles out a contradiction the other scholars have apparently failed to appreciate: ‘The particular contradiction that I find the most challenging in relationship to Dietrich is that this icon of sophistication and glamour was the proud owner of a black doll, which she called her “mascot” and carried with her everywhere during her career.’

  The chief source of information about the doll is a memoir that Dietrich’s daughter, Maria, published in 1992. Drawing from that memoir, Mayne describes the central role that the doll had in Dietrich’s life:

  ‘Marlene came home in a fury one day, desperately digging through trunks and accusing little Maria of having stolen her doll. Maria knew that her father, Rudolf Sieber, had been fixing the grass skirt of the doll; the father is thus identified as both maternal and as the devoted handmaiden to his wife’s desires. Daughter Maria concluded that the doll was Dietrich’s ‘good-luck charm throughout her life – her professional one’.

  Mayne reports that this was not the only doll that Dietrich owned, and that this doll was not a strictly private object. ‘Indeed, attentive viewers might well recognize the doll from Dietrich’s films as well as from publicity postcards of the actress, often in the company of yet another one of Dietrich’s dolls, a so-called Chinese coolie doll, made by Lenci.’ Mayne concentrates her analytical powers on the black doll, dismissing the Chinese coolie doll as likely just ‘a companion’ to the other, and paying the other dolls scarcely a mention.

  The black doll appeared in at least four of Dietrich’s films, including the one that made her famous: The Blue Angel. Mayne concentrates on that film. In so doing, she gives us her highly original – and, I must say, challenging – take on Dietrich, dolls and fetishism.

  ‘It is perhaps easy (too easy) to see the doll in The Blue Angel as a classic fetish’, Mayne writes. ‘Fetishism, understood now more as the ambivalence of the ironist than the dread of the phallocrat, is, if not celebrated, then at the very least explored as offering an understanding of multiple identifications and positions … [But] the racial dynamics of Dietrich’s relationship with her dolls foreclose any simple celebration of fetishism as necessarily subversive.’

  Mayne, Judith (2004). ‘Marlene, Dolls, and Fetishism’. Signs 30 (1): 1257–63.

  In brief

  ‘The Organization of Santa: Fetishism, Ambivalence and Narcissism’

  by Robert Cluley (published in Organization, 2011)

  Jesus, fleshed out

  The Tring tiles add spice, and maybe a little sugar, to the question, ‘What would Jesus do?’ These adventure-packed ceramic cartoons depict scenes, unmentioned in the bible, from Jesus’s boyhood, and appear to be based on the Apocryphal Infancy of Christ Gospels, ‘which purport to tell events from Jesus’ life, from ages 5 – 12’. Apparently created in the fourteenth century, they once enlivened a wall of the parish church in the town of Tring, though, according to some accounts, ‘the Infancy stories were so startling that Church Fathers condemned them as unsuitable for inclusion in the canon’.

  Several of the tiles now reside under glass, in Case 15 of Room 40 of the British Museum in London. Every year, almost all of the museum’s five million or so visitors pass them by, unaware of the potent lessons that the tiles offer.

  The spare New Testament description of Jesus gets some fleshing out. The museum has provided labels that help the visitor make sense of the action. (The museum changes the labels now and again; the descriptions below are the wording as it appeared when I first encountered the tiles.)

  We see young Jesus learning how to play with others, and how not to. The accompanying label explained: ‘Jesus plays by the side of the river Jordan making pools; a boy destroys one with a stick and falls dead.’ Then, ‘The Virgin admonishes Jesus, who restores the boy to life by touching him with his foot.’

  We see that Jesus the boy is rambunctiously playful: ‘A schoolmaster is seated on the left. Before him stands Jesus, a boy leaping on to his back in attack. The boy falls dead.’ Then ‘Two women complain to Joseph on the left, while Jesus restores the boy to life.’

  As with all artwork, religious or otherwise, these images invite further, and perhaps different, interpretations. As the boy is falling dead, the schoolmaster and Jesus rather appear to be smiling and giving each other what is now known as a ‘high five’. The two women who complain about the death do so with what would, in other circumstances, be taken as smug smiles.

  Where the museum labels’ author observed that Jesus revives the other boy – the one who mucked with Jesus’s pools by the river Jordan – ‘by touching him with his foot’, some may think they see a kick being administered.

  A few of the cartoon sequences are incomplete. For these, the museum’s captions shared what happens in the missing tiles.

  We see the curiosity-driven Jesus learn, in fits and starts, some fine points about how to teach people a lesson: ‘Parents, to prevent their children playing with Jesus, have shut them in an oven; Jesus, asking what that oven contains, is told “Pigs”. (The remainder of the story, showing the children transformed into pigs and their subsequent cure by Jesus, is missing.)’

  We see how, as word about the boy Jesus spreads, neighbours sometimes leap to unkind assumptions about the lad: ‘A father locks his boy up in a tower to stop him playing with Jesus.’ Then ‘Jesus helps the boy out of the tower. (T
he remainder of this story, showing the father struck blind on his return, is missing.)’

  The Tring tiles presumably will continue their residence in the British Museum. There are no announced plans to reproduce them for contemplative use in churches, offices or the home.

  Bagley, Ayers (1985). ‘Jesus at School’. Journal of Psychohistory 13 (1): 13–31.

  Casey, Mary F. (2007). ‘The Fourteenth-century Tring Tiles: A Fresh Look at Their Origins and the Hebraic Aspects of the Child Jesus’ Actions’. Peregrinations 2 (2): n.p., http://peregrinations.kenyon.edu/vol2-2/current.html.

  May we recommend

  ‘Jesus and the Ideal of the Manly Man in New Zealand after World War One’

  by Geoffrey M. Troughton (published in Journal of Religious History, 2006)

  ‌The dead cat bounce

  In struggling to make sense of the stock market, people reach and stretch for metaphors. Sometimes they even contort, dislocate and mangle. In 1995, Geoff P. Smith of the University of Hong Kong made a grand unified effort to gather and classify those metaphors.

  Smith congealed the metaphors and his thoughts into a monograph called ‘How High Can a Dead Cat Bounce?: Metaphor and the Hong Kong Stock Market’. It appeared in the journal Hong Kong Papers in Linguistics and Language Teaching.

  Detail: ‘Resident Fauna’ of ‘How High Can a Dead Cat Bounce?’

  Smith collected mostly from three sources: the South China Morning Post’s business supplement, the Asian Wall Street Journal and the Asia Business News television programme.