Tim DeRoche's Blog, page 4
August 5, 2018
Neve’s first short story
Neve was playing last night and talking to herself:
“He was my dad. My dad was my dad. Tim was my dad. And I was the big sister. And we loved each other. And the story was happy ever after.”
A sweet, semi-autobiographical tale of one family and the ties that bind.
I love the on-the-fly editing of the open.
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August 3, 2018
The original punk rock bird
Wow! Only the second time in eight years that this one has visited the Polish Plantation. Was able to take a better picture this time. It’s a red-whiskered bulbul, though his red whiskers are only visible from specific angles in some light. They’re native to Southeast Asia, but a few are living wild and free in Los Angeles.
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August 2, 2018
First-borns are taking over — Should we be afraid?
Over at The Cut, Adam Sternbergh bemoans the slow-motion extinction of the middle child. As fewer families have more than two children, the number of middle-born children declines. Dramatically.
I’m interested in a related phenomenon — the fact that first-borns are a much greater percentage of the population now than in previous decades. Using the chart above from the Pew Research Center, I estimate that first-borns have gone from about one-third of the population born from 1950-1975 to over...
August 1, 2018
Was Alan Watts the Jordan Peterson of the 50’s and 60’s?
Reading this story about Packers’ running back Ty Montgomery led me down a rabbit hole that led to this fascinating character Alan Watts, a public intellectual in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s who brought Eastern philosophy and religion to a popular Western audience.
It started with the Parable of the Chinese Farmer, which was recommended to Montgomery by one of the guys on the practice squad. (Montgomery is coming back from an injury-shortened season in 2017.) Listen to Watts’ telling of the parab...
July 31, 2018
First page – Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Here’s the first page of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The brilliant Charlie Kaufman breaks at least two rules here: (1) starts with a block of action description that is 16 lines long (any more than four and everyone will know you’re an amateur!), (2) tells us what is printed on his tie (not the writer’s business!), and (3) introduces a voiceover to tell us what is happening (verboten!).
What I love most about this is the quick start. We meet Joel right away. We know that someth...
We’re all Keynesians now — except when we’re not
The famous quote is “We’re all Keynesians now” credited to Milton Friedman and/or Richard Nixon. Or as Paul Krugman wrote in 2011, “Keynes was right“.
What they mean is that — in an economic downturn — there’s a general consensus among economists, policy makers, and monetary leaders that the government should engage in expansionary policies, increasing the federal deficit and enlarging the money supply. As Keynes said: “The boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity.”
As someone...
Impressive failure — the key to screenwriting and parental bonding?
One of my screenwriting teachers turned me onto this idea of impressive failure as an important tool in getting your audience to bond with the protagonist of your film. Think of Luke Skywalker and all the ways he fails in the first hour of Star Wars…
Tries and fails to convince his uncle to let him join the Rebellion Tries and fails to rescue the droids from the Sand People Tries and fails to learn how to use the Force with his lightsaber Tries and fails to rescue Princess Leia (leads her i...July 30, 2018
Double meaning – The “broken windows theory” vs. the “broken windows fallacy”
Two influential ideas from the social sciences. A theory and a fallacy. With the same name.
The broken windows theory was first introduced by James Q. Wilson and George Kelling in 1982. The idea is that small signs of disorder in a community — like broken windows — can increase the sense of lawlessness and lead to more serious crimes. Police leaders in the 1990’s and 2000’s used this theory to justify a crackdown on lots of small offenses (drunkenness, fair evasion, vandalism), believing...
Sesame Street teaches that correlation isn’t causation
Just realized what the punchline of this skit is about.
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