This NYT article on vitamins contained a few scientific issues that I feel the need to respond to. Unfortunately, the NYT didn’t allow opinions to be expressed so you will have to endure my ranting and raving.

The article provides details about published studies, two of which are published in The New England Journal of Medicine, that claim deleterious effects from excessive vitamin consumption. These studies show that those that took Vitamin A or beta carotene (Vitamin K) supplements were more likely to die from lung cancer or heart disease compared to those who didn’t. The article also lists other studies showing a correlation between taking Vitamin A, E, beta carotene (Vitamin K), Vitamin C and selenium supplements and mortality. The author then goes on the say the link between mortality and the vitamins ingested are antioxidants.

I cannot agree with this conclusion as this conflates fat soluble vitamins and water soluble vitamins and minerals. Vitamins A, D, E and K are fat soluble meaning any excess taken in the diet is stored in the fat of an individual and the body can’t regulate these nearly as well as the water soluble ones. Selenium is water soluble, as are the Vitamins B and C. An excess of a water soluble vitamin or mineral is removed in the urine by the body. I can therefore see the disease and mortality states arising from fat soluble vitamins. But I am concerned that the studies showing consuming the water soluble vitamins plus Vitamin C and selenium came to the wrong conclusion. It may be a case of guilt by association with the fat soluble vitamins. Have any studies looked at water soluble vitamins in isolation?

I worry about this because there are benefits to high vitamin levels for certain conditions. The third paragraph claims:

Nutrition experts argue that people need only the recommended daily allowance — the amount of vitamins found in a routine diet. Vitamin manufacturers argue that a regular diet doesn’t contain enough vitamins, and that more is better.

Up until I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS), I would have subscribed to the nutrition experts’ opinion as well. But after turning my research interests towards the genetic underpinnings of MS (I am a medical geneticist), I quickly uncovered how vital Vitamin D is in the management of the relapse-remitting disease. I even tried getting out in the sun in the summer and turned to tanning beds in the winter to maximize my body producing enough Vitamin D to manage my MS without resorting to Vitamin D supplements. After many flare ups over a two to three year period, the last of which put me in a wheelchair in the summer time, my Vitamin D level came back each time as below optimal levels. For this reason, I now take four times the FDA recommended level of Vitamin D in a supplement form to help manage my MS. Over the past year of doing this, I can report, my MS is well managed without any flare ups. For this reason, I think that the levels listed on the recommended daily allowance are not adequate for people with medical conditions needing additional supplements.

I consume a prescription strength dose of folate, vitamin B12 and Vitamin B6 for overcoming the chance of a miscarriage while I carry my second child. After three miscarriages, I was recently diagnosed as being a carrier of a gene known to be involved with miscarriages as well as migraines, cardiovascular disease and other disorders. To overcome this reduced gene function, more Vitamin B is needed to reduce homocysteine levels in the body. Since Vitamin B is a water soluble vitamin, I am also supplementing it with the consumption of spinach, which does not contain much Vitamin B12 or Vitamin B6, just folic acid (folate). Since my taste for spinach is waning, I rely on the supplement strength pill for these additional vitamins as I know my body can self regulate the concentration of these vitamins without much harm to the baby. Similarly, my husband also has the same genetic abnormality and suffers from migraines. To treat this disease, we buy an over the counter Vitamin B supplement for his symptom management at not much cost to us versus the prescription strength pill that I take.

This is why calling on the FDA to better regulate vitamin supplement sales makes me a bit nervous. If the FDA becomes involved in this fight, I worry that the ability to self regulate symptom management for diseases and disorders may be impaired. Tighter regulation of the fat soluble vitamins may be justified. But it is not obvious that tighter regulation of water soluble vitamins is.

(*I recently discovered, to my horror, that the version I read so long ago was, in fact, abridged. So I may have to read it again when I have a month to spare.)

So my expectations were medium to high going into the recent Les Miserables film. I can say that while I didn’t love it, I liked it quite a bit. There are times when it creaks. It has a very serious editing problem, with lots of rapid cuts that distract from the sumptuous visuals, the serviceable singing and the excellent acting.

But this is compensated for by the things the films gets right. The art direction is fantastic; 19th century Paris is recreated so well I felt like I needed antibiotics. The music is fine. I’m not as enamored of the score as most fan but it gets good when there is polyphony. The story, while stripped to its bare bones, retains the most important parts including the emotional wallop at the end. And the acting is uniformly good. Les Miserables has a great ensemble cast. One particular performance of note is that of Sacha Baron Cohen. His singing is OK, but his acting is a lot of fun. Between this and Hugo, he’s showing the makings of an excellent and versatile supporting actor. The more he does this and the less he does his characters, the happier I’ll be.

The thing I kept thinking as I watched it, however, was that I wished it weren’t a musical. I’m not slamming the music or anything. As I said, it works great sometimes. And Les Miserables is such a massive sprawling tale that perhaps musical numbers are the only way to advance the plot and the emotional threads fast enough to squeeze it into three hours. But I think the spectacle and the singing sort of take away from the excellent actors that populate the film. Many of the film’s flaws — Hooper’s preference for quick cuts and extreme closeups — are the result of doing it as pure musical rather than pure drama or drama punctuated by the occasional song. A distillation of this problem can be found in Russell Crowe. Many critics napalmed his singing. I found that he lacked dynamic range but was perfectly adequate. His flaws as a singer only stand out because the rest of the cast are better. But the complaints about his perfectly serviceable singing distract from his excellent acting. A little less singing and a little more acting and he would really have nailed Javert. The same can be said for many of the cast. Only Redmayne, Barks and perhaps Jackman are really able to pull off the singing and acting simultaneously.

One thing Hooper did right, however, was record the singing during filming. There is verisimilitude to the singing that is unique. Sometimes it’s distracting — Jackman in particular has a tendency to sing with a very open mouth. But I’m hoping the technique can be refined in the future because it really works much better than lip-synching.

Overall, I would probably give it a 8/10. I have to think about it a little bit. I love the story so dearly that the film redeems its sins with the occasional great moment.

It’s too bad they didn’t read the paper too carefully. Because it supports none of those conclusions.

So, yeah. They’re still playing with tiny numbers and tiny ranges of data to draw unsupportable conclusions. To be fair, the authors of the study are a bit more circumspect in their analysis, which is focused on training for law enforcement in dealing with active shooter situations. But Mother Jones never feels under any compulsion to question their conclusions.

(H/T: Christopher Mason)

Update: You might wonder why I’m on about this subject. The reason is that I think almost any analysis of mass shootings is deliberately misleading. Over the last twenty years, gun homicides have declined 40% (PDF) and gun violence by 70%. This is the real data. This is what we should be paying attention to. By diverting our attention to these horrific mass killings, Mother Jones and their ilk are focusing on about one one thousandth of the problem of gun violence because that’s the only way they can make it seem that we are in imminent danger.

The thing is, Mother Jones does acknowledge the decline in violence in other contexts, such as claiming that the crackdown on lead has been responsible for the decline in violence. So when it suits them, they’ll freely acknowledge that violent crime has plunged. But when it comes to gun control, they pick a tiny sliver of gun violence to try to pretend that it’s not. And the tell, as I noted before, is that in their gun-control articles, they do not acknowledge the overall decline of violence.

Using a fact when it suits your purposes and ignoring it when it doesn’t is pretty much the definition of hackery.

Given tomorrow’s launch, I thought I’d finally publish my blog post on the Trek movies.

Here is how IMDB ranks the Star Trek films:

Star Trek (2009): 8.0
The Wrath of Khan: 7.7
First Contact: 7.5
The Voyage Home: 7.2
The Undiscovered Country: 7.1
The Search for Spock: 6.5
Generations: 6.5
The Motion Picture: 6.3
Insurrection: 6.3
Nemesis: 6.3
The Final Frontier: 5.2

You can see the divisions right away, can’t you? The users easily divide the films into three categories:

Even is we assume that the IMDB ratings have some play in them (and I would say the 2009 movie is a bit over-rated right now), most people would agree with the broad strokes of that analysis. And while I would agree with it in principle, I can’t just leave it at that. I need a couple of thousand words to say what the IMDB users are saying in 11 numerical ratings before I get into the main point of this post: a breakdown of the 2009 film in anticipation of this year’s sequel.

Here is how I rate them, from worst to best (Note: non-Trek fans should knock a point off all of my ratings.):

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is ranked dead last on IMDB at 5.2 and deserves to be there. I rank it a 6 but that’s almost entirely because of Jerry Goldsmith’s score and the earnest efforts of the cast to make it work. But there’s no escaping that this was a bad film: poorly directed, badly plotted, upending much of the series’ mythology and simply sloppy sloppy sloppy. Agony Booth has a very long breakdown of everything this film does wrong. There are simply too many things to get into and this post is already at 2000 words.

The thing is that I think there actually was a good motion picture in here somewhere. Somewhere deep down, I grant you. But the idea of Sybok isn’t totally bad and Luckinbill tries very hard to make the character work. In fact, some of the scenes with the four leads just talking work quite well (although a bit Dr. Phil-ish for me). But the entire middle act and climax just fall apart.

Star Trek: Generations: Ranked 7th at 6.5. I give it a 6. Another Agony Booth target, I am not fond of it. It just had too many of the things that annoyed me about TNG, especially the goofy promotion scene. This is a subject for a bigger post, but I often found TNG to be a somewhat schizophrenic series. Sometimes it was incredible, especially when they let Patrick Stewart carry the show. At other times, it could be pretentious and irritating. Generations has way too much of the latter, way too little of the former.

It also annoyed my scientific sensibilities. I’m willing to let a lot slide in sci-fi movies, but not when I’m punched in the face by it. The nexus energy ribbon circles the galaxy in 75 years but takes minutes to cross a solar system. Gravitational fields change instantly in response to exploding stars. And the Enterprise is taken out by one of the most insanely stupid bits of technobabble in the history of the show (and the battle scenes reuses footage from a far superior film, The Undiscovered Country).

One other point that affects my viewing: I was only a casual viewer of TNG at the time and when I watched Generations, I felt like I was missing quite a bit. There were several aspects — Data’s emotion chip, the Klingon sisters — that only made sense to fans of the TNG show. Indeed, three of the four TNG films had the problem of feeling like an episode of the show they were charging me $7 for.

This was never the case with the old series. I had not seen Space Seed when I saw Wrath of Khan but never had that feeling of alienation. In fact, I assumed that the whole Khan thing was a Noodle Incident until my dad enlightened me.

Star Trek: Nemesis: I rank this a 6 to IMDB’s 10th ranking and 6.3. It tries very hard. And when it relies on Spiner and Stewart, it does OK. Tom Hardy does about as well as he can with a poorly written and entirely unoriginal part. Frakes’ direction is solid.

But again it feels like an episode and not a particularly good one. Data’s death, surprisingly, has almost no emotional impact. And the rip-offs of Wrath of Khan are not only obvious but make one long for the superior picture.

Star Trek: Insurrection: Ranked 9th at 6.3, I rate it a 7. This one was the third and final target for The Agony Booth. The big problem, again, is that it feels like an episode of the series, not a movie.

There are a few things that work for me, notably the romance between Picard and Anij. Again, like Final Frontier, I can look at this and see the outlines of a good movie. Frakes’ direction is fine. Stewart is his usual self. But the ridiculous villains, the nonsensical plot and the sloppy script drag this down.

(A number of people have commented that they don’t find the moral conflict compelling. Surely it justifiable to move a few hundred people to benefit millions? Oddly, I find the moral conflict equally clear — in the precise opposite direction. The planet belongs to the natives. Moving them off there, even if its benefits millions, is a big deal and a violation of their basic sovereignty.)

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock is ranked sixth at 6.5, in the middle of the pack for Trek. That’s about where it belongs. It is mostly unremarkable, serving as a bridge between movies II and IV. It has some nice character moments, some funny lines and a good action scene or two. Christopher Lloyd is a wonderful villain. But it was mostly holding the fort, moving the story along. I give it a 7, mostly for personal reasons. It’s perfectly serviceable and I used to love having it on in the background while I worked. It’s also the first Trek I really remember seeing in the theater (I have vague memories of Khan.) Plus, any time my brother and I were fighting as kids, it would end up with one of us saying, “I. Have Had. Enough of You!”

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is ranked 4th at 7.2. I’m not as high on it as most people, ranking it a 7, equivalent to the bulk of the series. I don’t have a problem with it, really. It has a good plot, some great jokes and builds itself almost entirely around the characters. I think I just got Voyaged out at some point the 80′s, having seen it way too often.

(OK, here’s an odd tangent. You know how movies and TV shows can come to be associated with certain memories? Well, anytime I think of Star Trek’s II-IV, all I can think about is Pizza Hut pepperoni pizza. We used to order pizza every sunday from whichever delivery service was having a sale. And if nothing else was on, we’d pop in a classic Trek film. Now anytime I think about them, all I can think about is greasy doughy pizza. Surprisingly, however, this has not killed my love of the films. After a while, I can block it out. Or eat some bad pizza.)

Star Trek (2009): More below. This is a tentative rating, even now.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture is ranked eighth by IMDB at 6.3, a rating that seems far too low to me. The film has its flaws: it is based heavily on episodes of the original series; it is somewhat cold in its approach; Spock starts out as a very different character; it seems to focus more on special effects than the crew.

On the other hand, it also has tremendous strengths: Roddenberry’s optimism and humanism infuses the plot without being overbearing. It has intriguing ideas by the dozen, taking the seed of “The Changeling” and expanding it to a much grander notion. I really bought into Spock’s progression back to his old self. The love story between Ilea and Decker works for me (and I really wish one of the series had run with the idea of the sexually open Deltan race). And the film is enjoyable as pure spectacle, lifted by imaginative effects and Goldsmith’s magnificent score. The director’s cut is a big improvement, shifting the emphasis from the effects to the crew.

The users rate this as being equal to Insurrection or Nemesis. I find that ridiculous. TMP is a much better, much more thoughtful, much more enjoyable film. I rate it an 8. There is much that is wrong with the film. But, in my opinion, it’s overwhelmed by what’s right with it.

Star Trek: First Contact: Ranked 3rd at 7.5, I give it an 8. It is simply excellent, mainly because it puts the emotional and dramatic weight on Spiner and Stewart, the two best actors. There are just so many good moments in this one, such good supporting characters. The scenes between Alfre Woodward and Patrick Stewart shine. The actions scenes are done with skill and the script finds its heart in the very real conflict of Picard against himself. The Borg are, once again, a terrifying enemy. If Generations and the succeeding films had Trek’s worst aspects, this one had the best.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country is ranked 5th at 7.1 and I give it an 8. Nick Meyer saved the franchise by, once again, building a Star Trek film the right way. He took contemporary political events — the end of the Cold War — and threw it at the characters rather than the other way around. Some of the best parts of the film are the quieter character moments. And once again, we see that the action scenes become thrilling when we care about what’s going on. The final battle between two Federation ships and a cloaked Bird of Prey is one of the most tense of the series.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is ranked second by IMDB users at 7.7, second only to the recent reboot. Given IMDB’s bias toward recent movies, that means it is universally regarded as the best of the series. I agree.

I once said on Twitter that Nick Meyer, more than any other director, *got* Star Trek. He understood its rhythms and its construction. The Wrath of Khan is a basic revenge story with the serial numbers filed off. But the details — the references to classical literature, the interactions of the three leads, the Horatio Hornblower rhythm, the moral and philosophical dilemma at the heart of the climax — elevate it to a great picture. You throw in Montalban’s iconic performance and the most devastating moment in the history of the franchise and, well … I just don’t see how you can rate JJ Abrams’ light show — as good as it was — over it.

I rate it a 9. It’s the only Trek movie that I would say transcends fandom.

So, back to the 2009 reboot…

Star Trek (2009 is ranked #1 by IMDB at 8.0. I rate it as 8. It’s a good film, the best since First Contact. But I think it’s ridiculous to place it above Wrath of Kahn.

First the good: Abrams’ Star Trek is anti-matter to most of the sci-fi movies made today. It does almost everything wrong. The lens flare film festival becomes aggravating. The Enterprise is a little soulless and has the internal workings, literally, of a beer factory. The Romulan ship is another of these hideous “tack on CGI fiddly bits” junkpiles. The plot is ludicrous and the science insane. And it ends with a freshly-graduated cadet being given charge of the Federation’s flagship (a point I’ll return to in a moment).

And yet … it works. It works because the actors are good and carry the roles with conviction. It works because of its clear love for the characters. There’s a moment — a very quiet moment — after Spock kicks Kirk off the ship (I’ll pause a moment for that utterly ridiculous and out-of-character plot twist). Spock thanks McCoy for supporting him and McCoy says, “was that a thank you?” Urban’s voice, at that moment, is eerily like Deforest Kelley’s. The intonation, tone, accent and content are so dead on I was convinced it was a dub of some kind.

And that’s why I like it. The film is filled with those sort of little moments where cast, script and director make you feel like you’re seeing the whole blessed, um, enterprise, start all over again. I bought it in a way that I could not buy, say, Transformers.

You can contrast that against Tron Legacy, which does a lot right, production-wise, but does not reach the heights of Star Trek because it does so much wrong in writing and acting. You can contrast that against the whole Transformers franchise, which spends a billion bucks, works its heart out on CGI and falls on its face. Star Trek works. And it’s a delight because so little in film does.

Now for the bad. A lot has been said about JJ Abrams’ love of lens flares, so there’s little to ad. He toned it way down in the very solid Super 8, which gives me hope that he learned his lesson. The science in the film is ridiculous. I’m sure a bit more technobabble could have made it a little more coherent, but really there wasn’t much to do. Science has rarely been Trek’s strong suit.

The pacing is a bit of a problem for me, as well. The movie is very fast, very rushed and rarely takes time to let the audience soak in the moment. The death of Spock’s mother is little more than a plot point. Kirk’s uncertainties almost don’t exist. Most of the time, it doesn’t in fact feel like a Star Trek film but more like a random sci-fi movie. It only works because, occasionally, it has a moment that would be right out of Trek. Occasionally, it lets Quinto, Pine and Urban carry the moment. And when it does, it’s glorious.

One other important point that I mentioned above: I think the big rush to get Kirk in the Captain’s chair was a problem. It made little sense in the movie’s culture and plot. Again, I can see why you’d give a brilliant cadet a command, maybe. But the flagship of the fleet? Since the cast were signed for three movies, why not spread that development out over three movies? Maybe it’s because I really liked Bruce Greenwood’s Christopher Pike so much, but a much better progression, to me, would have seen:

You could have any variation on that, including keeping the Enterprise off-screen until the rousing finale of Movie 1 (as was done quite nicely in Star Trek IV). That, to me, is a more natural progression and ends the first three movies with a lead-in to either a TV series or more films.

Still, for all its flaws, the 2009 reboot is a solid picture and I’m looking forward to Into Darkness. Hopefully, the returning cast and Cumberbatch can overcome Abrams frenetic lens-flare-bedecked directing and put together another solid outing. I do think Matt Yglesias has a point: Star Trek does work a little better as TV show than it does as a movie. But with the unwillingness of TV networks to do space adventure shows any more and the general Trek fatigue out there, I think movies are all we’re going to get.

That’ll do.

Addendum: My brother and I discussed the above and one thing we agreed on was that Trek films work best when they have a little bit of a hero’s journey for the characters: when their flaws and shortcomings are exposed, they face defeat and humiliation but then find a way to overcome it — through ingenuity, courage and teamwork. The Kirk-Spock-McCoy chemistry works so well because all three characters are flawed in some way but, when they work together, are unbeatable.

Look at the best rated films and see the conflicts: Kirk fighting middle age in Khan, Picard overcoming his thirst for revenge in Contact, Spock rediscovering his human side in TMP. One of the best scenes in Khan is when Kirk has to watch Scotty’s nephew die and, in a restored scene, admit that the only reason he won was because he knew something about the ship that Khan didn’t.

Characters are what drive drama. Characters are what have alway driven Trek. Save the CGI. Give me characters overcoming their own failing and a compelling enemy and I’ll watch you do a Trek movie with hand puppets.

Star Trek 2009 had just enough character development to keep me watching. Hopefully, they will continue to build on that.

There are certain characteristics of bullshit, and there are certain characteristics of the truth. The truth tends to be specific; bullshit tends to be vague and imprecise. The truth tends to involve facts that can be checked out; bullshit is always built around things that you have no way of checking out. The truth tends to be told consistently, the same from one day to the next; bullshit changes every time it is told. Stable, responsible honest people tend to tell the truth; unstable, dishonest, unreliable people tend to bullshit. The truth is coherent and logical; bullshit is incoherent and illogical.

Almost everything I said in my Law of Expertise post could be considered a subset of that general rule. When an “expert” tells you what a great expert he is, he’s spewing vague bullshit. Real experts tend to be specific, consistent and verifiable.

However…

I think the equation has changed a bit in the Information Age. The internet has a long memory and this has forced the bullshitters to be more consistent and more specific. The result is that BS now gets debunked faster than ever. However, it has also allowed BS to assume a facade of truth that fools some people.

Think about vaccine hysteria. The lies are specific, consistent and seem to involve facts. That makes people believe it, even after thorough and unremitting debunking.

(I should note, in passing, that the MacDonald case is of particular interest to me. My dad was — and still is, as far as I know — convinced that MacDonald was an innocent man railroaded by a biased judge, a vindictive prosecutor, a slimy writer and a vengeful father-in-law. I was convinced of that myself until I read Weingarten’s post, which pointed out that there is almost no evidence to prove MacDonald’s contention that his family was murdered by a bunch of hippies and that all the extant evidence — including recently tested tissue under the wife’s fingernails — supports the prosecution case. It’s kind of rare that I disagree with my dad on something like this, but … I do. The prosecution was able to put together a scenario consistent with the evidence (although I don’t buy the amphetamines angle). The defense wasn’t.

However, while I am mostly convinced that MacDonald probably did murder his family, I’m not as sure that he should have been convicted. The crime scene was not properly secured, for one and exculpatory evidence might have been destroyed. The judge did seem biased against MacDonald. And I do think Bill James (and Megan McArdle) make a good point about prosecutions — once they focus on a suspect, they develop a tunnel vision which sees everything in light of that suspicion. James’ makes what I think is the most important point: the prosecution’s case fits together extremely well … if you assume that MacDonald was the killer.

It’s an awful case and probably one of the reasons it fascinates so many people. On the one hand, you could have an innocent man convicted of one of the most heinous crimes a man can commit. On the other hand, you have a man committing one of the most heinous crimes a man can commit, including the deliberate murder of a sleeping toddler.

In any case, you should subscribe to James’ site if you have even a mild interest in baseball. Baseball analysis is only part of what he offers.)

When Tebow was with the Broncos, he crossed me as a poor man’s Doug Flutie — a QB who lacked some essential tool (height in Flutie’s case; passing ability in Tebow’s) but nevertheless found ways to win. I was dubious that it could be sustained. But it seemed like he’d found a niche — a team with a great running game and offensive line — where his skills were useful.

When the Jets took him, I hoped they would find some creative ways to use him and Sanchez. Two QB sets, especially at the goal line; wildcat formations; using Tebow as running back who could sometimes pass. Instead, the nailed him to the bench and used him as an alternative to Sanchez. But, without the Bronco’s running game, that wasn’t going to work. And it didn’t. It’s obvious now that Tebow can never be a feature QB.

However, I have to disagree with those, like ESPN, who are saying this is the end of the road for Tebow. He’s still young, still well-liked and still has some skills that will make your jaw drop. Some team is going to sign him for publicity if nothing else.

But what I would really like to see is Tebow fall into the hands of a Belichick-like unconventional guru; someone who could use what Tebow does well (run, lead, use his instincts) without exposing what he does poorly (pass). Someone who would put in a two-QB set at the line to give defenses fits.

In an odd way, I’m reminded of Reggie Bush. This is a bit of a stretch, since Bush was heavily touted coming out of college (although, in a post that disappeared in the event horizon, I was skeptical). But he never became the stud that everyone thought he would. Oh, he was good. But until 2011, he’d never a thousand yard season. What the Dolphins seemed to figure out was that he wasn’t an MVP type who could pound out 350 carries a year and gain 2000 yards from scrimmage. But there was nothing wrong with that. He was a guy who could run 200 times, catch 40-50 passes and get 1500 yards from scrimmage. And that guy was very very useful.

Whoever picks up Tebow needs to stop squeezing him into a pocket passer hole. Tebow is not that guy and never will be. But he is a guy who could throw 50-100 passes a year, run for a thousand yards, score few touchdowns and drive opposing defenses crazy. And he’s only 25 years old.

This post, which I wrote months ago, was originally much longer and incorporated many of the points Dr. Zuk makes, in particular my belief that evolution proceeds in a haphazard random way and does not necessarily lead to some supreme state.

She also puts some science behind the principle objection I have always had: that there is unlikely to be some idyllic point X at which our diet was perfectly suited to our physiology then and forever more. We have evolved with our diet. Our diet has been evolving since we were primordial slime. Claiming that our ancestors’ diet at some time X — even making the huge assumption that we know what our ancestors ate at point X — is arbitrary. Why go back to that point? Why not go back to the time when we were primordial slime eating protozoans?

Moreover, how do we know that our ancestors were eating the right foods in the first place? That’s a gigantic assumption to make based on what we know about evolution. Isn’t it possible that their paleo diet was actually bad for them? That they only ate it because they had no choice in the matter? That our technology and diet has evolved toward something better suited to us?

All that having been said, I’m not slamming the paleo diet, per se. Some people seem to have improved their health with it and I’ve found that cutting carbs benefits me. I do think the current received wisdom of cutting fat and protein and emphasizing carbs is not nearly as supported by the science as our government likes to pretend it is. But let’s not swing the pendulum too far back and pretend that the paleo diet has more science behind it. Or that any one-size-fits-all diet is appropriate. I think the point to take away is that diet is a lot more complex and a lot less well understood than we would like.

In 1972, the year I became aware of baseball, its highest-paid player, Hank Aaron, earned $200,000 per season—the equivalent of around $1 million today. Aaron’s salary was 18 times the median household income in the United States. This year’s highest-paid player, Alex Rodriguez, stands to earn $29 million, which is 580 times the median income. (In fairness, Verlander may be a more egregious example of inequality than Rodriguez, since he pitches in the nation’s poorest big city. In the first year of his new contract, Verlander will earn $20 million—around 800 times as much as Detroit’s median household income.)
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Over the past 40 years—the period of rising economic inequality that former Slate columnist Timothy Noah called “The Great Divergence”—Americans’ incomes have not grown at all, in real dollars. But baseball players’ incomes have increased twentyfold in real dollars: the average major-league salary in 2012 was $3,213,479. The income gap between ballplayers and their fans closely resembles the rising gap between CEOs and their employees, which grew during the same period from roughly 25-to-1 to 380-to-1.

…

As baseball players accumulate plutocratic riches (Rodriguez will have earned a third of $1 billion by the time his contract expires), I find myself wondering why I’m supposed to cheer for a guy earning $27.5 million a year—he’s already a winner. When I was 11, I hero-worshipped the Tigers’ shortstop because I could imagine growing up to take his place. Obviously, that’s not going to happen now. Since my past two jobs disappeared in the Great Recession, I can’t watch a professional sporting event without thinking, Most of those guys are set for life, while I’ve been buying my own health insurance for 5 1/2 years. Paying to see a baseball game feels like paying to see a tax lawyer argue in federal court or a commodities trader work the floor of the Mercantile Exchange. They’re getting rich out there, but how am I profiting from the experience? I know we’re never going back to the days when Willie Mays lived in Harlem and sold cars in the offseason, but the market forces that have overvalued ballplayers’ skills while devaluing mine have made it impossible for me to just enjoy the damn game.

McClelland even criticizes the Seitz decision, thinking players would be better off if they were bound for life to one team. Or, actually … I don’t think he cares about the players. What seems to be damaged here is a deranged sense of economic justice.

I shouldn’t bother but … I’m in a fish-in-barrel kind of mood.

First, let’s consider the point made by honest liberal Matt Yglesias: owners will price tickets, concessions and TV for as much as they can get. There is a myth the media like to promulgate (and MLB owners like to hear) that high player salaries drive high prices for games. This is baloney. The owners will charge whatever they can. When was the last time a team dumped payroll and then cut prices? I remember when Peter Angelos was on Baltimore radio flogging this myth. Someone called up and asked if he was going to cut prices now that the Orioles had dumped all their expensive players. He didn’t have an answer.

All that free agency has done is give players a bigger piece of the pie — a pie that they actually baked since no one ever payed a plugged nickel to see an owner (and it’s not like the owners are struggling). Frankly, I wish more businesses were following their example and bumping up salaries.

A few more things to factor in: athletes are taxed at very high rates; they typically only play for a few years, if that; most of those that do reach the highest levels have pursued it with a single-minded devotion. They will have to live on those earnings for a long time. Frankly, if equity is what you’re worried about, I’d spend more time flogging the low salaries of minor league players compared to their MLB counterparts.

The Slate readers are actually pretty savvy and make many of these points in the comments. However, you do get the occasional “why do we pay teachers and fireman so little and ball players so much!” This was always my favorite argument against high player salaries because it is so obviously absurd. At any given sporting event, an average of 30,000 people show up, buying tickets and concessions. They put in a significant amount of effort and money to watch someone like Justin Verlander pitch. How many teachers teach to 30,000 students at a time? If a teacher could teach that many 162 times a year, would she not be paid like Justin Verlander? The fact is that the skills needed to teach — patience, intelligence, hard work, empathy — are thankfully common. There are literally a few million people doing it. The skills needed to fight fires or fight wars — self-sacrifice, strength, courage — are also thankfully common. The skills needed to be a Cy Young winner — while having less value in an objective sense — are much more rare.

Yes, it’s true that Justin Verlander can’t teach a class or fight a fire or do astrophysics for that matter. It’s also true that I can’t hit a curveball. So what?

But doesn’t the huge amount of money spent on sports show that we have our priorities out of whack? Shouldn’t we spend more on education that we do on baseball? Well … we do. Major league baseball made $7.5 billion last year or about $10 for all 75 million people who went to a game and considerably less for those who watched it on television. We spent approximately $800 billion on education — over $10,000 per child in public schools. The difference is the number of people into whose hands that money is concentrated — three million teachers against a thousand athletes. If our devotion to a cause is judged by the how much we spend, how much we worry, how much we argue and how many people devote decades of their lives to it, education is far, far more valued in this country than all sports combined.

So, no, I don’t think athletes are paid too much. I think they are paid what they are worth. The market has not “overvalued” ballplayers nor has it “undervalued” writers. There are maybe a few hundred people in the entire world who can play baseball at a professional level. But there are millions who could write poorly reasoned articles that drip with wealth envy.

A final thought: my enthusiasm for sports bothered me a little bit when I was younger. Surely, I thought, I shouldn’t devote so much thought to such a trivial pursuit. Is not Shakespeare worth ten pennants? I departed from that thought when I realized that one can pursue all interests: Shakespeare, astrophysics, sports and, um, blogging. But it was actually Jonathan Swift who converted me, with his compelling argument that a truly enlightened race (the Houyhnhnms) would, once they had beaten down the necessities of nature, devote themselves to the pursuit of both mental and physical excellence. Whether it is writing, playing piano, measuring stars or hitting baseballs, the pursuit of a craft, the perfection of it the pinnacle of possibility — that is what drives us as a race.

When I watch a baseball game, I see Justin Verlander throw a ball 100 mph with the right spin to make it move just enough to be almost impossible to hit. I see Albert Pujols, in a split second, decide to swing and launch the bat into the precise position to hit the ball as hard as possible. I see Austin Jackson, at the crack of the bat, take off and pursue it into the gap at just the right angle that he can spear it with his outstretched arm. Every game, I see something that should be impossible but isn’t.

Isn’t that worth $10 a head?

There is another, overlooked reason that low-income individuals are less likely to get married these days: they can’t afford to. Weddings are a form of conspicuous consumption. Couples, and their parents, are judged on everything from their attire, to the venue, to the flowers. As Zoe noted recently, the average wedding now costs around $27,000. Committed low-income couples could simply go get married at a courthouse, but settling for a low-cost wedding violates cultural expectations and announces the sorry state of your finances to immediate friends and family. It’s little surprise that many lower-income couples opt for no wedding rather than a dirt-cheap one.

Marriage has many intrinsic benefits, but the increasing cost of a wedding partially explains why, statistically speaking, married couples are better off than non-married couples. Being the type of person who has $27,000 to spare, or has parents who can foot the bill, undoubtedly increases the likelihood of success in all facets of life. If you compared households with $27,000 cars to those without any car, I imagine you’d find that owning a such a car likewise correlates with greater economic potential, physical health, and various other desirable traits.

I think this is completely wrong. Yes, the average wedding costs $27,000. But that’s not some kind of requirement. My wife and I had the means for a bigger wedding, but chose a smaller $10k affair. I’ve had friends, relatives and co-workers who had the means but chose a weddings that were under $1000. And that’s among a group of upper middle class people. For people living in poorer circumstances, big expensive weddings are not even on the radar.

One thing to notice: I’m not sure if the data sets are the same, but the last estimate I saw for the *median* wedding was was more like $15-18k. That means the average is being dragged up by mega-expensive weddings. I would love to see a distribution of the data. I suspect that a lot of cheap weddings are taking place and that the data are being driven by a big group of weddings in the $10-20k range and then a small group in the $100+ range. A wedding is the ultimate conspicuous consumption and it would only make sense it follows the same skewed distribution other consumption does.

Frankly, this point crosses me as a middle income misunderstanding of a lower income problem. I think that, if you are of low-income, the dearth of marriage-worthy men is MUCH more important. If your only spousal options stink, you’re not going to spend a red cent on a wedding.

(As a side note, our tight wedding budget was actually a good thing. We found a huge number of ways to save money. Rather than hire a professional florist, we went to a whole saler, bought tons of flowers and I spent a few days arranging them — a talent that neither I nor my wife suspected I had. We bought our cake from HEB and it was wonderful. We hired a friend’s band and they were great. We hired some high school kids to be a string orchestra for a processional and they were fine. We went with a friend of a friend for photography and got great pictures. I couldn’t sleep the night before so I went to Walmart, bought a color printer and spent the night making place cards for the tables. All told, these things cut the cost of our wedding by at least a third and probably in half. At normal prices, it would have been at least a $15k wedding, right in the heart of the bell curve. And if we’d done it in Atlanta instead of New Braunfels, it would have cost twice as much.

There’s no reason to pay $27,000 for a wedding when you can get the same bang for a LOT less buck with just a little bit of work.)

Viren Swami and Martin Tovée at the Universities of Manchester and Newcastle, respectively, look into the intricate world of why physical ideals are ideals, and in turn why they drive people beyond reason and morality in the current Archives of Sexual Behavior.

Stylistic note: this lead make it sounds like the study is unique. But I’m guessing that the Archives of Sexual Behavior have published dozens if not hundreds of articles on why physical ideals are ideals. Indeed, the abstract says as much. So why are we talking about this one in particular? Is it the best done so far? I’m going to make the case below that it isn’t even close. What we’re about see is what I call the Scientific Peter Principle: poorly designed studies usually have the most attention-getting results.

(Also, do ideals drive people beyond reason and morality? That’s an awfully loaded statement.)

The problem is primal, so the research methods are not to be outdone. 361 white British men were “taken to a quiet private location” to look at women. Not real women; 3D computer renderings. The men were allowed to rotate them 360 degrees. The only difference among the women was breast size.

The men were then asked to “make their ratings on a paper-and-pencil survey.”

Emphasis mine. “Not to be outdone”? I can think of about a dozen ways I could outdo this study.

Swami and Tovée compared the results with the men’s preferences in breast size, which showed that “men who more strongly endorsed benevolently sexist attitudes toward women, who more strongly objectified women, and who were more hostile toward women idealized a large female breast size.”

The study’s abstract, which is all I have access to, is rather stunning in its lack of humility. After noting that previous studies have been ambiguous, they boldly proclaim their results and then say:

These results were discussed in relation to feminist theories, which postulate that beauty ideals and practices in contemporary societies serve to maintain the domination of one sex over the other.

Even if we were to accept the conclusions of this article — and I don’t — it’s a long way from there to beauty ideals maintaining the domination of one sex over the other. Would you like some science with your ideology? Actually, we don’t even need to go to the abstract to see the boldly stated ideological bias. The title is: “Men’s Oppressive Beliefs Predict Their Breast Size Preferences in Women”.

So, yeah.

You probably know that I’m not going to be sympathetic to this and not just because of my distaste for ideology. In my previous post, I stated my hypothesis that the breast fetish is just like any other fetish — something that the male mind has latched onto as a way of identifying potential mates. It’s commonality is simply because of its obviousness — visible breasts are the easiest way to identify the female of our species. It’s not a social construct, per se. It is a preference that arises within a social construct. If it weren’t breasts, it would be something else (and almost always is). But the key point here is that fetishes are not really chosen. They just happen. It’s just something that, on a very primal level, the human sexual id locks onto.

Still, even without my prior assumptions and biases, we can easily see that this study, which has now been widely cited by various mainstream sites (and not just because they like to talk about breasts), has some big problems.

First, the study was of 361 men. 361 men who were willing to be taken to a “private, quiet location”. 361 whose age, employment and marital status is not exactly clear. That’s an awfully small and demographically narrow number to be drawing conclusions from.

Second, if the 3D drawing in the Atlantic article is an accurate reproduction of what they were shown, this wasn’t a reasonable test at all. I hate to break this to the authors, but the average bust size in the Western World is quite large and increasing: at least a 36C by old standards and probably larger if the lamentations of bra fitters are to be believed. This is partly rising obesity, marginally because of implants and mostly for reasons that aren’t really clear. This has had a significant effect on the landscape in that men’s perception of what constitutes a big bust has changed. Looking at the figures, even the last one didn’t really cross me as “very large”. Were these informed by some statistical survey of women’s breasts sizes? That’s one way you could improve this “not to be outdone” study.

There’s a related issue of body type. Critics of male sexuality often claim that men want big breasts on skinny bodies. Certainly, there is a subset of men who like that but most men who prefer busty women actually prefer curvy women. They like big hips and curvy backsides just as much as they like big breasts. Asking these men to look at 3-D computer models — frankly, none of which look like a real woman — is problematic at best.

(Aside: as I argued in my previous blog, male preferences are not monopolar. All things being equal, a man may prefer a woman with bigger breasts. But in the real world, things are rarely equal. He may be fine with a woman with smaller breasts if she has other features he finds attractive — enchanting eyes, a warm smile, a slender frame, beautiful hair. And — this is a critical point — if a man likes a woman, finds her interesting, enjoys her company — he will begin to see her as attractive. She will become beautiful to him. He will see the beauty in her even if there really isn’t that much to see on an objective level.

I would posit that there are very few men who date or are attracted to women entirely on bust size. Their preference in models and pornography — situations in which there is no interaction — may reflect a preference (although even then there is probably a broad range). But their behavior in real life can be wildly at variance with this. I would bet you that a significant fraction of the men who preferred “very large” breasts are dating or married to skinny women. And I would bet that some of the men who preferred “very small” breasts are dating or married to busty women. And I would further bet that they find the women in their lives attractive despite not conforming to their preferences in zombie-like computer models.)

Third, the questions. I don’t have access to the study, but here are the sample questions they provided:

Attitudes Toward Women Scale (sample prompt: ”Intoxication among women is worse than intoxication among men.”)

Hostility Towards Women Scale (sample prompt: ”I feel that many times women flirt with men just to tease them or hurt them.”)

Benevolent Sexism subscale of the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (sample prompt: “Women, as compared to men, tend to have a more refined sense of culture and good taste.”)

Whoa, really? Those are your sample prompts? Those three prompts are all judgements. You would probably find lots of women who would agree with at least a couple of those. You would probably find that a man would agree or disagree based on his emotional state (if he’s just had a bad break-up, for example). And prompt three (and many of the questions on Ambivolet Sexism Inventory from which they are taken) aren’t clearly sexist. Many of even the most blatant ones probably probe misanthropy far more than they probe misogyny specifically.**

(Another aside: the Atlantic author illustrates sexism by quoting a lawsuit in which a boss constantly commented on a co-worker’s breasts and once shook her breast as a substitute for shaking her hand. This is not the behavior of a man who likes big breasts or thinks women have a more refined sense of cultural taste. This is the behavior of a sociopath.)

But I think the real flaw is highlighted by Ann Althouse:

They were taking a science-y survey, so deference to authority and desire to be socially acceptable would be an influence along with real-world sexual preference.

…

The scientists found “men who more strongly endorsed benevolently sexist attitudes toward women, who more strongly objectified women, and who were more hostile toward women idealized a large female breast size.” Were these men really the ones who “idealized a large female breast size,” or were they simply the ones who didn’t feel as strongly compelled to moderate their opinions to conform to the perceived demands of polite society?

Exactly. I keep harping on this in the social sciences: there is a huge difference between what people think and do and what they tell a group of leering scientists that they think and do. Most people do not want to be perceived as abnormal (or sexist). This is a big problem with this study since, if I read it correctly, the men were shown all five images at the same time. This creates a very obvious social pressure that is different from if five groups of men were shown five different images separately. Hell, if I were put in a room and asked which image I liked, I might say 3 or 4 even though I would prefer 4 or 5 (and would actually prefer a real women with real physical proportions).

How would I improve this “not to be outdone” survey? First of all, I would have a lot more than 361 white British men. Second, I would show each man only one image and ask him to rate her on a scale of 1-10. Second, I would get images of real women and digitally alter them, using some statistical model based on women’s actual bust sizes. Third, I would make a second axis by having some women altered to have both bigger hips and bigger breasts and others to just have bigger breasts. Breast size and hip size are correlated, as anyone who has seen real women instead of 3-D models knows. Fourth, I would use something a little less ambiguous than these prompts. For example, I might give the men two different job applications and just change the gender and see how they rated the applicant. Or have some people enact a job situation and ask them what they thought of the woman’s behavior. Something a little more direct, at any rate.

Or I might go to the gigantic database compiled by the authors of A Billion Wicked Thoughts who gathered data from Google when men didn’t know they were being studied. The only problem is that I would probably find — as those researchers did — that men actually prefer curvy women, not just just busty ones. And that would ruin my thesis that a preference for big boobs is a results of sexism.

So, let’s sum up: a small and poorly designed study asked men to look at unrealistic images of women. They were then asked leading questions of dubious utility. And from this, we conclude that men who like big boobs are more likely to be hostile to women and that feminist theory is vindicated.

That makes me feel some hostility all right. But it’s not directed against women.

**Update: Michael Talarski alerted me that there are links to the questions in the Atlantic article. Here is the attitude toward women quiz. The other triggers a download. The questions are mostly reasonable probes of attitudes toward women (although a few are bit ambiguous). But I would be curious to see how women score on that test. And I would be especially curious to see if these attitudes correlate with actual behavior.

What jumped out at me was this, which is relevant to my perennial struggles with sleep:

Each of us has an internal clock, or, to use Roenneberg’s term, a “chronotype.” Either we’re inclined to go to bed early and wake up at dawn, in which case we’re “larks,” or we like to stay up late and get up later, which makes us “owls.” (One’s chronotype seems to be largely inherited, although Roenneberg notes, not altogether helpfully, that the “genetics are complex.”) During the week, everyone is expected to get to the office more or less at the same time—let’s say 9 a.m. This suits larks just fine. Owls know they ought to go to bed at a reasonable time, but they can’t—they’re owls. So they end up having to get up one, two, or, in extreme cases, three hours earlier than their internal clock would dictate. This is what Roenneberg refers to as “social jet lag”—each workday, owls fall asleep in one time zone and, in effect, wake up in another. By the time the week is over, they’re exhausted. They “fly back” to their internal time zone on weekends and sleep in on Saturday and Sunday. Then, on Monday, they start the process all over again.

For larks, the problem is reversed. Social life is arranged so that it’s hard to have one unless you stay out late on Friday and Saturday nights. But, even when larks have partied till 3 a.m., they can’t sleep in the following day—they’re larks. So they stagger through until Monday, when they can finally get some rest.

The moral equivalence here is staggering. First of all, the problem for “larks” is non-existent for most people. If you have a family or are past the age of 30, it’s rare to stay up partying late on weekends. But the problem for “owls” never ends. No matter what age you are, you are expected to be at work at 9 am or earlier.

The simple fact is that the larks set the rules for the rest of us. And moreover, they cast their larkness as a sign of their virtue and industry (see Franklin, Ben). Those of us who are owls are seen as lazy sluggards. And this prejudice is only strengthened by our schools, government and military setting lark schedules (an especially odious practice in schools where, as the article notes, children are biologically prone to be owls but forced to live on adult lark schedules).

But, in a way, I’m being too harsh on the larks. The problem is partially them but also our insistance, as a society, on conformity. Everyone has to go to work at the same time, everyone has to come home at the same time. This makes some sense — businesses have to be open simultaneously to interact. But we carry it to a ridiculous extreme. It manifests not just in the owl-lark problem but in the absurdity of Daylight Savings Time (it would make far more sense for businesses to adjust their hours to the season on an individual basis, rather than forcing uniformity on all of us; astronomers understand this).

I’ve said before that I don’t think Shakespeare is as subtle as some people like to pretend he is. There’s a school of thought that claims that Henry V is actually an anti-war play, especially given some of the vivid descriptions Henry gives of the horrors of war. I don’t think this is the case. Shakespeare can acknowledge the horrors of war while still making it out to be glorious. There’s a common refrain out there that war-mongers are necessarily “chicken-hawks” who do not understand the horror they contemplate. I find that attitude amusing. Some of the most aggressive warlike leaders in history were themselves veterans. They knew how awful war was. It either didn’t bother them or it pleased them.

There are a few interesting issues with some of the scenes in the play. Branagh’s film version played the comedy bit straight, which was an interesting choice. I like them better as comedy myself to balanced out Henry’s seriousness. But the final scene — in which Henry “woos” Katherine — is a bit problematic. It is played straight in Branagh’s film but I read that many consider it comical or satirical. I must admit I lean a little bit toward the latter as the scene doesn’t really work as romance for me.

Next Up: Henry VI Part 1. Probably be a while before I get to it.

Well, I was right. Here you can read about how EMR’s have encourage the use of boilerplate descriptions which leave critical information out of patient’s record. Here you can read about how it makes doctoring difficult. I’ve experience this personally, finding that doctors spend all their time screwing around with the EMR system rather than interacting with me (although this has improved in the last couple of years as doctors learn from their mistakes and save EMR maintenance until after the appointment). And here you can read about how the system are not saving money and don’t interact with each other.

Some of these problems will eventually be solved. I expect that a uniform standard will eventually be created (probably by law). Improvements in computer transcription will probably restore dictation over boilerplate for making notes. And, as I noted, doctors are quickly improving their ability to use EMR without sabotaging their interaction with the patient. In the long run, I think this will improve healthcare.

But easy-to-use systems that have a uniform standard, protect patient privacy and can correctly spell esophagogastroduodenoscopy (as I just did on the first try) are not cheap and are never going to be. This is not the solution to our healthcare woes. There is no silver bullet that is.

I would have to say that 2 Henry IV is a bit of a letdown after Part 1. Oh, it’s still very good. But it suffers a bit from “middle chapter syndrome” between the outstanding Part 1 and the epic Henry V. Some plot threads from Part 1 are wrapped up too quickly and not much groundwork is laid for the next installment.

Part 1 struck an excellent balance with the low comedy of the Falstaff scenes and the high drama of the politics. It featured an fantastic counterpart to Prince Harry in Hotspur and built to an exciting battle. Part 2 doesn’t quite balance as well, with the low comedy being a bit much and the high drama not working as well. Northumberland’s waffling and selling out of allies is dropped too early. York is never made into a great villain. The conflict is resolved hastily (and, to my mind, dishonorably). It only reaches a real high point when Henry IV is dying and immediately thereafter, as Harry assumed the mantle of leadership.

Falstaff is wonderful, although I feel he played better off Prince Hal, who was his equal in verbal gymnastics, than he does off Lively or Doll. Henry’s rejection of him is heart-breaking, although not milked the way it should be (and indeed many, including Branagh, add this missing touch in their productions of Henry V).

In any case, I’m loving the histories. Maybe it’s because Shakespeare was bound by actual events, which makes the plot more linear and less dependent on twists. Maybe it’s because it combines the best elements of comedy and tragedy instead of being hamstrung by the conventions of either. Maybe it’s just because I love history. Whatever, the case, don’t expect a long wait before my next update.

Next Up: Henry V, of course. One of my favorites.

One of the reasons I started this project was the realization that my only encounter with Falstaff was his brief (but poignant) cameo in Branagh’s Henry V. And until two days ago, my only real experience was from The Merry Wives of Windsor. Falstaff is fun in Wives, but nothing like what he is in this one. Whenever the action moved to Hotspur or Henry IV, I found myself wondering when they were going to get back to Falstaff. As noted by many, his recounting of the attack by the robbers, the way he turns the conversation when Hal reveals his own involvement, his verbal outfoxing of Quickly … all of it is pure joy. And the counterpoint of his relatively harmless shenanigans to the devastating wars of the honorable characters is unmissable.

Would this play be as good without Falstaff? Yeah, I guess. Prince Harry and Prince Hostpsur are good characters and I’m fascinated by the history. I suspect without Falstaff, we would get more of the sub rosa politics of Richard II. But it’s clearly Falstaff and Harry who elevate this play to great.

Next up: Well, I guess it’s Henry IV, Part 2. My goal is to complete the Henry tetralogy by the time I head back to the states.

Richard II, as a character, is one of the better examples of this. When the play starts out, he is king and not terribly interesting. But as he loses power (and possibly his mind) his character becomes stronger and stronger, getting some of the bet speeches in the play. His melancholy dialogues in Act III are a highlight and he dominates Act IV, talking rings around everyone else.

The thing I liked most about Richard II was that so much was sub rosa. The past conspiracy to kill Duke of Gloucester, Henry’s gradual rebellion even as he proclaims his loyalty, his evident relief at Richard’s death — these all are belied by the words that come out of the character’s mouths. Very rarely in Richard II does anyone say what they really mean; they always dance around it. And it is a demonstration of Shakespeare’s skill that I, five centuries later and having to read about the War of the Roses on Wikipedia, can grasp this, even incompletely.

Next Up: Henry IV, Part I