Category: Uncategorized

The Balcony is Closed

Featured Photo Credit (edited): Felix Mooneeram on Unsplash

For as long as I can remember, I’ve liked movies. I grew up in a home that watched them, and it’s something I’ve carried on since becoming a parent, myself. I also remember, early on, when I began learning to like movies – that was around age six, when I started watching Siskel and Ebert.

For those who don’t know, of course… that would be Gene Siskel of The Chicago Tribune and Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times.

Originally paired on public television in November 1975, these two critics offered complementary movie reviews in an aisle-side format that was by turns conversant and quarrelsome, and never outright formal although always somehow compelling. For being TV-brief, their reviews were fluent and well-informed – notably so.

But what people really got a kick out of was the keen and perceptive banter and bickering that quickly came to define their relationship, underscored all the more by Siskel and Ebert’s shared zeal for movies and obvious respect for each other’s discernment. Here were two who knew how to disagree, vociferously, by way of some hold upon human foible and dignity that was surely also what sowed their critiques.

Conversely, their uncomplicated rating meme, two-thumbs up or down, condensed these erudite opinions into a succinct Gold Standard for the box office: a trustworthy symbol of substance for movie-goers that also inspired a whole school of empty mimicry, not unlike today’s movie industry, which – rather like today’s movie industry – seems to have missed the point that Siskel and Ebert were making week after week, year upon year, about the kinds of movies worth watching, and why.

For the record, that would be ‘thumbs down’ from me for the culture of sequels, reboots, and non-original risk-averse CGI crap that infests the big screen today.

Siskel and Ebert were iconic, a face-to-face template entertaining enough to earn national stardom and informative enough to sustain an audience across four broadcast moves over a nine-year span. I was at pains, sometimes, tracking down each new program in an era when Chicago newspapers were only to be found at Chicago newsstands.

By the time they reached a sadly abrupt end, in February 1999, Siskel and Ebert had become a media archetype, one lasting nearly twenty-four years. Ebert carried on for twelve more years, as good as ever, but that irreplaceable partnership was always greatly missed.

Today, I still find Siskel and Ebert’s reviews enjoyable, informative, accessible, and relatively timeless. That’s a remarkable thing, when something offered confirms itself as something lasting.

Although… I suppose they haven’t exactly lasted since someone out there today will have likely never heard of ‘Siskel and Ebert’. On the other hand, whatever is familiar probably reflects a culture’s values, whether directly or inversely, just as whatever gets remembered probably reflects what that culture more prefers. Case in point: I sure do miss Siskel and Ebert, these days. And, evidently, I’m not the only one although that isn’t why I posted this. What’s more, it’s no small irony that culture today is rife with critique, the kind of published informal opinions that target every thing imaginable under the sun.

One might even imagine Someone with Plenty to Say posting their YouTube reaction while watching a ‘Siskel and Ebert’ review… and, just so we’re clear, that would be an audience watching a review by a reviewer watching two reviewers offering reviews to an audience of viewers about the value of something to watch. OK, that’s larger irony than I first let on, and I can only guess what Siskel and Ebert might have said about it.

Still, I suspect it might have been one of those times when they found reason enough between them to agree.

Photo Credit: ChatGPT Image Jul 20, 2026, 01_17_33 PM

Check out this 50th Anniversary retrospective from CBS News, which features an equally entertaining montage of Gene Siskel as the critic for Channel 2 News with CBS Chicago.

We Get What You Pay For

Featured Photo Credit: Jan van der Wolf on Pexels

Am I the only one who sees at least a hazy comparison between banning social media and banning vices like alcohol and tobacco?

Just for instance… over the past fifty–odd years, we’ve not only managed to restrict the age for purchasing alcohol and tobacco, we’ve also reached some level of comfort that such restrictions may be growing somewhat more culturally acceptable, and even worth further pursuit.

Today, similar acceptance seems evident in myriad age-restricted bans upon the usage of social media, even as weighed against its benefits… one Google search is all anyone needs to confirm the health concerns. And let’s set aside that any threat to the health of so-called “minors” might also mean a threat to the health of so-called “adults” – we’ve apparently reached a comfort level on that, too, one that leaves the adults free to decide for themselves whether or not to damage their health.

Illicit drugs, pornography, firearms – all restricted, if not illegal. Even movie theatres, video games, and music releases can have age restrictions or purchase & supervision requirements. As for me (though not sure for you), I’ve known plenty of minors in my lifetime who were turned down when they asked adults to forgive such bans and let them purchase [ restricted Product X ]. The point just now is not enforcement, which in real consequence is hit-or-miss, but more plainly actuality, which by point of fact is cultural evidence that we’ve found actual reason and method in our past for imposing restrictions and bans.
 
As for the current hoo-haw… if it suggests anything, could it be simply that plenty of people have raised considerable concern? On its face, the mere call to ban social media seems grave enough to warrant a far more judicious – and far less rapid – pursuit of any usage, widespread or minimal, while we try to understand the longer-term consequences of social media, not to mention A.I. As much as the pace of e-culture has reduced our tolerance for waiting, it has also accelerated our lack of patience, which in turn has amplified our imprudence. Among these various cultural reductions, it’s that last one for me (though not sure for you) that really threatens our future.

Someone will argue that social media, and A.I. too, still have practical utility and that weighing this against any ban would short-change the deprived children and youth who use them. Yes, and a 12 year-old can’t just walk into the Motor Vehicles office and book a Road Test, yet driving too has great practical utility. Driving also presents a severe threat to public safety, even after motorists have earned their privilege by passing various licensing processes. Take issue as one may against protecting the duration or stringency of road safety and driver licensing, but for good reason, we do restrict its access.

So, as we halt a minor’s purchase of alcohol or tobacco, why not also a smart phone? Instead of banning social media or A.I., why not restrict the age for operating the devices and accounts we use to access them. How about restricting Rogers / Telus / Bell accounts to make it illegal for minors to be signed on as family members? As no responsible parent simply turns over their car keys to a 12 year-old, why hand them a restricted smart phone? That’s a cultural thing – a willingness to obey the law on account of respecting the belief that instituted it. Unless, of course, that’s a comfort level thing too, and people just aren’t comfortable with it – either way, wouldn’t that tell us something more about what we value most?

Funny over the past ~10-12 millenia how human civilization managed to grow without electronic anything – even longer than that, if we start redefining “human civilization.” Funnier still – and a little ironic – how all that non-digital time finally landed us here to be facing all this, just the same… did we follow some improper process along the way? Along that timeline, as social media and A.I. suddenly now present socio-economic threat, are we even capable of regulating or curtailing or halting their production and usage quickly enough? Are we even concerned enough to try? If no incentive to try outweighs the incentives to not try, at least not for the people who could try, then I’d say we definitely do and don’t know much about what we value most.

Do we value our health? As social media bears a documented health threat, why aren’t we flatly banning it all, for everyone? Or, if we won’t ban what’s addictive because its addictive, then at least we might regulate it because its addictive, and distorting, and hyper-personalized, and fatiguing, and algorithmic, and profitable. Regulate social media the way we regulate alcohol, or tax it the way we sin-tax alcohol and tobacco. Or at least license its proper usage… how ubiquitous would it be if access to social media were limited, even by dollar-cost? Wait, I forgot – it already is. So how important is any of this, as a health concern, when at least some people are evidently addicted? No problem – remember? Adults make their own decisions, plus bars and nightclubs seem to fare pretty well, and people still smoke too, if just a different shrub than before. Lucky for us, all that stuff is legal.

Bans and restrictions are no more effective in practice than their enforcement – in the world where I live, everyone who really wants to is able to smoke and drink and drive and shoot. But, as any of them might be held to account, well… that’s usually something after the fact, if even then. Lucky for us.

As for me though (not sure for you), rather than hassle everyone with bans and restrictions, rather than nag young people with “A.I. makes you lazy” or “Social media makes you ill,” I prefer to help them learn why “being lazy” or “being ill” is a worthwhile concern. I prefer to persuade people with more inclusive, longer-term responses, apart from whichever bans and restrictions might still get imposed. And I’d rather see us educating people about which choices we face, and which reasons underpin worthwhile debate, and which alternatives are available to those who want to live some better way than enduring threats to health and safety.

Create incentives that change behaviour – or hey, create disincentives that change behaviour, whichever – but create something more nuanced and imaginative than the decree of bans and restrictions, something more capable than getting peoples’ backs up. Unless, of course, we’re clearer now on what we value most.

On Teleology: V. Setting

Click here to read Pt. IV. Source?

On Teleology: V. Setting

Pretty recently, Science helped us understand two separate but related things in a more holistic way, and I think you’ll see what Science means once we dub the two things as ‘space’ and ‘time’.

Science merged these two fundamentals into one singular mind-bending concept, then imaginatively called it spacetime. Think Einstein and gravity and General Relativity although don’t think Newton and gravity and the falling apple… except of course, in our case, do think a falling acorn.

Don’t trust me… trust Science!

Let’s fall back down to Earth, ourselves, to swirl about in the gravity well as we revisit Part I’s analogies of schools and shipbuilding and students K-12, and our culture’s hankering obsession with Science and efficiency.

Being a teacher, I think a lot about efficiency, particularly for things like lessons and planning and short- & long-term objectives. Of course, in the Scientific here-and-now of the 21st century – ours being that hard core Sciencey culture of efficiency: a purpose for everything, nothing wasted – whenever I think about lessons and planning and short- & long-term objectives, naturally I think of spacetime… although maybe not quite the way you’d expect, with sole respect to ‘time’. I think of spacetime with sole respect to ‘spacetime’.

Try it, yourself, by inserting alongside the temporal ‘short-term’ & ‘long-term’ objectives some physical ones, such as ‘nearby’ & ‘further afield’. I also swap out the emptiness of ‘space’ with the tangibility of ‘place’ although, no, I’m not trying to make placetime a thing.

And this then, finally, is what I’ve been wondering about teleology: as time and place sometimes combine into one thing that we call setting, I wonder how we’re teleologically set for some kind of fulfilment or completion by our passage not simply in time but across space through time: what is our purpose as we find ourselves set within some distinct place + time? By analogy, why ‘this’ oak tree, and why here, and why now? Naturally, this includes all those oak trees with whom we’re set alongside – as I pointed out once before, we can’t all be Thoreau.

To explore all this, I’ve been using analogies. For instance, inasmuch as we might consider any teacher a so-called ‘shipbuilder’, we might ask by analogy, within the geography and economy of the setting, what kind of ship a teacher intends to ‘build’ of each student. As we would never build a ship apart from its filling some function or purpose, we might ask by analogy what function or purpose teachers envisage or intend for K-12 graduates – what kind(s) of people do we want K-12 graduates to become? And what kinds of people do teachers actually end up ‘building’, and how much are the students involved? What kinds of people finally cross that diploma stage? What is their telos, and who gets a say?

To consider telos further, I compared people to acorns that fall from trees, themselves born of acorns. By analogy, someone might suggest our broader telos as something similar – a kind of cyclical propagation as we hang and ripen from so-called trees and eventually fall to rest upon some unique spot of ground, there to grow roots of our own.

Nothing’s carved in stone

Falling to land and coming to rest as each of us does, each in place at some moment in time, what is our purpose not only there but then? And how do we assess our surroundings as capable of providing suitable conditions for root and growth? And, in whichever conditions we actually find ourselves placed, how do we know what we are or aren’t supposed to do next? How are we even brought to know – much less to ask – anything more specific than this cyclical continuance of reproduction and propagation before we die? I ask only because… well, only because I asked.

And, amidst all this, all around alongside us, as mentioned, are our neighbours… every other acorn, landed in place across time, the same as we are – a homogenous lineage of heterogeneity, all of us together, if not all at once: each as different, and unique, and persistent, and curious, and as full of intention as you and me. For every one of these, what is their source of telos?

Or maybe better to ask, who is their source?

Who is yours?

Click here to return to Pt. I. Efficiency