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elizadoolittlethings · 6 years ago

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"The Man in Black s1-3"

THE MAN IN BLACK – YOUR APPOINTMENT WITH FEAR FEBRUARY 5, 2017 GREYDOGTALES 1 COMMENT

Have you met the Man in Black? Has he whispered to you on the airwaves? Your radio is dead, and yet his voice is still there inside you, entreating you to join him… Yes, our Voice of Horror series is back, with a hero of the genre!

Long before Johnny Cash, the Tommy Lee Jones films or even Westworld, there was a single man who embodied the concept of the forbidding stranger, the archivist of the dark – the Man in Black. Can you recall his name, or remember his sepulchral tones? No? Then we shall help. Treats are in store, including some links to where you can listen to, or watch, him in action.

Along the way we bump into Shirley Jackson, Hammer Horror, GK Chesterton, Edgar Allan Poe, Dr Who, Sid James of Carry On fame and S T Joshi, amongst others. Is that enough names yet? For today’s article we must take you back to the days when you made radio shows by rubbing two sticks together, so a few reminders may be in order.

Dyall M for Murder

Valentine Dyall (1908-1985) was the true Man in Black, and it came about because of the BBC. In the 1940s and 50s, they aired a wonderful radio series called Appointment with Fear. This was a series of dramatised horror stories which both drew on the classics and also invited new stories from contemporary writers. Each started with an introduction from the narrator, the Man in Black, either teasing the listener about the nature of the tale to come, or warning them of the terror that awaited them.

Each show was about half an hour long. When Dyall started speaking, you knew you were in the right place. His voice was dark and distinctive (some called him the British Vincent Price), and he had a resonance which just oozed menace. Occasionally the actual story was less interesting than his narration. Between 1943 and 1955 he introduced nine series of terrifying tales, with one more series being narrated by his father, Franklin Dyall. He also narrated a single series of the Man in Black in 1949.

Before we say more about Appointment with Fear, we should mention Dyall’s wider horror credentials. He had a number of parts in film and TV over the years, in addition to his radio work, and his career was packed with the sort of media trivia that we so love.

For our younger listeners, Dyall played the Black Guardian in Dr Who between 1979 and 1983.

“The Black Guardian is an anthropomorphic personification of the forces of entropy and chaos, the counterpart of the White Guardian, a personification of order. The two Guardians balance out the forces in the universe, although the Black Guardian seems to desire to upset the balance in favour of chaos and evil while the White Guardian prefers to maintain the status quo.” (Wiki)

He took the lead role in individual episodes and in three linked serials, which some call the Black Guardian trilogy, playing opposite Peter Davison as the Doctor.

Well Hammered

We mentioned Dyall’s memorable voice, and in Hammer Horror’s film Lust for a Vampire (1971), the character Count Karnstein, played by Mike Raven, was dubbed by Valentine Dyall. He also appeared as the caretaker Mr Dudley in the outstanding 1963 film version of Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House. Sometimes just known as The Haunting, this is by far the best adaptation, and still sends shivers up the spine.

Going further back, he played a key part, Jethro Keane, in the wonderful City of the Dead (1960). The film was known as Horror Hotel in the States, and is the tale of a young student who seeks information on witchcraft for her college studies. What could possibly go wrong when she travels alone to a mist-shrouded New England village to ask if there are any witches about? Especially when your professor is an intense Christopher Lee, and the man who gets into your car is Valentine Dyall? The usual hilarity ensues…

Two film oddities in Dyall’s career remain worth noting. The first is the attempt to transfer the Man in Black idea to film, again by Hammer. The Man in Black (1949) was a British thriller film which starred Sid James. Adapted from Appointment with Fear, Dyall provided the introduction to the film, as “The Story-Teller”. Sid James, who rose to fame in the British Carry On films, plays a straight role for once, with none of his yuck-yuck dirty laughter. It received mixed reviews, but is worth a look.

His other role, which links to our interest in detectives and will lead us back to the radio, was as Dr Morelle in Dr Morelle: The case of the Missing Heiress. This was another Hammer Film, and was based on the popular long running BBC radio series written by Ernest Dudley.

Ernest Dudley (1908-2006) wrote many tales of Morelle, a psychiatrist with an interest in criminology. In the radio series, the part of Dr Morelle was taken by the silky-voiced Cecil Parker, a stalwart of British period films. It’s well worth seeking out the old-time radio recordings of A Case for Dr Morelle, as the sleuthing doctor is incredibly annoying and condescending to his secretary, Miss Frayne. They’re greatly enjoyable in a sort of ‘God, I want to slap this man’ sort of way (and for some unlikely, if not implausible, deductions).

Appointment with Fear

So we’re glued to our radios again, and Appointment with Fear. See, we know where we are – sort of. John Dickson Carr, the prolific mystery writer, was responsible for a number of the original stories and for many of the adaptations of classic tales. Given the number of series, we won’t list them all, but here are some of the adaptations which Dyall introduced:

The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe

The Cask of Amontillado – Edgar Allan Poe

A Watcher by the Dead – Ambrose Bierce

The Middle Toe Of The Right Foot – Ambrose Bierce

The Monkey’s Paw – W W Jacobs

Oh Whistle And I’ll Come To You, My Lad – M R James

The Beast with Five Fingers – W F Harvey

Markheim – Robert Louis Stevenson

The Hands of Nekamen – Kathleen Hyatt

The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Parkins Gilman

Mrs Amworth – E F Benson

John Dickson Carr (1906-1977) was an American, and yet his detective and mystery stories were predominantly English tales, perhaps due to his English wife and the time he spent there in the thirties and forties.

He was the creator of Dr Gideon Fell, a larger-than life investigator modelled on the author G K Chesterton. Fell is a great figure, an eccentric, corpulent cape-flapping fellow – an amateur sleuth who sees through the mistakes of the authorities. He too was made into a radio series, this time played by another classic British actor, Donald Sinden.

Carr and Dr Fell probably deserve their own article on greydogtales, so we’ll keep this short. There were 23 Dr Fell novels, and Carr wrote many other detective mysteries besides. He also wrote an authorised biography of Arthur Conan Doyle (1949), and with Doyle’s youngest son, Adrian, wrote Sherlock Holmes stories for the collection The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes (1954). Whilst musing on this, we were surprised to find that S T Joshi, a major figure in weird fiction criticism and a Lovecraftian scholar, produced a book-length critical study of Carr, John Dickson Carr: A Critical Study (1990).

Most of the recordings of Appointment with Fear have been lost, but one of the few surviving episodes is an original Carr tale, The Clock Strikes Eight, originally aired 05/18/1944.

Another example is And the Deep Shuddered, written by Monckton Hoffe, an Irish screenwriter, and aired 20/11/45, which can also be found on Youtube.

The Rest of the Man in Black

After Dyall, others took on the voice of the Man in Black. Revived as Fear on Four, the concept ran for five series on BBC Radio 4 (1988-1992), with Edward DeSouza in the key role. A fifth series was broadcast in 1997, but with no Man in Black.

The most recent revival was with Mark Gatiss reprising the role. There were four radio series featuring Gatiss between 2009 and 2011. Whilst not as sepulchral as Dyall, it’s fair to say that Gatiss does have the ability to make ordinary things sound quite unnerving, so he wasn’t a bad choice. We covered Gatiss’ recent audio version of Dracula here last year:

Come Freely, Go Safely: Dracula Returns, Scott Handcock Rules!

Although we must have missed it, apparently The Return of the Man In Black was broadcast by Radio 4 as two Archive Hour specials in October 1998. The documentaries were presented by the acclaimed horror writer Ramsey Campbell, and covered the history of fear and suspense on BBC radio. During the programmes, two complete episodes were presented: The Pit and the Pendulum (from Appointment With Fear) and The Beast With Five Fingers (from Fear On 4).

Buried under names and trivia, we leave you with Valentine Dyall, and his reading of The Pit and the Pendulum.

Sleep well…

wish i could listen

#MG #mark gatiss #the man in black s1-3 #audio link #the genius in action

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corkcitylibraries · 4 years ago

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Remembering Derek Mahon

by Dr Sorcha Fogarty

Derek Mahon, whose poem “Everything Is Going To Be All Right” brought solace to many during the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, died at his home in Kinsale, Co. Cork, aged 78 on October 01 2020. Regarded by many as “The poet’s poet”, Mahon has written some of the most respected and admired contemporary poetry in the English language, winning numerous awards for his work including the prestigious David Cohen Prize for a lifetime achievement in literature. He has produced in excess of twenty collections of poetry, has adapted literary novels for Film and Television, and has worked as a literary journalist for many Irish and UK newspapers and magazines.

Born in Belfast in 1941, Mahon was the only child of working-class, Church of Ireland parents. His father was a shipping engineer, while his mother, who had worked for a flax spinning company before she married, devoted herself to housework. They were Protestants, as Mahon told the Paris review, but not slavishly so: “They weren’t really serious church people. I mean, they were Protestants! There‘s no such thing as a devout Protestant, is there? Protestants aren’t devout, they’re staunch.” After Skegoneil Primary School, he attended the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, where he started writing and publishing poems, winning the first of many prizes when he was 17, and was involved in amateur dramatics, also participating in debates. Having made the decision to attend Trinity College, Dublin, Mahon stated that he “rumbled Belfast for the bigoted corrupt dump that it was and I was delighted to get out of it”. Turning his back on the North, however, also meant severing links to his ageing parents: he missed the death and funeral of each of them. He matriculated in Trinity College to read English, French and Philosophy, and although he formed many friendships with writers such as Michael Longley, Eavan Boland, and Brendan Kennelly, his Trinity years were difficult. He was a less than diligent student, twice expelled for poor attendance at lectures, and, in his second year, he allegedly attempted suicide by jumping into the Liffey at Butt Bridge following a “personal crisis”. Mahon, however, remembers it differently, and in one of the essays in “Red Sails” (2014), makes the comment, “Jump in the river for fun and someone will say you tried to commit suicide”. As noted by Stephen Enniss I his book on Mahon (2015), the truth of the matter may be contained in Michael Longley’s pithy summing up of the event: “partly theatrical, partly suicidal”. However, it was at Trinity that he decided to devote his life to poetry. Mahon left Trinity in 1965 to take up studies at the Sorbonne in Paris, but his stay in Paris only lasted a year, and he subsequently worked his way through Canada and the United States.

In 1965, he won an Eric Gregory Award, and three years later published his first full collection, “Night-Crossing”. During these years, he travelled a great deal: England, France, Belgium, Germany, Canada, and the USA. He worked at a great many disparate jobs, and even managed to finish his degree at Trinity but did not attend the graduation ceremony. In 1967, Mahon began seeing Doreen Douglas, a Trinity classmate, whom he married five years later. Not an easy marriage, it involved numerous, and increasingly lengthy and acrimonious, separations. Mahon would appear to have been a reluctant husband and father - they had two children - and things were greatly worsened by his problem drinking and, in 1986, adultery. Mahon continued to write, publishing six books of poems between 1972 and 1985, as well as various pamphlets. He worked for Vogue, the New Statesman, and the BBC, but could never really hold down a regular job, which exacerbated matters further with his wife. He then entered a prolonged period of writer's block, during which he turned to the translation of French poetry, especially that of Philippe Jaccottet. In 1975, he wrote what was to become his most celebrated poem, “A Disused Shed in Co Wexford”, described by John Banville as “the best single poem written in Ireland since the death of Yeats”.

A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford

Let them not forget us, the weak souls among the asphodels. —Seferis, Mythistorema (for J. G. Farrell) Even now there are places where a thought might grow — Peruvian mines, worked out and abandoned To a slow clock of condensation, An echo trapped for ever, and a flutter Of wildflowers in the lift-shaft, Indian compounds where the wind dances And a door bangs with diminished confidence, Lime crevices behind rippling rain barrels, Dog corners for bone burials; And in a disused shed in Co. Wexford, Deep in the grounds of a burnt-out hotel, Among the bathtubs and the washbasins A thousand mushrooms crowd to a keyhole. This is the one star in their firmament Or frames a star within a star. What should they do there but desire? So many days beyond the rhododendrons With the world waltzing in its bowl of cloud, They have learnt patience and silence Listening to the rooks querulous in the high wood. They have been waiting for us in a foetor Of vegetable sweat since civil war days, Since the gravel-crunching, interminable departure Of the expropriated mycologist. He never came back, and light since then Is a keyhole rusting gently after rain. Spiders have spun, flies dusted to mildew And once a day, perhaps, they have heard something — A trickle of masonry, a shout from the blue Or a lorry changing gear at the end of the lane. There have been deaths, the pale flesh flaking Into the earth that nourished it; And nightmares, born of these and the grim Dominion of stale air and rank moisture. Those nearest the door grow strong — ‘Elbow room! Elbow room!’ The rest, dim in a twilight of crumbling Utensils and broken pitchers, groaning For their deliverance, have been so long Expectant that there is left only the posture. A half century, without visitors, in the dark — Poor preparation for the cracking lock And creak of hinges; magi, moonmen, Powdery prisoners of the old regime, Web-throated, stalked like triffids, racked by drought And insomnia, only the ghost of a scream At the flash-bulb firing-squad we wake them with Shows there is life yet in their feverish forms. Grown beyond nature now, soft food for worms, They lift frail heads in gravity and good faith. They are begging us, you see, in their wordless way, To do something, to speak on their behalf Or at least not to close the door again. Lost people of Treblinka and Pompeii! ‘Save us, save us,’ they seem to say, ‘Let the god not abandon us Who have come so far in darkness and in pain. We too had our lives to live. You with your light meter and relaxed itinerary, Let not our naive labours have been in vain!’

As well as problems in his own private life, Mahon was beset by problems in the public sphere. The Northern Ireland Troubles started just after “Night-Crossing” was published, and left him deeply disturbed and perplexed. In 1977, he was appointed Writer-in-Residence at the New University of Ulster. When that position terminated in 1979, he left Northern Ireland for good. Though he found it difficult to deal head on with the Troubles, it was a recurring theme in his work. In “A Postcard from Berlin”, for example, he tells Paul Durcan, the poem’s dedicatee:

“I can imagine your dismay/As, cornered in some zinc café,/You read of another hunger-strike,/A postman blasted off his bike…” Essentially, Mahon was a poet of dislocation. His work revealed a fervent desire to resolve the ambiguities in life: between the secular and the sacred; past and future; natural and unnatural. The theme of loss, exile, and isolation is a repeating preoccupation in Mahon's work, as he holds a deep interest for figures that live on the fringes of contemporary society, “the unreconciled, in their metaphysical pain/dangle from lampposts in the dawn rain” (“Glengormley”, 1979)

Indeed, it seems that Mahon himself was one of those “unreconciled” characters which feature so largely in his work. As his relentless travels show, he was a wanderer at heart. However, Mahon was constantly plagued by poor finances and frequently hospitalised for alcoholism. He was one of a great number of exorbitantly talented writers who battled alcohol addiction. Widely regarded as one of the greatest writers of all time, Brendan Behan described himself as a “drinker with a writing problem”, and the prolific Flann O’Brien died from alcoholic complications at 54. A comprehensive list of creative geniuses who dealt with addiction in many forms would be too great a digression here, but it is difficult not to acknowledge the connection between addiction, other mental health disorders, and genius. In his article discussing the association between major mental disorders and geniuses, Psychiatrist Nicholas Pediaditakis reminds us that, “There exists an association between creativity and major mental disorders knows since antiquity. Aristotle, in his perspicactity, stated, ‘There is no genius without having a touch of madness’” (Pediaditakis, 2014). Mahon has been described as a “truculent character”, more comfortable being in the position of an outsider. Mahon himself states, “it is important for me to be on the outside looking in”. He wove together history, personal demons and quiet contemplation in works that could be dark but also spoke of renewal. His sympathy was often with “waste” – an example of which is the famous “A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford” – and critics such as Hugh Haughton have noted that there is an indisputable connection between order and detritus in Mahon’s work (Haughton, 2002), exemplifying the poet’s paradoxical fascination with trash as, to paraphrase “A Disused Shed”, “a place where thought might grow”.

Essentially, Mahon produced poems that combined classical allusion with vivid everyday detail, and explored history, conflict and personal demons with great wit, elegance, and skepticism. In his work, states John Byrne, Mahon completely eschews complacency, showing a readiness to confront in himself the “metaphysical unease” with which modern man and his literature are afflicted. Following Mahon’s death, President Michael D. Higgins said “The loss of Derek Mahon […] is like the falling of oak trees. We are left with hope from the fruit of the acorns in which the writing and its encouragement represents as legacy”. No doubt, now that Mahon himself has gone, his work will be studied assiduously with a renewed interest and vigour. Mahon’s work is a testament to the fact that it is possible to create something beautiful out of darkness and despair, a fact which could serve us well during this difficult year. In “Antarctica”, Mahon says, “‘I am just going outside and may be some time.’/The others nod, pretending not to know./At the heart of the ridiculous, the sublime./He leaves them reading and begins to climb…”. With his incredible body of work, Mahon has indeed left us with plenty to read. And it is, all of it, sublime.

Sources

After the Titanic: A Life of Derek Mahon, Stephen Enniss, 2015, Pub. Gill Books

The bright garbage on the incoming wave: Rubbish in the poetry of Derek Mahon, Hugh Haughton, June 2002, Textual Practice 16(2):323-343

The association between major mental disorders and geniuses, Nicholas Pediaditakis, Sept 25, 2014, Psychiatric Times, Vol. 31, Issue 9

#corkcitylibraries #lovereading

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ecotone99 · 5 years ago

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[MF] Misc Fiction

Homeless rider

My phone dinged. A rider. My very first rider. I grabbed the keys and was out the door and on the road in the blink of an eye. The perfect tunes were playing and the air conditioner was blasting. I was prepared. Ready to become the best uber driver this town has ever seen. My attitude changed as I realized what the the pickup location was. The soup kitchen. I threw my car in park and waited for my rider. Praying he or she would be a volunteer. Suddenly the doors to the homeless person haven burst open. Well fed hobos and nicely dressed volunteers flooded the stairs. One large man broke from the crowd and made his way over to my car. The door ripped open and a musty stench filled my nostrils. ¨Hi is this for Ricky?” I nodded at the dirty man entering my car. His graphic t shirt was much too small and his pants many sizes too big. His peppered white hair brushed the roof of the car, sprinkling dirt onto the center console. I pretended not to notice. ¨Where we heading?¨ He smiled a toothless grin. ¨The poker room down the street. I want to beat the heat today you know what I mean¨ I let out a short convincing laugh. ¨I know exactly what you mean sir.¨ Though I did not. A homeless man taking an uber from the soup kitchen to the casino. Was this some sort of joke? Multiple of questions raced through my head but I somehow managed to speak the one of least offense. ¨Is there a poker tournament going on today?¨ He nodded and grumbled scratching his chin. ¨Yes there is. And I am going to win it all. You see I volunteered today and that got me good with the lord. Also I completed my mandated service hours so Im good with the government. And in addition to that. I got a free breakfast which makes me good on the entry fee if you know what I mean.¨ This time I did know what he meant. I nodded. ¨You any good at cards uber driver?¨ I nodded again. In fact I was very good at cards once upon a time. But those days are over. I inhaled a long, slow breath, pushing back the memories. The excitement. ¨I used to be. I don´t exactly gamble anymore¨ I added. ¨Why don´t you gamble anymore¨ Because I don’t want to end up like you. ¨Because you don´t want to end up like me¨? Did he just read my mind? ¨Ha I just read your mind I can see it on your face. Tricky Ricky strikes again!¨ ¨Can you read minds?¨ I asked falsely He shrugged. ¨Its happened before.¨

We pulled up to the poker room and Ricky reached for the door. ¨Hey what do you say you come in there and play a few hands. If my mind reading thing kicks back in, shit we could take it all!¨ I forced a smile, ¨No thank you Ricky. But it was nice getting to chat. Good luck in there.¨ And I pushed the smelly homeless man from my car. I drove home and cleaned my car before returning to the patrol. What a strange first ride. Luckily it is over and chances are, I will never see him again. Thats the life of an uber driver I suppose.

Suddenly my phone dinged. Another ride request.

I took a left and a right then another left until I found myself sitting infront of the old tall hotel in the heart of downtown. Out the revolving glass door walk three gorgeous young women. Each of them supporting their own university with a different sweatshirt. Make up applied and shorts worn high, the three coeds walked up to my car. I rolled down my window and all three poked their heads in at once. ¨Is this for Stacy¨ ¨No I ordered it.¨ ¨Why does it smell like hobo in here¨

I managed to resist letting my eyes roll. As the three girls crawled into my car

¨Where are we headed?¨ I asked.

¨Uhm Im pretty sure the app tells you where to go?¨ Two of the girls giggled as the third shook her head smiling.

¨Don´t be so rude. We are headed to the poker tournament thanks for asking” She added kindly.

More tournament participants. Maybe the tournament is more popular than I expected.

“So what are you ladies studying in school” I asked, trying to make conversation. “Education! Stacy and I are going to be teachers!!” “Most important job in America. Good for you two.” Two of the girls beamed. “What about you” I asked the third girl, our eyes meeting again in my rear view mirror. “Psychology and Philosophy. I like it a lot so far.” “She is the smart one if you can’t tell. She’s going to be a psychiatrist one day.” I chuckled. “Very cool”

Moments later we found ourselves infront of the poker room. The three girls started to get out of my car when the nice one turned back and asked me if I would like to join them. Flattered. I smiled. ¨No thanks¨ and the door closed as the three girls raced into the poker room. My phone dinged. Another rider.

I pulled up to the same hotel as before, and waited for my rider. In front of the revolving door stood a lone man in a blue suit, sporting a leather briefcase in one hand, and a cell phone in the other. his eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses. He let out a wave, and I returned his signal. ¨The poker room on the east side please¨ Another poker player? ¨Sounds good. We will be there shortly.¨ Without request the businessman to proceeded to inform me of each and every dollar value attributed to the accounts he manages. He was a big financial manager in LA. I was surprised with how many of his clients I was familiar with. As well as how much golf he apparently played. But not one part of me cared about any of the haughty words leaving his mouth. ¨Very cool sir¨ I said carelessly as we pulled up to the stop. ¨Incase you ever make it big¨ I turned to see the man handing me his business card. And he was gone.

So it was back to patrol for me. I cruised the town, desperate for more riders, but My phone did not ding once again. So I returned home. Kicked off my shoes, and began making dinner. I cracked open a can of coconut milk and began stewing a curry as I flipped on the TV. Not a bad first day of uber driving. I thought. I wonder how that poker tournament went for everyone. To my surprise, the answer to my question appeared on the screen infront of me. ¨Well it looks like this is going to be the final hand tonight. The final three players are all in.¨ On the tv sat three characters at a round green table littered with paper anplastic. One was a well dressed business man with a girl under his arm. The other a ragged vagabond with a fem sitting upon his lap. And finally, in the third seat sat a beautiful young woman, draped in a university sweatshirt. I reached for the remote and turned up the volume. ¨This is the first time ever that no professional players made it into the final 3. But tonight one of these amateurs is going to walk away with it all. Stay tuned, right after this commercial break.¨ My keys were in the ignition before they cut to the advertisements and I was in the back of the poker room, standing out of site, just as the coverage returned. ¨And we are back. Thanks for sticking with us folks. Well it looks like all three players have laid down their chips. The only thing left to do is see what lies on the other side of their cards.¨ One by one each player revealed their cards. The business man sat straight, forcing his face to appear relaxed but the only emotion he portrayed was fear. The double major coed chuckled to herself, knowing her defeat was eminent. And Ricky slumped in his chair, inhaling his cigerette, truly calm and at peace, as if he had foreseen the outcome. The room erupted as the results were realized across the room. The ragged, scruffy, stinky man who had been in my uber only hours before had just won more money than he had ever seen. ¨I did it! I won.¨ His head spun around, his eyes looking for someone to share this moment with until they met mine. ¨Uber driver! It’s me Ricky. Come over here man¨ I walked towards the center of the room and reached out my hand for a congratulatory handshake only to have it slapped away as Ricky wrapped his long hairy arms around me and pulled me close. I returned his embrace then pulled away, dusting the newly attained dirt from my clothes. ¨I guess the mind reading trick worked for ya eh¨ I joked. His eyes widened and he looked over his shoulder before lowering his voice. ¨Your shit right it worked. I knew what cards everyone had that entire game. It was like taking candy from a bunch of babies¨ and two of the girls buried their faces into the phone while the third sat quietly, her eyes out the window.

I didn´t know whether to believe him or call him crazy. I decided to do neither. ¨So what are you going to do now.¨ ¨Celebrate!”

What followed can only be explained as insanity. Ricky and I hit every bar, strip club, and casino in town until our lustful desires had been satisfied and we were too drunk to find our way home. I somehow resisted the urge to gamble and didn’t spend a dime, While Ricky threw away hundred dollar bills as if it were chump change. But he continued to win and win until we found ourselves outside the bar, standing in the alley. “What a night. Im gunna be rich ya know. Im gunna be a even more rich than I am right now once I get all this shit invested. Ya before the tournament started some business type guy handed out his card to every player. Told us if we win he can turn our winnings into even more money. Imagine what he’s gunna be able to do with all this!!” Ricky fanned out hundred dollars bills infront of my face. ”Hey are you even listening to me.” I was, or I was at least trying to. My head was resting against the outer brick wall of some bar and my eyes were closed in an attempt to cease the spinning of the world around me. I managed to string a few letters together into a word, but failed to create a full sentence. “Home” Then I slid down to a sitting position, my head in my hands with my back propping me up against the cool brick wall. The street lights were dim, and the sidewalks all but empty. The bars were closing down and the night was coming to an end. Suddenly a voice that broke through my drunken jumbled existence. “Hey its our uber driver from earlier! “Hey Mr. Uber driver its us! Remember us!! I raised my head from my hands to see a blurry vision of two young girls wrapping there arms around Ricky, dollar signs where their pupils should have been. A third girl moved out from behind the greedy two and towards me, a soft smile on her face It was the sweet one, the smart one from before. She knelt down beside me and started to rub my back. “How you feeling mr. uber driver.” Her calm words soothed my stupor. “I’ve been better. But I think I’m ready to walk home. My apartment is just down the street.” She nodded and relayed it to her friends who were now attached to Ricky. He smiled a toothless grin and reached out a hand to pull me up. Before long we were back at my place. Ricky took the girls to my bedroom, and the philosophy major joined me in the bathroom, talking to me about whatever she pleased as I emptied my guts into the toilet. “I love your apartment. You did such a nice job decorating it. The amount of house plants in here probably does wonders for your stress levels.” I nodded. “I just like having something to take care of.” “It’s nice taking care of things.” She chuckled and started rubbing my back again. She opened her mouth to speak but was interrupted by sounds of snores from the next room. She went to check on her friends and found them sleeping, cuddled up next to Ricky. “Well it seems like the other guests are enjoying their stay at the uber driver hotel. How are you feeling though.” I raised my head from toilet bowl and looked at my caretaker for the first time since we left the bars. Her smile was warming and her eyes deep with blue and grey colors swimming around each other. Small infrequent freckles dotted her face, and her rosy cheeks dimpled as she grinned. “What are you staring at. Never seen a girl before?” I opened my mouth to respond but before I could she leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. “I’m just joking. Say is there a roof on this building? If your feeling up for it, maybe we could get some fresh air, the smell of vomit isn’t really doing it for me anymore.” I nodded in agreement and she pulled my by the hand until we were standing on the rooftop under the starless sky, looking over the small city surrounding us. She walked over to the wall, preventing us from falling to our untimely death. Without a second of hesitation, she hopped up, and began walking back and forth on the wall as if it were a balance beam in a gymnasium. She sensed my uneasiness. “Don’t worry dad I know what I know what I am doing.” With elegance and grace she walked across the railing encircling the entire roof until she bored, and took a seat on the wall, feet dangling into the abyss below. She motioned for me to join her. “I think Im good on this side. Thank you though.” I made my way over to her and leaned against the barrier. ”Today feels like a dream” I mumbled. “Maybe it was. Maybe I’m not actually here. Wooooo” She wiggled her fingers, at me jokingly. “That homelesss man, I mean Ricky, his life has taken a one 180 today. This morning he was getting breakfast at the soup kitchen and now he has more money than he has ever seen in his life. You know he was claiming that the reason he won was because he could read minds.” “Maybe he can.” “You actually believe that is possible? What are they teaching you in college these days anyways?” “Lots of things.” She smiled changing the subject. “I can’t believe my friends were about to sleep with a homeless man just because of how much money he won.” “It was a lot of money though.” She laughed and nodded in agreement. Then she looked at me and put her hand in mine, “This has been a pretty exciting day. You know I had a feeling I was going to see you again after you dropped us off earlier today. And I was right.” “Im glad your feeling was correct. But im not sure I believe in feelings or premonitions either.” “Ricky would believe me.” This got both of us laughing. “What do you think he’s gunna do with his money.” “Probably gamble it all away.” She slapped me on the arm giggling. “I think he’s gunna pay off whatever debt he had and then give the rest to his family and favorite charities.” She thought for a moment tapping her chin. “Whatever he does with it, his life has been changed forever. And good for him. He seems like a decent guy. He deserves it.” Suddenly the door to the stairs burst open. Two girls appeared in the doorway, their faces white with terror. The philosophy major was to them before I understood what was happening. I began to feel dizzy as the reality of the situation dawned on me. “Did you do CPR?” “No we panicked. We thought you would know what to do.” No time passed and I found myself staring at a shirtless homeless man lying on my floor, a young girl seated near him, pounding on his chest. Her efforts were futile but the later paramedics would thank her for trying. The ambulance took him away, and I stood in front of the apartment, with three young tormented girls. It started to rain. Before long their ride was here, and I stood staring into the grey blue eyes from before, knowing I would never see them again. “Im sorry” she said, and then she disapeared into the back of the car with her friends and they were gone.

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kristablogs · 8 years ago

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A Mindset "Revolution" Sweeping Britain's Classrooms May Be Based On Shaky Science

Michael Jordan didn’t make his high school basketball team in 1978. He went on to become the greatest player in the game’s history. This is what he says about failure: “I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

According to a theory that has swept education in the last few years, Jordan has what psychologists call a “growth mindset”. He believes that even if you can’t do something initially, you can improve your abilities, whether they involve basketball or maths or playing the oboe, through hard work. “I can accept failure,” he said. “Everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying.”

Psychologists say the growth mindset is contrasted to a “fixed mindset” – the belief that your skills are innate, genetically endowed and fixed. Someone with a fixed mindset, according to the theory, would look at a maths problem they couldn’t do, and think, I can’t do that, I’m not gifted at maths. They might give up. But someone with a growth mindset might apparently think, I just haven’t learnt enough maths to do that; I’ll learn some more and try again. They will keep trying in the face of difficulty – believing they can improve to meet challenges.

These ideas, known as mindset theory, have been described as a “revolution which is reshaping education”. Proponents say you can instil a growth mindset in a child through simple measures – notably, by praising them for how hard they work to achieve something, rather than for what they achieve – with impressive results.

It has garnered an enthusiastic following, with techniques marketed by a variety of training companies. Children in British schools make “mindset” posters to show the difference between the two states of mind, and hundreds of schools in the UK and US offer mindset programmes. NASA looks for, and tries to instil, a growth mindset in its top engineers, saying that fixed-mindset people feel “threatened by the success of others” and “plateau early and achieve less than their full potential”, while growth-mindset people “find inspiration” in others’ success and reach “ever higher levels of achievement”. Google looks for a growth mindset in new hires. The Harvard Business Review offers tips for how companies “can profit from a growth mindset”.

Michael Jordan (centre), who – according to Carol Dweck – is an example of a sportsperson with a "growth mindset".

Brent Smith

The concept is largely based on the research of Stanford professor Carol Dweck, whose book Mindset has sold over a million copies. A new edition was out on 12 January.

Dweck said in a talk to Google that she has worked with a US baseball team, asking them, for example, what they’d have to change about their approach if they became more successful. Some answered that they'd have to get used to playing in front of larger crowds. But others said they'd have to “take all my skills to a new level”, thus showing the growth mindset, according to Dweck.

She has made some eye-catching claims for the effects of the theory. Her website claims that a fixed mindset caused the Enron scandal, while a growth mindset can encourage cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians. “Almost every truly great athlete – Michael Jordan, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Tiger Woods, Mia Hamm, Pete Sampras – has had a growth mindset,” she believes.

Dweck says that people with a fixed mindset “are so concerned with being and looking talented that they never realise their full potential” and “when faced with setbacks, run away … make excuses, they blame others, they make themselves feel better by looking down on those who have done worse”. By contrast, a growth mindset “fosters a healthier attitude toward practice and learning, a hunger for feedback, a greater ability to deal with setbacks”.

But some statisticians and psychologists are increasingly worried that mindset theory is not all it claims to be. The findings of Dweck’s key study have never been replicated in a published paper, which is noteworthy in so high-profile a work. One scientist told BuzzFeed News that his attempt to reproduce the findings has so far failed. An investigation found several small but revealing errors in the study that may require a correction.

Dweck has been quick to explain and correct the mistakes – earning praise from the scientist who pointed them out – and denies that a failure to replicate her work is an indicator that the findings are shaky.

One of her first and most influential studies on the subject, authored with Claudia Mueller in 1998, claimed to find that teaching a growth mindset made children more likely to take on difficult challenges. One hundred and twenty-eight children took an intelligence test. They were all told that they had scored more than 80%, and that this was a high score. A third of them were then told “You must have worked hard at these problems” - to supposedly instil a growth mindset - another third were told “You must be smart at these problems”, and the rest were left as a control and given no further feedback.

All were then given a choice of further tests to do: either ones described as “problems that are pretty easy, so I’ll do well” or “problems that I’ll learn a lot from, even if I won’t look so smart”. Children who were praised as “smart” overwhelmingly opted for the easy problems; children praised as hard-working overwhelmingly chose the harder ones; the control group was evenly split. Similarly, when children were given another, harder test, those who had been praised as smart reported enjoying the challenging questions less than the children praised as hard-working.

The study has been hugely influential in social psychology – it has been cited by more than 1,200 other papers – and mindset theory has had a profound impact on business hiring practices and educational policy. A blog post on the British government website recommends hiring for growth mindset. Bill Gates has reviewed Dweck’s book in glowing terms. The University of Portsmouth got a £300,000 grant to carry out a mindset study on 6,000 British pupils this year, while educational bodies across Britain – including in Camden, Scotland, and Essex – want teachers to encourage a growth mindset in their children.

But the striking effects in Dweck’s findings have surprised psychologists. Timothy Bates, a professor of psychology at the University of Edinburgh, told BuzzFeed News that the “big effects, monstrous effects” that Dweck has found in the 1998 study and others are “strange – it’s an odd one to me”.

Scott Alexander, the pseudonymous psychiatrist behind the blog Slate Star Codex, described Dweck’s findings as “really weird”, saying “either something is really wrong here, or [the growth mindset intervention] produces the strongest effects in all of psychology”.

He asks: “Is growth mindset the one concept in psychology which throws up gigantic effect sizes … Or did Carol Dweck really, honest-to-goodness, make a pact with the Devil in which she offered her eternal soul in exchange for spectacular study results?”

Recently, other high-profile social psychology findings have come into question. The most prominent is the “power pose”, the idea that adopting assertive poses can make you more willing to take risks and even change your hormone levels. A TED talk on the subject by one of the study’s authors has been viewed 37 million times. But Andrew Gelman, a professor at the Applied Statistics Center at Columbia University and one of the most highly respected statisticians in the field, pointed out last year that the study was riddled with poor statistical practice, and one of its co-authors has recently admitted that she doesn’t think the supposed effects are real. In 2012, Daniel Kahneman, one of the pioneers of social psychology, wrote an open letter to his colleagues warning of a “train wreck” approaching the field if they didn’t improve its statistical practice.

Bates told BuzzFeed News that he has been trying to replicate Dweck’s findings in that key mindset study for several years. “We’re running a third study in China now,” he said. “With 200 12-year-olds. And the results are just null.

“People with a growth mindset don’t cope any better with failure. If we give them the mindset intervention, it doesn’t make them behave better. Kids with the growth mindset aren’t getting better grades, either before or after our intervention study.”

Carol Dweck's TED talk, "The power of believing that you can improve".

youtube.com

Dweck told BuzzFeed News that attempts to replicate can fail because the scientists haven’t created the right conditions. “Not anyone can do a replication,” she said. “We put so much thought into creating an environment; we spend hours and days on each question, on creating a context in which the phenomenon could plausibly emerge.

“Replication is very important, but they have to be genuine replications and thoughtful replications done by skilled people. Very few studies will replicate done by an amateur in a willy-nilly way.”

Nick Brown, a PhD student in psychology at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, is sceptical of this: “The question I have is: If your effect is so fragile that it can only be reproduced [under strictly controlled conditions], then why do you think it can be reproduced by schoolteachers?”

Using a statistical method he developed called Granularity-Related Inconsistency of Means or GRIM, Brown has tested whether means (averages) given for data in the 1998 study were mathematically possible.

It works like this: Imagine you have three children, and want to find how many siblings they have, on average. Finding an average, or mean, will always involve adding up the total number of siblings and dividing by the number of children – three. So the answer will always either be a whole number, or will end in .33 (a third) or .67 (two thirds). If there was a study that looked at three children and found they had, on average, 1.25 siblings, it would be wrong – because you can’t get that answer from the mean of three whole numbers.

Google has included "mindset" thinking in its hiring practices.

Mark Blinch / Reuters

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