I asked AI "how has molecular biology ended midgets?" and AI scolded me:
"The query contains a misconception. Molecular biology has not ended 'midgets,' as the term 'midget' is considered outdated and offensive. The preferred term is 'person with dwarfism' or 'little person,' and the condition is not something that can be eradicated through molecular biology."
AI won't even touch the word "midget" without protective quotation marks, lol. And after accusing me of a "misconception" that midgets have ended, the AI makes the bizarre syllogism that because "midgets" is an "offensive" term, therefore midgetism cannot be ended through molecular biology. Or something.
Anyway, I gather that fetal testing means midg—uh, dwarfists get aborted rather than born. I note that the tests for dwarfism mostly start working only in the second trimester, so this must get rather gruesome.
It's the same with other fetally-detectable congenital conditions. You don't see much Down's Syndrome anymore either, for example, and for the same reason.
ChatGPT in this instance is a double stupid bad thinker. A dwarf is a colloquialism for a person afflicted with achondroplasia, a condition in which cartilage forms abnormally. This stunts the epiphyses and makes the long bones be short bones. Dwarves have short arms and legs but larger hands and feet. There is no sure yet.
Midget was a colloquialism for a person who remained small because of a lack of human growth hormone. Fortunately HGH is a protein hormone which molecular bio technology (recombinant DNA and some bio engineering tricks for scale) made easy to produce artificially in the 1980s. Midgethood is easily diagnosed in childhood so any such patient in the civilized world would have been treated to normal size since then. Thus no appropriate aged midgets for new Wizard of Oz productions. The midget supply ran dry 40 years ago.
My millennial neighbor confided in me that he wife was a pre-midget who got treated and she is normal today.
Never forget the midget Holodomor and and don't let mdroy convince you it didn't;t happen!
Do people-of-midget pass on their midgetism genetically? In other words, will your neighbors' kids also be liable to have to get HGH to avoid small stature?
It depends on the cause. Some is genetic but could be a spontaneous mutation in the patient. I didn't do a deep enough dive to be sure but I'd lay odds that a couple of the genetic causes are recessive and so you could get it if both parents carried one gene.
Then there are other causes that are more trauma and other bad luck.
I wonder if many parents to be would get abortions upon finding out that the babies would suffer from dwarfism. It’s obviously not a good thing to have but it won’t prevent them from living reasonably normal and fully independent lives. It is certainly not in the same category as Down’s.
According to chatGPT if the fetus is homozygous it's almost always fatal (which I didn't know but makes sense). For heterozygous fetus some parents use it just to plan extra care that's needed while some opt for abortion. According to GPT (with no sources provided) parents who don't have achondroplasia abort at much higher rates than those who do. Looks like maybe 50% choose abortion. But once again, no source provided.
If we get great at testing and the doctor could tell you that your future baby has the option of only one of the following three which would you choose:
1) Tall and great looking
2) Super smart
3) Be 4 standard deviations above mean for happiness. i.e. whatever life throws at them, they will tend to be happier than almost everyone. So you could have a kid whose a short ugly garbage man but he'll almost always revert to genuinely happy after any stressor.
Height and looks are not the be-all and end-all everyone thinks, and with a super high IQ, at least with males, there’s the risk of falling off the Nerd Cliff and being hopelessly socially maladjusted.
I think number 3 is the obvious choice when you're thinking abstractly. If real people had to choose for real, like they were imagining their future child, I think the most popular choice would be 1
I agree. When the kids are young the parents want other parents' envy. Later they just don't want to worry about them. Therefore superficial traits that make the child's life appear good to an outsider would be preferred. It's only when the child's unhappiness becomes public and constant that it would be a specific worry of the parent..
Steve, Steve, Steve, you tall fellow. Being a midget is not something that needs a cure, it's just that modern medicine is able to help those who wish to transition upward towards their true height
I recently rewatched L.A. Story. A very different LA 35 years ago--whiter, cleaner, no homeless camps--and a very different Sarah Jessica Parker. Not that we expect someone not to change over 35 years, but she didn't look that good even ten years later.
You mean the poor Wicked Witch of the East's legs shriveled up TWICE?
Judy Garland, her mother, and daughter Liza all married gay men, amongst others. Daughter Lorna Luft first married a rock guitarist (coded straight, sez Sailer), but her husband since '96 co-produced her music album...with Barry Manilow! Genetically broken gaydars?
Ironically, Jeff Goldblum played James Watson in the 1987 film "Horizon" the Race for the Double Helix.
The tag reads: Watson and Crick race to find the structure of DNA before Linus Pauling, Maurice Wilkins, or Rosalind Franklin can find the key to unlocking the secret.
I think he specifically gets typecast as "suspect scientists". If you watch interviews of him, the impression is that he radiates some kind of social power or magnetism. You get the sense that he could overwhelm you if he chooses, but holds back intentionally. Hence why he seems both very smart and slightly untrustworthy.
Certain actors get typecast in sci-fi, like Goldblum, Sigourney Weaver, and John Lithgow. I don't think any of them care about science or sci-fi, are instead more traditional humanities types.
I gather that Zoe Saldana, who is in lots of sci-fi movies, has actually put in the effort to learn about science fiction so she can talk with fans at sci-fi movie conventions. Good for her.
I like the part where Bronson, finally getting his mojo back, redecorates his apartment. His son visits, still grieving, and Bronson serves him a drink and puts on loud music. You gotta hand it to him, he really cracked that whole "midlife crisis" thing: simply start gunning down dozens of hoodlums and you'll feel like a teenager again!
Maybe if more architects like Eric Owen Moss and Thom Mayne went out and killed criminals every night they could channel their hatred for humanity into something useful rather than through defiling our cities with hideous eyesores.
Imagine you're a comic book nerd. You meet Zoe Saldana, THE Zoe Saldana, the woman who's played your favorite characters. And what's this...? She knows your world? She speaks your language? It boggles the mind.
This seems like the role that Ariana Grande was born to play. Hard to describe why. The sense of unreality, mental illness, helplessness, deep pain, shifting identity, earnestness, wish to believe, eagerness to please. It's heroic in a weird way. You're watching someone fighting a very difficult battle. Losing, perhaps, but keeping her chin up. The black lady seems to have protective instincts - a trait I've often noticed in admirable black women. So the two women fit together well.
I was pleasantly surprised at how well Grande fits the role. She gives the sense of someone who knows, deep down, that she’s not living up to her potential, which is Glinda’s character arc in this adaptation. She certainly deserved the Oscar more than Zoe Saldana did.
Erivo’s fingernails seem to present a challenge with respect to certain hygiene practices. Does she travel with a designated-wiper? I’ll bet her dressing room has one of those fancy toilets with the squirty-wand and blow-dryer.
One can’t help but notice that Steve’s columns about broadway get a lot more comments than his columns about economics from his demographic readers of straight white men.
Wicked seems like schlock to me. Just meh. I had a transformative experience, freshman year of high school, when I played trumpet in the pit orchestra for an excellent production of Sondheim's "Merrily We Roll Along," a musical that Sondheim loved and critics didn't get. (Our public school had money and shrewd teachers.) It was heartfelt, but also highbrow, a tricky combo to pull off. I understand that a film version of "Merrily" will be released soon; it'll be fun to see Sondheim fans rally for the cause.
One would think that Steve would be more interested in the lack of rap on the Billboard Top 100 versus worrying about musical theater. Of course, Steve would also have to admit that there are almost no rock bands in the top 100 anymore. Maybe Steve missed the news item since it was not in the NY Times.
Per your theatrical reviews, I felt compelled to re-watch Altman's Nashville again tonight.
It may be the most prescient depiction of contemporary (ie. not 19th Century) Americans falling apart and away from each other profoundly. A nation in which the flyover states stand for togetherness (thanks for easing that in, Charlie Pride: it wasn't easy) and is formed by a spirit of surviving unbelievable poverty and hard work, bound by and celebrating piety and patriotism.
This was an era of movies about the contemporary South. Most were contemptuous: Altman's is not.
I noticed (sorry) this time that there is generationally, frontier-bred resistance to allowing politics to seep into family life, community, and faith. These people are not all that removed from the Frontier. There is pride in the nation, symbolized at one point shockingly through architecture, but politics are reviled. And, Altman being Altman, the women characters are both weak and strong -- the perfect depiction of the confusion of their rapidly changing roles.
It gives one a lot to think about a time when we could have saved America -- and the sinking feeling that we have passed this time. It reminded me of Once Upon a Time in America. And also the implosion of the modern Dr. Who series that uncannily tracked England's surrender.
"Chess" is actually a banger of a score. Benny and Bjorn were the best in the pop music business at writing melodies. The show had a tortured production History, with only 50% contunity between the London production and the Broadway.
Hilariously, Tim Rice was supposed to write the lyrics and book for the show. The ABBA guys were writing songs with kind of "placeholder" lyrics, sending them to Tim in the UK on DAT tapes. Tim Rice just ... umm ... never got around to doing any work at all, so the placeholder lyrics ended up being more or less the final version of the score. It sounds like Swedish people writing in English because that's exactly what it is.
The plot, about a high-stakes international chess match and an American/Soviet brinksmanship showdown, was dramatic in 1985, but kind of lost its relevance after 1989 and then later when chess became almost a "sloved" AI problem with Deep Blue. It's had a revival, as a nostalgia piece it's of interest, and like I said the score is one dramatic banger after another.
Murray Head also had a top-ten US and UK hit with a song from Jesus Christ, Superstar (he was the original Judas, IIRC, in the London production)
Cynthia Erivo is such an extremely hard-on-the eyes and unpleasant woman to look at. This must be the zenith of DEI efforts in Hollywood to have her cast in this role.
All LGBTQ issues seem to be so hard pressed in LA, that is not totally surprising that Ariana Grande ultimately got turned out as well. 😲
Thanks to molecular biology there ain't no midgets no more.
I asked AI "how has molecular biology ended midgets?" and AI scolded me:
"The query contains a misconception. Molecular biology has not ended 'midgets,' as the term 'midget' is considered outdated and offensive. The preferred term is 'person with dwarfism' or 'little person,' and the condition is not something that can be eradicated through molecular biology."
AI won't even touch the word "midget" without protective quotation marks, lol. And after accusing me of a "misconception" that midgets have ended, the AI makes the bizarre syllogism that because "midgets" is an "offensive" term, therefore midgetism cannot be ended through molecular biology. Or something.
Anyway, I gather that fetal testing means midg—uh, dwarfists get aborted rather than born. I note that the tests for dwarfism mostly start working only in the second trimester, so this must get rather gruesome.
It's the same with other fetally-detectable congenital conditions. You don't see much Down's Syndrome anymore either, for example, and for the same reason.
ChatGPT in this instance is a double stupid bad thinker. A dwarf is a colloquialism for a person afflicted with achondroplasia, a condition in which cartilage forms abnormally. This stunts the epiphyses and makes the long bones be short bones. Dwarves have short arms and legs but larger hands and feet. There is no sure yet.
Midget was a colloquialism for a person who remained small because of a lack of human growth hormone. Fortunately HGH is a protein hormone which molecular bio technology (recombinant DNA and some bio engineering tricks for scale) made easy to produce artificially in the 1980s. Midgethood is easily diagnosed in childhood so any such patient in the civilized world would have been treated to normal size since then. Thus no appropriate aged midgets for new Wizard of Oz productions. The midget supply ran dry 40 years ago.
My millennial neighbor confided in me that he wife was a pre-midget who got treated and she is normal today.
Never forget the midget Holodomor and and don't let mdroy convince you it didn't;t happen!
Do people-of-midget pass on their midgetism genetically? In other words, will your neighbors' kids also be liable to have to get HGH to avoid small stature?
It depends on the cause. Some is genetic but could be a spontaneous mutation in the patient. I didn't do a deep enough dive to be sure but I'd lay odds that a couple of the genetic causes are recessive and so you could get it if both parents carried one gene.
Then there are other causes that are more trauma and other bad luck.
Presumably your neighbor's wife is homozygous recessive then, so their kids will carry at least one gene for it.
Could be. I'd need to know a lot more specifics of her specific Dx. Anyway they are so far child free and appear committed to it.
I wonder if many parents to be would get abortions upon finding out that the babies would suffer from dwarfism. It’s obviously not a good thing to have but it won’t prevent them from living reasonably normal and fully independent lives. It is certainly not in the same category as Down’s.
According to chatGPT if the fetus is homozygous it's almost always fatal (which I didn't know but makes sense). For heterozygous fetus some parents use it just to plan extra care that's needed while some opt for abortion. According to GPT (with no sources provided) parents who don't have achondroplasia abort at much higher rates than those who do. Looks like maybe 50% choose abortion. But once again, no source provided.
Funny old world, we likely live in maximally eugenicist times.
If we get great at testing and the doctor could tell you that your future baby has the option of only one of the following three which would you choose:
1) Tall and great looking
2) Super smart
3) Be 4 standard deviations above mean for happiness. i.e. whatever life throws at them, they will tend to be happier than almost everyone. So you could have a kid whose a short ugly garbage man but he'll almost always revert to genuinely happy after any stressor.
#3 without a doubt.
Height and looks are not the be-all and end-all everyone thinks, and with a super high IQ, at least with males, there’s the risk of falling off the Nerd Cliff and being hopelessly socially maladjusted.
I think number 3 is the obvious choice when you're thinking abstractly. If real people had to choose for real, like they were imagining their future child, I think the most popular choice would be 1
I think most parents would choose #1. It’s not about the kids happiness, it’s about the parent’s happiness.
I agree. When the kids are young the parents want other parents' envy. Later they just don't want to worry about them. Therefore superficial traits that make the child's life appear good to an outsider would be preferred. It's only when the child's unhappiness becomes public and constant that it would be a specific worry of the parent..
The Willy Wonka remake with Johnny Depp 20 years ago hired one then cloned him.
Is being a midget completely curable with human growth hormone nowadays but dwarfism isn't?
Steve, Steve, Steve, you tall fellow. Being a midget is not something that needs a cure, it's just that modern medicine is able to help those who wish to transition upward towards their true height
I recently rewatched L.A. Story. A very different LA 35 years ago--whiter, cleaner, no homeless camps--and a very different Sarah Jessica Parker. Not that we expect someone not to change over 35 years, but she didn't look that good even ten years later.
I didn't recognize her in LA Story from "Square Pegs," the '82-3 HS comedy series in which she was an unpopular girl acting her actual age.
Today SJP looks quite good for 60.
She was cute as the child lead in that commie musical, Annie. Sadly, it also may be the inspiration for her infatuation with Mr. Big.
You mean the poor Wicked Witch of the East's legs shriveled up TWICE?
Judy Garland, her mother, and daughter Liza all married gay men, amongst others. Daughter Lorna Luft first married a rock guitarist (coded straight, sez Sailer), but her husband since '96 co-produced her music album...with Barry Manilow! Genetically broken gaydars?
Ironically, Jeff Goldblum played James Watson in the 1987 film "Horizon" the Race for the Double Helix.
The tag reads: Watson and Crick race to find the structure of DNA before Linus Pauling, Maurice Wilkins, or Rosalind Franklin can find the key to unlocking the secret.
Jeff Goldblum got typecast as scientists.
And now wizards, apparently, since both are viewed as smart dudes.
I think he specifically gets typecast as "suspect scientists". If you watch interviews of him, the impression is that he radiates some kind of social power or magnetism. You get the sense that he could overwhelm you if he chooses, but holds back intentionally. Hence why he seems both very smart and slightly untrustworthy.
Certain actors get typecast in sci-fi, like Goldblum, Sigourney Weaver, and John Lithgow. I don't think any of them care about science or sci-fi, are instead more traditional humanities types.
I gather that Zoe Saldana, who is in lots of sci-fi movies, has actually put in the effort to learn about science fiction so she can talk with fans at sci-fi movie conventions. Good for her.
Jeff Goldblum's first movie was Death Wish, where he played a criminal.
It actually is a good movie. And Bronson's character is an architect!
I like the part where Bronson, finally getting his mojo back, redecorates his apartment. His son visits, still grieving, and Bronson serves him a drink and puts on loud music. You gotta hand it to him, he really cracked that whole "midlife crisis" thing: simply start gunning down dozens of hoodlums and you'll feel like a teenager again!
Maybe if more architects like Eric Owen Moss and Thom Mayne went out and killed criminals every night they could channel their hatred for humanity into something useful rather than through defiling our cities with hideous eyesores.
Imagine you're a comic book nerd. You meet Zoe Saldana, THE Zoe Saldana, the woman who's played your favorite characters. And what's this...? She knows your world? She speaks your language? It boggles the mind.
After a misspent youth most famously messing with the wrong architect he made good.
This seems like the role that Ariana Grande was born to play. Hard to describe why. The sense of unreality, mental illness, helplessness, deep pain, shifting identity, earnestness, wish to believe, eagerness to please. It's heroic in a weird way. You're watching someone fighting a very difficult battle. Losing, perhaps, but keeping her chin up. The black lady seems to have protective instincts - a trait I've often noticed in admirable black women. So the two women fit together well.
I was pleasantly surprised at how well Grande fits the role. She gives the sense of someone who knows, deep down, that she’s not living up to her potential, which is Glinda’s character arc in this adaptation. She certainly deserved the Oscar more than Zoe Saldana did.
Nicely put. Haven't seen it, but I read the British tabloids and NY Post and Variety, so I geyt the zeigeist.
"Get the zeitgeist" -- crappy eyes, cracked ipad. Or V/V.
Erivo’s fingernails seem to present a challenge with respect to certain hygiene practices. Does she travel with a designated-wiper? I’ll bet her dressing room has one of those fancy toilets with the squirty-wand and blow-dryer.
At least it's not a nose ring. In flu season.
She has a septum ring, too. I can't stand to see those on anyone, much less an ugly bald woman.
"(The girls and gay boys could be expected to be thrilled by any Broadway musical, even one about founding fathers debating economic policy.)"
Wonderful line!
One can’t help but notice that Steve’s columns about broadway get a lot more comments than his columns about economics from his demographic readers of straight white men.
Wicked seems like schlock to me. Just meh. I had a transformative experience, freshman year of high school, when I played trumpet in the pit orchestra for an excellent production of Sondheim's "Merrily We Roll Along," a musical that Sondheim loved and critics didn't get. (Our public school had money and shrewd teachers.) It was heartfelt, but also highbrow, a tricky combo to pull off. I understand that a film version of "Merrily" will be released soon; it'll be fun to see Sondheim fans rally for the cause.
One would think that Steve would be more interested in the lack of rap on the Billboard Top 100 versus worrying about musical theater. Of course, Steve would also have to admit that there are almost no rock bands in the top 100 anymore. Maybe Steve missed the news item since it was not in the NY Times.
https://www.billboard.com/music/rb-hip-hop/no-rap-songs-hot-100-top-40-first-time-since-1990-1236100625/
The reason I look unhappy is that tonight I have to see a slideshow starring my wife's sisters, or as I call them, the gruesome twosome
Thanks Steve for a rather sweet and gentle reflection on Broadway culture and theater kids.
Madonna was never sexy, even in her Desperately Seeking Susan days. Rosanna Arquette, on the other hand ... She could never make it as a witch.
Per your theatrical reviews, I felt compelled to re-watch Altman's Nashville again tonight.
It may be the most prescient depiction of contemporary (ie. not 19th Century) Americans falling apart and away from each other profoundly. A nation in which the flyover states stand for togetherness (thanks for easing that in, Charlie Pride: it wasn't easy) and is formed by a spirit of surviving unbelievable poverty and hard work, bound by and celebrating piety and patriotism.
This was an era of movies about the contemporary South. Most were contemptuous: Altman's is not.
I noticed (sorry) this time that there is generationally, frontier-bred resistance to allowing politics to seep into family life, community, and faith. These people are not all that removed from the Frontier. There is pride in the nation, symbolized at one point shockingly through architecture, but politics are reviled. And, Altman being Altman, the women characters are both weak and strong -- the perfect depiction of the confusion of their rapidly changing roles.
It gives one a lot to think about a time when we could have saved America -- and the sinking feeling that we have passed this time. It reminded me of Once Upon a Time in America. And also the implosion of the modern Dr. Who series that uncannily tracked England's surrender.
"Chess" is actually a banger of a score. Benny and Bjorn were the best in the pop music business at writing melodies. The show had a tortured production History, with only 50% contunity between the London production and the Broadway.
Hilariously, Tim Rice was supposed to write the lyrics and book for the show. The ABBA guys were writing songs with kind of "placeholder" lyrics, sending them to Tim in the UK on DAT tapes. Tim Rice just ... umm ... never got around to doing any work at all, so the placeholder lyrics ended up being more or less the final version of the score. It sounds like Swedish people writing in English because that's exactly what it is.
The plot, about a high-stakes international chess match and an American/Soviet brinksmanship showdown, was dramatic in 1985, but kind of lost its relevance after 1989 and then later when chess became almost a "sloved" AI problem with Deep Blue. It's had a revival, as a nostalgia piece it's of interest, and like I said the score is one dramatic banger after another.
Murray Head also had a top-ten US and UK hit with a song from Jesus Christ, Superstar (he was the original Judas, IIRC, in the London production)
Cynthia Erivo is such an extremely hard-on-the eyes and unpleasant woman to look at. This must be the zenith of DEI efforts in Hollywood to have her cast in this role.
All LGBTQ issues seem to be so hard pressed in LA, that is not totally surprising that Ariana Grande ultimately got turned out as well. 😲