Trampoline Trauma

Once upon a time my parents bought a trampoline. It was a magical fun machine akin to a slip and slide or a zip line. I told the other first graders about it and they were all jealous (except for Amanda who claimed to own a trampoline and a playground and a horse.)

A visual approximation of Amanda's house
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As with all magical fun machines, grown ups felt the need to set down some rules governing its use. No frontflips, no backflips, no shoes, only one person at a time, always use the ladder to exit, and stay inside the circle. The circle was a white line my father spray painted onto the canvas to ensure that his children only jumped within the inner 50% of the trampoline.

When I mention these rules to people they give me quizzical looks. They all had carefree childhood memories of bouncing with friends and getting elbowed in the face by larger relatives. One lady shrugged her shoulders and told me “it’s a good way to lose your baby teeth.” My bubble-wrapped childhood seemed bizarre by comparison.

“Why all the rules?”

Because trampolines are bouncy reapers waiting to claim reckless children. I’m only half joking. Google “trampoline statistics” and you’ll find alarmed parents and pediatricians discussing the tens of thousands of trampoline-related emergency room visits per year.

Yessssss. Send your children to a bouncy death.
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“Did you actually follow these rules?”

My parents fired my favorite babysitter because she let us jump two at a time. I didn’t dare speculate what they’d do to me if they caught me attempting a flip. I didn’t even know how to do a flip. My lack of physical coordination rendered that a moot point.

“Did you even use the trampoline once they’d sucked all the fun out of it?”

Kind of. I’d bounce on it a bit, then I’d get bored and stare up at the sky. Then I’d bounce some more. Then I’d go get a book and read on the trampoline. Since my only option was “jump up and down in a small circle,” I probably spent as much time reading there as I did jumping. Still, the jumping part was fun.

Nets and other trampoline protections weaken the moral fiber of our children
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“Don’t you think your parents were being paranoid?”

Under different circumstances you could call my parents paranoid. But let’s not forget that they’re my parents. Already they’d witnessed me nearly blind myself at a public pool, and then accidentally chop my thumb off (as in no longer attached to my body) at the optometrist’s office. I’ve suffered from self inflicted stab wounds, I once lodged a staple inside my finger, and the less we say about my bike riding instruction the better.  I was the Mozart of unexpected injuries, I was a friggin child prodigy.

But with all these rules, surely I’d be safe from trampoline trauma. Nope. One day I watched my older sister jump off instead of using the ladder to get down, a clear violation of rule number five. I immediately tried it and I landed crooked on my left arm. It hurt, but I expected that. When the pain didn’t wear off I went to bed for a few hours until my Mom noticed that something was wrong and took me to the hospital.

You guessed it. It was my first rule violation and I ended up with a broken arm. So the story has two morals, take your pick.

1. No amount of rules will keep your kids safe so they might as well have fun.

2. There is no such thing as paranoid when you have me for a daughter.

Optimism: we are not going to hell in a hand basket

Technology is ruining our lives. Kids these days and their dang video games. If only life were simpler…

You probably haven’t spoken these exact phrases (because you don’t want to sound like a fretful old hermit knitting sweaters for cats) but odds are that you’ve said something like this. That’s normal, most of us have. Longing for the past is as common as fearing the future.

The sad fact is that the past is a terrible place made slightly less terrible by wealth or status. I don't need to go into the living conditions of the pre-eighteenth century world do I? I'm not just talking about the lack of indoor plumbing. I'm talking about starvation, disease, slavery and all the other normal conditions. Fix that in your mind and jump forward to the much admired 1950's.

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"Those were simpler times." Maybe, but simpler doesn't always mean better. Cancer treatments have certainly increased in their complexity, but I'm not complaining.

"People knew right from wrong back then." No. One generation is not more moral than another. We're the same people put into different situations. Prior generations valued religion, the current generation values equality. Obviously millennials aren't born different or "defective," they just changed with the times the same way baby boomers changed with their times. If a generation of hippies managed to grow up, hold jobs, have children, and live long enough to disapprove of their own children then millenials will doubtless do the same.

Between the lack of modern conveniences, rampant racism, and post-war push to get women out of the workplace and into the kitchen, I'll pass on the 1950's.  They had great diners though, and drive in movies, and some sharp outfits. It wasn't all bad. Very little ever is.

Pessimists out there believe that we're all going to hell in a hand basket and the world is getting gradually worse every year. They believe that the world is more dangerous than ever. Reading The Science of Fear: How the Culture of Fear Manipulates Your Brain cemented an idea that I'd long entertained. It convinced me that everything is actually ok.

Humans have always used the availability heuristic as a tool to determine how dangerous their environment is. If we hear one story about drinking poisoned well water we know that it's not very likely to happen to us. If we heard five stories we think twice before drinking that water. That tool worked well when we got our news through small communities, but now that we can hear thousands of worldwide stories about toxic water we worry. We worry about pesticides in our foods, sexual predators on our playgrounds, and terrorists in our cities.

We worry about our youth and the consequences of technology. We assume that they're more immoral or disrespectful than previous generations. We're afraid that social media will turn them all into illiterate narcissists. We wring our hands and repeat the laments that our ancestors uttered about the Gutenberg press, waltzing, and chess.

We shouldn't. Our world is not only safer than it's ever been, but the "kids these days" are going to be fine.

To illustrate my point I present you with the following links and graphs:

Let's start with all those diseases we don't have to deal with anymore. If you yearn for the good ol’ days you have to take the good with the bad; that includes polio, malaria and all those other illnesses that Americans don’t have to deal with anymore.

Then there's the worldwide decrease in poverty from 43.1%  in 1990 to 20.6% 2010. (There's some debate as to whether the increase is as dramatic as the World Bank claims is it, but nevertheless we have reason to believe that the quality of life is improving.) Many believe that third world countries are a lost cause. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation disagrees. Conditions overall are improving leading to greater worldwide income equality

As for safety concerns, it’s true that violent crime used to be on the rise, but in the past few decades violent crime has gone down, not up.

Speaking of violence, death due to war is way down worldwide.

You are more likely now than ever to die peacefully in your sleep surrounded by your grandchildren or even great grandchildren. If that's not a resounding recommendation of the modern day you can still join the Amish.

As amazing as the present day is, the future promises to be even better.  Look at all the cool stuff that could come our way.

Clean nuclear energy. We already have the technology, all we lack is the widespread implementation.

Lab grown organs, no more waiting on the list of people who need transplants. Also the organs are made from your cells so that your body won't reject it.

Faster than light space travel. I'm not saying that it'll happen soon, I'm just saying that we can't rule it out...it's too amazing to give up on.

Nasa’s imaginative design for a faster than light spaceship

Because we're humans we will misuse this technology and wring our hands and worry about how it's ruining our lives. Then we'll go home, say hello to our family, eat dinner, and go to bed the same way we always have.

Harry Potter Plot Holes: Why We Don't Care

If you’re a Harry Potter fan with an internet connection then the odds are good that you’ve heard of a few plot holes. Some of them are the natural consequence of reading seven books with a broad array of spells, characters, and locations. Some of these problems are a direct result of J.K. Rowling playing fast and loose with the rules. I’ll list a few examples for fun and then I’ll tell you why they don’t matter.

The biggest problems for me  are related to world building. There’s the inconsistency of the magic itself.

“Yet in the Potter books, the costs and limits are too often arbitrary. A patronus charm, for example, is awfully difficult - until Rowling wants a stirring scene in which Harry pulls together an intrepid band of students to Fight the Power, whereupon it becomes simple enough to be taught by an inexperienced fifteen year old.” (McArdle, "Harry Potter: the economics", 2007)

Then there’s the fact that the wizard economy should not work. Magic is pervasive and simple spells can be used for everything. Manual labor is completely unnecessary, the production of goods is limited to a few rare magical items. What do wizards contribute to their tiny economy? Do they really need money?

“The low opportunity cost attached to magic spills over into the thoroughly unbelievable wizard economy. Why are the Weasleys poor? Why would any wizard be? Anything they need, except scarce magical objects, can be obtained by ordering a house elf to do it, or casting a spell, or, in a pinch, making objects like dinner, or a house, assemble themselves. Yet the Weasleys are poor not just by wizard standards, but by ours: they lack things like new clothes and textbooks that should be easily obtainable with a few magic words. Why?” (McArdle, "Harry Potter: the economics", 2007)

With little need for labor, the job options are largely in the service industry or government.

“The private sector is limited to a handful of merchants on Diagon Alley and in Hogsmeade Village, and most of them seem essentially to be government contractors who supply Hogwarts students...Harry himself aspires to become an Auror, a government agent, when he grows up. Do any witches and wizards earn their knuts, sickles and galleons by providing goods or services that add value?” (Cullen,  Harry Potter and the realm of big government, 2005)

For many people these big-picture problems don’t matter because they don’t directly influence the plot. Ok, instead let’s address how we have a “team sport” that is really just about two seekers each trying to catch a ball that’s worth 150 points while the rest of the team works their butts off for every 10 points.  The rule is so awful that the International Quidditch Association changed it so that catching the snitch wins only 30 points.

These guys have the right idea.

Or consider the plot hole that is the Marauder’s Map. It lets you see everyone in the whole school. It’s a plot hole that could’ve solved the mystery of “who’s attacking the school?” in book three.

Or we can discuss the bizarre education system.

“As an independent school, it does not have to follow the National Curriculum closely; however, it is disappointing to note that basic requirements such as English, Mathematics, and Religious Education are all lacking or entirely missing from the school's syllabus. This has had adverse effects on all students, many of whom have never even been taught basic KS1 or 2 literacy.” (Wharmby, "The Board of Education Finally Inspects Hogwarts", 2013)

Even stranger than the lack of reading, writing, and arithmetic is the disconnect from the muggle world. Wizards make up a minuscule percentage of Britain’s population (J.K. Rowling says 3,000 people, some fans insist that you’d need at least 15,000 to support all the details of the story.) So even if all 15,000 wizards lived together in a gated community they’d still be too small to justify their naivety about the outside world. They don’t know muggle history, they never reference muggle pop culture, they live in the UK and they don’t understand soccer. The amish are more connected that wizards are.

Alright, this is the last plot hole I’m going to bring up, but it’s one that could’ve solved everything: the Time-Turner.

How Harry Potter Should Have Ended. AKA Just use the time-turner.

Once you introduce time travel all bets are off. You have to constantly explain why you don’t just go back in time and kill the bad guy. You have to set up clear cut rules about when and how time travel works. J.K. Rowling made a smart move by having all the time turners destroyed in later books so that we couldn’t use that device over and over, but their existence presents an easy solution to every problem. “Why don’t we just create another time-turner and…” You get the idea.

The reason that we shouldn’t care about these plot holes is because it doesn’t interfere with reading experience. Most of us only notice these inconsistencies in retrospect. J.K. Rowling gives us small details like the smell of the potions and the grease on Snape’s hair until we can see the whole potions class. Details like that sell the entire story until the things Rowling never explained become far less important than the rich tapestry of detail she weaves for the reader.

If we find a plot hole in Minority Report, or Inception, or The Matrix, we rejoice because they spend a long time working on internal consistency. Finding plot holes in a film like that can actually ruin the whole story. The Harry Potter series doesn’t really try to convince you that there’s a solid economy, instead it dazzles you with the details of Diagon Alley:

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Readers don’t care that the students never learned basic math because we see that they’re doing homework just like us.

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And all of the little “we could’ve ended the series much earlier if Harry had just used X magic instead of doing Y”--that’s irrelevant. Because ultimately this is a story about characters, and those characters are intensely real. They grow over seven years, they make sense, you know them. As Stephen King said “Harry Potter is about confronting fears, finding inner strength and doing what is right in the face of adversity.” You’re different at the end of book seven. You found a character stronger than death. You’ve learned that the world isn’t split into good people and death eaters. You're better able to choose between what is right and what is easy. Thank you J.K. Rowling. It's been magical.

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