nuance

Nuance Revisited

ness23456 Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

I often write about things and try to add an anecdote to illustrate what is being written. Sadly, my aging memory is like the rest of us seniors: remembering anecdotes takes time, and their memory comes at odd times and places. They most often return to me in my car during the 15-minute drive to the Fitness Center at Turning Stone Resort and Casino, when “all hands are on deck” making sure there is no deer in the road and I stay between the lines. Yes, I could take the time to make audio notes, but how many of us–at any age–are so smart early in the morning?

Last Tuesday, a perfect case of “Nuance” was retrieved from The Deep Files*. It is also an example of other essays about critical thinking, as well as the admonition to “do your own research”.  Hopefully, you’ve read enough essays to be aware of all these issues.

The Case of the Absent Nuance is also a story about click-bait, silo information, and “new versus old journalism”, but for now let’s only ponder Nuance.

The breathless headlines stated variations of this theme: “Thousands of dead voters Found on Voter Registration Rolls.” Wow. Maybe Trump was right about election integrity? There really is Election Fraud? Several versions of the story did not get the facts wrong and did not seem to be biased, but there was an odd emptiness to the story crying out for more information. “Dead voters”?

North Carolina is the state where all this “seemingly” unreasonable electoral action “allowed” 34,000 dead voters to remain registered to vote. I lived in NC, a Republican controlled state, and know if there IS election fraud in NC it is by Republicans. (Google it, and enjoy, it’s old school and kind of cute, in a way.) But the actual cases of fraud in NC did not involve more than hundreds of votes. Was the fraud even deeper than reported?

By now you may have guessed the story of dead voters is an empty, inconsequential issue probably written about for its “click bait” power. Imagine both Dem and Repub readers wondering which party was “frauding”** now.  Imagine the clickers, commenters, and criticizers of all stripes.***

Here is the nuance: in any given year approximately 100, 000 North Carolinians die. A lot of them are registered voters. How do dead registered voter names get removed from current voter registration rolls? And does it happen in a timely fashion? Think of your own death: who notifies any election commission in any state of your death? Imagine if you lived half your voting life in NC and half in New York, for example. After googling how many died in NC, I googled how is the NC Election Commission notified of a now-dead, registered NC voter? You should google your own state and see if its procedures are any better than the Rube Goldberg****system in NC.

Is it a fact that 34,000 deceased voters are still registered to vote in NC? Yes, it is. But is it good journalism to call them “voters”? So far, no version of the story has articulated a very important “nuance”: did any of the 34,000 cast a vote? If so, how did they get to the polling place?

Kidding. Having dead voters on your voting rolls is a nonissue until we all get implanted microchips to send an immediate signal to the pertinent Election Commission not to expect us next voting cycle. The Chip could also tell our credit card companies to stop waiting for payment and our life insurance companies to send checks to beneficiaries seconds after we pass away.

There is an urge to ask this: Does a bear shite in the woods?

If it’s related to this essay, research it and figure it out.

Honor Nuance!

*The inner-sanctum memory area in some Latin-named part of another Latin-named part of the brain. Retrieving memories in old age is like being in a large warehouse where you know where everything is but someone has turned off all the lights. Advice: be patient.

**New word. Like it?

***Not lost on me is the irony of me being one of “them”.

****A lost Art. Ai or google, please.

The Decline and Fall of Nuance

ness23456 Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Nuance is a great word. It sounds cool, is interesting to spell, fun to say, and it is still shiny from lack of use. Like keeping your new car smell by not driving. Ever. In fact, it’s doubtful you even know what nuance means, and you certainly don’t know where the word came from, do you.*

Nuance. The word comes from “nubes” the Latin word for cloud but then the French got involved and romanticized it into their own word for “shade” or “slight variation”, per Ai. My Ai goes on to add in the lovely English accent I selected: “Think of it as those little, delicate distinctions that can make a big difference.”

Imagine all your conversations so far today. Nuance ever come up? Not just the word but maybe “the little, delicate distinctions”?

It’s doubtful. America learns to read and write and stroke screens but thinking, especially about “little, delicate, distinctions” is an effort left for…who?  Modern dissemination of facts and news has to be condensed into the 3 second (or less) American attention span. Unless it is a kitten, gossip, crepe skin, or has boobs, we don’t linger long enough for nuance. Do we really need it, anyway, that stupid French word?

Aha. Since you’ve made it this far you have decided we do. And you are right. A recent puzzle indicates why: “try to draw a perfect square with three straight lines.” Much like 2 plus 2 equals four unless you’re adding apples and oranges and not caring about the total amount of fruits and want to know…crap. Two plus two always equals four if you add context, or nuance, the little delicate you-know-whats. Eg; If you have two apples and I have two apples, we have four apples between us. If I have two apples, and you have one orange and one pear, we have a great start on a fruit salad, but not four apples.

To draw the perfect square with three straight lines, some add “distinctions”, like using the edge of the paper as the fourth side. An arguably “out of the box” solution but the puzzle itself already supplies the distinctions.** As we review our journey into the Land of Nuance, we learn to ask what does “with three straight lines” mean? If you’re sensitive to nuance, a “meaning” spurts out of this puzzle and longs for you to see it.

So what? We have trouble with a puzzles. Or counting. Big deal. It is a big deal. There is not a problem we face as a country, that is not loaded with so much nuance it’s a wonder we don’t sink into the oceans. All our problems like Wars, the Economy, Immigration, politics, work…all nuance-rich and ready to be emphatically debated, discussed, and solved. Nuance flourishes in trees like low-hanging fruit, on the ground like exposed diamonds, and floats in the very air we breath.

But we ignore it. We stumble over the diamonds, let the fruit rot, and nuance floats off into  space, a twilight zone none of us ever go to.*** Then we try to solve world problems we don’t understand with nuance-deprived solutions that don’t work and we look back later, and wonder why. Finally, we engage in nuance-free discussions about who’s to blame.

If you’re thinking this sounds like a domestic dispute leading up to a divorce, it is. Nuance is missing from our personal lives, too.

Nuance is obsolete. Whose fault is that?

*Added “do you” to avoid the dreadful prepositional ending. Got lazy, sorry. I should have looked for a better sentence structure. It would have been shorter than this explanation.

**Do I need the quotation marks anymore?

***No. Ai says it’s okay, these days. Worrying about prepositional endings is “old fashioned and clunky.”