more random thoughts

Christmas was such a special occasion that I had the opportunity to watch a rerun of a recent Saturday Night Live. It has not changed, for better, or for worse. I got to see Eminem, uh, “perform,” if you can call it that. One skit to appreciate was that of an immigrant who’d just gotten his citizenship asking people at some New York landmark with a name like Democracy Center, or something. Really, I guess I should know what this is. I just took at as one more example of democracy-worship (see my October 16 post, all you readers out there…). Anyway, they guy approached people and asked them why they are proud to be an American, and just as the person began to speak, he walked away. Hilarious.

Walking out of Target today and this guy offered me $2 to drive him a few blocks. That’s just weird. He was in “a big rush,” he said. I mean, how much would I really accept? My main concern is that he’s a nut, and would either steal my car, hurt me, or both. So it would not really matter to me how much her offered, would it?

Fun with yoga

I’m taking an Ashtanga Yoga class on campus, and I experience a rather wide range of feelings. Pain: navasana, which strengthens the abs. Laughter (not really a feeling, but..): I can’t find the pose, but it’s one where the instructor says “it’s OK to bend your knees,” and my knees are almost bent all the way, so that must be more-than-OK. The crane was also fun, you could hear a “thump thump” indicating the a student fell forward. I laguhed more when it was me. Wonder: binding poses, such as this one, which involves wrapping one arm around your knee, say, or over your head, and rewaching the other way with the other arm to hold your hands. Somehow I’m much better at this than the other poses, which tend to require flexibility in the legs. For these, I suppose it helps to have long arms and little body fat or muscle – so the arms can wrap around things. Hmm. Also wonder: lotus position where you hop around in it. I got into a half or quarter(?) lotus, and proceeded to pop open like a spring the instant I tried to move. I guess I’m marvelling at the contortionist aspect of all this, which can be entertaining along the line of “stupid human tricks”,though yoga is considered to be a spiritual practice.

My jeans

Well, I disagree with Jonathan Richman (see link above) on one thing: I like Levi’s jeans, 550 to be exact. But it took me about a year to realize that just because the tag on the Levi’s and Gap jeans have the same waist/inseam dimensions, maybe they actually measure differently! For months I’ve wondered why my Gap Relaxed Fit kept falling down, so I finally measured them and found the waist diameters to be different! Go figure. I’d been stuck on the numbers. How rationalistic of me.

Today I a guy parked next to me in an old Cutlass Cierra with a crazy paint job. Many colors, different shapes. It worked. When he got out of the car I complimented his work, and he told me how he did it: card board cut-out shapes, etc. Hopefully it will hold up through the winter.

Virtual images

I shaved off my goatee a couple days ago. The most unexpected outcome of having one is being mistaken for someone else. Somewhere, out there in Boulder, is a guy who apparently looks like me – with a facial hair. Before growing it, I can recall being mistaken for someone once, and that was four years ago, and the look-alike was in Europe (I was not.). But in just, say, two months, I’ve been mistaken for someone four times, and to my knowledge, someone has mistaken someone else for me at least once. So, I’d like to find this guy! I’ve probably seen him and thought nothing of it, as somewhere in all of our psyches is the idea that we are unique. Further, my image of myself is reversed, as it’s based on my mirror image. So perhaps I should walk around with a mirror on me and look at people’s reflections.

Still marveling at object permanance

This morning I again wondered “where has all my lip balm gone?” I have at least four dispensers, and invariably they disappear. Most often I find them in a par of pants or shorts I had not worn in a while, and this morning was no exception. A prize find, indeed, this one had SPF 15! But again I marvel that it was still there. Apparently in this respect I have the brain development of an eight-month old infant, as by this age they develop the concept of object permanence. After some introspection, which is not too reliable, according to the book Strangers to Ourselves, I realized what implicit thoughts fueled my surprise:

See, the atoms making up the lip balm and container talk to eachother, and since I pretty much forgot about their existance, they felt ignored, and figured they had no purpose in life. “He does not even know we exist! Let’s go where we’re more appreciated, or at least noticed … yeah, let’s get him!” the head-molecule decried. And they go off to where they are more appreciated, or transform themselves into some nasty bug that haunts me in my apartment, and I never find the lip balm.

Yep, that’s what goes on behind the scenes in my head.

The Language Instinct, Moneyball, and Janet & Justin

I’ve added two new booknotes files: The Language Instinct, by Steven Pinker and Moneyball, by Michael Lewis.

So this Superbowl half-time show hubub is still in the news. The FCC is up in arms, and there are lawsuits. Ideally, how should this work? I am not so sure. Here are my thoughts, that maybe mistaken.

I guess there would be no FCC, and this would be a civil issue. There could be a breech of contract between those responsible for the “exposure” and MTV and/or CBS. So that’s a civil issue, and damages can be assessed. As it is, perhaps CBS has some kind of contract with the (illegitimate) FCC, by which the FCC “allows” them to use “its” airwaves.

Is there also some kind of contract violation between CBS and the viewers? What are analagous cases? If parents take their children to a Chuck-E-Cheese’s, and instead of the mechanical mice on stage, there are mechanical naked people-like figures, then I suppose the parents would have a case against the eating establishment for misrepresentation of a product. Is the Superbowl incident so far off? Perhaps not. I have not read the arguments for the lawsuit, but they might be similar.

What do you say…

to a young man in a grocery store wearing a black t-shirt that says “F**K off and die”? So, what do you wear when you’re in a bad mood? Is this your outfit for picking up women?

In football there’s something called the “prevent defense.” Had I not read The Language Instinct, by Steven Pinker, I probably would not have noticed that people place the accent on the first syllable of “prevent”, where as when the word is used as a verb, the second syllable is accented. “Permit” is similar. As a verb, the accent is on the second syllable, but as a noun, the accent is on the first. Hmm. What would Pinker say about this?

zeugma ZOOG-muh noun, to vote is to pray (& to prey?)

Word of the week: zeugma ZOOG-muh noun. Date: 1523: the use of a word to modify or govern two or more words usually in such a manner that it applies to each in a different sense or makes sense with only one (as in “opened the door and her heart to the homeless boy”).
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Pretty neat. I also like suffrage. From m-w.com’s word of the day, August 26, 2003:

Why would a 17th-century writer warn people that a chapel was only for “private or secret suffrages”? Because since the 14th century, “suffrage” has been used to mean “prayer” (especially a prayer requesting divine help or intercession). So how did “suffrage” come to mean “a vote” or “the right to vote”? To answer that, we must look to the word’s Latin ancestor, “suffragium,” which can be translated as “vote,” “support,” or “prayer.” That term produced descendants in a number of languages, and English picked up its senses of “suffrage” from two different places. We took the “prayer” sense from a Middle French “suffragium” offspring that emphasized the word’s spiritual aspects, and we elected to adopt the “voting” senses directly from the original Latin.

The thrill of ice. “Universal” health care.

My car was covered with a layer of ice this morning. It’s hard to explain the satisfaction of removing it with the scraper. I could not stop with just the windows. It was like excavating my car, as if it were an ancient artificact. But there was also something in how the ice have off – in huger chunks, sliding off the surfaces, like peeling a hard-boiled egg when it all comes off at once. (I think this occurs when the egg is still warm, as I read in Kitchen Science. Anyway, other residents of my apartment complex needed to get to work, and did a quick-and-dirty job. I had no intention of driving anywhere, and I took my time with it.

The Democratic presidential candidates are making health care an issue again. They call it “Universal Health Care”, so anyone who opposes it sounds like a real “meanee.” I must be spelling that wrong. It seems that people like this idea for the same reason they’d like a law outlawing illness. Of course, such a law could not prevent illness, and would be silly. Yet, can the same be said for “universal health care”? A popular meme is that “the United States is the only civilized country without [insert policy being advocated],” which implies that all the other countries are correct on this issue.”

So, for health care, how would this claim be verified? After some thought, I came up with survival rate statistics. Or, more personally, if you found yourself with a disease, e.g., a type of cancer, heart condition, organ failure, etc., what country would you want to be in? I mean, if the health care system is so much better in Canada or England, then shouldn’t people be cured of diseases, or at least survive longer with them, than in the United States? This sounds pretty reasonable.

Well, with a little effort, I found this study that finds “U.S. patients have better survival rates than European patients for most types of cancer.” Well, there’s a start. Another report, by the NCPA, also mentions long waiting periods for surgery and lack the lack of advance diagnostic technology in countries with socialized medicine.

Why junk e-mail is known as “spam”

Question of the day: How did junk email come to be known as “spam”? Answer.