Autonomy of motion

Today’s weather was quite nice, so I biked to my office to work out. As I was getting ready to leave, out of my cube window I saw (what I assume to be) a father teaching his son how to drive. I knew it was so immediately – car in an empty lot, not moving very fast, driver turning the wheel very slowly, passenger making steering motions with his hands. He pulled into a parking space, and after more gestures by the father, he pulled out. A few minutes later I was biking out of the lot and saw them again. The car stopped at a stop sign (well, sort of a stop sign…heh), for at least 10 seconds, then
slowly inched forward about 30 yards and stopped again. By this time I’d passed them.

There was something very satisfying about watching them from my window. Perhaps it’s that something that now seems as natural is walking at one time was not. Of course, I’d be humbled trying to drive a manual transmission, though I learned once. More likely I liked the “right of passage” aspect of it.

On the way home I passed two girls, probably about ten years old. One seemed to be teaching the other how to ride a skateboard, or at least how to balance on it. That was nice, too. So surely the autonomy associated with learning how to transport yourself faster than walking or running was satisfying to me, too. I do remember the thrill I had when I first learned to ride a bicycle.

Whistled at

A verbose telling of a short story. That is, it took longer for me to write about it than for it to occur:
Arriving home Thursday evening there was a man in silver late model Toyota Corolla parked across from my garage. It was dark, and I estimated him to be in his mid-to-late 30s. Maybe it was his apparent light hair. Pulling up in my car to turn right into the garage, I thought he would be in my way, so I made a but of eye contact with him and clicked my turn signal. It turns out he wasn’t in the way, and I somewhat self-consciously got out of my car, closed the garage, and walked past the Corolla to my apartment. Ten feet past the car I heard a well-tuned whistle, like those directed toward comely women. “Ignore it,” I thought to myself. “Nothing good can come of it, and it’s just creepy.” I unlock the door to my apartment, peaking behind me to make sure no one was there, and then enter and lock the door behind me. I first notice my housemate Jessica has not returned home. Curious, I check myself in the mirror to see if there was anything out of the ordinary about my appearance that would have prompted a whistle from the car. Nothing odd. I hang up my jacket in the hall closet, all the while still thinking about the whistle, and how strange it was. Then I hear the door being unlocked, and I got it. Jessica walks in, I point at her, smiling, and we share a good laugh.

suspicion(less)* driver, helmetless biking, topless basketball,

Late Saturday morning I road my new snazzy bike around Boulder and observed a few notable items. (1) I leaving a store where a man was asking for directions. He’d left his car running with the door open just outside the store. Sure he’d be in there for about 15 seconds, but I’m too much of a control freak to do that.

(2) For the second time during that week, I saw someone biking with, but not wearing, a helmet. What!? I mean, if I was not aware of the idea of biking with a helmet for safety purposes, and for some reason needed to bring a light-weight helmet with many vents, made for other purposes of course, with me on a bike trip, it might occur to me that wearing it would be easier than having it swing from my handlebars or my back pack. But hey, that’s just me.
(3) Speaking of alternative universes, I saw a man and a woman playing one-on-one basketball on a school yard court. It was quite hot outside by this point, and neither wore shirts. On a cooler day, I can imagine, given her cup side, that a sports bra would have added comfort, but it was hot. The funny thing was how ordinary it seemed, as I almost had to remind myself that it was not ordinary.

* My plethora of readers, feel free to suggest a replacement for “suspicion(less)” above that ends in “less.” Fearless is close, but not quite right.

Blowin’ in the wind

On Saturday I went to the credit union on the north-west corner of 55th and Arapahoe to deposit a couple of paychecks. Only the drive-in tellers were open, and I hadn’t endorsed the checks, so I started to do so on a ledge near the tellers. Soon after a gust of wind came along and, yes, took one of the checks with it. I scanned the area to the west, where the wind was blowing, had no luck, and realized that my search space was growing rapidly with every second. Since I’m currently reading (Nobel-prize-winning physicist – how do people not know this?) Richard Feymnan’s What Do You Care What Other People Think?, I found some deposit slips in the bushes and placed them on the ledge to see how they would respond to the wind. To my surprise, they blew around the wall and east. So I searched in the drive-in area, certainly to the amusement of the tellers working that shift, to whom I’d mentioned my predicament. After a few minutes I gave up and was resigned to call to have the check reissued, and did not expect much of a problem with that. The next day, to my delight, I received an e-mail from the Flatirons Golf Club, at 57th and Arapahoe (south side) [map] saying that someone had found a check with my name on it and, if it were mine, I could pick it up at the Pro Shop. I go to pick it up, and it turns out a guy working there Googled my name and found my e-mail address from one of my web pages. Nice.

Picked up where I left off.

Late last August I completed yet another season of the University of Colorado faculty/grad student/staff softball league, defended my PhD dissertation, and left Boulder for Washington, D.C. for a technology & science policy fellowship at the National Academies. In short, that didn’t work out, so I began looking for jobs in Boulder. Two weeks ago I had an interview at a local company, after which I had softball practice. Since I planned to drive out the next week, I left most of my clothes, including my “interview suit” in my old office at CU, which remained as I’d left it, down to the content of the dry erase boards and trash cans. Last night I even had a frozen dinner that I’d left behind.

It was as if I’d never left, for the above reasons, and that I had not participated in a graduation ceremony of any kind. This week I’ve been on campus a fair amount doing research for a grant proposal, and on Thursday saw my professors and former classmates donning their robes and funny hats for the Engineering graduation ceremony at 7 PM. At first I thought nothing of it, but then realized that participating in it would be nice, as it would commemorate an accomplishment and be quite literally a commencement of a new chapter in my life, which has been more-or-less in limbo for the past eight months. (“Life’s what goes on when you’re busing making other plans.” — John Lennon)

I arrived at the event center around 15 minutes before the ceremony was to begin, and casually inquired as to whether I could participate. They had no extra robes, I had not signed up to be on the list, and my advisor, who was supposed to “hood me” was not there. Resigned to be a spectator, I found the optics professors and my former classmates who were graduating and chatted with them, joking about how I could scrounge up a cap and gown, and that Adam, the department’s excellent graduate program assistant, could once again (for old times’ sake) save the day. I approach him at 7:00 PM, and jokingly state my case. He outlines a plan and says “Hey, you have to crash your own graduation.” I was weary, and figured I’d just watch it with him. Listening to the speeches, I realized that the only thing stopping me was that my attire was too casual, and it would be disrespectful to the occasion. Then I turned to Adam and said “Wait, I have a suit in my office!” So off I went, put on the suit, tied the tie, opted to go beltless than wear a brown belt with a gray suit and black shoes, and returned. Adam spoke to the right person, I joined my professors and classmates, borrowed a hat (jester-like, very nice), tassel, and hood from a professor (who has been very helpful for years, and continues to be) and walked across the stage with a few students in “my” cohort in the CU optics program since the autumn 1999. And to top if all off, I had my picture taken with an (empty) diploma case (mine was mailed to be months ago) and Colorado flags behind me. My final school photo! I even rested my chin on my fist.

280 Z, Yeah.

A few weeks ago I was at a red light when a man driving a Datsun (not Nissan) 280 Z pulled up in the lane to my left. It was silver with shiny chrome hubcaps, and was in excellent condition. According to a Wikipedia page, this car was produced between 1976 and 1978. I looked the car back and forth (so to speak), & thought, or even said to myself, “Yeaaahh,” in a very satisfied way. I suppose that, in an instant, I had recognized a thing of beauty and accomplishment of maintaining it (not to mention nostalgia). Then, perhaps feeling the pride the driver must have in it, I made eye contact, nodded, and gave him a thumbs up, which he returned. A fine moment.

An OCD moment

After meeting a friend for lunch I returned to my car to find the meter still had 12 minutes remaining. It occurred to me how absurd it would be to stick around for that time to “get the most for my money,” but still, I had the thought, which is both amusing and disturbing. Later in the day I watched an episode of Monk, where Monk (the “Obsessive Compulsive Detective”) solved the case during a therapy session and told the therapist he had to go, and would add on the 20 minutes the next week. The therapist said he couldn’t do that and alas, Inspector Monk was stuck for a few comic moments. Wow. As Homer Simpson said, “It’s funny because it’s true.”

The warm comfort of tradition

Yes, tradition. My mom has a new menorah, lights candles and recites prayer with Chanukaah prayer book her hand. I look on, with the Chinese take-out menu in my hand. Speaking of the holiday, The Leevees write and perform amusing songs about Chanukaah, or however you spell it, which they also sing about.

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer on Kelo vs. New London

Last week he spoke at the Brookings Institute. I asked him the following question, which in nicely recorded on the transcript. It took me a while to figure out how to ask the question. My first thoughts were to be intellectual about it, but then realized that the best way was just state my reaction to the decision, i.e., “What the $&@*$#!,” but in a polite way:

QUESTION: With the eminent domain case of Kelo v. New London, when it came out I was just shocked and I couldn’t imagine how anyone could vote with the majority because it seemed a clear case of violation of property rights. If I recall correctly, you voted in with the majority that it was a case of eminent domain and that the City of New London could take the property owners’ property without their consent. I just wanted to know where you were coming from on that.

JUSTICE BREYER: The best way to see where I’m coming from that won’t satisfy you is you have to read the opinions, and maybe you have. But the particular provision at issue in this case is called the Just Compensation Clause and it says no property can be taken for public use without just compensation. And in the particular case, the problem was how do we decide whether the property here is or is not being taken for public use when it has certain apparently public purposes but some of it is being given to private people? Everybody agrees nobody could do it without just compensation, and the question looking at the particular case is here what’s the mix? Is it for a public use? Is it not for a public use? Suppose it were taken to build an Olympic Village. Some of that property might go for a private hot dog stand. Maybe it shouldn’t be. Maybe it should be, but I’m giving you the issue in the case.

Then if you go read the opinions, you will see some people thought that this is on balance of public use and, therefore, you can take it provided you give just compensation, and it’s called the Compensation Clause. And others thought, no, there
isn’t enough public use in this.

And that’s why I say if you read the briefs in so many of these cases that appear, well, once you see the newspaper it was obviously right or it was obviously right. I have to admit that in cases in which I have dissented, in my heart, though I tended to think how right I am, in my heart I had to admit there is much to be said for the other side, wrong though it may be. [Laughter.]

Thomas Schelling wins Nobel Prize, and my landlord

I learned from Will Wilkinson’s blog that economist Thomas Schelling won the Nobel Prize in Economics. I’d first read about his works through the term “Schelling Point” in an article by David Friedman.

Oddly enough, I think I experienced this phenomenon yesterday with my landlord. A few weeks ago the house has no water for more than 24 hours, and I spent the night at a friend’s house. I thought we should be reimbursed for at least two night’s rent, not just one. After talking it over with a housemate, I figured that $50 would be a good amount. Anything more seemed like too much. I brought this up with the landlord, and after some back and forth, in which I did not mention any numbers, he said the most he would give was … $50. Strange!