Today I participated in an experiment on the “Psychic Staring Effect,” by students in a CU Boulder class, The Edges of Science. Apparently the administrator’s beliefs about the phenomenon affect whether it occurs. The professor considered me to be a good skeptic on the issue, and an adequate substitute for well-known skeptic Victor Stenger, which is an honor in some ways.
The best photograph of my final day driving to Boulder goes to the cat at The Dusty Bookshelf in Lawrence, Kansas.
Last night I saw a few acts in the 2nd annual DC Comedy Fest. One set included three stand-up acts, and two of them were actually good, which was a pleasant surprise, as stand-up is pretty tough compared to other forms of entertainment. For example, I can enjoy a local amateur rock band as much as, or possibly more so, than highly-accomplished professionals who are the best at their trade. Not these these were amateur comedians, but bad stand-up is just, well, bad. Notable sketches were “Douchbag” by Somebody’s in the Doghouse, a duo including Leah Gotcsik, who was in my year at Swarthmore. (Another Swattie, Sarah Nusser, brought the event to my attention. Thanks!) Check out “Missy and her Android” at their myspace page. Elephant Larry had a few good sketches, including an Irish sea shanty competition in the spirit of (I suppose) those in slam poetry or rap. Too bad I couldn’t find a link to this on their videos.
When I get settled in I intend to try out some improv comedy classes.
Since my last post, I defended my PhD, left Boulder, Colorado, drove to Maryland via St. Louis and Wheeling WV, and began a ten-week fellowship at the National Adademy of Sciences. Currently I’m helping out with what’s known as the “Prospering study”.
The program has an extensive orientation on policy-making and how the NAS works. One presenter was talking about the peer-review process each Academy study goes through. Apparently a reviewer can disagree with the report’s conclusions, but still accept that it makes a convincing argument. Huh? I asked how that could be: If the argument was truly convincing, how could the reviewer disagree with it? Wouldn’t he be convinced?
I understand that people do not always completely articulate their reasons for holding a point of view, and hence could find an argument convincing, but still hold our because of unresolved and/or unarticulated conflicts. Often our intuition about these, or mine at least, is quite useful, and can be articlulated with some work. Certainly it’s worth the time to do this with a National Academies Report. If anything, perhaps the reviewer can agree with a narrower version of the “convincing” conclusions.
I was at Target last night looking at the iPods, and three college-age guys are looking for ping-pong balls. “They’re seasonal,” the Target employee says, while agreeing that it did not make any sense. The guys walk off, wondering where they can find the objects of their desire at nearly 10 PM on a Saturday night. Other stores are announcing closing hours as they deliberate. “Walmart?” I hear one of them say. I shiver at the thought. And since the Boulder city government wants to protect its citizens from evil (and favor the small business lobby), the nearest Walmart is twenty minutes away.
They walk off, and I realize that I might have one in my car. I tell them I might have one, as paddles have been in my car for years. They follow me to my car as they tell me about an informal tournament they’re having the next day. They need to practice. They watch the drama unfold as I rummage through a baseball helmet, softball bat, Pictionary (need to part with that), plastic practice baseballs (with holes, but not Wiffle), and finally, two ping pong paddles. The ball could not be far. Ah hah! I hold it in the lights of the Target parking lot like a precious orb and give it to them.
One guy offers to give me a dollar for it, and without any thought decline. It would not seem right. Perhaps I was paid enough, silly as this sounds, knowing that the ball is put to good use. And perhaps the thought of these guys playing ping pong on a Saturday night instead of being loud and drunk vandals who enjoy music with heavy bass. (Boulder – it’s a college town.)
Last night I joined my friend Duff and his friends for karaoke at the Outback Saloon in North Boulder. I’ve been in Boulder for six years, and it’s the first time I’ve done karoke here. (Not including a foiled attempt a few years ago.) The karaoke DJ was great: enthusiastic, affable, participated in songs when needed, and has props (inflatable guitar!). I submitted my usual, a Talking Heads song, but then did “Dancing With Myself” by Billy Idol. Could use some work. Then I joined another guy for the theme to Gilligan’s Island, my request. That was a good one, but for some reason I seemed to be the only one who knew the second verse (at least well enough to get the cadence, the key to karaoke!). People were quite impressed.
I saw him speak last week at the Boulder Bookstore. I didn’t know he was known more for his humor than for his fiction writing. I enjoy hearing him much more than reading him, as so much of humor is in the delivery and tonality. He read a story recently published in the New Yorker. Excellent.
Outside the Duane Library (Math/Physics) are photos of the University of Colorado from its beginnings. The first building was Old Main, which I suppose did not have that name then. I got a strange feeling looking at these photos, as Boulder as I know it did not exist then, at the end of the 19th Century. Pretty much nothing was there except for Old Main surrounded by some dirt roads. I remember, about ten years ago now, how at Swarthmore some construction was being done around Trotter Hall. The roads were changed so people could no longer drive their cars through campus. Once something is gone, it takes some mental effort to recall what it looked like before, especially if you’re standing right there in the face of the new orientation. Surely the old photos of CU are on-line somewhere, but I could not find them. On a related note, Google maps is rather nifty, as they have arial photos and maps based on them.
Well, not quite. Surely Boulder is due for a blizzard of sort, but last night I played softball for the first time this year. A double-header, and I pitched for most of the first game, and all of the second. It’s slow pitch, so my job is to give them fat pitches to hit, and that I did. Still, sometimes they hit them poorly, and I found that I gave myelf credit for it, as if I’d managed to trick them or something. Still, it was nice, I felt like I had not missed a beat. The atmosphere was nice for an all men’s league, too.
None of the above. That is, asexual people, as reported in the New York Metro. What would abstinence advocates say to that? Cheating?
until now. I don’t drink coffee, and consider corporations innocent until proven guilty. Still, I don’t go to Starbucks, as I prefer the atmosphere of other places, but I don’t get self-righteous about it. Certainly there are more important things to get self-righteous about, like punctuation (Ironically, as pointed out my an Amazon reviewer, the cover of Eats[,] Shoots, and Leaves is missing a hyphen: “zero-tolerance”!), turning out lights, or the students environmental activists in Boulder this week singing uncritical praises of recycling, as if there were an environmentalist heaven and recycling was always good.
But I digress. My friend Charles, who has admired my song parodies, sent me a link to this story of a song parody performed at the Starbucks Licensed Stores Awards ceremony. (See the Feb. 24 entry.) I’d listened to the song before knowing the context, and thought it to be cute at best, but lacked any edge. I mean, how can it be funny if it’s not at anyone’s expense? Perhaps I’ve seen too much Family Guy, and had recently seen Team America: World Police, where I really did “laugh ’til it hurt.” Then I read the story about it. Ugh. The chorus is “Don’t you remember? … We built this Starbucks on heart and soul!” How can I forget?
P.S. Sure, I am guilty of a corporate song parody, Optics Queen, but that was “peformed” (with two guilty coworkers) in the style of a roast, and we knew it was ridiculous.
