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A brilliant rerun I iroincally found while sort of procrastinating

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Happy Fathers Day to those who celebrate!

I had a new introspective thought yesterday- it doesn't have the vibe of "oh my gosh this explains everything" but it seems like it might be a valid piece. I lost my dad when I was 14 after me and my mom being there for him through a year or two of debilitation. (Which is obviously kinda traumatic, though sometimes I think back to how some evaluation I had done around second grade noted I was more attached to my mom than my dad.)

But now for the first time I wonder, did witnessing that reshape my landscape about my own potential for fatherhood, and explain why something like Uncle-hood works so much better for me? Like somehow I either took in "dads get sick and die" or maybe "dads aren't necessary".

I dunno. Maybe it's a just a Just-So story. But I wonder.
Was thinking about the old "If You Call Me Without First Texting To Notify That You're Calling, You're A Monster" meme, and how it does and doesn't apply for me.

I've been working up a somewhat more regular rotation for phone calls of people I'm close to and I generally try just calling - most notably my mom, but then a few other friends.

I guess that doesn't count... all those non-Mom people have all been in the category of "best friend" at some point in my life. And in some of the cases there's a typical weekly time where I'm more likely to call, so it's not out of the blue.

Of course, I kind of got the idea by based on how my friend JZ (no not that Jay-Z) started calling me. And it reminds me of how some close friendships get sparked with an act of courage (or maybe the brave person is just oblivious or come from a different cultural set of expectations?) where they suggest hanging out... almost like asking for a date, minus the romance.

And pondering on cultural differences... I remember witnessing some folks here from Russia, where just dropping by the house was more of a norm for family and close friends. It's like they're living a 90s sitcom!

Getting back to phone calls - There can be a kind of asymmetry if it's always one side who calls the other, but it's wrong to assumes the callee has less strong feelings than the caller... it can also be based on bravery or depression or cultural expectations or just timing.

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As my friend Julian puts it, only half winkingly: "God blessed me by making me transsexual for the same reason God made wheat but not bread and fruit but not wine, so that humanity might share in the act of creation."

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IMG_6438.webp

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The tie in with health coverage and fulltime employment is the biggest block to entrepreneurship in this country. Tonight I rewatched the movie "Walking My Life" (Zô no senaka) that I watched on my way back from my trip to Japan in 2008. (Had some problems finding where to pay for it and stream it, found a somewhat sketchy service instead, but it worked ok.)

The story is of a 48 yr old businessman who decides not to seek intervention for his deadly lung cancer. I didn't remember it clearly, and thought it might resonate for me because of my own nostalgia, since part of it is him making contacts with estranged friends, especially since the businessman is the same age I am now... but the story is mostly about him reconciling with his present relationships in the shadow of his fragility and impending death, and it really strongly brought to mind thoughts of my dad and what he must have gone through his debilitation, partial rebound, and early death.

(Sometimes it feels weird being this old and still poking at the old scar of my dad's death. Like I'm almost a decade further along than he ever got, get over it already! But the movie definitely gave me a twinge of this guilt I'll always carry for having snuck out of the house in the morning on the actual day of his death, kind of running away from my feelings of helplessness-to-help. My mom assures me he was too busy struggling to really be aware of it, but not saying good-bye on the day it was my last chance to say good-bye will always be a small shame of mine. Though I guess "have a good day!" would have rung a little false anyway.)

Anyway. "Walking My Life" is the best movie I've seen for getting a feel for authentic Japanese domestic and business life - especially how they deal with overwhelming feelings in a society of extremely strict decorum.

There is an interesting question in the Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas and also in an old science fiction story, the name of which I forget, concerning the paradox of free will and predestined fate. It asks whether a man in making a great decision that will forever set the seal on his future does not also set the seal on his past. A man alters his future, and does he not also alter his past in conformity with it? Does he not settle not only what manner of man he will be, but also what manner of man he has been?

Via a Wired piece on R. A. Lafferty, an enormously influential but not widely read author. He reminds me a little of Vonnegut's foil Kilgore Trout.

This quote reminds me of my recent ponderings on free will and my own fixed mindset. I mean if all is predestined, is there ever a choice to make, or merely an unveiling? But even the concept of "unveiling" presumes a linear sense of the progression of time... it is unveiled, but in some sense, if its predestined, than it has always been unveiled... or rather, the unveiling is an essential element of what it is.

I've been thinking a lot about this left brain / right brain stuff. Looking for a critique of McGilchrist's"The Master and His Emissary" I came across Nick Spencer's thoughts. There's this kind of Catholic/Anglican vibe about it. I think from a McGilchrist point of view, that church vibe of Mystery has a right brain "everything is known but not definable" vibe. Protestantism gets pretty left brained and specific sometimes. But of course there's Calvinism and predestination, which from a rationalistic point of view makes very little sense, but I guess if you're right brained enough you can embrace the contradiction of "we have no choice but to believe in free will".
(I just read a new description of the answer to this and I updated the 2006 entry with my javascript simulation of it.)

"No worries. I had just been hunting for a walking buddy. But my phone kept me company."
"who needs people when you can have a glass and steel slab with ALL the people"
"Exactly!"

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Those macarons were pretty good. I mean it's not the glory of a cupcake. By the way, I want that to be the title of my posthumous biography, 'The Glory of a Cupcake'.

Just found this dinosaurs "Everything's Going to be OK" comic in a folder I had forgotten about, of scans of old office decorations... I think from an ancient copy of "Funny Times"

I like it better than This Is Fine Dog which stresses me out tbh.

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Quotes from Dan Dennett's "Consciousness Explained" - I just reread this book, one that I've considered most critical to my understanding of my own sense of self...

If the resolution of our vision were as poor as the resolution of our olfaction, when a bird flew overhead the sky would *go all birdish* for us for a while.

The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task, it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain anymore, so it eats it! (It's rather like getting tenure.)

Consciousness is gappy and sparse, and doesn't contain half of what people think is there!

We speak, not only to tell others what we think, but to tell ourselves what we think.

How can I tell what I think until I see what I say?

Before my teacher came to me, I did not know that I am. I lived in a world that was a no-world. I cannot hope to describe adequately that unconscious, yet conscious time of nothingness.... Since I had no power of thought, I did not compare one mental state with another.

Sometimes I am, sometimes I think.

I admit I'm vaguely worried some USA gun fans are going to sneak into Australia and stage a massacre just so people pleading for some action on the gun control will stop pointing to Australia post-Point Arthur as effective action that can be taken.

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Did I post the great god gun Moloch essay?

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Sigh, realtalk time.

According to WebMD 90% of people get at least one cold sore in their life. I'm still uptight about mine, and cajoled my doctor into prescribing ongoing preventive doses of the powerful antiviral for it, and things were down to one appearing a year, generally in the fall.

Two days ago I was going over old pictures, and ran smackdab into a photo of me sporting a real brute of one on my trip to Japan. It was a little shocking. And then yesterday - sure enough, my first summer one in ages starts tingling, in exactly that place as the picture.

I figure, there's gotta be something psychosomatic about that, right? Yahoo Answers had some other anecdotes. (Ok, ok, Yahoo answers, but still) I know the plural of anecdote isn't data, and that sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence, but still - there's a correlation with virus immune response and stress, so I don't think the idea is so outlandish - though it's still surprising to think a trigger could have been so blatant and direct.

If there WAS this mind/body connection, what kind of thinking / mantra / visualization might be useful? What attitude, like just telling myself it ain't gonna happen?

Anyway, with Acyclovir and Abreva I got to this stuff so I'm not sure anyone would even notice - and it is embarrassing to talk about, but I wanted to know if anyone had thoughts on applying thinking to this kind of scene...

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Blender of Love I kind of resent how much I wanted to go to Disney World when I was a teenager. (Hey Kid! You just lost your father to a long illness! What are you gonna do now? We're going to Disneyworld!)

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New Drink: "The Rosy Palmer" (half red wine, half zero calorie arnold palmer (iced tea/lemonad)). I was trying to make "Diet Jesus Juice" but grabbed the wrong can. It's not bad! Reducing the drudgery of taping before painting by pretending I'm set decorating for a really low rent version of Tron...

How embarrassingly essential happiness is.

I posted some examples from this earlier (one of the stills is now the lock screen for my iPad, though I don't see it much with the smart cover) but man... the motion of these extremely-windblown faces is CRAZY -- I didn't know skin could move like that!

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Internet Explorer is the most chav of all the browsers.

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Kindness now interests me more than intelligence. Knowledge and cleverness have their allure. But a supple heart is worth far more than a quick and educated mind.

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http://factlets.info/Placebo - "Studies show placebos are twice as effective as they were 25 years ago."

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Man, 28 Great Movies From the Perspective of Minor Characters really resonated with me...

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Kids: God's little awkward moments machines.

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Yeah, "Better Off Ted"'s Veridian Dynamics + Portia de Rossi really holds its own against Portal's Aperture Science and GLaDOS... now I really wanna see more of Andy Richter Controls the Universe.

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CONGRATS BRUINS! (self-deprecating thought, all the Boston fans going, wait, what about the fourth quarter?) Yay Boston Sports!

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Man, Chara is 6'9"?? When he picked up the Stanley Cup from that official guy it looked like an optical illusion.
--OK Go's latest video "End Love". Man, these guys have such fun with this stuff. I love how they let the scaffolding show here. A nice counteraction if your day is having its ups and downs.

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http://www.slate.com/id/2256915/ - Hitchens on the fundamentalist-friendly piffle of Prince Charles - (I gotta read Hitchens' memoir...)

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If you want to have sex, but your partner doesn't feel like it, try saying 'Simon says let's have sex.'

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Vuvuzelas at that quantity seem horrendous - though seemed ok at urban New Years (either New York or Boston) a while back.
--Wolf researcher Shaun Ellis... he does a great howl and has obviously paid his dues in terms of studying wolves, though I wonder if humans lack, like, the right kind of fur and tail to actually speak the wolves' language.

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At The Dollar Tree - "Help Spider-Man erase the jumbo errors of the world!" Once upon a time, Douglas Adams wrote

[Ford Prefect] started to count to ten. He was desperately worried that one day sentient life forms would forget how to do this. Only by counting could humans demonstrate their independence of computers.

In my absolute lack of struggle to prevent this, and to make the whole Google is Making Us Dumber crowd cluck their tongues, and to also remind me what side of the street I need to park on on Mondays to avoid getting towed because of street cleaning, I made a webpage that I can quickly consult on my iPhone that says the following: The fact is the course of action to be derived from the rule "April through November, avoid parking on the left on the first and third Mondays, and avoid parking on the right on the second and fourth Mondays" is not always immediately obvious... What's today's date? How long 'til the next Monday? Which Monday of the month is that? Which side is which again? Trying to calculate that in your head on a narrow one way street, possibly blocking cars behind you, with the relevant No Parking signs at various levels of visibility... I'd rather be able to press 2 buttons and get a clearly worded answer.

I thought about making a UI for this, to let people enter and store their own parking restrictions, but meh, unless there's a sudden clamor for it, which I doubt. (If someone else would find it useful I'd be delighted to host a customized page for them that they can bookmark for rapid consultation!)

(If I had a mac setup to synch with my iPhone I would try and make a "bookmarklet" out of this code, thus not needing any connectivity at all.)

Actually, going back to the Douglas Adams wikiquote page to find the wording of the thing about counting to ten, I may have found an even more appropriate quote:

I am rarely happier than when spending an entire day programming my computer to perform automatically a task that it would otherwise take me a good ten seconds to do by hand.

Computers: they think so we don't have to!

Despite the risk of running into "what are you trying to do, kill your mother?" I wanted to mention that at Mr. Ibis' birthday party we hosted, for a lark I got my toenails painted by felisdemens:


(I used nail polish remover the other day, fulfilling my vow to felisdemens to remove the color before it grew out too much.)

It was interesting gaging folks' reaction to it. Some positive, some much more iffy. It provoked more raised eyebrow than I expected... painted toenails are a bigger secondary signifier than I would have guessed, people don't see it as a gender-neutral form of decoration like they have with earrings.

PS On an unrelated (honest) note, the proposed MA constitutional amendment to limit the definition of marriage was defeated so it won't come to statewide ballot until at least 2012. Good.

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Books of the Moment
Now Reading: "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin". Just Finished: "One Good Turn" and "The Perks of Being a Wallflower"

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Spam Response of the Moment

I will not be reading my mail forever.
Your mail regarding '(No subject)' will be read if you send to my another mail address.
please get my new address from faculty of management.
Thank you

I just like the despair in the first line, undercut a bit by what follows.

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Link of the Moment
Kids roaming ranges shrinking. Talks about some interesting possible mental health issues related to that. boingboing has a nice summary. I know I have a very iffy relationship with the great outdoors...

Tuesday evening Ksenia and I went with a few of her friends to a grillout at Mystic Lake. (I hadn't know known that there was a small beach there.) It was a great time but we got eateaten alive by mosquitoes. It wasn't too bad but now the tops of my feet (I was wearing sandals) are itching like mad.

And since Wednesday I feel a bit of something coming on, scratchy throat, just feeling a bit bleh... and of course I'm not just a neurological hypochondriac... Lyme's? West Nile? Yikes!

Actually I've heard two different opinions about why you don't hear much about West Nile these days. Tim at works thinks the government has done a good job at eradicating mosquitoes where and when migrating birds (which can be a significant carrier ) flock. My yoga instructor/physician John thinks that at this point many people have been exposed and are now immune, and that overall it wasn't the danger that it was made out to be, at least for non-at-risk groups.

I understand that a virus that's too effective at killing doesn't last all that long, because it flares up and takes out its host group. I still wish I had a sense if there was something intrinsically difficult about having a virus that spread like the flu but had the latency and mortality rate of HIV...

FUN FACT: Today's mosquito cartoon is a semi-deliberate effort for Kirk to get back into adding cartoons to entries on a regular basis... in part to help justify the purchase of the touchscreen computer he wants to buy!

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Scandal of the Moment
Reading about people all up in arms about FEMA debit cards used to buy porn, jewelry, etc just reminds me of that Kathleen Madigan line:

I always give homeless people money, and my friends yell at me, "He's only going to buy more alcohol and cigarettes." And I'm thinking, "Oh, and like I wasn't?"

People are angry with FEMA but I think that the defence they're using is eloquent and true: there's a tradeoff between getting people aid in a timely fashion, and some fraud or waste occurring. Besides, FEMA didn't becomes these people's nannies... I'm sure some people were perfectly eligible for assistance, but given that some might have stayed in New Orleans by choice, they might not be the best decision makers in the world, so buying champagne at Hooters might be par for the course. Or they just need a break!

By the way, are the "Girls Gone Wild" DVDs the "erotica" the headline talks about? Erotica? It's PORN you goofballs! You can tell by the lighting.

Quote of the Moment

Perhaps for our last words on the subject of usage we should turn to the last words of the venerable French grammarian Dominique Bonhours, who proved on his deathbed that a grammarian's work is never done when he gazed about those gathered loyally around him and whispered: 'I am about to -- or I am going to -- die; either expression is used.'

A truly delightful read, a short history of where English has been, where it is now, and where it might go from here. Easily in the top two or three books I've read this year.

He mentioned a city in Wyoming called "Maggie's Nipples", though I think there's the chance it has since changed it name, or something. But what an idea! Man, I can't help but think those must be some amazingly inspirational nipples, to merit being the name of the place, right up there with Helen of Troy launching 1000 ships, but sexier.

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Animation of the Moment

WARNING: MILDLY OFFENSIVE --Been a few days since I've had an image here, so I thought I'd post this animation of Penn (that I guess already made the rounds) urging people to be quiet.

Mo's mom had a pretty decent rule for her kids: if they didn't like a book they had just started, they had to read 50 pages, and then decide to give it a rest or not. I've tried to adopt the rule for myself, though upping it up to 100. And the current book about to get the axe is "100 Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I can tell it's a pretty good book, but it's just not catching for me...the characters are a little interesting but I have trouble sounding out their depth.

Sometimes you can come back to a book though. I think I had to be through a few unrequited loves before "Great Gatsby" made sense to me, and now it's one of my favorites.

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Video of the Moment
I got a piehole on the front of my head. Cool bit of music and image.

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Survey Question of the Moment
So, in an effort to get the comments feature moving again, as well as hoping to get a few new views...I mentioned Memorial Day I need to figure out what if anything I should do car-wise. I do have my eyes on those MINIs...they seem cute, and easy-to-park, reliable, not unreasonably expensive, and women seem to dig 'em, and those are 5 of my most important factors right there. A new car would definately take a chunk out of my new house money--and that money represents the bulk of my long term savings thus far, I don't want to feel like I'm squandering it. But still...

Heh, this Sunday I was stuck (and sun burning, I realized later) for 4 hours in downstate New York as my very capable Uncle Bill replaced an alternator fan belt (that had popped on the Tappan Zee bridge) on his '91 VW Jetta. It shoulda been more like an hour job, but the underhood arrangement was pretty dang unfriendly. That reminded me that I'm not really equipped for life with an old car, though I do have hopes that the Civic has quite a number of years of reliable life left in it.

I also need to figure out to do with my old car. Blue book or whatever, I'd likely get around 3K for it as a trade-in, and they'd probably sell it for 5K or so...that 3K is small enough that I'd like to do something better with it. My first thought is giving it to my cousin Ivan, who'll be starting to drive soon. It just seems like it would be a big boon in high school, and I would've loved to have a car rather than borrowing the family minivan. On the other hand, I know some adults with more real-world problems and transportation issues could possibly use it...including one friend who was enquiring about buying it. Complicating the decision, I've already mentioned it as a possibility to Ivan and his family, so it might be incredibly bad-spirited to back out without a really good reason.

So I dunno. Apologies in advance to people who might be cursing me and thinking "oh, poor baby, got a bunch of money and doesn't know how to spend it". I have been very fortunate with this and I want to balance being a good steward of my good fortune with not being a joyless stingy bastard.

Thoughts or suggestions?

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Quote of the Moment

The Germans have done for consonants what the Hawaiians have done for vowels.

Guitarist Leo Kottke was introducing his song tentatively titled "Gewerbegebiet" ("Trade Area", according to Google's Language Tools) at Prairie Home Companion in OGNJ. Funny of the Moment

New Scientist readers are concerned about their e-mail boxes being bombarded with spam, and the need for more and better filters. However, they seem to have overlooked the benefits to be gained from all these spam messages. For instance, I have been accepting all offers made to me by e-mail since the beginning of this year, and my penis is now 43 meters long.

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Index of the Moment
Probably one of those things that is more interesting to Kirk than to anybody else, I've made a public version of my script that shows you all of my blog entries sorted by name. It's interesting (to me, anyway) to see the patterns there, what titles are repeats or near-repeats. Between a multiplayer themed videogame trademeet today and John's birthday tomorrow, I'm having a very videogame heavy weekend...

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Link of the Moment
This oddly nihilistic ad for the Xbox was banned in Britain. You can see an explanation and a screenshot at Slate. You can also play with the very cool yet very irritating UI at the Xbox playmore.com site...funky little wireframe critters roaming around in a bar cyberscape...

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History of the Moment

When Germany invaded Denmark at the beginning of World War II, exporting gold became a crime. Niels Bohr, entrusted with the Nobel Prize medals of Max von Laue and James Franck, didn't want those gold medals to fall into German hands or risk smuggling them out of the country. He and a colleague hid the medals for the duration of the war by dissolving them in acid, each medal in its own jar. When the war ended, the gold was recovered from solution and recast by the Nobel Foundation.

It reminds me of a very primitive version of the old thought experiments, can you tell if a Star Trek style teleporter tranports "you", or if it just kills you on one end and makes a clone on the other? Game of the Moment
Pretty addictive game: kick-ups. It's hacky-sack for your mouse, surprisingly tough, with a neat physics feel. (via memepool)

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Games of the Moment
This is one of the best histories of videogames I've ever seen: The Dot Eaters. Few histories are so lavishly illustrated, with tons of screenshots, promotional materials, and other goodies. Covers arcade games, consoles, home computer, the works.

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Quote of the Moment

Always remember, however, that there's usually a simpler and better way to do something than the first way that pops into your head.

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