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I fail

2009-02-23T21:07:00.000-08:00

Basically, I fail at blogging. I haven't posted in many months, and I probably won't ever again. I could write a long post about why I fail at blogging, but that would actually be a successful blog post, so you see, it's not going to happen.

Instead, check out this little simulation I made. It took the idea of Braitenberg vehicles and extrapolated: "What if there were lots of them?!"

Sarah Palin: What a bitch.

2008-09-03T07:15:00.000-07:00

Ugh. Read this shit about Sarah Palin in the NY Times. It sounds like her election as Mayor of a 5,000-person town was the ascent of a megalomaniacal incarnation of evil.

Ann Kilkenny, a Democrat who said she attended every City Council meeting in Ms. Palin’s first year in office, said Ms. Palin brought up the idea of banning some books at one meeting. “They were somehow morally or socially objectionable to her,” Ms. Kilkenny said.
The librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, pledged to “resist all efforts at censorship,” Ms. Kilkenny recalled. Ms. Palin fired Ms. Emmons shortly after taking office but changed course after residents made a strong show of support.
...
Ms. Palin also upended the town’s traditional ways with a surprise edict: No employee was to talk to the news media without her permission.
“It was just things you don’t ever associate with a small town,” Victoria Naegele, then the managing editor of The Frontiersman, recalled of Ms. Palin’s first year in office. “It was like we were warped into real politics instead of just ‘Do you like Joe or Mary for the job?’ It was a strange time.”

My favorite part, though, is the part about when her stepmother-in-law (stepmother of the "first dude") ran for mayor after she was leaving office:

It seemed like a good idea, except that Faye Palin supported abortion rights and was registered as unaffiliated, not Republican, people who remember the race said. Sarah Palin sided instead with Dianne M. Keller, a religious conservative and an ally on the City Council. Ms. Keller won.

I find the whole idea of her being vice president terrifying. What if McCain dies? Or becomes incompetent? Reagan had Alzheimer's while he was in office. This crazy bitch cannot become VP. Come on America. Why do you fight so hard against good?

"Quick Billy, climb inside for warmth."

Mmm mmm... Just like Grandma Palin used to make!

2008-09-01T13:21:00.001-07:00

I don't know how much y'all have been following this whole Sarah Palin fake pregnancy thing, but I have, and am pretty convinced, courtesy of the DailyKos's investigative reporting.

These are facts of the case:

She didn't tell anyone of her most recent pregnancy until she was seven months pregnant.
She didn't look pregnant.
She didn't behave pregnant.
She was near-criminally irresponsible when she allegedly went into labor.
Her then 16-year-old daughter Bristol was absent from school for 5-8 months (sources differ on this) during said time, allegedly for mono.
Bristol looks somewhat pregnant, in photos from before the announcement, though this is debatable.
Bristol is pregnant (again?) at 17.

Sarah, shortly after announcing she was 7 months pregnant.

And the family Palin, from around the same time. Bristol looks like she can't wait to exhale and let out that gut.

I don't think it's been definitively proven that Bristol, not Sarah Palin is the mother of little Trig, but it looks pretty damn likely. Read the DailyKos's dealie for many more details, and way snarkier writing.

Is this petty? Of course it is. It's incredibly petty. But this bitch is totally unqualified to be vice president. OK, there's the abuse of power in firing a colleague for not heeding her request to fire a state trooper for the crime of happening to be her sister's ex-husband. There's the fact that she's a fundamentalist anti-choice, anti-science, anti-environment, anti-gay hick who has less than 2 years experience governing a state that a) is more than 500 miles from the rest of America, and b) has one-quarter the population of Brooklyn. In a frighteningly real sense, Dennis Kucinich has more executive experience than Sarah Palin. Oh, and she also has no sense of American history.

If America elects the McCain-Palin ticket, I will have lost all faith in the American people, and will strengthen my endorsement of the secession of East-West Coastopia.

Rats! And bikes!

2008-08-29T13:32:00.000-07:00

In case anyone is interested, here is an overview of the last big project my advisor worked on. I'm working on a continuation of that project, with young adult animals in a more complex environment. What I really want to do is get my hands on some sick motion-tracking software, which is going to require either a) grant money to buy it, or b) writing it ourselves. I'm both scared and a little excited for it to end up being option b. Once that's done, let the science begin!

In other news, my fixed gear bike is awesome. I've wanted one of these for a long while, so it's nice to have finally followed through on that. Riding it is incredible - I've never felt so in tune with both the road and the bike. Plus, it's incredibly light, and, if I don't say so myself, pretty damn stylin'. Take a gander:

This thing hauls ass. Which is somewhat scary, since I have to push back on the pedals to stop.

In which our hero brings the reader up to date, bullet point-style

2008-08-25T16:24:00.000-07:00

Does anyone still read this anymore? Jesus. I'm no good at updating it these days. But how about this. I'll reward any of the faithful with some stuff going on in my life. Woo hoo!

I'm moving. Don't get excited - I'm moving across town, in Davis. I spent the past year living in a large 3-bedroom house with 2 roommates and a very nervous pitbull mix, about 4 miles from campus and downtown. I'm moving into my very own little pad very near both campus and downtown. While it doesn't have a yard or a deck, what it does have is a rad tiled fireplace. And also it's ALL MINE. I move next Wednesday. Emily came over yesterday and helped me start to pack up all my books (I have many, but never enough) and kitchen stuff, which made it start to feel real. I can't wait.

New bike! After what is probably years of talk, I finally got myself a fixed gear bike. Now, those of you who know me know that I am not so great at building things from scratch. I'm the kind of person who likes to be able to fix something, maybe add something to it, but not so much build or piece it together. I really wanted to build me a fixed gear. I bought a used 10-speed frame from this awesome old dude I found on craigslist (whose garage was filled with bike stuff), and then the frame just sat in my garage for months. Everytime I started to look up gear, I became overwhelmed. What works? What parts are good? Etc. So I looked on the amazingly helpful Davis Wiki, and found a local bike shop that specializes in building fixed gears. I went in, had a long talk with the owner, and we decided on parts, etc., and he put it together for me at no additional charge. I promise I'll put together the next one, OK? I was supposed to pick it up on Saturday, but it turned out that the bolt on the seat post I had (the one that came with the frame) had been replaced with an ill-fitting one that had stripped its threads (by the previous owner, unless the owner of the bike shop is so shady that he wanted to scam me into buying a 20-dollar seat post, which I seriously doubt). The shop had black seat posts, but we both agreed that getting a matching seat-post was necessary to the bike's aesthetic, and so tomorrow I shall finally own the bike of my dreams. And I'm not even kidding - I have been dreaming about this bike ever since I saw it in its state of near-completion on Saturday. I'll try and post pictures.

School is cool. I don't want to bore anyone with the details of the sciency stuff I do. I will say that I'm becoming much better at programming. I'm taking a class this fall on Neural Networks in the computer science department, which should be very cool. The project I'm working on has to do with dynamic descriptions and computer modeling of exploratory and social behavior in rodents. I've been daydreaming about working on artificially-intelligent robotics, which, perhaps after another 3 years of schooling, I may actually be qualified to do! Part of that was influenced by watching a recent Nova special on autonomous vehicles, titled The Great Robot Race. I highly recommend checking this out - it's absolutely amazing what those people did. And also, anyone remember Armatron (check out the picture of the box!)? That thing was the bomb. If anyone wants to get me something awesome for Christmas, I would be thrilled to get one of those.

I need music back in my life. Not listening to it - I do that all the time. Playing and producing it. I just started jamming with a couple of guys in the psych program. We only jammed once so far, but it was actually better than I had hoped for - long trippy groove-based jams of 10-30 minutes each encompassing various styles such as thrash rock, reggae, and soul-inspired trip-hop. Once I move I also want to get a new MacBook and some studio monitors (will there ever be enough freelance work?) and start producing again. Perhaps something a little less whimsical than Household Songs, but I think it's safe to say that it would be devoid of humor or whimsy.

Burning Man is this week. I totally forgot about it until last week, and it was a little late to plan for it (plus tickets are something like $275!). Next year I 'm going for sure, as long as I'm in the country.

Busy busy busy. Seriously. I am busy all the time. Between working on research, working my freelance jobs, TAing a class, and attempting to maintain a modest social life and personal life, time for frivolous indulgences is short and not to be wasted. I'm trying to take this as a wholly good thing, even though my tendencies toward frivolous indulgences sometimes leads me astray.

Not enough intellectually-challenging conversations/interactions. I'm talking late-night sessions on politics, philosophy, science, culture, etc. There are some, but not enough. I'm working on it. You who are interested, you know where to find me. Though see the previous bullet point if scheduling becomes an issue.

I think it's reasonable of me to face the fact that I probably won't do a serious posting of any real length or depth more than once or twice a month at max, plus all the little items of amusing bullshit I find share-worthy here and there. But we'll see - one never knows when the next post will come. Until next time, then...

Lab animals

2008-08-09T02:00:00.001-07:00

Wow. I came across this webcomic tonight. This one hit a little too close to home for comfort.

Purses: Delicious or not? You decide!

2008-08-05T15:16:00.000-07:00

As a child, I had a very strong love for Garfield comics. This was probably at its peak between the ages of 8 and 10, when I discovered comics that were actually funny and smart, like the Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes. Still, my early love has served me well, as I am able to maximize my enjoyment of the recent wave of retro-kitsch/irony-hued debasement regarding our favorite Monday-hating feline, as illustrated in the numerous posts concerning the cat.

I have discovered what is likely the best yet. The folks at Lasagna Cat have make a series of live action shorts followed by a brief music video, each based on a single Garfield strip. Check it out.

My new nickname

2008-07-26T00:58:00.000-07:00

I heart Married to the Sea.

It's called epMotion

2008-07-23T22:02:00.001-07:00

I came across this today thanks to one of my many well-placed informants.

Ladies, are you wasting all your youthful years spending late nights in the lab pipetting? No more. Let the boys from Eppendorf show you how it's done.

My reaction is a mix of "awesome!" and "ummm, okaaay..."

Back from NYC, and a replacement for "atheist"

2008-07-23T17:17:00.000-07:00

I just got back from New York last night. It was hot there. Degree-wise, it's hotter in Davis, but that humidity is quite something. That notwithstanding, I had an excellent time, and got to see most if not all the people I wanted to see. For those of you who I missed, you know who you are, and we'll catch up next time I'm on the east coast or whenever you get off your rear and come visit me.
I'm going to do a big photo posting soon, but my camera broke on Saturday - which makes it two summers in a row that my (different) digital camera broke because some particle got in the telescoping mechanism and jammed the gears. I'm going to get an eyeglasses screwdriver and see what I can do. Then pictures will hopefully ensue.

Now it's back to work. But before I do leave off, I wanted to link to this excellent posting from the feminist-progressive blog I Blame the Patriarchy (yet again, courtesy of Nina). Or I would link to it, if it hadn't exceeded it's CPU quota. So I'll just tell you.

The gist of the posting is that the term "atheist" defines a person in terms of what they don't believe, rather than anything that actually in their belief system. It is only because the dominant cultural view is to belief in a deity, and as a consequence those who don't believe are in the minority, that a term like "atheist" makes any sense. It is high time to break these chains that bind us to this theocratic claptrap. Imagine, if you will, a world in which a naturalistic worldview is dominant, where statements about the nature of the universe are subject, at least in their most ultimate versions, to critical thinking and evidence-based reasoning. In this world, there might exist a small minority who don't accept this method of looking at reality. Instead of evidence and reason, these people rely on faith and scripture and other intangible agents of "revelation" for their worldview. Why, surely we might call these folks atruthists.

OK. Once the blog has fixed its errors, you can find the original posting here. I also found a working link to a write up here, which features lots of nice stereotypical internet-y kvetching about religion in its comments section.

Also, I'm aware that there's a whole organization dedicated to promoting the naturalistic worldview and who have eschewed the term "atheist" for something they consider better. They're fine, but I really, really, really hate their revised terminology. Seriously. It's stupid.

Hot Fun in the (NYC) Summertime

2008-07-07T16:35:00.000-07:00

I leave for a two-week trip to New York on Wednesday. I can't wait. There are a bazillion reasons why I want to go to New York, most of which fall under
a) seeing friends,
b) doing cool New York stuff,
c) eating delicious food,
d) nostalgia.
Someone recently asked why I would ever want to go to New York City in the summer, with its ungodly heat and interminable mugginess. This is a good point. I have two answers:

I love the heat. That's right. I like it when it's very hot. It's the cold I can't stand.
You might think that in lovely Northern California, the weather would be idyllic. This is true if you go about 70 miles east to the Bay Area. I, however, live in the Central Valley, which acts as a huge basin to capture all the hot air from everywhere around. I call your attention to exhibit A, the weather forecast for the next few days in Davis:

That's right. It's going to be 108° here tomorrow. So there.

Ah New York in the summer time: cool and breezy.

Talkin' 'bout computers

2008-07-03T09:05:00.000-07:00

I really dislike Microsoft Windows. I'm typing this now on a cheap Dell laptop ("Dude, you gotta get a cheap, shitty computer") that runs on Windows, and I grow increasingly fed up with the freezing, crashing, and overall slowness that comes from Windows. I personally have a strong preference for the Mac OS, which is smoother and crashes less often.

There are those who think (mostly correctly) that both Microsoft and Apple are fiendish corporate giants whose proprietary software controls and restricts their users, leaving them, in the words of Richard Stallman from today's BBC News Online, "helpless and divided."

The users are divided because they are forbidden to share copies with anyone else. The users are helpless because they don't have the source code that programmers can read and change.
If you're a programmer and you want to change the software, for yourself or for someone else, you can't.
If you're a business and you want to pay a programmer to make the software suit your needs better, you can't. If you copy it to share with your friend, which is simple good-neighbourliness, they call you a "pirate".

The article starts out nice and easy, criticizing Bill and MS for obvious, public things, before really getting into the agenda. Which goes something like this: Proprietary software is bad - it's divisive, it leaves its users helpless, and punishes them for helping out their neighbors by sharing. Free, open-source software is the way to go, and everyone should switch to Linux. It turns out that Stallman is the founder of the Free Software Foundation. So there you go.

While I think I'm not quite ready to make the switch from Windows to Linux on this machine, I do think it's time to check out open source text editors like LaTex, which is tag-based language (like HTML) and is the standard among mathy, sciency types, or Open Office, a free, open-source version of all the MS Office programs. I truly have few complaints about MS Office. I think Word is a revolutionary piece of software. However, if you want to make slightly less conventional-looking documents, or godforbid have some equations in your doc, then it's a huge pain. Plus it crashes unreasonably often. One of my goals this summer, in addition to building a fixed gear bicycle, is to learn LaTex.

I'm also about halfway through Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, which is just another factor in why I'm writing about computers right now.

Sad times in the southwest

2008-06-23T08:15:00.000-07:00

George Carlin died yesterday. He was old beyond his 71 years, and his death is not a tragedy, but it's nonetheless sad. He was an early hero of mine - when I was 11 I got a copy of his album "Parental Advisory Warning" on cassette tape, and spent a long time at first wondering a) why the warning was so big and b) where the title was. It was one of my first introductions to absurdist, irreverent humor, and the acknowledgment that the world is crazy and no one know what's going on. Plus it had great lines like "You never see a really big tall fat Chinese guy with red hair." I never have. Then he was Rufus in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, an important movie of my childhood and I'm sure many of yours. He was funny and smart and one of the rare few great stand-up comics. A toast to George.

I've been in Santa Fe, New Mexico for a week now, for a workshop on computational modeling. We're housed in glorified dorms on the campus of St. John's College. The workshop is good, I'm learning stuff and making progress on my research project, which is nice. On Saturday five of us rented a car and explored the some pretty cool areas, such as Bandalier National Monument and the Valle Grande caldera. I forgot my camera at home, so I don't have many pictures now, but I will once the other people with cameras get around to posting all of them. Meanwhile, there's a water tower just up the hill from the dorms, labeled with loads of graffitti including "Long live water tower wednesdays!" Indeed. Here's a view from the top:

And then it's fight for old Wesleyan

2008-06-04T14:25:00.001-07:00

I got an fundraising email from my alma mater, Wesleyan University (whose students were recently treated to a way better commencement speaker than we got in my day - see below), which started:

Dear #Nickname##,

Here's a lesson. When asking for money, one should check one's code to make sure that it works as expected before soliciting thousands of potential donors for cash.

GObama

2008-06-04T09:56:00.000-07:00

Thank fucking god.

Paul gets serious

2008-05-05T23:19:00.000-07:00

It's 11:22pm, and I've just finished putting together my first presentation. Everyone has to give at least one talk at the weekly psychobio brownbag each year on something they're working on, so tomorrow I'll be giving a short talk in front of the subdepartment (i.e. faculty and other grad students) entitled "Dynamic Differences in Exploratory Behavior in Vasopressin-Deficient Rats."

I managed to almost completely slack off this weekend, which meant that today was pretty much a stay-in-and-work-nonstop kind of day. I probably started in earnest today at about 11am, and finished in earnest 12 hours later. All this for a 20-minute presentation on a study I haven't even really started working on. Hurrah for grad school!

If anyone is interested in the links between vasopressin and autism spectrum disorders, I am now your man.

My back hurts

2008-05-04T19:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the 4th Annual Tour d'Davis. This is a pretty ridiculous event, whereby 60-80 grad students and affiliated others form loose teams, dress in coordinated costumes, and bicycle around town in the middle of the day from place to place to drink excessive amounts of alcohol and "compete" in very disorganized games. I crapped out around 3:30pm - we'd been going since 10:30am or so, and I was tired. The party, however, was in full swing when I left, I don't even know how late it went. Much ridiculousness no doubt ensued after I left. But I was there for at least some of it.

My team, consisting of a bunch of guys from the psychology department plus Kelly, Dario's fiancee`. We decided to dress as old people, complete, of course, with old people names. There was Mortimer, George, Madge, Norman Bradley (brother of Milton), and Clancy. I was Murray Goldfarb, from Coney Island, now of Boca Raton. Behold:
This picture was taken in the morning right before I left my house. Keep in mind I biked halfway across town dressed like this, all by myself. The things I do for posterity.
Clicking on the picture should take you to my flickr account if you want to see more pictures.

Sunny side up

2008-04-30T17:50:00.000-07:00

Happy days are here again.

I want an old timey bathing suit

2008-04-21T12:27:00.000-07:00

With the warm weather upon us, trips to the beach and swimming hole are imminent. This Wednesday is in fact the first game for my intramural inner-tube water polo team, Team Awesome (which should be interesting, since I am also currently nursing a broken toe, which I sustained playing volleyball, of all things). That being said, I'm tired of the same old boring swim suit. What I really want is one of those awesome striped bathing suits from the '20s (or whenever), with the shoulder straps that look sort of like old timey circus strongman outfits.

These things are surprisingly hard to find. I looked online, but I don't know the official term for them, so I end up googling "old timey men's bathing suit" and "swimsuit men 1920s" which gets me to some interesting gay fetish sites*, but not much closer to purchasing a rad swimsuit. I did find a could of vintage suits on eBay but those were problematic because A) they cost like $200, and B) they were actually vintage, meaning that I would be buying a 90 year-old swimsuit. I can see the headline now: "Local water polo team linked to reintroduction of typhoid epidemic."

Ah, good old typhoid.

The point is, if anyone knows where to get a new, usable old timey-style bathing suit, please let me know.

PS - I got my tickets to go to New York in July! I'm psyched!

*Not really.

RIP Edward Lorenz

2008-04-17T01:09:00.000-07:00

Edward Lorenz, one of the founders of Chaos theory, just died yesterday at 90. He's essentially responsible for the whole "butterfly effect" concept, as well as the Lorenz Attractor, which is the coolest graphic representation of Chaos this side of the Mandelbrot Set.

Explanations of these constructs abound on the internet, so I won't go into them here. Needless to say, they're awesome. The Times obituary has a pretty good recap of Lorenz's first major discoveries.

Also, just look at this guy. He looks completely clear-headed despite his age - he finished an academic paper collaboration last week, and was hiking 2 weeks ago, at 90. That's what I'm talking about. Or maybe he looks totally bananas. Whatever. Look at the Lorenz attractor. It's clearly the shit. What have you invented lately?

I've been skimming my copy of Chaos, by James Gleick, on and off in the past couple of months. Everyone should read that book again and again and again. How anyone can live without thinking that these concepts are mind-blowingly beautiful and awesome is beyond me.

Justice

2008-04-14T11:16:00.000-07:00

What a douche.

In Searching for New Job, Gonzales Sees No Takers.

Teabag me

2008-04-07T13:06:00.000-07:00

This is the greatest tea I've ever had. I can't get enough. In fact, I'm drinking it right now. I don't usually even drink all that much tea, but I am a total fiend for Hot Cinnamon Sunset.I'm gonna go crochet a sweater and play pinochle now.

Horror? Hilarity

2008-04-07T10:49:00.000-07:00

Last night I went and saw The Bank Job. It was pretty entertaining, a fine "Let's go see a movie" movie. However, the best part of the experience was this trailer, for a movie whose title had me doubled over laughing for about two minutes straight.

Santa Fe...

2008-04-04T19:37:00.000-07:00

Nina has pointed out that this song will be in my head pretty much continuously from now until the summer. One thing I love about the songs Bob Dylan wrote in the late '60s and early '70s is that they have great simple and catchy melodies combined with some of the most nonsensical lyrics this side of Robert Plant.

Santa-Fe,
Dear, dear, dear, dear, dear Santa-Fe,
My woman needs it ev'ryday,
She promised this a-lad she'd stay,
She's rollin' up a lotta bread
To toss away.
She's in Santa-Fe,
Dear, dear, dear, dear, dear Santa-Fe
Now she's opened up an old maid's home,
She's proud, but she needs to roam,
She's gonna write herself a roadside poem,
About Santa-Fe.

Santa-Fe,
Dear, dear, dear, dear Santa-Fe.
Since I'm never gonna cease to roam,
I'm never, ever far from home,
But I'll build a geodesic dome
And sail away.
Don't feel bad.
No, no, no, no, don't feel bad
It's the best food I've ever had.
Makes me feel so glad
That she's cooking in a home-made pad
She never caught a cold so bad
When I'm away.

Santa-Fe,
Dear, dear, dear, dear, dear, dear Santa-Fe.
My shrimp boat's in the bay
I won't have my nature this way,
And I'm leanin' on the wheel each day
To drift away
From Santa-Fe,
Dear, dear, dear, dear, dear Santa-Fe.
My sister looks good at home,
She's lickin' on an ice cream cone,
She's packin' her big white comb,
What does it weigh?

Santa Fe, dear dear dear dear Santa Fe

2008-04-04T17:44:00.000-07:00

I just received word today that I've been invited to participate in this year's Graduate Workshop in Computational Social Science Modeling and Complexity at the Santa Fe Institute, to take place the last two weeks in June. SFI is pretty prestigious, and they do some a lot of really good interdisciplinary work in the computational sciences. Also, I get a paid two-week trip to Santa Fe where I get to do modeling homework problems the whole time! I am unashamedly dorking out hardcore over this.

Conveniently, I just ordered one of the primary readings for the workshop for a seminar I'm taking on models of social learning. Oh academia, you're so much better than a real job.

I hear that.

2008-03-30T18:50:00.000-07:00

I haven't really been feeling much like blogging. So, as an arbitrary post topic, here's what I've been listening to lately:

Spottiswoode & His Enemies - Building a Road
I heard an interview with the singer of this band on NPR on Saturday morning, this was the album that eMusic had. They just released two new ones. I'll probably get them. This CD is pretty awesome, with elements of Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Beirut, and Eels.

Okay - Low Road and Huggable Dust
Saw this band open for Mountain Goats about a month ago. They were the best part of the show (which also included a solid performance by Jeffrey Lewis), especially since John D. gave a hyper manic but less than stellar performance. Perhaps reminiscent of Sparklehorse, but better lyrics and tighter. Highly recommend seeing them live.

Be Good Tanyas - Blue Horse
It's spring time, and thus time for some serious feelgood music. Beautiful-voiced ladies singing laid back country-bluegrass.

Domer - Vaguest Vacation
Saw my old buddy Adam in San Francisco a few weeks ago, and he gave me an advanced copy. By far his best work yet.

And... that's all I have to say right now.

Lookie lookie! I got hookie!

2008-03-12T16:00:00.000-07:00

Eliot Spitzer resigned today as Governor of New York. I had high hopes for the man, but what can you do?

It's a very weird world we live in. Spitzer is 48 years old (we share a birthday, coincidentally). His wife is 50. He found himself wanting to mess around with younger women. He's a busy man, and so he found himself a high class hooker company.

Let's put aside how hypocritical it is for him to be caught paying for a prostitute when he spent years as NY Attorney General going after prostitution rings. I agree - it's incredibly hypocritical. But I recently got into a conversation with someone who said that if it had been something like Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, with Spitzer sleeping with an intern, it wouldn't be that big a deal. While I think that's certainly true in terms of both the media reaction and Spitzer's political options, I also think there's something to be said for visiting a prostitute over outright cheating. I know prostitution is illegal (except in Nevada), but let's put that aside. There are many good arguments for why it should be legal, and others for why it should stay illegal. That line of debate, if you exclude inane religious arguments, boils down to the fact that our society is biased in favor of men. I know it is, and I agree that many things suck more for women than for men. Still, certain things are going to be highly desired even by people who support keeping them illegal. (I've met more than one pot smoker who thinks marijuana shouldn't be legalized. It's very bizarre.) Anyway, the services of a prostitute are one of those things.

With money changing hands ($1,000 an hour, according to the NY Times), the man knows he's paying for a service: to get to sleep with a hot young girl with no strings attached. She doesn't think he loves her or that he's going to leave his wife for her, and he can still give focus his affections on his wife (assuming he wants to). In a perfect world, perhaps he would even discuss his "visitations" with his wife, who could give her approval (or even join in). Spitzer doesn't have to deal with "Kristen" calling him on the phone wanting to talk about her dreams, that's not what he pays her for. He's not investing emotionally, he just want to fool around with a young hottie. A hottie who, incidentally, is probably going to be doing better than ever now. She's an aspiring singer, and I'll eat my hat if this media shitstorm doesn't land her a record deal if she's got an ounce of talent. As of this posting, her song on myspace (which is pretty mediocre) has been played over 223,000 times today.

I'm willing to accept that some of you might feel I'm totally wrong about this. I do think that Spitzer was right to resign, but only because he's been such a moral crusader (and because seems like kind of a douchebag). If the drug czar got caught with a joint, he'd have to resign too - not for smoking weed, but for lacking sincerity when it comes to doing his job. In the mean time, how about we hold elected officials responsible for the way they handle their duties as elected officials (you know, like passing and enforcing laws and such) and not for who they want to sleep with.

Admit it: she's pretty hot. And she totally boned the Governor for money. Awww yeah.

Slowly but surely

2008-03-09T22:35:00.000-07:00

Apparently, my Pro Tools isn't as fucked up as I thought. Making headway on Volume 2. There are now 3 new songs (not actually new, but newly available) up on MySpace. Check 'em out. Household Songs Vol. 2: Due out Christmas 2010.

I got this email from the army today...

2008-03-05T15:52:00.000-08:00

The army is under the mistaken belief that I am in medical school:

Fire it up

2008-03-05T11:11:00.000-08:00

Goddammit Obama. Will this thing never end? Are we really going to leave this up to 200 (or whatever) superdelegates? Whatever. As long as one of them gets to be President, and we don't get stuck with McCain (don't be fooled - he's still evil).

To take our minds off of these shenanigans, take a look at this amazing footage of some hair mousse getting set on fire, which is way cooler than it sounds (thanks again to Nina for pointing this one out). Can you parse the physical principles at work? Can ya? Yes we can!

http://view.break.com/462895 - Watch more free videos

Elephant seals - reprise

2008-03-03T11:10:00.001-08:00

First, here's a better picture of the coyote, courtesy of Mike. I wasn't lying!
Next, I can't believe I put up a post about elephant seals without talking about weaners! When elephant seal pups stop being nursed by their mothers (i.e. they're weaned), they officially become weaners. However, some of these weaners still crave that sweet and tasty milk, and will actually try, with some degree of success, to scam milk off of other nursing seal mothers. This extra milk makes them extra fat and juicy. The official name for these guys: superweaners. I got a really awesome postcard with pictures of superweaners, and if I manage to find easy access to a scanner, I'll post it. For now, you should check out this page by amateur nature photographer Laurie Darcy, who has some great shots of all things weaner.

It's a fact: "weaner" is a valid scrabble word.

Barrrrump! Elephant seals are awesome!

2008-02-26T16:43:00.000-08:00

Last friday, I took a trip to the Ano Nuevo State Reserve to check out the Elephant Seals. The Reserve is actually set up for the express purpose of protecting elephant seals, who come to the reserve every year to give birth and do it. Here are some neat facts:

The males arrive first, in mid-December, and start displaying and fighting to see who's gonna be doin' it the most. Upon arrival, they can top out at around 5,000 lbs.
When the females arrive, they're pregnant. Males group them into harems of about 50 females, and one male will generally do it with all 50 of his ladies once they've given birth.
Neither the males nor the females will eat or drink anything in the 3 months or so they're on the beach. The males lose something like half their body weight.

When we went, it was kind of late in the season, so many of the femles had already gone back out to sea. Moreover, it was midday, and the sun was out, so the activity was minimal. Here's a short video that Yao Hua took of one of the bulls moving on the dunes that's pretty indicative of the kind of activity we saw. You can see it taking up almost all of their energy just to flop a few feet before giving up to rest for a few minutes. I want to go back next year to see more fighting and elephant seal gettings on. I'm hoping for something a little more like this kickass David Attenborough video. Anyway, here are some pictures:
It was a beautiful day for seal watching. Or for being by the ocean in any respect, for that matter. The last leg of the drive was about 25 miles down Highway 1, and we rolled down the windows to let the sea air in.
It's hard to see, but there's a coyote in this picture. I'd never seen a coyote in the wild before, and unfortunately this was the best shot I could get. Apparently they scavenge on the carcasses of baby seals that don't make it.

There's a lighthouse near the reserve, and this house is on an island near the shore. It used to be the lighthouse keeper's house, back when they needed things like that. Now it's abandoned, and according to our docent tour guide, and confirmed by a ranger, it's often inhabited by California sea lions, who can climb the stairs and hang out all over the house. I bet they throw wicked parties.
Sometimes fate is cruel. This is the skeleton of a seal pup we saw on the beach. Picked clean, possibly by coyotes and/or birds.

All the seals in the center of this circle are females, part of a harem guarded by the surrounding males. The one on the left got a little too close to the other one's pup, and they started yelling at each other.
Here's a shot of a bull yelling. Due to the heat and the lateness of the season, there wasn't an excessive amount of activity, but when the bulls yell, it sounds almost exactly like a lawnmower engine revving.
I had envisioned there being some sort of fence between the tour and the beach, or at least keeping a lot of distance between us and the seals. But no, it was just like "OK, be quite as we're walking past this giant seal that is ten feet away, and there are three of them all around us." If any of you have the opportunity, go see the seals next winter.

Kid sister (kid sister!)

2008-02-21T11:15:00.000-08:00

My younger sis Emma started a blog to display some of her artwork! Check it out. Woot!

I have no idea what is going on with this chick's leg (or is she birthing an eel?)

Lee "Scratch" Perry is gonna be pissed

2008-02-19T23:29:00.002-08:00

Saw Dub Trio at Harlow's in Sacramento on Sunday night. I really like me some good dub music, and there are precious few live bands (of which I'm aware, at least) around playing it live. In fact, I can think of only three: Dub Is A Weapon, Dub Trio, and Sub Oslo. So I was really disappointed to note that Dub Trio is now pretty much a dub act in name only. Their guitarist appears to have discovered an overdrive pedal and Rage Against the Machine's first two albums, and convinced the group that generic thrashing out mixed in with some also-generic trippy post-rock is better than deep dub grooves to move the soul. May the ghost of King Tubby smite ye, Dub Trio.

The King is disheartened about the state of modern American dub music.

Jon Arbuckle: unsung hero

2008-02-19T23:22:00.000-08:00

An interesting fact: the number one reason for people who don't know me ending up viewing this blog is due to web searches (especially GIS) for things related to Garfield. It's true! But it turns out that some genius discovered that Garfield is even funnier when you remove him from the strip entirely - what remains appears to be the tragic comedy of a lonely and hallucinatory Jon Arbuckle. Thanks to Gina for finding this gem.

GObama again! And a eulogy for Mitt Romney.

2008-02-09T21:53:00.000-08:00

After a close race at Super Tuesday, Obama killed today, winning all three primaries in Louisiana, Washington, and Nebraska. And he seems favored to win more and more. Hooray!

And more good news. Mitt Romney, has dropped out of the race. My favorite thing on Thursday night was Jon's Stewart's amazing response to the loss of this "cipher, devoid of principle, a salt-and-pepper, man-shaped polymer casing for a spiritual vacuum."

I could go on, but in this case, I was pretty pleased that the Daily Show almost exactly summed up my feelings on Romney (video stolen from here).

Garfield, revisited

2008-02-06T11:43:00.000-08:00

I love me some Garfield. Since Joe Mathlete seems to be taking an extended sabbatical, Sir Particulate seems to have picked up the slack, with slightly modified Garfield's complete with clever headlines. Check it out.

John Takes His Cat to the Mall; Probably So He Doesn't Have to Feel So Alone; The Cat Wants a Hug

I should also add thanks to Nina for directing me to this gem.

Lost is back!

2008-02-04T14:23:00.000-08:00

And also, after a long, long wait, Lost is finally back on ABC. It's the only TV show I watch regularly, and I am happy to say I was not disappointed by the season premiere. Hooray!

GObama

2008-02-04T13:40:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is Super Tuesday, and for the first time I will vote in a Presidential Primary, and it will be in California. I have decided that Obama is going to get my vote.

I think I've made it fairly clear that I think the whole thing is a bit of a farcical pig circus. If any of us had the nation to build from the ground up as we saw fit (perhaps in a Sims-esque game), no one would choose any of the major candidates to lead our country. But Obama, Clinton, and even potentially McCain are all people that I would tolerate without too much relative agony, compared to the terrible emotional holocaust that has been the Bush administration. As for Hucakbee and Romney, the first seems amiable and funny, the second seems uptight and crotchety, but they are both insane fuckers who will continue the terrible downward spiral of America if allowed anywhere near the Oval Office. Romney's firm recently acquired the media titan Clear Channel, which is NOT something you want your president to hold executive power over. And Huckabee doesn't believe in evolution. Enough said about those two clowns.

That being said, I like the cut of Obama's jib. Obama pledges to double funding for basic research, which is good for me. He also seems the most savvy in terms of the available technology, and he wants too get us out of Iraq. But really, the final nail in Hillary's coffin came for me at the end of a recent debate, when they were asked whether they would consider either a Obama-Clinton or Clinton-Obama ticket. Obama's answer: smooth as all hell. Clinton: awkward and shamelessly self-promoting without answering the question.

Also, I think the Obama-McCain debates will be fucking fantastic.

I'll say it: There Will Be Blood kinda sucked

2008-01-28T01:34:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time since there has been a film as widely regarded as Paul Thomas Anderson's newest release, There Will Be Blood. Critics have gone apeshit over it, the masses seem to like it (for a winter-release art film, at any rate), and the Academy has besmirched the film with their smelly poo-stick of nominating goodness. Moreover, seemingly all of my friends, whose opinions I happen to regard rather more highly than the Academy's, seem to feel that this is a film Worth Seeing, a Tremendous film, perhaps even an Excellent one.

Before I start in on why I feel otherwise, I think it only fair that I make two points. The first is that I am not a fan of P.T. Anderson. I liked Boogie Nights - I mean, how could you not? It's a kickass movie about the porn industry in the 1970s (Though it's still too long and gets preachy at the end). But as for Magnolia and Punch Drunk Love, my one-word assessment is the same that I have for this new one: overrated.

The second point follows quite naturally - I readily concede that P.T. is a helluva skilled technical filmmaker. His composition, use of space, lighting - all superb. And he clearly knows how to get a good performance, though it doesn't hurt to start out with the kind of talent he usually gets. How hard was it to get Daniel Day-Lewis to act well? (Try getting what Steven Soderbergh got out of J-Lo in Out Of Sight.)

As an aside, I feel compelled to mention an exception to the P.T. Anderson-gets-good-actors rule: Adam Sandler's performance in Punch Drunk Love. People were going on and on about his fine performance, "Oh, wow, he can really act!" No. Adam Sandler does three things well on screen (I have no idea of and no interest in learning what he does well off screen): being childishly obnoxious and self-centered, throwing temper tantrums, and being endearing when his one-dimensional value system ends up somehow saving the day (possibly involving him learning some sort of lesson). This has led to a number of comedies that successfully (to varying degrees) exploit those traits. Those movies are comedies because, in a drama, it would be nigh impossible to make those the traits of a sympathetic character. Which is what happens in Punch Drunk Love, which is essentially the story of a person who is just like Adam Sandler's characters in all of his other movies, except that instead of being fabulously wealthy, or possessed of magical golfing abilities, or being the son of Satan, he's just a broke loser with no friends and terrible social skills. Notice how Adam Sandler hasn't made a drama (or a good comedy, for that matter) since. I think the only hope for his career is for someone to realize that he is essentially not a likeable character, and to cast him in small roles that warrant someone the audience should have an easy time disliking. Like Kevin Costner in 3000 Miles to Graceland, or Elijah Wood in Sin City. Aside end.

A man and his son go off in search of a film with better-developed characters and more interesting subtext.

Back to the Blood movie. I've acknowledged that it's a well-shot, well-acted movie. And for the first 45 minutes or so (total running time: 158 minutes), I was pretty into it. It seemed to be about a man doing his thing in the early, Manifest Destiny days of the American Industrial Revolution. Perhaps something tricky was going on - good. What truths about our culture and human nature will be revealed? And then, some kid shows up to betray his family's trust and get rich quick. Our hero goes and buys the land, give the town the old Lyle Lanley routine, and then the movie takes a nosedive from which it never recovers. In fact, after this point, every single thing in the movie is exactly the same as P.T. Anderson's other movies. We have mean, uncaring fathers, overblown tragedies, melodramatic religious demagogues, awkward non-reconciliation reconciliations, and, of course, spiraling descents into madness.

Incidentally, lots of interesting things about fathers and sons - a topic that male artists will never grow tired of - could have been said, following the admittedly pretty cool but way too long scene where the son loses his hearing. But then the dad simply goes crazy and ceases to be an interesting character.

If all that wasn't enough, we're treated with a final act that felt like the mid-90s Cinemax remake of Citizen Kane. It's years later, and we find our Old Oil Tycoon alone in his big mansion, faced only with the miserable wreckage of his wasted life. First, he disowns his son in the most awkward and nonsensical scene ever. Then he gets a visit from his old friend/nemesis the Emo Preacher, who is magically still 25 years old, and the audience gets bludgeoned with some overacted and underwritten turnabout, followed by the preacher getting bludgeoned with the Bowling Pin of Ironic Justice.

In the end, this movie has the same problem as Magnolia - it never feels like it comes together. Also like Magnolia, it has a number of scenes that are individually interesting, but don't effectively serve the film as a larger unit. If there is anything profound to take away from There Will Be Blood, maybe it's this: The world is full of all sorts of people, so if you're one of the nice ones, watch out for mean people, stupid people, and crazy people. And also, fathers can be a bitch, so, you know, keep that in mind too.

I'm your huckleberry

2008-01-19T19:26:00.000-08:00

In keeping with my politics-is-like-sports-only-better sensibilities, I've decided to start betting on the races. It's on!

Traveler - what a bizarre blog

2008-01-19T14:27:00.000-08:00

Apparently, this blog that translated my posting into German is some bizarre thing that takes (seemingly) random blog postings and posts a new one - in German - every day. Maybe that's the "traveler" part - a random journey through the intertubes. For some reason it reminds me of (biologist) J.B.S. Haldane's semi-famous quote:

"I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."

Square Off and Share in German!!

2008-01-18T12:37:00.001-08:00

The internet is so incredibly bizarre. Don't ask me how, but I found an entry of this very blog re-posted in German elsewhere on the tubes. It's one from October where I talked about Garfield - and is incidentally the number one entry that gets viewed by random internet surfers from around the world when they are apparently using GIS to procrastinate. Here it is in the "original" Deutsch. I then went and translated it using babelfish (not perfect, but hey, it's a free site that will translate an entire webpage in a second, so, ya know, don't complain). I recommend comparing this to the original, but either way translating back and forth is funny:

Like that edge magazine was kind of a laundry - I was unbegeistert by their enterprise. Therefore provisionally at least none works superhip freelance culture letter, at least the kind, which pays, for me. Somebody wishing to pay me is however pushed to thus make at its earliest comfort.

In other messages brauste I by some old InterNet bookmarks of mine, and is gestolpert on some changes to some old Garfield caricatures, which were made by an unknown Alleingaenger of the world of art. I give freely that, as a boy, I have loved reading Garfield too. Perhaps it was its extreme predictability, and its lighter, uncomplicated cynicism. The putrid step of Garfield, which Odie pushes again and again starting from that table, could have been a comfort under the chaos of mine ************ changing world. Return to it as older and wiser me, if I am forced to admit although over some going from the older strips still, can do me smile make, Garfield is a rather stupid Komiker. Each sub-committee is often nearly identical, and the letter, which Jim Davis still vorgeblich makes (was pawned starting from design obligations nearly, since that very much beginning) seems usual, how it took a minimum degree of the thought. Notice also the heavy difference between the original designs of Jim Davis and that, which derjenig made, since it began agriculture it.

Anyway I do not know, who made these, but they have me laugh made really hard, when I saw first them, and I do not know why really. I will set up only all to them, but if you asked yourselves, I received her here.

I don't know who went and translated me into German, but you have my blessing. Spread the Good News, my child.

Metermaids

2008-01-16T20:28:00.000-08:00

I just want to take a second and reiterate how awesome I think Metermaids are. I first met Sean (aka Swell) a couple of years ago through a mutual friend or two, and first saw them at a show at the now sadly defunct Sin*e in the Lower East Side, where I had gone to see my friend Adam (aka Domer) perform. I thought they were good, and I was especially into the fact that he traded me a copy of his shiny, sleek, and excellently produced EP for a marginally-nicer-than-homemade copy of the Household Songs. The EP is four songs, every one of which is fantastic.

I got to check out Metermaids last spring at the Viper Room in LA, again with Domer, and they're new stuff sounds even better. I can't wait till they drop a full-length album.

I also think that I have an added affinity for the EP now that I've moved from New York out to sleepy NorCal. All it takes is a listen to "Back and Forth" and my mind is drunkenly wandering around the East Village at night, torn between another drink at the Cherry Tavern and a tasty Crif Dog tsunami. Mmmm. I am so hungry right now.

He's gonna need that stick.

2008-01-16T20:22:00.000-08:00

Ugh. I'm doing a very tedious project for the publishers, and am not getting out-of-doors enough. I was very excited because this academic quarter I only have classes on tuesdays and thursdays, but that has just been leading me to waste the early part of the day on other days and then have a bunch of crap to do at night when I just want to chill out.

On the other hand, elephant seals are awesome!!

In other good news, I should start hanging out at the Monkey Center very soon. Which I'm pretty excited about. Monkeys are neat.

Comics, KFC, Wal*Mart, and Science!

2008-01-14T21:24:00.001-08:00

Hey kids! It's time for another installment of Paul spews out a bunch of crap he sort of has on his mind! Yay!!!!!!
First, I found a sweet new webcomic to procrastinate with. It's called Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. Check it out.

Second, for you fans of Patton Oswalt, he's finally taken the plunge and tried one of KFC's "Famous Bowls." Courtesy of the Onion A.V. Club, it can be found here. I could comment further on this, but, well I'm not gonna.

However, this reminds me, I've been meaning to get myself a coffee machine, and the other day I was in one of the many disgusting Strip Mall Extravaganza that dot our American landscape (to buy a poster frame, in case you were curious), and I thought, "Hey, they sell coffee machines over at the Wal*Mart! I'll just go over and... Gah!" I literally went over, walked in, got about four steps, and walked right back out. That place is like the incarnation of everything awful about America. Here's a TED Talk I liked, ragging on suburban sprawl and strip malls.

Which reminds me of something else. Last week I went to the Exploratorium in San Francisco. If you're in the Bay Area, I highly recommend this place. It's a big-ass hands on science museum. It was reminiscent of the Queens Hall of Science back in New York, except that I have no idea what that place is like now, since I haven't been there since I was probably 12 or so. Anyway, the Exploratorium is enormous, and they have exhibits showing lots of neat phenomena, involving physics, biology, psychology, and acoustics. I also went to the Tactile Dome. This is basically a thing that is totally pitch dark, and you crawl and walk through it. There are ladders and slides, and lots of things to touch on the walls and ceiling. My only complaint was that it was a little small - it takes about 5 to 10 minutes to go through the whole thing. I think it would be really cool to do one that took like a half an hour. One guy went in with his girlfriend, and 10 seconds later the guy comes back out, sweating, and was like "No way I'm doing that." But for you non-claustrophics, why not pay the extra 3 bucks and do something novel.

What reminded me of that trip was this thing where they had a bunch of different gas lights shining through a prism (physics people may recall this as a spectrometer). The deal is that light produced by exciting different gases - like sodium, helium, etc. - produce different combinations of wavelengths of light. By reverse analyzing these patterns, astronomers, for example, can tell what elements are burning in a star.
In addition to all the various gas lights, they had a normal incandescent light and a normal fluorescent light. They both produced all the colors of the rainbow when shone through a prism, but here's the difference: the incandescent light showed a smooth transition between all the different colors, including all the in-between colors at equal brightness. The fluorescent light was different. There seemed to be small gaps, and some of the colors had streaks that were much brighter than the rest of the light. This probably explains why things appear to be the same color but look somehow different and crappier under fluorescent lighting. Here some people at Carnegie Mellon show you how to build a spectrometer out of a CD, a cereal box, and some duct tape.

This is incandescent light.

And this is fluorescent light.

I Love New York

2008-01-11T10:26:00.000-08:00

The headline says it all. Thanks to Cris for making me read it.

Corpse Wheeled to Check-Cashing Store Leads to 2 Arrests

It's the playoffs!

2008-01-07T13:17:00.000-08:00

A bit unexpectedly, I find myself completely enthralled by the race for the Presidency now that the primaries have begun. I have never been much of a sports fan, but I do enjoy watching the championships. This applies to a variety of sports - baseball, basketball, and hockey in particular, not to mention my love of World Cup Soccer. I couldn't care less during the regular season, but once every game counts big toward deciding who makes it to the Big Match, I can't turn away. And for nothing is this as true as a Presidential election.

I suppose it's also partly that after 8 years of George W. Bush, I can't wait for something new. I'm also happy that it looks very likely that we'll have a Democrat in the White House, and that Democrat is guaranteed to NOT be John Kerry. But on a more general level, I can't help feeling the sentiment of Hunter S. Thompson, for whom politics was so much like sports that for the last few years of his life he had a regular column at ESPN.com where he wrote about politics and sports in the sense that politics was merely another kind of sport. Here's an excerpt from one of those columns, collected in the book of the same name, Hey Rube. You can find the whole column here.

Let's face it: The only true Blood-Sport in this country is high-end Politics. You can dabble in Sports or the Stock Markets, but when you start lusting after the White House, The Joke is Over. These are the real Gamblers, & there is nothing they won't do to win.

Nothing involving jock straps or sports bras will ever come close to it for drama, violence, savagery & over-weaning lust for the spoils of victory. ... The Presidency of the United States is the richest & most powerful prize in the history of the World. The difference between winning the Super Bowl & winning the White House is the difference between a Goldfish & a vault full of Gold bars.

...

Rude people will now & then ask me why I think I know so much about Politics. I tell them it's because I'm Smart. ... But that is a lie: The real reason is because I'm an incurable Gambling addict.

My money's on Obama and Huckabee to take the division championships, with Obama pulling a narrow win for the Cup. But the game has yet to be played in Southern arenas, where the climate may have a strong effect on the Players' footwork. I expect Edwards, Clinton, McCain, and Romney to all put in fine performances in their respective leagues, and the truth, of course, is this is still anybody's game.

Happy New Year!

2008-01-03T09:37:00.000-08:00

I got nothin'. Happy new year, everybody.

Gangstagrass

2007-12-30T17:52:00.000-08:00

It's not all that uncommon for me to have an idea of the music I want to be listening to at any given moment in my head, even though it doesn't actually exist. This might explain my not-always-so-successful forays into the world of music production. Yesterday, I thought to myself, "Self, you know what I'd like to hear right now? Some sort of mixing up of bluegrass and hip-hop." "That's crazy!" I said back to myself, but much like Nicholas Cage in one of the stupidest plots of all time, I didn't let ridiculousness stand in the way, and proudly googled "hip hop bluegrass." And voilá! Just a few months prior, some like-minded folks from my old stomping grounds of Brooklyn put together just such a recording, calling it Gangstagrass. And, to boot, they made the whole album available as a free download. It's actually pretty sweet - very decent rhymes over beats that sample excellent rootsy bluegrass. My current favorite tracks are "Pistol Packin" and "Street Soldier."

It's just another one of many moments that make me think "what a crazy fucking world we live in." A world where I get an idea, hop on my magic light box and tell it my idea. The box reports that some guys 3000 miles away have executed a similar idea, and would I like to have their entire album right away? Why yes, thank you. So I then tell my magic light box to put the songs onto a disc that I can feed to my car so that its stereo will play the songs I just got. And now those guys in Brooklyn who made those songs have no idea that some other guy in California is driving around listening to the songs they made. Wonders never cease.

Also, it's almost New Year's, aka my favorite holiday. I'm psyched.

Will Shortz is due for an asswhooping

2007-12-28T21:42:00.000-08:00

I lied. I'll talk about Tahoe later. I need to talk about today's Saturday NY Times crossword puzzle. Did anyone try this fucker? I'm used to Saturday puzzles being near-impossible to solve, but this one was ridiculous. The following is a list of the words from the puzzle, either in the clue or the answer, that I have never heard of:

Hobart [McKinley's 1st VP]
mashie [a five-iron in golf]
cupule [The covering of an acorn]
golconda [A rich mine or other source or wealth]
margay [a small wild cat]
argali [mountain sheep]
peripeteia [an unexpected turn of events, as in literature]
brassard [an armband on a uniform]
catawampus [diagonal, here answered as "awry"]
ochlocracy [mob rule]
Xantippe [alt. spelling of Socrates' wife, clued as "Scolding wife, var."]
retinue
cortege [these two were clue and answer, respectively. They mean "entourage"]
gasconade [a boast or brag]

I love you, Will Shortz, and rely on you to nurse my addiction to your crossword. I'm OK if a crossword bests me, but not when its difficulty relies on an assault of arcane terminology rather than on clever wordplay. Fuck you for this one, Will.

Will Shortz, pre-asswhooping.

Christmas at the zoo

2007-12-27T23:51:00.000-08:00

This horribly sad news story about an escaped tiger killing a young man made me think of my favorite Christmas song:

I still love the song, but it sort of takes on a depressing air in light of what would really happen if the animals were freed.

Merry Christmas, everyone. Sorry if this post is a downer, referring to tiger maulings and all. I had a great Christmas up in Tahoe, and now I'm all alone in my house in Davis. I'll write more about Tahoe tomorrow.

The spice... is life...

2007-12-22T01:19:00.000-08:00

Late night thoughts inspired by re-reading Frank Herbert's Dune.

It's well known that repression makes a religion flourish (p. 379).

It seems that opponents of religion, or any belief system should not simply directly attack the system's beliefs. It must look at the way of life proferred by that belief system and, in order to compete, must offer something better. Know that you're right doesn't keep you feeling safe at night. If we use beliefs to take away the tyranny of living in the world, then in order to
make people face reality, we need to first make reality a place worth facing.

Otherwise, toke up.

God and religion, blah blah blah

2007-12-21T12:30:00.001-08:00

One more thing I wanted to post about. The other day Adam sent me this pretty great video of the biggies of the "New Atheists" hanging out and discussing religion. It's a two-hour discussion between Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett (my personal favorite), Sam Harris, and the irascible Christopher Hitchens. I don't expect that most of you care to sit through two hours of atheists talking about atheism. But since I'm into that kind of thing, I did. And I got to thinking, especially in light of also having recently watched the South Park episodes where Richard Dawkins falls in love with Ms. Garrison, and Cartman is frozen and wakes up 500 years in the future where religion is abolished and now there is war over the correct interpretations of reason and logic.
Now, I love South Park. Love it. And this episode (actually a two-parter) is no exception. I especially like the sentient Sea Otters - "Why would they eat food off of a table when they have perfectly good tummies to eat of off? It is illogical. Death to the table-eaters!" And also, as they often do, Matt and Trey make a good point - that reason and logic work well when people are rational, but the truth is that most people are often irrational. Dawkins especially, of the four, has been vocal about having a serious wish to see a world free from religion. And he, as have they all, have acknowledged the good that comes from religion, and that to abolish it would require having something that fills the same roles in community-building and the like. I don't think Dawkins has ever actually insinuated that there should be a Doctrine of Reason and Science to which the world should be bound. Which is also not what Matt and Trey suggest - in the episode it is Ms. Garrison who is the crucial catalyst in turning Dawkin's reasonable viewpoints on evolution and God into dogma. Their suggestion is, rather than replacing a doctrine of religion with a doctrine of science, to create an acknowledgment that ideology of any kind is harmful when placed in the hands of the irrational masses. And I think this has been a point they have been making for some time - if believing ludicrous things leads people to live better, happier lives, than who are we to tell them to do otherwise? (The idea that a useful religion can be based on lies was a major point made by Kurt Vonnegut in Cat's Cradle and other books.) Science clearly has some answers, but not all the answers. And for some people, myself included, it has more answers than it does for other people. The same goes for the various religions, I suppose, no matter how ridiculous I may think they are. Problems arise when dogma is enlisted as a shortcut for reason in matters that markedly affect others. See "Middle East, entire history of,"for details.

Sometimes, when I'm feeling both sciency and atheisty, I head over to Pharyngula, a blog by the biologist PZ Myers, who also has a column of the same name in one of my favorite magazines, Seed. When I went there, he had a link to an interview with a total tool of a theologian named John Haught, who goes after the "New Atheists" with the same old stupid arguments about how beautiful faith is, and how atheism must logically lead to nihilism. Since I read this stuff at around 2 or 3 in the morning, and I wasn't entirely sober, I was inspired to write a little dialogue in Haught's honor. It's pretty stupid, but there it is.

"Hi John."
"Hey-a Fred. What's cookin'?"
"I heard you saying that it's ridiculous to ask for evidence when claims are dear to your heart."
"That's right, Fred. I don't want scientific proof of the Resurrection or any of the other great Bible stories. They are too important to the spiritual meaning of my life. I believe they happened. Evidence is not the only way of knowing things, you know."
"That's outstanding, John."
"Thank you Fred. I'm happy to hear you say that."
"Tell me, John, how did you come to know that story? I mean, how do you know it's true?"
"Well, Fred, it's written in the Bible. Which is God's testament to his creation."
"And you have no evidence that this book is actually the word of God, right?"
"For the last time, Fred, faith is about believing in something. It's about taking that leap because something is moved inside you."
"I completely hear you, brother man."
"Really?"
"Most definitely."
"Wow. I'm so glad to hear that."
"Yeah. So I totally boned your wife last night."
"What?"
"Seriously. Totally bonage. I was all like 'Uh! Uh!' And she was like 'Oh yeah! Do me Fred! You're totally better that John!'"
"What the fuck, dude?"
"Prove me wrong, bitch."
"Um, I was with her all evening yesterday. I was with her from yesterday afternoon until this morning."
"Nuh uh, son. See, in a moment of revelation, time totally stopped, and your wife and I had a cosmic experience."
"Ha ha. You're very funny."
"Seriously, man! And it was totally foretold. Check out this writing:
And ye, the earth was parted from the sea, and then God made some animals and stuff. Then like four billion years of evolution happened, producing, among the insignificant masses, a god among men, by the goodly name of Fred. And Fred didst knoweth a stupid douchebag named John, who had a most bangable wife. And the Lord dideth giveth John's wife to Fred in a most time-warping and cosmically fulfilling night of lusty passion. And the Lord did see his creation. And it was good."
"You are an asshole."
"No, seriously John. I totally get what you're talking about. Something definitely moved inside your wife, and then something moved inside me too! We're for sure on the same page, bro!"

Thus endeth the lesson.

Physics and snowtubing

2007-12-21T12:00:00.001-08:00

Physics, as we all know, is awesome. The NY Times reports that, thanks to Apple's iTunes U (dutifully reported on by yours truly some time ago), an MIT physics professor is shaking things up and educating the masses re: physics and its awesomeness. Way to go, old man.
It makes me wonder, though, if Apple's free online classes are going to give the Teaching Company, maker of the Great Courses series, a run for its money. My dad apparently has begun watching their course Understanding the Brain. I hope the Teaching Company stays in business, because I think they hold their courses to more rigorous standards than does iTunes U.
Just as I'm getting back into the swing of blogging, I am taking a forced hiatus. Nina and Gina and John and Paddy are en route to Davis this very day, and we'll be spending some time at lovely Lake Tahoe, skiing and snowtubing at Heavenly. For those of you who don't know, Heavenly is situated right on the border of California and Nevada, and you can ski down either side. And you know what that means: ski-thru gambling. Or so I've been told. I'll let you know if that's for real. As for snowtubing, you can find a description here. The picture of the old guy tubing really makes the page.

I'll be back a few days after Christmas, though if there's internet where we are I may do a post from the slopes.

I hope everyone is having a happy solstice.

Cross Country Pics!! (Part 3 - Finally!)

2007-12-19T01:59:00.000-08:00

I've been really bad at keeping up with this thing. But I also made a promise, and by god I'm going to keep it! Without further ado, the better parts of South Dakota:

This doesn't look like much. But this is about ten minutes from the Badlands. They really sneak up on you.

Right at the entrance to the park, there's a colony of prairie dogs. You can get peanuts, and they'll eat them. One of them ate one right out of my hand, but my dad didn't get eh picture in time. They are ridiculously cute.

Looking at this picture now, it seems unreal. The Badlands is like no other place on earth. They were apparently formed hundreds of millions of years ago when South Dakota was actually under the ocean. The Badlands is a major source of dinosaur fossils. The red stripes reflect the iron content in the soil. The Badlands is super neat. I'm going back, and I'm going camping. Who's with me?
Vistas like this are all over the park. This part of the country is where some of the last remaining wild herds of bison live. I kept hoping to see some, but no luck.
Just as we were leaving the park boundaries, we came upon a huge colony of prairie dogs. Here in Davis, we have the California Ground Squirrel. While decidedly less cute than the prairie dog, they may be more badass.
If you drive through South Dakota on I-90, you are legally required to stop at Wall Drug. It pretty much sucks.

Mount Rushmore is the stupidest thing in the world. It makes me want to find the estate of the guy who made it and demolish his house by carving a statue of an intact mountain into it. On the other hand, this guy was also at Mount Rushmore. I kept looking at him until finally I went up and politely, asked if he wouldn't mind if I took his picture. "Go right ahead," he said. "Most people don't even ask." Come on, America! When a man has blessed you by taking the time to grow such amazing facial hair, he deserves your respect. Then we got to Wyoming. It started out cloudy and depressing.
But then it got real pretty.

If there's a lot of demand, I can post some more pictures of the road trip. After this, there's basically a bunch of pictures of the road, some rocks, the Utah Salt Flats, and little else.

My lovely lady lumps.

2007-12-06T19:35:00.000-08:00

On Saturday night I was on my way to a fancy soirée, so I stopped at the Safeway to pick up some beer. I bought the ever eco-friendly Sierra Nevada. On my way out to my car, I heard a rumble from a baby blue Toyota Corolla parked next to mine. It had a Jesus fish, a "Jesus is the Way" sticker, and two dancing pubescent girls in the front seats. These girls must have been waiting for a parent-type person to emerge from the store, because either they were at most 14 years old, or I have lost the last of my already meager ability to judge female ages. They were vigorously dancing, giggling, and doing the pursed-lips head bob at each other. This went on for at least the couple minutes I spent in the parking lot. The song: My Humps. It was simultaneously amazing and sort of awful.
For those of you in the dark, here's our old friend Alanis breaking it down.

Getting back into the swing of things

2007-12-02T22:41:00.001-08:00

I've been a vewy, vewy bad blogger, ignoring my bloggerly duties to this site. No more!

To be fair, I've been busy. I had a great though terribly rushed trip to New York for Thanksgiving. The main highlights were of course seeing family and friends. There were also some other nice things about the trip. After suffering the terrible pizza that Northern California dishes out, I was craving some fine New York slices. And I got more than I bargained for at Di Fara, which was maybe the best slice I have ever eaten, ever. It was even worth the trek out to Midwood and the 90 minute wait. Seriously. Go now.

Flying on the holidays, on the other hand, sucks balls. After the Denver debacle on the way out, I was hoping for a hassle-free flight back. Not happening, suckas. I got to La Guardia almost two hours early, ready to settle in, get some work done, and get on my flight, which this time was through Chicago. But upon arriving at the gate, a sign informed me that the flight would be delayed. 45 minutes later, when staff finally arrived, I was informed that the plane was going to leave Chicago any minute to come to New York. I was going to miss my connection. And no more flights to Sacramento that evening. Well, not to worry sir, we can get you on a flight to San Francisco, arriving at 12:25 am. And you're in luck, because it leaves from JFK - a convenient 30 minute cab ride away! Never again, people. United Airlines can suck it.

South Dakota pics are imminent.

Awesome shades of love

2007-11-23T08:15:00.000-08:00

I wrote this post last week, after Thanksgiving dinner, but had too run before I could post it. Sorry about that.

I am writing this with a belly full of food from my parents' house on Long Island. Ah.
The plane ride over was sort of a nightmare - my plane out of Sacramento Tuesday afternoon was delayed, which caused us to get to Denver late, which meant I missed my connecting flight, which meant I had too spend the night in Denver and take another flight Wednesday morning.
The kicker: the Radisson Hotel in S.E. Denver didn't even have pay-per-view. So I watched the Departed on HBO. People: this movie is good, but let's not go crazy. It's a Scorsese movie. It's just like Goodfellas or Casino, except it's in Boston and it's about Irish people instead of Italians. OK.

When I was flying into New York, a flight attendant came on the PA with the following announcement: Ladies and gentlemen, for those of you seated on the right side of the airplane, you can look out the window to see a terrific view of the greatest city in the world, New York. I had a window seat on the right, and I looked out to see probably the best aerial view of the city I have ever seen. I could see the whole of manhattan, and we went up from South Street all the way up to the Bronx. It ruled.
After a brief pause, though, the flight attendant came back on the PA:
And for those of you seated on the left side of the plane... Jersey.

Moving on. This summer, I went to the wedding of my friend Josh (and, you know, his lady friend). We reminisced about how he used to think the Def Leppard Song "Pour Some Sugar On Me" actually went "Awesome Shades of Love". We agreed that there should, in fact, be a song called "Awesome Shades of Love." My friend Ben, of the band The Shamblers, told me that if I wrote such song, his band would play it. So I did. And so they did. You can hear it here.

The point being, I love nerds.

2007-11-18T23:49:00.001-08:00

I am going to do my very best to post some post cross-country pictures before I leave town on Tuesday (for New York! Woo hoo!), but first I have some shit to add to this site right now. Enjoy.

The other day I had an eerie encounter with a younger version of myself. At least in certain respects. Let me explain. I had been working all day, and around 6pm was starving. I went to the Davis Memorial Union to get a burrito, and the cashier, a young male undergraduate and I had the following exchange:
Me: [crankily approaching with burrito]
He: Howdy!
Me: Howdy.
He: $5.95 will be your total.
Me: [hands him six dollars]
He: Six dollars! Five cents will be your change.
Me: [starts to pocket nickel, then reconsidering, drops it into change dish] Five cents will be your tip.
He: [broad grin] Huzzah!

OK, not really evidence for a young Paul-in-training, but it definitely brightened my day to encounter this ridiculous and unashamed nerd. Huzzah to you, where ever you are.

Moving on, I was reading this xkcd comic, which led me to in turn to this youtube video, which is so awesome I had to post it. Watch it and consider how YOU have been spending your leisure time.

Swarms!!

2007-11-13T10:20:00.000-08:00

Check out the science section of today's New York Times for a very decent article on swarm behavior. In case anyone was wondering, this is pretty close to what I'm studying, except that most of the swarm research has been done with animals moving in, well, big swarms, like ants and birds and fish, as well as bacteria and viruses. I'm gearing up to look at social behavior and cooperation in monkeys, but many of the principles are the same, though we also try and code for things like the ability to learn and remember.

The Times article hints at the very end about cognition and perception being related to swarm theories. I'm completely convinced that all the higher cognitive functions are emergent phenomena of patterns of neural firing. This is still a pretty radical idea in brain science, and I also think that both data and theory still have a long way to go before we start having real theories of cognition based on emergence, but the ideas are in place. Doug Hofstader outlined a pretty convincing case for consciousness as emerging from reflexive patterns of neural activity in his last book I Am A Strange Loop. In the meantime, as the behavioral sciences, neurosciences, and evolutionary sciences (and others) become increasingly interlinked - simply by people talking to one another, but especially by adopting similar mathematical modeling techniques - the application to cognition, perception, and even consciousness may also emerge.

For a slightly more detailed and very enjoyable article on swarm behavior, see also this piece from National Geographic that appeared this summer.

It's spreading!

2007-11-12T23:53:00.000-08:00

This blog business is spreading like Paris Hilton's STDs. Allan's new blog Rattle My Cage gives me big ups. Check it.

A regaling tale of pale ale

2007-11-12T14:04:00.000-08:00

Yesterday a bunch of us Psych people went up to Chico to visit the Sierra Nevada brewery.
It was pretty cool. We drank some beer and took a tour and drank more beer and ate some food. Their restaurant is actually pretty good. Standards like onion rings and buffalo wings were mighty tasty, and I heard the Portobella Sandwich was good. Calamari weren't too great, but what do you expect?

One cool thing I learned is that they are almost entirely sustainable, and are working to become one hundred percent so. For instance, they have hydrogen power cells, partly powered by the methane and CO2 that gets released by the yeast. They feed their leftover grain to local cattle, which they use for meat in their restaurant, and they use the manure to fertilize their hops fields.
Another thing they do is have a company medical facility across the street. So even part-time employees, who don't get health insurance, can still see doctors for free. And all employees get a case of beer every 2 weeks.

Makes their beer even tastier.

Quick thought

2007-11-10T16:54:00.000-08:00

I think a neat think to have in a novel or a movie (or real life, even) would be for there to be a really strong gay population in a suburban town, and for them to form a Gay Homeowner's Association. Motto: "Because you can't spell "Home Owner" without H-O-M-O."

And back to work.

Comin' into Los Angeleees

2007-11-05T23:43:00.000-08:00

This Saturday was Jake's birthday, so like any good friend, I got in my car and drove for six hours to Los Angeles for his birthday party. Which was an LA-style hoot. For example, I met the guy who lived in his Nissan Sentra for a week, as well as many beautiful ladies. I also ran into a friend of my sister's. This is a guy who went on a summer camp program with Emma 9 (count 'em) years ago, and is somehow friends with Jake's friend's younger brother. Nuts. The highlight of random meetings, though, is without a doubt getting to hang out, however briefly, with Danny Leiner, director of such cinematic gems as Dude, Where's My Car? and Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. He was actually very friendly (chalk up another point for booze), and thus represented the first celebrity interaction I have ever had that went well, ending a pretty black streak that, over the years, has included:

stammering on the phone with James Earl Jones at age 13
kicking Gwyneth Paltrow in the leg (one could argue that this one did, in fact, go "well")
getting snubbed in a bar by Frank Black
awkwardly avoiding the topic of my obsessive fandom with Patton Oswalt
being called a baby koala by Harland Williams
having Jack Black go "ah, fuck!" and walk away when he caught me looking at him
having the most stilted conversation of my life with Morgan Freeman, who looked at me with eyes filled with soulful pity
being paid a measly wage to watch Glenn Close's trailer, only to have her finally give me a curt "hi" the ninth time she passed by me
telling Peri Gilpin that yes, it was all right if she used my waste paper basket
having to tell Jessica Alba that enough was enough, and that four times in one night was all I had in me

All true, folks. All true.

Halloween movie review!

2007-11-01T16:30:00.000-07:00

My Halloween was fairly lackluster. I went to a decent party last Friday. having only made up my mind to attend at about 9:30pm that night, I scrambled to find a costume. I have a bandanna that's black and red with japanese characters, and my first thought was to go as the Karate Kid. But then I looked in the mirror and realized I'm 10 years too old, 30 pounds too heavy, too hairy, and my hair's too short. Then I thought of Rambo, more suited to my build, sort of, but I'm not quite jacked enough to want to spend all night in a wife beater, plus the short hair thing still cried no. It was too late to find a wig. So, still wearing the red bandanna, I put on a red flannel shirt, buttoned the top button, got some baggy pant, adidas sandals with socks, and some chains around my neck borrowed from my roommates, and voila`! Cholo Paul, reppin' it for the bloods. Two people still asked me if I was supposed to be the Karate Kid. I don't have pictures, and I hope that none ever surface, but I looked pretty much like this.

Anyway, last night I went and saw 30 Days of Night, starring America's sweetheart, Josh Hartnett. The premise was incredibly promising and I can see it getting greenlit based solely on the idea: In the northernmost town in Alaska, the sun sets for 30 days straight every winter. During this time there is little communication had with the outside world, and only a barebones community remains. This, my friends, is when the vampires come. With a month-long night, they rule this town.

Sounds awesome, right? Well, it wasn't. In fact, it totally sucked. Here's why [spoilers galore, though I think if you're planning on seeing this travesty of a film, knowing what you're in store for might make it better]:

Most horror movies take place over the course of a day, or a night, or two nights tops. Here we have a whole month. So there were many times when it just has an ellipsis - oh, by the way, 5 days just passed, and they're still alive.
Way too much killing way too fast. The vampires wipe out 90% of the town in like 10 minutes. So now the rest of them have to survive. How? It's a little unclear. Their plan doesn't really make any sense. They camp out in an attic. Then they have to leave. Why? The vampires haven't found them. They have supplies. What gives?
One of the worst romantic plot setups I have ever seen. Josh Hartnett and his hot ex-wife (the chick who played Camilla in Mullholland Dr.) are at odds - she doesn't even tell him she's in town until she needs a ride to catch the last flight out for a month (because airplanes never fly at night). When asked to explain what went wrong, she says "It would take a lifetime to say what's wrong me and Eban [Hartnett's classy name]." Then, though, she's basically on his jock the whole rest of the movie. Everytime he goes anywhere, she's like "I'm coming with you."
Lackluster action. The vampires are all fast and vicious. Which is cool. But the movie never commits to it. Are they really fast and vicious? Then why do they toy with one lady and repeatedly bitch slap her before the kill?
Unexplained plot elements. They come across a little girl-turned-vampire in the general store licking what can only be her dead mom's corpse. After they kill her (which is pretty cool), one of them is like "Does anyone know who that girl was? I didn't recognize her." And there are a bunch of murmurs like "No, who could she be?" Viewers, you will be left wondering, as that is the last mention of that.
Also, there's an old man with Alzheimer's who is like "fuck this, I'm out of here" while they're hiding, and his son goes after him. And instead of finding dad, he gets eaten by vampires. But what ever happened to the old man? Presumably eaten.
Also, the stranger that appears in town at the beginning, who is apparently the vampires' minion, and who is by far the best character in the movie - what the fuck is up with him? He stumbles into town from a big ocean liner or something, like the vampires' cargo ship. When asked his back story, all he says is "I don't talk to dead men." Which is kind of bad ass, but I'd still like to know.
Hartnett's friend, Billy, is established as a likable, if absent-minded character. Then he disappears for most of the movie. The he reappears, having camped out in his house, somehow undetected by vampires, after having killed his wife and children because he didn't want them to "go out like that." He tried to turn the gun on himself, but it jammed. So now he's just been chillin' out in the same room as his dead family for a couple of weeks. Because when your town's been overrun with vampires who are going out of their way to kill people without turning them into vampires (because they don't want to turn them, because, no, they don't wanna, don't wanna!), it must be difficult to think of another way to kill yourself. Then you think he's gonna redeem himself, but he doesn't, and then he's partially eaten, and then Josh Hartnett chops off his head with an axe. That last part is pretty cool.
The worst end fight of all time. Worse than another shitty vampire movie, Van Helsing. Terrible choreography, awful cinematography, it's just Josh Hartnett and the boss vampire bitch slapping each other. The end fight in the Karate Kid (see above) has more drama. Also, there's one point where Hartnett lunges at the boss, and the boss dodges, throwing Josh into a car. But then the camera cuts to a wide shot, and the boss is getting up like he's just been thrown to the ground. It's called coverage, people. Learn how to shoot a fucking movie.
Additionally, the conclusion of that fight is fucking retarded. First, why did the boss vampire consent to fight Joshy all by himself when his crew is totally backing him up. Second, why do the rest of them just sort of wander off after the fight ends. Third, and most importantly, what the fuck? He just punches the dude through the mouth and out the other side of his head? Then the other vampires just walk off.
Worst ending ever. He just had to turn himself into a vampire to save the girl, right? So then, instead of being a fucking man about it and walking off alone to die as the sun comes up, he and his reconciled lady friend (talk about bad timing, eh toots?) sit and watch the sunrise. They kiss, with him holding back what now must be an almost unbearable urge to eat her, and he snuggles into her as the sun burns his skin. Then we get a close up of her crying face atop his ashy, flaking, dead scalp. The End.

And that's how you procrastinate doing your schoolwork!

My sorry plight

2007-10-28T13:10:00.000-07:00

This is pretty much exactly me right now, so it cracked me up to see this Piled High and Deeper strip. Except replace TV with surfing the web for comics and scrabble games.

Saturday night - Gradefest!

2007-10-28T03:20:00.001-07:00

There will be more pictures to come, but I wanted to take a minute and just write for a bit. It's 3:25 am Saturday night/Sunday morning, and I just got home. Am I drunk, home from a wild party? No. I was at my office at school, grading papers.
First of all, I haven't turned totally square - I was in fact at a party last night, from which I got home at a similarly late hour. Today, however, was spent proofreading for Worth, then I had to finish up grading tonight so I could devote tomorrow to my own work.
The papers I was reading were summaries of psychology journal articles by undergraduate freshmen and sophomores taking Research Methods in Psychology. TAing has caused me to rethink a lot of the assumptions I was carrying while reading all those undergrad textbooks for Worth. By which I mean I used to get upset that the textbooks were patronizing and full of unfortunate oversimplifications.

Undergraduates are, by and large, complete idiots. They are terrible writers, and they have very little in the way of critical thinking skills. The worst part, though, is that it is blatantly obvious that many of them spent very little time on the assignment. They more often than not demonstrated little understanding of the material, sometimes going so far as to get the hypothesis or basic findings of the study completely wrong. Obviously, these students don't feel a particularly strong sense of obligation to do a thorough job here.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I was totally the same when I was that age. I've looked back on some of my old college essays, and they are goddamn terrible. I always did them in a blind panic, usually not trying to actually write a good paper, but just to write enough so I would get away with a good grade. Hell, one of the main appeals of being a physics major was the fact that the number of papers I had to write was minimal. The phrase "little asshole" seems pretty apt for describing collegiate me.

I've been reflecting on a number of related things, like how the extended adolescence and our educational system, among other things, creates a culture of apathetic, entitled idiots out of teenagers and college kids. Of course, that was me and many of you not too long ago, so is it really bad? On the one hand, I still haven't figured out how to effectively organize my time or to generate an income that adequately covers my expenses. Which would be nice. On the other hand, I'm pretty OK with how I turned out, and I like many of you people very much as well. I'm gonna go with my usually answer to such questions here, which goes something like "Life is really complicated. Things are the way they are. The best anyone can do is to be as savvy as he can given the circumstances, make the best of things, and be on the lookout for opportunities for positive change. And by positive change, might I add that I emphatically include opportunities for ridiculous sex." If, god forbid, I should ever die, that can be my epitaph.

Cross Country Pics!! (Part 2)

2007-10-23T01:29:00.001-07:00

Ah, South Dakota. This state goes for over 400 miles, almost all of which is desolate and yet spattered with a canvas of knick-knack shops and corny tourist traps the whole way.

Certainly the most famous and persistent of these is Wall Drug. Before we even entered the state, we saw a sign proclaiming "407 Miles to Wall Drug!!!" Roughly every 5-10 miles, there was another sign.
Another big thing in South Dakota is the Corn Palace. The pictures I took of that modern marvel didn't hold up so well in DVD form, so let me instead tell you a story. The Corn Palace is this thing where they took a building and every year they put new mosaic art pieces on it that are colored (in pure paint-by-numbers style) not with paint but with black and yellow corn cobs. We rolled in around 5 pm and stopped in at the tourism office, which was a little shack. The man there frowned when we said we wanted to see the Corn Palace. You see, this was the final day of their annual Corn Fest, and the Oak Ridge Boys were playing the palace. Now, of course everybody in a 200 mile radius had come to see the Oak Ridge Boys play their tunes, so we weren't going to be able to get inside. As soon as we got back outside, I lit up. "Let's go see some rubes!" I yelled, and, my friends, so we did. It was glorious.
Also at Wall Drug, there's a 15-foot plastic T-Re statue that that roars and spits smoke every 12 minutes. This is prominently featured in many of their ads.
When you're driving and driving and driving and there's nothing around, so stop at all the mildly interesting bullshit that you see. This little place off the highway had a collection of petrified wood, and some other fossils, that had been collected nearby. South Dakota is known for its fossils. They had a big ol' timeline explaining how the continents shifted and over hundreds of millions of years, moving water and pressure had created these fossils.
But South Dakota does not discriminate! Right next to the timeline with all the empirically validated scientific information, was a second one that, for the skeptically minded, showed when the flying spaghetti monster magically hid all the fossils for good little pirates to find. This one is worth clicking one for the fine print.
Ah, America.

Coming soon: South Dakota (the good parts)!!!

Cross Country Pics!! (Part 1)

2007-10-17T23:29:00.000-07:00

I've finally gotten a hold of some of the pictures from my cross country trip! Check it out.
Driving is tiring. This is one of the least flattering pictures of me ever. I share it with you.
This is a cool picture I took just outside Chicago. As you can see, there was crazy traffic going the other way, due to flooding, of all things.
Illinois has this bullshit toll system. If you have I-Pass (like EZ-Pass, but, and I'm not exactly sure how this is possible or even makes sense, gayer), you can just keep on driving along the highway. If not, however, you must pull off to the side of the road into a toll-paying area. We drove past a couple of them before catching on (I never heard from my dad if he got a ticket in the mail through Budget). The kicker is that these tolls are like every 20 miles. Which means that every 20 minutes you have to pull over and wait in a toll line to pay something like $1. I now hate Illinois. You hear that Witten? Your state can suck my penis.
This is what all of the Midwest looks like. This was taken in Wisconsin, but it could have been anywhere out there in corn country. You know how there's corn syrup and corn starch and corn whatever in everything we eat? After driving through this part of the country, you start gaining perspective for how much corn there is. There is a shitload.
For reasons that were never clear at the time, we didn't make it to the Spam museum.
In the hot August sun, some cows took refuge under a tree. I thought it was a neat sight.
If you drive cross country, it is an inevitability that you will take lots of pictures of the road ahead. This was in Minnesota.

Coming soon: South Dakota!!!

The Might T-Rex vs. Squiddy

2007-10-15T14:55:00.000-07:00

Last night I held a TA session for my students in a computer lab so I could help them with online database searches. Blabbity blabbity blah. The computer lab, however, has a really big projection monitor (probably around 5 feet across, maybe 3.5 tall) for instruction, and pens and erasers so you can click on stuff by directly touching the screen. I first saw this thing a couple of weeks back when we got a lesson in using the school's online course thingie. My first thought then: Pictionary. I've been trying to organize a game of pictionary in the computer lab. So, in order to test how it would work, after my students all left I fired up MS Paint and just started drawing, using only the touch screen.
This is the result; I hope you enjoy.

Back to SF, and more Garfield

2007-10-15T10:52:00.000-07:00

The weekend was good. Went down and saw Broke and Domer in San Francisco, crashed on Nolan's floor in Oakland. Got no work done. I'm going to drown in work this week. Sweet.

Parking in downtown San Francisco - we were in North Beach, whatever that means - is a terrible, terrible nightmare. I drove around for like 40 minutes, up and down these insane hills to finally realize it wasn't going to happen and had to shell out 25 smackers to park. It was good to see Adam and Nolan. Being around guys who have stuck with doing music seriously over the years definitely makes me miss it, but whatever talent and drive you need to take that road, I don't have it. I got to play a little with Nolan's copy of Reason 4.0. I need that shit. Anyone who wants to give me lots of money to indulge all my whims, that would be much appreciated.

So, apropos of the Garfield entry last week, I found this gem among the other rad entries of this webcomic (which I found through kottke). Check it.

TGI, muh-fuckas.

2007-10-12T15:59:00.000-07:00

I can't believe it's Friday already. What an exhausting week. Too much partying going on here, it's no good for a busy old man like myself. Tonight there's a grad party at one of my classmates' house, and then tomorrow I'm going back down to San Fran to see Domer and all those crazy kids. If there's time on Sunday, we'll hit up the Redwood Forest. More on that to come.

I went out and bought a giant book on Java programming. It's for real - I actually have to learn how to do this. It's a bit intimidating - the book is over a thousand pages and feels lethal. Anyway, that's the plan for the afternoon, in addition to finding food and taking a nap. It's raining, I'm tired. Peace.

My first real trip to San Francisco

2007-10-08T22:50:00.001-07:00

On Sunday I drove down to San Francisco. Traffic wasn't bad until I got to the Bay Bridge, so I'll be looking for sneakier ways to get into the city. It may be inevitable, though.
Not having a very clear idea of the area, I parked on the opposite side of Golden Gate Park from the festival, so I had to walk for a while. Which was fine, because Golden Gate Park
is exceptionally beautiful.
The Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival was excellent. I definitely want to go back next year. I got there and caught the last song and a half of Bill Callahan, which was a nice little appetizer for his show at the Independent later that night. Next I met up with Paddy over by the Banjo Stage. There are five stages - this festival is HUGE, in addition to being free. Earl Scruggs was easing into a sweet rendition of one of my favorite songs, You Ain't Goin' Nowhere, by Bob Dylan and the Band. So that was nice. It was too bad I couldn't have gone for the whole weekend, and gotten to see Jeff Tweedy and Neko Case and Bela Fleck, among others, but I'm not a kid anymore, after all.

I spent the rest of the afternoon cruising around the festival with Paddy and his hooligan friends. A particularly nice moment was during Dave Alvin and the Guilty Men. These guys were playing in the middle of this sweet grove of some kind of big, looming trees, some sort of psychedelic blues-inspired country music. I started thinking about a bunch of the stuff that I think about - causality, the nature of the universe, consciousness, game theory, fractals, etc. And somehow it all came together and made sense in this beautiful, ever-expanding recursive fractal dynamic system. The whole thing leaves a lot more questions, but I think I've come upon a pretty good way of approaching questions that is integrative of all levels of reduction and abstraction. I should finish hammering out the details sometime after the last bit of polar ice has melted. Good times.

After all that, Paddy and I needed some food. So we drove up to Haight Street, where I'd never been and Paddy was only vaguely familiar, looking for a place to grab a burrito. Which we found. God Bless the West Coast and its Mexican food! They may not be able to make a pizza worth a damn (brief aside - pizza in Davis is fucking terrible. Seriously - the places people here call "good" is worse than the crappiest pizza you can find in New York. Now when people here say "how 'bout a pizza? Duppy durpy doo!" I have a slight cringing reaction.), but their Mexican food is awesome.

After a giant burrito, it was time to get to the show. The only problem was, neither of us knew how to get there. Well, thanks to the wonders of technology, and the power of friendship and brotherly love, Jon came through on the phone with some directions.
Despite some stomach illness on the part of Paddy, which caused him to go outside for air a number of times, the show was fantastic. This nutty old hippie played some virtuosic gypsy/spanish/psychedelic guitar, interspersed with a jokey story and boozy song that sounded right out of Tom Waits' Nighthawks at the Diner. His name was Richard Bishop. He was perfect. Then the man of the evening, Signor Callahan, totally rocked it. He didn't play as many songs off Supper as I perhaps would have liked, but it was good. Paddy said it was amazing, and he seemed to mean it.

One thing about San Francisco. I've never really spent much time there. And I recognize that the festival environment brought out people in great numbers in a way that isn't representative of the entire city a whole. But there was a vibe or some kind of energy there that I feel like I'd read about but never actually experienced. There was a real positivity and sense of community. The whole thing was free. The people were of all ages, from the very young too the very old. The vendors were local businesses, not corporate. A girl was walking around selling "herbal" cookies that packed a wallop at a rate of 3 for $10. This wasn't the false cheeriness of suburbanites briefly turned into hippies during college, and it certainly wasn't the tough, fuck-you cynicism of a New York rock show. What was most amazing about the vibe I felt at the festival is that it felt like the real thing.

Garfield: A trip down memory lane

2007-10-07T01:15:00.001-07:00

So Fringe Magazine was kind of a wash - I was unimpressed by their operation. So, for now at least, no superhip freelance culture writing, at least the kind that pays, for me. Anyone desiring to pay me, however, is urged to do so at their earliest convenience.

In other news, I was browsing through some old internet bookmarks of mine, and stumbled upon some modifications to a number of old Garfield cartoons, done by some unknown maverick of the art world. I freely admit that, as a youngster, I loved reading Garfield. Maybe it was its utter predictability, and its easy, uncomplicated cynicism. The lazy stride of Garfield pushing Odie off that table over and over could have been a comfort amidst the chaos of my ever-changing world. Coming back to it as an older and wiser me, I am forced to admit that, although going over some of the older strips can still make me smile, Garfield is a pretty stupid comic. Each panel is often almost identical, and the writing, which Jim Davis still allegedly does (having pawned off drawing duties almost since the very beginning) usually seems like it took up a minimal degree of thought. Note also the severe difference between Jim Davis' original drawings and the ones done since he started farming it out.

Anyway, I don't know who did these, but they made me laugh really hard when I first saw them, and I don't really know why. I'm just going to post them all, but in case you were wondering, I got them here.

Good times. Friday. Whoop whoop.

2007-10-05T20:01:00.000-07:00

Today was a good day. This morning we had a good discussion in class, and I got an A on my paper. Then I had a meeting with Jeff, my advisor, in which he was going to start teaching me how to do agent-based modeling (and not asian face modeling, as my housemate keeps thinking I'm saying). This was set back a bit by the fact that he hadn't set up the new computer on which he was going to teach me, so that took about an hour and half. Then he couldn't remember how to get the software working, so he took me and this undergrad who wanted to learn the program out to lunch. Then we came back and he remembered how to make the program work. It's very cool, and has a lot of potential for many, many projects. I also got his unofficial approval to work on a project coming up that would be modeling monkey behavior. This would involve spending time at the Primate Center, filming monkeys, and then making computer models of their behavior. I'm pretty psyched.

After I got home, I got a message from Kelly, my neighbor across the street. Kelly, who lives with his wife Maryann and beagle Benji, is probably in his 50s, and seems to be dying of some lung-related illness. He has a breathing tube and is often short of breath. He's also kind of the man. A couple of weeks we started talking about music, and he invited me in to see
his home recording studio, which is sweet. There's been talk of a jam session one of these days.
But that's not the awesome part of today. Kelly's friend Tim was in town visiting, and he invited me over to hang out. Tim was trained as an ornithologist, and for the last 20 years has been working as a wildlife cameraman filming birds and the life. Naturally, conversation turned to my man D.A., and Tim had met him a couple of times (said he was really nice, a "genuine human being") and claims to be good friends with the producer of both Planet Earth and Blue Planet, Alastair Fothergill. We also talked about the sad state of natural history programming in the states, and how it's impossible to get anything with a conservationist message across the airwaves. I also learned that National Geographic Television, in stark contrast to the magazine, is owned by none other than Rupert Murdoch. Which is the reason the channel is so terrible while the magazine is so awesome. I'm gonna go have lunch with them tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it.

Then tonight Marissa made dinner - teriyaki beef, broccoli, and pear crisp. In an hour I'm going drinking with some classmates, and tomorrow I have a meeting with the Sacramento Fringe, the local music/alternative culture zine, to maybe do some freelance writing. At the very least, I figure I'll get comped into some shows and meet some people who aren't grad students. Sunday I'm going down to San Francisco for the last day of Hardly Strictly Bluegrass and then to see Bill Callahan at the Independent. More on that to come.

Sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!!!!

2007-10-03T03:05:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone! It's three in the morning, and I just finished writing my first paper as a doctoral student. It's only 2 pages, so why am I up so late? Well, partly because I'm incapable of not procrastinating. For instance, did you ever wonder what I would look like if I was a South Park character? Well the wait is OVER!!!

More classes? Sign me up!

2007-10-02T07:59:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the iTunes store, and Apple in general, can do some shit that pisses me off. They definitely pissed off the people who bought the iPhone early, only to have the price drop by 33% two months later. They made me a little upset when I wanted to get Patton Oswalt's new album, since they didn't mention that the CD came with a bonus DVD not included with the download (thanks to a reviewer on their site, though, I ended up getting the CD and not downloading it).

But sometimes, pretty often, really, Apple does something cool. Their new iTunes University offers free full-length college course lecture series in video format from places like Bowdoin, MIT, Duke, Yale, and UC Berkeley. MIT's course listing seems to be the most extensive.

I know, I'm a big dork. "Ooh! Free classes!" Whatever. This is cool.

It's been a while since I've posted a good ol' political rant

2007-10-01T11:04:00.000-07:00

It's time to get political. My man Thomas Friedman wrote an op-ed piece in the NY Times yesterday that pretty much nailed it, as far as I'm concern, on the biggest issue of what needs to be changed in America.

Yes, in the wake of 9/11, we need new precautions, new barriers. But we also need our old habits and sense of openness. For me, the candidate of 9/12 is the one who will not only understand who our enemies are, but who we are.

There are, of course, real issues on the American political front. Racism. Poverty. Health care. Education. The environment. The freakin' war. And lots of little issues that are also important, such as food industry regulation, more funding for science, the war on drugs, etc. But I also think that what is lacking in today's America, most critically, is an overall sensibility of what it means to be American.

I'm not on any short lists for any type of Most Patriotic award (don't think they don't exist), but I fucking love this country. It's big, it's beautiful, it's full of wonder, it's full of all-night taquerias, and anything is allegedly possible. We've got a wonderful paradox of an ideal: an united country founded on the principles of individualism. We're about freedom, democracy, and being the best in the world at pretty much everything that matters.

Except that we also suck. Anyone who's flown overseas knows how much crappier the airport experience is when we get back. And it's doubly bad for foreigners - they have to wait in even longer lines so they can get fingerprinted, just in case they might be a terrorist.

Now, bear with me, I think this will all tie together. I was reading this other article today, also from the NY Times (what can I say, old habits die hard), about how even though we know we should stop using so many plastic bags, we don't. This, one woman's response when asked about bringing a reusable bag to the supermarket, was the kicker:

“I should, but I don’t. I’m sorry. I’m too busy. Things are too crazy. If I got the bags, I’d probably forget to put them in the car.”

It's that fourth sentence, really. "Things are too crazy." I hear that all the time, and I say it myself sometimes too. It's supposed to convey an apologetic no - "I'd love to, you know, but I just can't. Things are craaazy. You know what I mean."
And we nod and say yes, we know, things sure can get crazy. But it's also a completely bullshit excuse. Allow me to psychologize for a minute. We use plastic bags. It's pointed out that they're not good for the environment, and it wouldn't really be too much of a bother to bring a reusable bag shopping. This is a moral accusation - we're not arguing about whether or not this is true (you could argue that, but you'd be an asshole).

Now we have two choices.
Choice the First: We admit that we have been wrong, and change our ways. This means a few things. It means admitting we were wrong. It means changing our shopping routine. And it means that every time we do go ahead and forget that reusable bag and end up using plastic, we feel like a jerk. In these cases we had good intentions, but we were incapable of seeing them through. We are oafish, second-rate hacks in the game of life.
Now over here is Choice the Second: we acknowledge our moral inferiority, and continue with our wicked ways. We may not be perfect, but, after all, who is? We know we're sinners, but it's making our lives more streamlined, and everyone else is doing it too. We have our way of doing things, and we're good at it. So fuck off, ya hippie.

Just a theory. But, just to bring it back to the original point before I sign off and go do some real work, I think this kind of attitude is indicative of some of the larger problems at hand. Like, just to keeping going on this whole climate change thing, how about George Bush's acknowledging global climate change without actually doing anything? Well, we could do something, but then it would be really hard and people might not agree on the best way to do that thing and also everything we weren't doing would stick out more and we might actually have to try to live ethically, so it's probably for the best that we don't even really try. Why don't we just ride it out, what could go wrong? OK, you know what? We really should do something. But everything's so crazy now, there's just no time. (See what I did there? Yeah.)

Drinking and frisbee - college all over again.

2007-09-29T22:40:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week I organized a night out for all the first-year psychology grad students, which took place last night at a bar called Sophia's, which is also a Thai restaurant during the day. It was a good time had by all, I think, even though I drank a teense too much, but that's pretty much to be expected. Today I tried to play frisbee, but the pickup game that was alleged to occur on a certain field at a certain time was naught to be found. So John, a classmate, and I played air hockey instead at the student union.

That's my lackluster update. I need more stimulus. More input! Here, watch this.

The upcoming "rainy season"

2007-09-26T23:11:00.001-07:00

For a while now I've been hearing about this "rainy season" that Northern California gets in the winter. People here are like, "Yeah, it's risky to bike, because it rains so much in the winter." I was worried, envisioning days and days of rain on end, and dangerous thunderstorms that could take down the bell tower and kill a young girl if some idealistic young foreigner doesn't do something quick. More than once I'd checked the monthly rainfall averages on weather.com, and noted grimly the drastic increase in precipitation during the wintry months. But today I did something new: I compared it with the average rainfall in New York.
Here is the rainfall trend in Davis:
As you can see, it barely rains at all in the summertime. It makes perfect sense to call the winter "the rainy season." But wait, first take a look at what rainfall in New York looks like:
That's right. What happens during this dreaded "rainy season" is that it rains about as much as it does anywhere else normally, maybe even a little bit less.

I'm left with mixed emotions. On the one hand, I'm glad that it doesn't really get all that rainy, because that would suck. On the other hand, I really want to play the Karate Kid NES game, and like a jerk I left my system on Long Island.

Marmaduke and rats

2007-09-26T00:10:00.000-07:00

First, I'd just like to note once more that Joe Mathlete is awesome, whilst stupid fratboy dipshit imitators are not.

Today I sat through 6 hours of alleged TA orientation, which kind of sucked but at least now it's over. Also, I watched my faculty advisor kill, or "put down," a bunch of rats by putting them into basically a small plastic gas chamber and filling it with carbon dioxide. I have to admit, though, that I felt better once I learned that the rats would be frozen and sent to the Davis Raptor Center, where they will make tasty treats for some lucky birds.

I think I made a big mistake in coming to Davis

2007-09-24T21:32:00.000-07:00

I had a hard time getting to sleep last night, and I had to be at orientation at 9am this morning. I gotta say, I'm pretty beat. Tomorrow I have to be there at 8:30am, and I've condemned myself to 9am classes three days a week this quarter. My life, really, is just too damn hard. I won't lie, I've been questioning this decision to come out here to Davis for school. Will it pay off? Will this so-called "doctorate" do me any good, when I won't even be able prescribe oxycontin to squirrels, let alone people? I just don't know anymore. So you can imagine the tragic bitterness I felt when I received this letter in the mail today, courtesy of my friend and erstwhile roommate Daniel. Take a gander:
There's so much I love about this letter. The first is that not only are the careers "exciting", but there are "two" of them! Hot? That's not figure of speech, these jobs are literally scorching! However, to say there are actually two money-making careers available is perhaps not an accurate representation of one's prospectives after completing the curriculum at this fine institute. Because by "two", they probably mean a number close to two, for example, on a scale from zero to a million. The physicist in me would call that effectively zero.
Speaking of relativity, my other favorite thing is that you can make $80K-$100K in a "relatively short period of time." Really? Sign me up! Because relative to the time it takes for a dinosaur to become oil, I'll make eighty grand in no time.

Clearly, I've made a big mistake.

Continuing with this Environmentalism kick I seem to be on...

2007-09-24T02:08:00.001-07:00

Right now it's 2:08 am. My program orientation starts in less than seven hours and, predictably, I can't sleep. So why not vent my brain a bit by discussing a documentary I saw a few days ago: The Eleventh Hour. This movie has Leonardo DiCaprio's name all over it - he was a producer on it, he narrates it and he appears on camera a few times to deliver his narration head on - so I was prepared that it might be mostly a vanity piece. Which, to some degree, it is. I couldn't help thinking a few times that Leo, having lived a ludicrously lavish and overindulgent lifestyle, woke up one morning thinking he was going to be the one to tell the world the straight story.

That being said, the film has a powerful message: that we are in the eleventh hour in terms of the damage we are doing to the world's ecosystems, and immediate and drastic action is required. It did this with some emotional footage of lost rainforests and drowning polar bears, but mostly through footage of a number of scientists and activists talking directly to the camera (which was kind of irritating, though I can't say exactly why that is).

What this film actually ended up being for me was a good companion to the three-part Planet Earth: The Future, which as I've said comes on a bonus disc when you buy the box-set of Planet Earth (don't resist, just do it). The two specials actually have a number of overlaps in terms of the people they interview (including Nobel prizewinner Wangari Maathai, who is totally awesome). The Planet Earth episodes gave a very grounded, analytical view of the situation. One thing I really liked is that they interviewed people who held differing viewpoints, including a U.S. government employee who kept saying, in essence, that everything was fine while scoffing at any mention of sustainability. The message in fact might have been, in part, that there are many different points of view, and don't you forget it. The Eleventh Hour, in contrast, is much more aggressive and single-minded in its message: there's no more time, we've got to do something, aaaaahh!!!

I think it's clear that there is an imminent a convergence of crises on a national and global scale. Films like the Eleventh Hour can be good in spreading awareness and getting people involved. Clearly, the filmmakers hoped to use the name-power of Leo DiCaprio to get more people to the theater. I worry, though, that the alarmist views of the film might end up alienating people from the movement for change. Of course, given that apparently almost no one has seen it, I'm not too worried about that happening. All in all, it wasn't a bad way to spend an otherwise lackluster evening in Davis.

Paul and Dani in France

2007-09-21T22:15:00.001-07:00

My camera broke during my trip to Italy this summer, and I haven't gotten around to getting them off of my memory stick. However, I do have these pictures from Dani from our sub-trip to southern France. Check em out.

This shot was taken from the Jardin Exotique, in the principality of Monaco. You walk around looking at cacti from all over the world whilst overlooking Monte Carlo, the pimpest of cities.
Dani and me in front of the Casino Royale in Monte Carlo. They wouldn't let us in because we were wearing shorts, but the Greek guy dressed in a red velour shirt with matching alligator skin shoes, white pants, gold chains, and a combover, him they let in.

If you happen to be in Monte Carlo, may we recommend this fine hotel? I don't remember the name, but it was crazy expensive. We just snuck in to use the pool, and this old drunk British lady started talking to us about how she and her rich-ass husband lived in Monte Carlo for tax purposes (they have no income tax) and she had a membership at the hotel so she was there most days. Upon hearing we were American she said, "Ah. My first husband was Irish, and now my second husband is English. Perhaps my third will be American."
And yes, we are both reading Harry Potter because we are just that cool. So very cool.

Nice is a beach town, right? Well known around the world for being a beach town. Who'd of figure the whole stretch of beach would be covered not with sand but with huge rocks that hurt your feet to walk on. If you've got the green, however, there is a pay-only area where they've shipped in sand for you to lie on. I'm not kidding.
The Chagall museum in Nice is amazing. Before I went in I didn't think too much of Chagall. After spending a couple of hours here, I am a total convert. I am now pro-Chagall.

Follow up on Taser boy

2007-09-20T10:03:00.000-07:00

The kid is a known joker, an occasional performance artist who has video spots on his website. Great. But no one is denying that the arrest and the tasing were real. Yet, all we get from the mainstream media are snarky articles about how he's a practical joker. This kind of reporting is vomit inducing. Worst offender I found after a quick search was South Florida's own Local 10 (the incident was at the U of Florida), with the headline "Tasered Student Has History of Practical Jokes." The Boston Herald also puts the blame squarely on the student in question, Andrew Meyer: "Take that one, Taser-Boy." The New York Times gave the incident lip service but hasn't made any comments on it. I'm sure they're waiting for a cultural consensus to be reached before announcing the event as "news" in a week or two, as is their usual tactic when dealing with anything of cultural relevance. The only news coverage I could find which even suggested there were two sides to this story came, predictably, from the British press.

Of course, other, more experienced bloggers have posted more insightful thoughts that I.

Hooray for the American Stasi!

2007-09-19T23:46:00.001-07:00

In case any of you haven't seen this (it's been making the rounds on the internet and was on Stephen Colbert tonight), this is some fucked up shit. This kid was cocky in the way only college kids can be, but it's amazing not only what the cops did but that nobody did anything to stop it. Sure, somebody filmed it, but how bout a little help, huh guy? Also, you can hear John Kerry in the background addressing the kid's question, when what he should have been doing is telling the cops to let the kid go. John Kerry had very little of my respect before, and now he has none. The whole time I was watching this I was like "Come on, people! This is bullshit! Get up and kick those cops' asses!" It doesn't matter who said it - All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.

Place your bets

2007-09-19T21:44:00.000-07:00

Hey, remember when I was all like, "I won't need a car, 'cause Davis is such a big biking town"? Yeah. Funny, that. Well, it turns out that Davis is also in the middle of fucking nowhere, and getting anywhere outside the city limits requires the use of an automobile. Public transportation, you say? Har dee har, I say. The sprawl of Sacramento limits the value of the bus that only goes to the Airport and city center, and as for San Francisco, at $17 each way (including a transfer halfway), Amtrak can suck my balls. Also, my mom's friend Betty, a very fine lady, told me I could go to her house in Lake Tahoe any time I wanted to unwind for a weekend. This is an excellent offer, but was a little hard too follow up on with no way of actually getting to Tahoe. So, with a little preliminary help from my loving and forgiving parents, I went ahead and signed a contract today on a 2007 Toyota Yaris. Go me.

I didn't really mean to buy it, to tell the truth. I went in today having every intention of merely checking out my options. This, of course, is sheer folly for the solo shopper. But I have no regrets. I bought a car that gets 40 mpg highway and got a reasonable monthly payment.
Now the race is on: Which will I finish first, my PhD or my car payments? Place your bets.

OK, I have one quasi-regret. It's not a full regret because it saved me several hundreds of dollars, but to do so I had to agree to take the car that was on the lot. Which was white. So I have a white car. Future project to save for: paint job. Too bad they're taking Pimp My Ride off the air.

There are some perks about living in the sticks

2007-09-17T12:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I tagged along with my housemate to the UCD Vet School's tri-annual Sloshball game. Much like regular kickball, but runner's must chug a beer at 2nd base (where there is a keg) before they can advance to third, and all all the fielding players must have a beer on their person, which they cannot put down to field. I'm afraid I got sloshed. Good times.

No Lost till February 2008? What?!

2007-09-16T12:41:00.000-07:00

For real. At least according to the TV Addict. Sad times, people.

This blogs spawns a new blog!

2007-09-16T11:40:00.000-07:00

Like cellular mitosis with excess mutation caused by a rampaging local power plant, this blog has spawned another, from my old friend Brandon who writes a touching tribute to yours truly. Sycophantic? Not to this this egotist. Nope, it's naught but pure gold.

Paul was quite the Renaissance Hipster before that was a dirty word, and together we shared many marvelous nights of stoned inebriation, white boy soul, and all around filthy rock'n'roll behavior.

Brandon, you're a prince among men. A frog prince perhaps, but hey, so was Kermit, and he was a pretty cool cat. Stay groovy.

Sometimes I get all depressed about the environment

2007-09-16T00:03:00.000-07:00

So what prompted me to start writing this blog was to have a space to bitch about the state of the world. It's weird how I can just go about my day pretty normally, often feeling like I have nothing to do (which is a hard feeling to shake when you're in Davis without a car and your work and school haven't started yet, but nevertheless...), and then sort of all of a sudden I feel like something must be done, by God!

I've been reading Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. I'm still getting through the first section (of three), and he's been going into pretty much every aspect of the corn industry, the history of corn, and the impact it has on both nature and culture. Like how everything we eat has corn in it, and the farmers are producing more corn than we can use, so industry and government just keep on figuring out more and more uses for corn. It's been especially impactful since I just recently drove across the country with my father in order to get my ass out here, and though we didn't pass through Iowa, the state Pollan talks about specifically, we did see a hell of a lot of corn nonetheless. Minnesota claims to be the land of 10,000 lakes, but at least along I-90, it was pretty much the land of endless cornfields.

Incidentally, I want to do a number of posts on the trip, because I think I have some great pictures, but I'm waiting to get them back from my dad. So that's gonna have to wait.

Okay. So then tonight I start watching the bonus DVD of the BBC's Planet Earth. The series is, of course, amazing, but I've been putting off watching the last disc, which was exclusive only to the DVD box set, titled Planet Earth: The Future. There are three hour-long episodes on the disc, and I watched 2 of them. It had footage from Planet Earth interspersed with interviews with scientists and other experts, tied together with some thoughtful narration (though not by David Attenborough, since he was also being interviewed). Did you know that 25% of all mammals, 33% of all amphibians, and 70% (!) of all plant species are currently endangered? Well, they are. The grim but very reasoned discussion of the changing ecosystem and the loss of biodiversity was pretty heartbreaking.

Someone should alert the NY Times.

Anyone who has any suggestions of how to make me feel better about this - I'm all ears.

It has begun!

2007-09-15T23:48:00.000-07:00

I've been threatening to do it for years. Now, that I've moved from bustling New York to remote Davis, California for graduate school, I'm feeling a need for an outlet for my random thoughts. This is it.

In case you were wondering, the name Square Off and Share comes from an album title I came up with when I was making music with Adam N., aka Domer. The front of the album would feature the two of us fiercely staring the other down over a pile of something, perhaps money, perhaps legos, and on the back we would be joyously sharing whatever it was between us. One day I'll have to get such a thing made for this site, should I stick with it. Anyway, consider this the groundbreaking entry.