Sourav: Friends

While standing in the grocery checkout aisle this morning I noticed that all the magazines are acting as if Barack won the Democratic candidacy. I've been out of the news loop this last week - did he secure some kind of Democratic vote minimum? Or is this just best-guesswork?

(I saw no mention of this on my regular newsfeed. And I can't exactly Google "Barack Obama" in search of any particular news item.)

Some life lessons, smuggled in the form of weekend anecdotes:

Learn Enough Dance to Dance to Funk / Soul; Everything Else is Wasted. Well, okay, and the bare minimum of dance required to get married in the States. But so few places bust out any sort of swing worth swingin' to, and salsa can only be found in seedy gin joints with knife artists in sharkskin suits. But if you're ever in Central Square on a Friday night - like I was for Rachel R's birthday - stop by the Cantab and listen to Diane Blue and the Fatback Band lay down the oldest and greatest. "Dancing in September," "Knock on Wood," and maybe even a little James Brown for you. Really - all you need.

Pick a Party and Stick With It. I left Rachel's celebration midway through to see if anyone had camped out at 90's Night in Allston. Had I called ahead I could have saved myself the trip - the cool kids had been crowded out by the BU kids. After waiting in line for a minute and confirming the situation with Matthew, I returned to Cambridge and closed out the night at the Cantab. I probably missed a lot of prime dancing thanks to my indecision and I will regret it until the day I die.

You Build a Surprise Party with 90% Discipline and 10% Innovation. I went to a surprise party with Kym from work on Saturday evening. Kym's friend Allie had been planning this for about a month and had gone above and beyond to keep everything quiet. But it takes more than just secrecy to get a surprise party going. So, that afternoon, she recruited Kym's landlord, who called Kym and told her that a burst pipe had flooded her closet. She hurried home and found us waiting.

Never Drink On An Empty Stomach. Seriously! Never! What did you think would happen? And no, two plates of tortilla chips and a bowl of creamy dip do not count! And no, a single slice of a pulled pork quesadilla does not count! How old are you? Have you learned nothing? Seriously! It's like I can't even look at you!

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Last night's delicious irony: Watching Disney's animated "Sorcerer's Apprentice", then within half an hour bailing out an overflowing sink with ersatz buckets.

(Upside: since I had help from mixophrygian, it was sorta fun.)

Lately I've been doing all of my (very excessive) linkwhoring on Google Reader, but I thought this article was great enough to make a special livejournal post about.

From Cato, via Reason, the Cult of the Presidency, by Gene Healy.

It's an essay about how the American presidency has evolved from a post that was little more than an executer of laws and watchdog into those reasonable among us know and loathe and fear today.

"The chief executive of the United States is no longer a mere constitutional officer charged with faithful execution of the laws. He is a soul nourisher, a hope giver, a living American talisman against hurricanes, terrorism, economic downturns, and spiritual malaise. He—or she—is the one who answers the phone at 3 a.m. to keep our children safe from harm. The modern president is America’s shrink, a social worker, our very own national talk show host. He’s also the Supreme Warlord of the Earth.

This messianic campaign rhetoric merely reflects what the office has evolved into after decades of public clamoring. The vision of the president as national guardian and spiritual redeemer is so ubiquitous it goes virtually unnoticed. Americans, left, right, and other, think of the “commander in chief” as a superhero, responsible for swooping to the rescue when danger strikes. And with great responsibility comes great power."

I think I might read the Federalist Papers as one of my summer projects.

The above is an old Zen saying that poetically encapsulates what's referred to in Western philosophy as the problem of free will. The problem being that there is no problem: we obsess over freedom because we're little creatures who feel acute awareness of our constraints, yet we could just as well look at it from the other direction. Imagine a being with no constraints -- God, if you like. For such a being "choice" is as meaningless a concept as it is for the simplest deterministic system, because choice presupposes degrees freedom within constraints. It can't make choices because it has no choices to make, like someone adrift in deep space with no objects to push off of. Beings much closer to omnipotence than ourselves might well wring their proverbial hands over the problem of constraint.

After an early-morning stop at JiffyLube (at which the cashier/mechanic offered to replace my automatic transmission and radiator fluid for $230), mixophrygian and I zipped down to San Diego in nigh-record time. Thither we met up with integreillumine and neoteny for a fine crepe-filled brunchfast in Del Mar. Fortunately we preceded the onslaught of Mothers who wished to celebrate their Day, and had a peaceful time.

(En route, E and I took advantage of a rest stop to make our respective Mother's Day calls. So to all the kind friends who have taken it upon themselves to remind me that it's M-Day every year, rest assured that I won't have to write another I'm Sorry I Missed Mother's Day Song in compensation for forgetting.)

Next stop was the One Zoo To Rule Them All, where we joined with starling321, Rob-whose-LJ-identity-I-forget, their young'n Will, and dozens of free-roaming peacocks to explore the Aminal Kingdom. Highlights included otters (of course), hyperactive arctic birds, and cute deerlike things. Lowlights included a Tapir who greeted our arrival with a JET SPRAY OF PEE against the rockface directly behind. Tapirs aren't exactly swoon-inducingly pretty to begin with, and this behavior easily made it the Least Appealing Animal At The Zoo.

Back at chez neoteny we enjoyed two or three episodes of both Star Blazers and Invader Zim, neither of which I had seen before. Both are really darn good, in their respective genres. I'd only caught a few episodes of Star Blazers as a kid, but found I still remembered the theme song pretty clearly. Invader Zim was entertaining both in its own right, and in that I suddenly understood the icons of half my friends list. It was also a blast to hear so many voice-over actors from Psychonauts again.

Drove home safely. A fine day overall.

Strangemaps.wordpress.com is very cool! It has all kinds of interesting graphical displays of information. Some of my favorites:

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This weekend media blow drew the black marble:

Battlestar Galactica: I have been greatly impressed by the depth of writing this season. You can always count on BSG to throw in plot twists and sudden traumatic developments. That doesn't take much in the way of skill. But the last couple of episodes - particularly "Escape Velocity" and "Faith" - have really floored me. Little details, like the offhand mention of the "Mithras cult" in the former or the understated symbolism with Anders in the latter, show me that the writers know what they're doing.

The Office: Back up to speed in a strong way. I'm pretty happy with them. "... and then you said, Pam, Pam, Pam, and then you sneezed in my tea, but you said not to worry because it was just allergies."

30 Rock: I think the shortened season hurt these guys more than anyone else I watch regularly. The last few episodes I saw seemed rushed and heavy on exposition. The penultimate episode - with the mystery sandwich shop, and Floyd's random visits - felt so weak I worried that I'd recorded the wrong show. But the season finale won me over again. "There's not actually a leak. We've done a study."

Redbelt: So a David Mamet movie about jiu-jitsu instructors draws me in like black tar heroin, and I fulfilled my obligation this weekend. (Read more - no spoilers!)

At a wonderful party on Saturday, I learned that there are several people who have not availed themselves of the (only) master work of Jean-Claude Van Damme, the Muscles from Brussels. This must be remedied.

I speak, naturally, of Sudden Death. Terror goes into Overtime. See JCVD in a Penguins uniform, and what the Civic Arena looked like when the roof was open!

Date: Sunday, May 18th
Place: My house, 1021 Edgewood Rd., New Kensington
Time: 7:45 pm. (a.k.a. after War Practice)

I know, Game 5 of the Penguins series is that afternoon. I have to make a caveat, then: if the Penguins game goes into overtime, I'll postpone it. Feel free to bring snacks, but don't feel *obligated*. Please comment if you'll be attending!

I read two fascinating books recently. I would bet that you have all heard of one (and I know at least one of you has read it), and that almost none of you have heard of the other (I told one of you, though).

The book you have heard of is The Feminine Mystique. I learned about it in high school, but never read it until now. I learned a lot from it about conditions for middle-class women in the fifties and early sixties, and what really surprised me is that while some arguments in the book could be looked back upon with a mentality of "I'm so glad we don't do that now", other arguments Freidan brings up are still being debated. Despite the flaws in the text, it gives a good perspective on both how far we have come and what challenges remain, and the advice near the end of the book is constructive for anyone.

The book I doubt you have heard of is Covering, by Kenji Yoshino. The author is a Yale law professor and a former poet, and as a result the book is one of the best syntheses of fluid, beautiful prose and solidly reasoned argument that I have ever read. The main thesis of the book is that the acceptance of a minority group into the mainstream is in three stages: Conversion (what you are is inferior and that's all there is to it), Passing (don't ask, don't tell), and Covering. Covering as he defines it is hiding parts of yourself that are not accepted in the mainstream, which applies to both minority groups trying to fit in and non-minority groups in unusual situations (a nice example of this is single dads). He sees the acceptance of gays, women, and racial minorities to be in this Covering stage, where people are often asked to hide parts of themselves or be subject to consequences. There were positive messages about the importance of accepting others and the need to not be required to cover--Yoshino sees this as the new stage of the civil rights battle. But what was alarming for me about the book was the examples he gave; as a law professor he gave many examples in the form of legal cases, mostly in the last 15 years but many from the last five years. I did not know that the court has helped people lose their children or their job teaching children for not hiding their homosexuality, or upheld the firing of women for refusing to wear makeup, or the firing of blacks for not changing their hairstyles to traditionally "white" hairstyles. In general until quite recently the idea was that if you are being asked to cover and you possibly can, the court would rule that you are obligated to do it. This was really shocking to me, especially how recently this was.

What was also really interesting is that when he discussed women, he said they were the only group covering that he knew of which was subject to both covering and anti-covering demands from the majority group. What that means is, while for a racial minority they are asked to act white by the majority white group, but lambasted by their minority if they act "too white"; women in careers are asked to hide parts of their gender identity (for example, not take too much time for pregnancy/childbirth and hide evidence of parental responsibilities) but are also taken to task by the same people for not being feminine enough (women will often get passed over for promotions if they are perceived as being too aggressive or frigid, which basically means not being a pushover). What I liked about hearing this was that it put a categorical description to behavior I've seen a lot of times, from many different sides. And I've said it before but I'll say it again--legislation to help women in the workplace helps some men as well, men who have outside interests or want to actually be fathers or any number of other things. The basic idea of the book was that we should be accepting diversity, which will make everyone more productive and capable of pursuing what they want, and it was presented in such an eloquent and well-reasoned fashion that I wish everyone would read this book. Really.

In no particular order:

- This morning, brunch at the C&O Trattoria with museumgirl and mixophrygian. This helped mitigate my guilt at not having taken latter there during her last trip. Of course, we waited for the servers to bring out the Infinite Free Garlic Rolls at 11:30.

- On the premise that no trip to Los Angeles is complete without visiting a film shoot, I took mixophrygian to a shady residential street in NoHo to watch some pickup shooting for an internet series I'm scoring. As it was a guerilla shoot, the street wasn't blocked off. Periodically someone would yell, "Car!" and everyone would shuffle to the side. I was handed a camcorder and asked to contribute to some of the "making of" footage, which was fun.

- Yesterday, in view of the inclement weather, we replaced our planned beach day with Make Up Day As You Go Along Day. This resulted in a subway trip to the L.A. Library (to get more opera videos), dinner at Souplantation (to compensate for recent gluttony), and several episodes of Dual Music Nerd Theater, where we plugged our respective headphones into mixophrygian's audio interface and shared music with each other, taking turns at picking the next item out of our iTunes libraries. We listened to (among other artists) Suk, The Jellyfish, Nina Gordon, The Ben Folds Five, and Bartok. Later that eve we also listened to Beethoven 6th while reading the score. I am not sure greater music-nerdity is possible.

Yesterday, in the process of editing I must have hit the "publish" button which is adjacent to the "save" button, because Tash and I discover, perhaps an hour later, that an early and faulty version of our "pull-ups how-to" post got published to the Vcrossfit RSS feed on LiveJournal.

Damn.

Once a post gets published to this RSS feed, there's no pulling it back. I fixed the minute syntax error that bust the entire post in about 10 seconds, and saved, and went to check that that fix propagated. It didn't. Eventually I deleted the post, but once that RSS post is published, it's gone, no bringing it back, no fixing it.

Anyway, I published the correct version tonight. Please check it out at Valhalla CrossFit, some photos of me and Tash in there, and greatly improved text over the first version.

Could anyone volunteer to make a -- strange -- image with photoshop? It would involve a just-barely-safe-for-work girl's backside, clearly showing her lumbar arch, and you'd have to create a tattoo right there on her lumbar arch. Not simple to do. Let me know if you'd be willing to try this, we'll discuss it.

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While I'm here, I need to qualify that last post I wrote. Virtually repudiate or rescind it.

I now understand that I was severely overtrained and desperately in need of rest and recovery. Symptoms, beyond pain and weakness, included some depression. I'm pretty sure much of my experience for the past couple weeks was due to this lack of recovery and cumulative physical effects.

Tash has RXd five days of rest for me. Icing the shoulders, too. I wasn't happy about this, I'm still not, but --- I just felt what a single day of relative rest has done for me, and I'm feeling much, much better --- I can practically feel my shoulders knitting back together.

Tash and I also succeeded in getting a bit more food in our diets the last 2 weeks. With the extra calories, I put on 2-3 pounds, and I'm up to 205 lbs now. This is probably a good thing, as my exertion level is screaming for that extra muscle.

Nora A. Murphy - Appearing Smart: The Impression Management of Intelligence, Person Perception Accuracy, and Behavior in Social Interaction

I imagine that those immune to the illusion get annoyed and might even interpret it as attempted deception.

Dear The South,

Would you cut it out with the tornadoes? You're screwing up my beach weather!

Mike

w00t. The new issue of Berkeley Science Review is finally up with my article.

My article is here but you should check out the rest of the issue as well.

Also, I've started writing my first journal article. I have just a bit of grading to do and then I'll be completely done with teaching for the rest of grad school. Thank fuck. And the undergrads will be gone soon. The campus will be beautiful and quiet.

w00t.

I am doing my first show ever tonight at the Grove! Okay, so I have a tiny part, and I won't even be on the stage - I'll be on the rooftop waving a flag - but this will be the biggest production ever staged by our aerial school.

The series grand finale will take place Saturday, May 10 at 7:30pm with an exclusive, one-time-only aerial performance inspired by Canada’s Northern Lights. Produced by Hollywood Aerial Arts, the show will feature acrobatic aerialists presenting a stunning dance, music and light show inspired by the 47th Parallel’s spectacular Aurora Borealis. The show will include a dazzling array of aerial and acrobatic routines, music of Canadian artists and kaleidoscopic lights as white and sliver-clad performers are suspended in front of a glittering sky backdrop and a dazzling colorful lights display is projected directly on them to achieve the look of the Northern Lights. Attendees should be prepared for a show-stopping grand finale, the likes of which have never before been performed at The Grove.

Come on down if you can make it! The show is free and starts around 8 o'clock, but get there early to stake out good seats.

More info at:
http://www.thegrovela.com/events/mall/2008-05-10/
http://www.hollywoodaerialarts.com/

This is hilarious, especially the animation. It's actually the basis of some really silly litigation. I love how all the commenters are trying to be the wronged townspeople in a science fiction movie.