Escape Validity

An Economist's Bedtime Story

2010-03-08T18:04:00.000-08:00

1. People tend towards talking about things in absolute terms because doing otherwise requires more energy-consuming real estate in the brain.
2. Some people live according to a fortress of rules that they build for themselves.

Combining 1 + 2 can yield resolute resolve across a myriad of topics, currency chief among them, such as this scrooge-tainted mandate:

Restrict money coming in from particular revenue streams to being spent only on related expenses. For example, from tomato sales at the local Farmer's Market, buy materials for a greenhouse expansion. But the relation between revenue stream and expense need not be so direct. The relation could be as weak as hinging on a word's multiple definitions: from the cash collected mowing neighbors' lawns, you buy an eighth of grass.

I think I probably stumbled across this idea through the strategy I strive for when playing warfish. I like to allocate to a particular continent bonus armies obtained as a consequence of occupying that entire continent. Publicly sharing warfish strategy doesn't concern me because my opponents should know this could all be misinformation.

Alas, it's not long before the mischievous twins, Dirty & Rhyme, conspire to spoil the good fun with a twisted one: use money earned donating sperm to purchase fucking time with a prostitute. Afterwards, lay there with yarbles destitute.

Or two, one less than too few: set aside funds coming in from payments of child support to press charges in court against the man who made you a victim of chikan, the one who softened you by pretending to be on the girls gone wild film crew.

Sinus Congestion On The High Seas

2010-02-07T13:27:00.000-08:00

Some of the people who spend time in my field of view are such colorful characters that they demand formal documentation, much like Darwin upon discovery of a new species in the Gálapagos.

I once saw a lost mariner drowning in the disorientation that is solid land. Thin, small, middle-aged and unshaven, he scampered aimlessly, light-footed, and unbalanced, like Gollum. Wrapped round his neck hung a flickering strobe light, nicely juxtaposed by the well-lit building interior he occupied. While all of the aforementioned was visually interesting, it was perhaps outdone auditorily by the soundtrack to schizophrenia emanating from a short-wave radio he wore on his jacket: a repeating, static-riddled weather transmission "20 knot winds..kshh...80 nautical miles Northeast of Kodiak..kshh." He shouted gibberish into a phone that probably wasn't listening.

Coughing or sneezing in the vicinity of tens of sitting strangers begets more of the same from them. Lecture and concert halls are particularly vulnerable settings. When a period of audience silence is broken by a single nose/throat disturbance, one or two others in the audience usually follow suit, domino-like, in a reaction that on the surface mirrors the contagiousness of yawning. But where yawning is largely out of one's control and is motivated by some biological need, coughs or throat clearing that are 2nd or 3rd in a series are usually imparted onto the crowd on account of a primitive, petty consideration, as if to say "My respiratory tract air discharge is louder and more disruptive than yours, bitch." Thus, the source of the last outburst in a series is the silverback gorilla and dominates, until an irritated throat emboldens a lesser audience member to threaten the hierarchy. Importantly, there are two unspoken rules that limit the amount of disturbance an audience will tolerate.

1. The first disruption must be legitimate, as from an allergy or cold.
2. Back and forth battles are not allowed, any audience member wanting to show their stuff has only one opportunity to shine within a single disturbance series.

Movie theaters offer an interesting twist: the breaking of audience silence may be initiated by a character in the film. For example, when I saw The Road, several audience members felt their dominance threatened by the pneumonic father character's coughing fits.

Goddamn Religion

2010-01-24T15:39:00.000-08:00

Before discarding as completely useless a belief you don't believe in, consider its worth as entertainment. Unproveable yet deeply held convictions, and variations on them, can represent fertile ground for quality daydreaming.

Consider the premise of an all-knowing god who orchestrates everything, from people's decisions to where on the ground a falling leaf will land. One implication is that diseases and natural disasters are similarly willed. When good people are subjected to suffering and untimely death, accusations that God is a fucked up bastard sit restlessly at the tip of the tongue, kept from being spoken by the fear of an eternal, hellish retribution.

Given Earth's large population, the intricacies of biology, and the plethora of activities that constitute modern living, each new day brings with it a nearly countless number of misfortune-yielding options from which this twisted fuck of a god can choose. The celebrated, centuries-old paintings rendering the god in human form give a green light to its personification and make it easy to imagine Him reclining in an easy chair considering an array of screens.

Let each screen display in real-time the current happenings in one person's life, such that the number of screens equals Earth's population. Powerful note that irrefutably and completely addresses a potential point of contention regarding this unlikely scenario: since He is God, He can process the continually evolving information on all of the screens simultaneously in a way that leaves supercomputers speechless. Also, let it be known that He, and all references to Him, receive a capital H (or G, if referred to by name), even in mid-sentence, because He is special (He rides the short bus to Sunday school).

Now then, back to the screens. It's natural to question how He decides which misfortune-yielding options to choose and which to pass up, but I don't think speculating on an answer adds anything to this daydream, so I'm ignoring it. As for why not all options are chosen, which would unleash maximum misfortune, well, "you have to build them up to tear them down."

What I find interesting is what must happen when He considers screens which display fast-paced activities like highway driving. For simplicity, consider just two screens: in one, God has the option of sending a deer running onto the road to be hit by a car, and in the other He has the option of willing a drunk driver to swerve into the oncoming lane at an unfortunate time. There are options within these options. For example, exact location of deer on road and whether or not it kicks up its hind legs to meet the windshield; call these 2nd order options, as opposed to 1st order.

Choosing one 1st order option (drunk swerve or deer run) over the other necessitates that each option's misfortune potential be evaluated at the same timestamp. Choosing to set in motion option A at time t=5 when option B's misfortune potential was evaluated at time t=6 is like comparing apples and running (thanks, wikipedia). To summarize, in this example there are two cars simultaneously traveling down highways at different locations on earth. In order to choose one unfortunate accident over the other, God must evaluate each 1st order's 2nd order options sequentially and beginning at the same timestamp each time.

Two notes:

1. Depending on the level of detail required, it's entirely possible to consider nth order options.
2. The option ultimately selected by God may not necessarily be the option with greatest misfortune potential, for reasons similar to those responsible for "you have to build them up to tear them down."

I thought I had come across a discrepancy. On one hand I'm saying God is capable of processing all incoming information from an array of screens equal in number to Earth's human population. On the other hand, I claim God must decide on a time in the future for initiating an option in order to allow ample time to evaluate each option's misfortune potential. At first, it seems that if God is capable of the former, the time required to evaluate each option's misfortune potential should be so small as to allow options to be chosen or discarded as soon as they are discovered. However, I no longer think there's a discrepancy. The information processing and option evaluation tasks must take place concurrently. The possibility that if all God's resources were moved from the former to the latter it might result in options being chosen/discarded upon discovery is irrelevant because option evaluation is occurring in addition to, not instead of, information processing.

Whether there is or isn't a discrepancy is not the point. The point is to daydream. Practically-minded individuals may want to link their daydreams with the "real" world. The above is relevant to closed systems. Feedback and feed-forward mechanisms require information processing and option evaluation.

Smoke, Sniff, or Syringe Inject

2010-01-16T14:01:00.000-08:00

One of the staples of air travel is selling out to a corporate giant: every refreshment napkin received on this trip prominently featured Coca-Cola. Delta's napkins could've even come from a restaurant, as the airline had no presence on them whatsoever. Instead, two red coke bottles bordered by fireworks bursts and the words "open happiness" attempted to bait travelers into consuming the carbonated syrup. It's a fucking shame.

Bronze busts of dead war men look out over a memorial ground covered in white powder. The snow blowers weren't brave enough to defeat the metal post barriers and trespass onto pedestrian-only paths.

As our length of stay drags on, a sense of confinement grows stronger. Classmates with cars are targeted for superficial friendship. Soon, leaving the base daily becomes the norm. One night, we dine at the high noon, a quintessential, rustic, all-american feed-barn. In the bar on the other side of a separating wall, the evening's entertainment is karaoke. An unfortunate majority of the people with wheels are enthusiastic for the stage, so after plates are cleared we embark on a short migration and take new seats in the smokey, loud dive. One after another, serious amateurs predictably dismiss most of the available karaoke tracks in favor of crooning only those belonging to the country genre. While in the middle of a verse, one gentleman belches into the mic, an action that receives applause and nicely summarizes the ambiance.

Unwilling to shout above the noise, and aware that sitting quietly without participating in any sort of activity would draw annoying inquires regarding my well-being, I order a cocaine shooter to look after. In the interest of prolonging my drink's lifetime, I allow minutes to pass between taking sips gingerly. It tastes fine but could've used more coke. I stir it occasionally with the pair of narrow, red straws. Melting ice cubes dilute the top layer and keep it deliciously cold.

Visible Hearing Aids Encourage Loud Conversations --> Listen To The Nonverbals

2009-12-29T21:09:00.000-08:00

The intended recipient of a solicitation for attention is made aware of the situation, and of their role in it, through means other than just the solicitor-spoken words.

Consider five people standing in a semi-circle formation, equidistant from, and with backs facing, a sixth person who shouts "Hey, you!" For ease of communicating the point, give the five semi-circulars different color shirts, and let the sixth person's exclamation be an address to the semi-circular wearing the green upper. Even though the outburst contains no words specifying which of the five it is directed towards, the green shirt wearer will have a stronger sense than the others that s/he is being spoken to.

This means that information is being encoded and transferred in more ways than by spoken language alone. On the surface, this conclusion should come as no surprise, as the sizable niche carved into common awareness for the notion of nonverbal communication can attest. Still, for all that the term could encompass based on a by definition perspective, in popular usage it refers singly to visible communication information.

But the green shirt wearer's strong sense that they're being spoken to can't be chalked up to visually captured information because they, like the other semi-circulars, have their back to the speaker. There's something else happening, neither auditory nor visual. It's akin to telekinesis' 2nd cousin.

Sea Life With Life Jackets and Fuselage

2009-12-06T21:01:00.000-08:00

If you're drinking water, it feels like a liquid. Alternately, if you managed to escape through an emergency exit the cabin of a doomed ocean-crossing airplane but forgot to locate an unsupplied parachute, the calm waves feel more like cement when you land.

Let's take it to eleven: a sea otter floating on his back still feels as though he's partially submerged in a liquid, even as he watches your body splatter flat on the surface as if you had jumped out of a skyscraper and landed on Broadway Avenue. This example illustrates the concept of regions of experience, which I like to think of as a far-reaching phenomena that is at play in a great many areas. For example, I would consider the portion of special relativity dealing with the frames of reference of objects in motion to intersect the regions of experience phenomena. And, more than an intersection, the sea otter thought experiment belongs to a subset of the phenomena dealing with the perspective-dependence of water's state of matter. I don't know whether it's significant that the intersection and subset share speed as a fundamental component, but it's probably worth noting.

Establishing the fact that a person's perception of water as a liquid or solid depends on their speed prompts two questions:

1. If a person's body could withstand the hardships of flying hundreds of miles per hour through a large cloud, would the person feel as though they were underwater?

2. Does a high velocity object create an as yet undiscovered state of matter when it collides with a solid?

These questions assume that increasing velocity corresponds to the perception of matter moving in the gas-->liquid-->solid direction, as is suggested by what we know to be true in the falling airplane passenger case.

A note of clarification on question 2: given that the sea otter in the airplane example never perceives the water as a solid, any new state of matter beyond solid resulting from an object's collision with a solid would only be perceptible to the object itself.

If the answer to question 1 is true, one may wonder by extension whether flying through the cloud many times faster would result in traversing all the way to the other side of the states of matter spectrum, so that the perception was of colliding with a solid. If this is also true, and it likely is, then one can definitively say that a person can perceive a gas as any of the principle states of matter naturally occurring on earth and that their perception is a function of their speed relative to it. I add the 'principle states of matter' and 'naturally occurring on earth' qualifiers because plasma is the most common state of matter in the universe but accommodating it in this post would require excessive writing for only a small return on investment.

A final comment. We know that decreasing velocity doesn't correspond to the perception of matter in the solid-->liquid-->gas direction. Usually, you can obtain a physical behavior's opposite by reversing the math governing the behavior, but even adding a minus sign and making the velocity negative doesn't help in this case because we know that the speed-dependent gas-->liquid-->solid state of matter flow is independent of the direction of the person moving through the matter. Maybe Stephen Hawking can solve this asymmetry.

The Archer Missed The Apple

2009-12-05T21:41:00.000-08:00

There are often many ways of modeling the same thing. Models are inherently inaccurate, but the best are those which combine an acceptable degree of inaccuracy with a significant reduction in complexity. It's obvious that the theorized output of a system depends on the model used to represent the system, but it's nonetheless an important point. It's a point that makes choosing a model akin to medical researchers brainstorming clinical trial designs or fiction writers selecting from an array of metaphors: each available option will alter the results in a unique way, will emphasize some aspect of the output.

And with that introduction, check out my drawings of arrows pointing towards and away from a brain.

This first image represents the brain functioning under normal conditions. The incoming arrows originating from the left represent sensory stimuli, the incoming arrows originating from the brain itself represent internal thoughts, and the outgoing arrows represent speech, muscle movement, or some other interaction with the external environment. The real attraction of using models is the ease of exploring the results of what would be prohibitively expensive, immoral, or physically impossible in the real world. For example, consider the drawing below, which represents the expected result of instantaneously placing the test subject in a sensory deprivation chamber.

The incoming arrows representing sensory stimuli have necessarily disappeared. The shock of the transition has also resulted in the absence of the arrows representing interaction with the external environment. The presence of internal thoughts is unchanged and, while the nature of the thoughts has probably changed in reaction to the new environment, this model doesn't reflect that level of detail. The dashed lines and question marks shouldn't be interpreted to represent the likely state of the test subject "what the hell just happened?" Instead, I drew them in to personify the brain receptors/order issuers who are normally occupied receiving/sending signals throughout the nervous system. This intermediate and unstable state leads to the final drawing, which exemplifies the adaptability of the brain in seeking to achieve a state approaching normalcy.

Visually, the coarseness of these models suggests that there is no difference in capability between the receptors/order issuers and those portions of the brain involved in internal thought. It follows, then, that increasing internal thoughts, as illustrated above, satisfies the question marks of the previous illustration by requiring the participation of both the receptors and order issuers. The outgoing arrows are included for good measure to account for the possibility of the subject beginning to talk to themselves after several hours in the chamber.

Secondhand Smoke Shakes Firsthand Experience

2009-11-19T21:54:00.000-08:00

In spite of all the negatives that tarnish much of the advertised allure, there is at least one societal benefit to the existence of smoking as an activity. That it is an intangible benefit and is consequently difficult to quantify should not be interpreted to mean that its impact is negligible. After all, many of life's most meaningful aspects are priceless.

Each day, the world over, one of the most repeated questions between strangers is "do you have a smoke?" If the person questioned replies in the affirmative, the ensuing act of generosity transforms the entire exchange into an invisible thread that weaves the participants into transient amicability. Given that a chemical dependence is involved, I'd guess that, while active, this thread is stronger than the fiber woven by random acts of kindness. The cigarette provider is arguably as happy to give help as the receiver is to accept it. This is chemical dependence related, too: the provider has no trouble sympathizing with how the receiver feels because they have often felt the same way, and knowing that they are enabling the hunger to be satisfied is like taking a drag themselves. Meanwhile, the receiver looks forward to inhaling cloudy poison and gratefully thinks "during my darkest hour a stranger came to my nicotine fix rescue." Similar effects result from the "do you have a light?" query. And even though these interactions are fleeting, their sheer number, combined with their biological-addiction-attributable strength, must surely mean that they have an influence on establishing the norms for how the world's populations interact.

For the pessimists among you, I offer the paragraphs below. They detail two escapes from the bonding of strangers happening in the paragraph above.

Rather than seeking to alleviate the smoker's nicotine cravings, the cigarette provider might only be handing over the cig because they want to passively help the smoker die. The idea that a non-smoker would carry a pack of cigarettes in order to contribute to the early demise of those who request cigarettes of them is both twisted and unlikely. It's an idea, however, that's deserving of its own quotation. "A smoke? Sure, I would be happy to withdraw from my pocket and hand to you something that will increase your likelihood of developing cancer."

The larger threat to the stability of the strangers are kind assumption is that the person seeking to bum a cigarette will believe they are being lied to when the person they've approached claims to not have any cigarettes in their possession. For symmetry, a quote, representative of what the liar (if they are really lying) may be thinking to themselves, follows. "While it is in my power to do so, I do not believe that alleviating your suffering is worth the price of even just one of the many cigarettes I have tucked safely away in my jacket. Your present condition warns me of how I may feel in the future, and I should like to have the necessary tobacco resources to be self-sufficient when that time comes."

Don't Fuck Yourself Like A Narcissistic Benefactor

2009-11-11T21:56:00.000-08:00

Priceless inquiry overheard in the workplace: do coffee, chocolate, and cocaine all come from the same bean? How appropriate that it was a Central America native in an adjacent cubicle who set the sorely misinformed employee straight.

Being put on hold after dialing a military base building phone number, the soundtrack is a cross between a brass marching band and the orchestral backing of a 1930s Disney cartoon. This differs from the music of choice for private sector phone holds: the same soul-less jazz and lobotomized pop that is favored by airplanes waiting on the tarmac.

To the productivity-minded question "what are you working on?" one of the most underrated answers that satisfyingly conveys the semblance of work being done is "I'm on hold."

Instead of completing in bulk all of the day's tasks that require walking, skilled desk jockeys spread these out over the eight hours to promote blood flow, the same way you're encouraged to periodically get out of your seat on a trans-atlantic flight.

Chunky peanut butter exists so that after you finish a jar of smooth peanut butter you are afforded marginal excitement when purchasing a replacement jar of the other variety, and vice-versa.

Remove from the processing line all of the peanut pieces that would normally have been destined for a jar of chunky peanut butter. Crush them into a smooth paste and add this instead to the jar, such that a purchaser would be perplexed at the discrepancy between the labeling and what was inside. Is the resultant level of peanut butter in the jar higher or lower than the level in a jar of identical dimension filled with smooth peanut butter? In other words, does a jar of one variety require more peanuts than a jar of the other? I'd guess that smooth pb requires more peanuts, but any difference is evidently insignificant enough to allow the same nutrition facts to apply to both varieties. Or, possibly more accurately, the difference in nutrition information isn't great enough to warrant the investment required to print a second set of labels. That's a weak argument, though, since most labels are single wrap-around sheets which have already undergone significant redesign to differentiate them from the other variety. Relative to a color scheme change and the replacement of the large script word 'smooth' for 'crunchy', a new number for milligrams of sodium costs pennies. Of course, none of this shite matters, and I've written about it more as a cautionary example of why food should only ever be eaten in places where you're afforded clear views of the outdoors.

Bitter Wind Blockade

2009-11-06T02:10:00.000-08:00

What's scarier: unexpected turbulence or turbulence announced before it strikes? That the latter will be severe is suggested by the fact that cockpit instruments could measure it and that the pilot considered it worthy of mention. If the former is severe, one wonders why an announcement beforehand wasn't made, i.e. what sort of undetectable air pressure system anomaly is this?!

Bed & Breakfast with eggs benedict in the morning. Average quality.

The wind was strong on base, maybe 25 mph. It howled through a crack in the door for the duration of the charrette's first day.

Attendance: approx. 20.
Equipment: projector and screen, nearly as many laptops as people.

There was a lot of talking. The attitude was positive, with light laughter occasionally elicited when PG-rated humor colored the discussion.

Two people were flown up from Seattle to perform value engineering and be facilitators. It became clear to me that their presence was hardly necessary.

Notable examples of the emptiness of their function:

1. The enthusiastic outburst by one "That's an action item!" followed by their jumping over to a large presentation-style paper-leafed tablet to write down something in big letters.

2. The outsider-status-betraying and seemingly verbatim extract from a course text on facilitation tips "Do we need to make an assumption in order to move forward?"

I wouldn't be surprised if half of the justification for their contracted hire was that it reflects well on the project manager. Still, maybe it's worthwhile to have a charrette organized and led by a semi-independent 3rd party. I don't really know, and I don't really care.

Galaxy Reduction Resume

2009-10-31T18:29:00.001-07:00

Disabled a victim nest
using twigs to fuel the torch light
sorting veterans by lost limb
sending them back with homeless birds

Drew inks in water, led to thirst-battling drinks
querying skipper on squid locale
diving to retrieve black bladders from tentacle depths
replenishing arsenal of bold coloring dyes

Converged disparate information
removing spaceless places
shrinking original dimensions to a small dense mass
marking lines of intersection with bullet points

Found grass-infused socks (full of muster)
accented with a salt wick
chlorophyll dirt white cloth
a nutritive base for future growth

Void was a compressed generic beast
left post on account of disagreement with right orders
first evaluation was a missed touch positive
sighted aliens in a neutral territory, peacetime negotiations

Organized virus versus bacteria melee
balancing size on numbers, one thousand to one
limiting replication till after bout rounds
ensuring fight fairness, spectator enjoyability

Compared partitioned domains for complimentary pear tree sanctuary
overlaying grid system on root network
estimating receptivity of insect populations to planned planting
finding ants partial to pear juice

Customs standard interpol security
bribery via vanilla creme custard dish

Shocking Marine Airlines

2009-10-24T22:13:00.000-07:00

On balconies overlooking beach sands
iced drinks rest on banisters
or in the hands of drinkers
who kiss the rim and take a sip
just as soon as they’re aware
that they are hot again

Two drinkers, each in turn,
compare the colors of their drinks
to that of the surrounding ocean waters
and wonder,
does sea life grow tired of living in blueberry daiquiri?

“But don’t,” she says, “tire your faculties with questions of insignificance”
and, to add firm closure to her remark,
slams her drink down with a thud
an action humorously at odds with the softness of her voice

And as she reclines there tanning nude,
your eyes get fixed on the evolution of waves
the way the water gets bit
at some point on its journey
and subsequently develops rabies
and foams aggressively on the sands

These Glasses Reflect Stares

2009-10-17T20:19:00.000-07:00

Following is among the most offensive things I've written here. First, some background.

Remember in one of the Harry Potter flicks, where Harry is battling Voldemort from a distance? Their respective magic powers are conveniently manifested as sorcerous energy light beams of different color. The beams meet somewhere in the middle, the forces of good and evil clashing in electric plasma chaos. Each participant grimaces for the strength required, and the implication is that if the location where the beams meet is forced all the way to the wand of one of the participants, then that person will die or at least be defeated. It's essentially arm wresting for magicians, where the meeting of energy beams directly in the center is equivalent to the forearm plane being perpendicular to the table. The use of this method to communicate to audiences the metaphysical strength of characters relative to each other is nothing new. On the contrary, it's been a staple of Saturday morning superhero cartoons for decades.

There are people walking this earth who have nothing behind their eyes. The most dangerous of these are those whose entire visage is affected by the disability. Note: the people to whom I'm referring are not sufferers of down syndrome or other clinically recognized mental deficiency. They're dangerous because of what happens if your eyes meet. It's hard to look away, probably for the same reason that someone witnessing unspeakable horror finds themselves unable to do anything but keep witnessing. Now, what happens the instant their eyes lock with yours is this: a metaphysical battle of the kind described above is initiated, with the invisible energy beams emanating from the eyes. While the term 'battle' suggests either participant could win, I can't fathom what it would mean for me to be the victor. Moreover, in my experience I've taken a purely defensive role in these tenths-of-second silent interactions, hoping the beam meeting location is kept at a sufficiently safe distance from my eyes long enough for me to break the stare and turn away, thereby avoiding neurological harm. That's right, I'm convinced that losing these battles results in the shriveling of dendrites and axon disassembly.

Monday's Document Aged Till Friday

2009-10-10T20:49:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, upper management is not well enough aware of their employees' backgrounds that they'll delegate a task ill-suited to the worker's experience. In such cases, it's easier for the employee to accept the new job responsibility than to respectfully refuse it on the basis of being under-qualified. Reasons for the ease of acceptance/difficulty of refusal:

1. Refusal on said basis implicitly challenges the supervisor's knowledge of what the capabilities of the people they supervise are. This is an embarrassing situation for any supervisor to be put in and, in an effort to remove themselves from it, they may make a penalizing action against the employee, stubbornly steadfast in their belief that their original task delegation was without flaw.

2. In the culture, there is a strong perception that career progress correlates with added responsibilities. While generally true, the perception fails for refusing to acknowledge the importance of being able to discern justifiable responsibilities from those that aren't. Consequently, the false premise that, in order to advance, all responsibilities handed down from above must be accepted has a controlling presence in the work environment.

3. The likelihood that the employee will successfully complete the task if they refuse it is zero. In accepting a task they've never had any experience with, there is a chance, however small, that they'll succeed.

In a cold, money-driven outlook, management's motivation for assigning more responsibility may be to determine the maximum work output they can extract from each employee in the standard 40hr work week. It's the only definitive way to deduce each individual's work limit. Until an employee accepts added responsibility and subsequently fails to meet all their commitments, they may only have been working at 85% capacity, just short of the target upper nineties.

I saw a cute thing the other day: a mother with her two children, maybe ages five and three; the daughter looking after her younger brother protectively, pulling gently at his jacket for him to sit down next to her.

On The Edge Of Relevancy

2009-10-02T21:17:00.000-07:00

One of my ongoing projects is to work through end-of-chapter problems in my EE textbooks. The reminiscence of this activity to late nights spent making mentally taxing progress on homework during past school years is obvious, but now the problem solving is accompanied by an ever-present sense of accomplished inconsequence. The feeling is strongest when I encounter a problem that I'm unable to solve. Where before, this result might have been a seed of anxiety, my impression now is that in some way I've already conquered the problem by virtue of having graduated.

I'm at work now, writing this in a notebook, and someone talking on the phone in a room near mine just exemplified a type of communication error that I've noticed is not uncommon here: the speaker articulates incorrect and specific information (e.g. calendar date, specification #), quickly identifies their mistake, and articulates the correct information. Misspeaking is liable to happen when avoiding loss of conversation control takes precedence over accuracy of information shared, which is especially the case in meetings between owner, contractor, and sub-contractor. Avoiding loss of conversation control is usually achieved by not allowing pauses in oration to surface, and where a pause to fact check/access memory would normally have been, the filler information might be false. The cynical, unfortunate thing about misspeaking is that, even though the speaker quickly corrects their error, the initial and false utterance often leaves a stronger impression. Correcting the error is like using Wite Out on a document: the reader can tell that there was something else there before, and the new thing that is there now does not seamlessly replace it.

Closing Eyes To Open Doors

2009-10-01T00:29:00.000-07:00

Every day at work there are lulls where I'm left on my own to spend an hour or two as I wish. I've heard from former interns who recall with theatrical exhaustion the weeks they spent in certain departments without being tasked with anything, and how their time in these departments was characterized by boredom. I don't think I could get bored if I tried.

Whether they know it or not, many people are grateful for the negative connotations boredom has and that the term is linked to the outward appearance of doing nothing. These conditions make boredom indistinguishable from internal reflection from the point of view of people on the outside and, consequently, a prime candidate for enabling the avoidance of situations that would encourage internal reflection. Whereas a person's stated goal of avoiding situations conducive to reflection would be frowned upon, a stated goal of avoiding boredom would be met with approval and the allocation of resources to aid in the goal's achievement. Playing this sleight of hand, no matter how second-nature it has become, is an acknowledgment that they know they're not being honest. Their shameful secret is that they don't want to be put in a situation conducive to reflection because it's been so long since they've listened to themselves that the barrage of thoughts would be overwhelming and they're afraid of what they would hear.

If I want to be reminded of reality's humorous fragility, I lean back in my chair in my office and remember living in a homeless shelter and sleeping on a mattress that was inspected for bed bugs.

Often, during the lulls, I'll write or draw things to be later added here. I need to buy a scanner. Today I drew some brains with arrows pointing into and out of them. Also I drew a 2-D graph with Susceptibility To Being Dominated plotted against Time. Those posts should show up next week.

A girl who used to be my friend continues to regularly check this blog even though we're not on communicating terms. She says she reads it to make sure I'm not going to get on a plane to try and see her. Two things about this that render it pointless: 1. Her fear will never be realized because she wasn't comfortable for me to be around, I don't know her address, and I don't want to see her again. 2. While I write lightly about what's happening in my life, I'm guaranteed never to share every flight itinerary I have in the future, and some trips will likely only be mentioned and written about after I've returned from them. While odd, it doesn't really bother me that she keeps checking this page; I guess I'm mostly surprised that, even without contact, I can influence a former friend's behavior that much.

That last bit about flight itinerary was intended as a segue to the following. Travis setup a couple Thought Trade shows, so I'll be flying to Fairbanks sooner and more frequently than expected. Mark your calendars and come see us at The Marlin Nov 14th and Dec 12th.

Breakfast Table <--> Work Desk = 1hr

2009-09-23T21:59:00.000-07:00

When the automatic sliding doors at the downtown transit center open or close it sounds just like a barista turning the steam on full wide to heat up milk. That an actual espresso joint exists near one of the entrances is an example of a society-provided source of free amusement.

It's deliciously awkward when a passenger pulls the cord for a drop-off request and, before reaching the designated drop-off point, the bus has to slow, stop, and wait in front of a red light. "Damn, yo. Bad timing on the cord pull. You got schooled." As the bus sits in idle watching the flow of perpendicular traffic, the relentless push of the clock assaults the ding and automated voice declaration "Stop Requested!" that had accompanied the pulled cord, trying to force these auditory cues into distant memory, no longer relevant by the time the light turns green. Still, bus drivers rarely forget to pull over after they've crossed the intersection.

There are always at least two other passengers who get off the bus with me at my morning drop-off location outside the gate, so I've left it to one or the other of them to pull the cord. I'm drowsy in the mornings, enveloped in an invisible cocoon; it's too early to force my fingers against the tight pressure of a plastic string. Besides, if I pulled it even only a couple days in a row, it would set a dangerous precedent, the other passengers expecting me to pull the cord each morning thereafter. The routine nature of the morning commute introduces some awkwardness of its own: since the bus driver, passengers, and bus stop are all reliably the same each morning, it shouldn't be necessary for the cord to be pulled at all. Think of the hundreds of "Stop Requested!" declarations that could be avoided if the bus driver took a moment to say that pulling the cord was unnecessary, "I know you all get off there." Maybe he wouldn't feel right about providing passengers information that cuts the corners of his own employer's written procedure for how to get off the bus where you want. Maybe he's in love with the imaginary woman behind the voice; I guess as a bus driver you would have to at least like her. Maybe at the end of his shift he just stands inside the bus pulling the cord again and again to hear her voice, pulling quickly before she's finished speaking so that all she says is "Stop, Stop, Stop."

In at least one driver, their nicety communication is tied more strongly to their repeated physical action than to what is spoken to them by the passengers. The other day, a passenger getting off the bus said something like "have a good day" to the driver, an utterance that was not acknowledged for an awkward duration until, in conjunction with his opening the door, the driver said "have a good day" in a tone that was kind but seemingly oblivious to what the passenger had already said.

Last week on the bus an attractive girl asked me, in Polish, if I was from Poland. I've never wished more than then that I knew the language.

I've bought my tickets to Fairbanks for Nov. 25-29.

Fun With Probability

2009-09-21T23:38:00.000-07:00

What better way to follow up a post involving the acronym RIP than to write about murder? Consider the Venn diagram below. The blue circle is the likelihood that I'll be murdered. The orange circle is the likelihood that I'll become a serial killer.

That I've made each circle the same size is purely for aesthetics and is not a reflection of the relevant statistics. While on the topic of appearance, the orange and blue color scheme was chosen for the visually assertive quality typical of complimentary color pairs. The black which denotes the overlap was a substitution for what would probably be a displeasing bile-brown.

An intuitive cornerstone of probability is that the likelihood an event will occur decreases for each additional criteria necessary to define the event. This truth is illustrated in the Venn diagram, where the overlap of the two circles, which represents both criteria being met, is smaller than each of the individual criteria circles. I don't want to be murdered. My risk of being murdered is greatly reduced if I become a serial killer.

One may rightly question the validity of this model and ask "isn't a serial killer more likely than an average member of the general population to be murdered, since their intended victims will presumably act in self-defense?" I would attempt to address this legitimate query by proposing the following subjective qualifier: serial killers are murderers who, when engaged in their illicit behaviors, take measures to ensure that they are never at a greater risk of being murdered than an average member of the general population.

If someone were seriously considering becoming a serial killer, isn't writing about it in their blog one of the stupidest and most easily avoidable self-incriminating things they could do? Well, not necessarily. It depends on how sophisticated the investigators are willing to believe the suspect to be. The almost inconceivable idea that blog entries concerning illegal activity were not the creative outlet of a harmless individual but rather the self-documentation of a real criminal is itself material for a defense attorney. Then again, prosecutors might argue that using such an argument as a defense had always been the original intent of this person sitting here before you who deserves to go to jail. Pretty soon, the whole affair becomes very reminiscent of that scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail with the guy having to decide from which goblet to drink to avoid being poisoned, and the endless circular logic that that entailed, and all for naught!

There is a gaping hole in this whole business, however. Being murdered is largely up to chance, whereas becoming a serial killer is a choice; two vastly different categories. Putting these incompatible criteria together on the same Venn diagram doubtless breaks countless rules and makes the pioneers of probability theory turn over in their graves. RIP indeed.

Dead in the ground, with a portfolio

2009-09-18T22:12:00.000-07:00

Opinions you have about anything are reinforced each time you share them with another person. Possibly because my working hours are spent deep inside an acronym mating ground, the titles I've decided on for the concepts responsible are Repetition Influenced Perspective (RIP) and Combative Human Assailed Stock Market (CHASM).

RIP: Leave a prisoner confined to a solitary cell with an automated voice repeatedly telling him through a wall speaker that his name is one it isn't and, eventually, he'll break and accept the speaker-spoken name as his own. The timing here is critical; continue to subject him to the same treatment even after he's accepted his new name and you've made a vegetable of him, if he wasn't one already. A similar thing is happening, albeit in a far less severe manner and, significantly, with control of the wall speaker being delegated to our internal self, when we hear ourselves express how we feel about something.

CHASM: Simply by listening passively, the person you've shared your opinions with has invested in your honesty. Each opinion shared is a different stock, and the more you share about how you feel, the more shares of you they necessarily buy. Stretch the metaphor to its limits: if it comes to light that you have lied, the price of the associated stock falls and, like the real markets, can trigger a widespread crash, since the truth of the other opinions you've shared is suspect. The more people you talk to = the more investors you have --> the greater the repercussions of a crashed market. No one wants to walk around feeling undervalued. Sorry about the puns, I hate them too, and you can invest in that.

The Evolution of Time

2009-09-11T01:44:00.000-07:00

Time passes faster in the mornings than it does in the afternoons. An 8 hour shift beginning at 6 is brought to its end more quickly than one beginning at 9.

Reasons for why this is the case are too numerous for me to completely list here, and come from a wide array of specializations including philosophy, psychology, neurology, botany, and cultural studies. One reason, put forth by the linguistic community, is this: in the alphabet, the 'A' of AM precedes the 'P' of PM and, in the minds of the masses, there exists a correlation between cumming first and being faster; they are something like cousins. Further, when enough people make the same assumption, it becomes the truth.

It's a complicated matter: while always faster, the degree to which AM time passes more quickly than PM time is not a dependable constant and cannot be counted on. The military, desperate to force time into a predictable nature, created a system absent of letters. The initial result of this strategy was the result hoped for: seeing only numbers, the linguists reluctantly withdrew their passage-of-time justification and bowed out of the scene. No sooner had they left, however, than the military's cheers and jubilance was immediately subdued by the arrival of the mathematicians, who pointed out that the smaller numerals precede the larger ones on the real-number line.

Time's faster morning-hour passage was preserved. Guns and artillery proved no match against these wicked instruments:

Paint No Sign, Signal

2009-09-05T12:10:00.000-07:00

My driving instructor raced cars in Germany four decades ago. He teaches a very precision-oriented, methodical, and engineering-friendly approach to vehicle maneuvering known as reference point driving. Rather than be at the mercy of the optical illusions associated with gauging distance by looking at objects through windows and in mirrors, reference point driving uses the intersection of road/curb lines with well-defined locations on the car to complete accurate turns, stay centered in lane, parallel park 5" from curb, etc.

I almost always find the obliteration of ambiguity attractive and, from an engineering point of view, I'm very glad to have been taught how to drive in this way. I passed my driving exam with a comfortable buffer of points to spare. After the exam, he went into the Anchorage Driver Training office and then returned to the car, sitting once again in the passenger seat, with the paperwork I would need to present to the DMV for my license. I was still behind the wheel, but asked if instead he would drive us there. Though getting in an accident while on my way to the DMV for a license after having minutes earlier passed my driving exam was an amusing possibility, I was by this point both hungry and thirsty and was not interested in doing anything to put quenching these biological demands at risk, no matter the richness of the action's potential irony.

I've failed in my short-lived attempt to sever communication with my family.

My sister's last week in Boston was marked by the arrival of our parents there for the occasion of a relative's wedding anniversary and altogether large family gathering. Recently, she visited three colleges in the area: Williams, Bennington, and Middlebury, liking the latter the most. The beyond-words enthusiasm she expresses when trying to describe its campus induces smiles. She called me for help finding the email address of the professor of a class for which she is currently enrolled at UAF, to let them know she'll miss the first day on account of not arriving from Boston until the weekend. When I got off work and was back at my apt. I called her, ready to relay the information, but it was a bad time to talk. The three of them were in a car on the freeway, my dad driving and growing more irate as he didn't know which exit to take to get to the restaurant where they were supposed to have shown up to dine with relatives some time ago. His agitation was not helped by my sister laughing in the back seat.

I was to blame for some of her outbursts. When you spell out something letter by letter over a phone, it's unlikely the person on the receiving end will accurately reproduce the series. To further avoid miscommunication, I made a condition that all the words representing letters would be animals. Thus, mzhou@uaf.edu became monkey-zebra-horse-otter-underdog @uaf.edu. She retaliated that the 'u' should be unicorn. My dad's frustration culminated with his shouting from the front seat "Goodbye, Aram!" Shortly after, my sister said, concerned, "I have to hang up, he's going to get in an accident."

Shrug, walk away

2009-08-31T20:15:00.000-07:00

My employer's logo is a castle. It's not as glorious as having my own castle ruins to live in would be, but it suggests that things are moving in the right direction on that front.

I relish the 25 minute walk between the building where I work and where the bus drops me off/picks me up near the security gate entrance. In the mornings, the cool, grey, early dawn breeze is so enlivening. The overall chilly temp clashes with my hoodie and windbreaker layers, yielding a hybrid sensation of cool warmth that's addictive. Walking is often nearly meditative, and I wouldn't be surprised if it were in some ways therapeutic. Occasionally, a vehicle slows and the driver offers me a ride. When I respectfully turn them down, they roll away perplexed, unable to understand why anyone would choose to walk when wheels are available.

If a bed is your only furniture, it becomes a quicksand trap for sleep. The other evening around 8:00 I was lying on it fully clothed and wearing my jacket, looking up at the ceiling, and then I woke up after midnight.

I've since moved into my new apartment, the duplex in a residential neighborhood instead of the high-rise studio room with a faceless, corporate landlord. The numbered portion of my street address can be read as a 4-bit binary number and, if so read, its decimal equivalent is both equal to:

1. the first (or second) half of how the number is likely to be audibly described to someone seeking directions, where the other half is the other half repeated and
2. the number of the base which, by definition, corresponds to decimal numbers.

1010, "ten ten", base 10

Looking At Ourselves Standing Inside The Mirror

2009-08-22T14:12:00.000-07:00

The characteristics of a person's body, the fairness of the face they wear, the sound of their voice; while some variance is possible through diet, surgery, and smoking, these physical attributes are largely outside the realm of modification, and they at least partially inform the personality of the person to whom they belong.

People run round, scrambling, trapped in a body that they wish was not theirs. They shout through a megaphone to all who will listen "Fully half of my stress stems from my outer appearance not jiving with how I feel on the inside!" It is ironic to take care of oneself (eating when hungry, sleeping when tired, etc.) if one's greatest personal enemy is one's own body. The logical, if twisted, resolve to this conundrum of competing interests is to declare war on the enemy, to engage in regular bouts of self-harming; a hopeless fight against DNA, launched with an arsenal of razors, eating disorders, and a myriad of potent pills.

Who we are is reflected in each interaction we have with another person. This is why someone who has had few social interactions in their life will have a personality that is comparatively less stable and more malleable than someone whose identity is regularly reaffirmed by the same group of friends. This sets the foundation for two potentially dangerous situations:

1. Isolated individuals who are ceaselessly drifting, unable to "find themselves"
2. People who, while intricately woven into a strong and frequently maintained social web, are perceived in a very different way than how they perceive themselves, so that the identity reflected back onto them is not the identity they wish to project onto others.

drink this drink

2009-08-15T14:53:00.000-07:00

five pence and a pint of porter
that is what you're owed

when the bees have rolled their wings in the sand
when their honey is wet, not sticky

I've lost my mind in this move
it's worse than lost, it's damned

shove a lit tapered candle into a wall outlet
the room lights flicker in ecstasy
that's called an incestuous personification of visible spectrum radiation

I wish the girl illustrated above walked past me on a daily basis as a purely coincident consequence of the intersection of our commute to work schedules. A relationship built on the cumulative effect of seeing each other from a distance, approaching one another, and walking past each other day after day. A relationship developed entirely by non-verbal means. It would be even better if she were sleeping next to me. Alternately, I might wake up and she's not breathing. I put my arm around her and draw her against me, whispering "Are you alive, or am I suddenly a necrophiliac?"

Pictures Of My Pad

2009-08-01T18:20:00.000-07:00

Apartment hunting took little more than two days. Before I left Fairbanks I thought I'd get a place in the Government Hill neighborhood since it would just be a walk from work, but three things converged to result in my never even visiting the complex: I never heard from them after faxing in my application, I learned from a few people that Government Hill is like Mountain View minus the guns, and it’s on the opposite side of base from where I’ll be working, so not really a walk afterall.

I saw all manner of places, from elegant mansions to total dives. A tour of the 5 bedroom house in the doctor/lawyer neighborhood was given by the oriental equivalent of Smithers. He had an unnerving way of saying some of the same things 5 minutes later, smiled too often, came across as someone who doesn’t know how to deal with bad news, is a clean freak. The place gave me a bad vibe, something out of the twighlight zone. Even though it would’ve been the cheapest option, it was immediately removed from consideration when I learned that none of the roommates were girls.

The poor condition of the shit-hole residences was never suggested by the exorbitant monthly payments the landlords were seeking. In one decrepit dump sporting broken floor tiles a humorous exchange took place, beginning with my father’s inquiry loaded with faked interest “When will this place be ready to be moved into?” and ending with the landlord’s reply, “Well, it’s pretty much ready right now.”

Also looked at some properties managed by Weidner Apartment Homes, a huge company that has something of a monopoly on the major apartment complexes in town. The nice, if sad, thing about dealing with a monopoly is that the application process is the same everywhere and the $25 background/credit check fee need only be paid once, since every property uses the same results. One of these Weidner apartments turned out to be my temporary 1st choice.

The last place I looked at was the best; a 1 bedroom in a triplex owned by a person, not a massive apartment housing company. 725 sq ft, all utils included, huge back yard, quiet neighborhood, and about $300 cheaper than the 420 sq ft studio apartment that had been my prior first choice (I don’t even smoke pot). To top it off, the landlord was a very reasonable, easy-going guy. If I’d gotten the place I’d have questioned life more than I already am. What happened is, even though I was approved to lease (as was my father, in case my lack of credit history required that he co-sign), the girl whose tour of the place was ending just as we arrived was approved as well. In the interest of objectivity, the landlord gave her the lease option first, and she signed it that night. Apparently, she’d been apt. hunting for 2 weeks! She probably deserves it more than I do; I’ve been having more than my share of good luck this spring/summer.

That night we stayed with Katie and Doug. It was great to visit with them after so long. I’m glad they’re here.

I’ve neglected something worth mentioning. The easy-going triplex landlord felt bad that I’d just narrowly missed out on the apt., and wanted to make sure I had something else lined up. We told him about the studio apt., but stressed that we liked the 1 bedroom more. I need to give my dad credit, it was probably through his communication ability that the landlord, after several minutes of conversation with my father, offered this juicy morsel: his Yugoslavian parents have a duplex not far away that they’re looking to rent out beginning Sept. 1st. Minutes later we’re following him down the road as he leads the way towards his parent’s place. We pull into the driveway and check the place out. He says the only downside is that it’s fully furnished. His parents occupy the other half of the duplex and are both home now. He asks them if it’s alright if we come in, they say yes, we talk for awhile, interspersing words with smiles, a joke that “we’re Yugoslavian, we’ll give you the shirt off our back, but if you’re trouble we’ll take you out into the street and shoot you.” My father and I agree it’s better than the studio: larger, cheaper, quieter. So, basically, I’m only staying here in the studio for August (I signed a month-to-month lease).

Even given the advantages of the 1 bedroom with Yugoslavian neighbors, my dad can see that this studio will be a hard place to leave. It’s in a building very recently built, radiant in-floor heating, rooftop patio, in-suite washer and dryer, granite countertop, a pretty luxurious place. It also has a bed that pulls down from the wall, I sleep on the mattress in my sleeping bag. This should suffice for your daily dose of irony: my non-driver status had no bearing on my being assigned a parking space in the indoor garage. I’ll be parking the vehicle I don’t have in space #13, a number of superstition. I’d like to have Fridays off, working a compressed schedule of 10hr days Mon-Thurs.

I already like the big city more than Fairbanks. There are so many great places to eat, entire grocery stores that put Fred Meyer’s natural foods section to shame, at least two theaters that show movies for $3, clean ocean air (clean being a relative term, used here relative to the quality of what is often breathed in Fairbanks…smoke or ice fog, take your pick), an actual downtown, a more liberal populace, a more happenin’ scene. I think people here are generally happier than people in Fairbanks. Evidence of this was hidden in my father’s comment that he finds Anchorage drivers less aggressive.

I bought a bus pass for the month. I’ll be deciding on a work schedule on my first day, I’m guessing. The earliest bus could have me at work by 9:00, but they want me to arrive at 8:00 on Monday, so I planned to bike in. Then, someone who works for the USACE called and said he’d heard I was looking for a way to get to work and offered to pick me up on his way. WTF?