One of the things we talked about in a meeting today was about people being guided by their relationship with the divine. Not that there's anything wrong with that, this being a religious school, but given the history of civilization, it seems like the type of issue that is unlikely to be workable when you are talking about about a group of more than, well, one.
A big question in this debate is, how do you incorporate atheists into this discussion? What is an atheist's relationship to the divine? I'm not exactly an atheist, but I'm not a true believer either. So what's my relationship with the divine?
I am embarrassed to admit that the best encapsulation of my religious belief is what they call The Force in Star Wars. I'm not talking about "May the Force be with you," which is just a pseudo-mystical way of saying "Have a nice day." I'm talking about the way the Force is initially described, as an energy field created by all living things, that surrounds and penetrates living beings and binds the galaxy together. George Lucas said he got the idea of the Force from another futuristic film, where it was roughly equated with God.
So it appears that I have a relationship with a roughly equated with the divine-like thing, I suppose, and I daresay that that goes for many of us who don't think of God as an old man in the sky. What's important in the original statement is being guided by that relationship, not the relationship itself. I guess that's kind of what I do, given that I try to live by a simple moral code. Since that code (and moral codes in general) revolves around my relationships with other people, rather than the divine, I can honestly say that I am guided by a sense of being part of something bigger, something that exists only because we will it to exist as living creatures.
Yes, I am aware that this makes only partial sense. I'm not very good at that spiritual philosophical logical argument construction stuff. What I am better at though is treating people the way I'd want to be treated, and trying to leave each situation I encounter better than I found it. And I can settle for that.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Choir attire
We're a pretty musical family. My kids especially like to sing, and one has been bugging us for years to allow her to join a local group. And this year, now that she can drive herself to rehearsals, we've allowed her to join. She's very happy doing this and the choir is really good, and we knew there would be some level of parent involvement, but we were completely unprepared for the cultlike aspects of being a part of this.
I should have known it would be like that when I saw that they referred to the girls as "choristers." I understand that this is an actual word, but it isn't one I'd encountered in the first 55 332/365 years of my life. The first thing that started were the e-mails. They come, several times a week, with details of concerts and everything about he concerts. Then came the uniforms. Then the calendar, then a series of calendar updates, modifications and clarifications. And then the meetings (I am currently sitting in what could be called either a double meeting or one long meeting, which started at 10:30 and runs through 12:15 on Saturday morning(!)). You learn that being the parent of a chorister is a state of mind, requiring an orientation that choir is, if not the only thing, certainly the vital center of the kid's life.
Now we're in the midst of fundraising hell. Obviously, an organization needs money, so we're going from one fundraiser to the next. My favorite so far is the cookies. Somebody knows about this bakery in another city that makes cookies. They are vanilla cookies with a big gob of chocolate icing on them. The number of announcements and amount of meeting time spent on these cookies is astounding. A few weeks ago I went to (somewhat shorter) back-to-back meetings, first for the whole group, then for my kid's particular group, and then another 3 days later. There were announcements about the cookies at all 3 meetings, and it was actually scary how scripted the announcements sounded. I know that, aside from being indescribably delicious (the woman sitting next to me did not agree), the cookies "make wonderful hostess gifts" and that they "freeze wonderfully." These exact phrases also appear in multiple follow-up e-mails. I can just see the glassy eyed choristers, traipsing from neighbor to neighbor, endlessly muttering "Make. Wonderful. Hostess. Gifts. Freeze. Wonderfully."
An afternote- the cookies arrived today. They look like vanilla cookies with a lot of chocolate icing on them, come in cellophane packages with printed labels on them like supermarket cookies, and would make (based on my non-WASP limited comprehension of the phrase), completely uninspiring hostess gifts. I have no doubt that they freeze wonderfully.
I should have known it would be like that when I saw that they referred to the girls as "choristers." I understand that this is an actual word, but it isn't one I'd encountered in the first 55 332/365 years of my life. The first thing that started were the e-mails. They come, several times a week, with details of concerts and everything about he concerts. Then came the uniforms. Then the calendar, then a series of calendar updates, modifications and clarifications. And then the meetings (I am currently sitting in what could be called either a double meeting or one long meeting, which started at 10:30 and runs through 12:15 on Saturday morning(!)). You learn that being the parent of a chorister is a state of mind, requiring an orientation that choir is, if not the only thing, certainly the vital center of the kid's life.
Now we're in the midst of fundraising hell. Obviously, an organization needs money, so we're going from one fundraiser to the next. My favorite so far is the cookies. Somebody knows about this bakery in another city that makes cookies. They are vanilla cookies with a big gob of chocolate icing on them. The number of announcements and amount of meeting time spent on these cookies is astounding. A few weeks ago I went to (somewhat shorter) back-to-back meetings, first for the whole group, then for my kid's particular group, and then another 3 days later. There were announcements about the cookies at all 3 meetings, and it was actually scary how scripted the announcements sounded. I know that, aside from being indescribably delicious (the woman sitting next to me did not agree), the cookies "make wonderful hostess gifts" and that they "freeze wonderfully." These exact phrases also appear in multiple follow-up e-mails. I can just see the glassy eyed choristers, traipsing from neighbor to neighbor, endlessly muttering "Make. Wonderful. Hostess. Gifts. Freeze. Wonderfully."
An afternote- the cookies arrived today. They look like vanilla cookies with a lot of chocolate icing on them, come in cellophane packages with printed labels on them like supermarket cookies, and would make (based on my non-WASP limited comprehension of the phrase), completely uninspiring hostess gifts. I have no doubt that they freeze wonderfully.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Shmollege
I wrote this a couple of years ago for a class I was taking and think I posted it here at the time, but it seems apropos at the moment.
All over my neighborhood, city, state, country, and as far as I know, the world, there are soon-to-be-graduating high school students in a state of high anxiety, agonizing over a monumental decision. Where do I go to college next year? And of course, it's not just the students. It's their parents, friends, relatives and school guidance departments poring over facts and figures and planning visits to faraway lands (okay, I'm exaggerating- let's say rural Maine) in the search for the Right Choice. Hours of thought and thousands of dollars, all spent on the first important decision many teenagers make.
Selecting a college seems like a huge decision for a young person. After all, it's what they're going to be doing and where they're going to be for the next four years and possibly more. It's their first experience away from home, living somewhat independently, meeting new people and exploring new horizons, growing in ways nobody can imagine. For many people, it's the first time they get to choose their own path. It's the Biggest Decision Of Their Life.
Or not. Maybe it's the least important decision of their life. But how could that be? Think of it this way; the consequences of a college selection cannot be anticipated and, in fact, may never be known. Nobody can predict the ultimate results of college choice for any given person with any degree of accuracy. It's weird to think that you make this huge, exhaustively researched decision and you'll probably never know if you made the right choice. But it flows directly from the old nature versus nurture question that child psychologists argue endlessly over.
Nobody knows for sure how much of what a person turns out to be is dependent on the individual's genetic makeup and how much comes from their environment. And if we don't know that, given the wide range of parenting styles and home situations, how are you going to glean a difference from a bunch of fundamentally similar institutions? Does it matter if you go to Middlebury versus Bowdoin, Bates, Skidmore, Wesleyan, Hamilton, Kenyon, Carleton or Haverford? Even comparing any of those places to "dissimilar" types of colleges like Ohio State, or the Universities of Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Texas or Florida, could you possibly prove to me that a person's life will be fundamentally better, or even different, if they chose one versus the other?
If there are no knowable consequences to making a decision, what kind of decision is that? If you're making the choice based on its outcome, on what basis are you going to evaluate it? You simply can't, at least not in any rational kind of way. If you talk to college students, my experience is that almost everyone likes where they're going to school, whether it was their original first choice or not.
So then is it any more important than deciding what color shirt to wear today? I'm not saying that college itself is inconsequential; college is a terrific experience for most people. And I understand that there are situations, like financial considerations or ultra specialized programs, where a particular choice matters. But I'd argue that these are a small minority and in most cases the opposite is true.
I feel like my own college choice was pretty much a disaster, and my life turned out pretty good in spite of it. Was I miserable for most of the 4 years? Absolutely. Not only did I choose the "wrong college," I chose a bad major as well. I majored in psychology for a ridiculously adolescent, child of the 60's kind of reason- to "find myself." And like all my friends who tried the same thing, I failed to do so and was profoundly disappointed with psychology as a way to understand one's self.
So does that mean that it's not really such an important decision? Maybe I would have been just as miserable and immature somewhere else and pretty much nothing in my post-college life seems even remotely connected to the particular school I attended. Other big decisions, like finding a job, getting married, buying a house or having kids, give you frequent and very specific feedback as to whether or not things are working out.
However, I now look back on my professional life and find that it's been centered around advertising and teaching, two of the most psychology-oriented fields there are. And though it would be hard to find a direct path from my college self to the present, I've maintained some core personal principles and beliefs throughout, and that, I'd argue is the most important thing. Not where I chose to spend the supposedly last 4 years of my adolescence.
All over my neighborhood, city, state, country, and as far as I know, the world, there are soon-to-be-graduating high school students in a state of high anxiety, agonizing over a monumental decision. Where do I go to college next year? And of course, it's not just the students. It's their parents, friends, relatives and school guidance departments poring over facts and figures and planning visits to faraway lands (okay, I'm exaggerating- let's say rural Maine) in the search for the Right Choice. Hours of thought and thousands of dollars, all spent on the first important decision many teenagers make.
Selecting a college seems like a huge decision for a young person. After all, it's what they're going to be doing and where they're going to be for the next four years and possibly more. It's their first experience away from home, living somewhat independently, meeting new people and exploring new horizons, growing in ways nobody can imagine. For many people, it's the first time they get to choose their own path. It's the Biggest Decision Of Their Life.
Or not. Maybe it's the least important decision of their life. But how could that be? Think of it this way; the consequences of a college selection cannot be anticipated and, in fact, may never be known. Nobody can predict the ultimate results of college choice for any given person with any degree of accuracy. It's weird to think that you make this huge, exhaustively researched decision and you'll probably never know if you made the right choice. But it flows directly from the old nature versus nurture question that child psychologists argue endlessly over.
Nobody knows for sure how much of what a person turns out to be is dependent on the individual's genetic makeup and how much comes from their environment. And if we don't know that, given the wide range of parenting styles and home situations, how are you going to glean a difference from a bunch of fundamentally similar institutions? Does it matter if you go to Middlebury versus Bowdoin, Bates, Skidmore, Wesleyan, Hamilton, Kenyon, Carleton or Haverford? Even comparing any of those places to "dissimilar" types of colleges like Ohio State, or the Universities of Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Texas or Florida, could you possibly prove to me that a person's life will be fundamentally better, or even different, if they chose one versus the other?
If there are no knowable consequences to making a decision, what kind of decision is that? If you're making the choice based on its outcome, on what basis are you going to evaluate it? You simply can't, at least not in any rational kind of way. If you talk to college students, my experience is that almost everyone likes where they're going to school, whether it was their original first choice or not.
So then is it any more important than deciding what color shirt to wear today? I'm not saying that college itself is inconsequential; college is a terrific experience for most people. And I understand that there are situations, like financial considerations or ultra specialized programs, where a particular choice matters. But I'd argue that these are a small minority and in most cases the opposite is true.
I feel like my own college choice was pretty much a disaster, and my life turned out pretty good in spite of it. Was I miserable for most of the 4 years? Absolutely. Not only did I choose the "wrong college," I chose a bad major as well. I majored in psychology for a ridiculously adolescent, child of the 60's kind of reason- to "find myself." And like all my friends who tried the same thing, I failed to do so and was profoundly disappointed with psychology as a way to understand one's self.
So does that mean that it's not really such an important decision? Maybe I would have been just as miserable and immature somewhere else and pretty much nothing in my post-college life seems even remotely connected to the particular school I attended. Other big decisions, like finding a job, getting married, buying a house or having kids, give you frequent and very specific feedback as to whether or not things are working out.
However, I now look back on my professional life and find that it's been centered around advertising and teaching, two of the most psychology-oriented fields there are. And though it would be hard to find a direct path from my college self to the present, I've maintained some core personal principles and beliefs throughout, and that, I'd argue is the most important thing. Not where I chose to spend the supposedly last 4 years of my adolescence.
Monday, November 14, 2011
Testing, 1 2 3
People around here hate and fear tests. I never hated tests when I was in school. I mean, I didn't like them or anything, but tests have the wonderful characteristic of finality. They're done when they are over, completely out of your control. This distinguishes them from papers, which are never done until you actually write them, and so I constructed my college course load around courses that had final tests rather than papers. (It should be noted that I got through my 4 years of college without turning a single paper in on time, so perhaps I'm not the best judge of the advisability of these things).
Thinking back on it, this really doesn't reflect well on my outlook at the time. Of course, I was 18, so to even refer to myself as having an outlook is probably giving myself too much credit. But what I mean is that I preferred to depend on outside influences to guide my life, rather than trying to guide it myself. This ultimately led to my college graduation being like the final scene in The Candidate, where Robert Redford, originally selected to run for office because they couldn't find anybody legit to run against and opponent who seemed unbeatable, actually wins the election. He's sitting in the back of a limo with his advisors, with his supporters roaring approval outside and he looks at his manager with a stricken look on his face and says, "Now what do I do?" Except it's so noisy the guy can't hear him, so he mouths the question again, "Now what do I do?" And that's how the movie ends. I still remember that lost feeling in the movie and my graduation.
I'm not sure that's the way you want your life to go necessarily. You can take a pretty winding path to get to where you want to go, as I did. But on the other hand, there's something wonderful about taking each day, each moment, as its own, without imposing some kind of structure on it. There's a great passage in one of the Pooh books (I was thinking of Pooh because, having mentioned that I'd once answered the question "Who would you want to play you in the movie of your life?" with Bugs Bunny, someone asked me today which Winnie the Pooh character I thought I was most like), where Piglet asks Pooh, "What's the first thing you think about when you wake up in the morning?" Pooh replies, "I think, what's for breakfast?" Piglet then says "I think, what exciting thing will happen to me today?" Pooh thinks for a moment and says simply, "It's the same thing."
It's one thing to embrace the moment. I understand that it's another thing entirely to embrace taking a test. And adolescents have a tendency to magnify the importance of these assessment points, none of which really make even a miniscule difference in the way the rest of their lives will unfold. However, the test will come and go, and you will still be here and you will still be the same person. If that's not reassuring in some fundamental way, you might reexamine the way you're approaching your life.
And, by the way, I don't think I ever saw myself in any of the Pooh characters, which is okay by me since I don't think the actual Christopher Robin (Milne) saw very much of himself in them either. I have, however, seen Christopher Robin's own stuffed animals, which were, and may still be, on display in a glass case in the children's section of a nondescript midtown Manhattan library. They look very much like the drawings in the books.
Thinking back on it, this really doesn't reflect well on my outlook at the time. Of course, I was 18, so to even refer to myself as having an outlook is probably giving myself too much credit. But what I mean is that I preferred to depend on outside influences to guide my life, rather than trying to guide it myself. This ultimately led to my college graduation being like the final scene in The Candidate, where Robert Redford, originally selected to run for office because they couldn't find anybody legit to run against and opponent who seemed unbeatable, actually wins the election. He's sitting in the back of a limo with his advisors, with his supporters roaring approval outside and he looks at his manager with a stricken look on his face and says, "Now what do I do?" Except it's so noisy the guy can't hear him, so he mouths the question again, "Now what do I do?" And that's how the movie ends. I still remember that lost feeling in the movie and my graduation.
I'm not sure that's the way you want your life to go necessarily. You can take a pretty winding path to get to where you want to go, as I did. But on the other hand, there's something wonderful about taking each day, each moment, as its own, without imposing some kind of structure on it. There's a great passage in one of the Pooh books (I was thinking of Pooh because, having mentioned that I'd once answered the question "Who would you want to play you in the movie of your life?" with Bugs Bunny, someone asked me today which Winnie the Pooh character I thought I was most like), where Piglet asks Pooh, "What's the first thing you think about when you wake up in the morning?" Pooh replies, "I think, what's for breakfast?" Piglet then says "I think, what exciting thing will happen to me today?" Pooh thinks for a moment and says simply, "It's the same thing."
It's one thing to embrace the moment. I understand that it's another thing entirely to embrace taking a test. And adolescents have a tendency to magnify the importance of these assessment points, none of which really make even a miniscule difference in the way the rest of their lives will unfold. However, the test will come and go, and you will still be here and you will still be the same person. If that's not reassuring in some fundamental way, you might reexamine the way you're approaching your life.
And, by the way, I don't think I ever saw myself in any of the Pooh characters, which is okay by me since I don't think the actual Christopher Robin (Milne) saw very much of himself in them either. I have, however, seen Christopher Robin's own stuffed animals, which were, and may still be, on display in a glass case in the children's section of a nondescript midtown Manhattan library. They look very much like the drawings in the books.
Check this out
This amazing video was shot from the International Space Station.
Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.
Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.
Here’s a list of the shooting locations, in order of appearance:
1. Aurora Borealis Pass over the United States at Night
2. Aurora Borealis and eastern United States at Night
3. Aurora Australis from Madagascar to southwest of Australia
4. Aurora Australis south of Australia
5. Northwest coast of United States to Central South America at Night
6. Aurora Australis from the Southern to the Northern Pacific Ocean
7. Halfway around the World
8. Night Pass over Central Africa and the Middle East
9. Evening Pass over the Sahara Desert and the Middle East
10. Pass over Canada and Central United States at Night
11. Pass over Southern California to Hudson Bay
12. Islands in the Philippine Sea at Night
13. Pass over Eastern Asia to Philippine Sea and Guam
14. Views of the Mideast at Night
15. Night Pass over Mediterranean Sea
16. Aurora Borealis and the United States at Night
17. Aurora Australis over Indian Ocean
18. Eastern Europe to Southeastern Asia at Night
Friday, November 11, 2011
Phoneyness
How much to you think a new iPhone costs? Let's say 32 gb, the middle level. $299, right? Wrong! A 32gb iPhone 4S costs $749. You can get one for $299 from your cell phone provider, but only in exchange for your signing a 2 year contract, obligating you to a monthly service fee which ranges, depending on your service level, from $70 to around $250 per month.
In other words, the cell phone companies make so much money off your monthly service fee that they consider it smart to discount your phone by $450. That's nearly $40 per mont over the 2 years.
So-called loss leaders are nothing new. A big discount on a popular item or two to lure people into a store? Classic retail sales technique. The first company to make big money off selling equipment for less than cost was Polaroid, which is no longer around.
Polaroid made the first instant cameras. Most cameras took pictures on film that had to be carried or mailed to a processing lab for developing and printing. This took anywhere from a few hours to several days. But a guy named Edwin Land invented a camera whose film contained its own developing chemicals, allowing pictures to appear within a minute or so. This was a one-of-a-kind thing and amazing, but expensive. But because Land and his company Polaroid made both the cameras and the film, they hit on the idea of selling the camera for less than what it cost to make and then making their money off the film. So lots of little profits instead of one big one.
Polaroid's out of business because digital camera technology made it obsolete, but they were very profitable for a long time. The most prevalent example of this strategy today is ink-jet printers. The printers themselves are sold at a price below cost, and the money is made on the ink. That's why they tell you not to refill the cartridges.
Cell phone subsidies, as they're called, are a similar tactic and here's how absurd it gets. Someone in my family has a phone that's a lemon. It's never worked right, the battery dies quickly, it's lousy. But it's not due for upgrade until next March and we just can't live with it anymore. So I went to the Verizon web site and saw that the phone cost $749 and was not pleased. So today I went to the Verizon store and I learned something. It's cheaper to get a whole new phone line and pay for 2 years of service with the discounted phone than it is to just buy the damned phone. Not just cheaper, more than $200 cheaper. How about that?
So now I have an extra phone line, which I don't even know the number for. It just seems wrong. What if someone calls? Should I pick up?
In other words, the cell phone companies make so much money off your monthly service fee that they consider it smart to discount your phone by $450. That's nearly $40 per mont over the 2 years.
So-called loss leaders are nothing new. A big discount on a popular item or two to lure people into a store? Classic retail sales technique. The first company to make big money off selling equipment for less than cost was Polaroid, which is no longer around.
Polaroid made the first instant cameras. Most cameras took pictures on film that had to be carried or mailed to a processing lab for developing and printing. This took anywhere from a few hours to several days. But a guy named Edwin Land invented a camera whose film contained its own developing chemicals, allowing pictures to appear within a minute or so. This was a one-of-a-kind thing and amazing, but expensive. But because Land and his company Polaroid made both the cameras and the film, they hit on the idea of selling the camera for less than what it cost to make and then making their money off the film. So lots of little profits instead of one big one.
Polaroid's out of business because digital camera technology made it obsolete, but they were very profitable for a long time. The most prevalent example of this strategy today is ink-jet printers. The printers themselves are sold at a price below cost, and the money is made on the ink. That's why they tell you not to refill the cartridges.
Cell phone subsidies, as they're called, are a similar tactic and here's how absurd it gets. Someone in my family has a phone that's a lemon. It's never worked right, the battery dies quickly, it's lousy. But it's not due for upgrade until next March and we just can't live with it anymore. So I went to the Verizon web site and saw that the phone cost $749 and was not pleased. So today I went to the Verizon store and I learned something. It's cheaper to get a whole new phone line and pay for 2 years of service with the discounted phone than it is to just buy the damned phone. Not just cheaper, more than $200 cheaper. How about that?
So now I have an extra phone line, which I don't even know the number for. It just seems wrong. What if someone calls? Should I pick up?
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
I'm guessing you can drive yourself crazy
After taking a peek at the election results so far, I have only one question. Can anyone explain to me why, in Montgomery County, is the Republican candidate for Recorder of Deeds is leading by 2000 votes while the Democratic candidate for Register of Wills is leading by an almost identical margin? Who is splitting their votes like that?
Oh, and what it a prothonotary? Bad enough I'm voting for candidates I know next to nothing about without having to vote for an office that I don't know what it is. It's some kind of notary? Like the guy at the Mailroom USA who verifies documents and puts an official-looking stamp on them?
Oh, and what it a prothonotary? Bad enough I'm voting for candidates I know next to nothing about without having to vote for an office that I don't know what it is. It's some kind of notary? Like the guy at the Mailroom USA who verifies documents and puts an official-looking stamp on them?
Football game
I went to my first Eagles game yesterday. It has been many years since I've been to a pro football game (to give you an idea, it was an LA Rams game) and I was pretty excited about it. As most of you know, I attend many baseball games, so my impressions will be refracted through the lens of my baseball experiences.
My daughter and I arrived at Lincoln Financial Field around half an hour before game time. As we walked toward the field, we saw the streams of people approaching the gate coalesce into a mass surrounded by chain link fence. This was the frisky mass, where you approach the frisking stations. To give you an idea of the atmosphere here, just imagine that you're at the airport and about 70,000 people are getting on a plane at once and they all approach security in a big crowd instead of a line. On the good side, nobody's got luggage and you don't have to take off your shoes, on the bad side, almost everyone is drunk and carrying a can or bottle of beer, which is tossed to the ground right before the frisking commences.
Frisking is done by gender, with females funneled into two lines and males into the other dozen. This causes a tremendous bottleneck as women struggle to get to their assigned line and then the men go through and wait. The frisking itself was thorough without being invasive and nobody got abusive.
Once through, we entered the stadium. Almost immediately, I felt a vibe of drunken male aggressiveness and rah-rah-ness that I didn't exactly find pleasant. The first order of business was to find a cash machine. I had inadvertently come with just barely enough cash to pay for parking (just barely meaning I need to pay $3 of the $25(!) in quarters). Since this is a Financial Field I figured that getting money would be no problem. However, the Lincoln Financial rep that I asked had no idea where the ATM was located. Fortunately, there was an ATM right next to the beer stand and fortunately there was a beer stand right next to the ATM.
There are, in fact, a massive number of beer stands in the stadium, which is good because the food choices are, to put it kindly, inadequate. When I was in Florida Spring Training in dinky little ballparks, the only thing you could get to eat if you didn't want beef was pizza. Same thing here, save for one stand that had fried chicken filets. Maybe I'm just spoiled by the wide variety of choices at Citizens Bank or any of the newer baseball parks. Or maybe the food choices just suck.
The stadium is a good place to watch football. The game was okay, I guess. I'm not a huge football fan, and the only real attraction for me is the occasional amazing athletic feat that the Eagles are capable of. But this game was completely devoid of spectacle. It was close and somewhat exciting as a result, but nothing very interesting happened. By the fourth quarter, the fans around us were more engaged in arguing with the fans of the opponent sprinkled through the section than in the game itself. The best part, and I have to admit that it is a very wonderful part, is the singing of "Fly Eagles Fly" after every touchdown. I've not experienced a lot of fight song and this is a good fight song. I also very much enjoyed watching the remote controlled camera fly over and around the field.
As we were leaving, the guy behind me on the stairs kept pushing up against me, as if that would make me somehow move faster than the person in front of me. And there it struck me what was bothering me the whole time. I somehow knew that if I pushed back, or turned and said something, that I was going to get the crap beaten out of me. As we passed back through the chain link fence on the way out, I thought it'd be a while before I did this again.
My daughter and I arrived at Lincoln Financial Field around half an hour before game time. As we walked toward the field, we saw the streams of people approaching the gate coalesce into a mass surrounded by chain link fence. This was the frisky mass, where you approach the frisking stations. To give you an idea of the atmosphere here, just imagine that you're at the airport and about 70,000 people are getting on a plane at once and they all approach security in a big crowd instead of a line. On the good side, nobody's got luggage and you don't have to take off your shoes, on the bad side, almost everyone is drunk and carrying a can or bottle of beer, which is tossed to the ground right before the frisking commences.
Frisking is done by gender, with females funneled into two lines and males into the other dozen. This causes a tremendous bottleneck as women struggle to get to their assigned line and then the men go through and wait. The frisking itself was thorough without being invasive and nobody got abusive.
Once through, we entered the stadium. Almost immediately, I felt a vibe of drunken male aggressiveness and rah-rah-ness that I didn't exactly find pleasant. The first order of business was to find a cash machine. I had inadvertently come with just barely enough cash to pay for parking (just barely meaning I need to pay $3 of the $25(!) in quarters). Since this is a Financial Field I figured that getting money would be no problem. However, the Lincoln Financial rep that I asked had no idea where the ATM was located. Fortunately, there was an ATM right next to the beer stand and fortunately there was a beer stand right next to the ATM.
There are, in fact, a massive number of beer stands in the stadium, which is good because the food choices are, to put it kindly, inadequate. When I was in Florida Spring Training in dinky little ballparks, the only thing you could get to eat if you didn't want beef was pizza. Same thing here, save for one stand that had fried chicken filets. Maybe I'm just spoiled by the wide variety of choices at Citizens Bank or any of the newer baseball parks. Or maybe the food choices just suck.
The stadium is a good place to watch football. The game was okay, I guess. I'm not a huge football fan, and the only real attraction for me is the occasional amazing athletic feat that the Eagles are capable of. But this game was completely devoid of spectacle. It was close and somewhat exciting as a result, but nothing very interesting happened. By the fourth quarter, the fans around us were more engaged in arguing with the fans of the opponent sprinkled through the section than in the game itself. The best part, and I have to admit that it is a very wonderful part, is the singing of "Fly Eagles Fly" after every touchdown. I've not experienced a lot of fight song and this is a good fight song. I also very much enjoyed watching the remote controlled camera fly over and around the field.
As we were leaving, the guy behind me on the stairs kept pushing up against me, as if that would make me somehow move faster than the person in front of me. And there it struck me what was bothering me the whole time. I somehow knew that if I pushed back, or turned and said something, that I was going to get the crap beaten out of me. As we passed back through the chain link fence on the way out, I thought it'd be a while before I did this again.
Thursday, November 03, 2011
Going nowhere fast
I got a bike trainer. No, my bike doesn't need training and a bike trainer is not a person. It's a thing you attach to a bike that allows you to simulate a riding experience, or to put it differently, that allows you to pretend to ride your bike inside.
In truth, this is profoundly silly. As a general rule I hate to exercise by pretending to do stuff. Treadmills, rowers, and especially climbing stairs, all ways to pretend to do something. And a big reason I bike for exercise is because it's fun. The biggest single difference between the pretend activities and the real ones is the lack of fun. I mean, it's nice that I don't have to wear a helmet when I pretend ride, although I can't quite get over the fear that the bike is going to somehow wiggle loose and I'll careen toward the basement steps at 20 miles an hour (and 20 miles an hour, while slow in a car, is very fast when you're indoors). But the only way I'll feel the wind in my face if I turn on the fan.
The best thing about pretend riding is that you can watch TV while you're doing it. All of my attempts to do that when riding on the streets have been brutal failures. But what am I going to watch? As hard as I look, I can't find any shows that are wordless video of passing countryside, so I need some options. Commercials are annoying, and I don't want to have to keep changing channels. The best thing I've found so far is soccer. If you can start watching right around the beginning of a half, they run for at least 45 minutes straight. Fortunately, on Comcast there's lots of soccer on channel 1513, and I just like the idea of watching channel 1513 anyway.
In truth, this is profoundly silly. As a general rule I hate to exercise by pretending to do stuff. Treadmills, rowers, and especially climbing stairs, all ways to pretend to do something. And a big reason I bike for exercise is because it's fun. The biggest single difference between the pretend activities and the real ones is the lack of fun. I mean, it's nice that I don't have to wear a helmet when I pretend ride, although I can't quite get over the fear that the bike is going to somehow wiggle loose and I'll careen toward the basement steps at 20 miles an hour (and 20 miles an hour, while slow in a car, is very fast when you're indoors). But the only way I'll feel the wind in my face if I turn on the fan.
The best thing about pretend riding is that you can watch TV while you're doing it. All of my attempts to do that when riding on the streets have been brutal failures. But what am I going to watch? As hard as I look, I can't find any shows that are wordless video of passing countryside, so I need some options. Commercials are annoying, and I don't want to have to keep changing channels. The best thing I've found so far is soccer. If you can start watching right around the beginning of a half, they run for at least 45 minutes straight. Fortunately, on Comcast there's lots of soccer on channel 1513, and I just like the idea of watching channel 1513 anyway.
Tuesday, November 01, 2011
Passing thoughts
I'm tired of driving. Not that I been drive all that much, but I've been doing it for like 40 years and I'm just tired of it. Maybe it's because too many people I encounter on the roads, while nice people I'm sure, are just not cut out to be drivers. Driving properly requires a combination of complete attention and strategic planning that is clearly beyond the ability of many people whom the state has deemed worthy of sharing the road with me.
Most folks probably don't think of strategic planning when they are driving, but that's a mistake. Driving is pretty difficult and bloody dangerous and one is foolish to think differently. But you can be strategic about it if you keep your objective in mind, and objective is simply this: Get from point A to Point B without bumping into anything. Everything else you do flows from that. Since it's much harder to avoid moving objects than stationary ones, keep the moving things (cars, trucks, bikes, people) as far away from your car as possible at all times, and never do anything that could be surprising to another driver.
Lately, the most frequent mistake I've seen people making is getting impatient behind someone making a left turn, swinging out to the right and going around them, especially on a road with 2 lanes in each direction. This is so risky as to be just plain stupid. You simply cannot look everywhere another car might be coming from at the same time, since you need to see (1) if there's someone coming in the right lane, (2) if someone behind you is doing the same thing at the same time, (3) if someone in front of you is doing the same thing at the same time, and (4) if someone going in the other direction is making a left turn into your lane as you swing around. Sorry, can't be done. If you get away with it you're lucky, but still stupid.
Most folks probably don't think of strategic planning when they are driving, but that's a mistake. Driving is pretty difficult and bloody dangerous and one is foolish to think differently. But you can be strategic about it if you keep your objective in mind, and objective is simply this: Get from point A to Point B without bumping into anything. Everything else you do flows from that. Since it's much harder to avoid moving objects than stationary ones, keep the moving things (cars, trucks, bikes, people) as far away from your car as possible at all times, and never do anything that could be surprising to another driver.
Lately, the most frequent mistake I've seen people making is getting impatient behind someone making a left turn, swinging out to the right and going around them, especially on a road with 2 lanes in each direction. This is so risky as to be just plain stupid. You simply cannot look everywhere another car might be coming from at the same time, since you need to see (1) if there's someone coming in the right lane, (2) if someone behind you is doing the same thing at the same time, (3) if someone in front of you is doing the same thing at the same time, and (4) if someone going in the other direction is making a left turn into your lane as you swing around. Sorry, can't be done. If you get away with it you're lucky, but still stupid.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)