Why can't they name a beverage after me? End of November ramblings.

Another week done and another month done. I really need to start an anonymous blog, because lately, most of the unexpected, weird, funny, interesting stuff in my life revolves around other people, and I'm into respecting people's privacy. It's no fun continuing to write about being sick. Being sick is boring. Also, maybe I don't want everyone to know every bit of truth about me, even if I want to write about it.

And of course it's inappropriate for a teacher to reveal too much to the students. Lord knows I'm inappropriate enough at times. From around 8th grade on I was always, though not exactly a class clown in the sense of always wanting attention directed at me, pretty much of a wiseass. I always did enjoy disrupting a class, and now I find as a teacher it's just as much fun as when I was a student, maybe even better because I don't get in trouble.

Today I wasn't exactly disruptive, but I did somehow get 8 generally well-behaved honors students riled up enough that the teacher in the classroom next door started banging on the wall to quiet us down. What does that say about me that this was my favorite moment of the day, or at least the one that makes me most proud? I do like a bit of disruption for its own sake.

For the record, I was only kicked out of class a couple of times in high school, a fraction of the number of classes I cut. Once I was mad enough at a teacher that I switched into another class for a day. But ultimately I went back because even though the teacher I was mad at (who was, I believe, equally mad at me, except he was mad at me for something I didn't do- though I wish I did because it was hilarious- and I was mad about being blamed) was kind of a jerk and had distinctly frog-like facial features, he did have the redeeming quality of being obsessed with Rasputin, the Mad Monk of Russia, a character quite deserving of obsession, (my favorite part of the Wikipedia entry is that Rasputin had "several beverages names after him"). And the other teacher gave a lot more homework and the day I was in her class was wearing a bright pink dress with absolutely the worst pit stains I'd ever seen. I'm still traumatized by them.

The other time my ejection was pretty much year-long. I always disagree when students say "that teacher hates me." Teachers don't tend to actually hate students, even the annoying ones. But this guy really did not like me and I must admit I enthusiastically gave him plenty of cause; I didn't much care for him either. He was very tightly wound and I enjoyed trying to unwind him. So we made a truce. I could skip class and hang out in the senior lounge except on days there were tests and as long as I kept getting A's on the tests I never had to come to class. Not having to go to class was such a great incentive for me to work hard that I believe I got the highest grades in that class of any non-math class I ever took.

Much of this week has been spent making up a midterm for my Calculus class. Technically, an exam at the end of a trimester cannot possibly be a midterm, but there's no catchy term for an exam you give after 1/3 of the year.

The rest of my not-in-class time this week was spent either expressing disbelief that the foundation who saw fit to give iPads to every student in order to bring us into 21st century education was balking at getting them for all the teachers as well. I asked nicely, if I can't have an iPad can I at least get an iPad mini? But it was to no avail.

Age: 55 to death

A recent issue of the Philadelphia Inquirer contained a special section titled "55+ Living." Wow, I thought, I'm 57, which is more than 55, and I'm living, so this is perfect from me.

So I open the section up and I'm completely confused. Here are the headlines about 55+ living:

• New Providence II Model: big hit at Spring Valley Village 
• Home Towne Square: A desirable community in Lancaster County
• New sites now available at Meadow Glen at Skippack
• Dublin Terrace 55-plus community now leasing
• Solana Horsham provides persopnalized assistive living care
• Discerning buyers turn to D.R. Horton
• Heritage shores: One of the best "master-planned communities" in the country
• Two local neighborhoods by Orleans Homes give convenience, privacy
• Customize your dream home at Coldstream Crossing
• Villas at Foxfield: Perfect for single, snowbirds, couple
• Downsizing in style at The Villages at Pine Valley

That's all. Wait, am I supposed to spend my 55+ years buying residences? I already have a house. Why do I need all of these?

 At this point I notice that that last article is right next to an ad for the very same Villages at Pine Valley. What a coincidence! Since it's right there I read on and Oh My God, it is so de-puh-ressing. First of all I can't even live there, because even though the article has a quote about "out 55-plus community," you actually need to be at least 62 to live there. So now I'm suspicious and I read on, only to discover that this section is very poorly titled. This section is not about 55+ living, it's abut 55+ dying, as in where am I going to live for that awkward pause between when my kids move away and the true death.

Clearly these people don't read the rest of the newspaper, because everyone knows that the kids don't really move out until they're around 30, and by that time I'll be much closer to 70, not 55 (but at least by then I'd be eligible to live at Pine Valley, where All My Children takes place). And maybe I'll eventually get to a point where "Discover just enough independence, without being alone" doesn't sound creepy, but I ain't there yet.

The rest of the information talks about how to make your new, smaller quarters seem larger, which seems to defeat the purpose of downsizing, though their ideas seem solid. Like don't keep clutter from your previous home, trade those bulky end tables for stylish, standing lamps, and my favorite, accessorize with accents. This means to add a splash of color with bright toss pillows. Toss pillows? I guess when you're 55+ you no longer have the energy to have throw pillows. There's also, more mass with glass- replace your end or coffee tables with glass. All this promises to make you new home "stylish, while being comfortable and grandchild friendly."

Don't drive if you can't see or control your bladder!

I'm perusing my new purloined copy of Neurology Now, because after all, what's the point of going to the neurologist if you can't sneak out with a copy of Neurology Now?

So what kind of stuff makes the front cover of NN? The story of a comedian with cerebral palsy, and article titled Navigating Life With a Brain Tumor, with Brain Tumor in orange type, and an invitation to enter the 2013 Neuro Film Festival. Hmm.

Inside cover is a happy woman carrying flowers and an invitation to get your Copaxone injections for no more than $35 per month. Black Friday indeed. The next ad is for Botox, not for cosmetic purposes, but to relieve migraines. They illustrate this with a picture of a troubled looking but still overly attractive young woman. The ad part is about a third of the first page and the rest of that page and the next 2 and half the pages are made up of detailed warnings. These include sage advice, like if you experience double vision, blurred vision, drooping eyelids, trouble saying words or trouble breathing, that you should not drive a car. Good advice even if you're not taking Botox. And for good sport, one potential side effect is headaches.

Holiday foolishness

I've been getting lots of email with special deals. I get a lot from the Phillies, who seem to alternate between 25% off and buy one thing, get 50% off a second thing. Even though those are substantially the same deal, it doesn't prevent them from also offering $25 off a $100 purchase. I can't decide...

The worst special deal I've gotten is from Dean and Deluca, a specialty food place in New York. The deal is, buy one gift, get 15% off a second gift of equal or lesser value. Wow, I'm blown away. But wait, there's more. They're offering 50% off shipping too. You just have to choose one or the other.

I don't understand this at all. Aside from its looking ridiculous compared to every other offer from every other company, I don't know who is going to care. Dean and Deluca is one of those places where you read the catalog and say, "Hey look, they have a tote bag full of candy for $75 and another tote filled with olive oil, vinegar, barbecue sauce, mustard and jam for $95. Isn't that silly?" I know people buy this stuff (and I guess I did once too since I'm on their mailing list) but who would be thinking, "Hmm, I'd really like to get that bag with the oil and mustard and the one with the candy, and if only the one with the candy was $65 instead of $75, or if only shipping was $8.75 instead of $17.50, gosh darn it, I'd buy it."

I'm not usually a fan of slick, made up names for things. But I do really like Cyber Monday. Not because I think it's such a great name- it's kind of meh, but the entire premise is that people are going to be on their computers shopping all day instead of doing their jobs. It used to be you had to sneak out of work to shop 'till you drop. Now you can sit at your desk and shop 'till you get up.

Even though I would normally just make up numbers to support this kind of argument, there's actually been some research. It's widely reported that 59% of companies are more concerned with the loss of productivity than with security breaches, and over 60% expect the loss of productivity will be greater than last year. On the other hand, over half of companies with network administrators will be blocking access to shopping sites this year, and of course we know that nobody is ever able to get around blocks like that. Unless, of course, they have a cell phone or an iPad or a laptop.

In the advertising business, when we were building production schedules for projects, we would pretty much chalk up December as useless because our suppliers were unproductive, and that was before computers. I can only imagine what happens now, when the people running the projects are too busy consuming to produce.

The symmetry of the whole thing is beautiful. The estimated Cyber Monday sales? About $1 billion. Loss of productivity? Also $1 billion.

Metafeeling

Thinking about what you're thinking can be exhausting. One of the challenges of a long recovery like I'm having is my desire to be gauging progress. Am I feeling better today? Oooh, I feel dizzy, tired, energetic, sharp, unfocused, just okay. What does that mean? And just because I ask that question, does it really mean anything?

More generally, at this point when you're asked to give your greatest strengths and weaknesses, I think the safest possible answer is that human brain's ability to detect patterns is perhaps its greatest strength while its desire to detect patterns is its greatest weakness. Finding real patterns is no more useful than finding patterns that aren't really there is deleterious. It's a bit like mistaking correlation for causation, but it's even more general than that. It encompasses all sorts of dubiously related observations being interpreted as having some larger meaning.

This makes long-term decision-making difficult. Whenever anyone is faced with a major decision and has sufficient time to ponder it, they have no choice but to refract everything that happens through the lens of that decision. I'm tense this morning; maybe I shouldn't take that job. I slept really well; maybe I should ask Kiki to marry me. I'm irritable; maybe I should break up with Kiki. Breakfast doesn't taste right; maybe I should buy the minivan instead of the crossover. The sunset looks beautiful; maybe I should shave my head and get a tattoo. You get the idea. Some of them might make sense, some might not, but if you're spending a lot of time seriously thinking about shaving your head and getting a tattoo, that's what happens.

Just a Grey Saturday thought

The front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer yesterday had a big headline: Culprit in early store hours? Their conclusion? The Internet, of course. It's online, always open shopping. That's whose fault it is. Yes, we say, satisfied.

How about this? It's our fault. Not the stores, not the Internet, us. To paraphrase Billie Dawn (in the original Born Yesterday), if a building is in flames and nobody calls 911 until it burns to the ground, who you gonna to blame, the fire? Stores open earlier for one reason only; we want to go and shop.

Yes, the holiday spirit (okay Fox News, the Christmas spirit) has become so pervasive that people need to go shopping, ostensibly for presents, on Thanksgiving Day. To hell with hanging out with family and friends, being thankful for our many blessings, and having some plain old relaxing time. We need to shop!

Crass commercialization doesn't get more crass or commercial. No holiday matters except for its purchasing patterns. We can throw blame around wherever we want. The secular humanists, Jesus, the stores that open early, the Internet, climate change. Whatever you say. But we all know, deep down, that this is wrong and we feel guilty about it. Otherwise, nobody would be writing about it.

Anybody want an Ordinateur de la Pomme?

Of all the things I read in the newspaper this morning, the most interesting had to be a report of the struggle of American-based chain stores to use their accustomed brand and logo in Quebec. Because they like to think of themselves as an independent country when everybody knows they're really not, the Quebecois are really snippy about when you have to use French. It's something they can control, so like any amusing and harmless petty tyrant, they're having at it. Stores must have their aisles marked mostly or even completely in French. Until this year, however, they haven't been nearly so strict about exterior signs.

Recently, however, the local attitude has done an quick change and without warning has now commanded all exterior signs to be in proper French, like Poulet Frit Kentucky. Companies whose names don't naturally lend themselves so easily to translation are up at arms. Apparently, there was a near fistfight in cabinet meetings over how to deal with the 'R' in Toys R Us. Okay, I made that part up. But just barely. The legality of all of this is dependent on the difference between trade name and brand name, because you can have whatever brand you want but your sign announcing your business has got to be French.

Some disconnected Thanksgiving thoughts

I know the usual parlance for this is "random thoughts," but if all the thoughts come from me, then they are pretty much the opposite of random, so unless I'm trying to be ironic, it's just wrong.

First a couple of holiday links. Here's coverage of the Thanksgiving Day Parade Eve balloon inflation event that "real" New Yorkers prefer to the parad itself. Then, having nothing to do with Thanksgiving, some interesting social commentary, or is it?

Oh, and before I forget, make sure to be thankful on Friday, Saturday and Sunday too. All of the good fortune you celebrate on Thanksgiving day is yours every day, and if you don't spend at least a moment savoring it, you're depriving yourself and others.

Since the announcement of the "word of the year," which is inexplicably 'GIF," which is neither a word nor in any way new, we've been discussing the most overused word or phrase that we wish to rid ourselves of. There was some discussion of store clerks' annoying "Are you sure?" when you say you don't want to put your purchase in a plastic bag. But the hands down winner (a phrase I assume has card game roots) is "Honestly...," or it's more loquacious cousin, "To be honest with you..."

This was alarming to me because I then became aware of how often I used that verbal tic. I wouldn't get too caught up in the implication that I'm not being honest the rest of the time, though I suppose that might be true for some people. I just don't like using phrases as catch-alls, both because it's an excuse not to think and when overused it becomes meaningless.

What's more interesting to contemplate is why that particular phrase at this particular time. I mentioned an article from the New York Times titled "How To Live Without Irony" which I found as interesting as an article dependent on stereotyping can be. Is there a general sense that people and institutions are normally less than honest? Is that a healthy thing?

For all the noise about certain politicians undermining Traditional American Values, the seasonal example being the so-called "War on Christmas" (which actually not about Christmas at all but whether you use the phrase 'Merry Christmas' or the more generic 'Happy Holidays'), the real undermining of TAV is being done by stores like Walmart, Target, etc. that are opening on Thanksgiving evening. What connection is there between being thankful for what you have and buying stuff? I don't get it.

Okay, time to start getting ready for my family's traditional Thanksgiving dinner, which this year is Breakfast For Dinner. None of us like turkey and whenever we're in a diner we all order breakfast stuff, no matter what time of day it is. So we can do any kind of breakfast items, as long as there's no turkey in them. Challah french toast, blueberry pancakes, fritatta, bacon, home fries, biscuits. Yum! Next year we're going to do Thanksgiving as our ancestors would have done after getting through Ellis Island- kashe varniskes, pot roast, latkes, blintzes. I can hardly wait.

Misadventures in teaching

Being a teacher, I always feel like it's my job to push the students to squeeze every possible bit of learning from any given situation. Sometimes I decide I'm going to extend that to everyone else I encounter in my life. Almost shockingly, this is not universally well received by the population at large. These people just don't understand the value of challenging their assumptions.

Today I was taking the train and so I stood by the edge of the platform and intently looked down the track in the wrong direction, for the sole purpose of helping people not take for granted what they assume to be true. Nobody thanked me and told me how good it was to have their minds freed from its closed state. They all just told me I was looking the wrong way and seemed perplexed when I replied, "I know."

Cheer up, Eagles fans!

Here are some bad things that have not happened to the Eagles this year:

1. Not a single player has spontaneously combusted on national television.
2. There is no proof that Jim Johnson has actually rolled over in his grave.
3. They have not had an entire game of coming up a yard short of the first down.
4. No Eagles quarterback has been sacked by his own team. At least not on purpose.
5. They have not given up a touchdown on a fair catch
6. They have not tripped an opposing player running down the sideline
7. No Eagles quarterback has pretended to have a concussion just to avoid having to take another snap behind their offensive line. Oh, wait...
8. They have never been caught with too many time outs at the end of the half.
9. Nobody has come down with "turf toe."
10. They didn't get the city to pay for a brand new stadium and then trade away all their expensive players and pocket the difference
11. Andy Reid hasn't yet said that whatever's wrong with them can't be fixed.

I am the dog

Back in my younger, wilder days, I did have moments where I felt that my dog and I were one, but those moments were brief and artificially produced. My current dog is old and her day consists of long periods of lying on the floor and resting or even sleeping, punctuated by high activity levels around meal time. Since I've continued to do the cooking even while sick, this mirror my patterns pretty much perfectly.

I only had some anecdotal data, such as the fact that yesterday both the dog and I went outside the house 3 times for the exact same period, because I only went outside to walk the dog.

Now, however, I have compiled the following data

November 17
My time spent lying on couch (MTLC), resting or sleeping: 14.5 hours
My time working in kitchen (MTWK): 55 minutes
Dog's time spent lying on the floor (DTLF) resting or sleeping: 14.75 hours
Dog's time sniffing around kitchen (DTSK): 52 minutes

November 16 (I was out of the house for part of the day so can only note what happened when I was home)
MTLC: 10.25 hours
MTWK: 47 minutes
DTLF: 10.25 hours
DTSK: 45 minutes
and so on...

I have data going back a month and the correlation is well over 90%, and the overlap of specific times of day  for all of these measures is also over 90%. So there is only one conclusion to be made; from a statistical standpoint, my dog and I are indistinguishable. Since math is the only thing that matters, I am therefore my dog.

Okay, after this I promise to go back to the fun stuff

As disorganized and dysfunctional as the Occupy movement was, we as a country owe them a great debt for changing the political conversation to highlight wealth inequality. It's not going to be easy to correct it even now, but it certainly wouldn't have gotten easier if we'd kept going down the same path.

The question now is what to do about it. A change in taxation definitely helps, but the Hostess closing really highlights the problem in hedge funds buying distressed companies and bleeding them dry.

Another fascinating labor issue at the moment is what's going on in and around Walmart. I'll admit to not liking Walmart and avoiding shopping there whenever possible. The only time I've been in a Walmart in the past 10 years was when I need to buy something at 5AM and they were the only store open (long and not very interesting story). Walmart is evil. They're not unmitigated evil, I know, but their core retail strategy rests upon abuse of its labor force.

I saw an excerpt from one of their internal documents about their pay scale and they start people at $8 an hour and then the maximum annual is raise is 60 cents an hour. So a perfect employee has to work for 4 years to get their pay rate up to $10 an hour. And then they limit hours to prevent most employees from receiving benefits. So if you top out at 29 hours per week (the typical cutoff for benefits being 30 hours), your maximum annual earnings at $10.40 an hour are $15,678.00. The federal government considers $23,000 to be the poverty line for a family of 4. Does that sound okay to you?

Twinkies are dead, long live Twinkies

I was definitely one of those kids who ate Hostess cakes when I was a kid. Twinkies were not my favorite necessarily; I tended to favor the chocolate (or in modern parlance, chocolaty) products. Yes, products more than strictly cakes. My favorites were Ring Dings (aka DingDongs) and Yodels, which had a shiny chocolaty coating, chocolate cake and creme filling. Devil Dogs, named I believe not after Cerberus (kind of like Fluffy from the first Harry Potter book but in Hell) but a type of chocolate cake with the provocative name of devil's food, were hot dog-shaped and less delicious.

But any discussion of Hostess Cakes has to come down to it's iconic brand, Twinkies. I read a book last year called Twinkie Deconstructed, where a man tracks down the origin of all 21 ingredients in a Twinkie. I recommend this book for anyone interested in food. It was very enlightening and cast a new light on the, let's just say extraordinary shelf life of Twinkies.

When I was in college, there were urban legends about the properties of Twinkies- that someone pasted one to their wall for an entire school year only to find its texture unaltered- that kind of thing. After reading the book, all of that became clear because I learned that Twinkies were developed specifically to be a cream puff (puffy pastry filled with whipped cream for those with poor deductive skills) with long-lasting properties. The problem with cream puffs from a bakery is that first the pastry gets stale and then the cream soaks through it turning it to a soggy mess. That's why "creme" filling was invented- to stay moist but not soak through the cake. Of course the cake also had to be modified to repel moisture.

So they were designed to last as long as possible, making it possible for stores to keep them on the shelves for days or weeks rather than hours. They were (and still are) a marvel of food technology.

The decline of Hostess traces originally to changing consumer tastes, as is the case with many declining brands. More recently, it was a victim of what became popularly known during the presidential campaign as "vulture capitalism." This is a pun on the financial term, venture capitalism, where investors supply the necessary funds for a company to grow and expand. In vulture capitalism, investors buy a struggling company for the purpose of extracting as much money as possible from it before leaving it to die. It's more like vampire capitalism, but I guess we've had our fill of vampire references these days. If you want a more complete and less opinionated description of the process, read here.

The most recent owners, known euphemistically as turnaround artists, had Hostess take on a crushing amount of debt, leaving it unable to modernize or pay decent wages. Eventually, the workers went on strike over having their paychecks slashed drastically for a second time. The owners declare bankruptcy and close the company, keeping as much of the money generated and borrowed as possible. This kind of thing is what Mitt Romney famously did for a living at Bain Capital before he got his new job whining about how people with a thousandth of a percent as much money as he has want things.

Longterm, most of those workers have permanently lost their jobs. Other companies already in the business of making cakes unaffected by the passage of time will bid for the famous brand name. The company that bought Tastykakes is reportedly interested. The former owners will pay their lawyers and pocket the difference, so they'll have plenty of money to buy Twinkies whenever they make their return, which I'm betting will be before the ones I have in my cabinet get stale.

I know I'm going to get tarred for saying this

But it needs saying.

In any conflict, especially one with complex roots, the biggest mistake you can make is to ignore or oversimplify the motives of your enemy.

I'm completely on Israel's side in that I want them to be able to live and thrive with secure borders and no threat of attack. On the other hand, when I hear people refer to the Palestinians as just being evil or things like, "life means nothing to them," it makes me want to tear my hair out.

Throughout history, everything big has happened because somebody (person, group, country, empire, etc.) really wants something very badly, not because of some character flaw on their part. I'm not denying that there have been some very, very bad people, people who could accurately be called evil. But to ascribe their motivation to evil for its own sake takes you into the realm of James Bond movies. People want power, money, geopolitical advantages, resources, and whatnot. Some people do evil things to accomplish these goals and yes, they may be evil people. But I don't think that evilness for its own sake has been a major motivator in any conflict I can think of.

Please don't misconstrue me here. I'm parsing the difference between seeking world domination and committing genocide. Both are unspeakably horrible. but they are different. One is an end. The other is a means to an end. It does nobody any good to confuse the two.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, Part Ho

So at a moment when I have a much appreciated pause in my workweek (no class tomorrow or Thursday), I want to continue my Calculus discussion from last time, just because I'm bored and cranky and have nothing else to talk about (aside from some crazy baseball trade action).

In talking about real-life motion in Calculus terms, the curious thing is that the harder it is to conceptualize something, the easier the math is. For example, people understand the idea of speeding up and slowing down pretty naturally, but the math of that is harder than the math of velocity, which can be positive or negative and can therefore be confusing.

Even more confusing is displacement, where positive and negative totals mean that from the time you get out of bed in the morning until the time you go to bed at night your displacement is exactly the same as someone who didn't get out of bed in the first place. In fact, the major reason we use  distance instead of displacement is because the Puritans valued industriousness and wanted to reward people who got out of bed and did stuff, so they invented something called distance to give them and the idea caught on. But it's still nice to get back into bed and have your net displacement equal 0.

Mathematically, distance is just like displacement except it values all motion as positive. So driving 6 miles to work and 6 miles back is counted as 6 + 6 instead of 6 - 6. Unlike displacement, distance cannot be undone, as Ferris Beuller and friends learned.

As for velocity, where the 35 miles per hour I travel to work is undone by the -35 miles per hour I drive home, we have a similar thing called speed. Speed was invented by Asa Whitney, cousin of Eli Whitney who invented cotton gin and cotton martinis. Asa Whitney was a proponent of the transcontinental railroad who believed the achievement would be diminished and use of the railroad limited if people thought that the east to west velocity was negative. Speed treats all velocity as positive, whatever direction life might take you.

The math of distance and speed is more complicated than displacement and velocity because going 6 miles one way and then returning to the same spot takes you back to the beginning, thank you, not 12 miles away. We segregate this type of behavior into something called absolute value, which is useful but annoying in math.

But now back to acceleration, which is the change in velocity. You can't take direction away from acceleration. If your velocity is positive and your acceleration is positive, your velocity is increasing. If your velocity is negative and your acceleration is negative, then your velocity is negatively increasing (or increasing in magnitude, if you must. Magnitude, by the way, was invented by Magnus Pompey, the Roman General, who just liked naming stuff after himself).

Whatever the direction, we call this state "speeding up." If your velocity is positive and acceleration is negative, or vice versa, you are "slowing down."

Of course, everyone since Asa Whitney has known what speeding up and slowing down are. But Calculus gives us tools to determine what's going on and a series of somewhat confusing techniques to measure it. And that's as much math as I'm going to do tonight.

Hi ho, hi ho, Part Hi

Of all the things, my head is swimming with Calculus after a solid week of helping both of my daughters and my own class with a circumscribed but still broad base of topics.

I like Calculus, and it's comforting to know that practically everybody feels the same way about it. People love Calculus. And why not? It's challenging (the traditional authority figure euphemism for 'difficult') and requires not only a strong understanding of new concepts and procedures and the accuracy to complete complex problems without error, but solid algebra skills and a working knowledge of Geometry and Trigonometry as well. I mean, who doesn't have that?

One of the topics du jour is something called rectilinear motion, the one-dimensional change in position of an object. By one-dimensional I mean back and forth along a given line. This seems pretty removed from reality, but if you think about it, unless your car can drive sideways, fly or burrow, driving is pretty much one-dimensional business.

The core measurement of rectilinear motion is something called displacement, the change in position from where you started to where you end up. For example, driving from home to school, I have been displaced in some measurable kind of way. And even though I am three dimensional and so is my car, a road is kind of like a line, the one and only one-dimensional thing.

It is sometimes said that displacement is "distance with direction" and technically, that's true, but what it means is that moving in one direction cancels movement in the opposite direction. For example, if I'm lying on my couch and then get up and off to work I go and then home from work I go and then lie back down in the same spot on the couch, that my displacement is 0. But that's not a very good description of my day, which included my walking 100 ft to my car, driving 6 miles to work, then walking 50 ft. into the office, then back to my car, drive back home and get back on the couch. I actually traveled 12 miles in the car and 300 ft. walking. But my displacement is 0. Weird, huh?

So once you have displacement and, like it or not, displacement takes time, you have velocity, which is the change of position per unit of time. It has that same unreal directional component in that if my drive to work has a velocity of 30 miles per hour, my drive home is -30 miles per hour. And with velocity comes acceleration, which is the change in velocity per unit of time.  This makes a little more sense in that if you're sitting still, then start moving, faster and faster until you reach the desired speed, then slow down until you stop again, that's positive and negative acceleration. Okay, but we're not up to the Calculus part of this yet, to be covered in the next post.

New perspective

I had my first week of part-time work this week. Each day I would go into the office, teach one class and maybe one sort-of class, and then go home. If there was a long gap in between them, I would go lie down for a while and maybe even sleep.

Each day I would go home an pretty much crash for the duration. I took long naps and stayed on the couch for most of the remainder of the day. This demonstrated an interesting principle for me, the idea of zero-sum energy.

I think I've noted before that I've always felt confident in my energy reserves. I could always summon up 5 more minutes of stamina, be it running or cycling or lesson planning or teaching or whatever. It was comforting to know that I always had that little extra for the occasional times I needed it. Well, I can say without a doubt that this does not in any way describe my current physical condition.

I haven't been able to find any explanation of why shingles causes fatigue, but every description of symptoms says that it does. For whatever reason, I find that on any given day, I have a finite amount of energy. Some of that is contained in my body when I wake up, and the rest comes from food and drink. But it's finite- it runs out eventually. And when that happens I physically crash. I get dizzy and weak and have to lie down, drink something with sugar in it, and wait to replenish.

I know this sounds depressing and to some extent it is. But on a scientific basis, it's really very interesting. I never thought about my energy stores in this way. They used to say, "You are what you eat," and that's much more literally true for me right now than it's ever been. A bowl of cereal, mid-morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner and evening snack give me a certain budget of energy. And even more interestingly, it's not just physical energy, it's mental energy as well.

I've noticed this because I've been helping both of my kids with their schoolwork- both with Calculus and one with an English paper as well. Thursday night through Saturday afternoon I spent a lot of time doing this, and then suddenly on Saturday evening I couldn't read anymore. I could look at a page, I suppose, but I was unable to take in any of the information. How weird is that? I've always been a sponge for information of any sort, and here it is, staring me in the face, something interesting and intellectually stimulating (an article on Hamlet that my daughter needs for a paper) and I just kept looking at the page and my reading muscles wouldn't engage.

This gives me a different perspective on how to budget my time in that I have to inventory my energy levels as well as my to do list. Today is the first day I've started with that perspective from the very start, so I'll let you know how it goes.

And now, because I'm lying around watching TV so much, and as much as I dislike that animal videos are a thing, here's a mysterious video of a pug somehow climbing a flight of stairs.

And here are two cats and a banana box

Today's News

As I'm beginning to recover, I intend to be posting more frequently. I'm going to start small because I have a lot to write about today.

The front page of today's Philadelphia Inquirer had a couple of interesting items. First, was an article about false confessions. I'd never thought much about that topic, but it turns out that 25% of people found guilty and then cleared by DNA evidence had confessed. This is fascinating and enlightening. At first glance, it seems like this happens most often to people with some sort of mental or emotional issue and people with little prior interaction with police,which makes sense. But it doesn't cover everyone.

So if any of you readers are much into social justice, this might be something you look into. The first step in protecting people's rights would probably be the videotaping of interrogations, which would provide context to the confession. The example in the article is the illiterate guy who couldn't read what he was signing (he's since been exonerated).

On a less weighty matter, literally, the Inquirer also announces that the newspaper will be converting to a "slightly narrower page width." It's clear that this sort of thing is done specifically to save money (like the tightfisted boss who buys toilet paper that's 1/2 inch narrower than standard) and the announcement doesn't deny that. They just mention that lots of other newspapers are doing the same thing to "enhance their commercial printing opportunities." In other words, use a printing press that can also be used to printing other stuff.

They are careful to note that they are not reducing type size. And they tout various "enhancements". My favorite among these are the "improved pages for comics, puzzles and games (emphasis theirs) for easier use (italics mine). I love this. I'd really like to read the comics page but it's just too damned difficult to use. And those puzzles? There are all kinds of things I could use the puzzles for, but it's just too hard. And don't get me started on the games. I think society would be better off if people were just honest with each other instead of playing games, I don't need my newspaper encouraging people to be manipulative.

Seriously though, did you know there were games in the newspaper? Forget about Words With Friends; I'm going to play the newspaper. I have to look for these games. I'll report in if I find them.

A few election notes (Updated)

Thank goodness. Lots of good news tonight.

I thought that Romney's concession speech was gracious and genuine. The problem is that we just as easily could have heard him spew all kinds of lies in exactly the same tone of voice. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt for now. In fact, he sounded so gracious that the pundits were saying, "If only the had seemed that genuine during the campaign..." Hmm, Al Gore, ever hear that before? These guys are too beholden to their contributors or bases to learn that lesson.

I think the problem that Romney faced, aside from the general unpalatability of the Republican platform, is that he reached the nomination almost entirely by negative ads. That's fine as far as it goes, but considering how viciously the right has attacked Obama, calling him un-American, Muslim, socialist, communist, Nazi, whatever from the moment he was elected, what exactly were the negative ads going to say that was going to rise above the noise?

On other topics, the whole thing was worth watching for the moment Elizabeth Warren was announced as the winner of the Senate seat in Massachusetts. Marriage equality had a big night, and marijuana was decriminalized in a couple of states, something that was, and I say this literally, nothing more than a pipe dream back in the day. The emergency manager law in Michigan (hopefully) getting defeated was a big win for democracy.

Obviously, the big dynamic, beyond the presidential race, was the obvious failure of the Republicans to nominate senatorial candidates who were in step with anyone aside from the most radical right wingers. I'm glad it happened because it alone kept the Senate in Democratic control, but really guys, for the good of the country you claim to love, get your act together.

Of course, Obama's speech was excellent as well. I just want to see that guy governing, not the hesitant compromiser who did some good stuff but squandered some opportunities as well.

Taggmentum 2016!

And here we go

Today I'm finally back at school. Technically, I was in school last week, and even led an elective class on business math, but today is my first day back and teaching a "real" class, AP Calculus. I am a little nervous and a little medicated, but I think it'll be fine. It's not as terrifying as it seemed last week. This is all I am teaching for the next month or so, just to make sure I'm up for it. I think I am but I've been very wrong on several occasions, so it's good to be sure.

This all feels kind of curious and a bit unworldly. I think that's in part because I've been forbidden by both my wife and my supervisor from driving to work. I understand and support this decision; I can't be trusted to decide this kind of thing, but it somehow unmoors me from the normal reality of work. I guess it's the lack of control and the lack of routine. I'm captive of other people's schedules.

So I'll check in later to let everyone know how it went.

Just by the way

I am not in any way, shape or form contagious. You cannot catch what I had. Even at its worst, the only thing that could have possibly happened if something freaky occurred is that you could catch chicken pox if you haven't been vaccinated. And if you haven't been vaccinated, I strongly recommend that you do so. If you never get chicken pox it is impossible for you to get shingles.

But where's my glass and ice cubes?

It's been all I can do to stop myself from filling my blog with page after page of complaining about how crappy I feel. I've written plenty, but when I read it back to myself, it all just seems whiny.

You may say, well Frank, you're Jewish, you're supposed to be whiny. Yeah, but it's not funny or even interesting. The best I can find is from a not-quite-post titled "Life As A Ghost"

Neither Casper nor Beetlejuice. Not Nearly Headless Nick nor even Sam Wheat (though even I am probably a better actor than Patrick Swayze). I'm not a ghost in that I've lost corporeal form. My losses have been less obvious (yes, I'm aware that most changes are less obvious than being dead, but I'm trying to make a point here). I'm a ghost in the sense of being more a shadow than a whole person.

That's actually not bad, but where do I go from there except to complain?

Anyway, since I've been in this state, I've struggled to find much interesting to say, and I certainly haven't even tried for anything uplifting. But I spoke with a psychologist this evening, and she advised me that finding myself at a low point like where I now sit is a prime opportunity for spiritual growth. On one hand, yeah, that sounds good. I should take advantage of my changed and humbled perspective to take stock of my life and figure out what's really important to me. On the other hand, this sounds like a very professional way of saying, "If life gives you lemons, make lemonade."