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.
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Happy Birthday Frank!
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Sunday, October 23, 2011
So what is this thing called again?
I got an iPhone this week. I hadn't intended to; I was just waiting for something that I thought would be a noticeable upgrade over my prior phone, which was a 3 year-old original Droid. That phone worked very well. It was just very slow on the data end. So I got the iPhone because it had a fast processor. Plus everything else in my house is Apple, so why not my phone.
So far, with my new phone, I have created task lists and shopping lists, listened to music, gotten directions, checked train schedules, played solitaire, received and sent text messages and e-mail, and a played with the voice controlled stuff. Can we spot the obvious omission?
I've had the phone for 4 days now and have not made or received a single phone call. In fact, I don't even know if the phone part of the thing works. The other kinds of messaging things I've done have made it unnecessary to make phone calls. So I've used my phone a lot, just not as a phone.
This makes me think of two things that I said about mobile phones, one while I was working as a marketer in the early days of cellular phones, and one of which I said several years later when I first got my oldest child a cell phone. They both sound kind of stupid, but put them together and it all kind of makes sense, not that I knew that at a time.
Back in the late 80's when cellular phones first burst onto the scene, most people know they were big and heavy and inconvenient to carry around. In fairly short order, this began to change. At around the point when there were finally phones you could put in your pocket, I said to the guy running our cellular biz, "You know when this business will be really big? When you don't have to carry the damn phone around with you." In the early 00's, when deciding what phone to get for a child, we decided, "The purpose of the phone is to make phone calls, not to play games on," (this was a HUGE concern to parents at the time).
So here I am, carrying around this thing that does so much more than could have been imagined back in the 80's. Now, one could be excused from thinking small at that time, 5 years or so before the World Wide Web had been invented. We knew the cellular had data transmission capabilities, but at the time we were deciding whether it made more sense to have messaging devices be separate from the phone. Nobody thought of transmitting data as a major thing in any aspect of life or even business.
But in a way, I was right 20 years ago. I'm not carrying a phone around with me, at least not in the traditional sense. I'm carrying a computer that makes phone calls. It's a thing to play games and a whole bunch more. And as an advertising person, what's really interesting to me is that we still call it a phone, when the telephone part of it is almost an afterthought. We've redefined what the word 'phone' means.
So far, with my new phone, I have created task lists and shopping lists, listened to music, gotten directions, checked train schedules, played solitaire, received and sent text messages and e-mail, and a played with the voice controlled stuff. Can we spot the obvious omission?
I've had the phone for 4 days now and have not made or received a single phone call. In fact, I don't even know if the phone part of the thing works. The other kinds of messaging things I've done have made it unnecessary to make phone calls. So I've used my phone a lot, just not as a phone.
This makes me think of two things that I said about mobile phones, one while I was working as a marketer in the early days of cellular phones, and one of which I said several years later when I first got my oldest child a cell phone. They both sound kind of stupid, but put them together and it all kind of makes sense, not that I knew that at a time.
Back in the late 80's when cellular phones first burst onto the scene, most people know they were big and heavy and inconvenient to carry around. In fairly short order, this began to change. At around the point when there were finally phones you could put in your pocket, I said to the guy running our cellular biz, "You know when this business will be really big? When you don't have to carry the damn phone around with you." In the early 00's, when deciding what phone to get for a child, we decided, "The purpose of the phone is to make phone calls, not to play games on," (this was a HUGE concern to parents at the time).
So here I am, carrying around this thing that does so much more than could have been imagined back in the 80's. Now, one could be excused from thinking small at that time, 5 years or so before the World Wide Web had been invented. We knew the cellular had data transmission capabilities, but at the time we were deciding whether it made more sense to have messaging devices be separate from the phone. Nobody thought of transmitting data as a major thing in any aspect of life or even business.
But in a way, I was right 20 years ago. I'm not carrying a phone around with me, at least not in the traditional sense. I'm carrying a computer that makes phone calls. It's a thing to play games and a whole bunch more. And as an advertising person, what's really interesting to me is that we still call it a phone, when the telephone part of it is almost an afterthought. We've redefined what the word 'phone' means.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
No boo hoo
I find it strange to hear people upset about the fatal auto race crash this past weekend. Of course, I don't wish sudden untimely death on anyone, but more than mourning the poor guy who perished, there's a lot of hand-wringing about how the conditions weren't safe.
Well, DUH. In what universe is it ever safe to drive in heavy traffic on a curvy road at 200 miles per hour? Anyone who's ever tried that on the Schuykill can tell you that it's no easy feat getting from King of Prussia to Center City in 4 1/2 minutes without crashing.
Really, the fact that there are so few crashes is a testament to the skill of the drivers and a reasonably strict code of conduct, but there's an inherent tension between speed and safety. I think people tend to underestimate the force involved in hitting a stationary object that doesn't give when you hit it. The best way it's ever been explained to me was to try to imagine what it would be like if you were just standing there and a brick wall came along and hit you at 40 miles per hour.
And the problem with high speed is that the force with which you hit the wall is based on the amount of deceleration you do, or how quickly your velocity decreases (which is pretty quick when you hit a wall). I could throw some numbers around, but I know neither what they signify nor what they really mean in terms of bodily harm. Key point though: Newton's laws of motion say that if you hit an immovable object that the object necessarily hits back with an equal force (that's the only way the motion can stop). That's actually the force that crumples your car. The way you get hurt is that you are moving at the same speed of the car and do not stop until something applies an equal and opposite force to you. This tends to hurt.
The reason we have airbags is that they increase the time it takes for that force to be applied- the stopping is more gradual, and since time is the denominator of the force formula, the bigger it is, the less force. Less force means less pain and less frequent death.
In any event, there's only so much you can do to mitigate the damage done to the body in a high speed crash. And that's not even talking about the fire part, which is another inevitable result of using combustable fuel to power the cars.
I certainly don't think there's anything wrong with imposing safety measures, but unless you take some of the speed out of the equation, so to speak, there's only a limited amount you can do.
Well, DUH. In what universe is it ever safe to drive in heavy traffic on a curvy road at 200 miles per hour? Anyone who's ever tried that on the Schuykill can tell you that it's no easy feat getting from King of Prussia to Center City in 4 1/2 minutes without crashing.
Really, the fact that there are so few crashes is a testament to the skill of the drivers and a reasonably strict code of conduct, but there's an inherent tension between speed and safety. I think people tend to underestimate the force involved in hitting a stationary object that doesn't give when you hit it. The best way it's ever been explained to me was to try to imagine what it would be like if you were just standing there and a brick wall came along and hit you at 40 miles per hour.
And the problem with high speed is that the force with which you hit the wall is based on the amount of deceleration you do, or how quickly your velocity decreases (which is pretty quick when you hit a wall). I could throw some numbers around, but I know neither what they signify nor what they really mean in terms of bodily harm. Key point though: Newton's laws of motion say that if you hit an immovable object that the object necessarily hits back with an equal force (that's the only way the motion can stop). That's actually the force that crumples your car. The way you get hurt is that you are moving at the same speed of the car and do not stop until something applies an equal and opposite force to you. This tends to hurt.
The reason we have airbags is that they increase the time it takes for that force to be applied- the stopping is more gradual, and since time is the denominator of the force formula, the bigger it is, the less force. Less force means less pain and less frequent death.
In any event, there's only so much you can do to mitigate the damage done to the body in a high speed crash. And that's not even talking about the fire part, which is another inevitable result of using combustable fuel to power the cars.
I certainly don't think there's anything wrong with imposing safety measures, but unless you take some of the speed out of the equation, so to speak, there's only a limited amount you can do.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Something's fishy
Being a male in his 50's, I have to worry about all kinds of things. Many of these things are health-related. I have to worry about health related things because, I gather, otherwise I will DIE. I don't particularly want to die, though I don't really know anything about what it would be like to do so. But since it's inevitable I'll eventually find out what it's like anyway, I might as well do the other thing for as long as I can.
This means several things, some of which I do, some of which I kind of do. They don't do a lot of studies on kind of doing things, so I know I'm on shaky ground in some instances.
One of the top things men my age need to worry about is cholesterol. Actually, I long for the day when it was as simple as cholesterol. Now there's good cholesterol and bad cholesterol. There's also something called triglycerides, which I don't think is exactly cholesterol but I've heard it's bad. I have no idea what my triglyceride level is or should be, but I had a friend visiting recently who was under doctor's orders to lower his triglycerides. He was to do so by exercising more frequently and by taking fish oil.
I've taken fish oil in the past because it's supposed to be good for you. In fact, if you use the internet, it's very easy to find many many many things that fish oil is good for. There's only one problem. Fish oil comes from fish. This may seem obvious, but in nature, for example, calcium comes from a number of sources, but it can be made (or purified anyway, I don't think you can technically "make" calcium) in a lab into a pill. Fish oil, on the other hand, comes from fish, or more accurately from things fish eat via the fish. And that's it. They can't make it or get it from anywhere else.
This means that if you wish to take a fish oil supplement, it comes in a capsule full of, yes, oil from fish. This has some downsides, of course. First of all, in order to get the purported benefits, you need to consume a fair amount of the stuff, which means taking 3 or 4 very large capsules every day. Even if that's not a problem, fish oil tastes like, yes, fish. Maybe not when you first take it, but once the capsule part dissolves, you've got it. The typical way you get it is affectionately known as fish burps. Re-peats will do as well. These can go on for a while, so even if you take it with a meal, as recommended, within a half hour you'll think you had fish for dinner.
As a result, I am now taking what is referred to as "Pharmaceutical Grade Fish Oil," otherwise known as the very expensive fish oil. The kind I'm using is about $40 per month and I know there are more expensive kinds. I've only taken it once, but so far I am fish burp-free and I can feel my triglycerides dropping as I sit her.
This means several things, some of which I do, some of which I kind of do. They don't do a lot of studies on kind of doing things, so I know I'm on shaky ground in some instances.
One of the top things men my age need to worry about is cholesterol. Actually, I long for the day when it was as simple as cholesterol. Now there's good cholesterol and bad cholesterol. There's also something called triglycerides, which I don't think is exactly cholesterol but I've heard it's bad. I have no idea what my triglyceride level is or should be, but I had a friend visiting recently who was under doctor's orders to lower his triglycerides. He was to do so by exercising more frequently and by taking fish oil.
I've taken fish oil in the past because it's supposed to be good for you. In fact, if you use the internet, it's very easy to find many many many things that fish oil is good for. There's only one problem. Fish oil comes from fish. This may seem obvious, but in nature, for example, calcium comes from a number of sources, but it can be made (or purified anyway, I don't think you can technically "make" calcium) in a lab into a pill. Fish oil, on the other hand, comes from fish, or more accurately from things fish eat via the fish. And that's it. They can't make it or get it from anywhere else.
This means that if you wish to take a fish oil supplement, it comes in a capsule full of, yes, oil from fish. This has some downsides, of course. First of all, in order to get the purported benefits, you need to consume a fair amount of the stuff, which means taking 3 or 4 very large capsules every day. Even if that's not a problem, fish oil tastes like, yes, fish. Maybe not when you first take it, but once the capsule part dissolves, you've got it. The typical way you get it is affectionately known as fish burps. Re-peats will do as well. These can go on for a while, so even if you take it with a meal, as recommended, within a half hour you'll think you had fish for dinner.
As a result, I am now taking what is referred to as "Pharmaceutical Grade Fish Oil," otherwise known as the very expensive fish oil. The kind I'm using is about $40 per month and I know there are more expensive kinds. I've only taken it once, but so far I am fish burp-free and I can feel my triglycerides dropping as I sit her.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Hallowverkill
I went to Target to try to buy some halloween candy. I've been aware that Halloween is now the closest thing to Christmas as far as consumer spending is concerned (estimated to be close to $7 billion this year- in the middle of a recession), but that doesn't even begin to cover its takeover of every store in neighborhood. Acme has 3 separate candy displays, the entire front of any Rite Aid can only be described as spooktacular, and Target? Well, Target has 5 display aisles of candy on top of the regular candy aisles.
Why do they need so much space? Are there suddenly more kinds of candy? Is it all candy corn? Nope, it's mixing and matching of existing products, with the occasional exception like Reece's pumpkin-shaped (but thankfully not flavored) peanut butter cups, and bag sizes. Mars, the largest candy maker, has 8 different kinds of chocolates that might show up, 10 if you include multiple M&Ms varieties. I know from teaching this stuff that if you make a mixture of 4 of these, you have 210 different combinations. Sell them in bags of 50, 100, and 150 and you now have 630 possibilities. Add in the other candy companies and you could argue that they're actually exhibiting restraint.
Since I try to only buy halloween candy that I will eat myself, making leftovers a feature and not a bug, I have to rifle through the shelves to make sure I get the combinations that have good variety but not one weirdo thing that'll end up in the garbage. Hence, 15 minutes doing nothing but wandering in and out of those 5 aisles at Target to get the bags with optimal variety and minimal waste. I'll give you the rundown after the trick or treaters have been through.
Oh, and don't let me forget to remind everyone of the importance of not eating anything pumpkin flavored. Not that anyone even knows what pumpkin tastes like anyway.
Why do they need so much space? Are there suddenly more kinds of candy? Is it all candy corn? Nope, it's mixing and matching of existing products, with the occasional exception like Reece's pumpkin-shaped (but thankfully not flavored) peanut butter cups, and bag sizes. Mars, the largest candy maker, has 8 different kinds of chocolates that might show up, 10 if you include multiple M&Ms varieties. I know from teaching this stuff that if you make a mixture of 4 of these, you have 210 different combinations. Sell them in bags of 50, 100, and 150 and you now have 630 possibilities. Add in the other candy companies and you could argue that they're actually exhibiting restraint.
Since I try to only buy halloween candy that I will eat myself, making leftovers a feature and not a bug, I have to rifle through the shelves to make sure I get the combinations that have good variety but not one weirdo thing that'll end up in the garbage. Hence, 15 minutes doing nothing but wandering in and out of those 5 aisles at Target to get the bags with optimal variety and minimal waste. I'll give you the rundown after the trick or treaters have been through.
Oh, and don't let me forget to remind everyone of the importance of not eating anything pumpkin flavored. Not that anyone even knows what pumpkin tastes like anyway.
Early morning metaphysics
I was driving back from dropping my daughter off at school at 7AM and I saw there was traffic on the main thoroughfare, City Avenue. There is seldom any traffic at 7AM, so I was surprised. I then saw a car with its flashers on in the right lane blocking the road, so the traffic made sense. I don't normally go on City Avenue anyway, but rather use a parallel road closer to my house.
As I head up that road and approach a traffic light, I see a long line of cars waiting. My initial thought is, why are there so many cars here? Then my exact thought was, "Oh they're just from City Avenue, they're not really here."
Because the cars clearly were here, this made me wonder, from a philosophical point of view, whether the people who were on the road as a detour existed in a different plane of reality from people like me who were on the road because it's my usual road. I would tend to think that the answer is yes. Whatever the physical manifestations, the people in the detouring cars were operating on a different level of consciousness than I, because all they were thinking about was how and when would they get back to City Avenue. They were, in a certain sense, not really there.
It was 7 AM and I was sleepy, so I began to think about whether this was true in a broader sense. If I'm not really thinking about where I'm going but instead just going along a familiar path, was I really there during the part I can't remember when I've arrived? Fortunately, I was soon home. Philosophers must have very strange lives if this is the way they think all the time.
As I head up that road and approach a traffic light, I see a long line of cars waiting. My initial thought is, why are there so many cars here? Then my exact thought was, "Oh they're just from City Avenue, they're not really here."
Because the cars clearly were here, this made me wonder, from a philosophical point of view, whether the people who were on the road as a detour existed in a different plane of reality from people like me who were on the road because it's my usual road. I would tend to think that the answer is yes. Whatever the physical manifestations, the people in the detouring cars were operating on a different level of consciousness than I, because all they were thinking about was how and when would they get back to City Avenue. They were, in a certain sense, not really there.
It was 7 AM and I was sleepy, so I began to think about whether this was true in a broader sense. If I'm not really thinking about where I'm going but instead just going along a familiar path, was I really there during the part I can't remember when I've arrived? Fortunately, I was soon home. Philosophers must have very strange lives if this is the way they think all the time.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Friends, not food
I'm not one to criticize Community Supported Agriculture, which supports small farms by having members pay upfront for fruit and vegetables to be delivered later. And I love getting a crate of whatever they happen to be harvesting this year. But every once in a while, they try to pawn something off as a crop that just isn't.
This week it was Sweet Potato Leaves. Really? Does anybody genuinely think that sweet potato leaves are food? If they were, they would have their own name and not be called the leaves of something that is food.
Earlier this year we got something called garlic scapes, which I think are some vestigial part of the garlic plant (okay, I made that up) and taste like a combination of scallions and garlic, without any of the good flavor notes. I've been to a farmer's market where they sell spreads and pesto made with garlic scapes and they are universally awful. The other thing we got were pea shoots. Again, it's a by-product of growing peas, not its own thing.
The farmers try to trick you into taking this stuff by including recipes using them and treating them as exotic ingredients. But ultimately, they are the kinds of things that farmers probably eat when there's absolutely nothing else to eat and that they would never even try to sell because nobody would ever buy them.
Hope we get some actual sweet potatoes soon.
This week it was Sweet Potato Leaves. Really? Does anybody genuinely think that sweet potato leaves are food? If they were, they would have their own name and not be called the leaves of something that is food.
Earlier this year we got something called garlic scapes, which I think are some vestigial part of the garlic plant (okay, I made that up) and taste like a combination of scallions and garlic, without any of the good flavor notes. I've been to a farmer's market where they sell spreads and pesto made with garlic scapes and they are universally awful. The other thing we got were pea shoots. Again, it's a by-product of growing peas, not its own thing.
The farmers try to trick you into taking this stuff by including recipes using them and treating them as exotic ingredients. But ultimately, they are the kinds of things that farmers probably eat when there's absolutely nothing else to eat and that they would never even try to sell because nobody would ever buy them.
Hope we get some actual sweet potatoes soon.
Monday, October 10, 2011
Decaf night
A lot of schools have things they call Coffee House, where kids come and perform mostly but not exclusively music. If this were talking place at an actual coffee house it probably wouldn't be called a coffee house, but that's another matter. This is a charming proposition, if fraught with risk from the perspective of the listener. It reminds me of the old Chris Rock line, "You know, they call it Community College because everyone in the community can go there." It always has the potential for awfulness.
This potential is one of the charms at my daughter's school, where they not only don't call it a coffee house but hold it in a room where no coffee or drinks of any kind are allowed (because why would a bunch of singers ever want a drink of water?). This particular school has these things every month or so, with the number of performers ranging from 15 to nearly thrice that.
The popularity of these shows tends to grow as the school year progresses, and the room's seats were about half full when the show began by showing a very nicely done if unremarkable music video done by students. Then the MC came on and immediately starts bemoaning the small size of the crowd. He continued to do so throughout the show, until a few of us called out, "Hey! The people you're talking to are here! You're complaining to the wrong people."
The performances range from bad karaoke types of things to some really excellent stuff to things that are just fun. The problem with many of the singers is the American Idol Syndrome, which requires one to have every song build to a huge, belted out crescendo. The better performers realize there's more than one way to sing a song and give the audience something beautiful or charming. There were also a couple of songs where I thought, "This is a good song to open a cellophane-wrapped candy to," where the aural assault was so intense that I literally grimaced.
One of the ways people do things differently is to not decide what they're going to perform until the day before or even day of. This has increased entertainment value if, for example, they have never even considered doing the song they've chosen, meaning they have to start from scratch, learning words and music a few hours before show time. You find these people frantically rehearsing in various alcoves of the building and outside until minutes before the show. It's all done in good fun and the crowd cheers everyone.
My favorite moment in the past year was when a lone 8th grader with an acoustic guitar decided to perform "Tubthumper" by Chumbawamba. He did a good job stumbling through and the audience was more than happy to join in for a rousing "I get knocked down, but I get up again" chorus. And we all went home happy.
This potential is one of the charms at my daughter's school, where they not only don't call it a coffee house but hold it in a room where no coffee or drinks of any kind are allowed (because why would a bunch of singers ever want a drink of water?). This particular school has these things every month or so, with the number of performers ranging from 15 to nearly thrice that.
The popularity of these shows tends to grow as the school year progresses, and the room's seats were about half full when the show began by showing a very nicely done if unremarkable music video done by students. Then the MC came on and immediately starts bemoaning the small size of the crowd. He continued to do so throughout the show, until a few of us called out, "Hey! The people you're talking to are here! You're complaining to the wrong people."
The performances range from bad karaoke types of things to some really excellent stuff to things that are just fun. The problem with many of the singers is the American Idol Syndrome, which requires one to have every song build to a huge, belted out crescendo. The better performers realize there's more than one way to sing a song and give the audience something beautiful or charming. There were also a couple of songs where I thought, "This is a good song to open a cellophane-wrapped candy to," where the aural assault was so intense that I literally grimaced.
One of the ways people do things differently is to not decide what they're going to perform until the day before or even day of. This has increased entertainment value if, for example, they have never even considered doing the song they've chosen, meaning they have to start from scratch, learning words and music a few hours before show time. You find these people frantically rehearsing in various alcoves of the building and outside until minutes before the show. It's all done in good fun and the crowd cheers everyone.
My favorite moment in the past year was when a lone 8th grader with an acoustic guitar decided to perform "Tubthumper" by Chumbawamba. He did a good job stumbling through and the audience was more than happy to join in for a rousing "I get knocked down, but I get up again" chorus. And we all went home happy.
Saturday, October 08, 2011
End of Phillies 2011
Last night was pretty sad. The crowd was great. I hate it when people only get loud when the scoreboard and music urge them to do so. Last night, it got louder after that nonsense stopped.
The game itself was an absolute masterpiece. I don't think I've ever seen two pitchers pitch so well against each other. Take out the first two batters of the game and you have 17 consecutive scoreless innings by the starters. It's impossible to know which pitcher was better. Even though the Cardinals scored and the Phillies didn't, they're a better hitting team to begin with.
It was sad to think it might have been the last time I cheered for Rollins and Madson. It was sad to think I'll probably never yell "Rauuul!" again. It was sad to see Howard go down in a heap. It's sad to see Charlie Manuel's faith in his players go unrewarded.
I could give you my in-depth analysis of how and why this series ended the way it did, but there's so much baseball writing out there that it seems pointless. From the third inning of the second game on, the Cardinals played better, by whatever measure you might care to use.
But what's saddest for me is that I don't get to go to any more games this year. I don't think I've ever enjoyed watching baseball more than I did this spring and summer, miserable weather and all. I'll miss the energy and the fun and the way it made me feel to be there and part of it. It was a fantastic season and I loved every minute. I just could have used a few more hours of it.
Now my raft of crimson t-shirts and my ballpark rain kit are put away, the year's souvenirs locked up in a zipper bag, and it's time to watch some good baseball without really caring who wins. And to hope that the time until pitchers and catchers report to camp soon feels shorter than it does right now.
The game itself was an absolute masterpiece. I don't think I've ever seen two pitchers pitch so well against each other. Take out the first two batters of the game and you have 17 consecutive scoreless innings by the starters. It's impossible to know which pitcher was better. Even though the Cardinals scored and the Phillies didn't, they're a better hitting team to begin with.
It was sad to think it might have been the last time I cheered for Rollins and Madson. It was sad to think I'll probably never yell "Rauuul!" again. It was sad to see Howard go down in a heap. It's sad to see Charlie Manuel's faith in his players go unrewarded.
I could give you my in-depth analysis of how and why this series ended the way it did, but there's so much baseball writing out there that it seems pointless. From the third inning of the second game on, the Cardinals played better, by whatever measure you might care to use.
But what's saddest for me is that I don't get to go to any more games this year. I don't think I've ever enjoyed watching baseball more than I did this spring and summer, miserable weather and all. I'll miss the energy and the fun and the way it made me feel to be there and part of it. It was a fantastic season and I loved every minute. I just could have used a few more hours of it.
Now my raft of crimson t-shirts and my ballpark rain kit are put away, the year's souvenirs locked up in a zipper bag, and it's time to watch some good baseball without really caring who wins. And to hope that the time until pitchers and catchers report to camp soon feels shorter than it does right now.
Tuesday, October 04, 2011
I love getting e-mail
Here's one I got this evening:
I was really confused with the homework, will we be going over it in class? Also, the soccer team has a game tomorrow and our dismissal is at 2:30 so we will only have about 10 minutes of your class
I was really confused with the homework, will we be going over it in class? Also, the soccer team has a game tomorrow and our dismissal is at 2:30 so we will only have about 10 minutes of your class
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