I just read an article on slashdot saying that a lawyer is trying to patent the idea of a "marketing company devoted to selling/marketing products produced by other companies in return for a share of their profits".
Yes, he's trying to patent the idea of a marketing company.
It seems like common sense that the patent office would read that application, and then pull out its special "Fuck Off" stamp and reject it, but the patent office isn't run by anything approximating common sense these days.
Which led me to a brilliant idea: I'm going to file a patent for the idea of "being a dick". That way, once my patent is approved, anytime someone is being a dick they'll either have to pay me royalties, or else stop being a dick. Or get sued.
I am going to be filthy fucking rich.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
A Valentine's weekend to remember, Part 1, 2009 Edition
A year ago, I celebrated Valentine's Day by taking Keiko on a romantic trip to Mendocino, where I proceeded to nearly get us killed.
This year, I celebrated Valentine's Day by helping Ed nearly kill himself...
I invited the whole NYC crew out for a weekend in CA. As it happened, the weekend we all agreed on was Valentine's Day weekend. The plan was:
Friday: everyone arrives on the evening JetBlue flight into SFO.
Saturday: breakfast at the house, I cook all day, and we have a V-Day dinner party
Sunday: we recover from Saturday
Monday: leave early and head to Napa for winetasting tour
Tuesday: more winetasting, and then everyone but Keiko flies out on the redeye
The entire crew was coming: MK & his wife Carrie, Alex & his fiancee Rose, Ed & his GF Alison, and J-Rob and Socci. And Keiko. Counting me and Joel, that's 11 people staying in the house. That's a high population density for the house, but high population for the house = heaven for Kona the Corgi, or as Joel calls her, Kona the Whore-gi:
Kona and Socci
Kona and J-Rob
Kona, Alison, and Ed
Joel and Karen had broken up a couple weeks previous, so he generously volunteered to give up his room as a guestroom, and sleep on the floor of the library. In the days leading up to everyone's arrival, we were frantically trying to get the place ready for all those guests, plus I was trying hard to get started on the cooking for the dinner party. I was attempting an 8-course meal for 11 people, my most ambitious dinner party ever.
I started the cooking on Thursday morning, making the marinade for duck confit. If you've ever had confit, you know that it's amazing. The reason it's amazing is that it's basically meat slow cooked in salty fat. Mmmmmm, salty fat. I made the marinade thurs morning and let the duck soak in it a little over 24 hrs. The rest of Thursday I had to work, and Thursday night was allocated toward doing all the shopping for all the ingredients.
Took a break from cooking, and saw this! If there weren't duck on the stove, I'd go look for a pot of gold...
Friday I slow cooked the duck in 35 ounces of rendered duck fat. I cooked it for over 12 hours, and then strained the fat, put the duck in a bowl, poured the strained fat over it, and put it in the fridge to chill for another 24 hours. It was looking good. I had to run into work to give an interview, for a guy I think I will end up hiring, and then it was time to run home again and bake the cupcakes. I had also baked a cheesecake with a chocolate wafer crust during the day.
The weather here in the Bay Area has been mostly gorgeous the entirety of 2009, which has translated to most of CA having a drought. But, with all my friends coming in for the weekend, naturally a massive storm system moved into the area, and the resulting downpours caused their flight to be late. So I ended up picking everyone up at 1130pm. They were all hungry, so we stopped at In-N-Out, because you can't get that in NYC and nothing in HMB is open past 10.
Upon arriving at the house, we first held a sleeping arrangments draft. Joel was adamant that Keiko participate in the draft, on the grounds that I should not assume she would want to sleep with me. So I reminded Keiko (who seemed to find this funny) that if she _didn't_ choose my room as her preferred sleeping place, at least 5 guys, 3 of them single, were going to be choosing after her, so she ought to consider carefully how far down this little jokey road she wanted to go.
Much to the disappointment of the aforementioned single guys, Keiko chose my room, and in short order everyone had a place to sleep, and we all bedded down for the night.
The next morning, I got up at 9 and started making a huge whitetrash breakfast for everyone: fruit salad, including marashino cherries, pillsbury cinnamon rolls, french toast, eggs, bacon, hashbrowns (those OreIda ones), and, just to balance all that, we busted open a bottle of Dom Perignon that a student had given me, and toasted to a weekend in Cali.
Dom and whitetrash breakfast- a classic combination
After breakfast, half the group went into town to buy the wine for the meal, and the other half lounged around while I started cooking.
Ed, heading for the ocean. Like one of those newly hatched sea turtles you see on the Nature Channel.
Fortunately, everyone was a veteran of my dinner parties, so no one expected that dinner would actually be served at my projected 8pm timeline. I cooked all day, and even with Joel as sous chef, and occasional drafting of other folks, the first course was not served until 9pm.
Kona looking typically ouroboric, Keiko looking typically slender, me looking typically Stay-Puft Marshmallow Gus.
The theme of the dinner, since it was Valentine's Day, was "red". Here's the food lineup for the evening:
1st course: appetizer-sized patties of a black-eyed pea/roasted red peppers/onion/garlic/spices, rolled in cornmeal and lightly fried, served with jerk beef, and a thick spicy tomato dipping sauce
2nd course: red lentil soup
3rd course: chopped salad of red cabbage, radicchio, red bell peppers, cherry tomatoes, served with a orange based viniagrette (some sweet to balance the bitters from the leafy stuff)
4th course: vegetarian calzones, topped with a vegetarian bolognese sauce (Joel is vegetarian), served with homemade spicy meatballs in a red sauce
5th course: duck confit, served with buttered polenta (to balance the salty of the duck), and radish flowers
6th course: salmon broiled in a red-wine butter, served with roasted red potatoes
7th course: orange slices in a red-wine sauce, with sugared orange zest
8th course: cheesecake with a chocolate-wafer crust, served with a warm mixed berry compote
Pre-dinner "Citadel" is a big hit. Except with Rose, apparently.
And of course, wine with every course. Alex and J-Rob went crazy, and bought a couple bottles of Opus 1. That is some good stuff. We ate and drank until 3am.
The journey begins...
We have a lot of drinking to do...
Time to eat!
Getting tipsy = getting touchy-feely. Keiko handles this with typical Japanese stoicism.
Well, that is to say, those of us who made it to the end, ate and drank until 3am. Since I don't have a table big enough to seat 11 people, we used the makeshift table we made for the dinner party last year. It's a low table, and we sit on cushions japanese-style. It's actually a very nice way to eat a dinner, but it also makes it very easy to tip over and fall asleep.
Here's where we lost people:
J-Rob:
- after course 3: insisted that the dinner was awesome, the wine was awesome, and that "There's no way we'd fall asleep after more wine. Absolutely no way."
J-Rob after course 4.
- We were able to wake him for the 5th course, the duck, although the next day he couldn't remember having eaten it. ("I did? Did I like it? Damn, I wish I could remember...")
- after course 5: tipped over again. We tried to wake him for course 6, but he flipped all of us off and went aggressively fetal.
Keiko:
- after course 5: she went downstairs to bed and said to wake her for course 6, which I did.
- after course 6: she went downstairs to bed and said to wake her for course 7. I was unable to accomplish this successfully. (me, speaking to a mound of covers on the bed: "Orange slices! They're delicious!" Mound of covers: "I can't baby, leave me alone and let me sleep.")
Ed, Alison, and MK:
- after course 7, they all tipped over and lay strewn across the living room floor. Along with J-Rob, it looked like a massacre had occurred in the room.
Alison trying to hang on...
...and failing.
Joel:
- made it through all 8 courses, and about 30 seconds after eating his cheesecake, said: "I have to go to bed. Now."
Right now.
Carrie, Socci, Alex, Rose, and I were chilling out after course 8, and they helped me bus the table and get some dishes going. For Alex and Rose, 330am is an early night, so they were fine. Socci is indestructible. Carrie is surprisingly tough- though, in retrospect, to be married to MK she must be tough.
Interlude:
For those of you who have had the pleasure of listening to the song MK wrote for me and Ed on the road trip- The Ballad of A&E, here's a link to yet another creation of his, which I promise you is worth a listen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0boXx-QMRU0
So, at around 330am, Carrie dragged MK off to bed, and Alex and Rose started getting ready for bed. At that point, Ed woke up, picked himself up from the floor, and went for the common bathroom, which was occupied. Then he came and found me in the kitchen, where Socci and I were loading the dishwasher.
Ed: "Dude, I think I'm going to be sick."
Now, here are some important things you should know about Ed:
1) He likes to eat.
2) He really, really likes to eat.
3) He is like a corgi, in that he will, if given the opportunity, eat and keep eating until he kills himself.
When J-Rob failed to muster anything for course 6 other than obscene hand gestures and low gutteral growling, Ed demanded he be given J-Rob's plate. He polished both his own plate and J-Rob's. Similarly, for course 7, he ate his own, and J-Rob's, AND Keiko's. Add to this the fact that he picked off Alison's plate, my plate, and Keiko's plate throughout some of the other courses, and the math adds up to Ed having something like 10-12 courses, plus about a bottle and a half of wine.
Anyway, back to the story...
Me: "Jesus. Just go outside on the deck there, lean over the side, and heave away right into the bushes."
Ed: "Really? You sure?"
Me: "Uh, it's better than having you be sick in here."
So Ed dutifully went outside, and heaved ho over the railing. I brought him a glass of water, and waited with him for a bit. Then I went back inside and resumed cleaning, and about 15 minutes later he came back inside and was standing next to me in the kitchen. Actually, after a few minutes I noticed that he was not so much standing as leaning over the counter, clutching his chest.
Now, for those of you questioning my powers of observation, I remind you that I am me, pretty unobservant in the best of times, and it is now almost 4am, and I am wasted.
Me: "Uh, dude, are you OK?"
(long pause)
Ed (whispering): "No."
Me: "Dude, what's wrong?"
Ed (whispering): "My chest hurts. I've never felt anything like this."
Me: "Your chest hurts? Is there numbness in your arm?? Shit dude, are you having a heart attack????"
Ed: "No... no... I don't think so. It's just a sharp pain right in my chest. I can barely breathe." He looks up. He is actually crying.
This is the point at which I really start freaking out. Ed is crying, we are not watching sports, Castro is not, to the best of my knowledge, actually dead, so something serious is happening. At this point, Alex, Rose, and Socci all realize something is happening, and crowd into the kitchen.
We decide to pull out the sofabed, and Rose wakes up Alison, who immediately comes to comfort Ed. Pulling out the sofabed requires waking up J-Rob, who is still fetal on the floor right where the bed opens up. Fortunately, after 3 hours of uninterrupted sleep he is less surly, and upon learning what's happening, sobers up quickly.
Now, we have the sofabed pulled out, Ed is fetal on it, Alison is spooning him and trying to calm him down, and he is writhing in pain. The rest of us are drunk and worried, and finally Rose says "We have to dial 9-1-1."
In the end, we had no idea if Ed was dying or what, so we did it. At about 350am, we dialed 9-1-1, and were on the phone with them a bit, and 90 seconds after we hung up, an ambulance and a fire truck showed up at the house. 5 EMTs came trundling up the stairs, and made a semicircle around the sofabed, where Ed was writhing in pain.
What followed was a lengthy interrogation of Ed- questions about his medical history, what had happened over the course of the evening, did he have any allergies, etc. It turned out that just a few days earlier, Ed had gone on Prilosec and Zantac to treat acid reflux, which he is apparently susceptible to.
Then they asked: "What have you had to eat tonight?"
All eyes turned to me.
Me: "Uh, um, well..."
I proceeded to list all the things he'd eaten. As I related the list, I realized that everything had tomatoes, or citrus, or hot peppers, or other acidic ingredients. Plus, we'd been drinking only red wine.
It had never occurred to me to try and pH-balance the meal.
Finally, they took his vitals with a nifty portable machine, at which point we figured out that one guy was being trained by the other guy (EMT tutoring- there's something I don't do).
EMT Trainee: "Your vitals look fine. But we can take you to a hospital. Do you want to go to a hospital?"
Ed: "I don't want to go to a fucking hospital."
EMT Trainee: "Do you want to see a doctor? Your friends can take you- you don't have to ride in the ambulance."
Ed: "I don't want to see a fucking doctor. I don't want to go to the fucking hospital. Just tell me right now: is there any reason to think I'm about to die? Am I dying???"
EMT Trainee (trying not to smile): "No, you're not dying. Your vitals are fine."
Ed: "Can you tell me how long I'm going to be like this???"
EMT Trainee (abjectly failing not to smile): "Well, that depends on your body. Probably what happens is that it's like this for another couple of hours, and then you have a lo-o-o-o-o-ng trip to the bathroom, and then you'll be alright."
Ed: "Fuck."
So the EMTs packed up and left at around 430am, practically giggling. And so me, J-Rob, Alex, Rose, and Socci sat around with Ed watching him periodically writhe in pain. I estimated that we'd start mocking him in ten minutes.
Forecasted time to mockery: 10 min
Actual time to mockery: 1.5 min
Forecast error: (10-1.5)/1.5 = +567%
Oh well, good thing I'm not in forecasting anymore.
I went downstairs to bed at 515am. Joel, Keiko, MK, and Carrie slept through the entire series of events.
Ed (and Alison), almost exactly 12 hours later.
Out of deference to the only real casualty of the evening -Ed's pride- I am not posting any photos of EMTs standing around Ed trying not to smirk as he writhes in pain. He was very adamant about that. You'll just have to picture it for yourself.
And that's how I almost killed Ed. Though, to be fair, I only supplied the rope. Ed's the one who almost hung himself with it.
This year, I celebrated Valentine's Day by helping Ed nearly kill himself...
I invited the whole NYC crew out for a weekend in CA. As it happened, the weekend we all agreed on was Valentine's Day weekend. The plan was:
Friday: everyone arrives on the evening JetBlue flight into SFO.
Saturday: breakfast at the house, I cook all day, and we have a V-Day dinner party
Sunday: we recover from Saturday
Monday: leave early and head to Napa for winetasting tour
Tuesday: more winetasting, and then everyone but Keiko flies out on the redeye
The entire crew was coming: MK & his wife Carrie, Alex & his fiancee Rose, Ed & his GF Alison, and J-Rob and Socci. And Keiko. Counting me and Joel, that's 11 people staying in the house. That's a high population density for the house, but high population for the house = heaven for Kona the Corgi, or as Joel calls her, Kona the Whore-gi:
Kona and Socci
Kona and J-Rob
Kona, Alison, and Ed
Joel and Karen had broken up a couple weeks previous, so he generously volunteered to give up his room as a guestroom, and sleep on the floor of the library. In the days leading up to everyone's arrival, we were frantically trying to get the place ready for all those guests, plus I was trying hard to get started on the cooking for the dinner party. I was attempting an 8-course meal for 11 people, my most ambitious dinner party ever.
I started the cooking on Thursday morning, making the marinade for duck confit. If you've ever had confit, you know that it's amazing. The reason it's amazing is that it's basically meat slow cooked in salty fat. Mmmmmm, salty fat. I made the marinade thurs morning and let the duck soak in it a little over 24 hrs. The rest of Thursday I had to work, and Thursday night was allocated toward doing all the shopping for all the ingredients.
Took a break from cooking, and saw this! If there weren't duck on the stove, I'd go look for a pot of gold...
Friday I slow cooked the duck in 35 ounces of rendered duck fat. I cooked it for over 12 hours, and then strained the fat, put the duck in a bowl, poured the strained fat over it, and put it in the fridge to chill for another 24 hours. It was looking good. I had to run into work to give an interview, for a guy I think I will end up hiring, and then it was time to run home again and bake the cupcakes. I had also baked a cheesecake with a chocolate wafer crust during the day.
The weather here in the Bay Area has been mostly gorgeous the entirety of 2009, which has translated to most of CA having a drought. But, with all my friends coming in for the weekend, naturally a massive storm system moved into the area, and the resulting downpours caused their flight to be late. So I ended up picking everyone up at 1130pm. They were all hungry, so we stopped at In-N-Out, because you can't get that in NYC and nothing in HMB is open past 10.
Upon arriving at the house, we first held a sleeping arrangments draft. Joel was adamant that Keiko participate in the draft, on the grounds that I should not assume she would want to sleep with me. So I reminded Keiko (who seemed to find this funny) that if she _didn't_ choose my room as her preferred sleeping place, at least 5 guys, 3 of them single, were going to be choosing after her, so she ought to consider carefully how far down this little jokey road she wanted to go.
Much to the disappointment of the aforementioned single guys, Keiko chose my room, and in short order everyone had a place to sleep, and we all bedded down for the night.
The next morning, I got up at 9 and started making a huge whitetrash breakfast for everyone: fruit salad, including marashino cherries, pillsbury cinnamon rolls, french toast, eggs, bacon, hashbrowns (those OreIda ones), and, just to balance all that, we busted open a bottle of Dom Perignon that a student had given me, and toasted to a weekend in Cali.
Dom and whitetrash breakfast- a classic combination
After breakfast, half the group went into town to buy the wine for the meal, and the other half lounged around while I started cooking.
Ed, heading for the ocean. Like one of those newly hatched sea turtles you see on the Nature Channel.
Fortunately, everyone was a veteran of my dinner parties, so no one expected that dinner would actually be served at my projected 8pm timeline. I cooked all day, and even with Joel as sous chef, and occasional drafting of other folks, the first course was not served until 9pm.
Kona looking typically ouroboric, Keiko looking typically slender, me looking typically Stay-Puft Marshmallow Gus.
The theme of the dinner, since it was Valentine's Day, was "red". Here's the food lineup for the evening:
1st course: appetizer-sized patties of a black-eyed pea/roasted red peppers/onion/garlic/spices, rolled in cornmeal and lightly fried, served with jerk beef, and a thick spicy tomato dipping sauce
2nd course: red lentil soup
3rd course: chopped salad of red cabbage, radicchio, red bell peppers, cherry tomatoes, served with a orange based viniagrette (some sweet to balance the bitters from the leafy stuff)
4th course: vegetarian calzones, topped with a vegetarian bolognese sauce (Joel is vegetarian), served with homemade spicy meatballs in a red sauce
5th course: duck confit, served with buttered polenta (to balance the salty of the duck), and radish flowers
6th course: salmon broiled in a red-wine butter, served with roasted red potatoes
7th course: orange slices in a red-wine sauce, with sugared orange zest
8th course: cheesecake with a chocolate-wafer crust, served with a warm mixed berry compote
Pre-dinner "Citadel" is a big hit. Except with Rose, apparently.
And of course, wine with every course. Alex and J-Rob went crazy, and bought a couple bottles of Opus 1. That is some good stuff. We ate and drank until 3am.
The journey begins...
We have a lot of drinking to do...
Time to eat!
Getting tipsy = getting touchy-feely. Keiko handles this with typical Japanese stoicism.
Well, that is to say, those of us who made it to the end, ate and drank until 3am. Since I don't have a table big enough to seat 11 people, we used the makeshift table we made for the dinner party last year. It's a low table, and we sit on cushions japanese-style. It's actually a very nice way to eat a dinner, but it also makes it very easy to tip over and fall asleep.
Here's where we lost people:
J-Rob:
- after course 3: insisted that the dinner was awesome, the wine was awesome, and that "There's no way we'd fall asleep after more wine. Absolutely no way."
J-Rob after course 4.
- We were able to wake him for the 5th course, the duck, although the next day he couldn't remember having eaten it. ("I did? Did I like it? Damn, I wish I could remember...")
- after course 5: tipped over again. We tried to wake him for course 6, but he flipped all of us off and went aggressively fetal.
Keiko:
- after course 5: she went downstairs to bed and said to wake her for course 6, which I did.
- after course 6: she went downstairs to bed and said to wake her for course 7. I was unable to accomplish this successfully. (me, speaking to a mound of covers on the bed: "Orange slices! They're delicious!" Mound of covers: "I can't baby, leave me alone and let me sleep.")
Ed, Alison, and MK:
- after course 7, they all tipped over and lay strewn across the living room floor. Along with J-Rob, it looked like a massacre had occurred in the room.
Alison trying to hang on...
...and failing.
Joel:
- made it through all 8 courses, and about 30 seconds after eating his cheesecake, said: "I have to go to bed. Now."
Right now.
Carrie, Socci, Alex, Rose, and I were chilling out after course 8, and they helped me bus the table and get some dishes going. For Alex and Rose, 330am is an early night, so they were fine. Socci is indestructible. Carrie is surprisingly tough- though, in retrospect, to be married to MK she must be tough.
Interlude:
For those of you who have had the pleasure of listening to the song MK wrote for me and Ed on the road trip- The Ballad of A&E, here's a link to yet another creation of his, which I promise you is worth a listen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0boXx-QMRU0
So, at around 330am, Carrie dragged MK off to bed, and Alex and Rose started getting ready for bed. At that point, Ed woke up, picked himself up from the floor, and went for the common bathroom, which was occupied. Then he came and found me in the kitchen, where Socci and I were loading the dishwasher.
Ed: "Dude, I think I'm going to be sick."
Now, here are some important things you should know about Ed:
1) He likes to eat.
2) He really, really likes to eat.
3) He is like a corgi, in that he will, if given the opportunity, eat and keep eating until he kills himself.
When J-Rob failed to muster anything for course 6 other than obscene hand gestures and low gutteral growling, Ed demanded he be given J-Rob's plate. He polished both his own plate and J-Rob's. Similarly, for course 7, he ate his own, and J-Rob's, AND Keiko's. Add to this the fact that he picked off Alison's plate, my plate, and Keiko's plate throughout some of the other courses, and the math adds up to Ed having something like 10-12 courses, plus about a bottle and a half of wine.
Anyway, back to the story...
Me: "Jesus. Just go outside on the deck there, lean over the side, and heave away right into the bushes."
Ed: "Really? You sure?"
Me: "Uh, it's better than having you be sick in here."
So Ed dutifully went outside, and heaved ho over the railing. I brought him a glass of water, and waited with him for a bit. Then I went back inside and resumed cleaning, and about 15 minutes later he came back inside and was standing next to me in the kitchen. Actually, after a few minutes I noticed that he was not so much standing as leaning over the counter, clutching his chest.
Now, for those of you questioning my powers of observation, I remind you that I am me, pretty unobservant in the best of times, and it is now almost 4am, and I am wasted.
Me: "Uh, dude, are you OK?"
(long pause)
Ed (whispering): "No."
Me: "Dude, what's wrong?"
Ed (whispering): "My chest hurts. I've never felt anything like this."
Me: "Your chest hurts? Is there numbness in your arm?? Shit dude, are you having a heart attack????"
Ed: "No... no... I don't think so. It's just a sharp pain right in my chest. I can barely breathe." He looks up. He is actually crying.
This is the point at which I really start freaking out. Ed is crying, we are not watching sports, Castro is not, to the best of my knowledge, actually dead, so something serious is happening. At this point, Alex, Rose, and Socci all realize something is happening, and crowd into the kitchen.
We decide to pull out the sofabed, and Rose wakes up Alison, who immediately comes to comfort Ed. Pulling out the sofabed requires waking up J-Rob, who is still fetal on the floor right where the bed opens up. Fortunately, after 3 hours of uninterrupted sleep he is less surly, and upon learning what's happening, sobers up quickly.
Now, we have the sofabed pulled out, Ed is fetal on it, Alison is spooning him and trying to calm him down, and he is writhing in pain. The rest of us are drunk and worried, and finally Rose says "We have to dial 9-1-1."
In the end, we had no idea if Ed was dying or what, so we did it. At about 350am, we dialed 9-1-1, and were on the phone with them a bit, and 90 seconds after we hung up, an ambulance and a fire truck showed up at the house. 5 EMTs came trundling up the stairs, and made a semicircle around the sofabed, where Ed was writhing in pain.
What followed was a lengthy interrogation of Ed- questions about his medical history, what had happened over the course of the evening, did he have any allergies, etc. It turned out that just a few days earlier, Ed had gone on Prilosec and Zantac to treat acid reflux, which he is apparently susceptible to.
Then they asked: "What have you had to eat tonight?"
All eyes turned to me.
Me: "Uh, um, well..."
I proceeded to list all the things he'd eaten. As I related the list, I realized that everything had tomatoes, or citrus, or hot peppers, or other acidic ingredients. Plus, we'd been drinking only red wine.
It had never occurred to me to try and pH-balance the meal.
Finally, they took his vitals with a nifty portable machine, at which point we figured out that one guy was being trained by the other guy (EMT tutoring- there's something I don't do).
EMT Trainee: "Your vitals look fine. But we can take you to a hospital. Do you want to go to a hospital?"
Ed: "I don't want to go to a fucking hospital."
EMT Trainee: "Do you want to see a doctor? Your friends can take you- you don't have to ride in the ambulance."
Ed: "I don't want to see a fucking doctor. I don't want to go to the fucking hospital. Just tell me right now: is there any reason to think I'm about to die? Am I dying???"
EMT Trainee (trying not to smile): "No, you're not dying. Your vitals are fine."
Ed: "Can you tell me how long I'm going to be like this???"
EMT Trainee (abjectly failing not to smile): "Well, that depends on your body. Probably what happens is that it's like this for another couple of hours, and then you have a lo-o-o-o-o-ng trip to the bathroom, and then you'll be alright."
Ed: "Fuck."
So the EMTs packed up and left at around 430am, practically giggling. And so me, J-Rob, Alex, Rose, and Socci sat around with Ed watching him periodically writhe in pain. I estimated that we'd start mocking him in ten minutes.
Forecasted time to mockery: 10 min
Actual time to mockery: 1.5 min
Forecast error: (10-1.5)/1.5 = +567%
Oh well, good thing I'm not in forecasting anymore.
I went downstairs to bed at 515am. Joel, Keiko, MK, and Carrie slept through the entire series of events.
Ed (and Alison), almost exactly 12 hours later.
Out of deference to the only real casualty of the evening -Ed's pride- I am not posting any photos of EMTs standing around Ed trying not to smirk as he writhes in pain. He was very adamant about that. You'll just have to picture it for yourself.
And that's how I almost killed Ed. Though, to be fair, I only supplied the rope. Ed's the one who almost hung himself with it.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Seeing your ex on 20/20
So, the other day I got a bunch of messages that all said something to the effect of;
caller: "Uh, I think I just saw Nacole on 20/20, in a piece about dating. You should check it out."
So, I went online the next day, and sure enough, they did a special on finding the right person, and Nacole was in it. The special featured Dr. Helen Fisher, who has divided all people into 4 types: Directors, Explorers, Negotiators, and... something else that I can't remember. Whatever. It's the usual completely arbitrary classification scheme. I took her little test online, using the hypothesis that I would be classified as an explorer, and I was.
It's not clear at all, either from the special, or from Dr. Fisher herself, how the heck this classification helps you find the "right" person, probably because "finding the right person" is inherently an exercise in futility. But hey, it's a very monetizable exercise in futility.
My advice: meet lots of people. Eventually you'll meet one you like enough to want to do the hard work it takes to make a relationship work over the long run. Unfortunately, the first time you hit upon that person, it's unlikely they'll view you precisely the same way, so you have to iterate this process until you find someone you like enough to want to do the hard work it takes to make a relationship work over the long run, AND they like you enough to want to do the hard work it takes to make a relationship work over the long run. At that point, you get married/cohabitate until one of you dies/Thelma&Louise it off a cliff, whatever.
Of course, I'm more or less the last one of my friends to get married, so it's entirely possible that there's no one on earth less qualified to be dispensing dating advice than I am. I mean, my exes are going on dates on national TV, for Chrissake.
Anyway, apparently she went to some big singles mixer that Dr. Fisher hosted, and was one of 4 women and 4 men picked to go on a series of camera dates, in order to see if "something special" would develop. Dr. Fisher cleverly avoided saying that her algorithm for matching the men and women would have any success in predicting this.
Sure enough, only 1 of the 4 couples were still together at the time of the airing of the special, and it wasn't Nacole and Jason. Though, they went on a nice date to a cooking class. There was a funny (for me) moment during it...
Nacole: "This is fun! I've never made breaded chicken before."
[Side note: for the first 5 years I dated Nacole, she was on this super extreme diet where chicken was one of like half a dozen things she could eat. One or the other of us cooked chicken about 400 different ways. In retrospect, none of them were "breaded".]
Jason (affecting shock, as if he has, ever in his life, made breaded chicken): "Really??"
Nacole (pausing in her vigorous stirring): "No." (whipping around to face him) "Have YOU ever made breaded chicken?"
Jason (clearly caught off guard that Nacole has challenged his authority): "Uh, yeah" (quickly turns away and goes back to stirring)
I laughed and laughed. "Dude," I thought, "You better learn quickly that she's not gonna let you get away with that kind of bullshit."
Sadly, the spark apparently just wasn't there for them. Presumably Jason is out there right now looking for some doe-eyed blond who'll just gaze at him adoringly and believe him when he says he's made breaded chicken. Though, I guess next time he uses that line it'll actually be true.
So, if you feel you might be amused watching such things, you can see it online on the 20/20 website, under the special "Why Him, Why Her?", which aired on 1/30. The bit I wrote about is in "Part 2: Love is in the Air: Creating Chemistry".
One of the many reasons I lean toward theism over atheism is that life is so utterly ridiculous, it just has to be the product of some higher intelligence. A higher intelligence with a really impish sense of humor.
caller: "Uh, I think I just saw Nacole on 20/20, in a piece about dating. You should check it out."
So, I went online the next day, and sure enough, they did a special on finding the right person, and Nacole was in it. The special featured Dr. Helen Fisher, who has divided all people into 4 types: Directors, Explorers, Negotiators, and... something else that I can't remember. Whatever. It's the usual completely arbitrary classification scheme. I took her little test online, using the hypothesis that I would be classified as an explorer, and I was.
It's not clear at all, either from the special, or from Dr. Fisher herself, how the heck this classification helps you find the "right" person, probably because "finding the right person" is inherently an exercise in futility. But hey, it's a very monetizable exercise in futility.
My advice: meet lots of people. Eventually you'll meet one you like enough to want to do the hard work it takes to make a relationship work over the long run. Unfortunately, the first time you hit upon that person, it's unlikely they'll view you precisely the same way, so you have to iterate this process until you find someone you like enough to want to do the hard work it takes to make a relationship work over the long run, AND they like you enough to want to do the hard work it takes to make a relationship work over the long run. At that point, you get married/cohabitate until one of you dies/Thelma&Louise it off a cliff, whatever.
Of course, I'm more or less the last one of my friends to get married, so it's entirely possible that there's no one on earth less qualified to be dispensing dating advice than I am. I mean, my exes are going on dates on national TV, for Chrissake.
Anyway, apparently she went to some big singles mixer that Dr. Fisher hosted, and was one of 4 women and 4 men picked to go on a series of camera dates, in order to see if "something special" would develop. Dr. Fisher cleverly avoided saying that her algorithm for matching the men and women would have any success in predicting this.
Sure enough, only 1 of the 4 couples were still together at the time of the airing of the special, and it wasn't Nacole and Jason. Though, they went on a nice date to a cooking class. There was a funny (for me) moment during it...
Nacole: "This is fun! I've never made breaded chicken before."
[Side note: for the first 5 years I dated Nacole, she was on this super extreme diet where chicken was one of like half a dozen things she could eat. One or the other of us cooked chicken about 400 different ways. In retrospect, none of them were "breaded".]
Jason (affecting shock, as if he has, ever in his life, made breaded chicken): "Really??"
Nacole (pausing in her vigorous stirring): "No." (whipping around to face him) "Have YOU ever made breaded chicken?"
Jason (clearly caught off guard that Nacole has challenged his authority): "Uh, yeah" (quickly turns away and goes back to stirring)
I laughed and laughed. "Dude," I thought, "You better learn quickly that she's not gonna let you get away with that kind of bullshit."
Sadly, the spark apparently just wasn't there for them. Presumably Jason is out there right now looking for some doe-eyed blond who'll just gaze at him adoringly and believe him when he says he's made breaded chicken. Though, I guess next time he uses that line it'll actually be true.
So, if you feel you might be amused watching such things, you can see it online on the 20/20 website, under the special "Why Him, Why Her?", which aired on 1/30. The bit I wrote about is in "Part 2: Love is in the Air: Creating Chemistry".
One of the many reasons I lean toward theism over atheism is that life is so utterly ridiculous, it just has to be the product of some higher intelligence. A higher intelligence with a really impish sense of humor.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Gran Torino, and getting older
So, you may have noticed that I haven't been blogging as much. More or less since August, every time I've thought about blogging, I've thought: "I should do something business development related instead. I can blog later." The result is that I've been terribly inconsistent with the blogging, but the tutoring business is growing 110% year over year 4 months into year 2. Given the small base, that's not worth a ticker-tape parade, but in the worst economy since the Great Depression, I'll take it.
I'm not typically one for new year's resolutions, but this year I decided that the goal would be to "be more effective." I've quanitfied that by saying:
- work out 2x/wk
- get 30 min of cardio 4x/wk
- read 30 min/day 6x/wk
- cook one new recipe 1x/wk
- do 30 min of bus dev 5x/wk
- do 30 min of tutoring prep 5x/wk
The goal is to hit each of those weekly goals 45 out of the 52 weeks this year. I'm off to a shaky start, but just having the goals explicit (and having a spreadsheet to track it all in), has made me do more of all those things than I would have done otherwise. As of this morning, I'm adding:
- do 1 blog entry per week
Since I'm stuck here at work every Saturday morning (waking up at 7am on Saturdays SUCKS, btw) proctoring practice tests, saturday mornings are going to be blogtime. And so I begin today.
Keiko came out for NYE. I hung out with Laszlo and GA and Li and Em while I was waiting for Keiko to land, so I got to watch East Coast NYE on TV. Keiko landed at 1030pm, so we just went back to the beachhouse. We had been kicking around the idea of sitting on a blanket on the beach and drinking champagne there, but it was chilly and damp, so we listened to the waves crashing from the deck and drank the champagne there. It was nice- extremely mellow. We were in bed by 130am. But I figure last year we did the NYC party-until-4am thing so it all averages out.
Keiko wanted to see Gran Torino, so we went while she was here. It was quite good, and would lend itself to a drinking game whereby you have to take a drink every time there's a racial slur uttered. When the movie is over, you can play the get-my-stomach-pumped game; I swear every racial slur I've ever heard is uttered in that movie at least 3 times. Clint Eastwood does a good job of playing a cranky old man, but it's not clear that much actual acting was involved.
We saw it with Joel and Karen. As we were leaving, the following exchange occurred:
Me: "I thought it was pretty good. What did you guys think?"
Karen: "I really liked it!"
Joel: "Enh, it was OK I guess."
Keiko: "Clint Eastwood wears the same sweatpants you do baby, he just wears them pulled up a little higher."
(pause)
Me: "He wears them pulled up a LOT higher, thank you very much, and now I can never wear sweatpants ever again. I hope you're satisfied."
Keiko: "I love you babe."
Me: (grrrrr)
OK, granted, I got those sweatpants in high school, which means they're from the mid-eighties, and the elastic is worn, so I do have to wear them a little ligher than normal to keep them from falling off, but goddammit, I AM NOT A CRANKY CURMUDGEON WITH PANTS PULLED UP TO MY RIBCAGE!
hmph.
I'm not typically one for new year's resolutions, but this year I decided that the goal would be to "be more effective." I've quanitfied that by saying:
- work out 2x/wk
- get 30 min of cardio 4x/wk
- read 30 min/day 6x/wk
- cook one new recipe 1x/wk
- do 30 min of bus dev 5x/wk
- do 30 min of tutoring prep 5x/wk
The goal is to hit each of those weekly goals 45 out of the 52 weeks this year. I'm off to a shaky start, but just having the goals explicit (and having a spreadsheet to track it all in), has made me do more of all those things than I would have done otherwise. As of this morning, I'm adding:
- do 1 blog entry per week
Since I'm stuck here at work every Saturday morning (waking up at 7am on Saturdays SUCKS, btw) proctoring practice tests, saturday mornings are going to be blogtime. And so I begin today.
Keiko came out for NYE. I hung out with Laszlo and GA and Li and Em while I was waiting for Keiko to land, so I got to watch East Coast NYE on TV. Keiko landed at 1030pm, so we just went back to the beachhouse. We had been kicking around the idea of sitting on a blanket on the beach and drinking champagne there, but it was chilly and damp, so we listened to the waves crashing from the deck and drank the champagne there. It was nice- extremely mellow. We were in bed by 130am. But I figure last year we did the NYC party-until-4am thing so it all averages out.
Keiko wanted to see Gran Torino, so we went while she was here. It was quite good, and would lend itself to a drinking game whereby you have to take a drink every time there's a racial slur uttered. When the movie is over, you can play the get-my-stomach-pumped game; I swear every racial slur I've ever heard is uttered in that movie at least 3 times. Clint Eastwood does a good job of playing a cranky old man, but it's not clear that much actual acting was involved.
We saw it with Joel and Karen. As we were leaving, the following exchange occurred:
Me: "I thought it was pretty good. What did you guys think?"
Karen: "I really liked it!"
Joel: "Enh, it was OK I guess."
Keiko: "Clint Eastwood wears the same sweatpants you do baby, he just wears them pulled up a little higher."
(pause)
Me: "He wears them pulled up a LOT higher, thank you very much, and now I can never wear sweatpants ever again. I hope you're satisfied."
Keiko: "I love you babe."
Me: (grrrrr)
OK, granted, I got those sweatpants in high school, which means they're from the mid-eighties, and the elastic is worn, so I do have to wear them a little ligher than normal to keep them from falling off, but goddammit, I AM NOT A CRANKY CURMUDGEON WITH PANTS PULLED UP TO MY RIBCAGE!
hmph.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
A Weekend in Japantown...
A post I started a month ago and never finished...
A few weeks ago I finally got around to reading "Of Mice and Men", which I enjoyed quite a bit, even if it was depressing as hell. I mention that b/c Keiko came out this past weekend, and we had big plans in store: go clubbing, maybe take a dinner cruise on the Bay, etc. Sadly, all our big plans came to naught...
It started Saturday morning. I had to work 830-130, so after flying cross-country Keiko had to wake up at 7am to go into the office with me, so we could head up to the city from there. I had to give an SAT at 830, and then a GRE at 10. The GRE was going to be my very first meeting with the student, and since the SAT kid was in the office, I figured I would set up the GRE student down at the end of the hallway. This office is an empty wasteland on weekends, so I figured she'd be undisturbed. I've done this same thing before on several occasions with my other GRE student and not had a problem.
So the GRE student shows up, I set her up at the end of the hall, and start her on the first section, which goes fine. About 5 minutes into the second section, a small army of cleaning guys shows up. I've never seen them before; the usual weekend cleaning happens on Sunday afternoon.
Upon questioning them, it turns out that they're here to steam vacuum the carpets. In the hallways. And, this building is just one of several they have to do on a pretty tight schedule, so they have to do it now. Apparently this happens monthly, and of course today is the day. After some discussion, they agree to start at the opposite end of the floor. Whereupon, they begin steam cleaning the carpets using a cleaner apparently powered by a Saturn IV liquid-oxygen booster rocket. It is, in a word, deafening.
Not good.
Never one to surrender to adversity, [side note: I first typed this sentence: "Never one to surrender to diversity". It was almost worth leaving it.] I quickly cast about for a solution. There's a 3rd floor to the building, which I had never gone to, so I went up there and discovered that although most of it was controlled-access, there was a single long corridor that had a quiet nook at the end of it.
Now, the building is in the middle of having the elevators replaced, and the 3rd-floor lobby had a ton of construction equipment, but there were no people and the construction seems to happen during the week, so I figured I had my solution.
When the GRE student finished the section she was working on, I apologized for the presence of the 3 million decibel cleaning crew, and said I'd move her up to the 3rd floor, where I assured her it would be quiet. Keiko helped me execute the maneuver, and in no time we had her working in a nice, quiet, somewhat creepily dark empty hallway.
Problem solved.
Having solved this problem, I now moved to solve another problem. Since Keiko and I were going to be up in the city the next 2 days, I wasn't going to be around to let my Bio tutor in the next day to teach the lesson he needed to teach. My tutor attends Stanford business school, which is only 10 minutes away, so I left Keiko with the timers for the GRE student and the SAT student in my office, figuring at worst she would have to give the 5 minute warnings, and then dashed out to go drop off the office key to my bio tutor. Round trip: 20 minutes tops.
Well, despite missing my turn on the way to drop off the key, with some aggressive driving I managed to make it back in precisely 20 minutes, only to discover the following:
Apparently, the reason I hadn't seen anyone when I went up to check the 3rd floor was that the elevator construction crew just happened to be on lunch break. They came back approximately 5 minutes after I left, and proceeded to begin running compressed air machinery, banging on things, and yelling at each other in Spanish. Which, it turns out, was more distracting for the GRE student than the constant drone of the 747 engine that the cleaning crew on the 2nd floor was using.
So, the GRE student had come down to ask to be moved back to the 2nd floor. So Keiko did an emergency search and found an office on the floor that had its door unlocked, and put her in there. But, in the transfer of the mobile table with the GRE student's test and stuff, Keiko had put the student's chair upside down on the table, covering the scratch paper I'd left her.
So, when the student started up her section again in the office, she was now without scratch paper for the math sections, causing her to come back out and ask Keiko for scratch paper. Since Keiko didn't have any, she told the student to just write on the test. A simple solution, except it contradicted what I'd gone out of my way to instruct the student before she began the test. Of course, there was no way Keiko would have known that, but it annoyed the student. Keiko ended up finding my physics notebook in the kitchen and ripping pages out of that. So the GRE student finally got her situation straightened out, but in the course of dealing with all this, Keiko neglected to give the SAT student her 5 minute warning, which made her run out of time on one of her sections.
And all of this happened in the 20 minutes I was away. Poor Keiko was stressed out when I got back. Not a good morning.
Eventually both students finished their tests, and the GRE student I had a long talk with. I told her I wouldn't charge her for the test, and after talking a while she seemed fine. But we ended up leaving the office at nearly 4, versus at 1, so by the time we got to SF we were exhausted, and our big plans for hitting the town became dinner and "Pineapple Express". Which, it must be said, was pretty funny.
Dinner was at a restaurant called Kappa. It's virtually impossible to find- it's a tiny place that seats only ten at a wooden bar. There's no sign outside at all; when you find the outer door, on the upper level of an outdoor shopping area, which primarily leads to a much larger restaurant that has lots of big, obvious signage, there is a secret side inner side door that has a tiny (palm-sized) sign that says Kappa on it.
Going through that door you pass through a narrow curtain into a space barely big enough for me and Keiko to stand in simultaneously, and are immediately faced with two other curtains right next to each other at a V-shaped angle. Pass through the one on the left and you end up in a tiny kitchen. Pass through the one on the right and you find the tiny eating area.
There's one cook, and one waitress. She's dressed in a formal kimono, and she'll warn you right off the bat that they don't serve sushi here, and ask if you're OK with that. What they serve is very traditional Japanese cooking, like what you might find in someone's house. Some of the stuff we had Keiko said her mom makes. The food was quite good overall; I even tried a bunch of new stuff, and enjoyed it. If anyone's ever thinking about going, let me know and I'll explain how to find the secret door.
We stayed at the Kabuki Hotel in Japantown, which is quite nice. I got a deal on a suite which was, well, sweet. A huge room- tatami mats, a japanese futon, a japanese soaking tub, a rock garden with bamboo. In the room. Very nice.
Sunday began as you might expect- by the time we emerged into the light of day it was already afternoon. After a light lunch, we handed the car off to Joel, who met us in the city, and then went for a lo-o-o-o-o-o-o-ng walk. We went down through Cow Hollow, went into an open house of a condo with a spectacular view of the Bay, continued down into the Marina, Municipal pier, Fisherman's Wharf, Ghiradelli square, then Columbus Ave, Lombard St, Russian Hill, and then back into Japantown.
When you factor in all the hills, plus a stop for margaritas (don't get drinks on the Wharf- they suck ass), our walk turned out to be about 5 hours long, up and down a lot of steep hills. So, by the time we got back we were exhausted and starving, and another night in which we had big plans to hit the town became dinner, crepes, crazy Japanese photo booth, and then long bath in the soaking tub.
There is nothing more Japanese than the crazy photo booth. It is a riot of bright colors, Japanese pop, and high-pitched Japanese girl voices shrieking instructions at you. Also, all the directions on the screen are in Japanese. It really helps to have a Japanese person with you when you use the booth. The pictures get taken inside the booth, and then you come back outside and around to the side of the thing where there is a screen where you pick which photos you like, pick a background, and decorate the living shit out of the pictures.
Being a Japanese creation, the picture-taking happens with ruthless efficiency, whether you're ready or not, and each booth has a decorating screen on each side of it, so the total machine can be processing 3 different groups of people simultaneously: the people inside doing the picture-taking, and 1 group of people on each side of the booth doing the manic decorating. And all the while crazy Japan-pop is playing and Japanese schoolgirls are shrieking instructions at you.
Here is the result of our turn in the machine:
Monday, we managed to get out of the room by check-out time, and then went and had breakfast at New Minny's Restaurant. A bit risky, ordering my favorite trailer-park breakfast items from an Asian restaurant, but I was satisfied. And, while I'll eat Asian food for lunch and dinner every day, I can't eat Asian food for breakfast. The white half of me dominates until lunchtime.
After that, we just went for a walk (a much shorter one). It was a beautiful weekend in SF- 75 degrees and totally sunny. I'm coming to the conclusion that the best times to visit SF are mid April-mid June, and mid September-mid November. Which just happen to be the busiest times of the year for tutoring. Sigh.
For dinner, we picked up super-fancy cupcakes from Sprinkles (highly recommended to those who like cupcakes), and headed over to Laura and Dmitri's. Kate and Max, my godchildren, get really excited to see Keiko. Well, technically, Kate gets really excited to see Keiko, and Max gets really excited about anything Kate gets really excited about, but either way it means a wild time of running, throwing, catching, and then watching Thomas the Train. We take Thomas the Train VERY seriously. And woe betide the godfather who mistakes James (the red one, I think) for Percy (the green one, I think). Such gauche behavior merits the sternest admonishment a 2 year old can give.
After dinner, it was off to the airport, after a weekend both more, and less, whirlwind than planned. Best laid plans, and all that. BTW, I never knew "Of Mice and Men" was so depressing. I loved it, and highly recommend it to everyone else who never had to read it in high school...
A few weeks ago I finally got around to reading "Of Mice and Men", which I enjoyed quite a bit, even if it was depressing as hell. I mention that b/c Keiko came out this past weekend, and we had big plans in store: go clubbing, maybe take a dinner cruise on the Bay, etc. Sadly, all our big plans came to naught...
It started Saturday morning. I had to work 830-130, so after flying cross-country Keiko had to wake up at 7am to go into the office with me, so we could head up to the city from there. I had to give an SAT at 830, and then a GRE at 10. The GRE was going to be my very first meeting with the student, and since the SAT kid was in the office, I figured I would set up the GRE student down at the end of the hallway. This office is an empty wasteland on weekends, so I figured she'd be undisturbed. I've done this same thing before on several occasions with my other GRE student and not had a problem.
So the GRE student shows up, I set her up at the end of the hall, and start her on the first section, which goes fine. About 5 minutes into the second section, a small army of cleaning guys shows up. I've never seen them before; the usual weekend cleaning happens on Sunday afternoon.
Upon questioning them, it turns out that they're here to steam vacuum the carpets. In the hallways. And, this building is just one of several they have to do on a pretty tight schedule, so they have to do it now. Apparently this happens monthly, and of course today is the day. After some discussion, they agree to start at the opposite end of the floor. Whereupon, they begin steam cleaning the carpets using a cleaner apparently powered by a Saturn IV liquid-oxygen booster rocket. It is, in a word, deafening.
Not good.
Never one to surrender to adversity, [side note: I first typed this sentence: "Never one to surrender to diversity". It was almost worth leaving it.] I quickly cast about for a solution. There's a 3rd floor to the building, which I had never gone to, so I went up there and discovered that although most of it was controlled-access, there was a single long corridor that had a quiet nook at the end of it.
Now, the building is in the middle of having the elevators replaced, and the 3rd-floor lobby had a ton of construction equipment, but there were no people and the construction seems to happen during the week, so I figured I had my solution.
When the GRE student finished the section she was working on, I apologized for the presence of the 3 million decibel cleaning crew, and said I'd move her up to the 3rd floor, where I assured her it would be quiet. Keiko helped me execute the maneuver, and in no time we had her working in a nice, quiet, somewhat creepily dark empty hallway.
Problem solved.
Having solved this problem, I now moved to solve another problem. Since Keiko and I were going to be up in the city the next 2 days, I wasn't going to be around to let my Bio tutor in the next day to teach the lesson he needed to teach. My tutor attends Stanford business school, which is only 10 minutes away, so I left Keiko with the timers for the GRE student and the SAT student in my office, figuring at worst she would have to give the 5 minute warnings, and then dashed out to go drop off the office key to my bio tutor. Round trip: 20 minutes tops.
Well, despite missing my turn on the way to drop off the key, with some aggressive driving I managed to make it back in precisely 20 minutes, only to discover the following:
Apparently, the reason I hadn't seen anyone when I went up to check the 3rd floor was that the elevator construction crew just happened to be on lunch break. They came back approximately 5 minutes after I left, and proceeded to begin running compressed air machinery, banging on things, and yelling at each other in Spanish. Which, it turns out, was more distracting for the GRE student than the constant drone of the 747 engine that the cleaning crew on the 2nd floor was using.
So, the GRE student had come down to ask to be moved back to the 2nd floor. So Keiko did an emergency search and found an office on the floor that had its door unlocked, and put her in there. But, in the transfer of the mobile table with the GRE student's test and stuff, Keiko had put the student's chair upside down on the table, covering the scratch paper I'd left her.
So, when the student started up her section again in the office, she was now without scratch paper for the math sections, causing her to come back out and ask Keiko for scratch paper. Since Keiko didn't have any, she told the student to just write on the test. A simple solution, except it contradicted what I'd gone out of my way to instruct the student before she began the test. Of course, there was no way Keiko would have known that, but it annoyed the student. Keiko ended up finding my physics notebook in the kitchen and ripping pages out of that. So the GRE student finally got her situation straightened out, but in the course of dealing with all this, Keiko neglected to give the SAT student her 5 minute warning, which made her run out of time on one of her sections.
And all of this happened in the 20 minutes I was away. Poor Keiko was stressed out when I got back. Not a good morning.
Eventually both students finished their tests, and the GRE student I had a long talk with. I told her I wouldn't charge her for the test, and after talking a while she seemed fine. But we ended up leaving the office at nearly 4, versus at 1, so by the time we got to SF we were exhausted, and our big plans for hitting the town became dinner and "Pineapple Express". Which, it must be said, was pretty funny.
Dinner was at a restaurant called Kappa. It's virtually impossible to find- it's a tiny place that seats only ten at a wooden bar. There's no sign outside at all; when you find the outer door, on the upper level of an outdoor shopping area, which primarily leads to a much larger restaurant that has lots of big, obvious signage, there is a secret side inner side door that has a tiny (palm-sized) sign that says Kappa on it.
Going through that door you pass through a narrow curtain into a space barely big enough for me and Keiko to stand in simultaneously, and are immediately faced with two other curtains right next to each other at a V-shaped angle. Pass through the one on the left and you end up in a tiny kitchen. Pass through the one on the right and you find the tiny eating area.
There's one cook, and one waitress. She's dressed in a formal kimono, and she'll warn you right off the bat that they don't serve sushi here, and ask if you're OK with that. What they serve is very traditional Japanese cooking, like what you might find in someone's house. Some of the stuff we had Keiko said her mom makes. The food was quite good overall; I even tried a bunch of new stuff, and enjoyed it. If anyone's ever thinking about going, let me know and I'll explain how to find the secret door.
We stayed at the Kabuki Hotel in Japantown, which is quite nice. I got a deal on a suite which was, well, sweet. A huge room- tatami mats, a japanese futon, a japanese soaking tub, a rock garden with bamboo. In the room. Very nice.
Sunday began as you might expect- by the time we emerged into the light of day it was already afternoon. After a light lunch, we handed the car off to Joel, who met us in the city, and then went for a lo-o-o-o-o-o-o-ng walk. We went down through Cow Hollow, went into an open house of a condo with a spectacular view of the Bay, continued down into the Marina, Municipal pier, Fisherman's Wharf, Ghiradelli square, then Columbus Ave, Lombard St, Russian Hill, and then back into Japantown.
When you factor in all the hills, plus a stop for margaritas (don't get drinks on the Wharf- they suck ass), our walk turned out to be about 5 hours long, up and down a lot of steep hills. So, by the time we got back we were exhausted and starving, and another night in which we had big plans to hit the town became dinner, crepes, crazy Japanese photo booth, and then long bath in the soaking tub.
There is nothing more Japanese than the crazy photo booth. It is a riot of bright colors, Japanese pop, and high-pitched Japanese girl voices shrieking instructions at you. Also, all the directions on the screen are in Japanese. It really helps to have a Japanese person with you when you use the booth. The pictures get taken inside the booth, and then you come back outside and around to the side of the thing where there is a screen where you pick which photos you like, pick a background, and decorate the living shit out of the pictures.
Being a Japanese creation, the picture-taking happens with ruthless efficiency, whether you're ready or not, and each booth has a decorating screen on each side of it, so the total machine can be processing 3 different groups of people simultaneously: the people inside doing the picture-taking, and 1 group of people on each side of the booth doing the manic decorating. And all the while crazy Japan-pop is playing and Japanese schoolgirls are shrieking instructions at you.
Here is the result of our turn in the machine:
Monday, we managed to get out of the room by check-out time, and then went and had breakfast at New Minny's Restaurant. A bit risky, ordering my favorite trailer-park breakfast items from an Asian restaurant, but I was satisfied. And, while I'll eat Asian food for lunch and dinner every day, I can't eat Asian food for breakfast. The white half of me dominates until lunchtime.
After that, we just went for a walk (a much shorter one). It was a beautiful weekend in SF- 75 degrees and totally sunny. I'm coming to the conclusion that the best times to visit SF are mid April-mid June, and mid September-mid November. Which just happen to be the busiest times of the year for tutoring. Sigh.
For dinner, we picked up super-fancy cupcakes from Sprinkles (highly recommended to those who like cupcakes), and headed over to Laura and Dmitri's. Kate and Max, my godchildren, get really excited to see Keiko. Well, technically, Kate gets really excited to see Keiko, and Max gets really excited about anything Kate gets really excited about, but either way it means a wild time of running, throwing, catching, and then watching Thomas the Train. We take Thomas the Train VERY seriously. And woe betide the godfather who mistakes James (the red one, I think) for Percy (the green one, I think). Such gauche behavior merits the sternest admonishment a 2 year old can give.
After dinner, it was off to the airport, after a weekend both more, and less, whirlwind than planned. Best laid plans, and all that. BTW, I never knew "Of Mice and Men" was so depressing. I loved it, and highly recommend it to everyone else who never had to read it in high school...
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Random Thoughts...
1) In certain ways, I am very much not the stereotypical guy, but in certain ways I am.
For instance, take clothes. I am deeply, profoundly apathetic about clothing. I have a few things I feel comfortable wearing, and my preference is to wear those things over and over until they eventually become rags that actually fall off my body.
Once, when Keiko was visiting, she was helping me fold my laundry and she lifted out a couple of wifebeaters that, I admit, may have had a few small holes in them. I mean, nothing serious- they were holes still too small to accidentally put my arm through...
Keiko [holding up the 2 wifebeaters]: "Babe, seriously?"
Me: "What? What's wrong with them?"
Keiko: "Why don't you consider retiring just _these_ two? Baby steps..."
Me: "Why??? They're still wearable!"
Keiko: "I know baby- we use all parts of the buffalo. But still."
Me [sighing]: "Fine. But just those two."
So I allowed those 2 to be retired. As I was packing Wed morning to come here to Houston for Thanksgiving, I was putting away laundry and grudgingly decided to retire a pair of underwear that was pretty close to being a rag. I felt quite proud of myself, and bragged about it to Keiko later.
It was raining when I left HMB; the first real rain we've had since a freak thunderstorm early in the summer. As I got out of the car at the airport, and stepped into a puddle, I realized that the lack of rain makes me wear shoes a lot longer than I used to; within seconds, my socks were damp because there are large cracks through the soles of both of my favorite shoes. Damn. That means I have to find new shoes. That leads me to my second thought:
2) I hate shopping. I've always hated it. Hated it a lot. I put my sister on one of my credit cards so that I wouldn't have to ever go shopping; she knows my pants and shirt sizes, and roughly what styles I like, so when I need stuff I just ask her to look for me. "I need some shirts for work," I'll say, and like magic, a couple of weeks later shirts arrive. It's a symbiotic relationship- she gets to shop but not spend any of her money, and I get clothes without shopping. It works beautifully.
So tomorrow we go to look for shoes. Winter comes to HMB in January, so I'll need shoes that don't leak by then.
3) I read that someone got trampled to death by people stampeding to get into a WalMart Friday morning. Seriously, I don't care if they're selling Electrolux refrigerators for $3.99 in there, if you can't wait calmly to walk into the store like a sane person, you're lamer than a 3-legged horse. Actually, you're lamer than a 3-legged horse whose 3 legs are all broken. What kind of person does that?
Actually, I know what kind of person does that. Once, I went to the San Diego zoo, and there was a tiger enclosure with a glass wall. The tiger liked sleeping up against the glass, and right next to his favorite sleeping spot was a sign on the glass saying "Please do not tap on the glass. It disturbs the tiger."
While I was standing there, a guy came up next to me, looked at the tiger, read the sign, looked at the tiger again, and then tapped on the glass, right above the sleeping tiger's head. It was at that point that I imagined a hinged glass panel, which, when tapped like that, would flip over, dumping the idiot who tapped on the glass right on top of the tiger. Such an arrangement would both cut down on the feeding cost of the tiger, and make the average human marginally smarter and less annoying, all through a process of natural selection.
Anyway, that guy would have been one of the people stampeding to get into WalMart.
4) Being a Missouri football fan is depressing, and watching them lose so many close, heartbreaking games over the last 10-15 years gives me a small glimpse of what it's like to be a Cubs fan.
This weekend's result: Kansas 40, Mizzou 37. [Bite me, Chris]
5) I have spent 3 days in a row doing nothing but sleeping, eating, reading, and watching TV. Although I could never live this way all the time, doing it once a year for 3 days is _awesome_.
6) I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!
For instance, take clothes. I am deeply, profoundly apathetic about clothing. I have a few things I feel comfortable wearing, and my preference is to wear those things over and over until they eventually become rags that actually fall off my body.
Once, when Keiko was visiting, she was helping me fold my laundry and she lifted out a couple of wifebeaters that, I admit, may have had a few small holes in them. I mean, nothing serious- they were holes still too small to accidentally put my arm through...
Keiko [holding up the 2 wifebeaters]: "Babe, seriously?"
Me: "What? What's wrong with them?"
Keiko: "Why don't you consider retiring just _these_ two? Baby steps..."
Me: "Why??? They're still wearable!"
Keiko: "I know baby- we use all parts of the buffalo. But still."
Me [sighing]: "Fine. But just those two."
So I allowed those 2 to be retired. As I was packing Wed morning to come here to Houston for Thanksgiving, I was putting away laundry and grudgingly decided to retire a pair of underwear that was pretty close to being a rag. I felt quite proud of myself, and bragged about it to Keiko later.
It was raining when I left HMB; the first real rain we've had since a freak thunderstorm early in the summer. As I got out of the car at the airport, and stepped into a puddle, I realized that the lack of rain makes me wear shoes a lot longer than I used to; within seconds, my socks were damp because there are large cracks through the soles of both of my favorite shoes. Damn. That means I have to find new shoes. That leads me to my second thought:
2) I hate shopping. I've always hated it. Hated it a lot. I put my sister on one of my credit cards so that I wouldn't have to ever go shopping; she knows my pants and shirt sizes, and roughly what styles I like, so when I need stuff I just ask her to look for me. "I need some shirts for work," I'll say, and like magic, a couple of weeks later shirts arrive. It's a symbiotic relationship- she gets to shop but not spend any of her money, and I get clothes without shopping. It works beautifully.
So tomorrow we go to look for shoes. Winter comes to HMB in January, so I'll need shoes that don't leak by then.
3) I read that someone got trampled to death by people stampeding to get into a WalMart Friday morning. Seriously, I don't care if they're selling Electrolux refrigerators for $3.99 in there, if you can't wait calmly to walk into the store like a sane person, you're lamer than a 3-legged horse. Actually, you're lamer than a 3-legged horse whose 3 legs are all broken. What kind of person does that?
Actually, I know what kind of person does that. Once, I went to the San Diego zoo, and there was a tiger enclosure with a glass wall. The tiger liked sleeping up against the glass, and right next to his favorite sleeping spot was a sign on the glass saying "Please do not tap on the glass. It disturbs the tiger."
While I was standing there, a guy came up next to me, looked at the tiger, read the sign, looked at the tiger again, and then tapped on the glass, right above the sleeping tiger's head. It was at that point that I imagined a hinged glass panel, which, when tapped like that, would flip over, dumping the idiot who tapped on the glass right on top of the tiger. Such an arrangement would both cut down on the feeding cost of the tiger, and make the average human marginally smarter and less annoying, all through a process of natural selection.
Anyway, that guy would have been one of the people stampeding to get into WalMart.
4) Being a Missouri football fan is depressing, and watching them lose so many close, heartbreaking games over the last 10-15 years gives me a small glimpse of what it's like to be a Cubs fan.
This weekend's result: Kansas 40, Mizzou 37. [Bite me, Chris]
5) I have spent 3 days in a row doing nothing but sleeping, eating, reading, and watching TV. Although I could never live this way all the time, doing it once a year for 3 days is _awesome_.
6) I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Why I Love Half Moon Bay, Pt 5
It was sunny this morning by the house, the fog having retreated about half a mile offshore, but you could see that a couple miles south, down by the state beach, the fog was still ashore. I decided to go for a bike ride, to get my one cardio point for the day.
[Laszlo and I are in the middle of cardio month, in which 30 minutes of cardio activity constitutes 1 point, and you can earn up to 1 point per day. We're in a friendly contest to see who gets the most points by the end of November. Right now I'm up 11-10, unless he runs tonight.]
Once down by the state beach, where the path starts going up along the cliff, the view became awesome- there was fog everywhere, I was biking right along the edge of the cliff, and it was high tide, so the waves were coming in at about 8-10 feet. Really spectacular.
And then I noticed a fin in the water. Slowing down to look, I saw that it seemed very dolphin-like. I've heard down at the harbor that there are dolphins in the area, but I'd never seen any. And although it looked dolphin-like, I always thought dolphins were not solitary creatures, so I was trying to figure out what else it could be when I looked to my left at a particularly big wave beginning to break and saw that there was not just 1 fin, but 2....3...4..5.6.7.8 fins.
Oh.
A whole pod of dolphins, coming in to ride the big waves. They looked like they were having fun.
I watched them for a while, and then I started hatching a plan whereby I would tie my sweatshirt to the brush on the edge of the cliff, bike like crazy the 1/4 mile down to the beach trail, ride down to the sand, abandon the bike, run back the 1/4 mile until I saw the sweatshirt hanging, then shuck my shirt and shoes and go in to swim among the dolphins. At exactly the point I got all this worked out, the dolphins all turned around and started swimming straight out to sea.
Damn.
My dream of swimming with the dolphins will have to wait for another day. Well, that's OK- the sea teaches you to be patient, and it was a bit chilly anyway. But still, it was awesome to see dolphins. As JJM would say, it warms the soul.
I love HMB.
[Laszlo and I are in the middle of cardio month, in which 30 minutes of cardio activity constitutes 1 point, and you can earn up to 1 point per day. We're in a friendly contest to see who gets the most points by the end of November. Right now I'm up 11-10, unless he runs tonight.]
Once down by the state beach, where the path starts going up along the cliff, the view became awesome- there was fog everywhere, I was biking right along the edge of the cliff, and it was high tide, so the waves were coming in at about 8-10 feet. Really spectacular.
And then I noticed a fin in the water. Slowing down to look, I saw that it seemed very dolphin-like. I've heard down at the harbor that there are dolphins in the area, but I'd never seen any. And although it looked dolphin-like, I always thought dolphins were not solitary creatures, so I was trying to figure out what else it could be when I looked to my left at a particularly big wave beginning to break and saw that there was not just 1 fin, but 2....3...4..5.6.7.8 fins.
Oh.
A whole pod of dolphins, coming in to ride the big waves. They looked like they were having fun.
I watched them for a while, and then I started hatching a plan whereby I would tie my sweatshirt to the brush on the edge of the cliff, bike like crazy the 1/4 mile down to the beach trail, ride down to the sand, abandon the bike, run back the 1/4 mile until I saw the sweatshirt hanging, then shuck my shirt and shoes and go in to swim among the dolphins. At exactly the point I got all this worked out, the dolphins all turned around and started swimming straight out to sea.
Damn.
My dream of swimming with the dolphins will have to wait for another day. Well, that's OK- the sea teaches you to be patient, and it was a bit chilly anyway. But still, it was awesome to see dolphins. As JJM would say, it warms the soul.
I love HMB.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Science is AWESOME!
I decided I'm going to make a list of awesome science headlines for my office, so I can get kids more interested in learning about it. First on the list is going to be this headline:
"Scientists turn tequila into diamonds"
http://www.physorg.com/news145255770.html
Imagine... now you'll be able to say to a woman, "Hey baby, I've got a bottle of tequila here... why don't we go back to my place and I'll make you margaritas and diamonds."
Science _rocks_.
Of course, most students will still end up being turned off from science by the thoroughly incompetent, interest-crushing manner in which it is typically taught, but perhaps now a few more will be drawn in...
"Scientists turn tequila into diamonds"
http://www.physorg.com/news145255770.html
Imagine... now you'll be able to say to a woman, "Hey baby, I've got a bottle of tequila here... why don't we go back to my place and I'll make you margaritas and diamonds."
Science _rocks_.
Of course, most students will still end up being turned off from science by the thoroughly incompetent, interest-crushing manner in which it is typically taught, but perhaps now a few more will be drawn in...
Friday, November 7, 2008
If I were a conservative...
I'd still have voted for Obama, but I'd've been incensed at the modern Republican party for so utterly abandoning conservatism for the weird ideological hodgepodge that they've evolved to over the last 20 years or so. The modern Republican party seems to have abandoned a number of core principles:
1) Limited government power
The Bush administration in particular has vastly expanded government power. Warrentless wiretapping? Seriously? In THIS country? There's nothing conservative about that.
2) Maximizing individual freedom of choice
A prime example: the abortion issue. If abortion is legal, then everyone can make a choice consistent with their principles- if you think abortion is wrong, you don't have one. If you think it's acceptable, you do. Individual freedom is maximized. Sure, some compromise like no 3rd-trimester abortions is probably sensible, to account for the fact that by that time the developing fetus is capable of surviving outside the mother, is clearly human, etc. But promoting an outright ban is not consistent with conservative princples.
Or, you can do what the Republican party has done, and make Sarah Palin, whose philosophy seems to be "if your father rapes you, I'm going to make you pay for the rape kit and keep the baby", the face of the party.
3) Promoting "American exceptionalism"
I like the idea of American exceptionalism. But it's a really hard sell when you're torturing prisoners (Abu Ghraib), holding people without charges (Guantanamo), and secretly shipping people to other countries for torture sessions that violate the Geneva conventions and our own internal laws. That's not conservatism, that's despotism.
4) Fiscal responsibility
President Bush and his congressional allies have done a marvelous job of turning hundreds of millions of dollars of surplus into hundreds of millions of dollars of deficit. There's nothing conservative about that. Instead, the party has become a party of cutting taxes at all times, whether it makes any conceivable sense to do so or not. Conservatism would be about doing the thing that makes fiscal sense.
5) Government efficiency
Conservatism should be about making sure government agencies are as lean as they can be, while accomplishing whatever tasks are needed. Instead, for the last 8 years we've had nothing but incompetence from the people appointed to run government agencies. Showcase example: FEMA during Katrina. That kind of performance is not conservatism. And Katrina brings me to:
6) Promoting a meritocracy
Conservatism should be about individuals working hard and getting rewarded as a result. Instead, since the Reagan Revolution we've seen a pretty steady decline in social mobility, which has led to tremendous empowerment of the very well-off, while holding down everyone else. There's nothing conservative about that. And don't even get me started on President Bush and the nincompoops he appointed to key positions within the federal government. Heckuva job there, Mr. President.
On all of these issues, the Republican party has completely ceded the ground to the Democrats. And lo and behold, the Republicans got their asses kicked. They were only able to pull off the 2000 election because people were so frustrated with President Clinton's shenanigans, and they were only able to pull off 2004 because enough people were still residually scared from the 9/11 experience. And that's without factoring in any election-day cheating. It's been a long time since they've won on ideas; fear/anger is pretty much all they've got. And it's not working anymore. People are less afraid of terrorism, less afraid of gay people (and getting less afraid all the time- in another generation no one will care anymore), and generally less likely to respond to a message like Senator McCain's, which basically boiled down to: "Elect me because you're afraid of life under the other guy."
So at this point, any true conservative has to vote Dem or abstain completely. But I'd be hopping mad, and I'd want to spend the next 4 years re-writing the Republican platform. And if the Grover Norquists and James Dobsons of the world didn't like the new platform, I'd tell them to kiss my ass and stay home on election day. Because the party that pushes the ideals above will be extremely attractive to the middle 60% of voters.
Election '08 proved it.
1) Limited government power
The Bush administration in particular has vastly expanded government power. Warrentless wiretapping? Seriously? In THIS country? There's nothing conservative about that.
2) Maximizing individual freedom of choice
A prime example: the abortion issue. If abortion is legal, then everyone can make a choice consistent with their principles- if you think abortion is wrong, you don't have one. If you think it's acceptable, you do. Individual freedom is maximized. Sure, some compromise like no 3rd-trimester abortions is probably sensible, to account for the fact that by that time the developing fetus is capable of surviving outside the mother, is clearly human, etc. But promoting an outright ban is not consistent with conservative princples.
Or, you can do what the Republican party has done, and make Sarah Palin, whose philosophy seems to be "if your father rapes you, I'm going to make you pay for the rape kit and keep the baby", the face of the party.
3) Promoting "American exceptionalism"
I like the idea of American exceptionalism. But it's a really hard sell when you're torturing prisoners (Abu Ghraib), holding people without charges (Guantanamo), and secretly shipping people to other countries for torture sessions that violate the Geneva conventions and our own internal laws. That's not conservatism, that's despotism.
4) Fiscal responsibility
President Bush and his congressional allies have done a marvelous job of turning hundreds of millions of dollars of surplus into hundreds of millions of dollars of deficit. There's nothing conservative about that. Instead, the party has become a party of cutting taxes at all times, whether it makes any conceivable sense to do so or not. Conservatism would be about doing the thing that makes fiscal sense.
5) Government efficiency
Conservatism should be about making sure government agencies are as lean as they can be, while accomplishing whatever tasks are needed. Instead, for the last 8 years we've had nothing but incompetence from the people appointed to run government agencies. Showcase example: FEMA during Katrina. That kind of performance is not conservatism. And Katrina brings me to:
6) Promoting a meritocracy
Conservatism should be about individuals working hard and getting rewarded as a result. Instead, since the Reagan Revolution we've seen a pretty steady decline in social mobility, which has led to tremendous empowerment of the very well-off, while holding down everyone else. There's nothing conservative about that. And don't even get me started on President Bush and the nincompoops he appointed to key positions within the federal government. Heckuva job there, Mr. President.
On all of these issues, the Republican party has completely ceded the ground to the Democrats. And lo and behold, the Republicans got their asses kicked. They were only able to pull off the 2000 election because people were so frustrated with President Clinton's shenanigans, and they were only able to pull off 2004 because enough people were still residually scared from the 9/11 experience. And that's without factoring in any election-day cheating. It's been a long time since they've won on ideas; fear/anger is pretty much all they've got. And it's not working anymore. People are less afraid of terrorism, less afraid of gay people (and getting less afraid all the time- in another generation no one will care anymore), and generally less likely to respond to a message like Senator McCain's, which basically boiled down to: "Elect me because you're afraid of life under the other guy."
So at this point, any true conservative has to vote Dem or abstain completely. But I'd be hopping mad, and I'd want to spend the next 4 years re-writing the Republican platform. And if the Grover Norquists and James Dobsons of the world didn't like the new platform, I'd tell them to kiss my ass and stay home on election day. Because the party that pushes the ideals above will be extremely attractive to the middle 60% of voters.
Election '08 proved it.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Oh (mostly) happy day!
At so many times, and in so many ways, this country has done dumb stuff. And yet, there have been times when this country has really gotten it right. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, emancipation, suffrage, civil rights, saying we'd send a man to the moon, and doing it. But no moment like that has occurred in my lifetime.
Until yesterday.
It was so awesome to finally feel like I'm living in one of those moments where America really gets it right. Thanks to everyone who helped make that possible.
I heard on the news today that Israel and the Palestinians are shelling each other again. Congratulations, President-Elect Obama. You had about 6 hours or so to bask in the warm glow of an historic victory. Now you start paying the price of victory.
Good luck, my man.
The only terribly disappointing thing was the passage of Proposition 8, to amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage. I didn't do enough to fight this. I didn't donate money. I thought about making a sign and pasting it to my car, but I opted not to because the only ideas I had were ideas like:
NO on Prop 8 - Seriously people, it's the 21st century.
Prop 8 - The Last Refuge for Bigots
NO on Prop 8 - It's "Liberty and Justice for all", NOT "bigotry and injustice for all"!!
and so on. Probably not going to change any minds with signs like that.
And, I was mostly obsessed with the presidential election. But I want to see a proposition in 2010 to repeal that stinking piece of crap from my state constitution, and if there is one, I'm definitely getting on board early.
Still, it's a good day today. Morning in America, at last.
Until yesterday.
It was so awesome to finally feel like I'm living in one of those moments where America really gets it right. Thanks to everyone who helped make that possible.
I heard on the news today that Israel and the Palestinians are shelling each other again. Congratulations, President-Elect Obama. You had about 6 hours or so to bask in the warm glow of an historic victory. Now you start paying the price of victory.
Good luck, my man.
The only terribly disappointing thing was the passage of Proposition 8, to amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage. I didn't do enough to fight this. I didn't donate money. I thought about making a sign and pasting it to my car, but I opted not to because the only ideas I had were ideas like:
NO on Prop 8 - Seriously people, it's the 21st century.
Prop 8 - The Last Refuge for Bigots
NO on Prop 8 - It's "Liberty and Justice for all", NOT "bigotry and injustice for all"!!
and so on. Probably not going to change any minds with signs like that.
And, I was mostly obsessed with the presidential election. But I want to see a proposition in 2010 to repeal that stinking piece of crap from my state constitution, and if there is one, I'm definitely getting on board early.
Still, it's a good day today. Morning in America, at last.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Why I'm not cut out for a life of crime...
There are many illustrations. One of the early instances of my realizing this important fact was in high school, in Russian class with my friend Foma. We had a game we used to play -and by 'we', I mean 'Foma'- that, well, rather than try to explain it I'll just lay out a typical instance of the game...
Foma's Game
Game Clock (min:sec)....Event
00:00Mr. Morris turns to the board to illustrate Russian grammar, signaling the start of the game
00:01Foma leans over to his right and slugs Gus in the shoulder
00:01.5Foma flashes evil grin
00:02Gus mutters under his breath, "quit it."
00:03Foma leans over to his right and slugs Gus in the shoulder
00:03.5Foma flashes evil grin
00:04Gus mutters a little more loudly, "quit it."
00:05Foma leans over to his right and slugs Gus in the shoulder
00:05.5Foma flashes evil grin
00:06Gus mutters a little more insistently, "quit it."
00:07Foma leans over to his right and slugs Gus in the shoulder
00:07.5Foma flashes evil grin
00:08Gus mutters very annoyedly, "quit it, goddammit."
00:09Foma leans over to his right and slugs Gus in the shoulder
00:09.5Foma flashes evil grin
00:10Gus mutters angrily, "quit IT!"
00:11Foma leans over to his right and slugs Gus in the shoulder
00:11.5Foma flashes evil grin
00:12Gus mutters furiously, "QUIT IT!!"
00:13Foma leans over to his right and slugs Gus in the shoulder
00:13.5Foma flashes evil grin
00:14Gus mutters murderously, "QUIT IT GODDAMMIT!!"
00:15Foma leans over to his right and slugs Gus in the shoulder
00:15.5Foma flashes evil grin
00:16Gus leans over to his left, reaching across his body to slug Foma
00:16.2Gus's arm is hanging in the empty space in the aisle, fist clenched, on a clear trajectory to hit Foma
00:16.3Mr. Morris turns around from the board, and sees Gus about to slug Foma
00:16.5Mr. Morris: "Gus, give me your card."
00:16.6Foma flashes evil grin
00:17Gus gets up to hand Mr. Morris his demerit card. Game ends. Winner: Foma
I don't recall ever winning this game, btw.
For those of you who are not veterans of Jesuit education, we all had demerit cards. On the back was a pattern of characters: 1 2 3 4 J 1 2 3 4 J 1 2 3 J 1 2 3 J...
Teachers gave you demerits for breaking any of the various and sundry rules. When you got to a "J", that meant you got a "JUG", which stands for "Justice Under God", which is an hour of hard labor after school. Mopping floors, cleaning bathrooms, whatever.
If you really fucked up, you got a Saturday jug, which was 8 hours hard labor on a saturday. I only got one of those, senior year. I spent 6 hours mowing grass in the heat, and 2 hours weeding Brother Thornton's rose garden. Without gloves. I'd grab a handful of weeds, and pull, only to discover a dead branch of rose bush had fallen in there. So basically, I spent 2 hours cursing and pulling thorns out of my hand. Honestly, I don't know if I've ever felt more Catholic.
But the Foma game illustrates how merciless fate is about keeping me on the straight and narrow. Here's another illustration...
Fast forward to October 1994. I graduated from Pomona in May, my dad gave me our second car, a little Plymouth Sundance that I called Mr. Perkins, because it was an average, nondescript car that needed an average, nondescript name. I piled all my things into it in June and moved back to LA, to move in with my girlfriend Tasha. Now that it's October, Mr. Perkins' Missouri registration has just expired. I've researched what it would cost to register the car in CA, and I can't afford it. I'm in my third month at Katz Communications, where my salary is $15,600. That's not a lot to live on in LA, with student loans, rent, gas, insurance, etc.
The basic registration is only about $100, and that part I can cobble together using my strategy of gratefully accepting any time one of the account executives offers to take me to lunch, then getting half of whatever I order in a to-go box, so I can have it for dinner. But, since my car is from out-of-state, CA also wants me to pay a $300 "smog impact fee", and I just don't have it.
My strategy: the sticker won't show as expired until 11/1. At that point, all I have to do is stay off the radar until 12/20, when I fly home to StL. I'll take all the money I get from Christmas, and save until then, and I should be able to cobble together the payment. Note here that my intent is to comply with the law as best I can given my economic circumstances.
Fast forward to December 15th or so...
I've been in the habit of running my gas tank as low as it can go, to delay having to spend money on gas as long as possible. As a risk mitigation measure, I keep a small gas can in the trunk, in case I run out.
At about 1am, coming back from dance rehearsal in Claremont, I run out of gas on the 10 freeway. No problem- I'll just dump the emergency gas in there and be on my way.
At about 105am, the California Highway Patrol pulls up behind me, and shines the light on me, dumping gas into the car. The officers get out and slowly approach.
Officer 1: "Is this your vehicle?"
Me: "Uh, yes."
Officer 2: "What are you doing?"
Me: "Uh, well, I ran out of gas but I keep some emergency gas in the trunk, so I'm just putting that in."
Officer 1: "Can we see some ID?"
Me: "Sure." I hand over my driver's license. Officer 1 takes it and goes back to the car. Officer 2 watches me while we wait.
After a while, Officer 1 comes back.
Officer 1: "This car is not registered to you. I thought you said it was your car."
Me: "Well, it's registered to my dad, but he gave it to me, and I'm going to get it registered here in CA. You can see our last names are the same."
This seems to satisfy CHP. They say they'll watch to make sure I get going OK.
I finish putting gas in the car, get back in, start up Mr. Perkins, and pull onto the freeway. CHP pulls onto the freeway behind me. 10 yards down the road, they flip on their lights and pull me back over. I pull onto the shoulder and wait while the officer approaches.
Officer 1: "We noticed your registration is expired. You've been driving on expired registration. License please."
I hand over my license, giving him the whole sob story about how I'm leaving at the end of the week to go home, where I'll finally be able to get the money to afford the registration. Officer 1 doesn't give a shit. He just let me drive 10 yards down the highway so he could officially give me a ticket for driving on expired registration.
He writes me the ticket. I curse my star-crossed fate, and remember Foma, and note once again that I'll never succeed as a criminal.
As a special ironic postscript, some years later the "smog impact fee" was ruled unconstitutional, and I got a check in the mail for $300 plus some nominal interest.
In case you're wondering why I'm writing about all this today, let's start with last night. Joel borrowed the car to go drive to Berkeley so he could go to a Halloween party with his Female Of Interest (FOI). I was content to hang at the beach house with Kona and catch up on episodes of the Daily Show and Colbert, and maybe take a short evening beach walk. It's a little rainy, which is extremely unusual for HMB outside of Jan-Mar, but the beach is nice even in the rain.
I told Joel the curfew was 10am Sat morning, since I needed the car at that point to drive to work to tutor. At 830 this morning, Joel called...
Joel: "So, I'm up, and I went outside to drive back from Berkeley, and the front right tire is totally flat."
Me: "Shit."
Joel: "Yeah, I'm going to get working on that."
So I push back my tutoring meeting, and get out of bed. I realize that Kona hasn't been walked since early evening yesterday, so I leash her up and we go outside. Kona wants to run a bit, so I run with her, and she leads me straight to the sandy beach path.
Now, technically, HMB state beach is no-dogs-allowed. You have to walk up a bit to where the state beach ends. But it's 9am on a rainy Saturday morning, and there's absolutely no one around, and Kona _really_ wants to go down that path, so we walk down the sandy beach path about 20 feet, and Kona does her #2 thing. I stop to pick up after her, and unclip her leash figuring I'll give her like 2 minutes of freedom before taking her back. In spite of the gentle rain, it's quite warm, and the beach is beautiful. The waves are really coming in, and crashing noisily onto the sand.
So noisily that I didn't hear the HMB state park ranger pull into the parking lot behind us.
Kona is 20 feet onto the sandy path, and has been unleashed for a grand total of 45 seconds. I turn around and see the ranger approaching.
Yes, it's going to be one of those days. It's like 9am and already I just want it to be over. I clip Kona up again and wait for the ranger.
In the end, I get a break because I'm a local. I get a long lecture, the ranger takes down all my information and puts me into the computer and gives me a warning, saying that if they catch me again I'll get _two_ tickets.
The thing is, locals take their dogs on the beach all the time. They just don't do it on weekends. Weekends are when all the outsiders come, and that's when they patrol the beaches. And me, not normally dealing with dog issues, I forgot that the unwritten rule is that you only take the dogs down there during the week, when there are no outsiders.
Sigh.
So, this is why I decided long ago that I'm just not cut out for a life of crime. The universe punishes me swiftly and mercilessly.
Foma's Game
Game Clock (min:sec)....Event
00:00
00:01
00:01.5
00:02
00:03
00:03.5
00:04
00:05
00:05.5
00:06
00:07
00:07.5
00:08
00:09
00:09.5
00:10
00:11
00:11.5
00:12
00:13
00:13.5
00:14
00:15
00:15.5
00:16
00:16.2
00:16.3
00:16.5
00:16.6
00:17
I don't recall ever winning this game, btw.
For those of you who are not veterans of Jesuit education, we all had demerit cards. On the back was a pattern of characters: 1 2 3 4 J 1 2 3 4 J 1 2 3 J 1 2 3 J...
Teachers gave you demerits for breaking any of the various and sundry rules. When you got to a "J", that meant you got a "JUG", which stands for "Justice Under God", which is an hour of hard labor after school. Mopping floors, cleaning bathrooms, whatever.
If you really fucked up, you got a Saturday jug, which was 8 hours hard labor on a saturday. I only got one of those, senior year. I spent 6 hours mowing grass in the heat, and 2 hours weeding Brother Thornton's rose garden. Without gloves. I'd grab a handful of weeds, and pull, only to discover a dead branch of rose bush had fallen in there. So basically, I spent 2 hours cursing and pulling thorns out of my hand. Honestly, I don't know if I've ever felt more Catholic.
But the Foma game illustrates how merciless fate is about keeping me on the straight and narrow. Here's another illustration...
Fast forward to October 1994. I graduated from Pomona in May, my dad gave me our second car, a little Plymouth Sundance that I called Mr. Perkins, because it was an average, nondescript car that needed an average, nondescript name. I piled all my things into it in June and moved back to LA, to move in with my girlfriend Tasha. Now that it's October, Mr. Perkins' Missouri registration has just expired. I've researched what it would cost to register the car in CA, and I can't afford it. I'm in my third month at Katz Communications, where my salary is $15,600. That's not a lot to live on in LA, with student loans, rent, gas, insurance, etc.
The basic registration is only about $100, and that part I can cobble together using my strategy of gratefully accepting any time one of the account executives offers to take me to lunch, then getting half of whatever I order in a to-go box, so I can have it for dinner. But, since my car is from out-of-state, CA also wants me to pay a $300 "smog impact fee", and I just don't have it.
My strategy: the sticker won't show as expired until 11/1. At that point, all I have to do is stay off the radar until 12/20, when I fly home to StL. I'll take all the money I get from Christmas, and save until then, and I should be able to cobble together the payment. Note here that my intent is to comply with the law as best I can given my economic circumstances.
Fast forward to December 15th or so...
I've been in the habit of running my gas tank as low as it can go, to delay having to spend money on gas as long as possible. As a risk mitigation measure, I keep a small gas can in the trunk, in case I run out.
At about 1am, coming back from dance rehearsal in Claremont, I run out of gas on the 10 freeway. No problem- I'll just dump the emergency gas in there and be on my way.
At about 105am, the California Highway Patrol pulls up behind me, and shines the light on me, dumping gas into the car. The officers get out and slowly approach.
Officer 1: "Is this your vehicle?"
Me: "Uh, yes."
Officer 2: "What are you doing?"
Me: "Uh, well, I ran out of gas but I keep some emergency gas in the trunk, so I'm just putting that in."
Officer 1: "Can we see some ID?"
Me: "Sure." I hand over my driver's license. Officer 1 takes it and goes back to the car. Officer 2 watches me while we wait.
After a while, Officer 1 comes back.
Officer 1: "This car is not registered to you. I thought you said it was your car."
Me: "Well, it's registered to my dad, but he gave it to me, and I'm going to get it registered here in CA. You can see our last names are the same."
This seems to satisfy CHP. They say they'll watch to make sure I get going OK.
I finish putting gas in the car, get back in, start up Mr. Perkins, and pull onto the freeway. CHP pulls onto the freeway behind me. 10 yards down the road, they flip on their lights and pull me back over. I pull onto the shoulder and wait while the officer approaches.
Officer 1: "We noticed your registration is expired. You've been driving on expired registration. License please."
I hand over my license, giving him the whole sob story about how I'm leaving at the end of the week to go home, where I'll finally be able to get the money to afford the registration. Officer 1 doesn't give a shit. He just let me drive 10 yards down the highway so he could officially give me a ticket for driving on expired registration.
He writes me the ticket. I curse my star-crossed fate, and remember Foma, and note once again that I'll never succeed as a criminal.
As a special ironic postscript, some years later the "smog impact fee" was ruled unconstitutional, and I got a check in the mail for $300 plus some nominal interest.
In case you're wondering why I'm writing about all this today, let's start with last night. Joel borrowed the car to go drive to Berkeley so he could go to a Halloween party with his Female Of Interest (FOI). I was content to hang at the beach house with Kona and catch up on episodes of the Daily Show and Colbert, and maybe take a short evening beach walk. It's a little rainy, which is extremely unusual for HMB outside of Jan-Mar, but the beach is nice even in the rain.
I told Joel the curfew was 10am Sat morning, since I needed the car at that point to drive to work to tutor. At 830 this morning, Joel called...
Joel: "So, I'm up, and I went outside to drive back from Berkeley, and the front right tire is totally flat."
Me: "Shit."
Joel: "Yeah, I'm going to get working on that."
So I push back my tutoring meeting, and get out of bed. I realize that Kona hasn't been walked since early evening yesterday, so I leash her up and we go outside. Kona wants to run a bit, so I run with her, and she leads me straight to the sandy beach path.
Now, technically, HMB state beach is no-dogs-allowed. You have to walk up a bit to where the state beach ends. But it's 9am on a rainy Saturday morning, and there's absolutely no one around, and Kona _really_ wants to go down that path, so we walk down the sandy beach path about 20 feet, and Kona does her #2 thing. I stop to pick up after her, and unclip her leash figuring I'll give her like 2 minutes of freedom before taking her back. In spite of the gentle rain, it's quite warm, and the beach is beautiful. The waves are really coming in, and crashing noisily onto the sand.
So noisily that I didn't hear the HMB state park ranger pull into the parking lot behind us.
Kona is 20 feet onto the sandy path, and has been unleashed for a grand total of 45 seconds. I turn around and see the ranger approaching.
Yes, it's going to be one of those days. It's like 9am and already I just want it to be over. I clip Kona up again and wait for the ranger.
In the end, I get a break because I'm a local. I get a long lecture, the ranger takes down all my information and puts me into the computer and gives me a warning, saying that if they catch me again I'll get _two_ tickets.
The thing is, locals take their dogs on the beach all the time. They just don't do it on weekends. Weekends are when all the outsiders come, and that's when they patrol the beaches. And me, not normally dealing with dog issues, I forgot that the unwritten rule is that you only take the dogs down there during the week, when there are no outsiders.
Sigh.
So, this is why I decided long ago that I'm just not cut out for a life of crime. The universe punishes me swiftly and mercilessly.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Nacole singing a Pro-Obama video...
If you're interested in hearing Nacole sing in a pro-Obama video, doing an election version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah", check out the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBSW1WuoJTA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBSW1WuoJTA
Monday, October 27, 2008
Election '08 by Gus, Part 12: My endorsements
Here are my endorsements for the CA general election on 11/4:
National:
President: Barack Obama
Thoughtful, intellectually curious, intelligent, compassionate, and potentially transformational. In short, what we need more of in our leadership at all levels.
State:
Proposition 1, High Speed Rail Bonds: YES
SF to LA in 2.5 hrs at $50 a person? Sign me up. That shit can't happen quickly enough.
Proposition 2, Standards for Confining Farm Animals: NO
Redundant- CA law already protects animal welfare and safety. Enforce the existing regulations as the supply side strategy. The rest of it can be handled by demand side consumer preferences (i.e., buying cage-free eggs, etc.)
Proposition 3, Children's Hospital Bond Act: NO
Redundant- only $400M of the $750M that was authorized in Proposition 61 in November 2004 has been awarded. Spend the other $350M you already have, and once that's spent, if there's really an argument for more I'll be happy to consider it.
Proposition 4, Waiting Period and Parental Notification Before Termination of a Minor's Pregnancy: NO
Raise your kids well, and they won't get pregnant as minors, thus obviating the need for this law.
Failing that, raise your kids semi-competently, and they'll involve you in the decision-making, thus obviating the need for this law.
Or, just raise your kids like you don't know what the hell you're doing. Sorry, but I don't feel like changing the legal code to bail you out of the consequences of your incompetent parenting.
Proposition 5, Nonviolent Drug Offenses: YES
Drug use is primarily a public health problem, not a law enforcement problem. I have no problem throwing violent drug cartel members in jail, but your average idiot walking around with a little bag of weed is hardly a major threat to society.
Proposition 6, Police and Law Enforcement Funding: NO
After Proposition 8, which I will get to shortly, this one is the most offensive to me. It isn't even the usual shitty proposition that increases already stiff sentencing rules in a blatant, shameless effort to pander to people's baser instincts:
Politician 1: I think we should have mandatory sentences for all people convicted of jaywalking of 100 years in prison, after which time their rotting corpses will be pissed on, then cremated, and then the ashes locked up for the next 10,000 years in the Yucca Mountain facility with all the leaking nuclear waste.
Politician 2: I don't know, I kind of think our current policy of 25 years in prison, including daily raging anal fistula, is sufficient.
Politician 1: WHAT? How DARE you insult decent, hardworking folks. SOFT ON CRIME! SOFT ON CRIME! Why do you love criminals and hate America???
Politician 2: NO! NO! I'm NOT soft on crime!! I... I... I think we should take the jaywalkers, and put them, still alive, in barrels full of spent nuclear fuel and put them in Yucca Mountain for 10,000 years!
And that, friends, is how sentencing laws are developed in this country. But this proposition isn't even really that. No, it's an attempt to legislate that a fixed amount of the general budget gets spent on law enforcement. Screw budget negotiations! Screw schools! Screw all the other stuff that needs money! Yes, we'll make a naked grab for dollars, but embed it WITHIN a blatant, shameless effort to pander to people's baser instincts.
Crap. Crap crap crap. Seriously, who writes this shit?
Proposition 7: Renewable Energy Generation: NO
Another favorite strategy of mine- naming your proposition the opposite of what it actually does.
This one creates thresholds for renewable energy sourcing, but establishes a minimum power requirement for getting a permit at 30 megawatts, which is more than what 60% of renewable energy providers can produce (since most renewable energy providers are pretty small). That will wipe out a hefty fraction of the renewable power suppliers. Also, the permitting authority is transferred from local government, where it currently resides, to the state Energy Commission. Then, the measure raises the targets for renewable sourcing, while simultaneously removing the provision that requires utilities that fail to meet the target in a given year to make up for that loss by procuring additional renewable energy in later years.
In short, wipe out a new industry of small providers so that the large energy suppliers of old can get around someday to providing what the smaller providers already do. Oh, and we'll make sure there's no real penalty for failing to get around to doing it.
Proposition 8, Amending the State Constitution to Eliminate the Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry: NO
I regret that I have but one vote to cast against this stinking piece of bigoted, pseudo-legislative crap.
Seriously, people, this is the 21st fucking century. What I love about America is that if you want to hate gay people, you're totally welcome to do within the confines of your own exceedingly small mind. In fact, you're even free to shout out your bigotry from the very rooftops. And I would go to the mat to protect your right to do so.
But do not touch the Constitution. Keep your angry, close-minded, bigoted hands off.
Proposition 9, Constitutional Amendment of Victims' Rights, Parole for Criminals, etc.: NO
This one is like a hybrid of Props 6 and 8: a constitutional amendment to enshrine forever a blatant, shameless effort to pander to people's baser instincts. I have nothing new to add- this thing is crap.
Proposition 10, Alternative Fuel Vehicles Bonds: NO
I went back and forth on this one a little. It appears to be a move to get more trucks on natural gas, which is supplied by a company that is owned by the author of the proposition.
Thing is, the U.S. has a reasonable amount of natural gas. It doesn't have a lot of oil. So although it wouldn't necessarily help much on the renewable fuels front, I was willing to entertain the idea just on the basis of being able to rely more on domestic energy production.
That said, this proposition boils down to borrowing $10B to hand out $50K subsidies per truck to anyone willing to trade their crappy gasoline-powered truck for a slightly less crappy natural gas truck. In the end, I think the marginal benefit of this scheme is less than the marginal cost.
Proposition 11, Redistricting Constitutional Amendment: YES
Much as I hate constitutional amendments, the current system is definitely rigged for incumbents, so having a defined process that incumbent legislators don't have direct control over sounds like a nice try. If it doesn't work, another state can figure out a better way.
Proposition 12, Veterans' Bonds: YES
This appears to be a straightforward continuance of a reasonably well-run, reasonably low-impact program fiscally.
Get out and vote on Tuesday, folks!
National:
President: Barack Obama
Thoughtful, intellectually curious, intelligent, compassionate, and potentially transformational. In short, what we need more of in our leadership at all levels.
State:
Proposition 1, High Speed Rail Bonds: YES
SF to LA in 2.5 hrs at $50 a person? Sign me up. That shit can't happen quickly enough.
Proposition 2, Standards for Confining Farm Animals: NO
Redundant- CA law already protects animal welfare and safety. Enforce the existing regulations as the supply side strategy. The rest of it can be handled by demand side consumer preferences (i.e., buying cage-free eggs, etc.)
Proposition 3, Children's Hospital Bond Act: NO
Redundant- only $400M of the $750M that was authorized in Proposition 61 in November 2004 has been awarded. Spend the other $350M you already have, and once that's spent, if there's really an argument for more I'll be happy to consider it.
Proposition 4, Waiting Period and Parental Notification Before Termination of a Minor's Pregnancy: NO
Raise your kids well, and they won't get pregnant as minors, thus obviating the need for this law.
Failing that, raise your kids semi-competently, and they'll involve you in the decision-making, thus obviating the need for this law.
Or, just raise your kids like you don't know what the hell you're doing. Sorry, but I don't feel like changing the legal code to bail you out of the consequences of your incompetent parenting.
Proposition 5, Nonviolent Drug Offenses: YES
Drug use is primarily a public health problem, not a law enforcement problem. I have no problem throwing violent drug cartel members in jail, but your average idiot walking around with a little bag of weed is hardly a major threat to society.
Proposition 6, Police and Law Enforcement Funding: NO
After Proposition 8, which I will get to shortly, this one is the most offensive to me. It isn't even the usual shitty proposition that increases already stiff sentencing rules in a blatant, shameless effort to pander to people's baser instincts:
Politician 1: I think we should have mandatory sentences for all people convicted of jaywalking of 100 years in prison, after which time their rotting corpses will be pissed on, then cremated, and then the ashes locked up for the next 10,000 years in the Yucca Mountain facility with all the leaking nuclear waste.
Politician 2: I don't know, I kind of think our current policy of 25 years in prison, including daily raging anal fistula, is sufficient.
Politician 1: WHAT? How DARE you insult decent, hardworking folks. SOFT ON CRIME! SOFT ON CRIME! Why do you love criminals and hate America???
Politician 2: NO! NO! I'm NOT soft on crime!! I... I... I think we should take the jaywalkers, and put them, still alive, in barrels full of spent nuclear fuel and put them in Yucca Mountain for 10,000 years!
And that, friends, is how sentencing laws are developed in this country. But this proposition isn't even really that. No, it's an attempt to legislate that a fixed amount of the general budget gets spent on law enforcement. Screw budget negotiations! Screw schools! Screw all the other stuff that needs money! Yes, we'll make a naked grab for dollars, but embed it WITHIN a blatant, shameless effort to pander to people's baser instincts.
Crap. Crap crap crap. Seriously, who writes this shit?
Proposition 7: Renewable Energy Generation: NO
Another favorite strategy of mine- naming your proposition the opposite of what it actually does.
This one creates thresholds for renewable energy sourcing, but establishes a minimum power requirement for getting a permit at 30 megawatts, which is more than what 60% of renewable energy providers can produce (since most renewable energy providers are pretty small). That will wipe out a hefty fraction of the renewable power suppliers. Also, the permitting authority is transferred from local government, where it currently resides, to the state Energy Commission. Then, the measure raises the targets for renewable sourcing, while simultaneously removing the provision that requires utilities that fail to meet the target in a given year to make up for that loss by procuring additional renewable energy in later years.
In short, wipe out a new industry of small providers so that the large energy suppliers of old can get around someday to providing what the smaller providers already do. Oh, and we'll make sure there's no real penalty for failing to get around to doing it.
Proposition 8, Amending the State Constitution to Eliminate the Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry: NO
I regret that I have but one vote to cast against this stinking piece of bigoted, pseudo-legislative crap.
Seriously, people, this is the 21st fucking century. What I love about America is that if you want to hate gay people, you're totally welcome to do within the confines of your own exceedingly small mind. In fact, you're even free to shout out your bigotry from the very rooftops. And I would go to the mat to protect your right to do so.
But do not touch the Constitution. Keep your angry, close-minded, bigoted hands off.
Proposition 9, Constitutional Amendment of Victims' Rights, Parole for Criminals, etc.: NO
This one is like a hybrid of Props 6 and 8: a constitutional amendment to enshrine forever a blatant, shameless effort to pander to people's baser instincts. I have nothing new to add- this thing is crap.
Proposition 10, Alternative Fuel Vehicles Bonds: NO
I went back and forth on this one a little. It appears to be a move to get more trucks on natural gas, which is supplied by a company that is owned by the author of the proposition.
Thing is, the U.S. has a reasonable amount of natural gas. It doesn't have a lot of oil. So although it wouldn't necessarily help much on the renewable fuels front, I was willing to entertain the idea just on the basis of being able to rely more on domestic energy production.
That said, this proposition boils down to borrowing $10B to hand out $50K subsidies per truck to anyone willing to trade their crappy gasoline-powered truck for a slightly less crappy natural gas truck. In the end, I think the marginal benefit of this scheme is less than the marginal cost.
Proposition 11, Redistricting Constitutional Amendment: YES
Much as I hate constitutional amendments, the current system is definitely rigged for incumbents, so having a defined process that incumbent legislators don't have direct control over sounds like a nice try. If it doesn't work, another state can figure out a better way.
Proposition 12, Veterans' Bonds: YES
This appears to be a straightforward continuance of a reasonably well-run, reasonably low-impact program fiscally.
Get out and vote on Tuesday, folks!
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Election '08 by Gus, Part 11
Watching the 2008 presidential election is feeling for me a lot like watching the 2008 Cardinals playing the Pirates, up by 9 runs going into the 7th inning. The team I'm rooting for is playing a team that's obviously weaker, and has fallen behind by a huge margin late in the game. In theory, all that should happen is that the game plays itself out and my team wins handily.
Thing is, the 2008 Cardinals proceeded to collapse in that game, surrendering 10 runs over the last 3 innings to find their way to an improbable loss.
So the question that keeps me up at nights is: are the 2008 Democrats like the 2008 Cardinals? It's a legitimate worry, because both the 2004 and the 2000 Dems were.
I figure that Obama needs a 7-9 point edge going into the election because 3 points will disappear due to the Bradley effect, as some people at the end decide that they just can't handle voting for a black man, and then another 3 points will disappear due to voter intimidation and improper elimination of voters from the rolls, as part of the typical Republican suppress-the-vote strategy.
On a different note, it's been sad to watch John McCain become so many of the things he previously has denounced. I mean, I don't feel sorry for him personally; he made his decisions. But on at least some issues he used to be moderate and reasonable, and it's always tragic when a moderate and reasonable politician passes from the scene. Once upon a time, social conservatives hated him because he was willing to make a compromise on supreme court justices, and because he labelled the extreme social conservative right as "agents of intolerance"; now, he has Sarah Palin as his running mate. That's Sarah if-you-get-raped-by-a-relative-I'll-make-you-keep-the-baby-AND-make-you-pay-for-your-rape-kit Palin. Once upon a time, Club-for-Growth conservatives hated him because he opposed the Bush tax cuts. Now, he'll make them permanent at a time we're bleeding red ink and mortgaging the future of the next few generations. Once upon a time, he wanted to run a responsible campaign, and now he's caved to whatever consultants told him he should go totally negative.
I can't remember if I've said this before, and I'm too lazy to read my own posts, but I met John McCain in 2000 when he was running. He came and spoke at Yale, and I hung around after to shake hands and introduce myself. He gave an interesting talk, and seemed energetic and a reasonable guy. I wouldn't have voted for him over Gore, but I at least respected him then. And I was irritated that he got waxed by Bush and Rove and the hardcore Republican attack machine.
I guess over the last 8 years he realized that this would be his last chance, and he wanted the nomination so bad that he made every compromise he felt he needed to in order to get it. That's what happens when you want it too much. And the irony is that Bush is going to indirectly be the cause of his defeat again, since his governance has been so bad that people are desperate for change. That desperation for change led to the Obama phenomenon, which swamped another candidate who waited a long time for a nomination she wanted so bad she was willing to make any compromise to get it: Hillary Clinton.
Fortunately for Obama, he was so new to the scene and such a long shot initially that he will ascend to the presidency without having made too many compromises along the way (though he has made some, especially over the last couple months). He hasn't had a long political career to spend wanting the presidency and systematically compromising his values in order to better position himself for a future run. There is evidence that he has thought about it; for instance, he has avoided taking positions on issues in the past, particularly with regard to expressing an opinion on controversial legal issues, most likely in order to prevent anyone from dredging up those opinions later. But still, for a major candidate he's coming in pretty clean, and it will be interesting to see if that helps him be effective in the presidency.
And to be sure, he'll need every advantage he can get. He will assume the presidency with 2 wars going, a serious recession in progress, a sea of red budget ink, and all kinds of potential crises, foreign and domestic, looming. I don't think he's the answer to every problem, but I'm hoping he's the answer to at least _some_ of the problems. And that's why he'll have my vote come Nov 4th.
Get out and vote, everyone!
Thing is, the 2008 Cardinals proceeded to collapse in that game, surrendering 10 runs over the last 3 innings to find their way to an improbable loss.
So the question that keeps me up at nights is: are the 2008 Democrats like the 2008 Cardinals? It's a legitimate worry, because both the 2004 and the 2000 Dems were.
I figure that Obama needs a 7-9 point edge going into the election because 3 points will disappear due to the Bradley effect, as some people at the end decide that they just can't handle voting for a black man, and then another 3 points will disappear due to voter intimidation and improper elimination of voters from the rolls, as part of the typical Republican suppress-the-vote strategy.
On a different note, it's been sad to watch John McCain become so many of the things he previously has denounced. I mean, I don't feel sorry for him personally; he made his decisions. But on at least some issues he used to be moderate and reasonable, and it's always tragic when a moderate and reasonable politician passes from the scene. Once upon a time, social conservatives hated him because he was willing to make a compromise on supreme court justices, and because he labelled the extreme social conservative right as "agents of intolerance"; now, he has Sarah Palin as his running mate. That's Sarah if-you-get-raped-by-a-relative-I'll-make-you-keep-the-baby-AND-make-you-pay-for-your-rape-kit Palin. Once upon a time, Club-for-Growth conservatives hated him because he opposed the Bush tax cuts. Now, he'll make them permanent at a time we're bleeding red ink and mortgaging the future of the next few generations. Once upon a time, he wanted to run a responsible campaign, and now he's caved to whatever consultants told him he should go totally negative.
I can't remember if I've said this before, and I'm too lazy to read my own posts, but I met John McCain in 2000 when he was running. He came and spoke at Yale, and I hung around after to shake hands and introduce myself. He gave an interesting talk, and seemed energetic and a reasonable guy. I wouldn't have voted for him over Gore, but I at least respected him then. And I was irritated that he got waxed by Bush and Rove and the hardcore Republican attack machine.
I guess over the last 8 years he realized that this would be his last chance, and he wanted the nomination so bad that he made every compromise he felt he needed to in order to get it. That's what happens when you want it too much. And the irony is that Bush is going to indirectly be the cause of his defeat again, since his governance has been so bad that people are desperate for change. That desperation for change led to the Obama phenomenon, which swamped another candidate who waited a long time for a nomination she wanted so bad she was willing to make any compromise to get it: Hillary Clinton.
Fortunately for Obama, he was so new to the scene and such a long shot initially that he will ascend to the presidency without having made too many compromises along the way (though he has made some, especially over the last couple months). He hasn't had a long political career to spend wanting the presidency and systematically compromising his values in order to better position himself for a future run. There is evidence that he has thought about it; for instance, he has avoided taking positions on issues in the past, particularly with regard to expressing an opinion on controversial legal issues, most likely in order to prevent anyone from dredging up those opinions later. But still, for a major candidate he's coming in pretty clean, and it will be interesting to see if that helps him be effective in the presidency.
And to be sure, he'll need every advantage he can get. He will assume the presidency with 2 wars going, a serious recession in progress, a sea of red budget ink, and all kinds of potential crises, foreign and domestic, looming. I don't think he's the answer to every problem, but I'm hoping he's the answer to at least _some_ of the problems. And that's why he'll have my vote come Nov 4th.
Get out and vote, everyone!
Monday, October 13, 2008
Why I love Half Moon Bay, Pt 4
Because you can, on a whim, decide to take a walk on the beach at midnight under the full moon, and when you do, you discover a whole new side to HMB's beauty.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Stirring the Pot, Chapter 4: National Public Service
So, I took the GMAT yesterday. I hadn't taken it since 1998, when it first went on the computer. I took it to keep my student Jose company- he was also taking it in the same room. He suffers from the most extreme case of test anxiety I've ever seen, and so I thought it might help him to have me nearby, as psychological support. He did end up getting his highest score ever, though it did still fall a little short of what we hoped.
The GMAT begins with a pair of essays, one of which is an "issue" essay where you give your opinion on some issue they provide. The issue I was given was: All Americans should be required to perform a period of public service." And that got me to thinking...
As it stands, I disagree with that statement. We have built this country in part on the principle that people should be, to the extent possible, allowed to make their own decisions about their lives. Forcing people to perform public service runs counter to this founding principle. So I don't think it's a good idea to actually implement, even though it is well-intentioned, and would presumably accomplish a lot of good.
But a more interesting thought experiment is to think about a more fundamental question, which is: starting from an assumption that more public service would be a good thing, is there any non-coercive way to increase the amount of public service performed in America?
To answer that question, I started by thinking about public service as a positive externality. For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of sitting through a class in economics, a positive externality occurs whenever somebody gets the benefit of a good or service without paying for it. Here's a fun and simple example: fireworks on the 4th of July.
If you think about it, all the fireworks shows on the 4th of July are put on by governments. You might wonder: "Gee, how come nobody puts on a private fireworks show and charges admission?" The answer is that no one would pay- the vast majority of people would simply watch from outside the paying area, thereby receiving all the benefit of the fireworks show without incurring any of the cost. And so, no private party has any incentive to put on a fireworks show, and absent any government action, there wouldn't be any 4th of July fireworks.
Of course, fireworks shows on the 4th are a lot of fun, and it would be nice if there were some, so the government steps in and uses tax dollars to fund the show. That spreads the cost over a nice wide population, and then everyone can come down to the river or the park or whatever and watch fireworks, ostensibly for free.
Positive externalities are like that- something good that you'd want to happen, but isn't going to unless someone, almost always a government, steps in to absorb the cost of making it happen. Put another way, in the absence of intervention, less of something good is going to happen. I'd argue public service is like that.
So, if we accept public service as a positive externality, then the question becomes: how to we remove the externality, and make more public service happen? In my little essay I kicked around a couple of ideas, one of has definitely been implemented, and the other of which has not (to the best of my knowledge).
The first idea centers around the fact that many of our most productive citizens invest heavily in higher education, and as a result of that investment leave school with a significant student loan debt. So one way to increase public service would be to compensate such folks with loan forgiveness based on hours of public service worked. There already exists a program for this specifically for med school graduates, and Americorps allows you to work full-time and earn a $4725 amount that you can use to pay for school or to pay off student loans.
The issue I have with these programs is that they require a significant time investment. What if I only want to contribute 3 hours a week to public service? There's still good work that could be done, and I bet a LOT more people would participate if they could do so at a level more like this. Compensate people hourly with funds that can only be used to pay for education or educational loan foregiveness. With hourly compensation, people who only had small amounts of time could participate, which would likely drive up significantly the number of public service hours worked.
But here's another idea, related in a certain way, but not one I've seen before (though I'm sure if I thought of it, 20 other people already have also): set up a 401(k) for every citizen (honestly, this should be done anyway), and then allow government-approved public service to be compensated at the federal minimum wage on an hourly basis, with the entire proceeds (no taxes) directed to the 401(k).
The people with the most spare time for public service tend to be younger people, since they are less likely to have families or more advanced (and therefore demanding) careers. Young people also tend not to have as much disposable income to put toward saving for retirement. We could divert the energy of youth toward public service, while at the same time building a good habit in saving, and setting them up to be better off economically late in life. There is a lot of wasted human potential that we could harness through public service, and doing so would help grow the economy, which in turn would help set up the government to be able to make the necessary payouts in the future when people were ready to draw on the 401(k)'s. And it's not as if old folks couldn't participate too; I'm just thinking younger folks are the primary target here.
If I'd worked 3 hours a week for the 4 years between college and business school at the current minimum wage of $6.55, I'd have somewhere between $4000 to $5000 dollars plus 10 years of compounding more saved for retirement, plus I'd presumably have accomplished more good in this world than I regret to admit that I have to date.
It's not the hugest difference in the world, but scaled up to a couple million people, it could be a huge force for good. That's all I'm sayin'...
The GMAT begins with a pair of essays, one of which is an "issue" essay where you give your opinion on some issue they provide. The issue I was given was: All Americans should be required to perform a period of public service." And that got me to thinking...
As it stands, I disagree with that statement. We have built this country in part on the principle that people should be, to the extent possible, allowed to make their own decisions about their lives. Forcing people to perform public service runs counter to this founding principle. So I don't think it's a good idea to actually implement, even though it is well-intentioned, and would presumably accomplish a lot of good.
But a more interesting thought experiment is to think about a more fundamental question, which is: starting from an assumption that more public service would be a good thing, is there any non-coercive way to increase the amount of public service performed in America?
To answer that question, I started by thinking about public service as a positive externality. For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of sitting through a class in economics, a positive externality occurs whenever somebody gets the benefit of a good or service without paying for it. Here's a fun and simple example: fireworks on the 4th of July.
If you think about it, all the fireworks shows on the 4th of July are put on by governments. You might wonder: "Gee, how come nobody puts on a private fireworks show and charges admission?" The answer is that no one would pay- the vast majority of people would simply watch from outside the paying area, thereby receiving all the benefit of the fireworks show without incurring any of the cost. And so, no private party has any incentive to put on a fireworks show, and absent any government action, there wouldn't be any 4th of July fireworks.
Of course, fireworks shows on the 4th are a lot of fun, and it would be nice if there were some, so the government steps in and uses tax dollars to fund the show. That spreads the cost over a nice wide population, and then everyone can come down to the river or the park or whatever and watch fireworks, ostensibly for free.
Positive externalities are like that- something good that you'd want to happen, but isn't going to unless someone, almost always a government, steps in to absorb the cost of making it happen. Put another way, in the absence of intervention, less of something good is going to happen. I'd argue public service is like that.
So, if we accept public service as a positive externality, then the question becomes: how to we remove the externality, and make more public service happen? In my little essay I kicked around a couple of ideas, one of has definitely been implemented, and the other of which has not (to the best of my knowledge).
The first idea centers around the fact that many of our most productive citizens invest heavily in higher education, and as a result of that investment leave school with a significant student loan debt. So one way to increase public service would be to compensate such folks with loan forgiveness based on hours of public service worked. There already exists a program for this specifically for med school graduates, and Americorps allows you to work full-time and earn a $4725 amount that you can use to pay for school or to pay off student loans.
The issue I have with these programs is that they require a significant time investment. What if I only want to contribute 3 hours a week to public service? There's still good work that could be done, and I bet a LOT more people would participate if they could do so at a level more like this. Compensate people hourly with funds that can only be used to pay for education or educational loan foregiveness. With hourly compensation, people who only had small amounts of time could participate, which would likely drive up significantly the number of public service hours worked.
But here's another idea, related in a certain way, but not one I've seen before (though I'm sure if I thought of it, 20 other people already have also): set up a 401(k) for every citizen (honestly, this should be done anyway), and then allow government-approved public service to be compensated at the federal minimum wage on an hourly basis, with the entire proceeds (no taxes) directed to the 401(k).
The people with the most spare time for public service tend to be younger people, since they are less likely to have families or more advanced (and therefore demanding) careers. Young people also tend not to have as much disposable income to put toward saving for retirement. We could divert the energy of youth toward public service, while at the same time building a good habit in saving, and setting them up to be better off economically late in life. There is a lot of wasted human potential that we could harness through public service, and doing so would help grow the economy, which in turn would help set up the government to be able to make the necessary payouts in the future when people were ready to draw on the 401(k)'s. And it's not as if old folks couldn't participate too; I'm just thinking younger folks are the primary target here.
If I'd worked 3 hours a week for the 4 years between college and business school at the current minimum wage of $6.55, I'd have somewhere between $4000 to $5000 dollars plus 10 years of compounding more saved for retirement, plus I'd presumably have accomplished more good in this world than I regret to admit that I have to date.
It's not the hugest difference in the world, but scaled up to a couple million people, it could be a huge force for good. That's all I'm sayin'...
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Sitrring the Pot, Chapter 3: The Death Penalty
As part of my continuing exercise in publishing all my positions that make my totally unelectable, let me now comment on the death penalty:
I'm totally against it.
It occurred to me to write about it today because the Supreme Court refused to re-hear a case which banned the death penalty in child rape cases where the child survived. The original case spurred a lot of strong reactions because part of the logic of the 5-4 majority was that there was an evolving consensus against the use of the death penalty.
Now, it's not exactly clear to me how evolved that consensus is, but I certainly agree with the end result. There are a lot of arguments against capital punishment, including that there's not a clear body of statistical evidence to suggest it functions as a deterrent to crime, that the amount of appeals process you have to put in place to make sure you don't end up executing an innocent person makes the cost of the capital punishment process greater than the cost of simply imprisoning the person for life, and that even with those processes in place, innocent people end up getting executed anyway, as demonstrated in recent years by the impact of DNA testing on previously tried and adjudicated cases.
Whew. That's a lot of argument against, but these are all utilitarian arguments and to me they obscure the truly important reason:
We are our judicial system, and when our judicial system makes a judgment to take a person's life, we as a society have made a collective, premeditated decision to commit murder, and I believe that decision diminishes us. We as people have to make choices about what kind of society we want to live in, and I believe we should choose wherever we can to live in a society with less violence.
In the past, when I've argued with folks about capital punishment, there is usually a point where someone says, "Well, what if there were a nuclear bomb ticking in Grand Central, and you found the guy who had the shutoff switch, and he swallowed it, and there were only 30 seconds left until it was about to blow, and so the only way you had to get the kill switch was to shoot the guy, rip open his gut, and pull the kill switch out? That's a premeditated act of murder. Are you saying you wouldn't do that??"
This kind of example is lame on so many levels. Among them are:
1) The premise is lame. By that I mean, if we as a society actually wound up in that situation, we just had a massive, systemic failure of our intelligence services, and a lot of people should lose their jobs.
This is akin to the 9/11 situation: since then, the government has massively expanded its powers using the logic that it needs to do so in order to keep us safe. But the problem with 9/11 was not that the govt did not have enough power to do its keeping-us-safe job properly, the problem was that it didn't have enough competence to do it properly. That lack of competence is largely, though not entirely, due to the Bush administration's total lack of interest or ability to find people capable of governing competently. Competent governance would, of course, be evidence against the neoconservative belief that government is always the problem. And neocons don't want to see any evidence they're wrong. And that's why electing neocons to any office is counterproductive. But I digress. Back to reasons why the bomb example is lame.
2) Obviously, if I'm put in a situation where I have a binary choice between an option where one person is killed, and an option where thousands of people are killed, I'll take the option where one person is killed. But that option is still consistent with my original principle of living in a society with less violence. I took the path of least violence.
"Aha!", they usually say, "You're willing to commit murder in order to protect society. That's all we're doing with capital punishment- protecting society from known dangers."
The problem with that perspective is- in real life there's always the option to imprison someone for life without parole, which serves the same purpose of protecting society from future acts by this individual, punishes them for previous acts, and doesn't involve an act of violence. Plus, if evidence is discovered later on that exonerates the person, you can at least partially undo what is now an obviously unjust act, which is having imprisoned the person for something they didn't do. That option is off the table if you executed the person.
Of course, the other major argument people use for capital punishment is that it provides "closure" for the victims and/or their loved ones. Capital punishment cannot possibly provide "closure" to people who have suffered from crimes of the severity that we normally reserve capital punishment for. All capital punishment can provide is sanctioned revenge. And I think it's unhealthy for us as a society to be organized around revenge. There's no answer to the pain of victims, least of all revenge.
This is one of those rare issues on which I agree totally with the Catholic Church's position, so from time to time I think about the issue just to remind myself that they aren't wrong about everything. Their position is consistent with their culture-of-life philosophy.
Last point: one of the single most intellectually irritating strains of people is the strain which simultaneously is militantly pro-life, sanctimoniously lecturing everyone on the importance of not killing fetuses because they're human beings, while in the same breath being militantly pro-capital punishment. That's so inherently contradictory it gives me a headache. For the record, I'm pro-choice, as I noted in a previous installment of Stirring the Pot, but want people to choose to have fewer abortions (choose less violence), primarily by not having unwanted pregnancies in the first place.
So there you have it- another personal opinion that makes me totally unelectable. Ah well...
I'm totally against it.
It occurred to me to write about it today because the Supreme Court refused to re-hear a case which banned the death penalty in child rape cases where the child survived. The original case spurred a lot of strong reactions because part of the logic of the 5-4 majority was that there was an evolving consensus against the use of the death penalty.
Now, it's not exactly clear to me how evolved that consensus is, but I certainly agree with the end result. There are a lot of arguments against capital punishment, including that there's not a clear body of statistical evidence to suggest it functions as a deterrent to crime, that the amount of appeals process you have to put in place to make sure you don't end up executing an innocent person makes the cost of the capital punishment process greater than the cost of simply imprisoning the person for life, and that even with those processes in place, innocent people end up getting executed anyway, as demonstrated in recent years by the impact of DNA testing on previously tried and adjudicated cases.
Whew. That's a lot of argument against, but these are all utilitarian arguments and to me they obscure the truly important reason:
We are our judicial system, and when our judicial system makes a judgment to take a person's life, we as a society have made a collective, premeditated decision to commit murder, and I believe that decision diminishes us. We as people have to make choices about what kind of society we want to live in, and I believe we should choose wherever we can to live in a society with less violence.
In the past, when I've argued with folks about capital punishment, there is usually a point where someone says, "Well, what if there were a nuclear bomb ticking in Grand Central, and you found the guy who had the shutoff switch, and he swallowed it, and there were only 30 seconds left until it was about to blow, and so the only way you had to get the kill switch was to shoot the guy, rip open his gut, and pull the kill switch out? That's a premeditated act of murder. Are you saying you wouldn't do that??"
This kind of example is lame on so many levels. Among them are:
1) The premise is lame. By that I mean, if we as a society actually wound up in that situation, we just had a massive, systemic failure of our intelligence services, and a lot of people should lose their jobs.
This is akin to the 9/11 situation: since then, the government has massively expanded its powers using the logic that it needs to do so in order to keep us safe. But the problem with 9/11 was not that the govt did not have enough power to do its keeping-us-safe job properly, the problem was that it didn't have enough competence to do it properly. That lack of competence is largely, though not entirely, due to the Bush administration's total lack of interest or ability to find people capable of governing competently. Competent governance would, of course, be evidence against the neoconservative belief that government is always the problem. And neocons don't want to see any evidence they're wrong. And that's why electing neocons to any office is counterproductive. But I digress. Back to reasons why the bomb example is lame.
2) Obviously, if I'm put in a situation where I have a binary choice between an option where one person is killed, and an option where thousands of people are killed, I'll take the option where one person is killed. But that option is still consistent with my original principle of living in a society with less violence. I took the path of least violence.
"Aha!", they usually say, "You're willing to commit murder in order to protect society. That's all we're doing with capital punishment- protecting society from known dangers."
The problem with that perspective is- in real life there's always the option to imprison someone for life without parole, which serves the same purpose of protecting society from future acts by this individual, punishes them for previous acts, and doesn't involve an act of violence. Plus, if evidence is discovered later on that exonerates the person, you can at least partially undo what is now an obviously unjust act, which is having imprisoned the person for something they didn't do. That option is off the table if you executed the person.
Of course, the other major argument people use for capital punishment is that it provides "closure" for the victims and/or their loved ones. Capital punishment cannot possibly provide "closure" to people who have suffered from crimes of the severity that we normally reserve capital punishment for. All capital punishment can provide is sanctioned revenge. And I think it's unhealthy for us as a society to be organized around revenge. There's no answer to the pain of victims, least of all revenge.
This is one of those rare issues on which I agree totally with the Catholic Church's position, so from time to time I think about the issue just to remind myself that they aren't wrong about everything. Their position is consistent with their culture-of-life philosophy.
Last point: one of the single most intellectually irritating strains of people is the strain which simultaneously is militantly pro-life, sanctimoniously lecturing everyone on the importance of not killing fetuses because they're human beings, while in the same breath being militantly pro-capital punishment. That's so inherently contradictory it gives me a headache. For the record, I'm pro-choice, as I noted in a previous installment of Stirring the Pot, but want people to choose to have fewer abortions (choose less violence), primarily by not having unwanted pregnancies in the first place.
So there you have it- another personal opinion that makes me totally unelectable. Ah well...
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