18 Dec 2008
I just got back from my school’s faculty holiday party. Since my dad works at the school, I was invited. I had an excellent time. One rather intriguing thing that happened was that I discovered a Hershey’s Special Dark chocolate bar that was packaged upside down. Chocolate bars are in the shape of a trapezoidal prism, and usually the longer side of the trapezoid is the one on the side of the wrapper with the seam that you peel to open. The shorter side, with the ingots and respective logos stamped into it, is on top, where the brand is printed on the wrapper. However, this one was backwards. It was very confusing, and I have saved the chocolate for posterity, and further consultation with the requisite authorities. My statistics teacher and I discussed the implications this has for quality control, but given our low sample size (there were no other chocolates of the same variety [thus n=1]), we could not draw any statistically significant conclusions.
So it goes.
17 Dec 2008
Beginning Friday, Chrysler is shutting down production for a month. This is big. A huge automaker is not just announcing layoffs, production reorganization, or cutbacks in employee pay or benefits, they are shutting down entirely. Clearly they will still be selling (or trying to sell) new cars, and advertising, and such, but their actual supply is grinding to a halt. I am curious to see how this goes. I suppose they will save a lot of money; it costs a lot to build a month’s worth of cars, but the disruption to their workflow could have larger effects. It may not be able to start up again smoothly. Plus, it is as yet unclear what kind of money the government will be throwing at them, and when. A lot is up in the air.
16 Dec 2008
A family friend recently passed away, and we have, for the meantime, adopted her parrot. It is a stunning creature, with incredible colors, and it makes some amazing noises. It shrieks very loudly when it is lonely, and you have to go over and talk to it soothingly, and move your head around like a bird, and not look it in the eye, because that is threatening to it. It also makes an amazingly communicative array of coos and clucks, and rings the bells in its cage with its beak. I am told that it speaks sometimes, but I haven’t heard that yet. Regardless, it is quite a remarkable bird.
15 Dec 2008
As we were pulling out of the driveway this morning, I noticed a pickup truck in the road towing a flatbed trailer with a four-wheeler on it. This struck me as emblematic of what’s wrong with the conservation movement. Although it is true that individual people need to cut their usage of petroleum and other unnecessary energy, it is important to note that the operative word there is “unnecessary”. The expenditure of energy is, in and of itself, unavoidable, and necessary. It’s the idea that anything that is beneficial is therefore necessary that has to change. While it is true that it is valid to want to have a comfortable life, using a gas-powered lawnmower or driving an SUV is not. To be sure, we may save time by not mowing the lawn by hand or feel safer in an SUV. But this approach fails to weight the consequences of our actions outside the context of our own lives. So the real issue is self- and macro-awareness. Are we conscious of how we impact others? What we really need is more education; if children were aware of these issue throughout their early education, and knew about ways they could impact the global issue of conservation of resources, they would be more equipped to make smart choices later in life.
Like many other things, climate change and global awareness are not problems that can be solved in an isolated fashion. They came about for specific reasons, and they won’t go away until we address the root issues. Better education is an important start to this, but it is only a start, and it must be looked at in the context of the whole problem.
14 Dec 2008
I have upgraded this site to WordPress 2.7. This is a big deal. Although the site doesn’t really look that different (read: at all), the administrator backend is much easier to use, and has a bunch of really great new features. It was a rather complicated upgrade, though, because I was not just upgrading a single WordPress 2.6.x install. Rather, I had been running WordPress MU, the multi-user version of WordPress. So I had to manually back up and reimport my data to the site, which took quite a while. I am no longer using MU, since it hasn’t been updated to 2.7 yet, and since I am no longer hosting the LC(A) Plog here anymore. MU was just getting too complicated to administer, as it has special needs. A lot of plugins and modifications built for WordPress don’t work with MU, and my site is a lot simpler to run now.
14 Dec 2008
I have maintained total radio silence for the past four days or so due to a variety of reasons. Some involve Brown, some do not. I will begin with those that do. The long and short of it (as I don’t really have more information at the moment) is that I have been admitted to Brown University. As I applied using the binding Early Decision program, and I have received a legitimate amount of financial aid, I will be matriculating there this fall. I am incredibly relieved to be done with this process, and very excited to start school.
This rather momentous news is, believe it or not, not the main reason for my preoccupation these last few days. I’ve been simultaneously performing in and running sound for our school’s annual Holiday Show, a music showcase which is usually thrown together at the last minute. This year was no exception, and as Mitch (the director of the music department, who is responsible for this show) was out of school a lot for the past month or so, due to a death in the family, the show was even more last-minute than usual. We really pulled it together, and there was even a group that dedicated a song to Mitch, and another teacher, Rahul, whose mother had passed away. They played Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven”, which was wonderful. It was a fabulous show all around, and I had my hands full between performing with 5-Alone and doing a Matisyahu song with some friends (King Without a Crown). Last night I didn’t get home until about eleven because I was striking.
I think I may take today off of work, as I am starting to cough again, and I have a whole lot of homework to do. Now that college is out of the way, I will be focusing solely on academics; more specifically, regaining the ground I lost during this time-consuming process. I have been a rather bad student for the past few months. No more.
10 Dec 2008
…is on Thursday. I think this means I will receive the letter Saturday. It will be crazy. I am getting home from work and immediately leaving for two shows right in a row. My friend who also applied ED to Brown is in the shows, so I think I may get the letter when I come home, and bring it with me without opening it, so we can open our letters together. Maybe not though; there is great potential for hurt feelings in this case. Although that is probably true no matter what we do.
We will see.
10 Dec 2008
Well, I just checked Brown Admission’s page, and it says that the decisions will not only be mailed tomorrow, they will be available online at 5PM EST. This complicates things severely. I have a lot of thinking to do.
09 Dec 2008
I had another interesting conversation with the same friend today at school, this time about organic and environmentally friendly food. It is interesting to note that a lot of what we consider environmentally friendly really isn’t, and things like genetic engineering are really much more in line with the ultimate goals of the “green” movement. My feeling is that humans have for a long time been practicing ways of growing food more efficiently, and getting the end product they wanted, be it a more hardy organism, one that produces better or more fruit, one that consumes less resources, or whatever. Genetic engineering is no different in its intent or function than these practices, it is just more severe. A good analogy is the atomic bomb. It has the same function as conventional incendiary explosives, differing only in its magnitude. The magnitude of control with genetic engineering is far greater than existing techniques, meaning that the potential to damage ecosystems and such is similarly amplified. Therefore, an equivalent amount of increase in research and consumer protection is also required. But this is not an essential or inherent difference, just an effective one.
The key to real environmental friendliness is locality. We should be consuming food that we can grow ourselves or buy from the immediate area. Buying bananas or other such seasonal fruit at this time of year, even organic ones, requires that the be shipped up from tropical climates, consuming vast amounts of fossil fuels and resources. Whatever environmental benefit we may derive from their organic production is far outweighed by these liabilities.
I think that the environmental movement has some serious thinking to do about its future. I personally am not as responsible as I could or should be when it comes to this kind of choice. No one is. But I do think that we need some kind of leadership overall on how to best protect the environment. Fossil fuels are they key. I hope that the incoming administration and Congress make this a priority. There is potential for real change.
08 Dec 2008
I have been thinking a lot recently about the options we have for how to deal with the requested bailout by the Big Three. I had an interesting conversation with a friend about it today, and we agree that although sinking more money into the issue is perhaps not the most efficient thing we could do, we have set the precedent in terms of the larger $700 billion bailout, and it would be a bit hypocritical not to follow through. On the other hand, do we really need more cars? The answer is of course not. Given that the economy is in recession, and we are probably entering a depression, perhaps we should cut our losses and make more long-term investments in things like infrastructure and public transportation.
This, however, would require a significant amount of capital, something that is sorely lacking at the mooment. Obama has promised to provide money for these things, but I’m not sure where he’s planning to get it, given that we have such a huge deficit, and owe unimaginable amounts of money to other countries.
I am very interested to see how the bailout bill unfolds, what sort of oversight there is, what sort of long-term plans are being made, and where the money’s coming from. Other than straight from our pockets, that is.
07 Dec 2008
This morning, I was reminded of this xkcd comic. I woke up, lay around for a while, checked my email and the news, and then got up. It took until I was going downstairs and passing the window in the stairway to notice that there was a beautiful snow on the ground.
06 Dec 2008
Two important people recently died. Sunny von Bulow, who had been in a coma for many years, the subject of the movie “Reversal of Fortune”, died today, and Henry Molaison, better known as “H.M.”, died on Thursday. H.M. was an extremely historically important mental patient, who helped neuroscientists learn more about amnesia and its causes and effects. He underwent an experimental brain operation for an unrelated issue in 1953 which had the unexpected effect of causing him to lose his ability to store short-term memories. See this New York Times article for more info on H.M..
Sunny von Bulow was notable because of the controversy surrounding her coma. Her second husband, whom she was married to at the time of the coma, was tried several times for attempting to murder her, convicted once, acquitted twice, and subject to a lengthy civil proceeding as well. Here’s another NYTimes article on von Bulow.
06 Dec 2008
Apparently the store where I work was robbed yesterday. Nothing big, just a cheap camera, and it was quickly recovered. But here’s the great part: It was robbed by a group of transvestites. Several of them distracted the guy behind the counter while another jacked the camera; a low-end Canon that was on the display floor. The owner had figured no one would bother stealing such a cheap product, but apparently these people didn’t think it through very carefully.
But wait. It gets even better. Immediately after this occurred, the sales manager’s girlfriend came into the shop. The guys on hand were just figuring out what had happened, and she ran out the door to see if she could see where they went. She followed them to the library, and called the police. But it turned out she had followed The Wrong Group of transvestites! Where else but Northampton would you follow The Wrong Group of Transvestites?
When I heard about this this morning when I came in, I said, “Sounds like you had a run-in with Hell’s Trannies!”.
06 Dec 2008
I just got back from the dance show at my school, which was fabulous. The school’s modern, jazz, ballet, and probably some other style that I have forgotten about, troupe, Catalyst, performed a bunch, the African Dance troupe performed, and the hip hop class Urban Connection did a number, as did the Tango / Salsa class (not mine, the other one) and various smaller combos. One of the pieces had live music, played by a friend of mine.
One of the dances started off with a Christina Aguilera song before switching to something, which, although I don’t remember what it was, was a lot better. Before it switched, though, we were unfortunate enough to be subjected to Christina Aguilera scatting. This is not something that anyone should have to endure. Cruel and unusual punishment, say I.
But it was otherwise a great show.
05 Dec 2008
Me and a friend performed all 18 minutes today at open mic. It was fabulous. He played guitar, and I “sang”, if you can call it that. From memory. ZING!
04 Dec 2008
I made steak tonight for the first time ever. I have eaten many times before, but never made it. It turned out rather well. I made a dinner of roasted russet and sweet potatoes, and sauted the steak with onions. My father assembled a salad at the last minute, as I realized I had neglected to do so.
02 Dec 2008
Coming out of school this evening, there was a beautiful sunset. I took some pictures, one of which is included here.
I was also reminded on the way home that I am going to a David Byrne concert tonight, which I had managed to completely forget about. I am very excited, especially because Young At Heart, a local old folks’ chorus, is performing (or so I am told). They are always really awesome.
02 Dec 2008
The show was incredible. Definitely ranking with the top shows I’ve seen (in no particular order):
Eddie Izzard
James Brown
Toots and the Maytals
They Might Be Giants
They played a bunch of Byrne and Eno’s new music, which I didn’t know very well, but it was fabulous. They also did a bunch of Talking Heads songs, some very similarly to the older rcordings, some reimagined, but all incredibly moving and vitalized.
