Long Shrift

another call for patent reform

The Discovery Channel was on, but I wasn't really paying attention when Man vs. Wild came on. I could have sworn, during the show's intro, that they said that Bear Grylls uses 'patented survival techniques.'

What kind of cruel bastard patents a survival technique? I had an image in my head of a Discovery Channel lawyer riding along in a Coast Guard rescue helicopter. "Look, buddy, I know you're excited and all, but it appears that you were hydrating yourself with a coconut milk enema, and I have to inform you that we have no record that you were licensed for the use of our intellectual property."

I have a feeling I misheard that. Although a guy who karate chops a rabbit seems a little suspect.

methadone

A few years ago, a friend taught me what to do when I get a song stuck in my head. I think of another song that is also infectious, but easier to to push to the background.

At this point, I am conflicted. I fear that if I tell you what this song is, it might get stuck in your head, and you may not have built up an immunity as I have.

Oh, what the hell. If you want to know, fine.

Anyway... I was talking about this at the dinner table, and I referred to it as 'musical methadone' - but that's inaccurate, since methadone is sometimes used to help people break their addiction to heroin. But I couldn't find the words to explain the problem. My wife didn't immediately follow my logic, and she regarded me warily.

Me: See, the problem is that methadone helps you get away from something desirable. I can't call that song 'musical methadone' because it's helping me get away from something I don't want.
Wife: Heroin is desirable?
Me: Er, well, I mean, obviously it's not good for you. But if I've got a song in my head, and it's driving me nuts, and that song helps me get the worse song out of my head, then the methadone song is actually good for me.
Wife: I don't get it. Isn't methadone better for you than heroin?
Me: Well, the difference is, I don't want the song going through my head. I want heroin.

Then we paused, and looked at our three-year-old son, and wondered if he'd be repeating that at day care the next day.

on the road again

Another business trip, this time to Austin, Texas. The TSA agent at the head of the gate area was talkative and pleasant; maybe he was naturally friendly, maybe he was just bored in the quiet airport. Maybe the pen with the Zoloft logo in his shirt pocket provided a clue. Thankfully, just beyond the X-ray machine, a passenger who had apparently been under a rock for the last several years was challenging a different agent about the 3-1-1 policy.

Waiting at the gate, I fired up my laptop. It's actually a loaner from the office, in a black and blue Targus backpack that screams "I've got a laptop in here, I'm easy to steal, and I'm ergonomically friendly!" One of my co-workers had joked that the only backpack we had left was a Hannah Montana bag. Of course, like the hymn book cover for an iPod, I'd be substituting one kind of unwanted attention for another.

Another guy in the gate area came over, also being unusually friendly. In short order it became clear that he just wanted to check on his connecting flight and wanted to know if he could use my laptop for a minute. Correction: he didn't actually know how to use the Web, and he wanted me to look it up for him. Since it's generally a bad idea to provoke strangers, even in public places, I figured I'd help him out. He was going to be getting to Houston earlier than he expected, and he was wondering if he could get an earlier flight to Tulsa. Continental helpfully suggested that he could fly from Houston to New York and then to Tulsa. Or, if he didn't mind another stop in Atlanta, he could save a couple hundred dollars. The guy figured he was going to stick to his original flight.

The flight itself was uneventful. On the way to Houston our plane passed over another, something I had never seen before. It's as if the other plane was just slipping sideways on the clouds below. I have no idea how far apart the two planes were - it's hard to judge the distance - but I figured we would have heard a lot of swearing from the cockpit if we had been in any actual danger.

I picked up a Ludlum book for the flight. I dimly recalled reading another Ludlum book a few years ago, and not really digging it, but I figured I'd give it another try. Every now and then, I'll fall prey in the checkout lane at the grocery store and buy a pack of Rolos; minutes later, as I'm trying to peel caramel off my teeth, I remember why I avoid them. They may make good movies out of his books, but lordy, Ludlum's a horrible writer. At least Dan Brown's a quick read, and doesn't crank out 700-page tomes of steaming crap. I traded the book in for Oil on the Brain, which seemed appropriate for a trip to Texas. I'm only a couple of chapters in, but it's an enjoyable read thus far.

In Houston, the courtesy go-carts don't use horns or beeps, so the drivers go around chanting "Beep beep."

Another co-worker has suggested that while I'm here in Texas, I should mess around with the state a bit and see what happens. I'm thinking that here in Austin, which is definitely a blue spot in an otherwise red state, I'm OK as long as I don't start dissing Ron Paul.

oh crap, I might be an optimist

A few days ago, I stumbled across the Electoral Compass Web site, and after going through the questionnaire, I am afraid that I may have some soul-searching to do. People who know me, or have read more than three posts of this blog, understand that I lean to the left politically; they may be squinting at this paragraph warily, suspecting that I'm about to confess that I've decided to throw my lot behind Mike Huckabee or, even worse, Ron Paul. No, it's far more insidious than that.

I think I may be going over to the Obama camp.

If you haven't gone through the Electoral Compass quiz, you should. There are 36 questions, and you're just asked to indicate if you agree or disagree with each statement; you're even allowed to be neutral or have no opinion for each. Then they plot out on a grid where you are in relation to the positions of the candidates, and they'll tell you who's closest politically (as well as who's the farthest away).

When the campaign started, I figured Hillary was the way to go, and Obama was a distant second. I figured that my views were pretty close to Clinton's, and that she had the experience to get things done. Obama, while an inspirational orator, was too wet behind the ears to be an effective player of the political game. And I had to face the ugly fact: I felt that a white woman had a better chance of making it to the White House than a black man.

What a long, strange trip it's been. I correctly anticipated a couple of events. Wisconsin's own Tommy Thompson didn't last very long. (I had hoped that he would make it a bit farther, and the media spotlight would have shown just how much of a idiot the man is.) I definitely got it wrong on a few others, like thinking Romney would last longer, or that Fred Thompson would be a contender. But conventional wisdom has been wrong about this campaign, in that the race hasn't been winnowed to one Democrat and one Republican, that the likes of Rush Limbaugh and James Dobson weren't actually kingmakers, and that people might not be so opposed to the idea of a woman or a black man in the Oval Office.

As an aside, I don't know much about Ellen Goodman, but I disagree with one of her statements:

Southern White Men Won't Vote for a Black for President. Circle "False" on your Georgia answer sheet where 48% of Democratic white men went for Obama, disproving the last acceptable bigotry: anti-redneckism. Unless, of course, they were proving that Southern white men still won't vote for a woman. Oh well.

I think that declaring all Southern men to be rednecks is certainly bigotry, but once someone has proved himself a redneck, anti-redneckism is a moral imperative. This may inadvisable at Talladega, though.

Anyway, after going through the Electoral Compass quiz, it turned out that I ended up closer to Obama. In my initial shock, I didn't go through the point-by-point analysis; later, after taking the survey again, I saw that I was closer to Clinton on a couple of issues, and (shudder) Ron Paul in the 'law and order' category - I must have misread the statement about whether people should be able to take concealed Uzis onto airplanes.

Over the last few days, there was a lot of media coverage for the CPAC conference (some of which makes for entertaining reading). It seems that the far right are hoping that Clinton gets the Democratic nod. She's a polarizing figure, so fundraising would be easier for the GOP; and if she wins, her presidency would be such a disaster that we'd see a repeat of the Carter administration, which essentially paved the way for the Reagan era. Obama's relative inexperience could conceivably make him less of a target - but then again, it's fear, not conventional wisdom, that fuels GOP campaign advertising, so I assume they'd find something about Obama to question.

As for things to question... I so wish that we could actually get the candidates to answer some questions about religion and science, such as:

I think we can all agree that a candidate who thought that we ought to outlaw interest on loans or revert to a barter system would not be a good steward for our troubled economy. Would you also agree that someone who believes the Earth is 6,000 years old and that Noah's Ark is an event in zoological history would not be an effective leader on issues such as stem cells, climate change, and renewable resources?

As for me, I've definitely been paying more attention to Obama lately, and I've got a difficult decision to make. Up until recently, I figured that supporting Clinton fit more closely with my jaded views: that only insiders can get things done, that every politician has skeletons in the closet, and that a fresh approach to policy will never overcome firmly entrenched opposition. I may have to reject some of these notions and give the new guy a chance. But being optimistic just takes so much energy, you know?

keep your shirt on

I was moving into the corner office at work, although the office looked oddly different - a cross between the bland McOffice I had worked in more than 15 years ago and an ornate Masonic lodge. The previous occupant had left a lot of beautiful furniture behind - to the point that getting to the desk was like navigating a maze. I reached the desk, but there was no chair.

Suddenly I was awake. I could see the glowing display of the digital clock - 4:02 am. What had woken me up?

I didn't have to wait long to find out: there was an anguished wail from the our son's bedroom. I jumped up and ran to his room, my wife a step behind me. I threw on the light, and there was Quinn, sitting up in bed.

I had a flashback to the night a couple of weeks ago - Quinn had had some kind of stomach bug, and he threw up five times between midnight and 5 am. We had changed the sheets so many times that we almost exhausted our supply; if he had thrown up once more that night, he'd have been sleeping on towels and spare bath mats.

But this time, there was no vomit. I knelt by the bed. "What's wrong?" He wailed again, something incomprehensible. I picked him up, and my wife pointed to the bathroom. Was he about to vomit? I fully expected that I'd be changing my shirt once we got there.

He wailed again, on the verge of sobbing. We asked him again what was wrong. It took a couple of tries, but he finally got it out: "I want to pick out my shirt."

We led him to the closet, and he picked out his favorite shirt - a blue striped one, which he inexplicably calls his IrishFest shirt. We told him he could wear it tomorrow. Then he was back in bed and immediately asleep.

bringing a geek to a dork fight

A couple of weeks ago, some irrational impulse caused me to IM my friend Scott.

Me: I bet that I can out-dork you.

Scott: Oh?

Me: OK, here goes...
Me: The D&D 4th edition books are coming out soon.

Scott: Ha. Come over here.

Little did I know that Scott had just received a box of hard-core nerditry. The debate raged briefly, but I think that I won this competition, as Scott's was geekier, but my entry was dorkier.

But moments ago, I found something that would put both of us to shame: an iPhone app for checking the current status of the cryosphere.

All hail the hybrid geek/dork overlords.

knowing when to shut up

I've mentioned recently that I got a copy of The Book of General Ignorance for Xmas (which I asked for). I'm almost finished, and I think it's been good bathroom reading, but others have found it to be less than entertaining:

Several publishers had bestsellers last Christmas with books that were little more than a list of offbeat facts designed to appeal to smug smartarses. This is our attempt to cash in on the market.

Some of the topics in the book are intriguing - for example, did you know what in the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the Oompa-Loompas were not orange, but black? In the book, the Oompa-Loompas are African pygmies; these were later changed to white due to concerns about racist overtones, and ultimately orange - perhaps as a rip-off of The Wizard of Oz. While Oompa-Loompas and other (pop-culture icons) are themselves trivial, the change in color is something of a societal commentary.

However, many of the topics are not so much intriguing as nit-picky. For example, did you know that coffee beans aren't technically beans, but seeds? Or that you can't technically slide down a banister, because banisters are the struts that support the balustrade or handrail? Did you care? Doubtful.

I have a problem. I consider myself fairly intelligent and fairly well-read. My problem is that I have some innate need to demonstrate this to other people. I like to think that this is driven by a need to stamp out ignorance, but the flip side of that coin is that I can come off as someone who needs to demonstrate intelligence, perhaps out of some self-esteem issues, etc. etc. etc. (In my defense, though, I at least recognize this, and I temper this with a bit of self-deprecation. Hence this blog, and my use of the word 'hence'.)

Knowledge, in and of itself, isn't dangerous. But if I'm having a discussion about coffee with my co-workers, and I interject something like '"Well you know, coffee beans aren't actually beans, they're seeds," I think my co-workers can and should inform me that I've overstepped polite conversation. If I interject some other useless fact out of context ("You know, it's a popular misconception that Catherine the Great died under a horse"), then I think they have the right - if not an obligation - to punch me in the face.

waiting for the singularity

I've been thinking a lot lately about the idea of a singularity. There are many different kinds of singularities, but the concept is generally the same: some single event or point where everything changes. In fiction, 'the singularity' often refers to a point where artificial intelligence transcends human intelligence - which may not be that far off. These same fictions would generally posit that once machines learn to think for themselves, the extermination of humanity is a foregone conclusion.

I am surprised that popular culture has yet to trivialize the concept of a singularity. (Well, I did see an article where an a PC was referred to as 'the singularity' - not because it boasts transhuman ability but because the computer and monitor are one box. Har har har.) Given our current fixation on 'tipping points', one one think that 'singularity' would be a natural extension.

Can you experience a singularity on a personal level, or is that an epiphany? I would think singularities would have to be relative to... something. I mean, if we're talking about posthuman intelligence, there are some humans who would be outclassed by devices that exist in the here and now.

Consider the Andamanese, one of only two tribes who, up until the 19th century, hadn't discovered how to make fire. Did they experience the singularity after a lightning strike, or when they figured out how to make fire on their own? (Incidentally, the other tribe is said to be a bunch of Tasmanian pygmies, but I can think of one other that probably still hasn't figured out that whole fire thing.)

I tend to think that the singularity won't be artificial sentience but rather the introduction of some new power source that is wildly efficient and creates limited harmful byproducts. I'll keep hoping.

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In researching this post - and by 'researching', I mean poking around online for about twenty minutes - I may have stumbled upon the beginning of a hypothesis: the craziness of a Web site's content is directly proportional to the amount of text on its home page. I have determined that the reverse isn't true, however.