To date, the most "exciting" thing I've found is a pair of high-heel shoes.

That is, until I (in truth, my co-worker) cleaned out the cube of one of our call contractors and found this notebook:

Turns out she used to do readings for the Vagina Monologues. The entire notebook is full of this erotic poetry, and it is actually really good stuff.

Just goes to show, that people are very often more interesting than you think.

I remember the wonderful feeling during my first week of work as an intern where I experienced the joy and simplicity of real world problems over the contrived and sometimes aggravatingly obscure problems presented in a college setting. It opened my eyes that I enjoyed solving problems much more when people were involved. Each day of work involved me subtracting a problem from one person's life rather than solving problems that millions had solved before.

Doing the reverse, coming out of 12 years of practical problem solving and slipping back into word problems and lectures gave me the insight that I also miss the complexity of University problems. So often in the real world I rely on "guess and check". Each circumstance can only have a few logical explanations, and the act of figuring out which one is not a silent pondering one, but one of immediately testing all possibilities and see which one was right.

Academic problems cannot be approached that way. It requires quite a bit of silent concentration, holding the figures in your head, double checking negative signs, units. Getting the correct answer out of a page full of scribbles always feels a bit like doing a successful backflip (after 9 straight failed backflips).

Speaking of failed backflips, so far my biggest problem has been properly understanding the questions. Several times I have spent two hours spinning beautiful algebraic circles trying to solve an entirely more difficult problem then was actually asked.

I've been to class since the university, but most of it corporate training, which I now realize is different than University classes in the amount of effort they expect you to employ. Corporate training they walk you all the way up to a hurdle, and patiently wait while you step over it one foot at a time. Whereas the examples following University lectures often stop three feet from the hurdle, requiring you to summon the intellectual "momentum" to know what to do.

I have tried many times to learn basic electronics, books, videos, etc. None of it has ever stuck, as I always hit the point where the circuit defied the simple rules, and they very nearly lost me on the first day when the professor employed an absolutely rude amount of calculus to prove why people who work in electronics don't ever need to use calculus.

I have trashed talked college quite a bit in my time, and much of that really is a resentment that the college I went to never called me out on the min/maxing methodology I used to "solve" its classes. Most of the calculus tests I took could be passed by entering the applicable equations, printed in bold on each chapter, into my calculator and applying them to the obvious problems they are associated with. No greater knowledge than that was every required or rewarded.

So far the MIT class doesn't resemble most of my freshman classes. It has definitely "winded" me intellectually. I'm also drawn to it not just out of interest in the subject matter, but I'm fascinated by their approach to online classes.

My absolutely most favorite feature so far is the ability to "speed up" a lecture to 1.25x or 1.5x speed. They managed to do this in a way that doesn't create a "chipmunk" effect, but rather the professor sounds like he's giving a 1AR.

Everything so far is really impressive. Most especially their format for having students answer other student's questions. More than once I've had to ask for help on a tricky example (because I was reading it wrong) and I have received several helpful and humane responses within 30 minutes, which seems a thing that nobody has figured out how to use the Internet for yet.

To be honest, I don't recollect agreeing to the whole idea. In all likelihood it could be that the relevant adjective above was omitted when pitched. Although, in fairness, it is equally likely that I was asked while playing SimCity, and my only response was a fervent nod of my floating, CRT illuminated face.

At the time my musical tastes weren't too honed anyway, largely consisting of me listening to parodies of songs of which I had never heard the original.

C-word aside, being on a campground for a three day concert and all the trappings and logistics that requires was an interesting experience. Invariably I discovered a cache of stand-up arcade games, from which I surmised that most of the other youth in attendance might be relatively sheltered since even mediocre games of me playing "Elevator Action" would garner a substantial crowd.

In the tent area we were staying, I kept seeing a dirty-faced 4 year old wandering around, seemingly without any parental supervision. Having a sister 9 years my junior, I had some rudimentary tools for interacting with children, largely reliant on a robust routine of me playing "the goof".

I forget what first triggered our interaction, likely I felt bad and just wanted to make her laugh. In any case, much like throwing the first ball for an OCD retriever, I become uncomfortably popular and in demand.

It got so bad that the second day I attempted to hide in my tent to avoid another day of performance. I mentioned the problem to my aunt, who knew the family of the girl from their church.

"She really is very neglected", was my aunt's response to my complaint.

So I spent the remaining days playing the attentive clown to the young girl whose parents I never specifically met.

The final night of concerts featured the headline bands I had never heard of, it took little time for them to direct the crowd, stretched across a dozen football fields, in a frothy Jesus frenzy. I'd like to say I remained properly jaded against such blatent manipulation tactics, but I doubt it. In all likelihood I was screaming hallelujah on cue with the rest of them.

I returned home, and for two months nothing of note happened.

Then a letter arrived, addressed to me. I had to search my brain to match up the name to that of the 4 year old girl. The letter upset me. In it, she said she loved me several times, and wanted me very much to come visit.

The contents aside, the mere presence of the note after so much time just disturbed me, since my mind immediately inferred what sort of continuous fuss she would have had to raise to get her, apparently, neglectful parents to first goto the trouble of asking my aunt for my address, and then actually issuing an invitation to a stranger.

How many times would she have had to ask where I was to make her parents do that?

But what truly angered me was that by issuing an impossible invitation to me, they had successfully "punted" the nonreturnable burden of neglect across the state, to me.

Their answers to her queries would be obvious now, "Where is Kyle? I guess he didn't want to come see you," or even worse "Maybe his letter will arrive today!"

Two more letters came over some time span. I did not open them.

It has been twenty years, and I clearly don't remember her name anymore. But whenever I think on it, I solemnly pray that she's forgotten mine as well.]]> General http://www.mindlessdrivel.com/index.php?itemid=706 Sun, 12 Feb 2012 23:50:15 -0600 http://www.mindlessdrivel.com/index.php?itemid=703 So one of my pet peeves are unmanned marketing boxes, often disguised as methods of winning tropical cruises or another unlikely prize.

I couldn't tell you exactly why I do it, or even what the point of it is. What I can say is that a few years back I started to stop by those boxes, write gibberish on one of the cards, and put it in the box. I do zero thinking about what goes on the cards, I just put pen to paper and scribble words until the card is full.

It didn't occur to me to snap pictures of the gibberish until a few months ago. So here is some of the nonsense I've been adding to transparent boxes at a mall near you.

"Enter For a Chance to Win A $5,000 Mall Shopping Spree"

Once upon a time a wizard banished 500 Lions to (a) mirror universe for the sin of being too greedy. The lions found an old machine capable of shattering the crystaline wall that held them back from the edge of the world. They broke through and robbed a bank.

"Enter For a Chance to Win A $5,000 Mall Shopping Spree"

(This is about a hobo with gills)

I grew up a poor and disadvantaged Fishman. I dug through trash and dumpsters for anything breathable, cold coffee, chicken blood or even rotten milk. That lasted until one day when I found a man selling fake watches. He took pity on me and bought me a Coke. Then it was back to the garbage for me.

"Custom Remodelers, Inc"

Complexion of red hot pokers destroys all it sees. It does not know mercy. It does not like Milk. Don't feed it hay! Do NOT!

"FREE STORM DAMAGE ASSEMENT(sic)"

BALROG the Weather Spirit destroyed my above ground pool! I shall avenge it by using my claw of Earthen RAGE to smite his four mothers back to the vortex that spawned them.

I feel like most people don't need this rule in their lives. Either they mentally stop themselves from eating an unnecessary amount of food, their body gives them subtle clues that they unconsciously obey or maybe they just physically cannot just keep eating well past the point of any nutritional justification.

I, however, am the rare type of champion that can power through all of these obstacles and more! My mindless super consumption cannot be stopped by normal means. A lot of the times I just don't think about it. More than often I have found myself, seemingly a passenger in a body car that is rolling into the kitchen.

"What the hell am I doing in here?" I'll say outloud, hoping to establish out some sort of communication with whoever is actually controlling my actions.

"Why are we opening that cabinet that we logically know hasn't had snacks in it for weeks?"

"Why are we continuing to eat these tasteless, stale crumbs of 6 month old Pita Chips?"

Clearly, no logical barrier or physical one can withstand the Kool-Aid man bursting force of my gluttony. So I am hoping that, as has worked in the past, that the velvet rope of resolution will present a symbolic barrier where all others have failed.

Otherwise, I think I might just have to get accustomed to the fact that I am a gigantic fucking pig. (Don't worry, I don't mean this in a strange body image way, I am honestly horrified by my zombie like food trances.)

In preparation for making a New Years Resolution, I took mental stock of my feelings towards eating animals.

I was somewhat surprised to find that they had shifted, not just in my willing to eat them, but also in my desire to eat them.

In short, I feel better about eating cows, but have almost no longing or desire to do so. Still feel bad about pig unless I know where it came from, which is too bad since I really crave them.

Chicken is grossing me out more than last year as the lingering taint of some of the things I've read haven't fallen off, but this is largely counter-balanced by the fact that I have the habit of eating a lot of chicken. So as long as I don't think about it to much, chicken is just fine...

Which is again, a maddening mishmash of nonsensical rules.

For some reason, the lingering revulsion of chicken processing methods reminded me of this study a few years ago about how conservatives' brains have a higher "disgust sensitivity".

The scientists helpfully point out that maybe this is why conservatives are against gay marriage. Since it is a well-known scientific fact that male gay marriage involves twice the number of male butts than "normal" marriage, or as Rick Santorum recently pointed out, that it was impossible to think about the issue without also considering the hypothetical case of upwards of three or four male butts all rhythmically eroding the ability of those of opposite genders to love.

In the case of the grossed-out conservative, it would seem that the hypothesis is that anything over the disgust threshold simply short-circuits the ability to empathize on the nuances of the issue. You can talk about medical visitation, estate transfer rights, tax benefits all day long, and all they'll presumably hear is expermiental jazz comprised of three notes: "penis", "poop" and "butthole".

I kid them, but I can't help wonder if I am entraped in a similar net of moral short-circuits that make normal meat eaters scoff at me. Is my concern that pigs are too intellectual to be confined and subjected to factory farming conditions sound a bit odd? I mean are the farmers supposed to give them sudoku puzzles or something?

It is clearly an odd objection, but with the similar difficulty that it seems an impassable barrier to me getting past it to the utopia on the otherside where the biggest quandry is to mesquite or not mesquite?

The answer seems easy enough, that in this case, my car is just pointed the wrong way. These matters of disgust all seem like the frosted glass across the doors of our messy primal instincts. You enter the room, you do a thing, and then you leave without over analyzing what just happened. This is the way things were meant to be.

It is like going to a cocktail party to discover the home owner has set up his dog with a tophat and monocle, as if he were the host. The next step at that party is to relax and enjoy it, and not point and wonder at how the dog could have possibly folded thin layers of ham around pickles.

In the end, we're all the dogs in the top hats, and the most polite thing to do is to not point this out to one another, because, for one, we all secretly know it and two we very much want to be invited back to these sorts of parties again.

Among the attendees were school board members past and present, and their stories of how they got "recruited" to run.

Nearly every time it was the exact same story, X slots were open, Y people were running, Z of those people were nutjobs. It was at this point that almost everyone in the room got brought in. Chosen largely for their reasonableness.

Taken one way, it was almost as if it was a cabal of people secretly determining the outcome of each school board election, but after listening to them, and meeting them, it was much clearer that they took it as their social responsibility. Their sacrifice for the community of plugging a warm bodied hole before vermin invade it.

I'm kind of down on representative democracy right now. The definition instilled in my in junior high of it being a mechanism for selecting the greatest among us to inspire us to do more than ourselves is quickly dissolving.

But seeing these people, a vocal mix of Democrats and Republicans come together under the common banner of keeping "the crazies out", I found particularly inspiring.

This, this is one thing that maybe representative democracy as currently structured can be good at.

And by "crazy" let's refine that down to "Idealistic", that is, someone who is more concerned with the purity of their personal view of the world than reality.

You might be asking how, precisely the 2008 election of Obama fits into this mold. He of course ran on a very high minded, idealistic platform.

My response to that is that the other side was offering someone crazier, in the form of Sarah Palin. I believe her simply, folksy fundamentalist view of the world, and her disdain for those that corrected it pushed the independent voting groups to the less "radical" candidate who was running on very generically defined "change".

So often people get discouraged with democracy because they don't see a candidate who perfectly fits their views, or they'll feel cognitive dissonance about "wasting" their vote on a third-party candidate they agree *more* with, but who stands little chance of winning.

I think this view of voting simplifies things. The goal of voting is not to raise up the next Octavian for the masses, it is to keep the Neros out.

While Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog may have tainted the association forever, I often find it useful to think of the logical portion of my brain as a tool. A hammer specifically.

The simile is particularly obvious at night, when it's incessant presence first annoys me and eventually makes me feel like the helpless neighbor of a prolific nocturnal carpenter.

The comparison also helps to separate the "A+B=C" automatic sequencing I perform all day from who I am. It used to be that the mere thought of someone "smarter" than me would drive me to existential crisis. But when you think of reasoning as just another wielded skill that humans makes use of, I find the remainder a much more comfortable living room for a self.

My brief, but frequent dabblings in meditation also helped with this insight. If you totaled how I've spent my life so far, my guess is I've probably spent more time literally vomiting from sickness than spent in a comfortable state of having my calculating mind "off".

I've also gotten interesting mileage out of the "mind as a tool" concept when trying to reconcile my love of science with religion.

If all your life you have only encountered nails, straight-forward problems with linear solutions, you would naturally develop a strong tool preference. You might also have good reason to believe a user of any non-levered tools a complete fool.

That said, I think it is safe to conjecture the existence of some life obstacles where there exists no useful solution. For instance, if a loved one is dying and you very much want to stop that from happening, the answer is simply that you can't. This is the 100% logically correct answer, but is completely unsatisfying to a man of action with a hammer in his hand. In my case, I spent a good deal of time doing the equivalent of hitting a bunch of things with hammers. Striking out at anything on the off chance that it could be budged any metric unit towards my goal. The "Guess and Check" method has no logical terminating condition, only different values of desperation.

To a devout hammer user, a screwdriver must seem a very strange thing. Almost sinister. At first glance it appears to be nothing other than a tool for inflicting swift and gross harm, completely rubbish on nails, and seemingly designed for an imaginary situation. Similarly, to a person who has spent most of their life in situation after situation largely out of their control, the utility of being able to optimally choose your next course of action might seem like a strange thing to be excited about. If life hands you moments of freedom, why not simply relax and enjoy it?

So, as usual, I have leapt through overly complicated wickets to arrive at a point of forced moral relativism, and staked out what these days is considered the largely radical stance amongst most of my peer group that "religion might be good for something".

My son is going to Sunday School. I did this on purpose because I want him to be comfortable turning to religion if he's ever in a hopeless situation, rather than it being the a place he turns when he is in a grief stricken depth-first search.

That said, it scares the crap out of me how thoroughly he takes to it. I think religion is useful, but I also pretty much hate most of its implementations. I hate that my kid is learning Old Testament stories that are just weird. I hate the Noah story, and I hate that it is currently taking up real estate in his precious young mindspace. I hate that my kid will have to essentially apologize to most smart people he meets (or more than likely, disavow it and live in fear of me finding out of his decision), I hate that he will likely be unable to articulate the difference between his liberal Lutheran ELCA church and the crazy, hateful people that are constitute essentially 100% of religion's vocal cheerleaders.

When it comes down to it, if you throw a dart at a random Christian church, I probably disagree with something they do orsay.

So why bother?

I actually like Christian philosophy. Abandoning it just because so many people suck at it would be like abandoning Newton's equations just because 75% of the American public aren't anywhere near understanding them and 40% start using it as reasoning for denying rights to a minority group.

I believe good ideas should be judged on their merits, not by the company that claim to hold them.

Too often, people's interaction with religion goes as follows: Heaven sounds too good to be true, so it probably isn't, therefore religion likely has nothing to offer me.

This is the type of short circuit logic I employed for a long time. When really, using that logic is similar to saying "The natives on this island said their god would strike me down if I eat these berries, their god clearly doesn't exist, therefore it is safe to eat these berries". By definition the reason given for the superstition is a straw man, you learn far more by asking why it successfully propagated...

To scientifically analyze religion, you really should judge it by its component actions:

For me, they were:
• Get up on Sunday morning and hang out for an hour with people who want to be better people
• Brief group meditation where you think of friends and family that might need help
• Sing songs with very talented musician accompaniment
• Donate money earmarked for supporting the largest local food shelf
• Get reminded that it is okay to forgive yourself for all the stupid crap your mind keeps bringing up
• Eat Donuts
• Make small talk with nice old ladies

To me, the only damnable one up there that is "getting up on Sunday morning".

Okay, I actually wrote a ton more here, but I think I've tested your patience long enough. I know that reading about what another person thinks of religion is probably the least enjoyable topic possible. As a reward, I leave you with this.]]> General http://www.mindlessdrivel.com/index.php?itemid=694 Thu, 29 Dec 2011 00:26:37 -0600 http://www.mindlessdrivel.com/index.php?itemid=690 An oft hollered question on this blog these last dozen years has been regarding how such a fundamental difference in viewing reality has come about in American politics.

Today My Friend Chuck whose blog is better than mine shared an article by David Frum entitled "When Did the GOP Lose Touch With Reality?"

Frum is a staunch Conservative, and was one of loudest voices for the invasion of Iraq. So rather than tearing down Conservative values he is more providing insight into what has happened to the GOP in the last ten years.

I think his most interesting point is his observation that the Republican Party these past years has transformed into something altogether different from the standard political party of 80's that it used to be.

Having a nation wide network of TV ,radio shows and book authors willing to parrot your talking points is useful. The problem being, that ratings often rewards the exaggerators (see also, Glen Beck), eventually after many years there has been the subtle shift of politics driving news content, to news show antics driving politics.

Republicanism is now no different than a brand, and currently it is the Coke of the market. Both in economic success, and in the fact that it has essentially refined itself over the years tto have the maximal appeal to its target audience, even if that means becoming a sickly sweet secret concoction with questionable value to the well being of its consumers.

If Republicans are Coke, the Democrats appear to be Shasta. In that there are excellent rational reasons for choosing them, but in the end you just feel embarrassed about your choice. Now, I'm not saying that the Democrats are equally as empty as what the GOP media machine has created, just that since most people assume the two are foils, if one has become more about selling commercials and books than most people will just assume the other is comprised of identical garbage. (Garbage which does a far poorer job about making people feel good about choosing it...)

That said, from my vantage point, the Democrats seem largely unchanged these past dozen years. It is still largely comprised of old white dudes who are pretty much okay with the status quo, and lack the creativity or leadership to transform their party into something that could actually combat the Republican media juggernaut.

Frum talks quite frankly about how he was thrown off the GOP gravy train for pointing out that the train was moving in the incorrect direction. You do not discuss the quality of brand names. You don't point out that Pepsi might be more delicious with a burger than Coke, because brands are not something that can be rationally argued about. They are a symbol of trust of an iconic ideal, and the more you choose it, the more you trust it.

That's why so many political discussions are short circuited into quips and one-line statements. Since people who prefer Pepsi to Coke don't trust who you trust they aren't to be trusted! Most people chose their choice of detergent with their gut, not their mind.

This also explains the GOP Media's treatment of Ron Paul. He is not part of the brand, does not believe in the brand. In as such, his appearance at the debates is as unwelcome by the GOP as a wedding crasher trying to deliver the best man's speech. It is politely tolerated only due to the fact that the alternative would make too much of a scene.

So where does that leave us?

Well, I'd argue that there is hope. It isn't that there aren't sane Conservatives out there, it is just that they are not given any sane options to vote for.

With Obama content to sit on the sidelines and watch the inevitable belly flop of the GOP's self-made slippery slope, I almost find myself hoping for an Independent spoiler candidate.

I really think Bloomberg, a social liberal, fiscal conservative self financed campaign could bring a lot to the race, if only by making the two sides have a reason to pull themselves into something coherent, rather than relying on the cold zero sum logic of "Vote for me so that the other guy will lose".

I have come to a realization. I don't like Chess.

I was going to right "hate" there, but that would be overstating it.

Chess and I go way back. I remember playing it in third grade with Jason my friend who doesn't have a blog, sometimes we'd stay in from recess to finish a game. We even played it at Festival of Nations where I ended up tying a game to one of those Ukrainian guys who plays like a million games at a time.

At the time I think I played it for the same reason a 5th grader insists on sipping coffee, or a 7th grader tries to smoke, to clumsily show off to everyone how grown up I was.

In 5th grade I carried around a hand held chess set and played it quite a bit. I organized a chess tournament and would play against teachers. In 6th grade I went to chess day camp where I was pretty much humiliated over and over again.

Seriously, I wept openly after one particular game.

Which, to Chess' credit was probably a well needed ego correction at the time.

That said, "get good at chess" was always kind of a life goal of mine, but despite playing over and over, I really feel like I never got any better. Even after reading books on the subject, I just never got to the mystical moment where I could start predicting even a modest number of moves ahead.

So there's that and the fact that Chess seems like the "gotcha journalism" of strategy games, in that you can just be playing along, and if you didn't realize that in three moves their knight was going to be able to move in an L and threaten both your king and your rook at the same time, well fuck you the game is over.

I also almost never have fun playing chess. So many other games I can play and just enjoy the actual game, and lose and still not be grumpy, but Chess is so tied up as an "intellectual" game, that I feel like you can't play someone else without it being, at some level, a "who has got the bigger mind phallus" contest.

That, and I just do not understand the opening game at all, or how it ever transitions to the point where you have any idea what is going to happen next.

I give Chess respect for its long established place in history, but to be honest, in the given game climate, I just think it can no longer be considered a good game. A lot of its game mechanics rely on obfuscation, and fiddly line of sight relationships that are obtuse and unfriendly.

Although, that's clearly not it. That was not the thirty-plus year old me writing sour grapes like "You know, if you think about it, chess it really isn't that great of a game".

Chess is clearly an exceptional game with tight, simplistic rules that explode into effectively infinite variation. It is a classic game which has more than stood up to any and all test of time as well as numerous attempts to profit by changing its core mechanics into something patentable.

Those are clearly the bitter thrashings of the ghost of the elementary school me, who so badly wanted to cling to the idea of himself as a Bobby Fischer style prodigy. Who so often assumed that to be a "smart person" you had to be super good at chess, in the same way that rich people wear suits. It is the prototypical keystone of who I imagined I wanted to be.

Identity is a weird thing, but at some point you have to start examining what you're clinging to.

"Hello everyone, my name is Kyle , and I'm not magically good at chess."