Random Thought

When you were growing up was everyone afraid of tampered candy during Halloween? Growing up in Wisconsin, our local police force volunteered their scanner to ensure no metal was in our candy. What was up with that? How could anyone have ever believed this? We thought that there were people out there with enough smarts, resources and child hatred to take chocolate bars out of wrappers, insert razors or inject poison, then somehow seal them back? And these people are thinking, "I'm going to put a lot of time and energy into hurting random children who have the audacity to beg for milky ways. And this is despite the fact that I am one of only 20-30 houses they hit up, and so this crime will easily be traced to me. This is the perfect crime."

Obviously, it's an urban legend, but it's amazing that so many people believed it, and in some cases, continue to believe it.

http://www.snopes.com/horrors/poison/halloween.asp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoned_candy_scare#Origins_of_candy_tampering

And yes, I should be thinking about Christmas, I'm one holiday behind...

how technology passes us by

I was helping my girlfriend's mother install some security software on
her windows vista PC and I began to realize how technology can pass us
by. I was trying to drag and drop her music into a folder and it
would just disappear and not end up where I wanted. For someone who
has spent decades with windows 3.1, 95, and XP, this was bewildering.
When you drag a file and drop it somewhere, it copies to that
location. After a little frustration, I realized that Windows Vista
was recognizing that I was copying music and put it in the "music"
folder instead, this was simply Microsoft trying to be "helpful".
These little changes will continue to compound until surely one day, I
will be an old person confusedly looking at a computer screen (or
perhaps image on a contact lens computer). I tend to think of myself
as a logical person who understands technology and is all up on
Facebook twitter etc... and yet I've found myself resisting Vista,
resisting Office 2007 (I just can't believe they got rid of the
structure of shortcuts in Excel). Will my resistance continue until
I'm a bewildered old man? Or will I just get a Mac at some point?

Once more time

Would DMB's lover lay down have been worse if DM had gone with the
grammatically correct "lover lie down"? I think it's obvious that
Dylan's "lay lady lay" would have been significantly worse and more
confusing if he had chosen the grammatically correct "lie lady lie."

Obviously "lover lie down" sounds worse, but is that only because
we've heard the song sung incorrectly a million times or because of
the inherent sound difference? In a somewhat related story, I was in
a college a cappella group and we once went on a trip to India. We
performed at a small club in Mumbai and when we finished, we heard the
crowd begin to chant in unison. It took a second before we realized
what they were saying in their accented english...
"Once more time! Once more time!"

I've told this story so many times that my entire extended family and
group of friends will chant this if prompted despite being completely
disconnected from the story. Some of my family members don't even
know the story, but will still chant on. I've now heard the refrain
so many times that it now doesn't sound as hilariously incorrect as it
did that night in Mumbai. While I'm intellectually aware of the
error, that specific grammatical alarm bell no longer rings for me.
That house song "One More Time" can now be "Once more time" and I
would not protest.

In this house called the universe...

 facts are the leaks in the roof and scientific hypothesis are pots that capture the water.  Often when those hypotheses pots overflow, people come and get bigger and better pots.  In some rare cases, a larger pot is exchanged for a smaller pot even before the water has overflown (i.e as in when Einstein comes up with relativity decades before evidence verifies it).  At its worst, religion consists of pots that are overflowing with water, at its best, religion constructs pots where there is no leak.  In other words, religion often makes scientific claims (about the origin of the universe, origin of life, miracles) that given our understanding of the world are unlikely to be true.  To the extent that religion makes claims that are by definition unverifiable (there is an abstract, consciousness that exists beyond our comprehension) they are placing pots where there are no leaks.

Synchronicity

Coincidentally, I'm going to an MJ tribute concert tomorrow in DC, crazyness.

RIP Michael Jackson

You were very messed up, a victim and a perpetrator, but nothing can
ever mar your unbelievably good music.

Isn't Girl talk (the music group) ...

a musical omen? People used to sit down and listen to entire albums straight through. Then people made mix tapes of a related group of 10 songs. Then they had playlists of hundreds of songs on computers. You can probably shuffle through your ipod right now between beethoven, the beatles and notorious BIG. Girl talk takes advantage of our narrowing attention span by mashing 100s of songs into an album in brilliant ways. Will the soundtrack of our future lives be mood sensitive, so based on the galvanic skin response a different tune will pop into the speakers installed into our ears?

Deja Vu

I was surprised that in a conversation on Deja Vu, 3 different perceptions came out.  One person felt it reflected real past memories to some extent, one person felt it repeats some vision of the future he had experienced vividly in a past dream or thought.  He believes this to such an extent that he claims he can make predictions of the future when deja vu hits him.  I have the consensus view that deja vu reflects the perception of a repeat event, but in reality, that past event did not occur.  

  - The FIRST version is a morphed version of the original concept; as in, someone says "looks like somebody's got a case of the mondays ," and you say "deja vu, you said that last week."  So it's an event that is actually repeated, but I don't think this is deja vu in the original meaning of the word.  

  - The SECOND person reflects a delusional understanding of deja vu, but probably one that many people share.  

  - The THIRD one is the standard interpretation that wikipedia  would provide.

Just realized...

...that "I googled 'best man's speech' " as an opener to wedding speeches is this generation's "the dictionary defines wedding as...". I've seen it twice now

The Internet is the ultimate confirmation bias

I love how no matter what your opinion is, you can find someone online who shares it.  For example, http://tinyurl.com/cg22vw

At the new yankee stadium, where they sell sushi and tofu noodles. While it may be soul-less, I can't complain, they have incredibly comfy seats.

At a south indian wedding

in jersey city with manhattan as the backdrop. There are two priests, and my cousin jay is imagining them as dueling sanskrit rappers

In vegas

And I've played tennis, hung out with family and am now off to a temple. Also, there's a beirut section in the casino of our hotel I've yet to play on. Am I old or boring?

Shamrock shakes...

Nothing better.

Snow tubing in nashoba

Busy night

Off to prana to help deepa set up a share and care event and then to carnegie hall to see an rem tribute show featuring rachael yamagata and guster

Off to west side highway esplanade for picnicing

Audible boo

An audible boo echoes as bush arrives. Cheney looks exactly like penguin from batman.
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Finally on the mall

It took a couple of hours but jay and I made it. It's a spectacular sight. Take the largest concert you've been to and then multiply by a hundred and then place them around the washington monument.
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Off to dc

I decided last second to go to dc to check out the inauguration with my roommate jay. I know its going to be painful and that a city designed for hundreds of thousands will have perhaps four and a half million, but I can't wait.
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