The Usual Shop

Posted by Steve on August 27th, 2008 in Uncategorized

I’ve written before about confirmation bias from a more negative, or cynical perspective.  This fascinating article about the practice of noticing touches on some of the same ideas but from a much different (and more useful) angle.

I’ve noticed in my own life that i don’t notice nearly as much external (potential) stimulus as i would like to.  With my studies in math and my over-the-top introvertedness, i’ve spent way more time in my own head than i should have and than i think is healthy.  And not nearly as much time on the outside world.  That’s why this blog of mine is so erratic and so rarely interesting, because i’m a terrible analyst of what’s going on out there.

But, occasionally against my better judgment, i’m working on it.

I’ve often wondered if time that is noticed is any different than time unnoticed.  In fact, i’ve been working (inconsistently) on a novel about someone that can consciously control how fast time seems to be going by just by controlling how much attention he’s placing on it.

A very limited example is the following idea:  When i’m aware that i’m driving in such a way as to conserve as much gas as possible, is my gas consumption any different than when i’m driving exactly the same but not aware of it?  On the surface, i’d argue that it is not any different.  However, on a quantum level, observing something can have relatively dramatic effects.  The obvious example is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (measuring the momentum of a particle makes its location uncertain and vice versa), which has been stretched (arguably too far) to philosophy.

A more obscure and more dramatic theory is that of observing dark energy with the potential of the quantum zeno effect.  Essentially, the idea is that by observing dark energy more closely and more frequently, we might be drastically shortening the lifespan of the universe.  C’est la vie.

So there are my escalating thoughts on observing and noticing and the destruction of the universe.  My hope is that just by documenting this some good will come from it.  In the article i mentioned earlier about noticing, they recommend a practice of describing somewhere (e.g., a blog) something that one has seen or experienced earlier in the day that he or she hasn’t shared with anyone yet.  The practice itself is supposed to open more eyes to experiences.  How dangerously apropos.

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Posted by Steve on August 21st, 2008 in Uncategorized

Ahem…  My Rhapsody Channel, i think it’s about time that we sit down and talk about our relationship.  Don’t act surprised, Rhapsody Channel, i’m sure you knew that we were headed to this point.  You must have seen this coming.  And now here we are.  Let’s just get it over with so we can both be more comfortable with the relationship.  I know you have some issues with me as well, this will not be a one-sided conversation.

It almost seems as though you don’t listen to me anymore.  I rate song after song after song but you are so set in your ways that you just keep playing the same stuff over and over again.  I feel that our lack of communication might bring this relationship down.  And i don’t think either of us want that.

I know we didn’t exactly start out on an idyllic foot, My Rhapsody Channel.  It was no secret that i came to you when My Yahoo Channel went defunct.  But i don’t want you to feel as though you’re a rebound product.  Think of it more as, i just hadn’t found you yet.  Granted, you took some getting used to, but i really feel as though we quickly became comfortable with each other and progressed for a while almost synergistically.

That is, until lately.  It seems as though for the past few days every other song you’ve chosen has been either Tool, Nirvana, or Mudhoney…  Rhapsody Channel, i don’t really know how to say this, so i’m just going to come right out and ask…  Are you depressed?  Would it kill you to play some Donovan or Polyphonic Spree every now and then?  I think it would help you feel a lot better.  I know when i’m down, i put on one of your Surf Rock channels and those Pet Sounds get me feeling groovy in no time.

This is a little awkward, but does this have anything to do with Pandora?  Because, i swear, that was a one time thing.  I was lonely one night, Rhapsody Channel, and you were down with “server issues” so i found comfort in the music of another service.  If anything, that only reaffirmed my commitment to you and i promise it will never happen again.  Pandora means nothing to me.

Rhapsody Channel, do you realize that we haven’t heard Sex Pistols in two months?  Two months is a long time to go without Sex Pistols.  And don’t claim that you’ve had a Van Halen, because i know that isn’t the case.  If your Van Halen won’t go away for two months, you should probably see somebody.  Anyway, if you had been listening to me, you would know that i’ve rated Van Halen as “Never Play Again”.  You can’t use that excuse anymore.  We need to look at the real issues.

Maybe it’s my fault.  I know i’ve been sending mixed signals by rating The Moody Blues so high but Bread so low.  But Rhapsody, you have to look at it from my perspective.  To me, those are two very different bands.  Just because i like the Moody Blues so much doesn’t mean that i’m going to love Seals and Crofts or The Carpenters.  But once again, i’m afraid i’m going to have to point the blame back to you .  Your rating system leaves a little to be desired.  I’ve had no choice but to rate Henry Rollins the same as Stephane Grapelli even though my feelings for those two artists are very different.

Anyway, Rhapsody, i’m glad we’ve had this talk.  I feel like we’ve covered some good ground here and come a long way.  And i hope that in the future we can take this relationship to the next level and try some new things like Opera and, if you’re up to it, some Funk.  I have a funny feeling that you and me and George Clinton could some day make beautiful music together…  So to speak.

Good talk, My Rhapsody Channel, good talk.

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Posted by Steve on August 13th, 2008 in Uncategorized

I know this is kind of old news now, but i’m going to bring it up here anyway, just to ask the following question:

What does it say about your country when your nation’s chief law-enforcement officer says that, “not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime.”?

What a spectacular stretch of semantics.

Also in the news is this video:

It turns out that Christian right evangelical group, Focus on the Family hires this guy Stuart Shepard to make videos for them.  Which is fine, of course.  The problem is that this particular video is so ridiculously void of conscience that Keith Olbermann went ahead and featured Shepard as one of his Worst People in the World.

In case you didn’t watch the video, Shepard asks people to pray for rain to fall in Denver on August 28th to interrupt Barack Obama’s presidential nominee acceptance speech.  Shepard actually uses the phrases “abundant rain, torrential rain … flood-advisory rain…  I’m talking about umbrella-ain’t-gonna-help-you rain … swamp-the-intersections rain.”

Just for fun, i thought it would be interesting to google how far Denver, Colorado is from Cedar Rapids, Iowa where just a few months ago, the type of rain that Shepard asks people to pray for caused an estimated $1bil worth of damage and destruction…  714 miles.  Priorities, please.

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Posted by Steve on August 12th, 2008 in Uncategorized

I had a running joke for a while where i would constantly suggest ridiculously utilizing overhead space when considering living room rearrangements.  My girlfriend would contemplate where to put the television with respect to the couch and my immediate suggestion would be to hang it from the ceiling.  Whatever it was, hang it from the ceiling.  Now i’m no interior decorator (obviously), but it seems more and more that i may have been onto something.  Consider this upside-down Christmas Tree that Hammacher Schlemmer is selling.  The tree, as they explain:

is inverted to ensure a smaller footprint for less-spacious areas, and allowing more room for the accumulation of presents underneath.

Um…  Well, i certainly wouldn’t need it, but i’m sure there are people out there receiving so many gifts that they need an inverted Christmas tree just to make room for them all.  (Also, from a marketing perspective, notice their use of “ensure a smaller footprint”, now who could they be trying to appeal to?)

My favorite part of that description is that, in the very first sentence, they explain that hanging a Christmas tree upside down is actually a 12th Century Central European tradition, rather than some post-modern, different-to-be-different trend.  While i’m sure there is a tradition of the sort, i’m also pretty sure that if i had tried to hang my Christmas tree upside-down even last year, i would have been laughed off my block.

Favorite part number two would be the fact that those particular trees have sold out even though Christmas is 4 months away.  That’s right, yule-trenders, if you wanted an invertred tree to send all those positive energies from the heavens directly into your giagantic gift pile, you would have had to get up pretty early in the morning, so to speak.

The picture:

Notice the chair*.  See how the claw and ball foot of the chair are on the ground with the front leg (ankle, knee, knee return) spatially above the foot.  Moving farther up and back, we have the back rail, splats and crest rail at the top.  This is the natural position of a chair and is used as a reference to show just how upside-down the feature item in the image (the aforementioned holiday tree) really is.

*A chair:

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Posted by Steve on August 8th, 2008 in Uncategorized

This video doesn’t quite do it justice (or maybe i’m just turned off by the fact that the struggling matchwork is matched only by the struggling camerawork), but burning a ping pong ball is a helluva lotuvfun. Ping pong balls are cheap and they burn as interestingly (imho) as any item that simple.

But it turns out there’s a whole lot more you can do with ping pong balls.  I read today two stories regarding those simple white spheres and technology among the most advanced in the world.  The first is about the very exciting Large Hadron Collider they’re getting ready to power up in Switzerland and France.  Before actually colliding frozen protons at gazillions of miles per hour to unlock the secrets of the physical universe, they did some tests with ping pong balls.  Of course.

The second story was from Wired magazine about Olympic training device Robo-Pong 2040 which:

spits out balls at up to 75 mph. The oscillating cannon can imitate serves, dish up vicious spins, and even simulate lobs. It fires up to 94 shots per minute, and players can test their accuracy by aiming returns at “pong-master” sensors.

Sounds like a lot of fun, but has anyone thought about combining the two yet?  Imagine shooting ping pong balls at near the speed of light around the 27 Kilomoter LHC tube and have players try to whack it back around and hit a “pong-master” sensor.  We’d have the best table tennis team in the world.

However, if you find yourself without matches, professional ping pong training equipment, or the world’s largest particle collider/philosophical implication tester, you can still use those ping pong balls you’ve been saving up to search for sunken treasure…  Provided the treasure is in a sunken ship…  And provided you’ve saved up 27,000 ping pong balls.

And then again, if all else fails, you could try playing table tennis.

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