Empirical Evidence Trumps the Label
While walking the dog in the rain on Friday afternoon, I learned something valuable: my waterproof Columbia jacket is only a windbreaker.
If You Were to Actually Get Three Wishes, You Should Go Nuts With Them
My son Ian decided that if you make it to "your thirties," then you should be rewarded with three wishes, but when I asked him what he would wish for, hoping for some crazy-ass imaginative kid stuff . . . zombie armies, world domination, interplanetary battle ships, and such, but his wishes turned out to be fairly lame: first he said he would wish for a time machine, which had promise, but then he said he would use the time machine to "make a plane ride to Florida seem like three minutes" which resulted in me lecturing him in the style of Louie C.K. and then he wished that "he could visit all fifty states" with his family and his buddy Ben-- which was sweet, but entirely within the realm of possibility without squandering a magical wish-- and then he finished up with the completely mundane and cliche desire to "live a long and healthy life."
There's No Crying in Silicon Valley!
While we all know that "there's no crying in baseball," apparently the same isn't true about founding the most successful computer company in history, as Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs biography is chock full of incidents where the charismatic, sensitive, and quite possibly delusional Jobs breaks down in tears, often in front of co-workers, rivals, or friends (and usually when his "reality distortion field" ceases to operate).
iPod, I Name Thee Lazarus
One of the perks of writing a trivial blog filled with drivel is that I can fact-check extremely mundane details from my life; for example, I know for certain that I bought my iPod Nano in April of 2008 and I made a habit of swimming with this iPod in November of 2008 (which didn't last long, as my supposedly waterproof Otterbox case leaked, resulting in a waterlogged and broken iPod . . . but one of my well-connected students set me up with an "appointment" with her ex-boyfriend at the Apple Store and he gave me a new one, despite the fact that water damage is NOT covered by the limited warranty) and then I used the new iPod-- an exact clone of the old iPod-- without incident for many years, until I lost it for several months in the winter of 2013, and now I am realizing that this particular iPod (which I have conflated with the original water-damaged iPod in a philosophical leap reminiscent of the Ship of Theseus dilemma) is imbued with miraculous qualities, because my wife's iPod -- a newer, sleeker model-- doesn't hold a charge and gives her loads of problems, but this model (like my Jeep) is built to last, possibly to infinity and beyond; to make a long story short, Tuesday morning, when I got in my car to go to work, I saw my iPod lying prostrate in the road . . . it must have fallen out of my gym bag, and so it spent the night on the pavement, getting soaked by several rainstorms and quite possibly run over by cars, and so I assumed this was finally the end -- R.I.P iPod-- but when I pressed the "play" symbol, the screen popped right up, and so I put it in a bowl of dry rice and it is now in good working order-- and this tempts me to to try other more extreme experiments on the device: fire, acid, ice, my digestive system . . . but perhaps I shouldn't tempt fate, as I'm sure I will place it in peril some time soon, without forcing the issue.
A Belated Happy Mother's Day to Hannah Duston?
To determine if you are going to purchase a Hannah Duston bobble-head doll (pictured above) and to decide whether Hannah Duston is the greatest mom in American history or a cold-blooded racist child killer, you are going to have to learn the story of Hannah Duston . . . and the best way to do this is to listen to the most recent episode of 99 Percent Invisible: Monumental Dilemma.
We Look at Big Things and Small Things at Rutgers Day
We went over to Busch campus for this year's Rutgers Day, and the highlights were getting a tour of the electron microscope-- it's one of a kind, cost 5.2 million dollars, and is "one of the best in the world"-- and while the microscope itself is incredibly cool looking-- very steam punk-- the results of the microscope, seeing gold atoms magnified a billion times, isn't as excellent as it sounds because the "atoms" are just little moving blips on a really big computer monitor (I don't know what I expected to see . . . little blips with AU tattooed on their butts?) but even better than the microscope was the presentation by a psychologist with the excellent name of Thomas Papathomas, who studies the top down and bottom up nature of our visual system . . . how our eyes feed our brain and our brain feeds our eyes, and he said that he finds the best way to study this is to look at when our brain makes mistakes . . . and then he presented us with a phenomenal bunch of optical illusions, and he had the actual gigantic three-dimensional models of these things, and they were mind boggling . . . I will put some videos up here of what we saw, and you can see some original artwork that uses these ideas at the Patrick Hughes show at the Flowers Gallery in Chelsea, which I am definitely going to attend . . . anyway, I hope you enjoy the videos.
My Family Is No Threat to the Jackson Five
This year for Mother's Day the boys and I composed a song for Catherine and then recorded a video of us performing it. . . and it took many many takes to get a decent version . . . a version with audible lyrics and a minimum of giggling and modicum of timing . . . and while we finally got it done, we are definitely not going on tour any time soon (and I'm not going to post the video here because I don't want to turn my children into the Star Wars kid).
Adventure Time is the Best Time
I am biding my time until my kids are old enough to watch great shows such as The Shield and Battlestar Galactica and The Wire and Louie, but until then, Adventure Time will suffice . . . in fact, it will more than suffice, as each twelve minute episode packs in more jokes and epic awesomeness than a full episode of any other show in the entire universe, so find your children, tell them to stop doing their homework or practicing violin or whatever stupid thing they're doing, and get watching (because you've got 150 episodes to watch, or thirty hours of adventuring).
A Fun Thing To Do If Someone Leaves His/Her Email Open
This prank was the brainchild of my friend Stacey, but I took the ball and ran with it . . . lesser artists borrow, but great artists steal; fellow English teacher Kevin left his email account open in the office, and usually when this happens someone will write an over-the-top absurd epistle of love to the boss or something equally ridiculous that it's immediately recognized as a joke, but instead of the usual tact, Stacey simply e-mailed another teacher (as Kevin) and asked for some Hamlet materials -- so that this teacher would bring them to his room and he wouldn't know why-- and I liked the understated nature of this concept, but thought it would be funnier if twenty people came to see Kevin and he didn't know why, and they didn't really know why either, and so I sent out e-mails to all the English teachers, with headings like "weird rumor" and "crazy coincidence" and "I have something for you" and I left very simple messages, such as "you wouldn't believe who I ran into from your past" and "no big deal but I heard something about you that I don't want to put on e-mail" and "remind me to tell you this story, too complicated to write it" and this worked like a charm, teachers started showing up in his classroom, and he didn't know why and they weren't sure why and finally he ran into the hall, screaming "I don't want anything from anybody! I don't have anything for anybody!" which is a pretty good result for a joke conceived at 7:20 AM on a Friday (after a late pub night on Thursday).
Two Things Sentence of Dave Does NOT Condone
The staff here at Sentence of Dave would like to vociferously proclaim that we completely oppose Boko Haram's mass abduction of Nigerian school girls and consequent threat to sell them into slavery . . . and that we are also totally against both mass abduction and slavery in a general sense as well and don't think either of these things should be a part of 21st century life on planet earth (we were expecting life in the 21st century to provide a cure for cancer, flying cars and beef jerky that's actually good for you).
A Stupid Discussion That Was Still Compelling
In the English office last week, a novice runner asked a question that had never occurred to me: "When you go out for a run, when do you start running?" and it turns out that many people have "starting points," such as the end of the driveway, where they begin and end their run . . . I tend to start running as I am going out the door, I jog down the steps and cut across the lawn . . . and maybe this is because of all the preparation I do before the run-- iPod, sunglasses, hands-free-dog leash/belt, poop bag, hat, orthotic inserts, etcetera . . . so that by the time I get out the door, I am impatient and fully "in the mode," but now I know that this isn't always the case . . . when and where do you start running when you go out for a run?
Dave's Meta-Joke of the Month
There are three things that are certain in the life: death, taxes, and jokes about death and taxes.
A Promise of Loyalty
While I probably shouldn't have abandoned my wife, children and dog to the slowly growing flood in our basement the other night, especially since we couldn't locate our submersible pump . . . but I would like to say in my defense that I did finally figure out who had borrowed it, though this was not until after I played in the first basketball game of the evening and -- unfortunately for my marriage -- my wife had already loaded the kids into the car (in their pajamas) and drove through the storm to the Home Depot, where she was going to purchase a new pump, when I called her . . . and she got home in time to get the pump into the basement shower so the water never went over the lip, and I got her flowers the next day, and it's not like this was a real flood, such as the one that caused a landslide to bury a village in Afghanistan, and I would like to hereby swear that if there ever is a real flood of that magnitude, I will skip Wednesday basketball night and remain with my family.
Thought Experiment?
It's best not to think about why you root for a particular team-- because, as Seinfeld points our, you are actually "rooting for the clothes"-- and Paul Lukas, the creator of Uni Watch: The Obsessive Study of Athletics Aesthetics, pushes this logic to the extreme (I heard him discussing this with Roman Mars on 99% Invisible) when he poses this dilemma: imagine that your favorite team traded all of its players, even up, for all the players on your least favorite team . . . which team would you root for?
My Kids Do Not Know How to Have Fun
My wife introduced my kids to the "license plate game" last Friday -- we were driving down Route 130 and she thought it would be good practice for our cross-country trip to try to identify license plates from different states . . . the rule being that you score a point if you are the first person to see a particular state's plate, but little did she imagine the genie she uncorked, as both my children took the game VERY seriously, and this resulted in several arguments, much yelling, some outright cheating (so that we had to introduce a verification corollary rule) and finally, just after I parallel parked the car across from the public lot, to culminate the competition, both my children bolted from the car, ran across the street (without looking both ways, or even one way) darted between cars in the parking lot, and sprinted to a white plate -- "Indiana!"-- and then argued about who yelled it first (resulting in another corollary rule: no playing the game outside the confines of the car) and two days later, on Sunday, when I was driving Ian back from his soccer game, he was still playing, even though he was alone in the back seat and I had informed him that I wasn't playing because I was driving back from an unfamiliar location, but none of this mattered, he was racking up points and soundly beating some imaginary opponent, an imaginary opponent who probably resembled his older brother.
Teenagers Go On Twitter to Escape Old People Who Write Long Sentences
Danah Boyd's new book It's Complicated: the social lives of networked teens is a must read -- both for people with kids and people who just want to know what the hell is going on; Boyd extensively researched teen internet habits-- she interviewed teens around the country and also read numerous sociological works on the topic-- and her big ideas are tempered with lots of anecdotes, often in the voices of the teens she interviewed . . . and what Boyd feels these teens are saying is this: we want to hang out with our friends, and that's a lot harder to do than it once was-- as the world is overly circumscribed for our kind, and there is a lack of public spaces where we our welcome, and we have a difficult time transporting ourselves to the few places we are welcome, and no one wants to see a cluster of teenagers anywhere except a high school football game-- and when we're there, we put our phones away, unlike most of you adults-- but most of the time, the best, safest, most accessible, and most convenient place to hang out is on-line . . . and while we can usually monitor and handle what we are doing, it's difficult to hang out in a place where you can't see lurking adults, which is why we often switch forums to where our friends are and the adults are not-- and we are willing to repurpose any forum to suit our needs, which are often social, and we often forget that we are under adult surveillance when we are online, and yes, the same problems that crop up in the real world happen on-line: bullying, racism, misinterpretation, gossip, drama, but adults shouldn't intervene in this world unless they really know the actual context of what is going on, which is often difficult and encoded . . . but still, if adults use their window into the online public space with some subtlety, instead of to only to pry, then it might open up lines of communication which are otherwise often frozen during the teenage years, but the most important thing to remember is that after we do our compulsory day at school and then practice soccer, meet with the Key Club, finish our violin exercises, study for AP Bio, then we go online to be social, not anti-social, and so unless you think we are having problems in the real world, please let us alone in our online world . . . the book is a quick and relatively easy read, and it acknowledges that our networked lives are here to stay -- and neither utopian nor dystopian-- instead they reflect the society at large, and it is up to adults to help children navigate the digital world, even though it is complicated, and adults should not simply rely on the fact that kids are digital "natives," because oftentimes they are not, and need help in understanding the consequences and methods of life on the internet . . . and I'm going to really test Boyd's claims this week, as I'm going to photocopy several excerpts and see how the real flesh and blood teenagers in my senior classes react; I will keep you posted of the results.
Dave Has an Emotion Towards Canada!
While I can't pretend that I care about Canada (though I tried my darndest) I at least harbor some emotion towards our nice neighbors to the north (with the capitol city no one can name) and this emotion is jealousy, as Canada now has the richest middle class in the world, a title the U.S. once held . . . and while our rich our richer than the Canadian rich, our poor are poorer than the Canadian poor, so unless you're one of the 1%, you're better off donning a toque, buying a down vest, and learning to enjoy backbacon and poutine (but I'm NOT learning French, that's where I' put my foot down).
Lawyers, Drones, and Funny (Stuff Going on in The U.S. Government)
I am often suspicious that I have no idea how the world works, which is one of the reasons I like to read: I feel as though I'm filling an infinitely large hole in my brain, and this feels simultaneously productive and good and also desperate and futile, and so it made me happy to hear Radiolab's Jad Abumrad make the same assertion during their new podcast "60 Words"; the show explores the consequences of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists, a resolution passed by the United States Congress on September 14th, 2001 for obvious reasons . . . and a resolution that passed with a nearly unanimous vote-- only Barbara Lee had the foresight to see the possible problems with such a vague, broad, timeless fiat; the sixty words have authorized two wars, Guantanamo Bay detention center, and drone attacks, and the two phantom words, which were not in the original sentence, which authorizes the president to "use all necessary and appropriate force" against "nations, organization, or persons" that were involved in the September 11 attack on the United States, these two words-- which have been inserted by the government to make it easier to fight this war on terror . . . the words "associated forces," and so now it is difficult (even for congress itself) to know exactly who we are at war with, and who we can legitimately attack and kill with a drone (which is where the lawyers come in, when you want to issue a drone strike, you don't check with your commanding officer, first you check with a lawyer to see if it's legal) and while President Obama has attempted to make some inroads at ending the War on Terror, it's very difficult to stop something when the folks you are fighting haven't stopped fighting . . . and so Obama said that he was only going to use drone strikes when there is "an imminent threat" to the American people . . . and so perhaps the AUMF will eventually be repealed, but then there will be some new and powerful words that will insure that most folks have absolutely no idea what is legal and what our government is improvising . . . if you really want to learn more, read this very detailed article by Gregory Johnson called "60 Words and a War Without End: The UNtold Story of the Most Dangerous Sentence in U.S. History."
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