8/5/10 A Political Thought Experiment

If we could divide our nation into two, and all the Red State Conservatives lived on one side and the Blue State Liberals lived on the other, and you had to choose where you were going to live and you couldn't switch . . . would you live on the unregulated, low taxation, abortion is illegal, few social services, health care for those with jobs, non-unionized, lobbyist empowered, large gap between rich and poor, underfunded public education Red side or the high taxation, plenty of social services, abortion is legal, marijuana is legal, universal health care, unionized, regulated markets and financial institutions, pro-public education Blue side?

Just Say Your Sorry!

Another tip from social scientist Dan Ariely:  saying "sorry" really does have a beneficial effect . . . Ariely proved this by setting up a simple experiment where the technician running the experiment takes a cell-phone call in the middle of questioning the subject-- and rudely ignores him for a time-- but later the subject has a chance to exact "revenge" when the technician over-pays him for his efforts; if the technician did NOT take the cell phone call, then the subject usually gave back the overpayment, but the times the technician took the call, the subject usually exacted pecuniary revenge for  the rudeness . . . unless the technician said, "Sorry, I shouldn't have taken that call" afterward . . . but, of course, if Ariely simply watched this scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (when Lancelot storms the wedding and kills the best man and many other guests, but ends up getting along smashingly with the King because he apologizes for his violent actions) the he wouldn't have had to go through all the trouble of running the experiment.

Bonus at Gheorghe:The Blog . . . The Internet is for Corn-Hole

If you want to learn more about corn-hole performance during Outer Banks Fishing Trip XXVII, check this post out . . . you will also learn about the true purpose of the internet.

OBFT XVII

Highlights (and lowlights) of the Outer Banks Fishing Trip XXVII . . . worst water ever, cold and full of sea lice and jellyfish, which led to the most corn-hole playing ever, my right hamstring and back muscles actually started to get sore from tossing those beanbags . . . after a sound beating by the Bill/Whit corn-hole dynasty, Jerry and Chris go inside and Google "how to toss a corn-hole beanbag" and then return minutes later and drub the dynasty . . . Bruce a.k.a. "Windy Buttocks" gives an extemporaneous wind report off the deck of the Martha Wood . . . T.J. tries to leap the chair, although "leap" probably isn't the correct word . . . a fantastic sit-com called "T.J. and the Weave" also featuring "Jerry" . . . two guys with mustaches . . . Lacey the bartender is pregnant so we do the math (and also try to name the baby "Whitney" but she says it sounds too snobby) . . . a discussion of The Book of Mormon . . . Bruce tries to change seats at Tortuga's because of the "menu game" . . . the advent of the Tortuga's "bar crawl" and a cyber-method of persuading someone to pick them up . . . thanks again for another successful trip,Whit.

Bonus : A Pertinent SNL Skit

Here is a related SNL skit (thanks to Greg) that is almost as funny as the last sentence:  "How Much Ya Bench."

8/2/10 This Won't Help What People Think Of New Jersey

My friend Bruce runs Kittyhawk Kites down on the Outer Banks, and he often teaches hang-gliding lessons at Jockey's Ridge, and this was his unfortunate experience with a Jersey guy a few weeks ago:  the guy was built well, he certainly worked out, but he was having trouble flying the glider (actually, a lighter touch works much better) and not getting half the distance the rest of his group was getting, so Bruce took him aside and gave him a few pointers, and then when the guy walked back over to his friend, and Bruce clearly heard him say: "Yeah, so that guy knows a lot about hang-gliding, but how much can he bench?"

8/1/10 Family Life: A Portrait

A snapshot of our family life:  my lovely wife agreed to sugar-wax the disgusting patches of hair off my back, which really hurt, so my youngest son held my hand during the process, and while my wife ripped and teared away I told my other son that if I was a movie star, they'd depilate my entire body, which would really hurt and he said, "But do they let fat guys be movie stars?" and then he qualified it and said, "Not like you . . . even fatter, like THIS fat" and he mimicked being really fat with his hands and I said, "Sure, John Candy and John Belushi and Chris Farley and Jack Black were all fat movie stars," and he said, "Oh yeah, if you had a fat movie star you could paint him brown and he'd be like a piece of poop, that would be funny" and this image of painting someone like John Candy poop brown made us all laugh really hard (despite the fact that Catherine was dripping hot wax on my back and then yanking it off) and then Catherine said, "Our son is weird."

7/31/10 A Metaphor for a Large Dead Jellyfish

I followed a link about a "large dead jellyfish" that my friend sent out on Twitter-- I am a sucker for that sort of thing-- and found out that a large Lion's man jellyfish broke apart near a New Hampshire beach and stung nearly one hundred people, but what interested me more than the actual jellyfish was the metaphor that State Park Manager Ken Loughlin used to describe the size of the jellyfish:  he said it was the "size of a turkey platter," which grosses me out, because he's associating a delicious land animal with a giant aquatic sac of poison, and now when I think of Thanksgiving, I think of a giant seething jellyfish on a silver platter and I blame Ken Loughlin for this and I'm sure he's ruined Thanksgiving for everyone else who read that article . . . and so I think he should be fired-- or at least put on probation and have to do a hundred hours of dead jellyfish picking on the New Hampshire beaches.

7/30/10 A Musical Analogy

Brent Mason's instrumental "Hotwired" is the country analogue to Eddie Van Halen's "Eruption."

Ouch!

Last week I used the gift certificate my brother gave me for a massage-- it wasn't at the usual Asian place I go to, instead I went to a girl my brother knew from high school and she hurt me-- it was not relaxing at all-- and I feel like as I've gotten older I've built up a tolerance for deep tissue massage and I sort of pride myself on being able to take some pretty rough body work, but I had to say uncle a couple times to this chick, who was built like a power lifter and liked to stick her elbow deep into recesses in my back and buttocks until I cried like a little girl, and I know in the end it's worth it, after a day of being very sore, but I remember the days of going and getting a nice light oily rub and napping . . . and this sort of reminds me of eating spicy food, it starts as something fun and exotic, you use some hot sauce or order something a bit spicy for variety, but then suddenly your ordering things as hot as they come just to prove you can take it and then it's not about enjoying the food any more, it's about withstanding the pain . . . but I think I'll go back to her, she played cool bhangra music while she tortured me.

Spandex: Pros and Cons

These are the pros of wearing spandex under your shorts during a run on the beach: 1) no chafing 2) when you're finished running, you can strip off your shorts and put them high and dry on the sand, iPod and condo keys safely tucked away in the pockets, and jump in the water wearing just the spandex . . . and then you can put your shorts back on for the walk home and enjoy the benefit of #1 . . . and there is only one con but it is a major one, if you happen to be an early riser and you are serenely walking down the beach, collecting shells or watching for porpoises, you might run into a hairy man coming out of the ocean, stuffed into a pair of slightly too small spandex shorts, like a sausage in it casing, and that hairy man would be me . . . sorry . . . but there's no way I'm risking chafing.

Bonus at Gheorghe: The Blog!

I've just created a new Oscar category over at Gheorghe: The Blog . . . if you've got the time, check it out.

7/27/10 An Antagonistic Encounter with a NAVY Seal . . . or maybe not.

After dinner, I was waiting outside a sushi place with a friend when an SUV whipped around the corner of the parking lot and nearly hit a middle-aged guy walking across the road, and the middle aged guy yelled "Asshole!" at the SUV and the driver of the SUV yelled "Suck my dick!" and the middle aged guy yelled "It's too small!" and the driver, a young guy got out and started advancing toward the older guy and my friend Mike said, "Get back in your car" and we did what teachers do-- we positioned ourselves in between the two parties-- and the driver's friend entered the scene now, with an unlit cigarette in his mouth (flipped the wrong way)  and the young guy looked at my friend Mike, who's pretty big, and said, "Where did you guys come from?" and Mike said, "Get back in your car" and then the strange thing happened-- the young driver opened his wallet and flashed a card or something and said, "You're lucky I didn't kick all your asses! I'm a NAVY Seal" and then he jumped back in his car and drove away . . . but he was sort of pear shaped for a young guy and he didn't really look like a Navy SEAL at all . . . and then the middle aged guy, who had walked into the restaurant, poked his head out and said, "Thanks guys" and then the other two guys we were with, who were in the bathroom and missed everything (isn't that always the case?) came outside and we got to tell them the whole story (and I thank Mike for sending me the details for this sentence, because I missed the beginning of the exchange because I was just sort of spacing out).

Bonus Explanation!

I was out late last night and very hungover when I wrote this morning's sentence, so it doesn't make much sense but I've tried to do a better job of it over here-- I apologize for the low quality content I produced this AM . . . but hey, it's not like I'm getting paid for this . . .

A Rock and Roll Coincidence

I won't wax poetically about the inimitable LeCompt, as I've already given them enough praise (I believe I've called them the "best bar band in the universe") but last night, after a frantic and late entrance -- they had already played an afternoon gig in Philly-- they started with a mellow and weird psychedelic set, and while they were playing "Down By the River" I told my cousin that my kids liked this song because they were intrigued as to why the narrator "shot his baby," and I then told my cousin that I had been playing "Space Oddity" to my kids on my guitar because they liked the space theme and then-- and it couldn't have been ten seconds after I said this-- LeCompt launched into an amazing cover of "Space Oddity" . . . which is pretty coincidental, because nobody covers "Space Oddity," but they did it, complete with space vocals and guitar, but I didn't make too much of this very strange coincidence because I once read something by a statistician who pointed out that the very fact that we are alive and process stimuli every second-- which adds up to a million events a month or so- and the fact that we are constantly on the lookout for patterns means that we will discover a one in a million coincidence fairly often, but it is foolish to assign meaning to it because that means we must also assign meaning to all the non-coincidences that happen to us-- all the songs I've mentioned that bands don't suddenly start playing moments later . . . and while this does ruin the fun, it doesn't mean I still can't enjoy the coincidence (and sorry the sentence is late today, but it was a late night).

7/25/10 Everyone is Hot!

Dan Ariely used data from the website Hot or Not to see if people who were "aesthetically challenged" actually had different standards of what was "hot," and he found out that they don't, but that's not important-- what is important is that there is some serious "hotness inflation" on that site, kind of like grade inflation in high school . . . everyone is an "8" . . . and I mean everyone, warts and all, and now I think I'm going to put my photo on there so I can be an "8" too . . . I urge you to go there and see what I'm talking about.

This is Scary

One more idea from The Upside of Irrationality (sorry) that I can't stop thinking about-- this is an explanation of emotions and their influence on decision making, and Ariely explains it like this, we all know that our emotions can have an influence on our short-term decision making, you get stuck in traffic and it makes you irate, so you end up yelling at your kids about making noise in the car . . . but Ariely explains how this can lead to long-term influence . . . because though you usually don't remember your emotions from last week (how did you feel last Wednesday at noon?) you do remember your previous decisions and actions, and you generally think that your own behavior was rational and so you often repeat behaviors that happened in the past (this can be good, as well: you have a good day at work and get flowers for your wife in your ebullient mood, and then the week after, you just get her flowers because you are now the kind of guy who randomly gets his wife flowers-- you don't remember the good emotion that caused the initial decision, you just remember the decision) and so suddenly, because of some ephemeral emotions that you thought were short lived and only put you in a good or bad mood for a few minutes, the way you live your life is altered for good.

A Psychological Tactic

This tactic is from Dan Ariely's new book The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home and it is based upon the psychological fact that people will enjoy something pleasurably more if there is an interruption-- whether it is getting a massage or watching television, a break inserted in there when you are no longer receiving the pleasurable stimulus makes you appreciate it again once the break is over . . . and so TiVo actually makes television watching less pleasurable, because resuming your favorite show after some annoying commercials makes you treasure the show even more-- and so the next time you and your wife/lover/mistress are doing something fun, sitting in a hot-tub drinking beer or relaxing on the beach watching the waves or simply watching TV, offer to get up and get your wife/lover/mistress something they want; this is the beauty of the tactic, you will appear to be unselfish because you've interrupted your pleasant activity to get them another drink or a snack or something, but actually you will be increasing your perception of pleasure because when you get back to the pleasurable activity, you will enjoy it more . . . mwooohahahahah (that is how you phonetically spell an evil laugh . . . I also recommend Ariely's other book, Predictably Irrational).

7/22/10 Ask the Oil Spill

Head over to Gheorghe: The Blog to hear what the BP oil spill has to say for itself . . . you won't regret it.

7/21/10 A Poll About Coffee

My wife wants me to poll ten people and see if they know that Taster's Choice is instant coffee . . . I did NOT know this and the other morning I thought we were out of coffee (we weren't, I just couldn't see it in the fridge) an so I rummaged around and found a canister of Taster's Choice and so I put it into the coffee maker, though the consistency was a little weird, and it made some very very strong coffee and it also formed a thick sludge in the filter and machine . . . a sludge that I imagine is similar to what the shrimp are eating right now in the Gulf . . . and Catherine thinks I should have known that Taster's Choice is instant coffee, which is coffee that disintegrates right into your cup, but I don't watch TV and I've never made instant coffee before and I'm not so sure that everyone in America knows what this stuff is, as my wife claims . . . so any information on the public knowledge of this product is greatly appreciated.