Merry Christmas

To anyone who’s still reading this blog, bless you and a merry Christmas! I will be writing a lot more in the new year so stay tuned, will you?

To anyone who’s just passing, merry Christmas.

Victims

I'm always interested—and almost always disgusted, but that's another post—by who is identified as a victim by society and the media. The Petraeus Affair, which could have been the title of a smashing Sherlock Holmes story, is the latest example.

According to everything I've seen written and seen, Mrs. Petraeus is the victim of the whole sordid mess, forgetting Dr. (Mrs) Broadwell is one as well by any definition of the term. Am I being led to believe that husbands who are cheated on are not as important a victim category as long-suffering dowdy wives?

It seems so.

Perfect

Reading the ‘Perfect’ book, learned how to brush your teeth, perfectly:

1. Hold your toothbrush so the bristles are at a 45-degree angle along your gum line  The bristles should be in contact with the tooth surface and your gums.
2. Use a pea-sized amount of toothpaste. Brush the outer surfaces of two to three teeth at a time, and use alternating motions of back, forward, and circles, then shift to the next two to three teeth and do the same.
3. Continuing to keep the head of the brush at a 45-degree angle and in contact with both the gum line and tooth surface, use the same method as above for brushing the inside surfaces of your teeth.
4. When it comes to your front teeth, both top and bottom, pivot the brush so it's vertical, like you are biting into the bristles. Using the front half of the brush, use repeated up-and-down motions to clean the inside surfaces.
5. Gently clean the top surfaces of your teeth, the places food first touches, with a back-and-forth scrubbing motion. Don't be too vigorous or you'll have some irritation and eventually gum erosion. Last, scrub the top surface of your tongue to remove bacteria.

Tooth brushing done this way should last a full two minutes. You should replace your toothbrush every three months, as toothbrushes can easily harbor over 10, 000, 000 bacterial. Besides changing your brush frequently, store the brush at least six feet away from the toilet, to avoid airborne microbes. If you don't have a toothbrush handy, you can break up plaque with a swish of green tea. Coffee and black teas also work to break up plaque, but are more staining.

Perfectly interesting book:

Persona Non Grata

“He’s probably done.”

Thus I heard confirmed what I’ve been thinking, my path to health is mine and mine alone once again. Melody funneled through the white tendrils of an iPod will have to provide the distraction as I pick things up and put them down again. Here I go again, down the only road I’ve ever known, like a drifter I was born to walk alone.

Course Notes

As I like to leave things to the last day before the last moment, I re-enacted the reason why, with some proactive effort, I’d have been a person of some note. The feedback was mostly positive (“a bit slow”) but no one fell asleep or walked out or threw rotten fruit. A smattering of applause, polite or not, I’ll take it!—just think if I hadn’t procrastinated!

Death Dearth

I’m a slave in a world overseen by Forces largely unseen. My opinion that death isn’t welcome goes unheeded, probably rightly so as I have neither the foresight not the hindsight to understand. I have not been given enough data to make my opinion worth heeding and so I trudge on, hauling my carcass over my shoulders toward that closely distant Light.

Death be not proud …

In Genius

Largely inconsequential, a woman with a “phd” teaches “creativity” and blusters on about our being created in God’s image. A fact which instantly grants us ALL God’s genius for genius. Allow me, lady, to disabuse you: that you hold such an opinion forcefully debunks the hypothesis, “phd” or no.

In Mala Fide

We are all story-devouring machines. Most of us process them and egest other stories which we re-consume in a descending spiral until the only thing left of the story is a nugget of excrement.

Some—those lucky few—produce better stories which they leave scattered about for others of the first ilk to vacuum in, halting their progress, if it can be called that.

Yet even fewer others, The Remnant, produce stories out of thin air (Cf In Genius). Sorry, you can’t be a part of The Remnant because The Remnant don’t know they’re The Remnant. Now go eat some stories.

The Simple Explanation

My back hurts. twitter.com/fwoodbridge/st…
— Fred Woodbridge (@fwoodbridge) February 18, 2012

Exercise

I’m in for it!

My job consists of sitting. The only exercise I get is from my fingers picking at various keys none of which are more than two inches from each other (exercise idea: keyboards with more than two inches between the keys). That and walking. And oh yes, eating.

To read the literature, this sedentariness is killing me faster than if my wife were to start spiking my coffee with small doses of carpet cleaner. As a new father, this won’t do, of course. But there’s the rub: the only time I can possibly hit the gym and stop the company which owns said gym from royally helping me rip myself off, I’d need to get underway by 5am. Which means a 4.45am wake up. Which means a 9pm sleep time if I’m going to be of any use the next day, which means ad nauseam.

I trust you see my ‘quadrilemma.’ So, it’s die slow faster, or die fast slower, or die fast faster, or die slow slower. Or something. And while I’m figuring all this out, there’s food—as in consuming less, but better. It seems you can’t out-exercise a bad diet. Curses! So there’s that as well.

Strangely, in High School, I was a jock of sorts. I ran the 100m sprint (badly), the 400m (badly), threw Shot Put (badly), the Javelin (badly) and played Soccer (NOT badly). Arriving on American shores, not unlike Cortes, seems to have been a bad move for your humble correspondent (for the arteries in my case, and for the Indians, in Cortes’) because I immediately started sitting—for school, for church, for watching sports—instead of playing—for, well just about everything. America is the Seating Capital of the World. We sit better than any Goddamned People in the Universe, a boast I can make unless they discover The Milky Sit.

The other question I must answer before it’s too late (ie. I die, in case you’d forgotten what this was all about) is what kind of exercise I should half-kill myself doing. I hate being a human being because [a] nothing is easy, and [b] everything is a paradox. So, to get better, I have to work at self-inflicting pain and now I’m trying to decide exactly what version of pain I should be enduring so I can take even more pain in the future.

I’ve read (which I do a lot of) that getting the heart and other stalwarts of the cardio-vascular system to work better is indeed better. So it’s cardio. But I don’t like cardio and I’ve read (some more) that lifting weights, in addition to building muscle which helps “burn” fat—even though the only burning taking place is the cozy campfire in your lungs—also is “cardio-protective.” I’d rather something that was “death-protective,” but surely I ask for too much, aye, what?

I think what I’ll do is to start a cardio program for the next four weeks then switch to moving masses of iron inches first this way then that. My only regret is I should have decided this before the onset of Old Man Winter because absolutely nothing sucks (sorry Professor Mondo) more than walking from the car to the gym wearing gym clothes at 5am on February mornings in Boise, Global Warming Climate Change notwithstanding.

Wish me luck.

The Spider’s Web

A question on the LSAT, first:

Poor nutrition is at the root of the violent behavior of many young offenders. Researchers observed that in a certain institution for young offenders, the violent inmates among them consistently chose, from the food available, those items that were low in nutrients. In a subsequent experiment, some of the violent inmates were placed on diet high in nutrients. There was a steady improvement in their behavior over the four months of the experiment. These results confirm the link between poor nutrition and violent behavior.

Then:

Which one of the following, if true, most strengthens the argument?

1. Some of the violent inmates who took part in the experiment had committed a large number of violent crimes.
2. Dietary changes are easier and cheaper to implement than any other type of reform program in institutions for young offenders.
3. Many young offenders have reported that they had consumed a low-nutrient food sometime in the days before they committed a violent crime.
4. A further study investigated young offenders who chose a high-nutrient diet on their own and found that many of them were nonviolent.
5. The violent inmates in the institution who were not placed on a high-nutrient diet did not show an improvement in behavior.

Well, what do you think is the correct answer and, if you like, why? Bonus question: how many of the Wall Street Occupiers do you think would be able to answer this question and get the wrong answer?

The Project

Several years ago, I was the lead designer, architect, and all-round champion of a big project. Everyday I went in prepared for battle with skeptics and naysayers of every stripe. Were it not for my blind devotion to what I knew was right and true, I would have given up—almost did, many times—and turned over the hospital to the inmates. Every day since, however, my design’s been proven to be the right one, by constant practice and testing.

Skeptics, I can take. Blind naysayers, on the other hand, happy to impede progress for various—almost always petty—reasons are the bane of my existence. I can’t stand these people and unfortunately, there were more of these than the former.

As the project neared completion despite its many man-made potholes, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that the “CEO” would be handing out certificates of appreciation at a lunch ceremony to project team members. I felt we’d deserved praise especially knowing we wouldn’t be getting any raises—also, free food tastes great, doesn’t it?

With the appropriate paeans to teamwork, something called “shared vision,” and hard work over, the time to dispense that certificate arrived and I found I was excited. Sure, it wasn’t worth the paper it’s printed on, but I like framing shitty certificates, it’s a character flaw.

My name was called, I walked up, shook hands with the Big Guy, had my picture taken, got a nice “thank you for your service” (so this is what servicemen feel like) and walked back to my now cold—and as it turned out—rather crappy spaghetti, a silly smile of satisfaction pasted on the puss. What happened next almost detached my brain’s left hemisphere.

The number one hellspawn, the master of disaster, the naysayer-in-chief, Lord Voldermort himself. Yes, his name followed mine. I hadn’t even seen him in the “banquet hall,” which is what this restaurant called a never-used outhouse attachment to their building. And yet, here he was, walking the same path toward the same Big Guy, getting the same inconsequential “thank you for your service,” same camera flash capturing the moment for the company newsletter, the jaunt back to his lair chair, my smile pasted on his incubus face!

If it were up to this guy, we wouldn’t be here. He’d tried everything short of walking in with an AK47 and shooting up the place. He’d hemmed and hawed. He’d raised objections at such a furious pace, they seemed to meld into a raging stream of endless German profanity. By the second day he was on the project, he’d stopped extending anyone the courtesy of a “hello” preferring a vampiric scowl and toothy snarl.

The most painful part of the project for me wasn’t the many, yellow hours spent devising and conceiving solutions to all the varied technical problems that inevitably attended a project of this size. It wasn’t dealing with the personalities of all the geeks of varying corpulence welded into too-small seats around too many conference tables. It wasn’t the interminable meetings. It wasn’t answering the same interminable questions hurled by people who thought they’d stymie this know-it-all this time! It wasn’t formulating answers to those questions so they’d make sense even to my embryo of a son (at the time) only to see the answer make hardly a dent on their high-tensile-steel armored, Rhino’s backside brains. It wasn’t even dealing with Mr. Personality, Demon Hellion with diarrhea mouth.

No.

The most painful part of this entire thing was that I’d been the one who suggested Dickhead for the team. Yes ladies, I’d been asked who I wanted on the team and recalling a time in the distant past when he seemed nice—I’d taken his talkativeness as a sign of a lively brain, not realizing maggot-infested decay can have the same effect—I wrote his name down and welcomed myself into hell.

And there he was, his goat hoofs cladding past my table, cradling the same certificate I’d just got for doing nothing at all. He’d stopped “working” on the team after two weeks, choosing rather to disappear back into Cesspit Valhalla where the very best assholes are forged. The horns on his head glowed with what I knew he thought was pride, if such a virtuous feeling is allowed to exist in the pure darkness that is his heart.

My hands grew heavy as the slaggy, ersatz gold lettering on the certificate proclaiming the everlasting thanks of a grateful nation to one Frederic Woodbridge, III and his descendants now and forevermore, faded into a puke-green patina. This worthless piece of paper was now well and truly worthless. If they saw fit to slide one of these things across to the one person who had actively worked to sabotage the project, there was no standard, no judgment, nothing. It was utter meaninglessness. Crap. Vapid. Air-filled. Inconsequential. Trifling. Shallow. Weak. Paltry. Putid. Wretched. Magno conatu magnas nugas.

The certificate spent almost a year in the trunk of my car, after which I tossed it onto the top shelf of a bookcase in my study and there it remains still, the paper personification of a black hole.

Happy Independence Day

To one (likely reader) and all.

83 Problems

This was in my Evernote from 2007. Why, I have no clue:

There once was a man who had a problem. He’d heard about a wise guru that had answers to difficult questions. He decided to find this man.
After a long and difficult journey, he ended up at a temple high on a mountaintop. He entered and found the guru meditating. The guru, sensing the man’s presence, opened his eyes and looked up.

Guru: Ah, I see you have a problem.
Man: Yes. That’s amazing! How did you know?
Guru: Actually, you have 83 problems.
Man: Oh my gosh! It’s worse than I thought! 83 problems! What should I do?
Guru: Solve them.
Man: OK… I guess I can work on that. When I solve my 83 problems, then what happens?
Guru: You get 83 more.
Man: @%#$@!!!
Guru: Actually, everyone, every single human being, has 83 problems, from the homeless peasant, to the leader of your country. And actually, some people have 84 problems.
Man: What’s the 84th problem?
Guru: The 84th problem when you believe that you're the only person that has 83 problems. This is truly the greatest problem.

Do you have 83 problems? Great. Solve them. Do you believe you’re the only person that has 83 problems? Then you have 84. Solve that one first, then work on the other 83. 
Source:  http://www.humanbeingcurious.com/page1

Ecce Homo

Don’t Talk To The Police!

James Duane explains why even innocent people should never talk to the police (and thank God for the United States of America and the Constitution).

Actually Made Me Sad

Life Saver

If you have a baby, you have a problem.

There will come a time and day when, like my poor little guy, Freddie, you'll need to give him liquid medicine either for a fever or an ear infection. And when you do, you'll rapidly discover that babies don't like droppers, injections and the various other ways mommy and daddy attempt to insert medicine into babies mouth.

Enter the dragon:

This thing is ingenious! Daddy pours the medicine into the reservoir and gives the pacifier to baby. Baby stupidly thinks this pacifier is like any other old pacifier and whamo! baby gets his dose of medicine.
If daddy had been in a hurry, he'd press the plunger and the stream of goodness would explode into baby's mouth--baby will NOT be happy, but you'll be out of the door in two seconds' flat.

It's easy to use, keep clean and a positive life-saver when you have to give your baby medicine.

Misc.

My good (childhood) friend Chidi got in touch after almost two decades--hi Chidi!—and asked after my brother and mom. I had the unpleasant and sorrowful task of telling him my mom had died.

In his commiserative reply, he told me something about my mom: she had gotten him his first library card. For some reason, this particular bit of news was quite upsetting. Mama was such a person, kind and noble beyond measure, as Chidi put it. I do not think I will see her kind anymore in this lifetime which is all the more upsetting because I realize Freddie—who’s 11 weeks old today!—will never know her in person.

RIP mama.

We Are All Connected

This video is a rather interesting musical “mashup” of utterances by Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Bill Nye(?). Watch:

The one thought that kept popping up in my mind was the amusing one of how silly it was. Here we have eminent scientific personages waxing poetic about the cosmos and Nature and how insignificant are we humans when placed in cosmological perspective:

“I know that the molecules in my body are traceable to phenomena in the cosmos. That makes me want to grab people in the street and say, have you heard this?”

All this while blithely disregarding the capital ‘E’ explanation: God.

Says Dawkins’ ilk: Of course all THIS happened by utter chance. Indeed.

OK, I’ll shut up and continue to watch these men of science attempt to worship God by searching for the light switch in a dark room.

For the record, however, know that Christians have been saying “we’re all connected” before Science ever did. Indeed, we’ve been trying to “grab people in the street and say, have you heard this?”

Your Chair Is Your Enemy

That is the opening sentence of an article on the New York Times’ Opinionator dealing with obesity and exercise. According to this enlightening article by Olivia Judson,

It doesn’t matter if you go running every morning, or you’re a regular at the gym. If you spend most of the rest of the day sitting — in your car, your office chair, on your sofa at home — you are putting yourself at increased risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, a variety of cancers and an early death. In other words, irrespective of whether you exercise vigorously, sitting for long periods is bad for you.

That last sentence is a bit alarming, most especially for those of you who, like me, don’t exercise but do sit for long periods. So, what’s wrong, specifically, with sitting?

The answer seems to have two parts. The first is that sitting is one of the most passive things you can do. You burn more energy by chewing gum or fidgeting than you do sitting still in a chair. Compared to sitting, standing in one place is hard work. To stand, you have to tense your leg muscles, and engage the muscles of your back and shoulders; while standing, you often shift from leg to leg. All of this burns energy.

There’s more in the article that makes me very worried, especially as I’m already a fatso.

But it looks as though there’s a more sinister aspect to sitting, too. Several strands of evidence suggest that there’s a “physiology of inactivity”: that when you spend long periods sitting, your body actually does things that are bad for you.

As an example, consider lipoprotein lipase. This is a molecule that plays a central role in how the body processes fats; it’s produced by many tissues, including muscles. Low levels of lipoprotein lipase are associated with a variety of health problems, including heart disease. Studies in rats show that leg muscles only produce this molecule when they are actively being flexed (for example, when the animal is standing up and ambling about). The implication is that when you sit, a crucial part of your metabolism slows down.

Some of the solutions some people have advanced are, according to the article:

Some people have advanced radical solutions to the sitting syndrome: replace your sit-down desk with a stand-up desk, and equip this with a slow treadmill so that you walk while you work. (Talk about pacing the office.) Make sure that your television can only operate if you are pedaling furiously on an exercise bike. Or, watch television in a rocking chair: rocking also takes energy and involves a continuous gentle flexing of the calf muscles. Get rid of your office chair and replace it with a therapy ball: this too uses more muscles, and hence more energy, than a normal chair, because you have to support your back and work to keep balanced. You also have the option of bouncing, if you like.

Or you could take all this as a license to fidget.

This has got to be a wake-up call to people like me (and you!) who work in IT, sitting for most of the day. Get moving!

One Day At A Time, A Precis

The news of the last few days is the death of Ted Kennedy. I wonder what he’ll have to say to that poor girl he killed just before They open the trapdoor to Hades … I’d give anything to be an angel at the Almighty’s side as He hears both sides, divine fingers gingerly playing with the lever. Knowing God (yes, I do!) He’d probably forgive and forget.

Kennedy was a degenerate socialist elite asshole. Some others have espoused the idea that while they didn’t agree with his various stances on polity, he should be commended for “his service” to which I say pish! The man settled on to the teat of government work and didn’t let go for one second, helped usher in a bunch of really stupid legislation and policies. Would to God he’d just kept to the two things he did best: murderin’ and philanderin’.

Yes, below the belt but in the Kennedys’ cases, you gotta hit ’em where it’ll hurt: below the belt and between the legs.

Earlier this week, one of my co-workers dropped a big pile of stink: they’re moving on to (what they think are) greener pastures and of course, they couldn’t have picked a better time to drop this bit of news, what with the holy hell unleashed on us. Let me put it this way … I’m going to have a good hard think before I ever agree to hire on someone like this again. Sigh.

And so the weekend starts. Next week is going to be busy, but there’s the weekend. Only one hour away.

Sweet!

Happy Independence Day

Here are some other examples of fireworks photography, spellbinding.

Who's Bad?

One web dollar to anyone who correctly names this bad ass woman:

Good luck.

Late To The Party

But it's still a cool party: