Books: "The Sydeian Coalition"

Steampunk book number two complete.  The first one I read, The Difference Engine, is considered to be a steampunk classic and I could really see why.

This one?  Not so much ...

The Sydeian Coalition is ... fun.  It did hold my interest.  But most of the time I got the feeling that I was reading a novel that was due as a term paper by some eleventh grader.  No ... an eighth grader.  Grammar, punctuation, spelling, proper word usage, etc., etc., all were pretty much thrown out the window in this one.  However, there may be one small saving grace here in that maybe, just maybe, that was all done intentionally.  Y'see, this book was written in the form of diary or journal extracts by the two fictional (I assume ...) main characters.

Kids are good for your brain

I am just beginning to realize this.  Our kids keep my wife and me mentally hopping.  Our son Li'l D, in particular, asks us tons of questions, being the studious, intuitive and knowledge-seeking-type.  Today?  We were discussing ... oh I don't know what ... and I guess I said something along the lines of something being relative to something else ... who knows.  Li'l D immediately asked:

What does 'relative' mean?

I quickly thrust back with:

It's when you compare something to something else.

Not having enough, Li'l D parried my verbal comeback with:

What does 'compare' mean?

"Holy crap!" I thought to myself.  After a while, meaning a few years of questioning and interrogation like this, you begin to think quite quickly on your proverbial feet.  So, gathering up all of my mental weaponry, and as we were in the car heading to dinner, I looked ahead and said:

See the blue truck and brown van in front of us?  Which one is taller?

Li'l D:

The blue truck.

Dad:

Right.  So you compared the two, and the blue one is tall relative to the brown one.

He seemed relatively satisfied with that explanation, compared with previous sessions.

My words don't do true justice to this, but afterward, during dinner, it really got me to thinking that our kids really do keep us on our mental toes.  Maybe that is the answer to Oldtimers' Disease ... having kids around to keep you constantly thinking.

My Anti-Katie Couric rant

So back in December 2009 I wrote a rather long-ish rant about a bunch of various things, and in there somewhere I mentioned that I needed to write my Anti-Katie Couric rant.  So here goes ...

A few years ago I was listening to the radio, minding my own business, when Katie Couric really, REALLY pissed me off.

OK, to back up just a couple of minutes for some perspective ...

There is not enough time - Part 2

So my wife (finally) read my post on not having enough time to do the "me" things that I'd like to do.  She then came to me as I was playing my current favorite computer game, Age of Empires 3, a huge time waster for myself and, unfortunately, for my son as well, since he loves to watch every time I play.  And she said

"So you do't have enough time, huh?"

My initial thought was very simply

"Uh oh."

But then, shortly thereafter, it occurred to me that playing this game and another, BZFlag, that I have been playing for a number of years now, are actually items that are part of this same list but don't need to be on this list.  Evidently my list, and my post, were mis-named.  The post should have been titled

There is not enough energy

Energy?  Mental energy.  So many of the things I listed, like reading and learning about different fields of study (the mathy stuff), reading novels, studying our investments, even messing around with LEGO in the way that I'd like to do it (that is, building engineering marvels), all take a good deal of mental energy and, more important, an attention span.  I just don't have the latter right now.  That makes it difficult to dive into anything that requires it for more than literally just a few minutes, and therefore I, for the most part, don't.  Even reading a good novel means that you have to pay attention to what you are reading and remember all of it for your next reading sit-down.  Ain't happening.

The games, on the other hand, for whatever reason, require almost none of this.  They are pure brainless entertainment, the keyword being brainless.  Any idiot (well, most idiots ...) can play them, and anyone with a decent ability to ... think ... can play them pretty well.

So that, in a nutshell, I think, is my answer to my wife's unfortunately-very-valid question.

Now my brain hurts again ...

Don't you want me baby?

And then there is my daughter's theme song.  Imagine a 3 year old girl, adorable as can be, roaming around the house singing "Don't you want me baby?"  This one, like my son's various theme songs, will remind me of my daughter forever.

Life is a highway

I will always remember this song, forever and ever.  I think it's sort of my son's theme song (different, however, from the theme song that I mentioned here).  If you've ever seen the Pixar movie "Cars", then this song will surely sound familiar.  Growing up, my son (he's now all of six) loved this movie.  We abused the DVD dozens and dozens of times in the DVD player, watching it ... dozens and dozens of times.  We often hear the song during dinner, as the local pop station plays it every so often.  And next time I take a road trip, a good road trip, on the big ol' Harley, I most likely will be thinking about, if not listening to, this song.

Books: "SuperFreakonomics"

A spoiler right up front: Newborns in Uganda a few years ago, when born in the month of May, were 20% more likely to have visual, hearing or learning disabilities than those born in other months.  Huh?  Oh yeah, and the same thing tended to happen in Michigan.  HUH???  Oh yeah, and this pattern shifted to the month of April over the following couple of years.  HUH??????  Hint: It's all about Ramadan ...

"SuperFreakonomics" is an excellent book.  It is the successful successor to "Freakonomics".  I read the latter a couple of years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it.  In this one they both added more nuggets of statistical wisdom and they did a fabulous job of synopsizing both books into a single thought:

People respond to incentives in very different ways.

I won't expound on that; read the book.

I will say that I read this in just over a weekend.  It was fun, interesting, intriguing, compelling, and many other words that critics love to say.  Definitely worth your time.

There is not enough time

There really isn't.  There are so many things I really, really want to do.  But having a family and a full-time job means very simply that many ... most of the things that I would love to spend some personal time on ... I can't.

Like sit down for hours a day and 'invent' things with LEGO.  Some people seem to have that kind of time (not a slam, because I am sure he has a real full-time job and kids, but I just don't know how people like http://tinkernology.blogspot.com/ find the time, yet he does some absolutely amazing stuff).

Like spend much more time cooking, playing in the kitchen and out on our deck with our BBQ grill, learning and designing new cuisine ... I just re-read that and now see how funny the word "cuisine" sounds coming from me ... But I do love to cook.  Nothing too out-of-the-ordinary; I think the most unique food I have ever cooked myself was plantains.  I love watching Good Eats with Alton Brown and Primal Grill (formerly "Barbecue University") with Steven Raichlen.  I have several of each of their books and am very eager to try more of their recipes.  It is just plain fun to tinker with food, play with flavors and spices, design new rubs and marinades for the meats and veggies that we eat.  But pasta and various simple forms of chicken inevitably rule the day.  They are quick and easy ... as is the Chinese delivery guy ...

I saw a good deed the other day

So the wife and I were in New York City for the weekend, and oh what a wonderful weekend it was to travel to NYC.  We enjoyed at least 6 inches of rain per hour, or so it seemed, and the cabs looked like they would have done better as boats in the newly-transformed Manhattan "Canal District".  But on Saturday, for lunch I believe, we headed to the deli next door to our hotel to eat.  We ended up sitting at a small bar along the window, so we had a beautiful view of the back of some smoker's head, the ambiance of seeing New York City scaffolding on the building across the narrow street, and the pleasant smell of disinfectant, since the deli guy had just mopped our area a minute before we sat down.  Mmmm yummy!!! ...

Regardless, as we sat and ate I saw what I think was a good deed.  It was surprising, and nice.  I saw a mid-late-twenty-something guy walking on the sidewalk just outside the deli in front of us.  We'll call him Guy A.  Guy A was carrying, and using, an umbrella, because it was raining (didn't I just mention that??).  About 20 feet further I saw another guy, Guy B, run to his car which was parked at the curb and try to open the door.  He was umbrellaless (is that a word????  NOW IT IS!!!!).  His car door didn't open.  This resulted in Guy B frowning and smirking, since he was getting more wet by the second, and fumbling in his pockets for his car keys.  Right at this time Guy A, Mr. Umbrella, was passing by him, saw this and walked over to him and held his umbrella over Guy B to help keep him dry.  Guy B looked back, said "Thank you" or something equivalent (I assume --- I couldn't hear what he said, and Guy A remained there, implying to me that Guy B did not, in fact, say "Screw you!!!") and reached into his car for a few seconds.  Guy A remained holding his umbrella over Guy B.  Guy B, several seconds later, got out, closed his car door, put his arm around Guy A and they both walked on, out of my line of vision.

I am not sure that this was a pure act of unwarranted kindness.  It was an act of kindness, as

1. Guy A did try to keep Guy B as dry as he could;
2. Guy A didn't immediately go to Guy B; he saw him, but then did a sort of pump-fake as he took a step further and then changed his mind and went back to Guy B to help --- he conciously thought for a second about what he was about to do, and it was obviously unexpected.

But I don't know if Guy A knew Guy B beforehand or not.  I don't think so.  And it makes this unusual (for me) story all that much nicer to remember.

After that, I kept thinking of the phrase "Pay It Forward" ...

"Panspermia"? Really???

So I found this article a while ago: Professor: We have a 'moral obligation' to seed universe with life.  The idea is that we should send some earth-bound organisms into space in hopes that they will someday reach other planets and populate them with earth-like thingies.  I disagree with this, and I think it's stupid, but that is not the point of this post.  (Of course it isn't ...)

In this article I learnt a new word: "panspermia".  It means "the theory that life exists and is distributed throughout the universe in the form of germs or spores that develop in the right environment".  And this is, of course, a wordicle.

I had never heard of panspermia.  However when I first read the article, and when I first saw the word but before they really expressed the definition, I was under the impression that to spread human life throughout the universe they'd have to ... you know ... do like the word itself sounds and send some ... you know ... mens' wiggly things up into space in some kind of ... you know ... repository which would somehow keep them alive for ... you know ... a very long time until they got to somewhere that they could ... you know ... do their human spreading thing.

But I was wrong.  Doesn't matter though, becase some dumbass (hopefully not our Gubment) is going to spend buzzillions of dollars to rig up an environmentally-proper repository for the organisms, shoot it into outer space and then die happy because their Earth-originated germs will populate the universe.  How ridiculously stupid ...