Brown People vs. Black People

You know how people are either brown people or black people?  Brown or black being the predominant "accessory" color.  Brown shoes, black shoes.  Brown belt, black belt.  Brown bag, black bag.

I've always thought I was a black person.  I have more black shoes than brown, I think black eyeliner looks better on me than brown eyeliner (when I actually manage to wear the stuff).

And then of course he has to say, "I think you're more of a brown person, with your skin tone and hair color."  Then again, he's biased, because he's most obviously a brown person.

So because I'm curious, here starts the great Brown Experiment of 2010.  I'm still skeptical.

The Gripping Hand

One of my favorite operators in C++ is the ternary operator, rarely used in practice.  I was first exposed to it my first or second year of college and immediately liked it.  It was just such a quick and elegant way to express something that could take up four or five lines of code.

I'm not quite sure where I was going with this now, because I really wanted to talk about The Gripping Hand concept in Niven and Pournelle's "The Mote in God's Eye".  Possibly because ternary operator makes me think of ternary logic, and this "gripping hand" concept kind of deals with that. 

I think humans tend to be a bit binary in how we think (on one hand we have A, on the other hand we have B).  So this idea of the Gripping Hand was novel and interesting to me in the book.  Basically, the aliens in the novel have three hands; two hands for detailed work, and one heavy "gripping hand" for the strong-arm stuff.  Because these aliens have three hands, their logic follows suit: on one hand we have A, on the other hand we have B, but on the gripping hand, C.

One of my classmates from USC, who you could say is one of those engineer-types who needs the ideal, perfect solution, asked me which job offer of two he should take.  "Job A makes more money and is stable, but Job B is innovative and unstable.  I'd get to program with Job B."  He liked neither offer enough to pick one on his own.  "So go hunting for more jobs," I said.  Not that he liked that idea any better, but hey.  I guess even the Gripping Hand argument can't win all the time.

Every Time I'm Disappointed . . . .

I try to tell myself that I wasn't entitled to whatever I thought I was supposed to get.  Why this is such a difficult concept for others in my generation, I'll never know.  It certainly is frustrating trying to explain the concept to people who just don't want to see it.  Maybe I am not being articulate enough.

For example, I'm not entitled to receiving e-mails from random strangers from whatever online dating service I use decides it wants to match me with.  I'm not entitled to phone calls from certain guys I happen to be infatuated with.  Unless I'm actually in a relationship with some person and can reasonably expect a certain behavior from that person, I'm not entitled to whatever behavior I thought I was going to get from that person.  Or something like that.  (While it's possible I can correctly predict what will happen given two data points, that is certainly no guarantee, and it's not fair of me to blame the other person for the surprise.)

I have to treat myself respectfully and love myself fully before I can garner any similar feelings for or from another human being.  By putting the responsibility of my happiness and satisfaction in my life out of my hands and into someone else's, I've automatically doomed myself to disappointment and misery.

Also. . . .isn't it nice that life isn't quite what I expected it would be?  For all the downs, I've had some pretty awesome ups as well, including ones I was not anticipating.

One More Breath

My yoga instructor has a great philosophy.

"All you need is one more breath", he tells us. "This is practice for what we do in the real world. Dealing with the frustrations and tensions on the mat is going to help us when we're faced with challenges in our lives. Being calm and learning how to relax in Warrior II is going to help you remain centered and calm when faced with stressful situations at work and at home and in the rest of our lives."

As we come down from Standing Split, he says, "Clasp your elbows, bend your knees, relax your neck and just breathe."

Just breathe. Because all we need is one more breath.

One more breath.

Just one more breath.

Go Learn Something!

Stanford Engineering Everywhere
DeviceGuru - Stanford offers free CS, Robotics courses

Cool! Wanna see what Computer Science is all about? Take a free course from Stanford! It would be nearly identical to the course that's offered in-the-flesh on campus, plus you'll get to see if Computer Science is something you want to delve into further.

In the perfect world I envision in my head, learning would be free. This is a step towards that.

Fencing Is A Sexy Skill To Have

Super Sweep: US Is Now a Fencing Power

I've always wanted to learn fencing. I even bought and read a book on the subject. But I never had the opportunity to take classes, which I think is essential for a martial art.

I think it's great that we're starting the Olympics off with some good medal wins. I've never been wild about the summer Olympics, and I'm definitely not paying a lot of attention to the Beijing Olympics, but I think it's good that we can get together with our fellow nations and have some friendly athletic competition.

I should define what I think a "sexy skill" is. A sexy skill is a skill that might come in handy if you were a super-spy, with a sufficiently low probability that an average citizen would have that same skill. Like piloting a helicopter (fixed wing aircraft is kind of sexy, helicopters are much more complex to control and, therefore, much more sexy). Fencing made my list of sexy skills.

The ultimate sexy skill is the skill of observation. All the "spy stuff" I read point to this. A good spy is supposed to see/notice something and remember it to the greatest detail. What a target was wearing on a particular meeting. What people's voices sound like. Phone numbers, addresses, important dates. You can't write it down, because that leaves a paper trail.

So now you know.

User Interface Design Flaw

On my new car I have a keyless entry similar to this one. It's actually kind of ingenious, to have the keyless entry on the key itself instead of on a key fob.

The biggest problem I have with it is that I tend to accidentally press the buttons when I'm just holding the key (or trying to start the car). My suggestion to improve it is to put the buttons on the side of the key, leaving the driver to grip the key in a "normal" way without having to worry if he/she just unlocked all their car doors. The key is big enough that you could fit buttons on the side of the key and I think it would be slightly more intuitive that the current user interface.

Hey. It's just an idea.

The Allure of the Manual Transmission

I feel safe commenting on this, because a close friend of mine and I are in consensus, and the theory must hold some water.

There's something essentially attractive about a man who can drive a stick-shift. Perhaps it's "just a stereotype". The message seems to be "I can drive a manual transmission - I can 'handle' my car", perhaps alluding to the message "I can 'handle' my woman" (not in a bad or misogynistic way!). This is the way my friend describes it. I don't think it's a very satisfactory description of this intangible feeling.

It's a very masculine, "I'm in control of my domain" vibe. It's something I find very attractive.

I don't know any female friends who can drive a stick-shift, so I'm not sure what riding with them might be like.

Of course, this quality has zero correlation with the asshole rating of the driver. Ride at your own risk.

Communicating Through Mind-Melds

What is desire? What is wanting something so badly you must have it at all costs? What a great feeling it must be to want someone so badly, to want to reach out and communicate with someone at such an intimate level that it hurts. Is that only lust?

What does it feel like to need to, I don't know what to call it, mind-meld with someone on an intimate level? I'm not thinking about sex; I'm thinking about the connection one could make if they touched someone so that each would know what the other was thinking and feeling. If we could mind-meld, would there be no misunderstandings?

People are such social creatures. But we're so far away. When we touch it's a light year away, and IM must have been so people between galaxies could speak.

Meeting People

Quite a while ago, I overheard some professors and students discussing something very interesting in the Museum Lab (it happens).

Basically, our society has no real way for us to meet new people for the pure purpose of socializing. Think about it; most of the people you know, you've met in one of a couple ways: through school/work/church, or through other friends/family.

Breaking it down, all the people you've met through school or work are colleagues, who you may or may not want to hang out with. People you met through church were probably involved in some church function that you were also involved with.

Friends and family are where things get interesting. We don't choose our families, and I know we all have a few interesting characters in our family trees. Friends may have started out as colleagues at school or work, or maybe they were neighbors or roommates.

In our society, there's really only one socially acceptable place to meet new people: the bar/club/liquor-unleashing establishment. Since I've only been to a bar in Twin Falls twice, and that was with my cousin, I haven't met any new people there. Nor would I want to; I got way too many lecherous grins from scary-looking people there.

Meeting someone at church is pretty much out of the question; I don't plan on being here long enough to get involved with the music ministry there, or help out with RCIA. Both groups are where I met most the people I knew in the parish I belonged to in Butte.

I'm not in school anymore, I don't have a job (yet), and I haven't met one friend here yet. It's not that I'm living a complete hermit lifestyle; I go to town every day and log on the internet at the public library, and I visit Barnes & Noble at least twice a week. My neighbors look like families, with no Finished-and-Unemployed college graduates to talk to, or even 30-year-old kids living at home to talk to.

I would have thought by now I would have at least met someone new and interesting.

I don't have a gym membership (my outdoor running trail is quite nice, actually), and I definitely don't know where the other 20-somethings hang out.

If anyone has any ideas or comments, I'd like to hear them. After all, this is just a theory, and I would assume that there are lots of cool college grads in Twin Falls (or any town) to hang out with.

Men in Victoria's Secret

I have a theory (based on observances and experience) that several people have said I needed to blog, so here it is. It's definitely not organized, but I do think I make some sound general points.

Men (who are heterosexual and have no 'issues' with sex) generally like seeing their girlfriend/wife/etc. in pretty underthings. However, they will rarely venture into what I'd like to call "the estrogen bubble" on their own.

Usually, men are dragged into Victoria's Secret by their significant others, who want to shop and buy pretty underthings. While the ladies are busy trying on/looking at/etc. pretty underthings, the men are busy (uncomfortably) trying to look interested with the merchandise without appearing peverted to the rest of the world. If more than one man is in the store, they won't acknowledge ever seeing the other men. In fact, I would guess that 80% of the time men's eyes are on the hot-pink carpet, because it's the only "safe" thing to look at.

Did I also mention that they probably do this while holding their lady's purse?

After the men are allowed to leave the store, they now get to hold the pink shopping bag the size of a medium dog.

Ladies, if you can get a man to do this, it truly must be love.

If a man happens to venture alone into a Victoria's Secret (presumably to buy something lovely for his woman), he will never, ever touch the merchandise. He will wait until one of the helpful saleswomen approach him, and unless he knows his lady's sizes, will say that the size the saleswoman wears is the size his lady wears. Invariably, he'll point out what he wants and have the saleswoman fetch it off the rack for him.

This poses the extreme irony that Victoria's Secret ad campaigns are definitely targeted toward men, especially with slogans such as "Buy Me Sexy" (which I just realized is a double entendre).