The (Non)Evolution of My Thinking, Re: Snowshovels

As you know, the mid-Atlantic has been bombarded with snow since December. As the below timeline will illustrate, I don't learn from my mistakes.

Date: 19-20 December 2009 
Snow Accumulation: 24 inches
In Possession of Snowshovel? No
Thinking at the Time: Digging out without a snowshovel is going to be tough. I should have bought one before the storm. I should buy one now, to be prepared for next time. But wait -- what are the chances that it will snow this much again? If I buy one now, I'll never use it again. Forget it. That'd be stupid.

Date: 29-30 January 2010
Snow Accumulation: 12 inches
In Possession of Snowshovel? No
Thinking at the Time: Well, it snowed again. I should have bought that snowshovel, but there's less snow this time so digging my car out shouldn't be too bad. I really should at least buy one now. But wait -- what are the chances that it will snow this much again? If I buy one now, I'll never use it again. Forget it.
 
Date: 6-7 February 2010
Snow Accumulation: 32 inches
In Possession of Snowshovel? Hell no
Thinking at the Time: I should have bought that snowshovel. Digging my car out is going to be tough without a snowshovel. I should at least buy one now, just in case, right? But wait -- what are the chances that it will snow this much again? If I buy one now, I'll never use it again. Forget it.

Date: 9-10 February 2010
Snow Accumulation: 20 inches
In Possession of Snowshovel? Still no.
Thinking at the Time: I should have bought that snowshovel. I AM AN IDIOT. Now I have to dig my car out with my snowshoe. I HATE MYSELF.

So basically I spent two hours with my snowshoe digging my car out of multiple feet of snow on 11 February. Am I going to buy a snowshovel now, to be prepared for the next time? Of course not. Why? Well, I wrote it in all caps above, but in case you missed it: I AM AN IDIOT.

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Highlights for the Week

Correspondence via snail mail is pretty much done. Pen pals; creepy stalkers sending letters; vomit-inducing love letters; these are all a thing of the past.

Nowadays it's done instantly through email, texting, Facebook, and -- much to my annoyance -- Twitter. It's a Digital Correspondence (DC) age, for better or worse.

So here are some of my DC highlights from the week:

--Via email from my marathon consigliere, Coach, who occasionally has issue a virtual reprimand to me when I deviate from his assigned schedules. This snippet is not a reprimand, but hilarious:

"I have some concern about how the perm will affect your athletic performance. However, hair-style advice is likely beyond the bounds of my responsibilities as a coach. You look pretty hot though."

--Via TXT from White Josh, re: his first day of med school:

"Easily 1/3 of class is of the azn descent. Crazy"

The only thing that surprises me about this is that it wasn't higher. Let's face it, my people are taking over the hard sciences and technical fields, while disgraceful halfies like myself study in a liberal arts major, and are left to hang our heads in the shame we have brought upon our ancestors' computationally-inclined households.

--Via Email from Jay, re: awkward shirtless photos the GA Tech FB team took for PR purposes (including one picture below). I sent them to Jay for two reasons: 1) he went to grad school there; 2) Back in college he liked to walk around shirtless -- to the extent that we considered marketing a "Poolside Tanner" calendar for the neighborhood ladies. Just various photos of Jay shirtless. His reply to my email:

"I did rail slide naked in the background, but they must have photoshopped that out."

Can't wait for the video of that one to go viral, Jay!

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Affirmation of My Career Choice

Forgot to mention I went to the dentist last week for the routine check-up/taking of my money. Needless to say, I got violated. And not in the good way.

Back in my ignorant days, I was considering the dental track. Good pay. Good work schedule.

Then two things happened that changed my perspective:
1) I became disenchanted with science;
2) I realized I don't hate my fellow human beings enough to inflict pain on them.

There is no pleasing dentists:

Do you brush and floss regularly?
"Yes"
How often?
"I brush at least twice a day and floss everyday. Is that 'regularly' enough for you? Are we going to start arguing semantics on top of you gouging my gums with that scythe-thing? Who am I, Braveheart?"
Well, your brushing and flossing don't seem to be very effective.

Well, this last visit pushed me over the edge. I'm openly declaring that I am a rabid Anti-Dentite (They DO have their own schools!). Thank you, Seinfeld, for giving me the strength to admit it.

Seriously, dentists. You and I are done, professionally.

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The Root Beer Brouhaha

Remember Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs? The pyramid mapping out the basic needs of every individual, that works upward to higher functions as the basics are fulfilled? I guess I agree with most of it, but after some reflection (and copious consumption of root beer) since the last entry, I would insert the following level to the hierarchy:

Seriously. I would have stuck Henry's at a lower level, but friends and family would have raised a stink.

Since I just rewrote a fundamentally accepted psychological principle, let me make an unsolicited and unsubstantiated suggestion to psychologists: Give up. You will never be accepted as a "hard" science.

Anyway. A month or so back, BiL Ben made a borderline blasphemous statement:

Josh, I think I found a root beer that is equivalent to -- maybe better than -- Henry's: Bulldog Root Beer.

This was the root beer world equivalent to Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses to the Wittenberg church door. Keep in mind, this is the same Ben who would -- before it was illegal to carry liquids onto planes -- buy a 12-case of Henry's every year in WA state and use it as his carry-on when flying back east. He would hoard it the entire year until his next chance to go back west; so for him to make such a statement was either the undeliberated delirium of someone experiencing severe withdrawal, or this new root beer had to be considered as a true contender.

So, unlike the BCS, I decided to allow head-to-head competition make the decision. DJA agreed to participate. We would stick five contenders into a de facto Royal Rumble of root beers. The three others ("Natural Brew," "Dominion," and an Australian import "Bundaberg") were really peripheral to the headliner: Bulldog v. Henry Weinhard's. This was the Ali-Frazier of Root Beer Face-offs. Proper preparation was essential.

We took turns doing a blind taste-test -- one would pour and track which root beer was in which glass, while the other mentally prepared himself for sampling. The line-up:



And then we sampled. And took notes. And assessed:



Not to brag, but I went 5 for 5 on identifying the correct root beer.

As for the Henry's-Bulldog Face-off, the jury is still out. This one is close, folks.

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Random Thoughts From Thursday

--I watched The Forbidden Kingdom yesterday, with an admittedly unrealistic hope: That it would be the martial arts equivalent to Heat. See, Heat brought together, for the first time, two powerhouse acting legends: Pacino and De Niro. It is one of the best movies I've seen. Kingdom features Jet Li and Jackie Chan, two powerhouse martial artists, and so I hoped--

Aside from being visually gripping at times, I was underwhelmed by Kingdom.

--Re: The 12 Jan PotW and D&D/Medieval/Anime-Manga people, WJ Gchatted this to me:

WJ: We need to find some of those people and dissect their brains

Knowing him, WJ meant this in the the most non-violent way possible. Being a future MD, he simply wants to understand which part of the brain serves as the motivational center for completely withdrawing from/severing ties with reality. It's simple scientific curiosity. Checking the Manga aisle in the nearest Barnes & Noble will surely yield some potential candidates.

--There's a sign in my work bathroom that lists five things users should do. #2 reads: "Flush the toilet after use." Is it more disturbing that this needs to be stated explicitly on a list of instructions in an adult bathroom, or that it is not #1?

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The Futility of Multi-Tasking

We need to come to grips with the fact that, regardless of what science says about the capabilities and untapped potential of our brain, we are no good at multi-tasking. Instead of accomplishing a bunch of things in the same amount of time, we fail or do a sub-par job at all of the tasks we have attempted; we end up with scalding hot coffee in our laps, food stains on the report we're about to hand the boss, our car in a ditch.

What are we guilty of? If I were to list them all, "the list would be as long as my--" ...well, it'd be long.* I think we've all seen and made ridiculous attempts to be more "efficient" at the expense of doing a quality job. I'll try to list a few, and in the accompanying parentheses will be my own plea on these various attempted multi-task combinations:

• Talking on cell phone while driving. (guilty as charged)
• Talking on cell phone while bicycling. (definitely not guilty. If people want to do this, I am fine with it, but they should be required to have bicycle insurance; that way I won't try something risky to avoid hitting them when they dart out in the middle of traffic.)
• Singing in the shower. (guilty at times. Some would argue you can do these simultaneously without doing them poorly, but if you've ever gotten out of the shower without having rinsed something as fundamental as your hair, your showering performance has indeed dropped).
• Studying while listening to music. (perpetually guilty. Professors would always be thrown through a loop at the random Tupac lyrics that would find themselves interspersed in my papers on pre-modern Japanese literature and Haiku poetry. Weird.)
  
• Driving while applying makeup. (...not guilty)
• The ultimate: Writing down directions given by someone on your cell phone while driving (I know...I'm stupid.)
  

I will make note of one exception that I've observed, at least for males. Men, on the whole, aren't usually big talkers. But something about staring at a tiled wall 6 inches from your nose and peeing into a urinal, while standing next to other men who are staring at a tiled wall 6 inches from their nose and peeing into a urinal, just inspires men to talk. And they do it (the talking) better than they normally would outside of the bathroom environment, and as far as I can tell, their peeing hasn't suffered in performance, either.

Anybody care to prove me wrong by sharing their own multi-tasking triumphs?

To pre-empt your follow-up questions: Yes, people do talk to me when I'm at the urinal at work; and no, I don't like it.

*Kudos to those who picked up on the Ocean's 11 reference, and knew that I wasn't trying to be perverted.

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'Asian' v. 'Oriental'

I returned a missed call from my good friend Nartker a couple of weeks back. He had a question that he categorized as "a little embarrassing, now that you've called me back." He wanted to know my feeling on the usage of 'Asian' as opposed to 'Oriental'; I guess his old man was had been using 'orientals.' Was one more offensive than the other? Nartker felt that 'oriental' was reserved for food, but not race.

This has been a disputed topic at the annual big meetings since the 1967 San Francisco Incident, but no consensus has been reached.

To illustrate my stance on the topic, I told Nartker a high school experience of mine that irrevocably changed me. One day during my Sophomore year, I walked into Chemistry and all of the students were grinning at me expectantly, as if they had been waiting for me to walk in and start a party. I looked at the blackboard at the front of room and found out the reason why. In Mr. Lemberg's chalkmanship: "If you spin Josh around in circles, does he become dis-oriented?" (emphasis added)

(Keep in mind that this teacher was the king of horrible puns. When the Science Olympiad team went to Chicago to compete in nationals, we were driving alongside Lake Michigan and my best friend, who had a yacht-detailing business at the time, was staring in amazement at the lake and said out loud: "Dude, check out all those ferries..." Mr. Lemberg turned around angrily in the driver's seat and said in a stern voice: "JARRAD." There was an awkward pause as we tried to figure out what had him so upset. He said: "...I think they prefer the term 'homosexuals.' " Hilarious.)

Anyway. Back to the story that deeply affected my life. It was an ACLU-fueled lawsuit waiting to happen. I could have sued his labcoat-wearing, chemical-mixing, bunsen-burner lighting butt.

But I could have cared less. It was a good pun. Mr. Lemberg and I had a good rapport and we all got a good laugh about it and started class. So I guess nothing really came of it, and I just felt like telling Nartker a funny story.

Through a bit of discussion, Nartker and I concluded off of our gut instincts that 'Oriental' felt a little old-fashioned, like something pre-20th century straight from the Opium War or something. We concluded 'Asian' sounded more correct for our time and age. But then again, we're not experts.

Speaking of experts...Are there any on this topic?

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