Ted

finding something to like

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 04:54:03 GMT

I really want to give it a chance, but this Unpopular Science magazine is bumming me out.

Graduation Ceremony!

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 20:44:05 GMT

I just went to my high school graduation ceremony yesterday. I want to tell you about the speech I heard.

I suppose I'd better justify myself first.

There was a freak hailstorm on the day of my outdoor graduation ceremony, so we rescheduled for the next weekend, inside the auditorium, but the auditorium roof caved in the day before and we cancelled again.

A week later we had a local movie theatre booked, but there was a bomb scare. The local dance hall the next week was accidentally double-booked and we lost the coin toss. In desperation, we just planned to have it in a parking lot, and this time there was a rain of frogs the night before and the whole place was quarantined. Two other high schools offered their auditoriums, but both of them backed out for fear that they'd get hit by a fire or earthquake or whatever else -- nobody wanted our particular bad luck.

All summer through there were 14 separate attempts to reschedule the graduation, and all failed. Then another remake over Thanksgiving break, but nobody could agree on a date and time. Winter break graduation fell apart due to infighting, and the next spring the class after us refused utterly to let us participate.

Since then, we have had eight more attempts to have our graduation ceremony, each of them foiled, mostly by our increasingly busy lives. This weekend, eighteen and a half years later, we finally managed to have the ceremony. I got my diploma!

The valedictorian gave the speech that she had prepared for the original graduation:

"Soon, fellow graduates, we will be leaving these halls of learning and going out into the Real World. Nothing we have learned here can prepare us for the things we'll see in the Real World. In the Real World, anvils dropped upon your head will cause fractures and concussions, not comical dizziness. In the Real World, when your eyes jump out of your head from surprise you may be blind for life. In the Real World, cars cannot talk, or see through their headlamps, or smile with their front bumper. In the Real World, people are more likely to watch contrived and as-yet-unwritten awkward living situations on MTV rather than invent invisibility potions. In the Real World, all numbers can be expressed in decimal representation, though not necessarily finite or repeating. In the Real World, there are too many bridges that Roy Orbison can burn. Please keep all this in mind as you go out and face this new decade of the nineties."

The more things change, the less they stay the same.

Sea?

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 09:14:11 GMT

At midnight exactly, I turned into a giant sea turtle, about forty-five feet across, with ceramic lacing in my muscles to bolster them and overcome that whole square-cube ratio problem.

Anyway, I think I might spend all of 2010 as a sea turtle. You know, catch the waves.

Happy new year!

Air

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 05:48:20 GMT

The professor held up her hand with her thumb apart from her fingers, marking a volume of space maybe about three inches in a cube.

"This air here is far from boring," she told us, "If you were stuck inside this patch of air, you'd notice how much was happening. The air vibrates with the words I'm saying, and the hum of the heater system we're ignoring, and the rustling of everyone in the room. You'd have photons carrying the sights of this whole room, all inside this little patch of air, and down the electromagnetic spectrum, you'd have an orchestra of radio stations playing all kinds of different music, news, advertisements and commentary. If you paid close attention to those radio stations, you might start to understand the economic forces behind them, the push and pull of demographics, the jostling attempts to capture listeners, the ebb and flow of consumer spending and debt and new business ideas and the march of science, all in those radio waves, all in this patch of air. A little lower down the spectrum, hopefully obfuscated with a little dash of encryption, you'd find thousands of cell phone conversations, packets of wireless data, and so on. If you were really astute, you might even notice the faintest trace of a pull from every other atom in the universe, enough to build a full map."

I raised my hand, "You'd also see water molecules talking about the weather."

She nodded, keeping her hand around that patch of air, "Yes! And complex currents of air at different temperatures. And protons and electrons seeking one another out with a constant longing. But the drama doesn't end there. You have dust molecules drifting along in their reminiscence, and viruses seeking out new victims. You have bacteria pushing one another aside to gobble on bits of dead skin that make up the dust. You have bustling, vicious, verdant, violent and competitive life, blossoming full and rich dramas of birth and death, all happening in this little patch of air. You have reflections of distant dramas projected onto the molecules from elsewhere. You have every little bit struggling to get the most of what it in particular likes to get. And heedless of all of that, you have aloof and noble neutrinos zipping by, unperturbed by anything else that happens in this circle. And who knows how many other undetectable particles there might be? This is quite the exciting patch of air."

With her other hand, she indicated another patch of air, about three feet to her left from that first patch of air, and maybe a few inches back.

"This patch of air here, though," she said, nodding toward her left hand with a sour face of contempt, "is totally boring. Let's just ignore it. Stupid patch of air."

talking about talking about the weather

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 09:37:34 GMT

If you ask the water molecules about the weather, you will get a different answer from every single one. Sure are a lot of nitrogen atoms, one might say. Or aren't you a little big to be chatting up a water molecule there? Or I know, I know, these hydrogen atoms look like Mickey Mouse ears, right?

A particular water molecule doesn't know if it's rain or snow or steam or sleet or just ambient moisture, but you can pretty much assume that every little guy is excited to be part of the weather and eager to do its part. You gotta love 'em for that; they really give the whole thing their all. Thanks, water molecules. If I pass you by in the hallway tomorrow morning, I won't play it cool pretend not to know you. We're not like that, aich-two-oh, you and me. You know I got your back. Thanks for all that weather.

guard rails

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 21:33:23 GMT

The thing I think about, when I look at the sky, is the big volcano at the South Pole where all the kids gather together with their blue crayons of so many shades, lining up all jittery and excited for the moment when each one gets their chance to toss their personal crayons down into the Caldera and watch it come back up in smoke and paint the sky another few smidgeons of new shades of blue, then watch it blend in and swirl together in that uniform shade I see in the sky today. That lovely flawless shade that makes me think of childhood and smile wistfully.

Have you been there? Have you taken your own children there,or will you when you have them? I am scared to go back -- it would ruin me to go there and find out they've installed guard rails.

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:00:22 GMT

You know, it's pages like this that make me glad that I listened to that friendly camel who told me about the Internet back in 1890.

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 17:54:44 GMT

I just got voted off the Island of Dr. Moreau.

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 18:48:50 GMT

A Thanksgiving thought:

There are a lot of people alive today who were born when the gorilla was largely believed to be a myth, at least by Europeans.

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 08:23:54 GMT

"To complete your time machine, all you need to the right background music. Specifically, a gay heavy metal band."

I'm not sure that I've ever heard of one.

View Poll: #1490108

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:36:03 GMT

On a molecular level, I'm being very serious right now.

What I talk about when I talk about robots

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 04:57:39 GMT

A while back (when discussing Moleman Rhyming Slang) I mentioned terms used to describe desirable traits in robots. Some people were confused.

Here's a quick glossary!

Acidity: Refers to the acid-spraying reservoir that some robots have. Such robots spray people who attempt to discuss the weather with them. Do not bring up the weather with a robot that has high acidity.
Bouquet: When a robot brings you flowers, it is not a good thing. Usually this means the robot is going to start making weird romantic advances. Awkward!
Dry: All robots make fun of people, due to the Eleventh Law of Robotics. The "dryness" of a robot refers to how subtle the humor is. Seen as a desirable trait, because if the robot's humor is sufficiently dry, it's easier to ignore.
Earthy: Some robots have a tendency to play you folk songs on an acoustic guitar, to talk about their feelings a lot, to drink tea, and to do yoga. Robot yoga is pretty amazing to watch!
Fruit: Efforts to make more inexpensive robot brains led to the innovative trend of using old Apple ][ computers, usually picked up from obsolete high school labs. A robot that uses such a computer is described as "appley" or having "hints of apple." Further cost-saving trends included using old Apple knock-off imitation brands, such as pear, berry, orange and banana. Generally, such robots are cheap but efficient.
Legs: After watching the movie "A Christmas Story," most robots begin to collect lamps made from mannikin legs. This is seen as a desirable trait because it really does cheer up a robot to have a good hobby. The more legs the better.
Oak: Short for "Oklahoma School of Robotics." The Oklahoma School is a leading robotics design group, known most prominently for their trademark of teaching all their robots to breakdance. If a robot is described as "oaky" or having "flavors of oak" that means it can breakdance.
Smoky: A friendly bear who prevents forest fires. When this term is used to describe a robot, it can either mean that the robot is covered in fur, or that the robot helps stop forest fires, or just that the robot is friendly.
Tannins: Microscopic helper-robots that scuttle along the surface of a bigger robot with buffer-brushes, keeping the robot shiny. Usually seen as desirable, but they emit so many complaints in ultrasound frequencies that they exasperate nearby dogs. Called "tannins" because if a robot has too many, the robot turns that same weird orangey-gold color that white people get from chemical tanning cream.
Well-Balanced: The first generation of sentient robots were all based on the Golem of Prague, and had a tendency to go berserk, especially in the presence of Judaism. This behavior was euphemistically described as "erratic." The second and subsequent generations of robots didn't do this, but people ask if a robot is "well-balanced" anyway just to be sure.
Woody: Many efforts have been made to design robots that turn into automobiles. Overall, this is impractical and results in a mediocre robot that can vaguely transform into a mediocre vehicle. The only successful models so far have been robots that change into old station wagons with wood paneling. A robot described as "woody" can make such a transformation.

Hope this helps!

The duty of customer service is to absorb irrational hatred

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 21:30:45 GMT

Working as a dental assistant has been harder than I thought.

Today a man walked in and asked for multiple rows of teeth.

"Like a shark," he said, "but don't worry, I can sharpen them myself."

"Uh, we don't have the technology for that," I told him, "would you like to schedule a teeth cleaning session?"

"Nonsense," he replied, "We grow a second set of teeth for adulthood, right? Right? There must be some signal the body gets that makes it start growing that set of teeth. Simulate that, just find out what triggers it, what hormones or stem cells or whatever, and do that again like the first time. And then a few more times, so I'll have multiple rows. Like a shark."

"You'd be in constant pain, then, wouldn't you?" I replied, foolishly trying to reason with him, "Remember how much it hurt when you were a kid?"

"It would be worth it," he insisted.

"Also, your insurance plan doesn't cover demented experimentation."

"Look here!" he said, pounding a fist into the countertop, "I said I want multiple rows of teeth, not excuses. If you can't do this for me, I will go home and play Oregon trail. And name the characters after you. And keep playing the game really really badly until you get dysentery for realsies."

Whoa. Oregon Trail sympathetic hoodoo curses. Working as a dental assistant has been harder than I thought.

Snacks on a Plan

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:16:10 GMT

My buddy Matt is a movie-to-TV script consultant. He's responsible for writing the non-profanity lines that get dubbed over swear words when they put movies on television. You'd think that in his spare time, he'd either curse up a storm all the time, or maybe he'd constantly be all monkey-fighting this and Monday-to-Friday that.

Neither is true. Mostly Matt talks in a really high-pitched, almost squeaky voice. He swears occasionally but not often.

But Matt and I don't talk about our jobs often. What we like to do is get together on weekends in the mall, and open up a table booth, and tell passersby what utensils would most make them happy.

"You, sir, would be happiest with chopsticks made from finished pine wood," we might say, "and I know it might take a while to learn, but trust us, it'll make you happiest."

Or "you, ma'am, would benefit from a simple set of silver flatware. Antique. I thinka few places in this mall might have them, but I don't know which. Good luck."

Today, somehow, everyone we've met would benefit from a titanium spork. Matt and I are stumped. What does this mean?

Existence

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 06:49:18 GMT

I park up the hill from my house, because gravitational potential energy is a good way to keep car thieves at bay.

In the driveway near me was a car with a bumper sticker that read "MY OTHER CAR IS TOTALLY PANTOMIMED" and as I started up my car, I saw a guy (dressed in normal clothes and without benefit of greasepaint) walk out to the empty part of his driveway, about ten feet to the left of his existing car, mime sitting down and turning the keys, and suddenly become whisked off by some unknown force at the speed of an automobile.

I followed him, of course, as he sat hovering a few feet in the air, zipping along the street at the speed of traffic. He got to a gas station, and parked in a spot with no pump, then paid the attendant nonexistent mimed money, went to a blank spot in the parking lot, and pretended to pump his nonexistent car.

While he was inside getting his change, I was tempted to pretend keying his car, but I didn't. I just sort of stared at it.

He came out and we had a conversation. Well, I talked but he communicated his side of the conversation very effectively with gestures. He's proud of his pretend sportscar (but he does have a mimed bumper sticker on it that says "MY OTHER CAR EXISTS") and likes his job.

He works for the worldwide sinister conspiracy that watches over us all! He doesn't do the spying work, though. He's a technical writer. He takes all the data from the spying, and the Panopticon camera, and so forth, and compiles that information into the clean, concise, glossy-photo dossiers that you always see the conspiracy has in the movies. There's a lot of hard work in collating all that data into a meaningful dossier, but it's engaging work that uses his skills, and the benefits are great, so he's pretty happy.

Technically, he's not allowed to talk about it, but, you know, technically, he didn't.

the coming of archy

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:50:24 GMT

(today my LiveJournal is in disguise as Maria's, and I believe that means that I post poetry!)

by Don Marquis, in "archy and mehitabel," 1927

The circumstances of Archy's first appearance are narrated in the following extract from the Sun Dial column of the New York Sun:

Dobbs Ferry possesses a rat which slips out of his lair at night and runs a typewriting machine in a garage. Unfortunately, he has always been interrupted by the watchman before he could produce a complete story. It was at first thought that the power which made the typewriter run was a ghost, instead of a rat. It seems likely to us that it was both a ghost and a rat. Mme. Blavatsky's ego went into a white horse after she passed over, and someone's personality has undoubtedly gone into this rat. It is an era of belief in communications from the spirit land.

And since this matter has been reported in the public prints and seriously received we are no longer afraid of being ridiculed, and we do not mind making a statement of something that happened to our own typewriter only a couple of weeks ago.

We came into our room earlier than usual in the morning, and discovered a gigantic cockroach jumping about on the keys. He did not see us, and we watched him. He would climb painfully upon the framework of the machine and cast himself with all his force upon a key, head downward, and his weight and the impact of the blow were just sufficient to operate the machine, one slow letter after another. He could not work the capital letters, and he had a great deal of difficulty operating the mechanism that shifts the paper so that a fresh line may be started. We never saw a cockroach work so hard or perspire so freely in all our lives before. After about an hour of this frightfully difficult literary labor he fell to the floor exhausted, and we saw him creep feebly into a nest of the poems which are always there in profusion.

Congratulating ourself that we had left a sheet of paper in the machine the night before so that all this work had not been in vain, we made an examination, and this is what we found:

expression is the need of my soul
i was once a vers libre bard
but i died and my soul went into the body of a cockroach
it has given me a new outlook upon life
i see things from the under side now
thank you for the apple peelings in the wastepaper basket
but your paste is getting so stale i cant eat it
there is a cat here called mehitabel i wish you would have
removed she nearly ate me the other night why dont she
catch rats that is what she is supposed to be fore
there is a rat here she should get without delay

most of these rats here are just rats
but this rat is like me he has a human soul in him
he used to be a poet himself
night after night i have written poetry for you
on your typewriter
and this big brute of a rat who used to be a poet
comes out of his hole when it is done
and reads it and sniffs at it
he is jealous of my poetry
he used to make fun of it when we were both human
he was a punk poet himself
and after he has read it he sneers
and then he eats it

i wish you would have mehitabel kill that rat
or get a cat that is onto her job
and i will write you a series of poems showing how things look
to a cockroach
that rats name is freddy
the next time freddy dies i hope he wont be a rat
but something smaller i hope i will be a rat
in the next transmigration and freddy a cockroach
i will teach him to sneer at my poetry then

dont you ever eat any sandwiches in your office
i haven't had a crumb of bread for i dont know how long
or a piece of ham or anything but apple parings
and paste and leave a piece of paper in your machine
every night you can call me archy

Silver

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:08:46 GMT

If I got these, I would be the coolest werewolf hunter ever.

Who's with me?

View Poll: #1478158

But now that I think about it, maybe what a werewolf-hunter really needs is this.

Hybrid Vigor

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 04:08:13 GMT

"I've decided," my friend said, "that from now on I'll only eat food that comes from hybrid cultures. You know, like a Chinese restaurant that starts selling donuts because it's next to a police station. Or Zante's Indian Pizza, in San Francisco, where you can get a curry pizza. Indian buffets that serve a few Chinese dishes, or British-Indian cuisine, or Tex-Mex, or pretty much anything Jamaican. Maybe I'll drive down to Los Angeles and see if Poncho & Wong's is still open. Heck, I'll even take a pseudo-Indian hippie place, or a burger from a Chinese-American restaurant or Korean ribs from an all-you-can-eat sushi buffet. Anything that comes from an intersection of multiple cultures, I will eat."

"I think this is a good plan," I said, "and I will support it in any way I can."

"I'm glad I have your carte-blanche support," she replied, "because the other part of my plan is that I pour one hundred live tarantulas into your bed every night. Also, no take-backs."

Darnit! I don't want tarantulas in my bed, but she said no takebacks! There's no way to get around that.

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 05:05:05 GMT

"I was into this dying sun before it was cool," the satellite told me sadly.

Nose

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:19:01 GMT

"This wine has no nose," the wine critic told me, frowning.

"Then how does it smell?" I asked.

"Oh!" the wine critic replied proudly, "The producers of the wine, after they removed all the wine's aroma, managed to set up a complex electrical system in the bowl of the wine glass that conducts in such a way that the wine itself has a virtual but fully functional central nervous system, arcing through the liquid in subtle but complex resonances to create true sentience. Then they added chemical receptors to the stem of the wine glass, to give the wine a complete and functional olfactory system."

"And you're going to drink it?" I asked her, frowning.

"It is one of the most expensive wines ever made," the wine critic replied, "but it kind of zaps your tongue."

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 22:31:09 GMT

I've had this problem all day that whenever I put on music, the band shows up at my apartment to say hello.

David Bowie just said goodbye and went off to finish his day, and Devo are still here, chatting merrily.

I'm a little nervous because the next thing on my playlist is the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra.

I'm even more nervous about the song after that, which is Buddy Holly.

I'm even *more* nervous about Gwar, three songs away.

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 02:33:12 GMT

Hey all! I'm testing out a new experimental user interface for this LiveJournal. Please try it out.

To use the experimental UI:
1. Visualize exactly what you'd like the LiveJournal to do.
2. Violently headbutt your screen.

Hopefully, this advanced interface will be intuitive, flexible, and responsive.

Let me know how it works out.

Parrot fencer in the light

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 19:17:50 GMT

I saw online that the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2009 has been awarded to Venkatramana Ramakrishnan, Thomas A. Steitz, and Ada E. Yonath, for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome.

The ribosome is a complex of RNA and protein that is found in all cells. The ribosome is part of the mechanism that translates the DNA sequence into the protein sequence. At least, so Wikipedia tells me.

I think we can all agree that the prestigious and dignified Nobel Prize is, of course, somehow going to be an embarrassing failure and an obstacle for the ribosome. I see this award as an indictment of everything that is wrong with the ribosome today.

The ribosome should decline the award, and instead pass it on to malignant prions. There is no way the ribosome has earned this prize.

Shame on you, ribosome, for your bad lofty achievements! I demand an apology!

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 00:30:31 GMT

"I'm writing software that will not give me any superpowers," I told my parakeet today as he watched over my shoulder. "Every piece of software always has bugs, especially when you first compile it, so I figure if this software has no purpose except to give me no superpowers, and it fails the first time I compile it, I'll get superpowers."

The parakeet over my shoulder squawked disapproval, "Sorry, no. You're actually writing a software program to give you superpowers by failing not to do so."

Stupid parakeet! I almost had me fooled!

Cow Rehab

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 15:07:15 GMT

They tried to make me go to cow rehab.

I said moo, moo, moo.