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My New Personal Blog

I created this blog in order to house some of the more personal entries from energy for celerity, and in order to continue a personal blog.  I think that it is best to make energy for celerity into a tech only blog so that I can get it to a wider audience and then use this blog for all of my random writings.  Think of this as the sister site to energy for celerity and one you are probably only going to read if you know me and you're curious about my new life in New England.  I may mention entries on the other blog, but I will keep this one mostly for personal anecdotes, rants, and other minutia. 

The Post-Modern Era and Lost Souls

I think liberals are brainless, conservatives are heartless, and neo-cons.. well, let's just say that I put more faith in 20th c. philosophy than 18th c. theology. We've taken all of the good parts of any Steinbeck novel and ripped them out. Now we're left only with blind progress and authoritarianism. It's illegal for me to walk in a park after sunset, and I can be issued a citation for doing any of a hundred other things that should be at my discretion. Environmentalism and Libertarianism are just counter culture; environmentalists lack an important element of "carpe diem," and Libertarians have no real concept of culture in the first place. So here we are in the 21st c., lost. We have no just war to fight and space is no new frontier. We are a nation, a developed world, of lost souls with the luxury of debating some of the most meaningless minutia.

The upshot is that many generations have felt the world resting on the eve of destruction or moral turpitude, yet some of the best human beings have sprung up after those supposed endings. Maybe this is a curse though, for so many generations of people to feel that the world constantly turns in the wrong direction. If we believe that humans have control over this direction then we are left feeling alienated by the efficacious majority, but if we believe that this direction is outside of human control then we are united only by our impotence and helplessness.

Why is the world this way, where is it going and what ought we to do? Every sect of man proposes a different answer to these perpetual questions. They may provide an ideology, a lifestyle, or a saying or two. What many or most of these sects fail to realize is that because of the limited nature of human understanding it might be more earnest to live with the questions posed and unanswered. This is not to say that we should be shocked into a state of inaction, but rather that we should not act with such certainty on prescriptions for living.

Modern medical science will not cure your 21st c. ADHD child, a child who would have been normal or rambunctious a few years earlier, and it won't cure your depression. Science has treatments for those dispositions, not cures. Sometimes depression will peak through the heavy linen cloth that these drugs drape over it. It seems strange that we no longer accept that sometimes the world is a dark enough place to render depression a natural and acceptable reaction. Maybe post-modernity is the era in which man decides that the lowest lows and highest highs are no longer worth experiencing and tries to do away with them completely.

For my part, I will focus on the people closest to me and those who are ideologically similar. If I spend too much time fighting with those I disagree with then I will spend less time choosing a way of life for myself. A way of life shouldn't be solely a reaction to an opposing ideology; I won't choose to embody all contrary statements just for the sake of showing my displeasure. The smaller the area I focus on, the more likely I am to change it in ways that I deem beneficial. I'll focus on my immediate family and my friends for now, and if I ever have the influence then perhaps I will later focus on a slightly larger community.

Keirin Videos and Bike Thieves

This will be a short entry. I found two keirin videos worth posting (a race and an ad). I've been searching everywhere and still cannot find high quality videos of these races. They must make it out of Japan somehow though, so help me out by posting a link to a site that streams them if you find one.

This commercial for keirin racing may be of interest to you as well:

Everyone hates bike thieves. In NYC, where bikes are stolen with some regularity and tempers are high, I would say that being a bike thief is probably a very dangerous occupation. Take for example this video of the second half of a beating that a bike thief received after trying to steal a bike messenger's Cannondale track frame.

Ouch. Hopefully he'll get a real job after that.

Catching Frogs and Keirin Races

Today I woke up at 2pm. I have no idea how I slept so late, but when I got up I didn't even feel groggy. I ate a bagel and then went to catch frogs with Julia. I haven't ever, that I can remember, caught frogs. I've captured tadpoles before, and I think I've chased after a frog or two in my life, but I've never scooped frogs up with nets and plopped them into a bucket. Happily, I can say that the frogless void of my childhood has been filled.

I didn't keep track of how many I caught, but I can tell you that Julia caught more. That being said, I feel that I had a very respectable frog catch overall. I will add as a disclaimer that all of the frogs we caught were eventually freed unharmed.

Our frog collection:

I can say that frogs are very active in captivity. In the wild they are often completely motionless, camouflaging with their surroundings unless they absolutely have to jump away from you. Put them in a bucket though, and they will not be calm captives.

I love frogs. Catching frogs is a real kick, but with a net I feel that I have quite an unfair advantage. Next time I'd like to try with just my hands. It might actually be more pleasant for the frogs, too. I can't explain why, but when I could get a frog out of the bucket and into my hand for long enough, it would stay there. Initially it tries to jump away, but if you keep it in one hand with the other over it so that it can't jump away, eventually it calms down. After this happens you can take your other hand away and the frog will just sit there. Maybe they like the heat.

A calm frog:

Finding frogs involves the ultimate gestalt switch. At first I looked around and I couldn't find any frogs at all. Then, after stepping down to the edge of the pond, I saw an odd piece of half-decayed leaf poking about a fourth of an inch out of the water. It caught my attention for whatever reason, and so I stared at it. As soon as I did I saw that the decayed leaf wasn't a decayed leaf at all, but the top of a frog's head.

They are so well-camouflaged. Several times while I was catching them I would fail to get one in my net only to see another, unmoving, a foot from where I was standing. You start to take a second look at every little pile of muck and every leaf. In this particular pond, anything poking out of the water within a foot and a half of the bank could be a frog (sometimes, of course, they were on the bank too). The intelligent ones stay very close to the long grass that has half-decayed in the water. They are about the same color, so often you see a bit of the grass poking out of the water and overlook the set of eyes right next to it. If you do see the frog, it can dive into the thick, soggy grass in order to escape your net.

Our catch, again:

Anyway, moving on to Keirin racing. I have been searching off and on for two days for high quality (preferably high definition) Keirin racing videos. I have no idea why these seem so hard to find. Please, if anyone knows where I can find high quality videos, tell me. I don't want videos of Americans with carbon-fiber-everything racing in velodromes, I want more traditional Keirin racing. It would also be cool to find a source for watching the races as they happen. If not streamed live, then maybe released shortly after the race. I can't find any source for this, and I'm sure it's just because I can't read Japanese. Someone please help me out with this.

I'm also disappointed by the lack of Keirin racing and velodrome related posters available on the internet. I have checked auction sites and large poster websites only to find crappy looking posters in French. I know that these must be available -- how do Keirin fans in Japan decorate their walls otherwise? I need something to spruce up whatever apartment I eventually end up moving into.

I will conclude my entry with a video Julia shot of me joking around. She is on the other side of a door that I am trying to close (I have socks on and the floors are hardwood). Locking someone out is has never been so hard.

Burlington, Bikes, Wilco, Apartments, Dumb Yale Kids and More

One major difference between California and Vermont (or at least Burlington, VT): People here wear helmets. Well, many of them do. This is funny to me not because it is a bad idea in general, but because it seems less dangerous here than in California. The drivers here give you a lot of room and all that I have encountered seem accustomed to driving near cyclists. The one reason I can think of has to do with the fact that there are so many damn potholes in this town.

On another note, there is also a severe lack of serious riders. To qualify that last statement I should say that I haven't found any yet. Supposedly UVM has quite the cycling team, so the serious riders are hiding around here somewhere. I just don't know where to look yet.

Speaking of bikes, if anyone reading this ever gets filthy rich, one of these would be a great gift (seen here):

Oh, and for winter please buy me one of these. When I tried to find one I was greeted with Japanese, which I can't read. No matter though, because I'm sure they cost $150 each anyway. That's the problem with independent clothing companies (seen here).

Yesterday I was walking Church street and a man passing with an old guitar case said "Hey, you just missed us playing California Stars." For the smallest moment I was internally shocked. I love the song by Wilco, but how could he know that? Or was it that he knew I'm from California? Equally impossible. Luckily I remembered almost instantly that I was wearing my Wilco shirt -- so all of this made sense. Minutes later, while Julia and I were buying very bad imitations (I'm told) of Philly Cheesesteaks, I saw a musician sitting on a chair. When I got near he said "I've got one for you," and proceeded to play California Stars by Wilco. I tipped him and we sat on a rock and listened to a handful of very well sung covers.

Today I decided to learn the song, which turns out to be only 3 chords. While searching for the tablature I came across this advertisement. I've boxed it in red on the left.

Way to make a man feel homesick. Santa Barbara. California. I guess that I am a bit homesick. That being said I absolutely love it here and I'm not ready to return any time soon. I think that I'll feel a lot better after I secure a place to live, get a job, and set out some kind of scholastic path for the future. This is probably less homesickness than it is a desire to return to solid foundations.

Apartment hunting is a horrible experience. It wouldn't be nearly as bad if people were more professional about it. If a landlord puts up an ad (say on craigslist) and then starts the process of locking up a deal with someone, he or she won't actually take the ad down until the deal is closed. This means that the ad will be up, but when you call you'll be told that the place has already been taken (they won't say 'tentatively' because I assume these things usually go through). Of course what they should do is take the ads down at this stage so that other people don't waste their time. If the deal falls through, then re-list the property. It isn't hard. It's an annoying process.

In addition to nonsense like the above, the average apartment (at least in Burlington near downtown) is a wreck. Usually it's a wreck with a lot of stairs to climb in order to get there. The prospect of coming home from a really hard ride only to have to carry my bike up three flights of stairs is not very appealing.

Anyway, I'm sure (or I'll pretend) you were wondering why 'Dumb Yale Kids' is a part of the title for this post. Some people may have actually read my entry which included a bunch of links to various sites around the net, and a small fraction of those people may have actually clicked on Academic Earth. The site is a collection of educational videos created in the classrooms of prestigious academicians at several universities.

So far I am two lectures into Game Theory, taught at Yale by Benjamin Polak. While I find the professor amusing and intelligent, I was surprised to see that the quality of the interaction between the professor and the students was quite poor. Not only are the students' answers to his questions absolutely inarticulate (of course, with grand exceptions), but they are more often than not completely incorrect. I find myself sitting in front of my computer wanting to shout the answers at them, and I'm not even doing this for a grade. It's embarrassing.

I suppose that I shouldn't be all that surprised. Students are students, after all. Part of me is sad at having seen through the mirage though. I grew up thinking that universities like Yale let in only the best, and now it is more obvious than ever that good test scores do not necessarily mean that a person is all that intelligent or gifted.

All of this being said, I am sure that Yale has some amazingly intelligent students (especially graduate students). It's just a shame that this video does not seem to reflect this. Since I doubt that I would have been accepted to Yale if I had applied, I have something like a desire for all of Yale's students to be more intelligent than I am. Many of them aren't. I guess that is just not how the game works. I wonder if there are any schools around any more that truly only let in the best of the best.

Now for the 'and More' of the title. I wanted to post a link to a documentary film by Kerry Candaele called Following the Ninth. The film examines the ways in which Beethoven's Ninth Symphony links people together across 5 different continents. It explores the ways in which the music is still relevant today. I was directed to this website by a professor at Santa Barbara City College, Joe White. I hope that you will find the trailer interesting; I think that the premise is good, and I'll certainly watch the film when it is released.

Finally, I leave you with the lyrics to California Stars by Wilco:

I'd like to rest my heavy head tonight

On a bed of california stars

I'd like to lay my weary bones tonight

On a bed of california stars

I'd love to feel your hand touching mine

And tell me why I must keep working on

Yes, I'd give my life to lay my head tonight

On a bed of california stars

I'd like to dream my troubles all away

On a bed of california stars

Jump up from my starbed and make another day

Underneath my california stars

They hang like grapes on vines that shine

And warm the lovers glass like friendly wine

So, I'd give this world

Just to dream a dream with you

On our bed of california stars