Organic tampons

Yesterday, while doing groceries at Trader Joes I noticed that right under dogfood they had a shelf full of organic tampons! I wonder if the idea is that once you are done with them you can feed them to your dog for a nutritious iron-rich meal. Or if they biodegrade while they are inside.

The Secret

Last night I saw The Secret, a documentary movie that claims to tell you about the secret to all success in your life and that how all the great thinkers in the world, from Einstein to Plato were in the know and for a low price of 10 bucks or so you could be too. I downloaded the movie off Bittorrent and fully encourage everybody to do as well. Not because the movie is a complete waste of money, many of its ideas are decent, but because it bastardizes science in an unacceptable way and I'd rather not see that supported.

The movie is in the same vein as What the Bleep Do We Know and I think its makers probably saw that one and it occurred to them that they could make a lot of money by combining some facts with a lot of hokey stuff and promising the world. The cinematography and CGI is similar and some of the people being interviewed are the same as well. It seems Quantum Physics is the snake oil of the 21st century, there were two quantum physicists there to reassure us that even if we did not understand anything, there was science backing all their assertions. There weren't any truly whacked out people like Ramtha in WTBDWK though. Both the physicists in this movie also appear in WTBDWK. They do interview people with titles like 'Visionary', and 'Metaphysician' which I didn't know existed in real life. I wonder if their main job in life is to appear in jokes like 'I never metaphysician who was academically rigorous'.

The 'secret' in movie, and I'll let it out since it isn't that much of a secret, is what they call the 'Law of Attraction' . That is, you attract what you imagine. Thus, if you think about, say, getting out of debt, then you actually attract more debt since the you are attracting that by imagining it. Some truth to it, but not as much as they would like to believe. It is true, and believable, that going after things you want is more effective than going away from things you don't want. Also, that your subconscious mind does not understand negatives so putting things in positive terms is a better way to create a reality in your mind. What I don't believe is that putting things in a positive way, somehow invokes quantum mechanics in such a way that the cosmos gets together and presents you with the Lear Jet that you were fantasizing about.

Bean put his arms around her. Not because he felt any personal need to do it, but because he knew she needed that gesture from him. Living with a family for a year had not given him the full complement of normal human emotional responses, but at least it had made him more aware of what they ought to be. And he did have one normal reaction -- he felt a little guilty that he could only fake what Mother needed, instead of having it come from the heart. But such gestures never came from the heart, for Bean. It was a language he had learned too late for it to come naturally to him. He would always speak the language of the heart with an awkward foreign accent. --Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon

Right now, I totally empathize with this passage and it fucking sucks. I don't know how long it will take for me to feel that I belong in this world, or if I ever will. In fact, I am reminded of another quote,

"... News had always suspected that people who regularly used the word 'community' were using it in a very specific sense that excluded him and everyone he knew." --Terry Pratchett, Good Omens

This, I've suspected has been truer for longer than I've been cognizant. I dont ever recall being an accepted part of a 'community'. Now, I can function reasonably well as part of one. I can mix and chat and appear like I am having fun but I don't feel one with them. Not with nerd groups, not with religious groups, not with atheist organizations. Although, I don't do too badly in any of them. In fact, I remember being quite surprised at some point when I learned that not everybody feels this way. That there are people who seamlessly fit into communities. I thought this thing would get solved as I got older and well, it has significantly improved, but, for the moment, it seems I've hit a plateau and its depressing.

Gateway Arch

While puttering around on the google labs website, I discovered their Google Sketchup. A software for making realistic 3D models. While not intended to be a replacement for CAD I found it powerful and not so difficult to get the hang of. So as a start I decided to make a true model of the gateway arch, as detailed as could be without getting into things like windows and doors and stuff. After about a couple of hours, here it is. While I didn't bother getting the true catenary shape of the arch, it is pretty close as can be seen if you rotate the image in Google Earth you can get an exact overlap of my model on the real shadow. I made a better model. This took far less time and is more accurate and easier.

some days suck ass

So yesterday I was having a nice happy day with my bro and 2 cousins and we were having fun going around Detroit casinos and stuff. Then we return home later offers me his car which has been just sitting in his garage for a while. Now living in the vast midwest and not having a car also sucks ass and not in the fun rimjobby way either. All he was looking for was that I transfer the insurance to my name and he wasn't interested in selling the car, which was fine by me since I wasn't interested in buying the car. So I take the car out for a spin and drive it around and there are some issues, nothing major, but it runs fine so I am quite happy and the next day we go ahead and spend a couple of hours getting insurance and all. So far, all very good. I have a nice sports car, for almost nothing. I start off at night, with a cousin who I was planning to drop off on the way. The car starts off fine. We go sweetly about 20 miles, and I suddenly lose all power. Then I notice, the engine temperature thing is all maxed out, I put flashers on and let the car drift to the shoulder. There is lots of steam coming off from under the hood. Open the hood and the steam is all pouring out. At that point, my thought was that the coolant must be low and once the car cools down it will start, we were stopped on an exit ramp anyway, and we would just have to go off, our in some coolant and I'd be on my way. We waited about 20 mins for the car to cool down. Amazingly, the interior was almost freezing within 5 mins and we were literally freezing our balls off. The car took its own sweet time cooling. Another 20 mins and the car was cooler and gave it a try. Little response. We gave lots more tries and drained the battery. Then we called my other cousin, whose car it was to come with jumper cables and get some coolant. I was still und the impression that it would be a minor thing. Apparently another half an hour or so of trying to jump the car, pouring coolant and other esoteric stuff did not work. Finally, we call a tow company and get it towed back to a repair shop. Of course, being Sunday it was closed, So we left the car, but since I had to be back before morning in order to teach, I decided to take a rental and get home and then drive back up and drop the rental and take that car with me. This was an 8 hour round trip for me. Of course, being Sunday no rental locations are open except for the airport. Also, since I was reserving at pretty much the last hour, the rates sucked ass, and again not in the rimjobby way, though maybe for the rental company it was that way. We go over to the airport and they are out of the car that I had reserved. They upgraded me to a huge van big enough for 9 people. Anyway, I was already running 6 hours behind schedule and really wanted to get home and get to school and teach and get some sleep. Since this wasn't bad enough, my brother calls sometime and tells me he somehow has my house keys and all other keys with it. Fuck fuck fuck. So I can't even get into my home. So I go to my office and start working from there. Then I realise that I have grease stains on my jeans and there is no way I can teach like that. So I decide to go back home and hope that my housemate is up and he'll let me in. He's usually up by 5:30 but on this special sucky ass day that was not to be.Not only was he not up I could not rouse him by calling his cell or ringing the bell or banging the door. Finally, I decided to get creative. Checked all windows, tightly closed. Looked into basement windows, and one of them seemed slightly open. I pulled it open until it was like horizontal with a gap of a foot or so. These windows are a little underground so it was all overgrown. So first I jumped around in there to kill any snakes, scorpions, other nasty critters. Then being skinny and flexible I just somehow managed to slide in and dropped into the basement. dusty, cobwebby, leafy, but intact, and amazingly, no scratches or anything. I close the window and look for my kitty and she is nowhere to be sen. I wondered if something had happened to my roommate and her and if I would go upstairs and find a pool of blood on the carpet or something. So I call out her name again and again and then a little head pokes out from under the couch. Poor girl seemed totally scared by all the shaking going on in the house and people dropping into her basement. Finally, I did manage to take a quick shower and rush back to school and teach. Since things weren't bad enough, I receive a call from my cousin who has contacted the mechanic and apparently it wasn't a simple coolant problem. It seemed the gasket rings had blown out. Given the age and condition of the car, at that point my cousin decided to retire the car rather than put it on life support. No, of course, that meant that I cancel the insurance I had so enthusiastically obtained a day back. Now its been 36 hours since I last slept. Over $200 in the sink for a car that did not pan out and I still have to return the rental.

Sexual Harassment and you

I wanted to avoid putting stuff that wasn't my creation but I'll make exceptions now and then. This is an instructive video. It really is.

Kids say the darnedest things

I spent another night grading algebra midterms. The sole joy (and pain) of doing that is look at many of the responses. One of the response that brought lots of guffaws was this.

Solve:
2 ln(x)=ln(4x+21)
2 ln(x)=4x ln + 21 ln
2 x ln = 21 ln
ln = 21- 2x

Another kid correctly transformed 2 ln (x) to ln (x²) then converted things to a quadratic and finally solved and wrote 3=ln=6. I kid you not. This is after 2 weeks of spending time on problems very much like this.

Dawkins is God

Dawkins interviews Rev. Ted Haggard. While Dawkins is too classy to gloat over this guy's fall, there is some priceless ironical moments near the end when Haggard lectures Dawkins on arrogance. Also wonderfully delightful is when Haggard comes unhinged at the end though it makes sense in light of his meth addiction. He probably tweaked some, got paranoid, and lashed out.

Welcome

Welcome to my new blog. Zappa worship continues unabated. I initially tried to move away from Google to livejournal but the signup process proved too confusing there. And I rationalized creating a blog on blogger by thinking that google will anyway buy up livejournal in not too long a time.