Phrase Heard Around the World

I've decided to patent the phrase:

"Powered By AC"

For instance, this blog is not powered by Blogger, it is "Powered by AC" because who's writing it? AC baby! And my car is not powered by gas or DC electricity, it's powered by AC. Cuz who's drivin' it? AC baby! The computer that you're using may be powered by DC, but if I'm using it? Powered by AC.

Uh-kay, you get the point. If you don't, then it's probably because you don't know that A & C are my initials, as well as the ones for a type of electricity.

Thanks for the inspiration, David.

Caught By Surprise

Today, I took my mom to the airport early in the morning, and upon returning, instead of going back to sleep, I decided to start my day. Inevitably, I guess, I found myself nodding off while reading about symmetry and decided to take a "quick" nap. I just woke up 3 hours later, looked out my window, and guess what?

It is SNOWING.

The weather never ceases to amaze me. All the signs of spring in WA are here: The pink flowers finally blossoming forth from the naked trees, and the endless days of either rain or sunny rain. Snow is the last thing one expects here- even during the winter. But it is definitely snowing. Snowflakes are symmetric. So are the laws of nature. Sigh...back to work.

Econ for Dummies

What is a depression? How is it different from a recession? How does a recession or a depression occur? What is so troubling about the whopping number of home foreclosures? What does it all mean? Now I'm going existential...but these are some questions that have been floating around in my head these past couple weeks. Why?

The state of the economy has been making headlines lately, and I have no idea what the big deal is. For instance, a couple posts ago, I mentioned something I heard on NPR: "Now that analysts have finally determined that we are in a recession..." The second half of that sentence was "should we be talking about a depression?" As in, like the Great Depression of the 1930's. The expert that was interviewed for this segment basically said that all the signs were there, so yes, we should be bracing ourselves for the grand economic slam.

Damn, Armageddon's coming, so why do I feel so indifferent? Maybe it's because I don't own a house yet. Or maybe it's because the guy on NPR was over-exaggerating. Or maybe it's because I still don't understand what a depression or a recession is or how it all works. Like how does a troubled housing market signal a recession and a possible depression?

It was not until I read this Times article today that I finally began to understand what it all meant. Also the message in this article was quite the opposite of the NPR dude. It painted a much rosier picture of our economic situation, and basically made the case that the possibility of a repeat of the Great Depression is close to nil because the government is plugging the leaks before they turn into craters- unlike during the '30s- and they've been putting up such "safety nets" as Social Security and unemployment benefits since the post-Great Depression era, having learned their lesson.

So breathe easy folks! (Not that you were going to go out and buy that big-screen or Honda anyway, right?) According to the article, the sign of a true depression is when banks start failing en masse just when unemployment levels are booming. That is when we should all join the Great Bank Run, just as Jane and Michael did in Mary Poppins. And FYI:

Recession: A significant decline in economic activity, lasting a few months;

Depression: A much more significant decline in economic activity, lasting much longer.

To be honest, I'm a bit suspicious of the overly-positive message of the Times article. I mean, the government is plugging the leaks, but the fact that there are leaks- serious ones like the near-bankruptcy of major Wall Street securities firm Bear Stearns- should not be taken too lightly. The reality of the situation is probably somewhere between it and the NPR dude.

Made in Taiwan

“I was biologically conceived in Taiwan, although I was born in Hong Kong, so technically I was made in Taiwan."

~Taiwan's new president Ma Ying-jeou

Made in Taiwan? I thought that phrase only applied to clothing and toys. Well, at least we can be assured that President-elect Ma does not contain a high-risk percentage of lead.

Also, today I found out that I'm an enantiomorph! In other words, Sarah and I are "non-superimposable mirror-images" of each other, like a pair of hands. Of course this was truer before Sarah got side bangs, so if I want to stay a true enantiomorph, I'd have to get side bangs that go the other way.

Archimedes, Evolved (Somehow)

If you ever observe an owl watching its prey, you'll notice that its neck is extremely flexible. While eying its prey, it will turn its head 180 degrees upside down or even 360 degrees around like a corkscrew- all without moving its body. I was told that this is because owls can't move their eyes- they have to move their whole head if they want to keep their prey in sight. Dunno how true that is, I mean what kind of animal survives Darwinian selection if they can't even move their eyes?

Winter Soldier Hearings

Winter Soldier: US Vets, Active-Duty Soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan Testify About the Horrors of War

Hearing that the war in Iraq was a mistake and a disaster from people like me is one thing- hearing it from actual US vets gives it a little more weight. I was made aware of Democracy Now's broadcast of the Winter Soldier hearings by a friend, and thought I'd spread the word on this here blog thing.

Something I heard on NPR this morning: "Now that analysts have finally determined that we are in a recession (drip, drip, drip)..." (That was the dripping sarcasm that accompanied the statement.)

ARRRRRRRRRGH

This is a noise that I have uttered countless times since coming to live at home. Sometimes there are more G's and less R's, sometimes there are more A's and even more R's. But it is always the same basic noise indicating extreme, intense, head-banging-on-a-brick-wall frustration.

Once again, I feel the sudden urge to escape to Costa Rica with my dog. And once again, I realize I don't have a dog. Dogdammitall.

Wangbuggershittinarseheadinahole.

The Science of Trees

It occurred to me that the best way to learn to draw is to observe the things you want to draw. I once recently tried to draw a tree for one of my fanciful drawings, and it looked like a kindergartener had drawn it. So I started studying trees whenever I went on a walk or, yes, sometimes while I drove (would not recommend it), and today I drew a tree that looked like a 15-year-old might have drawn it! That's an improvement of 10 years after only a few days of observation! Since it is nearing spring and the flowers are blooming, I drew one of those with pink blossoms that you see lining a lot of sidewalks and driveways these days.

Trees can be classified into 4 different types: Trees with branches that:

a) have a positive slope
b) have zero slope
c) have a negative slope, or
d) start out with a fairly large positive slope but almost immediately level off like a log graph.

Sometimes, the ones with positive slopes have branches that slope way downward- this is due to the heaviness of the leaves I think, especially in evergreen (pine?) trees, making them look like they're having a bad hair day. The tree can have either a single or multiple main branches coming from the main node (this is where I start wishing I could draw on my blog). Main branches then have mini-branches bifulcating from them at varying points with the same type of sloping, and then those mini-branches also have mini^2-branches bifulcating from them at varying points (with the same type of sloping), and on and on. Trees are actually quite fractal!*

This fractal-ness of trees got me thinking about neurons and how much they looked like trees- with their branches, nodes, and bifulcations- and this in turn made me think that maybe it's true that the universe is a giant Russian nesting doll: microcosm within microcosm within microcosm of the same basic pattern. I don't think there is anything mystical about this idea. What works for a tree works for a brain, and what works for planets works for atoms, why not. And anyway, we always like to describe new phenomena through analogy to what we already know, so that when we first saw neurons, we explained their appearance by saying they looked like the branches of trees. In fact, I think the only way we can learn new things is through metaphor, or mapping from the known to the unknown through analogy. To see what I mean, try explaining a concept to someone who just doesn't get it. You'll find that comprehension will dawn once you start using the phrase "It's like..." or "It's kinda like when..." a lot. The best teachers make use of (good) analogies. This is where I bow down to the Analogy Queen and confess that I don't really hate analogies- quite the opposite actually:) Now I'm branching...point being,

There is a forest inside your head!

*Fractals are created by taking a pattern and repeating it over and over again in smaller and smaller sizes, so that if you focus on any smaller part of the resulting picture, its pattern looks exactly like the pattern of the resulting picture except at a smaller scale.

Crusading for Mutants

Yesterday morning, while I was swishing my Scope in front of the mirror, I had this thought: Humans are slowing down evolution. Think about it, a baby is born with three arms, and what do we do? We cut off the extra arm! Imagine how useful a third arm could be- you could be a world class pianist, you could shoot a basketball while blocking your opponent with your third elbow, you could rub your tummy, pat your head, and wipe your ass all at the same time!

Imagine if the same thing was done to dinosaurs eons ago. What is this flappy wing thing- you call that an arm? The mother dino would say, and she'd abandon her mutant winged child for dead, and we wouldn't have birds! And in some (human) cultures, twins were considered to be of the devil, and so the mother would abandon them in the forest- what would this world be without twins??? I'm a freak of nature, and damn proud of it!

Mutants rule!

Haha!

"In America, we don't speak French, we speak Freedom!"

Panera Proselytizer

Ohmygod, I'm being preached at! Dear God, please give me the strength to withstand this sore attempt at conversion!

Your favorite heathen,

Angie

Don't Make This Mistake!

Femmes musulmanes does not mean "female bodybuilders"!

It follows that Je n'aime pas les femmes musulmanes does not mean "I don't like female bodybuilders."

In my defense, musulmanes looks so much like "muscleman", I think it's just ridiculous that it doesn't mean that at all. But then again, it also looks like "Muslim", which is what it actually means. Fiiiiiiine, you win.

Didn't I say to expect gibberish from onforthhence?

What Do All the Following Have in Common?

Garage Empty
King Arthur
Infinity Hubbard
Please Cope
Helen Troy
Satan/Lucifer
Ima Pigg
Ima Nut
Ima Hooker
Mary Christmas
Rasp Berry
Ogre
Medusa
Leper Priest
Lotta Beers
Good Bye
Every deadly sin except for Gluttony

Answer: Bad Baby Names

“I can’t tell you,” Mr. Sherrod said, “how often I’ve heard guys who wanted their kid to be able to say truthfully, ‘Danger is my middle name.’ But their wives absolutely refused.” ~ quote from the above article.

The Importance of Peek-a-boo!

A while ago, I read that elephants can recognize themselves in the mirror- a big deal because it's a sign of self-awareness and thus of higher, more complex cognitive development. It makes you wonder what the elephant involved in the experiment was thinking when it suddenly recognized that the elephant staring back at it was actually itself.

Of course, it is hard to know because as mentioned in the article, humans typically reach self-recognition at 18 months, and who remembers anything that happened when they were 18 months old. After last night's reflection though, I think I have a smidgen of an idea of what Happy the elephant experienced in front of that elephantine mirror.

Maybe schizophrenic patients missed that crucial moment in their babyhood, of developing a solid self-awareness. They clearly didn't play enough peek-a-boo.

Babies 4 Peek-a-boo!

Reflections

I just thought of something weird:

If you're reflecting in front of a mirror, you're reflecting your reflection reflecting. Ouch my head. And then once you reflect on that, you're reflecting on you reflecting your reflection reflecting. And what is your reflection reflecting on? GAH!

I've finally succeeded in devising a method of driving myself insane. Expect gibberish from forthhenceon.

*Edit: And ho hum, no the previous entries were not gibberish, thank you very much!

Suspect Company

There's a guy in Forza right now that looks almost exactly like Big Puss from the Sopranos- eek!

Sometimes I wonder what kind of people I am occupying the same room with at any given time- mafia members, KGB spies, you just never know who could be drinking coffee at the table next to you!

And now, before wasting any more time, I shall go back to reading about time.

The Forza Guy's God

I've been frequenting a Forza coffeeshop in Lakewood lately, and this morning I had the best conversation with The World's Friendliest Barista. I walked in this morning, and was greeted with the usual friendly Tamil-accented "Hello, how are you!" He asked if my brother was not coming in today, and I told him "no, he's got church", so that's how we ended up talking a little bit about our own beliefs.

Then I told him about a really funny yo mama joke that I saw on a friend's gchat status (Your mom goes to college) to see if he thought it was funny*, only in his culture, they don't have yo mama jokes, so that kinda failed, jokewise. Instead he went back to the whole God thing (possibly I was the only one who left it in the first place):

"When people look for God,", he said, "they try this god and that god, they go to temple, church, read the Koran, the Bible,...they going down every route looking for God. But when you are trying to find your mom, you don't go to this woman and that woman asking "Are you my mom?". You know who she is, and you just go straight to her and say, "This is my mom". In this world, the first person you know is your mom. It's your mom who tells you who your dad is and then who is your brother and sister, and what is a tree."

"So what you're saying is everything you know you can trace back to your mom as the original source."

"Yes, yes! I don't know about God, I only believe my mom."

"That's the best thing I've ever heard! All truth leads to mom!"

See why I like this Forza guy? I can't say I agree with his mom-centric philosophy. As I told him, parents are generally wiser than their kids due to experience, but they're not necessarily always right. The world changes, you know? But still it's not every day that you hear of a guy who looks to his mother as his god-figure. What a lucky woman, I thought. And what a lucky woman his wife is too.

As I listened to his "Are you my mom? Are you my mom?" speech, I was hilariously reminded of that kid's book where the bird hatches from an abandoned egg and goes around asking "Are you my mother? Are you my mother?" to a dog, a cow, a plane, and everything that moves basically. In the natural world, the instinct for animals- well birds anyway- is to accept the first thing they see moving as their mother. The sensory stimulus is stamped into their brain as soon as they hatch, and you can read here about how the makers of Winged Migration took advantage of this natural "imprinting" to succeed in strapping cameras to the ducks' heads for filming.

*This morning, I related this joke to James, and I was surprised at his lukewarm response.

"I don't get it. Why is that funny?"

And well, you know what happens when you try to explain a joke...

Folks, is it not funny?

Kidding Korner: Taking Sides

Why did Sarah and Angie never lose a game?

Because they were born t'win!

I heart Google

Ok, I came back pretty quickly just to say how much I love Google books! I'm not sure if Google library is the same thing, but dude, free books either way! A lot of them have pages missing, but if the book is out of copyright, you can download the entire book! For now, I've only been skimming books I've found through general web searches, but soon, when I have more time, I'm going to read my first entire free book online- and it'll be a moment to celebrate.

For now, let me just say, thank god it's 2008! (I realize the hypocrisy of my statements- just a few days ago, I was dissing Qwest and threatening to run away from 2008's society with my dog. But hey, you diss some, you praise some.)

Some improvements I would love to see in Google books, though, are:

-ability to highlight: When reading online, I like to highlight as I go along because it helps me to read faster and to focus, but on these digital scans, we can't highlight with our mouse, nor can we use the Find tool to highlight key words and phrases; the only time words are highlighted is when the book is found through a keyword search...unless I'm missing something

-hm, I don't really have a second suggestion. Google books is just that great!

*Edit: I just thought of- discovered- another suggestion: get rid of the viewing limits! Aw, dude, I had no idea! No take backs? Oh well, luckily, there are such things as "previous editions". Also, I just discovered the "search in this book" box. Wow, just look at that learning curve!

**Update: So Google library is the same thing as its book search thing. You search through the library through the book search. Duh Angie. Ok, also, I discovered that there are 4 types of viewing availability: full view (can read/download entire book), limited preview (just as I tragically discovered, the previews are lush but limited), snippet view (something to do with keywords, I didn't really read the explanation), and no preview.

GUESS WHAT???

I think I've found my calling! When I grow up, I want to be...

a Classic.!

You know, a Classic, as in...really famous piece of artwork in a museum? Think Mona Lisa! Venus de Milo! Um...shoot I'm so uncultured. But you get the point.

How long does one have to wait to become a classic? Maybe I can be a Modern Classic!

I'll have to pick out a favorite pose. Should I be sitting or standing? Kneeling? Maybe I should pick an action pose, like the Thinker! I could be...I could be The Sneezer! (Should I be in the "Ahh" phase, or the "-chooo!" phase?) My, but this is so exciting! Suddenly, I feel so full of purpose.

Gotta go.

-The Sneezer

One of us has GOT to go!

I think the phone service people at Qwest should all walk off a bridge like the idiot lemmings that they are. In fact, include Comcast, and any other phone, cable, internet service provider, and credit card companies on that bridge. Whenever I have to deal with them, I can't shake the feeling that they're stealing my money. And yet, I can't live in 2008 without internet or a phone. What is a person to do?! I know- I'll move to Costa Rica and live in a hut by the beach with my dog and my books. What more could a person need, really? I need to go dog-shopping...

Spotting Omar and Bessie

Last night, I saw Omar Sharif in Monsieur Ibrahim. Omar Sharif seems to pop up in the most random places, but it's always a nice surprise. The last time I saw him was in the IMAX show at the Philadelphia King Tut exhibit, where he was the narrator telling the history of the King Tut discovery to his fake niece as if it were a nice bedtime story. Random!

The movie was very good, and I wouldn't mind watching it a few more times in order to listen to M. Ibrahim's sage life aphorisms. It's about the Koran and about an old man's need to leave his legacy, which he does by spoiling a 16 year old boy with goods, both of the tangible and the intangible sort. They end up going on a roadtrip to Turkey. Roadtrips are something every human being should do at least once in their lifetime. In the end, the boy, grown up now, becomes the owner of M. Ibrahim's convenience store. A boy walks in and steals stuff, just as he did so many years ago, and so he too gets the opportunity to take M. Ibrahim's place and pass on the knowledge of the Koran.

Aaron said he thought the ending was too contrived, though he loved the movie, and I agreed with him. Later though, under the influence of the bubbly no doubt, I realized that it- the ending that was really a return to the beginning- might be yet another parallel to the Islam faith; Muslims believe that the nature of life is cyclic. It doesn't make the ending any less contrived, but at least I understand why the director might have ended it that way. One of my favorite parts was when the boy Momo gave the prostitute his teddy bear.

Also, I took a mini-mini roadtrip to Olympia with the people I met through the French club (who are turning out to be so so awesome!) and had the best weekend ever in the middle of nowhere. As we were nearing our destination, we spotted a real, live brown & white cow hangin' out on the side of the road.

"Cow!" cried out Tom excitedly. Only, when a Frenchman says it, "cow" sounds a lot like "car". And cars, frankly, are not that interesting or uncommon, despite the fact that we were in Olympia. So Aaron and I were like "Uh, calm down Frenchman, it's just a car. They must have those in France too, dude."

So that's how we nearly missed our first cow-on-the-road sighting, but luckily, we saw it in time, and then Aaron and I were the ones yelling "cow!" and pointing and gawking at it like stupid city folk. Seeing cows on the roadside is somehow that much more exciting than seeing them grazing on the grass. Seriously though, it was like, we could have reached out of our window and touched it!

A Decade's Difference

Yesterday, I found myself hanging out with some people in their 30's. We had just met, so I didn't know much about them yet, but as I got to know them, I began to think about how different 30 year olds were from 20 year olds. When we're in our 20's, we are, generally speaking, full of aspirations and dreams like getting a doctorate, traveling to 5 countries, taking up painting, or writing a book. We are either waiting to find the right time or inspiration for reaching these goals, or in the process of reaching these goals, but we haven't reached them yet.

But as I lounged in the living room and listened to the idle chat of a couple 30 year olds, I thought about the two or three other 30 year olds I knew, and realized that these people have actually accomplished what they set out to do in their 20's. They sit nonchalantly, shy or boisterous, experienced for better or for worse, but they sit on all these accomplishments that make their older age a non-issue. When I think of turning 30, it freaks me out because it sounds so old. But these people who have actually reached their 30's don't seem to freak out about the passage of youth because they've done what they set out to do, they've got things to show, things to talk about- concrete things, not just insubstantial hopes and dreams. They appear dignified in my eyes, and make me look forward to that part of being 30.