Blog-Mahoney

A near disaster... but kind of amazing...

2012-01-29T21:06:00.000-08:00

With the new year comes a new round of high school students applying to Brown that I have the pleasure of interviewing. I cannot emphasize enough what a pleasure it is to speak with these young men and women--they do so much to restore my faith in humanity. Today was my first round of the 2012 crop.

I was standing in the local coffee shop where I typically conduct these interviews. I was waiting for my drink, and trying to scope out a place to sit. A table was opening up, and I was getting ready to make my move, when I saw her.

In addition to myself, the city of Eugene is home to a handful of Brown alumni. Other than a pudgy, older gentleman who is a recreational cyclist, I can't say I've ever had a conversation with any of them, but I know they're out there. We saw each other. I knew who she was. She knew who I was. What I didn't know was whether or not she knew that I knew that she knew who I was, and she was unsure if I knew that she knew that I knew who she was. What was absolutely clear was that there was no way I could conduct a Brown interview sitting next to a Brown alumna.

"Excuse me, I hate to interrupt but I wouldn't want you to get the impression that Brown is filled with nothing but overweight, antisocial, math geeks."

Of all the places in town to be at 11am on a Sunday morning, why'd she have to be there? Thankfully, just then, a table opened up just around the corner. I took a seat just minutes before my first interviewee arrived. The interviews themselves went smoothly--at least from my perspective. Just a couple more great kids who will hopefully be getting a big envelope in the mail this May. On my way out, we noticed each other again. I'm not certain if she knew what I just did, but I think we were both thankful I didn't take the adjacent table.

The unintended (sort of) consequences of losing weight

2012-01-28T02:07:00.000-08:00

My number one goal in trying to lose weight, it so make myself more attractive. After all, Maria Sharapova is a professional athlete. She's not going to be interested in dating some guy who doesn't have a rock-solid physique. Deep down inside, I know that a little bit of stomach fat isn't what's stopping me from dating a 10 like Maria. Me is what's stopping me. And the fact that she doesn't even know me. But there are other non-Marias out there, and while they might not be as Maria-y, they will still insist upon nothing but perfection from my abs. And so I must drop weight.

But I know that's not true. And so alternatively, I tell myself that I'm trying to drop weight so that I'll be faster at cycling. That is true. When it comes to racing bikes: skinny rules. Lance Armstrong even gave himself cancer so he could drop that extra weight. And it worked. I don't know if I have the talent to make it worth investing in cancer, but winning some local races would certainly be possible if I could get to 145 pounds. But I wasn't counting on how much losing weight would accelerate my cycling training.

Losing weight is very much a test of willpower, and willpower is hard. If the Catholic Church was still selling indulgences, I would buy them by the dozen. But that ass Martin Luther had to put a stop to that, so now I've got to do penance. An extra bagel at breakfast? Better go for a run! Mid-afternoon snack? Better hit the weight room! Trip to the frozen yogurt shop? Looks like that "easy ride" I had planned is going to turn into a hard ride. As my willpower has been faltering, I've been getting in 2-3 workouts per day for the past week or two.

My legs feel great right now. No, that's not true. My legs feel awful right now. They're pretty much in a permanent state of distress from all this exercise, but I'm getting faster. Right now it's only January--there's still a month before the first races of the season, and I think I've as fast as I've ever been right now. If I can keep this up until the summer races that I actually care about, I think I'll be in good shape. In fact, I might have to set a new weight target of 140 pounds--not that I think I'll ever get there, but the punishment I give myself as I fail to meet my weight goals will surely make me even faster.

And why do I want to be fast? To impress Maria Sharapova, of course (sorry, but I've been watching the Australian Open final while I type this).

Food lust

2012-01-25T13:53:00.000-08:00

I'm close... I'm really close.

I've lost 5.3% of my body weight since the start of the contest (yes, I know my feet still look fat). I have just over a pound to go... but let me tell you, I want to eat.

I want to sit down and indulge in cheeseburgers, and lasagna. I want to eat entire tubs of ice cream, and whole batches of cookies. I want to go to the movies and eat a giant tub of popcorn--no, that's not quite right. I want to sit at home watching Zookeeper on DVD, while eating an entire tub of popcorn.

Even if I "win" this week, I don't know if I'll be able to survive the 30 days. The real tragedy is that I know if I "crack" and indulge myself, it won't make me any happier. Biology is a fickle beast, and if I give myself the taste of cookies, I'll only want more.

Why didn't I become an engineer?

2012-01-23T22:51:00.000-08:00

Stupid, stupid me. Why am I studying economics? This afternoon, I had the great pleasure of going to an economics talk. For those of you who have never had the pleasure of hearing an economics talk, let me explain what goes on. First, there is a speaker. Often he or she is a distinguished guest of the university, though in this case, it was man applying for a job. After him, there are two assistant professors in the audience who are determined to prove to everyone that they're the smartest people in the room. Then, there are two tenured professors who are determined to prove that they're actually smarter than the assistant professors. Then, there are two more tenured professors who just like the sound of their own voices. There's a grad student who's too dumb to realize he doesn't have any clue what anyone else is talking about. Finally, there are about 25 people who are bored to tears, and struggling to keep their heads upright throughout this travesty.

By the time the hour and a half was finished, the speaker had made it through his introduction, and the assistant professor made it through 200 bullet points about how he would have estimated the equation he assumed would follow from the introduction, using data the speaker didn't have

So next time you're wondering why the Federal Reserve wasn't better able to prevent or respond to the financial credit, take comfort knowing that some assistant professor from Oregon has a really big penis.

But then it was over and the real fun started. Last week, I purchased for myself a Texas Instruments ez430 Chronos Wireless Development System Tool in a Watch. You know Texas Instruments? They're the company that's really good at dropping revenue 68% and closing plants.

Let me tell you, this thing is really cool. The watch has a temperature sensor, barometer, tri-axial accelerometer, and is fully reprogrammable if you're into that sort of thing.

Buying it was the easy part. Figuring out how to use it was a little more challenging. I have a wee bit of programming under my belt, but I've never had to deal with hardware/software interaction before. For my first project, I was hoping to take advantage of the watch's accelerometer as an analytic tool to support my chronic fencing addiction. The long list of things I hope(d) it could do would bore anyone who isn't a fencer, but the gist of it is I wanted to gain potential insight into a fencer's movement that might not be available to the naked eye.

Successful implementation of my vision includes lots of matrix algebra, which would most easily be performed in MATLAB, which is good for me, because MATLAB is the programming environment I'm most comfortable in. All I had to do was figure out how to get MATLAB to interact with the stupid watch. As I mentioned, I had never done any hardware/software interaction before, and learning how to do it required the frequent crashing of my computer as punishment for my poor code.

After just a little bit longer than it should have taken me to get the general interface programmed, tonight at practice, it was finally time to try it out. The first thing I needed was a way to mount it on the fencer. The watch is nice, but the hand position is far too erratic for my purposes (though measuring the hand would be a good extension of this project, Mr Assistant Professor). So I co-opted an old heart rate monitor and some duct tape to make a nice little accelerometer belt.

Then I just had to sit back and wait for the data to come in.

In case you were wondering, the data I got was every bit as shitty and useless as it appears in that picture. Well, not entirely useless, but not particularly useful as-is. My linear algebra wasn't quite up to the task of filtering complicated tri-dimensional acceleration data and isolating the axes relevant to fencing. So now I need to try to rewrite my data analysis using various tools I learn from Google.

But the thing is... this is fun. Way more fun than economics. Why didn't I become an engineer, where I'd have the luxury of working on fun projects like this all day long. I'm sure being an engineer would suck if I actually was one, but from where I'm sitting, I am beyond jealous.

Winter training

2012-01-19T22:31:00.000-08:00

Hey, you know that stupid Google+ commercial where a bunch of Muppets are dancing around like anyone actually uses Google+? Well, it turns that despite how stupid the rest of Google+ is, its "Hangout" feature is actually pretty useful.

The weather in Oregon has been downright miserable for the past week or so. There's been a little snow, a lot of ice, (naturally) some rain, and severe flooding. When it comes to riding my bike in inclement weather, I am all for enduring misery, but I don't want to compromise my safety. Not that I don't deserve the pain of a crash, but a broken leg would surely fatten me up as I recover. So as frequently as I can muster up the enthusiasm, I've been mounting my bike on the trainer, in front of my computer, and enduring some bad movies to try to pass the time... that is, until I had the brilliant (but apparently already-been-done) idea of combining the first paragraph of this blog post with the second to produce...

UNIVERSITY OF OREGON CYCLING TEAM HOT WEBCAM TRAINER RIDES!!!
These are, without a doubt, the most fun I've ever had on my bike, in my apartment, without a shirt, on a webcam with a bunch of other dudes. I think the pictures speak for themselves.

I have to give those nerds at Google some credit, the whole camera-jumping-to-the-guy-whose-talking feature is pretty cool.

But I don't know what they were thinking with this "reindeer" feature...

I mean, it's cool they can superimpose things on our faces in real time, but reindeer? I've compiled a small, but by no means comprehensive, list of things that would be better to superimpose on our faces than reindeer.

1. Groucho Marx mustache/glasses
2. Penises

That is all.

In today's edition of last night's dreams

2012-01-16T11:50:00.000-08:00

Last night I had a dream. The premise of this dream was that Katie and I were engaged in some sort of "Cooking" Contest. Now, at first glance, a cooking contest between us would seem to be a little one-sided. After all, there's no way here gruel would hold up against my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. But what you have to remember is that this was a dream world, and the rules don't always make sense.

The first part of the contest (and now you'll see why I put "cooking" in quotes) required Katie and I to run around the forest collecting vegetation to be eaten. Katie was pretty good at this, picking out assorted leaves, and fruits, and roots--all those things a person might actually eat. I was in trouble, so in my desperation, I just started pulling small trees out of the ground to add to my pile. When time ran out, it was revealed by the anonymous judge that I was the winner, because we were being judged entirely on weight, and not by substance. It was also deemed that as Katie and I were both classified as "large mammals" so therefore we should be eating "large vegetation." Katie's collection was said to be more fit for a bird.

The second part of the competition started with a different premise. There was a very cranky little girl who really wanted chicken parmigiana, and we were just about to make it for her, we realized we didn't have any chicken. This contest was to salvage the meal as best as possible. Katie quickly got to work making whatever weird healthy delicious thing she would. I suddenly remembered that I had some sausage in my refrigerator (as I really do have some sausage in my refrigerator). I was going to make that little girl some sausage parmigiana, and she would be the happiest girl in the world. Unfortunately, when I opened the refrigerator, I noticed Katie had set something heavy down on top of the sausage, puncturing the package and resulting in the meat going bad. Now I had no shot. I was very unhappy with her. Far more unhappy than the real Dan ever gets at the real Katie.

I think I woke up before this part of the contest ended, but things weren't going well for me. That sausage was my only hope.

Just another one of my enemies

2012-01-14T19:55:00.000-08:00

This December, my sister sent me a UNICEF Chanukah card with the following note:

"I bought it, but you'll be happy to know that it came form a thrift store, so not one penny went to UNICEF!"

(by the way, Katie, 2/3 of your Christmas presents are sitting on my desk waiting to be mailed to you, and the last one appears to have been permanently lost by the USPS)

It's a well known fact that I hate charities--this is a subject that I intend to devote a significant portion of the book I'll never write to, but there's one charity-related subject that has recently gotten me too angry to put off writing about. This is the charitable convention of "Please sponsor me to do [x] to raise money for [some 'charitable cause' that has absolutely nothing to do with x]."

A member of the University of Oregon Cycling Team was recently looking for donations for the "Polar Plunge", an event in Portland where a bunch of people jump into cold water to support Special Olympics Oregon athletes. I mean, I know they're retarded, but I'm sure even they would start to wonder how a bunch of middle class white people bringing themselves to the verge of hypothermia helps their cause.

But of course, I'm forgetting about the donations. Ah the lovely donations.

Participants must raise a minimum of $50 for the privilege of taking a wintry dip in an icy body of water in February and will receive a commemorative long-sleeve t-shirt and a bowl of soup, plus bragging rights!

Yes, this is where I come in. Now I am expected to donate money so that someone else can get a free t-shirt, a free bowl of soup, some bragging rights, and a little bit of money will be donated to the Special Olympics. Even if I thought the Special Olympics was a worthwhile organization (and I don't. There's already a much better organization that provided intellectually disabled young men a chance to excel in sports, and it doesn't ask for donations), why wouldn't I just donate my money directly?

If anyone wants to swim in cold water, that's absolutely fine. It doesn't bother me, but don't kid yourself into thinking it is anything but a selfish act (and much like my hero Ayn Rand, I fully support selfish acts). If I donate money to help your cause, I'm the one doing something for charity. You're just the asshole whose t-shirt and soup cuts into the proceeds.

There are countless other events and organizations built upon this model, but perhaps the biggest offender is Team in Training. This organization helps support "over half a million" people to complete endurance athletic feats, and in return, they have to bug the shit out of all their friends for money. I'm a big fan of competing in endurance sports. I spend hundreds of hours a year on my bike, but no amount of donations will make that time help support leukemia and/or lymphoma. How about instead of "sponsor me to run" Team in Training transform into Researcher in Training and instead of donating money so someone can run a marathon, I donate money to support someone getting an MD/PhD in cancer research? Or perhaps McDonald's Employee of the Month in Training where I donate money to charity for someone getting shitty job at McDonald's and donate all the money you earn from that job to charity? At least then something productive would be happening.

Clearly, I will never donate to these causes, but other people do, and this only encourages more assholes to bug me for money. Let me make it clear, if the extent to which you are "helping a charitable cause" is asking other people to donate money, you're not really helping--they are. You're just trying to appease your white guilt (or what's the 'white guilt' equivalent of not having cancer?). So go, run your damn marathon, jump into your ice cold water, ride a bike a kind-of long distance... and give your own money to charity because this just ain't doin' it for me.

A few other organizations that should be blackballed:
Pan-Mass Challenge
Relay for Life
St Jude Heroes

(if anyone else can recommend organizations that should be added to this list, don't hesitate to speak up)

My latest fashion accessory

2012-01-10T13:51:00.000-08:00

This is perhaps only relevant to Nick and Stu, but now the whole world will know just how damn stylish I am.

I was in the market for some new fashion accessories, and I decided a new bag was just the thing I needed to complete my wardrobe. After a long and hard search, I was just about to pull the trigger on this beauty, and that's when I saw it. It being the new Starcraft II Zerg Messenger Bag. It's got all the class and style of the Coach bag, but was on sale for $20. How could I resist.

It arrived in the mail today, and I couldn't have been more excited.

I know it might seem odd for me to get a Zerg messenger bag, since my number one motto in life is "I don't want to be a monster," but it's got the Queen of Blades on the cover, and she epitomizes one woman's struggles to not be a monster.

There are more designs on the inside. Hey, are those minerals glowing?

One more monster in there. I probably could have done without this one.

And me with the bag. Damn it feels good to be a gangster.

For today's dose of political outrage

2012-01-05T23:47:00.000-08:00

This horrifying story comes from Indiana where, apparently, a state senator has decided she has nothing better to do than introduce a law that would mandate "performance standards" for The Star-Spangled Banner, when played at state schools and universities. The as-of-yet undetermined standards for performance would presumably be created by today's leading authorities on music (read: politicians), and would fine the performers $25 if their rendition didn't meet the state's standards.

My first thought is that this bill would be absolutely devastating to local schools. When I was in elementary school, we must have sung that song about once a week, and let me tell you, we were absolutely terrible at it. It's an undeniable fact that children suck at singing, and almost certainly they would not meet any musical standards set forth by the state. At $25 per student, per week, even a small elementary school like my own would end up being fined $180,000 per year.

But perhaps more importantly than that, this bill would also (presumably) punish such phenomenal performances of our national anthem, like this one by Enrico Pallazzo.

The one thing I do agree with is that most performances of The Star-Spangled Banner are absolutely terrible. Too many performers try to add their own style, and it just turns into a giant mess. But why? Why does every performer feel the desire to put his or her own spin on the song? For starters, it's a horrible song. Musically, it does nothing for me. Combine that with the fact that the song's been played to death, and mangling it is the only way a person can stay sane in this day and age. Sure the stylized rendition might be just as shitty as the original version, but at least it's new shit.

Contrast that with a better song. In this next video, you can see Taylor Swift doing a cover of The Sweet Escape. Notice how she doesn't have to add any excessive flourishes or improvisation. That's because the song stands strong enough on its own. Sure it's not as good as the Gwen Stefani version, but that's forgivable.

So it's clear, if we had a better national anthem, this wouldn't even be an issue. There would be no need for government busybodies to introduce self-important legislation, just for the sake of satisfying their own whims. This is why I would like to officially propose changing the national anthem from The Star-Spangled Banner to The Sweet Escape.

Let the games begin

2012-01-02T21:42:00.000-08:00

The 2012 Mahoney Weight Loss Challenge has begun. With visions of health, fitness, and attractiveness, five competitors have risen to the challenge and submitted their efforts to the ridicule of the world in the hopes of winning $100.

Dan M
It wouldn't be my contest without my participation. I was almost ashamed when I looked down at my fat feet on the scale.

My Japanese scale reads in kilograms, but that's 176 pounds. Too many. My objective for the contest is to get down to 166.

Josh B
The next competitor is Josh B, from Maryland, who claims that his body is anywhere from 30-65% beer.

Weighing in at 191 pounds, Josh's target is 179 pounds, and possibly for Iran to develop closer ties with Latin America.

Bryan D
Bryan D is a medical student from Houston, who hopes to get back to his "teaching weight."

At 166 pounds, he enters the contest as the lightest competitor, with a target weight of 156 pounds.

Ted S
Longtime blog readers might recognize Ted from winning some cookies back in 2010. He might have to "win" a few more cookies just to make sure he doesn't win this contest. Ted actually stopped by my apartment halfway through a run this morning in order to weigh himself on my Japanese scale. Unfortunately, I was too stupid to remember to take a picture, so you'll just have to know that he weighed in at 208 pounds. His target weight is 195 pounds.

Joe M
Joe hails from Montreal, and is armed with a fiery Italian temper, and an ungodly amount of luck (Joe has been known as the "luck fairy" because he's so lucky). Joe enters the competition as the heaviest competitor, weighing in at 463 pounds. His target weight is 435 pounds.

PLAAAAAAAAAAAAY BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALL!

There are five competitors, so the winner will receive an $80 payout, and the second place finisher will get his $20 entry fee back. The remaining "losers" will have nothing to show for their effort but a svelte new physique,

For those of you wishing to track all of the competitor's progress, standings will be updated on this page.

New Year's Epee

2012-01-02T11:34:00.000-08:00

I decided to start the new year right, by reminding myself how much I suck at fencing epee. Yesterday morning, having not picked up an epee in six weeks, I went up to Portland for a tournament at Northwest Fencing Center. This tournament was held at the culmination of a week-long training camp, so not only am I bad at epee, but it insured that most of the participants had been practicing intensely, and would be in good form.

I started off the day in a tremendous amount of pain. That was my own fault. Saturday morning, my first full day back in Eugene, I was feeling particularly fat and out of shape. I wanted to do a long, slow, bike ride to start burning away the fat. I woke up early and was out the door slightly after 8. About 10 minutes out, I felt my rear wheel slipping a bit under me. Shortly after that, I noticed that the roads were all covered with ice, and it was actually a miracle I hadn't crashed yet. I made it home very carefully, and very slowly. It was clearly not the time to go for a ride, but I wasn't about to get skinnier sitting at home playing video games, so I decided to put my bike on the trainer and continue riding. After about an hour, I was bored out of my mind, and looking to see if it had warmed up enough to ride outside. Things still didn't look safe, but I couldn't stand any more trainer riding, so I went for a run for an hour. After I finished the run, I worked up the courage to hop back on my trainer for another hour.

The whole workout was great for my fat-burning, but left my legs destroyed. My only hope was that my fencing would be so bad that the pain in my legs wouldn't be what causes me to lose.

The competition got off to a good start when the kid I was fencing in my first pool bout showed up to the strip with two broken weapons. 1-0, Dan. Then we started fencing. Well, he started fencing, and I started standing there with an epee in my hand. I lost. Lost my next bout to a slightly older, slightly better kid with two functioning weapons. Both could have been winnable bouts. My next bout wasn't going to be, as I went up against current US #3 and former Olympian, Cody Mattern. He won 5-0.

At this point I had visions of finishing my pool 0-5, losing my first DE, and going home in last place. As bad as I am, that would still be a really bad result for me. If that was going to be the case, I should at least try to improve my fencing in the process. For my next bout, my only objective was to make sure I kept my tip on target. I was fortunate enough to go up against a fencer who fleched himself onto it 5 time (3 of them doubles), and I got myself a win. WOO! My next bout was against a female A who didn't move very well (was that redundant?). Based on my track record of failure, I think she assumed she was going to win. For reasons unbeknownst to me, and which certainly must have caught her off guard, I decided to spend the entire bout going for hand touches. I don't think I had even attempted a hand touch to this point, but after the first one worked, I realized she was incapable of attacking me, so as long as I kept my distance, I would get as many shots at the hand as I wanted. Another win.

At 2-3, I was potentially seeded high enough to get a winnable DE. I ended up getting a little kid, who was completely nonthreatening, but nonetheless seeded higher than me. The bout was a lot closer than it should have been, but I won. That win got me my real reward for the day, a trip to the top 32, and a bout against current US #1 (and two-time Olympian) Seth Kelsey. Our pre-bout conversation went something like this:

Homer: You're Darryl Strawberry!
Darryl Strawberry: Yes.
Homer: You play right field.
Darryl Strawberry: Yes.
Homer: I play right field too.
Darryl Strawberry: So?
Homer: Well, are you better than me?
Darryl Strawberry: Well, I've never met you, but... yes.

I wasn't expecting to win, but I was hoping it would be good practice. At least he didn't know what to expect out of me. The first touch of the bout was a beauty. I worked the distance well, attacked at just the right moment to catch him flat footed, disengaged his parry and hit him square in the chest. As I felt my blade bend on the impact, I looked in horror as my light didn't go off. Then he hit me. DAMN YOU, EPEE, AND YOUR INFERNAL TIPS!

The bout continued, with me picking up a double here or there. Then, about halfway through, from the command of 'fence', Mr Kelsey does a hard attack. I read his first step, and my saber instincts kick in for a beautiful "simultaneous" (read: double touch) action. At this point I just start laughing. I throw my hands up in the air, and excitedly shout, "hey, I can do this!" I have no idea what could have possibly been going through his head at that moment, probably something along the lines of "why is this scrub so excited over a double touch when he's losing?" But from my perspective, my odds of winning were negligible to start with, but certainly, so long as he was fencing "saber", my odds were as good as they were going to be. The next touch, he tries the same thing again. Excellent. I'm in out, make him fall short, and hit him. Alas, without right of way, it's still a double touch, but I'll keep doing that with him all day. Sooner or later, the touches would be mine--certainly more than if he were fencing "epee" against me.

After that, he stopped fencing my game, and went on to win. I got two one-light touches in the bout, and lost 7-15. From my perspective, the day was a success. I fenced well enough to make sure I was knocked out by someone a lot better than me, and I'm motivated to train harder in the coming year.

Why newspapers deserve to die

2011-12-31T18:27:00.000-08:00

Shortly before I flew back to Eugene, I got a letter in the mail from US Airways informing me that my frequent flier miles were about to expire. This wasn't a great tragedy, as US Airways subcontracts all their flights to/from Eugene, which means even if I did have enough frequent flier miles to redeem (which I don't), I still wouldn't be able to get a good flight. Sure, I was a little disgruntled that my hard-earned miles would go to waste, but I was relieved when US Airways informed me that it did not have to be so--my miles could be exchanged for magazines.... I guess that's something.

I can go to the website Magsformiles.com and choose from any number of their limited selection of magazines. There are mainstream staples like Entertainment Weekly, Sports Illustrated, and Time, along with niche publications like Horse Illustrated, Diabetes Forecast, and Inc. ("The magazine for growing companies"). One publication, in particular, caught my eye: The Wall Street Journal. I like the Wall Street Journal. Stu (of Stucraft fame) writes for it. I frequently read its articles. I certainly have as much respect it as any newspaper in America, and yet, I can't possibly imagine wanted to have a daily subscription to it, even at negligible cost.

If I used my miles to get a subscription to the Wall Street Journal, my apartment would be overflowing with old newspapers within a month. If I ever went out of town for a few days, the pile of newspapers outside my door would be overflowing into the dumpster. I know I don't keep the place particularly tidy, but right now, there's still a very clear line between me and hoarder, and that line is made up of old newspapers and cat feces. I can't afford to let one of those towers fall. If ever one were to wonder why newspapers are dying, this is it: even when it's free, I still don't want their product, and I hope they burn in hell.

As for magazines, they might still have a future. Though I still have copies of American Fencing Magazine floating around my apartment somewhere, I think it isn't beyond my capabilities to throw a magazine out on a weekly basis. So I'll order The Atlantic, and Cat Fancy, but that still leaves me with over 10,000 miles to waste on magazines. Does anyone want one (or several)? If any of my blog readers (even those blog readers that I may not know, or haven't talked to in years) has any interest in a free magazine subscription, send me an e-mail (dan.m.mahoney@gmail.com) before Monday when all my points expire.

Nick's response when asked if he wanted any free magazines: "who the hell reads magazines? I think just ipad users who want something to do with their ipads."

Almost back to Eugene

2011-12-30T16:49:00.000-08:00

All good things must come to an end, and Today it was time to say goodbye to the fattening comfort of Western Massachusetts, and say hello to the rainy purgatory known as Oregon. I woke up at 5:30AM eastern time so that my mom would have one last chance to get food in me before I left. Mmm... apple crisp for breakfast. By 6:30 we were all in the car to the Hartford airport. My mom promised she wouldn't cry, but she lied (this is sort of like that time Jim accused the kid in our dorm who killed himself of being a liar, because he had previously said he wouldn't kill himself).

When I boarded the plane, I thought I had finally lucked out. Instead of an overweight, smelly, old man sitting next to me, I found a rather attractive young woman who was dressed far too nicely for a flight to Chicago. I spent most of the flight trying to think up something to say to her, but no matter how good an introduction I thought I had, her boyfriend's hand resting on her upper thigh for the duration of the flight kept me from saying anything.

Then I was in Chicago for what was originally supposed to be an hour and a half layover, but naturally my flight was delayed by 45 minutes. That's okay, at least I had good pictures to text to Nick.

And there were the bathrooms with the automated toilet seat changers. In the absence of wifi, going to the bathroom is probably my favorite thing to do in an airport--provided, of course, that the bathrooms meet at least some standard of cleanliness.

After about 8 trips to the bathroom, it was time to fly to Portland. I don't know who at United Airlines is in charge of picking the in-flight movies, but let me give you some advice: if half the movie is in Spanish with English subtitles, it probably isn't a great option to be watched on those tiny airplane screens. After squinting for 5 minutes and still being unable to read anything, I switched over to the music channel that played Karma Chameleon 5 times on one flight, and shut my eyes.

Landing in Portland, it was actually a really nice day. The sun was out, it was relatively warm, and I have to sit in an airport for three and a half hours waiting for my flight to a city that's only two hours away by car.

Fresh air: some day we will meet again.

Movie Reviews: Sherlock Holmes: something or other

2011-12-29T11:17:00.000-08:00

Warning: Liberal Use of Spoilers

It wouldn't be the holiday season without my semi-annual trip to the movie theater. I didn't have high hopes when I checked the listings and saw there were no movies starring Kevin James. There weren't even any movies starring talking animals, and so naturally there weren't any movies with Kevin James and talking animals. It was hard for me to get excited for anything, but my parents wanted to see Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, and so we loaded up the ol' Ford Focus and took a trip to the local mall.

In Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, Robert Down Jr plays Johnny Depp playing Sherlock Holmes, and that was just the beginning of the questionable decisions in this movie. The literary Sherlock Holmes was known for his potent observational and reasoning skills, but those things rarely make for exciting action. Instead, what the filmmakers have done here is merged Sherlock Holmes's traditional abilities with the Hollywood staple commonly known as "bullet time." This has created something I like to call "deductive time" where Holmes figures out exactly what everyone is going to do in slow motion, and then he beats them up in real time. Shockingly, it always seems to work.

But perhaps the filmmakers could have borrowed some of Holmes's brilliant reasoning skills, because not ten minutes into the movie, they make the shockingly poor decision of killing off Rachel McAdams--and they don't even have the common courtesy to hit her with a bus. Why would they do that? I have to hope it was her decision; after reading the script, she refused to have her name associated with more than ten minutes of this monstrosity.

With her out of the way, the audience was free to enjoy the movie without being encumbered by such unnecessary things as "engaging characters." It was then that they introduced notorious supervillain, professor James Moriarty. Apparently he was still a little bitter over Jay Leno taking his job, and decides that global war is the only reasonable retribution.

Thankfully for late Nineteenth Century Europe, Sherlock Holmes was determined to stop him. Holmes tries everything: he dresses like a woman, he plays chess, but even then, it doesn't seem like that will be enough. In the end, he needs the help of his trusty sidekick Watson to spot the assassin who has been the recipient of a Nineteenth Century face transplant, and thus will be unrecognizable. If Nineteenth Century face transplants are anything like Twenty-First Century face transplants, this should be the easiest job in the world, but apparently doctors have gotten a lot worse in the last 120 years.

What the audience should realize at this point is that Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows has compressed the entire story of Face/Off into a five minute scene at the end of the movie. This is really the same problem Zookeeper had. I can suspend my disbelief if the filmmakers take their time setting it up, but to just throw something that preposterous out there so hastily forces me to disengage from the madness before me.

The climax of the movie has Holmes and Moriarty tumbling off a mountain, resulting in certain death... or did it? In the movie's final scene, Watson receives a mysterious package that seems to imply that Holmes is still alive. And just in case anyone in the audience was too dumb to pick up on that, they then explicitly show that not only was Holmes alive, but he was hiding in the room the whole time. Thank god they cleared that up. I was afraid there might not be another sequel. Hopefully in the next film, they will at least have the decency to bring Rachel McAdams back from the dead--if not for the Sherlock Holmes franchise, perhaps they can revive her for The Notebook 2.

Nick's Dream (guest blog post)

2011-12-28T06:03:00.000-08:00

Today I'd like to share with you one of Nick's dreams. Just to be clear, this isn't a Martin Luther King Junior "I have a dream" kind of dream, this is a literal dream Nick had while sleeping. After the overwhelming success that was Nick's last guest blog post, as soon as Nick told me about this dream, I immediately requested that he write it up for my blog. Without further delay, I give you Nick:

Hi everybody in the world,

I'm here to tell you today about a dream I had the other night. I was at a dorm-type thing, I think for some sort of conference. Dan, Dan's new girlfriend, and I were sharing a room. Dan's new girlfriend wasn't based, as far as I know, on anyone I know. I recall her as attractive, with curly black hair, and quite skinny. Frail. Not really Dan's type (musclebound as hell). They were a bit of a mismatch.

Now, some background on this dream world, which I think I just took as given. Guys were supposed to steal each other's rock tumblers. The whole kit, including all the sands and polish dust stuff. It was like a prank frat boys did. So, you know, you kindle a little bromance by putting cellophane over the toilet. Get really stoked and give someone a gorilla mask. And on the way out, you swipe your roomie's rock tumbler. They all have them, and when they notice their tumbler is gone, they know you got them good. They laugh about it and plot a way to get you back, probably involving drawing cartoon dicks on your forehead while you sleep.

With that background in mind, we proceed. Dan and I go visit another room. As we leave, their backs are turned, and there's a rock tumbler by the door. In its original box, with all the sands and stuff. So of course Dan steals it. It's not that Dan's much of a frat guy - these days are behind us/never existed. It's more of an homage, a tribute to this spirit of things.

We get back to our dorm room, and things get awkward. It turns out that Dan's girl is this sheltered weirdo who never heard about how stealing rock tumblers is a thing. She thinks he's a at best a huge jerk and at worst a criminal, and he needs to go return it or turn himself in or something. We try to explain things, but she's relentless. She doesn't realize that Dan was just having a little rock tumbler fun. This couple isn't going to last.

This is a completely different dream, but I just remembered it and really feel like mentioning it anyway. One time I dreamed that I met Jim Carrey. He tells me that he's working on a Jaws remake. He's to play the shark. I think this is the best idea I have ever had.

My only regret is that I didn't buy up all the Rock Tumbler futures prior to publishing this story.

Pictures only Katie will care about

2011-12-26T21:19:00.000-08:00

I'm sure Katie is the only person who will find this blog post interesting, but since she makes up 25% of my blog readership, I figured it wouldn't be unreasonable for me to post the story of another Mahoney family Christmas.

Things really got going Friday night with my Jewish mother's favorite part of the holiday season: decorating the tree, my father's favorite part of the holiday season: playing his Patsy Cline CD, and my favorite part of the holiday season: Santa eating Santa. The Santas were originally gifts to Katie and I from our grandparents. They were designed to have candy in their stomach. By the time we got them, the candy was gone. I did the only logical thing.

Yo dawg, I herd you like Santa...

The tree was looking pretty good, though a little sparse. When we were finished, we started looking all over the house for the missing box of ornaments, before we vaguely remembered that we had sent some ornaments to Katie last year.

And, of course, we couldn't have a tree without Fred on top. This year he added a cello to his collection.

By Christmas morning, the bottom of the tree was overflowing with presents...

The rest of Christmas day was very nice. We opened presents, went for long walks, ate way too much turkey, and special guest Jew (and former Brown fencer) Jeremy Adler joined us to light the menorah.

Monday, my father and I drove to Albany to visit assorted family members. The highlight of the visit was, of course, the oversized, novelty box of chocolates my uncle gave us as a present.

I'm not smiling nearly as much as I should be in that picture.

Perhaps my next blog post will have most substance and fewer pictures. Especially since these pictures look pretty much identical to last year's Christmas. We don't like change in this household.

2012 Mahoney Weight Loss Challenge

2011-12-22T20:27:00.000-08:00

Like so many others this holiday season, I have fallen victim to an overindulgent mother. Forgetting all of my bike-racing failures of the past year, I allow myself to succumb to the temptation, figuring that good food won't even be available to me the other 50 weeks of the year. This is an acceptable tradeoff, so long as I take immediate corrective action at the conclusion of the holiday season. My top goals for 2012 are to win bike races, and impress attractive women, and both goals can be achieved with a rock hard physique. Step 1 will be to shed all my holiday weight, and then some. My immediate goal is to drop 10 pounds.

To help myself meet this goal, I introduce the 2012 MAHONEY WEIGHT LOSS CHALLENGE!!! I encourage all interested parties to welcome the new year with a race to drop the weight. My personal goal is 10 pounds, but in the interest of fairness to women and fat guys, I will set the mark at 6% of base body weight (which equates to 10 pounds for a person starting at approximately 170 pounds). It's $20 to join, and the more people that join, the more you can win. Tell your friends!

Official Rules for 2012 Mahoney Weight Loss Challenge

How to Enter
To enter the contest, please send an e-mail with your name to dan.m.mahoney@gmail.com with the subject "WEIGHT LOSS CHALLENGE!" prior to January 2. Entrants should also deliver $20 to me via cash/check/paypal. Entrants whose payments have not been received by January 9 may be disqualified.

Objective
The objective for all who participate in this challenge is to be the first contestant shed at least 6% of his or her body weight, and keep it off for at least one month.

Starting from the date the contestant's weight is at or below 94% of its starting value, the contestant will have one month, during which he or she is required to provide eight (8) subsequent weight updates, at semi-weekly intervals, and in that time should average at or below the initial target.

Time will be measured in days, and any measurements within the same day are considered to have occurred at the same time. In the event that two contestants meet the criteria for winning on the same day, they will split whatever their winnings would have been.

Obligations
All contestants are responsible for measuring and reporting his or her own weight. The first such weighing shall occur on January 2nd, 2012, the date the contest begins. Contestants should make every effort to weigh themselves at a similar point in every day, ideally first thing in the morning, prior to breakfast. Subsequent weighings should be on the same scale, and under as similar circumstances as possible to the original weighing.

Contestants should provide their weight status at least twice weekly, on different days, and ideally with some sort of photographic evidence (just for fun, this is not required). Contestants who fail to provide such updates may be disqualified.

In the absence of impartial officials to verify the authenticity of the measurements, it is up to each and every contestant to provide measurements as truthfully and accurately as possible. This contest is, first and foremost, about maintaining a healthy lifestyle, and anyone attempting to win through unhealthy means (vomiting, dehydration, surgical enhancements, blood loss, amputation) will be disqualified.

Winnings
The winnings will be distributed based upon the number of entrants.

1-4 Entrants: The first person to successfully satisfy the objectives of the challenge will receive the entirety of the entrance fees paid by the contestants.

5-8 Entrants: The first person to successfully satisfy the objectives of the challenge will receive 80% of the gross entry fees collected, while the second person to successfully satisfy the objectives of the challenge will receive 20%.

9+ Entrants: The first person to successfully satisfy the objectives of the challenge will receive 70% of the entry fees, the second person will receive 20%, and the third person will receive 10%.

Fine Print
In the event of a dispute over the outcome of this contest, I, Dan Mahoney will be the final arbiter, though, as contestants should be entering in the spirit of incentivized healthy weight loss and not with the primary objective of earning money, I do hope that the honor and integrity of the contestants will prevail and there will be no need for such disputes.

If, after one year, all prize-winning positions have not been filled, the contest will end and any unclaimed money will be donated to the local food bank.

I'm going to Mexico!

2011-12-21T16:03:00.000-08:00

My blog updates have been sparse since I arrived in Massachusetts. I wish I could say it was because I was too busy having crazy adventures to have time to write about them, but really it's because 200 games of Yahtzee with my parents doesn't make for an interesting story.

So what have I been doing?

Watching Football
I know this might not seem like a worthwhile event, but this Sunday my father and I went to one of his friend's houses to watch the Patriots game. Ten year-old me would be absolutely horrified to know that this was the first Patriots game I've watched this season. It's actually the first football game I've watched in its entirely this year. It's not that I don't enjoy football. I actually really like watching the game, but between my absolute disgust over the character of the people who play the game, and the shocking amount of harm the game does to their bodies (one would think I would like a game that hurts people I don't like, but I've never been a big fan of retribution). As for the game itself, it was pretty good. After a horrendous first quarter, the Patriots defense managed to force enough turnovers to overcome their incompetence, and the offense had a strong outing to give the team a win.

Bicycle Riding
Two weeks in Massachusetts is nearly a death sentence for this season's cycling aspirations. I'll probably gain 3-5 pounds while I'm home, and won't be able to log nearly the hours on my bike that the season deserves. After an unsuccessful 10 minutes trying to ride my mother's stationary bicycle, which began with the seat slipping, and ended with my knees bleeding from repeatedly hitting the handlebars, I knew I had to try something else. Though Massachusetts roads are usually covered with ice and snow this year, an unusually mild winter left them in pretty good condition. Though the temperature was still in the 20s/30s, I figured I might give riding outdoors a shot.

With my road bike and spandex still in Oregon, I (literally) dusted off my old mountain bike. It wasn't going to be pretty, but it would have to do. I tossed on my heavy winter coat, a bike helmet, and in my jeans and running shoes, I just went for a ride. It was actually a little liberating to not spend 45 minutes layering spandex, greasing my scrotum, and carefully mixing just the right intensity Gatorade. I just started riding. The speed wasn't there, but so long as I kept going up the steepest hills I could find, it didn't really matter. The whole thing ended up being more fun than I expected, and a surprisingly good workout. If I can keep this up for the next 6 months, I might actually start winning races.

Though my bike had far less carbon fire and Dura Ace than I am accustomed to, the two things I missed most from my road bike were my shoes, and my powertap. Cycling in sneakers just isn't very comfortable.

Passport
My parents have been bugging me for some time to get a passport. You never know when you'll need to take an emergency trip to Ottawa. Plus, then the only thing stopping me from visiting Yuji will be the airfare, and the language barrier. The first step was to go get a passport photo taken. I knew CVS did passport photos, so naturally my mother took me to two stores that definitely didn't do passport photos, because allegedly some businesses that used to operate in the same building used to to passport photos 20 years ago. Our third stop was CVS, where I got my picture taken and, if I may say so, I was looking pretty good.

I mean, not good by normal person standards, but at least I don't look like a terrorist. With picture in hand, it was off to the post office to hand in the paperwork. Once again, I was pleasantly surprised with the service at the post office. It's a shame they're losing billions of dollars, because other than that, they do a really good job.

In 3-4 weeks, I should officially be able to leave the country. Not that I want to.

Christmas Shopping
I'm screwed. I still need to find gifts for my parents. I've been brainstorming for the past month and a half, but so far the best I've come up with is a new tool belt for my mom, and some dirty roots for my dad. I went out the other day hoping to find inspiration, and I came back with nothing but a half a bag of M&M's. I now have two days to find the perfect gifts for my parents. I already told Katie her and Richard's Christmas presents would arrive in the middle of January, so I have a little more time with that.

Home!

2011-12-16T06:56:00.000-08:00

Traveling home, Eugene to Denver was my first flight of the day. I sat down in my window seat and waiting to see who would be sitting next to me. It's sort of like playing the lottery, and my odds seemed pretty good. There were only 50 passengers in all, and not a single one was a baby. One by one they boarded the plane: attractive young woman, old lady handing out candy, guy in a Red Sox hat, another attractive young women. I actually started to get a little optimistic, which is how I knew that the only obese man on the plane was going to sit down next to me. Yup. This man was three inches shorter than me while we were standing, and a foot taller while we were both sitting down. At least he didn't smell funny, which is more than I can say about the fellow sitting in the seat in front of me.

Two and a half hours later--shortly before my legs required amputation, we mercifully landed in Denver. Flying is always hard on my legs, but doing an intense weight training session within 24 hours of flying was definitely a bad idea.

Denver was an easy layover, with most of my 45 minutes spent walking to the new gate. This time I was fortunately enough to sit next to a 30-something woman who didn't weigh over 350 pounds, so I considered that to be a success.

And then there was Chicago. It was scheduled to be an hour and a half layover. That was before the plane was over an hour behind schedule. Why? Why couldn't this happen in an airport with free wifi. Why don't I just pay the $10 for wifi? I don't know--it's the principle. That feels like too much money. It's clearly not, but because my gut reaction is that it's too much money, I'm going to stubbornly refuse to pay, and just make myself miserable for 3 hours. My only solace is the knowledge that the same thing is going to happen when I return to Eugene in two weeks. Curse my irrationality.

But Chicago wasn't all bad. They had this gem in the bathroom.

I must have spent 30 minutes in the bathroom just waving my hand over that toilet. Anything to pass the time. Then, before I left the stall, I made sure to pee all over the toilet seat, just so that the next guy felt like he was getting his money's worth. That thing was really cool.

By the time my flight was finally ready to depart, I was too tired to care about anything anymore. I think I actually fell asleep shortly before boarding began, and when I woke up, I was standing at baggage claim in Hartford.

Some observations.

Apparently leggings are the thing to wear for young women traveling. I'm not sure where I stand on that issue.

To the man in the Chicago bathroom who stood the urinal and exclaimed, "worthless piece of shit," we all have trouble going from time to time, but insulting you penis is not the way to win his favor.

To the middle aged man waiting for a flight to hartford, when you're able to sit upright and rest your laptop on your stomach, it might be time to face the fact that you have a problem.

Every time I start to think that maybe I've been too hard on humanity, maybe most people really do have value, then I watch how they de-plane. It is a travesty. For the love of god, airlines, start charging for carry-on bags.

Mahoney Trek IV: The Voyage Home

2011-12-15T10:45:00.000-08:00

Sitting in the Eugene airport right now. So far, Operation Don't-Forget-The-Peanut-Butter-And-Jelly-Sandwich-I-Made-And-Left-In-The-Fridge-Overnight has been an overwhelming success.

The adventure began last night when I realized I was flying in 12 hours and hadn't started packing yet. What should I bring? What clothes am I going to wear for the next two weeks. Quickly I figured that the best indicator of what I want to wear for the next two weeks is what I actually wore for the last two weeks. I scooped all my dirty laundry off the floor, put it in my suitcase, and I was done.

The next step was to run into the office and grab the data files that had been generating all afternoon on my professor's computer. I went in around midnight, but it was only on 31/50. I suppose I had no choice but to get up early and grab the files in the morning. When I went into the office in the morning, I saw I had been undone by my old nemesis: windows update. Apparently at some point last night, Microsoft deemed it so urgent that the computer be updated that it didn't care how much of the computer's processing power was currently being allotted to menial data work. When I went in this morning to witness the travesty that lay before me, can you guess how much had finished? You guessed it, 31/50.

No worries, I'll just trim a few observations off my dissertation. I'm sure they won't care.

But then this morning was what I'm sure will be the best part of the whole trip: the ride to the airport. My professor had graciously volunteered to give me a lift, and when he came to pick me up, he had his adorable little Brittany in the car with him.

Now I'm covered in dog fur, and I couldn't be happier. Flight is boarding now.

Everything that's wrong with politics in this country

2011-12-13T01:53:00.000-08:00

This evening, I was troubled when I read a news story that talk-radio host Michael Savage has offered Newt Gingrich one million dollars to drop out of the presidential race. I had no idea who Michael Savage was, though after a quick google search, I suspect that I wouldn't like him very much if I did. For the moment, I will shelve my criticisms of the man as a whole, because I am really far more disturbed by what he's done here. Offering Newt Gingrich one million dollars epitomizes everything that's wrong with the current U.S. political process.

Perhaps it is far too idealist of me, but I believe that people should evaluate the candidates based upon their their ability to execute the tasks of the office they're running for. Unfortunately, now too many people are caught up in the "game" of elections, concerning themselves with the notion of "electability"--choosing inferior candidates based upon the game of "winning" rather than the true metric of actually being president. This offer of one million dollars is the ultimate example of "gaming" gone too far. He wants Newt Gingrich to drop out, not because he believes Newt Gingrich will be a worse president than Mitt Romney, but because he believes Mitt Romney stands a better chance of being elected against Barack Obama, and Michael Savages top goal is to make sure Barack Obama doesn't get re-elected. Michael Savage has become so caught up in the "game" of elections that he has completely abandoned rational thought. Seriously, what the hell is wrong with that man? Has he suffered brain damage? Was he just born stupid? Michael Savage, I'm not sure how I can make this point clear enough for your minuscule brain to comprehend, but if you don't want to see Barack Obama re-elected as president, the FIRST person you should be offering one million dollars to drop out of the presidential should be Barack Obama himself. That's how you can guarantee he won't be re-elected.

It makes me sad when I think how the current state of politics robs people of rational thought.

Old Lady Rental Service

2011-12-12T01:43:00.000-08:00

My life is boring. This is no real surprise. I would have it no other way. But the downside of having a boring life is not having any interesting stories. All my best stories are getting old, and quite frankly, a little dated ("So this one time, my friend and I were playing POGs..."). It's been years since I've been assaulted by a football player, and even if I was, I currently don't have any graphing calculators by my desk (my TI-82 is sitting in Massachusetts, and I loaned out my TI-89 for finals week). It's time to start remedying the situation. I need to go out and do more stupid things, just for the sake of being stupid, but before I go all the way to "stupid", I should just try "normal".

So step one of being normal is to go to social functions, and try to interact with some of the finest young women that Eugene has to offer. This is no small task. After people from the south, and Occupiers, women are the demographic I have the greatest difficulty interacting with. I can't figure them out. Me, I'm direct. I'm an asshole to people I like, and I don't interact with people I don't like. But women, they're tricky. Sometimes a young woman and I will have what appears to be a perfectly lovely conversation. She's being extremely nice, and tells me to call her--then the next day I find out she's been telling all her friends about the creepy weirdo in the Simpsons t-shirts who won't leave her alone. Still other times I won't get so much as a smile out of her, and it turns out she really likes me. This may come as a surprise to everyone except that one guy in my class who thinks I have asperger's, but I'm actually really horrible at reading other people. That's why I need to rent an old lady.

While most people think the only thing old ladies are good at is paying with a check at the grocery store, I know they're useful for so much more. They're also good at making the whole checkout line wait for an extra five minutes as they keep looking for the two pennies that they swear are somewhere at the bottom of their purse, because in Old Lady World, paying with exact change is somehow a good thing. Listen, lady, count the number of people waiting behind you in the line. Multiply that by minimum wage. Multiply that by how long it takes you to find your pennies. If that number is bigger than the amount of money you're looking for, just walk away.

But there is one thing that old ladies are actually good at. Old ladies are shockingly good at sizing up romantic potential between young couples. This was actually something I learned far too late in life. I was out with this girl I had some interest in. She had been giving me what could best be described as mixed signals. I probably could have known I had no chance if only I weren't socially retarded. Instead, as I sat there wallowing in uncertainty, I caught a glance of an old lady who was sitting nearby. One look in her eyes told me everything I needed to know: "poor guy, he really wants this to work, but he has absolutely no shot." From that point on, I started realizing that this is something all old ladies do all the time. I could be walking down the street speaking with a student in a completely professional manner, and the old lady passing by will give us one of those creepy smiles that says, "ooh, you two would be great together--go for it." Sorry old lady, but this girl isn't really my type... plus, you know, that whole "ethical" thing.

I think it's fair to say that since I discovered the power of old ladies, I have all but eliminated humiliation in my life... at least on the receiving end. But now I've come to rely on that feedback, and I avoid initiating a conversation if I don't have an old lady around to pass her judgment, and there certainly aren't any old ladies hanging around college parties. That's why I need to rent one. $50 for the night, and she follows me signalling to me which girls I do or don't have a shot with. It would give me the confidence to go out on the town and be sociable, give an old lady some money to buy her medication with, and needless to say, everyone at the grocery store would be thrilled to know there was one less old lady clogging up the checkout lines.

Yuji, take notice: this is the next great startup idea.

Holiday Cheer

2011-12-10T00:13:00.000-08:00

This evening was the econ department's annual "holiday" party. Combined with the beginning-of-the-school party, and the end-of-school party, these make up the three main departmental social events that I don't go to. I didn't even remember the party was tonight, but at about 4PM, I stopped in to chat with my professor and he asked if I was going. He knows I don't like these things, but suggested I go anyway. And an hour later I reluctantly decided that I would make an appearance. This left me with about 10 minutes to get ready. The party was being held at the Downtown Athletic Club, which is Eugene's attempt at being one of those fancy athletic clubs that's more focused on keeping out Jews than actually promoting athletics.

This also left me with some concern that my usual appearance might not meet their dress code. "Sir, I know the dress code only explicitly states that a jacket and tie are required, but it is understood that pants are required as well." I dug through my closet trying to find something to wear. After vetoing a cycling jersey, and a fencing lamé with someone else's name on the back, I decided I'd wear that same pink shirt I wore to Jen's wedding. Worn over a Simpsons t-shirt, of course. I didn't want to sell my soul.

When I arrived at the DAC, I found out that the econ department was one of five Christmas parties they were hosting that evening. Naturally, we were the bottom tier event, and so our party was hosted in the ballet room. Whenever I arrive at the party, the first thing I like to do is stake out a good piece of wall to stand against. Some place where my blind side is protected as I survey the field of people I don't like. This party, being held in the ballet room (which was literally a ballet room, not just a fancy name for a dining hall), had mirrors on all the walls. This afforded me the luxury of waltzing through the middle of the room, mingling as I pleased, with the comfort of knowing that thanks to the mirrors, I could always see if someone was sneaking up behind me.

Though it was a treat to have mirrors guarding my six, it wasn't long before I remembered I hate mingling, and just grabbed a spot of wall to stand away from everyone. Finally it was time for the free food--the real reason I was there. I really must tip my hat to the catering staff for providing us with a truly inspired buffet spread. There was a lasagna, a different kind of lasagna, and some fettuccine. I decided to go with the two lasagnas and some salad. It was certainly better than whatever frozen delicacy I could have popped in the microwave at home, but I'm not really sure the food was pink-shirt-worthy. I filled my plate and grabbed a table.

Throughout the room, the department was very rapidly stratifying itself. Graduate students clustered by years, faculty clustered by research interest, secretaries sat alone, and several parents spent the whole time chasing their toddlers around. I ended up sitting with one professor, one female graduate student and her boyfriend. As the tables filled up, I couldn't help but notice the large void at ours. Half the seats were empty. Scaring people away is just a talent I have. No other tables had more than a single empty seat. Eventually some people came over to sit with us. No, actually, they just came over to take our chairs to another table. I have documented before how I tend to create a void wherever I sit, and certainly that effected manifested itself tonight.

After an hour or so of moping, it was time to get out of there. Free food is nice, but this did nothing to change my belief that departmental social functions should be avoided at all costs.

Here's to the finest President in Starfleet

2011-12-08T10:00:00.000-08:00

I was standing in line at the grocery store, waiting to purchase my bananas and Cocoa Nuggets, when, out of the corner of my eye, a tabloid catches my eye. This one featured a picture of Michelle Obama on the cover, with some headline to the effect of "Report: Michelle plans to file for divorce." Now obviously these publications have very little credibility, but it still made me think. What it made me think, literally, word for word, "ooh, she's finally going to leave Picard."

I quickly realized my error: that Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise is not, in fact, the 44th President of the United States of America, but it remained such a wonderful thought in my mind that I couldn't help but start laughing. I would like to publicly thank my subconscious for filling me with so much joy. I'd also like to thank the fat old lady, and the two teenage boys buying scratch tickets, for not saying anything when the weirdo in the Red Sox hat abruptly started laughing for no apparent reason while standing in the checkout line.

How do I know it's cold outside?

2011-12-07T00:45:00.000-08:00

It's time for my semi-annual complaint about how cold it is. Some time between the rainy season, and the other rainy season is a time when Oregon is just unpleasantly cold. Other than my fingers, toes, and penis going number on long bike rides, I really don't mind when it's cold outside. What bothers me is when it's cold inside. After two and a half years living in this apartment, I still don't understand how the heat works. I know this building has heat. I just don't know how they manage to keep every other part of the building warm without accidentally heating up my apartment.

Many people have suggested to me several times that I buy a space heater. That would make sense, but it feels like admitting defeat. I'm a tough guy, and it's only cold for a few weeks a year, but today was the last straw. I was attempting to grade final exams when I found my productivity had come to a halt as my cold fingers were no longer able to turn the pages or work a red pen. It was time for a change. Discomfort is something I can deal with, but productivity is nothing to mess with. Alas, I needed warmth now--there isn't nearly enough time for Amazon.com to deliver a space heater to me. Nick suggested I turn the oven on, but I didn't have an excuse to cook anything, and to just leave the over on empty would be wasteful. So I decided to run the shower instead. Did I mention the part where I pay for electricity, but I don't pay for water?

Quickly the apartment started to heat up. Well... not all of the apartment. The bathroom was pretty warm, and there was a zone within about a foot of my ceiling that was pretty warm. If I had a dollar for every time I was screwed over by convection...

But I had patience, eventually that hot air would have to diffuse a little bit, right? I don't know, because before that happened, my apartment filled with water vapor, and I decided to abort. Sure my hands were getting warmer, but wet fingers are just as unproductive as cold ones.

If I ducked down to floor level, I could get below the fog. But it was even colder down there...

I think my apartment actually looked better with the fog. Remind me to run the shower the next time I have company.

But after I stopped the wanton waste of water, I did get a few moments where my hands made it back up to primitive levels of dexterity, and I finished my grading. Well, I finished my "scoring"--now I still need to take their raw scores and assign them letter grades. Where do I draw the cutoff? Is an 85 an A? What about an 84.8? How about an 83.9? Between any two adjacent students, it really is impossible to differentiate. I even made this little chart to send to my students, as if they somehow cared about my struggles.

"Hey Dan, it sure would be easy if you just gave us all A's."

And then it all stops

2011-12-04T23:30:00.000-08:00

It's this time of year that I start to feel pretty awesome. No sooner have I spoken the words "office hours" than I have 50 "friends" lined up to get a piece of me. It's overwhelming... but kind of awesome. This must be how Avril Lavigne feels when she goes to a Mahoney convention. Today was my crowning achievement. I scheduled a special extended office hours session the day before the final. Since my office was locked, I held them in the student union.

Five minutes in, and I knew I was in trouble. There were a lot of students. Though not necessarily more than I should have expected, it was a lot more than I was prepared to handle. I had been planning on simply sitting down and tackling whatever questions they lobbed at me. But this wasn't going to cut it. The first students to me had formed an impenetrable wall. It would have taken a monumental effort to get them to move, so I figured I should just start rotating from student to student. This system seemed to work well, as the students generally clustered in small groups and worked out problems together until I came around, though a few particularly frightening students decided the better course of action was to hover just behind my shoulder and shove their notes into my face whenever I stopped talking for 2 seconds. Three hours later, my work was done. Two of the students were ready for the final, and the rest had made peace with the idea that they were going to fail the class.

But the funny thing is, I actually kind of like a lot of students in my class. For a bunch of annoying young whippersnappers, a lot of them are any assortment of positive adjectives, including, but not limited to intelligent, funny, skinny, creative, tall, thoughtful, imaginative, mustachioed, and charming. They're good kids... but 24 hours from now, they're all going to hate me. Actually, they all hate me now, but 24 hours from now, they can stop pretending they don't hate me. I will be forgotten almost as quickly as all the economics they crammed into their brains in the past 24 hours. From now on the only thing I'll see is them flagrantly avoiding sitting near me at volleyball games, and I'll be left with no one but my cardboard cutouts of Nick and Yuji for friends.

Farewell, friends. May the C be with you, even when I am gone.

Calling out Yuji

2011-12-02T20:48:00.000-08:00

Yuji recently announced on his blog that he wants to blog more. Obviously, this should be a great thing. Everyone knows two of my favorite things are blogs and Yujis. Unfortunately, there's a problem with Yuji's writing. There's nothing mechanically wrong--Yuji's diction and syntax are impeccable, but Yuji's writing is devoid of so much of the charm and creativity that makes Yuji Yuji.

Why are Yuji and I friends? Sure we have a lot of superficial characteristics in common. We're both good at math. We're both exceptionally handsome individuals. We both love to eat disgusting bean stuff. But more than anything else, the reason Yuji and I get along so well is our shared affinity for applying a fictional narrative to the world around us. This much was apparent from the beginning. We were freshman year physics lab partners, and despite barely knowing each other, it didn't take long before our experiments evolved from measuring the acceleration of a wooden block, to "Commander Yuji" and "Ensign Mahoney" accelerating to warp speed. Aye aye, commander.

For the next for years, nearly every person we encountered was given an elaborate fictional persona, often complete with unique voices and catch-phrases. There were enough of them to fill an entire book, but just to name a few:

The math professor who was always trying to trick the other math professors into taking his undesirable wife off his hands.
The ridiculously jacked black guy who was very protective of the good sink, and exceptionally polite as he carried out his duty to abuse nerds.
The guy who kept eating concrete, then blaming the girls for clogging up the toilets.
Gordy, the tentacle monster.
The juggler who was always offended we didn't notice he shaved his beard.
The janitor who regarded Yuji's spoiled milk as treasure ("fresh milk!").

No one was immune. We had a voice for Nick ("nerr"), and a catch phrase for Sheehy ("I LOVE PEACH SODA!"). Even inanimate objects got the treatment, as Yuji's bicycle became "Bikey", his neglected girlfriend that he kept locked up in the basement.

The world becomes more fun when you turn it into a story--when people and things become characters, with their own quirks and motivations, no matter how bizarre. This is something that I know Yuji does so well, and why the world becomes a magical place as seen through our eyes. Unfortunately, this is all lost in Yuji's blogging. His writing is extremely matter-of-fact. It's not telling a story, just laying out the information. It's not bad--just a little boring. And so, to Yuji, I am calling you out. If your goal is to blog 6+times/week, I know it'll be more fun for both of us if you can channel your creative side, and give the world the narrative it deserves.

Fat man thighs

2011-11-30T10:47:00.000-08:00

Being fat isn't all fun and games. Certainly, at my heaviest, I was never so large that I had trouble doing normal things like tying my shoes, climbing stairs, or reaching the Twinkie I had strategically taped to my back (a la Die Hard), but if there was one thing that gave me trouble, it was walking. The combination of 40 extra pounds of fat, and a sport that excessively developed my legs meant that as I was striding, my thighs no longer had the requisite clearance to pass each other freely. This caused me to develop a walk with my legs flared out a bit, and an uncomfortable posture. I certainly wasn't alone with this problem. Most fat men suffer from it in one form or another. Even otherwise athletic football players must often walk funny when their legs get to big--even if it's all muscle. No amount of weight training can widen a man's hips (though I suspect in China, they will crush the hips of babies and attempt to reset the bones with a wider profile in order to produce more NFL linemen).

In the past year, as part of my patented Weight and Posture Improvement Program (WAPIP), I've also been trying to restore my walk to the smooth, confident swagger that one wouldn't be surprised to see coming from a George Clooney-type. I had been making significant proress, as my weight fell, and my legs slimmed down. But in the past few months, I've been going to the gym fairly regularly, and when I'm not ogling girls in Brown shirts, I spend most of my time strengthening my legs. Even as my weight has held constant, my legs are getting fatter, and I can slowly feel the thigh-rubbing pressures coercing me to return to my old ways.

Why I don't like public education

2011-11-29T10:30:00.000-08:00

For those of you not present at the University of Oregon, there's been quite a fuss here in Eugene after the State Board of Higher Education decided to fire our University President, Richard Lariviere. The gritty details are available from legitimate news sources, but if I may summarize the events that transpired.

1. Richard Lariviere was hired to be President of the U of O, and presumably help it achieve its assorted goals.

2. President Lariviere appears to be making measurable progress towards a variety of University goals, in spite of opposition by the Oregon University System, and State Board of Higher Education, who are unhappy that they aren't in charge of everything.

3. President Lariviere, hoping to avoid this, creates a plan for the University of Oregon to have its own board, independent from the State University System, which is holding the school back. This angers them further.

4. The board decides to not renew President Lariviere's contract when it expires at the end of the school year, because he's "not a team player". (I have particular sympathy for this 'offense')

5. A great many faculty, students, and other UO supporters (including, but not limited to Phil Knight, who delivered this gem of a quote).

6. In response to the support for President Lariviere, the board decides to fire him immediately, rather than when his contract expires at the end of the year.

And this pretty much sums up why I don't like public education--because it was apparently more important that the university president cede control to a group of political appointees than manage the university responsibly. How dare he commit the grave sin of giving raises to faculty and staff to keep them from leaving for greener pastures!

But the worst part of all of this is I am now forced to agree with people I absolutely hate agreeing with. The same people who just days ago were posting to Facebook obnoxious pictures in support of the 'Occupy' movement are now posting obnoxious pictures in opposition to the State Board of Higher Education. Eww... I don't want to agree with those people. They have already displayed a clear lack of cognitive ability. And yet, I am a man of principle... I can't just disagree for the sake of disagreeing, can I? Must I? I guess I have to.

See you in hell, Richard Lariviere. Maybe you should have been more of a team player, asshole. I hope the new president is an incompetent stooge, just to prove you wrong.

Staying skinny this holiday season

2011-11-25T01:09:00.000-08:00

For some of us, the most challenging part of the holiday season is finding a hot date for New Year's Eve, but for the rest of us, the hardest part is making it through the season without getting fat before our hot date on New Year's Eve. The fattening begins on Thanksgiving, and Jewish mothers across America won't rest until every son and daughter has added 10 pounds. So I've come up with a few strategies that I hope will keep me skinny in the face of irresistible temptation.

1. Pick Foods with High Diminishing Returns

Everyone knows that secret to staying slim is just eating controlled portions of healthy foods. That's enough to render everything else obsolete. But unfortunately, genetics had other ideas. When you're wandering around in the desert for forty years, the uncontrollable desire to stuff your face with any and all available food is an asset. In today's land of plenty, it's a liability. So they key is not to avoid tempting food, but to pick foods that turn against you.

Have you ever sat down to eat a few Oreos? You have one, or two, and then you just can't stop. Before you know it, you're sitting on the floor crying with nothing to show for it but regret. And Oreos aren't even that good. So why can't I stop eating them?

That's why you can't start. But what to do to counter the uncontrollable urge for something unhealthy? The key is to go for foods like chili dogs. Chili dogs are great. That first bite is pure indulgence. But you know, it doesn't take long before they just don't taste as good. The first one goes down easily. A few bites into the second and you're starting to fill up with regret, and by the third dog, it's no longer that intellectually you know you shouldn't eat anymore, you don't even want to. They've become disgusting. THAT is the goal. You've got to turn your body against food, and that requires careful strategic choices.

2. Keep Yourself Busy Away From the Food

Holidays are a time when friends and families tend to congregate. Often this congregation is done somewhere between the kitchen and the dining room, with a possible excursion to the television. This provides real-time access to food. It's one thing to sit down and eat a giant, unhealthy Thanksgiving dinner. It's quite another to spend all day in the kitchen snacking as you prepare the food, then sit down and have a giant, unhealthy Thanksgiving dinner.

There are two main ways to avoid this trap. The first, is to designate a rotating "sacrificial lamb." While often, it is customary for the whole family to chip in and help prepare the festive meals, really, it should just be one person isolated in the pit of temptation, while the remaining people take a trip to some place where food is scarce. I recommend sporting events. Nothing curbs the temptation of hunger quite like $10 pretzel.

The second technique is to eat out. While this may seem expensive, the opportunity cost of holiday food preparation often far exceeds the monetary cost of even the most expensive restaurants. I spoke with the cashier at Safeway this evening. He was receiving 2.5x normal pay for working on Thanksgiving. Get the whole family together, put 'em to work at Safeway for a few hours on Christmas, then go to the fanciest Chinese restaurant money can buy.

3. Avoid Balanced Meals

Most nutritional advice emphasizes balanced meals--providing a healthy mix of all the nutrients a body needs in one modest-portioned setting. This is wrong. Not that balanced nutrition is wrong, but if one had the self-control to moderate portions, one wouldn't be reading a diet advice article to begin with. The key is to concentrate the indulgences--if you mix in your vegetables with your bacon, you'll just end up puking up your vegetables with the rest of it. By keeping "healthy" and "unhealthy" meals separate, you can purge yourself of the "unhealthy" while still keeping down all your essential nutrients.

Now some people will say, "throwing up to lose weight is wrong." And that's partially true. Repeated vomiting causes stomach acid to wear away at the esophagus. It leads to tooth and gum disease, and it's kind of gross. But I everyone throws up a little bit. Personally, I can't remember the last time I threw up. It might have been 10 years. I'm just not a puker. But a normal person might reasonably puke every so often. The way I see it, I'm entitled to a little vomit from time to time. That would put me back into the normal range of digestive upheaval. It would only make sense for me to use my upchuck allotment strategically to counteract lapses in willpower.

So first thing on Christmas morning, I wake up, stuff my face with chocolate, enjoy some deep-friend bacon, round it off with a few pizzas, then puke up a storm. After that, I clean my mouth out with some salad, and let six-pack abs live the good life.

DDelivery (volleyball picture)

2011-11-23T14:28:00.000-08:00

It seems like so long ago, but it was really just last Friday night, when Nick attended the Stanford-Oregon volleyball game.

I can now officially confirm that when Nick spotted the team's athletic trainer either taking a picture of him, or just reading her phone from a weird angle, she was, in fact, taking a picture of him. And now I've got it to share with all of you.

As a reminder, here's what it looked like from Nick's perspective:

And here's what it looked like from the team's perspective, fresh off the AT's phone:

I can't count all the moments in my life that could have been improved had Nick been sitting nearby, in the largely-deserted stands, awkwardly holding a sign for me.

Why does my brain waste its energy on these things?

2011-11-23T00:49:00.000-08:00

This evening I was at the gym, doing my normal routine of lifting some weights, then looking in the mirror, blurring my eyes, and pretending that 5 minutes of weights has transformed me into Ryan Reynolds. It never works. As I was working on my abs, I spotted a young lady enter the weight room who looked rather familiar. It wasn't like she was particularly attractive, or even particularly ugly--I just thought I had seen her before.

I didn't think much of it, but as I was leaving the gym, I passed her by, and noticed she was wearing a "Brown Spring Weekend" t-shirt. So odds are, I had seen her before. I still have no recollection of ever having any interaction with her, or even knowing her name. She just looked familiar. Maybe I'd see her in the dining hall? Maybe she was in a class of mine? I don't know, and I don't even care. Now I'm just angry at my brain. Of all the things my brain could be doing with its energy, it's remember the faces of people I don't know that I haven't seen for at least four and a half years. How many other useless people are in there? She can't be the only one. How many extra decimal places of pi does that face cost? What about birthdays, phone numbers, or Jeopardy answers? Maybe I could even use that as active memory to help with my problem-solving skills.

No matter what betters uses it has, I don't want my brain wasting its energy remembering people I don't know. Especially people that it had no good reason to believe I'd ever see again. The fact that I recognized her bothers me, but at this point, I'm even more bothered by the fact that I have no idea who she is, or why she's stalking me.

Glorious Epee Failure

2011-11-20T00:29:00.000-08:00

So I know the first thing you're all wondering, "Did Nick's sign have any residual magic when Oregon played #3 Cal tonight?" The answer, of course, is yes. Going up against one of the best teams in the country, our ladies were clearly determined not to disappoint the tall awkward guy who may or may not be dating one of the Stanford players.

As for me, I traveled up to Portland for an epee tournament. My first epee tournament, over the summer, featured a number of fencers with shockingly impressive national and international credentials. For my second epee tournament, I impulsively decided to go to the opposite extreme: I decided to fence a collegiate competition. While back east, collegiate competitions are a good way for talented college fencers to test themselves against each other, out here, collegiate competitions are a way to hide the incredibly shitty fencers from the cruel levels of talent present in open tournaments.

But this is epee, and I suck too. Up against scrubs from such renowned institutions of sport and learning as Portland State University, Western Washington University, Central Washington University, and Lower Columbia College (teams ranked in order of ascending shittiness), I was fencing for more than just victory: I was fencing for the right to consider myself better than them.

Things got off to a rocky start. I lost my first bout 4-5, but mercifully, it was against one of my Oregon teammates. I won the rest of my pool bouts using the same formula: miss a bunch of hand shots until the score was close and time was running out, then just attack stronger than any of them could defend.

I was 3-1 coming out of pools which put me at the 7 seed going in to the DE. No, that's not a typo, I was 3-1... I really had a pool of 5. For a 19 person tournament, they decided to split it into pools of 5,5,5, and 4. 4? Pool of 4? What the hell is a pool of 4 doing in a fencing tournament? This wasn't a medical withdrawal. They actually thought that was an appropriate way to segment the 19 fencers. My god, the only thing these people are worse at than actually fencing is running fencing tournaments.

After a bye, my first DE bout was against the girl. I won 15-6, though she probably should have had a couple more touches. My next DE was against this exceptionally scrubby lefty who liked to stand still and parry. This should have been another easy win, but unfortunately, he actually was a particularly challenging matchup for me. His left-handedness made the angles a little trickier, and his refusal to move made it much harder for me to get him off balance. I made a lot of really poor decisions, complemented by some rather poor technique and was lucky to escape with a 15-14 win. This put me into the top 4, where it was no longer possible to avoid fencing one of my UO teammates: the same one who beat me in pools.

I actually started fencing a little bit better. I was moving around, and hitting my shots. Well, most of them. When I lost 14-15, I really wished I could have had a second shot at that beautiful parry I took, that I followed up with an equally beautiful saber cut to the shoulder. Such is life. I can't harbor too much animosity towards my UO teammate, who went on to lose to another UO teammate 14-15 in the final. After I easily won the bout for third place (I stopped counting the score once I got up 7-1, and then just tried to double it out to end things as quickly as possible).

This gave UO a clean sweep of the "medals", and I use "medals" in the loosest sense of the word, because it turns out someone at PSU thought it would be a good idea to hand out broken blades with ribbons tied around them as prizes. Remember what I said about these people being awful at putting together a tournament?

This thing was in the trash before I left the venue.

So I managed to accomplish my goal of considering these college tournaments beneath me, and though I don't have a medal to commemorate my success, I do have a gigantic blister on my big toe, that will be reminding me of this day for weeks to come.

Full results available here.

UPDATE: Here's the only picture of me from the event where I am visibly hitting a shot, and I don't look awful.

Bizarro World

2011-11-19T00:06:00.000-08:00

Friday night, you know what that means? Staying in doing math. What's that you say, that staying in doing math is what Nick is supposed to be doing on Friday night? Well this Friday night, Nick was out going to the volleyball game.

The University of Oregon team traveled to Stanford, and with Ty unable to make it with one of his trademarked signs for #6, I called in a favor and asked if Nick could go. I don't know why Nick thought he owed me a favor. If anything, I owe him a favor for that time I called his cell phone as he was receiving his diploma. But Nick's a nice guy, and it was for a good cause (I told Nick Ty had cancer and this was his dying wish).

Nick made it to the game, and he gave us a nice recap of the events.

(official recap here if you want to know what happened)

Howdy,

A little post-game report. Some pics attached. The first one is from my pre-game rally in my office, where I made the sign. The second is a little less than 3/4 Oregon warming up, and a little more than 1/4 sign. I thought it was important that you see both. The third is of that damn tree, and the 4th is mainly just proof that it was me there holding the sign.

As you probably know by now, Liz, #6, had a great game, all thanks to her substantial fan base. I'm not exactly sure how to quantify exactly how good a game she had. I know that she had 30-some 'kls,' which was like twice everybody else's kls. They also said her name a lot, and I think she scored the winning point. I'm not entirely sure, because I didn't really know how many points they were supposed to play to, so the ends of the first and last sets caught me a bit off guard.

I'd like to point out that a large number of players on both teams put on quite a show in terms of attractiveness. As far as that part of the competition went, it was volleyball players, the girl in the Stanford band playing the cowbell (she was really good at being too cool for that cowbell), and then maybe the cheerleaders, modulo hot spectators. It must suck being the cheerleaders there, because the volleyball team makes all of them look way too short (sorry Ty).

There was quite a turnout for this game, except in the Stanford student section. That was mostly just tall guys. I assume that those are the SOs of the volleyball team, and they thought that I was one of them. I think I'll continue to go to these games to reinforce the assumption I'm making about the assumption they're making about me, until I can expect them to invite me to their cool parties.

I'd like to point out that gmail is giving me a related link to 'gay volleyball' on the right hand side.

Sadly, I did not get a photo op with the hero, Liz, #6, of this game, as she disappeared right away. I'd have had a sure in with her, what with the sign, or a sure in with #2, because all I'd need to do is tell her about my friend who took a picture with her previously, and if she doesn't remember, show the pic of you two in my wallet. Sadly #2 left immediately as well. With all the others, it would have just seemed creepy.

There's also rumor that the volleyball team's busty athletic trainer may have seen Nick's sign and taken a picture. If I manage to get my hands on that picture, believe me, my two blog readers who aren't Nick or Ty will be the first to know.

LinkedIn is creeping me out

2011-11-16T02:46:00.000-08:00

I'm supposed to be finishing my homework right now, but it's not going well. I'm searching for new ways to avoid doing work, because I feel guilty about the old ways (old ways like "sleeping" or crying). This evening's "new way" included updating my neglected LinkedIn page. In general, I'm not a big fan of LinkedIn. For starters, their automated e-mail practices are more consistent with a virus than a legitimate company--but without even the benefit of enlarging my penis. Beyond that, as a person with no marketable talents, and poor networking skills, I really can't see how anyone could possibly get any benefit out of the site. I guess it's a way to write-off Facebook as a business expense.

So after adding juggling to my list of skills, I decided to browse their list of suggested contacts for me. Now, I assume they crawl my e-mail inbox, my friends' e-mail inboxes, and exploit their own network data to populate the people I might want to network with, but when I actually saw their suggestions, I was shocked. Not at first. The first few were just what I expected: fencers, cyclists, and guys I play online video games with. But then I came across a strange name. It was the freshman roommate of a guy I didn't even like back in 2003. Him? Then they present me with a list of about five different girls I haven't Facebook stalked in at least 3 years. How do they even know? It's not like I've ever had any direct communication with any of these ladies. They're not on my contact list. I'm not on theirs... am I? Certainly I have to tip my hat to them for finding "connections" even Nick or Yuji couldn't come up with, but how? It's not like I care about privacy, I'm really just curious here.

I say I'm disappointed in myself, but I'm really disappointed in my students

2011-11-15T01:06:00.000-08:00

I gave my class a quiz today. It was my intention to make this one a little bit harder than the last quiz I gave them. Not because this one was actually harder to do, but when I gave them their last quiz, I solved an identical problem at the beginning of the class period for them. This time, I was asking them about some material from about two weeks ago. I wasn't expecting perfection, but I let them work in groups, and I figured at least somebody from the class would remember this stuff, and one group would get it right.

Nope. And I tried to hard to make this interesting. Instead of asking them boring, mathematical questions, I tried to present them with a problem they might encounter in their daily lives. But it didn't work. It would be easy to just dismiss myself as a poor instructor, but this wasn't that hard, so I'm going to put the blame squarely where it belongs: on my students. They really dropped the ball on this one.

So now I present it to you, my blog readers. There will be a prize for the first person not named Nick or Yuji who can solve this quiz.

What would I be accused of?

2011-11-14T10:40:00.000-08:00

Reading the news, Herman Cain continues to be accused of sexual harassment, and continues to deny it. Even his wife has joined in to deny it, because, as we all know, most sexually harassing men use their wife as an accomplice, so she clearly would have known. Personally, I assume he's guilty, because after football players, politicians are the most morally deplorable group of people we have living in this country. Actually, that's not accurate. Politicians are really worse than football players. Football players only ruin the lives of the people they know. Politicians try to ruin everybody's lives.

So if I were running for office, what scandalous things would I be accused of? These could be either legitimate complaints (like Herman Cain's sexual harassment problem), or nothing more than lies and rumors (like Herman Cain pretends his sexual harassment problem is). Now first of all, I must publicly acknowledge that there's enough material on this blog to make sure I never get elected to public office ever, no matter how trivial a position. But that's because Americans are stupid. They'd rather be screwed than offended, and lord knows I love to offend people. Personally, I'd be offended by congressman wasting trillions of dollars and thousands of lives to send American troops overseas to indiscriminately kill people in a couple of shitty desert countries no one cares about, but if you present that to the American people, they'd be much more offended by the fact that I had the audacity to refer to Iraq and Afghanistan as a couple of shitholes no one cares about. And don't even get me started on women drivers...

But assuming we'd cleared that hurdle, what would I be accused of next? I don't think I'd have to worry about the accusations of illegal drug use. Having stayed well away from fun throughout my entire life, I think I'm safe. Maybe they'll find out about that one time when I was 10 that I accidentally grabbed my dad's glass of beer instead of my glass of apple juice, and I was so surprised by the taste of beer in my mouth that I immediately spit it back out into the glass... and then I was so embarrassed by what I had done that I didn't tell my dad that I just spit a mouthful of beer back into his glass, and I quietly walked away (sorry about that one).

I hope I'd be safe from sexual harassment allegations, but on the other hand, there is that mustache I occasionally grow out. Thankfully, I think I've learned how to behave appropriately in the workplace, thanks to my favorite sexual harassment video.

So what would I be accused of? Justifiably, I might be accused of talking too much. I try not to, but sometimes when I get on a roll, it's hard to notice that I've just repeated myself 8 times. Not enough people tell me when to shut up. They should. I really appreciate it.

But talking too much is a pretty minor offense. What more serious allegations could be made against me? High school. I like to pretend that high school never existed, but if I ended up in the spotlight, there's a good chance that some record of the years 1999-2003 exist. That's unfortunate. Why couldn't I have just been relentlessly bullied in high school, so that I could make myself out to be the sympathetic victim? Instead, all the embarrassment of high school was self-imposed. Why did I have to be so stupid?

On the other hand, at least being accused of going to high school isn't as bad as being accused of being homeschooled.

I want to have kids

2011-11-12T14:23:00.000-08:00

I want to have kids. Well, not really. The very thought terrifies me. I don't think I could handle all the responsibility. And can you imagine a little person who's just like me? Or even worse, a little person who isn't anything like me! No, I don't really want to have kids--at least not now. What I really want is an excuse to buy these without people thinking I'm weird.

Gwen Stefani flying in on a video game cloud? That must be what heaven is like.

Ty doesn't want to be me

2011-11-09T23:31:00.000-08:00

Hey, remember Ty? He's the one who laughs at naked old man penis. Well, when he's not doing that, he's also pining over a rather attractive lady who's only slightly out of his league. He is now particularly motivated to channel his inner Casanova, lest he miss this opportunity and become me. He's done us all the great service of writing this guest blog letter on the subject.

For those of you that don't know me, Dan and I are eerily similar people. We enjoy volleyball matches, riding bikes, making racist jokes as long as they fit a certain stereotype, and most importantly; have a realist perspective towards life in general.

I've always been one to accept my fate and deal with the circumstances I've been given. I'm 5'6", weigh 133 pounds, and am quickly disregarded as an intimidating presence in nearly any situation. If it's a bike race and I'm the fastest, people still push me off to the side as the smaller guy. I'm asked for my ID on an airplane to sit in an exit isle (ages 15 and up, I'm 21). I've accepted this. I know how big I am, and I've chosen a lifestyle and sports that others generally can't use their size as an advantage.

That being said, one thing that's always been an issue is dating. As a freshman in high school, I was 4'10" and weighed 76 pounds. That's right, 76 pounds. I was the smallest in a school of 2000, any gender. Girls at that age pushed me to the side as a friend, and I quickly became comfortable with that role in the "friend zone." I never learned to be a dick, if I was I would have been beaten up and shoved in a locker. I had to be that lovable, cute kid that no one would hate. I had my first girlfriend sophomore year of high school, and I've had one since then (sophomore year of college). Both which required me to do very little work. It's been 2 years since the last one failed quite miserably.

"Alright, but how does all this relate to Dan Mahoney and why is it on his blog?" Excellent question. Dan and I have been talking for about a year now about a girl I've had a crush on and how amazing I think she is. Of all the similarities Dan and I have together, the one I refuse to accept is our social skills with girls. I can't fall in to that path. I can't be like Dan in every way. I have to break this cycle. I have to finally become uncomfortable, and ask someone out on a date. So this is my public/not so public announcement that I'm going to attempt to truly differentiate between Dan and myself. It's going to take courage, and most likely the acceptance of rejection, but damnit I have to try. Updates to come in the following weeks.

Wish me luck

Ty Mangum

...because everyone knows how women love a short guy with a chip on his shoulder.

But seriously. Godspeed, Ty. May this be your glorious triumph, or else finalize your transition to the dark side.

A Little Gem, via Yuji

2011-11-07T21:39:00.000-08:00

As part of Yuji's latest, glorious unemployment binge, he has decided to learn the computer programming language Haskell. I'm not sure how useful it is, but he seems to be having fun with it, and obviously the #1 source for teaching yourself Haskell is www.learnyouahaskell.com.

This afternoon, Yuji tipped me off to a little gem in Chapter 9: Input and Output.

So any book that includes references (either explicit or implicit) to Avril Lavigne wins some major points in my book. She should be the foundation of programming examples whenever feasible. But then, somehow, it gets even better when they analyze this program line by line:

So this book has the kind of jokes I love best AND the pop culture references I love best. I didn't previously have any interest, but I think I might have to learn Haskell for no other reason than to have an excuse to go through the rest of this book.

Or Yuji can just keep sharing the best parts with me.

Epee training

2011-11-06T17:07:00.000-08:00

For the past few months, I've been dabbling off and on with fencing epee in practice. I even fenced an epee competition over the summer. Today, I actually took my epee fencing to the "next level" by accompanying several University of Oregon fencers to an all-day training session in Portland. This camp was run by the current men's epee national coach, with special guest, current national team member, Cody Mattern.

My primary goal going in to the camp was to do well enough that the rest of the epee fencers there didn't think to themselves, "why the hell is this saber fencer ruining our epee camp?" I think I managed to achieve that goal, but beyond that, I stunk. To recap my impressions of the camp in list form:

The Good:

I got the opportunity to fence with a handful of fencers I wouldn't normally have the opportunity to fence with.

One of those fencers was the aforementioned Mr Mattern, who beat me 15-6. When I jokingly boasted to Sheehy that getting 6 touches on him was a small victory, Sheehy (correctly) reminded me that less than 10 doesn't count. He kicked my ass, and the score was irrelevant, but I did learn from it, and he was willing to give me a few pointers after.

We watched some video from the national men's epee team's recent Pan Am Games gold medal bout, with commentary from the coach, and a participating athlete. It was great to hear what they were actually thinking at the time, instead of just inferring their thoughts from the actions in the video.

I learn best from failure, and there was no shortage of "learning" for me that day.

The Bad:

Now I know I'm kind of an odd case, in that I have a lot of intense fencing training under my belt, and am currently in the best shape of my life, but this camp wasn't intense enough. They gave regular breaks, and could have pushed harder. Now, of course, if the camp was actually tuned around the level of intensity I desired, I wouldn't have the skillset needed to participate. So I know it's unreasonable to expect them to suit my (uncommon) needs, but more intensity would have been nice.

The afternoon bouting was a little inefficient. Lots of standing around waiting. Not a lot of fencing. I know this resembles actual tournaments, but in the time allotted, I easily could have fenced twice as many bouts if I didn't have to keep waiting for my next partner to be available.

The Conclusion:

So, walking away from my first epee training camp, what was the most important thing I learned? I need to stop pretending that this is still a viable fencing shoe. I lost count of the number of times I slipped because I went to push off the floor, and there was simply no shoe there to make contact.

Can't you people make a good decision without it becoming an 'event'?

2011-11-04T17:33:00.000-07:00

Spurred in small part due to the growing resentment towards profitable enterprise, and in large part due to a $5 monthly fee, there has apparently been a nationwide surge of people transferring their money from large, national banks to smaller credit unions and local banks.

Outraged over fee hikes, consumers mark Saturday as ‘Bank Transfer Day

A grassroots movement that sprang to life last month is urging bank customers to close their accounts in favor of credit unions by Saturday.
The spirit behind “Bank Transfer Day” caught fire with the Occupy Wall Street protests around the country and had more than 77,000 supporters on its Facebook page as of Friday. The movement has already helped beat back Bank of America’s plan to start charging a $5 debit card fee.

And to this I say, "get with the times, people." I love large corporations as much as anyone in America who doesn't have any money, but this is just silly. For as long as I've had to make personal decisions about banking, the largest banks have always had excessive fees, while offering no better service or return than their local competitors.

My money is currently split between Florence Savings Bank, a small bank in Western Massachusetts, and Oregon Community Credit Union, a slightly-larger credit union here in Eugene. Surely Bank of America doesn't weep for my meager sums of money, but that's okay, because I have no animosity toward them. I just save my money in the bank that is most convenient, and offers me the greatest value. To that end, I can't figure out why so many people who do detest the large banks so much would wait so long to withdraw their money.

UPDATE: How fortuitous, as I was walking to fencing practice, I passed two ATMs. One, for Oregon Community Credit Union, which had a single person using it. The other, for Bank of America, which had 8 people lined up.

I rest my case.

169

2011-11-01T08:00:00.000-07:00

This is big. This evening I weighed myself, and found myself south of the 170 mark for the first time since... I can't even remember. Maybe I was 12? I was a pretty pudgy kid, not that I would have ever admitted it at the time. No, when I was growing up, I lived in my own little fantasy world where I was healthy weight. Sure I knew I wasn't "skinny", but I wasn't fat. No, that picture of me was just from a bad angle. So was that other picture of me. And that other one. As it turns out, when you're fat, every angle is a bad one.

My weight kept steadily creeping up until the summer after my freshman year of college, when I was weighed in at a doctors appointment as 210 pounds. It was at that point that it became clear to me that I weighed too much, whether I believed it or not. This tough look at myself was consistent with my general life transformation of the time: if I wanted to be an asshole to other people, it was only fair that I be an asshole to myself as well. So I decided to make a few changes. The biggest change was that I stopped drinking soda. Of all the dietary commitments I've ever made, this was the most profound. Not only because I found the willpower to avoid the sugary vixen, but because I actually managed to completely transform my mental perception of the drink. After weening myself off of it, soda now looks disgusting to me. While other unhealthy treats (most notably cookies) continue to tempt me even when I am practicing restraint, I simply have no desire to consume carbonated soft drinks. It's wonderful.

So that year, I dropped down from 210 to around 190. Everyone kept telling me how thin I looked, but the funny thing was, I couldn't notice a difference when I looked at myself. For the next several years, I bounced around between 180 and 190, depending on the season, or my fluctuating self-control. Throughout this time, I was more self-aware of my level of pudge. I imagined that if I ever got my weight down to 165 or so, I could actually be skinny. But I never made the commitment.

Then, last spring, after failing particularly dramatically in several bike races, I decided, after all these years, I finally wanted to be skinny. I was around 183 when I started measuring, and today I made it into the glorious realm of the 160s. I'm still not at my preconceived target of 165, but it's pretty clear to me that 165 isn't low enough. I might have to go down to 155 to actually be skinny. Though over 40 pounds less than my heaviest, I still can't notice a difference when I look at myself in the mirror. It's just that pictures don't seem to be from bad angles anymore.

Children, there will be no Halloween this year

2011-10-31T08:00:00.000-07:00

If anyone has any spare heat or electricity, please send some to my parents. They are currently without both. Much of Western Massachusetts finds itself in a similar predicament, and it looks like it might be a few days before anything changes. And just to make matters worse, as my mom was navigating the house at night by flashlight, a rat picked that moment to make his appearance. I'm not sure why a rat would want choose a power outage to make his grand debut, was the house too warm and inviting before?

Thanks to a Vanny and a power inverter, they are not completely helpless, but I do feel bad for all the poor children who will most likely have their Halloween plans curtailed by the absence of safe roads, and electricity. Never have I felt so good about being in rainy Oregon instead of (typically) gorgeous autumn in New England. While my parents were moving all their perishables out of the refrigerator (ironically, in a winter power outage, the refrigerator actually keeps food warm), I had a downright delightful day. Woke up in the morning and went for a bike ride. About 30 miles, at a relatively easy pace. Got home, showered, changed, and fed in time to make it to the volleyball game. I'm not sure if one can say Oregon redeemed themselves for their performance on Friday, but they did the next best thing, winning 3-0.

After the volleyball game, I went home and got my semi-annual inspiration to clean. This time it was actually different. Usually, when I clean my apartment, I "clean" it by stuffing as much as possible into my closet, and pretending I've actually accomplished something. This time, I decided to actually tackle the closet head-on. I actually threw out some old shorts where the elastic was shot. I also "recycled" some old socks and underwear by moving them from my closet to my bike-rag pile. I sorted my clothes into different piles ("clothes I don't wear", "clothes I don't like","clothes I wouldn't ever wear", "Simpsons t-shirts"), and by the time I was done, my closet was actually looking pretty good.

No, not that closet--the other one...

Yeah... that's the closet I cleaned. Doesn't it look nice? That's the kind of closet you're only a little ashamed to show your friends.

But there is just one problem--I realized that much of my clutter is caused by a grand imbalance in my books:bookshelf ratio. Namely, that I don't have any bookshelves. This currently leaves me with a table full of books.

I've got books I've already read, books I want to read, books I'll never read, economics books, baseball books, math books, bad books, and good books. It's only about 30 books in all, but what if I actually wanted to use my table? Ideally, I'd like to throw lots of parties. Right now I don't have acceptable accommodations to host one. Once I get my bookshelf, the only thing stopping me will be popularity.

And for those of you who were concerned about Ty, don't be. He finally got that picture today with both his favorite players.

A disappointing evening

2011-10-29T12:42:00.000-07:00

After a busy week, filled with lots of new enemies (I gave my class their midterm), I was really looking forward to some Oregon Volleyball this weekend. Coming off two strong wins last weekend, including an upset over the University of Washington, this weekend Oregon welcomed Utah and Colorado--two Pac 12 bottom-feeders.

Utah was first up, Friday night. Ty was looking to continue his sign streak, and after seeing my picture with Alaina Bergsma last week, he figured the best excuse to get a picture himself would be to dedicate this sign to her.

Side Note: I don't look half-bad in that picture. Sure I'm no Harrison Ford, but posing next to someone taller than me, skinnier than me, and with a nicer smile than me, I would have thought it would make me look a lot worse in comparison, but as far as pictures of me go, that one's pretty good.

Though Ty is the sign-master, I agreed to lend a hand when he dreamed up this two-parter.

I held up the first one, he had the pleasure of holding up Russel Crowe. Through the first set, the signs appeared to be working. Oregon took it 25-13, and I foolishly wished that Oregon was playing a stronger opponent, because this game looked like it wasn't going to be particularly exciting. Alas, I got all that I wished for and more, as Utah came back strong, and our ladies did not appear to have their A-game. In the end, Utah took it in 5 sets. It was a terribly disappointing game to watch, but as bad it was for us, it was quite clear from the look on the players' faces that they were absolutely devastated.

I immediately thought back to some of the more disappointing moments of my fencing career (one that was certainly filled with more disappointment than success). I know if it were me in that situation, I would have been looking for a way to punish myself (most likely by running). I'm not sure how the Oregon Volleyball team handles it, but one thing was certain--they weren't going to be in the mood to chat, or have their picture taken. And so Ty's glorious sign (and glorious plan) would have to wait for another night... Or preferably Sunday afternoon when they play Colorado, and give them the gift of fury. While it may be completely preposterous to assume they're anything like me, I know I was never so motivated as after a bad loss. I'm predicting scores of 25-11, 25-8, and 25-13.

As I mentioned, if I were a player, after a disappointment such as that, I would go for a run. But as a fan, that hardly seems like the right response. So instead, with sadness filling my heart, I went out and did something I had never done before. Something I never thought I'd ever do. I went to the grocery store and bought a bag of potatoes.

Sure I'd bought french fries before. I'd bought potato chips. I'd even occasionally by frozen dinners that included some sort of potato dish (Uncle Ben's Homemade Latkes), but I had never bought raw potatoes. I'm sure somewhere my Irish ancestors would have been smiling if only they weren't such surly, joyless people. I'm not sure why I thought I could drown my sorrows in a dirty, flavorless tuber, but it somehow seemed appropriate.

The only question now is what to do with them. I know I have a few options, but considering I don't actually like potatoes, none of the choices seem that appealing. I'll probably do what I do with every other food I don't know how to cook--cover it with Hershey's Syrup, and stick it in the microwave.

Corporations need to stop stealing my ideas

2011-10-27T15:17:00.000-07:00

I was watching some TV shows online, when I was presented with the following commercial:

It looked like a typical horrible commercial, but as I kept watching, something seemed off. At first, I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but as I kept watching, it jumped out at me. See it?

How about now?

Who has a bicycle wheel and pump just sitting around, but no bike? Well I'll tell you who; I do. Compare that to this photograph from my apartment.

Look at that. Just sitting there... a wheel, a pump... and laundry detergent. Sure everything's a little dirtier than in the commercial. I've got some rags, and some cardboard boxes. A broken saber blade, and a few cobwebs, but there can be no doubt, the visual design of that commercial is flagrantly plagiarized from my apartment. They may have tried to cover it up with obnoxious actors and a wretched color scheme, but that wasn't enough to fool a hawk like me.

Needless to say, the Procter and Gamble will be hearing from my lawyers, just as soon as I can afford lawyers.

Occupy Eugene Update

2011-10-26T00:13:00.000-07:00

Today I went out for a run. It's like a bike ride, but with your legs as wheels. It was a chilly October day, but the sun was shining, so I was happy with that. As I ran through Alton Baker Park, I noticed that the Occupy Eugene movement had relocated their tent city. I'm not sure if they got sick of protesting the farmers market, or maybe the Eugene Police Department finally got sick of them soiling the downtown, but they seem to have adapted well to their new sprawling home in the park.

The spacious land, beautiful trees, and cool breeze coming off the river still wasn't enough to hide the stench of tobacco and B.O.. This point was really emphasized by one of the signs I saw:

THE TOP 1% TAKE 30% OF THE SHOWERS

It's about damn time Obama stepped up to bat and got that personal hygiene bill passed. They also had a makeshift amphitheater set up. It was really just a few tarps strung up to a tree, but some guy with no teeth was giving a speech to no one who was listening. Someone with a camera was recording it, though. Probably a reporter for the local branch of the Daily Worker. This is just the kind of crap that makes them feel relevant.

But times are tough. I sympathize with their plight. One of the ~~bums~~ protesters asked me if I had a light. It really reflects on the sorry state of our country if a man can't even afford some matches to light his cigarette. WHY ARE YOU HOARDING ALL THE MATCHES, WALL STREET?

And just like that, I was gone. After all, I was on a run, and lord knows I wasn't going to linger long enough for them to think I somehow supported their "cause". As I continued running, another runner overtook me, and in the time we were passing, he asked me about my running shoes. Very quickly did I realize he knew more about my shoes than I did. I tried my best to talk the part ("so... you like running to, eh?"), but in a place that calls itself "Track Town", I'm just as much out of my element with the runners as I am with the "99%".

Friday night volleyball

2011-10-22T13:35:00.000-07:00

Last night, Ty and I had the pleasure of an Oregon Volleyball home game. That's always a treat. The game was against Washington State, and they're not particularly good, so the outlook was certainly favorable going in. Ty decided to go the extra mile for this game, making a sign for his favorite player. It read:

"LIZ, #6, IS MY FAVORITE PLAYER"

I like that he specified her by both name and number, just in case the only "Liz" on the team didn't know he was referring to her. I also appreciated his use of punctuation in the sign. I also appreciated that every time Ty held the sign up, he further punctuated it with a Curly/Zoidberg "woop woop woop".

Unfortunately, his sign may have backfired initially, as Liz, #6, got off to a very poor start. The whole team did. They dropped the first two sets, and looked bad in doing so. Thankfully, after the break, everyone seemed to remember that Oregon was a lot better than Washington State, and so Oregon came back to take the last three sets 25-8, 25-13, and 15-12. A very important factor in that comeback was the outstanding play of Liz, #6, Ty's favorite player.

So naturally, after the game, we had to stick around so that Liz, #6, could sign Ty's sign. Everything was going well until Ty approached her with the sign, and the first words out of her mouth were, "So... who are you?" Of all the potentially clever things running through his head, none of them addressed the most obvious question. After stuttering a few words like an idiot, she quickly realized Ty was harmless, and agreed to a picture with him.

"Hey, is that your little brother?"

And while we were there, I had to take the opportunity to have my picture taken with my favorite player, #2, Alaina Bergsma. I know she's almost everybody's favorite player, and I hate being like everyone else, but it's hard to watch her play and not be absolutely blown away by her talent.

Notice the death grip I have on her arm? That's because the last thing Ty said to me before I stepped up for the photograph was to warn me against the dreaded hover hand. Mission: Accomplished, but I may have overcompensated a bit.

Though it was a wonderful experience--the game, the autographs, the pictures, I couldn't help but feel a little guilty. Not because I'm a creepy grad student in line with a bunch of 10 year-old girls waiting to meet the players after the game. No, I felt guilty for the amount of reverence I have for the players on that team. It's the same feeling typical students here have for the players on the football team, and I find that contemptible. Certainly no volleyball player has ever had her hands around my throat threatening to kill me, but I also haven't spent as much time interacting with volleyball players. I do tend to bring out the worst in people.

I really want to believe that these players are worthy of the respect I give them, but that's just the problem, I want to believe. I don't know. Liking things, desiring things--those cloud our judgment. It stops us from seeing what's real. But for now, I'm just going to let myself have this one. Until the day some volleyball player comes along and ruins the whole sport for me like Ted did for football, I will go to their games, cheer loudly, and let my heart be filled with joy when I look at that picture.

My frozen banana peel collection is shaping up nicely

2011-10-20T22:16:00.000-07:00

Occupy Eugene

2011-10-18T18:50:00.000-07:00

Today I was tipped off by Ty to an article in the local newspaper. Headline: "The downtown protest against economic injustice will force the relocation of today’s farmers’ market". It seems several thousand miles away from relevance of Wall Street, the protesters are actually doing some good.

A lesser man would just laugh at the irony that these protesters are actually inhibiting small farmers from peddling their wares, while doing nothing to affect large financial firms in any way. But just because it's ironic, doesn't mean its bad. I commend these citizens for finally taking a stand against small farmers. I mean, if they didn't suck so much at their jobs, they'd have bigger farms. And their fresh produce wouldn't be so damn expensive, and rather underwhelming to consume. "No pesticides"--that's just great... this worm adds more protein. So finally the protesters and I found a little common ground. Maybe this could be a new beginning?

Nope.

Later in the day, I walked to the post office to mail a fitbit to Yuji. On my way, I walked through the protesters base of operations. It's no secret that the "Occupy" movement has some ill-defined objectives, but seeing them in person, it was clear there was one thing they could all agree on--cigarettes. And not showering. Between the smoke and the B.O., it seems they were primarily protesting clean air. They were holding signs "End Corporate Greed" but on the other side of the cardboard, you could still see yesterday's message "Spare Change?" Wait a minute... these are just the same bums that loiter around downtown all the time. They just figured out that if they affix themselves to a national cause, the police will feel guilty chasing them away to live under the bridges where they belong.

Between all the smoking, dyed hair, and smelly people with anarchy symbols safety pinned to their tattered pants, I thought I was back in high school again. "We are the 99%" they said--99% of what? I'm poor as shit, and whatever the hell you are, I'm not one of you.

I know some have claimed that it is unfair to dismiss all the "Occupy" movement as being a bunch of worthless bums unworthy of our concern, and I will concede that perhaps that is true... in New York. Here in Eugene, they really are all just bums. Take that Eugene Bank of America retail branch. How dare you offer that convenient ATM, and drive-up window!

Brown Fencing should live to see another day

2011-10-17T13:47:00.000-07:00

Excellent news today from President Simmons, in particular the part of the report most personally relevant to myself and other supporters of Brown Fencing:

The three teams recommended for elimination – wrestling, fencing and skiing – should be given the chance to demonstrate that their supporters are able to endow their sport at the level deemed necessary by the University. These sports should demonstrate over the course of the year that they have assembled gifts and pledges that, when combined with existing team-designated support, constitute an income stream sufficient to generate no less than 100% of the current annual budget for that sport.
In addition, the skiing team’s proposed new practice and competition plan should be examined by the Dean of the College and the Vice President for Campus Life and Student Services to determine if it meets standards for an appropriate balance between academic and extra-curricular activity.
Over the next five years, assuming that annual funding continues at the current level, as Athletics builds the appropriate endowment base to support the current team sports, the University should agree not to cut the Athletics budget. Until such time as that budget reaches the overall agreed-upon funding target, all funds freed up by new endowment should be either reallocated within the Athletics budget or used to support incremental staffing needed to support the full Athletics program. In this way, donors will be better incentivized to make gifts to support athletics.

The Brown Corporation still needs to vote to adopt her recommendations, but it is assumed that they will support this plan. So fencing is safe for now, but with the added burden of being (essentially) financially self-sufficient.

Personally I am happy with this recommendation. I understand the financial realities of running a University, and I know the stress the athletics department was under, as well as the whole university. Still, if there were sufficient outside funds (from parents, alumni, friends, such as myself) to support the team, it certainly didn't serve the mission of the University to cut the team anyway. There has been nearly $1million pledged to support the fencing team. I hope this number continues to grow, but I am glad the current athletes will not have the rug pulled out from under them, so to speak.

As for some of the other recommendations in the report, I wholeheartedly support raising the academic standards for admitted athletes. Based on my personal interactions, the academic merits of certain teams (most notably football and basketball) lagged behind the general student body. Brown must first and foremost remain an outstanding academic institution. Athletics should serve to further the opportunities available to the students.

I also support the reduction in recruitment spots (even if it is likely that these spots will be taken from the fencing team, among others). Much as with the academic standards, the goal of Brown athletics should be about bringing athletics to Brown students, not bringing Brown to athletic students.

I would like to thank Ruth Simmons for her thoughtfulness in this process. She managed to address many of my original concerns--particularly the claim that Brown couldn't afford to keep its least expensive sport, even if donations could cover all its expenses.

Vive Brown Fencing!

Body Image and the Media

2011-10-14T23:20:00.000-07:00

In today's internet surfing, I stumbled across this shocking article, Dear Every Woman I Know, Including Me. It comes from the O(prah) magazine, but I swear I didn't read it there. I promise.

We know that Barbie’s body is anatomically impossible. So why are we still trying for it?
Every day a new plastic surgery promise emerges: scooped-out backs, rear-end lifts, sculpted kneecaps. If it’s possible, it’s suddenly necessary.

It even includes this classy picture, which features a rather odd looking woman holding a Barbie doll:

Quite frankly, to see this was absolutely shocking to me. Can you believe it? We're in the 21st Century, people. It's 2011 and women still think other women compare their bodies to a Barbie doll. I don't know who the first feminist was who decided that a plastic doll was a role model for young women, but since then, the whole obnoxio-feminist culture has really run with the idea.

The biggest problem with the notion that women are aspiring to look like Barbie is it's a really shitty goal. Not because it's unattainable, but because Barbie is far from the ideal physique. The ideal woman looks something like this:

Or possibly like this:

In fact, when today's women describe another woman as looking "like Barbie", they are using the term as an insult, because it is universally recognized that Barbie's physique is rather unappealing on actual humans. This is painfully obvious to everyone except feminists, who fancy themselves so clever that they just have to pretend they want to look like Barbie.

But what about very young girls? Ones who might not yet know any better? Perhaps they have developed body image problems because of Barbie? Little girls definitely have body image problems, but Barbie's actually helping. Have you ever seen what it looks like when a little girl tries to draw a person? It's awful. My mom's an art teacher, and so suffice to say I've seen more horrors than any man ought to. I asked if she could send me a few samples so I could post them and make fun of them, but she refused. Next time I should just ask her for the samples without telling her I'm going to make fun of them.

When little kids draw bodies, there are some serious problems with those images. You've got arms coming out of heads, legs that make up 90% of the height, and faces so disoriented they would make Picasso blush. Barbie is a wonderful role model for these children. For starters, she's got a neck. He limbs are vaguely proportional to her height. She's got 10 fingers and 10 toes. All those things positively reinforce to children what the human body actually looks like. Sure it's not perfect. She's a little skinny around the middle, which makes her easier for kids to grab with their tiny hands, but that's okay too. When children draw bodies, the torso is always either a line or a circle. That Barbie teaches young children that bodies have shapes that can't be characterized by a single parameter is a hugely important.

As the children grow older, most will detach themselves from their Barbie dolls. They will get new idols and role models. If they're lucky, they will be exposed to better body ideals. If they're unlucky, they will grow up in Mississippi, shop at Wal-Mart, and Barbie will be closer to a healthy body than any real person they encounter in their daily life. No matter what they're exposed to, they will grow up and forget about Barbie.. or they'll become a feminist--someone so indignant at the notion of artistic liberties that she will devote her life to feeling bad about herself just so that she can blame other people.

Why isn't Yuji still in Japan?

2011-10-11T13:42:00.000-07:00

Good news! Japan is really desperate for friends. So much so that they're giving away free plane tickets for people to come visit.

Thus the Japan Tourism Agency has proposed offering free airfare to 10,000 foreigners to visit the country next year.
The project would only cover travelers’ airline fees: visitors would have to pay their own food, lodging and other costs. Still, if implemented, it will cost about ¥1.1 billion ($14.3 million). That’s roughly 10% of the tourism agency’s overall 2012 budget appropriation request, and an indication of how serious the tourism slide may have become. The national budget is expected to be approved in parliament next March.

Okay, okay, but what's the catch?

In return for a free flight, participants will be asked to share their experiences in a report to be published online. Online applications for the promotion will open next April, if all goes according to plan, and the agency will select the candidates by early summer.

So, in exchange for Japan paying for me to visit Yuji, all I have to do is... blog about it? I couldn't imagine it any other way. There's just one problem, Yuji's not in Japan. He had to move to London like a jerk. Visiting Japan doesn't seem nearly as much fun without him. Especially since I don't speak the language, and am terrified by all their food.

So here's hoping that Yuji moves back to Japan before next summer. Even if I don't go, I'll still probably blog about it.

What's the nicest way to tell my students that I don't give a damn what grade they get?

2011-10-10T01:20:00.000-07:00

Two weeks into the term, and already my class and I are out of sync. It's not just that they don't understand the material--it's that there appears to be a fundamental misunderstanding as to the nature of my job. As I always understood it, my job was to teach the students of my class to understand the principles and techniques of microeconomics as best as possible. As they understand it, I am a black box that assigns them grades. For some stupid reason, I actually care about doing a good job, as far as I believe the job to, but it's a losing battle.

In a typical day, I probably get 5 e-mail messages of the form:

Subject: Homework N Posted
Message: Dear Professor (not actually my title) Mahoney,
On homework N, problem M, I got X as an answer. Is this right?

There is no confusion over the material. No explanation of why the student might believe that his (often correct) answer might not be correct. All that he wants is for me to reassure him that his answer is correct so that he doesn't accidentally lose the "10 points" that will have a negligible impact on his final grade. Now, let me be clear--it is absolutely not the case that this student simply wants to know whether or not he has done the problem correct, because if that were the case, he could simply hit 'submit' to his homework that he does online to receive instant feedback.

I have the class do all their homework online because in a class of 110 students, it's really the only feasible way to give them problems and feedback in a timely fashion. It does have its drawbacks. The auto-grading system isn't particularly intelligent. For example, if I ask them a simple question like "what price should I sell my pants for?" and they give an answer of "$5", the system will mark that as wrong. It only accepts numbers (so just "5"), and only in decimal format (so it cannot process that 1/2=.5). Despite repeatedly telling the students this, half of them still submit answers like "$5", "the price will be $5", or "price 5". And you know what? THAT'S OKAY! Sure, it's a pain in the ass, but putting units on numbers isn't a bad habit, and so I can forgive them for something like this. All it means is I have to go through and manually double check the answers online. It's not a particularly time consuming process, and I have a grader who can help, so once or twice a week we can scroll through all their answers and double check it all. We expect to have to do this, and have planned accordingly. So when I tell the students that this might happen and that the grader and I will be checking these anyway, so please wait at least a few days after the homework has been submitted before bringing this issue to our attention, it's only natural that 5 minutes later, I have 20 e-mails sitting in my inbox saying:

Subject: HW N Correction
Message: Dear Professor (still not my title) Mahoney,
On homework N, problem M, I submitted an answer of $X, but it marked it wrong, even though it said the correct answer is X. I think I should be given full credit, because I basically have the same answer. Can you please amend this, because if I miss any points on this homework assignment, I have convinced myself that I can't get an A in the course, even though you and I both know that the reason I won't get an A in this course is because I spend more time worrying about my grade than actually studying.

The students don't actually say that last part, but I'm still bombarded with these requests regularly. And the whole thing is so infuriating to me because grades don't matter. And homework grades less than don't matter. I would be perfectly happy to simply abolish grades, but alas, I can't do that. Grades their incentive. Subsequently, grades are my only tool to get them to do things. Things that will help them learn, such as homework. It's a bad system. I wish I could give them other rewards. I'd probably give them candy, if I could afford to buy candy for 110 students. Until then, I will be regularly assaulted by students coming to me to help them figure out a way to pass the class that doesn't actually involve learning the material.

Poor people are just greedy people who aren't very good at it

2011-10-08T00:18:00.000-07:00

As the protests on Wall Street continue, and my Facebook feed continues to fill with angry 20somethings calling for greater redistribution of wealth, I am forced to ponder just how much these people annoy me.

If there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that the economy isn't in a particularly desirable condition right now. Unemployment is quite high, GDP growth has been sluggish, and debt levels are downright disturbing. Those are all real problems. You know what isn't a problem? Income inequality. Income inequality is not a bad thing in and of itself. One doesn't have to look hard to realize that despite greater inequality, the United States is certainly a much better country to live in than such egalitarian paradises as Ethiopia, Bosnia, or India. Even the poorest of the poor in the United States have a better quality of life than the typical citizen of those countries. Making money is not a zero sum game, and to specifically target those who are prosperous, as is being done in the Wall Street protests, is to fundamentally misunderstand the economy.

To reiterate, income inequality is not a problem. But it may be a symptom. So what is the real problem. It's not that so many people aren't "making enough money". The problem is that so many people aren't being productive. Millions of Americans, who are perfectly capable of holding jobs and producing goods and services desired by others have been unable to make the most of their talents. That is the tragedy of the economy. It is not that those who are successfully have given the rest of us a "raw deal", they are simply the ones who have come out on top. They may be "greedy" but greed is not a trait of the rich. Greed is a trait of everybody. Success is a trait of the rich. Poor people are just greedy people who aren't very good at it.

Still, angry people who feel wronged by the system continue to insist upon greater redistribution of wealth. They have dreams of greater income equality, and they only way they can think to create that is to take wealth away from those who have the most. But that's not the only way. A better way would be for people who have little to get more wealth. "But where is it going to come from, if not from the rich?" a very dumb strawman might ask. The answer, of course, is that it will come from being productive. When a man is productive, he creates value. Every time my dad renovates a kitchen, he is creating value. He is taking the tools, and the raw materials and creating something worth more than its inputs. Every time Giorgio Armani designs a new suit, he is creating value. The same is true for every car manufactured (at least Japanese cars--the same is not clear for the American ones), every computer built, or every Gwen Stefani song--they are all adding value to society.

To fix the economy, we don't need to figure out how to stop the wealthy from exploiting us, we need to figure out how the millions of unemployed or underemployed Americans can reach their productive potential. The Keynesians think it's an aggregate demand problem, and they're probably not wrong about that. The natural solution is for the government to increase spending. Ironically, this solution requires borrowing money through the very financial institutions the Wall Street protesters are protesting. You hear that? Even when you're right, you're still wrong.

But to simply say "government spending" oversimplifies things. Not all government spending is created equally, and even the best of spending still won't address all the problems with the labor market. Even with all of modern technology at our disposal, jobs are still won and lost with just two main tools: a resume and an interview. The resume is a rather vague list, often unverified, of other jobs a person has supposedly done. There are no detailed measures of performance, only vague implications of a performance good enough to avoid being fired for the duration of employment. The other tool is the interview. If you're interviewing for a salesman, or newspaper reporter, the interview is a great tool. If you're interviewing for an actuary, sitting down and talking with the applicant might not be the best approach. Everyone knows all the best actuaries are autistic, and everyone knows autistic people don't do well in interviews. Worse than that, a great many of these interviews are arranged through personal connections. Personal connections are a great way to do favors for your friends, but it's certainly not the most meritocratic way to allocate workers.

But for those of you who are still more worried about the income distribution than the income level, remember, there's more than one way to skin a cat. The income distribution isn't just shaped by the rich. It's shaped by the choices that all of us make.

My sister works for NARAL, and advocates for the "pro choice" movement. This is actually something she and I are completely in agreement on this (this is where I now proceed to write a whole bunch of things that would horrify her). Having a child is a woman's choice. And you know what's so great about choices? We can judge people for their choices. Even for a judgmental asshole like me, it's hard to judge people for factors that were fundamentally outside of their control (height, hair color, ethnicity, etc.). But choices--those are fair game. Having a baby is a woman's choice, and every time a woman living in poverty chooses to have a child, she is personally responsible for raising the rate of children living in poverty in this country. While there are some cases where people of adequate means suffer unexpected hardship, the vast majority of childhood poverty in this country comes from people already living in poverty who choose to have children. We could all-but eliminate childhood poverty in this country, and it is totally within our power. Don't look to the government, don't look to the banks. The fertility choices that each and every one of us make shape the nature of the income distribution.

So who'd like to join me next week as I protest poor, pregnant women?

The most obnoxious thing on the internet

2011-10-06T22:02:00.000-07:00

You know those images people keep sharing on Facebook? The images that are really just text, often about topical political issues? Occasionally, when the the quote comes from someone famous, the picture of the text is accompanied by a picture of the quotes supposed originator? Do you know those? Because I hate those images more than Yuji loves Steve Jobs.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, all you need to do is browse imgur to see a bunch of them.

They look stupid and something like this:

The first thing that one notices in each case is that any associated "pictures" add nothing to the text. It's just text. So why does it need an image file? I know today's computers are often overkill for what we need them to do, but there's no need to be inefficient just for the sake of inefficiency. Even a highly compressed, low resolution image will require several orders of magnitude more memory than text. Computers were built around text, and to use an image file where plain text would serve the purpose just as effectively, you are announcing to the world that you are a person of poor cognitive ability.

Which brings me to my next complaint: quoting famous people. There are good reasons to quote people. One may wish to use quotations to apply attribution to a statement of fact. If I were to tell you that the Earth revolves around the sun, that's just hearsay. When Copernicus tells you that the Earth revolves around the sun, he is an expert witness with suitable credentials, and so his words are assumed to carry with them a certain amount of merit, unlike me, who likes to make things up.

Another reason to quote is in the case where the words have been crafted in a particularly elegant fashion, and to accurately replicate the sentiment would be considered plagiarism without proper credit. This might often be the case with a person like Mark Twain or Bill Cosby--real geniuses. But all too often, these quotes are just bland, vaguely political statements that are attributed to Gandhi because he's well respected so if he says "I'd vote for Obama" that somehow carries more weight than if you or I said "I'd vote for Obama"--let ideas stand on their own merit. If you need Martin Luther King Jr to agree with you in order to validate your feelings, you probably have a small penis.

So go right ahead, share with me the inane details of your life. What did you have for breakfast. What song are you listening to. How much you love your stupid boyfriend--at least that's you. But I swear to god, if you keep sharing stupid image files that have nothing but text, or text and a worthless picture, I swear to god I'm defriending you!

How am I going to handle this?

2011-10-04T00:00:00.000-07:00

I'm starting to put together my cycling training schedule for next year. Though I'm sure I won't be able to stick to it, my rough schedule looks something like this:

Monday: Fencing, weights
Tuesday: Bike Ride (approx. 2 hours)
Wednesday: Fencing, weights
Thursday: Bike Ride (optional: run)
Friday: Run, Fencing (optional: bike ride)
Saturday: Long Bike Ride (approx. 4 hours)
Sunday: Long Bike Ride (approx. 4 hours)

In any given week, I'm aiming for 4 bike rides, 3 fencing sessions, 2 weightlifting sessions, 2 runs, and a hell of a lot of Powerbars. I'm sure something will have to give (I really ought to schedule some rest days), but I'm not worried about the level of exercise. What really worries me is the laundry. That's an awful lot of cycling jerseys, Simpsons t-shirts, crotchless compression shorts, and other miscellaneous athletic apparel that I will be soiling on a regular basis. Thank god fencers never wash their uniforms, but all my other activities demand at least some semblance of hygiene. The way I see it, I have several options.

1. Laundry night twice a week
This is the hardest, and most expensive option. Running the washing machine is $1.25. I usually like to dry as much as possible on my drying rack, but that might not work if I need it dry by the next morning. That's another $.75. But it's really not the money. The hard part is remembering to do it so frequently.

2. Get used to the stink
While this option isn't desirable, it's certainly likely that on more than a few occasions, I won't have anything clean to wear, and will have to reluctantly have to brave the stench of my dirty gym shorts. Good thing I don't have any workout buddies, because if I did, I wouldn't.

3. Leave my bathtub filled with ammonia
I kind of like this one. All I have to do is get back from my work out, hop in with all my clothes out, and 5 minutes later, I'd disinfected--clothes and all. The only downside is that given my apartment's completely lack of ventilation, I may suffer some incidental brain damage.

Life is all about sacrifices, and I might not be able to have everything. At the end of the day, it's clear I've got a choice to make: be slow, or B.O..

I told him it was a bad idea...

2011-10-02T23:58:00.000-07:00

I know it may be a stretch to call what I have a "front yard" but that overgrown pile of broken glass bottles and cigarette butts is the closest thing I've got. Now I'm certainly no Carl (my parents' next door neighbor), but I'm certainly a little possessive of my little piece of heaven. I want it looking its best, so last week, when someone dumped an oven there, I was a little pissed off.

"Look buddy, unless you're on a smoke break, you keep your garbage off my lawn!" But there wasn't anyone there. I don't know where it came from. Why there? Should I do anything about it? No.

A few days later, the door do the oven went missing. Not just smashed. Actually missing. Like someone was walking by, saw an abandoned oven, and realized this was the opportunity he had been waiting for his whole life--to steal an oven door. It was a crime of passion. I can understand that. I too have had my own youthful indiscretions.*

But what happened next defied all logic. I returned home to find a severed bike lock next to the oven. Was someone really dumb enough to lock their bike to a discarded oven? More than that, was someone really dumb enough to disregard all of Sheehy's premonitions and lock his or her bike up with a cheap cable lock. Next time you're wondering how we could possibly live in a country that elected Obama as president, remember, these are the same people who lock their bikes up to ovens.

*actually, I haven't

I wasn't expecting that

2011-10-01T17:37:00.000-07:00

Today I decided to skip the bike and hit the weight room instead. After a few reps, the pain in my knee said it might not have been the best idea. After a few more reps, the pain in my shoulder told me it really wasn't a good idea. After still a few more reps, I figured I should probably stick to a light workout.

As I was on my way out, I passed someone that made me do a double take. Usually, my double takes are reserved for volleyball players, but for this, I make an exception. It was me from the future. I hadn't seen him around campus since last year, and I was a little worried that he had failed out--or worse, graduated. Despite being done with my workout, I decided to go back in for a few more reps so I could check him out. One thing was clear: my lackluster upper body strength certainly doesn't improve much in the next few years. That much I could have guessed, but there are some things you just can't learn about yourself until you see yourself through your own eyes at a different point in time. In this case, I learned that I'm actually left handed. It's funny how I could go through 26 (you know, I just had to do that math on that one--I actually forgot how old I was) years of my life thinking I was right handed. I guess now is the moment I have to convert. It's like one of those time paradoxes that Captain Picard must contend with in Star Trek. I don't discover I'm left handed until I see myself from the future having already discovered I'm left handed.

This is all getting me confused, but the important thing is that me from the future is alive and well, and I'm looking forward to another year of seeing me around campus.

A little bit of sports blogging

2011-09-30T22:41:00.000-07:00

In recent days/months/years, I have remained relatively quiet on issues of professional sports--specifically, baseball. It's not that I don't still like baseball. It has been my favorite sport since I was a young boy, and even to this day, for all the cycling that I do, if you gave me the chance to be Barry Bonds or Lance Armstrong, I'd still rather be Barry Bonds. I'm still a fan too. I don't get to watch to as many games as I'd like, but I remain emotionally invested--particularly in the interests of the Boston Red Sox.

Yup. It happened. Two days ago, the Red Sox finished their season with a performance so poor that even the Houston Astros felt embarrassed to be seen around them. At first, I tried to pretend there had been no baseball season at all. Maybe another strike had cancelled it. Maybe it was still too soon after 9/11 to resume play. Finally, I couldn't keep up the charade any longer. The Red Sox sucked as badly as any 90 win team ever has in the history of Major League Baseball. As a fan, this was devastating. Even though intellectually, it seems bizarre to personally invest oneself in the performance men I will never know, and probably wouldn't like if I did know, I can't deny that it makes the games more fun to watch.

At least, it makes it more fun to watch when they're winning. When they're losing it sucks. Why? Why couldn't I just not care? Why couldn't I be the Manny Ramirez of fans? Do my own thing. Take my steroids, beat my wife, and live without a worry in the world. That would be great, but I can't do that.

The next best thing to not feeling anything at all is to feel bad. But it's not enough for me to just feel bad, I want to take responsibility. When I fail at sports (which I do quite frequently), I thrive off my own feelings of disappointment. Only through proper penance can I redeem myself, and lord knows how much I love penance. But when the Red Sox lose. When they rip my heart out and use it season their buffet of failure, I really can't do anything about it. Nothing I could have done, short of being a sufficiently talented at baseball to play for a professional franchise could have changed anything. And since that would be an unrealistic goal, even for me, it's difficult more me to find myself accountable for their failure. But I want to. Isn't there some way I can be at fault? I want to be the zincs of the universe--corroding myself to keep others pure. Sort of like Jesus.

An ethical question

2011-09-27T20:32:00.000-07:00

This is one of those purely hypothetical situations, that clearly wasn't inspired by actual events. I promise.

So, suppose you're stalking someone on Facebook. Don't pretend like you don't stalk people on Facebook. We all do it. That's what it's there for. So suppose you've been stalking someone for some time now, and in recent pictures, you notice a suspicious looking mole that wasn't there before (I have a mole?). It might be cancerous. She should probably have it checked out by her doctor. Do you have an obligation to point this out to her?

The downside is it reveals yourself to be a creep. Now, for people, this might not be a huge revelation, but it still takes the discomfort to a new level. On the upside, if your comment ends up saving a life, you might become known as an endearing creep, or a heroic creep. Clearly, it is for the greater good of humanity, but everything society has taught me is that you don't give people unsolicited advice about their skin abnormalities. What would Gandhi do? What should I do? What would you do?

(it was just a piece of dirt on my monitor, and we're not "friends" anymore)

Throwing stuff away

2011-09-25T20:55:00.000-07:00

As I was walking home from the grocery store tonight, I spotted some drawers sitting in a dumpster. My first instinct was to pull them out and take them home, but I didn't think I could do it without squishing my bananas.

But then I remembered, I didn't need to salvage these drawers, I had my own perfectly good drawers just sitting in my closet. Unused since the day I moved in. As I thought about it, I quickly realized that the dumpster was really the right place for my drawers too.

For two years, that has taken up space in my closet that could have been used for more valuable garbage. At this point, it's clear I'm never going to actually the thing, so why not get rid of it? I'm not making a huge mistake.

The first thing I did was take all the drawers out. The discovery of these two shirts made it clear that apparently I hadn't even opened these drawers in all the time I've lived here.

Soccer and Power Rangers. Somehow I don't regret never getting to know the previous tenants.

With the drawers out, it wasn't terribly difficult to move the chassis into the bathtub.

Anyone know where the Wilson School is? I have something for them.

Now it was time to start the disassembly process. A lesser man would simply throw the whole unit into the dumpster as-is, but that is a serious breach of dumpster protocol, and after so many years of living together, I simply must uphold the honor and integrity of the dumpster.

If my father weren't still alive, I would have inherited all his hammers*, and the whole process would have gone quite easily. Without a hammer, I was forced to use the next-best tool for the job...

The whole thing came apart relatively easily. Wilson School just doesn't make 'em like they used to. I can only imagine what they were thinking in Barry's kitchen.

"Hello... that sounds like a boy taking apart some furniture with a banana."

With the first armful of wood I brought outside, I noticed that the dumpster was already overflowing. That might have been worth checking before I started. So now I have a pile of dirty, nail-poking, wood sitting in my apartment. It's a good thing women don't like me for my personality, because otherwise they would certainly be turned off by my living conditions.

*According to the will that Katie drafted when she was 12, I believe I only stand to inherit his old deodorant, and possibly some nickels. Since a will drafted by a child and unsigned by the testator is still a legally binding document in Massachusetts, I may be at Katie's mercy if I ever wish to gain access to one of his prized hammers.

Equal pay for equal work?

2011-09-24T20:43:00.000-07:00

Today I would like to address two of my least favorite, but most consuming areas of interest: bike racing and economics. According to an article from Velonews.com, professional female cyclists are lobbying to receive a minimum guaranteed salary like their male counterparts.

Top women pros say they deserve minimum-salary guarantee

COPENHAGEN (VN) — Women racers say the time has come for the UCI to treat them the same as their male counterparts when it comes to earning a living.

But when pressed by journalists during a press conference Saturday morning, UCI president Pat McQuaid said that women’s racing has not developed to the point that a minimum salary should be introduced for women’s teams.

“I am not so sure,” McQuaid said. “We have an agreement in men’s sport, but women’s cycling has not developed enough that we are at that level yet.

That drew the ire of the top medalists in Saturday’s elite women’s road race.

Ina-Yoko Teutenberg, the bronze medalist, said the level of women’s cycling has improved dramatically over the past half decade or so.

“I think it’s total bullshit. We’ve seen over the last couple of years, it’s getting harder and harder, you cannot come to a race to win if you’re not fit. The women deserve it,” the German veteran said.

“I don’t know why the men get this guarantee with a contract and the women don’t. We deserve equal rights. We are living in the 21st century.”

So, before I go on to declare that the women are obviously misguided in their demands, I must remind you that I am as big a fan of women's sports as anyone. I go to watch them play, I even pay money when I have to--if women aren't getting the financial returns they want, the problem for them is that there aren't more people like me. With that being said, no one (not even women) is entitled to certain pay. They have to earn it.

Even on the men's side, the financial benefits of cycling are dubious. Teams and events are financed entirely by sponsors, rather than things like ticket sales and television contracts. This makes the revenue generated by the athletes particularly difficult to measure. How many extra bikes did Trek sell because of Lance Armstrong? How many extra financial products did DSB Bank sell because of Marianne Vos?

Earning money is great--I can totally understand why female cyclists want to earn more, but unless they actually generate the money they want to be paid, then existing teams would choose to cease operations rather than pay higher salaries. Let me return to several quotes from the article:

“I am not so sure,” McQuaid said. “We have an agreement in men’s sport, but women’s cycling has not developed enough that we are at that level yet.

That drew the ire of the top medalists in Saturday’s elite women’s road race.

Ina-Yoko Teutenberg, the bronze medalist, said the level of women’s cycling has improved dramatically over the past half decade or so.

“I think it’s total bullshit. We’ve seen over the last couple of years, it’s getting harder and harder, you cannot come to a race to win if you’re not fit. The women deserve it,” the German veteran said.

Of course, the kind of development UCI President Pat McQuaid is economic development. Women's cycling is simply unable to generate the same kind of sponsorship dollars as their male counterparts. It doesn't matter how hard the women train, or needing to be fit to win a race (that should go without saying), it matters whether or not the marginal gains of sponsoring a women's cycling team outweigh the costs.

I must also address this monstrosity of a quote:

“I don’t know why the men get this guarantee with a contract and the women don’t. We deserve equal rights. We are living in the 21st century.”

Where should I begin? First, despite what that obnoxious kid in your social studies class would have you believe, income is not a right. It is an exchange. Exchanges require the consent of multiple parties. But if we ignore the word "rights" (I'll give her the benefit of the doubt, since English isn't her first language), she's still wrong. Men and women absolutely deserve to be paid the same for doing the same job, but in cycling, they're not doing the same job. That's why women's divisions exist to begin with--because women would not have an opportunity to be successful if they were competing with the men.

At the recent UCI Time Trial World Championships, the first place woman was 14% slower than the first place man, and the women were racing over a shorter distance. The winning female pace was comparable to the male rider from Eritrea, who apparently had never ridden a bicycle before the day's race. If a woman is fast enough to race with the men, then absolutely she should be given the same guaranteed contract that the men get, but so long as the women are competing in their own divisions, they must be content with their own marginal products.

Everyone is partying except me

2011-09-24T01:32:00.000-07:00

Tonight was the Friday before the first Monday of classes, and so naturally it is the biggest party day of the year. Naturally I'm holed up inside my apartment. Outside I can hear cheers of unbridled exuberance, and broken glass shattering on the pavement. I'd better be careful when I go out riding. But as for tonight, I'm going to sit out on the fun.

With the volleyball team in Colorado, I went to a soccer game tonight. Oregon lost, and it wasn't nearly as fun as volleyball, but they had slightly nicer posters. After that I came home and Stu'd with Nick for a while. Why don't I want to go out and have fun? What am I missing out on?

Alcohol, for starters. As someone who doesn't drink, I know the traditional Friday night activities aren't for me, but why are they for other people? Last week, I made one of my semi-annual visits to the local bars at the urging of a girl on the cycling team. It was mildly interesting to observe at first, but it really wasn't much fun--certainly not enough for me to go more than once every six months. Now I know "fun" people would say, "of course bars aren't fun if you don't drink," but I don't understand why they are if you do. If something isn't fun sober, why is it fun drunk? I understand when people drink while doing something like playing softball--playing softball is fun, and drinking is fun, so why not combine them? But at the point when alcohol transforms an otherwise unpleasant activity into apparent fun, I feel as though one really ought to question the merits of drinking.

Though I managed to avoid a headache the next day by not drinking, my throat was certainly sore. Nothing quite like yelling for a few hours just to keep up a little pleasant conversation.

Is there value in diversity?

2011-09-21T20:51:00.000-07:00

As I prepare to teach my own class, for what will now be the second time this fall, I am left questioning the merits of diversity in education. If I first ask myself, "is there value to diversity in education?" my initial reaction would be unquestionably yes. There is certainly value to exposing people to new ideas, new ways of thinking, new approaches to the world. Diversity can cause us to question the previously unquestionable assumptions underlying our lives. The positive benefits of diversity should be obvious to anyone who ever watched Rush Hour, or Die Hard 3. By bringing together two different people, they created something that was far more entertaining than anything Chris Tucker ever did without Jackie Chan.

And yet, when I evaluate my experience from teaching over the summer, it appeared as though I was much more effective with the American students than with the international students. Now, it certainly isn't entirely stratified--there were plenty of American students who hated me, and at least a couple international students who didn't hate me all that much, but I think it's fair to say that the two groups of students had fundamentally different experiences in my class.

So were they any better for it? I don't think so. I don't think I was terribly effective for them. Diversity sounds great on paper, but I don't think they were particularly receptive to my own brand of Americana, and they certainly didn't learn more economics because of it. Thinking back on my own classes, while I had plenty of international professors from countries including (but not limited to) Israel, China, France, India, Australia, and Germany, the ones whose classes I felt I got the most out of were all American... or possibly Canadian.

So now what to do? On an impractical level, would it really be so bad if we segregated our classes? Probably. But wouldn't the students be happier for it? Wouldn't everyone learn more? In an ideal world, both the international students and I would learn from each other, and come to some level of intellectual compromise, but that will never happen. I can learn from the students, and they can adapt, but in a 1-term class, those students will never learn from me.

So what do I do? Do I abandon my American values and cater to the Chinese (I single them out because they make up the largest portion of my class)? That wouldn't be fair to the American students. Or the Middle Eastern students, the European students...

While certainly there is room for absolute growth in my teaching ability, I'm not sure how to properly respond when large subsets of my class respond completely differently to the same stimuli... without just splitting them up. Maybe Mondays are Eastern Days and Wednesdays are Western Days?

Nobody out worst-chefs me

2011-09-18T15:44:00.000-07:00

This post is dedicated to Rebecca, who apparently was lamenting the sorry state of yogurt-based recipes at 4:30 in the morning. Though Rebecca quickly caved in to the pressure from Big Yogurt, and accepted the recipes, I wasn't about to be outdone. If they can make a bad recipe unnecessarily involving yogurt, I can certainly do worse.

Just like building a house, every recipe needs to start out with a good foundation. In this case, white bread. White bread is the unsung hero of breads. Sure it doesn't have the zing of rye, or the ethnic flavorings of pumpernickel, but its bland, inoffensive styling goes well with everything. It's sort of the Garth Brooks of breads.

(Yes, I confess, this is Mexican white bread)

Next, it was time to apply the Yogur--

Before I even realized what I was doing, the bread was covered with peanut butter. Force of habit, I guess. Oh well, better late than never, I suppose.

So far things were looking pretty good, but I was lacking some of the exotic flavoring of the Brown Cow recipes. Now, I don't know what an "avocado" is, but I'm pretty certain I don't have any in my kitchen (and if I did, it's probably in that bottom cabinet that's stuck shut, so I haven't opened it up since I moved in--and if there is 3 year-old avocado in there, I probably wouldn't want to eat it anyway). So what kinds of exotic flavors do I have in my kitchen? Well... I've got Hershey's Syrup...

I wanted to throw some chicken nuggets on there, but it would have taken too long for them to defrost.

But no ice cream sundae would be complete without a little cinnamon sprinkled on top.

By now, I was really getting into the whole "master chef" kind of thing. They should give me my own show on the food network. I AM A GOD. In fact, I was so proud of myself that I almost forgot to pour the breadcrumbs on the egg.

Ah, got it on there just in the nick of time.

At long last, my peanut butter-yogurt-chocolate-cinnamon-breaded-egg open faced sandwich was complete.

At this point, the shortcomings of my one-man blog operation became apparent. As soon as I started to eat it, my hands became too sticky to work the camera. You'll just have to trust me that I got it all down, but this sandwich was spilling all over the place. I should have gone with a pita or something, so that the whole thing could have been better contained. Also, if I had to do it all over again, I would have had some bananas to put on there. I thought I had some, but it turns out the dozen or so bananas I bought last night had all been mysteriously eaten.

Now where's my trip to Hawaii?

I guess that's an improvement

2011-09-17T21:54:00.000-07:00

After waking up up from my late afternoon nap, with little motivation to work on economics, I decided to do a little cleaning around the apartment. The school year is almost starting, and so it was time to chase away the summertime stink.

One of the things I like best about cleaning, aside from taking breaks (a holdover from my days as a professional janitor's assistant), is learning something new about myself. While most people like to save important letters, today I discovered that I like to save important envelopes. I have no idea where the documents are, but today I found myself throwing away envelopes from the IRS, student loans, my credit card company, envelopes from mom, Katie, dad (really they're the same envelopes from mom, but he underlined them), U of O, Brown, Make-A-Wish Foundation, Rick Perry's campaign office, and three different envelopes that used to contain wedding invitations.

And despite the fact that it was hardly likely that these envelopes were making my apartment smell, I decided to trash them anyway. The next step was some vacuuming. I really just like vacuuming, or at least I did until the canister broke and I had to re-vacuum everything. Then it was time for mopping. Next to vacuuming, mopping is my favorite part of cleaning. It's also exceptionally effective at getting rid of all those sticky patches on my kitchen floor.

By the time I was done mopping, my apartment didn't smell like stink anymore. Now it smelling like stink and lemon-scented cleaner. It wasn't about to get any better unless I could get some fresh air in here. I tried opening the windows until I remember they were screwed shut. Then I opted to open the door, praying I was upwind from the dumpsters tonight. I set up an elaborate system of fans to try to circulate the air in my apartment. And it was working. Before long, the stale air of my apartment had been replaced by the cool, refreshing scent of one of Barry's baker's cigarettes.

Questions on the street

2011-09-13T12:37:00.000-07:00

This morning, while walking in to the office, I passed an older gentleman on the street. He was smoking a cigarette, and looking at something in a shop window. As I walked by, he said to me, "may I ask you a question?" in a foreign accent that I couldn't quite identify, but reminded me a lot of Dr Scratchansniff (I guess he's supposed to be German?). In fact, his whole appearance was shockingly similar to Dr Scratchansniff. Just pretend I was walking down the street, and Dr Scratchansniff was smoking a cigarette and looking in a shop window.

I stop to hear him out. Does he want money? Do I speak Portuguese? Is he lost? As I got closer, I could see he was looking at a map of North America. If he's lost, he's really Lost lost, not just "how do I get to the nearest Starbucks"-lost. He says to me, he says, "New Brunswick--is that Canada or U.S.?"

"Canada"

"Thank you"

And that was it. It was a little bit of a flashback to my elementary school geography bee, but rarely do I feel so satisfied when accosted to answer a question on the street.

VO2max Testing

2011-09-12T17:10:00.000-07:00

This morning, after minor delay, I finally got to go into the ol' Human Physiology lab and get a VO2 max test done. The basic procedure involved riding an exercise bike while I breathed into a tube, and a sensor on my forehead took my heartrate and blood oxygen level. I asked if they had anything more invasive, but they said no. The test starts with me spinning the bike with minimal resistance, and the difficulty is gradually increased until I can't breathe any harder. Thankfully, I had Ty by my side (he works in this lab) to play Gwen Stefani songs and inform me that my current VO2 level was really good for a 65 year overweight man.

The main purpose of this test (for me, at least) was diagnostic. Knowing what my body can do should be able to improve the quality of my training. That being said, I still wanted to perform well. Thankfully I had only biked 140 miles in the past two days, so my body was well rested and poised to perform optimally under test conditions.

They started me at 120 watts ("hey, this is easy") and each minute increased the wattage by 30. At 240 watts, I hit my anaerobic threshold, with a heartrate of 145. At that point, my vo2 was at 36, and I was only halfway through the test (though I didn't explicitly know that at the time).

I hit my max of 56.9 ml/kg/min at 420 watts, with my heartrate up to 186. My legs were still kicking, but my oxygen consumption had peaked, and so the test was over. According to various charts I've googled, such as this one, 56.9 was quite good for a non-athlete, but not particularly good for a cyclist. That makes sense. I'm not particularly good for a cyclist. Comparing my results to Ty, who had been tested earlier and scored a 72.6 (with a max heartrate of 210!), I simply couldn't keep up. My absolute numbers (not normalized by body mass) were a little bit higher, but that only confirmed what I already knew--if I could just lose 40 pounds, I'd be a pretty good cyclist.

And I never did get any cake.

A new business opportunity

2011-09-09T22:07:00.000-07:00

Earlier tonight at the grocery store, after loading my cart up with nothing but bananas and milk, I foolishly chose the absolute worst possible checkout line to queue up in. Ahead of me was a morbidly obese woman with two shopping cars full of the worst food money can buy. Packages upon packages of Oreos, ramen, fruit drink, bacon, 20 packs of hot dogs, frozen pizzas, and adult diapers. And did I say "the worst food money can buy"? I meant the worst food food stamps can buy. She actually had to put some of the corn dogs back, because she grabbed too many of them and didn't have enough money.

Now I'm certainly not one to restrict the use of food stamps to healthy food. If people want to destroy their own health, we should let them. But that certainly doesn't mean we shouldn't judge them. And that's my business idea, a judgmental supermarket. I'll call it, "You're Going to Buy That" and if customers show up to the check out line with a cart full of crap, they'll get an earful. I know personally I try to eat healthy, but I could certainly do better, and one of the best motivators is a good scolding. I could imagine it now, I show up to the check out line, and Katie is the cashier.

"Dan, where are all your vegetables?"

"Well, I have a little bit of broccoli here. And some frozen string beans."

"Dan, you need 5 servings of vegetables every day. What you have there wouldn't even be enough for one day."

"But Katie, I just--"

"Dan, go back and pick out more vegetables."

And I would. And I'd be skinnier, and healthier. And all it would require is a regular shaming from my sister every time I go shopping. But not everybody is lucky enough to have a sister--and that's where I come in. For a small premium, my customer would have the experience of having their unhealthy food purchases ridiculed in front of whichever customers may be patiently waiting in line. Peer pressure is the best pressure, and by working together, we can have a slimmer America. Or, at the very least, we can make some people feel bad about themselves. It's a win-win. I can combine my dual passions of health and humiliation to create the money making opportunity of the century.

Is it time to think about the elections already?

2011-09-08T01:25:00.000-07:00

Well, tonight was the big GOP debate. At least a big GOP debate. I certainly didn't watch--those things are boring, but I did read a couple of news articles summarizing the events.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am registered as an independent in the state of Massachusetts. I have no intention of voting in any primary, and I didn't vote in the last presidential election (though I did in 2004).

I should also add that I do have a personal connection to one of the candidates. I met governor Rick Perry when I was visiting my sister in Texas. Well... not the governor himself, but I did meet his copy machine when I we were touring the State Capitol.

Most important pieces of legislation never make it to his desk without first being cleared by that copy machine, so it's safe to say that it's a pretty important person in this upcoming election. It also staples.

I have mixed feelings about Governor Perry. On one hand, I agree with a handful of things he says. On the other hand, he's insane. I do like his stance on shooting coyotes, but I hate the obligatory "wily" puns in all the headlines. Despite drawing a lot of criticism from his fellow candidates for calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme, he's right. It is a Ponzi scheme. That doesn't necessarily mean it's bad, but it's absolutely a Ponzi scheme. And note to Mitt Romney, you can't defend Social Security by arguing that the people receiving Social Security are better off receiving it than not. Of course they are. The proper question to ask is whether or not the people receiving Social Security are better off now than had the program never existed. Obviously it is unfair to outright cut social programs that individuals have come to expect and depend on--they must be weened off them gradually, and painfully, like a heroin addict trying to rid himself of his crippling breastmilk addiction.

There were 8 candidates in total, but I really have no idea who any of them were besides Mitt Romney and Rick Perry. I think Ron Paul was there. I'd really love Ron Paul if it weren't for his nutty affection for gold. I'd still probably vote for him if he made it to the general election, but he really ought to cut Ben Bernanke a little slack. Then there's Huntsman, who appears to be shockingly popular in my Facebook and Twitter feeds, but doesn't seem to exist in the real world. I guess he's sort of like a Republican Ralph Nader, if Ralph Nader were less wrong about everything, but still kind of a creep. And there, I guess, there was another guy I knew absolutely nothing about.

But the real fun of primary debates is watching the candidates struggle to passionately disagree with each other without accidentally agreeing with the Democrats. "Mr Romney's proposed budget is a complete disaster that will send this country into financial ruin. If we want any hope of an economic recovery, it is absolutely essential that we lower the capital gains tax by .3%, not .2%" Thankfully, no matter how much they argue over who wants smaller government more, or whether the military should be involved with three or four different wars we shouldn't be involved with, there's one thing all the candidates can come together to appreciate--Jesus. Because we might have a black president, and we'll soon have a female president, but I'll be damned if I ever see a president who isn't Christian in my lifetime.

September Brown Fencing Update

2011-09-07T10:02:00.000-07:00

The Brown Daily Herald has an article on the current state of Brown's fencing team.

The fencing team has secured over $750,000 to save its varsity program from elimination and is eyeing another $200,000 in promised pledges, according to Arnold-Peter Weiss P'15, a professor of orthopedic surgery and associate dean of admissions of the AlpertMedical School. Of the nearly 100 donors, Weiss and another individual contributed $250,000 each.
Pledges have come from team members, parents and donors, with an average of two to three donations arriving each day, said Head Coach Atilio Tass. All the pledges are contingent upon Brown maintaining the fencing program, he said.
The Athletic Review Committee reported in April that the University cannot support all of its athletic programs due to funding shortfalls. The committee recommended the men's and women's fencing teams be cut due to the need for "a large investment in facilities, infrastructure and coaching to bring the fencing program to the necessary level," as well as the "small number of fencing programs nationally." The fate of the team will be decided along with that of the men's wrestling and women's skiing teams at the October Corporation meeting.
The fencing team raises about 30 percent of its own budget every year, Weiss said. Of its $100,000 budget last year, the team managed to raise $50,000.
Despite the massive fundraising effort, committee chair Richard Spies, executive vice president for planning and senior adviser to the president, noted other aspects of maintaining a varsity program that are not necessarily covered by donations.
When people think of fundraising, they think only about "the cost of the salaries and other expenses related to coaching staff and travel and so on," Spies said. There are also other costs, including those associated with the teams' facilities and administrative staff.
The committee recommended the teams not be reinstated through independent fundraising, citing the "strain on every resource in Athletics" in a statement on its website.
"All of the things that are required for an intercollegiate athletic program are stretched very thin, and the more teams you have, the harder it is to support any of them," Spies said. "Even if somehow magically there were no direct costs to the program itself, there would still be a significant resource requirement to support those teams."
But Weiss said he disagrees.
"In the end, if you have a program, and it's underfunded, and you go out, and you raise a bunch of money for the entire athletic department, whether it's fencing or another team, you're not going to be underfunded anymore," he said. "So I find it a bit of a hollow argument."
Weiss has two sons starting at Brown this fall, one of whom is a fencer who applied early decision. "He gets to Brown, and all of a sudden the program's cut," Weiss said. "You can imagine how difficult that was for him to hear about after he already made a decision."
He said he is hopeful that President Ruth Simmons is listening to other members of the Brown community besides the committee. "There was a pretty big outcry, and I think the president is a thoughtful individual, and she's taken everybody's opinions into account."
Men's team captain Andrew Pintea '12 said much of the campus has been supportive of the fencers. "Even if they're not a fan of sports, they sympathize in the way that they know this is important to us," Pintea said. "They know this is a huge part of our lives, and they can realize how much it would hurt to have that taken away from us."
He said he is hopeful about the team's future. "We are as optimistic as we can be, given the situation,"Pintea said. "We think we've done just about all we can to convince Ruth Simmons and the Corporation that we should be allowed to continue. That said, obviously we're not happy about thesituation."
The fencing teams are not the only ones garnering sympathy from students and alumni — the wrestling and skiing teams are also fighting to survive. Weiss said he has been in close contact with the wrestling and skiing teams, which have also made substantial fundraising progress. The three teams are working together as one unit to save their respective programs. "We're not trying to just save our sport — it's a bigger solution," Weiss said.
Part of the solution can include distributing the fundraised money to other sports, Weiss said. "If the Athletic Department as a whole is underfunded," he said. "We're willing to put some of our money into that pot to solve the bigger problem, not just the fencing problem."
"Brown can be made a better university by not cutting, but by making what we have better," Weiss added. "I don't buy the argument, and neither do the other teams, that cutting three sports is going to solve the problem for the rest of the University. All it's going to do is cut three sports."

It's still not great news, and I'm not optimistic for the future of the team, but money helps--despite Mr Spies insistence otherwise. Remember, it's never too late to make a donation to the fencing team, or any other Brown sports teams you believe to be worthwhile.

Is Labor Day Worth Celebrating?

2011-09-05T07:00:00.000-07:00

Today is labor day; a holiday which, according to the US Department of Labor, is "a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers." Unfortunately, it doesn't really seem like the American workers have been bringing it particularly strong in recent years. I know it's popular to simply blame "evil corporations" or "the government" for the lack of productivity, but the fact of the matter is, no matter how you cut it, the American workers simply haven't been terribly productive over the past few years.

Though many Americans have been looking for work, many of them simply do not have what it takes to be productive members of society. This problem facing the economy has been dubbed the ‘skills gap’--the difference between the skills workers possess and the skills that companies desire. With the increasing prominence of computers, and the incredible efficiency gains that accompany them, a vast many jobs now require the worker to have the skills associated with operating such machines. At the bottom end of the skill spectrum, this might include familiarity with word processing programs, spreadsheets, and premade database interfaces. Better (more engaging, prestigious, profitable) are increasingly reliant on advanced programming skills.

Whenever I read about the skills gap, I can’t help but feel guilty. Though over the years I have picked up a little bit of programming skills, it never takes long before I encounter a problem that is beyond my ability level. Though I may be highly skilled when compared to the high school dropouts or liberal arts majors, by being self-aware of my own shortcomings, I must take responsibility for my contribution to the skills gap. There are far too many job vacancies that I am incapable of filling, but more than just that, are jobs that I could conceivably have been able to do had I applied myself better.

I do not lament that I lack the skills to be an artist, a musician, or a doctor—those are all professions that are clearly not for me. A small desire to be a professional baseball player lingers within me, but again, even with a lifetime of dedication, it is unlikely I would have been able to have any success in that endeavor. But computer science, on the other hand, is something that was well within my grasp. In fact, if one had asked high school me to predict what I would be doing with my life in ten years, I almost certainly would have said ‘computer programmer.’ So where did it all go wrong?

As I arrived on campus for my freshman year of college, I thought I had everything all planned out. I would double major in mathematics and computer science, and had selected appropriate course work to help me achieve that goal. I was to take math, physics, computer science, and French. The only remaining step was to meet with my advisor and get his signature on my schedule.

I’m sure the freshman advising program at Brown is well-intentioned, but there simply isn’t a good way to pair up over 1,000 students with a handful of tenured and disinterested professors and have them forge a meaningful relationship. I was placed with a professor in the engineering department. He was a nice man, with a nice mustache, and an office that looked like it was decorated in the late 70’s. I brought him my schedule and he took a look.

“This looks like a pretty challenging schedule. Are you sure you want to take all of these classes?”

“I’m a smart guy, and I work quickly, I think I can handle it.”

“Every student here is smart, and this is still a challenging course load. The computer science class alone is known to take over 20 hours per week.”

Again, I’m sure he had good intentions. He didn’t want me biting off more than I could chew. He was trying to protect me from failure. He was trying to be a good advisor, but I never recovered. Never in my life was I so ambitious, or so confident in my own abilities as I was when I first set foot on campus that August. I’m sure I would have struggled had I taken those courses, but so what? Other students managed to take those classes. Some even took a fifth. It was a challenge I needed to take on, but I did not. The man had planted the seeds of fear in my brain. I may have been many things: intelligent, ambitious, arrogant, socially awkward, but one thing I have never been is brave. I can’t handle disappointment, and so I either avoid even moderate risk situations, or I deliberately sabotage myself to avoid the pain of knowing I tried my best. And so, as freshman orientation progressed and the first day of class drew closer and closer, the fear of being unable to handle the challenge grew inside of me. After sitting through the first lecture of computer science, I finally cracked. I dropped the class and filled my schedule up with something easy and boring instead. After all, I ought to trust the expertise of my advisor, right?

And, on some level, he was right. Freshman year was a challenge. Not just the courses, but also the rigors of fencing practices, and the difficult transition to living away from home. Sure, I could have started computer science course work the following year, but by that point, I was committed to sticking with what was comfortable. I continued with math, and I learned a lot, but the field never engaged me as much as I wished it had. By the time I reached graduation, I knew that a career in pure mathematics wasn’t for me. What I wasn't prepared for was the fact that every career option that looked appealing to me required computer skills that I didn’t have. Sure, I could have made more diligent efforts to self-teach, but that still could not make up for the missed opportunity.

Which brings me back to labor day. I am not alone. There are millions of Americans who, like me, have allowed their shortcomings to prevent them from becoming productive members of society. I think it's time we suspended this holiday until the American workers deserve it.

The worst poster I've ever seen

2011-09-03T00:49:00.000-07:00

It's my favorite time of year again. Blackberry season? No, volleyball season. Though I'm still not talented enough to play volleyball at even the lowest of recreational levels, I can go out and enjoy the Oregon women's volleyball team, who had their home opener tonight against Seattle University. Oregon won easily, 3-0, and though a little sloppy at times, it was a very good game.

Not so good was the revelation of this year's volleyball poster.

This is, without a doubt, the worst sports promotional poster I have ever seen. So, the first thing you'll notice is the apparent void of all things volleyball. Sure the word "volleyball" is written in tiny letters in the bottom corner, but you've really got to work hard to notice it.

The thing that you will notice is a lovely/creepy face, or rather half a face, that's taking up most of the space. I think she's got... got a little somethign in her eye. On the right side of the poster is a faded image of the team high-fiving each other, after presumably playing volleyball, but it's hard to tell.

Compare this to my beloved University of Texas volleyball poster.

Notice the prominence of several players playing volleyball. This poster also features the portrait of every team member along the border. It really emphasizes the two most important parts of a volleyball team: volleyball and team. The Oregon poster doesn't seem to be able to decide whether or would rather piss on the idea of volleyball or piss on the idea of team. Instead, it prominently features half a face, and that O in the eye is... apparently "really cool" according to the sports marketing intern who was forced to listen to me articulate what an awful poster it was.

But he never even got to hear me complain about the worst part of this poster. That's because I didn't even notice it. On the left side of the poster, in dark grey letters on a black background, are the words "A 4.0 doesn't define me" and then in the bottom right, it states "Victory Defines Me." What the hell? Is this poster actually disparaging academic success? Now, I certainly agree in principle that grades shouldn't define a person, but there's no reason they couldn't be celebrated in conjunction with athletic excellence. Especially for a school whose athletes are often seen to be rather lacking off the field.

And what's worse than defining someone by grades? Defining them by unconditional victory. For example, tonight the Oregon team was victorious against Seattle University. Who in their right mind would want to be defined by victory against Seattle University--nothing against the school, of course. They are, undoubtedly, the fourth finest research university in Seattle, and their students are second to none... except all the students at other schools who are more talented. While athletic success must be measured by victories, it is important that those measurement victories be carefully selected in conjunction with one's goals.

Ultimately, this poster has left me feeling so disgusting that I am unable to properly express my disgust. The design is awful, the message is misguided, and the worst part is that it makes me look like a creep for having a giant poster of half a girl's face hanging on my wall.

It's about time someone else crashed

2011-09-01T21:00:00.000-07:00

It should come as no surprise that today I went for a bike ride. Just one of the standard loops around town, about 36 miles in all. For one part of this ride, there is a small bike/pedestrian pathway that cuts between two houses, and is commonly taken to avoid a roughly half-mile detour. Though only about 100 feet long, this path is somewhat treacherous, as it features tall fences on both sides, and a turn in the middle limiting visibility. To deal with this apparently problem, the city erected a small post in the middle of the path here which would insure that oncoming riders would not collide with each other, but rather the post instead.

Though I had never witnessed any accidents here, I always considered myself lucky, as it seemed particularly conducive to them, were two riders to ever come through at the same time (end foreshadowing).

Well, today it finally happened. Just as I exited the road and got onto the path, a well-known female triathlete from town came zipping around the bend. I was going slow, and we managed to avoid any incident, but just as I got the the kink in the path, her boyfriend/riding partner was approaching from the other side. Though I was going slowly and over to the side, he panicked when he saw me, and collided with the post. It was really quite a remarkable site; though only about four inches wide, he managed to hit it square with his front wheel. His bike came to an immediate stop, while his body, still susceptible to the laws of physics, continued moving forward. This flipped him over his handlebars, over the post, and crashing into the ground/fence.

I stopped to see if he was okay, and remarkably he was. After a little work getting his chain back on, it appeared his bike was damaged either. This was all good news. A concerned neighbor who heard the crash came to check on him. Then, a minute or two later, from off in the distance, a female voice was calling his name. Yep, his lady friend had finally decided to see what had happened. When she arrived on the scene, she expressed, in Wilma Flintstoniest voice, how displeased she was that he had allowed this to happen to himself. When he assured her that he was okay, she took off, leaving me standing there with him, apologizing for what role I might have played in his accident. Except it wasn't my fault. In fact, it was almost entirely her fault. That she saw me approaching what is such an obvious and well-known hazard without making any attempt whatsoever to warn either me, or him was shockingly irresponsible, and a cyclist as experienced as herself should have obviously known better. In fact, even a cyclist with absolutely no experience would know to issue some sort of warning, as it is human nature to vocalize in response to potentially treacherous situations. It takes a particularly dedicated and well-trained cyclist to remain silent and allow her partner to come into harms way.

My only regret was that I did not think to ask Ty to borrow his GoPro camera beforehand so I could have brought it with me, recording my ride just in case something hilarious like this happened (because make no mistake about it, I may have been showing a face of concern, but I was stifling laughter the whole time). In the absence of actual pictures of the event, I have brought my MSPaint skills out of retirement to offer you, the audience, an illustration of what happened.

Addendum to the weekend's race recap

2011-08-30T20:32:00.000-07:00

So, in typical fashion, I wrote about this weekend's stage race while leaving out the best part. I meant to write about it, I even alluded to it at a later point, but I forgot to write about how I almost ruined my race Saturday for reasons completely unrelated to my weak legs.

Saturday morning, Ty picked me up and we drove out to the race course. We got there early with plenty of time to relax, warm-up, pee, relax, and pee some more before the race. At the race, I put on my jersey, helmet, glasses, shoes... shoes? SHOES! I forgot my shoes. It was currently 9:30 and my race was scheduled to start at 10:15. Uh oh. With no time to waste, Ty tossed me his car keys and I was off. I sped back to my apartment, but in my hurry, I was still able to hit a handful of cyclists. If I wasn't going to make my start time, no one was.

As I got into town, I was in trouble. Remember that this is the Eugene Celebration Stage Race I was doing? Well, Saturday was also the day of the Eugene Celebration... Celebration. In particular, the Eugene Celebration Celebration Parade, which was shutting down several major roadways which were essential to getting to and from my apartment quickly. Even as I took the side streets, I still had to contend with the masses of families dragging their children very slowly across the street to get to the parade. Oh, and did I mention it was move-in day at Northwest Christian University? Sure there are only 500 students, but all their dorms are on my street. DON'T YOU EVEN THINK ABOUT CARRYING THAT MINI-FRIDGE ACROSS THE STREET BEFORE I GET THROUGH!

I made it into the parking lot and into my apartment where I picked up my shoes, rushed to the bathroom (this was the best chance I was going to get before the race), then almost left without my shoes again.

As I sped back to the race site, I knew things were going to be close. I would hate to have to waste all my energy chasing to catch up before the race even started. I pulled into the parking lot just as the riders were lining up for the start. I quickly put on my shoes, helmet, peed once more in Ty's water bottle, and rushed to the starting line. I had made it, and I was still better than the guy who showed up to the line with two flat tires. He was going to have an even worse day than me.

And the finale

2011-08-29T07:00:00.000-07:00

And today was the glorious (painful) conclusion of the Eugene Celebration Stage Race.

The morning started out with a drive up to Coburg for a 15 mile time trial. Thank god the course was flat, because after yesterday, my legs explicitly told me that they would move me forward, but not up. I conquered the first challenge when I remembered to bring my shoes, but when I looked around the staging area, it appeared everyone else remembered their shoes too, so that wasn't going to give me an advantage. Riding with borrowed aero bars, and aero helmet, and christening my UO skinsuit with its first ride, it was clear that I looked like a schmuck on the course. No matter, the challenge was to win. I started out making good, averaging around 26 mph. That was good. Unfortunately, by the midway point of the race, my legs were absolutely dying on me. Also, though the wind was pretty tame today, a time trail does an excellent job of alerting one's self to even a 1-2 mph headwind. I struggled on the back stretch until about 2 miles to go, when I got a second wind... by which I mean I just started cursing at myself vigorously, and insisting that I deserved every bit of the immense pain I was inflicting upon myself.

Apparently that pain wasn't enough, because I finished in 12th place, less than a second behind the 11th place finisher.

I had a few hours to stuff my face with chocolate and rest up before the afternoon's criterium. Try as I might, an hour lying in bed simply cannot undo the previous two days' worth of abuse. When I hopped on my bike to ride out to the race, every turn of the pedals demanded a monumental effort. This certainly didn't bode well for the race.

As I warmed up, I gradually became desensitized to the pain in my legs. It was still there, but I could avoid thinking about it... at least until I tried to ride fast. I simply didn't have the ability to accelerate or sustain hard efforts. My only comfort was telling myself that everybody else was hurting as much as I was, but that probably wasn't true. At every stage, the other riders proved themselves to be stronger than me, and so there was no reason to believe this one would be any different. Things got going and started out pretty fast. I had to put my head down in mash, but I was never really pushed to my limits. At one point, I was even feeling good enough to put up an attack, but that only lasted a lap. Finally, with one lap to go, and feeling no confidence in my ability to sprint, I decided to give it a shot, and hope that maybe enough riders would get stuck behind at one of the corners that I could end up with a top 10 finish. Just as I was moving up the outside, one of the riders at the front of the pack was accelerating, which started a chain reaction that caused a crash in the middle of the peloton. My attack was perfectly timed to let me slip back in about 8 from the front with a group of riders who were still pushing hard. We stayed strung out through the final turn, and I passed a couple of people in the final sprint, coming in somewhere around 6th (I haven't seen the official results yet).

That actually makes it my best finish in a bike race ever (in terms of places down from the top. I had a comparable result percentile-wise earlier this year). Ironically, I had my best finish ever because my legs hurt too badly to race as stupidly as I usually do.

Barring any DNF's I didn't notice, my final position should stand in 12th place. I guess it's not horrible, but it's certainly nothing to be proud of. I'm still slow, and for the amount of training I do, I sure don't have a lot of improvement to show for it. There's always next year.

And if any of you were wondering how Ty did today... he stopped to pick blackberries in the middle of his time trial.

Failure is nothing to celebrate

2011-08-27T22:28:00.000-07:00

WARNING: Another Bike Race Post

Against my better judgment, this weekend I decided to end my bike racing season with a bang. Friday morning I decided I would enter the Eugene Celebration Stage Race. This is a 3 day, 4 race event held in and around the greater Eugene metropolitan area.

The first race, Friday evening, was a hill climb up McBeth road, one of the more unpleasant hills in town. Though only 3 miles long, it features just under 1000 feet of climbing, which makes a fatty like me angrier with my body than I am on a typical day. Though my legs felt pretty good earlier in the day, by the time I made it to the start line, I was no longer feeling quite so confident. At least I made it to the start line on time, which was better than another UO cyclist I was riding out to the race with.

After just under 14 minutes of unimaginable pain, it was just an easy coast downhill to get home, where I lay in bed praying my legs would recover in time for today's road race.

Today's road race was 3 laps of a 19 mile course, meaning 57 miles in total, with a rather painful climb 2/3 of the way through each lap. The first lap, things were going fine... by which I mean slow. It wasn't until the second lap when one of the skinny fellows in the race decided to make the most out of his 140 pounds and start riding fast up the climb. I just couldn't quite hang on. I thought I had a change of catching them on the descent, but they lingered just a few second ahead of me for several miles. Eventually they started to slip away.

I joined up with a group of 3 other dropped riders, and we worked together to at least make it to the finish line as quickly as possible (and when I say "worked together" I mean I did at least 75% of the pulls). Finally, maybe 15-ish miles after I had become dislodged, "we" finally caught the group. For those of you doing the math at home, yes, that means it was just in time for that climb again. And naturally if I couldn't hang on last time, I certainly wasn't about to hang on after expending that much energy to catch them. So I struggled up the hill, and eventually came across the finish line down a minute forty-one seconds.

Out of 29 starters, I finished in 13th place in both the road race and the hill climb. I now sit three-and-a-half minutes down going into the time trial. I certainly don't expect to make up that much time, but it sure would be nice if I could move up a few places.

I will report back after the two races tomorrow, as I plan to introduce my legs to new worlds of pain.

You screwed me again, UPS

2011-08-26T10:23:00.000-07:00

Wednesday I was supposed to receive a package. Nothing special, just a stapler to replace the one I lost. You never realize just how much you love your stapler until it's gone. Wednesday morning I was planning to go on a bike ride with "that girl", and told her I would text her as soon as I got my package, and we could ride then. I really wanted that package, and usually the UPS lady comes around 11:30 in the morning, so it shouldn't have been a problem.

But the hours dragged on, and still I had no package. Eventually, I gave up and decided to go for that bike ride. My papers would have to remain loose for another day, and I would accept all of the associated risks. When I got home that evening, I was expecting to see delivery attempt notification stuck to my door, but instead, there was nothing. I checked the status online, and was surprised to see that my package was delivered.

Apparently it was left at the "office" and signed by Gilman. I have no idea who Gilman is or what office it could be referring to. I was left to suffer another day without a stapler, leaving me no better off than the typical Rwandan (who also doesn't have a stapler, I presume). Maybe it was just a mix up, and they'd have my package for me the next day. So I waited patiently for another day, and another. Finally this morning, by the grace of god, I decided to do laundry. This was really quite fortunate as often I can go weeks or even months without clean clothes. As I exited my apartment and went around to the laundry entrance, I noticed a UPS delivery notification on the door addressed to Mahoney--hey, that might be me.

Looking more closely, my package was delivered two days ago, and was sitting in Barry's. That should be nothing unusual--there are packages for me in Barry's all the time, but in over two years of living here, never before has UPS left a package there for me. Furthermore, UPS has never before had trouble distinguishing my door behind the dumpster from the door on the street that leads up to the apartments with windows. And I still don't know who Gilman is.

Finally, after days of hardship and anticipation, the brand new Swingline XT-5000 was mine. Look out loose sheets of paper, your day of reckoning is upon you.

Oh crap! I forgot to order staples!

100 tacos for 100 dollars (OR: I WANT MY TOUCHPAD!)

2011-08-24T17:37:00.000-07:00

As some of you may have read, this Hewlett-Packard has abandoned their hardware division, and this weekend, they put their lovely tablet, the HP Touchpad on sale with prices starting at $99. If you want to know more of the details, you can read about it in this article from the Washington Post.

Now personally, I had never really had much interest in having a tablet before. They sell for as much as a laptop, and their biggest selling point is... well, I'm not sure. I guess Apple did a really good job marketing the iPad to people whose long work hours leave them with more money than they have time to spend. From there, other tech companies were scrambling to steal a piece of that market by appealing to consumers who wanted all the function of an iPad, but didn't want to have to spend their whole day telling people how awesome Apple products are. Several months later, HP launched a lovely product known as the Touchpad that absolutely no one wanted to buy.

So this weekend, they made the hasty decision to discontinue their products and cut their prices to unheard of levels. Though I hadn't wanted a tablet, at $99, I thought I might see if I could snag one. If nothing else it could be really useful for impressing the ladies. Assuming they're not turned off by my appearance, my manners, my personality, my intelligence, or my insults, the Touchpad would surely be enough to get me to a second date. Unfortunately, at $99, 50% of all Americans had similar thoughts. Numerous retailers websites crashed. Others took more orders than they had inventory. Long story short, I wasn't able to buy a Touchpad. Now that didn't bother me by itself. My desire to own one wasn't very strong, and I'm certainly no worse off than I was a week ago...

But as an economist, I am certainly bothered. Even for a liquidation sale, HP really missed the mark. The surplus demand is off the charts. Ebay is now flooded with new Touchpads which are selling for around $250 each. It seems as though HP left an awful lot of money on the table here, and I just can't figure out why. Early reports suggest they sold approximately half a million Touchpads in the past week. If they had increased their prices by $50 (if not $100), which almost certainly would have sold just as many units, they could have generated an additional $25 million in revenue. Now maybe I could understand selling at a loss in order to establish market position, but they're abandoning the industry, there can be no long term gain from this.

So I'm left asking, was there some tactical angle I'm overlooking here, or did they just do a terrible job of estimating demand?

Where'd the pavement go?

2011-08-22T21:43:00.000-07:00

This evening started out like any other... me sitting around at my computer, in my underpants, waiting for another day to slip away. This evening would not turn out like any other, as Graham called me up and asked if I had already gone for a bike ride. I said "no," today was my rest day, but Graham was not to be convinced. He wanted me to go for a ride with him, except this was going to be a mountain bike ride.

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA?!

I haven't been mountain biking since I was in high school, and make no mistake about it, I was absolutely horrible at it back then. Since I only have a road bike, I was going to ride Graham's old mountain bike. It was a little too small for me, and the shifters were just a little broken, and I was borrowing some old mountain bike shoes that didn't entirely fit me, and used some different pedals, but I thought I could manage to pull it off.

The ride didn't start off too poorly. I started to think to myself "hey, I can do this" but that was just the ride on the road to get to the trails. Once we hit the trails, I was in way over my head. The front suspension and beefy tires had me bouncing all over the place, and the rapid dips and bumps in the terrain made constantly unsure of what gear to be in. And I still was just getting the hang of the bike's handling.

It didn't take long before I had my first fall. I would normally say "crash" but it was on an uphill switchback, and I was at a virtual standstill. I just fell. I was also having an inordinate level of difficulty getting clipped back in, resulting in me walking my bike up half the climb. But that was fun compared to the way down. Now, I'm pretty timid descending on my road bike, but nothing on the road compares to what I had to tackle on the mountain bike. 45 degree slopes, on paths barely wider than my tires. Due to liberal abuse of Graham's brakes, I managed to keep myself upright, and often on the bike, but there were definitely a few spots where I thought I was going to die.

But for all the misery, some of it was pretty nice. Mostly the flat sections. I don't mind bumps, but I really hate speed. I bet mountain biking in Florida is a lot of fun.

The most surprising thing of this ride was, much more so than road riding, it revealed the strength differential of my two legs. At the end of the ride, my front leg was a little tired, but overall, didn't feel too bad, while my back leg is still aching. I'm surprised it was so noticeable, but the lesson is clear: if I ever want to fix my asymmetrical musculature, I'm going to have to mountain bike more often.

One more day of fun

2011-08-19T10:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was my last full day of enjoying my mother's company. I wish I hadn't alienated all my friends in the week that she was here. Next week would have been so much more enjoyable. But as long as my mom was still here, I figured I ought to make the most of it, so we had more big plans. On the agenda was the Lane County Fair--the 5th largest fair in Lane County this month.

Our first stop, naturally, was to see the decorative cakes. I'm sure this one tastes awful, but I just can't help but like it...

And this one was pretty adorable too. It's a fair, in cake form... at the fair. Whoa.

But enough of the ready-to-eat food. How about the exhibits that haven't been turned into food yet: livestock. This one competition was particularly amusing. It featured a group of young women mandhandling some disinterested sheep while a portly old gentleman judged them. I'm not sure if "them" refers to the sheep, the women, or some combination of both, but I can't possibly imagine this being a worthwhile endeavor.

And yet, the sheep being tugged around by their necks still appeared to be enjoying themselves more than these pigs.

Or these cows...

Okay, enough with the quaint country fair exhibits, it's time to move on to carny trash. I know these games are rigged, and I'll never win, but with prizes like these... I just have to try.

I also decided I ought to go on at least one of the carnival rides. After carefully considering all my options, I picked the stupidest one: "The Inverter."

Presumably there are some people who like being upside down. I'm not one of them. I spent the first half the ride looking at my feet so I wouldn't have to confront the harsh reality of the situation. Halfway through, I figured I shouldn't waste the whole ride that way, so I mustered up the courage to look up at the ground. That was mistake number two. I just had to keep reminding myself that there are rarely more than a couple fatalities per carnival, so the odds couldn't have been more than 1 in 10 that I died. In fact, there were only about 6 people total on the ride at the time, so it was unlikely that any of us would die. Still, I should have saved my tickets for the petting zoo.

But after that, it was time for the main event: the pig races. Remember that cake earlier? Well this is that cake, only real. I've never seen pigs race before, but there's no way this could possibly be bad. I mean, the worst thing that could happen is the pigs escape and start attacking people in the crowd, but it's far more likely they just stand around and don't realize they're supposed to race. In reality, they exceeded even my highest expectations.

And thus concluded my week of excitement. My mom's now off to attend my cousin's wedding in Reno, and I'm left to find someone else to clean my apartment and cook for me.

A trip to the shore

2011-08-17T22:20:00.000-07:00

In today's episode of Visit from Mom, we decided to take a trip to the shore.

My mom came by the apartment early this morning. We were driving to the coast, and hoping we could make it there in time to watch the sun rise over the Pacific Ocean. Unfortunately, by the time we figured out how to reverse the rotation of the Earth, it was too late.

We were, however, just in time to see the Sea Lions in the bay. Look at them, just lounging around on that dock.

Aren't they just the cutest things? Way cuter than Katie.

But for those of you who have never been out to see these lazy beasts, pictures simply do not do them justice. Half of their attraction is their surprisingly inoffensive bark, and I have captured that in video format.

These are the kind of animals you wouldn't mind being stuck sitting next to on an airplane.

And, of course, no visit would be complete without a stop to the local gift shop. I hate to re-use Simpsons allusions so frequently, but I simply cannot help myself.

"We need more Bort license plates in the gift shop. I repeat, we are sold out of Bort license plates."

And I know it's a joke, but when I actually sit back and look at the names that made the cut, I have to say it seems a bit odd. Do we really need both Beth and Bethany? Two rows of Brenda? Brittany but not Britney? And don't even get me started on Bryan with a 'y'--that's the white person equivalent of one of those awful... nevermind.

They also had something that made me think of Yuji.

After seeing all the sea mammals the bay had to offer, we decided to take a trip to the Oregon Coast Aquarium to see even more sea creatures.

It was kind of awesome, but also kind of horrifying. The seals, sea lions, and sea otters were adorable, but the fish were kind of grotesque, and the lobster was overcooked. The best part were these little guys...

But then I started thinking... if I go to an aquarium and my favorite part is the birds, they maybe I really wanted to go to a zoo rather than an aquarium. Ocean mammals are charming, but fish are disgusting. After seeing this place, I swore I'd never eat fish again (shortly thereafter, my mom and I went out for fish and chips by the beach).

Okay, just one more cute bird.

Okay, I must confess, I was a little impressed with diversity in undersea life forms. Jellyfish, regular fish, sharks, mammals, anemone, octopussy--they're all just so bizarre and so different. How can such variety of creatures come about on one small planet? (don't say god) It is particularly fascinating in light of the fact that Star Trek has taught me that the whole galaxy is just filled with humanoids with strange bumps on their heads.

Continuing on in our adventure, we finally made it to the beach proper, where the cool temperatures and strong wind made it surprisingly unpleasant.

I kept looking for a nice sunny dock I could lie down and shout at the passers-by.

Only one more day with my mom tomorrow. Who knows what new adventures lie ahead.

Crater Lake

2011-08-16T07:00:00.000-07:00

As fun as my Eugene restaurant tour with my mother has been, it may have been lacking a little in excitement. That all changed today, when we decided to hop in the ol' rental car and drive down to Crater Lake (though Richard informs me that the drive was a waste, since we could have just looked in our pockets instead).

Before we could enjoy the sights, we had to get there first. It's approximately a two-and-a-half hour drive from Eugene, through some scenic Oregon roadways (read: middle of nowhere). About 15 miles from Crater Lake, we were passing through what appeared to be the last bit of civilization we would encounter, and as it was almost lunch time, we figured it would be prudent to stop and grab a bite to eat. In the middle-of-nowhere, Oregon, there were only two choices, and they both looked like they served nothing but overly greasy hamburgers. We picked one, and figured, "hey, how bad can it be?" There was one overworked waitress, who was struggling (and failing) to do her job. A number of customers came and went without food after being ignored, and the menu certainly left something to be desired. The one redeeming part of the restaurant was when my mother asked the waitress what kinds of cheese they had, the waitress responded with "white and yellow"--now that's my kind of eating. But I certainly wasn't impressed by the hour it took to get a burger that could have been bested by McDonald's.

Finally we made it. Here we are on the approach... I know there's something good just over that next hill.

My camera isn't very good, and so this picture doesn't do it justice, but this was, without a doubt the bluest water I've ever seen. If the Blue Man Group, and that kid from Willy Wonka teamed up to solve children's mysteries with a cartoon dog, they would all look gray next to this lake. My god, it was gorgeous.

And here I am trying to look cool. "Dan, are you wearing that tie to impress the crater?"

I had wanted to take one of their boat tours of the lake, but by the time we got there, they were all sold out for the day. If only we hadn't stopped for those burgers...

No matter, there were plenty of fascination geologic sites on land. Plus, I got to hear all the boring factoids from the on-land tour guide. What happens when you're too interesting to be a government administrator, but too boring to be a middle school science teacher? You end up here!

Really not a bad gig. We drove around the rim stopping every mile or so to take pictures from new angles. I really took a lot--if you doubt me, you can see for yourself here.

Even the trees were pretty awesome. Add a little fat, and some lady parts and this one could have turned into the world's largest root monster.

And no visit to a national park would be complete without a stop at the gift shop.

"We need more Bort license plates in the gift shop. I repeat, we are sold out of Bort license plates."

But thankfully, they did have one for Nick.

Just when I thought my day couldn't get any better, on the ride home, my phone started vibrating. SOMEBODY CARES ABOUT ME!!! I was so excited... then it did it again, and again, and again. By the time it stopped buzzing, I had 6 new text messages. That was great, until I saw the timestamp. These were all from last week. "No, I don't want to go for a ride with you." "No, I don't want to go Denny's with you." "Hey, that would be lovely. How about Saturday night at 7?" Ouch.

It hurts to miss out on important messages, but nothing was going to spoil my fantastic day. I know I don't usually like things, but I really have a soft spot for geology. Isn't it just fascinating how something like this could be created? I wish I knew, but I seem to have forgotten the vast majority of everything I learned in remedial geology (those were igneous rocks). When I got home, I decided to search through my computer to see if I still had any notes from the class (these are, of course, lecture notes prepared by the instructor and downloaded on my computer--I would never be caught 1) taking notes and 2) archiving them). In the process, I did stumble across this wonderful picture from our geology class field trip to Purgatory Chasm.

That picture was taken over four years ago. And let's compare it to one of me taken today at Crater Lake.

So, I have matured a little bit. My backwards Red Sox cap has been adjusted to the more professional forward position, but yes, it is the same hat. My sunglasses are new, but my shirt... In both cases, I'm wearing a blue shirt Simpsons t-shirt. I can't identify the exact design I was wearing back in 2007, but it could, quite plausibly, be the same one.

Even I have to be a little impressed with my commitment to resisting change.

STUFF... from mom

2011-08-14T00:22:00.000-07:00

Another day and more fun with moms. I don't want to sound like a greedy child, but my mother likes to buy me things, and I am obliged to receive.

The first item... how do I eat salad? By pretending to be a gorilla. How do I eat Chinese food? With chimp sticks.

On an evening trip to get some miscellaneous kitchen and storage supplies, I discovered these beauties and I knew I had to have them.

As fantastic as these are, I can't help but wonder... who picked the characters to go onto this glass set? Homer is an obvious decision. I could see Barney and Moe if they wanted to go with the drinking theme... but Krusty? On the other hand, maybe they wanted to make it a glass set of characters voiced by Dan Castellaneta; in that case, Moe is the odd one out. I don't have any criticisms, per se, but I really don't understand the logic of the character selection.

And finally, in addition to some lovely accessories, mom also helped me out with some of the necessities. Below is a video of one such thing, except unless your name is Katie, you probably won't find it even remotely amusing.

Mom visits

2011-08-13T00:12:00.000-07:00

Today my glorious summer routine was disrupted as my mother finally completed the long trek from Haydenville, Massachusetts to Eugene, Oregon. I was happy to see her, but before her arrival, I had to do the obligatory apartment cleaning. Though most of it was routine, I did stumble across one thing whose continued presence in my apartment surprised me.

When I moved in two years ago, there was an old bar of soap by my bathroom sink. I've never understood people who use bar soap for handwashing. It's always been an unsatisfactory experience for me. Despite my disheveled appearance, I am quite good about certain parts of hygiene. I wash my hands every time I go to the bathroom, even the times when I don't piss all over them. To me, liquid soap is the only way. Anyway, for whatever reason, I kept this soap by my bathroom sink for 2 years, where it sat there, never being used and generally leaving old, gross, soap residue everywhere. Finally, like a rape victim being able to confront her accuser in court, I was able to stare that bar of soap right in the eye and say "get in my trash can."

Naturally, like any good mother, she arrived bringing candy. Delicious, delicious, candy.

This one's dedicated to Yuji for reasons I can't fully articulate.

Outraged at the news

2011-08-10T07:30:00.000-07:00

These are troubling times. Every day I read the news I am saddened by what I see. Just when I think I am becoming desensitized to the madness, an article comes along that really gets my blood boiling. Today, on cnn.com, I came across one of those articles.

Nation of adults who will write like children?

Oh no, another sad tale of our nation's growing illiteracy. Oh wait, what's that? This article isn't about literacy? It's about penmanship?

(CNN) -- A glance at teen stars Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber's letters to their younger selves makes one thing clear: their handwriting is terrible. In the letters, part of the Habbo Celebrity "Advice to My Teenage Self" book, the content is messy and their cursive signatures are barely legible.

The handwriting of today's teen stars "is so atrocious, it's talked about and recognized through the industry," says Justin King, a Toronto-based paparazzi for Flynet Pictures and independent autograph seller. "With stars ages 30 and above, they generally have a much more full, legible signature. When you deal with these new people like [teen actress] Elle Fanning, you're lucky if you get an E and F and a heart for her signature."

Wait, wait, wait... not only is this article about penmanship, but the gold standard by which we will judge the penmanship of a nation is from the signatures of teenage celebrities? And since when were signatures legible? Certainly not in my lifetime. I learned to write cursive in school, but when I was ten years old, I decided I wanted to craft my own signature just like the adults I had seen. I grabbed myself a pad and a pen and sat down on the toilet. The first thing I did was write my name out in cursive. Then I re-wrote it a little less legibly. I continued the process, and by the time I was done pooping, I had something that barely resembled a few letters of my name. I was satisfied--I finally had an adult-looking signature.

Technology has pushed cursive writing off the agenda of many school systems across the country. As a result, Handwriting Without Tears founder Jan Olsen sees more sloppy handwriting in schools today.

"If you stop teaching handwriting in the second grade, you're going to have a generation of people who write like second graders," says Olsen, whose company teaches a clean and simple style of cursive that avoids the fancy curls and swirls of old-fashioned script.

Oh, okay, as long as somebody who has a vested financial interest in propagating the ridiculous notion that handwriting is important thinks that handwriting is important, it certainly must be. And please, let us not be so sloppy with words. When one says, "you're going to have a generation of people who write like second graders," the reader naturally assumes the word "write" refers to the intellectual act of crafting words, not the obsolete practice of transcribing those words onto paper without the aid of modern technology.

Are we becoming a country of adults who write like children? Will we be able to understand the power of John Hancock's actual signature on the Declaration of Independence if we can't read the document he signed? How can we feel the magic of Jane Austen's earliest, unpublished, handwritten manuscript, "The Watsons," which recently sold for $1.6 million at auction?

Will younger generations not know the powerful emotions that come from receiving a handwritten love letter that describes all the love someone else feels for you? What about the fear and courage that comes from writing your first love letter that contains all the love you feel for someone else?

I learned cursive in school. I can read the Declaration of Independence... but my god it's a lot of work. The phrase "wall of text" comes to mind. And even the finest hand-written documents will be slower to read than a standardized typeset. As for love letters, while dotting my i's with hearts does add a nice touch, any benefit of nice handwriting will be offset by the tears that drip onto the page as I write it out. By typing, I am able to give the whole think a much cleaner appearance.

Dear Ms Sharapova,
From the first moment I saw you, I knew that we were destined to solve mysteries together. I've saved up enough money to lease an office, and put an ad in the Yellowpages, all I need now is your word that you'll be my partner and I will drop out of school and open up my detective agency.
With love,
Dan

Tell me that doesn't bring tears to your eyes.

But the article just keeps getting worse.

"Handwritten documents convey important cultural information about authors," says Davis Schneiderman, novelist and chair of the English Department at Lake Forest College. "These documents also suggest an authenticity that electronically produced documents do not. The Declaration is an index of its time as well as clue to the physicality of its signers. Imagine 'John Hancock' typed in an 18-point Times New Roman font. The proud fury behind his oversized signature would be lost."

When future generations read my writing, you know what kind of important cultural information I want them to know? That I was smart enough to type things out instead of writing them down by hand.

Retired schoolteacher Carol Collin also mourns the loss of cursive in children's lives. "They miss the sense of pride they get when they can write neatly and elegantly in cursive instead of only knowing manuscript [print]," says Collin, who taught for 40 years in the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District in California and still substitute teaches. "There are many times in school and as an adult where being able to write elegantly is an advantage. Prospective employers will be impressed by clear, readable, attractive writing."

Oh surprise, surprise, an old woman is trying to claim the way she did it is better than how they're doing it today. And yes, all things being equal, having excellent penmanship would be advantageous, but perhaps if Ms Collin hadn't been so busy studying penmanship, she might have learned about something called "opportunity cost"--the time spent learning to write legibly could also be spent learning math, history, civics, phys. ed... really anything else. It is not enough for handwriting to be useful, it must be more useful than whatever else could be learned.

Yet teens who can't write legibly -- multimillionaire teen celebrities aside -- do suffer. Even though many children use computers to write papers at home, most writing done within the school walls is still done by hand. (The country's ongoing economic problems won't likely add many computers to our nation's public school classrooms in the next few years.)

It's true that there are still times where writing by hand is necessary, which is why the skill hasn't entirely abandoned, but that by no means means that today's skill levels are insufficient.

"Without it [cursive handwriting] you lose the sense of having your thought process through your hand movements to create your language and thoughts to someone else," says Michael Sull, a master penman in Spencerian script; past president of the International Association of Master Penmen, Engrossers and Teachers of Handwriting; and author of four books on handwriting including, "American Cursive Handwriting," which was released last month. "There is a great loss in the progress that could be made with children fostering their motor skill development, literacy training and concepts of communication."

I didn't know there was an international society of master penman, but I am not at all surprised that one would spout such self-aggrandizing bullshit as this.

Sloppiness makes the reader think the writer's ideas aren't any good, studies show. "If you have sloppy handwriting, people make [negative] judgments about the quality of your ideas," says Steven Graham, professor of education at Vanderbilt University.

This is very true--which is naturally why all work which will be judged ought to be typed. Typing is meritocratic. It allows ideas to be judged for their value, not for the fine motor skills of the author. Until old people can get over their penmanship prejudices, the computer is the only way to make things fair.

And poor handwriting slows down the writer. If you write slowly, your hand may not be able to keep up with your mind's attempt to have a thought, form it into a sentence and remember it long enough to write it down. "Until you can do this skill quickly and without thinking, it will interfere with your output," says Graham. "You better learn to write."

Now "poor" handwriting is slow? That's funny. The faster I write, the less legible it becomes. My "good" handwriting is slow. And when I need maximum speed, what do I do? I sure as hell don't write. But maybe that's just me... let's look at professionals. People whose livelihood depends on rapid transcription--stenographers. Do they write by hand? Preposterous, that would be too slow. Even the fastest penmanship can't keep up with average typing.

When Guttenberg first invented the printing press, do you know what he said? "Thank fucking god I never have to read a damn handwritten bible again." While he may have gone overboard with the blasphemy there, his message was spot-on. Writing words out by hand is a horribly inefficient process, and no matter how many "master penman" try to convince you otherwise, advancing penmanship beyond a rudimentary level is a nugatory pursuit.

How to fix the economy

2011-08-08T09:30:00.000-07:00

The government can blabber about budgets and credit ratings all they want, but none of their concerns address the fundamental problem with the economy. People have forgotten how to be productive. How to add value. Trying to profit from arbitraging gold is nice, and financial institutions provide a valuable service in guarding against risk, but at the end of the day, the economy is only as strong as the goods and services produced. Every day that goes by, too many American works are sitting idle. Internationally, even more children from impoverished nations go unexploited. Think of all the designer handbags they could be making if only someone would give them a chance.

To solve this problem we must look to the future, but in doing so, we must also look to the past. I'm not usually big on touting the successes of past generations, but it wasn't long ago in American history that there was a large group of men who had all of the qualities that we need to make a resurgence. They were hard-working, courageous, and shockingly productive. They were completely committed to doing the right thing, even in the face of great danger, and though many Americans lost their lives, these men succeeded in creating the America they dreamed about. A dream that has been eroding in recent history.

The men I speak of are, of course, the brave marketing executives from big tobacco companies. They had the brilliant vision to take a product which is fundamentally repulsive to its core, and turned it into one of the most indispensable products worldwide.

Let us consider the product for a moment. What man could have ever considered the inhalation of the smoke of dried tobacco leaves to be a good idea? Even if it doesn't sound idiotic in concept, the first cough after the first puff should have cleared up any doubts that this wasn't a product that was good for you. Sure the full extent of the health risks may not have been known at the time, but the shortness of breath and discolored teeth should have all been good signs. Not to mention the repugnant odor it leaves behind. And all this for what? A buzz that's weaker than caffeine and an addiction that's stronger than heroin? How could anyone possibly think that smoking was a good idea?

That is the genius of these marketing executives. They convinced a generation of men that cigarettes could make them more manly. They convinced women that cigarettes could make them more womanly, and they convinced children that cigarettes would make them more... adultly. They created a market for this product. Rich people, poor people, black people, white people--everybody had to have their cigarettes, and they were willing to work for them. Even the starving homeless man who digs through my dumpster smokes. That is a miracle.

As fears of the dollars decline spreads, many people have turned to gold as a currency of choice. Though immune to the inflationary risks of the dollar, gold has little intrinsic value. Sure it's useful in electronics and dental work. It even makes nice jewelry, but at the end of the day, all the people buying up gold really just want to sell it for other goods and services. Contrast that with cigarettes--another product that has taken on the form of currency in certain environments. When you give Bubba two cartons not to rape you, he can be content with his newfound bounty without having to find a seller willing to accept them. That's because to him, the cigarettes do have strong intrinsic value. And that's all because of big tobacco's marketing. They did their job so well that they created not only a new product, but a new currency. When was the last time Steve Jobs did that?

But then... then the government started cracking down. They made laws that made it impossible for the tobacco companies to sell their products effectively. Then, much like the heroes of my beloved Atlas Shrugged, these men simply went away. We need these men now. We need them to come back and create demand. They need to make us want to buy stuff, and make us work to earn it. The economy is struggling not because of a .1% increase in the rate we have to pay to China on our bonds, but because there aren't enough people who are willing to do whatever it takes to get their cigarettes. We need to set a fire underneath the unproductive and ignite the economic development that's just waiting to happen.

If only those men were still around...

Why do I always set myself up for failure?

2011-08-07T00:42:00.000-07:00

Today I went to my first epee competition. After years of fencing saber, a few months ago I reluctantly took up epee when I was forced to face the reality that there just weren't enough opportunities for me to fence saber here. So since then, I've probably practice epee about once a week, which means that while I have accumulated some epee-specific skills, I'm still fundamentally a saber fencer with an epee in my hand.

For my first tournament ever, I sure picked a good one. This one was held at Northwest Fencing Center in conjunction with an elite international epee camp. If I had to lose, I'd better lose from the best. My first bout was against some pudgy Asian kid. After giving up the first touch, I managed a few singles and a few doubles to win with relative ease. "Hey, maybe all this pessimism is unwarranted," I said as I began to become just a little optimistic about my chances. Unfortunately, as life has taught me so many times before, whenever I believe that my pessimism is unwarranted, not only is my pessimism warranted, but actually isn't nearly enough pessimism for the situation. So my next bout was against an older (mid-40s) Frenchman, who just so happens to have an Olympic medal to his name... but that was like 15 years ago, how good could he be? In the time that it took me to ponder that question, I lost the bout.

In my next bout, I discovered that there was another major flaw in my game that I hadn't even realized. While I was struggling to fix the problems I knew I had (bladework), I ran out of time. What? Time? What the hell is that? The score's only 1-2. I thought we were fencing to 5?!

My next two bouts were totally winnable, which means I naturally lost them both, and finished my first pool 1-4. The field was cut... by a single fencer for a second round of pools. In the second round of pools, I turned the tables, winning a bout 2-1. I would have felt better if the win hadn't been against a teenage girl. Maybe I should buy her some beer to make her feel better. That would be my only win of the second round of pools. This time there were no Frenchmen to stand in my way, just my own incompetence.

With that lackluster performance, I was not promoted to the direct elimination round, where I would have surely be eliminated as directly as possible. I finished 55/66--not awful for my first epee tournament, but not good by any stretch of the imagination.

Let's face it, when it comes to me and sports, failure can never be far behind.

UPDATE: Complete results available here for anyone who wants to see the details of my failure.

Keeping up appearances

2011-08-05T16:19:00.000-07:00

Last night I had the pleasure of attending a Eugene Emeralds baseball game. They're the local Single A affiliate of the San Diego Padres. I'm not sure why I don't go to their games more often, but I was looking forward to a fun night of baseball. I bought my ticket and went to my seat. No sooner had I sat down than the people around me all got up and left to go sit somewhere else. Now I know that sometimes I take liberties with the truth in my blog posts, but this literally happened. I don't understand. I had showered recently, and was only a little gassy. And they were great seats--right behind home plate about 15 rows back. I couldn't help but feel just a little dejected. "There's the loser watching a baseball game all by himself! What's the matter, doesn't he have any friends?"

But the funny thing is, as much as I want other people to look at me and think I'm cool, I got exactly what I wanted. I got to enjoy a baseball game, in relative solitude. As much as I love going to sporting events, I hate the crowds. That's why I prefer going to women's sporting events--all the fun of the sport, without anyone else in the stands with me. And so, through my inexplicable repulsive aura, I achieved exactly what I wanted, but would have preferred to have been able to do that while still appearing to be popular.

Pants or no pants?

2011-08-03T22:13:00.000-07:00

I know it seems like I've been having a lot of Stu-themed blog posts lately, but fresh off of running his first marathon, today the man made an appearance on Fox Business, discussing Amazon and sales tax. This has prompted the return of my world-famous polls. Watch the video below and decide for yourself whether Stu was wearing pants.