Hey it's new years. We made it all the way around again!

I'm still sitting here and again I'm trying hard to care that the year has come to an end. And this time even the decade is ending.

Nobody else seems to care about the end of this decade either. All of the "best of the decade" lists have come late, almost as an afterthought. I think that's because the decade has no name. Goodbye seventies, eighties, 20th century, ... now what? The BBC calls them "the naughties", but I think that's the disease I blamed for having caused me to steal all of the cookies (if you know what I mean) and have sex with them. No wait, I think the naughties were the villain in the pilot episode of the Teletubbies.

Anyway, I think "first ten years of the century" probably fits best. So, goodbye ftyotc. We hardly knew you.

I've been blogging for one year

In case I'm dead or something, don't worry. It's not a ghost or a hacker. I set this up months ago to post at this time.

I think Sally Draper grows up to be former SNL cast member Victoria Jackson.

State Coin Tarrot

Have you ever considered trying to tell the future based on the state quarters you receive as change? A state you like (Wisconsin) means you're going to have a good day. A state you hate (Wyoming) mean's you're going to have a bad day. Me either, but one could.

Science vs. Fiction

Fiction writing is very similar to science in one central way: You need to create a narrative that allows the facts to be exposed.

Space Taxi: Diary of a Long-Haul Tanker

At the bottom of the ocean, thermophilic bacteria have evolved to take nourishment from heat coming through cracks in the earth’s crust. Though similar in most respects to other bacteria, these thermophiles have the unique ability to harness this heat energy. Through natural selection, generation by generation, their species has adapted to take advantage of unseen power radiated from below the ocean floor. Organs that once digested physical nourishment have slowly mutated to perform this dual purpose.

If string theory is correct, space contains many more dimensions than the four that we can perceive. Imagine that some vastly intelligent being lives right next door to us along one of these unseen dimensions. Could he be sending information to us in some manner not easily measured by modern technology? He may even be looking forward along our “temporal” dimension and sending us clues.

Neuroscience is in its infancy. We’ve hardly even guessed at the function of vast portions human brain; much less the selective pressures and adaptations that carved it. Could we be evolving to better receive these signals? Even inchoate, such an ability would certainly confer a selective advantage. Could this vastly complex organ be only part thinking machine and part … antenna?

I doubt it, but my passengers are pretty fired-up about the idea. That’s why they’ve hired me to .. blah blah blah blah blah blah … etc.

ask mefi doesn't know funny

I feel like this is one of the funniest things I've ever written and it didn't get favorited once. Why do I care? I don't know but I do.

Why do people all hope we'll find extraterrestrial intelligence? I don't know that either. It's illogical.

15 Minutes?

By my math, if only one person can be famous at a time, everyone should be famous for more like 39 seconds. That's probably a bad assumption, however, since the Earth can clearly support more than one famous person at a time. It goes to 13:20 if you assume 20 people at a time. That averages to 1 famous person at a time in the US, but I'd say the US can support 10 famous people at a time at least. This means that each of us can now be famous for over 2 hours! I propose we keep 10 people on TV at all times, swapping out the one who's been there the longest every 13:20.

51-Star American Flag

Here is my proposal for a 51-star flag. I think, at this point, the rectangle has been done. It's time for a new shape.

I'm Addicted to the TV Show "Intervention"

There. I said it. It's on A&E and it's awesome.

Recorded History

In the future, there will exist roughly as much information about each and every person's life as would exist in a standard memoir. This information will exist into perpetuity and be database searchable. So, if historians want to ask a specific question about what life was like, what people were thinking, etc., they can make a clever query and search the database. Studying the history of people (like us) who lived before this data exists will be like studying cave paintings and ancient scrolls. You have to make a story about people's lives based on the shreds of evidence that happen to have been written down. There's a big bias toward famous people and others (like me) who write everything down in spite of a lack of people interested in reading about them.

An Idea for a Broadway Musical

The Elton John album "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" is a Broadway musical waiting to happen. Just listen to it from start to finish and tell me it isn't true. The musical is a coming-of-age story about a kid who leaves home to go to the big city and all of the crazy stuff that happens there.

Though not on the album, "Take Me to the Pilot" would be a great big finish. It's about him finally coming to terms.

The 7 Pills

In the future, there will be a pill for each of the seven deadly sins. There are already potent anti-sloths pills, anti-wrath pills, and anti-gluttony pills. There have been anti-lust pills for centuries. Just 3 to go: anti-pride, anti-greed and anti-envy.

Pink Floyd's "The Thin Ice" is about George W. Bush

These lyrics never made sense to me until I thought about them as a premonition of our 43rd president. The first part is about an easy and blissfully ignorant childhood (enough said there). As for the rest, couldn't you call the high-tech-but-fatally-flawed-by-lack-of-historical-consideration invasion of Iraq skating on the thin ice of modern life? And I'd say that, in doing so, he dragged behind him the silent reproach of [at least] a million tear-stained eyes. I'd also say that a pretty big crack in the ice appeared under his feet. And if anyone's ever slipped out of their depth, he has.

Momma loves her baby,
And daddy loves you, too.
And the sea may look warm to ya, babe,
And the sky may look blue.

Oooooo babe.
Oooooooo baby blue.
Oooooo ooohh babe.

If you should go skating,
On the thin ice of modern life,
Dragging behind you the silent reproach,
Of a million tear-stained eyes,
Dont be surprised when a crack in the ice,
Appears under your feet.
You slip out of your depth and out of your mind,
With your fear flowing out from behind,
You as you claw the ice.

Hello World

Until today, I hadn't ridden my bike in years (and hadn't been a big rider even back then). On an impulse, I filled the tires and rode in to work today. It's about 15 miles through Lexington, Arlington, Cambridge and Boston and it took about an hour. I don't even have a helmet. It turned out to be quite pleasant. We'll see how well I get home tonight and sore I am tomorrow.

It would be very nice if this could become a regular thing. I tried public transportation for a while. It was a long multi-phase trip (bus/subway/bus). Eventually it got to be too much. When I was stuck on the stalled T underground for 45 minutes and was, therefore, a half hour late to pick up my two small children from daycare and unable to call (because I was underground), I decided to start driving to work. The problem is that the drive is now taking at least 45 minutes, usually more. It can be as long as two hours when the weather is bad or when Boston's many many many construction delays clog my main, alternate, and alternate-alternate routes. This seems to be happening more and more often and I can't leave work 2 hours earlier everyday just in case. Did I mention that when you're late to school (they're in school now) they charge a dollar a minute per kid? 10 minutes late = $20. This is completely reasonable. If they didn't, parents would be late every day. The teachers have lives too. However, it's also not affordable. We're already paying $33k per year. It's not a fancy place. That's just how much it costs to have 2 kids in preschool. We've spent well over $100k to this point.

We don't eat out much and I drive a 15-year-old car that I bought on eBay. I'll be very happy when they start kindergarten. Public kindergarten will be like a 33 grand raise. What to do with all of that money ... how about paying off all of the debt we've gotten into trying to survive in Boston with 2 kids on a postdoc + medical resident salary? It's a generous postdoc, but it's turning out to be insufficient. I think Boston's a fantastic place to be either rich or childless, but if you're neither of those, there's no good reason to be here. We're both signed up for 3-year employment contracts and when they end (in a year and a half) I'll be more than ready to move either back to Madison (where we came here from) or some other place in the middle of the country.

So, why do we live in Lexington? We used to live in a two-family in Arlington. Unfortunately, (as almost everyone I know in the area who has small children has found out) families sharing a space with anyone but other families tends to result in serious and ongoing noise/lifestyle conflicts that almost never end well. It certainly wasn't going to end well in our case. A full description of what happened would require at least one full post in itself. See this NYTimes article for a good description of the general phenomenon.

We didn't want to move out unless we could close off the possibility of landing in the same (apparently all-to-common) situation, but you can't control who moves in around you. So we searched Craigslist for an affordable, non-fraudulent, cat-allowing, de-leaded (our kids don't eat paint, but it's the law around here), single family house to rent. What we found was a tiny house in Lexington. It's actually not much more money than we were paying in Arlington and it's got a gigantic yard.

So now, though Lexington has more history and character than typical post-WW2 Brady-Bunch land, we're in the suburbs and, of course, transportation is an issue. I haven't mentioned gas prices because I'm actually pro-high-gas-prices for the obvious reasons. I just have to figure out a way to fulfill my responsibilities to my family and my job within the confines of what we can afford in terms of housing and transportation. So, maybe riding my bike will work out. I don't think driving once in a while will be a problem, especially if I fold in a grocery-shopping trip on the way home. I can probably also work from home a day or two a week (assuming I'm productive).

Anyway, that's what I've been thinking about this morning. Speaking of being productive, I better get to it. Happy First-Blog-Post-Ever Day (in case anyone reads this).