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After some cajoling, we both managed to get back to STL for a few days to see friends. Friends who turned out in force! It was a nice present to have friends who let us stay with them and borrow their vehicles (wow, how easy that made it), and of course many friends whom we saw, ate cheap, great food with (oh Mai Lee…how I miss you, and your #126), shopped with, and visited old neighborhoods with.

Perhaps one of the most rewarding aspects was that so many of our friends in this city think a great deal about what MAKES a good city, a good neighborhood, a good block. Sam and I are thinking a great deal about this too after reading the majority of a very dense but altogether sensible book called A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander. Sitting in at close to 1200 pages, I think we should be forgiven for jumping over a few pages, but by and large, this tome on design of all types and sizes of spaces written in the 1970s has a ton of good ideas that seem common sense but don’t automatically spring to mind. Like, what kinds of neighborhoods inspire the residents to walk instead of drive? Some say they want a jumbomart to get everything in one place, but large numbers of people find a corner grocery to be useful for most of their needs. How big should a town square be in order to be more inviting for a variety of people? How do you even design housing to encourage a diversity of ages, socio-economic class, and family types to move in? These questions are thought about a lot when you don’t consider your own city to be ideal, and the residents of STL certainly are hard on theirs. But many of our friends are improving their city actively through day jobs or weekend projects: from working with local arts and youth organizations to renovating a house in a neighborhood that needs a lot of work, from building a rooftop garden at work to becoming a teacher or building a sculpture for a public event, we’re lucky to know so many people who think so much about how to make their city a better place to be. And stranger still, most of these people flow effortlessly between white collar and blue collar jobs – and mingle with a combination of both in their neighborhoods and friend groups. Few cities in the U.S. really achieve this.

That’s actually two concepts, but I still appreciate both. And it’s exciting for us to see all the things our friends have accomplished since we moved – even if it’s buying a ‘76 camper named a “scamp” or plotting hijinks for their upcoming wedding. In the meantime, we’ll try to improve the city we live in now, even if most of the residents here have a much higher opinion of their city and don’t believe it needs help, change or any more people in it. It takes time, naturally, to tap in to the improvement elements in a city.

The lack of posts recently is because of traveling. Pictures will go up in the gallery soon, but for the time being, there are other things to tell.

Since the move, we are subleasing in a rather large apartment building, living 7 blocks from the downtown area. This is really great for walking down to restaurants, bars, groceries, etc. In fact, I’ve found a website that identifies exactly what it is I like about the places I choose to live. It’s called walkscore, and you put in your address to get a rating between 0 and 100 (with 100 being a good thing) of how closely you live to various services. It then produces a map and a list of the nearest grocery, movie theatre, hardware store, bar, dry cleaners, you get the idea. Our current score is 88, and our last place was an 82. Aaaaahhh. Quantifying what were previously unquantifiable qualities is very satisfying for engineers…

However, that’s irrelevant to this story. In our building of about 30 units, there is an open area linking the hall to the laundry room and leasing office. It’s where the mailboxes are, and there’s a bulletin board, useful things like that. The weird part is the “free” bookshelf. A bookshelf in one corner accumulates and dissipates….stuff. Sure, there are lots of very dated books and magazines that seem to stay on the shelf, but we’ve seen lamps, TVs, houseplants, what I assume are doctoral theses, and other bookshelves come and go. Sam grinningly brought home one day one of those plastic sheets that magnify whatever is behind it. (One guess as to the first thing he, and probably any boy, wanted to magnify). I topped that by bringing home a gauzy, pink curtain with screen-printed trees on it in various shades of pink.

But the truly WEIRD item found in the pile sat there for close to a week before finding an anonymous new home. A cabbage. A cabbage bigger than the average adult human head. It was bagged in a plastic grocery sack, unassumingly sitting there. Who buys a cabbage and sadly, finds that it does not meet their needs, leaving it instead in the building-wide free pile? And even more strange, who decides, “AH-HA!! Exactly what I wanted! A giant cabbage! ‘Ask, and ye shall receive!’” I just wish I could find out about the adventures this cabbage embarked upon, and am a little sad I never will.

Hello world –
Quite literally, this is my first post – Sam and I are sharing it for purposes of sharing news with friends and offering tidbits of entertainment. Let us know if we do a better job of this online than in person – we can become blogging recluses instead of hanging out if it works better.

At any rate, I feel a need to comment on a St. Louis activity that continues to make me feel like an outsider: Trivia. I have played trivia in other cities, but outside of St. Louis, what passes for trivia is a casual affair – usually the stakes go no higher than a round of drinks, and there is certainly no serious competition, hard feelings, or outside food to the degree seen in St. Louis.

In St. Louis, first, one must be invited to trivia, or involved in an organization hosting a Trivia Night. These events are always fundraisers, which a specific set-up: you can register a team of eight people, each of whom usually pays a fee of $20. If you cannot find eight people, you can risk showing up with less than eight members, because some people show up as singles, just ready to join a partial team. They are usually members of the church/synagogue/childrens non-profit that want to support the fundraiser, but don’t believe they should create their own team. This strikes me as very strange…counting on strangers to allow you to join their team, hoping your skills are up to par (or beyond) the other team members, or that your new teammates don’t drag your score down. Other etiquette involves bringing massive amounts of junk foods: fried chicken, cakes, macaroons, cheetos, twizzlers, iced tea, two liter bottles of soda, sausage, casseroles, dips of every kind imaginable, and anything else one might think would clot an artery. [I must point out, I fail this etiquette point each time, constantly forgetting the courtesy of bringing even so much as a bag of potato chips. Luckily, my various teammates have forgiven me each time.] You must also bring paper, pens, and perhaps wear a hat. Be sure to yell out wrong answers to throw off other teams, and give shouts of “Yay!” or “Boo!” randomly, to throw off other teams about how well you are doing [nevermind that the scores are written on an easel to the side of the MC]. And if you insist on an answer that turns out to be wrong, well, you better hope these people really like you. You may not be coming back.

Despite all this, I find it a fascinating cultural event – entirely MidWestern, entirely Judeo-Christian, and with the etiquette involved, entirely unique to St. Louis. Luckily for the anthropologist in me, Saturday night’s trivia came packed with drama:

My two friends, R & J, who invited me, had done this particular trivia night the year before. That year, they opted for bringing a partial team, and added two women to their team who showed up as singles. It turns out that the team did reasonably well, winning a gift certificate for eight to tour the Schlafly brewery. The two women were very excited, and insisted on giving their names and numbers so that they could join whenever the tour was scheduled by the other members of the team. My friends, unfortunately, were very lazy, and have not, even a year later, used the certificate. They mentioned all of this to me before we walked in because there was a chance the two women would be there this year, and wonder why no one had called them about taking the tour.

That would be an understatement. By the third round, one of the two women came up, and interrogated my friends on their silence over the past year. She brusquely demanded that they call her, if it was actually true that they hadn’t used the gift certificate. Despite a great deal of disdain for R & J, she insisted that she would be going on that damn brewery tour. She rewrote her name and number for them, and huffed off. It affected our concentration, which is why, despite good effort all around, we only made fifth place out of 20 or so teams.

I have to wonder: if you are so angry with your teammates for not calling you, why would you want to invite more discomfort by spending several hours together at a brewery? Wouldn’t you rather forget the whole thing? Or demand the price of a beer or two to “buy out” your share? Why insist on spending more time with people you have told to their faces you are angry with them?

Alas, this is the mystery of St. Louis trivia. Treat the evening casually at your own risk. Bring junk food to share. Shout out wrong answers to throw other teams off. And by all means, you better share any prize you get with your teammates, even if you met them for the first time that same night.

Sometimes, when days are cold, and nights are long, people have to pamper themselves.

Take a moment for yourself, and relax.

Some people wrap themselves in a warm blanket, hold a cup of steaming hot cocoa with both hands and relax with a good book propped upon their knee. Others put on a favored movie or record, and allow themselves to take a luxurious nap. Bubble baths and aromatherapy candles may also be included.

I’ve got a new guilty pleasure, one I’ve enjoyed a few times, and will likely become a habit of mine.

I find a quiet place, settle myself down, put on a pair of headphones, blast the glitchiest drum and bass and breakbeats I can get my hands on, and read The Economist. Lately I’ve been happy listening to The Freestylers (particularly their live albums, like Fabric Live 19), and Pendulum’s album True Colours or Live on Breezeblock. But I’ve recently gotten back into some of the new releases by Bassnectar which are incredibly good. His beats are raw, the bass is grinding and the limited vocals are radically leftist. Lorin AKA Bassnectar is from Santa Cruz, CA, which is great, because I fondly remember hearing him spin early on at Moontribe beach parties. These days he’s a very accomplished producer, and is touring like crazy. I chatted with him briefly after his set here in St. Louis a few days ago, and he was a real pleasure. He obviously loves what he does and has a great time doing it. His sets reflect his energy, and are always special.

But remember, this isn’t just an opportunity to bang some beats, its about the reading material too. The Economist is one of my new favorite news rags. It’s a weekly news publication, but is very unique. Nearly every article is written in an editorial fashion, and they don’t hesitate to make value judgments or criticisms. However, they are never unfair, and seem to make a legitimate attempt to have their facts straight. The thing I like about it is the fact that they make their personal and editorial biases clear, and are consistent with them. I believe that all news sources are highly biased, and I become very wary when a news source claims to be “fair and balanced” (a favored phrase by Fox News, which is not fair or balanced). Usually this just means that they are making an attempt to disguise their bias, or mislead you into thinking a certain way.

I think the Economist is actually pretty fair, and well balanced. But not in the smarmy, way, but the real way. Their coverage of international politics is better than any other major news outlet, and their UK base and international editorial departments mean you get real coverage about things happening in “poor” countries that are often ignored by mainstream media.

It’s not a perfect news magazine, but it is significantly better than most, as far as I can tell, and I enjoy reading it. The material is quite heady, and even their advertisements are fun. Instead of shampoo ads, there are job advertisements for things like CFO of the State Bank of Pakistan. Maybe I should apply.

Plus, it makes me feel smart. I’m reminded of the Simpson’s quote when Homer is on an airplane and manages to get into first class, he finds an Economist and says, “Look at meee. I’m reading the Economist! Did you know that Indonesia is at a crossroads?” Apparently intentionally, the next issue of the Economist had an article entitled, “Investing in Indonesia, at a crossroads”.

You don’t realize how old fashioned you really are until you search to buy something you haven’t bought in a while. When you arrive at the store, you find that nothing is how you remembered it, and confusion reigns supreme.

In the world of televisions and computers, you expect rampant advancement, but in other fields, you might assume that thousands of years of success with a product design would last a few more years. But that would be foolish of you to assume, because why would you buy new products if it weren’t for new features, even if said features were completely useless?

Today I searched for grill skewers, of the metal variety. I was hoping for a 12-18” long piece of thin metal, with a pointy end. A loop on one end and a few twists in the metal for easy gripping were features that I would have appreciated, but didn’t require.

However, after checking no fewer than eight stores, all of which claiming to have a ‘BBQ’ department, I was only barely successful in my search. The stores ranged from low end department stores to home stores to import shops to kitchen supply stores, and quite a number of things in between.

It isn’t that no one had skewers. Oh, they had skewers. Some were long elegant curves, meant to fit on special plates sold for the purpose. Others had huge handles with rotating finger knobs for easy turning. One was a skewer basket with a long thin basket attachment that would probably be very handy for cooking krill. If size was important, there were mighty 5 pronged skewers that looked more like the devil’s backscratcher than a cooking implement. Others still were equipped with spring-loaded attachments that served to ‘launch’ the food off the skewer upon completion of cooking, an attractive idea that would probably result in more airborne mushrooms than anything else. They came in all sorts of exotic materials and finishes, and some included their own carrying case. They were all quite expensive.

In a basket by the floor one could also find the traditional, but useless, bamboo skewers.

What was not to be found was a simple metal skewer that didn’t include some ridiculous feature! I had no idea that in the span of a few years we had completely reinvented the skewer. I was unaware of just how much I lacked by not being on the cutting edge of the skewer.

On a broader note, I think things like this are a sign of our countries disappearing middle class. When you buy a skewer, you show your class, everyone who sees you walk from the store now knows to which group you belong. Will you timidly pay cash and slink from the store clutching your little sack of pathetic bamboo skewers? Or do you proudly pay with your Titanium Credit Card, and march to your automobile brandishing your new Stainless Steel Bolt-Action Spring Loaded Ergo-Grip Skewers?

There is no room for the humble working man, who desires a simple but durable skewer for preparing his family’s hearty meals over their charcoal grill? Why must we relegate our citizens to pitiful bamboo skewers, clearly meant to be used over a coffee can full of burning animal feces, or glittering titanium skewers to be used over a Grill-Master 3000 grilling station? Is there no middle ground? Why all the extremes?!?

Anyway, in the end I finally found my skewers, but I had to look a lot harder than any reasonable person should have to look for skewers. Life is hard for the proletariat.

This quote sums up my feelings about much of what we receive as news, both in print and video (yes, this includes much online news as well).

“To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worthwhile. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.”—Aleister Crowley

Sometimes it feels like news is generated more out of a desire to fill time, than an actual need for people to know about certain things. It is important to keep up with the world around you, but at the same time, it is rare that an article in the paper will give you a complete picture. All you get is a ‘factoid’ that remains isolated from everything else you know about the world. You may know that yesterday 4 people died in a fire in central China that may or may not have been caused by arson, but since there is no relevancy to your life, your knowledge of it will make no difference in how you live your life, or the choices you will make.

I like to call it pseudo-knowledge. My head is full, but the links between each factoid don’t exist. It is not a collection of factoids that makes up knowledge, but rather the connections between them, tying our thoughts together, that constitute knowledge. Most news articles supply me with much in the way of factoids, and very little in the way of connections and relevancy. The knowledge that I find changes my life, and influences my decisions, stems from more complete sources which take the time to give a complete picture, rather than just selected tidbits. This ‘real’ knowledge is combined in a thick web within my mind that gives me the power to make more informed decisions. I find that news articles rarely integrate with this web, instead seeming to float about as disconnected noise.

Another term I’m going to toss out is “infonography”, which, like pornography, is often enjoyed with excess, filling, and then overfilling, a basic human desire. Many people (myself included) often find themselves with the purient desire to read more news, simply because they can. The internet has made this almost endemic. I sometimes find myself reading every little article I can, trolling through Google News or the BBC reading articles. Why? The desire to read them is totally purient. It isn’t rooted in a desire to become a better person through knowledge, but rather a desire to be entertained, without feeling guilty. Sitting around watching soap operas is seen as a waste of time, but sitting around watching the news is not. However, for many people, the two activities fulfill the same desire, entertainment. The fact that one is ‘real’, and the other isn’t, is irrelevant.

This is why my desire to read news waxes and wanes. I believe that a certain amount of news-following is helpful, to keep one informed about things that do affect your life, and to better understand how changes in one part of the world affect other parts, perhaps your own part. However, I try to keep it in perspective. Just because it is easy to move thousands of news articles back and forth across the globe instantaneously through the magic of the Internet, doesn’t mean we should. Just because I can sit down and do nothing except read news articles the moment they are released, doesn’t mean that is a healthy activity. I say this mostly for my own benefit, but many will find the same tendencies within themselves or others around them.

This topic is discussed in great detail, and with much rigor in the book Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. I recommend visiting your local library and reading it. Postman is a very cynical man, but he brings forth some very good points. Also of note is the fact that the book was written in 1986, about 17 years ago. News then was a bit different from news now, but Postman makes several grim predictions for the future of news, based on negative trends he saw in 1986. Many of these predictions have come eerily true in the years since the book’s publication, and are worth noting when you read it.

Two days ago our sun released the 3rd largest recorded solar flare ever. The flare was accompanied by a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) consisting of about 10 billion tons of ionized gas. The gas is streaming towards us now at about 1250 miles per second.

This image was taken by the SOHO Satellite (The SOlar and Heliospheric Observatory). Each frame is spaced by about 30 minutes, and shows a ‘halo’ type effect as the flare spreads out and heads directly toward SOHO, and the Earth. The specks seen on the image are interference caused by protons striking the surface of the detector. The large dot in the center is called an occulting disk, and it allows us to get a view of the behavior around the sun, without being blinded by the light and energy from the sun itself. Shortly after taking these images, SOHO had to be placed in a safe-mode to prevent damage from the radiation. For more images and videos of the flare, check out the hot shots page for this flare at SOHO.

What I really want you to take away from all this is the fact that solar flares of this magnitude are some of the largest and most awesome eruptions of energy that we will ever experience. Space is full of things like this, but rarely do those things actually affect our lives. Solar flares, and the associated ejection of mass, can disrupt communication and power grids, damage satellites, and create powerful and beautiful Aurora Borealis’s, like this one caught in the Colorado sky, one of the first signs of the flare’s effects here on Earth.

The sun is a violent and terrific thing, bursting with energy. If it weren’t for our powerful magnetic field, we would have never had the chance to evolve, let alone stand outside and enjoy its magnificence. Next time you are outside, think briefly about how much energy it would take to get 10 billion tons of gas moving 1250 miles per second. Then realize that its only another day in the life of a medium sized star.

Links to information about the recent solar activity:

• NASA – Tuesday/Wednesday Solar Punch
• Giant Sunspot Groups 10484 and 10486 – Two huge sunspot groups currently visible on the surface of the sun (don’t stare at the sun though! If you want to see, use some techniques found here for protecting your eyes while viewing the sun.). These sunspots are the source of the current flare and CME activity, and are each about the size of Jupiter.

• SOHO Hot Shot: X17.2 Flare – This is NOT to be missed! Check out more images and MPEG videos of the flare in action, including close-ups of the Sun’s surface.

Thousands of years from now, when the past becomes an indistinct fog, two historians will be sitting in an office, arguing. They are both specialists in a certain time in the past, which was known to its inhabitants as the time between 1700 AD and 2200 AD, a tiny little 500 year block that almost no one cared about, and was covered in less than one week of lecturing in most high-school level World History classes.

The argument today concerns emergency response systems in the landmass that was, for the greater part of the period, known as America. Their infrastructure, what was left of it, made it clear that they had a system by which individuals could report an emergency such as a crime in progress, or a health problem, and have teams of emergency response crews arrive quickly. Scattered documentation suggests that the inhabitants were able to dial a number into their common communication system, telephones, and be connected to a central dispatch for emergency crews. This number was most probably ‘911’.

One historian has been studying the cultural significance of a very brief period of turmoil, only a few decades long, that began with an attack against the country known as America by some sort of religious organization. The date the attack occurred on is generally agreed to be 9/11/2001. The historian notes that after the attacks, the numbers 9/11 held cultural significance, as the inhabitants mourned over the attacks, and bolstered morale.

Surely, he argues, the fact that the emergency response code is agreed to have been ‘911’ is not a coincidence with the fact that the attacks in question occurred on a date known to the inhabitants as ‘9/11’. Surely the emergency response system wasn’t set up until after the attacks, and the number ‘911’ was chosen because it evoked a sense of tragedy in the populace, and hence, was easy to remember.

The second historian is skeptical. She notes that in all probability, emergency response teams would have been summoned for the attacks, since much cultural significance at the time was placed on the role of rescue teams. Those had to have been organized teams, she argues, meaning the emergency response system was already in place, and ‘911’ had been chosen for other reasons.

The debate goes back and forth for the better part of an hour with both sides finally agreeing to continue the debate at a later time, because the issue really wasn’t a big deal anyway, and they had real work to be doing.

BTW, Madalene flew back in from New York this morning, of all mornings. She brought me bagels, such as the horrifically delicious garlic bagel that I’m eating right now that surely required at least 4 cloves of garlic to make.

Click for larger image

I saw this sign on the way home from picking up groceries today. Some clever person had modified the sign from its original text, which was something to the effect of “Forest Park Blvd. is under construction, expect delays,” to, “Free Mandela,” flashing over and over. How they did it, I don’t know, but I’m glad they did. Of course, Nelson Mandela has been free for over 13 years, but the sentiment remains. Even after his release from prison, there was a lot Nelson Mandela had to do before he could become free. And even today, as a father of a nation, and a symbol of peace and solidarity, whenever anyone is not free, Nelson Mandela is not free. I think the ‘editor’ of the sign intended for us to remember what Mandela went through. To that end, here is a nice biography of Nelson Mandela that has both a detailed section, as well as a brief bio near the bottom.

So lets obey the sign, and do everything we can to make Mr. Mandela, and all the people in the world that he cares about, free.

Just to let everyone know, I’m not dead. Billy and I got back on Sunday afternoon from Schwagstock without incident. I proceeded to sleep for a very long time. The past few days have been interesting. It has been raining incredibly heavily, and our house even leaked a little bit. Its something I’ve been getting used to out here, weeks of endless precipitation.

I got a few beers in the mail. Through homebrewing forums, I hooked up with a guy who wanted to trade some beers he could get locally, for some beers I could get locally. I sent him a few New Belgium beers which he could not get on the east coast, and he sent me a few local brews he was proud of. It was a fun trade, and I got to try some interesting beers, a Yards Extra Special Ale, and a Flying Fish Dubbel that was quite charming.

I also received some scooter parts in the mail, which will help me improve the performance of my scooter a little bit. Not much, but a bit.

Today I worked 13 hours, starting at around 9ish this morning, and ending around 10pm. There was a whole day of gallery stuff that needed to be done, and then a special event in the evening where a group of salespeople had reserved the planetarium for dinner and drinks. I got to shuttle them up and down in our ‘star shuttle’ elevator, which is basically an elevator souped up with plasma displays, launch timers, scads of switches, controls and buttons, and a little speech I give where I describe our launch to the planetarium space station, and then our subsequent return to Earth. It is quite entertaining, but it gets tiring after a few hours.

On a plus note, I got a whole handful of glowing customer comment cards from my presentations today. I give short presentations about science to kids as part of my job, typically 4 a day, lasting around 15 to 20 minutes each. The presentations are stimulating, exciting, interactive and quite cool, if I do say so myself. There is a customer comment box next to the demo site, and when I emptied it out at the end of the day, it was full of cards from my shows. They were all 100% satisfaction, with great comments written in little kid handwriting that said things like, “Now I love sound more than I used to!” There was even one from an adult that said, “Great show, I’m really starting to appreciate the sounds we take for granted!” As you might have guessed, my shows for the day were about sound and vibrations. It feels good to know that people are getting something out of what I do. Its all simple stuff, with very little emphasis on facts or details. I try to make people love science as much as I do, make them love discovery, and the wonder of the universe around us. Science isn’t about facts or numbers or equations or laws. Science is about a willingness to open yourself to new possibilities and a desire to examine the truths we take for granted. The universe is a giant onion, and the act of peeling back a layer and seeing what’s underneath is a very special one, and its something I’m excited to be a part of, at least for a few kids a day. After you peel back a lot of layers, you eventually need numbers and equations in order to actually talk to people about it, because it has gotten very complex down there, but those are secondary to the actual peeling. You can peel a long way without needing a single equation. The end result of any scientific discovery is not an answer, it is not a solution. It is just a door to more questions. Science needs no ‘end goal’. The act of discovery is the reason. The journey is why we do it. The destination, if one even exists, is inconsequential. Enjoy the peeling.

Its like a story my dad told me once about a young monk who was trying to understand the universe. He went to his master and asked, “What is the true nature of the universe?” The master told him, “The universe is like an onion, as you peel back each layer, you arrive closer to the true meaning.” The young monk mediated on this, and was satisfied. But many years later, the monk was getting older, and getting very frustrated. He returned to his master and asked, “Master, I’ve been peeling back layers for many years, and I do not seem to understand any more than I did the day I first came to you! What is wrong?!” The master calmly replied, “Well, it is a very big onion.”

I enjoy eating with chopsticks. One reason I like them is that they make me more mindful of my food, by forcing me to slow down a bit, and grab each item of food individually. One Buddhist concept is that of ‘mindfulness’ where being aware of your surroundings and your interactions with your surroundings is encouraged. The food you eat is a very critical part of your day, and what you eat can affect the health of your body as well as your mind. When we shovel food down as fast as possible, we aren’t being mindful of what we are eating. We aren’t paying attention to it, enjoying it, or taking the time to really experience eating. This isn’t a good habit, so things that help you slow down can be nice.

Chopsticks require modest concentration, and are best suited to picking up each piece of food separately. While some people can certainly eat very fast with them, they aren’t well suited to ‘shoveling’ your food down with the same voracity as say, a large fork. Each bite of food is distinct, and can be contemplated and enjoyed on its own merits. A bit of pepper, a piece of tofu, a slice of carrot, each one comes to you, presents itself, and proceeds to be eaten. You are very aware of what you are eating.

I think everyone should try using chopsticks at least some of the time. There is some food it is better suited to than others, but most foods can be enjoyed with chopsticks. Eating with one’s fingers is also a good way to better experience one’s food. Far from being a childish game, this is actually the custom in parts of the world, namely India and Ethiopia. If anyone has any other interesting ways to make their eating experience more mindful, I’d love to hear about it.

Today I got my haircut by a large woman with an even larger hairdo. She did an OK job, which is good, because I have a job interview tomorrow at a hi-fi audio store. Hopefully it goes well! I have some bad news to report as well, namely that I am an ass and didn’t realize it. I didn’t tip my hairdresser, because I didn’t know that it was customary to tip them. This stems from the fact that I’ve only had my hair cut by people who aren’t family members or friends a few times in my life. So to that mystery woman, sorry I didn’t tip you. You probably said dirty things about me to your coworkers after I left, and you were right to do so. I’ll tip next time, I promise. Thanks to Madalene for informing me of my faux pa.

As many of your probably read, NASA finally ended communication with the Pioneer 10 spacecraft today. The craft is now 12 Billion kilometers from Earth, well outside the solar system. They are still able to detect it’s carrier signal, but they are unable to lock on for telemetry. Additionally, Pioneer 10’s radioisotope power source is probably reaching the end of its lifetime as well. As Pioneer 10 falls silent, it will fly as a ghost ship, arriving at the great red star Aldebaran in about 2 million years.

The Pioneer series spacecraft were relatively simple, but were solidly built. Pioneer 10 completed its primary mission objectives, including flybys of Jupiter, in its first 21 months after its launch on March 3rd, 1972. It has been a great workhorse since then, and it has been said that NASA really got their money’s worth on that one.

In a time when troubles here on Earth are pressing, there is a tendency to take our interest off the skies. There is too much to worry about here, we feel, and we look away from space exploration, and look to war/social problems/economic issues, etc. I’d like to put forth an idea put in my head by the late great Richard Feynman, a Nobel prize winning physicist with unique and amazing views on science. He saw science not as something you do in a lab with grant money, but as something you do because you have a desire to learn. A desire to uncover the great mysteries of the universe. He never felt that he had to justify his research in terms of practical applications. While much of his work resulted in practical applications, and even nefarious applications, including the atomic bomb, he never tried to define his research on those terms. Practicality, he felt, was not part of science. Science is about recognizing that the universe is an amazing place, filled with beauty and wonder, and recognizing that we don’t know but a tiny fraction of all there is to know about it. Each bit we peel back, each time we learn a little more, we see something more wonderous than we had seen before. We learn that no matter how sure we are of something, that there could be a discovery just around the corner that could prove us all wrong. Doubt keeps us humble, and keeps us flexible. When we perform research that has no outright practical application, we aren’t wasting time, or wasting money. We are expanding our knowledge, and honing our ability to separate truth from fantasy. Richard was wary of anyone who claimed they had all the answers, in any subject, because he knew that no one has all the answers. By reminding ourselves through scientific discovery that answers come through careful examination and creative new ideas, we remind ourselves to be more humble in our lives, and to base our political, personal and moral decisions on the idea that learning comes through personal experience, and careful examination of evidence, rather than straight from a book, or from a leader’s mouth.

Richard didn’t realize it at the time, but his philosophies are very Buddhist in nature. Buddhism has no dogma, no absolutes. The Buddha himself continually reminded his followers that they shouldn’t take anything he said as the truth, unless they learned through experience and contemplation that it matched their views and understanding. When people ask the Dali Lama for advice, he gives suggestions, but only suggestions. He says, “This is what works for me, and I have seen it work for others. Try it if you like, but if it isn’t right for you, or you think it should be changed, please do so.”

I’m rambling, but the point I want to make is that space exploration isn’t useless. We might get practical benefits from it in the future, but the reason it is valuable isn’t because of the promise of riches, but because of the opening of the mind that occurs when we peel back more layers of this wondrous universe. Pioneer 10 was one of our first successful attempts to reach out into the sky. When I imagine what 12 billion kilometers looks like, and I imagine a piece of humanity hurtling into deep space, carrying a seed of knowledge and exploration, I’m filled with awe at the vastness of the universe, and I feel renewed in my desire to uncover even a fraction of its secrets. Its a reminder that we still know so little, a reminder to be humble when we think of political and religious leaders (and even some scientific leaders who have perhaps lost sight) who claim to have the solution to all the problems. A reminder that knowledge comes only when we leave ourselves open to doubt. When we feel like we know everything, we turn a blind eye to the truth.

My father has a quality I’ve always admired, that being that he seems to know something about everything. He has an intelligent answer for nearly every question you might have for him, and knows how to work his resources to find any answer he doesn’t already have. One example of this is that he is an excellent short order cook. He had worked as one many many years ago, picked up some valuable skills, and never forgot them. He could have four pans going on the stove at once, eggs here, hash browns there, bacon, sausages, what-have-you. Each item requires its own special care, and has different temperatures, starting times and finishing times. Yet he could keep each one under control, and time them all to be ready at the exact same moment, so he could grab some of each, put them on a pre-warmed plate, and send them out to be consumed by his family.

Today I shall impart to you a lesson I learned from him concerning the cooking of eggs. When you are cooking eggs, perhaps an omelet or scrambled eggs, you are eventually going to find yourself in the position of needing to get some cheese to melt onto the cooked eggs. But, the eggs are cooking fast, and you don’t have time to let the cheese melt by itself, because the eggs would be burned by the time the cheese was done melting. A solution is to examine your stove. Nearly every stove burner tilts one direction or another, meaning there is a ‘high side’ of the pan, and a ‘low side’. Take a large lid, like the kind you’d put on a big huge pot, preferably about the size of your pan. Then move the eggs up to the high side, and place a small piece of ice on the low side. It will instantly start to melt and form hot steam. Put the lid over the pan, and wait a moment. The ice melting will release a steady stream of hot steam into the confined area, which will almost instantly melt your cheese. The ice doesn’t melt too fast, so you don’t get a bunch of water all over the bottom of the pan. If you managed to get the ice into the low side of the pan, you’ll have even less water to deal with. When you pull the lid off, be careful not to drip too much water onto the eggs, put the lid to the side, and pull out your perfectly done eggs, with cheese melted perfectly on top. People will admire your kung-fu.

Which leads me to a related topic… Frequently you hear of people describing non-martial arts activities as ‘kung-fu’. Hip-hop artists, chefs, etc. all being described as having kung-fu. At first it sounds like just a silly thing, people goofing around and comparing their activity to martial arts. But in fact, the literal translation of kung-fu is “Skill with effort” meaning any skill that has been learned with great effort can be accurately described as kung-fu. I recommend using that in your day to day speech. If someone criticizes you, pull out the real definition of kung-fu, and prove their criticism is without merit. They will admire your kung-fu.

Many of you probably know about Tibetan prayer wheels, or “Mani” wheels. A prayer wheel is simply a cylinder set on a rotating axis, and inscribed with Buddhist mantras, such as “Om mani padme hum.” The wheels can be anywhere from small and handheld, to larger tabletop versions, to huge wheels over 6 feet high in temples. The wheels are spun clockwise by hand, wind power, water power, or anything handy. The effect is that the mantra engraved on the wheel (or written on rolls of paper inserted into the wheel) gets ‘recited’ once per turn. Mantras are short prayers which are intended to be repeated over and over again as a method of purification and meditation, so the more repetitions, the better.

This begs the question, what about the files on my computer’s hard drives? They are spinning round and round at over 7000 revolutions per minute. Turns out that the Dali Lama has even commented on this, and noted that it was very effective to have files containing the mantras on one’s hard drive, as the rotating drive would serve as a continual purification device, emanating waves of healing spiritual energy. As such, I suggest that everyone keep a few copies of the mantras around on their computer. I’ve got 4 hard drives, each whipping the mantras around 24/7. I’ve got two more 10,000RPM drives coming on order, which should do wonders for my holiness.

However, it would be suggested that the true benefit of having them around isn’t the constant rotating, but rather the fact that they will come to one’s mind more frequently, and serve as a reminder of the six qualities of the enlightened heart: generosity, harmonious conduct, endurance, enthusiasm, concentration and insight. Keeping the goals in mind helps the path stay clear.

More on Prayer Wheels.
More on Digital Prayer Wheels.
More on the mantra “Om mani padme hum”.

Incidentally, now that you are reading this, your computer is currently a prayer wheel, because anytime you read “Om mani padme hum” on this page, the file you are reading is cached on your drive, and hence whirling about at this very moment. Enjoy.

Josh made this interesting statement today, it reminds me a bit of a post I made the other day.

I think he might be talking a little bit about me, especially since recently I’ve been posting in a sort of shotgun manner, just spurts every few days. This is mostly because I’ve been very busy, and have generally been too tired to post. But when I get the postin’ urge, I’ll spank out several posts in a row. Like I’m doing right now.

However, I think the most interesting part of his statement is the idea that people might just ‘run out’ of things to say. Imagine if this happened! One day everyone just, runs out. You see someone on the street, and say hi, and they just say hi back, and you stare at each other for a minute, and walk along. The news for the week is all pictures, just random footage taken from a camera at the mall. Webpages would sit un-updated. Authors would lay down their pens. Classes would be cancelled. It would be, in a word, sad. I certainly hope that Josh is right, and that we don’t run out of things to write, because that sure would be a shame. However, I’m confident that the well-spring that is human conciousness is quite capable of creating many many millions of terabytes more than we have currently created, and that quenching the simultaneous efforts of intelligent discourse, creative exposition, stream-of-conciousness output, poetry, essays, novels, textbooks, speeches, notes and so much more would be an impossible task.

Once again, three huzzahs for communication. Huzzah, Huzzah, Huzzah!