Working For the Man

There is a hilarious website (and equally hilarious book by the writer of 52 Projects) about working for The Man and all the small deaths you die each day as a corporate slave.

I thought this page was especially relevant... Man, I can't wait to retire.

Nobels and Presidencies

The headline on MSNBC.com this morning gave me chills:

Gore Wins

It was one of those time-travel moments; for a second I let myself believe I was reading that headline in the fall of 2000. If only! But Gore's win this time is the Nobel Peace Prize, for his work promoting awareness of global warming.

And good for him.

I've been anticipating this for months because it's inevitably tied to the lingering question, "Will Gore run?" Oh, sure, I'm an Obama man through and through, but in my more insecure moments, when a "President Obama" seems unlikely, there's a definite appeal to a Gore/Obama ticket. It would be a great balance -- Al's experience and vision, Barack's charisma. Who could challenge that?

But at this point, given Hillary's steam-train of a campaign (and the growing likelihood of a Clinton/Obama ticket), I no longer feel the same desperation for Gore to run and to save this day. Clearly he has other things to do.

A balanced diet of germs, please

Here's an interesting article arguing that Americans don't eat enough shit. And by shit I mean feces. OK, so not exactly feces, but bacteria.

I know of a lot of people who slather germ-killing Purell all over their bodies (it's popular in the office, as though we're cow farmers rather than cubicle dwellers), and people who insist on antibacterial soap. But it makes sense that they're actually doing themselves a disservice, weakening their immune systems even while they try to ward off germs.

To wit:

But here is the problem: We have become victims of our own success. Ever wonder why your dog can gobble, lick, and gnaw all he wants along the glorious buffet of a city street and (almost) never get sick? Your dog is used to eating shit. Americans, on the other hand, grow up eating almost no shit at all. Our food is hosed and boiled and rinsed and detoxified and frozen and salted and preserved. Recently, we have begun to irradiate it, too--just in case. As a result, when our bodies encounter the occasional inevitable bug, they're unhappy. Our centuries-long program of winnowing out all the muck has turned us into sissies and withered the substantial part of the immune system mediated by our intestinal tract.

Employment Daydreams

If I quit my job tomorrow, I think the first thing I would do is get a part-time job at someplace like Barnes and Noble and I'd spend the rest of my time trying to start my own business.

I first daydreamed about a dog-walking business. Then I thought that it should not be that specific and decided I would instead advertise myself as a personal assistant. I could do errands like post office runs, dog walking, dry cleaning pick-up, making dinner, picking up kids from school or daycare, maybe some simple cleaning stuff... I like doing those household things so it might be fun to do them for someone else and get paid for it. I often wish I had someone to go to the post office for me, and return my library books and think about what to eat for dinner.

The Afterlife.net

Chris: "Well your consciousness and memories have to go somewhere."

Ben: "Why?"

C: "Because brainwaves are energy and energy can't be destroyed."

B: "But consciousness isn't the energy -- consciousness is energy interacting with cells and chemicals. Cells and chemicals both can be destroyed. You're saying that you can move a grindstone with water but no water-wheel."

C: "But the energy takes on the traits of the memories. So it can go into something else. Or someone else. And they would experience the memories contained in the energy."

B: "No they wouldn't. The energy itself might go into someone else, but once it gets there it'll only fire the synapses of the other person and fuel the feeling of the other person's own memories."

C: "But the information is in the energy."

B: "No it's not. Hmm. Say you take a computer that can syphon energy through the air to power itself. If you place it beside another computer, it could take the other computer's electricity but it couldn't read the other computer's data because the data is in the hard drive, not in the electricity that powers the hard drive."

Chris: "It could if it had a wireless network."

Ben: "..................................... Touche."

A Break in Routine

I had a doctor's appointment this morning. When I arrived at my train station to take a later train into Boston, the parking lot was full. So I decided to drive a few miles east and take the train from the next closest station.

There were only a few people waiting. Unlike my station, the parking lot at this one is split in half by the tracks. There is a walkway you can climb to cross from one side of the tracks to the other (something I wish my station had... instead, we have to go around and under the tracks).

When my train is about to arrive, an alarm sounds, making a terrible "eh eh eh eh eh" noise. My favorite thing about the other station was that the alarm was different. When the train began approaching as a small dot from the west, the alarm went "bloo blee bloo blee" - far more pleasant.