Author: admin

My need for a chiropractor is starting to affect my behaviors. I worry about the growing neck pain more than I should, and it distracts me from nearly every activity. I should just go. I will just go, but I haven’t gone because of a long standing fear of doctors that dates back to the death of my stepfather. He went in for liver treatment and was given and later died of AIDS. The doctors apologized and claimed not to understand what kind of complications could of occurred. Later on they blamed bad blood. We were a young family and maybe more than a little naive. We didn’t take any sort of action. I don’t regret avoiding making money off of death. Money helps always, but you have to live with what you do.

Right now I’m living with this great sense of indecision and lack of intrinsic motivation. There are projects that make me really happy, but nothing that keeps that engine going. That leaves me in the constant start-stop leap from job to job, class to class, with no thread of purpose to hold it all together.

This could be an actual mid life crisis or merely the result of the 20 lbs of physical change negatively impacting my mental condition. Whatever the cause of this personal wasteland, I need to do something now. Starting with the physical condition seems to be the best course of action, but how do I get myself to start? Nike’s answer isn’t working.

Some Thoughts:

1. Vince Young, drafted as the 3rd pick and hope of a professional franchise in 2006, has been cut yet again. This could mark the end of his very brief NFL career. This was a career marred by failures and poor attitude. It sends the message that the athletic QB is to be lauded and courted but thoroughly vetted. Cam Newton he was not. He remains a lone dissapointment in a top 6 that produced 5 pro bowlers (including Young!)
2. Jets finally traded Wayne Hunter. He’ll do good in his new role, but the important part is they got a former #1 pick in return. Smith has a big price tag next year, so this is a one shot deal unless he renegotiates. That means they’ll be looking at Tackles in the next draft.

I experienced the toughest two hours of my life this morning against a backdrop of Pokemon-like monsters called Rinjitoto. My first born was tasked with writing a book report on Rinjitoto and set about reading the 100 pg book to the best of his ability. Sadly, the best of his ability is not very good. We spent two hours going through a single chapter. The issue on his end is a failure to comprehend. The issue on my end is a blatant inability to teach someone that young and distracted.

My wife started the lesson. 10 minutes in, she was quite through with him. I took over, hoping to apply some of my education and patience to the situation. The next two hours was a lot like playing tug of war with a dead bear. You tug and tug, but all it does is lay there and stink. At one point I dropped everything and started giving the boy dyslexia tests. They were inconclusive. The 2nd grade comprehension tests I dug up didn’t tell me much either. I learned that my 5 yr old can answer the questions just about as well as the 3rd grader, which is to say near perfect scores. That either tells me that the 5 yr old is doing well, or the tests are a bit screwy. Either way, it didn’t give me the information I needed to help this boy.

The real problem is that I cannot help this boy. I cannot teach him in the way he needs to be taught. Because I cannot teach the boy, I feel really helpless when it is time for him to learn. So, I’m more angry at me than I am at him for not being able to comprehend what he is supposed to at this point in his learning.

Not quite sure how to deal with that yet…

Some Thoughts:
1. Jets play in 2 hours. Last dress rehearsal for a group of offensive players that appear to have nearly no game and even less pass protection. Maybe something will happen tonight. If not, pray for free agency.

2. I think I fixed the facebook problem. Time will tell

How do people get culture? Is it news? TV? Conversation? Maybe video games play a role. While preparing for class this week I stumbled across some interesting numbers. The American newspaper industry is a 34 Billion dollar industry circa 2011. The American video game industry was a 21 Billion dollar industry in 2008. Globally, video games generated about 49 billion that year. in 2012 they generated 74 billion.

It seems that the video game industry may generate more cash than the newspaper industry, which is to say that games reach more people than papers and they do so more often. Games are invasive. They’re on your phone, in your paper, and on TV. So it is fair to assume that games have more contact with people than newspapers. I surmise from this information that games have more impact on people than newspapers.

What does this mean from a social perspective? Clearly our Internet lives influence us more than papers, but in the hierarchy of things it was nice to believe that Newspapers trumped Sonic the Hedgehog. This is no longer the case, which means reality is also no longer the case. I wonder how that will shape our next generation?

Recent scientific advancements point to the ability to store data in DNA. We already know that the mind somehow synthesizes memory and now it is clear that DNA can also do so–though the ability of that DNA to function is compromised. I wonder if, in some long forgotten time, the people of a past or even distant world coded a message in human DNA and that message could somehow be retrieved.

When thinking about memory it is hard not to presume that our memories are the only things that separate us from other high order animals. In fact, the entire idea of high order is predicated on this belief that we have free will/sentience. Do we? The more I watch children develop into adults, the more I see trained pets or even computers learning scripts, the more I feel like we are mistaken in our presumption of sentience.

What if everything we say or do is actually a function, a development of being extremely complex biological computers that are tasked with running very basic routines? What if our idea of self is born out of the need for us to preserve our machine selves and continue running these nameless processes? What if we are broken machines that have abandoned the primary function and exist only on broken code and a need to replicate if for no other reason than to root out the malfunction–something we refer to as evolution.

If this is true, then it is also true that the human conscious can, for what it is worth, be replicated as part of a digital matrix. It can be that this is the only possible form of immortality. Even this leaves open the question of the soul. Should the soul actually exist, can that ‘starting energy’ be transferred as well?

Perhaps as we learn more about DNA and the transfer of information we will learn how to code our memories and grow them into new versions of ourselves so that when we die we might simply wake up in a new form and continue a life worth living.

 

Been waking up early, trying to get a good start to the day. My first moments involve clicking on the TV and looking for something interesting on the news. That failing, I slide towards the sports channels and hope for news. Lately there is none.

There also isn’t much to write about on this Thursday night that comes to mind. Sad, that.

Some Thoughts:

1. The asian marrying white meme is not going away. More surprisingly, this is a more openly acceptable interracial match than any other I’ve talked with people about. Fact is, people don’t care about that match at all. It doesn’t even register on their racial radar. There has to be a story there. Or maybe just a sociology article.
2. Wayne Hunter: Benched. See, Coach Ryan isn’t as dumb as he sometimes leads people to believe. No, I think he has a lot of ideas jammed up them sleeves, but needs to stay silent until they pan out.

The counter on the NY Jets website reads 3 days till Carolina. It should probably serve as a countdown to destruction, because there are only three days until embattled Tackle Wayne Hunter is reminded of his inability to protect anything larger than the ho hos stashed in his locker. Someone could get hurt.

Back at the other end of the NY football spectrum, the Giants remain the most overlooked team in football. These guys are the champs and the story is how much they’ve been ignored by the rest of the NFL. Heck, they are not even expected to win the NFC east. 3rd place at last check.

The beauty of the NFL is that there is so much talk about it. As a fan you have to feel a certain degree of vindication when your team utterly defies the talk. I don’t know that I will experience that as a Jets fan this year, but as a Giants fan there is a chance I could be singing that Super Bowl song. Who knows, next year may even bring the promised home tow show down…

Some Thoughts:

1. Baseball is not the same sort of sport as others. We started holding open Baseball clinics and the kids coming to see us used to be studs. Now, months removed from practice, these kids have no game. You gotta keep up with baseball timing.
2. Speaking of different sports, rich people sports are some weird stuff. They require expensive equipment and are very difficult to learn. They also tend to involve the fans dressing quite a bit nicer than most of the folks at a Yankee game.

 

 

If you’re looking for a sign of how bad politics have gotten, look no further than the Akin issue. Todd Akin said what many in the GOP are thinking. He basically claimed that getting pregnant due to rape is a myth. This was later echoed by Rep. Steve King who claimed he’d never personally heard of it ever happening. Of course, it is unlikely that anyone has ever shared their rape story with him. See, he’s another one who believes that not even rape is a good reason for abortion.

The GOP platform pushes even further right, leading with Tea Party conservatism (read: flat out take it back to slave time values). Yet, the story is about Obama and will he in. Why? Because everyone loves a story. We are hardwired to think in story, and the more compelling–the more that is at stake–the more we tune in. Romney is a paperweight. He is not compelling in the least, so his story is already forgotten; overshadowed by his VP (sounds like 2008?). Meanwhile, Obama is such an obvious choice that the only way to make the election relevant is to tear him down and make something at stake. So, Obama’s job is at stake.

A friend bet me $50 that Obama would lose. She’s a longtime democrat too. That tells me the narrative has shifted away from reality to the disappointing narrative the GOP created. Suddenly Obama is the divider and the hatemonger?

How the heck can we believe that?

Some Thoughts:

1. I wonder what happened to Ochocinco?

I have sighed more in the past 8 days than at any other point in my life. Every breath leaves my throat heavily. There is a lot on my mind, from starting classes to stories due to kids, inability to spend time with the wifey, heck even the suck that is the Jets fills my soul. The fact is I am tired. I am not overwhelmed or overworked, I am merely tired and have not taken a rest in a very long time.

Tonight’s work is limited to two syllabi and the 1st week of a hybrid course. I am less concerned with the in-class stuff than I am with getting everything published in time. Worst of all, the motivation simply isn’t there. I don’t want to do it, because I’m too worn out on the teaching front. Of course I’ll get it done. I always do.

I might need some Ice Cream and pie first though.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Had a chance to listen to the GOP response to the Akin comments about ‘Legitimate Rape’ and whether or not a woman’s body could discern the difference and somehow prevent itself from getting pregnant should the intercourse not be ‘legitimate’. GOP is still in lock step with the talking points. Everyone asked said some variation of this statement: ‘he should spend 24 hours considering what will best help the country at this critical time.” (Romney). Who knows where the talking points come from?

To begin, there will be no Beyblade party. Not yet. The kids and I ran a ‘proof of concept’ in-house tourney that ended with the 3yr old assault his brothers with a Bey. I can only imagine this playing out with a 24+ kid bracket. Maybe I need to scale up slowly; invite a few kids over to blade and go from there. I ordered a dozen Beys from China, just for the chance to actually order something from China.

Beys dominated my thoughts last night and class dominated my thoughts today. Less than a full night’s sleep before the 17 week crazy train kicks into gear. I’ve gone to organizational tools–Handouts, Powerpoints–to get me on track. I’m not ready to deliver information about the syllabus, but I am ready to teach.

It occurs to me that as we age our perceptions change. As perception is reality, our reality changes. We work hard to design scientific principles that support our ever-shifting reality, but the truth is that we don’t know what we don’t know. We have the power to lie to ourselves, to color perception in order to feel like things are as we want (or simply need on some psychological level) them to be. How else can a girl living on a dirt floor of a shack filled with HIV positive siblings and parents be happier than most people I know? Her perception of her life and situation is different from what we experience in this country, from what many individuals here experience, etc. Her perception is better.

Wayne Hunter’s perception isn’t so hot. His skills are worse than his perception. I’ve joined the sports pundits in calling the dude a turn style. He cannot protect the QB and is likely to get someone hurt. For this reason, I feel the Jets need to get a new RT or start Tebow. The big guy can operate out of the pocket–a necessary skill when the pocket is ripped.