chronicle of wasted time's Journal

9:20am: crown
do you think that kundera's passages on bowler hats in unbearable lightness of being had anything to do with magritte?

i'm trying to figure out if this is one of those cultural references in literature that for years i don't see and then one day i realize (like finally getting the belle and sebastian lyrics in "like dylan in the movies" and feeling very slow) OR if it's me being over-analytic, English-major style.

for the bored, not the boring:

magritte and book covers

in fact he's all over popular culture (lots of album covers)

hats, in case you need to know

8:41am: we love it!
Last night I was the only person in the subway station for awhile (granted it was late on a Monday night). I ended up having a nice long conversation with a (perhaps bored and lonely) MTA custodian (janitor? what's politically correct here?). We talked about the wind in the station (and what it does with trash), how some of the homeless people are nice to have around, what L.A.'s doing to downtown, new MTA project near USC, riding Metro, new MTA buildings (incl. the one at Vermont and Wilshire), and various other topics. It was very nice and unexpected.

and

also

here's what I'm sayin'

To Be Happy We Must Walk

"A good city is one where people like to be out of their homes. They want to be in the public space: walking, being with people in parks, plazas, in cafes. There are some needs that we have for happiness... We need to be with people and we need to walk; not in order to survive, as birds need to fly or fish needs to swim. We need to walk."

"Transport problems cannot be solved with money, but solved with changes in life. But the fact is that if everybody, every 16 year old and older wants to go into a car at peak hours, it would destroy a city quality, at least mathematically would probably not be able to solve the transport problem ever... Whatever the level of car use there is is because government has decided; society has decided. I mean if New York, if there was more space for cars, there would be more cars; if there was less space for cars, there would be less cars... This is a political decision on how we will solve transportation problems."

--the former mayor of Bogotá, Columbia, Enrique Peñalosa, during a visit to Los Angeles last week

7:24pm: does the phrase "true digital reality" really make any sense? it doesn't to me. commercials are weird.

2:52pm: the new currency?
carbon units

( or read article here )

12:20pm: why do we always end up back in the same spot (that spot where we are unsure of what to do next)? rereading my old journal entries, rereading friends' old LJ entries--we are never satisfied. we change apartments, change jobs, change cities. what are we looking for? what will make us happy? settled? do we move on because we have to? because we don't know what else to do? are we moving forward or sideways? does it matter? my future plans change constantly, and i'm not alone in this: we (=people my age? my friends?) never really know what we're doing next (until we just force ourselves to do it, but even then remain unsure). i'm putting off the future. that's what i'm doing. but why can't i be satisfied now? and what makes me think that i ever will be to that point? (i'm beginning to doubt it, but there must be something. if not, why bother all this moving at all? is it just energy expenditure towards no greater good or goal?)

10:18am: planets 9 & 10
Interesting bit about discovery of 10th planet on PBS the other day:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3302/01.html

PBS told me I could find the definition of a planet here:
http://www.iau.org/
but the site's not opening,
instead go here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Astronomical_Union

Pluto's now only a "dwarf planet" by the way
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/5282440.stm

( BBC article on Pluto )

9:22am: Reclamation
In 1957 the Game and Fish Commission of Tennessee and the National Park Service decided to “reclaim” Abrams Creek for the rainbow trout, a non-native species popular to fishermen. To this end, workers poisoned the creek with Rotenone in an attempt to kill off the less-popular fish native to the creek. They succeeded in killing most of the species of fish in the area, including one previously undiscovered species that they then thought to be extinct (but turned up years later in another creek).

I’m pretty much pro-environment and anti-destroying it; however, I would really like to hear more about the newly created species for awhile. I’m tired of hearing about species becoming extinct (not really, just kind of). I’m reading A Walk in the Woods (which is very good), and Bryson is fond of describing trees (the American chestnut, for example) that have been destroyed by various natural and unnatural means through the years. With so many things dying off, surely new things are being introduced. I figure the ecosystem is like a dictionary where words fall out of use while new words are added all the time. Evolution has not just stopped. There must be new species. I want to hear about them. I’m tired of feeling like we’re killing the earth. I want to know that even though we are killing the earth, that the earth is still pretty resilient. Are we really the insignificant dust in the universe that some people claim? Or are we really so significant that we can change the fate of an entire planet? Or are we the planet’s fate to begin with? And who believes in fate anyway?

1:51pm: my life.
Here’s a nice little anecdote to get you through the weekend:

A few days ago at the bus stop an old man pointed at me from about 6 feet away and said loudly, “Look. There’s a real Californian. Sucking on a lemon. You can always tell a real Californian with that sucking-on-a-lemon face.” Startled, I didn’t know how to respond. My first instinct was to defend myself as not, in fact, a “real” Californian. Then some vague local pride took over, and I thought, what’s wrong with being a “real Californian”? We’re not all blonde beach bimbos. Those may even only exist in Beach Boys’ songs. (That’s not true, I’ve seen real ones.) I opted for non-response so as not to provoke the loud man.

The bus came, and I got on and took a place in the back. Then, worried he might sit by me, put my bag in the seat beside me. He got on the bus loudly singing “Hey Good Lookin’” and sat a few seats behind me. He continued to rant about this and that: being Italian American, being from Brooklyn, all the traveling he’s done, the problems in L.A. (in his opinion). At some point a woman sat down by him. He started trying to talk to her in Spanish. She got up and moved to the front of the bus. He said, “Why are they scared? How can you be afraid of an old man?”

7:29am: Fidel Castro—the evil of my childhood (along with the U.S.S.R.), until Saddam Hussein replaced him as the most-talked-about bad guy (we always need one)—has temporarily stepped down as president of Cuba. This child of the ‘eighties, for one, senses another victory over those darn "commies" close at hand. Oh, how things have changed since then, though. Is it me or is it the world?

Bush, yesterday, before Castro’s illness was announced: "If Fidel Castro were to move on because of natural causes, we've got a plan in place to help the people of Cuba understand there's a better way than the system in which they've been living under."

1:05pm: my to do list just got crossed off down to just one thing. that's not possible right? i can't have done everything i need to do.

10:51am: argument for public transportation
according to the St. Louis Metro site (www.metrostlouis.org):

Riding public transit gives you extra time to yourself. Time you can spend reading, planning, working, meeting new folks, or just relaxing. Plus, you won't have to fight traffic or search for a parking space. And, you can save the cost of parking, automobile repairs and insurance, plus the cost of gasoline. In addition, using public transit helps keep our air clean, and that benefits all of us!

9:05am: my boss and i have fights (intense discussions) about when to use apostrophes (for possessives) and hyphens. how cool is my job? (for a nerd like me)

12:56pm: Question in my statistics book (note specifically the final question):

In "Tobacco and Alcohol Use in G-Rated Children's Animated Films," by Goldstein, Sobel, and Newman (Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 281, No. 12), the lengths (in seconds) of scenes showing tobacco use were recorded for animated movies from Universal Studios. The first six values are 0, 223, 0, 176, 0, 548. Find the mean, median, mode, and midrange for the given sample data. Is there any problem with including scenes of tobacco use in animated children's films?


Answer given in back of the book:

mean = 157.8 sec; median = 88 sec; mode = 0 sec; midrange = 274 sec.
Yes, young children should not be influenced by exposure to tobacco use.


My question:

What does that last question have to do with the math of it? Even if scientists have conclusively proven that cartoons influence children (I don't know that they have, but even if), what does it have to do with the mean, medium, mode and midrange? If you have ideas, feel free to edumacate me.

9:04am: My two things for the day:

1. Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006

The House passed COPE 321-101. There are a lot of issues at play, but basically if passed (all around) it will apparently mean that ISPs, such as AT&T, would be able to control what websites you have access to and how fast, limiting access to competing phone service providers, for ex.

http://saveaccess.org/HR5252 says:
“The COPE legislation would eliminate 'net neutrality' by allowing internet providers (phone and cable companies) the right to charge for preferential content delivery, creating a multitiered internet based on the ability to pay.”

More:
http://www.savetheinternet.com/=faq
http://www.savetheinternet.com/=threat

Please read up more on it: there are always multiple sides, it’s just sometimes easier to find information on one, esp. if it’s one you already feel biased towards. I want more information before fully concluding. Feed me.




2. Another multi-sided issue: Cuts to public broadcasting

The cut already passed, but some people seem to think they can convince Congress to give the money back.
http://www.freepress.net/publicbroadcasting/
http://www.tellthempublicmatters.org/how_pb_funded.html

I’m absolutely sure that the money can be used for better things, but I’m not absolutely sure it will be. And public TV and radio are pretty darn good things. in fact, i love them.

10:36am: i just finished my first week of community college. i've come a long way, eh? my parents are so proud.

my class makes me overconfident...it will knock me down eventually.

3:21pm: i have decided to start asking people if they "want to carpool" instead of if they "want to give me a ride." i like the sound of it better.

books that should be made into graphic novels: Dhalgren
comic books that should be made into movies: Night Man (or another Ultraverse title before Marvel killed Malibu)

how i've been spending my time: www.papermadeorg.org

10:01am: in case you ever wondered
SELL LIKE HOT CAKES - "Hot cakes cooked in bear grease or pork lard were popular from earliest times in American. First made of cornmeal, the griddle cakes or pancakes were of course best when served piping hot and were often sold at church benefits, fairs, and other functions. So popular were they that by the beginning of the 19th century 'to sell like hot cakes' was a familiar expression for anything that sold very quickly effortlessly, and in quantity." From "Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins" by Robert Hendrickson (Facts on File, New York, 1997)

11:42am: www.totembookmedia.com

10:24am: tv @ cbgb, 1974

"the most beautiful neck in rock n' roll"
"creating infinite space"
"like Arthur Lee with a stomach ache"
"He's real neat, totally Highway 61"
"if he loses his rhythm he invents another one"
"worth all temperance"

1:54pm: scan scam spam
This is a rather long, but totally worthwhile article if you're interested in the subject.

thoughts on:
a "universal library"
Google
the Million Book Project
hypertext
outsourcing book scanning
the future of actual books
Wikipedia
blogs
intellectual property
the economics of creation

"While a few best-selling authors fear piracy, every author fears obscurity."

12:05pm: Settle is a town in England
I have signed up for dental insurance. I have registered to take community college classes. I have not started looking for a new apartment (i.e. i'm staying). And my bank account is dependent on direct deposit. This is my version of nesting, or at least settling. I've never been so settled in a place. I don't like it, but i do like it. know what i mean?

2:10pm: and by the way...
not a run-on:
Researchers at the University at Buffalo of the State University of New York, tipped off by research that's shown people have positive associations with places and things named with the same letters as those in their own names, found archival and experimental evidence that people also tend to gravitate to other people who have common initials and name sounds.

article: matching monikers prove magnetic

9:39am: singalong
Almost as surprising as John randomly saying "cookie" in "Hold On" (John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, 1970), is hearing Nilsson say "fuck you" in "You're Breakin' My Heart" (Son of Schmilsson, 1972). This is no poor man's Donovan, folks. This is the real deal.

9:13am: end of the world
metro art
So it's about flying, but I seriously thought it was about falling, and I still think it's pretty creepy thing to have in a subway in a town of earthquakes.


(Red Line, Civic Center stop)

2:48pm: i've tried calendars of various forms to keep me going and doing, but they have all failed. we'll see if the google one succeeds. i'm beginning to think it's just me...but that couldn't be it.