State symbols

Sometimes when I need a good laugh I'll take a look at the lists of state symbols from Wikipedia. Here are some good ones:

Missouri state desert: Ice cream cone. I guess the state senate must have had a majority of people that was lactose intolerant at the time of the vote.

North Carolina state blue berry: With a surprising result, it is the blueberry. Really what else could it have been? Guess what their state straw berry is.

Arkansas state fruit/vegetable: Tomato. They didn't even have the guts to call it one or the other, they just know they like it.

Oklahoma state menu item: Barbecued pork. Chicken fried steak. Sausage. Biscuits and gravy. Fried okra. Squash. Grits. Corn. Black-eyed peas. Cornbread. Pecan Pie. No wonder Oklahoma is one of the fattest states in the Union. It also goes to show why you should wait for voting on state foods until after lunch.

Indiana state beverage: Water. Why did that even come up as a topic to make official?

Delaware state colors: Colonial Blue and Buff.

Georgia state colors: Colonial Blue and Buff. I bet it is going to be awkward when Delaware and Georgia see each other at the dance wearing the same thing.

Maryland state individual sport: Jousting. Jousting? Really? Didn't that happen 500 years ago?

That's all I got for now, but seriously? Ice cream cone?

Words that I read wrong.

For whatever reason there as some words that when I read them I pronounce them in my head incorrectly. They are:

Smoking: On signs I always read this as smorking. I know why too -Engrish.com. Sometimes I have to make a conscious effort to not say smorking instead of smoking when I talk. The strange thing is that I only pronounce this word wrong when it is associated with cigarette smorking.

Parking: Along with smoking parking gets transofrmed in my head to porking (thanks engrish). I don't have as much problems with this word, however I do say this one outloud sometimes, just for personal irony.

Elevator: My strangest mental mispronouciation is elevator which I read as elevatop. I know why I do this; because the Games Workshop store in Manhattan has a sign up that says ELEVATOR but someone took off one of R's legs to change it into a P. Then whenever I would go to the store I would read it and laugh about it (it almost describes what an elevator does better than the actual word). But something happened, and now every time I see a sign for an elevator I read it as elevatop.

I am sure that there are other words that I read incorrectly, but those are the main three.

News is dead. Long live news!

I have been opposed to the idea that bloggers can't cover news as well as "News" organizations, but I can see that the average folk won't put together an investigation piece. However I just stumbled upon a Twitter feed of a "doctor" who pitches "news" ideas to media. Getting an inside view on how "News" actually happens is quite enlightening:

Only one goal in local newsrooms: FIND FIRST SUSPECTED IL SWINE FLU CASE!

Swine Flu Angles: shortage of Tamiflu at your hospital? Increased anxious ER patients? Any use of masks? (TV would love the visual).

Watch Jay Leno story closely. Very high interest. Have expert ASAP if his illness is interesting.

We're told health trumps money. Not in this economy. Media obsession with money stories makes placing health challenging.

Credit Card debt a big story. Nice angle is always "compulsive shopping" treatments. Have an expert? Pitch it!

Once again recession stories dominate. Try to tie any medical advance to cost savings (e.g. new procedure decreases time off work)

Avoid "morning after" pill stories. Too controversial. You can't win.

Another Chicago boy killed by baseball pitch to chest . Offer cardiologist for seasonal "commotio cordis" story.

Large practice needs help getting docs to "buy in" to marketing campaign. Wants me to convince them as fellow doc.

Cute potential story: hospital gowns redesigned to be more modest. New ones at your practice or hospital? Pitch it!

All the stupid jokes on cable news about "tea-bagging?" Just what is journalism turning into?

Typical. MSM first exaggerates risk of NMH TB. Now, having got your attention, slant is to reassure public the risk is minimal.

Just buy good PR? First Chicago Tribune considers "Pay to Play" news stories. Now LA Times front pages "advertorial." NyTimes today.

I kind of had an idea this stuff was going on, but not so blatantly. Pitching pointless stories, working on fear mongering and headline grabbing, even bringing up the idea of pay to get something published. He even has the ironic "why is media covering stupid money stories and not stupid medical stories".

Here is the problem for conventional news organizations. When blogging was just people covering their lives and events that they were immediately effected by the Media could snub their nose at it. However now bloggers include experts in every field, Media just can't keep up with it. If I want to know about new happenings in web start up companies I check TechCrunch, if I want to hear about consumer issues I go to the Consumerist. Media can't compete with this, especially when they think that their angle is to grab headlines and then fill their space with crap and fluff. The end is neigh for the old way to get news, soon the experts will be the ones that we go to for news, and the people that generate the "News" will be out of a job.

Can't come soon enough.

Ah, non-memories

I am closing in on 2,500 posts on my blog soon, so it doesn't surprise me that I don't remember everything I have posted. However I don't remember this at all (original post):

"One of the joys of working for a master's degree is getting to know a good amount of people that are not from America. Sometimes they shed light on subjects that I have not ever thought about.

At today's data mining class I brought the rest of my twizzlers that I had started to devour yesterday (I would have ate them all, but I only took half of them with me to class last time.) I offered some of them to my professor (from China) and a classmate (from ?). My prof. tried it and said that they were ok, and tried to get my classmate to try them as well, which she refused. Then my prof. said that: "it was good, kind of like fruit jerky, and smells like toothpaste." Well if I had never tried them before I wouldn't have after that description.

But was it true? Are twizzlers fruit jerky toothpaste mix? I smelt them, and sadly I have to admit they do kind of smell like toothpaste.

Needless to say my classmate never did try them."

I am glad I wrote stuff like that down, cause it is too funny to forget.

The myth of childhood

[Edit: It took me longer than one day to write this post, and in between the days I got a B-Day present from my mom, which was the book Do Hard Things. (I know I'm not a teen, but I think the principle of teens holding themselves to greater goals than what society has set for them is right, so the book interests me.) Anywho, while thumbing through the book I noticed one of the chapter titles was "The Myth of Adolescence", in which they basically were saying the same things that I wanted to here. So my desire to finish this post was shot, however, I didn't want to move on until it was done... so what you get is a half way finished post. Enjoy!]

Having no kids of my own, and not taking any part in raising any I feel that I have quite enough authority to talk about raising kids. Let that set your expectations about how well thought out my post will be.

This weekend I was thinking about the current role of a child in America. We can basically sum it up: go to school and have fun. Any expectations beyond this is definitely not the norm for everyone.

So has this always been the case? In not so modern times have we allowed our children to run free without a care in the world besides school? I doubt it. In fact I bet that children of old would think that our kids were slackers. Should we feel sorry for the kids in the past that had to work more than play? No -I bet their lives we just as happy as our are today. I might even go as far to say that kids now days have less rewarding childhood as those of old.

[Edit: Next is the outline for the rest of the post. You get the idea of where I am going with this.]

School made childhood, which in turn made adulthood.
Now we save all responsibility for adulthood.
No responsibilities prevents children from developing. (Now even college aged students are expected to party instead of learn to actually live, they are in their 20's! You can have fun but be responsible.)
We have shifted to a society that teaches jobs, instead of apprenticing jobs.
Before children would spend their time learning a craft, now they learn books.
It is fairly obvious that learning a craft that can directly lead to a job has more responsibility than learning about things that most likely will not be directly used in a job.
Kids now days have little responsibility and play probably as much as kids of old, however the play they do now is nowhere as developing (video games vs. building forts)

[Edit: That is where my outline ends, but I am sure I would have come to some brilliant conclusion, and then would have ended the post off with yelling at the kids these days to get of my lawn. Pulitzer Prize here I come.]

Nerd!

As an intellectual and a visionary I have to balance my nerd karma, or at least justify the guilty nerd pleasures with activities that are acceptable to the rest of the world. For example my main hobby in life is painting and playing with toy soldiers. The games that I play are made by Games Workshop and range from small skirmish battles to epically large battlefields, all set in various lands of fantasy (there are two time periods that Games Workshops makes games in, one that is clearly pulled from "Lord of the Rings", the other is in the distant future.) I can spend hours painting the models and further hours playing with them, and yes, when no one wants to play with me I have even been known to play the games by myself. But wait, I say, do not feel bad for me, for I am not a total nerd loser.

You see my other main activity in life has been playing hockey. Throughout my time at K-State I played with the hockey club there, and during the season I would spend every other weekend on the road playing games. Not only that, but I was an assistant captain for our team a couple of years and then captain my final year with the team (I also won the MVP for our team one year.) So don't cry for me about being a nerd, I clearly can pull my weight in other areas of my life.

And really I think most people would be ok with me playing with toys and not feel pity or repulsed by it solely because I have another activity in life that I have excelled at that is definitely not a nerdy activity. But why is this? My act of sitting down to paint chunks of plastic and metal are not any different than anyone else's, however because at other times of my life I play a sport it is ok? It seems that our problems with 'nerdy' activities is not an actual bash at the activity itself but the lifestyle that a typical person with that activity holds.

Take video games for example, not too long ago if you were hardcore into video games you would be labeled a nerd. However now there is so many people playing games that we see that you can still be a normal functioning person in society while still finding enjoyment in pressing some buttons on a pad that makes something happen on the TV. Nerdiness must come from perceived lifestyle, not the actual activity involved.

So then why are nerdy activities looked down upon, or why is a nerdy lifestyle generally perceived to be unattractive? I think it has to do with not making a contribution to society. Leveling a night elf to 60 might take a lot of work, but in the real world (IRL for you internet cats) nothing really changes. Drawing comics does not result in great literature, and painting a unit of dwarfs does not actually make my house more protected from intruders. But if I can prove that I can contribute to society through other actions, like leading a hockey team, then my non-contributional free time activities can be overlooked. However, I think that is the wrong way to look at the activities, I feel that I am more successful at work because of the creativity that I used when thinking up scenarios and campaigns. But I think that society does not count building your brain as a useful activity, actually one may say 'nerdy'.

So I urge you to take some time, read some comic books, argue about Captain Picard versus Han Solo in a fist fight, and break out your leggings for the Renaissance Festival. Just remember to contribute to the society while you are at it, lest you be labeled a nerd.

Also avoid Dungeons & Dragons, you don't want to be a dork do you?
(I didn't play D&D growing up, but this video brings back memories of playing Warhammer with my friends in High School.)

Backpfeifengesicht

I don't hide the fact that I do not like Owen Wilson. If he is in a movie I will go out of my way to not see it. Sort of like Keanu Reeves, the presence of the actor just changes my ability to enjoy a movie. However, unlike Keanu it isn't his acting that I have a problem with, it is Owen Wilson's face.

For some reason I really can not stand the way he looks, it just drives me crazy. I am sure that it is just his zany nose pose, but it is almost painful for me to watch him. Fortunately for me the Germans have a name for this sort of face: Backpfeifengesicht, meaning a face badly in need of a fist.

I am glad that a whole culture can sum up my feeling of an actor with one extra long word. I guess it shouldn't surprise me that it was the Germans though...

(I did like the move Armageddon though... maybe I was naive then.)
(Oh, also, these guys make me want to go backpfeifengesicht on their face as well.)

Do Blind People See in Heaven?

While watching Family Guy last night I got to pondering something (everyone watches Family Guy and ponders the world at the same time, right?). The joke was that Peter was doing a magic trick for a blind crowd, and asks if he pulled out the proper card. Obviously the blind guy doesn't know what the original card was, so Peter asks if the card was red. The blind guy then yells at him "I don't even know what red is!" Ha, funny indeed.

Well for some reason I got to think about what happens when the blind guy gets to heaven, obviously he would be given the ability to see when he got there, it would be cruel to confine him to an eternity of blindness. But then I got to thinking about people that have extraordinary abilities, such as photographic memories or people that can see four primary colors. For them wouldn't our existence be of similar eternal handicap?

There are only two conclusions that I can come to. Either we go to heaven just as we are (sorry no legged buddy, you just can't make it on the hockey team in heaven), or we will be given so many extra senses that equating our current life to the afterlife would be impossible. I tend to think the latter.

They are who we thought they were.

I find it amazing that most situations, people, or companies can be gauged within the first couple of moments with them. I guess it shouldn't be surprising that years of natural selection has resulted in humans that are able to accurately discern the nature of a situation within seconds of encountering it, but it still is interesting that we can do it.

It is no secret that I like eating at restaurants, and I will try a place that looks good for fun, however trying to get me to visit a place that doesn't look right is sometimes very difficult. So how do I know what place looks good and what place doesn't? I don't know... but I will give two examples.

Back in my Garden City Community College days I would spend the summers working for my dad up in Longmont, Colorado. There was a smallish restaurant that had an image to it that made we want to try it, I had only drove by the place a few times, but it just looked like a place I wanted to eat. We fianlly were able to stop by the place to give it a try and the line happened to be backed up to the door. We were greeted by a guy working there and in a few minutes everyone in line was given large soda cups for free. I knew then that it was a place that I would love eating at. Little did I know that in the comming couple of years Chipotle would grow from a small Colorado chain to a nationwide burrito awesome fest. Not even concidering the awesome food and the free drinks they gave us, it was obvious just from the look of the building that Chioptle was awesome.

On the other hand there is Goldie's Patio Grill, a Tulsa restaurant tradition. From looking at the sign I knew that the place would be horrible... no udderably horrible. But despite my best judgment one day I decided to give it a shot, really how bad could it be? It turns out that I had overestimated it, the food was barley editable. Even thinking about it triggers a bit of gag reflex in me now. But can I blame them? Not really, as soon as I saw the sign I knew that the place was not for me, at all.

My point is that we have "gut feelings" for a reason -they help us survive. Our ancestors that knew that a cave just didn't seem right, or felt that one water hole was better to drink out of than another, was able to survive better when those hunches were triggered unconsiously by observing the slightly visible cues. Fortunatly we don't need to use these feelings to keep us alive (for the most part) anymore, but we still have them and we can use them for our benifit. If there is a situation, or a store, or a person that just doesn't seem right, it propbably isn't. You might not know why you feel that way but we have an inate ability to process more than just what we think, and something in your brain has thrown up a warning flag. It is usually prudent to at least acknolwedge the feeling.

Now, I'm not saying to make snap judgements about people or decisions, but I am going to say that the first reaction is most likely the one that you will come to in the end after careful thought. Call me crazy, but I just have a hunch about that.

Rivals

There is really only one city that I love, Garden City, Kansas. Sure there are cities that I like more than others: Denver, Tulsa, Wichita, and Manhattan (KS). But these cities are just places I like and I want them to succeed just so that I have more things to do while visiting or living in them. However, I want Garden City to succeed because of the city and the people in the city -I know that I am biased but it really is a good city.

Almost as much as I like Garden City I tend to dislike Dodge City, Garden City's rival town. Yes, THAT Dodge City; the smaller, dirtier, Applebee's in Boothill, "special" cousin of Garden City. There are a few reasons why our cities are rivalies. First is city size, we both have approximatly around 30,000 residents, Garden being a little bit larger. Second is that the trip over to Dodge is less than an hour away, so the cities are spread far enough apart that there isn't constant interaction between each other, however they are close enough that decisions in one town can effect the other. Third, there is no other sizeable towns in the area. The next biggest town to the east is Wichita (200 miles away), to the south is Amarillio (230 miles away), to the west is Colorado Springs (250 miles away), and to the north is Rapid City South Dakota (580 miles away). This means that there is no other local town to draw away the "rival spirit" from. There is no question that Garden City and Dodge City are rivals.

However our rivaly is not just limited to sports. The proximity of the two cites makes luring businiess a tricky ordeal. Sometimes when a buisness desides to move into the area they build in both cities at the same time, which was the case when Applebee's moved into both towns. Most of the time though a company will only chose one city to build in. News that something is going to be built in Garden is doubly good becuase that means that not only do we get a new store, but chances are Dodge City will be shut out for also getting the same store. With every step forward Garden City takes Dodge City doesn't just fall back because we moved up, they fall back because they are now prevented from taking the same step forward. So stems why some of the rivalry is so intense.

My main point here though isn't to just point out that Dodge City sucks; because they have a meat packing plant in the middle of their town and that the smell of the refined fat is nauseating, nor that I had never seen a cockroach in real life until someone brought one back in a blanket that they used in Dodge. No, my point with this post is to say that having a rival is important for building a strong community. I know that poeple in Garden try harder than they would normally just because they want our city to be better than Dodge. The proximity of a similar town keeps the pressure on everone to keep on improving. And for that I am thankful that Dodge City is around.

How I Belive in God

I find it amazing that people are basically split into two groups, those that believe in God and those that believe in science. I, for one, believe in both. Here is how:

1. The Bible can not be taken literally. There are many places in which Bible experts explain confusing or seemingly contradictory passages by looking at what these passages mean for the people of the times of the Bible. They use the culture and the language of the era to show what each passage means when taken in context. Now why we must abandon this sort of interpretation (from the standpoint of somebody with a 1AD understanding of science) when it comes to matters of science is beyond my comprehension. Was the world made in seven days? No –that goes against the laws of the universe, God doesn’t need to break his own rules to make earth. Were seven days figurative to represent to cycle of the formation of earth and life? That seems more reasonable. We should not use a book given to us as a work of religion as a text for science. God gave us the ability to perform experiments, to think the results that we get from science are there to intentionally mislead us is tomfoolery.

2. Miracles are in the timing. For some reason when "miracles" are explained by natural phenomenon this ruffles some feathers of the devout. I think that we need to stop thinking about miracles as the action but instead as the timing. I find the idea of God needing miracles to direct human history as a bit degrading to his power. Think about it -there are thousands of parameters that need to be set to make the whole universe contain matter that doesn't just degenerate into a soup of energy waves, yet we are to believe that he didn't plan ahead enough to part the Red Sea at the right time? God has already set into motion every miracle that will happen, and they will play out through provable science techniques. Saying that God has to change the rules of the universe just because of actions of people is mighty arrogant of our part. The miracle not that the Red Sea was parted, the miracle is that it parted when it did.

3. Science only leads to more questions. When it comes to the nature of the universe science is very good at opening doors but very terrible at closing them. Instead of four elements (earth, fire, wind, air) we now have 117 elements, which can be broken down into subatomic particles which have anti-particles, which are possibly all made up of infinity thin quantum strings which adhere to quantum mechanics that dictate that every possible outcome does actually happen. ...Right... Currently science is saying we have no idea how the basic building blocks of the universe work. Even when we figure out a unified theory of everything it will just lead to a pile of new questions that need to be answered, which in turn will lead to even more questions. I don't understand why learning about the universe that God placed us in is somehow a violation of God. I trust that if there is something that he does not want us to know about he would have the ability to hide it from us. Heck, there might be all the puppet masters in a parallel universe pulling their strings into this one, and we have no way to detect it. This point is that for me science does not make God worthless, instead it shows us how much there actually is to all of this, it makes God all the more needed to make the ends meet. There are true answers to the questions- however the more we learn about our surroundings the less we “know” the answers.

4. God can not be proven/disproven. It seems to be quite obvious that God can not be proven or disproven by science. And to think that we can do so is akin to thinking that we can prove that there is a city named Boston by measuring the temperature that water boils at. The nature of science is so far away from being able to disprove God that to think that we could through experiment is vastly overestimating our abilities as humans, and quite arrogant.

You will see that I have shied away from the topics of why I should believe in God and all the stuff like that that normal discussion of God turns to. That is really quite another subject, and one of even more faith. The bottom line of this post is just to point out that science and God can co-exist, much like a car and a driver. Figuring out how the car works has no relation as to why it does.

Music Catch 2

Music Catch is a very simple game where you want to get blue, yellow and purple while avoiding red objects. While the rules are simple the game is quite fun because of the presentation. If you need a couple minutes of relaxing give this one a shot.

NCAA Expands March Madness To 4,096 Teams

NCAA Expands March Madness To Include 4,096 Teams

Just a reminder if we go to a playoffs in NCAA Football, the teams that make it to the playoffs are only there because they legitimately could be number one, not because they "deserve to make it to the playoffs".

But I do agree that Xenon will take the Central Kansas Region, and my money is on the Oklahoma Horseshoeing School in the Southern Oklahoma Region.

"Hello Lance"

I have been requested to explain why I have a shirt that says "Hello Lance" on it, so that I shall do. It all began when they built a Hobby Lobby in Manhattan back when I was going to grad school. We were walking around and noticed that you could buy blank t-shirts and iron on letters for a good price. So we bought a couple of shirts and a couple sets of iron on letters.

Then came the hard part -thinking of something to actually write on the shirts. Nicole decided upon a shirt that said "Snotvia" in homage of her homeland. Jenette made a "Nani?" shirt, and Chris made his that said "Don't be a wanker". I thought about mine for a bit and went for "Chinastronaut". However after I made it I realized that there were a few people in the Stat. Dept. from China that might not like the idea that I was aspiring to be an astronaut from China, also, I didn't want to have to explain my obviously funny t-shirt to them. So I had to make another t-shirt.

I pondered over another shirt for a bit and thought that it would be funny to make a shirt that says hello to somebody, and the best person that I could have thought of was my K-State office buddy Lance. So I made a shirt that would greet him every time he saw it. "Hello Lance" was thus decided upon.

I wore the shirt a couple times at K-State and then it got packed up when I needed space in my apartment closet. I had forgotten all about it until I looked through my old boxed clothes and ever since it has been back in my regular t-shirt rotation.

I think I still have all the stuff to make two more shirts... I need to get on that.

Intent

When I become the king of the world, (yes, the king -I don't want to have to deal with re-election issues every couple of years) I will mandate that all laws shall have their intent recorded with the actual law. then when enforcing the law if there is a case that technically breaks the law but is not included in the intent of the law it shall not be counted as breaking the law.
An example would be jaywalking, clearly the intent of the law is to stop people form crossing the road at any point so that cars have an idea of where to expect pedestrians. Now there was a story in the news where a person helped out some old ladies cross the street but got a jaywalking ticket for doing so. He obviously wasn't crossing the street just to get to the other side, but to help someone out.

I would also mandate that every city that has more than 5,000 residents have an official soccer team and make a massive worldwide league.