otoh

I am travelling through time… forward… at about the same rate as everyone else. But still… I mean — And yet.
I read an interesting explanation for why time seems to pass more quickly as we get older. (And if I remember where I read it I’ll credit the source.) When we are one day old, that day is 100% of our entire life experience. When we are one month old, one day is about 3.3% of our experience. At a year old, that day is down to about 0.27%. By the time we reach the age of 40 years, each day is such a small percentage of our experience that it is nearly insignificant.

Except that we know that a day is not insignificant. Each day is a precious gift that we must spend wisely and immediately. We cannot save time to spend it later. In one day our life can change dramatically and permanently.

Now I find myself in an ironic position. Days, sometimes moments, are all I remember. Months and years are all a blur. And they’re getting blurrier every day.

I happened to run across these two stories on the same day. Coincidence? Synchronicity? The universe smacking me upside the head to get my attention?

The first is about a robotic exoskeleton being tested at the University of Michigan that is “controlled by the wearer’s own nervous system [and] could help users regain limb function.” The second is about Dean Kamen, already well-known for inventing the Segway and several medical devices. Recently his team, working with university researchers, has developed a prototype prosthetic arm for the Department of Defense.

I suffer under the delusion that the work I do is both extremely important and extremely under appreciated. But while I am a soldier in the war on ignorance, I’m not helping people walk again or replacing lost limbs. And I feel humbled. But I also feel elated that there are people working on this. The world is not limited to an endless fascination with sports, awards shows, and Anna Nicole’s legacy.

Are you with me? Stand up, take a step forward, and raise your hand. And don’t take one of those actions for granted.

As if the recent photo were not proof enough…

I can count on one friend of mine in particular to forward tons of email jokes and just about every hoax that crosses his inbox. Still. He counts on me to look up evenly the patently absurd junk to verify that

• Bill Gates/Microsoft/AOL will not send him money/prizes for forwarding this (or any) email message
• Cell phone numbers are not soon to be made public to telemarketing firms
• Fred Rogers and Bob “Captain Kangaroo” Keeshan were not Navy Seals or Marine snipers
• There is no evidence that Barack Obma is secretly a loyal Muslem and pretends to be devout Christian
• Entering your PIN backwards at an ATM will not alert the police
• Cars cannot be unlocked by transferring a signal from a remote through your cell (or any other) phone

Despite my assurances that ANY email that suggests you “forward this to everyone you know” is almost certainly untrue and my suggestions that he can easily verify information through sites like Snopes.com and About: Urban Legends and Folklore (two of my favorites), he continues to spread this stuff around. I can’t always tell if he really thinks there may some truth in them or if he’s just sending them for humor value.

So I wasn’t surprised when he sent me a link to what is supposed to be a CNN story about a study claiming that “fellatio may significantly reduce the risk of breast cancer in women.” This particular link clearly did not connect to CNN.com (or any other news agency — some versions of the hoax apparently spoofed AP instead of CNN). The hoax has been around in various versions for a few years and its history is well-documented. But it is so clearly a hoax in the version that he sent to me that I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt that it was sent for entertainment value (because these are the types of issues about which men will joke with each other). We are pigs, after all.

And even though I immediately deleted his email without replying, I had a fleeting moment when I thought, “I’d like to make a donation to reduce breast cancer….”

We’re just a few days into the Year of the Pig on the Chinese calendar. Happy New Year!

Hmmm… about that resemblance to Steinbeck……

Technorati tags: blog~personal~otoh~photo~hnt~otohPhoto: PIGture This

The day after VD. I’ll bet there’s going to be leftover candy boxes marked down for sale all over the place. God help me. If I don’t have it around, I can go a long time without eating a bite of it and not really mind too much. But if I buy any, it calls my name until it’s all gone — usually very quickly.

I wore my Chocoholics Anonymous button yesterday. I stopped for a burrito on the way home. The girl who rang it up noticed it and asked, “Do you have meetings for that?”

“Yes,” I told her, “but we’ve been meeting in the candy store and that hasn’t worked out very well.”

Sometimes I kill me. Hmmm, dying from a chocolate overdose may not be such a bad way to go….

I love you. And you. And you and you and you. I really like you and you and you and you a lot. I tolerate you and you. You and you kind of got on my nerves a little. But in the spirit of Cupid, today I love you (almost) all.

Happy Valentines Day!

One of my colleagues and a couple of my students told me recently that there is a picture of author John Steinbeck in their literature textbook that looks a lot like me [or I look a lot like him] but without the beard. I haven’t seen the photo yet, but I did a search and he has a beard in most of what I found. But here are two:

I’m not sure I look all that much like him although there is some resemblance in the latter. [I never expect to write as well either, but that's another story.] But in reading the entry on Wikipedia I came across this bit of trivia: “To symbolize himself, Steinbeck used the stamp of a Pigasus, a flying pig, and the phrase Ad Astra Per Alia Porci (To the stars on wings of pigs.)”

I was born in the Year of the Pig on the Chinese calendar. The Chinese New Year is this weekend and we will be entering a Year of the Pig. And suddenly I have people telling me I look like a famous writer that used a (flying) pig as a personal symbol. Just last week was the 70th anniversary of the publishing of his novel Of Mice and Men (which takes place on a farm where I’m sure they had pigs). These are really freaky coinkydinks! No?

When I say, “What’s under there?”

Then you say, “Under Where?”

Ha ha ha ha ha ha. I just made you say underwear…..

---

Oh, and I remember the chant from when I was a kid, “I see London. I see France. I see your underpants!” [I guess that doesn't play as well with the recent trend of intentionally wearing your pants so low that your ass angs out the top. Thank god they're still wearing underwear.... Do I sound like an old curmudgeon?]

---

The little boys bet the little girl a dollar that she can’t climb a certain tree. She does and claims the dollar while the boys giggle uncontrollably. The little girl goes home and tells her mother, “Look Mommy. The boys bet me a dollar that I couldn’t climb a tree but I could.”

“Oh, dear,” the Mommy says, “It’s because you’re wearing a skirt and the boys wanted to see your underpants when you climbed up.”

“I know that, Mommy. So I fooled them. I’m not wearing any underpants….”

[Do you suppose it was a blonde little girl...?]

---

Finally, if you ask whether I’m into kinky underwear I might say, “Depends….”

But [butt?] I haven’t mentioned NASA even once!

I am not what one would call a family man. But I am a member of the family of man — or the human family if the generic form of “man” offends you. I am a son and a brother and an uncle. We have the families we are born into. And we have families that we draw around us — not of blood but of choice, kindred spirits becoming kin of sorts.

Not long after I moved to Central Florida I met M___ and H___ and R___. I’m a tall, white guy of mostly Dutch and German descent. M___ is shorter and rounder and mostly Scottish. H___ is small-framed and both his parents are from Bangladesh. R___ had red hair and beard and was built like the rugby player he was. The four of us could not look less alike if we had planned it. For a couple years we hung out together a lot.

Here’s a quick story about R___. Where he worked, when you logged in to the computer network messages from coworkers would automatically be sent to your screen. So he wrote a message that looked just like the screen you got when the network was down….

When R___ was diagnosed with brain tumors, M___, H___, and I went to see him in the hospital. By sheer coincidence we rode up in the elevator with his mother. At the nurse’s station we were told that only family was allowed to see him. “We’re his brothers,” we said. After a little conferring behind the desk, we were welcomed by “Mom” and we got to see our brother. He was in pretty good spirits considering they had shaved the side of his head, drilled holes into it, and cut out part of his brain.

R___ was a member of Mensa. We thought it would be really funny to send him a letter on Mensa letterhead informing him that he would need to retest since he no longer had the brain he had originally qualified with. I don’t think we ever actually sent the letter, but we did tell R___ about it and he thought it was a hilarious idea.

R___ passed away a few months later. And over the years M___ and H___ and I have drifted in and out of contact with each other. But we always laugh when we are together. And at odd moments I hear R___’s laughter too. My kindred spirit. My other brother.

No, I didn’t lose a finger. I still have all ten and one in particular for the system most days….

So the other morning one of the administrative deans comes in during my second period class with a couple other guys in workclothes. They’re talking about the brackets that hold the TVs in the corner of the classrooms. One of the workers turns the bracket to the side and points. “See,” he says to the dean, “there should be another hole right here. Look at how loose this is.” And he shakes the TV.

“We can’t get even get our people to sweep the floors every day,” replies the dean. We’re not going to get them to go around and drill holes in all the brackets any time soon….” He signs the work order and leaves.

Now, all this is going on during my class. The students were working on their own but still, this is a distraction. A few minutes later they have my TV on a handtruck and start wheeling it toward the door. As an aside, one of them asks me, “So what’s wrong with your TV, sir?”

“I didn’t report a problem with my TV.”

“What?”

“I didn’t report a problem with my TV. I think Mr. O across the hall in 215 did. This is 216.”

He looks at the work order. “This says 216.” And they leave. With my TV.

I call the office. Please have the dean return to my room. He gets back a few minutes later. I explain that when they came in talking about a problem with brackets I didn’t realize they were there because they thought there was a problem with my TV. He confirms that it was indeed Mr. O that has a problem with his TV. “I could be playing golf instead of doing this,” he says….

But he gets on the phone and not long after the guys bring back my TV. But now they are reinstalling it during my third period class while I am trying to explain about the Architect’s Scale and how to read the fractions on it. [If you think high school students should already be able to read a scale divided into 16ths of an inch, I would not argue. However, I can also tell you that there is a large void between what we may think a high school student should be able to do and what they are usually capable of when they enter my classes....]

I don’t know if it was related to a bracket, but I did find out the next day that one of my colleagues was hit in the head by a falling TV earlier in the week. And I understand why that would be a more interesting topic of conversation. But if they had verified the information on the workorder before they interrupted my class and started removing my TV… well, I’d have one less story to blog so I guess it wasn’t all for nothing….