Because I Require Stimulation

Since I started posting erotica on this blog (again), I wanted to make something clear. To me, a waist size has nothing to do with physical or inner beauty. Thanks to Cosmo and celebrity stick figures, Americans are enamoured with people who are too damn thin. What’s really stupid is many of us know how much photo editing and retouching goes into a magazine cover image or photo shoot. We know, intellectually, that the person doesn’t really look that damn perfect.

Yet we still believe that we can.

Screw that. I like people of all shapes and sizes and if you don’t want to see erotic images like that, then look elsewhere. I’ll always post people who are less than perfect because beauty is always attainable while perfection never is.

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When it comes to being ecologically friendly, I try to do my bit. I happily recycle anything I can. I reuse quite a few things because, let’s face it, grocery sacks are good for more than a single use. I really don’t like driving all that much, so I avoid it when I can. Driving around downtown Phoenix can cause a spike in my blood pressure and profanity to proper English ratio, so I drive to Mesa and take the train.

But it’s never enough, and never will be for some people encouraging others to live an ultra green lifestyle. I normally don’t care, but the issue of water conservation and what they (green folks) expect you to do about it. A friend of mine marked a rather typical list in her Google Reader, and I wanted to comment on it.

First, and foremost, my friend 7ohn really put things in perspective when it comes to personal water conservation and its effect on the environment. As an individual, I’ll start worrying myself with water conservation right after they shut down all those water slide parks. Until then, I don’t see this as being a big thing; not when some park has millions of gallons of dihydrogen monoxide coursing through it day after day. So, here’s their ideas and my thoughts:

Shower instead of taking a bath

Well, yeah, but that has nothing to do with water conservation. I typically shower because I don’t normally have time for a long, luxurious, hot bath. Besides, showers wake me up, and baths relax me. Telling me to shower rather than taking a bath is kind of like telling me to go for a run rather than take a nap. For me, the two are used for completely different things.

Shower together

This one is written with a wink and a nudge that it might also be a fun way to waste water together. But what about people who have no one to shower with? You know what, as hot as Sasha Grey and Lisa Ann are, and as much sex as they have, I bet there are times when they both just have to shower alone because they’re on a trip or something and no one shared their room that night. Even if they are porn stars, I don’t expect them to pull strangers out of the hall for a quick, water conserving shower. Seriously, I have kids and my wife usually winds up watching them when I shower and vice versa. Showering together isn’t always an option.

Don’t wait for the water to get warm to shower

Fuck that damn water heater and all the money you spent on it! After all, humans have come all this way to develop technologies which kill cancer, orbit the planet, and provide lesbian pornography on demand. But hot water? You’re not good enough for hot water. Personally, I just love it when I get into shower that’s so cold my balls shrink up inside my chest. I don’t know about you, but if we’re going to go this far in water conservation, you can save a whole lot of money, pain, and anguish by not showering at all. It’s the ultimate water saving technique and you’ll look and smell like the hippie you are.

Repair dripping faucets and leaky toilets

Yeah, because that kinda shit wastes money, man! If there’s anything I want to conserve more than water it’s money. Also, dripping faucets and showers have a nasty habit of keeping me awake when I’m trying to sleep. If there’s anything I want more than money, it might be a good night’s rest. So naturally I fix those dripping things, but it’s more for selfish reasons rather than green ones.

Avoid flushing the toilet unnecessarily

If it’s yellow it’s mellow if it’s brown flush it down. Sure, I see absolutely no health and safety concerns about living in a house with kids and having a couple of toilets full of piss stewing away in the bathrooms. Also, I totally love it when my house smells like the New York subway system and bum urine. That’s just awesome. Every so often, just to complete the illusion of New York underground, I’ll squat in the corner and drop a huge turd. That way I don’t have to flush that down the toilet either. Also, there’s no problem with piss turning my toilet bowl nasty colours. I’ll just scrub it out with the harshest fucking chemicals I can find. I may be saving water, but I’ll make up for by flushing bleach and lye down the toilet.

Pee in the shower

Doesn’t everyone? Moving on.

Replace your shower head with an ultra-low flow unit

Absolutely. I did this once. I put on a shower head that cut my water usage by a third. I also found that my normally five minute shower took fifteen minutes. Do the math. Seriously, if you want me out of the shower faster, you’re going to have to allow me water pressure with a force greater than my urine stream. In other words, if I can piss faster than a shower flows, you’re wasting my time which is, incidentally, far more valuable to me than water ever will be.

Don’t let water run unnecessarily

Turn off the water while you’re shaving. (I shave in the shower.) Turn it off while you’re brushing your teeth. Hey, since you’re not going to flush that toilet so often, why not turn the valve on the floor behind it and shut that off too? Hey, that old house down the street was a fire trap anyway. No sense wasting water to put it out. Just turn that big wrench on top of the hydrant. That’ll save water and it’ll teach those firemen a lesson about conservation too. Or, better yet, get one of those auto off water faucets with the added bonus that you’ll be putting batteries into the landfills because, you know, I’ve never seen a solar powered auto off faucet.

Install water heaters wherever you can

Wait, I thought you didn’t want me to wait for the water to get hot? Now you’re telling me to install more water heaters? They point out that, since the water heater uses a lot of electricity or gas, you can save money by installing more water heaters which use more electricity than you were probably using to heat the water in the first place. This all bespeaks of lovely irony if you happen to get your power from a hydroelectric dam. Also, multiple water heaters aren’t free. Exactly how long does it take before those supposedly pay for themselves? It’s a simple physical fact of thermodynamics, you want to heat something, you’ll have to apply power. There’s no way to get around that. Where you apply the power really doesn’t make a difference.

Do not use a garbage disposal

Instead, grow your own food and compost instead. After all, it’s completely and totally easy for me to grow a huge garden in my tiny backyard in the middle of the desert while I’m working an eight hour job, raising two children, writing, making an online show, and living a life. So I’ll just take all of my shit and throw it in a composter which, I’m sure, will smell absolutely amazing when the temperature hits 110 degrees F. Also, growing a garden? Do you know how much fucking water it takes to grow a fucking garden, stupid? Believe me, I know. My dad raised one for years and still does. It takes a shitload of water which, I thought, we were trying to conserve.

I’m a child of the 80s and, like a lot of people my age, I look back on that decade with a sense of nostalgia. I see a happier time with Atari, Transformers, Masters of the Universe, GI Joe, Nintendo, Punky Brewster, Silver Spoons, Ferris Bueller, and The Breakfast Club. It was a happier time and things were simple, right?

Well, yes and no. See, unfortunately I grew up and became a historian. So looking back the 80s I can’t help but see the Iran/Contra Scandal, the assassination of John Lennon, Reaganomics, the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, the rise of AIDS, the Tylenol scare, the Challenger disaster, the creation of infomercials, Pan Am Flight 103, and Tiananmen Square. In other words, no decade, no matter how magical it seems later on, is without its blemishes.

Something occurred to me yesterday while I was listening to some music at work. It wasn’t anything profound, but it had everything to do with how I was listening to music. As I wandered around the staff area of the library, I had my new iPod Touch tucked into a pouch on my belt. (I haven’t gotten a proper case for it yet.) I was listening to one of my stations on Pandora via the wireless internet in the library.

Let me rephrase that in a different way so the meaning is crystal clear. I was walking around with a magic device that pulls the kind of music I want from computers in a far away location and it brings it to me in lovely clarity on mysterious waves of electromagnetism. If I like a song, I can tag it and then purchase it later via another magic box connected to a vast network of information using a simple numerical code which allows instant access to the funds in my bank account. While I do that I can send a message to a friend who lives over 1,500 miles away and they will get it within a few seconds of my sending it. Meanwhile I’m watching Monty Python’s Flying Circus on a big screen, high definition television. I don’t own a copy of the show I’m watching, I’m getting it over those same magical waves and pumping them through a state of the art video game system which delivers gameplay and graphics so real, certain games have actually frightened me.

After that show is over I’ll take my magical device and go for a walk and listen to music or pre-recorded talk shows about technology and cyberculture. It’s a smaller capacity magic device so I only have a selection of around 1,700 songs to choose from, which is 85 times the number of songs I could carry with me back in the 80s. If I don’t like a song, I can instantly skip to another one, or search for one I will like.

When I get back home, I’ll work on a documentary show that I’m writing and shooting using a high definition camera which is only slightly bigger than a pack of cigarettes. I can edit it together using the very same magical box I used to send that message to my far flung friend and purchased the song I heard earlier in the day. Oh! But I got interrupted by a “phone call” from another friend who lives even farther away that the first. I put the words phone call in quotes because that call came to me over the very same network I used to purchase the song, watch Monty Python, send the message, and listen to music. I talk to them for a while and ring off. I put the finishing touches on my show and upload it to the network so anyone, anywhere, with a similar magical box and a connection to the network can view it.

Thing is, I wouldn’t want to live in another time than the one I’m currently living in. We do strange and wonderful things every day and we do them so often that we begin to take them for granted. Indeed we forget about them for a while as we look about on the past and think how much better life supposedly was then. Sure, now isn’t perfect, but neither was then and later on isn’t going to be perfect either. But you know what, I bet it’s going to be enjoyable; if you allow it to be so.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go play Ninja Gaiden on my NES emulator. It lives on the same magic box I used to send the message to a friend, talk to another, edit my movie…

I love listening to podcasts and, given the kind of geek I am, I love listening to the TWiT network podcasts. First, I’m a huge fan of Leo Laporte and I love how he’s set up his own broadcasting studio and produces quality content every single week. Second, I love the guests he has on his shows from John C. Dvorak to Wil Harris to Veronica Belmont to Andy Ihnatko and so on. It’s always interesting stuff and, if you’re into computers, it’s a helluva lotta fun.

Now then, I don’t own a Mac, but I’d really like to someday. I’m very interested in all things Mac so I listen to MacBreak Weekly. Besides, Leo is a huge Mac geek and it’s fun to listen to him and his guests discuss something they love. Yet something was said on this last episode of MacBreak Weekly that really made me tilt my head and say “What?”.

One of the guests said that if you kit out a PC the same as a Mac, you’ll find that the difference in price isn’t all that much, or that it’s closer than you’d think.

Now let me get this straight. I hoped that’s true. Because if it was, I’d gleefully pay a little more the Mac than a PC. I really wanted it to be true, but I doubted it immediately because, believe me, I’ve been pricing computers left and right trying to justify paying the Apple tax.

So I did a little research. I went to Apple’s website and brought up the 15” MacBook Pro. If I buy a Mac, that’s the kind of Mac I wanna buy. Then I popped over the Dell’s website and selected something similar, the Studio 15. Both have similar sized displays and both are fairly well packed with features. Then I just went down the line. I put the same processor on the Dell as the MacBook Pro. I made sure the RAM was the same. Turns out, the Studio 15 comes standard with a 500GB hard drive so I popped over and adjusted that for the MacBook Pro, giving it a 500GB drive.

After tweaking and checking I finally got a Studio 15 kitted out as close as I could to the MacBook Pro, and by “close” I mean almost exactly. Then I looked at the prices.

MacBook Pro: $1,849

Dell Studio 15: $1,154

I’m sorry, but that’s not a small difference in price, at least it’s not for me. To me, a difference of almost $700 is not small. For the price of a MacBook pro, I can a similarly priced Dell notebook and another well rounded Dell notebook.

As much as I want an Apple, this is the reason I won’t be buying one anytime soon.

Vincent Price once said in the movie Laura that “I don’t know a lot about anything, but I know a little about practically everything.” Well, Isaac Asimov did know a lot about anything and he certainly knew more than a little about everything else.

Besides be a doctor of biochemistry, the man had a love and a passion for science. But unlike many scientists today, he decided that he didn’t want to specialize, even though he already had specialized by virtue of his aforementioned Ph.D. He realized that, while he loved teaching, being a professor wasn’t for him. He saw that researching would be his weakness and the publish or perish mentality of most universities wouldn’t suit him at all. The pressure to keep finding new things to write about and publish was simple not his cup of tea.

So he left academia and went on to write or edit over 500 books.

Hey, he was writing about stuff he wanted to write about. For him, that wasn’t pressure, that was passion. Dr. Asimov, well known for his science fiction, is better regarded in my mind for his science fact. But the man didn’t just write about science. He wrote about history, Shakespeare, the Bible, sociology, and astronomy- oh he wrote a lot about astronomy. And while I was initially drawn toward his work because I’m a science fiction fan, it was his short essays for Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine that really appealed to me.

You can tell when someone enjoys their work, and for Asimov, writing simple and elegant explanations for complex things was something he dearly enjoyed. When I read these essays, it’s not like I’m learning something from a professor. More than anything, it’s like I’ve sat down for a conversation with a knowledgeable friend. His essays on mathematics coaxed me back into a respect, and then a love, for the discipline. With his nonfiction writing, you don’t just get mere facts. You get history, thoughtful insight, and context. You also get the sense that the man was doing something he throughly enjoyed and thus it’s hard not to enjoy it yourself.

Asimov’s book on the Bible is particularly interesting to me. Asimov was raised Jewish and later embraced humanism, so he wasn’t a big believer in the Christian god. So as you read his book, you get a fair historical and theological picture from someone with an interest, but without an agenda. He criticizes and praises and pulls no punches. If something doesn’t make sense, he said so. If a beloved Christian tale was derived from several earlier tales which all tell the same story, he lets you know.

Beyond all of that, he was a fun man. Normally he started essays with amusing little anecdotes and stories. Funny things happened to him because of who he was. He’d fall on his face due to his fame and one of my favourite stories was the incident where he bought two reams of paper from a stationary store. As the clerk retrieved the paper, he seemed mystified why anyone would need so much paper at once. So he asked Dr. Asimov; Wow, mister. Are you writing a book or something? To which Asimov replied: Well, I have been known to do so.

Further Reading and Information:

Asimov’s Guide to the Bible (via Amazon)

The Roving Mind (via Amazon)

Make sure you check your local library! Since Asimov was so prolific, I’m not going to link to a catalogue here. Just ask your librarian, they’ll find something good for you!

When I was in my early teens, I suffered from the delusion that art was just something you looked at. You either thought a particular piece was beautiful, or you didn’t. Art was simple, you admired (or not) and then you moved on. The idea of spending an entire day at an art gallery made no sense to me. Surely you wouldn’t even have to break stride as you looked at the paintings and sculptures. You could just wander through and then go on to the next activity.

Now, I’m not a religious man at all. But I am eternally grateful for a mousy little Catholic nun named Sister Wendy Beckett.

She’s not an imposing person. Indeed, she’s a contemplative nun. In our parlance, she’d be classified as an honest to goodness hermit. So she lives a life of silence, poverty, and prayer. Oh yes, she also happens to be an expert on art and, on the rare occasions that she speaks, she’ll probably be talking about art. That’s when the magic happens.

I caught Sister Wendy’s documentaries one day while flipping through channels. It caught my eye because, after all, a nun talking about a Renaissance painting is something one doesn’t see everyday. After the first couple of minutes the novelty wore off because she was no longer a nun to me, she was an instructor. And I’m not talking about your stereotypical Catholic school teacher, I mean she became my art professor.

She spoke about art not as a thing, but as an entity. She pointed at paintings and told their stories as if she were telling you about her good friends and their lives. For the first time, I really started to care about the story and the meaning behind great works of art. Sure, I thought Saturn Devouring His Son by Francisco Goya was a work of fantastical horror, but when Sister Wendy explains something like that, it becomes something so much more. It could be related to Goya’s relationship with his son, or it could be a depiction of the horrors of war, or many other things.

In other words, it ceased to be a work of horror and became a story, just as much a story as that told in the pages of a book.

Sister Wendy opened my eyes to art. Now, when I enter an art museum or gallery, I plan on spending time there. I plan on coming back because, if it’s of any size at all, there’s no way I’m going to make it through the whole thing in one go. I’ll take some paper with me so I can make note of pictures and sculptures to come see again.

After all, it takes more than a few minutes to read a book just like it takes more than a few minutes to really appreciate a work of art.

Further Information and Reading:

Sister Wendy- The Complete DVD Collection (Amazon)

Sister Wendy’s Story of Painting (Amazon)

Sister Wendy Books and DVD (via Worldcat. Search your local library!)

As I mentioned in my previous post, I didn’t become an astronomer even though I was well on the road to that after Carl Sagan’s documentary series Cosmos and his many books influenced my thinking and devotion to science.

My parents had a fairly good library in their basement and besides a couple books on space, there was a good amount on history. So I soon learned that I liked reading books about World War II and other historical stuff. So even though I had my sites set on science, history fascinated me as well.

It never dawned on me I could do both, combining one with the other. At least, not until I was a junior in high school. One afternoon, while sitting in an honours history class that netted me absolutely no honours at all, the teacher made the decision that he didn’t want to teach that day. So instead he was going to show us a movie. He fired up the VCR popped in a tape and I was treated to this grinding sound and then the activation of an arc light.

I actually knew what an arc light was because we used them in my theatre tech class.

Then this man with a lovely accent started talking about history and science and how seemingly unrelated things were actually connected. That made sense, since the man was James Burke and the show is called Connections. He ran through a series of events and demonstrated how the invention of the plow not only could save civilization but also created civilization. More than that, he discussed the history of science. Up to then, I didn’t even know that there was such a thing as science historians.

After that, we got to watch another episode later on. And he demonstrated how Mediterranean traders rubbing gold on touchstones led to the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

James Burke not only makes history interesting, he makes it fun. This especially comes out in the next couple of Connections series where he starts doing the historical bit, while drinking.

My kind of historian there.

I was hooked and my academic direction was forever altered. Just as Carl Sagan put me on the path to science, James Burke threw a fork in the road and I immediately shifted my focus to history. Today I have a degree in history and a bi-weekly history podcast where I do something very like James Burke’s Connections series. The biggest difference is that Mr. Burke has a research team while I can only draw upon the historical talents of me, myself, and I.

Further Information and Reading:

Connections DVD set (from Amazon.com)

Connections (from Amazon.com)

Connections DVD set (via Worldcat. Search your local library!)

When I was about five years old, I watched a lot of PBS. There wasn’t any educational reason I did this. My parents weren’t the type who let me watch nothing but PBS. My reasons for watching PBS were very simple and kid-like. I was (and still am) a rabid fan of Sesame Street and I knew that, if I watched long enough, I’d see some Muppets. I had no idea how television schedules work. My parents never subscribed to the TV Guide. I just knew that PBS showed Muppets and thus I watched PBS. One night, sitting on the floor of my living room, I awaited Muppets. I was a little miffed at the animal programme that had just gone off and hoped that the next show would have Muppets.

It didn’t.

The next show started with some odd sound effect and orange lettering which spelled out WGBH. Then the most beautiful music I’d ever heard (at the age of five, mind you) started playing and stars floated on the screen. It was a show about space. I liked space shows so maybe I could watch this until Muppets came on. Besides, the music was nice.

Then a very passive, very soothing voice started to talk about space and the wonders of the cosmos. That voice belonged to Dr. Carl Sagan and the name of the show was Cosmos. My parents were more than a little amused that their kiddo was enraptured by a show about stars and planets. After it was over, I remember turning to my mom and dad and saying "I want to be an astronomer when I grow up!"

Cosmos changed my life in two very important ways. To this day, I am fascinated by space. I’ll read anything you give me about space whether it be a popular science article in a magazine or a scholarly paper in a prestigious scientific journal. It’s a testament to the effect Dr. Sagan had on my life that, even though I didn’t become an astronomer, I know enough about it that I can follow along with a serious scientific essay with little trouble. Usually I get lost in some of the math. I can do calculus, but not that well.

It’s no wonder why Cosmos won so many awards. After all, Sagan was able to explain incredibly complex astronomical concepts and make them understandable to a five year old boy.

I mentioned a second way that Cosmos changed my life. Well, the soundtrack for the documentary was done by the Greek new age composer, Vangelis. Soon after hearing that music, I wanted to try that piano sitting over against the wall. The first real song I learned was Chariots of Fire, by Vangelis.

I introduced my oldest kiddo to Cosmos a year ago. Every so often he still asks me “Daddy, can we watch that movie about space?”

Further Information and Reading:

Cosmos DVD Set (from Amazon.com)

Cosmos (from Amazon.com)

Cosmos DVD (via Worldcat. Search your local library!)

Cosmos (via Worldcat. Search your local library!)

Sometimes, all we need is a clear explanation. We need someone to take something complex and talk to us about it in a way that we can grow to understand it on some level. We may never achieve expertise, but we walk away more intelligent, and just a tad wiser, than we were before.

I want to talk about a few people who explained things in excellent ways. I don’t look up to many people as "heroes" in the classical sense, but in my book, these are the people who changed my life and, in a very real since, made my life. So over the next few days, I want to tell you about some of my seven favourite explainers and how they affected me. Perhaps, if you have some time, you could seek them out and learn from them too. If nothing else, I can guarantee you that they’re entertaining. So, at the very least, you won’t be bored.

Whether or not I bore you is a completely different matter.