Popular Sentiment

Some Thoughts on All This Horrible Stuff That Happened Today That I Just Had to Write Down But It Was Too Long For Facebook

A couple thoughts:

When I was in high school, I got to take a trip to Germany. During my trip, my peers and I spent some time at a German high school, and one day, toward the end of our trip, we went to a few different classes and answered questions about America. A boy's hand shot up: "Is it true," the boy asked, "that everyone in America has a gun?" We told him no, lots of people don't have guns.

"But you can get one when you are 18? And it's very easy."

We didn't really know. I remember we asked among ourselves, Do you have to be 18? Yeah, I think it's pretty easy...we were 16-year-old suburbanites. This was post-Columbine. We probably should have known. But, even in our ignorance, the significance of the question, and the fact that it was, for at least one kid, a defining trait of Americanness, was not lost on us. Some of the kids in the class were surprised by our answer as to the ease and prevalence of firearms in our country; some were probably scared, some excited. But they all, every one of those teenagers, thought it was weird.

But back to today. It is so strange to me that I've become one of those people who gets her news reports from Facebook. Blame grad school and not having a TV, I guess. Stranger still is that, even with only FB as a news-getting tool, I don't miss a whole lot. Especially when something really great happens. Or something really, really bad.

We are a reactionary people. Maybe it's because our country is so large and diverse, but in order for change to take place, it seems like we need hard proof that things are broken. I wish, for the sake of families that lost loved ones today, that we could be more proactive.

At the same time, it would be nice if we could hold off on politicizing every tragedy our nation faces, out of a moment of respect for the grieving. But we can't help it. When something terrible happens, we want to fix it. One way to fix a problem is through legislation. Another is through education. Some Americans prefer the government to stay out of their business, and that makes sense. But when a problem becomes a plague, an epidemic, and talking about it or putting band aids on it isn't working, I think it's time for legislation to step in.

I know this is vague, but this is not a news story. And I think this logic applies pretty well to lots of things in our country: gun control laws, sure, but also mental health care, the impossibility of a one-income household which keeps many parents away from their kids, sloppy national discourse, 21st century isolation-based anxiety, 24-hour news cycles and fear mongering, the list goes on... But another thing about this big, busy, diverse country: we have strength to make an impact, but we lose momentum fast. That goes for me and blog-post writing too. So, I don't know what we're supposed to do now - start a petition? Sign a petition? Call our congressmen? - but I know we need to do it. Soon.

From the Mind of Don Flaxbart: AAPLtini (with recipe)

I thought about calling this post "Marissa's Tips for Living the Dream: Celebrate Any Damn Thing," but that just didn't seem informational enought.

Today, as some of you are sure to be aware, Apple stock (aka AAPL) passed 600 and Apple announced they'd begin paying out quarterly dividends. This is kind of bittersweet news for me (I had a tiny bit of the stock once, but had to sell it to survive my year of joblessness), but my dad was pretty psyched. In fact, he decided he had to celebrate by creating a cocktail. 

And it's good.

Here's the recipe

AAPLtini

2 oz vodka

1 oz Goldschlager

3-4 oz Martinelli's, chilled

Combine vodka and Goldschlager in a shaker (ice optional). Strain into a martini glass and top with Martinelli's. Sit back and think about how you bought Apple stock in the 1980s when people thought the company was going down the tubes. Alternately, stare blankly into the glass, enjoying the pretty gold color and the bubbles.

Says Don, "We'll enjoy it for today. The stock's been going up so fast, something's gotta...[trails off]."

Genius, master chef, goofball, pessimist. That's my dad. 

 

Why is 'Rolling Stone' anti-cursive?

I'm a little behind on my magazine reading, but I've been leafing through the August 4 issue of 'Rolling Stone' I've had stashed in my desk at work. One of my favorite recurring features is the news-bite infographic, "Threat Assessment," where recent occurrences are rated on a scale of "With Us" to "Against Us." Far down the scale toward "Against Us," this issue lists the spike in birth control prices after New Hampshire's defunding of Planned Parenthood and government shutdown that caused "beer shortages" in Minnesota. On the "With Us" end of the spectrum is the birth of South Sudan, a Bahamas ban on shark fishing, and..."Indiana schools stop teaching cursive."

What? Really? Putting aside the fact that I clearly remember learning D'Nealian cursive in an Indiana public school, I'm totally confused as to why 'Rolling Stone' would take an anti-cursive stance. Yes, in a digital world, cursive is probably less important to the average human, Hoosier or otherwise. But handwritten communication is still a part of life — think of memo boards, greeting cards, phone messages — and all that NOT teaching it does is create a generation of Indianans who can't read half of other people's handwriting.

I know, I know. There are text messages, emails, digital display screens, and probably cursive-reading apps out there to help the confused reader of analog text. But this obsession with how ubiquitous virtual text, information, and possessions have become seems to assume that there will someday exists a people that don't need ACTUAL anything. Personally, though, I doubt that paper and ink will ever die out completely. A paperless, hadwriting-free world would be one where we all stared at screens all day long, for everything. Does that really sound appealing to anybody?

We'll see. For now, the world is still full of paper and ink, and, hand to God, I use cursive every single day. I guess I'll just have to hand-write a desultory letter to 'Rolling Stone,' sadly knowing that none of the little third-graders in Indiana will have any idea what it says.

Politics Imitating Art (?)

I do not know much about James Cappleman, and I don't have the option of voting for him in Chicago's upcoming elections, as I don't live in Chicago's 46th ward. He's on twitter, which is cool. He has a pretty logo. But when I saw his sign for the first time yesterday (when I happened to be in the 46th ward) all I could think was "Is he going to change our money, and make it super-fly?"

Here's why:
 

Sorry about all that, Mr. Cappleman. Leave it to a Sifl & Olly fan to draw connections to obscure 3rd-season, DVD-only nonsense skits.

Snow Photos, River North Style

Here are the results of my Wednesday afternoon photo excursion. Please note that every snow pile seemed bigger in person, proving that the camera does NOT add ten pounds to errant precipitation.

As for the LSD photos, they were taken between Chicago Avenue and Huron Street, which is a bit south of the real craziness. A cop on the scene said that all the drama was up further on the road, and we know that all those parked cars are on the northbound lanes only. Nevertheless, it was very surreal to see Lake Shore (and Michigan, and Chicago) essentially empty in the middle of the day.

 

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

 

For Snow's Sake

In case you haven't heard, Chicago just got hit with a snowfall that topped 20 inches, the third highest fall in recorded history. Because I'm a home typing, surfing, and moviemaking, my "snow day" is pretty business-as-usual. That said, I don't usually have the WGN Chopper Cam Feed playing as I work. Last time I checked it, there were tons of people standing on the bridge over Lake Shore Drive at North Avenue Beach, looking at the snowy, abandoned car-filled aftermath.

It occurs to me that I live within walking distance from Lake Shore Drive.

I'm going to head out and check it out, and hopefully get some pictures. For the city's sake, I hope I'm too late to catch anything of interest, but I kind of doubt it.

More later.

Not-So-Nice Haiku: Kendra

I have a feeling I'm going to be writing a lot of these. Enjoy.

Kendra

Looking at Kendra
"Playboy Reality Star"
All I can think is:

She's not that sexy.
But maybe that's just because
I have heard her voice.

The End is NOT Near

In today's installment of the New Yorker cartoon newsletter that Bob Mankoff sends out, he talked a bit about the political scene. As there's rarely a candidate willing to support my staunchly hippie-esque love, nature, and pacificity stance, I feel this cartoon pretty much sums up my personal feeling on politics in general:

Also, not to get too uppity or anything, I feel like sharing some prudent analogies from my friend Kevin's Facebook status, which I hope he doesn't mind: 

Let me ask you this: If your hands are cold, would you pour boiling water on them to warm them up? Then, once they are burning, dip them in liquid nitrogen to cool them off? Seems stupid, yet we do it with politics all the time. Minor corrections will keep a car on the road, going full lock to full lock will not.

Kevin is a restaurant owner and an a car aficionado, which may shed some light on his choice of metaphors. Good work, Kevin.

 

What the Hell is String Theory? Ask Mary.

My best friend from college, the strange and wonderful Mary Parker, is getting her master's degree in journalism at Boston University. She's been a journalist for some time now, but is grad-schooling it up on her way to the science journalism world, her dream niche. On her newborn blog, Mary has written a short article about string theory that I am loving. It's concise and explanatory, plus wise and funny. And I've gotten Mary's permission to repost it. Enjoy, science wonderers!

String theory?
by Mary Parker

The smallest of all realities: researchers at Imperial College London claim to have found a way to test a very small and almost unrelated subsection of string theory in a lab. A claim of this kind would be minor in most instances, but physicists’ passionate visceral reaction to string theory makes this a reportable story. 

The conflict: Euclid and Newton (among others) gave us an excellent and accurate system for mathematically describing most of the universe. Their math can predict the action of balls on a pool table and planets in a solar system. 

However: Traditional physics breaks down completely at superfast speeds and atomic sizes. New physical models were created to deal with light speed and atoms, like Einstein’s theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. We now have two working methods to cover pretty much everything in the universe, from the small to the large, the fast to the slow. Good enough, right? 

WRONG! Physicists hate this divide. It’s annoying; untidy. Ever since they came up with new physics vs. old physics they have tried to unite them in the elusive Theory of Everything (TOE). Even though it is likely that the TOE would be much more complicated than either of the two current models, they keep trying to find it. 

String theory is the most vocal candidate for the TOE. String theory postulates that the smallest elements in the universe, the elements that make quarks and atoms and Belgium and everything, are like vibrating strings. Depending on the frequency of the vibrations, you get energy and solid matter. The only problem is this “theory” is impossible to test. 

Physicists can construct beautiful and moving math equations from string theory, but not one single testable, reproducible, empirical experiment. See the problem? String theory is not unlike a religion: it seems to explain the world, but no one can prove it. As a result, some physicists spend their careers championing string theory while others spend a good deal of time complaining about it. Even the new claim from Imperial College comes with emotional baggage. Physicist Michael Duff noticed at a conference that someone else’s equations for quantum entanglement matched his equations for a string theory explanation of black holes. Quantum entanglement has nothing much to do with sting theory, and a test of this find would not prove that the theory is valid. Furthermore, quantum entanglement can be explained already with the conference presenter’s original equations. And yet noticing this strange coincidence merited a paper in Physical Review Letters and a dozen articles on physics news websites.

 

This last point of Mary's – that string theory is almost like a religion  – gave me an idea. What if string theory, the almost-known but seemingly unknowable all-spark, is God's secret M.O.? Like those fluffy clouds that look like cotton swabs, trying to touch it will always leave you empty-handed, as concrete and huggable as it looks when you're flying past. 

Seems feasible to me. But I'm no science journalist.

All I know about oil spills, I learned from Zack Morris.

What's worse than ignoring the lessons of the past? 

Ignoring the lessons of Saturday morning television. Especially when the lesson was taught by the less-than-deep students of Bayside High. Among those lessons: Drugs are bad, lying is bad, cheating is bad...and drilling for crude oil is dangerous.

I've been at a loss as to what I could possible do to help out in the wake of the current Gulf disaster. As always in times of crisis, I turned to my encyclopedic knowledge of ridiculous sitcoms. This is what I came up with. Enjoy, and please share.

Oil Spill: Saved by the Bell vs. Reality from Marissa Flaxbart on Vimeo.

Anybody with enough smarts to follow Saved by the Bell should understand why drilling is not an undertaking to enter into lightly, why strict regulations are necessary (no filibusters, jerkwads!) and why oil dependency is for tools. It was true in 1991, and for God's sake, it's true now.