What a week...

I've been spending most of this week wrestling with a new MacBook Pro.  I feel kinda dirty, but a lot of that time has been configuring it to run Windows as well.  It seems to be working and, quite frankly, this is the best Windows machine I've ever had.  It's fast and furious...  But, that's been why there's been a delay in the blogging.

Laura went back to teaching this week (yesterday, actually...) and, while yesterday didn't seem so bad, this morning was hard.  Maybe part of it was that Grandma was here to sit Ellie.  Maybe part of it was that yesterday morning was too hectic to think about it.  In any case, this morning was quite a bit harder than yesterday.

But, it turns out that Julie R. is as awesome as we'd assumed she'd be after her interview.  I think it will get easier as time goes on because we have a nanny we can trust and evenings seem to be going swimmingly well.

Take care and more soon...  Go Bears!

Corn!

Happy Survivorday to everyone.

We'll be packing up the family and heading due west to get us some Rosita's and Survivor today.  If you want to join us for a #5 (crispy), we'll be hitting Rosita's at 2:00.  We'll be heading to the fest ~4:00, but we're relegated to the family area (which is back by the "dumbsters" where you can't see) this year. 

Happy corn-ing and fest-ing to all!

Bear Down

So, Rex looked like a perfectly adequate backup QB tonight.  Griese looked like a bona fide NFL field general.  There are those who will say, "But, Griese's doing that against the second team defense."  To which, I'd reply, "But, he's doing it with the second team offense."  He's making quick reads and accurate throws.

My prediction:  Next week, Griese gets the start and Rex suffers from some sort of clipboard-holding injury which avoids any QB controversy.

Blogged with Flock

MOND

Okay... So, this one might be a bit esoteric.

I was reading an article in Discover today about Mordehai Milgrom's Modified Newtonian Dynamics theory or MOND, as it is referred to. Mr. Milgrom's theory is controversial. Why is that, you say? Because he went and mucked with the cornerstone of Physics, Isaac Newton's equation "F=ma." If you are not familiar with that equation, what it says is that Force = mass X acceleration. For example, if you take a mass (like the human body) and accelerate it (say, in a car) a force will be exerted upon it (which you feel as you're being pushed back into the seat). For centuries, it's been used to calculate everything from rocket trajectories, to planetary orbits, to the weight of the sun. Mr. Milgrom saw fit to go and fuck with all that... Here's why.

Back in the 70's, between snorting piles of coke and popping in different Donna Summer 8 tracks, scientists were measuring the rotation of galaxies. A galaxy does not all rotate at the same speed. The stuff on the inside rotates faster than the stuff on the outside. It's like when an ice skater pulls her arms in while she's spinning and she rotates faster. Now imagine if her hands were somehow instantaneously severed from her arms. When she pulled her arms in, the non-severed parts of her would rotate faster, but her hands would continue to rotate at the same speed. The longer her arms were in the first place, the slower her hands would be rotating relative to the rest of her.

The reason this is important is that you can back your way into figuring out the total mass of a galaxy if you can document the rotational speed as you work your way out from the center of the galaxy. But, there was a problem...

As the scientists worked their way out from the center, they noticed that there was a point where the stuff toward the outside of a galaxy was spinning faster than it should, given Newton's equation - they call this "flattening of the rotation curve." What this seemed to indicate is that the gravity from the center of the galaxy was having more of an effect than it should on the stuff towards the outer edge of the galaxy. This kind of messed their shit up.

So, they needed a way to explain this. What those coke-addled disco scientists did was invent the concept of dark matter. Dark matter has always bugged me because it seems like the cosmological version of a homunculus. Basically, what they're saying is, "Uhhh... I dunno. Something must be there that we can't see. That's what's creating the extra gravity." In order for this to work, something like 20% of our universe would need to be composed of "dark matter." For 30-some years, they've been trying to detect dark matter with no success.

What Milgrom did was fiddle with Newton's equation. The idea being that, just maybe, there was just a little more to the equation than that. What he proposed was F = ma²/a₀, but only if the acceleration were low enough - on the order of a 10 billionth of a meter per second per second. That's pretty freakin' slow. Thing is, it worked like a charm. The only problem is that it doesn't really offer an explanation why.

Here's what I'm proposing:

Gravity is pretty freakin' weak. How weak, you say? Let's put it like this: We are held fast to Terra Firma because of the gravity field of the Earth, which weighs 13.17 septillion pounds. Even so, a reasonably athletic man who weighs 200 pounds can propel himself 2-3 feet off the ground with little effort before gravity catches up with him and pulls him back down again. So, it's hard to imagine a force weaker than gravity. But, what if there was?

What if space-time itself had some sort of plasticity? What if it (to some very small degree) didn't want to submit to gravity? What if, when the gravitational force becomes small enough, matter would simply drag space-time along with it?

Imagine soap bubbles. It doesn't take much force to make them pop. But, a force small enough (say, blowing on it) will move the bubble as a whole. Or imagine a liquid. Stirring violently will create eddies while a slow stir will get the whole pot rotating along with the spoon.

What if space-time is viscous at a degree to which gravity is strong enough to cause eddies, but lessen that gravitational force enough and you can stir space-time - say 10 billionths of a meter per second per second? I need a person much smarter than myself to tell me why this wouldn't work.

Thanks for listening to my harebrained idea.

technorati tags:cosmology, MOND, physics, gravity

Random thoughts

• Hair gel is prohibited on airplanes.  At last check, exploding Dell laptops still allowed.
• Paris Hilton says, "I, like, cry, when I listen to my CD."  So do the rest of us, Paris...  So do the rest of us.
• There's a 13 year old kid (who stands 6'8" and weighs 256lbs.) playing in the little league world series.  Holy crap!
• I don't really believe that JonBenet guy is guilty, except of being REALLY creepy.
• Tech Buzz: Researchers have invented a shopping cart that won't run into things (even people's heels).  Laura is rejoicing.
• R.I.P Mattress Man.  McHenry, IL joins a growing list of municipalities banning mascots.  What am I going to do with this banana suit now?
• I wonder whatever happened to Henry Earl...
  

Small people that make me happy

So, I noticed CNNSI.com has a feature called "Top Ten Non-BCS Players." I clicked through telling myself, "One of them's got to be Garrett Wolfe."  For those of you unfamiliar with Mr. Wolfe, he's the diminuative (in stature, but not ability) running back for NIU.  He's in his senior year and is poised to break all the rushing records there.  The list starts at #10 and I clicked my way through 10, 9, 8...  By the time I got to 3 I thought, "Crap.  They totally overlooked this guy!"  Then, I got down to #1 and there he was!  It should be a fun time watching Huskie football this year.  Hopefully, they'll get into a big enough bowl that I won't be watching it alone at 2 in the morning because the stadium power went out like the last one...

Also, The Bean (a nickname derived from "Ellie Belly Jelly Bean..."  I'm so gay...) fell asleep in my arms again tonight.  That is possibly the most rewarding thing about parenting.  The way she reacts when I walk in the door after work is probably more immediately gratifying, but when she falls asleep, she wraps her little arms around my big, fat arm and snuggles up as close as she can.  The unbridled enthusiasm when I get home is great, but the unparalleled trust when she falls asleep lets me know it all really matters.

Ambiguous Grammar (Part Trois)

There was an ad on the bus this morning that read something like this:

"Do you experience the following:

• Do you find yourself unable or unwilling to interact with others?
• Do you lack the motivation to take care of your personal needs?
• Do others have a hard time following your conversations?
• Do you hear things others don't?

If you or someone you know are experiencing these symptoms, you may suffer from schizophrenia."

So, I'm thinking, if my friend hears voices that means I'm schizophrenic? So what if he's imaginary... And he only hears things we don't because he's a 6 ft. bunny. I mean, c'mon! His ears are huge!

General Notes

So, it looks like my cousin will be moving in for a while, which is cool 'cause I've always liked her. However, it will force me to make some tough decisions about which computers I really need in order to make some room. She's offered to sit for Ellie on Fridays when she has no class (heh...) which, combined with Laura's mom taking a day, helped us reduce the amount of nanny time we need to 3 days a week.

Julie R. (the woman we interviewed in an earler post) got the job. She was actually the only person we interviewed, but we were so impressed with her profile and presence that we both agreed immediately that she was the right one for the job. Sometimes, the universe just looks after you. She'll be starting next week. I'm not sure whom I feel happier for - us because we found someone we trust with the well-being of our child, or Julie R. because she gets to spend 3 days a week with the cutest girl in the world.

My mom probably would have picked up some time, but she's taking care of my sister's kids and driving a school bus on days when they're in school. I hope that she doesn't become "that crazy school bus driver" to those kids - we all have one of those, don't we? But, she seems to be taking the whole task to heart.

The renters upstairs from us just bought a place in Geneva. That's great for them, but bad for us. They're the best renters ever. I didn't even know they were renting for quite a while after we moved in. They treated the place and the rest of us like they had a stake in the well-being of our building. They're also Cubs fans and you never know what manner of mullet-wielding umpire-jumpers might take their place. It sounds like a couple of girls might be very interested in renting the place already.

If you read between the lines, you can see that I will soon be surrounded by a whole bunch more females than I have been. There's a definite estrogentrification happening in my world. Feel free to help me combat that. Come over for a Bears game. I'll grill some steaks and buy some beer. I have a really big TV! C'mon... Help a brother out!

Lyrics preview

I was in the middle of typing the lyrics for my new song up so Old Dog would have the answer portion of the chorus written out when I figured I would share them here.  If you have any feedback y/o constructive criticism, let me know in the comments.  Otherwise, this will just be a handy place to download the lyrics at practice tomorrow.

I left my love upon the freeway
I took a turn for the worse for the wear, I don't know why
This rain's been comin' down for three days
I can't escape the rain or fix this broken sky

I'm rollin' miles up by the minute
I measure time in terms of times I hear that same old song
I had a dream and you were in it
I had a dream and it kept my wide awake the whole night long

Chorus
I'm still drivin' so's the rain
(now we're getting somewhere)
And, now it's driving me insane
(to know you're out there somewhere)
This jagged, broken down terrain
(it's causing wear and tear that)
Shakes me up and breaks me down
In the middle of nowhere...

I'm drivin' up and down this highway
I'm in the outskirts on the offchance that you went back home
I think we should have done it my way
... I think we should have done it my way

Chorus X2

That's it.  I guess this might qualify as an experiment in open-source lyric writing if any of the feedback I get is worth incorporating.  Otherwise, here's the lyrics, Old Dog.

Thees leetle peegy...

So, I've started doing "This Little Piggy" with Ellie, which she loves. I think she loves it even more because I do a variation I call the "Ozzie Guillen version." It goes a little something like this:

(In my best Ozzie Guillen accent, which always sounds kind of Russian for some reason...)

• Thees leetle peegy ees a well-known homoseck-shwal,
  
• Thees leetle peegy wouldn't plunk a guy I asked heem to, so I benched heem...
  
• Thees leetle peegy had rahst bif (a parody of his Subway commercial)
  
• Thees leetle peegy had hahm (again... parody... same commercial)
  
• And thees leetle peegy... thees one right here... he go "wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee" all de way to home plate, which is in your armpit for some reason... I don't know why.
  

She loves it.

Come on now, people...

So, my Auntie Barbara is now sending me emails falsely attributed (according to snopes.com) to some retired Air Force general saying that it's a good idea we're in Iraq.

The thing that bugs me the most is not that she seems to agree that the war in Iraq is equivalent to the war on terror - she's older and used to wars where you can draw a line and say "good guys on this side, bad guys on that side..." I mean, we could even do that with the cold war, except for all them pinkos in Hollyweird. The truth is that the front lines of this war are in the back of coffee shops around the world or, more precisely, in the heads of the extremists.

It's not that this crowd really believes that spreading democracy like sunshine would solve this. Look at Palestine... Democracy worked wonders there. No! Wait! It only works if you elect the party we support!

It's not that they believe we can solve this with bombs and not new ideas...

It's the racism. It's the perception that this is a problem with Muslims. This is a problem of extremist vs. extremist being sold to us as the only way. This is a problem of a conflict that we were dragged into under false pretenses. This is a problem from which there is no way to elegantly extract ourselves...

This is a problem for which our leaders have no long-term strategy... They sold america on the evils of Islam and sold them on the idea that if you oppose the war, you oppose america... But, they gave even less thought to conflict resolution than the writing staff of "Three's Company..."

The problem is, I don't know any productive way to tell my Aunt that she's aligned with a fallacious cause... Or whether it even pays to do so...

technorati tags:iraq, war, snopes

Childcare interviews are underway!

So, we had our first interview of a potential childcare provider tonight. The whole process is daunting... You are, essentially, trying to discern whether or not you feel comfortable trusting this person with the well-being of your child. What questions can you ask to determine if you can? "Question #1: Can we trust you with the well-being of our child? Question #2: Were you lying about question #1?"

We're very fortunate the the first candidate, Julie R., seemed like the right person for the job right off the bat. She's a Georgetown grad working on her masters in school counseling at Northeastern and needs a part-time source of income for her last year at school. She was a nanny for a year prior to this and is willing to take a CPR class to make us feel better. Despite the qualifications and good answers to our (downloaded from the pipes of the internets) questions, the only things actually germaine to the interview were an almost zen-like air of calm and the fact that Ellie really seemed to take to her and she to Ellie.

In fact, Ellie almost seemed like she was trying to show off for Julie R.. So was Ming (or, Black Tarry Stool if you read Laura's blog), but he'll show off for anyone. He's like a crackwhore, but attention is his crack.

We're going through with the interview tomorrow with the older, no-car-havin' woman. But unless she wow's us beyond belief, we're hoping to sign on the dotted line with Julie R. on Wednesday. I just hope she's not part of some cult or something...

Bear down.

This post is probably of no interest to non-football or non-Bears fans.  Probably not that interesting to those of you that are...

However...  A couple of predictions:

• Justin Gage will have a breakout season this year and be the Bears' go-to guy
• Brian Griese will show Rex Grossman for the pretender that he is.  I just have never believed this guy was as good as the hype.
• Brian Urlacher will father another child.  Possibly by Nicole Richie...
  

Lights in the sky

So...  I was on the deck watching this plane fly along and then I saw a bright light with a tail fall away from the plane.  I called Laura and said, "can you come take a look at this?"  By the time she showed up at the back door, the light had split into two and looked like 2 bright, white roman candles falling from the sky.  The plane circled for a bit and then flew away to the west. 

I don't see anything being broadcast about it, but it sure looked like some shit fell off a plane.  Oh, well.  Something odd to add some interest to a Friday night.

Celebrity encounters (Part VI)

Two more to add today:

Joe Torre
He was going into the North Face store as I was leaving L'Appetito with my morning coffee. He looked like he had a hard day off yesterday.

Randy "The Big Unit" Johnson
Saw him boarding the team bus. He's a tall man. Good looking, too...

Update (Born again website...)

So, I finally got my hands on one of the CDs we sent out that had music on it instead of our new company brand info... and it's better than I ever could have imagined!

It's not a mix CD. Apparently, it's some band's demo (I'm assuming a wedding band). All of the songs you see listed in the previous post are performed by just a bunch of schmoes. As we hypothesized, the previously unidentified Loverboy song is "Working for the Weekend."

The fact that it's only clips rather than the whole song turns out to be perfect because the comedy is just turning to disgust when the clip ends. Then the next clip starts and the comedy begins anew...

I'm so happy.

Third time's a charm?

So, this is actually my third attempt at this post...

The first one was called "Moses and the 10... guidelines?" and is best summed up with the quote, "If the Bible is the Word of God, fine. But, I don't recall him announcing you as his editor."

The second was called "Why the Right will and must fail," which was based on my view the the right is made up of the "Constituency of Me" where the left is a "Constituency of We." Now that the Me's are in power, they have to function as a We and, guess what? They're just as fucked up and disorganized as the Left and can't get anything meaningful done.

I have a habit of getting on my high-horse and pontificating in a way that I don't think fosters much discussion. So, this time I thought I'd just pose a question:

Why am I (a liberal) telling conservatives to keep the damn government from crawling up everyone's asses? This seems a bit counter-intuitive to me...

Setting her up for a lifetime of disappointment...

...but, what a great day.

Ambiguous grammar (Part Deux)

So, today the headline on the elevator news screen was, "Arizona Serial Killer Cops Get Break in Case." So, I pictured a press conference:

"Hello. I'd like to thank everyone for coming. Sergeant Riley here just remembered that the string of killings in Arizona was comitted by us, the Arizona Serial Killer Cops. But, you probably should have seen that coming. Now, we'd like to open the floor to questions..."

Ambiguous grammar

So, we have these screens in the elevators here at the Hancock that make the ride up from the lobby a bit more pleasant by displaying news and interesting tidbits. Today, one particular tidbit read, "Bees, wasps, and snakes kill more people than sharks each year." At first, I wondered if that meant that they killed fewer sharks...

Then it dawned on me: "Oh... my... God... They're working together!!!" So, if you se a bee, a wasp, and a snake on a street corner, act casual and for God's sake - avoid eye contact!

Born again website...

So, we launched the new version of our corporate website yesterday. I've been living and breathing that shit for a while now so, while it was stressful yesterday, it's a great big load off today. So far, response has been positive and there's even the possibility that it has generated new work for the firm.

Part of the stress was that the launch had to coincide with a press release announcing the sale of our Euro and Latin America assets to another firm and our new corporate identity. The timing had to be pretty tight. In conjunction with announcing this to the world, we had to let everyone inside the firm know the score and get them new document templates, screensaver, desktop image, etc..

Kind of late in the process, the decision was made to produce a CD with a flash-y splash image and a menu to guide them through the process of installing all the new crap. So, we worked like crazy to produce this CD, review and revise it, and prepare it for duplication. Since the decision was made so late, we had to get a company to duplicate and screen print the labels overnight. We settled on the largest such firm in the country.

We sent off our disk at the last possible minute and ordered 600 copies. We got them back the next day and they looked great and the installers were working fine. So, the marketing department stuffed them in envelopes and handed them off to FedEx to deliver...

About noon the next day, the emails started coming in. They asked how come the CDs they received had only music on them. It seems that about a quarter of the CDs contained a hot music mix including Journey, Kansas, Styx, Whitesnake and many more! It's a regular "Now, That's What I Call Crappy Music!" Ironically, the disk is meant to announce selling off part of our firm and the first song is Journey's "Separate Ways." If it weren't so freaking funny, I'd be completely livid. As it is, I have to call the company tomorrow to rip them a new one.

I'm still trying to get my hands on on a copy. Not to step on Josh's toes, but I'll burn a copy for anyone who's interested in one, and with a playlist like this one, who wouldn't be?

#1 - "separate ways" - journey
#2 - "i'll wait" - van halen
#3 - "feels like the first time" - foreigner
#4 - "renegade" - styx
#5 - "time of the season" - the zombies
#6 - an, as yet, unidentified loverboy song
#7 - "magic carpet ride" - steppenwolf
#8 - "here i go again" - whitesnake
#9 - "any way u want it" - journey again
#10 - "no matter what" - badfinger
#11 - "never been any reason" - head east
#12 - "carry on my wayward son" - Kansas
#13 - "come sail away" - styx
#14 - "jesus is just alright w/ me" - doobie bros

Even funnier is the fact that someone expecting a hot mix like this is going to see a Flash animation and hear me say "Welcome to Diamond" in my best James Earl Jones voice...