Nothing says 1975 like Woven Polyester Texturized pants.
(Click on the picture for more from the 1975 Sears Catalog.)
Unless of course it was the number one single of that year, “Love Will Keep Us Together” by Captain and Tennille. The chats from that year are filled with the likes of BJ Thomas, Tony Orlando and Dawn, John Denver, and Wings. That was one ugly year, even the colors were awful. The only year I can think of that can compete with it is 1974….
I know that I think differently than a lot of people do when it comes to things like economics, politics, and religion. What strikes me is the reactions I get from people. There is a common belief that if someone has deduced things logically, they must be right, and therefore I must be wrong. They confuse making sense for reality.
Imagine if told someone that parallel* lines can intersect and in some cases must intersect. If that person were in an argumentative mood, they might point out that the very definition of parallel lines forbids them from crossing. If this were a political, economic, or a religious point, more times than not I would be dismissed as an idiot. I’ve gotten that reaction fairly frequently. What I almost never get asked is why I might think that way. It turns out there’s a whole bunch of other types of geometries out there, as soon as you put lines on curved surfaces, basic rules of geometry get changed.
The point is that both I and my mysterious debater can logically defend why my view is right or wrong. The efficacy of logic is limited by the initial conditions or beliefs you start with. If you think you live in a Euclidian world and I think I live in an elliptic world, we are never going to come to any agreement or understanding if we rely on logic to stake out our claims.The same thing goes for any other world view you can think of. Once you believe you know the basic underpinning of your world, everything else follows logically.
Most people do what “males sense” to them based on their beliefs. If you try to point out that any given view they have is incorrect or, too often these days, tell them that they are stupid, you won’t get anywhere because they are a long ways down the causality chain. If you want to convince them to change their mind about something, you need to go to much deeper. When I talk to people about religion, economics, and even politics, I am usually pointing out that we don’t live in a Euclidian world despite appearances and how much sense it seems to make. It takes time, but ultimately you have to convince people you live in a better world than they do if you want them to come around to your way of thinking. It may not be a great way of scoring quick points, but it does give them some things to think about. That can lead to real conversations as opposed to slogans and name calling.
Of course, it’s a lot easier to not do any of this. Gotta keep telling myself that it’s worth doing. I think it pays off long term, if only for my mental health…
* I am using Euclid’s definition of parallel. Loosely, that is that if there is a line and a point off that line, there is only one line that can be drawn through that point that does not intersect that line. That’s Euclid’s 5th postulate, we call it parallelism. In elliptic space, there can be no parallel lines as Euclid postulated.
I moved into my new room/apartment yesterday. It’s 3-3.5 times bigger, I have my own “bachelor kitchen” and my own bathroom. I’m already wondering how I lived in that cramped little room for so long… I can now use my bed for just… sleeping. It was the only furniture I had in the last room. There wasn’t any room for anything else so I was on the computer, watched TV (on my computer), ate, talked on the phone, etc. all in my bed. Now I have an actual comfy chair plus a desk with another chair, and even a tiny eating area. I’m going to be able to set my speakers up more properly than before.
I am now in the basement. There is a huge sliding glass door on one end of the room, but it is under the deck. That, plus the dark panelling really do make this room a bit of a cave. It’s also a bit chilly in here too. While I might need to make use of the space heater for the next several weeks, the summer will be soooo much nicer down here. it was routinely 10-15 degrees cooler down here last year.
All in all I really like the new digs. I can stretch out, I’m pretty well separated from everyone else in the house, and it’s much quieter than I anticipated. Yes, I’ll be paying a bit more in rent, but it’s money well spent. Here’s to better living!
I’ll be moving into a much larger room on the 1st. This is a really big deal for me. I’ve been living in an 8 foot by 10 foot room ever since I came up here. I figure I’l have about 3x the space now. I’ll also have my own bathroom, my own fridge, and my own microwave and toaster oven. What more could a bachelor want? My rent will be going up of course, but it is still very reasonable. It’l max out at $600 a month. So I’m getting more space and I’m still going to be within walking distance of my Pakistani and Indian places and an easy commute. Doesn’t get much better than that up here.
Wow, 40 years… 1971 really was 40 years ago wasn’t it? That makes the music I grew up with officially “Oldies” radio at this point I suppose.
40 isn’t really hitting me very hard, 30 was much worse. When I turned 30, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had wasted my 20s. I hadn’t done much of anything really. Sure, I had some nice toys, but all I did was work really. Well, my 3d decade was quite a but more eventful. It started out with me going back to school. I decided that I was going to get some sort of degree, ended up getting into the doctoral program of economics. While I loved the subject matter, the academic life didn’t feel right to me, so it was on to plan B. That plan ended up being my trip to Yemen. That was enough adventure for a lifetime…
Of course the thing that has had the most impact on me from my 30’s is my MS. Like I said, my 30s were eventful! I think I’ve called a truce between it and myself. We’re getting along for the most part. MS does make me feel old, but I’m actually in a good place.. I’ve got a great job that I enjoy, my medicines are doing their thing, and everyone keeps telling me how young I look. 🙂
Thanks to everyone that has wished my a happy birthday, let’s go another 40 years!
Just did my 24th loan through Kiva. I have been putting in $25 a month since September of 2009 and now things are starting to really roll. By my estimates, I have put in $450 into Kiva but have made $600 worth of loans. As people pay me back, I channel that money back into more loans. The last two months have been great, when I do my usual $25 contribution there is already over $25 in my account. Now I’m doing 2 loans a month even though I’m still putting in the same amount as I always have.So far there has been exactly 0 defaults. This is how things are supposed to work. People get infusions of capital making them more productive. They pay that money back and then that same money can go to someone else. Yes, they pay interest on the loan (not to me BTW, I only get back what I put in) but that assures that the money is being put to productive uses.
Most people see this as a great charity. I can’t help but notice that it looks like good old fashioned loans to improve capital and productivity. In other words, this looks exactly the way things would be absent market distortions. In an ideal world I would receive some of that interest instead of only getting the warm glow of helping someone out. That’s really the only thing separating what Kiva does from good old-fashioned capitalism.
One day I might need to withdraw the money I’ve put into Kiva. I have that option. I’m not getting any interest on putting my money aside, and I run the risk of not getting some of it back. Additionally, if I do want to withdraw the money, I might have to wait until it gets paid back to me before withdrawing. In general though, I feel good about what Im doing with this money and with a diversified enough portfolio I know that I can get most of it back eventually. Why aren’t more people doing this?
I watched the Dr. Who Christmas special. Thought it was a great, fun episode. Nothing very deep, but Christmasy and will tide me over until the series starts up again in the spring. In addition, I got the last “Companion Chronicle” CD that I was missing. The Companion Chronicles are a series of audio plays made by Big Finish productions. They have a companion of the Doctor’s reminiscing about an adventure with (and once in a while without) the Doctor. They bring back folks from all of the “classic” doctors, including the 1st and 2nd doctors! So I now hove all of them…
I decided to take advantage of some specials that are being run by Big Finish and bought a few other Dr. Who related programs as well. I got both the “Gallifrey” and “Dalek Empire” series. They are spin offs, in the Dr. Who universe but not including the Doctor. All told, it’s close to 30 CDs worth of audio plays… I also bought the 4th season of the eighth doctor adventures. That’s another 9 when they have put all of them out…
Clearly, I really enjoy these things. All of this should keep me busy throughout the year. Believe it or not, there are still a bunch of other Dr. Who spin offs that I’d like to get. Cybermen, I Davros, UNIT, The Sarah Jane Adventures, and eventually more Bernice Summerfield. Big Finish sure know how to give folks what they like…
It’s a good Christmas, I’ve got time off, everyone is together, and things are looking good. Hope everyone has a great time and enjoys the holidays. Merry Christmas!!!!
I have an aunt that is a fan of lizards and has an appreciation of the silly things in life, so I was happy to find a comic called The Lizard of Oz. I figured it would be a fun Christmas present, and we’d all get a laugh. I got it yesterday and had a quick read. Good thing I did…
Instead of good witched and bad witches, we have the “Bitch of the West” and the “Good Fellatio Fairy of the North.” They are both curiously lacking in clothes. That ought to give you an idea of the level of this thing. Luckily, the main, Dorothy-like character is spared any sort of real sex treatment. Turns out the guy that did this was an artist for Heavy Metal magazine for years. Now, I’m not one to necessarily turn my nose up at this kind of thing, but this is just bad. It isn’t funny, sexy, or even drawn well. It manages to actually be offensive in several places. I gotta figure out if there’s a reasonable way to return this.
Sooooo, looks like Im going to have to find something else for my aunt for Christmas. SIGH, and I thought I was done shopping for the year…
I graduated from Ithaca College in 1994 with a BFA in Film, Photography, and Visual Arts. At the time I was totally burned out on academics and swore that I’d never go back to school. For a while that held, I got a job in Newport News and then later moved up to Northern Virginia. I continued my reading habit but drifted mostly into non-fiction works. In addition to my copy of Copi’s into to logic textbook, I also started to read things like The Blue Cliff Record, The Flower Ornament Sutra, Godel, Escher and Bach, Aikido and the Dynamic Sphere, Various histories of mathematics, and Mathematic, it’s Form, content and Meaning.
Those last two were instrumental in my later studies. Studying symbolic logic had gotten rid of a lot of the intimidation I felt towards mathematics. I finally actually understood things like the commutative, associative, and distributive laws in Algebra. The history of mathematics books piqued my interest in numbers and when I read the Form, Content and Meaning, I understood (conceptually) all the math I tried to learn in high school. Shortly after, I enrolled in a pre-calculus class in a community college. I aced it, going over the same tired ground of high school but understanding what it was about this time.
That class was mostly about seeing if I could do it, a theme I would return to later. At the time I didn’t think I’d do much with it. Well, my 30th birthday rolled around and I hated where I had gone professionally and decided to go back to school. Looking around at what was out there as a better career, I decided that architecture would be something that I would love to do and could potentially make a good living out of it. Trouble was, a BFA ill prepared me for that degree. I needed a lot more math and I could never draw… Back to school it was!
I re-enrolled in some classes in community college. Most of these were pretty directed towards my goal, but I managed to work in at least one fun class, creative writing. That was both good and terrible at the some time. I liked flexing my writing muscles, even if I was horrified at the prospect of spending the first part of the class on writing poetry. The bad part was that this was community college. There were a fair number of people that were really pushing themselves in community college. For me, it was a stepping stone. I turned in a 20 page short story for the class to read. One of my classmates told me, “I’m sure it’s a good story, but dude, I’m never going to read anything that long…”
My first semester back to school I took Calc 1, creative writing, and intro to drawing. The thought of doing calculus always intimidated me, I imagined that it was a black art. I was disappointed/relieved to find out that it was mostly algebra. I aced the class. I also had one of my “Doh!” moments in that class. The professor (can’t remember his name) finished explaining what an integral was. He stepped back from the diagram of rectangles under a curve and said, “If you ever want to know what genius looks like, that’s it.” It was the first time I got such a complicated concept boiled down into a diagram. The thought that someone had come up with that blew my mind…
The intro to drawing class was really the one that intimidated me the most. I have never been able to draw, I joke that the reason I went into photography was because I couldn’t draw. I read “Drawing on the Right side of the Brain” before the class started and it helped quite a bit. The teacher cajoled me and I sweated bullets. She eventually convinced me to relax a little and little by little I realized that I could indeed draw with enough practice. I was able to tap into the way of seeing I developed in my photography and really concentrate on putting it down on paper. I never did get a handle on shading though…
Anyway, I realized that with enough time I could learn to draw well. Casual sketching was still beyond me. That, and realizing that a carear in architecture would take 10+ years to get off the ground convinced me to change my direction. Looking in the papers, it looked like a public policy degree could take me places, so I went into that.
That was fortuitous. I never did do anything in the policy realm, but to get ready for that I needed to take some economics courses. Intro to macro economics was incredibly dull, it was truly just a class to get through. The micro class had a bit of a spark for me, but it too was painfully dull. It wasn’t until I took some intermediate (undergrad) economics courses at George Mason that my world turned upside down…
The macro class was interesting, but bewildering. There were all sorts of theories and none of them made a lot of sense. We covered the so-called classical economics and Keynesian economics views of the macro economy. It was all pretty abstract stuff. The micro class blew my mind. Larry Ianaconne is a brilliant man. Micro economics, unlike its macro cousin, made all sorts of sense. It fed into the logical framework that I had developed over the years and it all seemed to fit together nicely. What really made me take notice was Larry’s studies on the economics of religion. Not the dollars and cents part, but the decision making that went into people following religions. It opened my eyes to the possibilities that economics offers. I decided to switch my emphasis to economics.
Of course, that meant I would need far more mathematics. I took two more semesters of calculus, a semester of stats, a semester of econometrics (an applied stats class) and a semester of linear algebra just so I could apply to the doctoral program of economics. I also got a research assistant position with professor Ianaconne. That, along with a good recommendation from him got me into the program. I was a grad student! I was looking forward to a good job and 4 or 5 years of studying interesting things. How’d that turn out? I’ll see you in the next section…