North Dakota

My sister invited me to join here in North Dakota for Christmas. She goes up there to visit her husband's family, and it is quite a family. Roger is the youngest of 9 children, six of which ended up being there with their own children, plus one of the children of a sibling that couldn't make the trip. So it was quite a full house, actually three full houses!

Anyway, I was a bit reluctant at first, not sure how well I would fit in. Being alone on Christmas isn't as bad as being an outsider on Christmas. I ended up compromising by coming the day after Christmas, and staying for the weekend.

I had hoped this would also allow me to visit my brother and my sister-in-law when they were visiting Paul in New Hampshire. Unfortunately I was quite sick earlier in the week (even missing the last two drinking days of Christmas!) and on Christmas day I was still wrung out. I think pushing ahead to work Christmas Eve might have taken more out of me than my recovering body could deal with. Because when Christmas day rolled around, I slept till 11am, called my family, caught up on a few things and then took a three hour nap!

Anyway, on Christmas, I spent a good portion of the day tracking the blizzard that was hitting the area of North Dakota, Minnesota and surrounding areas. I only mention those two states in particular because those are the ones I needed to travel to/through. The weathermen were predicting 12-20 inches of snow, or more and near white-out conditions. But as I checked the airport status (even at the seeming height of the storm) Minneapolis wasn't showing delays. When I checked the next morning before heading to the airport I checked again and still didn't see delays.

So, I proceeded with the plan. I went to Logan and found the plane was on time. Because of the odd weather pattern surrounding the storm, we actually made amazing time to MSP and ended up arriving over half an hour early. This allowed me time to get food rather than just running to make my connection. The connecting plane apparently had a bit of a problem getting in (although I think it was from delays at the previous airport and not MSP), so they shuffled our gate and delayed the depature 30 minutes or so.

But eventually we got off the ground and a quick trip later we landed in Fargo. All told, my sister and Roger had a harder time driving to the Fargo Airport than I had flying in. The drive to Roger's parent's place wasn't too exciting, but it was a bit of a novel experience for me. The land is so flat, and the wind so persistent that the snow is constantly blowing around forming drifts in some places and clearing other places. Even though it was still snowing the wind blew the snow clear of the road. Off to either side of the road, it was impossible to separate land from sky as it was a even off-white all around.

The only places the snow would accumulate on the road was near the shelter belts, lines of trees planted to break up the wind. In those locations several inches of snow had accumulated. Actually the snow also accumulated at the intersections where the stop and go of traffic heated the snow and asphault enough to trap a layer of snow/ice which attracted more snow and ice.

That afternoon and evening some of the local family members came by. Some were unable to make it, even though they lived only a few miles away, because the snow plows had not come through and the snow drifts were too high to traverse. It was doubly ironic since others were able to drive all the way from Minnesota. But all told there were probably 20 or so family members there that night to open presents (the blizzard was at full tilt on Christmas day so the present opening was delayed). This is my niece Veronica opening one of her gifts, one small bit of paper at a time.

I got an awesome present from my sister, a T-Shirt that says, "Bacon is Meat Candy". She also got me a couple of knitted caps to keep my bald noggin warm in the Boston Winter.

The next day was a lot of fun. I got my first taste of snow-mobile driving! It was a lot of fun. I didn't get too adventurous as it was my first time. Well, I got a bit adventurous when I was coming in after going around the field for a while. Unfortunately, it was a bit too adventurous since I wasn't able to stay on the snow mobile as I was trying to force through the berm of plowed snow. Fortunately the snow was nice and soft. It was actually less painful and uncomfortable than a similar wipeout on a jet-ski. I guess water is a lot more forgiving frozen and at a tenth of the density. Even more fortunately, my sister was close enough to see what happened, and record the aftermath with my own camera. Yes that is snow on my beard

Most of the day was spent just hanging out. I learned how to play Smear, which is apparently very popular. Considering it requires eight people to play, it is a good thing Roger's family is so big. There was also round 2 of opening presents as more of the relatives were able to make it in. I thought the first night was ordered chaos, the second night was even crazier. With six of the siblings home, their wives and children... it was intense, but fun. I also learned that my Chinese Checkers skills are stuck back in the early 80's, as I was trounced by some of the kids.

All, told I had a lot of fun in North Dakota. The weather outside didn't end up being so cold (it was actually colder in Boston today than it was most of the time I was in in ND), and the people were very warm. So my thanks to the Bartholomays for having me.

Harvey

I stayed home sick from work today. Luckily, I recently got some new DVD's to help wile away the hours. Although I did catch some of the new Let's Make a Deal and The Price is Right. But there was no way I could sit through another judge so-and-so or a soap opera.

Anyway, one of the movies I put in was Harvey, starring Jimmy Stewart. I have to say that in many ways Elwood P Dowd is my hero. One line that has always stuck with me, ever since the first time I watched the movie was about advice that Elwood got from his mother:

'Years ago my mother used to say to me, she'd say, "In this world, Elwood, you must be" - she always called me Elwood - "In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant." Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me.' -- Elwood P Dowd (Harvey 1950).

Of course, it is really the entire character that I enjoyed. Perhaps its the naivete that gets to me, the simple natured man who won't see the bad in people. Someone who goes through life being friendly to strangers.

In a former life I collected quotes, that is to say I used to, but have fallen out of the habit. Another quote from Harvey that I found very interesting is when he is explaining what he does. He and Harvey sit at the bar and talk to people:

They tell about the big terrible things they've done and the big wonderful things they'll do. Their hopes, and their regrets, and their loves, and their hates. All very large, because nobody ever brings anything small into a bar.

Of course, there is a lot of philosophy to be found at the bottom of a whiskey glass.

2012

This weekend I went to see the movie 2012. It was definitely a disaster movie, with just about every cliche including ones not typically found in disaster movies. I'm not writing here to review the movie however, so much as to wax philosophical about one of the themes of the movie, namely: who gets a ticket to survive the disaster.

In the movie 2012, there were seemingly three types of people who made it onto the "ships": billionaires, genetically selected people, and politicians/military. The billionaires bought their way on the ship for a billion Euros, the politicians are politicians who need bully boys, and then there is the carefully selected by scientists types...

First off, why even allow billionaires? The world is getting obliterated and they won't have any money. Also they are very unlikely to have any skills that would be necessary to rebuilt society. Sure, their money would come in handy to actually build the ships, but after that they would become dead weight.

The politicians are marginally more acceptable, because there does need to be an organizational structure in place for the days after the end of the world as we know it. Although I know the politicians that would end up being selected would be the absolute worst of the bunch, so everyone would be better off without them.

In the same category as the politicians I put the military. They fall into the bucket because they are government. They also represent structure. They are probably the most obvious group to have represented because the "survival" and "engineering" experts could be cherry picked from across the military. Such selection process is very easy to do without drawing attention to the fact that the world is coming to an end.

The final group in the movie were those that were screened genetically to ensure the survival of the species. What a bunch of boloney. That is important when you only get to take say 20 people and have to repopulate the world. When you have thousands, or hundreds of thousands there is enough genetic diversity that inbreeding is not an issue. If they had said people were screened for hereditary diseases, that would make more sense, but it would only eliminate a small portion of the population. If you excluded people with family histories, you can still narrow it down, but would have billions of people to choose from.

So who would I pick? It is tempting to follow the path of eugenics: select people who are the smartest and strongest/healthiest. However, while that would be good for the long term advancement of humanity, it would do little to help in the first decade or two. In those days it is most important to have the correct job skills and the correct personalities.

The personalities of the people who are saved is very important. They have to be hard workers, optimists, and morally upright people. When there aren't a lot of people you can't have people who don't pull their weight, or people who leech of society. Of course, the real question is how to select people by personality type...

As for job skills, there are a number that are obvious: craftsmen and doctors. Someone has to build the new world, and take care of the people in it. Throw in some engineers, and chemists, biologists (zoologists/botanists), and of course farmers/ranchers. Some of these occupations are things that most anyone can learn given some time, but it would be important to have a number of experts in the various fields. So everyone should learn some crafts and farming, but experts are still needed.

But there are a number of less obvious occupations as well. Teachers will be very important, as will librarians and people who know how to access and disburse knowledge and information. With all the time and effort being spent to simply survive the fall of society, it will be incredibly easy to lose the knowledge. Sure, the information will be preserved by some media, but it is important to know the information is there to be accessed. It is also important to keep the knowledge "living" because it is easier to pass on information from person to person than to rediscover the knowledge buried somewhere.

The final thing I would touch on is the age and gender distribution. Obviously to repopulate the earth you want a large percentage of the people who survive to be of childbearing age or younger. But just because someone is too old to have children doesn't mean they can't be useful to a post-apocalypse society. There is the knowledge base that is so important, and with age comes wisdom. So the elder members of the saved group would need to be chosen more for their expertise than anything else, and the youth more for their health and predicted capabilities. The exact distribution should also be chosen based on predictions of how quickly food supplies with regrow. It would be terrible to have tons of babies being born and toddlers running around without food. Also children take time to contribute to society, so in the first few years they are a drain (although psychologically they would be very important!).

Finally gender distribution. It would be easy to say, "save more women" because the women are what would ultimately determine how quickly the world it repopulated. But that would really only be an issue with a very small group of survivors. With a large group of survivors that becomes less important because there isn't a rush to preserve the species. In those cases the provider/nurturer pairing becomes important. Also, men on average have advantages in strength and stamina which would be important in a building society.

Anyway, I could go on and on. It wouldn't be an easy thing to decide and the practical considerations are monumental. How to keep it secret so there isn't mass rioting and anarchy? How do you convince people to contribute to the building/preservation who aren't going to get a ticket? [Stepping out of character for a moment, remember the scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where Indy throws the Nazi out of the zeppelin and says, "No Ticket!"]

Scrambled Eggs

The first thing that I've been meaning to write down is about scrambled eggs. It doesn't sounds like anything too earth-shattering, I realize, but it is something that I've been thinking about. Breakfast happens to be one of my favorite meals of the day, but when I go to restaurants I can never understand why the eggs never taste good. Often they taste rather powdery, or greasy. Now, I'm not much of a chef, but I came up with my own recipe which seems to give pretty good results:

2 whole eggs
1 egg white
1 small pinch of creme of tartar
~2 tablespoons of milk
~1/4 teaspoon of salt

I'm not a big of yolks anyway, and uses some egg whites only makes the result a bit fluffier. Anyway, mix them all together and whip for a minute. Be sure to incorporate a lot of air as your doing it.

Frying pan with medium heat. Put in a pat of butter and wait until the butter is almost browning, which will take a bit of practice to figure out when this point is reached. If you like buttery eggs leave the excess butter in the pan, I usually pour out whatever isn't needed to cover the pan.

Pour the eggs into the pan. I usually let the bottom just start to congeal before stirring the mixture. I've found a rubber spatula works really well. Flipping the eggs on the bottom to the top. Constant motion prevents overcooking the outside. Keep it up until most of the runny moisture is cooked out. There should be some juice left, since the eggs will keep cooking once they are transferred to the plate. But no need to overdo it or the juice will run into your other food.

Anyway, that's how I cook my eggs.

Quotations

When I was in college, one of my hobbies was collecting quotes. Since it was the early days of the internet (at least before most people knew about the internet, the days of 56k modems and bulletin boards), I decided to make a webpage. One of the first things I did was start a quotation page. As I said, this was the early days of the internet, so my 200+ quotes was actually a huge number by the standards of the day. After a couple of years, someone even thought highly enough about my page that he plagiarized it. Of course, taking quotes from my page was fine, but I did object to wholesale copying of my page...

When I was in grad school, I discovered that one of my pages was actually referenced in a journal article. I had trolled the internet for a while trying to find the proper citation for the quote, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." Most sources listed Mark Twain, but he thought it came from Benjamin Disraeli. Benjamin Disraeli is not known to have said it however. Anyway, my explanation got cited which I thought was pretty cool.

But, that was college. I really haven't touched the quotation page I set up since then, except to transfer it from my school's computer system to Geocities. Recently, Yahoo has decided to close Geocities, so my pages are going to be taken down before the end of the month. I spent some time today copying all the files to my computer.

Anyway, I thought I'd share the quotes from one of my favorite sources Publilius Syrus. He was an ancient Roman who came up with a number of clever sentences. Many of them are relatively common today, and most are just as pertinent:

• Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
• To do two things at once is to do neither.
• The eyes are not responsible when the mind does the seeing.
• God looks at the clean hands, not the full ones.
• As men, we are all equal in the presence of death.
• We are interested in others when they are interested in us.
• Every one excels in something in which another fails.
• A god could hardly love and be wise.
• Learn to see in another's calamity the ills which you should avoid.
• Many receive advice, few profit by it.
• You should hammer your iron when it is glowing hot.
• What is left when honour is lost?
• When Fortune flatters, she does it to betray.
• Fortune is like glass,--the brighter the glitter, the more easily broken.
• It is more easy to get a favour from fortune than to keep it.
• There are some remedies worse than the disease.
• Powerful indeed is the empire of habit.
• When two do the same thing, it is not the same thing after all.
• No tears are shed when an enemy dies.
• The bow too tensely strung is easily broken.
• Treat your friend as if he might become an enemy.
• The judge is condemned when the criminal is acquitted.
• When innocence is frightened, the judge is condemned.
• Practice is the best of all instructors.
• Never find your delight in another's misfortune.
• The fear of death is more to be dreaded than death itself.
• A rolling stone gathers no moss.
• Never promise more than you can perform.
• It is not every question that deserves an answer.
• No man is happy who does not think himself so.
• Never find your delight in another's misfortune.
• A guilty conscience never feels secure.
• Familiarity breeds contempt.
• It is a very hard undertaking to seek to please everybody.
• It matters not what you are thought to be, but what you are.
• No one knows what he can do till he tries.
• It matters not how long you live, but how well.
• Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it.
• Better be ignorant of a matter than half know it.
• Prosperity makes friends, adversity tries them.
• Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage.
• It is a consolation to the wretched to have companions in misery.
• Confession of our faults is the next thing to innocency.
• I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
• Speech is a mirror of the soul: as a man speaks, so is he.
• In quarreling the truth is always lost.
• No one reaches a high position without daring.
• For a good cause, crime is virtuous.
• No pleasure endures unseasoned by variety.
• Beware the fury of a patient man
• It is only the ignorant who despise education.
• Do not despise the bottom rungs in the ascent to greatness.
• He who flees from trial confesses his guilt.
• It is his nature, not his standing, that makes a good man.
• You can accomplish by kindness what you cannot do by force.
• A friendship that can end never really began.
• It's a bad plan that can't be changed.
• An angry man is again angry with himself when he returns to reason.
• The remedy for wrongs is to forget them.
• From the errors of others a wise man corrects his own.
• It is better to learn late than never.
• A Rooster has great influence on its own dunghill

Weekend

I went down to Knoxville this weekend for my niece's 1st birthday. I would say birthday party, and that was the original intent, but the party was postponed until today, and I got back last night.

On the second leg of my flight down, I shared the flight with a Washington Redskin. His behavior, while not deplorable, still didn't shine the best light on him. He spent a good deal of the flight chatting up the flight attendant (not that I could blame him). When he found out she wanted to be a journalist, he began complaining about sports journalists and how "we" hate them (upon getting home and trying to identify which player it was on the flight, I came to realize why "he" wouldn't like journalists). Anyway, rather than make snarky comments, I'll close this anecdote with an observation, he was listed at 6'5 1/2", but appeared to be at least an inch, more likely two inches shorter than I am. Although it is hard to tell in the confines of an airplane that might have had six feet of headroom total.

My niece is well on the way to being a real person. She is just starting to walk and seems to be able to understand some of what is going on around her. I was hoping to hear her say something, but it all sounded like baby babble to me. Although she does seem to understand shaking her head to say no (which I mostly got when I tried to pick her up).

Apparently I am still too much of a stranger for Veronica to enjoy being around. Although Melanie says she was a bit grumpy because she is getting a new tooth in. Also she was a bit out of sorts because Melanie was sick and couldn't play with her.

So, Melanie found out she had Strep on Friday. Just in time to tell me before I got on the flight down. I didn't change my plans as a result, but the party was pushed back from Saturday till Monday, so Melanie wouldn't get people/children who came to the party sick. It is also hard to setup a party from quarantine.

One of the "upsides" was that I got to bake the cake for Veronica. Not the really cool bear cake Melanie ended up making for the actual party, but just a normal cake. It was actually the first time I'd made a cake from scratch, and it turned out pretty well, especially with Melanie helping as she could. The icing I made ended up being a little too soft to make great decorations (I was going to try to make icing roses), but it tasted pretty good.

When it came time for birthday cake, Veronica didn't demolish the cake as Melanie and I were expecting. We gave her a big slice and she delicately pulled crumbs off the corners. No handful of frosting, no big mess. But it was still a good time.

Cigarette Butts

I went shopping for my niece's birthday after work today. It was actually a rather refreshing experience for me. Being big and tall, it is very frustrating for me to go clothes shopping, since I am limited to a handful of stores and basically none of the specialty shops have anything. But for my niece, I didn't have to worry about sizes. Also, I didn't really have to worry about if anything matched because they were little outfits.

Anyway, the real reason for this blog isn't shopping for my niece. Because after I went shopping, I went to dinner, which was good but still not the subject of the story. It is what happened as I was walking out of the restaurant. There was a guy taking off the top of one of those cigarette disposal poles. About 2 inches wide column with holes on the sides that flares down at the bottom. Anyway the guy was searching through the disposed of cigarettes for something to smoke.

I have seen homeless people, at least that's how they look, in the past pick up cigarettes from the street and smoking them. But this seemed worse that than. I suppose it's pretty much the same in reality, but it is still a bit disturbing. Kind of like an alcoholic drinking the dregs of other people's drinks at a bar. Anyway, it made me wonder if he's driven to it entirely from the addiction to cigarettes or for the enjoyment he gets from the smoking. Similarly for the homeless people who spend their nickels and dimes to buy alcohol instead of food. Are they that strongly addicted, or do they crave the escape the alcohol gives them.

Another thing that I was reminded of was an old math problem. A man figures out a way to unroll cigarette butts and combine them together to form new cigarettes. It takes five cigarettes to create a new cigarette. If they man finds 25 cigarette butts, how many cigarettes can he smoke?