Friends

Let's talk about Fox News! I greatly dislike it.

That was a fairly quick discussion; perhaps I should elaborate a bit. It's not the content of Fox News that bothers me the most. I don't follow Fox News, and while many of the things which draw them to my attention irritate me, I don't claim that that's a full picture of the network. I'm sure that most of their stories are very similar to most of the stuff on CNN. Now that I think about it, that means that they're largely celebrity gossip and fluff pieces, so that's not a huge point in their favor -- but for good or for ill, it doesn't really set them apart from the other networks.

Their style of reporting, however, is distinct, and it irritates me. Like the emails I receive from the American Family Association, I notice a distinct lack of evidence in the articles I read from Fox News. Today, for example, they have a piece on a typographical error in a new law, causing it to require that Amtrak passengers with guns be locked inside boxes while traveling -- or so they would have me believe.

It's not that I think Fox made this up; that's a pretty ridiculous story to invent. However, they don't give the bill number, so I can't go look it up to corroborate. They don't include any sort of a picture. They don't even have the actual text containing the typo, which seems to me to be a particularly egregious failure. The article indicates that the error probably appeared late in the bill's life, so any online versions likely wouldn't have the same mistake, and I imagine there are only so many photos of bills that the president is signing into law. But they got this information from somewhere; someone had to read it and say, "Hey, that sentence says that people have to be locked up, not their guns!" Why couldn't the actual text be passed along? Is it so complex that they feel their readers wouldn't be able to follow the sentence? That's a bit insulting, but it's the best explanation I can come up with.

The alternative is that in his rush to write the article on how hilarious it is that people would write up a bill and not proofread it, the author failed to notice that he hadn't actually included the line which he was mocking. I doubt this is what actually occurred, but it's a fantastic visual.

"Ha ha, these schmoes can't even remember to put all the words in a sentence in the right order! Look at this!"
"Look at what?"
"At -- ah, at -- tell me you haven't already published that."

In a perfect world, this would be what really happened.

Just last week, I was talking to ddr_ho about why I don't have a counter on this journal. I've never wanted one, because the temptation to start tracking the statistics is much too great. I used to have a service that would tell me where people were visiting from; it would show me a pie chart diagramming how many visitors were American, how many were Australian, and so on. It also showed me who was coming from a .com, a .org, or whatever; I was always a little alarmed at the significant percentage who visited from behind a .mil address.

That tracker never told me how many visitors I had, though, nor did I want it to. I get much too caught up in making numbers dance; I like to reorganize them and see what new things they can tell me. It's a very entertaining pastime; indeed, if anything, it passes the time rather too well. I can kill hours just mucking around with a pile of loose numbers.

Unfortunately for me, LiveJournal has just integrated pageview tracking into its software, tracking visitors as far back as mid-June. It tells me how many people have been to my journal, how many have read the posts in other feeds, how many have read each individual post, and on what days -- the list goes on. This is much more information than it's really safe for me to have; I'm being sucked in by the lure of totally unnecessary statistics.

My sole saving grace is that there doesn't appear to be any way to export this data into a spreadsheet. If that happens, it's all over; my entire journal will become devoted to discussing the numbers of people looking at my journal, until I've looked so far into my own navel that I've turned myself entirely inside out. On the bright side, I'd know exactly how many page views it took to cause me to reach that point.

There's no reason in the world I'd ever need to know that my thoughts on creationists and stalactites have been looked at 1,245 times. Now that the information's available to me, though, I can't just leave it out there unviewed. It wants to be loved! And who am I to deny it that?

I was poking around in the trunk of my car the other day, and wedged in between the floor of the trunk and the back seat, I found a single playing card. It's a three of spades, and the back isn't a pattern I've ever seen before; there's a green sunburst with four spades arranged in a diamond pattern in the middle. Each spade has a faint image of a dragon on it. It's fairly distinctive, and I can't imagine how just one of these cards could have gotten into my car by itself, and without my knowledge.

The obvious answer, I think, is that someone was trying to kill me. Clearly, my trunk was infiltrated by one of those assassins who likes to leave a calling card -- in this case, the three of spades. Unfortunately for this assassin, I don't have all that much call to get things out of my trunk. He probably crawled in there, figuring he'd get me later that day, and a few days later gave up and left in disgust. He might not even have realized that he forgot his card; I assume he had a bunch. After all, it'd be awkward to have to go steal your calling card back every time.

I stuck the card in my sun visor, where it proceeded to badly alarm me a few minutes later when I turned a corner and the card fell into my lap. It was a jump-scare like in horror movies, only instead of "What was that? Oh, it's just the cat," it was, "What was that? Oh, it's only the symbol that someone is here to kill me, moving under its own power." As you might expect, this is somewhat less than reassuring.

I completely failed to die then, though, and continued this streak not only for the rest of the ride home, but all the way into today. With such a success record, I've begun to regard this card as a lucky talisman. After all, I have not died once since finding it! In fairness, this is remarkably similar to the number of times I have died previous to finding the card. Still, statistically significant or not, this is my life we're talking about. I don't think I can take any chances.

Even if the card isn't protecting my life, I figure it's a good idea to keep it on me. That way, if I ever have to kill someone, or even just kill someone by accident, I can leave the card with the body, and throw the police off of my trail.

"Look!" they'll say. "The three of spades! This was the work of a professional." And I, a mere amateur murderer, will be completely overlooked.

My trip into work today was filled with the usual distractions. I wondered if it was actually going to get cold enough to snow this year, I thought about the food I had for lunch, I wondered where on Earth I'd found some of the songs on my iPod. I did not think about one thing in particular that I really should have thought about; by definition, though, that didn't occur to me. It wasn't until I'd walked into work and unlocked my office that I realized what I should have been focused on. I turned on the light, looked at the lonely docking station on my desk and, in a truly Shakespearean summarization of the moment, said, "Huh." I'd forgotten my computer at home.

I briefly considered heading back home to get it, but dismissed that option as nearly as absurd as forgetting the computer in the first place. Although I am probably the person at my company least able to do my job without a computer, I'm also the only one who can go snag a spare without reporting his boneheaded maneuver to anyone else. Most of what I need is located on the network, and the bit that isn't, I was able to download to a travel laptop before the first of the morning crises rolled in.

Despite the fact that I have everything I technically need on this computer, it's amazing how inconvenient it is. It's a different model than the one I usually use, so it won't fit into my docking station. I don't feel like undoing all of the cords, only to reconnect them tomorrow, so I'm working without my external keyboard, mouse and monitor. Everything's crammed into half as much space as usual, making me surprisingly reluctant to run my standard complement of programs. I've found myself closing and reopening things all day long, just because I'm tired of them being piled up on top of each other.

On the other hand, it's been a great excuse for not starting projects. "Well, I could do that, but I'd just have to relocate/rework/resize it tomorrow." I had several things that I'd meant to begin working on today that have all been delayed now. Of course, I've been meaning to start on them for up to a week now, and it hasn't happened yet, so it's not like I believe this excuse. It's just today's rationale. Tomorrow, there'll be a new reason -- or else there'll be another project that I'm really going to start on, only I just can't because I've finally begun one of these. Everything's more enjoyable when you're doing it in order to avoid doing something else, I've found.

This computer hadn't been turned on for a while, and it's convinced that it's found some updates that need to be installed immediately. Every few minutes, it pops up a dialogue box that says, "I'm going to reboot if you don't tell me not to within 5 minutes!" I could just reboot, but it's more fun to pit myself against the computer. It's still got a few hours left to thwart me, but I haven't missed a window so far. We'll see if I can hold out for the rest of the day.

Yesterday, Norway was visited by aliens. This is, of course, being denied by Norway's Agency in Charge of No Fun, but their explanation is sorely lacking. According to them, it was probably a failed Russian missile launch. This is being supported by the Russian Defense Ministry, who say that they did launch a missile, which "failed in its third stage of trajectory."

Now, admittedly, I was not there; all I've seen of the event is some blurry video and this amazing picture that I assume is time-lapse photography. Each of them show the same thing, though, and that's a perfect spiral. When the head of an observatory in Norway was interviewed, he said that missile launches were commonly seen, but that he'd never seen anything like this before.

This is a man whose job it is to sit around watching the night sky in an area where missile launches happen frequently, and who presumably has quite a lot of expensive recording equipment catching things that he might have missed -- and it was new to him. So it could be that the strange sight really was due to a malfunctioning motor that just happened to make a rocket describe an unwavering design that looks to have been drawn by a spirograph, burning out -- if I saw correctly in the video -- only when it got to the exact center. It could also have been swamp gas, or maybe the planet Venus reflecting off of some clouds.

I do appreciate the variant denial technique Russia is using, of loudly stating that they refuse to admit it was a missile. "Yes, we launched a missile at the same time as that strange light, but we're not saying it was that," is what their statements boil down to. This makes it sound like they're actually just doing a bad job of denying that it was a missile, instead of doing a bad job of denying that a portal in spacetime opened over Norway and disgorged a race of sentient corrosive gases into the upper atmosphere.

I'm not saying that the strange blue protrusion in the center is an interdimensional drill, of course. I'm just saying that it's as good a theory as I've heard.

I have two apples on my desk right now. One has been here for a week, or maybe two; I brought it along one day in case I wanted to eat it, and never did. Every day, I consider eating it, and decide against it. Apples are very poor salesmen of themselves; their whole attitude is, "I'm here if you want an apple. You don't want an apple, that's your business." I'm not saying that I'd want someone who considered me to be food to devour me, either, but I do think I'd be emotionally invested in it one way or the other.

Although I have not been eating the apple, I have been flicking it every day. It sounds hollow, and since I'm fairly certain that this is not the case, it continues to interest me mildly. I'm not devoting any large amount of time to this activity, especially since you can only get one note out of an apple.

As I indicated, though, I brought in a second apple today. I hadn't really thought about it, but it now seems obvious: you can get two different notes out of two different apples, as long as they're at different stages of ripeness. So now, instead of drumming randomly on my apple, I can attempt some sort of syncopation between the two. It's obvious what I need here: more apples.

I have a bowl of apples at home, but they're all from the same bag, and therefore presumably at the same level of ripening. I hear that bananas give off a ripening agent, though, so perhaps by sequestering some of the apples in a paper bag with some bananas, I could accelerate the process and tune the apples to different notes. It'd be a bit trial-and-error, but I think that within a week, I might be able to put together a collection of apples on which I could play a song.

Here I run into a new problem: pretty much the only song I think I could play on the apples is "Mary Had a Little Lamb," and that's only because I can play it on the telephone. 6545666, 555, 699, 6545666655654!

I think it may have been over two decades since I learned that particular piece of information. I can only wonder at all of the more useful bits of knowledge that I could have retained instead. Next time someone I've met before calls me out on the fact that I've forgotten their name, I'll tell them, "Yes, but I can play nursery rhymes on the telephone!" I don't think this will clarify anything for them, but they might decide that they're better off if I don't know who they are. That's basically the same as success in my book.

Like many people, I feel that breakfast simply doesn't involve enough mathematical concepts. I tried to rectify this some time ago with my new cereal, Spherios, but it came to an untimely end when I received a cease and desist order from General Mills. Their claim was that I'd simply taken a box of Kix and scrawled "Spherios" across it with a Sharpie, and that anyway they owned the brand name "Cheerios" too. As there was some merit to both of these arguments, I decided it would be best to cancel my upcoming marketing blitz and let the idea die.

Fortunately, less derivative minds than mine were also working on this problem, which is why your breakfasts -- or at least your Sunday brunches -- can now be more topologically exciting! Thanks to George Hart, a sculptor from New York, the internet now contains step-by-step instructions on how to perform a Möbius cut on your bagel, separating it into two linked Möbius strips.

Perhaps some of you are wondering why on Earth you would want to do this. Apparently the fact that it is the best idea in the world is not enough for you! You will presumably also be unswayed by the argument that it will make some people look at you and say, "What possessed you to learn how to do that?", as you are clearly more likely to sympathize with the questioner there. Fortunately, there is an even more tangible benefit to having a Möbius bagel: when a bagel is cut this way, it produces a marginally larger area over which to spread toppings. This means that you can legitimately hog more of the cream cheese, butter, peanut butter or whatever else you're sharing with your fellow breakfasters. Also, due to the way in which the sides overlap, it's very difficult for them to see how thickly you're spreading your topping, meaning you can get away with more.

You may not be the sort of person who likes to get away with things. If that's so, let me first of all tell you that you're being taken advantage of; if you don't know about it, it just means that your friends are good at what they do. That aside, though, you still owe it to yourself to learn this technique; if you don't, someone else will, and then you'll be the one on the short end of the stick. It's the same reasoning that explains why so many countries have nuclear bombs. If only one did, they might use it, but with fear of retaliation, they can't. It's MAD -- mutually assured deliciousness.