Flirting With Shakira

Shakira is hot. She sings like a Kermit impersonator, but she is hot. Moving on...

It has come to my attention that there is documentation of a courting ritual, by which Shakira's favor is earned. This documentary is available on YouTube, so you know it's accurate.

Just how wooed is Shakira? In her own words:
"Oh baby when you talk like that
You make a woman go mad"

Well damn. That's pretty freakin' wooed. Her suitor, a certain Mr. Wyclef Jean, has said something that has driven her mad, and not in the "Mariah Carey's nervous breakdown" way, but in the "Tag Bodyspray just-plausible-enough commercials" way. I wish I had the ability to make a woman go mad. Perhaps if I study the words that initiated this effect?

"I never really knew that she
could dance like this
She makes a man wants to speak Spanish
Como se llama (si), bonita (si),
mi casa,
su casa"

Okay, so Wyclef used the formal "su" instead of the familiar "tu". Well done, Wyclef. Truly, you are a gentleman. Still, I don't think that that's the only thing that has driven the lovely Shakira mad.

I guess all I have to do to charm the womens is reproduce Wyclef's poetry. Odds are good, of course, that my audience will speak only the Queen's English, and so I'll have to translate from Mr. Jean's elegant Spanish... thanks, 6th grade Spanish class with Senora Quintana.

Allow me to set the scene. The lights are dim, the Karaoke is loud, and the Johnson and Johnson interns have spilled just enough beer on me to really accentuate my cologne. I spot a girl across the bar. I walk up to her, and whisper in her ear:

"I never knew that you could dance like this. You make a man want to speak English. What is your name? Pretty. My place? Your place?"

It's freaking foolproof. Feel free to try it yourself.

Retraction

The main entrances to my apartment building are sealed with electronically-controlled latches, not magnetic attraction. In other words, the mechanism by which the doors are locked is purely mechanical, much like the stick up Will's ass.

Big Brother is trying to watch me

It's no secret that to get into my building, all you have to do is yank the door open. The apartments themselves are locked via a traditional bolt, but the main entrance is magnetically sealed, and the magnet isn't particularly strong. If I'd forgotten my ID card, or if I felt particularly lazy, I could just brute-force my way into the building.

Perhaps because some residents complained, or perhaps because there's too much money floating around the Rutgers bureaucracy's coffers, the Office of Graduate Housing has installed cameras outside the entrances to each building.

There are a few questions that immediately come to mind with respect to the utility of these cameras. First of all, what use is a picture of a thief once he's escaped with my laptop and bicycles (I don't really own much else of value)? Second of all, what use is a picture of the back of the thief's head?

The camera is located outside the building,
behind you when you open the door
Most importantly, I'm really not sure if I'm cool with being recorded by security cameras in, or even just near, my home. What business is it of the administration to know when, how often, and with whom I enter the building? Who are they to judge me if, for example, I choose to bring home a morbidly obese prostitute of questionable gender... hypothetically speaking.

This will all probably amount to nothing. That doesn't mean I have to like it.

On the bright side, at least the cameras look a little bit like HAL.

I am not sorry that this is a race report

Usually I try not to write race reports. A lot of racers' blogs are so freaking repetitious, so cookie-cutter, that it discourages me from writing my own. However, I'm so happy with how my race went yesterday that I'll write a little about it.
AngryMark HUNGRY!!!
It was a 15 mile race on a 4-corner, 1 mile, pancake-flat course. My nerves were on edge going in, because my last two races have been absolutely abysmal, to the point where I deny that the North Jersey Classic in Park Ridge even happened. Surely it was all just a bad dream. Still, bad dreams can shake one's real-world confidence, and everyone else around me at the start looked so much fitter than me.

This was downright silly.

After surfing the front 1/3 of the pack for the first few laps, watching attack after attack get caught, I was feeling pretty good. A group of 3 went off the front, including two guys on the same team. Instead of chasing, the pack just started looking at each other, and the gap grew. Recognizing that this attack had potential, I shifted up, sprinted like someone had lit a fire under my ass, and bridged up to the break.

This hurt... a lot. By the time I caught the break, I was losing peripheral vision, and my heart was doing a drumroll. We never got our act together, and we got caught.
DK raced a few hours before getting on a 15 hour flight...
that's hardcore
Mark and I took turns counterattacking each others' unsuccessful moves, which was fun... but unsuccessful. There wasn't a single break that didn't have one of us in it.
DanFlan got crashed, but still said,
'I got to ride my bike, so I'm happy'
When the solo 1-lap-to-go break crashed himself out (yes, this actually happened), Mark found my wheel in the subsequent reorganization. I tried to lead him out, but he's enough of a lone-wolfie that he found a better wheel and sprinted for 3rd. More importantly, I had the wherewithal to contest the sprint myself, and I got 7th!
Me, AngryMark, and Jim post-race
Why is this a big deal? I've already won a 4/5 race (albeit in Cleveland, which is honestly just not on the same level). I didn't do anything spectacular today. This won't even get me any upgrade points. Why do I care?

Almost exactly 6 months ago, while training with Will, I drove him crazy with questions about pack dynamics. How does one get into the draft after being out in the wind? How does one avoid half-wheeling without braking? How does one allow or prevent the re-entry of another racer into the draft? I thought that after taking a turn on the front, I'd have to drop back to dead-last, like the pack is a giant paceline. 6 months ago. Seriously. Recall how happy I was when I simply finished a race.

Now, on days when I feel even semi-good, I'm treating the race like a plaything, toying with other teams' pacelines (sorry Van Dessel, but you were pissing me off) and surfing the pack pretty intuitively. It's partially a question of fitness, but mostly a function of newfound confidence by which I am simply floored.

In the race report I sent my coach, I concluded with the following: "i am a very happy guy. there is absolutely nothing i would've done differently"

There was more to the day than just my little 4/5 race. For example, the kids' races down the home-stretch were pretty hotly contested. Those little gremlins pedaled like fiends... until about 5m to go, when they noticed the neck-level tape stretched across the finish line. Not wanting to be clotheslined for winning, they would stomp on their brakes, locking out the rear wheel. Every age-group's race finished in a skid.
#75 won his race at about 150rpm

Since the race was a fundraiser for the local fire department, the organizers put on a firefighter's race. The poor bastards had to race 3 miles in their full turnout gear, just as if they were going into a burning building. Most were on WalMart-worthy mountain bikes. Oof.
The firefighters' race

In conclusion, I will simply say: I am a very happy guy.

Karaoke's Silver Lining

AngryMark has better sideburns than you
The rumors are true. Johnson and Johnson interns are ruining karaoke. They had the potential to be great, but indeed they are not. They are microphone hogs, they are bathroom-blockers, and they seem to have committed themselves to homogeneity. Their song selections show that they don't understand the fundamental difference between irony and poor taste.

I submitted a song selection to be sung by "Rutgers Cycling Team". A bunch of our guys had gone home, but there were still enough of us to rock out. As we started singing Say It Ain't So, I realized that between the 4 of us, there were 2 microphones. Where was the third mike?

Then I heard it. A rhythmic "uh, uh, rutgers cycling, let's hear it". Two of the J&J guys had hung on to a mike and were rapping. Milky Manchester, being a very hands-on Karaoke Guy, turned their mike off.. but we still wanted a 3rd mike for ourselves, as is our Constitutional right. Look it up.

Will, who was mikeless, asked them to hand it over. They said no, so Will and I started making fun of them on my mike... very passive-aggressive, but funny enough.

For reasons I'm not sure of, right around "I can't confront you" (how fitting, right?), Jay and I simultaneously decided to get aggressive-aggressive. I gave Will my mike, and the two of us went over to the J&J guys and demanded their ill-gotten mike.
Will and his "cowbell" during Don't Fear the Reaper
Now, Jay and I are not very imposing figures. Our combined weight is about 280. We had just been singing rather goofily, which is not particularly intimidating to most people. Still, we flipped the switch from "fun" to "intense", and we got right in the J&J guys' faces. They surrendered the mike.

We almost got in a fight over a microphone. How ridiculous is that?

There certainly was a silver lining too all of this, though. How bad can a night be when there's good beer, great friends, karaoke, and Tour de France coverage on a bigscreen? From Vino's attack with 4k to go until Hunter's winning sprint, we screamed at the TV to the confusion of everyone in earshot. It was great.
Jay and Mike sing as Jenks listens/watches the Tour

"There's enormous evidence that man and dinosaurs have always lived together"

I know I've already talked about this... but now there is a target for my ire and ohmygod I am so pissed off.

Kent Hovind. You smarmy little zealot. You luddite little demagogue. You schlemiel.

Your lecture is called "100 Reasons Why Evolution is So Stupid". Well you know what, Kent? You're so stupid. In fact, your mom is so stupid. There, I said it.

2 Hours of Nonsense

I'll concede that you raise some interesting points. For example, I wonder how it is that not all celestial bodies rotate in the same direction. And I am somewhat curious about how the ages of strata in core samples are determined by scientists.

Okay, we've gotten the requisite "Your lecture isn't all crap" paragraph out of the way.

I'm not going to pick you apart point by point. Let's not kid ourselves, that's way below the level of this blog... and I've written posts about the etiquette of portajohn use. Instead, I will simply quote you.

"There's enormous evidence that man and dinosaurs have always lived together... Dinosaurs have always lived with man, they used to be called dragons and man killed most of 'em"

Wow. Just wow.


"There is no geologic column, and they know it. This fella says 'if the geologic column exists... unfortunately, no such column exists'. it doesn't exist!"

By the way, even as you quoted that textbook, you showed the original text on the screen. It said:
"If there were a column of sediments deposited continuously since the formation of the earth, the entire history of the planet could be reconstructed. Unfortunately, no such column exists. Where sediments are missing, a break in the sedimentary record occurs. Breaks result in gaps in the record that may range from a few years to hundreds of millions of years."

You read elementary school textbooks as if they are the source of scientific information. Then you find "inconsistencies" and harp on them as proof that the science is wrong. ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEXTBOOKS. I can just imagine citing a 6th grade Life Sciences textbook in my next paper. "The frequency of Action Potentials from the Golgi Tendon Organs is proportional to the rate of angular displacement of the joint [How Our Bodies Work]"

Worse, you score so-called victories for yourself by attacking the Straw Man. We know when this happens because you smirk and say "I'm sorry, but that's just stupid", signaling that the debate on this topic has come to a close because you've found one of those inconsequential inconsistencies. Back in my fraternity days, Mark the Communications major actually improved chapter meetings by calling us on such shabby forensics. Leave the poor Straw Man alone, Kent. Hasn't he suffered enough already?

The underlying problem is that Evolution Science is not a religion, but a science. Science is dynamic, a conglomeration of testable hypotheses and evidence that builds an ever-improving understanding of reality. Religion, on the other hand, cannot be imperfect... isn't that the nature of faith?

We definitely agree on one thing. It's the imposition of one realm onto the other that causes problems.



Also, your webpage is full of stupid. And your mom is fat.

A Day of General Goodness

El Parto Uno

Yesterday started off with a 75 minute lecture to a group of high school seniors. My talk was titled "Generalization in Motor Control". It went well.

In fact, my talk didn't just go well. It went superwell. I've spent the past few minutes looking for metaphors by which to describe the wellness with which the talk went.

If this was prison, I'd be able to trade my lecture for cigarettes. If this was a 1980s action movie, the lecture would be my witty pre- or post-violence one-liner. If this was a RPG, my lecture would give me +10 defense against orc-sword attacks.

Figurative language, baby. Don't leave home without it.

The reason I'm so excited about this is that it's further confirmation of this whole "I want to teach" idea. For me, lecturing is genuinely fun, and exhilerating. After years of taking classes taught by Professor Uninspiring and his colleague Dr. Unintelligible. It is reassuring to me that I am neither.

El Parto Dos

Bicycle riding is fun. Riding with a group is even more fun. Riding in a group of 17 is unheard of in these parts, and it was fantastic. When we hit Washington Rd., there were fireworks, with early attacks, well-timed bridges (nicely done, Jenks), and the explosive sounds of people going "POP!" halfway up the climb.

A big Thumbs-Up to SpikyHairWill, who waited for me when I paused on the descent to fix a silly little mechanical. He and I chased hard to get back into the group. We chased for 15 miles. We never found the group. Apparently they'd split into short-distance and long-distance subgroups, neither of which did the loosely agreed upon medium-distance route that Will and I rode. So, again, thank you to Will, without whom that ride would surely have sucked.

We found the short-distance group in Bound Brook, which resulted in more fireworks on the way back to Highland Park. Alessandro and Will launched the first attack (drafting off an 18 wheeler, I might add) while I was chatting with Harold. In the ensuing carnage, Alessandro, Craig, Will, and I rode the legs off each other. I had a chip on my shoulder, since this was my first ride with Alessandro since hiring him as my coach. The ride was aggressive and brutal, just like I likes it.

El Parto Tres

Aaron half-jokingly asked me to help him write a toast for an upcoming wedding (that is, this weekend) in which he is best man. After Seds' unexpectedly perfect toast at Diak's wedding, I've been wondering if I have what it takes to write a good toast.

It turns out that I do.

How's Your Face? It's Killing Me!

Enough depth. Let's make fun of Rob's face.

Rob had a viral infection. He claims that it was of the airborne "common cold" variety, but I'm not counting out the possibility that it was an STD, because that would make the story that much funnier.

The virus spread. He got over the "cold" pretty fast, but the virus lingered. Its new home? The left trigeminal nerve, which is aka'ed as the nerve that makes the left side of your face work.

The left side of Rob's face stopped working. It lost sensation, and it lost motor control. He couldn't even blink or produce tears. Half of his face was paralyzed.

This is called "Bell's Pallsy", and it's also called hilarious.

A certain amount of time has to elapse before it's the sort of hilarious you can act on. Before that turning point, you have to be all "aw, poor Rob" and "aw, how's your face doing?" After a few weeks, though, you can be like "Dude. Awesome" and it will be funny, because your friend's face is impotent.

We are now well into the it's-okay-to-laugh period. And so, ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present to you: Rob and his Paralyzed Face




Before you call me a horrible person, don't worry, this is a temporary condition and Rob's back to normal now.

Are You There, God? It's Me, NinjaDon

Yes, it was a reference to Judy Blume and her preteen-girls' coming-of-age opus. Yes.

There's a great article about religion that I've read a few times now. It is a good read, and I recommend it:

Bloom, Paul. "Is God an Accident?" Atlantic Montly, 296(5): 105-112, Dec 2005"

I'm posting this link knowing that there are people in my audience whose faith is important to them. Believe me, the purpose of this isn't to try to shake your faith, nor do I ever intend to do that, in person or in blog.

So, indulge me. Suspend your religious beliefs - temporarily, of course. Then read the article, which asks the question: why does every people, from the Far East to the Amazon Basin to Vatican City, have a belief system that includes something supernatural?

more later...

Anecdotal Evidence

So yesterday was Friday the 13th (by the way, happy Bastille Day!). Will wrote a well thought out, if mildly ridiculous, post on the utter stupidity of Friday the 13th superstition. What can I do but agree?

And yet, there is anecdotal evidence to support the claim that Friday the 13th CURSED!!!

That would've worked better if you'd read it with the "ed" getting it's own syllable, Shakespeare-style. Friday the 13th is curséd!!!

I got on a NYC-bound train, and was pleased to realize that it was the express train. "Ooh," thought I naively, "I will get there early!" My next thought was "wow this is a lot of highschoolers packed into one train".

At Metropark, the train stopped and waited for police to arrive. The police yelled at the highschoolers in my car for a few minutes, then left. Delay: 10 minutes.

Somewhere in North Jersey, the train stopped again, this time in the middle of nowhere. There was an announcement, a train had broken down in a tunnel, we were waiting for it to be cleared. Delay: 15 minutes.

Just before Newark Airport, a pack of conductors came charging down the aisle, and I overheard "there they are, they'll know who did it". Then we got to wait at Newark Penn Station (not to be confused with New York Penn Station... seriously, who came up with these names?) for the police to arrive again. This time they escorted one of the kids off the train. Apparently he'd somehow defiled the train's bathroom... I guess (I hope) it was with something run-of-the-mill like vomit. Delay: 20 minutes.

So finally I get to Penn Station (the NYC version), at which point I call my friend to ask where we'll meet. "Well, I'm in a Starbucks." That doesn't exactly narrow things down, does it. "I'm on 42nd Street". Um, Penn Station is at 34th street... what the hell? "I'm at Grand Central Station".

My friend, being from not-NYC, had taken a train in to Grand Central Station. The fact that I was coming in by train must've gotten translated into "the same train station I came in to". An honest mistake.

Okay, I'll just hop on the subway up to Grand Central Station. Except, Grand Central is also (in fact, is primarily) a bus terminal. I, being from not-NYC, translated "Grand Central" into "bus"... which meant that I hopped on the C train up to the Port Authority, almost a mile away from Grand Central. I'd wandered around the Port Authority for 10 minutes, looking in vain for the landmarks my friend was describing. Seriously, an honest mistake!

Okay, I'll just hop on the subway to Grand Central. Oops, it doesn't exist. Taxi!!!

About 2 hours after we were supposed to meet, I finally found my friend in Grand Central Station. We had Thai. It was delicious.