I may not believe in Christmas or Jeebus or any of that.

But, man, Darlene Love on Letterman on Christmas Eve? Always 10/10.

Gets me choked up every time.

2006 

2005 

2004

2003 

2000

1995 

That writers' strike may keep this from us this year truly breaks my heart.

How strange is it to have rules to set your alarm by?

It strikes me I've only ever met one other person who I know has alarm rules, but the fact is that it's not a typical thing you talk about, the set of considerations that goes into making up how you set your alarm, so maybe there are more.

So, I'd like to poll you guys. Do you have alarm rules? Certain times that the alarm must or must not be set to? If so, what are they? What would happen if you disobeyed them?

Continue reading "Alarm Rules" »

italisizy: Oh, and Dale's a 49'ers fan.

Sir Turley: boo

italisizy: Agreed.

Sir Turley: lame

italisizy: And then he had the stones to goad me about being a Pats fan.

Sir Turley: yeah, that means he was a bandwagoner starting in the early 80;s

italisizy: Yep.
Although, I did get to deliver a sentence today that I never thought I would say.
"I'm not so bigoted as to say that Dale should stop watching football because he's a 49'ers fan. Better to watch football and root for the wrong team than to not like football."
If he was a Denver fan, that conversation would've gone much differently.

Continue reading "Bigots" »

MD4P looks different, eh?

If the revised design doesn't work on your machine, let me know.

Or if you just think it's ugly. 

Exhibit A: Last year, nutritionists presented data from a study of middle-aged Americans. Participants were asked to classify themselves as underweight, normal weight, overweight, or obese. Then they were weighed. Only 15 percent of obese people, compared with more than 70 percent of normal and overweight people, classified themselves correctly.

Exhibit B: In a 1985 survey by the NPD group, 55 percent of U.S. adults agreed that "[a] person who is not overweight is a lot more attractive." By 2005, only 24 percent agreed. The firm concluded, "Perhaps Americans have found that the easiest way to deal with their weight is to change their attitude."

Woah. These are amazing facts.

I've not written a lot about my struggle with my weight (coming up on nine months maintaing my weight-loss) but these two studies look to quantify some things that I feel, intuitively, as someone with a little experience with the subject, to be true.

Pulled from the most recent Human Nature column by Will Saletan at Slate. The article to which it is an addendum was pretty good to begin with.

Michelle: so do you not blog at all anymore?  or do you do it somewhere else?

italisizy:milesdavisforpresident.net
Since, like, five months ago.

Michelle: I looked there you haven't updated since march
oh wait
I see
cause I just kept checking the other one and being dissapointed for like months

italisizy: Wow.
No, I've been doing good work.
I like that my last post says that I'm moving... and you kept looking at it, for months, but apparently just not seeing or reading it.

Michelle: yeah well I remebered a possible change but im kinda a loser

italisizy:Apparently.

Sorry the posting's been non-existant lately--been packing.

Definitely done by July 2, as that's when I move in in Tucson.

Hopefully there will be more posting afoot then. 

So, tomorrow I leave for Maine.

Or, more accurately, tomorrow I leave for Austin.

Thursday I leave for Rochester.

Friday I leave for Boston.

And Saturday I leave for Maine.

Then I get to rock it M.E. style all week long.

Posting will be sporadic 'til I get back.

(Though posting is already sporadic anyway.)

If you have further questions, leave them in the comments. 

Driving:
Time onto I-10: 9:45AM Central (Daylight)
Time off of I-10: 1:30PM Central (Daylight)
Time on I-10: 3hrs, 45min
Distance (approx): 300mi
Max speed, highway: 96mph
Min speed, highway: 65mph
# of stops: 2 (Ozona, Junction)
Displayed average speed: 83mph
Calculated average speed: 300mi/3.75hrs = 80mph
Fuel economy: 32.8mpg

Consumed:
(2) Croissant
(1) Coke Zero
(1) 20oz. Dasani Water

Listened:
Fountains of Wayne - Traffic and Weather, track 6 ("This Had Better Be Good")
This American Life - A Little Bit of Knowledge
This American Life - New Beginnings
The Beatles - Revolver (personally re-ordered mix), tracks 1-3 ("She Said," "Tax Man," "Only Sleeping")
This American Life - 20 Acts in 60 Minutes
NPR (San Antonio) - Talk of the Nation, 1:00PM - 1:30PM
Beck - Odelay, tracks 1-3

Trip totals:

Episodes:
(9) "How I Met Your Mother"
(1) "Grey's Anatomy" (+ 1 special)
(1) "Lost"
(2) "Friends"
(3) "House"
(3.5) "Sex and the City"
(1) "Little People, Big World"
(1) "What Not to Wear" (+ 1 special)
(1) "30 Rock" (and a second time)
(4) "Around the Horn"
(3) "The Daily Show"
(11) "This American Life"

Hockey games watched: 4

Albums:
Distinct FOW discs listened: 3
Total times FOW discs played in entirety: 7
Times Regina Spektor's Begin To Hope played in entirety: 3
Distinct times part or all of Pipettes album played: 4

Cute girls
met: 4
liked: 1

Wholly depressing statistics realized about my life: 1

Hours of Morrowind played: 0 

Apartment complexes
driven to: 18
visited: 12
liked: 5
found acceptable: 2
loved: 1
chosen: 1

Days spend apartment hunting: 2x .75 + 2x .25

Professors
talked to about independent study: 3
not interested: 1
not exactly right: 2
leaving for a week of conferences who were unable to commit and said to email in early May: 1

Posts detailing statistics of trip: 4 

Driven:
Time left Kathleen's: 8:02AM, Mountain (Standard)
Time got on I-10: 8:35AM, Mountain (Standard)
Time got off I-10: 6:50PM, Central (Daylight)
Time, total, on I-10 (approx): 7hrs, 45 min
Total Miles (approx): 550
Fuel Economy: 37.3MPG
Max Speed, Highway: 102mph
Min Speed, Highway: 63mph
Avg Speed, Highway + City: 73mph
Avg Speed, Total: 550mi/7.75hrs = 70.96mph

Consumed:
(2) Regular Croissant
(1) Cherry Coke Zero
(1) .5 Litre, Fiji Water
(1) Sonic Cheeseburger
(1) Regular Tots, Sonic
(1) Small Barq's Rootbeer
(12oz) Orange juice
(1) Spinach Mushroom Omlet
(1) Short Stack, Pancakes

Listened:
NPR (Tucson) - Morning Edition, 8:02AM - 9:45AM
This American Life - Godless America
This American Life - With Great Power
Fountains of Wayne - Out of State Plates, Disc 1, all tracks
This American Life - And The Call Was Coming from the Basement!
Weezer - Make Believe, all tracks
This American Life - Americans in Paris
Fiona Apple - Extraordinary Machine, tracks 1-5

Colourlovers.com does a short post about colorblindness. I've always been fascinated by colorblindness (even though I didn't believe some of you when you told me that you were colorblind... repeatedly...), so the helpful visual was... helpful.

How this page looks to a person with reg/green colorblindness. From Colorblind Web Page Filter. 

A bit of good-natured ribbing from The Onion:

This American Life Completes Documentation Of Liberal, Upper-Middle-Class Existence

Grades of episodes I listened to recently:
24 Hours At The Golden Apple: 10/10
Seemed Like a Good Idea At the Time: 7/10
Fiasco: 8/10
Reruns: 9/10
A Better Mousetrap: 7/10 (Though Act 1 is 10/10)
Prom: 10/10

Because you surely know more about this than I do.

Have you ever or do you know anyone that has ever lived at any of the following apartment complexes in Tucson? Did you/they hate/love them?

The Plum Tree (North of Glenn on Columbus)

Briarwood (Ft. Lowell at Mountain)

North Hill Park (Limberlost just west of First)

Sunrise (Campbell and Prince)

Country Club Terrace (Country Club just north of Grant) 

Driving:
Time onto I-10: 7:10 AM Mountain (Daylight)
Time off of I-10: 10:00 AM Mountain (Standard)
Time on I-10: 3 hours, 50 minutes
Fuel economy, day 1 and 2 combined: 30.5 MPG

Eaten:
1 Holiday Inn Cinnamon Roll
2 Mini Croissants

Listened:
NPR - Morning Edition, 7:10 - 8:10AM
Fountains of Wayne - Traffic and Weather, tracks 7-14, 1-7
This American Life - Prom
Pipettes - We are the Pipettes, tracks 1-6, 8
King Floyd - Choice Cuts, tracks 1-5

Stats for today:

Driving:
Miles: ~550
AVG MPH, driving: 81
Time onto I-10: 7:30AM Central (Daylight)
Time off of I-10: 2:00PM Mountain (Daylight)
Total time: 7 hours, 30 minutes
MPH, total: 73.3
Fuel economy: 29.2 MPG

Eaten:
6x small croissant
1x Special K Berries and Cream granola bar
1x Regular Order Onion Rings, from Whataburger
1x Whataburger with Cheese, Bacon, Cheese, from Whataburger
5.5oz Cheeze-its (projected)

Drank:
20oz Barq's Rootbeer
2x .5 pint Fiji Water
1x Small Sprite (Whataburger)
Beer I've not been able to find anywhere except for a hole-in-the-wall liquor store in Las Cruces: Red Hook Brewery's Black Hook Porter
How good that beer that I've been waiting years to drink was: Not that good
Possibility I got a bad batch: 50/50

Listened to (in order):
NPR Morning Edition, 7:30AM to 8:45AM
This American Life - "Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time"
This American Life - "Fiaso"
Regina Spektor - Begin to Hope, tracks 1-9, 11-14
This American Life - "Reruns"
Fountains of Wayne - Fountains of Wayne, all tracks
This American Life - "A Better Mousetrap"
Wagner - Prelude and beginning of act 1 - Tannhauser

Today, on NPR's Day to Day, in honor of Vonnegut, they played him reading the following passage from Slaughterhouse Five:

Billy Pilgrim padded downstairs on his blue and ivory feet. He went into the kitchen, where the moonlight called his attention to a half bottle of champagne on the kitchen table, all that was left from the reception in the tent. Somebody had stoppered it again. "Drink me," it seemed to say.

So Billy uncorked it with his thumbs. It didn't make a pop. The champagne was dead. So it goes.

Billy looked at the clock on the gas stove. He had an hour to kill before the saucer came. He went into the living room, swinging the bottle like a dinner bell, turned on the television. He came slightly unstuck in time, saw the late movie backwards, then forwards again. It was a movie about American bombers in the Second World War and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this :

American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.

The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.

When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.

The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed. That wasn't in the movie. Billy was extrapolating. Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed.

And people wonder why I want to study philosophy of history. The film read forwards is jingoistic claptrap (probably) but read backwards, it's moving and solemn and beautiful. This simple transposition changes so much beyond just the order and causality of the events.

italisizy:So remember when I theorized that I was marked as only being enrolled for Summer II, which was why I couldn't register for this fall?

Sir Turley: yeah

italisizy: So I contact the office of admissions, they tell me I need to talk to my major / college advisor so they can 'release' me for fall.
So I call them.
And they don't call me back.
So I them again today, and they don't call back, so I call my major advisor, who's in his office for the first time this week today.
He gives me the email address of my SBS advisor.
She forwards my query to my actual SBS advisor, who tries to do exactly what should work to sign me up and finds that I am not admitted for Fall.
And I need to talk to the admissions office.
I would like to say that I knew exactly what was wrong At 3,05PM Central time last saturday, almost one week ago.
But it's taken all week to get the U of A to figure it out.

// 

Addendum: problem solved and one additional issue later, I'm finally registered for PHIL 441 - "Theory of Knowledge" and PHIL 470 - "Ancient Philosophy."

Alright, folks, as first reported here: I am returning to the University of Arizona to shore up my philosophical credentials before making a run at graduate school in philosophy.

My first class ("History of Early Modern Philosophy") is Summer II of this year and I'm hoping to be moved in my July 1st. Then this fall, I'll take more Phil. courses, including, hopefully, an independent study as well as busting my hump at applying to graduate schools (early front runners include University of Chicago, Maryland, Columbia and Wisconsin) to study Philosophy of History (not historiography, mind you).

I might not get much work with the Review while I'm in Tucson, as the Tucson office isn't full time and is run by the Tempe office (boo, Tempe), but I'll still be teaching.

Spring will bring some more Phil courses to finally and completely shore up my resume (and I will have completed a full Philosophy major by then, to boot).

After that, well, it depends. But that's the plan for now. If you're going to be in Tucson, we'll hang out.

End transmission.