This Is Not News

I’ve been reading Wil Wheaton’s blog for a while now, and while I enjoy the funny stories, the geek commentaries, and the occasional poker anecdotes, I think the one thing that makes sure I keep him in my bookmarks is that he’s willing to get introspective and try and work through his thought process in some of his blog posts. I can definitely relate to that; sometimes I think I’m too prone to navel-gazing. (And ironically, R.E.M.’s “Bittersweet Me” is playing just as I type this, a song in which navel-gazing plays a lyrical role.) But I think it’s worth doing for the self-discovery, and I think it’s worth sharing because heck, someone else might be able to relate to it. (And in keeping with the parenthetical theme here, that’s one of the things that Michael Stipe says he realized after a few years of lyric-writing, which made him willing to be more direct in his writing – at times.) I can definitely say that’s true for Wil’s writing – there are posts I’ve read where he really does nail a thought process I’ve gone through many times myself. An example would be this post, which starts off with Wil talking about a reader who described meeting Wil years ago, and that being a positive experience. Wil takes that incident and uses it as a springboard to talk about occasions where he’s less pleased with how he acted, and how he still beats himself up over those things. And that’s the bit where I said “Been there, done that, way too often.” There are incidents where I did not handle myself well, or disappointed people around me, or just flat out did something dumb when I should have known better, and every once in a while my brain likes to call up those incidents and relive them. And I get angry with myself all over again – for not knowing better, for not thinking things through, for doing something that wasn’t the right thing to do because I was trying to be someone that I’m not. And as Wil suggests, I just gotta hope that what I learned from those experiences helps make up for whatever screwup I made at the time. The advantage that Wil has over me is that on his blog, you can get all this lovely introspection and self-analysis along with a large helping of William Shatner stories.

Wednesday, it was around 80 degrees. Today, it was in the 30s with sleet, snow, and slush.

Today, it was also announced that we’re having the warmest winter on record. I know who’s getting the Poor Timing award this month.

Also also today, St. Joe’s was open during the day, so I had to slide up City Avenue t oget to class. But the barbecue restaurant I like was closed this evening, so I did not get to drown my sorrows in a platter of pulled pork tonight.

(Can one drown in a platter? If one can, I had every intention of doing so tonight.)

Ah well. Bring on the weekend. Stay warm.

As part of my effort to get through my media backlog, I finally did something I should have done a long time ago. I watched the Netflix disc that’s been sitting on the TV for about a month (more on that this weekend) and told Netflix to stop sending discs from my profile. We still get the service for Pattie, because she actually remembers to watch the things within a few days. I am not going to reactivate my service until I have watched every DVD I have in this house. And that includes the Superman IV: The Quest for Peace disc that came in the ultimate Superman set. So if you have stock in Netflix, don’t be expecting any revenue from me any time soon.

Now this is weird. The Metro is a small newspaper distributed for free on SEPTA buses and trains and at a few other points around the city. It mostly runs bite-sized versions of wire service articles with some original commentaries/features. But they have a blog set up at Fight for Room 215 covering the Philadelphia mayoral election, and wouldn’t you know it, the blog featured on the spot reporting of all the challenges that were filed against various candidates trying to knock them off the ballot. (Seriously, folks, if you’re not reading Young Philly Politics on this, you’re missing an entertaining story and a head-slapper of a political situation.) Now, I guess it doesn’t matter to Metro whether its deep reporting goes on the web or in print – they’re giving it away either way, right? But still, it baffles me sometimes.

(In fairness, the Inquirer has done similar live blogs of important political events, such as the recent speaker election in the state House. Man, local politics are entertaining around here . . .)

I’ve been trying to do the daily blogging thing for a few reasons – I don’t want to let the site go fallow for a long period, and I have an annoying habit of letting one skip day turn into a lot of skipped days. And I like the mental exercise and routine. But tonight, I was sitting somewhat bleary-eyed at the PC, scanning through headlines and other blogs looking for something to write about. The heck of it is, it wasn’t pure writer’s block. There are a bunch of things I have in mind to write. I just don’t feel I have the energy to put them into words properly, so all these great posts in my head fizzle when I start trying to put them down. I’m still trying to shake off the last of the cold and the odd sleep situations the cold helped to create, which I think explains why I’m not as sharp as I’d like to be. But it’s kind of funny to be saying that I’m physically not in shape to do my best writing right now. Usually, writing is seen as a mental activity, not something that gives the body any use – definitely on the cerebral side of the brain vs. brawn divide. But if you take seriously the idea that our brains are a part of our body, and thinking is an activity of the body just like anything else, well, then, all of a sudden that divide starts to fade away.

Maybe I should carbo load before my next posting run.

I was all set to do a post tonight about R.E.M. and their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I would perhaps even mention that they recorded a single with Bill Berry that’s going on sale tomorrow to benefit the efforts in Darfur. But the organizers apparently decided to have R.E.M. close the show, and they haven’t even begun to induct the band yet. So maybe all that will wait until tomorrow. If I have the energy, I’ll come back and edit this post after the ceremony’s over.

I’m fighting a cold, so no major entry tonight. I will encourage you to check out Young Philly Politics and the Next Mayor Blog for continuing coverage of Congressman Bob Brady’s small snafy with the filing papers for his mayoral candidacy. Now normally this might be the kind of thing you chalk up as minor error and move on, but here in Philly there’s something of a history of candidates being thrown off of the ballot for screwing up minor elements of the disclosure forms. So it’s gonna be real interesting to see if anyone decides to see if sauce for the goose is sauce for the chair of the city Democratic party committee.

This ought to sum up the life of a Philadelphia sports fan. It’s a paragraph from the AP’s coverage of the 76ers’ win over the Seattle Sonics:

Once a leading candidate to earn the most pingpong balls in the draft lottery, the Sixers instead are talking about the playoffs. The postseason is still a long shot, for sure, but thinking about it beats another dreary end to the season — only don’t tell that to Sixers fans who want their team to lose and get that No. 1 pick.

The AP is not making this up. My physical therapist has season tickets to the Sixers, and so I asked him if he thought that the team had improved since trading Allen Iverson. He said something to the effect of: “Yeah, and I’m not happy about it. I’m seeing defense, I’m seeing unselfish play, I’m seeing good decisions . . . and it’s ticking me off!”

I’ll be honest, I understand the logic. Sometimes you gotta tear things down to the ground and rebuild from the foundation if the goal is to get to the top, and small improvements can just fool you into thinking you’re better than you are. But still, it’s funny to hear people complaining about a team that doesn’t even have the decency to lose properly.

One of my assignments in my education courses this semester was to evaluate several WebQuests – basically, online lesson modules that have some kind of interactive research component for the students. One of my chosen subjects was this module, where students conduct research in order to be able to hold a town meeting debate for a presidential election. This module is set during the 2000 election, but I think the general idea might be useful to anyone who wants to incorporate some work from the current election cycle into a high schoo lcurriculum. (Watch, my teacher friends will be here in am inute to tell me what a bad idea this is.)

And for kicks, here’s what I had to say about the module for my evaluation:

The assignment encourages students to do research, look at problems from different ideological perspectives, take stances on issues, and express those stances in a democratic forum. Setting the assignment during the 2000 election was a good decision when the assignment was written, since it connects students to events outside the classroom in an immediate way. If I were to use this assignment with students today, though, I believe I would direct students to research the positions of the two major parties, rather than two candidates. This would allow the assignment to be used during non-presidential election years, and students would have more freedom to design the candidate they portray. A student who feels that, for example, George W. Bush was not enough of a financial conservative, or that Al Gore did not do enough to address the condition of the working poor, could create a presidential candidate that fits his or her vision of the party platform. This has the added benefit of being less exclusionary to female and minority students. I also wonder if the students asking the questions should be asked to do more to try and role-play the positions they take – perhaps the three questioners should have a small deliberative session where they discuss how well they feel the candidates responded to their issues.

I admit, I had lost track of the state of supercollider research. (Don’t we all, from time to time?) So I was happy to spot this article from Reuters about the progress in Europe towards getting the next generation of collider online by the end of the year. A 2000-ton magnet was lowered into a giant cavern, and if you have a 2000 ton magnet, where else would you put it?

Seriously, I’m happy to see this research get moving. I remember when I read Michio Kaku’s Hyperspace, which talked about strong theory, additional dimensions, and parallel universes, and Kaku mentioned that at the time he wrote the book, there was no way to test the theory – that would have to wait for better technology and better math. Well, maybe progress has been made:

“We think this project is going to uncover things we cannot dream of at the moment,” said Professor Jos Engelen, Chief Scientific Officer of CERN, the 26-nation European Organization for Nuclear Research.

Some of his colleagues say the experiment, smashing particles together at high speed in a Large Hadron Collider (LHC), may bring new knowledge such as the possible existence of multiple dimensions beyond the four of traditional physics — width, length, height and time.

Others speak, if cautiously, of venturing into realms long regarded as those of speculative science fiction — multiple universes, parallel worlds, black holes in space linking different levels of existence.

Very cool.