Haiku Hijinx

Enough people have been amused by this story that I think I should tell it out loud once and for all. Besides, I think the statute of limitations has run out on my crimes, so I think I'm safe.

When I got out of graduate school (for the second time -- story for another day), I did a brief stint at a little start-up company that had spun out of General Atomics in La Jolla. One day when I was at work, inspiration struck me and in that instant I was obliged to write on the bathroom wall the only thing I've ever saw fit to write in such an inauspicious place.

What I wrote was a haiku. Which was inevitable, if you know me. I reproduce it for you here, word for word, so that you might be amused by it as some few others have before you.

a bowel movement

is a very private thing

one person per stall

Despite its somewhat pedestrian nature (see my early meta-post on Haiku 1), I hope you find it and its circumstances enjoyable.  :-)

MO Speed!

I got my Missouri license plates for my car today. I don't want to put them on, though. According to my careful field observations, Missouri license plates cause cars to go about 10 mph slower than they otherwise woud go.

So much has changed

To quote the literary genius Jim Anchower, "I know it's been a long time since I rapped at ya, but things got crazy, if you know what I mean." The last time I wrote it was from Bend, OR, where I was interviewing because my company announced the closure of my site in Ann Arbor, MI. We just finished moving away from there, but not to Bend (which was nice, but probably not the right place for us). Nor did we move to Seattle, or Cambridge, or Groton, or Indianapolis, or La Jolla, or Thousand Oaks, or someplace in New Jersey of which I'd never heard.

Where we did move is Wildwood, MO. Turns out to be a pretty nice place actually, despite the punishing heat in the summertime. My new job is very cool, the people here are fantastic. The move went pretty smoothly, actually, although we did have couple of issues that were kind of a drag to deal with. But, that part is pretty much over now. The truth is, relocation is incredibly disruptive and time-consuming, but moving to a new place can be pretty interesting.

The proverbial fly in all of this relocation ointment is leaving our friends from Ann Arbor behind. We all had great friends there, and it was very hard to leave them behind. Lots of my friends moved to Groton, CT, one of whom I miss terribly (you know who you are). That's the real cost of moving.

One good thing about moving here is that I've taken up Shotokan karate again. I used to train at Sensei Bill Bly's excellent dojo in Cary, NC. I was pretty pleased to find a Shotokan dojo very near where I work in Chesterfield, the Missouri Karate Association. I really like doing Shotokan, and I think the people at MKA are great.

More later. Peace out.

New Hams

Yesterday I played the role of an ARRL Volunteer Examiner (VE) at a ham radio testing session for the first time. I had a lot of fun, for two reasons. First, it's great to see people taking an interest in amateur radio and passing their licensing exams to become new hams. And second, the other VE's were very knowledgeable and more than happy to share their knowledge with the new guy -- very typical ham behavior, I hasten to add.

One interesting aspect of the whole thing is that we have to be very, very careful about everything we do as a VE team in a testing session. We want everything to be exactly right, so we triple-check everything. Which is good, because what I and the other VEs have at stake in the matter is our own amateur radio licenses.

Such a cool hobby, ham radio.

This Just In: Egg Rolls Edition

I just learned that the best egg rolls to be had at any price in all the land are the Shrimp Egg Rolls served by Mr. Chan at Chan's Chinese in Bend, Oregon. Not only are they incredibly delicious, but they are presented to the delighted diner at a temperature perfectly compatible with immediate consumption.

Thank you, Mr. Chan!

Bend

I'm in Bend tonight, a town of about 75,000 in the high desert of Central Oregon. When I left Detroit this morning it was about 7 degrees F outside, and when I arrived here it was about 70. Pretty nice! This is a pretty cool little town, with lots of funky restaurants and lots of people out walking around the downtown area.

One thing I couldn't figure out was that some of the cars driving by had tires that were making all kinds of noise as they rolled down the street. At first I thought there must be a bunch of gravel in the treads, but I finally figured out that these were snow tires with studs on them. I have to say that I grew up in Muskegon, Michigan, and we got a lot of lake-effect snow there; we never had tires with studs on them. Sometimes we put snow tires on the car, sometimes we didn't. It reminded me of when I went to California for the first time one Chistmastime, and during a drive into the mountains we saw signs talking about the requirement for chains. Chains! Crazy.

The Popularity of Anti-intellectualism

I just read in my local paper that Fox just debuted a new TV game show to record numbers, 26.5 million, on Tuesday. This not only makes it the most-watched series debut in Fox history, but the most popular debut of any series since 1998 (according to Nielsen). The show is called, "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?" The rapt viewer of this show is evidently treated to the hijinks which ensue when adults are quizzed on the knowledge to be found in elementary school textbooks.

I hope that all of those viewers (a set of which I am not a member) were merely exhibiting a kind of morbid curiosity, wondering (as I do) whether the show's contestants were really up to that kind of challenge.

But I worry that most of those viewers were really wondering whether they themselves were smarter than a fifth grader. And when I think about how maybe some non-trivial fraction of them found themselves deficient, I just imagine them laughing as they tell their sympathetic friends, "I didn't hardly know none of them questions!"

Is this really be the standard to which Americans want to compare themselves?

This is all good, harmless fun, I suppose. Until somebody gets up in front of a school board somewhere, let's say, and wants to make an argument one way or another about something that takes maybe a bit more than a fifth-grade education to really understand. Then I think it's not so much funny as it is dangerous.

We don't merely tolerate ignorance, we embrace it, even encourage it. I think we should all stop acting like a bunch of fifth graders. Ignorance is not funny, or cool; it's just ignorance.