Is Blogging Like Happiness?

My best laid plans tonight were to work a couple of hours of overtime so I can go skiing on Friday. It's finally started to snow in earnest this week and I am getting pretty excited about the whole affair. Taking an hour to get to work due to road conditions is a small price to pay for some fresh powder later this week. Anyway the long and short of it is I needed my laptop and my notebook to work tonight, and I failed to bring my notebook home. Figures. On the plus side, this is an update that would not have happened tonight if I'd been more "responsible".

First thing's first -- required reading (OK, there's no test but this article is incredible: is that incentive enough?).

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/magazine/13contagion-t.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

Now I have to admit that I've always liked the concept of a public consciousness. There's an uplifting quality to the idea that we are connected to our fellow human beings, whether or not that is actually the case. I guess it's no surprise then that I latched onto this article when I first read it. Specifically, this is amazing:

Fowler told me their work had inspired him to lose five pounds and to listen to upbeat music before he arrives home from work so he will be in a good mood when he greets his family. “I try to get myself in a mental space where I’ll be happy,” he says. “Because I know that I’m not just having an impact on my son, I’m potentially having an impact on my son’s best friend’s mother.”

I actually made a conscious effort a couple years ago to improve the mood of the music I listen to on a regular basis. I'll still listen to Bittersweet Symphony every once in a while (perhaps only when I'm watching the England National Team play...), but I figured I'd be a happier person to be around if I wasn't constantly subjecting myself to depressing music.

On top of that it is incredible to me that my mood might affect a friend of a friend (and vice versa) while skipping my friend altogether. The implications for creative but pointed marketing are pretty ridiculous; actually this marketing scheme seems like it will be quite hard to implement on the face of it, but leave it to some creative genius to figure it out and have us all buying those Magic Bullet blenders. All of sudden, the fact that I abhor watching ads and avoid it at all cost, makes no difference since others around me are watching ads for me and influencing my behavior as a result.

Finally the idea that our place in this vast, interconnected network might be determined by our genes strikes me as another argument for nature over nurture. Does it all come back to genetics in the end? How should I feel about that? Overall I think I was dealt a pretty good hand, and I do feel lucky in many aspects of my life. I'd be interested to find out where I landed on the grand social network though.

Well, that's all I've got for now. Until next time, stay positive! My happiness may depend on it.

What's New and What's Not

This is going to be a brief life update, I think.

What's new:

I no longer live with my parents. I'm cooking for myself (although I still get plenty of dinner invitations from the family, so it has not been a huge burden or anything) and am still committed to cooking real food. So far I've cooked some delicious grilled pizzas, fajitas, and pasta with homemade sauce and italian sausage. Things I plan to make soon include pork loin, Costco rotisserie chicken (I definitely have a handle on this one), soup, and Tandoori chicken (on the grill before it gets too cold). I also made dried cherry and chocolate oatmeal cookies yesterday which were awesome. Kudos to my sister for the idea of substituting cherries in place of raisins.

I went backpacking for the first time in ten years or so this past weekend. I headed up to Zion National Park with a good friend of mine on Thursday and we embarked on an epic journey hiking The Narrows. The Narrows basically consists of a 16 mile-long canyon. The canyon has been carved out by a river, which is also an abundant source of life within the canyon. The result is that what would otherwise be a desert is a lush, green canyon. The place has a real utopian feel to it and it didn't hurt that the weather was perfect and the leaves were starting to turn. Good hike, good company, good times. It's definitely an experience I'd recommend.

What's Not:

Work. I'm still working and still enjoying my work, which is nice. The routine is nothing if not repetitive, but it gives me an excuse to try and form some good habits in my life. Going to bed at a reasonable hour so that I can wake up and enjoy the day to the fullest extent is one of those habits that I'm working on right now. Anyway we just had a cubicle reorganization at work which meant I had to sacrifice my large, comfortable window cube for a small non-window cube with much less privacy. That was unfortunate, but I did manage to get a slightly better-positioned cube than the one which the PM originally assigned me. These things seem mundane, but I guess that's office life for you.

Kickball! I just finished up my third season of kickball with the same team. I've begun to meet new people through the bar scene at my typically slow pace. I took on the role of designing my team's roster every week, including deciding our kicking order and what positions everyone is playing in each inning. Our team philosophy is all about every getting equal playing time which I think contributes to our team spirit. We don't win many games, but the wins we get are real accomplishments. We started practicing on Sunday afternoons which has been a lot of fun. There is something so satisfying about kicking that red rubber ball. Finally this season saw me achieve one of my personal goals of kicking a home run in a game. It was the bottom of the fifth (last) inning, and our team was down 18-2. The game had turned into a real drubbing in the fourth inning after our defense fell apart. I was up first in the kicking order, and I noticed that the outfielders were playing pretty close in. I let the first pitch go by and the catcher jokingly chided me for letting such a nice pitch go. I smiled and booted the next one into left field over the head of the outfielder. As I touched first and headed to second, I heard the first base coach say, "That's a solid double" and I decided at that moment that I was going to get better than a double. I dove into third and touched the base just before a girl on the other team threw the ball at me. Her throw missed and was not caught by the third baseman, so I hopped up and ran home. As I came into home, the catcher deliberately stuck his leg in the way and tripped me as I was trying to touch home plate, but the umpire saw the play and awarded me the run. We went on to score two more runs in that inning to make the final score a slightly respectable 18-5, so I guess I headed a pretty decent rally in the end.

So that's what's been going on in my life. I read a bit on the internet recently about not setting goals like "I will post to my blog more often" but instead setting more specific expectations like "I will post to my blog x times this week". I'm going to try that approach and see if I can't more satisfactorily meet a realistic goal for this space.

UP 2009

The third Halden child began his Ulster Project experience today. I just got back from picking up our host teen from the airport with my mom and brother. Derek understands on some level that this experience is not one to miss, but you can't really know what you're in for until after you've done the project. He's got a great month in store for him, and as usual I'm envious. I'm happy for him though, and I hope it has as much of a positive effect on him as it did on me.

Dave Matthews Band - Big Whiskey & The GrooGrux King (2009)

This is the Dave Matthews Band album I've been waiting for since Everyday in 2001. Busted Stuff (2003) had a few great tracks, but was disappointing to me as a complete listening experience. Stand Up (2005) was an average jam session without much replay value, but the band has finally rediscovered that spark with this, their seventh studio album.

The album title refers to the band's late saxophonist Leroi Moore, who's nickname was "The GrooGrux King", and I suspect that a lot of this album's greatness can be attributed to the effect on the band of losing a long-time friend and bandmate. Gone is the fairly shallow fare we heard in Stand Up. This time aroud Dave's lyrics are passionate and relevant, covering everything from animalistic, passionate summer love in "Shake Me Like A Monkey", to heaven and hell and introspection in "Why I Am" and the first single "Funny The Way It Is." There are hints of anger and bitterness in "Squirm" and "Time Bomb" which make them difficult listens, but their honesty and relevance refuse to be ignored.

The best thing about this album? The band has rediscovered the unique and irresistable instrumentation that made them popular in the first place. Carter Beauford's drum beats are top-notch, and for the first time since Before These Crowded Streets Tim Reynolds contributes his masterful electric guitar skills to the album. He's also touring with the band this summer which was all the convincing I needed to decide that I need to see them again when they come to Utah in September.

My prediction for the album's second single (and my pick for best track) is "Spaceman." Listen to that and tell me it's not a great, soon-to-be classic DMB song. Anyway if you like Dave at all, give this album a listen. I haven't listened to anything else since I first heard it a few days ago.

Standout Tracks
"Spaceman" and "Why I Am"

My New Plant

A year ago I decided I would buy some Miracle Fruit (Synsepalum dulcificum) seeds and try to grow my own plant. If you haven't heard about it, Miracle Fruit is a berry which when eaten rewires your taste buds to make sour things taste sweet for an hour or two. After eating one of these berries, you can bite into a wedge of lemon, and it tastes like candy. Not only did this plant seem like a more advanced growing experiment than my trusty jade plant from college (which was kind to me, surviving negligence on my part and still managing to grow enough to warrant a repotting), but with any luck I might actually have a plant that produces a really cool fruit. To make a long story short, even though I decided this would be my next plant a year ago, I was unmotivated and didn't actually bite the bullet until last week.

I went with a small plant purchase rather than a seed purchase because the cost was the same for ten seeds or a small plant, but the seed germination rate is only about 20%. That means that the chances of getting ten seeds and not seeing any of them sprout were non-trivial, especially since I'm not very experienced with this sort of thing. I went with the plant (since the germination rate is 100%...) and it arrived today. Behold my flashy, tropical Miracle Fruit plant!

I know, I was smitten too.

Anyway I thought it would be fun to document my plant's progress here (and it will force me to update periodically if things go well). The first order of business was to familiarize myself with the plant and what it needs to flourish. It turns out that this particular species thrives in acidic soil and can die if you plant it in alkaline soil. I bought peat moss and perlite at the recommendation of a number of websites detailing care for the plant and repotted it in a 50-50 mix of both. Since it's a tropical rainforest plant, it prefers indirect sunlight and a humid climate. Because Utah is so dry, I set up the pot in a tray with an absorbant material soaked in water. The water should evaporate over the course of the day and serve to create a more tolerable humidity level for the plant. If this doesn't work I may look into some sort of small greenhouse which I can keep more humid than if the plant is simply sitting outside, exposed to the desert climate. Here's my repotted plant.

To give it the appropriate amount and kind of light, I've decided to keep the plant on my back porch where it should get indirect, filtered sunlight through the foliage and hanging plants on our deck but not too much direct sun (which can burn the plant).

Once the plant adjusts to it's new pot and shows visible signs of growth, I'll repot the plant once more in a larger, permanent pot to allow it to develop a complete root system. I'm told a 12-15 inch plant will fruit a few times a year. Right now it measures in at about 7 inches, so with any luck I'll have a flowering plant in 6-8 months (perhaps a year at most). When that happens, everyone's invited to come experience the fruits of my labor... literally. Until then, stay tuned for exciting new developments.

Misnomer

I started off the month of April with two solid blog posts back to back and immediately began collecting articles and ideas for things to write about, hoping April would be the month where I make this process habitual. As you can see, that didn't really happen. Regardless, I have things to muse about and today I feel like writing.

I read this article a week ago and was intrigued. After all I've spent years making fun of the scientists who thought they had discovered cold fusion (that's the misnomer by the way: it's not cold as the whole point is to produce energy a.k.a. heat and it may not even be fusion). Wouldn't it be the ultimate irony if they were on to something and it had been right under our noses for twenty years before we realized the discovery's true potential? This has happened before in science - Mendel's work cross-breeding pea plants was famously forgotten and rediscovered years later to form the basis of modern genetics - but something like cold fusion, which has the potential to safely produce vast amounts of energy without generating any hazardous byproducts, has been a holy grail for the field since the invention of the hydrogen bomb.

The thing that is most stunning to me about this article is how even scientists, the most successful of whom seem to have the ability to think outside of the box and try to make the impossible happen, can sometimes be so closed-minded. What's that you say? The experiment doesn't always work, so they must be measuring energy wrong during the "successful" runs? We've known how to measure energy for years, so if our process has somehow been inaccurate all along, the doubts about this phenomenon should be the least of our concerns. If this is the case there must be a bevy of scientists out there who have been producing bad data for years that have been contributing to our (mis)understanding of the universe.

Anyway I am an eternal optimist when it comes to the potential of science to change our lives in ways beyond my imagination. I wrote off cold fusion when I learned its story in high school, but these guys may well be onto something. If they are you can forget all about this talk of the coming energy crisis. We're probably talking about an energy source better than solar power and assuming no road blocks, maybe we'll see it in the next ten years.

The Value of Ritual

I don't know what to believe, but I can see the value of routine. I think it helps even when it just feels like going through the motions.