In My Copious Free Time

Why are there so many songs about rainbows?

I've been doing a lot of iTunes clean-up lately. Serious cleaning - I've deleted about 600 songs and I've done a lot of editing of poorly named or untitled tracks. (Several years ago someone gave me CDs of the Billboard Top 100 for the years 1960-2001, so needless to say I had a HUGE amount of music just from those CDs, which included a lot of stuff I just didn't care about.)

Anyhow, in the clean-up I discovered I have "The Rainbow Connection," so I loaded it onto my iPod that I keep in the car. I played it last night for Alex and he really enjoyed it. When I told him it was Kermit the Frog singing he thought a moment and said, "He's not bad for a frog."

Personally, I think his singing is just average for frogs. His banjo playing, however, is second-to-none in the amphibian world.

I'm Gonna Be (13 Miles)

First of all, how awesome is MTV Music? So what if they don't play videos on MTV anymore - they play them whenever I want, on demand, on my computer. Sweetness.

The Proclaimers |MTV Music

Because the new iPhone has built-in Nike + AND I had to get a new sensor since the old one finally died, I decided to start anew on the Nike + website, which syncs run information directly from the phone. Innocuous enough, right? Well, I started playing around on the site, something I'd never done since I never really used it consistently in the first place. I noticed the training programs link and once on that page, there it was, staring me in the face:

HALF MARATHON

In all honestly, it looked more like this:

HALF MARATHON

Imagine that in some spiky font with little heat lines coming off of it, as if it just rose up out of the bowels of hell. Also, imagine it flashing.

It looked big. It looked scary. (I know you're thinking it - "that's what she said.") It looked impossible.*

So naturally, I signed right the hell up.



I usually run 2 miles a day, sometimes 2.5 miles. On a good day, I'll run 5k, but let's face it, I'm not a distance runner. I've run a 10k. Once. So I'm really not sure what I'm thinking or doing**, but it just seems like the thing to try. Or do. Just do it. Do or do not, there is no try. 

I'm going to go lace up my shoes and see if I can come up with more hackneyed motivational expressions. In the meantime, if you all never hear from me again, it's because running the first 4 miles was the end of me.

*Actually, it looked like a little, robin's egg blue square. I exaggerate.
**I suspect that a tiny part of this is being inspired as all get-out by Donna Downey's story of becoming a runner (in the midst of losing something like 50 pounds). I used to think I couldn't be a runner, like Donna thought. But now I am. I used to think I couldn't run very far or run something as big as a half-marathon. I want to prove myself wrong.

I want to be just like Cathy Z

That's what you'd think, anyway since I'm shamelessly stealing her blog post idea. It's okay though, since she shamelessly stole it from Ali Edwards. And if you don't know who these women are, you should check out their blogs. Both are very talented visual designers and artists.

On with the larceny...

Outside my window... the treetop is swaying in the breeze

I am thinking... about a conversation I had with my boss yesterday and about the housework I need to do tonight.

I am thankful for... Google Reader.

From the kitchen... this is so not applicable to my life, but I will say that the kitchen still smells like the pizza we had for dinner last night.

I am wearing...olive linen pants and a gauzy black top and black flip flops.

I am creating... plans in my head for the scrapbook pages I won't have time to work on tonight.

I am going... to finish this client contract revision today.

I am reading... well, at the moment I'm reading a data report for a client, but the book I'm in process of reading is  I Was Told There Would be Cake

I am hoping... that I get everything done that needs to get done before I leave for vacation.

I am hearing... the sound of the a/c.

Around the house... I dunno - it's there and I'm here.

One of my favorite things... cashews.

A few plans for the rest of the week... finish up the work on my desk, get a pedicure, cut Alex's hair (or take him to get it cut), clean house, pack, fly to Alabama to visit my family on Thursday.

Second best check memo ever

In David Sedaris's story "Youth in Asia," he relays the story of how his mother sent him a check to cover the cost of having his cat cremated. He writes:

In the left-hand corner, on the line marked MEMO, she'd written, "Pet burning."

Tonight, I got a check of my own.

It's no secret I'm a big fan of David Sedaris. (I'm just going to skip over the not one, not two, but THREE different random lists I've posted that mention him.) Tonight he was at Borders and since Joe left for Minneapolis to visit his brother today, I took Alex with me to the mall for the reading. He started with a new story (one he said he'd never read) about the preponderance of public making-out in Paris. (Aside 1: I really wanted to say "necking" there because "public making-out" seems awkward, but who on earth says "necking" anymore? Aside 2: I thought I'd turned into a prude when I saw all the public making-out in Paris in March, so it was a relief to know that it isn't just me.) He went on to read a fable about a cat who visits a baboon for some grooming before attending a party and then read a bunch of entries from his diary.

The normal Q&A followed and I asked if he had any good books to recommend, and he did, joking that this was going to seem like a set-up since we were in a bookstore and I went along, laughing and saying I'd pick up my check after the reading. During the Q&A, however, he said he had a project that maybe we could help with. "I need a nerd," he proclaimed. He was going to pick someone and then suggested someone in the crowd might be a better nerd-spotter, but then people wanted clarification. What would this nerd need to do? A job description was in order. Sedaris revealed that someone had said they saw him on Twitter ("Tweeter" he called it), but he is not, in fact, on Twitter. He was disturbed that he had an impostor and needed help putting a stop to this and would pay someone $50 for this service. Being a long-time Twitter-er and having one of its founders as a friend (meaning I can send him a direct message), I immediately piped up "Oh, I can take care of that!"

Brash? Probably. But what the hell - I wasn't positive I could fix it, but I was damn sure I could come closer than anyone else there! Sedaris told me to come up and see him after the reading, so Alex and I marched over and waited in the priority line to talk to him.

And yes, my seven-year-old knows who David Sedaris is. He pronounced the whole event "cool" and said, "As far as I know, I'm the first kid in my whole second grade that has gotten to meet David Sedaris." No offense to Sedaris, but I assured him he's probably the only kid in his whole second grade who even knows who David Sedaris is. Sedaris also seemed impressed when he offered Alex some candy and Alex politely answered, "No, thank you." I'm not sure what was more remarkable to him - the manners or the fact that he turned down chocolate.

Anyhow, we had a short conversation about Twitter and what I would do to help him out and suddenly he pulls out his checkbook. I insisted he didn't need to pay me and he insisted that he did, and then Alex chimed in saying, "Let him pay you, Mommy!" So I let David Sedaris write me a check for $50. Then he pulled out a little note pad from a Ritz-Carlton and wrote his email address on it and gave it to me. It wasn't until after I'd left the bookstore that I noticed the memo line he wrote:

Twitter end

Some people would be most excited about the check. Some would be most thrilled over the email address. (Not that I'm not.) Perhaps I'm easily amused, but it's the check memo that does it for me.

From the wilds of the upstairs bathroom...

Too excited to sleep

Tomorrow, on Mother's Day, we leave on a vacation to Walt Disney World that represents a lot of firsts. Our first official stay as Disney Vacation Club members. Joe's first vacation from his new job. When we planned this trip, we were really trying to fit it in between some other work events of mine (which later were rescheduled, naturally). But now that it's upon us, I'm delighted with how the scheduling has worked out. We're leaving on Sunday - this means that on Friday I just had to worry about wrapping things up at work. I didn't have to rush myself through knowing that I had to get home to finish packing, zip over for the traditional pre-vacation pedicure, etc. So Friday ended up being much calmer than I've ever experienced a last-day-of-work-before-vacation day being. That left me (and us) with a full day to wrap up whatever we needed to. We ran errands, finished up the laundry, finished packing at a leisurely pace. And we're returning home on Saturday evening at about 7:30. That gives us Sunday to recover. This couldn't have worked out better if I'd planned it myself. Except that I did plan it myself.

Needless to say, we're all excited. On the way to school earlier this week, Alex made a giddy little sound and said "Oh Mommy, I'm so excited! Four days until Disney!" I asked him what he was most excited about and he immeditaely responded, "The place with the fountains where I get to push the elevator button." Now, keep in mind that the child always gets to push the elevator button. I'm so fully trained on this matter that it isn't unusual for me to get in an elevator and then wait, forgetting that I am "allowed" to push the button. But what was this place he was so excited about? I asked a few questions to try to identify the spot and then he said something telling and (stifling the urge to giggle) I asked "Kiddo, do you mean the parking garage at the airport?"

"Yes!" came the resounding and enthusiastic response. All this effort and expense and the kid's favorite thing is a parking garage.

He then moved on, saying that the night before we left hewas going to say he's too excited to sleep. Of course, this is an inside joke with us - several years ago there was a commercial with two little kids, unable to sleep because they're so excited about their trip the next day to Walt Disney World. When the mom tells them it's bedtime, the little boy says....well, I'll let you see for yourselves...

So that's us. Except that, while I am excited, I am definitely going to sleep! This is another first! I can't remember the last time we went on vacation and I got more than 2 hours of sleep the night before. Sometimes I don't get any sleep given the early morning flights and my packing work.  But getting about 5 hours on vacation eve - that's a vacation in and of itself.

And now, excited or not, I'm off to bed!

The payoff of housework

I've been cleaning house all morning - lovely way to spend a Saturday, right? I was just straightening up Alex's work table, sorting through school papers to keep and toss and deciding which drawings to save. Lately Alex has been writing more, jotting down short thoughts on a page and then drawing all around them. I just found this one (all spelling and punctuation is his:

If i had war to peace i would end the war in IRAQ and go up to hevan. Then i would save some other people who were sick. And get along with everybody. And make every planet have life.

How did I get so lucky to have such a sweet child?

Feeling at home in Scotland

I arrived today in Aberdeen, Scotland for a few days of work (after which I'm on to a few days in Paris - w00t!). Our little group of three went out for some lunch and as we walked out of the pub to return to the hotel, strains of something familiar hit my ears. I could just barely make it out - is was so indistinct that I wasn't sure which direction the sound was coming from, or that I was even hearing it at all. (I have a tendency to hear phantom rings, so other phantom noises surely aren't that far off.) It sounded like an electric guitar, but was I really hearing what I thought I was hearing? As we walked through a courtyard and onto the main street, the sound became not simply clearer, but unmistakable. There I was, on Union Street on a gray day in Scotland, listening to a street performance of a song that made me grin from ear to ear.

The man was playing "Sweet Home Alabama." They might as well have rolled out a red carpet, because I felt totally, cosmically welcomed.

Warming up my passport

In 30 hours I leave for a work event in Aberdeen, Scotland. Thanks to some excellent sleuthing by our crack travel person, the best fare was found through Paris and since it's no more expensive to stay over in Paris a few days than to go straight home (cheaper, actually), I'm staying a few days.

It's been a couple of years since my last trip to Europe, and my one day in Paris. If you read the part about the Paris day trip, you'll see that it was short and that the only food I consumed while on the Continent was a single Tic-Tac, which did not stay with me for long. I'm not sure what I regret more - having so little time (particularly at the Louvre) or being unable to eat a single bite of French food. Let me go on record now as intending to correct both of those tragedies.

In preparation for this trip, I got a phrase book and accompanying CDs and I've been practicing my French.

Ou sont les toilettes? ("Where's the restroom?" very important)
Combien ca coute? ("How much?" - also very important!)
Je voudrais la crepe, s'il vous plait. ("I'd like a crepe, please." I plan on saying this frequently.)

And of course, the obvious:

Je suis desole, je ne parle pas francais. ("I'm sorry, I don't speak French.")

Aside from their practical use, these CDs have provided their fair share of amusement. The first time Alex was in the car as I listened, he was terribly puzzled, exclaiming "What IS that?" I told him and he seemed satisfied. I guess the ridiculousness of what he was hearing was too much for his 7-year-old brain to bear, because a few minutes later he asked, "What IS that?" again.

Before going on I should explain that Alex loves to watch "Super Mario Galaxy" tutorial and game play videos people post to YouTube. In the game, when your character dies, the words "you lose" appear on screen. Because he watches videos from people around the world, he's seen this phrase in several languages. Anyhow...the turning point in Alex's acceptance of the language CDs was when the "Emergencies" track began. On of the phrases was "je suis perdu" which means "I'm lost." Alex immediately recognized the word and from that point on he's listened attentively and recited many of the words and phrases along with me. He even greeted Joe with a hearty "Commet allez-vous?" ("How are you?")

There is one thing that puzzles me about these CDs, though. Logic dictates that anyone purchasing such a CD is unfamiliar with the language it covers. It isn't a big leap to assume that the purchaser is visiting a new, unfamiliar place where the language on the CD is spoken. Makes perfect sense, right? So I'm going about my merry business of stumbling through phrases when the phrase "Can you recommend a babysitter?" came up.

Excusez-moi???

What kind of person goes to France with little to no French language skills,and asks a person who is undoubtedly a stranger (one who speaks little to no English, apparently) to recommend yet another stranger to watch their offspring?? I'd tell you what kind of person does that, but my phrase book doesn't cover "stark-raving lunatic."

And now my last load of laundry is done and it's time to get some sleep.

#TED Day 4, Session 1: Predict

Sorry - I didn't realize that this last TED post was marked as a draft. Here it is...

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Chris responds to Wired's Smiling through the Apocalypse article suggesting that the TED program is ignoring the economic crisis.

"This is a nightmare, which will pass away with the morning. ...But today we have involved ourselves in a colossal muddle, having blundered in the control of a delicate machine, the working of which we do not understand. " - John Maynard Keynes, 1930

He makes a good point. However, his comments immediately following Juan Enriquez's talk (to the effect of "enough of that" - I'd have to go back to my post that day, or perhaps to Twitter to get the exact quote) certainly contributed to the criticism, which I believe is partially deserved.

We're going to have a terrific performance here in Palm Springs (Kids' Table Collective)-- lots of energy. People seem to feel very comfortable with each other by now.

Nate Silver
Statistician
What's the matter with Kansas? But really, it's what's the matter with Arkansas?

He says "When we think of Arkansas, we have a lot of negative connotations." -- um, who is "we"?  But yes, there seems to be more race-determined voting.

Biggest factors that seem to drive race-based voting: education and the type of neighbors you have.

Is racism predictable? - YES, he says.

General social survey - asked "Does anyone of the opposite race live in your neighborhood?" In rural communities a yes response is only about 30%

People in monoracial vs mixed neighborhoods respond almost identically regarding Affirmative Action, but when asked about banning interracial marriage or voting for a person of another race for President, the differences are marked.

Alex Tabarrok
First half of the 20th century was a disaster - multiple walls - political, trade, communication

By the end of the 20th century, we'd begun breaking down many of these walls - growth had spread to almost every part of the globe.

"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me." - Thomas Jefferson

If you're going to have a disease, it's better to have a common one, than a rare one - more incentive to produce drugs - larger markets save lives. If China and India were as rich as the US is today, the market for cancer drugs would be 8x what it is today.

Larger markets increase the incentive to produce new ideas. So how do we maximize the incentive to produce new ideas? By having one market - one world.

Today, less than one-tenth of 1% of the population are scientists and engineers. US has long been an idea leader. But the US is losing ground - that's a good thing, because for too long, the US has shouldered the burden. If the whole world were as wealthy as the US, there would be 5x as many scientists and engineers.

We ALL benefit when another country gets rich - creates greater demand and greater supply of ideas. Economics of ideas suggests optimism.

Okay, that's all well and good...but are we going to be uplifted only by scientists?

Pete Alcorn
Looking at UN population data, it looks like we're leveling off and all predictors show that will happen and we'll have declining population growth.

Declining population drives down demand for housing and therefore property costs drop, lifting a heavy burden off the poor.
Scarce labor drives wages up, again, lifting the poor.

He sees a period of re-enlightenment in about 150 years as the effects of declining population are felt.

Bruce Buenode Mesquita
We can predict the future scientifically. We can also use this knowledge to engineer it. Uses game theory which assumes people:

• Are rationally self-interested.
• Have values and beliefs
• Face limitations.

Who is rational? If you go by the definition "they do what is in their best interest" then almost everyone is.

But how do you get people to change behavior they believe is in their best interest? You have to influence them in ways so that they see new benefits in new behaviors.

What percent of the time is the model right even when the experts are wrong? CIA says 90% of the time.
What do we need to know in order to predict?

• Who has a stake?
• What do they say they want?
• How focused are they on the problem at hand compared to other issues?
• How much clout could they bring to bear?

We don't need to know: How they got to this point

We can predict behavior based on those factors based on 2 things - they care about the outcome and they care about getting credit.

On to Iran - some predictions:
What is Iran going to do about nuclear weapons?
In policy path simulations with 150 equalling "build a bomb", 130="make enough weapons-grade fuel, 115=only produce enough weapons-grade fuel for research
100=only civilian nuclear energy development

When plotting current factors based on the most international pressure and the least international pressure. The model predicts an equillibrium will be reached by 2010, will make enough WGF to show they can do it and increase national pride, but won't make enough to build a bomb.

How secure is the theocratic regime?
Current info shows the moneyed interests are increasing in power - this indicates that more stability, less radicalism is likely to be supported.

Nicholas Negroponte
Suggested a low-cost laptop for kids back in 1982. Now we're thinking in a year the nettop market will be 50%.

750k in hands of kids
250k in route

Oh snap, he just threw it on the floor! Guess it's durable. ;)

Kids - found they are teaching their parents how to read and write

Commercial markets will do everything to stop this from happening.

OLPC is going to olpc - now people understand, so we're going to a phase where everyone is copying it. We'll make it open source from beginning to end.

Dan Ariely

Ariely is the author of Predictably Rational, which I'm pretty sure is over there (<-- left sidebar, page down a little). It's a really cool read.

When he was hospitalized for  burns over 70% of his body, he noticed that nurses had a particular way of removing bandages. What is the right approach to removing a bandage? Nurses in his department went for the ripping and said that this was the best way to minimize pain.

After studying pain, the nurses were wrong - we don't process duration in the same way as intensity. It would have been better to go slowly, to start with more painful areas and move to less painful areas to show improvement trend and it would have been better to provide recovery breaks.

Enron - was it a few bad apples or were people capable of mass irrational behavior like this? In his tests, he didn't find a lot of people who cheat a lot - he saw a lot of people who cheated a little. Cost benefit analysis - what's the risk versus the reward. You would expect that the amount of money for questions would increase cheating - but no. As the probability of getting caught increased, people cheated the same amount.

Two forces - we all want to feel good about ourselves, but we can cheat a little and still feel okay. Personal fudge factor. How do you test for that?
Tasks - 1) recall 10 books read in high school vs. 10 commandments: the ones who tried to recall the commandments didn't cheat. So they tested with people signing an honor code - this also kept people from cheating.

Then they tried to increase the fudge factor. He would put cans of Coke in common fridges. He would also put dollar bills in the same fridges. The Cokes would disappear, the dollars wouldn't.

"Taking a pencil from work feels a lot different than taking a dime."

When paid with a token that could be exchanged for money, subjects cheated twice as much.

Then he prepaid students, did the test and gave subjects the chance to pay back what they didn't earn. They injected actors who pretended to solve all the problems very quickly. Did that make others cheat more? They were in Pittsburgh at Carnegie-Mellon, when the actor getting up had a CMU shirt on, cheating went up. When the actor wore a Pitt shirt, cheating went down. When someone is in the in group and cheats, it sets a norm. But when someone from the out group cheats, awareness of cheating goes up.

Think about this in terms of the stock market...chilling. When you remove the action from money (risky commodities like bundled mortgage funds), what happens?

Many of our intuitions are wrong, but do we test them?

One nurse told him that he didn't take her own pain into consideration - having to remove the bandages from someone she liked, knowing it was painful. She thought her intuition was right and the prospect of pain made it difficult to consider doing an experiment to test that intuition.

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Sorry peeps, I didn't blog the rest of the day. I'll post some pictures from the Kids' Table Collective, which is basically a parody/commentary on TED. The TED experience was blended with the Wizard of Oz (thanks to a TED@PalmSprings short talk about the inspiration for the Wizard) and I didn't blog this either because I was too busy laughing my head off.

Jamie Cullum did an awesome performance - my favorite was a mash-up of "Singing in the Rain" by Gene Kelly with "Umbrella" by Rihanna.

At the end of the conference, Jamie Cullum took the stage again to play "Imagine" and I don't know what was happening in Long Beach, but in Palm Springs, there was much standing arm-in-arm, hand-in-hand and singing. Utterly hokey but also just right.

Farewell, TED2009!