A long time ago, I made the decision to not be defined by my job. I was working full time as a web application developer and teaching full time at a technical college. I was putting in around 300 hours a month and getting paid for 180 of them, and I had the epiphany that work was ultimately not the purpose for my life, it was the thing I did to pay for the life I wanted to lead. I had missed too much of my life for work. Years later, I would sum the whole thing up in one of my rants on the old Johnny Incognito web site:
Let’s do a little math, all of which was inspired by my grandfather.
Let’s say you live to be a hundred years old. You die on the day you were born one century before. Forgetting about leap years (because at night figuring out leap years is stupid) that means you’ve lived 36500 days. That’s a good long time.
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If there’s one thing we love more than making heroes in our modern western culture, it’s watching them fall. We love the smell of schadenfreude in the morning, and it comes as no surprise. We build someone up to impossible heights and then watch diligently as they fail to live up to the status we have given them. Often, I’d say that this is unfair, but in the strange case of Mel Gibson, I’m afraid he has earned every lick of public laughter and scorn.
Christopher Hitchens recently provided his commentary, and it’s an interesting take on things. I’ve long found it strange that he is so often defended by people for what amounts to a long history of anger, racism, and alcohol abuse. He’s come a very long way since Mad Max and Gallipoli. I’ve also seen PZ Myers’ comments on Hitchens’ piece and I find it all a little disconcerting. Why are so few people ready to call Gibson on his insanity?
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The Inside Insides blog just crossed my path, and I thought it was really neat, really interesting, and probably a really expensive way to make art. I found the link on PZ Myers’ blog Pharyngula, and I can’t think of a better explanation than his:
I’m sure it was a moment of epiphany. Person in charge of an MRI takes avantage of an idle moment in the parade of patients to have lunch. Pulls a banana out of a brown paper bag. Looks at banana. Looks at MRI. Looks at banana. Looks at MRI. And the rest is history.
The posts are each a series of different fruits and veggies run through an MRI. They take a bunch of slices and turn them into animations. By “slices”, I’m using the MRI-specific term, and not the “knife knife stab stab” usage of the term. Way less fruit mess that way. If you aren’t familiar with how this can be, here’s a very basic explanation of how an MRI works. But I’m sure if you watch House you are already familiar with the term.
Broccoli looks kind of like fireworks, mushrooms look like eerily-lit jellyfish, and kiwis look like a big wet smooch. Very cool stuff.
Jim
Christopher Hitchens posted this on his web site:
I have been advised by my physician that I must undergo a course of chemotherapy on my esophagus. This advice seems persuasive to me. I regret having had to cancel so many engagements at such short notice.
Hitchens has many detractors on all sides of the conversation, but I think that is what makes him such an enjoyable character. Even on topics where I disagree with him, I always find his opinions thoughtful and insightful, and when we agree on topics, I find it fascinating to watch him shred through opponents in a debate, or tear them apart with written word. Here’s to a speedy recovery, sir.
Jim
I have always had a thing about bees and wasps. It never made sense to me. They’re entities less than the size of my thumb who couldn’t possibly hurt me more than the discomfort I put up with for a tattoo, and yet when they come flying by I get antsy. I’ve chalked it up to the notion that I have personal space issues. If people are too huggy, I’m just as likely to swat them as I am an ant or spider who carelessly wandered onto my leg. And I don’t feel at all bad about that. Billions of years of evolution and bugs still can’t tell if I’m a plant or not? Sorry, folks, but I am all for natural selection.
However, I’ve always been fascinated by the dark side of bugs. If they were made by God, as I had once upon a time thought, then how could the crawlies of the world be so darned nasty? At first it was things like trapdoor spiders that caught my attention. What would they have done back in the days of the Garden of Eden, when man and animals were all super happy and sang songs together and nobody ate anybody else? Did they just figure out one day after Eve bit the apple that hiding behind a trap door and launching at your prey is a good hunting strategy? Is this behavior learned or instinctive?
Then there was my first encounter in a book with ichneumons, that branch of wasp that embodies yucky better than any other animal I’ve ever heard of. I forget now where I had read about the tarantula wasp, but the image of their behavior definitely gave me the willies. For those who don’t know, what they do is paralyze a tarantula and then lay their eggs on top of it. The tarantula has to sit and wait until the larvae hatch, and then they devour it. This is a shit state of affairs for the tarantula, who is alive but unable to do things like play dodgeball or eat food, waiting for the inevitable mouths of his devourers to awaken.
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I just finished reading a fabulous book entitled Stiff: The Curious Lives Of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. It discusses the interesting and curious history of the use of cadavers in science. This topic runs that gamut from anatomy classes to medicinal cannibalism, which I’m sure you can imagine makes for a very interesting read. I must admit, though, the topic definitely made me think on what my own wishes would be for my body when I die, so I thought I should lay them out here. Because, you know, blog entries are as good as living wills, right?
Of the many options available, the least intriguing to me is to be the victim of medicinal cannibalism. Fortunately, it doesn’t sound like there’s an awful lot of that going around these days. But still, allow me to get that one out of the way first and foremost. I do not want to be eaten, even if it would cure someone’s dropsy.
I imagine that many would be surprised at the fact that I don’t put traditional burial far beyond cannibalism as distasteful ways to dispose of my corpse. I have never understood graveyards, though I certainly enjoy jogging through them. The practical side of “well, we need to put the body somewhere” obviously makes sense, and barring other options available that makes some sense. But the options are there, so that leaves only what I guess I would call the curious social aspect of burial. I do not want my loved ones coming to a plot of land to remember me. I do not want them clearing away detritus from the plot, leaving flowers and lanterns and weird ceramic things to keep me company, or even standing about having a one-sided conversation with me. Believe me, I’ve had my share of one-sided conversations with family and the last thing I need is to suffer through them for all eternity.
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I would highly recommend people read The FDA for the Average SBM Consumer by Martin A. Lessem, J.D. which was posted today on Science-Based Medicine. It’s a fascinating look at how the Food and Drug Administration came into being, and contains much that I did not know about this rather important US government body.
The FDA is, even more than Orac or Big Pharma, the whipping boy of the alternative medicine movement. It’s a funny argument that they present, arguing that since the FDA once “allowed” thalidomide to be given to pregnant women, clearly over 50 years later we simply cannot trust them to look out for our best interests. This is a fantastical mauling of the facts, but a fine example of how we can’t always believe what we google.
As the article states: Read more…
Hey MKids,
I love celebrations. Rites of passage are a big part of being human, and while the Meddling Kids may not celebrate Ramadan, Christmas or Easter quite a fervently as our neighbors, we still like to raise our glasses in celebration of reaching a milestone.
Meddling Kids has officially reached 100 members! This is not including all of you who subscribe to our RSS feeds or read our posts via Twitter and Facebook.
Thanks for reading, and an special thanks to those of you who comment! In fact, if you are a regular reader or subscriber why not comment on this post to let us know who’s out there?!
We’re looking forward to hearing from you and truly appreciate everyone’s support!
Marc “BoyInfidel”
Hey MKids,
Jim and I had a quick discussion the other night about the use of Google AdWords on this site. The idea is to help fund the growing needs of this site and maybe even implement some improvements along the way. The downside to this is that, given the nature of our content, AdSense ironically chooses to display religious-based ad’s! I’ve set the ad’s to block any religious content, but these settings take time to process. In the meantime this site is sponsored by World Vision, The Church of Scientology and JesusIsTheDifference .. i just threw up in my mouth a little.
My apologies.
ps: if anyone has any creative ideas on how to fund improvements without using advertising, or has experience optimizing AdWords, we’re very open to suggestions. Thanks!
To those of you who come here often, you’ll notice that the past few days has been unusually quiet around the Meddling Kids site. A quick post on shower urination, and then nothing for days.
Normally, I try to keep my weekends to myself. If I see something on a weekend that makes me want to write then that’s a separate matter, but as a general rule I prefer to fill them in other ways. This means that Mondays are often big days for Meddling Kids, with all my thoughts thunked over the weekend to process. But this week, I started things off differently.
It was laundry. Clearly, laundry is to blame.
I got up in the morning and was switching a load from the washer to the dryer. I was leaning over awkwardly and pushing wet clothes in with one hand, when suddenly my back let me know that it hated me, and wished a variety of ills upon me. And then it just quit.
I’m not entirely sure how I got upstairs and made the decision to lie down and see how this played out, but it was a good thing. I couldn’t even stand for the rest of the day, and on into the next day. Finally, around 4:00 of day-the-second, I managed to stand (much to the pleasure of my bladder). This led to walking, which led me to a walk-in massage appointment, and now I’m doing a lot better.
Today will be a “read through the 3000 top priority emails out of the 10000 total emails for the 12 emails that are actually worth reading” day, plus I’ve arranged a job interview. All things being equal, I’ll be back to the regular grind of posts today or tomorrow. Thanks for the patience.
Jim
