"There is no reason to tell us apart because I don't wish to be classified, as if that makes me more human to you, or makes me more identifiable to you, as if you can understand me better, as if the country my parents came from has affected my life so much that it makes me an exotic and rare bird."

( 2 more )

Given that opposite charges attract, what stops an electron from crashing into the positively-charged atomic nucleus?

(I'm assuming it's not analogous to a planet orbiting a star - though perhaps it is - because electromagnetic force is so much stronger than gravity, and anyway an electron isn't really a particle at all.)

I hope this is the right place to post a statistics question, particularly ANOVA.

Can anyone recommend a good text that comprehensively explains the RATIONALE for each partition of variance? (e.g. A, B, A x B, Error A, Error B, et cetera)

The formulae are easy enough to find, rationale is somewhat more difficult.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Worry and guilt are absolutely useless emotions that help no one. Preparation and mitigation are useful actions.

I read an about a study once upon a time, perhaps it was in Blink, perhaps it was in "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers" about a study done on monkeys and stress. I'm probably fudging the units here, but from what I recall, there were two groups of monkeys. One initially started getting shocked with 10 Amps of electricity. The second group was shocked with 50 Amps of electricity. Needless to say, they were stressed out of their mind initially, but as time wore on, they adapted to the point where, while they were still stressed, didn't think it was all that bad, measured in terms of their cortisol levels.

After awhile, the scientists started shocking both groups at 20 amps. Once again, the 10 amp monkeys were stressed out of their minds. The 50 amp group? No rise in cortisol levels whatsoever. They didn't think it was any worse than not getting shocked.

Primates adapt to a pain threshold relatively quickly, and when they experience less of it, they think things aren't that bad. People used to beat their children. Drill instructors tell their charges that they are the lowest of the low. Dr. Spock came to recommend letting children "cry it out" at the end of his career. Adversity leads to resilience, as long as it doesn't break you.

When Senator McCain hears about water torture, he probably doesn't think it's a big deal. This is a man who had his arms strung up to his ankles, which dislocated his shoulders to such a degree he still can't lift his arms above shoulder level. Medical workers and Forensic investigators are completely inured to the site of blood and brains. Boxers welcome physical confrontation. Haitians don't fear starvation.

The minimum wage worker in America is amongst the 13% of richest people in the world. More than half the world doesn't have enough food to eat. A third of the world doesn't have clean water to drink. Half the world gets by on less than $2 a day.

If you live in America, odds are you aren't making meals out of mud and butter because you can't afford Rice, like you would in Haiti. You're probably not getting shot at as people are in many parts of the world. The government isn't waging Genocidal warfare on you and everyone you know as in Darfur or Rwanda. The dictator's sons aren't bedding your wife on your wedding day like Saddam's sons were prior to 2003. You're not getting jailed and executed for speaking against the government like you would be in Zimbabwe. Jihadists aren't bombing your daughter's dance clubs as in Israel or Indonesia. The Average American at the time of the Revolutionary War didn't live to see their 30th birthday. And a majority of Americans have health problems because they have too much to eat. You have hope of an education, of raising yourself above your current situation, and the greatest of freedoms is the freedom to simply leave. You can break your leases, declare bankruptcy against your debts, put your children up for adoption, and hitchhike your way out of town to some isolated locale where people keep to themselves.

Life might be hard, and it might be hard by anyone's standards. But if you're in America, you're in a land where dreams come true. People come here completely destitute, little education, with nothing but the clothes on their backs, and become millionaires.

People tend to have a baseline happiness. People who lose limbs are on average only slightly more or less happy than they were before the event five years later. The same for people who are blinded, and people who get married. People who make 10 times the income they made in college are no happier. It's a hedonic treadmill, and wherever we find ourselves becomes the new baseline.

Ultimately, no one can make us happy but our own selves.

China has accumulated more than $2 Trillion in reserves over the past decade and a half. What are they doing with it? They're locking up resources, for five, ten, sometimes 30 years. Oil. Natural gas. They've got a $360 Billion dollar war chest whose sole purpose in life is securing the entirety of the world's uranium supply exclusively for Chinese use. They're buying entire mountain ranges in the Andes for their copper. Silver. Phosphorous. Fertilizer. Peat. They're building submarines at such a pace that it's estimated by 2025, their submarine fleet will outnumber America's 5 to 1. They're investing heavily in African infrastructure, and making nice with Venezuela, Russia, Iran, and Nigeria. They're doing their best to make it the Chinese century.

China's Oil Strategy
China's influence in Africa: Implications for the United States
Uranium Investing: China’s $300 Billion Conspiracy to Stockpile U308
Chinese Submarine Fleet Is Growing, Analysts Say
China's Foreign Reserve Increases Accelerate Despite Yuan Appreciation
Peru's copper mountain in Chinese hands
China's Financial Clout over the US

The sad truth of it is that the Chinese government holds nearly five times the number of $US Dollars as the US Treasury on hand, nearly all of it debts OF the US Treasury to the Chinese government. They could pretty much buy up every distressed US American financial institution, and thus control America's money supply if they so wished. But they won't, because American companies are a terrible investment in the current market.

This is a product of our high corporate and personal taxation structure, our minimum wage laws, and our unions and excess benefits. The areas of the world who are growing the most quickly in affluence are in China, in India, in Russia, in Eastern Europe, and even in Africa. If you can't make goods cheap enough for those people to buy, you aren't taking part in the biggest engine of wealth and growth in the world today. The Irish have figured it out, they make almost $13k more per capita ($61k) than we do (and $16k more than the Brits), where they made $20k per capita less than Americans in 1990 by lowering their corporate taxes to some of the lowest in Europe. So do the Chinese, the Japanese, the Indians, the Germans, and the Russians. Governments like the UK, France, Spain, and the USA face Soviet style collapse (what happened to the USSR is that they ran out of external oil revenues because the Saudis flooded the market, depriving them of all outside revenue) in our lifetimes.

Without access to unearned wealth (like Norway, Venezuelan, and Saudi Arabian oil exports, the USA through 1971, and the UK through 2002) nations that have easy wealth way out of disproportion with their populations can afford socialism and communism. The rest have to figure out how to make more money than they spend, or ultimately face bankruptcy and third world status. Entitlements are the great destroyer.

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were — I have not seen
As others saw — I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone ;
And all I lov'd, I lov'd alone .
Then — in my childhood — in the dawn
Of a most stormy life — was drawn
From ev'ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still :
From the torrent, or the fountain ,
From the red cliff of the mountain ,
From the sun that 'round me roll'd
In its autumn tint of gold —
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass'd me flying by —
From the thunder, and the storm
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

THE EVENING

With the ghostly shapes of dead heroes
Moon, you fill
The growing silence of the forest,
Sickle moon -
With the gentle embraces
Of lovers,
And with ghosts of famous ages
All around the crumbling rocks;
The moon shines with such blue light
Upon the city,
Where a decaying generation
Lives, cold and evil -
A dark future prepared
For the pale grandchild.
Your shadows swallowed by the moon
Sighing upward in the empty goblet
Of the mountain lake.


GEORG TRAKL

Translated by Robert Bly and James Wright

Whenever we make that drive, I always make it a point to take Massachusetts Avenue, in spite of the traffic. I barely recognize the buildings now, but each time I am there I return instantly to those six weeks as if they were only the other day, and I slow down and point to Mrs. Croft's street, saying to my son, here was my first home in America, where I lived with a woman who was 103. "Remember?" Mala says, and smiles, amazed, as I am, that there was ever a time that we were strangers. My son always expresses his astonishment, not at Mrs. Croft's age, but at how little I paid in rent, a fact nearly as inconceivable to him as a flag on the moon was to a woman born in 1866. In my son's eyes I see the ambition that had first hurled me across the world. In a few years he will graduate and pave his way, alone and unprotected. But I remind myself that he has a father who is still living, a mother who is happy and strong. Whenever he is discouraged, I tell him that if I can survive on three continents, then there is no obstacle he cannot conquer. While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.

"The Third and Final Continent" from Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

GM was the indisputed largest company in the world for decades. Today? It's valued at less than Mattel, the maker of Hot Wheels and other die cast metal toy cars. Oh how the mighty have fallen.



Making a lot more money than the real thing.

I don’t know exactly why I believe that a book brings us the possibility of happiness, but I am truly grateful for that modest miracle.

Jorge Luis Borges

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/constitution/index.html

It's due for an update pretty soon, but I've found this an amazing resource for the current state and history of any phrase within Constitutional law.

I am having a really hard time putting this book down. I love it! Here are two different passages:


Passage 1:
"What wise God would consign a man to Hell for ignorance, instead of teaching him better in the afterlife?"





Passage 2:
Taliesin said gently, "Father Patricius, you would do a great disservice to the people of this land if you close their sacred well. It is a gift from God--"
"It is a part of pagan worship." The eyes of the Archbishop glowed with the austere fire of the fanatic.
"It comes from God," the old Druid insisted, "because there is nothing in this universe which doesn't come from God, and simple people need simple signs and symbols. If they worship God in the waters which flow from his bounty, how is that evil?"
"God cannot be worshipped in symbols which are made by man--"
"There you are in total agreement with me, my brother," said the Merlin, "for a part of the Druid wisdom lies in the saying that God, who is beyond all, cannot be worshipped in any dwelling made by human hands, but only under his own sky. And yet you build churches and deck them richly with gold and silver. Wherefore, then, is the evil in drinking from the sacred springs which God has made and blessed with vision and healing?"

because property crimes are not defined as acts of violence
daphne gottlieb

it's not what he did, it's how
he did it so when I say he stole my heart
I mean he stole
my heart as if he sidled up
to my car at night
smashed the window with a crowbar
jerked the door open
threw the newspaper, the ice scraper into the street
decapitated the bobblehead cat
that was nodding sweetly on the dash
and then ripped out the stereo--he
didn't just grab the faceplate--
he tore the whole box out
bent and scraped the area around it
didn't clip the end of the wires
just yanked them until they gave
and then ran away, black box, jaw set, breathing
heavy

( so there's my car in the morning )

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1031611/Sharia-law-SHOULD-used-Britain-says-UKs-judge.html

says UK's lord Chief Justice. I've become such a legal nerd that I love choice-of-forum/choice-of-law issues. I guess in the age of the Internet and air travel, it's become practical to do this kind of thing. The next trick is to find a Sharia trained solicitor and a judge willing to accommodate it.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wwdn/~3/326133464/the-pretty-whit.html

I haven't had a theatrical agent for years, so I don't have as many auditions or opportunities to work as an actor as I once did. I have a fantastic manager, though, who always gets me into quality auditions, where I have a real shot at booking the job.[1]

My manager and I have an understanding that I'm primarily focused on writing at the moment, so he can put his time and energy into his other clients who are full-time actors, while keeping an eye out for parts like NUMB3RS, where I have a better than average shot to nail the audition.[2] This arrangement has worked out really well for both of us.

Last week, he got me an audition for a wonderful role on [awesome show redacted]. I had less than a day to prepare it but I did my best, and when I got into the room . . . I sucked. Oh, man how I sucked. I think the stink of my reading is still sitting in that building, a week after I left. In fact, if you see hazmat teams in Studio City, now you know why.

Luckily for us, the casting director was willing to give good, honest, useful feedback on my audition. The bottom line? He felt like I was really "acting" when I was in there. My performance wasn't organic, it wasn't honest, it wasn't real. In other words, it wasn't very good.

When my manager relayed this to me, it was like Billy Zabka swept my leg. Getting caught acting was one of my worst fears realized. Good actors don't get caught acting, bad actors get caught acting. Ergo . . . well, I'd rather not say it out loud.

For the next couple of days, I spent a lot of time thinking about how that happened, and I had to face an uncomfortable reality: maybe I was so out of practice, and so focused on writing (instead of acting), maybe I just don't have what it takes to be a successful on-camera actor anymore.

I had a real crisis on my hands, but before I could call my manager and discuss it yesterday, he called me with another audition.

"Okay," I thought, "I'll just go on this audition, and after the holiday weekend, I'll see if we can have lunch, and face this reality together."

I prepared the audition, keenly aware of all the things I'd done wrong with the [awesome show redacted] audition. I went through all the things I've written about acting and auditioning, and listened to a lot of my own advice and experience. I decided that I'd get in, do my thing, and get out.[3] I thought about a number of conversations I've recently had with a friend of mine who just booked a similar role on [very very very awesome show redacted], and applied some of his decision making to my own. I kept it simple, and I never thought, "Well, this is it. If this one doesn't work, I'm hanging up my dance belt."[4] Instead, I just prepared my take on this character, made some deliberate-but-risky choices, and went to work.

When I was in the room, I didn't think about the people there, I didn't think about what was at stake (directly or indirectly) and I just focused on the person I was reading with. I didn't do anything fancy, just gave them my simple-but-deliberate take on this guy.

I felt better than I felt after I sucked out loud last week. I didn't know if I nailed it, but I'd made my deliberate-but-risky choices, and I'd committed to them entirely. Whether I got the job or not, at least I had that to take home with me and keep in a box on the shelf for the weekend.

A few hours after I got home, my manager called me.

"Well, I have some feedback," he said.

"That was fast," I said.

"Yeah, I guess they wanted you to know right away that you're hired."

"Really?!" I said. I always say that, even though I know that my manager is never going to call me up, tell me a got a job, and then say, "Ha! PSYKE!"

"Yes, really." He said.

So I squeed, and he outlined the deal for me. I get guest-starring billing at the beginning of the show on my own card, I work for eight days, and -- best of all -- I'll earn enough to qualify for SAG's "good" health insurance for at least another year.

I can't say anything about the role, because I don't have permission from the producers and the network, but I think I can safely reveal that it's for Criminal Minds on CBS, and it's a part that I am going to love bringing to life.

There is a lesson here about not giving up. There's a lesson here about learning from your mistakes and applying that knowledge, instead of wallowing in self-pity. I'm not pointing that out because I think anyone else needs to hear it; I'm pointing it out because I'm going to forget it sooner or later, and I want to remember it the next time I go searching through my writing for advice from myself.

One more thing: when I had the audition last week, I did my best, even though my best was crap. When I did my audition yesterday, I did my best, and it was much better than what "my best" was just a week ago. Someone once said to me that we should always do our best, and understand and accept that "our best" will vary from time to time. I'm glad I remembered that.

And now, footnotes:

[1] That may not make sense. Let me explain: pretty much every agent I ever had would submit me on as many projects as possible, whether I was really right for the role or not. I guess the logic here is that you get more chances to score when you take more shots, which makes a certain amount of sense, but in practice is pretty frustrating for actors who keep getting sent out for roles that they have no chance of booking. (I realize that, to actors who are struggling for any auditions, this seems like a wonderful problem to have, but it really isn't.)

[2]Years ago, I took an extensive and comprehensive marketing class, where I learned a whole bunch of stuff about how to market myself as an actor, and how to find breakout roles that are supported by five or six things that define my personality -- my essences, in the language of this course. My manager looks for roles that match up with my essences, while a larger team of agents may just look for parts that call for a white male, 30-36.

[3]This is one of the valuable things I learned while writing sketch comedy.

[4]What? You don't wear a dance belt to every audition?

And now Cindy.

EDIT: Is pregnant. I forgot to say.

"I know. I know that I shall never again meet anything or anybody who will inspire me with passion. You know, it's quite a job starting to love somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment, in the very beginning, when you have to jump across a precipice: if you think about it you don't do it. I know I'll never jump again."

-Jean-Paul Sartre

"Oh if at every moment of our lives we could know the consequences of some of the utterings, thoughts and deeds that seem so trivial and unimportant at the time! And should we not conclude from such examples that there is no such thing in life as unimportant moments devoid of meaning for the future?"