Occupational Hazards

Mathematicians have the circle-squarers and angle-trisectors. These are amateur mathematicians who have heard that among the unsolved problems of Greek antiquity are creating a square with the same area as a given circle, and splitting a given angle into three equal parts, with a straightedge and compass. They play with it and work on it and eventually come up with something they are convinced solves the problem, usually unaware that it's been proven for a very long time that these things just can't be done.

And then there are those who have a new, short proof of something like Fermat's Last Theorem, which was recently proved by Andrew Wiles in something like 100 pages or so. Or maybe a proof of the Riemann Hypothesis, which is currently unproved (or un-disproved, depending on how it all turns out). Mathematicians get these things in the mail, or probably now in their email, maybe two or three a year. People hope to have solved the "big problem." They almost never do.

Writers, dramatists, producers, and publishers all have their "will you read my manuscript?" people. And there it is, in a manila envelope (if it fits in just one), full of hopes and flowery prose and reading like, well, like this blog, probably. People hope to have written the next great book/play/script. They almost never do.

And don't get me started about vitamins, strange tropical berry juices, or herbal supplements. They almost never solve any big health problems. Sorry, and sorry for your downline, but it's true.

Math Educators like me have this: "I've developed a math curriculum based on using the abacus. All the kids I've tried it on jump 3 grade levels, and their parents want to canonize me." And they can't understand why you aren't excited, getting out your wallet, writing a check or something.

Sigh.

Most of the time, the proofs get thrown away, the manuscripts go unread, and the juices finally get thrown away. And most of the time, the new curriculum gets ignored, because we're pretty sure that this particular curriculum, like almost any curriculum, works great on wealthy suburban kids, and somehow fails to do its magic with inner-city poor kids.

And the moral of all four stories is, unfortunately, "It really is harder than you think."

What the Well Dressed Man is Wearing at My House

Like most people who work for a living, I look forward to coming home, kicking off the shoes, plopping down in the easy chair and letting some of the day's bad mojo drip off of me. I don't have a Ward Cleaver complex or anything, but there's no doubt that the fire, the pipe (purely metaphorically), and the slippers call to me. Maybe a compressed - sawdust - and - petrochemical - log fire in the fireplace.

Man with more hair and less girth than me, but with the right idea.

So in an effort to be comfortable, of course I like to change into appropriate lounge wear. and this is where things get difficult. I imagine many men might think of donning a pair of slippers, say, like these:

But when I think of evening footwear I think more of something like this:



Or maybe like this:


These are what the well-dressed gentleman wears in the evening around my house, if he's smart, anyway. Jeeves might say, 'Not the ski-boots, sir." And I'd have to say, "Nonsense, Jeeves, they're the only thing." And it might cause some tension, but I'd have to hold fast on this point.

Why? Because of this:


A small kitty? A little kitty with a puff ball? Don't be fooled. Sure, he makes it look like he's really just interested in chasing the little puff ball around. But he's strategic. Get the ball on one side of the foot, and then you can pretty much do whatever you want to the foot itself:

Step 1: Carefully place puff ball on other side of foot

Step 2: Go ahead: Bite, scratch; rend with tooth and claw.

And pretty soon, it's everlastingly too late:



I'm keepin' the boots.

Make us Proud, Wal-Mart!

"Hey! There are hungry people all over the country! Let's have a contest and feed the winners!"

That's why we love ya, Sons-and-Daughters-of-Sam.

And Lo! The Word Came Down from On High

To simplify things and avoid my getting into trouble, let's just say that I am a level 3 administrator in the organization. Every month, my supervisor and his assistants (levels 5 and 4, respectively) call all the level 3's together to deal with problems, seek advice, and preach the gospel (from levels 6, 7, 8, 9, etc.). It's a good system, and the level 4- and 5-ers above me are good folks. We 3's don't always like what gets preached, but we're basically obedient and do our best to comply.

So about 6 months ago, in our meeting, the word came down that we could no longer do X. Sure, we had been allowed to do X in the past, but those days were over. No more X. They were serious. X causeth a multitude of problems, apparently, so just stop it. Now.

And in the months since then, we have been reminded at least a half-dozen times, in various contexts, that X was a thing of the past. Thou Shalt Not X. Remember? Remember how we said no more X? Well, better get used to it, 'cause NO MORE X.

I got it.

Only here's the problem: It soon became apparent that the best, most logical way to solve a problem in my department was to do . . . you guessed it: X. But I knew better. But I really needed to X. But I knew I couldn't. But. . . .

So I went to #5, and I said, "I know I can't do X. I know that. It's clear that X causes warts and communism, so X is Right Out. But you see, I need to do this certain thing, and is seems to little ol' me that the easiest thing to do would be XbutIknowIcan'tdothatsoyoudon'thavetotellme, so what do you think I should do instead?" Number 5 listened carefully and came up with a plan. He'd take the problem to #7.

So it turns out that #7 agreed that I was in a sticky situation all right, and maybe we could solve it by doing Y. Well, Y was actually a good idea. It was not something I knew about, and Y would work just fine to solve my problem. "So that's why #7 gets the big bucks," I thought. So I did as I was asked, and wrote up a case for Y, explaining why I needed to do Y and what a good idea it would be. And #5 added his support, and we sent it to #7, and #7 took my case to #8.

And I waited.
Then, today, I got an email from #7! And it said that #7 and #8 weren't really ready to do Y, it seemed a little drastic. No need for such draconian action. They suggested that X would be simpler. So I just needed to write a memo explaining why I wanted to do X, and that would be that.

Of course, I hit "Reply" immediately.

"But, you silly ass," I wrote, "X is what I wanted to do all along but you've been telling me over and over and over and over that I couldn't and now you say to me thas;dlkjfgaspoiuga;la;rua."

Those of you with who have trod the administrative boards will recognize the "s;dlkjfgaspoiuga;la;rua" part as where my vast administrative experience of two years kicked in and saved my backside. My instincts told my fingers to just quit working. Then my instincts told me to hit the delete key until my whole reply disappeared. And I walked away.

So I will write the memo, and get permission, and do X, and all will be well.

But the real question in my mind is, how long do you have to be an administrator before you start understanding things like this? Before you understand that Of course, you can't apply Y to a PS-55/J17, but that a PS-55/J17 is the only really acceptable exception to the "NO MORE X" rule?

Cause I have to retire before then.

Xlent

I have a couple of new favorite places, both of which floated, cream-like, to the top of the milk glass of my life this past week.

Disclaimer: Madison, Wisconsin, still holds large pieces of my heart. There's still no place like Woodman's. There's still no place like Dotty Dumpling's Dowry. Or Brennan's. But thinking about that from this far away -- well, it just doesn't do any good. So I'm trying to move on and do the best I can with the cards I've been dealt.

Anyway, the new Winco opened a while ago in Orem and it's really, by local standards, a pretty nice store. Prices, selection, ambiance, all above average. Also, Smashburger, a Denver-based hamburger franchise, also recently opened in Orem and, by golly, their burgers are pretty good. Gives In-n-Out reason to fear.

But what sealed the deal for both of these establishments was what I found in the restrooms: the world's most nearly perfect hand dryer, the Xlerator. I thought perhaps I had left these wonderful machines far behind in Wisconsin, as the only other one I knew about was in Woodman's in Madison.


Why all this bother about a hand dryer? For one thing, because it actually works. It dries your hands completely. Honest. But for another thing, they're just cool.

You know how the Mythbusters always examine a myth like, "mixing gasoline and alcohol by your water heater can blow your roof clean off" and when they find out that no, it doesn't blow your roof off, it just picks it up and moves it over a few feet, they then ask the fateful questions, "Well, what would it take to blow the roof clean off?" And then the fun starts?


The Xlerator is what would happen if the Mythbusters took on the question, "Do lavatory hand dryers ever really get your hands dry? And if so, would they have to deform your hands permanently to do it? Could it actually remove the tissue from the bones?"



Yeah. I like 'em. I like 'em a lot.

Ozzie

`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'

Just Say "NO." Or, "Eeeeew!"

I try to keep the blog more or less family friendly, so I feel the need to provide a

------------ PARENTAL ADVISORY -------------

This blog contains adult language like "athletic supporter" and "nether regions" and "the boys."

---------------------------------------------------

OK. So I was in Sports Authority the other day, in the area of knee braces and tape and other things needed to treat or prevent athletic (or in our case, dance) injuries. As I wandered down the aisle, I noticed the athletic cups, those used to protect the nether regions of young men from grounders that take a bad bounce, soccer balls that can't be avoided, or full on kicks in a karate class.

I saw these:





OK. Now I am NOT, like, "Mr. Athlete." But I have participated in sports, both when I have had to wear one of these and when I have really, REALLY wished I had. But I have never known anyone who needed either a "Left" or a "Right" (or ~SHUDDER~ both). So this is a very scary development, I tell you what.

I can only assume it's caused by the increased use of anabolic steroids. I've taken enough biology to know that anabolic steroids act as hormones, and hormones affect the, uh, boys. So steroids must be causing some very strange stuff.

And don't even try to tell me that L stands for Large and R stands for Regular or something. Regular is not a size for things people wear. It's a size for french fries. The sizes for things like this would be Small, Medium, Large, Extra-Large, and Yeah, Right. There ain't no Regular.

So, young men, let this be a warning. When it comes to steroid use, it isn't worth it. Just say NO. Or, as my wife said when I showed her and asked why anyone would need a "lefty" or a "righty,"

"Eeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwww!"

El Matador

There’s a perfectly rational explanation. I am a scholar, a man of (social) science, I expect logic and order in the universe. So it’s a matter of faith that there is a rational explanation.

I spent most of Monday evening wrestling with El Toro. El Toro mowed one swath of my lawn with my daughter at the helm, quit, and wouldn’t start again.


So it fell to El Matador to set things right again.


I started with the usual things: repeatedly pulling the starting cord and using power words, questioning the lineage of El Toro. That only made him mad. Mad enough to offer one little “cough” out of every 17 pulls, just enough to keep me pulling and pulling and pulling again.


I checked the air filter, I used starter fluid. I completely drained and replaced the oil. I drained the gas and replaced it with new gas in case it had gone bad. Nothing.



After dark, in the safety of my house, and drawing on my extensive mechanical know-how gleaned from “Benny and Joon” I reviewed the possibilities. Either I didn’t have fuel or I didn’t have fire. Having checked the fuel (at least as much as I could) I decided to check the fire at my earliest convenience.



So this morning I was about to take out the ol’ plug and check it out when I thought (and this shows the depth of my lunacy), “I’ll just give it one more pull.”

It started. One pull. No cough, no hesitation, nothing. One pull.

El Toro had become El Ferdinand.


Not only did it start, it mowed my whole yard, including the jungle that had once been my back lawn, and started with one pull pretty much every time.

There is a rational explanation. My current hypotheses include:

1. It don’t like Mondays.

2. El Toro doesn’t like to see my children actually doing work. It likes to wait until 8 am in the morning when all my children are asleep to start. “C’mon,” it says to me, “Let’s do some mowin’!”

3. So maybe my mower likes me. Me, personally. Great. My mower has a man-crush.





4. Bad gas gummed up the jets and the good gas reversed it over the course of two nights.

5. Roughly equivalent to #4, but involves the curse of a bad fairy and the good fairy coming to undo it. But the good fairy has a second job as Lady Gaga’s guardian angel Tuesdays, and so couldn’t make it until this morning.

So science marches on. I’ll keep you posted. Maybe I’ll have the Car Whisperer give it a once-over. I hope he can get to the bottom of it. When it comes to machines, I don’t mind pure cussedness, but inconsistency drives me nuts.

Should I Be Worried About This?

Although I don’t consider myself an uneasy sleeper, I have never really gone easy into that good night, either. Too often in my life, surrendering to sleep just means that the next thing I’m aware of is morning, with its attendant responsibilities and unpleasantness. As John Fogarty puts it, “night time is the right time” as far as I’m concerned.



So this means that I usually have to read myself to sleep. Or maybe do some crossword puzzles or sudokus or something. And before you want to tell me that sleep experts would suggest that’s only going to keep me awake, remember that’s just the point: to pretend I’m staying up while actually I’m slowly getting sleepy but don’t notice it. Anyway, the upshot is that I have piles of various reading materials by my bed, ranging from newspapers and magazines through novels and textbooks and back to Bloom County collections. And occasionally I have to break down and gather them up and put them away.

Not a pleasant task, but I discovered something both entertaining and unnerving the other day as I was doing this: I could sort the reading material into piles based on the seven deadly sins:

Gluttony: Various cookbooks, Cook’s Illustrated



Pride: Strength Training Anatomy, Body by Science, other books on weight training. As if.



Sloth: Crosswords. Sudokus. Get Fuzzy. Dave Barry. Patrick McManus.



Wrath: Most of my professional books on education, most of which make me angry.



Lust: Sorry, I gave this up when I got married, unless you throw it in with:

Greed and Envy: Consumer Reports, especially when it deals with off-road vehicles.


Oh well. I wish I could honestly say that I’m surprised. But I’m not. I couldn’t find a single piece of bedtime reading material that I could throw in a “cardinal virtue” pile.

No, I really can’t count holy writ. It isn’t bedtime reading, after all. It puts me to sleep.

Can’t have that.

Wayne Smith

I got a call from my credit card company this morning with an exciting new offer to protect my identity from theft. It won't surprise you when I tell you that the gentleman who talked with me had a rather pronounced Indian accent. I assume he was in fact sitting somewhere in India in a call center when we conversed. The best part, though, was that he told me his name: Wayne Smith.

"My name is Wayne Smith," he said. He repeated it a couple of times so I'd be sure to catch it. The second time, he said it fast, so it was like one word: "WayneSmith."

Why, he was just an ordinary guy like me, Joe Sixpack himself.You could trust him, a guy named Wayne Smith. Listened to Lee Greenwood a lot, no doubt. And calling little ol' me up with real concern about my identity being safe. Made me feel really bad to tell him I wasn't interested and hang up.

But it did get me thinking about the many employees of my credit card company, who I can just picture:

Wayne Smith

Wayne's brother Carl

Nguyen Bao

Magnús Guðjmansson


Kalepo Malielegaoi

And of course:

Or,
The Artist Formerly Known as Madonna

Makes me think they have a little bit of trouble with identity, themselves.

A Matter of Proportion

We recently discovered an infestation of mice in our downstairs storage area (here, "infestation" is defined mathematically as "a number of mice greater than or equal to 1"). Those of you who know this family will wonder how that can be possible, given that we have been associated with so very many cats in the past. But the fact is that we are down a few cats from, say, last year at this time, since two have passed on to that big easy chair in the sky, one has apparently wandered off as suddenly as he wandered in, and a fourth has been reclassified as an "outdoor" cat for reasons that good taste preclude a complete description of (i.e., I can't say he peed on things). So, that leaves us with one actual indoor cat.

Ming, also known occasionally as "Catness," and "Ouch! You little snot!"

(I will add two comments here unrelated to the real story: First, as I type this, Ming has assumed her usual position lying between the keyboard and the monitor, this time with her twitchy little tail covering the keys from the I to the Backspace. Every time I have to backspace, it pulls her tail hair a little. Eventually she will bite me. Second, as with a fourth or fifth child, I find that I can find fewer pictures of this fourth or fifth or sixth cat than of the first two or three.)

Now Ming is pretty much an indoor cat, and so you'd think we could maintain a fairly mouse-free environment. But that would be assuming that Ming is a useful cat, whereas in truth she is largely decorative. Also, she is no dummy. She has figured out the rudiments of multiplicative mathematical structures, and has at least this basic picture in mind:

"Hmmm. I wonder which one has the most bacon?"

Now I can't honestly say that Ming is waiting for a pig to appear in the downstairs food storage room, thinking that she'll save her energy for that moment and then eat for a year. But I do know she turns up her nose at fresh fish, but positively dances on her hind legs for bacon. She is not a maritime cat, more like a cat from America's heartland, say Iowa, where pork is king and there's plenty of it. Just sayin'.

So, until a herd of wild boars runs through our basement, Ming will remain largely decorative, and we will have to deal with the mice ourselves. Time to lay in more peanut butter.

Doin' Jack

It's a little embarrassing that my personal hero is not a religious figure, great person in history, or famous academic. Respectable LDS academics should try to choose their personal heroes wisely, but I have not. And don't get me started on my favorite books, movies, or TV shows. Ugh.

But the fact of the matter is, my personal hero is Adam Richman. He hosts Man vs Food on the Travel Channel and has what is unquestionably the best job in the known universe, which is eating for a living. For the uninitiated, Man vs Food has Adam visiting a different city each episode, eating in some great pig-out places, and then undertaking one selected restaurant's food challenge, which he often wins (especially if it involves very hot food) but sometimes loses (mostly in cases that involve sheer volume of food).

Of course, being a member of the Fraternity of the Crossed Forks (Motto: "Cardiologist? What's a Cardiologist?") I would love to visit those same places and eat those same wonderful things. Maybe more slowly, but still. So when I went to Denver a couple of weeks ago and had a chance to go to Jack-n-Grill, scene of the Denver episode's "Seven pound burrito challenge," well, you know I had to go, dragging my unwitting travel companions along if necessary.

Of course, the need to go there was particularly acute because my son had actually gone there last May during a road trip involving a Decemberists concert. His adventure is documented in his own blog post, which I will let you find if you care enough, but won't provide a link for because I think Colin Maloy sings like a goat and don't want to encourage him (my son, not Colin). However, the relevant pictures are these:













Left, my son about to do battle. Below, the battle being waged with the help of friend Tucker. Notice that, despite three refills of Mt. Dew, Tucker still appears to be falling asleep.



Anyway, my son had been-there-done-that so I saw this as a chance to bond a little, long distance, using food, which is my usual method of bonding with pretty much everyone. This one's for you, son.

We arrived at the Jack-n-Grill full of expectations, and after a 45 minute wait for a table, I found myself sitting in what I now know was the same spot my son's party occupied -- right by the glass door. Indeed, I was sitting right where Tucker sat.

Apparently there is something about that particular seat that makes you sleepy, despite three refills of Diet Coke.

We detected a theme in the decor. A certain Jack-iness, including but not limited to: Nicholson, Sparrow, Hungry, One-Eyed, Links, Broken Crowned, and Nimble.




No, I did not order the burrito. A man needs to know his limits, an old man even more so. I settled for a couple of smothered chimichangas, of which I only ate one.


The Divine Ms B, however, was the hero of the day. She ordered a Juarez Burger.


In case like me you have old eyes and can't read that, it says:

A full 10 oz. patty of fresh ground chuck, ham, hot-dog, fresh green chile, cheese, guacamole, mayo.

And so it was.

I consider it a work of art, sort of awe-inspiring, but no more so than the Divine Ms B's dedicated assault on it:


And the final result was commendable.

At this point in the meal, the Divine Ms B leaned over to me and said, "I want you to know I could have finished it, but I wanted to save some for later." I believe her. She is an honest person.

The Hero of the Day, in my book.

And to Dan and Roni Jo: thanks, you were good sports.