The Old Woman and The Parking Lot

"It's not a perfect metaphor..." -Dr. Horrible It was raining that day I left the gym. The tarmac hosted the usual cast of rainy day characters: people running through the parking lot, people ducking under newspapers and magazines to avoid getting wet, people who remembered their umbrellas, and those people who didn't mind getting wet. In the mix, I watched a little car turn into the parking lot and head towards the front row closest to the gym. What happened next is something we've all seen before or have experienced ourselves. Across from where I was standing I could see the perfect parking spot, right across from the entrance to the gym, ideal on any day. "This guy lucked out," I thought to myself. However, as the car approached it turned prematurely, and ended up in a space farther down the lot. And, as it turned, it revealed another car behind it. Having turned prematurely, the first car unknowingly yielded the better parking spot to another car. When my parents bought the land where they built the house I grew up in, there was only a small pear orchard. The old woman who owned the land had originally purchased it when her husband was still alive. They planned on retiring on this lot of land, building a cottage, and spending their summers by the beach. But one day her husband got sick. Treatment for his illness drained some of the money they spent a lifetime saving, and then he died. She still had enough money to build the cottage and retire, but she didn't. Instead the old woman sold the land and moved away to live with her daughter. These stories are dance partners.

Help!

Imagine walking somewhere. The weather is generally acceptable and you're not in a hurry to get there, so your stride slowly changes into something more of a saunter.
Suddenly something across the street catches your attention.
It's a person.
For a moment the two of you make eye contact.
They appear to be in your age range, possibly younger but not by much. Despite showing no clear signs of illness or peril, you are somehow able to tell this person is in some sort of danger.
However, with no clear-cut indication as to whether or not this person needs your help you continue on to your destination.
The next day, after consulting your daily news source, you learn that the person you passed by the previous night was found dead less than half a kilometer from where you spotted them.
Details on the cause of death have been withheld.

Would you tell anybody that you saw this person the same night they died?
If you did, would you tell them about your sensing danger?

Anti-Social Networking Ideas

A while ago I made a satirical entry about a fictional website called getawayfromme.com

Today I was made aware that similar anti-social networking sites exist, arsebook and farcebook These sites aren't nearly as innovative as getawayfromme.com, which is disappointing. Basically, all they did was paint the old idea a different color, "Instead of your friends, it'll be your enemies!"

Uh huh.

Discovering another one of my predictions about the Internet, culture, and art exists is affirming but not surprising. Humans have only a limited number of reactions, therefore the idea of an anti-social networking site was inevitable.

Where do you suppose all the other inversions of websites are. Where's the upturned Twitter where you can type all the words you want (er... I think that's called a blog), or how about a variant of Google that changes your search into an anagram of what you typed and searches that instead.

"Above all, it's creative thinking that lies at the basis of discoveries. You must dare to think differently, see things from different sides, in order to come across fortuitous new ideas frequently. You should develop even the most stupid ideas and when you do this systematically, there will always come something useful out of it." -Simon van der Meer

Today in Health: Death

"Curiosity did not kill this cat." -Studs Terkel

Death is one of those many things your mind blocks out on a day-to-day basis in an attempt to keep you on a mentally even keel and not terribly depressed drowning your sorrows in a chocolaty cereal.
The reason is because Death is not pleasant and being constantly aware of it will make life rather difficult.
Just try to function in society while being fixated on Death.
You start asking perfectly happy people questions about Death that they simply don't want to be asked.
These are nice folk who have Death fenced off in a dark and sunless prairie, located on a desolate moon, deep in the subconscious Universe of their minds and here comes you floating by in your morbid spaceship asking things like, "I keep thinking about Death from the perspective of being alive, don't you?"

I spent a good portion of last night reading Epitaphs and from a quick bit of math I could tell the majority of them ironically didn't believe in Death (or rather, didn't believe in being dead).

Dr. Sam Parnia and the AWARE Study seem to be fixated on Death.
Their dilemma is that no one wants to hear about Death. Their solution is to not talk about Death and instead talk about consciousness... sorta....

Sources of the above nonsense:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/33055341#33055341 (w/ video)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33055601/ns/today-today_health
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080910090829.htm

Death Bed

“Saturday, Donny, is Shabbos, the Jewish day of rest. That means that I don't work, I don't get in a car, I don't f*cking ride in a car, I don't pick up the phone, I don't turn on the oven, and I sure as sh*t don't f*cking roll! Shomer Shabbos!”
-Walter Sobchak

A few hours after reading this article, nodding defeatedly and muttering, "Figures," I decided that it deserved a little more thought than my knee-jerk reaction.

I had taken the easy way out, without bothering to ask myself what exactly “figured.”
After taking some time to think, I was reminded of two things: the Sabbath and my Death Bed.

Shomer Shabbos, as Mr. Sobchak meticulously outlined for Donny, is a day where much is prohibited (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melakha)

.
As someone who makes bold and ridiculous attempts at fitting as many activities into my life as possible, I found Shabbos to be a ludicrous, bewildering, and frustrating idea, therefore I had to try it.
For those who haven't tried it, Shabbos is akin to those days when the power goes out and you're forced to spend the entire time waiting until you're allowed to use electricity again.

The morning of my attempt at Shabbos I employed a thought experiment I developed called, "Death Bed".
Here's how it works:
I picture my future self on my deathbed lamenting on the aspects of my life where I could have used time more wisely.
If I find my future self asking why it was so important to watch some poor soul on youtube eat 40 pizza rolls more than once, I should probably stop and go do something else.

My future self had no such regrets about Shabbos, so I continued on with my day, eventually realising how Shabbos was its own thought experiment.
Shabbos broke routine in a way similar to Death Bed. In all its restrictions I was forced to reflect on aspects of my life that had previously gone ignored or become habit.

Marvin Minsky made a similar observation by describing the time one spends with a broken leg.
It isn't until the leg is broken that all the little details of walking become apparent.

Perhaps declaring the use of ethanol as a "sin" could be beneficial to some, I'm not sure, perhaps he was just being difficult.