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Live Forever

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The hyperbaric chamber reached mythical status when it was found that Michael Jackson slept in one at the height of his fame. Once the patient is sealed in the tank, the pressure in the tank is sent up to several atmospheres with increased levels of oxygen. This is useful in treating decompression sickness (the bends), carbon monoxide poisoning, and maybe some nonhealing wounds.

It sits in an unused part of the hospital, but I can understand its charms. It has a sci-fi movie feel to it, and the only way to talk to the person inside is via a telephone -COOL! It makes you think of pharoahs, pyramids, and immortality. It’s just a plexiglass pressure tank. 

Why do people want to live forever? It’s a supreme form of egotism. I rather like the view that being subjected to life is much like playing a round of golf on a municipal course on a sunny Saturday in the spring. It takes patience, a bit of smiling when you don’t want to, and the reflexes to duck when you hear “fore.” If this is life, then heaven is an championship caliber course in prime condition empty behind and ahead of you, with your favorite chosen companions, your stalwarts, playing by your side. 


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The Indebted

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The great international shrinkage is upon us. The shriveling, the destaturing, the descending, call it what you will. I watched the President’s speech last night, and gave it a B+. I think that I’m getting kind of used to inspiring speech from him -it’s called refractoriness. My 100 meaningful conversation rule applies to him as well as any friend (over course of a relationship, one should and can only have 100 meaningful conversations before the relationship ends), and with his books and speeches, the President is on #58 or so.

I have a very good friend who decided to divest from Western Civilization in 2001 after 9/11. He had been reading books about peak oil, and had recommended to me Mr. Kunstler’s The Long Emergency. He bailed out of his 401k’s and mutual funds, and put them all into gold and oil, did very well by the way, and now is building a compound off the grid in some undisclosed location in the Pacific Northwest. 

The only problem I have with that scheme -of going it alone in the woods with a lot of guns, plans for a vegetable garden, and long hours fishing and hunting, is that it completely disregards the lessons of zombie movies. ‘Nuff said.

It takes a community to survive these times. It takes caring neighbors and taking care of neighbors. We’re social creatures whose evolution was based on bands, small groups. Your neighbors and your relationship with them is your assurance of safety in the difficult times ahead. 

By some accounts, the recession will be over by this fall. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. 

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Spaceward Ho! -the greatest game not yet on iPhone

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space-logo

This is one of the greatest games ever created for the MAC. It came out in the early nineties, and it was one of those games that just ate up time. It is a resource management/conquering worlds game that was reduced to its barest essentials, but managed to keep certain elements intact to keep it interesting. 

 

It is such an efficiently written game that in the early ’00’s, the authors, Delta Tao (link) published a Palm OS version, which I used to play on my Tungsten T during my first years out of 

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training -usually during the dead time waiting for cases to go in the middle of the night. 

 

Resource management games are very old in the scifi-nerd culture. The problem is that when presented as a board game, an inordinate amount of time is taken up book-keeping. How many Quatloo’s can you keep track of while rolling the dice and moving imaginary fleets across the board? 

 

The game play is simple as clicking the keyboard. You start with a homeworld, and your mission is to explore and colonize surrounding worlds, mining the metal, and terraforming the planets so that your population grows on it and generates revenue. Terraforming, mining, designing and building ships takes money. Borrowing and saving also involves interest. space21

 

The game’s charms involve humorous graphics for the spaceships and funny sound effects for launching and exploring with the spaceships. The game quickly becomes interesting as you confront and battle against other players (both computer or human). 

 

It is turn based and requires a minimum of a learning curve. The shame of it is that Delta Tao has stopped developing it, right at the moment where farting applications are taking the world by storm. I can’t imagine it would take too much of an investment of time to convert it to an iPhone app. 

We can start by emailing Delta Tao to work on an iPhone version (help@deltatao.com). 

Addendum 2-24-2008

It works -Joe Williams -who the program icon is modeled after, replied “We’re talking about an iPhone version, and I’d say it’s highly likely, perhaps by the end of 2009.”

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Will It Wash and Dry?

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img_2010My iPod shuffle is so tiny it gets lost in my clothing. As such, it gets frequently washed and dried. The remarkable thing is that it still works! The same goes for my V-Moda headphones which after snc10296a spin cycle and drying, it came out in a tangle. Still works! I realized that so many things electronic are spindly and delicate that we’re used to taking care of them with the anxiety reserved for the moments watching someone juggle fine crystal, china, or your loved ones. It makes me quite happy to know that some things do take a licking and keep on ticking. Which is exactly what my Timex watch did after its stint in the wash and dry. Would be curious to find out other people’s experience laundering fine electronics.

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The protonetbook

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Pictured above is the Psion Series 5mx. It was an upgrade of the original Psion Series 5, and no computing gadget has come close to matching its utility.

It had a touch typable keyboard and compact flash drive for additional memory. Its power laid in an amazing operating system EPOC OS that Psion built from scratch. It was rock stable -the kind of stable that you would hope satellites and medical life support equipment were based on. I could routinely run 10-20 programs simultaneously and it just would not crash. The Office suite fit in a space less than a meg of memory -I heard the word module was 22kB!. The elements from each -like graphs, tables, and text were hot linked and autoupdating. And you could convert it to word or rtf or xls.

It ran on 2 AA batteries and could print wireless via IR to HP printers with IR ports -I did this for three years during my residency -eventually creating a database of patient notes that I could look up and reprint for frequently seen patients.

When you wanted to use it, you turned it on. When you were done, you turned it off. No boot up, no worrying about viruses, no nothing. With a phone modem, you could check email and do some light browsing, particularly on WAP sites (the equivalent of todays mobile sites such as m.nytimes.com.

This all came to a sad end when Psion gave up the ghost after creating the inimitable netbook, for which it carries the copyright. Nobody can call anything else a netbook, although common usage is calling a whole class of crappy small laptops.

Why do I call them that. No matter how beautiful the gadget -like the Sony Vaio P series, it’s software determines how useful it is. If you got a Sony Vaio P, for example, you would turn it on, and wait 47 seconds while it booted up. What’s the point except to impress people with your stupid gadget purchase?

The Psion 5mx is so valued that you can still see them on ebay going for 150-200 dollars used. There is a site in England that will sell you pre-owned refurbished units or even NEW units (link). It is illustrative that a the netbook Pro, an “upgrade” that runs Windows CE 4.2 is priced way cheaper than a refurbished netbook running EPOC OS. 

As I have been unhappy with my iPhone as the sole portable device, I have been thinking about keyboarded solutions for blogging. The lack of wireless internet capability of the series 5mx keeps me from purchasing, as I have an Acer Aspire One which I use as a breakfast nook computer for updating Facebook. I am toying with the idea of a Nokia N810 with a bluetooth keyboard as a mobile blogging solution. 

If you needed to go to the unwired parts of the world with no wall outlets, but needed to write a journal of your journey, there is no gadget that I would take other than a Psion 5mx. This was exactly the reason why the fellow who purchased my Psion in Mexico bought it -he was a writer who made frequent trips to rural Mexico and needed a solid portable computer which recorded to a safe medium -nothing more safe than compact flash drive which I have laundered and used without a hitch. AA batteries can be found everywhere but wall outlets are dear, he told me, paying 250 dollars for a five year old unit with printer cables, modem, and other accessories.

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Indulge Me

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img_0812The indulgences are back (link to NYT article). Yup, the indulgences you learned about in world history in high school -the same that drove Martin Luther to nail his grievances to bring about the Protestant Reformation. Its absolution for sin that you can purchase from the Roman Catholic Church which works to intercede with the heavenly authorities to take a few years out of slow roasting. It lets you cut line in Purgatory. It turns Heaven into another place where you have to grease the maitre de’s palm. 

To me, its a sign of the times. You can buy anything if you have enough green, and this includes avoiding punishment in the afterlife. But what if you did something awful and you were poor? Does the Church take layaway on your soul?

This is why golf appeals to me. No matter who you are, out of bounds means stroke and distance. The red stakes means you get to drop for a stroke. Honor really means something on the hallowed greens. You can’t buy a scratch handicap. You play where you lie.

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The Entertainer

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img_1720This is a 17 inch Dell behemoth that weights about ten pounds and is useful for checking email. It also offers connection to Youtube, Hulu, iTunes, and Netflix, and offers more entertainment than my 42 inch DLP TV in the basement with a DirecTV HD account. On screen is the 2-3pm episode from the current season of 24. 

 

Broadcast television was supplanted by cable. Cable television and its prettier sister, satellite television, are headed for the attic of dead technology by video on demand over the internet. This was presaged by TIVO and the ability to time-shift programs. But Youtube and Hulu, iTunes, and Netflix, and shows available on the networks sites all presage a time when you don’t have to watch what is available, but rather you choose exactly when and where to watch what you want. 

Currently, with the offerings of Youtube, Hulu, iTunes, and Netflix, I canimg_1721 watch pretty much whatever I want whenever I want. If a program isn’t available in fact, I usually couldn’t care less. This is an important threshold -if something of critical value weren’t available -I would feel compelled to pay extra for it. This one quality that is keeping the satellite subscription alive is high definition programming. It is just valuable enough to keep it around for the sake of viewing on a large screen, but the fact of the matter is that a 50 inch widescreen TV at 10 feet is the same as watching a 10 inch screen at 2 feet (yes, I did the math -proof above). That means, streaming hi-definition images to a 10 inch netbook gives you the same images relative size as watching a 50 inch screen from a couch. 

We are about to cancel our DirecTV connection in favor of our home stable of laptops and iPod touches. The video time that we have as a family is spent in bed with a laptop watching one of 12,000 movies available over the ‘net on Netflix with a $10/month account, or downloaded to an iPod for 1.99/episode, or on DVD, again on a laptop. The large screen is okay for viewing sports, but time is short, and the networks are available over the airwaves in HD. Fact is, I prefer watching sports with other people at a sports bar. 

The purchase I am considering next is a small computer capable of streaming Netflix and running iTunes, with double duty as a email checking station. The cable company gets to stay in the house only for the internet -until fiberoptic broadband becomes available then goodbye cable. In fact, I am waiting to see what Apple does with AppleTV versus the Mac Mini.

What I discovered more recently is this: it is more fun to make TV than it is to watch it. Check out my friend Victor’s channel on Youtube (link). 

The TV is dead. It is now just a monitor.

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The Road Trip

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img_0831The weather broke and hit the mid 50’s yesterday, which gave me the opportunity to shake some rust off. The golf hut was warm without the overhead infrared heaters turned on. I realized I had been missing this essential component of my life. With each swing, the joy factor rose. 

My lovely wife J understands this part of me and indulges me. I have planned a road trip to Texas in a few weeks with a few golfing friends. Friday night down, 36 holes on Saturday, drive back Sunday. Still need a a #4 -any takers?

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The Optimist

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img_0801As we lurch forward into the new era, I am comforted by the dissipation of the overly hopeful buzz that I had from about election day to about yesterday. It was infatuation -the same thing that makes Valentine’s Day a commercial juggernaut. We were a nation of giddy school girls infatuated with the hot new Social Studies teacher, until we realized that he gave a lot of pop quizzes, and he’s really, really mean (stomp – twirl). 

The NYT’s (link) writes about a gang of moderates hijacking the stimulus legislation from the left and the right, and this does give me hope. This centrist bloc is where we should all be as a nation as we detox from a two decade binge of mainlining easy credit while enriching the dealers of said credit. And this is it -we should be detoxing to some degree by abstinence and not by replacing easy money with public money. If cold turkey hurts too much, then a limited run of nicotine patches for the addicted nation until sobriety and clean living within means return to the norm. 

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It's hard out there for a pimp

So where do I turn in these troubling times for examples of clean living? The TV of course, in  the form of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints. I checked out HBO’s Big Love to see what all the buzz was about. It’s an amazing show, and not for the reasons that you would expect. I know, I know, Chloe Sevigny is one of the most important actresses of our generation, and she gives a mesmerizing, hypnotic performance as the-one-I-wouldn’t-mind-being-plural-married-to.

The show’s popularity speaks to a desire to be a part of a larger connectedness that we lost when we chose to accept live as a nuclear family unit, that we move to dislocated exurbs in Charlotte, Atlanta, Nashville, Houston, Minneapolis, Las Vegas, and Peoria -moved about like pawns on a chess board. In these troubled times, the sight of three homes circled like wagons around a common backyard with your own tribe, your own peeps, having dinner at a long table is a splash of cold water in the face. The show focuses on the people and does not dwell on their lifestyle too much, but that’s not unexpected for a great show. The plural marriage thing serves to triple the emphasis on the man-woman interplay, and correctly shows that with three wives, a man can suffer 9 times more than if he only lived alone with a high speed internet connection and a microwave. I rather enjoy this thought – if you support gay marriage, then you have no right to oppose plural marriage. So maybe that’s what I’ll give my wife for Valentine’s day -permission for her to go look for a second wife, for the both of us.

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The 25 Things About Me

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southpark

This is a chain letter circulating around Facebook -this is my contribution. My soul has been bared. 

Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.)

25 things about me

1.Imagination -my imagination tends to run amok. Ally MacBeal was a bit jarring to watch because on some levels, my brain works in a similar fashion.
2.Navel gazing -I am a chronic self examiner. Combined with number 3, blogging and Facebook suits me like swamp water does for a frog.
3.Exhibitionism -Yes. I am a bit of an exhibitionist,. Not in the trenchcoat with no pants way, but more in the need for getting everyone’s attention. But I have a purpose!
4.Food -Food, good food, obsesses me to the point that I have to force myself to view food as a bodily function and not the center of my day. Spam is the pearl of American food, by the way. I can be seduced with food. I prefer savory over sweet. 
5.Bloody mindedness -I have a masochistic streak. My personal motto was set at four, when I declared to my whiny cousin Eugene, “Namja neun ch’ah muh ya deh.” which loosely translates to “a man must persevere.” Stoicism appeals to me, even though I may unstoically complain of its absence. Once, out of boredom, I pulled out 5 of my remaining baby teeth at age 10.
6.I can’t talk about number 6. It involves the Plaza Hotel, the Harvard Club of Boston, Locke-Ober, The University Club, the Four Seasons of New York…There I said too much. They might be reading this.
7.Doing things from scratch -I enjoy creating things from elemental items. For a cucumber and tomato salad, I grew these items along with the chives and then became flustered over not being able to make the olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and coarse pickling salt. I then contemplated making the bowl out of the clay from the deeper soil of the garden. The longer the process and the shorter the reward, the greater the appeal. I like to fish with flies that I’ve tied myself, and dream of catching fish in Central Park with just the items from a sewing kit from one of the hotels. 
8.Narcissism -I tend to personalize everything. You are me, and he is me, and we are me, and we are all together -isn’t how that song goes?
9.Golf -I play golf in my mind when I’m not thinking about myself or what I’m going to eat next. I’m a big baby.
10.Rules -I like structure insofar as it draws lines for me to cross, if I can.
11.Impatient -I am not terribly patient.
12.Grand Gestures -I am a bit of a primitive or a throwback in my love and appreciation of grand gestures. Think Taj Mahal or the Defenestration of Prague -actually scratch that last one. 
13.Mongols -Yes, I love anything Mongolian. I would love to live in a yurt with forty horses and my clan in tow going from pasture to pasture. 
14.Chimpanzees -I can sit and watch them all day for weeks on end if given the opportunity. Their inner workings are so mysterious.
15.Women -I can sit and watch them all day for weeks on end if given the opportunity. Their inner workings are so mysterious. 
16.Minorities -The Yakuts, the Kipchaks, the Tai Dam, the Hmong, the Hottentots, Parsis, everyone Stalin moved around, the Piraha, remnant hunter gatherers of the world, Central Asian Jews, the Celts, the list goes on and on. Fascinating stuff. 
17.The Encyclopaedia Brittanica -I used to read it obsessively.
18.Scouting -I was an avid cub scout, but made the mistake of not going beyond Webelos. The ethos of scouting has always been a part of my worldview. 
19.Fishing -I can usually catch fish. A good skill to have. 
20.The Next Thing -My To-Do list is a branchy, multiply bifurcating clade of the next shiny, neat thing to figure out or do. I enjoy constantly remaking my environment.
21.School -If I hit Powerball, I’m going back to school forever. 
22.Anchovies -I really enjoy the salty, super fishy flavor of anchovies on the side with a freshly made Caesar’s salad.
23.Writing -If I had to do it all over, I would have put more effort into writing and storytelling. 
24.Love -I am a believer in true, romantic love. The kind that gives you strength, perspective, and a clear vision.
25.Purgatory -If the Old Testament, hellfire Christians are correct, then the best I can expect is to be in a line with quadrillions of people ahead of me, a line that includes Gandhi, Socrates, the Buddha, the entire pre-Columbian Aztec nation, most everyone who has ever lived in Marin County, aborted fetuses (each wearing an original sin pin on a simple gray smock), spilled semen (reconstituted as hopping demi-beings with whiplike tails, wearing half a black tee shirt with Onan in globby white letters), and a couple of my high school teachers. We’re all waiting to get processed and sent down a large hole in the clouds. We entertain each other with stories about our lives. I’m surrounded by a couple of billion demi-people who claim some relationship to me…