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Here’s a little foray into evolutionary biology…

In a radio interview I heard recently, Julian Paul Keenan, the author of “The Face in the Mirror: The Search for the Origins of Consciousness” says that the main benefit of self-awareness from an evolutionary standpoint is deception. Having self-awareness allows you to deceive others. A secondary benefit is empathy but deception helps you get ahead a heck of a lot better than empathy does.

Think about that one for a while. The implications are sure to intrigue, disgust and stimulate you.

When I was in upstate NY, that girl I met asked me, “What are you doing next weekend?” I thought for a few moments. I struggled to remember… I had something planned but I couldn’t think of what it was! I stammered out an, “Umm, I don’t know. I think I… I don’t remember but I might have something important.” She asked, “Would you like to come to Cappy’s housewarming party next weekend?” I smiled, “Oh yea that’s what I had planned!” The world is WAYYY too small. We had just met but were going to the same party some 300 miles distant in a week’s time! Of course I also had the Technology Education test on Saturday morning but that was just an aside. (and she wasn’t going to that! That would have been beyond weird).

Thursday and Friday, go to bed early. Saturday morning 6am, go to Technology Education Test (actually, 6:35am… I got up late but made it in time). 11am, drive to phila in the driving rain. 1:20pm, arrive at her apartment. I had told her on the phone a few days earlier that if she could actually make a really good thick crusted peasant bread, I’d worship her. Well, I helped her make the bread… though I cringed several times at her technique: the dough was way too wet, it wasn’t rising enough, it didn’t seem to be kneaded properly. 25 minutes later, as I checked it in the oven, I began to ready my knees for some serious worship. When we ate it an hour later, I was in full worship-mode. Apparently, knowing too much about how bread “should” be baked can be a detriment to how to should be baked!

I’m only thinking about this now but she made that masterful breadness only 2 weeks after moving into her apartment. She barely has her bedroom set up but she pulled all the right ingredients and tools out of boxes to make that for me! That was a feat. And she did that for me [grin!].

There is more. Lots more but I’ll write about it tomorrow.

I just found this online at http://www.upcomingmovies.com/shaolinsoccer.html

Release Date Note: (7/19/02) This was originally scheduled to open on April 5th, 2002, then, August 30th, 2002, and now sometime in the 1st quarter of 2003. (8/16/02) This has been pushed back a little bit again, now to April 11th, 2003. (1/31/03) Miramax has bumped this back another four months to August 8th, 2003. That’s 16 months after its first target date. (6/23/03) Miramax has adjusted this movie a week, from August 8th to August 15th. (8/8/03) Miramax has dumped their plans on giving this film a wide release, going with a platform release starting on September 5th instead. As KungFuCinema.com reports, this decision comes with the news that Miramax has decided to go with the original dialogue (with subtitles) rather than doing an English dub. (9/2/03) Miramax has decided not to release this film this week after all, with no word now on when they might release it to the U.S. public. Might they now be considering sending it direct-to-video? (9/4/03) Miramax is currently looking for a new release date in the 4th quarter of 2003.

And this:

Title Note: (1/5/02) Known as “Shaolin Soccer” in Asia, Miramax is changing the title to “Kung Fu Soccer” for the USA release. (4/10/02) AICN reports that Miramax may have decided (rightly) to change the title back to Shaolin Soccer. (4/12/02) That site has received confirmation that the title has been changed back again. (6/27/02) Now the AICN site’s owner, movie fan Harry Knowles is saying the title may be changed back to “Kung Fu Soccer” again. (7/19/02) Well, Miramax has submitted this film to the MPAA, and it was indeed with the “Shaolin Soccer” title.

And the worst part:

Running Time: 86 minutes (edited down from the 111 minutes of the Asian release)

Someone at Miramax needs a Boot to the Head! (click on this link and truly be enlightened!) Ti Kwan Leep r00ls.

To keep your data from being defaced and/or destroyed when logging on to the internet when using a Windows computer, you MUST have the following (this is a bare minimum, not what you “should” have) unless you want your computer to be taken over my the miscreants of the computer world:

• Firewall - IE: Blackice, XP’s firewall (free but sucky), hardware firewall
• Pop-up blocker - IE: GoogleToolbar, Mozilla’s blocker, Earthlink’s blocker
• Spyware blocker - IE: Ad Aware, Spybot Search & Destroy
• Virus Scanner - Norton, Symantec, McAfee, AVG anti-virus
• Spam blocker - IE: Spamkiller, your ISP, Cloudmark

You’ve got to install, configure and know (at least in general) how each of the program works so that it doesn’t ruin your internet experience. This sucks. I remember when the internet was a happy, smiling place.

I was chatting with Dave B tonight. He reminded me of the great time the two of us had at Pub 199. Pub 199 has this permanent special… call it a specialty… $10 gets you either a lobster and potato or a steak and potato. So we sat down like the guys we are and ordered. The food was guy-good. Good steak. Good lobster. Good potato. Ugh! Ambiance: stuffed beavers, moose, bear, and a deer with Christmas lights in his antlers. Ugh, good! We sat, we ate, we talked, we enjoyed. After the meal, we sat and talked about the world. And then a funny thing happened. We were hungry again. So we ordered another meal. I just (just, ha!) had a heaping bowl of cheese fries. Dave had the other dinner special! All is well in the world.

After dinner, what did we do? We went to a diner for pie! And Dave only barely kept me… and us… from going in to a teen roller rink. He told me tonight, “We’d probably get put in the same cell.” Ha!

I was passing by the TV in the kitchen a few minutes ago when I heard this guy on CNBC yelling at the camera, ranting about “disinflation”. He had to yell because he had the New York Stock Exchange trading floor ambient room noise piped into his glassed-in cubby at full volume.

One or two of three things is true: 1) I’m dumb and/or stubborn for not accepting this term as it stands. 2) He’s an idiot for using the term once, a fucking idiot for using it 3 times in one interview or 3) People that actually listen to this drivel are stupid.

My senator wrote back to me today (via email) about how he’s co-sponsoring federal anti-spam legislation:

Dear Mr. Sonko,

Thank you for contacting me about spam. I appreciate hearing from you on this issue.

The growth of the Internet and the increased use of e-mail have led to the emergence of “spam,” or electronic junk mail. Numerous marketers have begun to send unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE) over the Internet. Because this marketing technique is easier and less costly than traditional direct marketing techniques such as direct mail solicitations, e-mail accounts worldwide have been deluged with this unsolicited correspondence.

Spam is not just a nuisance, but it can also bring consumers higher charges for the Internet as service providers are forced to continually upgrade their systems to handle the increased traffic. Spam filters built into MSN and Hotmail servers, for example, block 2.4 billion messages a day. While proponents of UCE insist it is a legitimate marketing technique that is protected by the First Amendment, Congress should enact reasonable restrictions.

Although 35 States have anti-spam laws, there is no federal law specifically concerning spam. Consequently, I have co-sponsored CAN-SPAM, the “Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act” (S. 877), which would do the following: create criminal penalties for the transmission with knowledge and intent of spam messages with header information that is materially false or misleading; prohibit deceptive subject headings; require a functioning return address for the message recipient to submit a request that he or she not receive future messages; require clear identification that a message is an advertisement; and require that message recipients have an opportunity to opt-out, and for the sender to provide a valid physical mail address.

Please be assured that I will continue to support practical, sensible regulations that reduce unwanted spam while taking the concerns of legitimate, honest retailers into account.

Thanks again for contacting me.

Senator Frank Lautenberg
http://lautenberg.senate.gov/

From Kathyphrog:

This is strange…..

While sitting in a chair, make clockwise circles with your right foot.

While doing this, draw the number “6″ in the air with your right hand.

Keep it up and read the end…..

…

Your foot will change direction… and be rotating counter clockwise. . .

So I keep hearing that the USDA’s food pyramid thingy and vitamin recommendations are “outdated”. Everybody who knows anything about vitamins knows that the USDA is behind on the times… So being a person with some desire to do the right thing, I tried to find out what vitamins I SHOULD take.

Nobody friggin knows.

The best I could find is listed below.

http://www4.nas.edu/iom/iomhome.nsf/WFiles/webtablevitamins/$file/webtablevitamins.pdf
biotin 30 mcg ND
Choline 550 mg 3500
Folic Acid 400 mcg 1000
niacin 16 mg 35
Pantothenic Acid 5 mg ND
Riboflavin/B2 1.3 mg ND
Thiamin/B1 1.2 mg ND
A 900 mcg 3000
B6 1.3 mg 100
B12 2.4 mcg ND
C 90 mg 2000
D 5 mcg 50
E 15 mg 1000
K 120 mcg ND

http://www4.nas.edu/iom/iomhome.nsf/WFiles/Webtableminerals/$file/Webtableminerals.pdf
calcium 1000 mg 2500
chromium 35 mcg ND
copper 900 mcg 10,000
iodine 150 mcg 1,100
iron 8 mg 45
magnesium 400 mg 400
manganese 2.3 mg 11
molybdenum 45 mcg 2000
phosphorus 700 mg 4000
selenium 55 mcg 400
zinc 11 mg 40

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/vitamins.html

vitamin A is 5,000 IU. no more than 10,000
vitamin C is 90 mg
folic acid, at least 400 micrograms (women only?)
vitamin B6 1.3 to 1.7 milligrams of
B12 is 6 micrograms
vitamin D is 5 micrograms
vitamin E 22-400 IU

vitamin K is 80 micrograms

I’m just going to keep taking Centrum. And when I start to feel sick, I’ll take extra Vitamin C like my dad demands I do; At least it makes him feel better.

from an exchange between TJIC and me.

>Mail is going wonky. Web page load times are way up. There may be
>some sort of huge worm/virus attack going on as well, according to
>some reports.

I’ve gone to maybe 15 people’s homes in the last 2 months to help them with computers. NONE of these people had any idea what a firewall was or what Windows Update was. Heck, I tried to make the analogy to my cousins that updating Windows was like changing the oil in your car… getting it done is really easy and you have to do it or you won’t have a car for long. I got what amounted to a blank stare from all of them, including the 17 and 15 year olds. I decided to set their computers to automatically go to Windows Update and not even tell them about it.

But then if I can convince these people to have their “oil changed” by me, I can do well…