TTBOOK

March 2, 2008

It’s my brother’s birthday. He’s 28. “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”

I should clarify that Ben Stein’s otherwise marvelous talk yesterday was spoiled by creationism. It turns out he is narrating a documentary that purports to “explore” the creationism “question” by raising the same old stupid questions, concluding “it’s all a mystery”, and thus leaving an avenue for ignorance to flourish. He’s better and smarter than that.

Heard another marvelous podcast from PRI’s “To The Best of Our Knowledge” about consciousness, featuring Marvin Minsky and Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris and other bright folks, and I believe the Radio Lab first show of the new season is on my IPod also. Plenty of brainpower.

I have gone pretty directly from scoffing at the need for an IPod, to being pretty much unable to function without one.

Funny how I’ve gone from, “Gee, isn’t it neat how I can get x on my IPod” to being genuinely annoyed when I CAN’T get something on there.
I had a hankering for Def Leppard Friday night-I used to have Pyromania, Hysteria, and one or two of their other records on tape, and then, of course, on CD. I’m pretty sure I sold them off-anyway, they are no longer in my collection. So I go on ITunes…and they’re not there. I had to go to Barnes and Noble and actually BUY a CD. Can you imagine?

According to the author of “The Female Brain”, men use, on average, 7000 words per day, and women use more than 20000. That is easily true in my case, but I wonder how many words go through my head during the course of a day.
The author of that book also points out the problem companies have in adjusting to women’s dropping out of the work force to care for children. I would argue to remove the gender in that statement, but the companies that succeed in the future, I would argue, are going to recognize a holistic version of employees, and give them enough time off to be whole human beings instead of slaves to the grind.

I plan to be a little more Red Sox centric this year-posting a take on each regular season and postseason game. I haven’t been following the spring training games very carefully, because events in the spring are trapped in the “spring training paradox”: if you hit .450, it’s “only spring training”. If you hit .150, you’re struggling.

I ought to check on XM to see when the next game is on. I think there are some announcing changes this year, radio wise, so it will be interesting to hear who they’ve got.

I haven’t listened to a thing on XM since the end of baseball season.