The Kindness of Strangers

A great link from my friend Ben:

U.S. President George W. Bush writes a note to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a Security Council meeting at the 2005 World Summit and 60th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York September 14, 2005. World leaders are exploring ways to revitalize the United Nations at a summit on Wednesday but their blueprint falls short of Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s vision of freedom from want, persecution and war. REUTERS/Rick Wilking

(click on the image for the original)
See if you can read what he’s writing! If you’re having trouble, here’s a closeup.

Priceless! The best part is the “Is this possible?” line. As Ben put it, “CAN YOU MAKE THIS HAPPEN FOR ME?”

Haha. Also, last night, nytimes.com had a typo on its main page:

(“Stationary” with an “a” means, of course, “not moving”; they wanted “stationery” with an “e”.) Since I am apparently a grammar/spelling freak, I emailed them about the mistake. I received only an automated response. But then this morning the blurb was gone! Ah, the ways in which I try to make my life interesting.

Bad coinage of the day…
Condition of trying to stay single: amor-atorium

So I left off last time after breakfast on day two. This would definitely be our most strenuous day: 17 miles of hiking at elevation, the first ten with our packs, and the last seven slogging through six-inch deep cinder.

Luckily, it was also the most spectacular, view-wise.

The day’s hike took us up 1500 ft and past seven gorgeous lakes (like the one in the second picture) before we descended to our final destination, Snag Lake. This lake was pretty wacky, because on three of its sides, it looked just like any other lake, but the north end of the lake … wasn’t there. Instead, a monumental 30 ft high wall of volcanic debris had settled right up to the lake, like a giant glacier. You can see it in the last two pictures here. We dropped our packs and set up camp and headed up north, following the volcanic wall to its source.

The going was surprisingly difficult, as the cinder was so deep that even the slightest incline was rendered tedious. Luckily, the delicious vanilla aroma of ponderosa pines kept us refreshed (Kamin especially!). Check out the amazing skeletonized tree in that last picture. We skirted the south edge of the debris wall and followed its western edge for nearly two miles, until we finally found…

… ourselves on the moon. Great sweeps of cinder, and at the end of it, a thousand foot-high cinder cone volcano. The area was so still that we saw several trees that had disintegrated in place, like the one in the third picture here. The various lava bombs that littered the area only reinforced the feeling that we were on the moon.

A short climb brought us to the painted dunes. They were deathly still and very peaceful, and the shadows caused by the dunes and shrubs as the sun set were beautiful. In the fourth picture, you can see Mount Lassen in the distance. On the way down, I took more pictures of the lava bombs as the setting sun lengthened their shadows. Imagine those things raining down on you! In the last picture, Naveen and I are sporting our classic camping wear: my orange windbreaker and black Fogdog hat, and Naveen’s red fleece. I think if I lose either of those items, I might have to give up camping…

We made our way back to camp at the south end of the lake. By this time, the sun had set, and we saw some pretty cool driftwood deposits. The actual view in the second picture here was incredible — straight out of a Dr. Seuss book, perverse yet beautiful — but I jiggled the camera and blurred the shot! Doh. That night several deer walked right by our campsite on their way to the lake, but I didn’t take any pictures of them. Luckily we saw several more on the trail the next day, after a very restful sleep. We walked back past the seven lakes; in the picture, Naveen and Kamin are using a water filter to refill our Nalgenes from one of them. Finally, we got a last glimpse of Mount Lassen.

Tired after three days of hiking, we gratefully collapsed in Ben’s car. On our way out of the park, we came across a lake with a huge beaver damn. It was weird being eye-level with the water and still dry! The drive back to Berkeley took about four hours; we stopped on the way at the Redding FoodMaxx (?), one of the cheapest grocery stores I’ve ever seen. I fell in love immediately. We pigged out on fresh fruits and ice cream. As we neared Berkeley, we were greeted with a classic Bay Area sunset. What a welcome sight!

Here are some pictures from my recent camping trip to Lassen, with my friends Ben, Kamin, and Naveen. It was a three day trip, backcountry style.

We left at 6 am. It was a four hour drive, mostly north, and to the park’s elevation of 7000+ ft. We saw some pretty cool stuff just driving through the south end of the park, including some fumaroles.

Our next stop was a collection of boiling hot (or hotter) sulfur pools. Pretty surreal stuff. The silt in one stream that was cool enough to touch was so fine that you couldn’t even feel it when you dipped your hand in! (Also, there’s the obligatory scare sign for Wing.) After that we had lunch next to a gorgeous lake. Kamin had organized quite the luxurious menu for the weekend, and of course it was front-loaded with the best, freshest stuff (since there was no way we were going to carry tomatoes, mozzarella, and baguettes through to day three). Anyway, this meal was sweet.

That afternoon, we climbed up Mount Lassen (thankfully leaving our packs in Ben’s car at the base). It was about a 2000 ft climb, but the altitude and steep, unforgiving trail straight up a ridge to the peak made the climb a bit harder. The ridge was so steep (see the last picture, which shows a 1500 ft drop) that there was virtually nothing to stop you the whole way down if you slipped.

We met a very cute and friendly chipmunk on the way. After I sat still watching him for a while, he came over and jumped up on my shoe! He seemed ready to investigate further, but the thought of getting rabies on a mountainside didn’t sound appealing so I sadly nudged him off. In the fourth picture, we think that’s Mt. Shasta in the background. The fifth picture is from the very top.

That night, we hiked down to Paradise Meadow to set up camp. It wasn’t even on the park’s official map (although it was on our topo map), so it was pleasantly deserted. We had a great meal of burritos and watched the residual sunlight turn the clouds red long after the sun itself had set. We were so pooped, though, that we were out by 8:30 pm. The temperature that night was, literally, freezing. We all woke up several times during the night due to the frigid cold, and in the morning our packs were covered with frost. We made some breakfast burritos, and I took some more pictures (including that last one of Mount Lassen) before we started the hike back up to base altitude.

Stay tuned for Days Two and Three… in one deluxe entry!

So I finally got LASIK! I had my one-week followup on Tuesday and apparently I can see a little better than 20/20 (three of five letters on the 20/15 line). So that’s cool. There’s still a little blurring and bleeding of bright lights but for the most part, it’s awesome. For the first week, the irritation from the surgery made it feel like I was wearing contacts all the time, I had to put three kinds of drops in my eyes four times a day, and also I had to wear these amusing goggles at night so that I wouldn’t claw my eyeballs out while sleeping. So it was actually worse than wearing glasses or contacts. But of course that was only for one week.

Now, it’s pretty sweet. My brain is still a little confused: sometimes I’ll think, oh I better take off my contacts soon, or reach up to push my glasses back in place (a reflexive action in the past) when they clearly don’t exist, or even this morning I reached for my glasses as I got out of bed — even though I could see just fine. The weirdest thing is going to sleep at night and actually being able to see my reflection in the mirror and the time on the clock.

I even went camping this weekend (pictures from that trip are forthcoming, as usual), and not having to worry about fogging up my glasses, or trying to put my contacts in with dirty hands each morning, was a pleasure. So: so far, so good. Here’s the last known picture of me with glasses (with my dad, in Aspen), and a new picture of me with the badass shades the laser surgery people gave me to wear for the next month whenever I’m outside.

Also, there have been some complaints about the lack of people-pictures from my Aspen update. So here are some: me with my parents, my lovely mom, Umesh and Kate.

Do yourself a favor and read this interview with New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. Just take ten minutes out of whatever you’re doing right now and listen in. I heard it this morning and it’s been echoing in my head all day.

Transcript | MP3 Feed

The best thing to do is listen to the feed while reading the transcript (the transcript picks up at 2:20 into the mp3 feed).

Feel free to call me out if you found that it wasn’t worth your time.

Through LJ….

White people find things: http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050830/photos_ts_afp/050830071810_shxwaoma_photo1
whereas
Black people loot things: http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050830/480/ladm10208301530

That’s great reporting, AP…

[Edit: this is all over the place.

For people who posit that AP (distributor of the “black person looting” picture) always says “loot”, see this AP picture: http://news.yahoo.com/photos/ss/events/ts/080304tropicalweathe/im:/050831/480/wxs11908310010
in which a white person is “looking through his bag” after exiting a convenience store.

And for people who posit that AFP (distributor of the “white person who found stuff” picture) always says “found stuff”, see this AFP picture: http://news.yahoo.com/photos/ss/events/ts/080304tropicalweathe/im:/050831/photos_wl_afp/050831100019_zhpvj5dd_photo3;
in which black “looters hit a drug store”.
]

Here are some pictures from Aspen, Colorado. Actually the first two pictures are from Berkeley before I left. The thumbnails don’t do several of them justice, so look closely (if you care…)!

I am thinking of converting this LJ to more of a photo blog (maybe with some songs thrown in). I think ultimately people like looking at pictures, and most of the other stuff I write ends up being pretty boring on second read. We’ll see how it goes for the time being.

When my dad was young, he went to a somewhat impoverished boarding school in India.

(As my dad tells it, in this school, the boys and girls were separated and could hardly interact with each other at all… except for once, at the end of the semester, when they could take their autograph books around and get all their friends to sign them. Of course, for the boys, this was their chance to talk to the girls. So you can imagine a young boy going up to a cute girl that he’s had his eye on all semester and nervously asking her to sign his book. She smiles and complies. “What a wonderful semester we’ve had,” she writes, and signs it, “Love,” — at this the young boy’s heart leaps — but then: “Your sister, Sharmila”. Aughhh! He is crushed. Haha. Those adolescent years…)

Anyway, since they didn’t have a lot of money or resources, my dad and his friends had a concept called “cheap thrills”. The idea is simple: do something that’s so painful that when you stop, it feels really good. The classic case was going to the bathroom. If you had to go pee, you held it for as long as you could: till you felt like you were going to die, and them some. Then finally, bladder distended, you staggered to the bathroom. Ahhh. Such relief. There are few greater visceral pleasures. And free, too! Hence: “cheap thrills”.

When my dad told me about this concept, I found it awesome and funny. (And, relating to my last post, an argument for window seats :). Of course, while the classic peeing technique is still valid, I’ve developed my our cheap thrills: hiking for fifteen miles a day with a heavy pack, for instance, to get that feeling of incredible relief when I finally sit down in the car and strip off my shoes, or take that hot shower when I get back home.

I’ve got a new cheap thrills gimmick running, and it’s kind of driving me nuts at the moment. It’s a biggie: I’ve spent the last 16 years of my life wearing nerdy glasses and irritating contact lenses, and now I’m going to get LASIK surgery. I had hardly considered it before this summer, but once I did all the research and decided on it, it really pulled me in. And now I’m dying to get it. The only problem is, the surgery keeps getting postponed, for one reason or another. (Actually, the initial consultation also got postponed, due to a minor infection of my eyelid — something I’d never had before in my life until the week of the consultation!) I was supposed to have surgery last week, but postponed it because I was little nervous about having it so soon after travelling: I got back into town from Boston at midnight on Tuesday morning, and the surgery was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.

So it was postponed till today. I got up this morning (!) and got a call: they have to postpone it now because one of the lasers needs recalibration! (Actually, they gave me the option of getting a slightly different procedure instead today, but after much thought and consultation with my parents, I decided to postpone.) This was really frustrating, especially since you’re not supposed to wear contacts a week before the surgery, so I’ve been wearing glasses exclusively for the past couple weeks — all for naught. The worst part is that since I’ll be out of state the week after next, the next surgery date I could get is August 30th. So far away! It’s definitely a good exercise in patience. I’m hoping, though, that the thrill at the end of the ride will be worth it.

I’ve rerecorded much of the vocals for Terminal, and remixed it a bit, too. I think it sounds a lot better now. (Or, at least, less out of tune :). I’ve also remixed How I Stay Safe, but it still suffers from those cheap mics, and I don’t think much will change that save a redoing of the whole song. If you actually downloaded these songs before, please download them again! I can’t wait to record the next song I have lined up (inspired by some California geography!), but it might be a whole month before I have the time to record it.

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~aj/music/Terminal.mp3
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~aj/music/How I Stay Safe.mp3
—

Everyone seems to be writing about David Hume these days. Hume really liked talking about miracles, but let’s generalize a bit.

Let’s say there’s some evidence that event X occurred. What does it take for you to believe that X actually happened? Hume says you should “proportion your believe to the evidence”, as follows: 1. Given what we know about natural law, how likely is it that this event occurred? 2. How reliable are the witnesses (the people or instruments that provide the evidence)?

I totally agree with this. What I wonder about is whether your threshold for belief of X should also vary based on how costly it is to believe that X occurred. My intuition is that it shouldn’t: your disposition to believe should rely only on the facts, not the circumstances of your believing. (Otherwise, you could say you’d be intentionally deluding yourself.)

But it gets confusing. Given event X, you can either say a) I believe it happened b) I believe it did not happen c) I don’t believe one way or another. Now let’s consider two events:
A) Ooga is the progeny of God and died for our sins. If you believe this, and you’re right, you go to heaven. Otherwise, you go to hell.
B) Blooga is the progeny of God and died for our sins. If you believe this, and you’re right, and you act according to the tenets of Bloogaism, you go to heaven. Otherwise, you go to hell.

Notice that both of these events essentially eliminate the “I don’t believe one way or another” option, since feeling that way is effectively identical to not believing.

The question is: do you need more evidence to believe Blooga? It’s totally cool to believe Ooga, since that doesn’t really cost you anything, and hey, you might get lucky and go to heaven. So your threshold of evidence for Ooga does not need to be high. But Blooga, on the other hand, well, now you have to start going to Blooga church, and read the Blooga scriptures, and stay away from those sinful Oogaers. The cost of believing is greater, even though the payoff is the same; do you need a correspondingly greater amount of evidence to believe Blooga? You could imagine a scenario in which the cost rises to infinity, in which case you better be damn sure that the event happened, or else you’re really screwing yourself over. So the amount of evidence you require to make up your mind might in some way be proportional to the effect that believing will have on you.

The analogy here, of course, is to Pascal’s Wager. I think Pascal errantly ignored the cost of believing.