The Kindness of Strangers

Man, I am so exhausted. I have no idea why I’m updating now.

I’m in the 95th percentile in my March Madness bracket. Go UConn!

The wedding this past weekend was awesome. James and Erin were wonderful.

I was excited to see what the south was like. Turns out that it (at least Birmingham) is the same as everywhere else. People weren’t even appreciably nicer. Oh well.

Some pictures from the wedding, chronologically, courtesy of Wing:
Happy people
We wanted to get him strippers, but had to make do ourselves
Not sure why I look so sleazy here, but I like it
The lovely couple
The, er, other lovely couple
Someone had a little too much to drink! (Not me!)
Decompression at IHOP

Too tired to write out any real thoughts right now. Next time, maybe: thoughts on tradition. Explanation of AJ’s triumvirate of attractiveness: cuteness, hotness, beauty.

Actually here’s a thought, one that I’ve had many times as I’ve trekked in various places: do you think you’ve ever set foot anywhere where no other person has ever walked before? Just one step, maybe, slightly off the beaten path, that no one else has done?

I’m not so sure I have. The world’s a big place, but then again there have been a lot of people. History has taught me that originality is usually exaggerated. Would be cool, though. Maybe I’ll try tomorrow!

What is weird about these pictures?
(other than my ever-present goofy smile)

The answer is that I am currently missing an article of clothing that I was wearing in each of the pictures: the blue shirt, the legs (but not the top half) of my zipoffs, and the green shirt, respectively. How weird is that? How does clothing disappear? This is not just socks we’re talking about, folks. This is large-scale clothing abduction.

Actually most likely I just left these things during a visit home at some point. Gonna have to ask my parents about that. But until then I’m going to pretend that the explanation is a little more exciting; perhaps I’m the target of an international espionage ring, and they’re stealing my clothes to impersonate me? Yeah, that sounds about right.

Does anyone else lose clothes like this?

(The last picture is interesting in its own right: despite our desperate attempts to look as gay as possible, Wing (on the left) just got engaged this past weekend, and James (on the right) is getting married in three days. Doh! I mean, er, congratulations! But now I have to find new targets for my affection.)

I guess I might as well pay respects to another favorite article of clothing that was actually legitimately stolen from me (if you can handle that oxymoron):

Ah, the old Fila windbreaker. Man, I was down with Fila before it was cool to be down with Fila. Hmm… I guess that just makes me not cool. Shoot! Regardless, if I ever meet the CS punk who stole it from Soda 306 I’m going to type-check his ass until he throws an exception.

I can’t believe I just wrote that.

… it says to me, and I should listen.

Ever did something with the best possible intentions and have it turn out in the worst possible way? It’s a quick and easy way to realize that you have no idea how the world actually works. Good for the ol’ humility, though.

UConn had a great weekend — a crushing victory over Villanova on Friday night (although I ended up TiVoing it and watching it on Saturday morning, after successfully isolating myself from any news sources in the meanwhile), and then last night an awesome nail-biter of a victory over Pitt, 61-58, to win the Big East championship. Looks like all the talent is finally coming together …. and then today Maryland pulled off a huge overtime upset over Duke to win the ACC title, which could not have been cooler.

It was a good time for basketball to get good.

(The Boys speak again: “So whatcha-whatcha-whatcha want?” goes the current song. Good question.)

The weather’s been astoundingly beautiful here for the last week. 70s and cloudless during the day, high 60s in the evening — like New England summer nights. Back east, it’s been snowing and more is expected. Don’t know if I’ll ever be able to go back :). It’s just too nice wearing shorts, throwing disc (and just sitting around! :), and keeping my windows open at night.

A long time ago I signed up for the CD settlement thing that claimed that the major music manufacturers were inflating prices. Well, just recently I got a check for $13.86: my share of the settlement. It’s cool when random stuff like that happens.

It was a strange thing: a little while ago, within a six-hour span, I got emails from my friends John (teaching in China) and Marianne (back in Sweden), neither of whom I had heard from in a while (mostly my fault!). What’s interesting is that while I knew each of them in very different contexts (John: high school, Marianne: IHouse), our friendships were such that they both saw sides of me that most people don’t. So I always end up emailing them when I’m depressed :)… It’s amazing that they actually put up with that crap. They’re wonderful friends, and reading their emails made me very happy.

I’m in the process of trying to design an algorithm to do a certain thing for my research project. This involves me sitting around a lot and daydreaming, er, thinking hard. Actually it really is mostly daydreaming, due to my (legendary) inability to concentrate. Some of this daydreaming involved the “do nice people look nice” problem I brought up a couple of entries ago.

This question has been rattling around in my brain for about a year now, actually. When I was living in IHouse, I saw a lot of faces, some many times, and never met many of the people behind those faces. It really felt like I could tell which of those people were actually nice, and which weren’t, just based on how they looked. I have no idea how accurate I was, though.

For all of these questions, imagine only the person’s face, nothing else. For a rough definition of “nice”, use “considerate of others”.

Do nice people (tend to) look nice?
Do mean people (tend to) look mean?

Do nice-looking people tend to be nice? (question also suggested by Ryan)
etc.

Do athletic (coordinated) people (tend to) look athletic?
Do smart people (tend to) look smart?

What other qualities are discernible, if any?

These questions could all be tested by a simple experiment. Take the people in the CS department here, have their acquaintances rate them in these dimensions, and then post their mugshots online and let random people rate them. Compare the two.

Furthermore:

If there are any such correlations, why are we able to discern them?

Is it because of the way people choose to present themselves?
Is it because of obvious physiological cues — for instance, do nice people smile more often when they’re walking around?
– If so, are nice people happier than mean people? Or just more prone to smile?
Are we duped into thinking people are nice by conflating niceness with cuteness or beauty? (i.e. What does “look nice” really mean, exactly?)
Might there really just be a link between personality and phenotype? That is, do nice people actually just look different, even with a neutral facial expression, from mean people? I can’t think of any other examples of this, but it would be fascinating if true.
…

There are a ton of different angles you can take on this, and I won’t bore you with any more.

I’d love to hear anecdotes and thoughts about all of this, though.

[This whole idea ties into a deeper question that I’ve been considering recently, which is whether there is an evolutionary basis for why we like or dislike people based on certain characteristics that you’d think wouldn’t seriously affect the success (in an evolutionary sense) of future interactions, like arrogance or sense of humor.

Specifically, in this case, I’m wondering why occasionally I form an opinion very rapidly after first meeting someone, perhaps within five minutes or less. It sounds awfully close-minded, but it happens. What cues am I picking up? … which is why it would make a lot of sense if I happen to read a lot into the way people look. If it turns out that I am accurate in these assessments, then great. If not, then I better (forcefully) rethink the way I interact with other people.]

Looking back, this is an incredibly dry entry, and probably really boring for people who, well, aren’t me. But much better to raise this stuff on LJ, where you can skim or skip it, than in conversation, when you just might decide that I “look” boring :).

Just got back from the Dream Theater concert at the Warfield. As a final encore they played “In the Name of God” from their latest album, Train of Thought (which is surprisingly good, up there with Images and Words and Scenes From a Memory), which pretty much showcases all that’s cool about DT: awesome monster riffs, glorious singable choruses, jaw-dropping technical proficiency. It was a fitting ending.

I went by myself, and I found myself reveling in the anonymity. Surrounded by unknown faces, I felt free from expectation, abdicating the responsibilities of a social creature for one evening.

I had the opportunity to go to two other concerts this week (Vienna Teng’s release show for Warm Strangers, and Mahler 5) but for various reasons had to miss both. Phooey.

You might wonder why I write so much about music, why I’m so obsessed with it. The answer is: I don’t know. I have no idea why it does these things to me. It’s strange … in my life, blessed with an amazing amount of good fortune, yet inexplicably — and inextricably, it sometimes seems — fraught with delusions and neuroticisms, music appears to be a unique companion: one that speaks to me in my own voice, with words that I have neither the eloquence nor the understanding to say myself.

——–

On the drive home (borrowed my brother’s car), a kind of interesting analogy occurred to me.

In evolutionary biology, there’s a concept known as Zahavi’s Handicap: a negative characteristic endured by a male of a species to advertise that he is “man” enough to handle it. For instance, a peacock’s huge tail feathers are a real detriment to his safety — but by surviving with them, he is showing the females that he is such a good mate that he can survive even with some gargantuan ostentatious feathers sticking out of his butt. Antlers (especially when they get huge and cumbersome) are sometimes viewed as another example of Zahavi’s Handicap. If the handicap is honest — in that it really is costly to live with — then females tend to respond positively towards it.

Anyway, so a long time ago, in one of my first entries in this journal, I wrote about how annoying it is that so many girls like assholes. I offer my usual disclaimers: a) before you vehemently deny that such attractions occur consistently enough to be stereotyped, I can provide you with friends of mine who explicitly acknowledge such a preference, and other friends who implicitly acknowledge it, at least based on their choice of boyfriends :) b) and before I am accused of whining — as a purportedly “nice” guy who is just bitter that I don’t have whatever it is it takes — I will say that I’ve been lucky enough in my life to have met at least some girls who are sensible about realizing the values of “nice”.

Blah. Okay those disclaimers are ridiculously overwordy and unnecessary, and obscure my main point, which is this: being and asshole can be thought of as an example of Zahavi’s Handicap. Basically, the guy is saying, “Okay, I’m going to be a dick, which certainly will be detrimental in all other aspects of my life, but I’m such a studly guy that I can handle these detriments. So: I’m being a dick just to show you that I can be a dick and get away with it. Give me some sugar, baby.”

(Okay, that last sentence is copped from Army of Darkness. But the rest is serious!)

And girls buy it, because they’ve been trained to by evolution over the last zillion years.

So this is probably all a load crap, but it’s fun to think about :).

Okay, so this will interest about, hmm, 0% of people reading this (unless I re-read it myself, haha), but American Analog Set are touring with Pinback this spring! This actually sucks, though, because they’re not coming out to California at all — although of course they’re playing at the Paradise, one of my favorite rock clubs in Boston.

Damn east-coasters have all the fun.

I’ve somehow been hearing a lot of music from my high school years in the last couple of days: the first Counting Crows album, some Gin Blossoms on the radio last night, and now the Smashing Pumpkins. Some of my friends seem to outgrow their music tastes and habits every couple of years, but somehow it all still sounds good to me.

Do nice people (tend to) look nice?

More on this later.

Dream Theater concert on Friday.

I have a dry cough, with no other symptoms. I checked, and exactly a year and a week ago I had the same thing. (Both times, it started out with a couple days of congestion.) Between these two events, I was never sick. How weird is that? I guess it could be some allergy-related thing, triggered by some pollen that gets released around this time.

“I hear the ocean breathe… exhale upon the shore”

There’s a huge storm outside, and the thunder reverberates in my room every few minutes. I love thunder and lightning! As long as I’m inside :).

I also really like wind. One time in high school we were going to have track practice but then there was this hurricane warning and so they had to cancel practice. I ran to the middle of the field after everyone had left, but before it started raining really hard, and let the ferocious wind buffet me. It was so cool.

It’s refreshing when I find someone who thinks the same way I do.

Friends from afar traipsing through these parts recently: Chris (Australia), Michelle (Taiwan), Chris (Korea). It was great to see them! And soon Beth (England). Also got to see the IHouse Boyz (the ‘z’ is a mixture of irony and utter sincerity) this past weekend for Ray’s birthday.

Speaking of which, it was Umesh’s birthday yesterday, and we’re having a party for him on Friday. Happy Birthday Umesh!

I used to think that genetic modification (a la Gattaca) would be the single most controversial and potentially harmful issue during my lifetime. Now, based on a combination of doom-and-gloom scenarios proposed by various pundits and a Vonnegut short story I recently read, I’m thinking that the elongation of the human lifespan — without the corresponding elongation of a person’s “productive” years — may be a good candidate. How is society going to adapt? It’s going to be interesting. (Especially when I get to be old!)
[Edit: I didn’t make clear in this paragraph that I think that genetic modification also has the potential to be one of the most helpful issues, too. Either way, it’s definitely going to be controversial.]

Did I mention that getting really old and slowly losing all of my mental and physical faculties is one of my biggest fears? Weird, huh. It just depresses me though.

While I’m rambling, I’d just like to mention that the NFL’s arbitrary restrictions on post-touchdown celebrations do nothing save stroke the league’s collective ego and convince it that it is somehow dignified, despite the fact that it exists solely for our entertainment. Martin Luther King is dignified; the NFL is not. Players hate the restrictions, and so do the fans. Get off your high horse, officials.

“Is your armor ever heavy? Would you roll a little secret too?
Just twinkle and a false start. Do you want smoke or just a spark?”

Resisting the massive urge to re-sing all the out-of-tune parts, redo the awkward moments, and fill in all the gaps, I present a song I’ve finally gotten around to recording:

Stars: mp3 | lyrics

Some notes on the song and the process that are probably only interesting to me…