The Blues

 

The Blues

On being lucky and stupid.

h/t: Times and Seasons.

See more funny videos and TBT Videos at Today's Big Thing.

It's gotta be fake.

So that’s why Mormon missionaries are such babe-magnets!

I guess this Axe commercial is the real deal.  They didn’t get the name tag quite right and I must ask: just where is this elder’s companion?  But they did make the slogan at the end look a lot like the church’s logo, plus I think I made out a Book of Mormon for a split second .  The clip is pretty funny. Plus I just love the song.  It will probably make some people mad, but then again, a lot of us Mormons could stand to get a sense of humor about ourselves.  

Unfortunately, as any missionary or RM can attest, this effect is all too real (no Axe Body Spray needed).  Ironically, many of the missionaries in my mission used Axe religiously (pun definitely not intended).  Probably because it is relatively cheap (missionaries have tight budgets) but strong enough to cover up the hard day’s worth of smell that is inevitable after walking through the heat and humidity of the Philippine Islands.

East High Forever!

It's kind of surreal seeing people talk about graduating from my high school on SNL.
What have you learned at East High?

East High School Musical

I saw this on Eric Vogeler’s blog and I just had to steal it. For those of you who don’t know I went to the real East High School. Those were my lockers, that was my gym, and that was my cafeteria. My friend Donovan also had a cameo in High School Musical #1 (I think he played a student at a rival high school, but I never actually saw it so I can’t be sure). See Below.

You tube of The week: Back to my Alma Mater

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YouTube of the Week: Supai Flood

A couple of years ago April and I, along with some of our friends, hiked down into the Havasupai Indian Reservation in the Grand Canyon. There is no road down there and the village is only accessible by foot, horse, or helicopter. The village itself looks and feels like a little piece of the third world right in the middle of the American West. It is also one of the most beautiful places on earth. The abundance of spectacular waterfalls creates an almost jungle like environment turning the canyon into a green oasis.

Minerals in the water color it a spectacular shade of blue reminiscent of the ocean at Maui.
This week my brother Kevin and some friends were going to camp down there but had to turn back because the canyon was flooded when a dam burst upstream. Here’s a video of this week's flood.

And one from a while back.

Here we are in the same spot.
It’s kind of sad to see the place we just visited get trashed by a flash flood.
I hope that the people of Supai will be able to return to normal life as soon as possible.

Youtube of the week: Bunnies

It’s been quite a week for our rabbit friends. First a rabbit saves its owners’ lives from a fire. Unfortunately the bunny didn’t actually jump up on a bed and simultaneously drag two sleeping adult humans out of a burning building as the headlines imply. But it is still pretty cool and a major score for the hares. I love rabbits. We had them as pets growing up. And while they may not hold a candle to dogs in the usefulness department they can do some pretty cool things; like this one.

Book Review: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

I’m not sure whether or not I will also review the fiction I’m reading (I usually read one or two nonfiction and one fiction book at the same time). I don’t consider my self a lit critic and I don’t want this blog to turn into a review site (that’s why I refrain from reviewing movies and albums until after the end of the year, also if April started reviewing every book she reads 80% of the posts would be book reviews). But here goes anyway.

Crime and Punishment was one of those classics that for some reason I never got around to reading until now. I stole the book from my brother Kevin when he left for his mission a couple of years ago. After that it just sat on my shelf, making me look smart. Not until recently did I actually pull it out of our bookcase. April and I read it together, trading it back and forth and having our own mini book club. This was a lot of fun and also helped us to remember characters and plot developments.

Crime and Punishment is probably the best work of fiction that I’ve read since I finished Angle of Repose a few years ago. Dostoevsky’s prose is not as beautiful as Stegner’s or Steinbeck’s, for that matter (though some of this was likely lost in translation). Still, I have never read a book that did a better job of putting me inside the head of the protagonist, a protagonist who is a murderer. It is amazing how realistically his thought process is laid out for the reader. You really get to follow this guy through his rationalization. Importantly this book shows how good people can do horrible things.

Crime and Punishment also has a healthy share of page turning suspense. Dostoevsky’s writing left me guessing and was I surprised by most of the twists and turns. The cat and mouse between the protagonist and the detective is fantastic. The timing that Dostoevsky uses in their dialogue is perfect.

Towards the end of the book there are some touching sequences. And throughout the narrative a strong sense of reality pervades. It was fun to revisit Russia in literary form. I was there ‘literary-ily’ last summer when I read Master and Margarita. Some day I will go there for real. Both novels have something of a similar feel though they are radically different in almost every other respect. Master and Margarita is more of a dark fantasy novel, a retelling of the Faust legend. In both books I struggled to keep track of the Russian names. Fortunately the Pevear and Volokhonsky edition that I used has a helpful table of names at the front. This edition also has translators’ footnotes which are helpful in understanding not only translation issues but references to places and people as well as for understanding the context of many of the events and references in the work.

Youtube of the week: Filipino thriller

Just about everyone on the planet has seen this by now. But it takes me back to my mission where I visited a couple of Filipino prisons and some mental institutions as well. I served in this area called Mandaluyong in the middle of Manila where there are so many prisons and mental institutions that the joke, when anyone says that they are from Mandaluong, is to ask them “sa loob ba?” (from inside?). The conditions inside these places were nightmarish. We once had an investigator who was committed to the largest such mental institution by his aunt as retaliation for listening to missionaries. We went to visit him. He was in one of many large rooms where he and about a hundred other people lay chained to beds that were jammed next to each other. There were people howling and screaming. We got his aunt to let him out after a couple of weeks. As far as I know he never did join the church. But on a lighter note here are prison inmates in Cebu which is 365 miles south of Manila doing their famous Thriller reenactment.

Ballona Creek

April and I just got back from the beach. Instead of diving to the beach we’ve started biking there. There’s a great bike path called Ballona creek that starts about a mile from our apartment. From there we have a direct path along the creek without having to cross any streets all the way to the beach.

Once there we can connect to "the Strand," the famous bike path that follows the beach all the way from Will Rogers to Torrance County Beach. This week we biked to Dockweiler. We did some body surfing, sunbathing, had a picnic and then biked home.

Last week we stopped by the UCLA Marina on the way home. They were having their annual open house. We got to go sailing for free in a Catamaran. Afterwards we had dinner at Marina del Rey and biked home. Lots of fun.

Youtube of the Week: Lazy Sunday. So it it’s not technically Youtube. NBC has started posting SNL clips on their site and what’s better they even let you embed them. Thanks to Tom for putting it up first.
I nearly cried back when they pulled Lazy Sunday off of YouTube but now NBC has made up for it and I can watch it whenever I want. I think what I love most about this short is that it feels real. It seems like a real New York Sunday. These guys must have written the rap about what they actually do on weekends. All of the hyper-specific references enhance the sense of reality. Best lines: “Mr. Pibb and Red Bull equals crazy delicious” and “you can call us Aaron Burr from the way we’re dropping Hamiltons.” You may or may not have to sit through a commercial on this one to but thanks to the writers’ strike less of that ad revenue will go to the studios.

Book Review: Mind of the Market by Michael Shermer

This book is an attempt by the author to understand the market through the lens of evolutionary theory. Shermer uses the term “evolutionary economics” to describe this enterprise. Shermer is a good story teller and he does a good job of explaining cutting edge science in a way that is both accessible and interesting. Unfortunately, towards the end of the book, Shermer’s narrative peters out into an op-ed piece in favor of libertarianism. Perhaps most surprisingly Shermer introduces what he calls the “principle of freedom”, that we are free to act as long as it doesn’t interfere with the freedom of others, without any argument or justification whatsoever. Instead it is almost presented as some sort of indisputable maxim. When he combines this maxim with his discussion of evolutionary economics what he ends up with is merely an argument for less government control over the economy. I wish instead that he would have ended the book by drawing conclusions from his earlier discussion alone. I think that if he would have done this he could have had something that would have really been useful for trying to understand how the market works.
Throughout the book Shermer argues that there is a moral side to the market as a result of our evolutionary past. While his arguments are interesting as is the science behind them, the same conclusion can be drawn from merely reflecting on the necessary nature of the market. This is because a moral component is necessary for the market to exist at all. Of course the foundation of the market is greed. This is true but it is only half the story. Self interest is what ultimately drives the market but there is something else going on as well. Just as the market could not exist without self interest it could not exist without trust either. Every market transaction entails trust. We must trust the other party to at least some extent to trade with them. Because this trust is absolutely necessary for the market to exist the market is built on trust as much as it is on greed. Without this trust the market would not exist because no one would enter into it in the first place. This is not surprising because it reflects human nature itself. True, we are inherently self interested but we are also inherently moral. Game theory assumes that there is no trust in the transactions. As a result its application to financial markets is limited. Though it elegantly explains how selfishness works it does not account for the other half of the picture. Take for example the prisoner’s dilemma, perhaps the core illustration of game theory. For the dilemma to work you must assume that the prisoners are amoral and that they do not trust each other. This has always been a problem for me as I’ve studied the dilemma. It seems that in the real world the prisoners would likely be friends and therefore would trust each other and want to help each other out. We don’t get into prisoner’s dilemmas with our family and friends. And I do not believe that we completely get in them with our adversaries either. Illustrating this point is the relationship between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. during the cold war. Even between these two arch-nemeses in the battle for word power there was a degree of mutual trust. This trust is the reason that the world still exists today. Mathematician John Von Neumann was one of the developers of game theory and a believer in the principles of rational self-interest. He was also an adviser to Presidents Truman and Eisenhower. When the Soviets showed the first signs of developing nuclear weapons, he urged the president to bomb the Russians into oblivion. Game theory, he said, required it. It’s easy to see how he arrived at this conclusion. Either the Soviets were going to unleash their arsenal on us or they were not. If they did, at least we would both have been reduced to ashes and therefore on equal footing with each other. And If they did not send the apocalypse our way, then we would have won the cold war and earned the title of “worlds only superpower.” What Von Neumann failed to recognize was the other half of the equation; trust. As a result of this trust the two superpowers were able to resolve the dilemma, at least partially anyway, by choosing the best over all option, mutual preservation. Game theory certainly does describe many of the problems that do exist in the market. The question then is how can we use the moral tendencies of the market to counter its greedy, oppressive, and self-destructive dark side? As usual I digress. This was an entertaining read; it just felt like it could have been much more.

YouTube of the week: All this talk of libertarianism has reminded me of my many encounters with Randian Objectivism (I know they’re not the same thing). This video has been circulating around the various LDS philosophers societies for a few months now. It Synthesizes Ayn Rand, Immanuel Kant, and Mormon Missionaries.

Saint Augustine's Carnival '08

About a week after we moved into our current apartment last year we were walking down the street when we saw the lights of a Ferris wheel above us. It was a carnival right around our corner. Yesterday we went back for the annual St. Augustine Catholic Church Carnival to ride the rickety Ferris wheel and get sick on the rocking pirate ship (which wasn’t there this time). We did get a good ride on the Ferris wheel and enjoyed some good Filipino and Mexican food. We paid for these with tickets called Augies a currency nicknamed after the inventor of original sin and the man who brought Platonic Rationalism to Christianity.

April won a stuffed walrus while a Christian rock band played in the background. We’ll be back next year. I’ll need a break from Bar Review.

Below is a view of the carnival and Culver City from above. Maybe it’s not Augustine’s’ City of God, but it’s home.

Youtube of the Week: Stairway backwards. I’m sure this is just the power of suggestion because real backmasking is always more clear in reverse but this is fun nonetheless.

A Couple of Post Updates

I know that I could put these in the posts themselves, but then who is going to see them?

For my May 1 post: Booktober Fest ’08.

I’m glad to see that Yahoo is following my blog. Of Course the real credit belongs to Josh and Charlotte. Imagine my surprise when I opened up my web browser and saw Josh’s face front and center on the yahoo homepage. Congratulations to the Erickson’s on their fifteen minutes now that their video has gone "viral." If the video is no longer on yahoo’s homepage you can still find it on my blog under May 1 YouTube of the week. Could this clip become the next "Star Wars Kid"?

For my March 8 post: Ok Hippies, You Can Put Your Chains away.
April took this picture while she was visiting campus a couple of days ago.

File it as one more under the "silly signs at UCLA" category. I hope that our ranking in Campus Squirrel Listings doesn’t slip now that we can’t feed our bushy-tailed colleagues.
If we can't feed animals, can we still feed bruins?

YouTube of The Week:

Now that clips featured here are making their way to the front page of Yahoo I must make my selections delicately. So for this week I’m posting two again. The first is a parody of a beer commercial campaign that is a pretty accurate portrayal of the law school on campus interview program. We all know this guy.


I’ve recently joined Facebook. Though there is much to like about it, this next clip expresses some of my feelings about this new social order. Enjoy Facebook in real life.

Mexico

We just got back from a fantastic trip to the Yucatan. Kevin served his LDS mission there so we went back with him to see the people he taught, the sights he saw, and of course the beaches of Cancun (ok, fine, Kevin never saw this last one during his mission). Kevin, my parents, and Mike and Catherine went a few days ahead of us (I had Finals) and April and I stayed on a few days after they left. The most notable souvenir that we brought back is April’s tan. Everyone we have seen since the trip has commented on it and with the exact same words in every case; “WOW, you’re SOOO tan!” Anyway here’s our trip journal:
Day 1
I had a final in Real Estate Finance Law in the morning and April had work. We flew out of LAX at 1:00 AM to the tiny town of Zacatecas in the Mexican high dessert.

Sunrise over Zacatecas

We then flew into Mexico City and then Cancun Airport where I was detained for a half hour by the airport police. Once we got that sorted out we headed to our hotel were we met up with the rest of the Fam. Every single one of them had a severe sunburn. I laughed to myself then. Little did I know that I was soon to join them. April never sunburns, though she looks like she came home a different race. We spent the remainder of the day catching up with everyone, chilling on the beach, playing some pool basketball (enter the sunburn), enjoying a variation of virgin cocktails, and some shopping at night. Suffice it to say, we were exhausted by the end. I racked up a couple hours of sleep in about a 36 hour period.
Day 2
We went down to the Ruins of Tulum an ancient Mayan city on the beach.



Afterwards we went to a Cenote for some swimming. Cenotes are fresh water sinkholes/caves that dot the Yucatan.


Here's Kevin who is just about to experience some serious pain.

We finished off the day with five or six games of pool volleyball.
Day 3
We spent the day at Xcaret (pronounced “each-ka-rayt”). It's 50% Polynesian Cultural center, 40% Sea World, and 10% Disneyland.




Day 4
We went to Church at one of Kevin’s old wards and then spent the afternoon visiting some families that he taught.





Day 5
We took the bus into the bus terminal where we got another city bus out to Chichen Itza. It was a three hour one way bus ride but we were treated with School for Scoundrels and Casino Royale, which was in Spanish. Chichen Itza is a large collection of Mayan ruins not far from Merida. It was lots of fun but unbelievably hot. Some of the coolest features were the main pyramid “El Castillo,” the massive ball court, and the observatory





This next photo is of the cenote or well into which the Mayans sacraficed virgins. Archeologists know this because they found human remains in the water. How they were able to determine that the victims were virgins is unclear.
We also found an ancient steam bath which seems odd because the temperature was over 100 degrees with 100% humidity.



Here's the "wall of skulls" I thought it was cool.

After wandering the ruins we caught the bus back to Cancun. We enjoyed some street tacos on the way.
Day 6
We relaxed at the beach until it was time to catch our flight.

Youtube of the Week: I’m starting to come down with a cold. Correction: not just a cold but a “man cold.”