Kyle has a book called Gigs that I’ve been reading. Basically they interview hundreds of people with various jobs about what they do. “We feel that the world hears too much from ‘experts’ of all political stripes, and not enough from the people for and about whom they presume to speak,” one of the editors writes. Reading just a bit of the book so far, I’ve realized a few things:
People are people. So many people view people at work as just a human embodiment of a company, or merely as an ‘object’ with which they’re forced to interact. (Sidenote: spending some time in customer service should be mandatory for everyone.) A bus driver talks about the abuse she takes when the bus is late. A flight attendant complains about the time someone threw a hamburger in her face because he didn’t want it. The world would be a much better place if people could see that people were people.
I’ve narrowed my horizons far too much. I never considered that I could be:
A train engineer. He apparently makes about $90,000 a year and gets to see the country. The hours aren’t great, though, and I’d probably get bored.
A member of the paparazzi. I love photography anyway. This guy has a wild job. He doesn’t mention his salary (he works for a magazine), only that one of his photos got him into the “six-figure club,” referring to his revenues from a single photograph. He does claim to have been punched by Alec Baldwin, and mentions that he goes to the bathroom in his car because he has to remain vigilant. Those aren’t the working conditions I look forward to.
A porn star, although he makes the job sound less appealing than I’d have imagined.
Fisherman. It’s intense work, and risky, but he makes good money.
Casino surveillance officer. Watching hundreds of cameras. It actually sounds fun, though I’m not sure I’d be making the $40,000+ that jobs out of college are supposed to pay.
Drug dealer. He made good money!
There are so many more I haven’t read. Slaughterhouse human resources director? Chief Executive Officer? (I’ll do it!) Clutter consultant? Crime scene cleaner? Taxidermist? Bar owner? Buffalo rancher? Food stylist? Anchorwoman? (Err, man, in my case.) Television station receptionist? Carnival worker? Squash instructor? Transvestite prostitute? Mother? The possibilities are endless for me! College professor! Bounty hunter! Prisoner! Town manager! Psychiatric rehabilitation therapist!
(1) As someone who’s done a lot of work with SQL and web interfaces, today’s XKCD is hilarious.
(2) We’re currently trying to send out a fax. There are two of us, both tech-savvy, trying to figure it out. And we just have n0 clue. The screen says “WAITING TO DIAL 02%.” Kind of like, “PC LOAD LETTER” — what the @#$# does that mean? (I get the “Waiting to dial,” but 2% waiting?
This is really bizarre, but it still really cracks me up because it was so bizarre.
Some friends and I went to Margarita’s this weekend for dinner. It fills up fast, but I was able to get a reservation so we didn’t wait more than a couple minutes. But as we were waiting, this group got seated. They’d been waiting for a while, since they all had margaritas in hand. They left the waiting area to go to their table, but then one woman came back. There was a sort of display case with various Mexican art and handiwork in the wall. She rammed her margarita glass into it–I’m not sure how it didn’t break. And then she just left nonchalantly with margarita in hand.
We’re fairly certain that’s not what she was intending to do, but none of us can figure out what she was trying to do. I confess to not being up on all the issues surrounding drinking, since I don’t really drink, but I’m fairly certain that forcefully banging your margarita into windows isn’t a custom.
I can’t for the life of me find the quote, but I think it was Thomas Jefferson, or maybe Lincoln, who said in his inaugural address that, “We are all Democrats, all Republicans…”
I think that is exceptionally important these days. Last night, on campus, we had a debate with the Republicans. We bashed Bush, and they bashed Hillary. In the Senate, Democrats seem to oppose whatever the Republicans do, and the Republicans oppose whatever the Democrats do.
In theory, the parties are really important: much like the three branches of government, they keep each other in check. The country probably won’t go socialist, because the Republicans will oppose it. And we won’t become a fascist dictatorship because the Democrats won’t allow it. (Of course, some would call the current Administration a fascist dictatorship, and at last night’s meeting someone went on about how the Massachusetts government is now truly run by socialists; realistically, though, we’re not even close to either.)
In practice, people are too devoted to their parties. I don’t agree with everything the Democrats do: every now and then, I have to go with the Republicans on something. And I have a lot of respect for some Republicans who have taken the side of the Democrats. (Which is happening increasingly often when Bush is involved?)
So nothing gets done. Bush just vetoed a bill that would have given healthcare to children who can’t afford it. Did we ever renew the assault weapons ban? Michigan’s government almost shut down.
What did we debate last night? Whether or not Hillary could lead the country, and whether she could stare down world leaders. (My question, “Why do we want a president who intimidates world leaders?” got lost in the fray.) What else might we have talked about if we’d had more time? Whether or not we’re ready for a black President? Whether or not Rudy is inappropriately using 9/11 for his gain? The MoveOn ad?
It seems like not many people care about what’s right anymore, as much as whether their side wins. What do I think of the MoveOn ad? I don’t know, I never saw it. I don’t give a crap, really, just like I don’t give a crap about whether Hillary can look intimidating, or whether Rudy’s unceasing talk about 9/11 is inappropriate. I give a crap about children in poor families dying for want of health care. I give a crap about our soldiers dying in a pointless war. I give a crap about us not having an assault weapons ban. I give a crap about the fact that when I was a little kid, America was, without a doubt, the best nation in the world, and now most of the world hates us. I give a crap that our economy is going down while the rest of the world watches their economies soar. I give a crap that the government has such a deficit that we’re borrowing money just to pay off our debt. I give a crap that the big investors are moving all their money into foreign economies. I give a crap that schools aren’t getting the funding they need to keep America competitive. I give a crap that the military is losing talented people because of their sexual orientation. I give a crap that college keeps getting more and more expensive and we’re cutting loans. I give a crap that we’re not giving benefits to soldiers who came back from the war.
Please, politicians, get it. I’m a Democrat. I don’t want the Democrats to “win” in Congress: I want America to win. And we’re not.
It’s amazing what the Internet has unleashed. Today I stumbled across a mention of the Vosges Bacon Chocolate Bar. It was an amusing typo, I thought: it almost sounds like a chocolate bar with bacon in it. My roommates have long joked about my love for bacon. (A local pizza place offers a dish known as the “heart attack,” which is a calzone stuffed with mozzarella sticks and bacon–its name is well-deserved. But ohhhh is it good.)
But it turns out that I hadn’t misunderstood anything. It is a chocolate bar with bacon in it. Sitting on a hot tip like this, though, I knew I had to act fast, so I sent the link to the Snack Maniac. Barring the Maniac’s ghostwritten entry, the Internet had gone a whole month without any snack updates, so I’m proud to take credit for leading to the first update in a month. So proud, in fact, that I may have to take todays “Hero of the Day” designation away from [deep breath] the man suing to keep his amputated leg that he stored in a barbecue smoker in a storage shed but was inadvertently sold when he missed his rent payments and is now used by the guy who bought the smoker at an auction as some sort of bizarre exhibit in his backyard[deep breath], and instead give it to myself… (The Hero of the Day designation, not the amputated leg stored in a barbecue smoker in a self-rental shed.)
Having recently resolved that I need to focus on eating healthy, I was thrilled to learn that the Snack Maniac was sending me a bacon-chocolate bar of my own. And while I confess that I don’t have the experienced palate of the Snack Maniac, I’ll be sure to post an update on how it tastes.
I’m eating some nuts right now. They’re unsalted, unroasted, so they’re really not even that good.
Which got me wondering… How did people discover nuts? Were they accustomed to ripping things off trees and eating them? Did they try acorns? All the trees with inedible berries?
But here are some other things I’ve always wondered about the discoveries of:
Smoking. I think I posted about this before, actually. I think that, even if I lived all by myself in the woods with nothing to do and nothing to eat and no basis for what was normal, I’d never think, “Let’s rip this leaf up, dry it, set it on fire, and inhale the smoke.” And why tobacco leaves? Did they try oak leaves? Grass? Cabbage? Corn? Poison Ivy?
Sex. No, really. What else did they try before their breakthrough discovery? I think a fair amount of what we hold as “intuitive” is really societal. Was it clear initially that it should be a male and a female, and what went where, or were there lots of other variations?
Beer. Who thought, “Let’s take these unappetizing ingredients, let them rot for months, and then drink it!”? Intuitively, wouldn’t you think, “This has been rotting for months, I don’t dare drink it?” What else did they let ferment before ingesting?
Cheese. Kind of the same concept. Spoiled milk is disgusting. But getting it to cheese? I don’t think I could ever even eat cheese if I really thought about its manufacture. And for the first, say, century after cheese was discovered, I’m fairly certain that there weren’t supermarkets that sold pre-packaged cheese.
Milk. Really thinking about where it comes from, what led us to drink that? Did we try drinking bodily fluids from other animals? Do I even want to know?
Meat. Seriously, who thought, “Let’s kill that cow, cut it up, and eat it?” Was cooking devised right away? I love my burgers, but I’d rather starve to death than go up and start gnawing on a cow. And cutting up a cow and then gnawing away sounds even more disgusting.
Contact lenses. I’m glad I got them long after the technology was perfected. I’m fairly certain that if someone came up to me and said, “I’m working on a revolutionary new technology that lets you stick ‘glasses’ directly to your eyeball,” I just would have laughed… Or run screaming. Depending on whether or not they wanted to try them on me.
John Kerry gave a speech at Faneuil Hall today, focusing on economics. Between being interested, having been a Kerry ’04 supporter, wanting to try my hand at photographing the event, and having no classes during the day, I decided to attend. What follows is a write-up of the event, a combination of photography stuff and politics.
I was worried when I found out it was inside. I have a fairly “slow” lens (f/5.6 when zoomed in, which I knew is where I’d be shooting), so I wasn’t sure how they’d come out. It ended up being fairly bright inside, but shooting zoomed to 200mm still requires a fairly fast exposure. I left the lens wide open (which has the added benefit of helping to throw the background out of focus) the whole time, and bumped the camera up to ISO800. (I spent a little time at ISO1600 to try to get some “safety shots,” figuring a little grain was better than motion blur, but I can’t even tell without looking at the metadata which was which.)
This is not John Kerry, but I’ve still got a few photos uploading so I’ll start with those that are already online. This guy was marching around Harvard Square ranting about his dislike for Jews. I kind of wanted to get into his head: momentarily pretending that hating Jews isn’t crazy in and of itself, I have to wonder what possesses someone to dress up in a ridiculous costume and try to convince a ton of other people that they should hate Jews, too. Does this guy have a job? Is he sane in other settings, or is he always like this? Does he go to the grocery store to buy eggs and ham and rant to the cashier about Jews? Does he have a wife? What’s going on with the couple beyond him to the left?
Upon seeing this guy, someone near me wondered aloud, “Can you say that in public?!” This guy must not have gone to our school, because just a few weeks ago, we handed out about 1,000 copies of the Constitution. He wouldn’t have had to read far, even: we put that part right up front for him.
I had lunch in Quincy Market. Since I was by myself and didn’t feel like looking for a seat, I ate at one of those bizarre troffs tables. I took this shot with my 18-50mm lens, at 18mm. Even with the camera’s crop, 18mm (effectively 29mm) is really wide! This picture should also go in textbooks that talk about barrel distortion.
What are the odds that everyone here would be in orange? (It was pure coincidence.) I really like seeing that it’s not just young college students calling for Bush’s ouster.
The room was really impressive, and was a great place to hold something like this. Of course, there was no shortage of flags. The inscription on the bottom of the pictures behind Senator Kerry reads, “Liberty and Union Now and Forever.”
This breaks one of the cardinal rules of photography. You want the subject looking “in.” It’d have been great had he been facing the right (his left), but he wasn’t. Also, at least for me, the object that my eye jumps to is the woman in green, who was just some random audience member.
The enormous picture behind him wasn’t level. Another “cardinal rule” I’m big on is keeping straight lines. I’m more prone to noticing than most people, but when the horizon is slanting, it really detracts from the picture. I realized early on that my pictures were coming out pretty crooked, so I started being careful to try to keep the bottom of the frame nice and level. But on more zoomed-out shots like this, the stage was pretty slanted. I’d love to fix the alignment of the painting, but when I try aligning pictures on walls, they tend to fall off. I think I’d be in pretty deep trouble if I knocked that painting down.
Here’s the room. It’s on the upper floor of Faneuil Hall, and is incredibly nice. (This was a little before we started; the guy on the right is an usher.)
Any idea who this lady is? She was right near the front and a lot of people were coming up saying hello. I’m assuming she’s either a former politician or wife of a politician, but I didn’t recognize her.
See what I mean? Here I aligned the image so the stage was perfectly level. Look at that sloping painting! Isn’t it distracting?
Kerry talked a lot about health care, and the utter disaster that is our status quo. He actually slipped in what I thought was a hilarious joke… Discussing Romney’s move for universal health care in Massachusetts, he mentioned how he’s now downplaying it. “It’s almost as if he’s saying he was for universal health care before he voted against it.”
He also discussed tax cuts and the preposterous situation of giving the richest Americans huge tax rebates. “Teresa and I didn’t ask for a tax break. We didn’t need one, especially not when 43 million [?] Americans can’t afford basic health care.”
I’m not sure I did such a great job going over what happened, but it was great. My one critique is that he seemed a little too quick to bash Republicans: it’s something most all Democrats are quick to do, but unless we start working together, the schism is going to get wider. We need to work with the Republicans, not against them.
I should just get a large-format printer. Between printing my own photos and (somewhat illegally?) printing the high-res photos some people post online, I could probably save a lot of money.
What prints do you recommend? I think I need to get a half-dozen or so.
I’m hardly in the upper echelon when it comes to social skills, but I’m going to post this anyway…
I’ve come to the conclusion that a person’s social skills are one of the most important things they learn. The problem is that they seem to be learned solely through trial and error and observed experiences: no one ever teaches you anything formally. Some people are naturals. I just read an article about Obama, and he’s definitely one of them. Most people here, being a business school, have pretty good social skills. But we’ll periodically mingle with other schools. At a big convention we went to last year, I realized that some of the people there had terrible social skills, to the point of being somewhat creepy.
I think it’s somewhat industry-specific. In the business world, you need strong social skills. If I’d gone on to become, say, a programmer as I once considered, it wouldn’t have been as important, but it’d still be very important.
I view this as a sort of crisis. Too many mal-adjusted people are passing through our schools. In my opinion, it’s one of the most critical skills, and they’re just never getting taught. Let’s cut out history and replace it with Socializing 101. I never did like history anyway…
I read Body for Life a while back, and kept thinking, “I should take that up… Next week.”
This morning I finally cracked and went for a jog. I almost didn’t, but at the last minute I decided to give it a try. I promised myself I wouldn’t go far, and that I could always switch to walking if I wanted.
I made it about 200 feet great. I thought, “Wow, this isn’t so bad.” But then for the remaining quarter-mile or so, I was panting the whole time. Finally the sidewalk ended, and I took that as a perfect excuse to walk the rest of the way back to my dorm.
It’s a pathetic beginning, but, well, at least I began.
