Lotteries, time travel, and other trivialities

What would you do if you won the lottery... and

What would you do if you could do it all again

So I think that all of us have, at one point or another, imagined what it would be like if we could go back and do it all over again.  If you suddenly found yourself once again a young child but with all of your adult memories.  Girls you would have dated (or would have definitely NOT dated), jobs you would never have taken, opportunities that you would make sure not to loose. It’s definitely fun to consider but also not likely to ever happen.  But one of my thoughts has always been: “well its fun to think about but if you only had a couple of seconds to react before it happened what would you do?  What would you try to take with you?”

One of the benefits from going back in time would probably be financial: knowing what to invest in when.  The weakness, it seems, comes from having a funds to start with when you arrive.  In most cases it takes money to make money.  Yes, you’ll know major events such as stock market crashes, who wins major sporting events, invest in Apple, and the like; all of which provide you opportunities to make money... if you have money to start with. 

Water Snobbery

Hi, I'm James and I'm a Water Snob.

It all started when I was very young.  I grew up in a small city high in the mountains... a place with wonderful water.  My favorite drink in my youth was tap water, so clean and refreshing, I could drink glass after glass after glass of the stuff.

And then I moved to Phoenix, Arizona.  When I got off the plane and it was BAKING hot.  It was midsummer and the daily temperatures averaged in the 110s and 120s (that's 40-50 degrees for my huge audience of non-American readers).  One immediate result of the heat was that I REALLY needed something to drink.

Ah... a kitchen faucet!  Long the trusty source of revitalizing sustanance.  I grabbed a glass, twisted a nob and... what is that smell?  Yep, that's right, for the split second before the alleged water actually came out of the tap I could already smell it.  Water definitely should not be smellable.  For the first several months I lived in Arizona I lived almost entirely on soda pop, until a roommate who was doing the same thing came back from the dentist with strict orders to stop or all your teeth will all fall out.  Fortunately I was blessed with excellent preventive dental care in my youth so my teeth were fine... but the point was taken.  For the next several years I lived on a mixture of bottled water, or tap water mixed with drink mixes or caps of lemon juice to mask the smell and taste.

Later I ended up in our Nation's Capital (again, for my foreign readers, Washington, DC).  The tap water was a vast improvement to watery sludge of Phoenix but still not what I'd call fit for human consumption.  More soda, drink mixes, and bottled water.

Now I'm in Salt Lake City, Utah... which you would think, since its only 80 miles from where I grew up, would have wonderful water.  After all SLC tap water is so wonderful water that the Salt Lake County Mayor decided to ban bottled water in government offices (not people bringing personal bottles of water, just the big office water coolers) to celebrate our awesome waterness.

So SLC water is amazing right?   Nope.  Better than DC but it still tastes like your drinking water from a swimming pool which always makes me wonder about how many people have peed in this pool before it got to my tap. 

Even more wonderful, SLC water has something in it... I think it's the high mineral content, that makes my tummy very unhappy.  Even if I run it through Brita filters it still gives me a tummy ache to drink it.  After drinking a liter of it, it feels like my stomach has curled itself up into a fetal position while trying to hide under its neighbor the liver while quietly whimpering to itself in pain.   

I don't drink a lot of water anymore.  I miss the aqua of my youth.

The changing roles of libraries

A few days ago I was reading an article in the Salt Lake Tribune about how Davis county is planning on renovating and expanding their government center, including a new library building.  It got me to thinking about libraries and how we use them.  In recent years with the mortgage market crash recession and reduced tax revenues many municipalities have found themselves having to find ways to trim their budgets.  For many, their sights fell upon... The Library.

I am so happy to hear that, even though my local government (Davis County, Utah) often found itself having to face budget shortfalls and find ways to reduce their budget, they still decided to take advantage of the reduced costs of construction during the recession to build several new public buildings, including a new large library to be the new headquarters for the county library system.

My Favorites

The other day I was at a friends house and away from my computer and wanted to get online to check something... but wait!  Where are my favorites?  How am I suppose to find that website without my favorites.

So here you are: some of my favorite websites.  What are your favorite websites?  Feel free to browse and comment.

Damn Interesting - A collection of really Damn Interesting articles about a variety of weird things

Entreating Mind - When Damn Interesting stopped updating several of its fans started a new domain to continue the tradition

Discover Blogs -  Discover Magazine hosts a set of blogs about science, technology and the future.

Mental Floss - Where knowledge junkies get their fix

Book recommendation: Armor by John Steakley

John Steakley is probably most famous for his later work Vampire$ which was made into a movie by master of horror John Carpenter.  But I also loved his earlier work Armor

Initially the book resembles Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, but without the politics, with infantry troops wearing high-tech atomic powered battle armor and fighting bugs.  But the book moves into a psychological exploration into what can happen when a man reaches his limits in experiencing horror and then has to go back for more again and again.  And Steakley is much better than Heinlein at writing action scenes.

Babies come from vending machines

Calvin and Hobbes has long been one of my all time favorite cartoons.  I think in large part it is because I see a lot of myself in the characters; and not just in Calvin with his vivid imagination and roguish nature, but in the other characters as well, like Calvin’s dad.  One of my favorite themes in the series is Calvin’s dad bestowing pearls of wisdom to his son, pearls that are completely bogus, and intentionally so.

 image copyrighted by Bill Watterson

Am I creepy?

I think I'm a nice guy... unfortunately I don't really like crowds so I'm usually off by myself doing my own thing, peacefully minding my own business.  But unfortunately this type of behavior can come off as really creepy.

For example:

I my sister teaches swimming lessons.  One afternoon I went down to the pool where she was teaching to take her to lunch but I got there to early.  I found a space off alone on the bleachers overlooking the pool to watch while she finished up her last couple of lessons.

After a few minutes I realized that several people were kind of covertly watching me.  I didn't know any of them.  To my knowledge I don't closely resemble any celebrities.  Oh No!  Is my fly wide open?   Nope, zipped up fine.  Did I dress funny ... nope.  Why are do people keep looking at me like that?

Gradually I begin to realize on me that there is one reason the parent of a kid running around in a swimming suit might be casting nervous covert glances at a single 30ish guy sitting alone at a public pool and apparently watching their child.

Oh my lord, they think I'm some kind of pervert.  They think I'm sitting here watching their kid.  Oh no!  I just checked my fly!  The all probably think I was groping myself.

I really wanted to stand up and loudly announce that "No, I am not a pervert here to molest your child."  Fortunately my brain immediately and with extreme prejudice throttled that idea before I could act on it, realizing that more than anything else I could do, standing up and announcing loudly that "No, I am not a pervert here to molest your child" would be about the most counterproductive move I could make to  allaying such suspicions.

My sister shortly finished and I was able to leave.  Perhaps seeing me leave with their child's teacher made some of them realize that I'm not a child molester but I think there are probably a few that didn't make that connection.