Dating myself

Today, I referred to one of my favorite commercials--the 1980s commercial with the jingle "You can reach me at the Hilton. Just call me at the Hilton and we'll get down to your business right away!" I made this reference in the context of cultural differences in values and business approaches. I then sadly commented that 1988--when I was in the MBA program--was before many of the students were born. (These days, a lot of freshpersons and sophomores take the Marketing Fundamentals course). I don't feel that old!

It is better to give than to receive

That's why I was very happy to give a beautiful exam today!

Afghan TV

A story on NPR this morning reported that there are actually more households with TV sets in Afghanistan than there are homes with wired electricity (with some TVs apparently being powered by generators). Saad Mohseni, one of the co-founders of the largest TV network in Afghanistan comments that Afghans have historically been "deprived of all the good things that you Americans have become used to--such as soap operas...."

A historial milestone

Starting today, some of my web sites will be hosted on a Windows NT, as opposed to UNIX or Linux, based server!

The not so secret agent professor

Each week, I play music of a particular "theme" as students walk into the lecture hall or classroom before class. This week's theme was "mystique," with one of the featured songs being "Secret Agent Man." (Yes, I agree that it would be more appropriate and inclusive if the phrase "secret agent person" had been used, but this song appears to be from the 1970s or before, a baser time in history).

In any event, this semester, I am experimenting with recording the lecture sessions (but not the discussion sections which may contain voices of individuals who have not consented to be recorded) and posting these on the course web site. As I arrived in my first discussion section, right after the lecture session, I started the music playing and, while waiting for the time to start class to come, I started to take off my backup wireless microphone and the microphone leading to a digital recorder that I keep in my pocket. It was then the irony occurred to me that I was carrying a "hidden" recording device.

One reasonable hypotheses is that absent-minded professors usually do not make good secret agents since we may be too absent-minded to stay in character. Another hypothesis, of course, would go more at the eccentricity angle, suggesting that nothing that we do would be perceived as odd or unusual, allowing us much more latitude in behavior that, among "normal" (i.e., mediocre) people would raise suspicion.

Violent crime

One of my favorite podcast series is Life of a Law Student with Neil Wehneman. Normally, I am most interested in constitutional and commercial law, but at the moment, I am going through the series on criminal law. The topics that we have gone through the last several days do not paint a flattering picture of humanity: rape, murder, voluntary manslaughter, negligent homicide, felony murder, attempted murder, and conspiracy to commit unspeakable crimes.

This reminded me of back several years ago when a student heard of my interest in obtaining a copy of the Southern California Iranian Yellow Pages. It turned out that she was well connected and, in addition to the Iranian directory, she also found two different versions of Armenian Yellow Pages, each representing one of the three main variations of Armenian. One ad for an attorney seemed to be aimed at a rather unsavory group. He or she was offering to represent defendants accused of extortion, kidnapping, and a rather explicit laundry list major violent felonies. I hope this bozo is not overly successful in getting those among his clients who are as rotten psychopaths as the crimes they are accused of--probably the great majority--off.

Cola dreams

It has now been several weeks since I kicked the Diet Coke habit. Last night, for the first time, I had a dream in which a drank one. The good news is that I did not actually relapse.

Pencils

The other day, I received an e-mail on Classmates.com from a former high school classmate. This reminded me of how, when I had first arrived in the U.S. in the 9th grade, a number of rotten psychopaths would "borrow" pencils from me and neglect to return them. Therefore, I instituted a practice that students who wanted to borrow pens or pencils would have to pay a deposit. When I first instituted this policy, one student asked if he would get the deposit back when he returned the pencil. With my most cynical and doubtful voice, I said "If you're lucky." The student got somehow worried, but we agreed that he actually get the deposit back, not just if he "[were] lucky." On another occasion, both I and another student who had given his paycheck in deposit forgot about the loan, so I ended up keeping his paycheck over the week-end. $68 and change were a lot of money back then.

Just in case you are wondering, Audy--who reminded me about this practice--so far as I remember always returned my pens. One time, I was a bit disappointed since he had put up a $50 bill in deposit.

Dreaming about a brief

Last night, I dreamed that I had somehow gotten myself into having to write a brief in support of upholding Row v. Wade on very short notice. Since I am not trained as an attorney, this was not for filing in a court. Exactly what the brief was to be used for was not clear. The brief was apparently due at 9:00 p.m. EST, and it was close to 6:00 p.m. PST, so I was getting rather worried. Robert Bork was writing the brief for the other side.

Hard drive ache today

As I have mentioned before, a broken hard drive can be almost as painful as a broken heart.

Fortunately, it appears that the hard drive on my notebook is not actually broken, but the computer still refuses to boot. Hopefully, the nice folks at ITS will be able to fix it. It really would be nice if I could have it back "before the night is through."

Somewhere in Britain

A news story on NPR this morning reports that a British court has issued an injunction against a woman, prohibiting her from playing "country music classics" between 11:00 p.m.-7:00 a.m. One day, this woman had apparently played the same songs, including Tammy Wynette's "D*I*V*O*R*C*E" twenty times. The commentator suggested that it could have been worse (for the neighbors) since, at least, she did not play "All My Exes Live in Texas." I disagree. George Strait's song is actually much better. The former song is also very unnerving. I would also have preferred Tammy's other song, "Stand By Your Man" over the marital dissolution one (even though she was reportedly divorced three times as of some twenty years ago--I'm not sure what happened since). Or what about "Texas When I Die," in which Tanya Tucker suggests that, due to her uncertainty of whether the gatekeepers let cowboys into Heaven, the is not sure if she will go there. "If don't," she suggests, "just let me go to Texas/'Cause Texas is as close as I've been."

Now, I wonder how the neighbors are going to feel at 7:00 a.m. on Sundays when this poor, frustrated woman can finally get relief from the injunction and tries to make up for lost time. Perhaps they can take up a collection to buy the woman an iPod.

Those of y'all interested in further discussion of country music (probably a very small group) might want to check out my "unholiday letter" at http://larsperner.com/unholiday_letter.pdf .

Is this news?

A headline at NPR's web site features the title "U.S. Losing War on Terror, Experts Say in Survey." The article goes on to say that "Foreign-policy experts deem U.S. national-security strategy in disrepair, the war in Iraq alarmingly off course, and the world increasingly more dangerous for Americans." Is this news?

A mega-nightmare

Shortly before awakening this morning, I dreamed that I was taking a summer course in literature at UCLA. When driving to UCLA for the midterm, the 405 apparently only had two lanes, and I do not remember thinking of this as odd or knowing that it ever had more. Suddenly, the freeway was blocked by a large group of dour looking people in uniforms. I could not tell what the uniforms said, but it appeared to be a group of white supremacists, including one whose uniform had a badge with a Norwegian flag. There was a detour of the kind where, during freeway construction, the other side of the freeway is used for both directions, with each direction getting one lane. When I got to the other side, however, the freeway was still blocked. Apparently, I was still able to turn around and go back. I did not know which public transportation sources might get me there as the time of the exam (1:30 p.m.) was getting closer. It seems it never occurred to me that I was probably not the only one having trouble getting there and that the exam might have been postponed or that the campus as a whole might have been shut down.

Selective Southern accent

Today, I have been visiting my family to celebrate my sister's birthday, and my mother and I went shopping. As we were pulling into the Costco parking lot, a call came in from a Beaumont reporter concerning the extent to which the eight percent savings associated with a three day sales tax "holiday" could motive increased purchases. In the course of this discussion, I made reference several times to a similar "back to school" sales tax break in Maryland. After completing the conversation, my mother remarked that I seemed to slip into a Southern accent each time I started referring to the Maryland deal. I hadn't noticed this. Maryland is technically in the South, and you do not have to get too far away from D.C. into the Maryland countryside before an accent starts to appear, but in College Park where I lived, that really did not happen. Still, maybe there is some unconscious association. Although I only hung out in rural Virginia once while waiting for my car to be repaired, the Southern accent does seem to "kick in" rather quickly as you move south.

By the way, if I really did slip into a Southern accent, it's a bit of a shame that I never took the opportunity to refer to "y'all." Having lived the first third of my life in a country whose language distinguishes between the second person in the singular and plural, using the uniform reference in Northern English tends to feel a bit ambiguous.

The Year of the Cat

If my calculations are right, the next Year of the Cat--based on Vietnamese astrology--will not occur until 2011, but that seems a bit long to wait to make these comments on the identically named song.

Although I have heard and thought about the song over many years, I was never really able to understand much more than the title and the admonition "Don't bother asking for explanations." It was only recently that I got to look up the lyrics. At first the lyrics seemed quite revolting to me. Now I am at a point where I can't even say if I am really sickened. I simply do not understand the supposed logic (if one is even intended) of the song. How do the facts and events revealed lead to the outcomes described? Do the lyrics at http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=3526 many any more sense to you?

According to SongFacts.com--a great source of information about the background behind many songs--the song was inspired by the film Casablanca. Although I know that this film is supposed to be a classic and one that should be experienced by a "sophisticated" individual, I was never able to sit through it. Maybe enduring the film once and for all might help me understand the song better.

By the way, SongFacts also reports that the studio asked Al Stewart to make another song similar to "The Year of the Cat." The result was the song "Time Passages" which Al Stewart has since admitted to not liking. SongFacts quotes Stewart: "I didn't realize truly how bad a song it was until one day I was in an elevator and I was listening to what I thought was Muzak. About 30 seconds went by, and I finally began to recognize it and said to myself, 'This sounds pretty horrible.' Then, horror of horrors, I heard my voice come on, it actually was the record. So I'm thinking, 'Oh my God what have I done, this is terrible!' Hopefully in the last 25 years I've redeemed myself with other things, but "Time Passages" has just never thrilled me." I, on the other hand, actually like the lyrics to this song. They seem rather elegant to me. Are the words " Well, I'm not the kind to live in the past/ The years run too short and the days too fast/ The things you lean on/ Are the things that don't last" really entirely without artistic and philosophical merit? It looks like I was fooled. Again, I do agree that these words and the remaining lyrics do not appear to support a conclusion of a desire to have someone "buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight," but not all aspects of songs with merit necessarily develop the logic behind each conclusion.