Awareness

This is my first photo for Project 10-50.

The Ten

People online have been discussing whether 2010 should be pronounced "twenty ten" or "two thousand ten." I think we should go for short and snappy, and just call it "The Ten." Kind of like "The O.C."

Snowstorm

I took this photo at night during a snow storm. I processed it in Lightroom and tried to make it look more like a drawing.

Geese

The weather has been so cold lately that the pond at the Portland Chinese Garden froze about 3 inches thick. It was thick enough for this man to walk all the way across the pond.

Hawthorne Bridge Sunset

Frost Rose

Hawthorne Bridge at night

Flower Swirl

Taken with the Lumix ZS-1 in macro zoom mode, with flash. Walking on my lunch hour, I keep hunting for flowers and other things to photograph.

Dreamscape: the tree by the lake

Raw ingredients: a piece of a strange looking vine, a parking lot, a puddle. Once again I was looking for a way to take an interesting picture in a spot where there didn't seem to be much of visual interest.

Rosemary

Small Blades Big Sky

This is an interesting looking building in Portland. It's hard to get a good view of it from street level. I probably need to find another vantage point.

Edge of winter

November is a strange time of year to be thinking about outdoor flower photography, especially for roses, but look what I found in my garden today.

A day at the beach

Fragments of an angel's wing

Taken during my morning walk from my house to the bus stop. This is a close up of oil on water on the street. I keep thinking there can't possibly be anything "new" to take a picture of on my daily walks, but then I always find something.

Coffee Fair at the World Forestry Center

I went to the Coffee Fair at the World Forestry Center in Portland. One of the vendors had a test where you could try to identify many different scents from samples. I got all of them right except two -- I reversed "vanilla" and "butter." She told me that getting this many right was unusual.



An artist there was making watercolor paintings using coffee as the paint. In the picture above she is working on a version of "American Gothic." I thought these were cool so I bought a small one that shows a street cafe that looks like it could be in Paris.

The orbit

This was taken at Backspace in NW Portland.

Sunrise

Still Life With Gun

"When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand." -- Raymond Chandler

I created this last night for a still life photo contest on Reddit. I wanted to do something with rich reds and yellows, and incorporate an unusual element. This is taken in a dark, closed room with three different light sources: a dim lamp off to the right, an LED flashlight off to the right aimed at the end of the gun, and a large powerful flashlight off to the left with some tissue paper draped over the light to diffuse it. I hand held the camera.

If you like this, check out my Flickr photostream.

The Deciding Factor

It feels strange to me when an auto race is decided by the amount of time that a pit stop took. It's like if a soccer game were decided by which team took the quickest shower during halftime.

Longboard Sliding - Feel The Drift

Today I was skateboarding a route that has some fast 180-degree curves, on the Loaded Vanguard with the Orangatang In Heat wheels. I had my slide gloves on, so I decided to go for it and try to "drift" through the entire corner. I'm still learning to slide effectively . . . I've done many small speed-check slides but I've never tried to slide through a whole turn until today. I managed 3 of 3 successful slides, two heelside, one toeside, no crashes.

Now I see how sliding can be addictive. It is a really fun feeling.

Longboarding report

It's a hot day, and I got a late start, but I got in two runs down Mt. Tabor on the Loaded Vanguard. Things I'm still getting used to: the Orangatang In Heat 83a wheels, and the Loaded slide gloves. I can heelside slide with one hand on the ground with this setup, then stand back up on the board and keep going. Fun, and a good way to speed-check, but I'm not that great at it yet.

Then I went over to the Zoo and skated Knights Blvd. above the Zoo for the first time. It's a short hill, but but very fast and curvy. I got some funny looks from people in a minivan who were driving up the hill as I was descending. After 1 run I decided it was too hot and I was too tired, time to go home before I made a mistake and crashed.

Oh yeah, almost forgot. Yesterday I was skating down SW US Veterans Hospital Road down to Terwilliger. This section is really smooth and fast. I noticed some sprinklers were on and half the road was wet, but this wasn't a problem because my lane was dry, it was the oncoming traffic lane that was wet. So I slowed a little, but not too much. Next thing I know, an oncoming car rounds the corner, and the guy apparently didn't want to get his car wet so he swerved all the way over into my lane! That was a bit of a shock but luckily there was plenty of room to maneuver and I got past with plenty of room to spare.

Recipe

Her: You know what would be good in this (cocktail)? Milk?

Me: Arrggh! You're stealing my recipes! I made that for you a month ago! You're infringing on my intellectual property!

Her: Oh yeah.


[Note: this was a joke, I'm not that concerned about my drink recipes, which are all actually fairly obvious.]

They Have A Word

Me (web surfing): Apparently there is a "turtle vs. cat" YouTube video

Her: I wish you spoke German.

Me: Why, because the Germans have a word for turtle-vs-cat-YouTube-video?

Her: well, no...

Me: I bet they do! And I bet it's a verb!

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Rolling Information Booth

A few minutes ago I was skateboarding down SW Market street in downtown Portland. I was going at a pretty good speed when a car pulled up beside me, rolled down the window, and the driver asked me for directions! I quickly gave some general hints before I had to turn left onto 2nd. It felt very funny to be skateboarding down the street while having a conversation with someone in a car.

Another longboarding adventure after work

This was part of yesterday's after-work skateboarding. I rode on the Arbor Hybrid with 70mm Retro Zig Zag wheels. I had just put in the new Bones Super Swiss 6 bearings the night before. I have ridden variations on this route many times before but I usually do it early in the morning on weekends when there is little traffic. Doing it after work raised the challenge level because of all the cars.

The Best Hold

TV History Show: ". . . and from there he established a chokehold on absolute power."

Me: Well, if you're going to have some kind of hold on absolute power, I suppose a chokehold is a good hold to have. I bet those tyrants who had wrist locks on absolute power didn't get very far.

Fluffy

This animal was posing like a fashion model, turning one way then the other. See the Flickr set.

Mixed Metaphor Classic

"When it's time to pay the piper, that's when the skeletons in the closet come home to roost."

-- Davis Logsdon, on the Leonard Lopate show, creating a fantastic mixed metaphor. (He was deliberately being funny.)

Sakura-Con 2009 Convention Report

My Sakura-Con 2009 Convention Report is now posted at JLHLS.

All The Greatest

"All the greatest things are really messy!"

-- Waitress, responding to the difficulty of eating the dessert without spilling it.

The Pirates of Ersatz

I enjoyed this book, and it is available free online from BookGlutton.

Expensive Kindle Books

I noticed that this book for the Kindle costs $864, which means it costs more than 2 Kindles. I guess that's a bargain compared to the list price of over $1,000. So I decided to sort the Kindle books by price to see what the most expensive one is.



And the winner is: Selected Nuclear Materials and Engineering Systems (Part 4). The Kindle edition costs $6,431.20. And that's a $1607.80 savings off the list price of $8,039.00! Never before has the one-click order button felt so terrifying.

To The Strong

Some gardeners enjoy the challenge of coaxing some exotic and finicky flora -- something more at home in the Amazonian basin or the sweltering slopes of Mt. Doom -- to grow in their suburban back yard. I am not one of those types.

I love the plants that love to grow in my garden. I love the ones that burst out of the soil with an eerie buoyancy: bold, strong ("exuberating fantasticisms" as one reality-show contestant so memorably and hysterically put it) as if to say, "Look at me! I'm here! I rock! I kick ass! I rule this garden!"

Let us celebrate the strong. Lemon Sorrel, Swiss Chard, Giant Curly Mustard Greens, Cardoon, Rosemary, Strawberries, Bamboo, Figs, Jostaberry, Chives, Watercress, Arugula, Beets. The grape hyacinth that is taking over my lawn. And that weird hardy geranium that I can't remember what it is, that too. I'm proud of all of you.

Longboard Anti-Pumping

I've learned longboard pumping, which is a way of propelling a skateboard on the flat or slightly uphill without touching your feet to the ground. Now that I've gotten pretty good at it, I've been trying to learn to anti-pump. It seems logical that if the pumping motion can speed you up, doing the opposite motion could slow you down. (I don't mean sliding on purpose to slow down, which also works but is a whole different thing.) The anti-pump does work, and you can noticeably slow down while going down a hill, but it feels like a very unnatural silly motion, even more than the regular pumping motion does. It almost makes me laugh every time I do it. Maybe with more practice it will feel normal.

Heard Tuesday Night

"I used to work on an oil platform . . . well, actually it was a gas platform but they found it was cheaper to insure a gas platform if you call it an oil platform because oil platforms don't explode as often."

Sakuracon 2009 Cosplay and Dance

I just got back from Sakuracon 2009, where I covered the event for JLHLS (I will post a full report on the convention there soon). The convention was great. See more of our Sakuracon pictures on Flickr.

Update 5/3/2009: the Sakura-Con 2009 Convention Report is now up at JLHLS.

The Horror

My tax preparer asked me whether I "had borrowed money to invest in 2008."

I gasped and a look of sheer terror crossed my face. ". . . borrowed money . . . to invest in 2008? Oh man, that would have not ended well! No! I didn't do that. Oh I'm so glad I didn't do that!"

My tax preparer got a big laugh out of that one.

(Of course, like most people, I did lose money on investments in 2008. But at least I was not investing borrowed money.)

Google Is Mean

The downside to Google is it makes you realize how unoriginal you are. You have a cool idea, you Google it, and you see that 25,000 other people have already thought of that (some of them back in 2002) and at least 9,000 of them have already done it better than you ever would have. I guess it is good in terms of keeping you from wasting your time though.

The Magic of Starbuck

Me: What should we watch next, Battlestar Galactica?

Her: No, I'm too tired. I can't watch Battlestar when I'm tired because I have to really concentrate on the plot.

Me: No you don't. Just stare at Starbuck's body, that's what I do. It gets me through it every time.

Her: But Starbuck doesn't do anything for me.

Me: I was joking.

Best Oregon Trail Summary

"Of course, the main point of The Oregon Trail was to hunt animals until you got bored, after which you would attempt to drown your family in the nearest river." -- FingerGaming review

Giant Curly Mustard Greens

"Giant Curly Mustard Greens." I planted these seeds in my garden a while ago, not really intending to eat them, but just because I remembered reading somewhere that mustard greens make a good cover crop if you can't decide what else to plant. They started coming up in February, and eventually I became curious enough to taste them. Well, these are extremely delicious! They taste kind of like romaine lettuce crossed with wasabi. They make a great salad green if mixed with lettuce, so the spicy flavor isn't too overwhelming. Now I wish I had discovered this years ago, because they taste so good and are so easy to grow. And it's true, you can be growing edibles in Portland even in February.

The Howling

Me: Now it's time for the howling.

Her: "The Howling?" I thought we were going to watch American Idol.

Me: We are.

The Soundtrack Is Off

I had lunch in a place with curved walls, and the acoustics of the spot where I was sitting were unusual. The conversation from 3 tables away sounded exactly like it was coming from the table next to me. I looked over at the next table and I saw a woman talking but her lips didn't match up with what I was hearing. "The soundtrack is out of sync," I thought. "I hate it when the sountrack is off.". But then I realized that couldn't be right because this was real life and not a show. I briefly wondered if I was having a strange dream. Then I noticed the curved walls and figured out that it was an unusual echo.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Changes

"When in the course of human events somebody does something that puts somebody else to the trouble of adjusting the numb routine of his life, the adjustee is resentful. The richer he is and the more satisfactory he considers his life, the more resentful he is at any change, however minute. And of all the changes which offend people, changes which require them to think are most disliked."

-- from The Pirates of Ersatz, by Murray Leinster

Fanno Creek Flooding in Portland

As I was driving home today, I was shocked to see how high the water in Fanno Creek had gotten. I went home and returned with the camera. Here the water has almost reached the pedestrian bridge on SW Oleson Road.

This area is normally a very deep moat-like trench with a tiny bit of water at the bottom. Today everything looks different.

This is not normally a pond or stream. These ducks are swimming in a parking lot that has become completely flooded.

Crawl Bloopers

Don't mess with the "Shreriff."


Especially not on "Wenesday."

The Pan of Destiny

Me: So, if we get this new "au gratin pan," is there room in the kitchen to store it?

Her: I'll hang it up in the kitchen on the wall, I already have a place in mind for it.

Me: Oh, I get it, it's a big trophy item, kind of a way of saying to people without au gratin pans: "Ha! In your face, losers!"

Her: You know what's funny about that?

Me: That it's true?

Her: No.

The Economy Post-Game Show

Lately when I see government officials on TV talking about the economy, I feel like I'm watching one of those post-game sports interviews with the coach of the heavily-favored team that just got clobbered by the underdog after fumbling the ball eight times. And the coach sort of hangs his head and scowls and talks about how they just "didn't execute" today the way they planned, and they are going to have to put this behind them and work harder next week.

The trouble is, it is now mathematically impossible for the Economy to make the playoffs. We're already looking ahead to next season's draft.

Air Traffic Chaos

I've been playing a clever little game called Air Traffic Chaos for the Nintendo DS. It's been said that the sign of a good game is that even when you lose, you feel like you almost won. That's what keeps you coming back for "just one more try." This game works that way. You play as an air traffic controller trying to manage the traffic at one of 5 airports. The early stages are very easy, almost boring, but by midway through the levels things really get interesting, and you have to be juggling multiple arrivals and departures on multiple runways all at once. I also like this game because each level is fairly short, so you can play it a little at a time.

Credit is Time Travel for Money

Credit is like time travel for money. When you take out a loan, your future earnings travel backward in time so you can spend them in the present. As time passes and you arrive in the future, you find that you have less money available because you are paying back the loan, in effect sending the money back to your past self.

Some people look at today's "credit crisis" and ask "but where did all the lost money go then? What happened to it? Does that mean it never really existed?" I prefer to think of the time travel analogy and imagine that the lost money disappeared into the past.

(This is just a metaphorical story of course, not a technically accurate explanation.)

Silly String

Coworker 1: Should the code check whether the value equals null, or should it check if it equals the empty string? Or both?

Coworker 2: It should check whether it equalsIgnoreCase the empty string.

Me: Right, because that way it still works even if the user had Caps Lock on when they typed in nothing.

Crash

The global financial markets are in big trouble. The funny thing is, the first time I heard about some of the dangers that contribute to this, it was in a book called The Death of Money by Joel Kurtzman. That book was written in 1993. I got my copy off the shelf to look at it this morning, and I noticed that the blurb on the cover said this:

"The message in this well-organized, lucidly written book should not be ignored." -- Publishers Weekly

I guess it was ignored.

Longboard dance

I made this video a few days ago, just goofing around with the skateboard and my camera. I tried to include a few longboard dancing moves that I haven't seen before. The kneel-down stance swap is a move that I worked out just minutes before I recorded it.

Superstruct game

The Superstruct game starts October 6, 2008.

The Three-Liar System

A brief look at our financial world.

Part 1: The One-liar System

Liar 1: Lend me lots of money!

Sucker: Sure!

[Later . . .]

Sucker: Pay me back!

Liar 1: Sorry, the money's gone, I gambled it all away!

Sucker: Frak!


Part 2: The Creation of the Two-Liar System

Liar 1: Lend me lots of money!

Sucker: I don't trust you.

Liar 2: No problem. I will sell you insurance that guarantees that if Liar 1 doesn't pay you, I will. See? Now you will be paid no matter what.

Sucker: OK, it's a deal.

[Later . . .]

Sucker: Pay me back!

Liar 1: Sorry, the money's gone, I gambled it all away!

Sucker: Wow, good thing I have the insurance.

Liar 2: About that . . . it seems I sold too much of that insurance and I don't have enough reserves to pay all the claims. You get nothing.

Sucker: But I thought insurance was a highly regulated industry?

Liar 2: Well, this isn't exactly insurance, it's a complex derivative that acts kind of like insurance. It's a total free-for all.

Sucker: Frak!


Part 3: The Three-Liar System

Liar 1: Lend me lots of money!

Sucker: I don't trust you.

Liar 2: No problem. I will sell you insurance regarding Liar 1 . . .

Sucker: But I don't trust you either.

Liar 3: I am a ratings agency. I will rate Liar 2 as "AAA super-sparkly investment-grade chocolate bonbon."

Sucker: Oh, well in that case, it sounds great! Let's do the deal.

[Later . . .]

Sucker: Pay me back!

Liar 1: Sorry, the money's gone, I gambled it all away!

Sucker: I'll rely on the insurance then.

Liar 2: Sorry, I'm broke too.

Sucker: But how did you get such a high rating then?

Liar 3: About that rating . . . I just "downgraded" Liar 2's debt to the new rating of "ZZZ- completely toxic rat droppings." Sorry.

Sucker: What good are the ratings then, if the original rating was a meaningless fraud?

Liar 3: They help keep money flowing through the system.

Sucker: Frak!


Conclusion

Adding more liars to a system does not make it any safer. All three systems are essentially the same. It is "turtles all the way down" as the old saying goes, or in this case, liars all the way down.

Overheard at the coffee shop

Guy talking on cell phone: "Has he got what you need? You want it? Yeah, you want it? Take it. Yeah. Take it. Is it big? Take it. Yeah."

[Other people who overhear this start laughing.]

Guy on cell phone: "Hold on a second. People are laughing . . . What? What's so funny?"

Me: "Uh, well . . . it's just that your half of that conversation sounds really dirty. It's like you're in a porno. What are you talking about?"

Guy on cell phone: "She's buying a new stereo."

[Guy then thinks back on what his half of the conversation was, and cracks up laughing.]

Kumoricon 2008 Sunday Cosplay

These were some of my favorite pictures from Sunday at Kumoricon. My full article about the convention will be up at JLHLS in a few days.

More photos:

• Kumoricon 2008 Saturday cosplay
  
• Kumoricon 2008 Sunday cosplay

Kumoricon 2008 Saturday Cosplay

Today I went to Kumoricon 2008. I attended a panel called "Shakespeare and Anime," and another panel called "L vs. Kira" that organized a debate about the two Death Note characters.

As usual, my full article about the convention will be up at JLHLS in a few days.

Update - more photos:

• Kumoricon 2008 Saturday cosplay
  
• Kumoricon 2008 Sunday cosplay
  

Cape Kiwanda Longboard Surfing Contest

I went to watch the longboard surfing competition at Cape Kiwanda today. The conditions were not ideal, with high winds and fairly small waves, but the surfers still put on a very entertaining show.

See more photos of this event in my Flickr set.

Wipeout

A surfer wipes out at Cape Kiwanda, Oregon. What I love about this is how relaxed the surfer looks through the wipeout. Sort of like, "may as well enjoy this!" This could be one of those motivational posters, with a title like "Accepting the Inevitable."

Skateboarding Terwilliger To Tram

(Photo by davidgreystahl - Creative Commons)

On July 12, I completed a skateboarding adventure that I had been thinking about, daydreaming about, talking about, and planning for more than a year. It was a complete success and I really enjoyed it. Before I tell you about it though, I have to put in a disclaimer.

Disclaimer: This story is absolutely not a recommendation for anyone else to try what is described here. The activity described below is extremely dangerous and -- as the saying goes -- may result in serious injury or death. Skateboarding on the street is legal in the city of Portland. If you are an experienced skateboarder and feel comfortable skating down Mt. Tabor, this route would probably work for you. On the other hand, if you are more like, "Mt. Tabor, what's that?" then this route is not for you. Wearing protective gear is a must on a route like this. I wore a helmet, knee and elbow pads, and wrist guards.

I should point out that I'm no Tony Hawk, and the closest I ever get to doing amazing skateboard tricks is in video games. I'm also not a high-speed downhill rider. I like to carve turns and always be at a speed where I feel comfortable and I can quickly stop if needed. But I do like to do "adventure rides" on the street.

Last summer I had been doing a lot of street skateboarding around Portland. My favorite run was to skate the back roads down from the Zoo to Goose Hollow, then take the MAX train back up to the Zoo, almost like using the MAX as a ski lift. So I started to wonder if it would be possible to do the same thing using the Portland Aerial Tram as the "lift" instead of the MAX. I asked around a few skateboard shops to see if anyone had heard of this being done before. The reactions I got were always either, "no, that's nuts!" or "no, but hmm, that's kind of a good idea."

(Photo by Greg_e - Creative Commons)

I scouted the route by bicycling before attempting it on a skateboard. Then I did various shorter sections of the route separately before trying to link it all up.



View Larger Map

My basic plan was to skate down Terwilliger Boulevard into downtown, then from downtown skate to the waterfront, then along the waterfront, connect to Moody Ave, then to the lower station of the Portland Aerial Tram, then ride the tram back up to OHSU and skate down Terwilliger again. I started early in the morning on a Saturday, in order to minimize the number of cars that would be around.


View Larger Map

I started at the intersection of SW Terwilliger and SW Capitol Hwy. I walked up the jogging trail to the parking lot across from Westood Drive. Then it was time to put on my pads and helmet and start skateboarding in the street. It was going to be almost all downhill for several miles from here. My skateboard for this run was the Arbor Hybrid longboard, completely stock.

One nice aspect to Terwilliger is that there is a bike lane the whole way. So there is always room to move into the bike lane and let cars go past.

I wanted to skate in the street or bike lane the whole way. So this trip did not involve skating in the jogging path, that would be bad for several reasons: because it would annoy joggers and walkers, and because it is not really wide enough to carve good turns.

(Photo by Major Clanger - Creative Commons)

The route is almost all downhill, though there is a short uphill section near Hamilton Street, where I got off and walked up the jogging path until I got to the top of the hill again. The last section of Terwilliger from Campus Drive until SW Sheridan is probably the most fun. The hill right before Terwilliger intersects Sam Jackson Park road is a bit steep, so I had to do a lot of foot braking here. By the time I got to the Lilac Garden area, my legs were pretty tired. This is quite a long continuous downhill.

Once Terwilliger turns into 6th Avenue, the downhill cruising part of the ride is over and the ride becomes a downtown adventure. Riding on the streets downtown is fun, but the streetcar tracks are a hazard, and of course there are more cars coming from more different directions. Going down 6th I could keep up with the car traffic because of the low speed limits and the need to stop for so many red lights. 6th and Jackson is tricky because of cars coming in from the freeway off-ramp. There were one or two blocks here where I got off and walked, because the road construction made it impossible to have enough margin of safety if a car tried to pass me. I turned right on SW Market St and headed down the hill. Most of the time traffic was very light so I skated this, but here again there were one or two places when there was traffic coming in all lanes, and it made more sense to walk for a block or two instead of risking disaster.

When I got to Naito Parkway I crossed at the crosswalk, skated down to the waterfront, and turned right onto the wide multi-use path. This was all low speed flat pushing. From the path I turned up to River Parkway and then south on SW Moody Ave, back to skating on the street and bike lane again. The skate down Moody to the tram is very nice, most of it is very slightly down hill. The total distance from where I started at the top of Terwilliger all the way to the tram station is about 4.36 miles, almost all of it downhill or flat!

By the time I got to the tram, it was about 8:45 am, so I had to wait until 9am for the tram to make its first run (because this was a Saturday). After riding the tram to the top, I walked through the OHSU building, bought some coffee at the shop near the back, then went out the back door to walk down to Terwilliger along SW Campus Drive and take in the view.

This section (above Terwilliger) should be walked and not skated, for many reasons. First, I believe this section is private property, so skating may not be allowed there. Second, it is much too dangerous to skate there anyway. It is very steep with no bike lane, sharp turns, bus traffic, and cars pulling in and out of parking lots. The chances of disaster are too high to make this worth it. It's a great little walk though, with amazing views of the city.

Once I got back to Terwilliger, I had closed the loop. I repeated the lower part of the route as far as Naito Parkway and then got on a bus home. I had finished my dream route without injury.

HD Quote of the Week

Me: Wow, I haven't seen this show in HD before. It looks good. She looks good!

Her: You already knew she was pretty.

Me: Yeah, I knew she was pretty, but I didn't know she was "HD pretty!"

Ghost Streets

Lately I have seen a noticeable decrease in car traffic on some of the streets around SW Portland. People seem to be changing their habits due to high gas prices. In some ways it is nice to see the streets a bit emptier: it makes it that much more pleasant for me to bicycle and skateboard. But there is also something eerie about it. It reminds me of going out on the streets during the Super Bowl or some other occasion where most people aren't out driving much. It feels like the beginning of a very slow transition into a weird kind of ghost town where the buildings are still inhabited but the streets are empty.

Cuteness Gap Widens

(Photo by jonrawlinson - Creative Commons)

At the start of 2008, the cutest 1% of Americans had 39% of the total cuteness. This represents a substantial jump from 1998, when their share was only 22%. Kitten futures, traditionally a leading indicator of the cuteness economy, have spiked in recent months, though some economists blame this on international speculators.

But things are tough at the bottom: after inflation is taken into account, the bottom 25% of Americans are actually less cute than they were ten years ago. Some could have flirted their way out of a speeding ticket in the past, but now struggle to get strangers to make eye contact. Others only manage to get by with the help of federal assistance, such as the Cute Stamps program. Some drop in cuteness might be expected with an aging population, but this does not explain the phenomenal gains at the top. Cuteness inequality is rising, with no end in sight.

We risk becoming a two-tier society, where masses of barely-cute and plain citizens are reduced to begging for attention, while the mega-cute become so appealing that they can essentially get away with anything.

The New Guy

Today I went to a Walgreen's drug store to buy some razor blades. When I walked up to the counter, the guy working there looked at me with a shocked and horrified expression for a second, then he recovered and said, "oh man, you scared me, I thought for a minute that you were a new employee." I didn't understand what he was talking about at first. Then I realized that I happened to be wearing a blue shirt that was the exact same color as the employee uniforms. He thought at first I was some new employee he hadn't met yet.