Cracker

Early this morning on the bus from Rancho San Diego into El Cajon, there were three passengers, a man and two women, all sitting up near the front by the driver, engaged in a spirited conversation.

From my seat at the very back, I couldn't make out what they were saying, however based upon what happened later I surmised they were discussing convicted sex offender Leonard Earl Scroggins, who was recently captured in National City.

It bears mentioning that all three of the passengers would easily qualify as "Caucasian", and the bus driver herself was a white woman.

After several minutes of the conversation, which I wasn't paying attention too, suddenly the loud voice of the driver was clearly heard, as she interjected her own strong opinion.

"It's how they're raised," she said, waving her finger back and forth in admonishment, "it has nothing to do with the color of their skin."

The male passenger continued talking, and I think I heard him say "Yeah, it's how they're raised, and..."

The bus driver lady cut him off and waved her finger more emphatically at him in her mirror.

"It has nothing to with the color of their skin," she repeated.  "Look at John Gardner.  He's white!"

The guy responded with something that I just couldn't make out, but the driver was not satisfied.  As she pulled up to the next stop, she continued:

"It has NOTHING to do with the color of their skin.  It's how they're raised!  I have three mixed boys and they'd never do anything like that, I'll guarantee you.  It has nothing to do with the color of their skin!"

A black passenger got on, a man, and walked through the ongoing conversation seemingly oblivious to the subject.  He sat in the middle of the bus.  The next passenger to board was Hispanic, and he sat down in the front.  He was listening, and evidently got the gist of what was going on.

The white male responded to the bus driver by saying, "It's how their raised, yes, it's how their raised," in sort of an acquiescent acknowledgement of the driver's strong words.  As he spoke, the Hispanic man was looking at him.

"You're a racist?", he said, with sort of a chuckle as if it was hard to believe that racists still existed in Southern California.

The white man simply repeated the words of surrender, "It's how they're raised", and looked out the window, hoping the conversation would end.

Which it did.

Kurtosis

Today, just moments ago, I learned that Excel 2007 has an Analysis ToolPak that can be activated.

This allows you to analyze a table in a spreadsheet and determine several things, including something called "Kurtosis".

This really aroused my interest for two reasons:  (1) I have a good friend named Kurt.  He let me ride his off-road Segway.  The word reminds me of Kurt because it has the letters "kurt" in it, and (2) I've never heard of such a thing as "Kurtosis".  What is it?  I am really curious.

Here's the definition I found on wikipedia: 

In probability theory and statistics, kurtosis (from the Greek word κυρτός, kyrtos or kurtos, meaning bulging) is a measure of the "peakedness" of the probability distribution of a real-valued random variable. Higher kurtosis means more of the variance is the result of infrequent extreme deviations, as opposed to frequent modestly sized deviations.

What?????   My curiosity is slowly evaporating in the heat of this "over my head" feeling that's coming over me.

I'm going back to my Excel 2007 lesson now.

All the Souls

What do animals really think and feel?

Much has been written on the subject.

I don't have anything to add.

Yet I do wonder.

Roots of a Weed

"I would like to be a model in a science textbook."

Thus said the weed, just after I'd pulled it out of a planter pot, where it had been growing right against the inside surface of the earthenware container.

"Well, I don't really have access to any science textbooks," I replied.  "However, I can post your picture in my blog."

Though the weed didn't reply audibly, through body language, specifically its flat, diagrammatic appearance, it seemed to agree that this would be better than nothing.

In an attempt to do justice to this weed's aspirations to be the star of a science textbook, I did look up the following information:

** TWO HOURS LATER **     ahhhrrkgghk!   I can't find anything online that positively identifies the above weed.  So frustrating.  Ah well, I must give up for now, but I'll dream that perhaps this is a new weed and I'll receive the Nobel Peace Prize for discovering a new plant.

Hey! Where are you going?

It was their logo that first caught my eye and lured me into the Blind Lady Ale House on February 14, 2009, just two weeks after they'd opened.

The man was riding his bicycle into the ale house, and I simply followed him inside.

Later, however, I began to notice that the ads they were placing in CityBeat were irking me for some reason.

Where are you going, turn-of-the-century bicycle man?  You're riding away from the AleSmith Weekend!

Why did I feel so strongly about this?  Not sure.  I cannot recall exactly where I heard of this concept.  Certainly I didn't make it up.  Vaguely I remember reading somewhere that newspaper photographs are sometimes reversed, or "mirrored", to make the subject appear to be looking toward the center of the page rather than away.

So on June 28, 2009, I wrote a letter to the Blind Lady Ale House, specifically to co-owner Jeff Motch, the award-winning professional graphic designer who had created the logo.  Citing enclosed examples similar to the images above, I suggested that he design a new, complimentary logo, with the cyclist riding to the right, or toward the subject of any future advertisements.

There was no reply.  Which was kind of disappointing, though not unexpected.  Perhaps successful designer Motch thought "who the heck do you think you are?  Who is the professional graphic artist around here, anyway?"  Or then again, people good with art are often not so comfortable with words, so writing a letter in response might be quite a task.  Additionally, how many times do I respond to stuff I see online, much less by written word?  How often do I think "I'm gonna send them a ThankYou card", but then never do?  Often.

The main reason that I had no response, I figured, was that my idea was lacking in merit.  Does it really matter which way the guy is facing in the logo?  Evidently not.

Flash forward nine months to March 24, 2010.  Sitting in my PowerPoint 2007 class, the lesson asked me to include the following graphic on the left edge of my presentation:

"Next, to keep the viewer’s eye from traveling off the slide to the left, click the Rotate button and choose Flip Horizontal. "

Maybe my idea is not so crazy after all!

So right away, out of curiousity, I went to the Blind Lady Ale House BLAHG to look at one of their recent CityBeat ads.

 Cool!

Coming Undone

I am most certainly not a Korn fan, but must admit that I really like their video for Coming Undone conceptually.

On a Busy Street

On Amtrak this morning two men got on at San Luis Obispo.

These guys were exuberant, friendly, and full of life.

It took me several hours to piece together the clues that these guys had just been released from the San Luis Obispo Men's Colony.

Clues: (1) the fact they split up on the bus, not sitting together, (2) the guy behind me chatting up this girl across the aisle, (3) that both of them carried manilla envelopes with numbers written on the upper right corner (evidently personal effects), (4) the guy behind me telling the girl that he's sick of talking to guys all the time, (5) his also describing a situation where "he was there when the cops came" but was evidently innocent, so he claims, and (6) the other guy later at the Santa Barbara train station shouted out, "I been cooped up so long -- I don't mind the noise!"

Anyway, in the afternoon I was sitting for a while in the same car southbound on the Pacific Surfliner.  There are two things, gems, that I overheard which I would like to share, because I found them very interesting.

The first is a simple phrase.

One guy was ragging the other guy for his "bald head" (pronounced "bodd haid").  The bald guy responded with:

"Grass don't grow on a busy street!"

The second is a piece of street knowledge, or urban legend, or as the teller no doubt believes it, "just plain facts":

There's a Chinese technique where they shake your hand, and by pressing certain veins in your hand, it gives you a blood clot in the head.

The teller of the story illustrated it well with gestures, pointing to the veins in his hand as he shook it in the air, and then at the side of his head as if it had a blood clot.  The listener seemed to have some difficulty believing it, so the teller said "It's what I just said," and repeated the information.  Then he elaborated:

Remember Bruce Lee, that old guy, was doing Kung Fu?  Well his grandfather told him, "you're distorting the traditional Kung Fu."  Because it's like a religion to them!  But he kept on with his style of fighting.  So they shook his hand, and they pressed a vein in his hand, and it gave him a blood clot in the head.  They say it was, what, an aneurysm?  Nah... they shook his hand, and they pressed a vein in his hand, and he got a blood clot in the brain.

The teller was completely serious, and told the tale with such conviction that I was nearly convinced as I eavesdropped upon the conversation from about 5 rows away.