I'm on Youtube!

Concern for others

When I was in KBY, the guy who sat next to me in the Beis Medrash, Moshe*, got married. Sitting next to the guy for hours a day, I was pretty close to him, so I of course went to the wedding. It was an amazing wedding, with my favorite Jewish band, and everything was awesome.

Well, I had my pencil in my shirt pocket (where I always kept it) during the dancing. Well, dancing isn't so good with keeping things in your shirt pocket, so it fell out. I only realized when the groom, right in the middle of the dance set, found me and gave me back my pencil that he had noticed on the ground.

That concern for someone else, even at a moment that any person really has a right to be self-centered, continues to inspire me to this day.

* This blog post sat for a long time waiting to be posted because I couldn't, and still can't, remember Moshe's last name. Honestly, I always just called him "Moshe" or "Reb Moishe" or "Moshe Hakohen" so it's not all that bad that I can't remember his last name, but it's still embarrassing.

Blogging about Economics

I'm sitting in ECON now, and need something to fill the other half of my mind.

• My professor is actually pretty good. He has a tiny bit of an accent, but not so much that it affects comprehension at all. He speaks clearly, makes clear points, and turns to face the class often, even while making a graph on the board. He is speaking from a powerpoint, but it looks like he's using it as a tool, not a crutch.
• However, it's 20 minutes into class, and already I'm blogging. A 0-hundred level class is bound to be easy compared to the 400-level and 500-level classes I've been taking. I should take that as an opportunity to get an A, and put the effort in to get that A (yes, it will take some effort), rather than slacking off because of the easiness.
  
• The trick is (I think), finding something to do during class that occupies half my mind, so I can still listen (and pay attention) to lecture, without getting bored and losing my attention entirely. In the past I've tried reading the textbook, and that's probably worth another try, but I doubt it'll work. Right now, blogging seems to be working, but I don't know if I can really spend an hour and a half a day (or ~45 CPU minutes :-) ) blogging. Working on code or the like is usually an all-or-nothing activity that consumes all of my attention while I'm doing it, so that probably wouldn't be a good choice for an activity during class.
  

Psychology of a Mouse

"Hmm, there's a yummy piece of cheese sitting on the countertop. Let me nibble at it."

"Hmm, there's another piece of cheese on top of a black thing on the countertop. Why don't I make some squeaky noises so the human will think I'm caught, but I'll stay away from that cheese."

If only us humans were able to see the consequences of our actions as well as that mouse can....

What comes down, must come down

I am not generally a big fan of camera phones. Whenever something amazing is going on, people are always ruining the moment by taking a picture. As if there aren't millions of pictures of whatever it is that are already online.

But this shabbos, on the one day that I didn't have my phone with me, I saw something that truly deserved to be captured by a camera phone. (Too bad it was shabbos...) I saw this pidgeon walking along the sidewalk, a brown pidgeon (as pidgeons are wont to be), but with a big white splotch on its head and some dribbles along its back. Apparently, it's not only cars that get subjected to bird poop, it's birds as well.

I had about zero sympathy for the pidgeon - I'm sure it got what it deserved.

Late Nights

• Whew, I went to bed really late last night, I'm tired. I'll go to sleep early tonight.

or

• Oh man, I went to bed really late last night. Now my sleep schedule is all messed up, and therefore I'll start feeling tired even later tonight.

What determines which approach I take? Is it just an issue of choosing, i.e. free will? Or is there something more to it?

Addicted to Exercise

Note: My earlier promise to only post things that are new, true, and interesting is getting in the way of my posting as often as I'd like to. I hereby revoke that promise. This blog post, for example, is not spectacular or particularly noteworthy, though I think it does have real content.

For a long time, I have been planning on getting into an exercise routine. Lately, I think I might have gotten it. My plan is to have one big bike ride on Sundays (last week I did close to 30 miles up the Schuylkill River), and a few smaller rides during the week. Last week, between biking to and from work and short bike rides after work, I put in about 50 miles total.

Today, I was forced to give up my planned weekly big ride because I have a meeting with a professor tomorrow, before which I am expected to have done a whole lot of work, most of which I have procrastinated until now. When I left the computer lab after sitting there for way too many hours on end, I started biking home, but after a few blocks, realized that I am addicted to biking, and turned around to go for a ride. As this is West Philly, I had to turn around to head east, away from The Dark and Gloomy Forbidden Forest known as West Philly, and towards the New and Improved Fantastic Miraculous University City, home of lecture halls and science labs. As this was nighttime, and all the professors and grad students had gone home, the lecture halls and science labs surprisingly seemed less scary than the Forbidden Forest. I headed down Baltimore, down University Ave. (which has a MUCH steeper hill than I ever realized - I hit a maximum speed of 27.2 MPH going down there, without even pedaling hard), saw Troy (one of the kitchen workers at Hillel), chatted with him for a minute, headed back up University Ave. (it's as steep going up as it is going down), and then went home, panting hard. All in all, not a long ride, but a good ride.

Addiction.

It's not generally a good thing.

But I think that here it's OK.

The problem with addictions in general is that the addicted person is so attached to his drug, or whatever practice he's addicted to, that when he misses out he experiences withdrawal symptoms. When it comes to exercise, I think we're all addicted, whether we realize it or not. When we don't exercise, we all experience the withdrawal symptoms - the lethargy, the dead feeling, the lack of spark. The thing is, only some people are attuned enough to that feeling to recognize it. So rather than worrying about am I getting addicted, I should be proud that I recognize the symptoms of lack of exercise and that I have a natural desire to fight against that.