Hot Pockets

It's no secret that I like Hot Pockets. However, did you know about the long-standing Hot Pockets controversy raging across the internets? On the one hand, we have musical comedians Dave and Brian extolling the virtues of the Hot Pocket in their song "Hot Pockets." On the other hand, we have
non-musical comedian Jim Gaffigan lambasting them in a scathing stand-up routine. This debate is so important that we have comedians weighing in on it across the internet! Hear the arguments, eat a Hot Pocket, and decide for yourself.

Top Ten Worst Reasons to Fast

You're probably familiar, at least in passing, with the religious discipline of fasting--going without food for a set period of time to achieve a spiritual focus. Every time I've heard fasting preached about at church, they always emphasize the importance of your motivation. Thus, I present to you the Top Ten Worst Reasons to Fast: in reverse order, Letterman-style.

10. Good way to lose a few pounds
9. All the spiritual kids are doing it
8. Ostensibly as part of training for a marathon...but really just so you can make bad puns about fasting to become faster
7. "I don't like food anymore!" (obligatory Strong Sad reference)
6. Excuse to try out alternative systems of nourishment, like photosynthesis
5. Score some major brownie points with the Big Man
4. Just for the hell of it
3. Save on grocery bills
2. Hoping to get a mystical vision by starving yourself

And the number-one, rock-bottom worst reason to fast:

1. It's less effort than eating food

Down With the Sickness

Okay, this makes no sense.

I'm listening to a podcast right now, and one of the guys on it is talking about how his voice sounds funny because he's coming out of the tail end of a cold. And I am seriously having my "I had better be careful around this guy lest I catch his cold too" reaction, just to the sound of his voice! I caught myself trying to check my proximity to him, when I realized that oh right, he is in Chicago.

Of course, this reaction is totally crazy. There is no conceivable way that this fellow could transmit his illness to me. I have never even seen him in person! What's more, I am listening to this podcast pre-recorded, not live; by now he's probably over his cold. I am separated from his disease not only by space but time.

So why on earth am I having this weird, illogical reaction? I think it's that typically, when we hear someone talking, they're there. Sound recording doesn't occur naturally, and there's a limit to how far you can transmit your voice without mechanical amplification. Most of the time, when you hear a guy talking in a slightly-congested voice about how he's been sick, he is normally within potential contagion distance, so it makes sense that you'd have this built-in aversion. The instinct must be biologically hard-wired into us or something.

But, as usual, technology weirds things up. Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of technology--heck, my job would not exist at all without technology--but as long as human beings are changing the terms on which we interface with nature, there are going to be strange moments like this in our lives. It's been awhile since I posted anything up, so maybe I can find some time this weekend to write something else.

Comic I did

Check out this comic my friend Alyssa and I did together (she did the art). I think she did some great work on it, but...well, everyone I show it to keeps thinking it's about evolution vs. creationism! It's not, it's about scientism. It's about the bigger issue of assuming that scientists are the big experts on not just science, but everything. I don't know what it is about the writing that has failed to convey that. I'll have to think some more about it.

If any of you have any feedback on how to make the comic's point clearer, that would be great...

EDIT: As you can see from the comments, there hasn't exactly been a resounding response. But still, I'll keep this comic posted up anyway...maybe passing visitors will see it and be amused. I talked about the comic's writing with Lucas a couple days ago, so at least there's one source for feedback. I guess it makes sense that close friends rather than internet strangers would be more inclined to offer some constructive criticism, right?

A Facebook Clarification

I've recently heard my friends referring to "my Facebook" or saying things like, "Do you have a Facebook?" Every time I hear it, I want to stab myself in the face with...well, something very soft. I value my face. But still, I'm not very fond of these expressions.

No, you do not have a Facebook. There is only one Facebook, the Facebook, as in the site's original URL, <www.thefacebook.com>. The Facebook is an online directory of individuals' profiles and pictures; it is a BOOK of FACES, or a FACE BOOK. You have a page in this enormous online book, on which one can find your profile and, if you also belong to MySpace, a glut of ugly, cluttering, trivial applications that make finding any actual information about you impossible. You have a Facebook profile; you do not have a Facebook. Have I made myself clear?

And don't even get me started on MySpace.

EDIT: So Lucas tells me that the name originated from actual paper "facebooks" that colleges used to hand out, as a way of helping students meet new people and associate names with faces. Yet another reason not to refer to a person's profile page as "their Facebook"...

On Spam

Like everyone else under the sun in America, I received a handful of gift cards this Christmas from relatives who haven't known what to get me since I stopped playing with action figures. One of these was for Borders (not a bad call), so the other day I went to get a book I'd been wanting to read. At the desk, the guy asked me if I wanted to join the Borders Rewards club. It's free, you get one of those Kroger-style savings-accumulating cards, and they'll email you discount coupons to print out, he told me. There was no cost, so I figured I had nothing to lose; I signed up and gave him my email address.
A word about this email address. It was my old college email address, which I've guarded diligently from spammers by never posting it anywhere online. I've kept this email address spam-free for over four years by only using it for college stuff, personal emails, and Facebook notifications. It had never received a single piece of spam. I spouted it off to the guy at the register without even thinking, but figured it wasn't a big deal, as I'd only be receiving these occasional discount notices from Borders. Nothing unsolicited, right?
That evening, when I checked my email, I found a "Welcome to Borders Rewards" message in my inbox--along with a piece of spam. Over the next week, the spam kept coming in. It was pretty much the same sort of spam, too. No online pharmacy adverts, no offers to enlarge anything, no "SECRET CRUSH ALERT!!"s. The spam consisted pretty much entirely of scam emails, ostensibly from widows who wanted to put their deceased husband's fortune toward charities and for some reason needed my help with this, in the form of my bank information. Also, messages informing me that I'd won several hundred thousand dollars in some sort of national lottery, and they needed my bank account info to process it. Um, right.
Actual quote from one of these emails: "Congratulations once again from all the staff here on your cash award sum of US$500,000 (Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars) as charity donations/aid from the Vittorio Foundation, ECOWAS, EU and the UNO in accordance with the enabling act of Parliament which your e-mail addres was randomly selected by software powered by the Internet." My "e-mail addres?" "Software powered by the internet?" Sirs, you are so effing credible. It astounds me.
Since I've never received spam at the address before registering with Borders Rewards, it stands to reason that there's some correllation. This blog entry was originally going to be chewing Borders out for selling my email address to spam hucksters, but as I think about it, I'm not so sure. It might conceivably be that these Borders Rewards emails are not transmitted as securely as they should be--which is a fault, but a fault of negligence, not of outright consumer-exploiting greed. Alternately, it might not be the company that sold my address to spam scammers, but an employee who has access to this information. Abusing his priveledges for personal gain, you know? I do find it sort of hard to believe that a large-scale business like Borders would deal with these idiot spammers, whose schemes are almost as idiotic as the hypothetical people they're targeting. On the other hand, who knows whether Borders is actually aware of the intentions of their email-advertizing clients? For all I know, the Borders people selling email addresses in bulk could care less whether their clients use these emails for "reputable," "legitimate" unsolicited ads in your inbox. I don't know what's going on behind the scenes, or to what extent you can legitimately blame Borders for this, but the point is: think twice before you sign up for a mailing list, even if you sign up "in real life."
And more broadly, you can't expect large corporations to give a crap about your convenience unless it's profitable for them.

I know the Onion is supposed to be a parody newspaper, but sometimes its articles are uncomfortably close to reality.

Yeah, this is pretty much just a token effort. Real actual blogpost coming soon, I promise.