Mittwoch, März 30, 2005

negativism sure sucks you down

First the cold cloggs your nose, your chest and any hole you seem to have above the belly button. Then it warms up, your cold vanishes and you think, swell, no more cold. But with Spring comes the moisture and ALLERGY season, so your nose is tickling you to insanity, your tongue swells, ears itch, eyes water.
Now, one should do a nice survey looking into the correlation of negativity and stress to allergies, maybe even do a study on the effect of stress on colds. But I am sure it has been done and proven.

Freitag, März 25, 2005

birthdays are funny business

you wait a couple of days before you call, you don't want to call twice. you figure, you wait until the actual day. then on the day you try tohit the right hour, not too early, and not too late. sometimes the day gets so eventful you forget to call even tough you thought of it pretty much most of the day. so you call later. big deal! is it, or no?
I love my birthday and hate it at the same time.You get nice calls and get to talk to a lot of friends, but then I won't get to see them as I used to. my own family is there though, thank godness. they celebrate with me. it is odd perhaps that they don't know much of my youth, so funny stories remain untold and there is a change in schedule: grown-up birthday.

Sonntag, März 13, 2005

It shakes you and moves you,

It catches you and chews you up from the inside and spits you out! Better watch out!

I used to consume it at midnight and go to bed right afterwards. It would wake me up in the morning and get me going. There was a time I would meet it at any corner several times a day. But it took over, after the initial friendly phase, it lost the relaxing wibe. It soon got stronger and stronger, while the soft taste faded away. Its perception others started describing as mean. Soon I was no longer able to function without, couldn't think straight. Where I was, it wasn't far behind. We became one item and unseparable. It carried me and soon became my crutch. It took my independence, robbed me of my sleep. It started crippling me, caused me physical pain. I had to get out, there was no other choice, it had to leave! And yet it comes back, there is no escape. I do need my coffee and would miss, yet it does hurt me. After all decaf is no alternative!

Samstag, März 12, 2005

Magnetic Feet

I am convinced my feet are magnetic, so are my daughters or as a matter of fact any kid that walks with me. I bet yours are, too. But you may have never noticed it. Feet have two poles, just like any other magnet: one south and one north pole. Of course, it is really hard to do make a compass out of your feet, since I am afraid they lose their magnetic capability when they get disconnected from one's body. It must have something to do with blood streaming through feed, but that is not the point I wanted to make. Who in their right mind would cut of a foot to make a compass out of it anyway?
I first noticed that my feet are magnetic about a week ago, when picking up my daughter at school. She and her friend walked ahead of me, but as I got closer they ended up right infront of me, slowing down until their feed where against mine. Their heels against my toes. I tried avoiding collision by stepping passed them, which worked for a while. However, soon their feet caught up with mine and soon again I felt the attraction of their polarity to my heels.
Now, if this isn't magnitism at its finest!? I wonder what good one can do with the knowledge of the existence of magnetic feet?

Mittwoch, März 02, 2005

Now what?

Expectations are another form of price, just emotionally valued and thus hard to express in currency values. But sometimes you can estimate expectation well by looking at the next best alternative, its opportunity cost, sometimes you can find monetary values in these alternatives. But is it accurate or simple to find the cost of an expectation? Well, this bagged questions is neither just rhetoric nor is the answer as simple as yes or no. An expectation is a multifacet animal, one can look at it value it differently than the next person. A service rendered can be an expectation, but these are often handled with actual prices, unless these services are not bought in the regular sense. Lets look closer at favors. If you ask a friend for a favor, your expectation is the value of your favor asked. The expectation to receive such favor has to be greater then the cost of this favor to your friend, and by cost of course we are not speaking of monetary. So the effort undertaken has to gain for both of you more than the value of the alternative, not doing it. Text books suggest that the opportunity cost is the value of the next best alternative, but who determines what that is? Is it really obvious to people what they value emotions or activities that are in no way valued in monetary sense. Talking directly, a favor only occurs if both people value their expectation of doing such favor more than not doing it. So why would one do a favor? Coersion or blackmailing, not quite legal but I am sure it happens! Think of a bank robber with a gun and the bank teller with the received request to do a favor to the bank robber filling up the bag with money at no direct monetary cost. Why does the bank teller give out the money? Obviously, s/he favors life over death and thus his expectations to have a higher chance of surviving the robbery must be more valuable to her/him than resisting. I suggest s/he values their future emotions or expectations of such emotions higher than the money lost in the robbery. Maybe, would the teller know of passing away after the robbery s/he would act differently.
This fits nicely into the theory that there is a non-monetary currency out there, called emotions or expectations that are really hard to value in numbers, because everybody would feel differently about them. Economists use often something called utils, or happiness values. New research attempts to place numbers on utils by measuring brain activity and studying the human brain reacting to certain stimulations. That way, researches hope to identify the value each person has for certain activity. It would be interesting to include such measure of the well-being of people into the state of an economy, to see how healthy or wealthy an economy really is. Maybe one could even negotiate interest on feelings in monetary form. Banks now offering emotion accounts, automatic deposit and withdrawal would be difficult, but maybe their monetary value can be stored. Then, of course, the offering of derivatives on emotions wouldn't be that far away. You could literaly sell your smile on the market. What next, maybe the soul? I would like to see a price of that!
Or maybe there is something to not knowing everything. Afterall, that is what distinguishes humans from robots. Emotions cannot (at least yet) be calculated or one could program feelings into machines, a quite scary thought!