Defense! Defense!

Pigs must be flying over the frozen tundra of hell... I finally scheduled my thesis defense! We'll be flying back to Utah on the 13th (happy birthday me) and I'll defend on the 16th. Now instead of stressing about when it will be, I can stress about it directly. All I need is to muster one last reserve of motivation and prepare a good presentation. My adviser reminded me that by getting my second committee member to agree to schedule, it means he approves of the thesis overall and I should have a majority (2/3) on my side making it a formality more than anything. I'm hoping that's true and it goes fairly smoothly from this point. It will be such a relief to have this gorilla off my back.

Crash

This happened on Tuesday, but I wanted to get the pictures off my phone before I posted it:

I heard some squealing tires today and turned just in time to see a white car in the leftmost highway lane tip up slightly on two right wheels, then veer sharply to its left, smashing into the concrete barrier. Its forward momentum nearly caused it to roll, but it straightened out and came to a stop facing forward in the left shoulder. You can see it on the right here:

As we all rushed to the corner office for a better view, a Camaro hit a piece of road debris and pushed it until stopping in the shoulder. The debris looked like some kind of ladder or sawhorse that the white car had tried to avoid, causing the accident. The Camaro disentangled itself and left the debris on the shoulder as it drove off.

Within minutes the fire truck and ambulance were there, with the police and tow truck vultures not far behind:

All in all, the driver did not seem to be seriously hurt, and it was an interesting distraction from work.

Coefficients of Indolence

Ever since studying about the coefficients of friction, static and kinetic, in high school and again in college, I've often found it interesting how well this concept applies in a metaphysical way to the human propensity to begin work and the continuation thereof. Much as friction impedes the motion of an object, some attribute impedes us from accomplishing work until enough force is applied. For the purposes of this post, I will call this indolence, an inclination to inactivity.

It is not particularly noteworthy that some of us are lazier than others, but what I find interesting is the division of this inclination to inactivity into static and kinetic elements. For instance, my coefficient of static indolence is fairly high, to which I'm sure my wife and mother can attest. It often requires a large amount of force to start me working on something. However, my coefficient of kinetic indolence is fairly low -- once I've started working, I usually have no problem finishing the job to completion, no matter how long it takes.

Amber, on the other hand, seems to have an other-worldly low coefficient of static indolence causing her to break into cold sweats when going 15 minutes without beginning some kind of work, meaningful or not. Combined with her low coefficient of kinetic indolence, she usually puts me to shame in accomplishing tasks (although I like to think I contribute to our partnership in other important ways).

And I know there are others out there, opposite of me, the kind who start hundreds of projects that grind to a halt unfinished due to a high coefficient of kinetic indolence. People can call us lazy, but it's really not our fault; it's the laws of physics! At most we're half lazy.

But don't get too down on yourself if your coefficients are high. Just like any physics equation, there are more factors than just indolence involved in our work. When we include love, guilt, greed, pleasure, nagging, duty, habit, disgust, shame, curiosity, fear, hunger and all the other motivating forces, the equation balances itself and the forces will overcome your coefficients of indolence to get the necessary work done. Just be glad you don't have to solve for x.

The View

I have another "window office" post to make, but before I do, here's a picture I took using my cell phone that I've been meaning to post for a few days now to give you a frame of reference:

Motown and Old Town

We had moderate aspirations to make a small trip of our three-day weekend, so of course that didn't happen. But we did manage to do some interesting things.

On Saturday we met up with Amber's friend Doug and his fiancee downtown. We'd been meaning to get together for a while and this was the last time we could before the whirlwind of their marriage and honeymoon. We dined on pizza at an Italian place, then went to enjoy whatever was showing at the outdoor theater at Hermann Park. Usually a relaxed affair (according to them), we knew something was wrong when Doug narrowly avoided a parking ticket, as we later learned, by moving his car to a questionable, but not blatantly-marked-no-parking parking spot, instead of finding an open one. The second clue was that among the throngs of people there, we were some of the only white ones. As we soon found out, it was a "Motown Review" concert (Motown being defined as anything ever sung by a black person). We set up on a blanket out of view of the stage for a while, but left before it was over. Olivia, bless her heart, was a good sport and slept through a lot of it.

For the holiday, we went to Old Town Spring, the historic district of a city just north of Houston. All the original, old buildings have been converted into a series of shops and restaurants. Some of them were closed, but it was still fun browsing the shops. We managed to see about half of the town and eat before Olivia required a swift trip home to her crib. We'll have to see the rest some other time.

That evening a family in our ward invited us and a few other ward members over for a barbecue. It was fun and felt appropriate and a very American thing to do for Memorial Day.

I'd rather see fender benders

I looked out the window and what did I see? Someone perpetrating battery.

All joking aside, it was actually kind of disturbing. I happened to look out my office window as a young couple was walking across the parking lot of the hotel. They were both black and dressed, you might say, stereotypically. He was wearing baggy shorts and (appropriately) a wife-beater and had cornrows, and she was wearing heels and white pants and had her hair done up.

Very soon after I first saw them, he took a swing at her, hitting her in the upper body. They grappled a little and he managed to hit her a few more times in the head and body until she fell to the ground with bag, shoes, and her ripped-out hair extension scattered around her. She got up, not intimidated, and layed into him verbally and they scuffled a little bit more before he walked off the direction they had been going. She continued her verbal tirade, and he eventually turned around and went back the direction they had come from, kicking curbs and punching the air in anger. After picking up her things, she followed back after him, staying some distance behind.

I wasn't sure what to think. Violence like that is just so foreign to me. I considered calling the police, but it was over quickly and frankly, I wasn't sure some white cop interfering would help more than hurt. And they both took it in stride such that it almost seemed normal, like 12-year-old boys getting over their differences. I hope their walk home lets them cool off a little bit and nothing worse happens. But I still can't imagine what was so bad that he had to hit her. So foreign. It was all a bit surreal watching the silent action from my insulated perch five stories up, but it made me realize what a nice, pleasant life I lead.

Annoying, no?

I have never in my life heard anyone except a Frenchman tack "no?" onto the end of a sentence, yet for some reason this is becoming acceptable in written form. Example: That blogger sounds like she's trying be trendy, no?

I'm telling you, this trend is growing and it will no doubt get out of control. Are people too lazy to type "isn't she?" or "doesn't it?" or the other appropriate forms? I would even be ok with "eh?" or "huh?" or anything else remotely close to what people actually say.

In decreasing order of annoyance I would also like to decry "dood" as a trendy alternative to "dude" and fake Engrish such as Please to be not doing these things. The last one was actually kind of cool for a while, but like any successful Indie band its popularity has made it stale.

Sigh.

Thought on Homosexuality

I had a thought a while back during a conversation with Amber about homosexuality and I thought I'd write it out to see how valid it is. So here's the hypothesis that came to me:

The presentation of homosexuality is directly proportional to the amount of leisure time in a society or class of people.

By "presentation" I mean, whether or not there is some innate homosexual tendency in a minority of the population or whether it is completely societal, people seem to actively practice homosexuality more when they have more leisure time.

Arguments in support of this hypothesis include:

• Homosexuality is especially prevalent throughout history in "advanced" circles, such as philosophers, intellectuals, poets and writers, artists, political elite, and others whose survival is not necessarily dependent on their work and whose work closely resembles leisure time. This seems to roughly carry over into modern times.
• It seems logical that as biological creatures we would tend more to heterosexual relationships when survival is on the line, but be more inclined to homosexual experimentation when little work is required for survival. (Some kind of natural self-thinning?)

Arguments against this hypothesis include:

• Homosexuality may well have been equally prevalent in less "advanced" societies, we just don't know about it because these societies were less advanced and left fewer records.
• Records of homosexuality in history are an attempt to retroactively enforce current liberal ideals on past individuals by misinterpreting historic details. Current levels of homosexuality are a recent phenomenon not due to leisure time.
• The causation is reversed: People with a propensity for homosexuality are more naturally drawn to the "leisurely" professions of philosopher, artist, etc. and always have been.

Perhaps I'm biased by personal views and stereotypes, but with the exception of the occasional Brokeback Cowboy, I just can't see homosexuality being equally prevalent in a rural farming community where everyone is needed and works from dawn to dusk 7 days a week and an urban community where there is an excess of people who have nights and weekends free to focus on themselves.

Another thought just came to me as well. Delaying marriage, which is more common these days, means life without kids, which means life with much more leisure time. Leisure time means focusing on yourself, which would seem to encourage experimentation with "whatever makes you happy" to fill the void left by the absense of a family.

Anyway, it all seems to tie together somehow. What do you think?

The Oil Industry cont.

Here are some interesting facts from ExxonMobil about their role in the oil industry that people should know about:

1. ExxonMobil is the largest non-government owned company in the energy industry, yet they produce only about 3% of the world's oil and about 2% of the world's energy.
2. The United States imported only 14% of its crude oil from the Middle East in 2007. The majority came from North America (55%), then Africa (16%), the Middle East, South America (12%) and Europe/Asia (3%).
3. Global demand for oil and other liquid fuels is expected to be more than 35% higher in 2030 than it was in 2005.
4. ExxonMobil estimates it will have to invest over $25 billion annually to keep up production rates.
5. In a commodities business, earnings rise and fall in cycles. Oil is currently in an "up" cycle and the oil companies depend on these profits to maintain profitability with very long-term investments during the "down" cycles.
6. In 2007, the oil and gas industry earned, on average, about 8.3 cents per dollar of sales. The Dow Jones Industrial Average for major industries was 7.8 cents per dollar of sales.
7. About 75% of ExxonMobil's earnings come from outside the U.S.
8. Crude oil and natrual gas production (i.e., not gasoline refining and sales) have generated 2/3 of ExxonMobil's earnings over the past 5 years.
9. From 2003-2007, ExxonMobil's U.S. tax bill was $64.7 billion, exceeding U.S. earnings ($46.0 billion) by more than $19 billion.
10. From 2003-2007, ExxonMobil's earnings grew 89%, while income taxes grew 170%.
11. The Windfall Profit Tax of the 1980's reduced domestic oil production as much as 6% and increased imports as much as 16% (1990 Report of Congressional Research Service)
12. Imposing (arbitrary) punitive taxes on success discourages the stable, long-term investment in decades-long projects necessary to sustain oil output.

The very first item is the one I thought was really interesting. Producing only 3% of the world's oil, ExxonMobil can hardly dictate world prices in order to reduce the price of one byproduct of oil in one market as so many expect them to do. Sure, they could sell gasoline at a loss in the U.S. and lose what amounts to a relatively small fraction of worldwide profits (see #7 and #8). But the company is publicly owned. Selling gasoline at a loss does not have a direct increase in profits in other parts of the business like giving away free drinks might cause people to buy more food. There's no point in keeping a dead weight, so stockholders would demand that the downstream (gasoline-selling) part of the company be eliminated and eventually it would be replaced in the market by a company like Valero, who only refines and sells gasoline, and therefore must do so at a profit.

Point 2 also caught my attention. The U.S. is not nearly as "dependent" on middle-east oil, or even foreign oil (if you count Canada as not foreign) than the talking heads would have us believe.