Walking, Not Enough Has Been Said

I know I already talked about walking (“Walking… enough said.” See scottthoughts 12/12/09), but I don’t think I said quite enough. I once taught a fifty minute class on only walking. Without further ado, here are some of my thoughts about walking. Walking is complex. Walking can be something you do without thinking at all. Walking can be the only thing you are able to think about when you do it sometimes. You might be walking around life thinking you mastered it (walking, not life), but you haven’t. Luckily you have me to tell you all about it. Walking covers a wide variety of topics, such as: speed, time, distance, effort level, group size, style, and impairments. Let’s first consider speed, you obviously have a top speed level when walking, it varies from person to person based on fitness levels and whatnot. Next, time and distance, to all the physically inclined (as in those with an inclination for physics), this may seem like speed, but it is not. For example let’s say your top walking speed is two miles per hour, and your distance is five miles and your time is two hours. Obviously you should not be walking. Let’s say the same scenario, but with two and a half hours. You might think that was perfect, but you aren’t going to be able to walk at your top walking speed for two and a half hours (or five miles). See, this is where effort level comes in. normally, you will only need to choose three of the four: speed, time, distance, and effort level, and the last will pretty much choose itself. Unfortunately, walking isn’t quite that simple. You probably want to first consider what size group you’ll be traveling in. This is easy (all it requires is knowing how many people you’ll be traveling with) but it has many implications. For starters, for larger the groups, there is a higher probability of slower travel. This can be caused by a range of things, like sometimes everybody is about one minute late (it’s like you’re running late? Great, me too! But really you get there and you still have to wait for them a little), or because it’s harder for more people to travel together in public places. Then you want to consider what style you want to walk with. You could be calm and cool, but that won’t help much if it makes you five minutes late to a business meeting. Or you could be bold and assertive, or sly and sneaky, or passive and pondering. There’s a lot to say about style, so you might want to think about yours before you just casually walk around (unless you want to just casually walk around). Last you want to make sure you take into account impairments. This is the grab bag, it could be anything from more weight because you have more clothes because it’s winter, to you can’t stand straight because you have to hold your girlfriend’s hand. A lot of the things are weather related (like you have to wear a movement restricting rain coat or it is slippery), but there are other things (like you’re carrying beer). Perhaps now, you will think a little before you walk.

So Scott Thought

Memory

It seems to me that memory is a great thing. Think about it, memory, along with a couple other great human brain capabilities, helped us survive and become a dominant species. Thanks to memory, we remembered bad places and used our other skills to plan ways around. We adapted. Well what memory doesn’t tell you is that it can be deceptive. It’s a tricksy one, it is. Sometimes things happen, and everything is fine, then you think back on what happened. And of course everything that happened was bad, you did everything wrong, and everyone was against you. See, that is memory being all: oh! I’m over here! Look, here’s a little skin… and you’re all: oh boy, oh boy I just saw some skin *high five* but really all you saw was a little of the top of her foot. Because all that really happens is you are distorting the image the way you want and only seeing the parts you want. That’s not half as bad as not remembering though. Like sometimes (not often) my brain forgets, especially if I’m taking a test, or mostly if I’m drinking alcohol (not most times I drink, but most of the time I experience memory loss is because of drinking, and I don’t really blame memory for that). I find it’s just best to remember. Everything. How it actually happened. All the time.

So Scott Thought

Arguing Arguments

I think a lot of people argue improperly. I’ve been having discussions recently where the people I was talking with were not necessarily on the same side as I was. They were getting fairly heated. Now don’t get me wrong here, I love a good intellectual discussion, but I’m not so hot on a very heated, animated argument. This sort of caused me to think about why I was having these types of interactions, what I wanted out of them, and what I should do about it next time the situation rears its ugly head. I came to the idea that I believe many people aren’t necessarily thinking the right way when they argue. By default, most of the time this happens, you will strongly believe your own point of view, why else would you choose it? Since you already believe yourself, most of what you think of will be trying to find the right points and methods to convince the other person you’re correct. The other person is naturally doing the same. Furthermore, most of the things they say can anger you at their ignorance or whatnot and will prompt you to argue your point further. So what we have is two people, set in their convictions, being further convinced of their superiority with everything their counterpart says, like two gears trying to grind opposite directions with more and more force. It isn’t pretty (to me at least). Now this does not need to be the case. This only arises when the case is that you want to be correct, then you do anything and use any argument it takes to win. Alternatively, this can happen when you are thinking you know that you are right. Then all you see is the other person continually repeat how stupid they are. Unless the argument is purely fact based, I think there is no way to know that you are actually right (oddly enough even if it is fact based, sometime no one person is correct). A lot of arguments stem from misunderstanding. I think in order to argue properly, you need to know what you think and have points for it, but you should also almost want to have your mind changed. Going into an argument, my thought is you should want to learn something new, that way there doesn’t need to only be one winner (and even if you don’t learn anything new about your topic, maybe you learn something about the person you are arguing with). You may even be totally correct with the argument that you’re presenting about the topic you are arguing about. The thing is, maybe the other person has a different idea of what topic you’re talking about, or a different definition for one of the main points of contention. Both people could have the best argument for what they’re arguing, but they don’t realize they’re talking about different things. Now in case there ever was a question, I prefer not to argue. I don’t like it. I think usually the same can be achieved in a calm discussion. I have never before looked at an argument the way I just proposed until a couple days ago. To me, the goal was always to impart the knowledge I had onto the other person. Sometimes (not often) their knowledge is superior to mine, but almost always I still have something to offer them. To me, it doesn’t even need to persuade them that my point of view is correct; I just want to change their perspective, even if it’s only a little. I hope I have argued my argument about arguments in a way that changes your perspective (unless you already thought this, in which case you were right all along).

So Scott Thought

Smart Phones

I am anti phone evolution. It’s not that I don’t think the technology and innovation aren’t great, they’re pretty remarkable. My problem is the mindless way in which they are coming out (actually, I heard there was great thought by some people, but I also hear those people died, either way what I really take objection with is the way people get the phones). It seems to me, with the introduction of the iphone, competition kind of vanished and everything because about the iphone. I kid you not, at one time nine out of eleven of my friends had an iphone. At that time, I still didn’t even have a full keyboard, I was working off t9. Admittedly, recently there have been resurgences of competition, like android, but they’re all still based off the way the iphone looks. Now we have the whole google glasses thing. Again, I applaud the innovation and technology, but minus a million for the google monopoly thing that’s going to happen soon. It’s like there’s nothing like this so I must have this unique awesome thing, so people buy it without thinking. My mom is sorta pressuring me into getting a new phone that’s a smart phone (first world problems) because she wants to switch to a family data plan. The problem is I’m anti smart phone, not because I don’t think it wouldn’t be useful (almost everyone I know has the my life is so much better because I have this iphone look what it does and how it helped me out of a jam). I just don’t want to mindlessly get it because that’s the way things are. If it legitimately seems as though it will help me out in real life and I won’t be dependent on it, great. But that requires a lot of shopping around to know which device will provide the most benefit without overuse (which leads to my other clear objection to the smart phone: overuse). There is clearly great potential for the devices that are coming out, but part of that is the companies trying to make people over dependent on their product. I don’t want to have to use my phone for everything I do. I don’t even want to be using my phone a lot. It’s great if I want to communicate with people that aren’t near me, but beyond that, what else was a phone designed to do. I certainly don’t remember hearing about the first phones automatically telling you product information about anything you looked at. Plus I’m a little afraid (ok maybe paranoid) that eventually the phones will take over and turn us all into mindless zombies. Just don’t complain to me when you’ve had your brain taken over and I’m running around, trying to keep up the revolution. I just don't want smart phones to get too smart, like if they start thinking for us.

So Scott Thought

Repeated Repetitions

A couple thoughts for you, I recently realized I have the ability to send an email whenever I post, and I know a couple people have expressed an interest in that. (wow blogger did something right... I'm starting to get impressed) Unfortunately, I think I can only send it to ten people (oh wait nevermind, blogger sucks). I think it would be nice if they allowed me to choose whether or not you were allowed to choose for yourselves to get it emailed to you or not, they are not quite there yet. Anyways, if you want me to have this automatically emailed to you, post your email address here or email me at smcelhenie@wisc.edu.

Sometimes thoughts get a little mixed up in my head, which can lead to me telling some people the same thing more than once. See what happens is I have a couple groups of people I talk to, and often things in my life match up where three different groups will bring up the same topic on their own. I get confused easily. Some of you have mentioned that you heard the things I wrote on my blog, then read them on my blog. Tough nuggies. I’m not going to go all high and mighty here and say you were privileged to hear them twice, I don’t really think that’s true. I’ve noticed it happen to me before, and I sometimes just sit through it because the person seems to enjoy telling me and I don’t want to make them look stupid. Sometimes I tell the person what they’re going to say though, but to me it’s still like, that’s cool bro, I liked it the first time, we can discuss more now if you want, I have thoughts for you. Anybody should feel free to tell me when I am repeating myself to them, but don’t ruin my stories if it’s in a big group, most of whom have not heard said story (I can ruin stories all by myself, thank you). On the other hand, I think some people I know should have to hear the things I say twice because they don’t really listen. My life is ruled by logic and reason and there is normally a progression of the things I am saying and I believe most of it to be important. Skipping out on parts can change the whole sentiment of what I am trying to say. Anyways, here are some more thoughts that you may have heard me say, or I may have even blogged before. I hope they don’t bore you to hear them twice (because there’s no way hearing it once can bore you).

Breakfast!

I sometimes ask people the question which meal is their favorite. Not like taco pie or French toast (scratch that, taco pie and French toast, definitely the best meal I could ever have in the future ever, because I’ve never had both at once), more like breakfast, lunch, or dinner. I’ll even allow hobbit meals, snack time, midnight ice cream, anything that you have had that you might remotely consider a meal. I am here, now, to tell you that I think you’re all wrong. I have kind of been up in the air about this before, but I always bring it back to breakfast, easily my favorite. There are too many things to like. Just to name some foods, cereal (way too many good cereals to name but a few: lucky charms, cocoa anything, fruity pebbles, anything that has a lot of sugar, some things that don’t, etc.), French toast, regular toast, English muffins, bacon, eggs, pancakes, waffles, breakfast sandwiches, the list goes on. Breakfast is sometimes criticized (or rather, really is not criticized because nobody ever brings this up and I think I could provide a nice counterpoint, but all the other stuff counteracts it even if it does stand (which I don’t really think it does)) because of its lack of variety. There’s not actually a whole bunch more things you could add to the list above. On the other hand part of making something great is knowing how to use it, and I think there is great variety with only what I offered. Taking the example of cereal, which I just cracked the tip of, there are tons of different types of cereal. There are a million ways to make an egg. Most of breakfast food has the ability to be made a bunch of different ways (which can be said of almost any food, but the point here is that there’s enough variety that you wouldn’t have to get tired of any specific thing). The other great thing about breakfast is that it pretty much encompasses every food eaten in brunch (breakfast’s biggest competition), or as I like to call it, hungover breakfast. Plus there’s some great special opportunity breakfast that sometimes goes unnoticed, like steak and eggs. Oh wait, steak for breakfast, boom tho. Also, as shown by brunch, breakfast has the ability to carry to any meal of the day, like say dinner. By the way that’s not a point for dinner, like dinner’s awesome because you can have pancakes, it’s more like you’re having breakfast (again) at a later time of the day. Double point for breakfast, it can happen any time of day and it’s so good you want it twice. BOOM THO. Winner: Breakfast. See breakfast is so great it won without me including some other important points, like it’s the most important, best meal for you (not to be confused with healthiest), of the day. It kick starts your metabolism and starts burning your calories earlier in the day. It makes you hungry for more. It satisfies your hunger of just waking up. And to think, this newfound conviction (don’t get me wrong, like I said, I always thought this, but now I know it and need to proclaim it) all comes from me running out of anything that I could have for breakfast. Oh wait just you know, this means that in a house of two people where 1.07 people eat breakfast, we ran out of breakfast food first. Awesome. Breakfast is awesome.

So Scott Thought