A Curious Statistical Anomaly

It was the blurb for Waking Life that got me interested:

Product Description
From Richard Linklater comes one of the most imaginative animated features ever made. This funny, ingenious film, which Rolling Stone Magazine calls “nothing short of amazing,” explores the fascinating question: “Are we sleep-walking through our waking state or wake- walking through our dreams”? Join Wiley Wiggins as he searches for answers to life’s most important questions in a world that may or may not be reality in the “most visually alive movie of the year.” (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times)

It came from Netflix the other day and we just watched it this afternoon. This is one of those films that does take the term “weird” to new heights — but in a good way. Animated, the film has more options and scope for weirdness since so much can be done with animation at lower cost than with special effects and the directors used the media splendidly to highlight the thoughts being expressed by the characters.

A young man is returning home and gets a ride from a man in a boat-car that already has one passenger. From there things just get stranger. As we follow the young man around it seems like he’s working on a research project to gather various people’s viewpoints on consciousness, the meaning of life, religion, perceptions, and good vs evil, heaven vs hell. Then as things continue it seems that maybe he’s day dreaming or dreaming. The conversations and monologues give you the clues you need to determine what’s going on but they are buried in the discussions of various philosophies, psychological theories, and biological theories of consciousness and perception.

It may take a while to figure out what’s happening and even if you do there’s no way to be sure that what you believe is happening is in fact what is happening. I believe that’s the point of the film — to make the audience think. Think not just about what the movie is about but about the ideas that are expressed as our main character moves about the landscape listening to the people he meets.

I’m a child of the 60s and much of the intellectual theories and topics expressed are those that were bandied about during that era in the hallways of colleges, coffee houses, friends apartments, political meetings, and late night gab sessions where-ever. There were no answers then and I don’t believe there are or will ever really be definitive answers to the questions of whether we are the dream or the dreamer of the nature of consciousness and life.

This movie woke those memories of my past, those philosophy classes in college, and the late night talks with friends. So, whether I enjoyed the movie because of my background, or because I hope that these discussions are still occurring among today’s young adults — I do hope that many people are thinking about these issues and examining the life they are leading, not just to measure their success with yardsticks that have multiple scales that include personal growth, love, joy, friendship, connectedness to others, as well as financial success, control of others, and power. We should always live every moment as if it was special and never to be repeated because in fact each moment of our lives is special.

If you’ve seen this movie, I’d love to hear your opinion on it. If you haven’t seen it and enjoy movies that play with your head, check it out and get back to me and leave a comment.

I’m beginning to think all my life is about time. Time to work. Time to sleep. Time to play. Hours. Minutes. Seconds. Years. Decades. A lifetime.

All these small bits of time make up our lives. We treat life like it is infinite, but we all know there’s an end. Every minute is precious and not to be wasted. We know that and yet we waste so much time.

I find myself staring off into space. Not daydreaming. Daydreaming would be thinking, imagining things as they aren’t, but could or might be if only… An absence of consciousness — but not asleep either. Time has past and I don’t know where it went. I can account for the time but some is missing — so where did it go.

I’ve the flu — or a cold — I never know which because I always have the symptoms of both so I can’t tell. So maybe some of this missing time is because of the way I’m feeling but what about at other times.

Maybe you’ve had the same feeling when your coding and really into it — or writing or whatever you get very involved in. To me only a few minutes will have past, but my spouse will say it’s been hours are you ready for a break, and I check the clock and it has been hours …  but only minutes for me.

This blog seems like it’s really beginning to be about time — but that’s because I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. Maybe it’s because I work at home — mostly alone without interruptions — so there’s no break-time or lunch-time or close-up-for-the-day-time. All time is work time if I don’t watch out.

How to other people perceive time? I wonder if other people miss time, find it passing quickly or excruciatingly slow or just as it should. What should our relationship to time be? I know it’s changed over the years with the invention of lights, the industrial revolution, the factories, and other imposition of time constraints by society.

I guess it’s always something to think about–time. What does it mean to me? What does it mean to you? How do you use it? Do you miss it? Is there enough for work, family, and play?

I just realized it’s been several days since I posted. Not that I haven’t seen things that catch my attention–just haven’t had a minute to actually think about what I’ve seen and ponder the ramifications or emotional attachment to it.

Lately, it seems that I have a very iffy relationship with time–there never seems to be enough of it to do what I want to do. Prioritizing doesn’t work because I want to do it all and putting them in an order means that some (at the bottom of the list) just won’t get done as it gets reset and redone as the time runs out and the new day’s list is made including what didn’t get done the first time.

It seems to me the only way to deal with all this is to live forever. Yup, now the problem is to figure out how to do that. I mean getting turned by a vamp might work but then, depending on which mythos you go with, there are drawbacks and pluses. There’s all those vampire politics that seems to be a given for all the myths–so I guess I’ll have to do more pondering…but that takes even more time.  Maybe I should look into string and loopy theories…just saying…

Remember people telling you to just get over it when you got picked last for games, when you never got invited to the cool parties, when you were a wall-flower at dances, or when your best-friend canceled because he/she found something better to do at the last minute. Well, those rejections hurt. The problem though was that everyone said it was in your head that it didn’t really hurt — you were just pretending.

Well, according to this article in Telegraph.co.uk, that pain was real.

Psychologists at the University of California, Los Angeles say the human body has a gene which connects physical pain sensitivity with social pain sensitivity…

Their study indicates that a variation in the mu-opioid receptor gene (OPRM1), often associated with physical pain, is related to how much social pain a person feels in response to social rejection.

I’ve often wondered why people think that psychological pain is somehow less painful than physical pain when the pain receptors are basically the same. Pain is pain no matter where it comes from — whether you fall down a flight of stairs or have your significant other walk out on you because s/he need to find him/herself (as if they got lost and can’t get dressed until they find their body — where ever it went off to) is painful. Some people react to social rejection as if it was physical.

I’d hope that this finding will get educators and other to be a bit more proactive in stopping bullies and intimidation in the schools. But, since not even having children go postal or committing suicide because of the painful torment they suffer every day seems to be helpful, I doubt that research that shows these children and adults (faced with the same bullying and intimidation) do suffer pain will cause anyone to actually change their behavior.

Those who have suffered the pain for social rejection however, should feel a bit of vindication to know that the pain they felt or feel was not imaginary, it was real. And while from social rather than physical stimulus it still takes a toll on a person’s immune system and stamina.

Now if only someone could come up with a cure for a broken heart. Any ideas? Personally, I like to spend time with Ben & Jerry when I’m feeling the pain of social rejection.

I must admit that I find the Mindset list from Beloit College to be fascinating. Each year I look forward to their list because it does help to explain some of the cultural problems in dealing with young people.

Their overview of the Class of 2013:

Members of the class of 2013 won’t be surprised when they can charge a latté on their cell phone and curl up in the corner to read a textbook on an electronic screen. The migration of once independent media—radio, TV, videos and CDs—to the computer has never amazed them. They have grown up in a politically correct universe in which multi-culturalism has been a given. It is a world organized around globalization, with McDonald’s everywhere on the planet. Carter and Reagan are as distant to them as Truman and Eisenhower were to their parents. Tattoos, once thought “lower class,” are, to them, quite chic. Everybody knows the news before the evening news comes on.

Some of my favorite:

# The Green Giant has always been Shrek, not the big guy picking vegetables.
# They have never used a card catalog to find a book.
# The KGB has never officially existed.
# Text has always been hyper.
# Babies have always had a Social Security Number.
# They have never had to “shake down” an oral thermometer.
# Condoms have always been advertised on television.
# They have always been able to read books on an electronic screen.
# “Womyn” and “waitperson” have always been in the dictionary.
# Members of Congress have always had to keep their checkbooks balanced since the closing of the House Bank.
# There has always been a computer in the Oval Office.
# There has always been blue Jell-O.

Check out the full list at Beloit’s website. It really does explain why young people and us old foggies have problems communicating our basic understanding of the world is different in many cases.

I’ve known for a while now that Connie Willis had agreed to be a Capclave 2010 Guest of Honor but hoped that the official website would be up by now. But as you know one thing leads to another and the WSFA Small Press Award and the reviving of WSFA Press sort of took over web design and update time but we’re working on the 2010 site and it should be up soon.

So, since I’m so excited by this I wanted to announce it here so you’ll all be as excited and anxious for October 2010 to get here as I am. I’m particularly excited because this is my first time as a convention chairperson. There’s a lot of work to be done and I’m pulling together my committee and developing my time charts and milestones. I’ve just received the emails for the other two guest and will be sending out the invitations tomorrow so stay tuned in case they say yes — should I have a plan B? I didn’t for Connie and she said, “Yes.”

If you haven’t read any of Connie Willis’s works give yourself a treat and try one. I’ve always liked her books and short stories. She manages to pull me in and get me to suspend belief and live in the world she creates along with her characters for the length of whatever form she’s writing in. She can be serious, silly, and penetratingly observant of the human psyche but always entertaining. Some random novel titles to check out: Doomsday Book, To Say Nothing of the Dog, Passages, Bellwether, Lincoln’s Dreams, and Remake. There are also several collections of short stories too: Miracle and Other Christmas Stories, Impossible Things, and The Winds of Marble Arch. (Besides you’ll want to have read some of her works before October of 2010 now won’t you).

Capclave is the annual convention of the Washington Science Fiction Association (WSFA). It’s usually held in October and the 2009 Guests of Honor are Harry Turtledove, Sheila Williams, and Rob Balder. It will be held from October 16th to the 18th, 2009.

I’ll occasionally post updates on what’s happening with Capclave 2010 here in my blog and on the official Capclave blog.

The Washington Science Fiction Association is pleased to announce the finalists for the 2009 WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction (for stories published in 2008):

“Drinking Problem” by K.D. Wentworth, published in Seeds of Change, edited by John Joseph Adams, Prime Books (August, 2008).

“Hard Rain at the Fortean Café” by Lavie Tidhar, published in issue 14 of Aeon Speculative Fiction Magazine, edited by Bridget McKenna.

“His Last Arrow” by Christopher Sequeira, published in Gaslight Grimoire: Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes, edited by Jeff Campbell and Charles Prepolec, Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing, (October, 2008).

“Silent as Dust” by James Maxey, published in Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, edited by Edmund R. Schubert, Hatrack Publishing, January 2008.

“Spider the Artist” by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, published in Seeds of Change, edited by John Joseph Adams, Prime Books (August, 2008)

“The Absence of Stars: Part 1” by Greg Siewert, published in Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, edited by Edmund R. Schubert, Hatrack Publishing, December 2008.

“The Toy Car” by Luisa Maria Garcia Velasco, (translated from Spanish by Ian Watson) published in April 2008 edition of Aberrant Dreams, edited by Joseph W. Dickerson.

The award honors the efforts of small press publishers in providing a critical venue for short fiction in the area of speculative fiction. The award showcases the best original short fiction published by small presses in the previous year (2008). An unusual feature of the selection process is that all voting is done with the identity of the author (and publisher) hidden so that the final choice is based solely on the quality of the story.

The winner is chosen by the members of the Washington Science Fiction Association (www.wsfa.org) and will be presented at their annual convention, Capclave (www.capclave.org), held this year on October 16-18th in Rockville, Maryland.

I know this is a weird one but today, it occurred to me that most of us know what we mean when we say boy noises.  The arummm rumm sound of a revving car engine.  The bruummmmbruumm of a motorcycle speeding up.  There’s others, but they all come clumped as boy noises.

Is there an equivalent list of girl noises?  I could come up with giggles or squee sounds but that’s really not equivalent, or is that just because I’m a girl?  I have to confess that I made a heck of a lot of boy noises when I was growing up because I preferred the trucks and cars to those stiff dolls that didn’t do anything but look creepy — so I have a bias here.  I had a lot of girl friends but thinking about sounds, I don’t recall any particular sounds equivalent to those engine noises and such that guys make when playing.

Is that because girls are doing the doll/tea party thing?  Does the type of play for girls eliminate the need to make background noises?  Even girls that pretend to ride horses don’t tend to make horsey snorting sounds — at least not the one’s I knew but occasionally they did slap their legs to make a clip-clop sounds.

I’m really curious — is there an equivalent?  What’s your take on this?