Dad has a contingency planned for everything

Jane: Dad, suppose I had actually had brain damage. What would you have done? Would you have still taken care of me?

Dad: We would have put you into the meat grinder, and then flushed you down the toilet.

life drawings from the san francisco zoo

 

This is a seal. See how fat it is? I just want to wrap it up in foil and bake it good.

 

These are Chacoan peccaries. Their heads are huge. They are so cute, they should be in a Miyazaki film.

 

 

on loneliness

There’s something about being indoors, and alone. Something about the walls refracts every pang of loneliness back at me, magnifying those first psychic emanations to an unbearable degree. I put up little dampeners, like photos of my friends. Poems I’ve received. Letters of gratitude. 

They don’t work very well. I have to go outside.

The rational explanation, I suppose, is that outside is more stimulating. Perhaps more importantly, some atavistic instinct forged in our evolutionary past seeks out sun and fresh air. I do believe this.

But what I feel to be the real explanation is that indoors, I am cut off from Spiritus Mundi. Indoors, insulated from the world, I can concentrate on a solipsistic existence. Outside? At the very least, if I do not pay attention to the world, a car will run me over. But the more romantic way to put it, is that there are no walls to bounce my own loneliness back at me. Instead, the sky dissipates them, and sends back sun and fresh air in their place. It is not a gift given in benevolence. I am not singled out. This is a gift that you, and I, and everyone else is entitled to. You lay claim to it by simply being aware of it, and taking it. As the sun casts a shadow behind you, and the air makes a current as you walk forward, you take your place–no more exalted than any other, nor more base, but certainly inalienable, irrevocable–in the eternal flux of this world.

Given a closed room with no exits and an infinite number of kindergarteners determined to kill you, how many could you kill before you yourself died?

I recently drove myself to complete exhaustion by biking up a steep hill. Using the law of conservation of energy, we can calculate how much kindergartener-slaughtering energy I’ve got.
The combined mass of myself and my bike is about 63.5 kilograms.
The elevation gained was about 548.64 meters total.
The earth’s gravitational constant is 9.8 meters per second squared.
Taking the product of these three numbers, we find that the total amount of kinetic energy available to me is 341,418.672 joules.

I was stumped when it came to figuring out how many joules it would take to punch out a small child, but then I had the brilliant idea of consulting my physicist Tiger Father. [1] He told me in no uncertain terms that it took only 100 joules to the face. [2][3]

I am extremely efficient, so let’s assume no loss of energy from friction from the air or inefficiency in my own muscles. Then it’s a simple matter of arithmetic:

3,414 children slain. [4]

[1] Is Amy Chua right when she explains “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” in an op/ed in the Wall Street Journal? I’ll give you all the truth you need: NO.
[2] Apologies for playing fast and loose with the significant figures here.
[3] I assume this is from extensive empirical verification, since he is such a good scientist and a real paragon of Chinese parenting himself.
[4] I am so good.
N.B. My physicist brother just pointed out that if I ate my victims, I would replenish my energy and be able to kill infinitely.

I understand my devoted fans will have read this already, but not everyone is so devoted, nor has a Quora account.

jane teaches you how to do a swingout out of the generosity of her heart

This is most applicable to people who learn how to swing dance by taking Living Traditions of Swing at Stanford, from Richard Powers. Here are a couple pointers for follows who want to leave the warm, loving cocoon that is Jammix and the GCC dances, and venture out into the cold, uncaring world of dancing off-campus.

1. The swingout is supposed to be *followed.* What does that mean? That means, don’t walk towards the lead until you feel him tugging on you.

2. You don’t need to have a lot of tension in your connection. Connections come in two flavors: a subtle, light one that lends itself to catching every last little musical hit, and a heavy, hard, energetic kind. More experienced leads tend to prefer the former type of connection. The reason is that it’s easier to start with a light connection and build up to a heavy one when necessary, than the other way around. There is nothing wrong with the occasional hate-dance, of course.

3. On counts 3 and 4, you’re supposed to triple-step towards where the lead used to be. This is hard to do, because you’re aiming for empty air, which is an abstract, invisible target, and his hand is tugging you from where he * currently* is, which is much more concrete and noticeable. So, aim towards his *right hand,* which should be floating approximately where he used to be. Then when you connect with your lead on 5 and 6, it’ll feel much better.

4. STOP SUCKING. Don’t cry! I didn’t mean to say that! I just ran out of helpful things to say. I’m sorry. I’m mean.

saints, sinners, and flawless logic

Unconditional love–what does that even mean? Does anyone truly feel it? “Unconditional”–does that not imply a certain–arbitrariness? “Unconditional”–really, no conditions, none whatsoever? I have heard it said that a parent experiences unconditional love for their child. I staged a little thought experiment. Would a parent tolerate rebelliousness, insolence, indeed, even a criminal streak in their child, and come back for more? Most assuredly, yes. Sane people hold lifelong grudges over offenses only a tenth as terrible as a typical American teenager’s. So is that most hallowed of affections unconditional love? Pah, hardly! This is love with no conditions but one–that the child be their child.

Indeed, if unconditional love did exist, it would be insane! Imagine loving someone who had never done you any good whatsoever, not even holding out the promise of genetic immortality. Imagine a love which did not fly to greater heights on the rendering of some great service or token of affection! (For any love which could be affected by the gain or lack of some benefit is obviously conditional on the presence or absence of said benefit.) Truly, that would be inhuman–immoral, even, not to feel more love for those who have stood by your side, when others passed you by in hate or indifference.

But. If unconditional love exists, and it is at all a good, then cat owners are the only living saints on earth. Owning a cat is like walking naked into a hailstorm of disdain and indifference. To be shocked awake from a restful sleep by a baleful creature who regards you only as a breakfast-dispensing machine; to have one’s lap rejected as the central heating vent is much warmer; to be completely ignored as you wearily return home from a long and unrewarding day at work–this is what it is to be a cat owner.

If unconditional love exists at all, and can said to be good–well, cat owners are the only ones who have it, and are therefore infinitely better than dog owners. Quod erat demonstrandum.

This is what they do when they get you young

I read this story a long time ago in some self-help book. It is the only thing I remember:

A traveling circus must have an elphant, of course, but elephants are very strong, and it takes a lot of heavy chains to keep one in check. This equipment is heavy, and it’s a traveling circus, and so it’s impossible to afford the effort of bringing the chains everywhere.

The solution, then, is to buy a baby elephant. It is easy enough to restrain a baby elephant. You simply need to use a single chain to restrain it by one leg, lock the chain to a wooden peg, and drive the peg deep into the ground. No baby elephant likes being chained of course, and they all fight very hard, but they’re young enough that the chain defeats them. And after a while, they don’t even try any more. Even when they become full-grown strong elephants, they won’t even try. A single chain still works. The memory of their helplessness stays with them and keeps them from their freedom.

It’s a kind of learned blindspot.

I think about this story whenever I wonder why it’s not socially acceptable to skip in public, play Dungeons and Dragons, slide down a bannister, or ride a bike as an adult in some states. Simple, innocuous, childish things, things that shouldn’t even be anyone else’s business (so long as you’re careful to only break your own bannister and not mine). Those of us who are comfortable doing these things must have been very fast, evasive little elephants once.

compressions

I like to come up with sentences that summarize my thoughts on things. Like, if you took all the crap in my mind and used a program to zip it up, the output would be the following:

Enlightenment is not to be found head-on, but discovered out of the corner of your eye.
There is no willpower–only will management.
Everyone is just meat for time’s axe.
There are only two things you need to have. Something to live for, and something to die for.
Getting to do whatever you want is no fun at all.
A virtuous life is the worst consolation prize ever.
Every exception to a rule is merely proof of some other rule.
Rationality is the corset of the mind.

The thing about the virtuous life takes up a particularly large number of bits in my mind. Also the thing about meat and axes.

dad’s such a breeder

Jane: So dad, what would you have done if you’d had no kids to support? I mean, what’s so bad about never having had kids? You’d never know what you were missing out on.

Dad: Oh, I think about my unborn children all the time.

Jane: You do?

Dad: Oh yes. I like to imagine that I’m the father of two nations. One billion each.

my high-expectations Asian mother

Jane: Hey Mom! Turns out my blood type is a B+! Aren’t you upset?

Mom: Why would I be upset? It would be better in emergencies if you had type AB, though. Then you could suck blood from anybody, just like your father.

Jane: I mean, like, aren’t you upset that I don’t have an A+?

Mom: What? A+ in what?

Jane: My blood type!…never mind.