Month: October 2005

Congratulations to Sammy G on his wedding to… erm, what shell we call her? Let’s call her Shammy, after the awards given out this weekend 🙂

Christy and I left our kids at home under the care of Marsha, Christy’s mom. And we set off for Minneapolis on Friday afternoon. Long about 1:00 AM, we finally rolled into our hotel room and crashed.

I’ll leave it to Christy to tell the sordid tale of trying to find a clean hotel room. I’m about to hit the sack, so I’ll have to either update this blog or add more later. Regardless, Mazeltov! We had a fabulous time, and hope you have a fabulous lifetime together.

— Matt B.

Today, as I drove into work, I found myself listening to “Coast to Coast AM“, a radio program which seems to be entirely devoted to pseudoscience, superstition, and conspiracy theories.

However, this evening they were discussing the topic of the world’s oil supply. With the recent release of a book called “Black Gold Strangleold”, the authors were on the program to discuss the oil situation. While some of their points held water, one of their assumptions stood out to me as anti-science superstition that I felt it was important to debunk.

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Myth 1: Oil Reserves

The Myths:

1. The world’s oil supplies are dwindling rapidly as fossil fuels are depleted, and we should prepare for an economic disaster within the next 20-40 years,
2. the contrary myth: the world’s oil supplies are generated via abiotic processes; the “oil shortage” is an invention of oil companies to keep prices artifically high.

THE REALITY: Whether oil is abiotic or organic in origin, the fact remains that it is produced in large quantities only on geologic scales of time: millions of years. Both myths are wrong: we neither seem to be facing an imminent oil shortage within our lifetimes, nor do we have a virtually limitless supply of petroleum available within human-scale timeframes. We have a very large, but limited supply, of oil available to drill out. This oil will become increasingly expensive to access as existing wells refill more and more slowly as the overall pressure drops. What conclusions you draw from that are up to you in regards to conservation and other topics, but it’s a foregone conclusion that demand will continue to grow, while access to easily-pumped oil will continue to diminish. Simple economics dictates that the price will continue to rise. However, pumping technology seems to be working in our favor to keep the costs of drilling increasingly-difficult wells within reason, so it may be that the overall amount of oil drilled continues to rise for many decades.

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Myth 2: Global Warming

The Myths:

1. Human emissions have caused greenhouse gasses to increase, resulting in global temperature increases. These temperature increases cause stronger hurricanes and rising ocean levels, resulting in massive natural disasters.
2. The Contrary Myth: Human emission have nothing to do with the rising temperatures; they are merely part of a regular cycle of rising and falling average temperature.

THE REALITY: Both human emissions and natural cycles are at play here. The question is really: how much does each account for? This isn’t something we’ll have enough hard data on to answer within the next decade, but it’s a pretty good guess we’ll have an answer within two. In geologic time, that’s a tiny sliver. Attempting to gauge long-range weather patterns by the short time frame of human experience and ability to measure the weather is not very useful. More useful are the tree-ring analyses currently underway to determine historic weather patterns from ancient trees and gauge the extent of the warming. So far, the results are still indeterminate. That we are experiencing a global warming trend is indisputable fact at this point: the poles are melting, and billions of acre-feet of water are being dumped into the oceans from the antarctic ice shelves. The ocean level is rising, hurricane ferocity is increasing, and other residual effects from a rising ocean are being felt. That reducing human emissions will also reduce the greenhouse effect is also indisputable… the question is just whether or not that reduction will be statistical noise in the overall warming trend.

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— Matthew P. Barnson – – – – Thought for the moment: Sick Building Migration: The tendency of younger workers to leave or avoid jobs in unhealthy office environments or workplaces affected by the Sick Building Syndrome. — Douglas Coupland, “Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture”

In the news today: Rosa Parks is dead at 92. Sad news for her relatives and fans, but it got me thinking about the law, and how I really love how the Internet has given the common man such an ability to learn. In a lot of discussions with friends and online opponents, I’ve ended up discussing law. Not being a lawyer, of course, I’ve had to go for common-sense answers. Today, finally, I found something online that was really helpful:

Malum in se vs. Malum prohibitum.

In short, Malum in se is something which is illegal because it is inherently recognized as wrong, such as murder, rape, and theft. Malum prohibitum, on the other hand, refers to things which are illegal because they further a policy or doctrine, such as speed limits, immigration policies, and copyright regulations.

I realize that a first-year law student already knows this stuff. Oh, well.

Anyway, it clears up a lot of my confusion for me regarding ethics. I’ve often tried to prove the point that sometimes breaking a law is the correct ethical decision, even though it may land one in jail. For instance, violating the current draconian copyright laws can be, in my opinion, justified in certain circumstances as civil disobedience.

Rosa Parks, who died yesterday, was violating a law by refusing to give up her seat. Yet who today would argue that what she was doing was immoral? I’d submit very few would.

The U.S. Revolutionary War was fought and won “illegally”. And yet, today, the participants are celebrated as heroes. Had they lost, they’d have been vilified as instigators of a civil war.

It’s an interesting thing. It seems like you have to break a law in order to challenge it. At what point is breaking that law justified? It seems as if many of our most bitterly-fought legal battles involve some question as to whether those laws are malum in se or malum prohibitum. The ones that come to mind are abortion laws, church/state separation issues, freedom of speech… core stuff.

Boy oh boy did I love Wayward Sun. Despite the fact that they were just essentially a teen garage band, they were my favorite band in High School, the way some people loved Nirvana or Billy Joel. But now certain members of the band have kind of said “no thanks, we’ve done that”. I didn’t get it. You have a chance now to take what you were good at in High School, iron out the kinks, and make it better. Why not do that?

I get it now. In 1993, I played onstage, in my senior year, the role of John Proctor in Quince Orchard’s production of “The Crucible”. It got me a lot of credibility, I did a great job, and it galvanized my desire to act. Despite this, it was a high school play, I didn’t know crap about life, and it was ultimately a flawed performance.

Last weekend, I auditioned for Reston Players’ production of “The Crucible”. I wanted to play hale, but my Proctor was good enough in an audition to get me called back repeatedly once again for the lead. I was ecstatic, and for much of the audition, it seemed clear that the role was mine. As we neared the end though, we got to the meatier scenes, and I was doing passionate, precise redings.. that were a little out of context of what was going on. Thinking back, I was doing the same line readings I had done at the age of 17, and looking for the same responses. I never got them.

I did not get Proctor. I barely read for Hale. This production of the Crucible will roll along without me, and perhaps its just as well. I’ll be doing another play or film soon.. something that is new to me. As an artist, I have committed to doing new work. Taking something someone else made and making it my own. I already did my Proctor.. and doing it again would be doing an imitation of myself.. a remake.

So for me, the dream of playing Proctor again sometime is dead.. you can’t go back again. Maybe you shouldn’t. Maybe for me Hale should always belong to Mike Lanahan, Proctor should always be a teenager trying his best to impress his friends and detractors.. Maybe the best version of “All Over again” will always be the one on “The Right Of Way” – and maybe that has less to do with intrinsic quality, and more to do with what it meant way back when.

A geek, yes. There can be no question. Star Wars, Star Trek, Buffy, Angel, Firefly, the list goes on. Escapist asction shows with a twist of impossibility, either sci-fi or fantasy. I love them. I do. many do.. but I am a fan.

I’m not a costume wearing fanatic (although I was paid to wear the costume as an actor), its not about that. Its not necessarily the action, which is cool.. but can be found anywhere. Why be a fan, why care about fictional characters who are as unlikely as vampires and androids – and why do I want all of these things, all now defunct, all now finished, to continue?

It is a conversation Rowan and I have had.. he is also a person who enjoys all these things… but not a fan. To him, these are fictional people, to be let go easily, and to allow to leave when it is time. Not so for me. I want these things to continue, and I think I know why.

The realm of fantasy, in order to suspend disbelief, requires one to leave “here”, and go to another place. You need sunnydale for Buffy… you need the future for Trek. I am someone who is not so happy with the here and now today. And today, I pulled my Star Trek nemesis DVD out of the dust it was gathering to finally watch, of all things, the interviews with the cast, to hear them say how close they feel. I went on to watch some more of it, just because, “being transported” to this familiar place felt safe, and for a little while I could go on a journey, and feel like I had people there I knew.

People like “Friends” not for the jokes, but for the relationships. Like Cheers, or MASH, people like to leave there lives, and watch the dramas of others. For me, its easy to let that go. When Friends ended.. new york was still there. For my shows, when they end.. the entire universe of the shows come to an end.

I invest in the fantastical because a lot of times in my life, it gave me a place to go to where the things that sucked for me were very far away.. and I suspect many of us feel the same way. So, I wait for the Star Wars TV show, the Spike movie, the Serenity DVD, and for Trek to somehow find its way out of the toilet. Why? Because these are universes I like to go to. ports of call that are closed to me, and on nights like tonight, I could use 42 minutes of time focusing on something else than the real world.

Clearly, we were ahead of our time back in 1995. In the tradition of Jewish hip-hop artists MC Heeb and Kid Tu’Fonqué (and Weed, our goyishe homeboy), meet Matisyahu, the Chassidic reggae rapper.

“As we say in the wetlands, ‘Ribbit-ribbit-kneedeep-ribbit,’ which means ‘May success and a smile always be yours … even when you’re knee-deep in the sticky muck of life.’

So tonight I heard a 45-minute interview with Jason Mraz, who has become famous for his tune on the radio, “Mr. A to Z”.

I was pretty impressed with the song when I heard it, but tonight when I heard more of his stuff, I was floored. That man can sing. And he can play a mean guitar. He’s got this really unique vibe going on, a combination of pop/funk/blues/rap that’s distinctive and really soars when he sings it.

The only thing I really noticed different in the live interview vs. his albums is that his voice is much “saltier”. It’s got a little bit of gravel to it, but it sounds much more like that’s a result of an exhausting touring schedule than his usual timbre.

Anyway, I’ve gotta buy the album now. Maybe for Christmas this year, or something. The surprising thing is, I’ve heard a lot of these “unplugged”-style interviews on Mix, and he’s one of the very few who, IMHO, sounds even better “live” than he does on the heavily-engineered album releases.

It’s refreshing to see a new pop artist who isn’t selected for his pretty face and muscled physique, but instead for his talent. Talent that puts mine to shame.

Buy Mr. A to Z at Amazon.

Ever wondered why there were five kids with the same name in your junior-high class? Ever wondered if you could name your baby by weighing the popularity per million babies of a given name in order to choose one that was unpopular that year?

Well, here ya go:

The Baby Name Wizard. This thing will plot the popularity of a given name over time for you. Very cool.

Of course, I had to type in “Matthew” right off the bat. It was even more interesting, realizing that the variants: “Matt”, “Mat”, “Mathias”, and “Matteo” have variously ranked in the top 1000 at certain times. “Mat” died out in the late 1800’s, and while “Mathias” did, too, it began a resurgence in the 1990s.

What fun!

Before I issue my observations, I would like readers to know that I consider myself an expert in going to the bathroom. Since birth, I’ve had to purge excess waste from my body an estimated 35,328 times. Plus, the older I get, the more I get fixated on this process and the timing of this process. You see a lot of guys in their 30s and 40s talking about the phenomenon associated with having to get up a couple times a night. It’s a main topic of conversation with old people.

Which brings me to my observations, which could also be considered phenomenon. Since the turn of the century, I’ve noticed the emergence of two strange phenomenon with men’s urinals in public bathrooms. These two phenomenon are hereby expertly classified as “advertising