Lies

Today in Elders' Quorum, the topic was honesty. Through most of it, the teacher said fairly uncontroversial things, which was good because the Stake President was there.

Near the end, however, he brought up the subject of why people think it is OK or necessary to lie. The obvious ones came out quickly (e.g. to get ahead, to conceal something, to hurt someone), but I think that there are many reasons that I lie that seem less malevolent.

1. Humor: Sometimes lying is funny. I have been known to tell people that I used to be a World Champion African Stick Dancer but broke my knee in the 7th grade (when I was being chased down by an angry group of Tanzanian rebels)... and it would go on from there until it got so ridiculous that the person I'm talking to realizing that it is a lie. You would be surprised, by the way, on how far you can get before people will call you on it. You would be astounded on how much farther you can get if you insist on it even after they call you on it the first time. I think this is funny but harmless.

2. Convenience: Sometimes it is just easier to say one thing when another is more accurate. For example, I sing in a choir that meets twice a week in the evenings. Often, I'm asked by people if I'm free during that time. If I say I have choir, this often leads to a longer conversation about my choir that I don't want to have because I have other things to do. In fact, they probably don't even care to know about my choir, but they are obligated to ask if I mention it. So I usually tell people I have class, though technically it's not like a class that you register for and stuff.

3. Telling stories: It is relatively common to hear people say that you shouldn't let the truth get in the way of a good story. I don't mean that you should tell stories that are completely not true and pass them off as truth, but oftentimes the details just get in the way. So if a story is actually about my brother-in-law's second cousin's dog, in my version, it will usually be my cousin's dog. Or if the timing of a story would require less explaining if the whole thing happened over the course of a week instead of a month or a day, it will happen over a week. (If the most important part of the story is that it happened over a week, then I don't change that part, but if explaining the characters or setting of the story is noncrucial, and it turns a 15 second story into a 30 second story, I think an adjustment makes everyone better off.)

4. Avoiding hurt feelings: People sometimes call me and I'm still in bed and I try really hard to have a normal voice when I answer the phone, but usually I fail. Then they ask if they woke me up, and I say "No I've been up for a little while now." This makes them feel better and it makes it so we don't spend the whole conversation with them apologizing for pulling me out of bed. Really, I reject about 90% of the calls that come through my phone. If I answer, you shouldn't feel bad; you should be flattered that I wanted to talk to you. You are more important than sleep or anything else that I could be doing right then. (On the other hand, if you call and I don't pick up, you shouldn't feel bad either. I don't like talking on my phone if there is anyone within 20 feet of me, so if I don't answer, I'm probably in some crowded place (like class or something).)

I'm sure that there are lots of other justifications. My general view was that when it comes to lying, I follow the "no harm, no foul" principle. However, remember how I said the Stake President was there for this meeting? After my comment, he raised his hand and pretty much called me to repentance. All of his words were generally addressing the quorum, but he just looked straight at me the whole time.

He seems to think that Honesty is a virtue unto itself and that we should try to be completely honest even when our dishonesty is not hurting anyone. I suppose I can see where he is coming from. I need to think about it a little more though.

12 Steps

Hi. I'm Xister and I'm a Netflix-oholic.

I think that the first step is to acknowledge you have a problem.

I realized over Christmas break that I had watched way too much TV on Netflix this past semester. The first sign to me was when my sister recommended the series Battlestar Gallactica (which was great, by the way) and I got through the whole thing from beginning to end before she finished it herself. I think it took me a little over 3 weeks.

I've made adjustments this semester and have cut back significantly, but until recently, I've been nervous to actually look up how much TV I actually watched. This week, I was finally brave enough to look up the stats.

On watch instantly alone, I watched 23 seasons of various TV shows and 8 movies. This adds up to 244 hours or about 16 hours a week. If you include the DVDs that were shipped to me, I watched 5 more movies and 2 more seasons. I also followed 5 shows on Hulu. This means that my TV watching was about equivalent to a part-time job. My mother pointed out today that in this time, I could've have become conversational in a foreign language. (If only I had watched all these movies in Spanish.)

I don't really know what happened to me. I used to be such a responsible kid. Lest you are quick to judge me, I feel like I have a defense that makes me seem only a little ridiculous. First, I was really burnt out last semester. I had not had a chance to rest during the summer, and I never really got the chance to take a break before classes started. Second, most of the time which I was "watching" these shows, I was also doing other things (like studying, cooking, folding laundry, etc.). Third, a lot of the TV I watched was during holidays when you are supposed to relax already. Fourth, the quantity of Netflix that I watched means I was only paying about 10 cents an hour for their services. And fifth, I really have cut back this semester. It is already half-way over and I've only watched 2.5 seasons of TV shows and 1 movie.

In any case, I'm not sure why I felt the need to expose this in the blogosphere (it is probably one of the 12 steps too), but it sort of legitimizes my efforts to move on. I've taken up swimming to fill the time that I used to use on TV, and it's going well. Last week, I got to the point that I can swim a whole mile, which means I'm about ready to sign up for my triathlon. See? I'm a good kid.

Cities (and a little bit of ethics)

Last semester, I took a class from this guy. He is actually this intense.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-february-14-2011/edward-glaeser

After seeing this, I decided to read his book because several of his claims seemed a little far fetched. It's well-written, but he doesn't cite many of the studies that he refers to. He is a very smart man, however, and I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt in a lot of circumstances (i.e. that he is controlling for the right things and that the effects that he claims to be measuring are actually what he is measuring).

However, yesterday as I read it, I came across a passage where he was talking about the fall of Detroit. As evidence, he says that "the current median income in Detroit is $33,000, which is about half of the US average." I assume he means the US mean income because the median is around $40,000. It is odd to me that he would try to compare median and mean incomes when the mean of income data is systematically higher than the median (and particularly since comparing medians would have also supported his point). What he said is true, but it is definitely misleading.

So question one: What do people think about Glaeser's claim that large cities are better for the economy, mental and physical health, the environment, etc.?

Question two: To what degree are authors accountable to avoid true but misleading information, especially when the audience of the writing is primarily people who should be able to recognize this?

The Cruelest Month

In high school, two of my sisters took a course where some guy read some poem. I don't know who the guy is or what the poem is or anything beyond the first line, but my sisters would often quote the first line in a dramatic British accent: "April is the cruelest monTH."

That guy was totally wrong. It's February.

February is cold. February is dark. February is the time that school work seems to start piling up and there is no break in sight. February is the third lap of the 1600 where you are already exhausted, but you realize that you have to do again what you've already done, except that you can't breathe.

Anything that might seem a little bad in another month is awful in February. I have nothing against Valentine's Day; I actually really like being single. However, since it is in February, Valentine's Day makes me forget all the independence singledom affords and makes me wonder why I'm not dating anyone. (The answer is that I don't really go on many dates.) I'd probably be more patriotic if Presidents' Day was in March.

Anything that seems awesome in another month is just mediocre in February. I was wandering though town the other day thinking about how much fun my life is currently, but it was odd because I still felt a little glum. I couldn't figure it out until I realized that it is February.

A funny thing about February is that, since I don't pay much attention to my feelings, I usually don't notice that I'm depressed until I recognize external signals. The main one is that I make lots of useless purchases. At BYU, this was mostly office supplies. Today I bought a pair of scissors and some mechanical pencils. Recently though, I'm starting to buy more expensive things. I got some goggles on Monday and I'm about 1/2 inch from buying a computer monitor today. It's not like I think, "I depressed... I think I'll buy something." Rather, I think "I really need this thing," and then in March I look back a realize that the previous month, I spent $800 on Red Vines or model airplanes.

Maybe I should buy one of those sunlights. They are only like $100 and they will make me feel better. And while I'm online, I should get one of these, and one of these, and a few of these...

Keep up at home

So I've had a bunch of different conversations with my friends recently about how I'm not really good at keep up with my family members, in particular my parents. I was talking to one of my friends from the econ department about how he calls home every day. And he calls his grandma every week. My professor even mentioned the other day how he uses his time walking to and from school to call family members. (This was in response to when I said don't have enough people to call to efficiently use that time. He then asked, "Don't you have like a bazillion family members?")

I've justified my lack of correspondence for a few reasons. My parents have a lot of kids already, and I think that the rest of them are pretty good at calling home. When I was still coming home for Sunday dinners, it seemed the phone was off the hook the whole time I was there with one of my siblings or another. So I didn't think my parents were feeling neglected.

I also justified it because very little happens in my life these days that is different from what happens any other day. I don't know what I would say to my parents even if I did call every day. Yesterday, I woke up, ate breakfast, went on campus, did homework [while watching football], and then went to a classmate's birthday party. I might have watched half-an-episode of Battlestar Gallactica when I got home before I fell asleep. And that was a pretty exciting day. If you subtract the birthday part, that is a pretty accurate description of 80% of my days.

I realized the other day that I had taken this to the extreme though. It was one of those rare days that I had actually called home and was talking to my mother. I needed to ask her a question, so I started, "Mom, remember how I'm going to Germany this summer?"

She responded, "You are going to Germany?"

Whoops! I guess I forgot to tell her that my choir is traveling to Germany in May. "Ah! Remember how I'm in this choir?"

"You are in a choir?"

Whoops again! I only really do three things: school, church, and choir. Somehow I have neglected to tell my mother about 1/3 of my life.

But now she knows, so I guess she is up to date. Sorry about that though Mom. I will try to do better. [Even though I didn't manage to call home today. It became unexpectedly busy from 5-11pm when I would normally (or not so normally) call.]

The dream that you wish...

I get really vivid dreams sometimes. Especially when I'm stressed out about something. It often takes me 5 minutes or so after I wake up for me to identify the parts of my life that are real and the parts that I just dreamed about. I think it is really likely that I'll go absolutely insane in the next 20 years because I stop being able to identify what is my dreams and what is real.

If my dreams were absolutely ridiculous or my life really normal, this would be simple. I remember one time though, I was coming back from a Theater Conference in high school and on the way back, my parents told me that one of our neighbors had hung himself from his basketball hoop. It was perhaps 2am and I was exhausted, so when I woke up the next day, I assumed that I had just dreamed it up. I didn't want to ask though because it could have been an awkward question if it had been just a dream. It wasn't until I got to church and they had a special combined youth meeting about it that I realized it was real.

Most of the time, things aren't quite so dramatic though. I'm starting school tomorrow, and I've been having really long, really boring, and only mildly crazy dreams lately. The most common problem is when I dream that I wake up late or something because then I panic when I actually wake up at 5am and have to exert a huge effort to not jump in the shower right then. I would claim that Inception (A+ by the way) just had a huge impact on me, but I had these sorts of problems long before wind of that move started churning.

Last night, I had a dream that we had a stick in the front yard of my building that would help us tell the weather. Like if it was wet, then it meant it was raining. The stick was named Sally and she was stuck in the ground and dressed in a red dress with white spots. We called her Sally the Stick.

For some reason though, we needed to replace her. We found instead a dark brown two-by-four, dressed him up in a tux, and named him Brock. That meant that we called him Black Block Brock. I remember being so frustrated and how hard it was to say his name that I practiced for a long time till I could say it right.

Then I woke up late for church.

Then I woke up for real 20 minutes before my alarm went off.

Frog in a Pot

I remember being told as a child that if you try to drop a frog in hot water, it will hop out before it dies; if you drop it in cold water and then heat the water up, it will just hang out in there until the water gets too hot and then frog will die. The point was supposed to be about how we don't make bad choice all of a sudden. For instance, if someone offered me a million dollars to kill someone, I wouldn't do it. If they offered me a thousand dollars to kill a rose bush, maybe I would. And then if they offered me 100,000 to kill a dog and then a million to kill a person, maybe that would work.

(Side note: I've always wanted to test this to see if it's true, but no one is ever willing to try it out with me. The frog one. Not the murder one.)

I sometimes get this story mixed up with the one about crabs in a pan. If you put one crab in a pan and start heating it up, the crab runs away; if you put several crabs in a pan, if one tries to run away, the others grab it and pull it back it. As opposed to the other story, this one is supposed to be about fellowshipping I think. Put a bunch of crabs together and they all support eachother getting killed in a pan. Maybe these stories were written by Americans who don't eat frogs but do eat crabs.

I was reminded of these stories because I work in this office which is like the frog pot. When I get there in the morning, it is usually about 80 degrees, so I turn on the AC. After about 30 minutes, I start getting a little cold because it blows right at me, so I turn it off. I usually don't think to turn it on again until someone stops by at 4 or so and points out to me that it is 87 degrees in my office.

I should be getting an office mate any day now, but I don't know that it will help. What if they are a crab and not a frog?