To the Minotaur that lives above me.

SLIGHTLY DISGRUNTLED DIRT: nevermind

Looking for my SOLE-mate

Dear Parents of Employed Teenagers

HENCHMEN NEEDED

Autographed copy of the Bible - $1,000,000,000 OBO

Ferocious Attack Kitten

Fill My Valence Electron Shell

Nemesis required. 6-month project with possibilty to extend

Flying Carpet

For those of you concerned about the financial fallout of the failed bailout plan, and the “biggest single day drop in the history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average”, I thought I would share a little bit of research on the topic.

Monday’s (Sep 29, 2008) 777.68 point drop was the biggest numeric drop in the history, but it isn’t anywhere near the biggest single-day percentage drop, which is much more significant and investment is made by percentage instead of plain numeric value. This drop was 6.98%, 18th on the list of highest percentage drops.

Historical Losses:

The number one drop was 24.39% on December 12, 1914, the first day the market was open after the start of World War I. On October 12, 1987, the market declined by 22.61%, and the two-day stock market crash of 1929 saw consecutive 12.82% and 11.73% declines, ushering in the Great Depression. September 11, 2001 is far down at number 15, with only a 7.13% loss.

Due to the effects of percentage changes in general upward trends, the DJIA increased from 54 points after the 1914 crash, to 230 in 1929 and 1,739 in 1987, to today’s 10,850. In essence, the 777.68-point drop was only 7%, but the number was far bigger than the entire DJIA total of 1914 or 1929. Had those years lost 100% of financial value, it wouldn’t have come close to the recent numeric total, but it would have been far more serious (and was, at 20+%), destroying the financial circumstances of most people invested in the stock market.

Also take note: the DJIA increased by nearly 500 points the next day (Sep 30), salvaging much of the losses.

Also note that if the stock market drops more than 10%, trading is halted automatically (due to the 1987 crash), and this did not nearly come to pass in the recent drop. Our country is really relatively financially sound relative to past national crises.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_daily_changes_in_the_Dow_Jones_Industrial_Average
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trading_curb

For those who were curious, and everybody else, too.

Standard Myers-Briggs (ignore the “programmers” label; it’s irrelevant)
http://www.eggheadcafe.com/articles/mb/default.asp

Functions Test (especially for people with close numbers on the first test)
http://www.cognitiveprocesses.com/assessment/develop_old.html

It’ll take time to think, but it’s highly recommended. Both websites (and the cognitiveprocesses.com website) provide lots of detailed information to help understand your results. You should also post your results here, if possible, to share with the rest of us! Andrew and I can also help interpret results.

It had been a grueling day. As always, the crowds were tight, pressing in on them from every side, always trying to touch the Teacher, have their questions answered, or just be near him for a moment. The sun had been beating down right from the start, heating up oppressively muggy air. Needless to say, they were all exhausted, and when he suggested getting in the boats and sailing across the sea, there wasn’t a man opposed.

Many of them were fishermen by trade, and an afternoon sail could be very therapeutic. After all, they loved the sea: no more smelly, sweaty crowds, the freedom to cruise on the wind, to be in touch with nature, relaxing in peace and quiet. Sure there was some work involved, and one had to keep track of the weather, but the job was so contrary in nature to the constant interpersonal dealings of late – a welcome change.

So they set out. It didn’t take long for the crowds to dwindle from view. The landscape was spread out behind them, the water inviting them ahead. Noses filled with a watery breeze, and minds relaxed. Jesus soon fell asleep on a cushion in the stern. And who could blame him? There was clearly no bigger celebrity at the time, and even when he wished for a break he had to go out of his way to find a forgotten garden or the like in which to pray.

“It looks like we’re in for some rougher weather,” noted Andrew, glancing north at a quickly forming collection of dark clouds. “Might as well be prepared for the worst. You know how temperamental this lake can be.”

Sure enough, in only a manner of minutes, the sky grew dark, and rain began to fall. The fishermen set about their business, keeping their craft cruising along as if nothing was happening. The wind kicked up and the water became choppy. Waves began to grow, thrashing the boat from side to side.

“It’s getting rough!” called a fellow sailor from a nearby boat. A wave crashed over the side, soaking him through. “Hold on tight!”

They were hit by a squall. Sails were slackened, oars lengthened. Waves tossed the boats, nearly flipping them. Veteran sailors as they were, it was all they could do to keep from capsizing. Every moment the storm grew worse and worse; the boats began to fill with water. Andrew glanced back, amazed that Jesus could possibly still be sleeping.

“Help!” yelled John, a wave trying to pull him overboard. James grabbed his arm to hold him in, clinging to the bench with his legs.

“We can’t hold out much longer!”

They all knew it. Many of the best fishermen had been lost in the sea in storms calmer than this. Frantically they clung on for dear life, fighting the tossing of the boat. Miraculously, Jesus was still sleeping. There was no time for that now! They needed his help to try to keep the boat upright. Peter crawled back, clutching the sides of the boat as he went.
“Jesus! You’ve got to wake up! Teacher! Don’t you care if we drown?” he yelled into the wind.

Jesus stood up, looked around him, raised his arms, and commanded the wind and the waves in a stern voice. “Peace! Be still!”

It stopped.

The wind stopped blowing; not even a breeze remained. Andrew, who had been clinging for his life in the face of a wave about to crash over him, found the wave flattened, still – it completely ceased to exist. James, having been keeping John attached to the boat with his fist, was so astonished that he forgot what he was doing and dropped John into the suddenly glassy water, and John, too, was so surprised that when James dropped him, he forgot to grab on to the boat’s now-stationary side.

Jesus looked at them and shook his head in disappointment. “Why are you so afraid? Where is your faith?” he said, returning to his cushion in the stern.

The disciples marveled. “Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him!”

(This story is courtesy of Mark 4:35-41, Luke 8:22-25, and Matthew 8:23-27.)

Several of you noticed my non-consumption of alcohol at Johanna’s recent cocktail party (which, by the way, I found quite enjoyable: thank you Johanna for inviting me!). To answer your questions as to why I don’t drink, I share the following.

I have never drunk a drop of alcohol in my life. My parents don’t drink (as neither of them like the taste or cost of alcohol), and so that rubs off on me. To put it simply, I have no desire to drink.

I’m not morally opposed to it. I’ve never tried it. There just isn’t any desire at all. It’s entirely possible that I will drink at some point in my life, though I see no reason for it.

Incidentally, there have been a few alcoholics in my family, including one of my mom’s brothers and her uncle. For that reason, another of her brothers does not drink. Though I could use that as an excuse, I don’t; it means very little to me, and doesn’t influence my decision, as far as I can tell.

Since I have neither desire nor aversion to alcohol, I also look at it from a rather intellectual standpoint, e.g. evaluating pros and cons of drinking:

Cons:

1. Drinking alcohol is illegal when under the age of 21; hence, that was my primary reason until about a year ago when I turned said age.
2. Alcohol often tends to have odd effects on people, commonly enhancing negative attributes. Influenced individuals say things they normally wouldn’t say, do things they normally wouldn’t do, etc.
3. I have been told that alcohol clouds your thinking and messes with your senses. Since I am quite fond of both my thinking and my senses, I prefer to keep them as they are.
4. Though drinking is not wrong, getting drunk clearly is.
5. People who get drunk tend to have rather severely consequences the morning after.
6. I don’t like the smell of alcohol. It makes me queasy. (I didn’t notice any such smell at the cocktail party.)

Pros:

1. It’s a social thing. Lots of people do it. Of course, I can be quite happy hanging out with people who are drinking while myself not partaking, as at the aforementioned cocktail party with that ridiculously strong non-alcoholic fruity drink Keith mixed for me.
2. I have heard that there are some health benefits to drinking a limited amount of alcohol (wine, at least).
3. Apparently the process of sobering up feels good. If you can explain this, please do.
4. Based on the funny bartending book Lauren was reading and conversations I’ve overheard, it sounds like mixing drinks would be quite a lot of fun.

Now that I’ve said all that, feel free to try to persuade me in any direction you may like. Why do you, or don’t you, drink?

PS: Feel free to invite me out with you for a drink. I won’t have any alcohol, but I’ll gladly spend time with you. I think water is my favorite liquid, though apple juice is up there.

PPS: If you think I’m weird for not drinking alcohol: I don’t drink soda either.

PPPS: For those who were curious, I did weigh myself, at your request, on that bathroom scale. I was just under 125.

Gulliver’s Travels, Part II, was an interesting sequel to Part I; rather than Gulliver’s giantness with the Lilliputians, he is of Lilliputian size to the inhabitants of Brobdingnag, and everything else is large to match the inhabitants. I suppose in a sense Gulliver learned how it felt to be a Lilliputian in his presence, or rather, how a Lilliputian would feel among the peoples of Europe.

Gulliver’s Travels certainly alters my view of the world, in a rather odd way. After reading of the smallness of the Lilliputians, I began to imagine similarly small visitors to my room, and felt a giant living in a world of giants in which some small people also roam. Then, upon reading of Gulliver’s travels in Brobdingnag, the giant’s land, I felt small in a sense, though it was much harder to imagine people of so great a size than it was to imagine them little, and hence my mind pretended that Gulliver came to visit me, with myself as a giant. How it twists my mind!

One fascinating point in the latter part was a giant’s book that Gulliver read which talked about the possibility, in fact the philosophical necessity, of the past existence of giants, a larger form of humanity less fragile compared to the world. Of course, this implies giants larger than the ones with which Gulliver was presently residing, and also explained the current giants from the point of view of Gulliver’s European homeland.

Could there be infinitely more giants, each set greater in size than the previous, yet somehow no race found by any of the others, excepting the case of Gulliver? Presumably it might go the other way, with smaller and smaller versions of humanity.

Suppose this was true, and that the country of each race was larger or smaller proportionally, as Gulliver had experienced. Each race would feel inferior, weak in regard to its environment and thus postulate the existence of giants. Could this not support the notion that humanity was meant to be in the proportion to its environment as it is, and that there is some reason behind that, since it would be so in each race of giants, giant giants, Lilliputians, and mini-Lilliputians? What a thought!

Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift begins with Captain Gulliver’s tale of how the year 1699 found him shipwrecked onto the island of the kingdom of Lulliput, home to humans beings no more than six inches in height. When describing Lilliput, Gulliver notes the following:

In choosing persons for all employments, they have more regard to good morals than to great abilities; for, since government is necessary to mankind, they believe that the common size of human understandings is fitted to some station or other; and that Providence never intended to make the management of public affairs a mystery, to be comprehended only by a few persons of sublime genius, of which there seldom are three born in an age: but they suppose truth, justice, temperance, and the like, to be in every man’s power; the practice of which virtues, assisted by experience and good intention, would qualify any man for the service of his country, except where a course of study is required. But they thought the want of moral virtues was so far from being supplied by superior endowments of the minds, that employments could never be put in such dangerous hands as those of persons so qualified; and at least, that the mistakes committed by ignorance in a virtuous disposition would never be of such fatal consequence to the public weal, as the practices of a man whose inclinations led him to be corrupt, and had great abilities to manage, to multiply, and defend his corruptions.

A novel idea, indeed! That employment should be based on moral integrity at the expense of intellectual ability is an idea completely foreign to the American system: quite its opposite, in fact. The key to successful society in the eyes of a Lilliputian is an unwavering standard that brings out the best in all participants. This view suggests that all men are capable of doing pretty much anything, and that it is more important for a person to have values than qualifications. What would this world be like if it were run in such a way?