Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 699

Cant stand a snob

I learned today that the lack of applause between movements in a classical music performance is a 20th century convention, and it is the result of snobbery.

In Beethoven, Mozart, or Bach's day, applause between movements was standard and expected. But in the early 20th century, arrogant, elitist jackasses began withholding their applause in order to demonstrate their familiarity of the piece. Knowing that the piece was not finished, they would remain silent, waiting for the next movement to...

Great moments in academia: #1

I had three great academic moments in college. 

The first:

I majored in English while in college, with a concentration in creative writing.  My focus was upon fiction, but during my senior year, professor Hank Lewis suggested that I take a poetry class in order to hone my use of sentence structure.  So I did.  Little did I know that I was signing up for an advanced poetry class, full of students who had been reading and writing poetry for the past four years in the same way that I had...

You are probably not real

According to some researchers, there is at least a twenty percent chance that we are currently living in a computer simulation. In fact, if you accept a pretty reasonable assumption of Oxford University's Dr. Nick Bostrom's, it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else's computer simulation.

"This simulation would be similar to the one in The Matrix, in which most humans don't realize that their lives and their world are just illusions created in their brains...

Insecurity

I saw this Botero sculpture in the Time Warner Center in New York City earlier this week. 

"That's quite a situation he has going on," I said to my wife as we passed by.

"Eh," she said.  "I'm not impressed.  I actually don't think that's much of a situation at all."

I wasn't sure if I should feel good about myself or horribly intimidated.  

Never halfway

I was on the elliptical machine last night, watching the Red Sox-Rangers game.  During my forty minute workout, the Sox look pitiful.  The Rangers had already stolen nine bases on knuckleballer Tim Wakefield, who had surrendered a 6-2 lead in the fifth inning. 

I'm a Yankees fan, but that doesn't mean I can't admire certain Red Sox players, and one of those players is Tim Wakefield, who last night passed the great Cy Young for the team's all-time lead in innings pitched. 

Tim Wakefield...

Jerk

I would like to propose a new man rule:

Men don't comment on the state of another man's lawn.

A friend of mine came over the other day and noted that my lawn is getting rather long.  I began to defend myself, explaining that I haven't got the lawn mower out yet and it's the beginning of the season, but then I stopped myself, realizing that only a jackass would comment negatively on another man's lawn. 

What right does any man have critique or insult another man's yard?

Do we criticize...

Justified pride?

Is it wrong that I took so much pleasure in beating my former students and a bunch of teenagers in laser tag this afternoon?  I mean, I crushed them.  In two games of twenty players, I finished first and second.

My shining moment:  After blasting three teenage boys in a row, they turned and fled and I heard the tallest one say, "Damn. That guy is good.  Let's stay away from him."

That was six hours ago and I'm still basking in my glory.   

Movie critique

I caught some of The Hunt for Red October yesterday.  It's a good movie and a better book, but having not seen the film in years, I had some thoughts after watching it again.

1.  Just a little bit of CGI in the last fifteen minutes of the film could really improve the whole damn thing.  Those underwater submarine battle, and especially the torpedoes, look ridiculous.  If they can add a bunch of meaningless CGI to the original Star Wars, couldn't they fix this film up as well? 

2.  Does...

Deception I tell you!

New rule:

Walking in a retail district or downtown area does not constitute a genuine walk.

I can't tell you how many times I have been asked by friends and relatives to join them for a walk, only to realize after it's too late that I have been taken shopping.  Even though we have a perfectly good neighborhood in which to walk, parks in virtually every direction and a reservoir of walking trails and bike paths less than two miles away, I am routinely asked if I would like to go for a walk...

Forgive or else!

I drive by a billboard everyday that reads:

If you do not forgive others, God will not forgive you- Matthew 6:15

Does this strike anyone else as a gun-to-the-head kind of scenario? And is it even true? Though I am hardly an expert, I have always been under the impression that if a Christian asks  God for forgiveness, it shall be granted.

No strings attached.

Apparently not, at least according to this billboard.

What I find more surprising is the thought that this billboard, with its...