the-rex-files

[the-rex-files]

Can a Pretty Girl Improve Your Vision ?  (Or did I just cheat on my eye exam?)

I just took my annual eye exam, and guess what...my vision has improved!  

I can read a line lower on the standard eye chart than I could on my last exam.  I can think of three possible explanations for this improvement:

1.  I have regenerative powers, such as Wolverine of the X-Men, and my body self-heals.

2,  The clinician who gave me the eye exam was a gorgeous woman.  Therefore, my vision automatically improved just by looking at her.

3.  I may have ‘cheated’ a bit on the eye exam.

I prefer option number 2, but I suspect that choice number 3 may be the real reason.  

First, let me point out that “cheat’ is such a harsh word.  I prefer to say that I took measures to optimize the outcome of my eye exam.  Here’s what I did...

When I could narrow a letter down to a couple alternatives (which I could on the lowest line), I would say things such as:

“That’s an ‘O’, or it could be a ‘D’. “It’s an ‘F’, or maybe it’s a ‘T’. “Oh, that’s a ‘P’, or perhaps an ‘F’.

I suspect that the clinician gave me credit on some of those educated guesses.  I didn’t do this on my last exam, so I didn’t get the benefit of the doubt back then.

Now, is that really cheating?  I mean, I was telling the truth.  But, I was also intentionally trying to game the system.  

Yes, I know that an eye exam is an evaluation for my own benefit, and not a competition.  But the warrior in me really wants to be able to read the lowest line, so perhaps I tend to push the envelope at times when I should not do so?

Or maybe, pretty girls really do improve one’s vision?

#eyes #vision #eye exam

[the-rex-files]

I’m a Stoic and didn’t know it!

Many people have told me that a number of my behaviors fit the Stoic teachings.  I never studied Stoicism, so I found this observation intriguing.  Finally, I started reading the classical writings of ancient Stoics such as Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius.  It’s good stuff, and I recommend it!

The thing I most like about Stoicism is that it seems more like a practical guide to living a good life rather an esoteric and dogmatic way of thinking.  And, yes, I see that many of my behaviors are in line with Stoicism, even though I came to them by traveling my own path.

Perhaps the best way I can talk about Stoicism is by laying out a few key Stoic ideas and sharing how some of my behaviors and thoughts seem to fit each idea.  Okay, let’s get started (I’m going to limited myself to five points so that I can keep this post reasonably succinct):

1.  Practice measured asceticism.

In other words, don’t surround yourself with unnecessary things.  As Thoreau wrote, “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.”  Or, as my dad used to say, “Don’t have two of a thing if one is all you need.  And if you don’t really need the one, then do without it.”

I live what can probably be described as a Spartan life.  I don’t like clutter in my personal life -- it isn’t just unnecessary, it’s harmful because it distracts and generally causes waste and unhappiness.

2.  Be calm by practicing negative visualization.

When something ‘bad’ happens to you, don’t wallow in your misfortune -- instead think about how much worse things could have been (and, indeed, are for others).

For example, a few years ago, I fractured my elbow (I was watching a pretty girl cross the street, and I tripped and fell off one of Houston’s gigantic curbs.  Haha -- serves me right!).  It was mega painful.  However, when I went to the bone doctor’s office, the nurse there asked why I was so upbeat. I told her that I felt very fortunate that it was my left elbow that was broken instead of my right (because I’m right-handed).  It’s all a mater of perspective!

3.  To become comfortable, embrace discomfort.

I know that this seems counter-intuitive, but it’s really simple.  It’s a bit like the Greek idea of “moderation in all things” except carried to the more proactive extent of lowering the necessary threshold for ‘moderation’.

For example, I always set the temperature in my house to as close to the outside temperature as I can reasonably bear.  I don’t do this because I’m a masochist, but because it frees me from fear and excessive avoidance of hot and cold temperatures.  I can leave my house and enjoy the outdoors easily -- I’m not a slave to my house’s air conditioner and heater.  Life is therefore fuller, happier, and more comfortable.

As another example, check out my post, “Waking Up On the Wrong Side of the Bed!” that describes how I switch which side of the bed I sleep on from time to time.  I was not thinking about Stoicism when I wrote that post, but I believe it fits!

4.  Focus on what you can control and ignore what you cannot control.

This is classic Stoicism.  It makes absolute sense, but is seldom seen in actual practice.  

In my life, I tend to put a proactive spin on this idea.  A friend at work reminded me that I’ve often said, “Practice excellence in your current sphere of influence, and you will see that sphere expand.”  In other words, I see ‘control’ as something you can grow if you use your time wisely.  But the trick is to not waste time thrashing on things currently out of your sphere of control.

5.  “Virtue is rewarded with happiness”  -- Epictetus

My mother used to say, “Virtue is it’s own reward.”  Mom was right!  Stoics generally believe in a life guided by the setting of internal goals, and the goals that lead to happiness are those that embrace the virtues.

My favorite virtue is ‘industriousness’.  I wrote a post about it titled, “Yes, I’m a Workaholic...And I’m Happy About It!”  Check out that post (and the great comments) for more information and definitions of ‘virtue’ and ‘happiness’. 

Okay, there you have five ideas of Stoicism.  I could write a lot more about this topic, but I’m going to embrace discomfort and stop with my list of five!

#stoicism #philosophy #lifestyle #self improvement

[the-rex-files]

Who was ‘The Most Beautiful Woman Ever’... Helen of Troy or Tuesday Weld of Dobie Gillis or Dayeon of Neon Punch?

I recently watched ‘Troy: Fall of a City’ on Netflix.  It was a solid series.  However, I know the story so well that it’s difficult to get extremely excited about watching it unfold yet again.  Plus, I always cheer for the Trojans, and they always lose the battle with the Greeks anyway.  Bummer!

One thing I do like about the series is that it shows the mythical origin of how Paris, a prince of Troy, was destined to fall for Helen, 'the most beautiful woman in the world’ who was the wife of King Menelaus of Sparta.

As the myth explains, Paris got roped into judging which of the three beautiful goddesses, Hera, Diana, and Aphrodite, was the fairest.  Each of the goddesses bribed Paris.  Ultimately, Paris chose Aphrodite because she promised him ‘the most beautiful woman in the world’.  Aphrodite did indeed deliver Helen to Paris, and the tragic result was the downfall of Troy.  Ouch!

Well, now I’m putting you in the position of Paris, and asking you to choose ‘The Most Beautiful Woman Ever’ from three candidates.  The contenders are:

********************************************************************************

Helen of Troy

Helen’s beauty credentials are well-known.  Unfortunately, we don’t know a lot about her personality and interests.  However, she was generally described as the most beautiful woman of her time.  The question is whether the next two modern beauties have surpassed her.

Tuesday Weld of Dobie Gillis

My neighbor, Sid, who is in his seventies, nominated American actress, Tuesday Weld, who he describes as ‘the most beautiful woman ever’.  Tuesday Weld became a sensation when she appeared in the first season of the television series, ‘The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis’, which aired in 1959 and 1960.  

I was unfamiliar with Tuesday Weld and Dobie Gillis, so I watched several episodes of the show on YouTube.  Dobie is a slacker who only wants to find a girlfriend and write poetry -- unfortunately, he is a loser at both those things.  Tuesday Weld plays Thalia Menninger, a gorgeous, greedy girl who likes Dobie, but will only tolerate him if he figures out a way to make money.  Haha!

The character Thalia sounds unlikable, right?  Yet, Tuesday Weld plays the character in such a way that she becomes adorable.  My neighbor Sid made a good choice in Tuesday Weld -- she is genuinely magnetic -- everybody else on the screen disappears when Tuesday is in front of the camera.

For a fun episode of the Dobie Gillis television show, check out Season 1, Episode 3, ‘Love is a Science’ on YouTube.

Dayeon of Neon Punch

Dayeon is the leader of the five-member South Korean pop music girl group, Neon Punch.  Neon Punch debuted in the summer with the song ‘Moonlight’.  The group and the song generally caught K-pop fans by surprise -- the group is considered by many to be one of the top K-pop debuts of the year.

It is difficult to select one K-pop idol as the single nominee for ‘the most beautiful woman ever’ because most of the performers in K-pop girl groups are uncannily attractive.  However, I believe Dayeon makes a reasonable representative.  

To see Dayeon in action, check out the Neon Punch video of their debut song, ‘Moonlight’ on YouTube.

******************************************************************************

So, there you have the three contenders for ‘The Most Beautiful Woman Ever’.  Yes, I know that many people consider beauty contests to be ‘politically incorrect’, but I refuse to not write what I was thinking about -- I just can’t control myself!

It is a bit eerie how these three women, from different cultures, look so similar.  I didn’t do that by design.  Of course, I can think of dozens of other candidates, so I guess the mysterious similarity of appearance is a coincidence?

I remember an episode of the original Star Trek television series in which we discover that the infamous serial killer, Jack the Ripper, was really an immortal entity who lives through the eras by possessing people.  Perhaps Helen of Troy exists in the same way, an immortal who possesses different women as she passes through the ages.

If that theory is correct, then it makes perfect sense to me that Helen of Troy would choose to become a Hollywood star in the 1950s and 60s and then a K-pop idol in today’s time.  If that is the case, then all three women in the images above are actually the same woman!

I think I’ll run with the immortal theory of Helen of Troy.  That theory will save me from having to choose a winner from the three candidates.  This is a relief because I don’t want to repeat Paris’ mistake and cause the fall of my hometown!

What do you think of my candidates?

#kpop #beauty #helen of troy #tuesday weld #neon punch

[the-rex-files]

Tumblr vs. Journey for Journaling

[5/5/2018]

I’m testing both Tumblr and Journey for use as my primary journal platform.  Each has it’s strengths and weaknesses, of course.

Tumblr is a free ‘micro-blogging’ platform that has been around for quite a while.  I like Tumblr -  my first social media account was on Tumblr.  Tumblr has a good editor which makes it useful for creating the longer posts I tend to write.  Tumblr also has a good smartphone app.  A Tumblr blog can be password-protected which makes it suitable for a personal blog.  Another Tumblr alternative (the one I’ve chosen) is to select whether a journal entry is private or public at the time of posting.  

Of course, Tumblr is also a bit quirky.  I wrote a blog post on Medium titled “Social Media and Gilligan’s Island” in which I compared the various social media networks to the characters in the old Gilligan’s Island TV series.  In that comparison, Tumblr was Gilligan, “unpredictable and prone to doing wacky things”.  Haha!

It’s not always obvious why Tumblr does things the way it does them.  However, the platform has been around long enough now that lots of earlier quirks have been addressed.  For example, Tumblr has only recently addressed the need to provided a convenient way for people to back-up their Tumblr blogs.  So, all-in-all, Tumblr is mature enough now to easily support my needs for a personal journal.

I researched several journal-specific software apps.  My finalists were Penzu and Journey.  Both have a limited-feature free version with the ability to pay for an upgrade with additional capabilities.  I don’t mind paying for software; however, to justify spending money on a journaling tool, it needs to be clearly better than what Tumblr offers for free.

Both Penzu and Journey have some useful features.  Both likely offer better security than even a password-protected Tumblr account.  I dropped Penzu because the free version was not quite adequate to my needs, and the upgrades require the payment of a monthly subscription fee.

I’m currently testing the free version of Journey, basically duplicating all the posts I write on Tumblr.  Journey has a useful feature that allows the publishing of a journal entry to Facebook -- it basically copies and pastes the Journey entry to Facebook (this feature is also available for publishing a Journey post to Tumblr, but only with a paid upgrade).  The upgrade to Journey requires the payment of a one-time fee only, a much better option than Penzu’s monthly subscription fee.

A problem with Journey is that it’s editor supports only bare-bones plain text.  Markdown is available with a paid upgrade, but even that seems like an unnecessary limitation.  For a writer like me, a decent editor is a basic necessity.  

My sense is that Journey was developed primarily for smartphone use.  It’s smartphone app is handy, and the lack of a good editor is not as obvious on a phone as it is on my PC.  However, I’m sure that I’ll be writing most of my journal entries on my desktop or laptop PC, so Journey’s weak editor is a major shortcoming for me.

I’m going to run with both Journey and Tumblr for a while longer.  I suspect that I will ultimately select Tumblr as my primary journal platform.  I really can’t imagine that I’m going to be using my journal for anything particularly private or sensitive -- it’s more a staging area for in-process ideas.  That kind of use makes Tumblr a better choice for my journal needs than Journey.

However, I will likely retain my Journey account also on the chance that I may occasionally want to write about something that needs more confidentiality protection than what Tumblr provides. I also like Journey's smartphone app, so I may use Journey as a secondary journal to capture quick ideas and musings on the fly using the smartphone app.

You know, it strikes me as strange, but fun, to be using Tumblr, the ‘Gilligan of social media platforms”, for my personal journal! 

#writing #blogging #journal #tumblr #journey

[the-rex-files]

My First Journal Entry

[5/4/2018]

I'm finally starting a journal!

Since I was a boy, I've liked the idea of having a personal journal.  I've even bought notebooks at various times in the past with the intention of starting a journal.  But somehow, I just never actually wrote anything in the notebooks.  I like to write (and I've written hundreds of blog posts over the years), so I'm not sure why it's taken me so long to start this journal.

I suspect that one of the reasons for my reluctance to start a journal is that I've always felt that whatever I write needs to be  'good'.  I suppose that's why most of my blog posts end up being either essays or stories that generally require thought, research, structuring, editing, etc.  I seldom write casual snippets of text about anything.

Writing essays is a good thing, of course.  I really like essays -- it's my favorite form of writing.  However, requiring every single blog post I write to be essay-quality is self-limiting.  It means that lots of potentially valuable ideas and thoughts and observations and musings are lost forever -- I don't record them because I don't have the time or desire yet to turn them into full-blown essays or complete stories.  This is self-limiting!

I remember writing a blog post titled "Why I Suck at Social Media" in which I made essentially this same point.  As I wrote in that post, I suspect that this journal will consist mostly of ideas and drafts for essays.  However, I'm going to try to force myself to also be more relaxed about my writing here so that I am willing to record musings and observations that are unlikely to be essay or story material.

The problem with that goal is that just about everything in life seems to be essay material to me.  Generally speaking, if I'm curious enough about something to write anything at all about it, I automatically think about it in essay-like terms.  It's just my nature, I guess.

For example, the recent Olympics in South Korea caused me to take a look at K-POP music.  Listening to the music made me  think about what I would do to further promote K-POP if I worked in the industry.  So I wrote an essay about that, "A Tale of Two K-POP Girl Groups...(and why we need a film about them!)".  

That K-POP essay, in turn, has made me think about the K-POP industry from a business perspective and how entrepreneurial activity played a role in creating it -- that could be another essay.  And that topic, in turn, has made me think about the nature of creativity and how the Korean 'cultural technology' approach has a lot to say about creativity and talent that is different from the almost-mystical view of creativity and 'born talent' that often seems to dominate in the USA -- that could be another essay.  And so on....

So I guess that  those examples show that, rather than casual musings, most of what I record in this journal will likely be ideas that could turn into essays or stories some day.  And I guess that strikes me as reason enough to have a journal even if I never succeed in becoming more relaxed with it!

Although this is a personal journal, I don’t intend to make everything private.  Fortunately, here on Tumblr, I can choose which entries to make private and which to post publicly at posting time.  Handy!

[And I see that I have a lot of work to do to achieve the 'casual and relaxed' journal concept.  This first entry is essentially essay-like, I fear.  Haha!]

#writing #journal #blogging