I'm off to my 10 year college reunion. One day I will have to sing the praises of my Alma Mater - a truly great institution. Let's see if I feel that way on Monday :-)

Until then, I have a reading assignment for you. If you are interested in the value of our civilization at all (heh), take a read of Bill Whittle's latest essay, Santuary. And don't miss Part 2, either. Great stuff!

Metaphors are tricky. People who use them often take them too far, seeming to use the metaphor to convince themselves of their thoery, rather than using a more apt metaphor, or at least cutting it off. I personally don't use metaphors much, both because it is difficult to come up with an apt metaphor, and because they can be extremely boring to a reader. I prefer direct statements. Statements that sway the readers' opinion like a tsumani of persuasive facts created by an earthquake of revelation.

You see what I mean?

Well, it appears that one can become a major executive at PepsiCo, and land a commencement speech at Columbia Business School, without learning this lesson. Ms. Indra Nooyi, President and CFO, PepsiCo, used a very overextended metaphor during here speech, located here.

The remarks themselves are bad enough, and lots of bloggers have been flogging the speech. But the real danger in the overextended metaphor is that Lileks will get a hold of you. Lileks knows how to write great metaphors (in fact I have him listed as Best Metaphors on the Net), and he knows how to take someone down a notch. For a good laugh at Ms. Nooyi's expense, check it out.

Ah well. How embarrassing! Anyway, have a drink on me: Fill glass with ice. Add Mt. Gay or other decent brown rum (not coconut). Fill with tonic water. Add fresh sprig of mint, preferably from your garden. Welcome, spring.

I was reading a funny science article about the evolutionary reasons for women's orgasms in the NYT (hat tip Ed Cone via Puppy Blender). It's funny because one of the researchers is named Dr. Alcock, but also because these scientists are kind of clueless. I mean, they are smart scientists I am sure, and I am an ignorant bastard, but I think I can handle this one.

A lot of people use pretty cloudy logic when speculating on reasons for evolution. Whether they think it happens in one generation, or happens for aesthetic reasons (rather than procreative) or because a feature just makes sense (rather than improving survival chances), they have the wrong idea. The scientists in the article of course are way beyond this, and focus on how orgasms could potentially contribute to improving the chances of survival/procreation for women. I point out the flaw that many people don't use the survival criteria to show that I understand it and won't be making the same mistake here. I hope.

So let's answer the question. How does having an orgasm improve a woman's likelihood of survival/procreation? I believe there are two pretty straightforward reasons. First, women who orgasm more are more likely to enjoy sex and therefore engage in it more often. From the evolutionary standpoint, that increases the chance of procreation. Second, women who orgasm more often are more fun for men, improving the chance that a desirable man will have sex with the woman more often and perhaps stick around a while afterwards. This increases her chances for survival and procreation, an evolutionary two-fer.

From the article, it doesn't sound like the researcher, Dr. Lloyd, considered these possibilities. Given their obvious truth, it's a little perplexing to me. Maybe I just have a better perspective than the good doctor (does she not know men don't like to sleep with cold fish?). In any case, it's my pleasure to provide the solution, saving her perhaps years of frustrating research.

I should remark that while my solutions make sense from an evolutionary standpoint, they no longer apply. Our society has mixed things up so that evolution no longer directs survival and procreation. That's a morally neutral fact, reflecting the evolution of society rather than man. We just need to recognize that things are different now. For example, women who enjoy sex more and have it more often now are likely to practice "safe sex", making it less likely they will procreate. Men and women who have multitudes of partners are now considered undesirable for mating. Deadly diseases further dissuade "free love". And, of course, the survival skills that made for success in the "old days", such as hunting or fighting, have been replaced with skills that are more reliant on education and brain-power, such as making money and holding down a good job.

In short, while evolution may influence a woman to fantasize about a construction worker, they only want to marry him if he is inheriting a million dollars. I'm sure the good doctor can get another research grant out of that.

UPDATE: If you thought that was a bit pretentious, remember, it is ironic pretention. For an example of painfully ridiculous pretension, go party with the Magician. Had enough? No? Need a little R&R?

It's so bad, I'm actually embarrassed for him. Hat tip to Paul Phillips.

UPDATE: I've very sorry to report news that Stan Wabisky has passed away. I don't have any links. I don't yet know the cause of death.

I can say that given the opportunity, I picked on Stan as any friend of an older brother would be expected to. Stan was a pretty good sport, only crying for him mammy a couple times per day.

Then, Stan became a teenager and developed his own sort of hippy persona. He was a kind and laid back person, so I can't say it didn't suit him. That's about where I lost track of him, when he was probably a sophomore in High School and I left for college.

John, if you are reading this, I am very sorry to hear this terrible news. Too many people from our small towns have died young.

Back to regular programming (written yesterday):

A lot of current issues in the world center on religion. The "War on Terrorism" is a war on extremist violence, which is almost always rooted in religion (right now, Islamist violence). Israelis vs. (Palestinian) Arabs is both racial and religious, as is most of the violence in Africa (also largely about power there). And of course here in the USA, we've had huge reaction to the new Pope and the rising of the "Religious Right", among other things.

So, while I don't have much problem picking sides in some of the conflicts - I uniformly oppose extremists and especially violent anti-freedom types - in many others I am unattached. With all the news about the pope, I just thought, who really cares? In fact, many people actually care. But I don't.

See, God never really caught on with me. I went to church as a youngin', and was otherwise exposed to religion, but I can't say I've ever actually believed any of it. Even as a 9 and 10 year old, I would "get sick" on Sunday mornings. While there are some very good orators, your run-of-the-mill sermon sounds more like an infomercial than an affirmation of spritual beliefs. Tithing does nothing to abate this feeling.

In my late high school and early college years, I went through a deeper introspection and contemplation of such things, and became somewhat of an active atheist. That is, I tried to proselytize non-religion, using logic and other arguments to try to convince people not to be religious. I am sure I was quite annoying and amusing. I tried to always be courteous, but I can't say I was persuasive.

That didn't last long, and once I was comfortable with my own beliefs, or non-beliefs as they were, I stopped really discussing it. What was the point? I resolved the Big Questions for myself, and there didn't seem much point in trying to convince others my answers were "right." They were just mine.

Little did I know that I actually converted to Apatheism. I even married a fellow Apatheist. And, who cares? Whatever.

It does kind of rule out being President, though. But I knew that when I was 10.

Well that was unexpected. On Friday I found out about a festival in my home Greenbelt. It was the Green Man Festival, a sort of hippy Earth-centric music and entertainment gathering. There was drum music, singer/song writers baring their souls, and some cool merchandise for sale.

When I found out about the festival, I sensed an opportunity and emailed the coordinator. She was nice enough to allow me to sign up on the spot. Opportunity knocks!

So Saturday morning I woke fairly early and organized the shoes for sale. Instead of loading tons of shoes, for this one I travelled light - just what could fit in my Cabrio. As I have detailed before, this is quite a lot. I got 3 tables, 2 chairs, about 200 pairs of shoes, signs, gear, and pop up tent all loaded for a single trip. Being that Roosevelt Center is about 400 yards from my house, it's not a long one.

Organizing shoes is a lot more difficult that it would seem. We have about 35 styles. For about 10 or 15 of them, we only have a few so I just bring them all. For the others, I need to go through big boxes and locate one or two of each size until I have a full selection from size 5 to 10, with a few extras of the likely sellers. That's 20 or so styles, and all the while I am bending at the waist to locate the shoes and then stuff them into the correct bin (coded using photos of the shoes). Since I only have 8 bins going, many bins contain several styles.

I decided to discount the shoes 25% for the Greenbelt/Green Man discount. Hippies are notoriously price conscious, but $15 for a stylish pair of sandals is damn near irresistable. I knew it was a good deal when a homeless person bought a pair!

The show itself was quite satisfactory. While the turnout was probably less than 500, our sale penetration was much better than at Ocean City. By the end we had worked about 15 hours and sold 50 shoes - quite good considering the small audience.

Some of the credit goes to our developing sense of salesmanship, both in preparing the tables and in interacting with the customers. For a keenly interested shopper, the shoes essentially sell themselves. But for the other 95% of customers, a little encouragement is required. This ranges from simply showing the differences among the shoes (heel vs. flats, colors, etc.) to making recommendations based on their requirements (desires, discomforts, and feedback). I am quite sure that without my efforts, we would have sold far fewer shoes. It's not an overstatement to say that we really need to work for each sale.

That revelation is very important for the web site. We need to figure out how to make the relevant information, such as stylistic differences and cross-recommendations, available and obvious at the right points in the shopping experience. This is no small task, but our success in that task will have a great impact on our overall success. This is the hard part, and where (hopefully) my skills and analysis will result in good solutions.

I also played some poker Saturday night, winning about $115. So between selling and playing poker, it turned out to be a nice little boost to our checking account - just in time after the debacle in Ocean City.