The Tao of Sam

Category: Chapters

  • Chapter 96: Muhammed walks into a bar


    The following is a true story. If Dawkins is indeed wrong, I doubt this will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

    Rock It Bar and Grill is an enlightening place to go dressed as Muhammad.

    “Are you serious?”

    I turned to look over my shoulder to find the source of the question. Your standard issue 30-year-old-white-guy-wearing-a-collared-shirt had been opening the door to the bathroom until he saw me. Now he stood with a bemused look of shock on his face.

    “I’m always serious,” I said sternly, throwing a crumpled paper towel into the trash can. Squeezing past him and his goofy grin into the hall, I was pleasantly greeted with another stunning rendition of an early 90’s rap song. After dodging a gothic looking couple making out, I proceeded to the bar to order another drink.

    I was adorned with my best attempt at traditional Arab garb: keffiyeh, Kurdish pants, a canvas colored button up shirt and a pair of sandals no matter what the weather. And, unlike some of the people that were staring at me, I was wearing a smile.

    The reactions non-Arabs gave to my outfit were split perfectly down the middle. Half would laugh out loud and slap their knee at how totally audacious / bodacious I was. The other half would frown disapprovingly and give me a look that said in no uncertain terms: “inappropriate.”

    Dressing up as Muhammad didn’t strike me as any different than dressing up as Jesus or Gandhi. All were important historical figures that changed their regions and the world irreversibly. Though I had told people beforehand that I was attempting to dress like the prophet of Islam, there wasn’t any outward way to tell. While I did a pretty good modern day Arab man (albeit with that whole white thing), in actuality my costume was not only pedestrian but inaccurate; Muhammad likely didn’t even wear a keffiyeh, instead probably wearing a turban. To anyone in the know, I just looked like an Arab.

    That fact might have helped me out in the end. The reaction I got from the small Middle Eastern crowd was universal: wide smiles, handshakes and slaps on the back.

    “Your costume is very authentic, where did you get it from?” said a friendly man with an Arabic accent several years my senior.

    “My dad picked it up in Northern Iraq, Kurdistan.”

    His smile broadened from ear to ear, and with obvious pride in his voice stated, “I … am a Kurd!”

    After a brief exchange where he expounded upon the positive qualities of the present inhabitants of ancient Assyria, I threw out the obligatory “as-salaam alaykum” and caught the usual “walaykum as-salaam” in return.

    I wasn’t making fun of anyone or anything by wearing that outfit. In my head it was just authentic garb worn in an attempt to dress as an important historical figure. Of course, what goes on in my head is often of little relevance to what goes on outside it.

    When someone dresses up as Einstein, there aren’t groups of physicists getting angry because you’re mocking a great man. They just smile and go, “Yep, that’s our guy. Say what you will, but we think he’s pretty great.”

    I wish every group saw it that way.

  • Chapter 95: How to do a Skid Turn

    To almost everyone, driving is the simple pursuit of moving yourself efficiently from point A to point B. However, to a select few, driving is a matter of life and death where precious seconds can make a crucial difference.

    Before starting, make sure that:

    • The road is clear and free of obstacles such as cars, children, animals, etc.
    • You are traveling at a reasonably safe speed.
    • The car has a manual transmission with a handle-style emergency brake
    • Your left hand is on the wheel, right hand on the emergency brake, with feet on the gas and clutch.
    • You are not driving an SUV, van or for the love of god a vehicle carrying a trailer.

    To properly execute a moving skid turn, execute the following steps.

    1. Cut the wheel slightly in the direction you wish to turn.
    2. Pull the emergency brake slightly to initiate the skid of the back wheels.
    3. Point the wheels in the direction you want to go, counteracting the skid direction.
    4. Once the skid is initiated and the car is in a sideways motion, release the emergency brake.
    5. Accelerate quickly in the direction of choice, always pointing the wheel in the direction of the intended motion.

    The steps required to execute a well timed skid turn are simple, but much practice is required to get the proper timing. Also, the feel of your car when it’s moving in a direction other than where you are facing is novel and scary at first, but eventually becomes natural, even commonplace.

    As a final aside, frequent skid turn use will cause side to side wear on tires, requiring more frequent replacement.

  • Chapter 94: Getting philosophical with DJ Dills

    Three and a half years ago I took part in my first radio telethon. The goal was to talk for about 1/3 of my hour and a half long show and solicit those sad and lonely college radio listeners into giving money to the station. I got pretty emotional as it approached the end of my show (5am), but I like to think I made a difference, if even in a small way.

    Unprepared? Slightly. Awkward? More than a bit. In any event, I enjoy the sound of my own high pitched radio voice so much that I hope you do too.

    powered by ODEO

    For the record, I stopped being scared of the mic. This made me quite a bit more toolish, but better. Just putting that out there.

    Original air date: 4/08/2003

  • Chapter 93: Why I go on so many dates

    Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.
    – Carl Sagan

    The rules are simple: always at noon, and never decide the location until you’re standing outside. The former provides structure to what would otherwise be perfectly structureless days, and the latter gives people a chance to light a cigarette while we stand around and debate where we want to eat lunch. This specific day we wandered towards a small sandwich shop owned by the most enjoyable disgruntled man in Virginia.

    As I picked up my sandwich from the counter, I caught the eye of a cute girl standing in line. There are lots of disparate groups working in the area around the Patent Office, most of them being miscellaneous professional organizations like law firms. She was dressed professionally but was around my age, and gave me a slightly hesitant but warm closed lipped smile. I smiled back and went to make quick work of my sandwich.

    Observation. A constant feature of scientific inquiry.

    Several days later, at a different local eatery, wearing the same pair of pants (I need to go shopping), I saw her starting to walk out just as I had opened to door to walk in. I held the door for her and she smiled warmly and said thanks, looking at me just a little bit longer than is strictly necessary.

    Description. Information must be reliable, i.e., replicable (repeatable) as well as valid (relevant to the inquiry).

    There aren’t a lot of women that work in the same part of the Patent office as I do. It seems computer architecture isn’t that attractive to the fairer sex, so I end up spending a lot of time surrounded by a rag tag band of engineers, nerds and wannabe lawyers. This is normally my absolute cup of tea, but sometimes it’s nice to be around … you know … women.

    The following Thursday I was wearing a different set of pants, I had exact change, and just as I walked over to grab my drink from the cooler I spotted her deliberating on the chip selection. She turned as I walked up, I gave a friendly “hi”, and she returned the favor. “Salt and Vinegar is by far the best,” I posited. She furrowed her brow, thought for a couple seconds, then picked the bag up. “I guess we’ll see,” she said with twinkly eyes.

    Prediction. Information must be valid for observations past, present, and future of given phenomena, i.e., purported “one shot” phenomena do not give rise to the capability to predict, nor to the ability to repeat an experiment.

    The oft-repeated problem with women (or men, depending on how you look at it) is that it’s almost impossible for a man to determine if a woman likes him. This gets harder the more technical your degree is, as you brain has wired itself to the complicated pursuits of circuit design, recursive function debugging and pointer arithmetic. To suddenly switch tasks back into detecting subtle variations in audio frequency distributions emitted by members of the opposite sex proves beyond most men’s capabilities.

    This applies to most men, but not all men. I’m a scientist, after all.

    Control. Actively and fairly sampling the range of possible occurrences, whenever possible and proper, as opposed to the passive acceptance of opportunistic data, is the best way to control or counterbalance the risk of empirical bias.

    I had picked up several non-verbal clues as to what the girl-from-the-local-eateries was thinking, but not quite enough to strictly differentiate between the two obvious possibilities: she could just be friendly, or she could want me. Until I have definitive proof one way or another, I have two possible default strategies to take. One, to assume friendly until proven interested. Two, to assume interested until proven friendly.

    Deciding on a default strategy in this case comes down to weighing between the two types of statistical errors that can happen. Type I errors (false positives) are when you incorrectly label someone guilty when they are innocent, and Type II errors (false negatives) are when you fail to label someone guilty when they really are guilty. If I assume the girl is friendly, I eliminate the possibility of committing a Type I error but I open myself up to the possibility of a Type II error.

    Falsifiability, or the elimination of plausible alternatives. This is a gradual process that requires repeated experiments by multiple researchers who must be able to replicate results in order to corroborate them.

    In the ideal criminal justice system they’ve made the decision to place the burdan of proof on the prosecution so as to prevent innocent people from being convicted of crimes they did not commit. This is a case of the negative consequences of a Type I error outweighing those of a Type II. In every case, a Type I error is caused when an action is taken due to a false conclusion, and a Type II error is an action NOT taken due to a false conclusion. Every statistics class I’ve ever had has drilled into my head that Type I errors are the devil, and that Type II errors are what you laboriously add certainty to your conclusions to avoid.

    Accordingly, I assume she’s friendly. I commit to collecting more data.

    Causal explanation. Many scientists and theorists on scientific method argue that concepts of causality are not obligatory to science, but are in fact well-defined only under particular, admittedly widespread conditions.

    It was several weeks before I saw her again, and when I did she was sitting at a two person table with (in my heterosexual opinion) a very attractive professional looking man. She was recounting some story in a slightly southern accent. From my own observations I’ve found southern girls to be unabashed extroverts when it comes to friendliness. They seem to operate under a default strategy of assuming people are good until they are proven evil.

    At least the South understands Type I errors.

    Sciencey bits from Wikipedia.

    It seems that evolutionary biology and the Economist disagree with my rationale.

  • Chapter 92: Lost myyyy virginity

    It was in front of the Masonic Memorial. On the grass. Looking out onto Old Town Alexandria. The sun was shining and the sky was blueing itself all over the place. Something like 1:30 on a Monday afternoon. That’s when it happened.

    That’s when I realized I was walking like I had just lost my virginity.

    You know the walk. Hands in your pockets. Kicking your heels out. Eyes slightly squinted with the hint of a smile. None of that head drooping kids stuff, your neck is as straight as Travolta claims to be. As tall as Chase for once in your god damn life.

    It’s to be understood that this walk is not strictly associated with the loss of a V-card. It’s a metaphorical walk. Many who lose their virginity do not walk this way; the act is rarely associated with the world altering level of testosterone that is implied by the stride I was taking that afternoon.

    This is a Mandy the head cheerleader walk.

    The Patent Office keeps you as a probationary “fire-at-will” employee for a year. I started working at the PTO on September 19th, 2005. Today is Tuesday, September 19th. Yesterday morning I walked into my old bosses’ office with a firm handshake and a question.

    I got retained. And I feel fucking great.