mandarine

Charlotte says that the Queen o’ Memes might have me beheaded if I did not obey the tagging. So here are seven weird things (picked almost at random) about me.

I hardly ever get angry. This is generally a great asset when working with children (including my own progeny), as I can very well act angry and adapt my apparent anger to the situation long before I actually lose my temper. However, I am not 100% anger-proof. I remember losing my temper once on my youngest nephew (who is a worldwide specialist at turning apparently sane people into howling harpies). I was probably the scareder of the two, as I am not myself used to being angry (while he is used to people being angry at him). Next time, as soon as I feel the slightest urge to start yelling, I’ll run for the door.

I hardly ever get emotional. I’ve seen people cry when parting, cry at weddings, cry at the end of a movie, cry when cross. I can’t do that. Sometimes I wonder whether I would cry if someone dearest to me died. The closest I get to crying is with the second movement of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony (the part where the orchestra plays a whole phrase on a single chord), or the flute & cello duet in Dvorák’s Cello Concerto. If you could mix such music with a convincing political speech, a good plea, or a brilliant logical demonstration, you might see me cry.

I never feel hungry. I have already written about this in my article about fasting. This was a new (re)discovery at the time. I have repeatedly checked this fact since then, and I am positive: I can skip dinner and then breakfast, and eat only a salad for lunch, and still my body does not complain, and I am not running towards the fridge. I tend to check more often if there’s chocolate left, though.

I am a sluggish driver. When I was nineteen, on the morning I took my driving test, there had been an ice storm. The whole region was glistening under a 5mm slippery icing. I took my test nonetheless, but it was too slippery to go beyond second gear (yes, I can handle a stick-shift). That’s lucky, because the examiner would have seen how slow a driver I am. And the older I get, the slower I go. In the early years, I had my eyes on the meter to make sure the needle was always exactly superimposed with the speed limit, just as if I was landing an aircraft. This was a dangerous driving habit, as it would occupy my eyes, brains and foot just to ensure a very stiff cruise control function. But it made for an average speed at least 20% below that of fellow French drivers. With the introduction of automated speed cameras, French driving habits have changed dramatically, and the average speed has sharply declined. And so has mine, now a good 20 km/h below the speed limit. I do 110 kph on a motorway, and hardly 70 kph on a straight country road. On the winding roads around where I live, I am seldom above 50 kph. And this driving is so soothing that I find myself slowing down insensibly. Until my co-pilot tells me that she’d be there faster walking.

I am an early riser. I love to be up a 6 in the morning, and have two whole hours to myself while everybody else is still asleep. Unfortunately, I do need a lot of sleep. For me, the ideal night is 9:30 - 6:00. Knowing that the kid is seldom asleep before 9:00, that does not leave a lot of “big people’s time”. The other handicap is that I cannot sleep late. If I go to bed at 2:00, all I will have is four miserable hours of sleep. Maybe that’s a reason why I hate parties.

My brain is on constant overdrive. Everything in life is a puzzle that I must solve, a phenomenon I must explain, a mental note I must take. I have a thousand ideas a day, most of which are plain stupid. You can find the funniest absurd ideas there. Occasionally, there is a nugget which makes it to ‘good idea’ status. The problem is: where I work, people want me to file patents on some of these ideas; turning an idea into a patent is akin to dissecting an eyeball: it loses much of its appeal.

I am a master in casuistic reasoning. I could probably be a lawyer, as I am always very good at playing Devil’s advocate. It takes a forewarned public not to think me a dangerous extremist when I pull the yarn of some twisted logical reasoning. There are always two sides to one truth, and you can count on me for finding the other side.

To wrap things up

I am a cold-blooded, heartless, ascetic, slow, antisocial, raving, and immoral freak. You’re lucky I do not live down your street (but can you be sure of that?)

I hereby declare the 2008 hammock season officially Open.

More of the same (but more funny) at icanhascheezburger.com

Warning: I could not resist a little doom and gloom.

When we are burning fossil fuels, we only see the environmental impact. There is supposed to be a Kyoto quota, and when we consume more, we feel some sort of hypothetical environmental guilt regarding global warming. The concept of future generations is very abstract, and very uncertain, and it does not make for easy arbitrations in everyday’s life.

Digression on market, non-renewables and future generations

As a side-note, just note that market price is fixed just with today’s supply-demand balance. Future generations cannot stake claims on today’s market, while today’s sales will deprive them of their share. Imagine a group of ten friends camping together in the wilderness, with so much tea for breakfast. Four early-risers sit down for breakfast at sunrise, and drink as much tea as they wish. Four others wake up later, find that there is only tea left for three. Two of them agree to drink just half a mug each in exchange of cookies from the other two. The two late-risers get nothing. Had we placed all ten together with the global tea and cookie problem, the share would have been quite different.

For non-renewables, day-to-day supply-demand market rules are a total nonsense.

An unfair negotiation

But let’s not consider future generations. Let’s just focus on today’s market. What does the price of fuel reflect? It reflects the market and the law of supply and demand of today. The more people want fuel now, the higher the price will get.

I want fuel. Fuel price rises. I can afford it. I pay my fuel. Why should I feel guilty of burning it? Because a sky-high price is just a way of saying that somebody else forsook their expected share of today’s fuel supply. It would be OK if it were my retired neighbor in the same affluent neighborhood who said: “OK, you need to drive to work, I will stay at home instead of going fishing, so you can have my share of today’s gas”. But it is not like this. The negotiation power on a market is money, not importance. Therefore, the final share will not reflect an arbitration in terms of what’s more important to humans considered equals (e.g. trading comfort uses for vital ones), and the rich will always get more of the share, however futile their intentions.

Economic theory says that the rich will pay more, therefore get poorer, while the poor save money by not buying the stuff, therefore things even-out in the end. This is only true if the rich do not get richer with what they get to do with the stuff. And if the poor do not starve before that. Because in the meantime, rising gas prices are also pushing food prices upwards.

In a world of scarce resources in which the power scales are already all the way to our side, something has to break somewhere if we want more for us. Whenever I drive my car for a week-end excursion, whenever I turn heating on, whenever I eat a juicy steak, I can only do this because someone else forsook their share of today’s driving to work, their share of today’s stove, their share of today’s food.

My macabre illustration

Imagine yourself and a small child fighting over a blanket while camping out in a blizzard. The colder it gets, the harder you have to pull to keep warm and cosy. You have more strength, therefore you get more of the blanket, although you do not need it as much as the kid does. At some point, the child is too weak and lets go of the blanket altogether. This is called price elasticity in an unfair market.