Korbel
New Year’s champagne.
New Year’s champagne.
Notice the super narrow depth of field. Thanks for the new lens, Mykala! It’s a Canon 50mm f/1.8.
Very few folks are getting enough sleep, that’s certainly clear. There are different ways to cope with chronic tiredness, though the time pressure in most jobs (anything from studenthood to parenthood to careerhood) is rather intense. It’s interesting to see how the Japanese culture has adapted:
Napping at work isn’t acceptable in the UK, but in Japan dozing anywhere from Parliament to business meetings is allowed. It’s called inemuri, which literally means “to be asleep while present”.
The custom is partly a result of how commitment to a job is judged in Japan, says Dr Brigitte Steger. Inemuri is viewed as exhaustion from working hard and sacrificing sleep at night. Many people fake it to look committed to their job.
It’s a concept that seems bizarre in the UK but the Japanese are the ones who’ve got it right, says Dr Stanley.
“The Japanese are right in their assessment that you work better after a nap than before it. There’s a degree of machismo about it, you’re saying look how hard I’ve worked. But that’s better than the macho rituals we have over here, like how late you can send a work email to prove how long you’ve been working.”
Strict rules apply to inemuri. These include who is allowed to do it - only those high up or low down in a company - and how you do it - remain upright to show you are still socially engaged in some way.
“The rules are written nowhere but everyone knows them, they learn them culturally,” says Dr Steger.
Given the classic siesta, traditionally practiced by those in “China, India, Italy, Greece, Croatia, Malta, The Middle East and North Africa,” you would think that the United States could follow the sleep patterns of other countries and change for the better.
Then again, the US isn’t too accomplished at complying with the worldwide status quo.
Yesterday, I saw the movie Atonement. For those of you curious about the movie and who also want a vocabulary work out, take a read through the Washington Post’s review by Ann Hornaday. Now, though I still have yet to decide if I liked the movie or was merely enchanted by the cinematography, there is one flat-out great shot in the movie which I can not forget.
While the accomplished Seamus McGarvey uses blown out sunlight highlights, SteadiCam-stabilized 4+ minute long takes, and other beautiful techniques to help tell the story, the scene I have in mind employees none of these technical methods. During a verdant evening on the hottest day of the year, the romantic hero of the movie walks to a party, back to the camera. Clad in an exquisite tuxedo, he fluidly vaults a split rail fence. In this simple act, in this simple setting, the viewer experiences the bravado and physical prowess of youth and the fervent hope of young romance all encapsulated in an elegant, beautiful motion. Perfect.
I’ve learned a new word today: perspicacious; “having keen mental perception and understanding; discerning: to exhibit perspicacious judgment.” Now, if I can only master the pronunciation of such an unfamiliar word.
I always thought that dead reckoning was a complete guess about distance traveled. Turns out, it is based on an estimation of important factors like speed and time, not just looking back over the distance covered and making a visual guess thereof:
Dead Reckoning is the process of estimating your position by advancing a known position using course, speed, time and distance to be traveled. In other words, figuring out where you will be at a certain time if you hold the speed, time and course you plan to travel.
Interestingly enough, the Lewis and Clark Expedition used dead reckoning over its 8000 mile journey, and only erred by 40 miles. That’s a half of one percent of the total distance traveled. Perhaps our human skills of survival are less useless than one would think.
A gift for Mykala.
Well, I guess this will about do it for 2007. Mykala and I are baking a cake and watching Comcast channel 107 “CURNT,” which is broadcasting the entire Radiohead In Rainbows album, entitled “Scotch_Mist: a film with Radiohead in it”. It’s really fun to see them (Radiohead) record in these video vignettes. Right now, they are performing “Faust Arp” on a hill in front of a sunset. It’s cooler than my adjective-poor description would have you imagine.
Anyhow.
It’s been a quite a year. Didn’t get into school, graduated, studied for the DAT during a rather relaxing summer (lots of 10 mile runs this summer), took the DAT, got a job at 3M, moved into an awesome apartment in Saint Paul, got into school, and tried to tease out the meaning of life as it relates to my puny existence. High five to 2007. High hopes for 2008.
Now is as good a time as any to share my future plans for tumbledry. Dental school = four years of not very much free time to work on tumbledry. Therefore, in the next sixth months I have to work towards something to stabilize the site re:hosting, code, etc. I simply will not have time to move the site to another server in the middle of school, so I need to take steps now to ensure that tumble service continues uninterrupted throughout my professional education. Regardless, the feature set of tumbledry is such that it can go into low maintenance mode where comments are all turned off… however, since we don’t usually get a lot of comments here from random people, I may not turn off all comments. Besides, the feedback from you guys is one of my favorite parts about tumbledry. Also, with regard to pictures… I don’t think I’ll be able to continue a daily picture. It’s looking as though the pictures will be posted on a weekly basis instead. Special events, holidays, etc. will get more pictures… but I think the photographic component I so cherish will have to go into a low-power mode for a while. Furthermore, the ratio of links to posts (such as this one) will change — I expect to focus solely on documenting humorous anecdotes, life situations, life events, and so on, instead of the endless “hey look at this cool thing” that is so common on the site right now.
Happy New Year!
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