Writing again… hopefully

It's been a while, a long while since I've done any writing. I'm going to try to get started again. I finally feel like I'm capable of putting something intelligent out there again but I suppose you'll be the judge of that. I've overhauled the website, it's still a work in progress so please bear with me.

 

I've also made a few other blogs for more specialized topics. This one will still be my catch all, economics, music, general thoughts, etc. I have a blog specifically about app.net called ADNViews. App.net is the social media service that I have been using the most recently. There's a lot going on there, if you're curious you can check it out or listen to the podcasts I have made about it. . I have also made a new blog called Through Complexity that I hope will explore just how complicated things really are. Too often we think we know what's really going on and therefore know just how to fix things. I think there is too much hubris and not enough humility when it comes to things like the economy, politics, justice, etc. Haven't posted there yet, but things are percolating...

 

One of the many things that app.net has allowed me to do is make podcasts! I will drop them into these blogs if I think they're appropriate. Sometimes you gotta say stuff instead of writing it… OK, enough blogging about blogging, time to get to writing!

Sorry I haven't been writing

Seemingly every idea I've had for writing has been little more than a rant. The political grandstanding, ongoing economic issues, and various pop culture things just seem to make me angry. I'm really trying to not just vent, I'm trying to stay sort of positive. I'll see if I can't figure out some sort of positive thing, or at least some personal news that might appeal to folks.

41!

I'll be turning 41 tomorrow. My 40th year was really a bit of a blur. MS clouded my thoughts and made really lethargic for long periods of time but i think I've got it mostly under control now. My doctor explained MS like this, there are two ongoing issues with the disease, damage to the nerves, and the inflammation that causes that damage.

Right now there isn't a whole lot that can be done about the nerve damage, but the inflammation is a good target for improvement. I stumbled across Gary Taubes's writing about weight gain. His ideas that insulin, caused by carbs in the diet, is the main factor is weight gain seem to make a lot of sense, and it certainly has led to me losing some weight. What I was surprised about was how much clearer my thinking was and how much better my balance was. That didn't make a lot of sense to me, but I liked it.

In my usual poring over the internet, I think I stumbled across the reason for that. It turns out that carb rich foods spur on different types of inflammation. I don't know the mechanism, but it certainly seems to fit my experience.

I have also come across a new supplement that I think is really helping me. It's called Anatabloc and it is supposed to be a miracle anti-inflammatory substance. There have been some great studies done on various conditions and it seems to really help. This stuff is really expensive as far as supplements go, but in my short time using it, I feel like its worth it. This is the very definition of a small sample size, but in my two days at work with it, I have felt almost normal. In addition, I have not had any leg cramps at night either. I'm going to keep using this for a couple of months and see how it goes. Think I'll give it a test and try a favorite meal that is guaranteed to make me feel blah, Chic-Fil-A. One of their sandwiches and fries will usually make me swim my and dizzy, we'll see if this supplement has a mitigating effect.

I can do that because I have the next 7 days off! I'll be going down to see the folks and see a friend or two, should be fun.

My unexpected Yemen bonuses

I had been working at Penn camera off and on for almost 7 years when I decided to move out of the country. I had learned a lot at Penn. My sales technique was honed there and I learned how to deal with people, both customers and employees. I thought it was time for a change, so I decided to move.
I eventually decided to move to Yemen. The decisions leading up to that are a whole other story. By the time the date for me leaving came up, I had saved up over 20 grand for the trip. Believe me, I thought long and hard if spending  that money was the best thing I could do. Ultimately, I spent my mid-life crisis  over there, you can read my blog on my time over there if you want.
I could have invested that money, or I could have put it down on a house. All the while I would still be working at Penn. While I was in Yemen, the stock market tanked and I lost about half of my investments. I would have undoubtedly have invested that 20 thousand the same way, so I would have probably lost 10 grand. I felt pretty good about that, my experiences in Yemen were certainly worth that! Of course, I could have bought a house. We all saw what happened to housing prices...
So, looking back, I cannot believe how lucky I am to have spent my money on that experience. Looking back, it was the very best thing I could have done. May be the only time I've done that...
When I came back, I needed a job. Ramona was more than happy to hire me again. I really wanted something different though, so I stayed unemployed for a while longer while I looked around. After I got diagnosed, I was even more in need of a job. I had finally gotten through to the company I had wanted to work for, and they offered me a job, at  little more than half of what Penn had been paying me. Ugh. That was a tough decision. Ultimately, I couldn't shake the feeling that Penn was on shaky ground going into the future. Photography just wasn't what it once was, and it's all Penn really did. So I took the hit in pay in the short term.
It has payed off. Penn Camera declared bankruptcy the other day. The company I work for is incredibly stable and I now make what I used to. Plus, the benefits are quite a bit better. I was about 50/50 at the time I made my decision, thank God I did what I did. I also think that my trip to Yemen helped with this as well. If I had been working at Penn all along, it would have been much more difficult, maybe even impossible to take that hit in pay to work somewhere else. Starting from scratch, I didn't have the baggage of a rent or lifestyle maintenance to worry about. I had gotten used to being poor, I even lived in a third world country!
So maybe my trip to Yemen was divine providence. It was the best use of my money, it was an amazing experience, it was the very last time I could do something like that, and I think it helped me start a new career. If I had stayed put, done the safe thing, at best I would now be on disability. I certainly would be a lot poorer in spirit.
 
My heart goes out to the folks that were still working at Penn. Starting over is tough, believe me I know.
I'll miss Penn Camera, and I'm thanking God I made the decisions that I did. Who would have ever thought that Yemen would be the best thing to happen to me?:)

RIP Steve

When he announced that he was stepping down from CEO, we knew it wasn't a good sign. Still, the news wasn't any easier to hear. I have loved the products he has helped bring to market, but more importantly I love the institution he has left to us. To borrow from John Gruber, Apple the company is Steve's greatest creation.

Steve, I thank you for your vision and the opportunity to take part in what you started.

Sigh

I miss Yemen. Hope to go back some day.

Here's to normal family relationships!

The house I live in has a strange living arrangement. Originally, my landlord's plan was that this house was where his parents could live in their retired years. He was going to turn the basement into a living space for them and rent out the other rooms. I rented out the smallest of the rooms and there were 3 other people living in the two other rooms. Well, then the landlord lost his job and moved into the master bedroom, displacing two of the people that had lived here. He finished the basement apartment and his parents moved in. Then his ex-wife and daughter lost their place, so they moved in. They slept in the front room for a while until the remaining tenant's lease ran out, then they moved in there. is parents didn't like living in the basement, so they went back to Bolivia and I moved into the basement.

So for a while, it was me in the basement and my landlord (who is employed again), his ex-wife, and their daughter were sharing the three rooms upstairs. When my lease ran out, he asked me to move into the master bedroom. Part of that was because he was going to have to do some work on the basement but a large part of it was that he and his ex-wide were at each other's throat.

Is it any wonder? For a long time, people were urged to keep marriages together "for the children." I think we now all understand that often times it's better for the children if the fighting parents are separated. If nothing else, it allows everyone to get on with their lives. Imagine deciding to call it quits and then have to live with the ex. Ugh. Now their daughter has to live in some sort of purgatory. Every kid dreams of their parents getting back together again, and hers are but in a really bad situation.  It's the worst of all worlds.

I feel really bad for all of them when I come and they are eating dinner together, silently.  Never felt so thankful for normal relations between divorced parents and family in general. It's weird how you never notice healthy relationships until they are contrasted with unhealthy ones. I'm feeling thankful, that's for sure!

Went to a few stores today

There were a few new stores around one of the shops I go to every couple of months. One was called Cavern Cairo. I had no idea what it could be. A middle east restaurant? A shisha bar? It turned out to be a place dedicated to card games of all things. It was almost all Magic the Gathering oriented, but there was the inexplicable mix of UNO decks mixed in too, I spied a few board games on the walls too. Nothing I was interested in, so I moved on.

There was a "newsstand" next to it. I was curious what a newsstand looked like in this day and age. I used to go to one in Ithaca to get my copy of Goldmine. Back in the early 90's there were a slew of interesting magazines and a good newsstand was an amazing place to go. Goldmine was a paper/magazine that specialized in record collecting. There were all sorts of ads for places selling any number of different types of music in all sorts of formats. Yeah, I used to have to read a newspaper to find obscure songs and albums… This newsstand was really kind of sad. There was a smattering of magazines, but they were mostly catering to gun, tattoo, craft builders, and with some titles like Mother Earth News, Architectural digest, etc. Nothing I was interested in. There was the mandatory "adults only" section. I didn't go back to check that out. I assume that the adult stuff is what is keeping the store in business, but I'm amazed that market exists at all. I would have thought that the internet would allow anyone to find whatever it is that floats their boat, and in their own home to boot. Hmm, there's also an adult video store in Springfield, that's another business I would have thought would go under in modern times. Maybe it's Springfield that keeps those types of businesses around...

 

I also went into an HH Greg store. I had seen their ads on TV before, but I had never been in one. What a strange place. I mean, I guess they have a  similar product range as Best Buy (with one exception) but it felt rather odd in there. I can't put my finger on why, but things seemed to be just… sort of plopped in there. There were a ton of TVs, and as usual, I was mesmerized. They are so beautiful, if I watched TV I wouldn't be able to resist one of those. Luckily for me, I don't really watch anything… The salesperson was rather put off when I told him that I don't watch TV, LOL. They also carried appliances, cameras, computers, vacuums, etc. Two things they didn't seem to have as compared to Best Buy were cell phones and car audio.

Like Best Buy, a lot of their demos weren't working. Unlike Best Buy, several people came up and asked if I had any questions. One thing that was different was that HH Greg sold mattresses. It was an odd thing. Lots of electronic things, and then tucked back into a corner, in it's own walled off area, were beds. I don't see the connection, but I can guess why they were there. One thing that really struck me was how inexpensive things have gotten. Flat screen TVs are now down below what I remember tube TVs costing, and these are bigger. It looked as though I could buy a decent stovetop and oven for $600. The mattresses? $1200 for a twin. Granted, they were Temperpedic, I'm pretty sure those are going to be expensive anywhere you go. I'm also positive that they have a lot bigger profit margin in them than anything else in the store. I can't imagine that designing and manufacturing mattresses is all that high tech, especially when compared to the TVs there. I can't be the only one wondering about the value proposition of a bed that costs as much as a 50" TV. A rather nice 50" TV at that.

I also got to play around with a few Android tablets too. The Galaxies from Samsung were the ones I wanted to try the most. They weren't working of course… I did try a few others from Archos, Sharp( I think), and a smaller one from samsung. Ugh, not impressed. A couple of them seemed to run OK, not that there was much on them. The internet worked OK, and I assume that gmail would be good on there. My big problem was that they just felt terrible to hold. Not one of the large tablets were comfortable to hold. Plus, they just felt cheap. The 7" one was rather nice, I can see the appeal of that size for internet, ebooks, and email on the go. I was disappointed to get mobile versions of sites though. There's probably a way around that. In any case, maybe the Samsung tablets are amazing performers, they'd have to be to get over the way they feel. Several of them were plastered with stickers announcing features like SD card slots, USB, HDMI, etc. Unfortunately, they didn't tell me what they could do with those things. Even if they did, I'd have to use my imagination to see how they worked since most of them were dead. I understand why the iPad is going so well, there doesn't appear to be any actual competition...

 

Anyway, an odd store. I guess I'd go there if I wanted a TV, not sure what else I;d go there for. Oh well, at least I know where to go for adult magazines and Magic the Gathering cards… Oh Springfield, you are a shoppers dreamland!

Amy Winehouse (alcohol)

The news and internet were all a-twitter when Amy Winehouse died. Lots of shaking of the head and "I told you so's" were going around. The general assumption was that she finally OD'd on whatever it was she was taking. The initial autopsy was inconclusive. That just set off more snark, "They just aren't sure which drug killed her.." was a common joke running around. Now that the toxicology reports have come back inconclusive as well, I'm not hearing anything about it.

I assume that if she actually did OD on something it would show up in both the toxicology and probably the autopsy. Is there a recreational drug out there that kills you and leaves no obvious trace? So if she didn't OD, what killed her? Her family thinks that the stress of quitting drinking cold turkey did her in.

People forget just how nasty alcohol is. It's bad enough when you're drinking and wrecking everyone's lives, but even stopping drinking can be dangerous. Her family had begged her to quit gradually in order to avoid the worst of withdrawal symptoms but she decided that it was either cold turkey or nothing. In hindsight, that wasn't a very good decision, but I can see her reasoning. If you really do have a drinking problem, having "just a little" isn't always possible.

 

We still don't know what happened but it does look like Amy died from her abuse as opposed to a specific event. It's also plausible that her effort to quit is what got her in the end. Alcohol is just as dangerous as any other addicting drug, we should never forget that.

Charitable efforts

I don't make a tremendous amount of money, but I'm doing OK. There are plenty of people that aren't of course, and I'm a big believer that aid in the right way can make a big difference. I'm also of the opinion that decent people give what they can. It's part of my general optimistic view of people in general. I hope I'm a decent person, so....

 

I've been giving to Kiva pretty regularly for over a year now. If there's one thing that has taught me, it's how giving a little bit consistantly over time can add up. I just started giving to GiveDirectly. I can't give much each month, but they aggregate the donations that people send in and then give them to people in a larger chunk. These two charities do what I think charities should do. Kiva allows people to invest in themselves and try to make their life better. It's for people doing OK, but struggling to take that next step. GiveDirectly is much more about people having real difficulties and mired in poverty. As I've written before, GiveDirectly follows my own belief that the poor folks know where that money will have the most impact and so I should allow them to spend it as they see fit. I wish I could do more, but times are tight. Hopefully in the future things will get better.

Give directly, a great new charity

A little while ago, Tyler Cowan put together the principles of the ideal charity. You give money directly to people, that money has no strings attached, and they shouldn't expect it. Giving directly reduces the non-charitable cost aspect of the donation. All charities have overhead, giving directly minimizes this. If the people arent expecting it, you have a much better chance of avoiding scams and corruption diverting the charitable donation.

It's the second part that is so important, and it is also the part that so many people have problems with. Economists call things like food stamps, vouchers, etc. as "gifts in kind" and it has been known for a long time that they aren't a very good way of giving aid if the primary aim is to help people. Poor people are like anyone else, they need money for different things. When you give cash, they can apply it to whatever their most urgent need is. It might in fact be food, but it could just as easily be paying off debts, legal help, maintanince, or even investing or savings.

"But they might spend it on drugs or prostitutes!" Yeah, they might. A former professor summed up that attitude with the sarcastic comment, "Oh, I like the poor, but I don't trust them!" If we want the poor to get better, and if we want to help them, we have to allow them to make their own decisions and use money the way they need to. A more practical aspect of having no strings on the donation is that it saves the cost of monitoring them and enforcing the rules. The primary aspect of no strings donations should always be respecting who you are giving money to, it is supposed to be a charitable at after all.

GiveDirectly is a new charity based on these principles. They are working in Kenya right now because of the easy and inexpensive system for distributing cash via sim cards in place there. They are claiming a 90% effeciancy for donations. I am going to start using these guys for my monthly charitable donations along with my microfinancing thing thorugh Kiva. They are brand new, so there isn't much information on the progran just yet, but I am willing to give it a try. I encourage you to do the same if you want to give aid directly to recipients!

Events are conspiring against me

It's amazing how the little things in life can be blown up with MS... I needed to get the muffler fixed on the car, but they had to order the part. When could I leave it to be fixed? Well, they were going to get the part in on wednesday and I didn't have to be at work on thursday until 1:30. Plus, the parking lot in front of my house was going to get repaved starting really early on thursday morning. This gave me a place to put the car. So I'll just drop the car off after work and then pick it up before I go on thursday. Plus, the shop is just a bit further than my Pakistani resturants, i.e. about 4 blocks away. I figured I'd drop off the car and then walk back home.

That's when things started to go downhill. Wednesday was also the day the heat wave kicked in. Walking the 4 blocks in the heat after a day's work was exhausting. I managed to get the garage to pick me up the next day although I still ended up hanging out in the heat for a while before they did. Was really beat at work, but I did get through the day. I got out of work around 10. Forgot that the paving was still going on, so I had to find a parking space when I got back home. Ended up parking 5 blocks away. The walk home in the heat after the day's work just about killed me this time.

My alarm went off at 7:30 this morning. I must have fallen asleep as soon as I turned it off, I certainly don't remember doing it. Woke up briefly around 9:30, dragged my carcass out of bed to text work and then promptly fell asleep again. Woke up after 12, still groggy and stiff. I need to go retrieve the car after 6, the paving is supposed to be done by then. I fully anticipate being hobbled by the walk, but without the standing up for 7 hours, it'll be doable.

Still, another day off of work, this is getting expensive. Here's to hoping that stupid little things stop ganging up on me!

Not a whole lot going on

I've been trying to not post negative blog posts, you know, the whole, "If you can't say anything nice..." approach. The world's financial outlook is depressing. Europe is looking less and less sound by the day, and our politicians are playing chicken with our debt obligations. Things could go just fine I suppose, but it's looking more and more likely that there is going to be some pain coming up. Just to be on the safe side, I would hold a minimum of cash and money market funds right now, they could decrease in value quickly if things fall apart.

Enough global doom and gloom, I've got money issues myself. The car needs a rather expensive repair (my muffler was damaged and there aren't any aftermarket ones) and I missed a day of work. SIGH. Wasn't sure how I was going to take care of that, and then I remembered my savings in the form of Apple stock. Was hoping not to have to touch that, but I guess that's what savings is for, right? Once I get this out of the way, I will be in a better mood, but man, it's going to hurt.

Other than that, not a lot going on, working, eating, etc. Woohoo, do I know how to have a good time or what?

Whew! That's a dream!

 

I was living in what looked like a house that had been carved out of a cave or something. I was expecting my father to get back, but to my surprise he was already there. We chatted for a few minutes and then heard someone coming to the door. He went to go answer it  (it was around the corner) when I heard him say, hello! anyone there? And then dad walked in from his trip. He asked how I opened up the door and then got back to the front room so quickly.

That's when I realized what happened. A future version of him had managed to leak into the past. When he came into contact with his previous self, there was only one of him. That totally freaked me out. It was like seeing a ghost of him. Later I worried that he might actually be stuck in a time loop too... it got worse later on...

Since I had a time anomaly on my hands, who better to call in than the crew at Big Finish (the guys that do the Dr. Who audios)? The gang was all there, Jason, Nick, the Pauls, and even Lisa. Why I thought they could help I have no idea, but it was a dream, it all made sense. Then, my stepbrother came in with a bunch of his friends because they were making a student film. Here's where it gets complicated.

As future versions of folks came in, the current people were absolutely terrified. Seeing themselves was just too weird and unsettling. The future folks had it just as bad, they were seeing ghosts of themselves too, but they remembered what it was like to see themselves in the past and relived the experience plus had all of the weirdness of seeing their ghosts. Then it got worse. Now when future and past versions came into contact, they would merge into one person. The problem was that they simultaneously had the memories of all the things that had happened, and also understood that they hadn't done those things because they essentially got sucked into the future. And then future versions of themselves would show up and the effect would compound.

Between the disorientation and the fear, people started to go totally insane. And we started to accumulate multiples of the same people. Different groups of person would react in different ways. Some thought they were aliens discovering their true nature, some were convinced all of the others were trying to kill them, and more than a few were just curled up and crying.

The panic level was getting out of hand. At some point bullets started to fly. That's when I understood what was going on. I was sure that at some point, a future person was going to kill a past version of themselves and create a paradox. The effects of that paradox would spill outwards both in the future and in the past. Retro-causation is a tricky thing, but it made total sense. Then I woke up.

How's that for a dream?

 

Had a nice vacation

Saw a ton of people. Mom, my uncle Brian, Dad, My Aunt Cathy and uncle Doug, my cousin Beth and her husband Evan and their adorable little girl Zita, even my stepsister Coleman! That's a lot of family packed into one week, it was too short. The Bach family is the target for my next vacation. My brother is down there with my aunt, uncle, and cousin on that side of the family. And they're in Virginia Beach, I really don't have any excuse to not see them...

Did a few things that I hadn't done in a long time over that week. First, I used canned shaving cream. I have been using shaving soaps and and creams for the past three years but I decided that I didn't want the hassle of packing them and a brush. Man, what a difference, that canned stuff sucks! Yes, it was a much thicker lather than I usually get, but it really dried out my skin and the blade didn't glide nearly as well. The hell of it is that it is the same price as the good stuff, not going to do that again!

The other thing I did was listen to FM in the car. Ugh. I have been listening to my iPod, and more recently to LastFM or Slacker Radio in my car for the last 2 years. I do not miss FM at all. It was filled with nothing but commercials and people yakking. Oh, and some really terrible music to boot. I really don't mind paying in order to avoid commercials, and I love the ability to skip songs and tell them to never play that again... Technology really is wonderful. My drives are so much nicer because of my iPhone.

Dreams and how my brain works

I dreamed that I was in a photography class the other night.

My cousin Beth was in there with me and I explained to her in extreme detail how to use achieve accurate focus on an enlarger. I went through everything, the grain focuser, lens alignment, focus shifts as you top down from wide open, optimum apertures, vibration control, etc. This is pretty arcane knowledge at this point, and I was correct in every excruciating detail. What I failed to notice was that I was trying to focus onto previously exposed and developed film. That doesn't even make any sense. I had one of my slides on the board and was getting frustrated that I couldn't focus the image on the slide by shining light on it. The reflection was getting to me, the last thing I remember doing was looking for a polarizing filter to get rid of the reflection coming off the film. I had conflated copy photography and printing.

I woke up wondering how I could dredge up so much technical stuff accurately, stuff that wouldn't even occur to me without actually trying to make a print and be so far off on the main event in the darkroom. It would be like knowing all about carburetor overhauling and then wonder why a mixture of water and molasses wasn't doing real well in the car. Strange stuff...

Bin Laden

I'm glad to see the general tone of reaction about his being killed being toned down a bit in the days after the event. Frankly, I was a bit shocked at the glee that had been expressed. Most of the commentators I follow have now come out and said pretty much the same thing. I can't say I'm unhappy that he's dead, but I can't get too happy about any killing. I was actually afraid to post that feeling the day after we heard the news. I half expected someone to ask me if I couldn't enjoy Bin Laden's death, whose death could I enjoy? is there a word to describe the fear of irony?

New website!

OK, after many fits and starts, I finally overhauled my website. This exercise has reinforced my understanding that I am not very good at website design... It's not quite finished, I need to add some more content, but that will come as I feel like it. It's still a really simple site, that's by design. My main goals were to update the look a bit and get rid of the clutter that no one ever looked at, including me. I still need to put up my econ papers, those actually got a fair number of views and they are what drove more outside visitors to my site as opposed to family and friends. Please let me know if there are any obvious bugs or problems!

Woven Texturized Polyester Pants

Nothing says 1975 like Woven Polyester Texturized pants.

(Click on the picture for more from the 1975 Sears Catalog.)

Unless of course it was the number one single of that year, "Love Will Keep Us Together" by Captain and Tennille. The chats from that year are filled with the likes of BJ Thomas, Tony Orlando and Dawn, John Denver, and Wings. That was one ugly year, even the colors were awful. The only year I can think of that can compete with it is 1974....

The limits of Logic and world views

I know that I think differently than a lot of people do when it comes to things like economics, politics, and religion. What strikes me is the reactions I get from people. There is a common belief that if someone has deduced things logically, they must be right, and therefore I must be wrong. They confuse making sense for reality.

Imagine if told someone that parallel* lines can intersect and in some cases must intersect. If that person were in an argumentative mood, they might point out that the very definition of parallel lines forbids them from crossing. If this were a political, economic, or a religious point, more times than not I would be dismissed as an idiot. I've gotten that reaction fairly frequently. What I almost never get asked is why I might think that way. It turns out there's a whole bunch of other types of geometries out there, as soon as you put lines on curved surfaces, basic rules of geometry get changed.

The point is that both I and my mysterious debater can logically defend why my view is right or wrong. The efficacy of logic is limited by the initial conditions or beliefs you start with. If you think you live in a Euclidian world and I think I live in an elliptic world, we are never going to come to any agreement or understanding if we rely on logic to stake out our claims.The same thing goes for any other world view you can think of. Once you believe you know the basic underpinning of your world, everything else follows logically.

Most people do what "males sense" to them based on their beliefs. If you try to point out that any given view they have is incorrect or, too often these days, tell them that they are stupid, you won't get anywhere because they are a long ways down the causality chain. If you want to convince them to change their mind about something, you need to go to much deeper. When I talk to people about religion, economics, and even politics, I am usually pointing out that we don't live in a Euclidian world despite appearances and how much sense it seems to make. It takes time, but ultimately you have to convince people you live in a better world than they do if you want them to come around to your way of thinking. It may not be a great way of scoring quick points, but it does give them some things to think about. That can lead to real conversations as opposed to slogans and name calling.

Of course, it's a lot easier to not do any of this. Gotta keep telling myself that it's worth doing. I think it pays off long term, if only for my mental health...

 

* I am using Euclid's definition of parallel. Loosely, that is that if there is a line and a point off that line, there is only one line that can be drawn through that point that does not intersect that line. That's Euclid's 5th postulate, we call it parallelism. In elliptic space, there can be no parallel lines as Euclid postulated.