How To Measure One's Hand from Base to Tip in Terms of Eyeball Circumference

There's a problem I had been considering for some time that I believe to have finally resolved. I've always wanted to know how to determine the ratio of one's hand length to eyeball circumference. Far too few people know this detail about themselves, although they commonly go out of their way to determine their height or, say, blood type. And it's generally accepted that one can approximate the size of their heart by measuring their fist.

The answer came to me all at once, like a flash of inspiration. The result is this simple step-by-step procedure by which you can definitively determine the length of your hand with respect to your eyeball circumference:

1. Lift your eyelid up to just below your eyebrow (it doesn't matter whether left or right), using a needle and thread, make a stitch through both eyelid and eyebrow make at least 3 stitches, each about 6-8mm apart and then tie off the thread. This will ensure that your eyelid doesn't get in the way during the procedure. Have some antiseptic and cotton balls on hand to treat the punctures if there's any bleeding

2. Using your thumb and forefinger gently pinch your eyeball on the left and right sides. Don't squeeze too hard or you might flatten your eyeball, which could distort the circumference measurement.

3. Your thumb should be touching your eyeball just at the place where the corner of your cheekbone meets the eye cavity. Your forefinger is just between the bridge of your nose and eye socket on the other side. With a swift and firm motion rotate your hand inward. If you do this correctly, your eyeball should come out. You may want to grow your thumbnail to about 1-1.5 cm before performing this procedure, as this will provide more leverage and help you wedge the eyeball out of the socket.

4. Now that the eyeball has been extracted, you might notice that it's attached at the back to several messy blood vessels and nerves and such. You should be able to cut through all these with a snip from a good pair of kitchen shears. Make the cut as close to your face as possible, to avoid excess residuum from hanging out of the eyesocket.

5. (Optional) It's usually good practice to be sanitary. An open eye socket is at risk for infection, which is dangerous because of its proximity to the brain. Remember the cotton balls from before? After tucking the ends of the blood vessels and nerves back into the eye socket, stuff the empty cavity with cotton balls. The bleeding will stop within 3-4 hours. If more than 4 hours pass and bleeding persists, it is advisable to consult a physician.

6. Using a fine-tipped paint brush and dark ink, carefully paint a small dot on your eyeball. It doesn't matter where you place the dot, but the ink on the eyeball has to be sufficiently wet so that it will leave a mark when pressed against another surface.

7. Touch the eyeball to the base of your hand at the wrist. A small mark should appear. Lay your hand palm-down flat on a table, and slowly roll the eyeball down the length of your hand. Each time another mark appears, another circumference is added to your measurement.

8. There may be some leftover space between the last mark left by your eyeball and the end of your finger. Simply measure this length with a ruler and divide this measurement by the distance between two of the marks on your hand. This number (length of remainder after last mark over distance between to marks) will provide the decimal part of your reading.

...And you're done! You now know your hand length in terms of eyeball circumference. I was surprised to learn that my ratio was 3.14. I wasn't able to measure with enough accuracy to determine whether the ratio was exactly pi (that notoriously elusive geometric ratio), although I think it would be very interesting to see how close it actually comes using more precise measurement. I'd also like to know if there's a great degree of variance from person to person, or if this ratio is more or less the same for everyone. If you try it, please leave a comment and let me know what you find!

sad

well...where did we go wrong here?

cognitive function

Cognitive function - the essence of what it means to be alive. We have nothing more than cognitive function. It's nothing really, just five senses and some capacity to interpret/analyze the data gathered with those senses. And yet it's more important than than money, success, fame. It's more important than friends, family, and health. No matter what we can buy or how happy or excited we can be, in the end we can have nothing more than cognitive function. No matter how sad or lonely or angry we are, there's still nothing more, and nothing less. Sensory data and the interpretation thereof. Every human endeavor - every hobby, conviction, and project - is undertaken simply to pass the time; nothing matters. Even if our environment and circumstances change dramatically over time, our cognitive function remains the same. Why do we fight and struggle and toil so that we may find the circumstances perceived by our cognition to be more "favorable" to us? To pass the time? We're all born with the one thing that truly means anything to us: our ability to perceive. Is to perceive to exist? I think - therefore I am?

Who gets to interview Larry King!?

2007 in Music

I've been reading a lot of indie music 2007 top-ten lists the last couple weeks, spending most of the time being frustrated at the truly average choices that wound up filling virtually every chart. Honestly "In Rainbows", while certainly an enjoyable album by a great band, was not the most inspiring or worthwhile music to listen to of the year. In fact, after listening to literally hundreds of albums this year - this was, after all, my first and last year as a proud member of the inimitable bittorrent server OiNK - I've only come up with 3 albums that merit making a top-ten list.

#3 was Burial's album, released in I think the beginning of November. It was a brilliant and very logical progression from the dark, nuanced sound he had mastered about a year previously with his self-titled debut. This year, the beats were pretty much the same, if a little denser and melodic, with the big change being the inclusion of haunting, ephemeral vocals on most of the tracks. Although many have dubbed this album, as I have, a progression from the first album, and therefore superior, I found it to be a little less focused. It was still a fantastic album, but perhaps in its ambition it lost some of the godlike perfection. Definitely nothing to be ashamed of.

#2 was Justice, easily the best electronic dance music I've ever heard in my life. Justice may be proteges of Daft Punk, but their sound has eclipsed anything that existed in the era that they reference so frequently. Not only that, but since they released their breakthrough hit "Never Be Alone", they have proven to be inimitable by their contemporaries as well. I would say Justice was the album released this year that I listened to more than any other album. As dance music, it suits a startlingly wide variety of moods. The reason I call it my most frequently played album released this year is because my overall most frequently played album of the year was still last year's Burial album. This has been a beautiful year in electronic music. However...

My number #1 album of the year had very little to do with electronic music, although I believe there were a few cymbal sounds played backwards on the first track. And that wasn't even a highlight of this stunning mosaic of music present, past, and future. I'm talking about 'Rise Above' by the Dirty Projectors. A freely interpreted "remake" of an old Black Flag album called Damaged, this record throws some of the most otherworldy, twisted melodies around like they were totally natural. The vocal harmonies are very consistent and interesting throughout, the guitar playing is completely original, clearly based on a mastery of classical guitar styling, and the song arrangements forge new paths for pop songwriting in virtually direction imaginable while maintaining a certain orthodox elegance that makes them unforgettable even after a couple of listens.

OK, so there's my top three albums of 2007. Overall, it was a great year for music. If anything, there was too much new music. So please everyone, stop making music. Most of you don't know what you're doing.

Here's my honorable mentions (5 of them): I really loved all of these albums, and they probably each deserve volumes and volumes of praise and analysis, but for now, we'll just settle for artist and title:

Ava Luna - Lemming
Blonde Redhead - 23
Deerhoof - Friend Opportunity
Menomena - Friend and Foe
These Are Powers - Terrific Seasons

R.I.P.

If I finally eliminate all of you, can I then rest in peace? My life amounts to nothing more than an enervating series of evasions and repulsions, and, failing that, rejections of all those that enter into it. By being alone, with no one even caring, I get the fleeting sensation of immortality. As I exist out of mind, I exist out of time. But, in the end, this is the most devious mirage of all. Because, looking back, when I wonder what has happened to my youth, my untroubled years -- then it will be manifest that I have always been the one who has not existed.

Picasso - a poem by Carlos from his "sweet nothings" period

you ain't no picasso
More cowbell
the Modern age
the oh so quiet show
sixeyes
stereogum
the music slut
musicisart
yeti don't dance
skatterbrain
said the gramophone

Burial, Bobby McFerrin

In Bobby McFerrin's un-heralded tapestry of human voices called Circlesongs, he approaches African chants and oral (and thus vocal) tradition through the multi-faceted lenses of minimalist repititions and jazz improvisations, calls and responses, dense circular patterns. In doing so, he crafts an intricate lullabye for the ages. I listened to this album every night for three years, from 1996 through 1999. In about 1999, I began to develop and nurture a deeper respect and appreciation for contemporary music, as more than just a lullabye, or a vehicle upon which to drape my own personal uses.

The eight year interim might be called a search. In the process of searching, it goes without saying that I all but forgot the concept of music as a lullabye; music that is so perfect, so complex in its rhythms, so intricate in its repititions, and so dense in its sonic tapestries, that it can be listened-to on a level above normal everyday senses; music that sinks so deeply into the depths of your innards that it can do little but lull you into a deep slumber, night after night.

The question is, what music is capable of this?

The answer includes, but is not limited to, Bobby McFerrin's Circlesongs, and Burial's two efforts thus far, "Burial," and "Untrue."

Justice

Quick note on the Justice concert: do not go to a Justice concert in the summertime, because you'll probably die. It'll be way too hot, and you just might have to cash in your chips, so to speak, if you try to endure it. Of course, then you'll be playing right into the postmodern concept piece that is each and every Justice concert.

We all know that there's a dark theme running through Justice's apocalyptic dance music. On the album, you can hear it best on the track "The Party", which itemizes in great detail one woman's routine for getting ready to go out and have a good time against the most somber, reflective music on the album. In concert, the concept becomes much clearer, although I personally still wasn't able to piece together exactly what Justice is trying to say. Maybe it's the ringing in my ears.

Carlos, who was wearing earplugs, was able to capture the basic idea of it succinctly: here you have a DJ booth, set up on a giant heavy metal stage (symbolized by the stacks of Marshall speakers on either side), and a giant cross in the center, providing the most tangible imagery associeated with the group. They are asking the question, "How will the world end?", and the answer is "More or less just as this concert is playing out right now."

That's the genius of Justice - by doing what you are expected to when you go out to something like a dance concert, you are part of their exhibition. You get dressed up, you do the drugs that will give you the experience you seek, you rub bodies, kiss, spread germs, listen to music that's so loud that it permanently damages your hearing systems, and throw yourself about in ways that reveal how deficient your ability to preserve yourself really is. You're all facing the stage, like an altar, with the big cross in the middle, but the ubiquitous symbol in this context feels empty and soulless. In this rapturous scenario, self-destruction seems to be a new form of salvation.

Justice is truly a product of the 21st century. Music has always been visceral, ephemeral, and as a result, a perfect medium for posing those important existential questions that have always been with us: namely, how do we handle the fleeting nature of our existence and make the most of our lives given this truth? Justice is among the first music acts I've heard that are not necessarily interested in the brevity of a human life, but in the inevitable passing of the human race. If you view the behavior of the few humans gathered on the dance floor and extrapolate it to the tendencies of humanity as a whole, you have painted one of the most vivid and engaging apocalyptic scenarios that has yet been explored.

Dirty Projectors

I've heard a lot of good new music lately, which makes me feel like life in general might be tolerable for the duration. But enough about me. The absolutely best song I've heard in a long, long time is "Spray Paint (The Walls)" by Dirty Projectors. It's hard to say exactly what moves me so deeply when I listen to this song, but I think it manages to capture so poignantly the spirit of an entire generation, in a way that can only be accomplished using words from a previous generation. It might "feel good to say what (you) want", but you can probably learn more about yourself by listening, and the Dirty Projectors illustrate this theory with their own brilliant creation.

I would recommend the album "Rise Above" to anyone, not only for the lofty and well-formulated concept, but also for the visceral thrill of the music itself.