If you tried to hit Towering Intellect yesterday and were unable to get the site to show up, I apologize. I was performing my first successful blog brain transplant, and, well, there were a couple of complications.

Since Towering Intellect’s beginnings, way back in 2005, it has been generously hosted by my buddy Preston, the guy that first got me into blogging, Internet marketing, and 90% of the other cool stuff that I love today. Anyway, this week I decided to upgrade my version of Wordpress to the most recent release (finally). However, when I tried to access my site, I found that the access password had been changed.

So here I stood at the crossroads with a decision to make. Do I call Preston and harass him about my blog (yet again), further imposing on his hospitality, or do I transfer my blog over to my own hosting account so Preston doesn’t have to worry about me any more? It seemed like a no-brainer (pun!).

Anyway, to make a long story short(er) and less technical, after a few bumps, bruises, and DNS issues, I got my blog moved over to my own host, and the backend is now running the latest version of Wordpress. Sexy. So to all you readers who tried to check up on TI and were denied, I apologize, and I hope the improved performance and security of my upgraded blog will makeup for it.

I remember reading in some economics book about the diamond-water paradox. Basically, this paradox comments on how water, though far more useful to sustaining life, is generally valued far less than diamonds, relatively speaking. There are various theories that seek to explain why that is.

I, like many others, contend that as long as water is more plentiful, it’ll remain less valuable than diamonds. But just jack up the utility that you get from water, and see what happens. Here’s a real-life example, which is really the story that I wanted to tell in the first place.

So readers of the blog will no doubt remember The Rash. Well, The Rash was well on its way into oblivion, until it mysteriously reappeared, this time on my fingers and lips. “Dismayed” hardly begins to describe my feelings about this. After a couple of days of trying to fight this on my own, today I decided to call my doctor.

You’d think the second time around he’d react a little bit better, and you’d be completely wrong. He had another freakout, very similar to the one he had the first time I went in. He called in a prescription to the pharmacy nearest my work, and demanded that I come by in a week for another checkup.

So I walked into the pharmacy and picked up my prescriptions. As the pharmacist pulled my prescription, he stopped and said “Woah. What’s wrong with you?”

“Umm, I just have this rash that I need to get cleared up.”

“Well, this is a really heavy dose of antibiotic. I mean, REALLY heavy.”

“Umm, I guess he doesn’t want things to get infected?”

“I guess. But at this dose, you’ll be at risk of yeast infection instead.”

At this point, my brain said Woah. Stop. Yeast infection? Sounds like a feminine problem. You’re lacking some essential real estate for that problem, buddy. It’s not possible.

However, if the pharmacist says it’s a risk, then it must be a risk, right? So I told my brain to shut up and tried to play it cool, like I wasn’t panicking. “Yeast infection huh? Umm, anything I can do to avoid that?”

“Just drink plenty of water when you take it, and you should be fine.”

Done and done.

Fast forward a few hours. I had just finished a Bleu Ribbon Burger at Red Robin (delicious!), taken my medication (scary!) and was on my way to see Kung Foo Panda (hilarious!), when I realized that I hadn’t drunk nearly enough water with my meal for my medication. So once we were in the theater, I went to the concessions counter and asked for a big drink of water (because there’s no way in hell I’m getting a yeast infection). When the guy working the counter tried to hand me a small cup, I told him No way. It has to be a huge cup. You see, I need PLENTY of water. PLENTY. That’s big cup, even huge cup, but not little cup. The employee then informed me that if I wanted a large cup, I would have to pay for it like it was a large soda, even if it was just full of water. Obviously this was a total ripoff. No way a measly cup of water was worth the outrageous prices they charge for sugar water (and Dots) at movie concession stands.

But all of a sudden, the specter of a yeast infection loomed menacingly within my mind, crowding reason and thriftiness out. As I walked away from the counter with my $4 cup of water, I decided that Adam Smith would have had a way easier time with this paradox if he had been threatened with a yeast infection.

Tags: rash, yeast infection, decisions, economics, diamonds, water

During this last year of college, I wrote a paper entitled “The Anxieties of Freedom and the Perils of Choice.” This paper centered around a Henry James story about a man who returns to his childhood home after an absence of many years. As we walks around the empty halls of the house, he finds that it is haunted by the ghost of who he might have been had he chosen to stay at home instead of traveling abroad.

This story has come to mind several times recently as I’ve experienced the vicissitudes of graduated life. I was just commenting to a friend about how, before I graduated, I used to think I had it all buttoned up. I already had a full time job, decent salary with benefits, a (relatively) clear life plan, and an intense desire to be done with school so I could get on with it. But something strange happened when I walked across that podium and received that piece of paper. It was as if somebody had taken my neatly-planned and projected life and shook it up. All of a sudden I was presented with a dizzying array of choices. I mean, if I decided to pack up and move to New York City and become a waiter, what was to stop me? And then there was the even more terrifying status-quo.

Here’s where the anxiety and peril comes in. When you’re faced with so many viable options, how do you choose? And moreover, what don’t you choose? Because for every choice that you make, there are a thousand other selves that will never be because of the decisions that take you away from who you might have been had you chosen differently. And how do you choke down the paralyzing fear that, at some point, that alternative self might come back to haunt you?

Ultimately, I guess we have to choose and accept the consequences, whatever they might be. I just hope I do a good job of choosing.

(Thanks to this article from The New York Times for the awesome title and some of the ideas contained herein.)

Tags: choice, introspection, graduation

Let me say two things about where I work. First of all, our engineers are really busy, so getting extra engineering cycles is nigh impossible. Second of all, Rock Band is the official company obsession. We have an XBox 360 hooked up to a projector and sound system in our break room, and Rock Band is continually on. Coincidentally, it seems like it’s always the engineers who are playing it.

Anyway, today one of the engineers came into our office and offered to give us an extra day of his development time (with his boss’s encouragement) if someone in marketing could beat him at a Rock Band tug of war. We were obviously stoked at the possibility of getting some extra work done, so my fellow marketers and I headed for the break room to determine which of us would take the challenge. The problem (and the genius of the challenge) is that nobody in marketing plays guitar hero, probably because engineering has monopolized it. Anyway, after about a half hour of half-assed simulated guitar playing, it was determined that I sucked the least. So tomorrow I go head to head with a programmer to try to get us some engineering time. *sigh* The things I do to get my work done… I’ll let you know how it goes.

Update: Yeah, I totally got worked.

Tags: work, guitar hero, challenge, lazy

Spending all day on the Internet has its perks. One of those perks is that I come across some pretty awesome sites along the way. Here’s a couple I thought were really cool.

http://www.ecodazoo.com/ - This may be the most amazing use of Flash I’ve ever seen. It loads quickly, and once it’s loaded, the 3d animation is smooth as glass. Pay particular attention to the details - the way the walls of the foldout book houses pop in and out depending on your point of view, the way the shadows dance, and the lens flare when your view faces the sun. Delicious.

http://the1secondfilm.com/ - Like the website name says, these guys are making a 1-second film - with an hourlong documentary for the end credits. The novel part is that they’re allowing anyone, and I mean anyone to be a producer. Just front as little as a dollar and you’ll be included in the credits. You’ll be in good company if you fork over. Kevin Bacon, Keifer Sutherland, Tom Green, Pierce Brosnan, Stephen Colbert, and Seth Green have all donated. Oh yeah, all proceeds go to charity, so you’ll also be helping out as well. Make sure you watch the YouTube videos posted all over the site. It’s worth it.

Tags: video, links, flash, cool, interesting

As I relieved myself in the men’s room today, one of my coworkers (new guy, I don’t know him at all) came into the otherwise empty bathroom and just stood there behinds me to wait for me to finish with the urinal instead of just using one of the other two empty stalls. Why? Who knows. But I’ll tell you this: I was royally weirded out. This is going to give me stage fright for a month.

Tags: stagefright, bathroom, work, weird

Sometimes life gives you lemons, but what happens when it gives you The Rash to end all Rashes? This past couple of weeks, I decided to take a hit for the team and find out.

I started out by detaching my ACL from my knee-bone. This step was actually not as bad as some have said. I thought it was kind of like the band-aid principle. When you first tear it off, it hurts like hell, and then the pain goes away. However, it really did hurt a lot, which is why I think so many people avoid this Route to Rashiness. Once my ACL was good and detached, I walked around on it for a few days, just to make sure it was good and torn. I could feel my knee slipping around while I tried to walk down stairs, so I knew I was on the right track!

The next step was pretty straightforward. I paid an orthopedic surgeon an obscene amount of money to cut my leg open, strip out a piece of my hamstring, and then use said hamstring piece to reattach my ACL to the bone. The surgery went well, and they sent me home to recuperate for the next stage of the experiment.

After a fun-filled week of Percocet and little yogurt cups, I was in good enough shape to go see the doctor again so I could get The Rash Riot underway. At the doctor’s office, they stripped off my old bandages and replaced them with new, compact steri-strips. And just to make sure that a) the strips didn’t go anywhere and b) that I would get The Rash of my life, they used some medical glue to tamp those strips down. One appointment and another prescription for pain meds later, I was on my way to The Rash!

–Warning! The following paragraphs contain graphic descriptions that may be unsuitable for small children and those who hate awesomeness in all of its forms–

Two days later, I finally had some results! Large, angry blisters had formed underneath the steri-strips, and there was blister juice oozing out all over the place. Yum yum. In addition, I also noticed a small amount of swelling around the knee. In order to give The Rash enough time to really run its course, I decided not to do anything about said Rash until the weekend was upon me, at which point, the doctor’s office was closed. Perfect, and entire weekend of incubation! And I made good use of the weekend, watching with pride as my leg swelled to nearly twice its normal size, whilst becoming increasingly itchy.

By the end of the weekend, I knew that I had to go for broke with The Rash, so rather than go see the doctor on Monday, I jumped on a plane to Seattle to attend a conference for a couple of days! This was the right choice for The Rash experiment. By the time I returned from Seattle, My leg looked like a plump sausage. Or a Lil’ Smokey, which I tend to enjoy more. What was even better was that The Rash, discontented with being confined to my leg, decided to spread everywhere. And I do mean EVERYWHERE. At this point, The Rash had truly become THE RASH. I was eating Benadryl like a fat kid eats cake, just to survive. By the time I got home from Seattle and into the doctor’s office, I was convinced that my life had evolved into one gigantic itch that I could never scratch enough.

Thankfully, this was the beginning of the end of The Rash. Two days of intravenously-delivered steroids and antibiotics and an oral regimen of more of the same (plus more benadryl) and I was on the road to recovery. As of the time of this writing, I’m still a bit rashy and more itchy than I should be. But I’m getting there. So thanks for asking, Erin.

Note: I have pictures, but I have to get them off my camera, which requires me to find a special cable that apparently doesn’t want to be found. But I’ll get it. And then you’ll have your pictures.

Tags: rash, seattle, smx advanced, allergy

Those of you who watch a lot of political news (which used to be not-me before Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert made it funny and therefore worth my time), you are no doubt familiar with Bill “Papa Bear” O’Reilly. By way of disclaimer, let me first say that I have no intention of getting into an ideological or political discussion here. No, my intent is to point out the fact that Bill O’Reilly, as a person, is a total douchechbag.

I’ve had this sneaky suspicion for a while. I think it started the first time I ever saw him scream down a guest. “This is not the act of a rational man,” I thought to myself. Don’t know what I’m talking about? just type “Bill O’Reilly” into YouTube and watch one of what must be thousands of videos of Bill O’Reilly losing his cool in an attempt to win an argument by pure pugnacity. Great debating strategy, Bill. Way to show respect for others’ viewpoints and intellectual abilities.

Maybe he’s just passionate, you say. I thought the same thing at first. But then I saw this clip where he had a problem understanding the words on the teleprompter and lost his cool. (Caution: he uses a few R-rated words, surprise surprise.) The best part wasn’t watching him explode (see the link in the aforementioned paragraph if you’re not tired of those antics yet). No, it was seeing that “Papa Bear” O’Reilly’s egocentric and petulant douchebaggery comes through even in a completely non-political arena.

In conclusion, I’m naming Bill O’Reilly to Towering Intellect’s Invisible List of People I Despise. I learned to stop throwing temper tantrums when I was six. Why didn’t you, Bill?

Tags: billoreilly, douchebag, insane, despise

I know I haven’t written for a while, and it’ll be a few weeks yet before I can do any regular posting, but I had to throw this up because I feel pretty strongly about it.

It’s always fun for me to cruise through my friends’ blogrolls to see who they read and link to. I’ve found some great blogs that way. Tonight, however, I came across a blog post that bothered me, and though I generally just troll new blogs, I had to leave a comment on this one. And by comment I mean essay.

Anyway, by way of background, the post deals with the recent statement that Brigham Young University has made regarding homosexuality. They clarify and update “the university’s policy against homosexual behavior among students rather than homosexual orientation. . .Now the written policy more clearly states that gays can attend BYU without concern that the Honor Code Office will take action against them because of their sexual orientation.” Read the news release here.

Let me first say that I applaud this clarification by BYU. I will admit that in the past I have been guilty of intolerance, but as the years have passed and I have become more independent in my point of view, I have become much more tolerant of those espousing different points of view. Perhaps that’s what made the blog post I came across so disturbing to me. The author basically stated his shock and disappointment with BYU’s decision to publicize a more tolerant approach towards homosexuality, and then proceeded to engage in a vitriolic and closed-minded (I thought) diatribe against anybody with any kind of inclination towards homosexuality. It was exactly the kind of intolerant attitude that makes me hate living in Provo. What was even more worrisome was the cloud of back-slapping support for the sentiment in the comments. At that point, my inner activist flared up and I penned typed the following response:

I’m going to have to disagree with you, my friend. I have a couple of issues with what you’re saying.

First, let’s talk about this statement: “Entertaining thoughts is behavior.” Now, you had better hope to God that this is not true, because if it is, you and I are in far worse trouble than we realize. Fortunately, we have it on good authority that this isn’t the case: “The distinction between feelings or inclinations on the one hand, and behavior on the other hand, is very clear. It’s no sin to have inclinations that if yielded to would produce behavior that would be a transgression. The sin is in yielding to temptation. Temptation is not unique. Even the Savior was tempted.” -Dallin H Oaks
Granted, you did kind of edge away from this hard-line definition as you proceeded, but the fact is, you’ve based this entire post on this faulty statement.

You also mention how “they think it’s only “fair” that they be allowed to do whatever they like, since the hetero students can.” First let me address the obvious. Heterosexual students at BYU absolutely CANNOT do whatever they want. There are handfuls of students that are expelled from BYU for sexual misconduct each semester. The BYU Honor Code is very specific on this point. The point being if they do indeed feel entitled to do whatever they want, then they’re every bit as free to be expelled as heterosexual students with the same opinion.

The broader issue at stake here is your presumption that you know what all these individuals are thinking. Sure, there are some people who miraculously experience the healing power of the atonement and have the bitter cup taken from them. But for every instance of such miracles, there is another instance of the Lord allowing the individual to continue to labor under the burden of temptation. Notable examples include Paul (2 Cor. 12:7-10) and even the Savior (Luke 22:42).
In this light, your willingness to mete out judgment in behalf of the Lord based only on your own personal experience is troubling.

Finally, I have a comment relating to your insinuation that the church is caving to political and social pressure. Remember that the prophet and members of the 12 are on the board of directors for BYU. Also keep in mind that this attitude is the same attitude that led to the foundation of the FLDS church. They apostatized because they felt that polygamy had been abandoned by the church in response to outside pressure. I leave the conclusion up to you.
Here’s some additional reading on the topic, along with a snippet to support what I’ve said:

The Atonement also gives us the strength to endure “pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind,” because our Savior also took upon Him “the pains and the sicknesses of his people” (Alma 7:11). Brothers and sisters, if your faith and prayers and the power of the priesthood do not heal you from an affliction, the power of the Atonement will surely give you the strength to bear the burden.”
“He Heals the Heavy Laden,” Dallin H. Oaks.

Anyway, thanks for letting me hijack your comments to share my thoughts and feelings on this subject.

Nate Kartchner

And now I feel a little bit better. Man, I need to move.

Tags: rant, mormonism, homosexuality, tolerance, byu

Tags: graffiti, awesome, yourmom joke