Dan Quixote

"You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness."

-Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

During my mission to Paraguay, one of my companions had to make a trip to the hospital. After the appointment, we decided to have lunch in the hospital's cafeteria. They had one of those low-set freezers with the slide-open top, filled with all sorts of individually wrapped popsicles, ice cream sandwiches, and other frozen treats. Dessert sounded good, so I walked over, slid the lid open, and weighed my options.

My earliest childhood friend and his family gave me a nickname – “Danny Q.” To this day I have no idea how it originated… it’s just what they called (and still call) me. Not too long ago I decided that the Q stands for Quixote.

Anyone who’s been grocery shopping with me or seen me try to order food at a restaurant can tell you how long it often takes me to make up my mind. This decision in the hospital was no different – I studied all my options, carefully considering the available selection of treats, their prices, my personal taste, my hunger level, and amount of disposable funds. It took me literally 3-4 minutes to pick something.

I recently learned the hard way that what I once thought was being true to a glorious quest was in reality as useless as attacking windmills. How am I supposed to know when reaching for the unreachable star is commendable and noble or just impractical and unrealistic? 

When I finally returned to the table where my companion was sitting, he asked me, “Elder McIntosh, how are you ever going to choose a wife?!”

"Dreams die hard and you hold them in your hands long after they turn to dust."

-Bowen (Dennis Quaid), DragonHeart

And so I joined Cyrano and Luke at the wrong corner; turns out I was Harry the whole time. What purpose do I have in sharing these things? I don’t know… catharsis, probably. Will the world be better for this? I think so – I've definitely learned some things. Quests are difficult and tiring, but I’ve got to be willing to march into hell for the heavenly cause, because it's worth it. And the world is a pretty terrific place.

Revenge and Brackets

I'm a big fan of filmmaker Christopher Nolan - I think his movies are brilliant. Ironically, many of his films tend to be visually and thematically dark. One of these dark films, The Prestige, happens to be a favorite of mine. I consider it a high-quality example of cinematic art. Coming from a culture that values "anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy," I have encountered several people who don't like this movie based on its bleak and sinister premise.

Because I have been taught the importance of being careful about the media that we experience, I gave the matter some thought. Most of the darkness in this film revolves around the theme of revenge. As far as I can tell, the lessons and morals taught in this movie are in harmony with true principles (whether strictly religious or not): revenge and pride often lead to sadness and self-destruction, obsessions are mentally unhealthy, etc. I bounced these ideas off friends, and we considered other movies that deal with revenge.

The Count of Monte Cristo is an enjoyable, well-made film and I imagine that most people would consider it less dark than The Prestige. HOWEVER, I believe that the principles taught in this movie do not reflect reality. It seems to teach that you can waste your whole life seeking revenge against those who have wronged you, and God will support you if your cause is "just" and everyone lives happily ever after. (I've never read the book, but I hear that it has a more correct moral of the story.)

So, which do you prefer - what do you let your children watch? A grim movie that teaches truth, or a nicer, lighter movie that teaches the incorrect philosophies of men?

On a completely different note, check out this incredibly clever paragraph about the use of brackets from Wikipedia's article on the punctuation marks:

"Parentheses may be nested (generally with one set (such as this) inside another set). This is not commonly used in formal writing (though sometimes other brackets [especially square brackets] will be used for one or more inner set of parentheses [in other words, secondary {or even tertiary} phrases can be found within the main parenthetical sentence])."

Correlation

Last month my blog received more pageviews than it had in any other month of its existence.  I wondered why, and thought there might be a strong correlation to the number of posts published that month.  So, being a good scientist, I made a graph.  Here's a scatter plot showing the number of pageviews my blog had in a month (y axis) based on the number of posts I made that month (x-axis).

I used Excel to find the regression line:

y = 43.132x + 24.869

This means that in months that I don't post anything, I can expect about 25 pageviews.  For months that I do publish things, I can expect about 43 pageviews per post on top of the 25.

But being a good scientist, I also realize that there are other variables that I haven't accounted for.  Sometimes I "promote" certain blog posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Google +.  I didn't account for that - oh well.

(source)

Optometry

For those who don't know already, I've been accepted into the University of Houston's College of Optometry (hooray!).  Upon hearing that I want to become an optometrist, many people ask, "Is it because you wear glasses?"  This always seems like a silly question to me.  Do people become doctors because they occasionally get sick?  Do people become dentists because they've had a cavity?  Do people become mechanics because they've had a car break down?

Many factors influenced my career decision.  While some reasons are more personal, the following stats should do a great job at explaining "Why optometry?"

#12 on the list "Best Jobs in America" (2012) by CNNMoney & PayScale.com
#20 on the list "Highest Paying Jobs" (2010) by CNNMoney & Payscale.com
#8 on the list "Best Jobs of 2013" by CareerCast.com (as quoted by cnbc.com and Forbes)
#10 on the list "Best Paying Jobs of the Future" by The Huffington Post
On the list "Best Jobs for 2013 and Beyond" by AOL Jobs
On the list "Best Jobs for Investigative People" by USNews Careers
US Bureau of Labor Statistics says that employment of optometrists will increase 33% from 2010-2020 ("much faster than average")

Some good descriptions of the career:
ExploreHEALTHCareers.org
USNews Careers

I have a Bacon number!

I think most people are familiar with the '6 degrees of separation' theory. If you're not, look it up.  Related to this is the '6 degrees of Kevin Bacon' theory. Kevin Bacon has figuratively been in a billion movies; the idea is that any actor can be connected to him through 6 or fewer degrees (connections between actors). For example, Emma Watson was in The Perks of Being a Wallflower with Logan Lerman (1), who was in My One and Only with Kevin Bacon (2). The number of connections has come to be known as the 'Bacon number' - Emma Watson's Bacon number is 2. Google has incorporated this feature - just search any actor's name followed by the words 'Bacon number.'

Today I learned that I have a Bacon number! MY BACON NUMBER IS 4!

I played a singing, tap dancing cowboy in my high school's production of Crazy for You. (1)

(I'm the one kneeling in the front; the director is in the navy blue shirt)

The director of my high school drama department (and the play I was in) has been friends with Jim Parsons since they were in high school; they were also roommates at the University of Houston. Both of them were involved with Infernal Bridegroom Productions, a now-defunct theater company based in Houston (home of the country's 2nd-largest theater district). (2)

Jim Parsons and Billy Bob Thornton appeared in School for Scoundrels together... (3)

...and Billy Bob Thornton and Kevin Bacon starred in Jayne Mansfield's Car. (4)