New Bike

Last semester by bike got stolen by our apartment management. Well, not really . . . but kind of. I had locked it up to the bike rack near our apartment building, but since my bike had a flat tire, I didn't use it regularly.
Every year, the management here at Wymount goes through and clears up any bikes that haven't been registered with their office. They warn the tenants when cleaning season is coming in their monthly newsletter, which I unfortunately didn't read that month. It wasn't until I went to look for my bike a few weeks later that I even noticed what had happened. I talked to the lady who is in charge of that and we went looking through the piles and piles of bikes they had picked up this year. There were about 300. I'm not even exaggerating. It looked kind of like this. But my bike wasn't there. It was weird. I'm not sure where it is. The lady felt bad for me and said that when they get around to donating them to either DI or the juvenile detention center (where they apparently have a great bike repair crew), I can go back and pick out a bike of my choice. All I can say is "!!!!!!!!!!!". I got a call from the nice lady today and she said that I can go on Thursday afternoon to find my dream DI bike. This bike will most likely be a step up from the bike I had lost. I got my old bike from Craigslist for about $60. This one will be free!
I'm thinking about getting one of those racing street bikes with the curvy handlebars and thin razer tires. You don't want to have one of those go over the back of your knees. That's bad for the veins (see 1:21).

Bike riding is easy. Tasty life.

Fact

It has been proven that when someone enters a store in the Mid-west and buys diapers at 5:00 pm, their next most likely purchase is a case of beer.

That is why in many stores in the mid-west there are snacks to go along with the beer next to the diapers.

A store who tried this snack placement increased their sales by 17%.

(All of this information brought to you by BYU's Accounting 200 class.)

My advice: don't buy diapers at 5:00 pm or else you might need to talk to your bishop.

Power to the People

I think American democracy is quite amazing. As some of you may know, I am taking a Construction Law class. This past week we were talking about lien laws. Maybe you all know about them already, but it was a first for me. Liens are strictly an American thing. You can't find them in any other country. I'm pretty sure they started in the seventeen hundreds, but I can't be bothered to look in my notes.
This is how a lien works. The owner hires a contractor to build a building. The contractor hires a subcontractor, such as a plumber, to do the plumbing in this case. If the contractor doesn't pay the plumber, the plumber can put a lien on the property, causing the building to foreclose. The money from the foreclosure would then go to the plumber, even if it's only $1.
Now, this might seem unfair. "Why is the owner punished because of the contractor's negligence?" you may ask. Well, it has to do with a few things. First of all, in the seventeen hundreds, there was a great need for laborers to build up the nation's capital. They enacted this law to entice the laborers to work--they were worried that they wouldn't get paid. Also, a lot of the time the laborers didn't have the means to go to court or hire an attorney. This provided an easier way to get their money.
It can also be argued that it is the owner's fault for this lien because he or she hired a crummy contractor. There is a lot of competition among contractors to win the bidding for a job, and if he or she chooses an inexperienced or unethical contractor just because he or she said they would do the job for the least amount of money, well, that's their own fault.

So when I was working in the mill and if my boss didn't pay me, I could have technically put a lien on the building that the mouldings were going to, forcing the building to be sold, thereby receiving my wages from the sale of that building. Pretty cool. This gives great power to the laborer and a great incentive for owners and contractors to be ethical.



This guy is powerful.

Memory

I was reading the New York Times online the other day and I read this incredible article about a man named Henry Gustav Molaison. Most people knew him as "H. M." for protection of privacy. He died about two months ago at the age of 82 and he couldn't remember the last 55 years of his life. He would live day to day with only his short term memory and when he would go to sleep, he couldn't remember anything about the previous day.

This was because when he was 9 he hit his head in a bike accident and developed repetitive seizures. When he was 27, he saw a doctor who tried something a little risky. He opened up his head and removed some part of his brain that he thought controlled the seizures. After he sewed him up and he came around, he realized that he forgot everything that had happened 20 minutes before. He only had his short term memory. He met with a doctor for weeks on end and everyday the doctor had to reintroduce himself. It was from this guy that we learned about the different types of memory. He still had his muscle memory, meaning that he could ride a bike and other things like that.
The cool part about him having his muscle memory is that this doctor gave him a puzzle to do, and he did it everyday. Each day seemed like it was the first time for H. M., but the amazing thing is that he got faster and faster doing it. After a while he said things like "Huh, that was a lot easier than I thought it would be..." Crazy, huh? His muscle memory could remember how to do the puzzle, but his normal memory had no recollection of doing it.

You can read the whole article here if you want to. It's really cool.

I've been trying to think of ways on how this story could better my life, and I realized it would be cool to be able to turn my memory on and off if I wanted to. Like, if I had to learn how to play a song on the piano, I would turn my memory off and just practice and practice. Without my normal memory, I wouldn't be able to keep track of time and wouldn't get bored with practicing. But since I would still have my muscle memory, I could come back the next day or week or something and would be able to play an awesome song without even practicing.





Probably the piano would catch on fire because my skills would be too great for it to handle.


Can you think of any other applications?