Facebook birthday wall posts: part 1/3

[Part 2: Who posted happy birthday on my wall?]
[Part 3: What did people write on my wall for my birthday?]

A real blogger recently reminded me (more on that in a future post) that when people decide to read a blog entry, they're not necessarily willing to give it 3 hours of their lives.  And so, O reader, I will try to make these musings short enough for one sitting.

So when a topic comes along about which I have a lot to say, I'll break it up into multiple entries.  And if facebook birthday wall posts isn't one of those topics, what is?!


Where we're going on this two-part tangent

Everyone who has bought into facebook (i.e. has a bunch of friends and stays pretty active with posts, comments, messages, etc.) gets bombarded on shis birthday with wall posts.  It's just the way of the world.

But have you ever really thought about what kind of bombardment your wall is enduring?  I had a birthday recently, and I decided the 121 birthday-related wall posts I got would be a large enough sample size to figure out exactly what happens to someone's wall on that special day.  And, in fact, I think it will do more than that -- it might tell me something about my own social network.

The questions I wanted to answer all fall into roughly 3 categories:

1. When did people post on my wall?
2. Who posted on my wall?
3. How/what did people post on my wall?

These questions will be the three parts of this Tangent Series.  I think the second and third are much more compelling, but I arbitrarily typed the three in the above order, and so we start with the questions of timing.  Would the biggest rush be right at midnight, or the 8am-ish start of most people's day?  Would the fact that my birthday was on a Friday eliminate most or all evening wall posts?


When did people post "Happy Birthday" on my wall?

The graph shows the concentration of birthday wall posts in hourly slots.  The hour listed on the x-axis is the beginning of that slot, so, for instance, "10am" means the hour from 10am to 11am.

There's nothing earth-shattering there, but I think it describes facebook usage trends.  A decent number of people are on facebook after midnight, and some of them like to jump on the instant birthday post train.

It's no surprise there's a lull in activity during sleep hours, and then BAM-- from 7am to 11am is the peak of wall post activity.  My best guess is that most people who write birthday wall posts (I'm notoriously not one of them) tend to do so the first time they log onto facebook in a given day.  A natural time to log onto facebook for the first time in a given day is 8 or 9am.

The only other thing I have to say is that, despite my birthday's Friday orientation, there were in fact some evening posts.  But notice the awesome "social life lull" from 8-10pm.  I guess 10pm is the time when people get back from whatever they're doing and hop onto facebook.

I know facebook is how I spend my Friday nights.

Next time: Who writes on one's wall? Friends, enemies, people whose names you don't even recognize?

For now, just let me know what you think of the graph, if you have any thoughts or observations.  Also, share what your facebook life is like -- when and how often do YOU log on?

Jon

Ayn Rand vs. Jesus of Nazareth

It's getting hard to remember now (soon I will step one year closer to "late twenties" -- ugh), but I was once young.  Once, back then, I read Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand.  I didn't read it because it was supposed to be extremely important to political and economic philosophy, and I certainly didn't read it to expose myself to its ubiquitous references to Rand's Objectivism. 

I read it because, like most things I did back then, my friend Brett recommended it.  That, and the art on the cover was ballin':

Seriously, that is some simple, elegant cover art.

Anyway, the book drew me in with its awesome characters.  In the years and books since, I've only come across a couple characters I've liked more than Atlas's Francisco d'Anconia or Ragnar Danneskjöld.  The former is a brilliant industrialist pretending to be a brainless playboy (sort of like Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins), and the latter is a pirate.  Yeah, a pirate.

Anyway, while the book is packed with Objectivism, Rand's personal philosphy of "rational self-interest," I mainly just wanted to see what would happen to the characters, and figure out who the heck John Galt was.  But later I would take more of an interest in ethics and morality and would realize the significance of Rand's thoughts.

And, from a Christian perspective, some of Rand's quotations about these topics can seem... well, literally the exact opposite of the Christian perspective.

Objectivism

Objectivism, or at least my understanding of it, rests entirely on the assertion that in every area of life, people should pursue their self-interest.  In determining what is, in fact, in their best interest, they should trust their rationality alone.  And thus, articles on this school of thought are always throwing around "rational self-interest."

In politics, Objectivism calls for an extremely small government and laissez-faire economic system.  [This best allows each individual to pursue shis rational self-interest.]

In religion, Objectivism calls for atheism, because God "isn't needed" to explain or decide things, only one's rational mind is.

And in ethics, Objectivism calls for selfishness.  Because self-interest is a person's greatest goal, selfishness is the best course of action and is, ironically, the Objectivist's greatest "virtue."

Ayn and Jesus

Christian ethics seems pretty distant from Rand's.  The greatest goal for the Christian isn't self-interest, but God's glory and comformity to His desires.

In terms of lifestyle, what brings God glory?  What are His desires for us?  According to Jesus: giving our possessions to those in need (Matthew 19), giving liberty to the oppressed (Luke 4), befriending the destitute (Luke 14), reconciling with those we've hurt (Matthew 5), praying for our enemies (Matthew 5), the Golden Rule (Matthew 7), etc.  In summary, we glorify God and live the way he wants largely by what we do for others.  The virtues of Objectivism, you'll recall, are those things we do for ourselves.

To make the contrast as stark as possible, I'll give a remark from each important figure:

"Man—every man—is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others; he must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; he must work for his rational self-interest, with the achievement of his own happiness as the highest moral purpose of his life."  Ayn Rand

"This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you. There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends."  Jesus

From one side, "Don't sacrifice for others.  Seek your own happiness at all costs."  From the other, "Seek to help and better others' lives, even if this comes at great cost to you.  Were you to give up your very life for others, it would be the greatest possible act of love."

Pondering such extremes

I will mainly let you ponder these two polarities.  What's interesting to me is how two ideas of morality that function so oppositely could both have somewhat sizeable followings.  Usually when two people disagree on a moral issue, they agree on the values but differ on how to best preserve those values (e.g., pro-life and pro-choice supporters both agree on the value of human life and the freedom to decide about one's body). 

But the Christian and the Objectivist seem completely at odds about the very basic values that should guide our ethics.  Paul, one of the most important figures in the history of Christianity, wrote: "Consider others as more important than yourselves."

Yet, I recently listened to a Christian who specializes in Objectivism and he suggested that Rand was on the right track -- that we should naturally pursue our self-interest, but that the error lies in trusting our rational thought alone, to the exclusion of God, to determine what's in our interest.  In fact, this author contended, our greatest happiness, joy, and self-interest can be found only in relationship with God.  This is similar to John Piper's teachings on Christian hedonism.


Anyway, how do you think two opposite views of morality could both gain so much popularity?

Any other relevant thoughts, stories, ideas, jokes, video clips, memories, or questions?

Jon

Something epic

I know we're in the middle of a Nostalgic Tangent series, and we will return to that soon.  But sometimes something so awesome and exciting comes along that series are temporarily cast aside to make way.  Right now, that epic something is here, and it's the Pittsburgh Steelers.

I'm so full of Steelers mania right now that I can't decide what direction to take our tangent in.  I have so many memories from the win over the Ravens (I got the chance to go to the game -- thanks Dad), thoughts about the matchup with the Jets, jokes about the Patriots losing... but I think, given the awesome rivalry with B-more and the fact that probably not many of you have been to an NFL playoff game, I will walk you through the Steelers-Ravens playoff experience.

Pre-game -- introduction to the protagonists' hometown

First of all, I'm NOT a fan of sports pre-game festivities.  This probably stems from the fact that I went to WVU, where football pre-game tailgating is literally given more time and energy than schoolwork.  For thousands of Mountaineer students, tragically, the highlight of their academic year is drunken revelry before each home football game.

But Steelers fans, as crazed as they can be about the team, were much less... horrible... in their early afternoon celebrations.  While there was no shortage of beer and corn-hole on hand, there was a refreshing absence of vomit and yelled f-words.

The best part of this time for me was eating Primanti's in the stadium and listening to the seemingly out of place hard rock 80s cover band.

First quarter: first ten minutes (of game clock) -- the Golden Age

Have you ever noticed in sweeping epic fantasies (I'm clearly asking "are you super nerdy?") that some Golden Age always happened a long time ago, before the main storyline begins?  There was always some era in antiquity from which relics and legends exist but little else, that was supposed to be marked by prosperity and peace.  Every sweeping epic fantasy I've read (Lord of the Rings, Dark Tower, Wheel of Time, Chronicles of Narnia) has one of these.

To me, that's what the first two drives of this game were like.  I barely remember them because of all the turmoil that followed.  But I can barely recall our heroes forcing a Baltimore punt and scoring a touchdown...

The rest of the first half -- the shadow rises

To make an epic compelling, there has to be a moment at which it seems like the enemy's triumph is certain.  If the author doesn't bring you to a point of wondering, "How exactly could the good guys win?", you probably haven't been glued to it.

At this point in the game, it was like the entire crowd was watching Joseph get sold into slavery or Goliath taunt an army of puny, trembling Israelites.  No one cheered.  No one smiled.  I clung to two minute solaces:

1. The people next to me were seemingly the stadium's only no-shows (giving me more room).
2. My Ravens friend Justin is respectful enough to give me about 3 days to heal before calling to make fun of me.

It was just mistake after mistake -- costly pass interference penalty, horrible failure to recover unwanted loose ball, another fumble, and to top it off, a missed field goal.  At halftime, some crappy high school band played.  But we weren't listening to them; we were asking ourselves "Why?  Why?!"

The second half -- improbable yet inevitable victory

We spent most of the second half on a rigorous alternating voice program: making every possible decibel of noise when the Ravens had the ball, and sitting in quiet excitement (and shushing drunk cheerers) when we did.  This crazy gauntlet of sound somehow added to the thrill of the comeback.

There were many moments of frenzied rejoicing to recall, but I think if I could pick my favorite, it was Clark's interception.  First, we had the perfect view to see the play develop, and as soon as the ball left Flacco's hand, I (and probably many people in my section) uttered, "He's going to pick it off!"  And he did.  But more importantly, this is when the comeback officially switched from Impossible Dream to Absolute Certainty.

I'm not sure why those are the only two options, but they are.  And it was Clark's awesome read of Flacco and the latter's horribly ill-advised heave that marked the moment when I made the Fan's Leap of Hope.

During this play, I was jumping up and down so wildly that my foot at one point slipped down behind the next row's seat, crushing my shin against that row's back.  But the ecstasy of the moment dulled all the pain.

Post-game -- saying goodbye

When you finish any great book series, you become really sad because you have to say goodbye to the characters, and it feels like a part of you is dying.  I, too, felt like parts of me were dying, but that was just the pain returning to my shin and the fact that my limbs were succumbing to hypothermia.

Those injuries, combined with the fact that I was with an old man (sorry Dad), led us to make straight for the exit and car.  So I have no stories from after the game, except that of course all the fans were in good spirits and making comments about rooting for the Jets.

Moving from my joyous memories to yours,
or, Arguing about football

Any fun stories or observations from the Steelers-Ravens game?

Predictions for this weekend's championship games?

Let's go Steelers!

Jon

Nostalgic Tangent series: music

I rarely yearn to be a developmental psychologist (if that's even a real term), but now is one of those times.  Because as I think back on my childhood music phases, I'm noticing that they occurred later in life than last post's TV phases or next post's movie obsessions.  Truth be told, I had very few "childhood" music faves, just a bunch of obnoxious adolescent ones.

Why is that?  Referring back to my opening sentence, I'm guessing it has to do with the development of our minds.  Kids have ample time to watch TV and are drawn in, entranced, to moving things.  But what context is there in a kid's life for music?  They don't have the patience to just sit around listening to music, and so if they have favorite songs, they're probably from Barney or some wretched Mickey Mouse detective show (much to the chagrin, I'm sure, of parents and older siblings).

Well, enough pretend psychology.  Here were my major musical phases growing up.  Be warned: they're going to shock you.


My ridiculous list of favorite musical performers while I was growing up

Phase 1 (1993-1994): Billy Joel

My early love of Billy Joel was the result of three factors:

1. I was the age when I started to like music
2. My dad was a huge Billy Joel fan and would often play his records for me
3. Billy Joel rules

And in case there's any doubt, I mean that third one.  Yeah, he has some annoying songs ("Uptown Girl" comes to mind), but he has some awesome ones as well.  One of my favorites is "The Ballad of Billy the Kid", the first line of which is

"From a town known as Wheeling, West Virginia, rode a boy with a six gun in his hand."

That line alone compels me to love Billy Joel.

• [Tangent-within-a-tangent: I have postulated a Billy Joel Hypothesis.  It states that if you visit an establishment in Pittsburgh, PA that plays a loop radio of pop music, you will hear a Billy Joel song during your time there.  I don't know which song, and I don't care how short your visit it.  You'll hear one.]

Phase 2 (1995-1997): Boyz II Men

For those of you who know me now but didn't in 1996, which probably accounts for 99% of people reading this, this will be a huge surprise.  But believe me, or at least believe my Boyz II Men cassette tapes, that I was a huge fan.

But there are consequences to every action, and being a fan of an R&B group at age 10 is no exception.  There is a hilarious-- and I mean uproariously funny, embarrassing, horrifying, amazing, and profoundly disturbing-- home video of me and my cousins, circa 1995, in which my cousin Simeon and I sing "I'll Make Love to You" as the musical accompaniment for our cousins' dancing.  I don't know about Simeon (who was a player from a young age), but I definitely didn't know what making love was at age 10. 

I just sang about it.



Phase 3 (1998-1999): Bad Religion

I will probably devote at least one blog entry someday to the craziness of middle school.  Isn't it amazing that almost everyone, especially girls, hated middle school?  But I won't let myself get carried too far away on that tangent.

For me, middle school wasn't too bad.  And for that, I mainly have to thank my then-best friend Brett.  At a time when other middle schoolers were... well honestly I have no idea what they were doing... Brett and I would sit in his basement and ponder metaphysics, mathematics, Jesus, and women.  I'm serious.  That's what we did.

In addition to making my middle school years unique, nerdy, and cool, Brett introduced me to a lot of music.  Foremost among this music was Bad Religion.

Ironically, the person who probably laid the most groundwork in those years for me to know God also introduced me to a band whose logo is an X-ed out cross.



Phase 4 (1999-2000): Dave Matthews Band

I won't go into much detail here.  Dave Matthews Band's first three studio albums were incredible, and they were even better live.  But beyond just the music, the rampant popularity of DMB eliminated all middle ground and forced all my peers and me to choose a side:

• DMB-lover: You had to go to one DMB concert every 18 months, listen to them at least once a week, and complain about how the radio was killing "Crash" by overplaying it.
• DMB-hater: Your only rule was mandatory complaining anytime a DMB song came on the radio, a DMB fan droned on about their awesomeness, or a "DMB" bumper sticker was spotted on a car.

I chose to love.


What about you?

What music did you grow up on?
Please comment.  I get lonely.

Jon

Nostalgic Tangent series: television

I was a little panicky last night when I realized, O faithful tangent explorer, that I had no adventure in mind for today.  Maybe I was still a little teared up from our last journey.

But my friend D-Rod (why do all my friends who give me ideas have handles with first_name_initial--last_name_opening_syllable?) gave me a great idea.  He said I should blog about old awesome nostalgic things from childhood.  The idea is so awesome that I'm going to get 3 or 4 tangents out of it.  We'll start with TV shows.

The format of nostalgia

As I look back on my childhood, I see a lot of things.  Many of them make me shudder, as they're based on embarrassing footage from home videos where I must be trying to experiment with how annoying a young boy can be.

But one of the things that fascinates me about my childhood is that, apparently, I could only be into one thing at a time.  So all my favorites come in "phases", sort of like fashion trends (I wouldn't know about this, since I've been in a hoodie and sweatpants phase for about 5 years now).

And so, I give you...


My childhood TV show phases

Phase 1 (1987-1988): Alf

This phase was so early in life that it doesn't even exist in my memory -- only in my stuffed Alf doll, the VHS of Alf's Special Christmas, and a few pictures of me in ALF pajamas as a kid.  But I've taken it upon myself to learn about this early-life obsession. 

In case you don't know, Alf is an alien from the planet Melmac who lands in a family's backyard.  They keep him secret for his own safety, and in return he keeps them entertained with jokes about wanting to eat cats.  Yeah, for some reason he always wanted to eat a cat.


Phase 2 (1989-1990): Ghostbusters

You've probably seen the movie (or its awesomely terrifying sequel with the dude that comes to life from the painting -- nightmares, anyone?), but you might not be as familiar with the early 90s animated TV show.  I was.

It was the cartoon that introduced me to the idea of fighting ghosts, which I would end up doing regularly with every Ghostbusters action figure known to man.


Phase 3 (1991-1992): Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Of all the phases, this one probably hit me the hardest.  Maybe it's because at ages 6-7 we are first able to really sink our teeth into an obsession for the first time.  Maybe it's because I was first learning I was going to be an intellectual nerd, and Donatello's smart-but-cool persona gave me hope.  Whatever the reason, I was all about the ninja turtles.


Phase 4 (1993-1994): Saved by the Bell

I guess at age eight, a boy decides it's time to come of age.  There's no better way to do that, as far as I can see, than to spend 30 minutes a week with a role model (Zach Morris), his rival-but-still-best-friend (Slater), the class nerd (Screech), and a bunch of pretty girls.  If that won't grow you up, what will?

Aside from general life lessons, this show provided me with awesome sci-fi imagination skills (mainly from Zach freezing time with a cool snap of his fingers) and my first fictional character crush -- Kelly Kapowski.


Phase 5 (1995-20111997): X-Men

I guess after I grew up with Saved by the Bell the previous two years, I felt too serious and mature at age 10.  So I turned to the imagination, superpowers, and awesomeness of X-Men. 

I probably would have watched this cartoon up to the present day, but the show ended in 1997.  And believe me, you can't follow the reruns.  Despite the show purportedly being for kids, they introduced so much time-traveling with Bishop that it was about as easy to follow as jumping into the 5th season of LOST.

What shows did you grow up on??

Jon

I return with tears

My blog hiatus (if you noticed it, which I'm guessing three of you did) is over.  The holidays (Christmas, New Year's, and Christmas Eve Eve) were great for me, and I hope they were for you too.  But I was really busy, and blogging was out of the question.

My friend KMech recommended I blog about crying.  Specifically, something about how women cry much more than men.  Unfortunately, I'm hesitant to blog about gender differences for a few reasons, the foremost of which is that I understand zero things about women.

What I understand better, but not completely, is myself.  By extension, I understand a few things about men.  Thus, we can explore two things here today: the crying of me, and the crying of men in general.  And so, all aboard the good ship Catharsis as we embark on a tangential voyage down a river of tears.

The turning point in my crying life

Most people in my generation have baby boomer parents.  One of the stereotypes of baby boomer men is their gruff anti-emotional personalities.  While stereotypes probably have a bunch of drawbacks, they typically reflect widespread truths.  This one seems to be pretty accurate. 

And so, as my peers and I grew up, the masculinity modeled to us was one in which crying was for girls.  Once we crossed a certain plateau in age (let's call it 8 years old), crying went from a regular occurrence to an extreme rarity.

I was firmly entrenched in a lifestyle that conformed to my peers' expectations, so from the ages of, say, 9-15, my eye muscles became amazingly strong from all my practice of holding in tears.  (To this day, those muscles are buff enough to hold in tears for just about everything but E:60 and Alf's Special Christmas.)

Then, one day, Everybody Loves Raymond changed my life.  I saw episode 20 of the 4th season ("Alone Time").  In this classic episode, Deborah asks Ray for some alone time.  He comes back to the house to see what she's up to during her alone time, and she's sitting in the living room crying.

He assumes it's because he's been teasing her about her moustache, but she later reveals to him that crying is merely cathartic, so from time to time she likes to have a good cry to relieve tension/stress.  Curious, Ray attempts to copy her intentional cry.  When he can't cry to the first song he puts on, he unwisely chooses another: 

Anyway, this episode was the first time I heard "cathartic" used effectively, and the first time something suggested to me that crying could be good.  From then on, I gradually became more okay with crying, especially when I was alone.

Why some men cry

I think men can be roughly divided into two categories: those who have seen that episode of Everybody Loves Raymond, and those who haven't. 

That obviously wouldn't be helpful, but what I mean is that you can dichotomize men as those who have shrugged off baby boomer steel emotions, and those who haven't.  Those who keep all their tears bottled up, and those who cry for the first 20 minutes of Up.

I sort of already touched on one big reason men don't cry, but why do some let the waterworks fly?  I think we've probably just allowed ourselves to do it, whether in public or private, and realized that it's not the end of the world.  In fact, it's... cathartic.

Recent personal tearjerkers

I have decided that, much like the golden ratio is the most aesthetically pleasing proportion in art, a list with 5 elements is the most intellectually pleasing item in blogging.  And so, I leave you with the 5 things I most recently cried about:

1. Praying with a friend

Just last night I got to pray with a dear friend of mine about some really hard stuff he's going through.  As God met us in our time with Him, it was powerful and cool.

2. E:60's coverage of Josiah Viera

E:60 is an ESPN show that I speculate is designed to give men their "Raymond crying experience".  This particular episode, which you can watch here, is about a 15-pound baseball-loving boy suffering from Progeria.

3. Vulnerability with family

During our family at-home Christmas Eve faux church servive, several of us opened up about our feelings and memories.  Once one person started crying, most of us were doomed (though, fitting to the topic at hand, I think I was the only male to cry).

4. Doctor Who, season 2 finale

I just found out about Doctor Who recently, but apparently it is a classic light-hearted British sci-fi series.  Within the last decade they began making new seasons, the second of which ends with me crying.

5. Toy Story 3

Technically, I didn't actually cry when I saw this over the summer.  But I have to honor the film for how close it came.  I decided I didn't want to cry, so I called upon my tried and true Super Eye Muscles.  But the last 15 minutes were so sad that I was barely -- barely -- able to hold back the flood.

Help me out with the maintenance of the U.S.S. Catharsis

How often do you cry?

What's the most recent thing you cried about?

Any funny crying stories?

                                                        Jon