Handshakes are like a box of chocolates: You never know what you’re gonna get.

No really. Isn’t it amusing how everyone has a different conception of what a handshake is? I didn’t realize this until the other day. This fact becomes evident when your conception of a handshake differs vastly from the conception of the person who you’re shaking with.

It’s funny, because there is, supposedly, a “correct” handshake. When I was in high school, there was this prestigious competition called the “Pathfinder Awards” that is done in Palm Beach County every year. Because I went to one of the top 2 schools in the county, our school was always #1 or #2 for the number of Pathfinder Award winners, and they intended to stay that way. When it came to my being a nominee from my school, there was never a question of whether or not I’d be one, just which subject they should enter me in, as there were a few that I had a good chance of winning. I ended up competing in the Mathematics category, and winning 2nd place. (Which to this day is the best anyone has ever done from my high school in this category, since it’s an Arts Magnet High School, which tends not to have a great math program. The guy who beat me was from the Math & Science Magnet High School. It’s hard to compete with a guy who’s already been accepted early to MIT as a math major and has already learned differential equations, though I was told it was a close call.)

At any rate, in preparation for this award, one thing that they taught us was how to shake hands properly. The first thing you did when you came into the interview was shake hands with the interviewers. Because a 1st impression means so much, they wanted to make sure that no one competing from our school didn’t know how to shake hands. As a result, they explained the “proper” form and literally had us practice shaking hands. According to them, a proper handshake is firm and has one shake, though they had a bit more detail, which I will omit here.

I think that, in many ways, this may be the “proper” or “Classical” handshake for many situations. I think this is definitely the most common handshake for those who work in business. I know that nearly everyone I know who works in finance shakes hands this way, even socially. But this certainly isn’t the only way to shake hands on a grander scale.

What about if you see friends socially? This is when it can get tricky. Among friends, the different versions of handshakes are practically infinite in number. If you’re good friends with someone, this isn’t an issue. But for those friends who you aren’t that close to, but you see them occasionally, the handshake can catch you off guard. Let’s think about a few variations.

One common variation is what I will call the “Grab-Hand-And-Pat-Back” variety. This is when you don’t really shake hands, but you grab the other person’s hand, like you’re about to do a kind of upside-down handshake, but then give them a kind of half hug where you kind of slap them on the back with your free hand. I’ve found this type of handshake to be popular around the artsy circles.

Another common variation is the “Shake-Snap”. This is a very popular one, or at least was a few years back. I think its popularity is waning, but I could be wrong. This is where you grab the other person’s hand, maybe give it a quick shake and then each of you slide your fingers towards yourself until your fingertips are held together by tension and it makes a sort of “snap” sound when you let go from the pressure. My roommate from freshman year was all about the “shake-shap” variety. He was a crazy raver, and many of his raver friends shook hands this way too, so I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that this handshake is popular with the clubber types.

A bit less common type of handshake is the “Heavyweight-Champion-Grip” variety. If you’ve ever seen boxing, where there is a winner declared, the referee grabs the winners hand and holds is up, with their hands kind of interlocked. It is this same form that takes place in this variety – kind of like an upside-down handshake. It’s more of a squeeze-based handshake than a shake-based handshake. This one tends to be popular with the jock-type.

Another always-annoying possibility is the “Look-How-Strong-My-Grip-Is” Handshake. This is basically the Classical Handshake but instead of grabbing your hand and shaking it like a normal person, they grab your hand and try to crush every bone in it in the process of shaking it. Now, these people might not realize that they could be jeopardizing your possible career as a world-renowned flutist by shaking your hand in this way, but that’s really no excuse. Surely, they’ve shaken other people’s hands and realized that not everyone tries to squeeze the life out of their hand when they shake it. My only guess is that they believe that a “firm” handshake denotes power, and they believe firm to mean “with all their might”. As a result, this handshake is popular with those who need to overcompensate for something.

Perhaps the most problematic handshake is what I’ll call the “Freestyle-Handshake”. This one is damn tricky, because it’s always different since it’s personalized. Some people invent their own handshakes, and they don’t realize that you don’t know their handshake. This happens sometimes if you hang out with someone fairly often, but rarely shake his hand. Then when you do shake their hand they think subconsciously, “Oh, he’s a good friend of mine, so let me give him my freestyle handshake.” Then when you don’t know it, it’s just as awkward as hell for you, even though it’s your friend’s fault for assuming that you know it when you really don’t. This handshake is popular with people who have too much free time.

Besides these different types of handshakes, there are some people who are just plain bad at handshakes. There are some people who give your hand a squeeze instead of a shake. This might be fine if it’s a squeeze-based handshake, but if they’re doing a lot of squeezing and no shaking in a classical handshake form, then they’re wrong.

Finally, there is another amusing mistake that some people make which is kind of the opposite of the “Look-How-Strong-My-Grip-Is” Handshake. My brother coined this kind of handshake to have the term “limp-noodle”. This is when you go to shake someone’s hand, and his/her hand feels like an overcooked strand of linguine in yours. This occurs when there is absolutely no pressure or grip coming from their hand, and it’s you doing all the work. This isn’t actually a kind of handshake, because it’s simply a failure to understand how to shake hands.

Who thought I could write over 1300 words on handshakes? At any rate, I just found this something interesting to think about I guess. Don’t take shaking hands for granted: in reality, it is a difficult art which involves knowledge of the art, the ability to recognize how the art changes in different situations, and the ability to adapt quickly in unusual situations. Right. Of course, if you don’t want to deal with all the stress that can be involved with handshakes, there is a possible solution to avoid them: just start scratching your ass when you walk up to people who expect a handshake and I doubt they’ll want to touch your hand at all.

“So if the Times Square Ball doesn’t fall at midnight, does that mean the guy who drops the ball dropped the ball? And if he drops it correctly, has he then not dropped the ball?” — Jason (Foxtrot comic – 12/31/03)

I’m a pretty easygoing guy. As a result, there aren’t many things that I actually hate. Sure, there are a few I dislike, or that I’m not crazy about. But there are very few that I believe graduate to the level of hatred. One of those few things is ice.

What’s so bad about ice? It’s almost difficult to decide where to begin. For starters, it’s cold. I’m sure that, one way or another, you’ve probably noticed this physical attribute of ice. That’s because, in order for it not to be water, it needs to be maintained at a temperature below freezing. This temperature is 32 degrees fare height. Our bodies are maintained at the temperature 98.6 degrees. Thus, ice must be 66.6 degrees lower than our body temperature to exist. While the fact the numerical difference between our bodies and ice proves that it is clearly a creation of Satan himself, the mere fact that it is over 60 degrees colder than our own bodies shows that it’s way too cold.

As a result of its temperature, the only time that ice appears in nature is during the season that I hate the most: winter. It appears mostly in winter because winter is cold, and, as previously mentioned, ice needs cold temperatures to exist. In it’s natural form outdoors, ice is also nothing but an annoyance. Even those without a hatred for ice would probably agree with me on this one. When it coats the sidewalks, they are slippery and can cause you to fall, break your pelvis and pierce your pancreas. This has never happened to me, but if it did, I would hate ice even more. It also sticks to car windows, which is annoying. Icicles can be very dangerous, and have fatally injured people or poked their eyes out. And when it falls from the sky in chunks, it hurts. This is called hale. Notice the striking resemblance between the words “hale” and “hell”. With a southern accent, they sound almost the same.

But it is not only in its natural form where my hatred for ice thrives. That is to say, I don’t even like ice when it’s man-made. The forms of entertainment that ice provides are few and far between. One is with ice rinks, which lead to ice-skating and hockey. Hockey is not one of my favorite sports, despite the fact that I am winning the Fantasy Hockey League that I am in. Moreover, I find ice-skating unnatural. If we were meant to skate on ice, God would have given us metal blades coming out of our feet. The only other form of entertainment that I can think of involving ice might be ice sculpture. But this is easily replaced with other sculpture such as through sand or through permanent materials like marble or bronze – none of which melt after a day or two.

Another place where I don’t like ice is with food preparation. I’m not saying that I don’t like frozen food, as I would probably be quite sad not to have it – but this is different from ice. You don’t need ice to have frozen things, as the freezer in my apartment clearly demonstrates. The only other place ice is used in food production is to throw into drinks to cool them off. Let me talk about this for a minute.

The act of putting ice in drinks to cool them off is one of my most hated uses of ice. I HATE ice in my drinks. I would far rather drink a warm beverage than have ice in it. In fact, every day at work, I get room temperature water instead of using the ice provided by the machine. I do have my reasons.

The first reason is that it’s gross. I saw in a recent movie an allusion to this, which was half in jest, but it’s true. You don’t know how long that ice has been in there. Is the place where the ice is stored cleaned regularly? I doubt it. Is that ice made from filtered water? Unlikely. But if it’s in your drink, you drink it anyway – so what’s the point of drinking filtered water if you’re just gonna have ice in it that is dirty and impure?

But the grossness of ice isn’t the only problem: Ice takes up space. So that means whenever you’re in a bar or at a movie theater, you aren’t getting as much beverage as you should be, since half of the volume of the beverage container is ice. What makes maters worse is that the ice soon melts, and this waters-down the beverage that you purchased. So not only is ice responsible for you not having as much of your beverage as you should, but it also lessens the quality of the beverage if you don’t drink it quickly. Is this really worth a little bit of transitory coolness for the beverage? Why not cool it off in a refrigerator unit instead for the same effect with none of the undesirable consequences?

So here what I propose: a worldwide boycott on ice. That includes a boycott on winter. In order to do so, we just need to stop freezing water and speed up global warming. In doing so we will finally rid ourselves of the bane of humanity that is ice. We would live in an anti-ice age, if you will. Every day will be a tropical holiday, and our beverages would be clean, bountiful, and high quality. If there were no more ice, I know I wouldn’t miss it. And for those who do miss it, you’ll get your chance for ice to grace your presence again: you have at least a 50-50 chance of seeing it for the rest of eternity if Dante was right.

Wouldn’t you agree that the creator of M&Ms was a complete and total genius?

The other day something made me think about a peculiarity of probability: the shower handle. I began thinking about probability while adjusting the water temperature for the shower. You see, whenever I adjust the water temperature, unless it’s tuned to exactly the right spot, the water is too hot or too cold. So when turning the water on for the first time, I put the knob at some initial “guess”. As it turned out, that day I hit it right on the nose. This, however, is rather unusual. Through empirical observation, I get it exactly right maybe once every ten days.

I then began to wonder what the theoretical probability was that I turn it to exactly the right temperature. I then became puzzled. How do you measure the position of the handle? It’s a circular motion, so degrees might seem logical. But it is a very sensitive dial. So are degrees small enough of a measure to properly capture this probability? If not degrees, are minutes? Or maybe seconds? I wasn’t sure.

For example, let’s say I use seconds of a minute of a degree as the measure. Let’s say that the optimal temperature ends up being at 15 degrees, 3 minutes, and 18 seconds. The theoretical probability that I hit exactly this spot is extraordinarily low, and certainly lower than 1 in 10. But if we use degrees, we might select 15 degrees, the probability of which is obviously much higher.

As a result, I could not even derive, in theory, a probability of how often it is that I should happen to put the dial to the correct position. I found this troubling, and began to wonder if it was a rather unusual situation. With little thought, however, it occurred to me that this was, in fact, quite common: There are many instances when it is not clear what measures probability should be sought in conjunction with in order to learn something about the sample. In fact, any measurable quantity that is an object of statistical analysis faces this issue to some extent.

The answer may seem obvious: intervals. You figure out what interval is acceptable, and then take comparable intervals in either direction of this interval. You can then generate probabilities that you would end up in one of these intervals. Of course, if I believed it was this easy, I wouldn’t have bothered writing about this in my journal. No, I don’t think intervals do the trick, and let me explain why.

Don’t get me wrong: in some sense, intervals work. If all you want is a quick and dirty probability, then you can probably spend some time empirically calculating what intervals would be most relevant and then doing a theoretical calculation of how often this would occur. But I feel that doing this is kind of putting the cart before the horse. The purpose of such an exercise is to figure out, in theory, when a certain outcome is likely. Yet, you are using empirical data in a way that has a very causal influence on the results of your data. Thus, I do not find this method acceptable.

Perhaps you think that an arbitrary interval might do the trick then, since we want to stay away from an empirical measure. While better, I think that an arbitrary interval has two problems. First, what if the interval is inadequate to test the phenomenon you are hoping to study? For example, let’s say that, empirically, the water is right between 13 and 18 degrees. Yet, your intervals go from 10 to 15 and 16 through 20. In this case, you could never get any useful information to learn about the desired outcome. But what I find worse than that is the fact that your probabilities are now tested for arbitrarily chosen outcomes. While related to the first point, this objection is broader in scope because, even in theory, arbitrary measures would not provide any meaningful information.

Okay, so it looks like we’re in trouble: You can’t determine intervals empirically and you can’t determine them arbitrarily. To make matters worse, the problem in the first place was that you couldn’t figure out the intervals analytically (i.e. theoretically) either. So there is no way that I can possibly imagine figuring out how to test anything where the probability takes on a spectrum of values when its beginnings and ends of which are unclear.

This is a big problem for the connection between theoretical statistics and empirical statistics; at least I think it is. And as I mentioned before, this is a far reaching problem. It does not only apply to shower handles. It applies to everything quantifiable. The problem that it presents is that it is never clear how precise you want your intervals to be. You have no meaningful way to determine this, since it cannot be determined analytically, arbitrarily, or empirically.

Now, I could very well be missing something. I probably am. Because I can’t imagine that probability and statistics are that difficult to reconcile to the real world that statisticians have to create virtually circular arguments (when using empirically chosen intervals) to make claims about their findings. So if anyone with a strong background in statistical analysis or probability theory can shed some light on this mystery, please let me know. I’m just dying to know if my ability to set the shower’s water temperature is conforming to the theoretical estimate.

Have you ever wished that you could have your cake and eat it too?

There are certain things that I hope for in life. I hope that I meet a nice girl to marry; I hope to never go through a divorce; I hope to have financial stability; I hope to live to a ripe old age, with mind and body intact. But one, perhaps, unusual thing that I hope for is to never have a daughter.

I want kids; I really do. A couple. Kids are great. I expressed my desire for kids a few months back in this journal, but I don’t want any daughters. But my reasons are probably not what you would expect.

The major reason that I don’t want a daughter is because I wouldn’t want a daughter to have to have me as a father. That isn’t to say that I don’t think that I would be able to raise a daughter approximately as well as I would be able to raise a son. On the contrary: I’d probably appreciate far more “girlie” activities than most dads, such as shopping, chick flicks, etc. But the problem is that I would be SO overprotective, that her life would probably be fairly miserable a fair amount of the time.

I know what you’re thinking: “Dan! Why would you be so overprotective? You seem like such a free spirit, after all.” Right. The reason that I would be overprotective is because I, myself, am a guy. I also know many guys. And this leads me to one vast overarching conclusion and generalization: Guys are assholes. When it comes go girls, most guys (read: 98%) only care about one thing: getting her into bed. For most guys, they only get married if they get trapped. This occurs when they realize that the girl they’re currently with is as good as they’re ever going to do, and they might as well take what they can get and turn in their chips. While I do not, personally, share this attitude, I know for a fact that this is the attitude that most guys have when it comes to women.

So there are two options: Change men or protect your daughter. I know I’m not going to change men, so my only option would be to protect my daughter. Well, what kinds of things would that entail? Let me think of a few off the top of my head:

No Dating Until High School
- This may seem extreme, I know. But the fact that kids in middle school are having sex these days is just as scary as hell. Kids in middle school are even dumber than kids in high school. This means that the probability of teen pregnancy is even higher than for kids in high school. Pregnant at 12 or 13? Talk about a life ruined before it begins. If she wants to hang out with boys at school or supervised parties, by all means. But the dating can wait until she’s at least a little bit more mature and will hopefully think more fully about the possible consequences of her actions.

No Showing Skin Until She’s LEGAL
- There’s nothing I find more inappropriate than girls of high school and middle school age wearing next to nothing. Don’t get me wrong: When I was in middle school and high school, I’m sure I loved it. Of course, this is exactly the problem. The showing of excess skin serves one purpose: to make the opposite sex think of sex. It works for guys too: Any muscular guy who wears a tank top doesn’t do so for the women to notice his fashion sense or think of what a great mind he must have. Physical prowess indicates sexual fitness. As a result, any shorts or skirts should not be higher than her fingertips when her hands are left at her sides. This was the rule in high school, which I thought was plenty fair. None of those belly shirts either. This will probably be an area of serious contention if fashion then is anything like fashion is now. But if she wants to wear shirts like Britney, I’ll tell her that once she’s a multi-platinum recording artist, she can wear whatever she wants. Oh, and bathing suits should be one piece.

No Weird Piercings or Tattoos
- You know what they say about the girls with tongue rings. If she wants to pierce anything other than her ears, she can do that in college, but not before then. The same goes for tattoos. Incidentally, this rule would be exactly the same for any sons I’d have, so don’t be worried about a double standard.

No Clothing So Tight it nearly cuts off Circulation
- The rationale behind this one is pretty much the same as the showing skin issue. Tight clothes leave little to the imagination. And hornball middle and high school boys don’t need to have their imaginations running wild about any daughter(s) of mine.

There would surely be more rules, but these are some that I can think of off the top of my head. The make-up issue isn’t one that I have solved right now: I’d have to have a talk with my wife about her opinion on the issue. I’m sure by high school she could wear it, but I’m not sure what point before then make-up would be okay.

It’s not that I’m naïve or that I don’t want my daughter to have any contact whatsoever with boys. I’d just to try to help to insure two things: First, that she’s not sexually active before she’s responsible and mature enough to consider the possible consequences of her sexual activity. Second, that the wrong kind of guys wouldn’t be the ones interested in her. You can’t control a girl’s bizarre whims when it comes to guys: I of all people know that. But if she doesn’t dress or act slutty, then at least she wouldn’t be the first name on the list of the guys who are purely into “scoring”.

At any rate, to avoid all this trouble, I just hope I don’t have a daughter. I mean, a part of me would like to have a daughter, because obviously, it’d be fun to have a daughter, since it would be a very different experience from having a son (assuming I also have a son). But I’m not sure that the benefits would outweigh the costs for either of us. Of course, I suppose I have a few things to worry about before I worry about having a daughter anyway – such as finding a woman who wants to have my kids in the first place.

If Reuben won, why is Clay all that I ever hear about?

Today I was sitting in my room, listening to a U2 CD that I got for Christmas. I have not always liked U2; I actually only began liking them a few years ago. One of my best friends has been obsessed with them for many, many years. Yet, I never saw their draw. But in time, hearing their music over and over again, I began to like it. In some sense, for me, U2’s music was an acquired taste.

This made me think about the concept of an acquired taste: it’s an odd idea. Basically, what it means is that there was something that, at first, you did not like. But in time, you come to like this thing; thus, you develop a taste for it. I think that the acquired taste is actually a very unusual thing for humans to experience because it doesn’t seem like there’s any reason that there should be such a thing. But let me back up for a minute and explain some interesting characteristics of an acquired taste. After that, I will explain the consequences that follow from our ability to have an acquired taste.

The first interesting characteristic of the concept of the acquired taste is that it has to do with sensory experience. In the example from before, there is the music that I heard – that of U2. At first, I did not find this music particularly pleasant. Yet, through time, for some reason, this music became more pleasant to my ear.

Not only does acquired taste have directly to do with sensory experience, but it is not limited to a particular sense. If you think about it, there are possible acquired tastes for all the senses. Perhaps you didn’t like some music that you now like – that’s sound; perhaps you didn’t like a painting that you now like – that’s sight; perhaps you didn’t like a food that you now like – that’s taste; perhaps you didn’t like the feel of a material that you now like – that’s touch; perhaps you didn’t like a perfume that you now like – that’s smell. They’re all there; and I know that I have experienced acquired tastes for all five senses.

Now let’s think about what happens in the process of something becoming an acquired taste. First, you have a sensory experience that you do not particularly like. You go on not liking it for a time. But through experiencing it a number of times, you begin not to dislike it. In time, you actually start to like it. How does this happen? How is it that we allow something that we do not care for to become something that we do care for? If you think about it, it’s almost like we have no control over our senses. If we dislike something, then generally, we have little or no desire to begin to like it.

I admit, however, that there are instances that we intentionally develop an acquired taste. Perhaps you hate the taste of broccoli, but you know it’s healthy. As a result, you continue to eat it, until you develop a fondness of it, despite the fact that you didn’t like it to begin with. But as I mentioned in the very first example, there are definitely times when acquired tastes are inadvertent. Somehow, we lose control over our senses and something we once did not like becomes something we do like.

Finally, I think that acquired taste actually has significant implications for any aesthetic theory which dwells on sensory perception. What I mean by this is that, if an aesthetic theory claims that sensory perception is largely responsible for the aesthetic goodness that a person finds within something, then acquired taste will cause problems for such a theory. Let me explain why.

So some aesthetic theory claims that music is good if it is pleasing to one’s ear. You listen to Music Sample A, which you do not find pleasing to your ear; thus, you conclude that it does not exhibit musical beauty. Yet, you continue listening to Music Sample A every once in a while for a couple years. A few years later, you have somehow managed to acquire the taste so that you find Music Sample A pleasing to your ear; thus, you now must conclude that it does exhibit musical beauty. Clearly, such a theory must be false: if you accept the theory, then you must accept direct contradiction – this theory has led you to conclude that Music Sample A does not exhibit musical beauty and that Music Sample A does exhibit musical beauty. Clearly, both cannot be true, and thus, you must reject the theory.

I find this argument very convincing; as a result, I will now find it very difficult to accept any aesthetic theory that relies heavily on sensory perception without additional criteria. This leads me to believe (despite past consideration of such sensory-based aesthetic theories) that an acceptable aesthetic theory must involve more than just sensory perception. There must be some thinking that takes place in addition to this pure sensory perception. What that thinking consists of, however, will have to be investigated at a later time.

At any rate, I just though all of this was kind of interesting. I had never given much thought to acquired taste. As it turns out, I probably should have. As usual, that which is taken for granted tends to contain more profound consequences than one ever would have thought.

Wouldn’t it be cool if American cheese was red, white, and blue?