I might buy a safe

Yesterday I played basketball during lunch, as I usually do on Mondays. I ended up on a really good team, and we won a bunch of games in a row. One of the guys I was playing with was new. He was a really good athlete but not really a basketball player in the traditional sense. After the game we ran into each other in the locker room and started talking. It turned out he was a former football player (wide receiver) at my school, and he was back now to work as a staff member and to finish his degree. After some more talking, it turned out that he left just a few credits shy of his degree because he got drafted into the NFL by the Minnesota Vikings. He bounced around the league a bit and had to come back from injury a few times. He finished his career with the New England Patriots. As I was leaving, he said, "Hey, since you're a sports fan, I'm going to show you something."

He reaches into his gym bag, pulls out a Superbowl ring, and hands it to me! (I think he'd been wearing it and took it off to play basketball). It turned out that he was with the Pats in 2005, when they won the Superbowl in 2005. It was, far and away, the most impressive piece of jewelry I've ever seen. In size, it seemed like it was almost as big as a tennis ball. Heaviest ring I have ever held. White gold (or maybe platinum) encrusted with diamonds, rubies, and sapphires (the Patriots colors are red, white, and blue). The centerpiece was three giant diamonds shaped like footballs. Totally amazing. I looked it up later: It's worth about as much as my house.

Anyway, he was a really nice guy, and that was probably the most unexpected encounter I have ever had in my life. But if I were him, I don't think I'd keep that thing in my gym bag...

nothing new

I went to let the cat outside, and when I came back I caught Barney at the computer. I think he's a little sad because he didn't have any new emails.

experimental psychology speak

The new school year is almost in full swing, and I've been working on typical things. I've been learning to use a new statistics software called R. Unfortunately, it means I've had to start learning a special programming language called S that was developed just for statistics. It's really boring. I'll stop talking about it now.

Next week I'm starting a new study that's going to help figure out why modesty and false modesty are successful strategies for relating to other people. On one level, the answer is obvious. Say you're really good at tennis. If you're playing tennis with a friend and killing them, everyone knows you shouldn't say, "I'm awesome at tennis." If you want them to like you, you should say, "I got lucky today," or "You almost got me this time," or "Do you want to go get some ice cream? My treat!"

Most people intuit that this way of relating to people is successful because it makes you seem nice, or because it makes people like you. But I'm trying to get at the "why" on a deeper level. In experimental psychology speak, I'm trying to figure out the "cognitive processes that underlie this phenomenon."

I'll let you know if I ever get it figured out.

I knew it felt warm

I've been complaining about the heat down here a lot this summer. As it turns out, I had good reason. The national weather service just announced that our summer here in Texas was the hottest on record. FOR THE ENTIRE UNITED STATES. That is, no one has ever had a hotter summer. Anywhere. Ever. Not since they've been keeping records, anyway. Oh, unless you count other countries.

I'm hoping it'll be something in between

In honor of Labor Day, I'm not planning on doing any labor. Not if I can help it. Sarah and I both seem to be getting sick. I suspect she brought something home with her from school, but I can't prove it. Yet. Since I've last written, I haven't had a whole lot going on. I'm just getting back to the swing of things at school, a task that's going to be made difficult because typhoid Sarah keeps bringing back microbes that will eventually kill us both. Best case scenario my headache and sore throat turn into the plague and we both have to be euthanized. Worst case scenario we start a zombie apocalypse. I'm hoping it will be something in between.