Tag: discussion

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personal

Ship of Thesus Paradox

Are we really who we think we are?

Group of bikes chained together at 59th Street, Columbus Circle
There’s this philosophical puzzle that I like to tell people called the Theseus Paradox and it goes like this:

The Greek hero Theseus returned from Crete with new planks on his ship. It turns out that, while Theseus was away, he replaced bits and pieces of his ship all along. The philosopher Plutarch wondered, after hearing this, whether or not it would be the same ship if in fact every piece of that ship was replaced.

In other words, if that were the case, is it the same ship or a completely different ship?

Turning to myself, I know that I am a completely different person than I was when I was in my early 20s. Again different in my late 20s to early 30s. And I think my last major shift in personality and temperament came in my mid-30s. That’s my mental state.

Physiologically, there’s the old adage is that every single one of our cells are replaced every 10 years.

It turns out not to be entirely true, as some brain cells are always ever the same. But even if that is the case, the question remains: how much of us can be replaced so that we are still who we think we are? If 99.87% of us is wholly different than the person we were 10 years ago, are we the same person?

I say this as I look down on my swollen leg. It has the ACL of a dead man now. That fact is neither scary or sad to me, just interesting.

Said it before that Sleepy Logan and Younger Logan have both screwed and helped me in my life.

Met someone recently who proudly said that she was the exact same person with the exact same beliefs she had in her late 30s as she did in her teens.

Me: There are those that would say that you’ve wasted the last 20-some odd years of your life, then. You’ve learned nothing from those versions of yourself.
She: Would you say that?
Me: I would say that the 18-year old you should not hold hostage the destiny of a 38 year-old adult. But I’m here to drink and really, what do I know?

Because, maybe it’s just a cop-out. It’s a way for me not to take responsibility for being a truly terrible person in my possible pasts.

———-

Him: …two weeks, in the Bronx.
Me: I can’t do it. Not with my leg.

It turns out that if you live an eat-what-you-kill life and can’t physically get out the door to do work, your clients get disappointed. Disappointed clients are never good.

Turned down my third gig already this month.

Worried that this injury will be far more costly than I first imagined.

———-

Posting my follow-up to 10 Tips on how to write a good Match, OK Cupid, or POF dating profile: Part 1 on Friday after noon.

You’ll like it, I think.

Location: a chair, finally
Mood: concerned
Music: really want to go out, I really want to go outside
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Wetshaving with a double-edge razor – Part 2

My experiences wet shaving with a safety razor
Using a shave brush to lather up the face

My first time using a double edged safety razor was not a good experience.

Me: I have to warn you that I look like a murder victim.
Her: What do you…OH MY GOD, what happened to your neck and face?!!

It was bad. Really, really bad. My neck was covered in blood and everything hurt. A lot.

If you decide to use a double-edge razor, you will absolutely cut yourself the first time you shave. You will blame the blade and then blame me. Do not. Freindly advice from startifacts.com suggests watching videos online that show you how to wet shave properly like this one and this one.

The main thing I’ve learned is that holding the razor is very different than with a traditional cartridge razor, and that means holding it at a 30 degree angle or less to your face – the pic below is more like 10 degrees but that works for me. I start at 0 degrees and angle it towards my face slightly. Then I take short strokes no more than an inch or so, clean the blade, and do it again.

At first, it took forever. Now it just takes a little longer than regular shaving.

If I use canned shaving cream that learned of from BeardBro – which I keep around for a pinch – it takes even less although you still have to wait a minute or so for your beard to soften with water anyway so I find that I end up using my shaving mug more and more.

Plus it’s part of the fun.

Should mention that I cut myself the second time I shaved as well but by the third time, I had zero cuts and now shave regularly with no cuts at all.

Thus ends the entries about my shaving.  This entry has also reminded me that I need to write the follow-up entry to: 10 Tips on how to write a good Match, OK Cupid, or POF dating profile: Part 1- Men, which will be for women from a man’s perspective. I’ll do that soon since I’ve got the time.

Interspersed with all of this will be my usual nonsense.

How to hold a traditional double-edged razor for wet shaving

In the meanwhile, found out last week that I was nominated last week as a “Furthered 40” legal educator on Lawline.

I know, I’m as surprised as you are. More surprising is that I actually have a shot at winning.

Don’t know what the prize is but, dammit, I want it for it may be food or food related.

Location: getting dressed to see a doc about my leg
Mood: slightly depressed
Music: The wound is so fresh you can taste the blood
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Wetshaving with a double-edge safety razor – Part 1

6 Reasons you should start using a traditional double-edged safety razor

Traditional double-edged razor, shaving mug, shaving brush, and standRecently started wet shaving with an old style double-edge safety razor and I’ve gone from hating – absolutely hating – shaving to loving it.

Here are six reasons why you should consider it:

1. It’s fun

Shaving is a chore. I mentioned to my buddy John – who’s also Asian – that one of the perks of being Asian, generally, is that you don’t have to shave a lot. Unless you’re a member of my family or his. At which point, it’s a lot like that Simpsons episode where Homer shaves only to instantly get a 5 o’clock shadow.

I can shave on Monday and have a full beard by Wednesday, I can sport all the beard styles 2017, I know you are jealous.

When you start wet shaving with a safety razor, you realize that it’s a skill you have to learn again. And there are these rituals before and after that make it interesting.

2. You get to get cool new stuff

The safety razor’s a heavy piece of metal that feels solid in the hand. It’s not some piece of exuded poly-anything. Even the double-edged razor I have, which is less than $6, is a machine made of steel and chrome.

Now granted, the only thing you really need is the double-edged safety razor itself and blades but it’s also a good excuse to get some cool – male – things for the bathroom, like a shaving brush and shaving mug, but more on that later.

All this brings us to:

3. It’s insanely inexpensive

So, take a look at your razor. How much do you spend for each blade? I’m guessing it’s like $1.50 to $3 per blade.

Again, what’s for sale? Does anyone really need two, three, SIX blades? That’s just stupid – read Number 5 below. Here, you can get 200 blades for $12.93 – or $0.064 each. Figure you get about four shaves from each, that means each shave is about $0.016.

Unless you have a super thick beard, at which point you’ll need the far more expensive Feather Blades, at a whopping $0.08 a shave.

As an IP lawyer, my guess is that once the patent for the double-edged razor went away, the razor companies needed to convince you that the old way wasn’t working and that two-blades were better.

After a while, three. Then four. I’m waiting for the 16-blade razor to come out.

4. It’s better for the environment

My double-edged razor is 100% metal. I can give it to my great-grand kids – if you wanted to, you could buy an vintage one on Etsy or ebay. And it’s also 100% recyclable. As are the blades.

And if you decide to get the shaving mug and brush as well, you don’t even have shaving cans to throw away. I can also give my shaving mug to my great-grand kids, providing my clumsiness doesn’t destroy it first.

When I’m done with my razor, it goes into the recycling bin with zero plastic.

5. It’s better for your skin

If you watch the commercials of the razor companies, they say the multiple blades lift up – aka pull – your hair (ouch!) and cut it so that the hair falls below the skin.

Hair below skin equals ingrown hairs (ouch X2!). That’s the last thing you want. Women get to use the best epilator equipment to prevent this, we just need to be skillful.

Research has proven this out that two blades are actually worse for your skin than just one blade. And six blades are just a marketing excuse no different than the Stella Artois marketing itself as “reassuringly expensive” here in the US, when it’s called “wife beater” in Europe.

Once you get used to shaving with a double-edged safety razor, there’s no going back.

6. Not everyone does it – so you should do it

It’s like knowing how to tie a bow tie, wearing a suit with working buttonholes sleeves, fencing, or cooking.

It’s not like you’re the guy that carries around an iguana so that people say, “Oh, he’s that nutjob with the iguana.” It’s something small and subtle that becomes part of who you are, slightly different than the rest; a skill that no one can take away from you.

It’s not something you need to know to be a man, but it’s something that makes it fun to be one. Note also that it makes a unique gift for a man.

A raditional double-edged razor for wet shaving

Here’s what it’ll cost you if you decide to start wet shaving:

That’s pretty much it to start. It comes with a cheap blade and you can see if it’s for you. If not, toss it into the recycling bin, chalk one up to: “Dammit, I listened to some idiot blogger online,” and call it a day.

If you decide you like it, here’s some more stuff you might wanna consider (I’m an Amazon Associate, btw but that’s not why I put up these links):

Ladies, this Christmas, if you have no idea what to get your fella, get him the above. Like I said, it’s a unique gift and something that will look nice around the house.

Because men like sharp, rugged stuff made outta metal. While you’re at it, toss out that Stella Artois in his fridge and get him a bottle of single-barrel aged rum.

If you’re not totally bored by this post by now, here’s the second part of this post. Blame my injury for all this posting…

Shaving Mug and Brush with whipped foam

A Great Online Dating ProfileIf you liked this entry, I just wrote a quick little book in April 2014 on how to write A Great Online Dating Profile with 30 tips to get noticed and get more responses – it’s just $0.99 at Amazon, BN.com, and the Apple Store, as well as most other online retailer:

I also wrote a book about first dates with information I just haven’t seen in other books that I learned from three solid years of dating in NYC.

A Great First Date, early 2014It’s just $2.99 at at Amazon, BN.com, and the Apple Store.

Location: still home with a bum leg
Mood: pensive
Music: slashed in the face, you’ve been left there to bleed
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Pride comes before a fall

Right-Handed and Proud!

Fashion Institute of Technology, NYC

Have not been having a good week.

A byproduct of this is that my insomnia’s back. At least with the advent of tablet computing, I can just read quietly in bed and hopefully fall asleep.

Last night, read that the leader of the anti-Semitic party in Hungary learned he was Jewish.

And parta why I read that was because the Olympics are over. I understand the prideful screaming and cheering there. These are people that just worked for years at a certain skill and have finally achieved something few in the world could.

I get that.

However, got a number of friends that are extremely proud to be Chinese, Irish, black, whatever. One even has a tattoo to this effect. This I don’t get quite as much.

Cause they didn’t do anything to achieve that. Me for example, I’m Chinese. Specifically, from the Luo River in the Bing province. I like being Chinese – after all, we’re a lovely people.

But the question I always think to my friends was, If you were born, say, a Bermudian, would you be equally proud of that? Would you join the Bermudian Day parade, get a tattoo that says, “Bermudian and proud?”

Suspect they would. Which just kinda shows how silly it is. It’s all just sheer stupid luck.

This always gets Chinese people that don’t know me furious cause they say that without this pride, I must be ashamed I’m Chinese. Which, again, makes zero sense to me. I’m Chinese(-American). I’m also right-handed. I don’t get a tattoo that says, “Right-handed and proud” cause it’s merely what I am.

Got an issue with people that are prideful of things they had nuthin to do with. And sometimes, they take this pride to extremes like that guy in Hungary. And then they look idiotic when they realize how easily facts can change.

Him: The greatest fighter in the world was Chinese!
Me: He was one of the greatest fighters in the world cause he worked hard at it and was naturally gifted. Plus Bruce Lee was 1/4 Caucasian.

Location: waiting by the phone
Mood: unhappy
Music: I’ve had a s__t day, you’ve had a s__t day
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Deep questions and a review of The Grey film

LIRR stop overlooking a street in Queens, NY

Me: How’s the spinach and Parmesan omelet?
Her: It’s good, it just smells like a fart.
Me: Thank you for your contribution to this morning’s conversation.

Last week was a major week for me for good and bad reasons. Suppose I’ll get into that at some point in the future.

The heat’s getting to me. Find this odd cause my family’s from a subtropical country. Am pretty sure that, had I been born and raised there I would have gone full-on starkers with the heat. As it stands now, I’m the guy that shows up for work looking as if I just took a shower.

It is not a good look.

What I don’t understand – and I’d really like to know the answer – is how people can run around wearing sweaters in the middle of August? Who are these people? Are they related to the people that finish exams with 90 minutes left on the clock?

While fighting the heat, caught the film The Grey, mainly cause it takes place in the winter. If you’ve seen the film, highlight the below empty white space, which I’ve hidden for those that have (luckily) not seen the film.

This movie is yet another example of Hollywood writers making crap up that make zero sense. Essentially, everyone that listened/followed Lian Neeson’s character, including Lian Neeson character, dies. This should be required viewing for anyone in the wilderness of what not to do as it violates every rule of survival, onea the main ones being stay with your vehicle cause:

  • it’s huge
  • is visible from a distance
  • provides shelter
  • potentially has food and water

This was so egregious to me that I couldn’t enjoy the rest of the film – which compounded the number of mistakes  – such as route selection and leadership selection the latter which begs the question, why pick as leader the suicidal guy with zero survival skills?

Perhaps some questions were meant never to be answered. However, if you’ve ever wondered who’s the guy that wears shorts in the winter? That question I can answer: it’s people like me and my buddy Steel. Cause we’re melting even in the winter.

Cannot wait for Fall. After all, my year starts in September.

Location: my roasting room
Mood: heated
Music: White knuckles and sweaty palms from hanging on too tight
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California 2012 Travelogue: Day 3

A broken chair, ramen, and home

Jet Blue airplane in Burbank

Her: Morning!
Me: Morning – I need coffee and Mexican food.
Her: We have lots of leftover pizza.
Me: OK.

Wake up early. Damn insomnia. Sit down to chat with my brother’s girlfriend fiancee in the morning. As we’re talking about me falling down the stairs yesterday, my chair breaks and I come crashing down on that same knee.

Man, I swear I’m darned.

Broken chair in LA

After icing it for a bit more, putter around the house. Wanna keep it low-key so I give my buddy Lorin a call – we’ve not seen each other in years. He drives over and we go to a local coffee shop to catch up.

I tell him of the troubles and he tells me of his.

Him: …and then I got remarried.
Me: Good, I’m glad. You happier now?
Her: Much happier. You?
Me: Much.

Coffee Shop in Pasadena

We don’t stay long and soon I’m back at my brother’s pad. After trying to get some writing done – and hitting some really bad writer’s block – my brother, his girl, and I head out to the local Ramen joint. It’s closed.

Him: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

…but we find another joint around the way. Pretty good. Scarfed down the whole thing with a plate of fried tofu.

Bob Hope Airport, Burbank

I’m too beat to walk around so we head back early. Finally manage to get five hours sleep. We wake up the next morning and he drives me to Bob Hope airport.

Him: Thanks for the surprise.
Me: Ditto!

Pretty quiet trip. I walk out into the NYC summer heat, make it home, and call the wife.

Me: I’m home.
Her: Logan’s home!

It’s good to be home.

———-

Logan Lo and his brother in NYC in the 70s

For those of you that’ve read this blog for years, you might recall when I wrote the difference between Grace and Mercy:

  • Grace is when you get the good things you don’t deserve.
  • Mercy is when you don’t get the bad things you do deserve.

Anywho, I always think of my brother and sister when I think of that. Could use some of both these days for reasons we’ll get into some other time.

Even as a child, I’m stuffing my face. No wonder I broke that chair…

Location: my bed, writing this
Mood: anxious
Music: two American kids growing up in the heartland
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An Open Letter to Christine Quinn Regarding Chick-fil-A

New York City from Hoboken

Dear Speaker Quinn;

First of all, congratulations on your recent nuptials! Having just been married myself, I was told that my life would be the same but completely different afterward. I find that to be true.

However, I write this letter to discuss something less pleasant – which is this whole Chick-fil-A matter. Frankly, I don’t like where it’s going politically.

Specifically, you recently sent a letter to the NYU President, which you wrote on government stationary and opened with the words: “I write as the Speaker of the NYC Council.” In that letter you asked the President to break a legal agreement NYU signed with a corporation who’s view you term “repugnant.”

This comes on the heels of similar letters by the mayors of Boston, Chicago and San Francisco that have threatened to treat Chick-fil-A differently than any other person and organization for no other reason than that you find them “repugnant.”

While I too find them repugnant, as a citizen – and a minority – I also find this all even more unsettling.

A while back, I wrote about this judge 100 years ago named Stephen Johnson Field that hated the Chinese. Absolutely hated them. While sitting on the bench, he was called to judge the constitutionality of the Pigtail Ordinance. Without getting into the specifics of the law, suffice it to say that it was meant to make life hell for a group of people he personally despised.

In other words, he found us repugnant.

I’ve always found this odd because we’re a lovely people but that’s neither here nor there.

In any case, everyone expected him to uphold the law precisely because they knew his personal opinion. He did not. Instead, he struck down the law as unconstitutional.

His reason was simple: As much as he hated the Chinese, he respected the letter of the law more.

His office trumped his personal opinions.

A more recent example is the so-called Ground Zero Mosque. You stood with Mayor Bloomberg when he said that cancellation of the mosque would be a “sad day.” I assume because, in that instance, the party singled out you felt personal sympathy with AND it was on the right side of the law.

Here, you don’t feel personal sympathy with Chick-fil-A yet, like the mosque, it is on the right side of the law.

In both examples, the law is clear: An organization cannot be discriminated against because of its beliefs.

Speaker Quinn, integrity means that one is the same person in public as one is in private. It requires consistency.

It demands that if you defend the constitution for a white person you must defend the constitution for a Chinese person.

The judge in the Pigtail Ordinance, while racist, had integrity. 100 years later, that means something.

I humbly submit that you’re letting your personal feelings interfere with your respect for the law. It’s easy to defend the defenseless and sympathetic; it’s harder to defend those that you personally find repugnant.

  • The law allows a mosque to rent a space without concern that the government does not like its opinions.
  • The law allows a corporation to rent a space without concern that the government does not like its  opinions.

As a life-long New Yorker, I admit had conflicted feelings about having a mosque so close to where 9/11 happened. But in the end, the law is the law. And in the end, I supported it being there.

I would not want someone saying that I cannot live someplace because I am a Christian, or Chinese-American, or terribly clumsy.

I support citizens boycotting Chick-fil-A. I support citizens marching. I support citizens ripping them to shreds online.

But I draw the line at government telling us that its opinions supersede the law.

It’s dangerous when government officials use their positions of power to further their own personal agendas. To think otherwise sets a dangerous precedent.

History has shown, time-and-time again, that a world ruled by someone’s personal opinion is not a safe place for Chinese, gay, black, Jewish, Muslim, disabled people to live.

Imagine a world where Michele Bachmann’s personal opinion ruled it.

We put up with opinions that are different than ours – even repugnant to us – because it’s what we do. The word is “tolerance.”

One doesn’t tolerate things, people, and opinions one finds lovely. One tolerates things, people, and opinions one finds repugnant. It’s what we do.

Sincerely,

Logan Lo

Location: in front of my first cuppa joe for the day
Mood: curious
Music: if everybody looked the same we’d get tired of looking at each other
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Stop looking only north

This happened 15 years ago maybe?

Her: Who’s out there that could possibly overtake Yahoo now that AltaVisa, Excite, and Snap are gone?
Me: It’s gonna be someone we never heard of, doing stuff we never thought of, making things we’ve never seen.

There’s a story I’ve told for decades: For thousands of years, the Chinese have been invaded by the north.

  • The Xiongnu (aka Attila the Hun) invaded from the north regularly
  • The Jurchen invaded from the north and controlled China for over a century.
  • The Manchus invaded from the north and controlled China for over three centuries

It goes on.

In any case, they hit on the idea to build a wall. And for the next 1,800 years, they kept an eye on that wall.

Then in 1839, the Opium Wars start – in the south – which led China into the civil wars, WWII, more civil wars, Communism, and now China making Olympic clothing for the US.

My point is that they’d trained themselves to respond automatically to a set stimulus: Blitzkrieg attacks from the north.

But they no idea that they could be attacked – slowly and both militarily and economically – from the south.

By people they’d never heard of, doing stuff they never thought of, with things they’d never seen.

The hardest lesson to learn in wrasslin and in fencing – one I’m still struggling with – is how to stop going for a closed path and see the open paths.

Anywho, tell this story cause I got some interesting news the other day: The guy that made it into that law school just got a pretty good gig somewhere else. He’s super psyched. I remember telling him this story on the phone.

Me: The moral of the story’s this: Stop looking north. You spend all your time and energy looking at this one direction and your threats and opportunities are potentially – and probably – somewhere else completely.
Him: So stop looking north?
Me: Well, stop looking only north.

 

Location: my steamy room
Mood: hot as balls
Music: Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head
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Honesty and politeness are (very) different things

Me: Do you want me to be honest or polite?
Him: Honest.
Me: If that’s the case, then the truth is that: Unless you make it to an ivy league or top tier one, it just doesn’t pay to go to law school any more.

Hazel asked me to chat with a friend of her’s the other day.

What a lotta people don’t realize is that honesty and politeness are two very different – and usually, opposite – things. Consider some scenarios:

You’re rushing out the door and someone’s walking in.
Honest: If you’re honest with yourself, you’d want to head out first.
Polite: You let the other person in first.

Your friend’s in a play and you think it’s terrible.
Honest: You tell him he should stick to accounting.
Polite: You tell him that he has promise.

As for the conversation I had, it wasn’t the most pleasant one I’ve had in my life. He just got out of a messy marriage, lost his job, and law school was one of the few bright spots in his horizon.

But it was just a bright spot in his mind.

It wasn’t a first, second, or even a third tier law school. Moreover, he was getting zero financial aid. It would be a $150,000, three-year black hole.

Me: I once fought tooth-and-nail to get this company started – after two rejections – so that I could do it with a close family friend. I finally got it and I was so psyched.
Him: And?
Me: Well, the family friend ended up stealing all my scratch and I spent the next three years of my life just to end up at zero. Sometimes you spend all your time fighting for something without realizing what you’re actually fighting for.

Conversations with strangers remind me that I’m barely running close to schedule.

 

Location: in front of spreadsheets
Mood: slightly cooler
Music: If you ask me how I’m doing I would say I’m doing just fine
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In defense of lawyers: To do evil things, first kill all the lawyers

There’s this popular quote going around attributed to Will Smith:

Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.

However, that saying’s been around forever (most attribute it to Will Rogers). I personally like the variation that goes: It’s crazy to work at jobs you hate, to buy things you don’t need, to impress those you don’t know.

It’s yet another onea those sayings that people think they know but they don’t know at all; although, unlike these sayings, it has more than just the air of truth.

But there’s this joke that I’m tired of hearing that has only the air of truth:

Him: You know, Shakespeare said, First, kill all the lawyers.
Me: Really, when did he say that?
Him: (thinking) I don’t know.

Shakespeare wrote the line in Henry VI, Part 2. (Part 2 Act 4, scene 2, 71–78)

In it, a fella named Jack Cade is bragging that the world’d be a wonderful place if he were king cause:

  • you could buy seven half-penny loaves for a penny
  • get ten pots of soup for the price of three
  • it would be illegal to drink a small beer

If only the Jack Cade could get people to “worship me as their lord.”

It’s at this point that a villain named Dick the Butcher laughs and says, The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers. To which, Jack Cade goes, Yup, that I mean to do.

Why? Cause that would mean killing the people that ask the questions. Kill the people that protect the little guy.

(“How y’gonna make people sell ten pots of soup for the same price as three pots?” and “Why should you be king?”)

This is true even now: The most dangerous profession in China is a lawyer. It’s why it was such a big deal earlier in spring with the blind dissident, Chen Guangcheng. He was beaten and tortured for trying to make authorities follow their own laws.

Me: So basically, you’re quoting a villain – who’s also a Dick – who’s saying that to be a good and proper dictator, you have to kill the people that think and protect the little guy from empty promises. And the actual line is: The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.

We’ll add this to the list of things that have the air of truth, but no real truth at all.

Of course, only a lawyer like me would parse out every bit of meaning behind a fella trying to say something funny.

Some days, y’just can’t win.

Location: home, eying the AC
Mood: irritated
Music: funny the way it is, if you think about it
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