An Interview with a Guinea Pig
01 Nov 2009 Leave a Comment
We’ve been reading this book for class and the other day the author came in for an interview. It’s a great book and the author was a really nice dude. Enjoy.
Bestselling author A.J. Jacobs is on a diet, but not just any diet. Jacobs is doing a year-long experiment to become the healthiest man on the planet for his next book. He started the project three months ago and limits himself to foods with less than five ingredients. So when a New York University student asks if he would like one of the oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies she made, he seems a little wary. The oatmeal aspect encourages him, but he still has a few questions about the chocolate. “Is it dark chocolate?” he asks. “It’s semi-sweet,” the student replies. Jacobs, who sits at the head of the class and wears jeans, a blue and gray striped oxford shirt and brown glasses, hesitates for a moment, but the cookie is already in hand and he decides to indulge. Besides, the moment might offer fodder for his book. “Whatever’s happening in my life becomes grist for the story,” he explains.
Jacobs, 41, who has worked at Esquire magazine for the last ten years and is currently an Editor-at-Large, has based his career on writing about how his immersion experiments affect his daily life. He first turned his life into an experiment in The Know-It-All by reading the entirety of the Encyclopedia Britannica. His personal life seeped into his writing then when he explained that one reason he started the experiment was that his father had attempted the same feat and failed. “I think he got through ‘boomerang,’” he says, “I thought I’d finish what he began and remove that black mark from our family history.” In The Year of Living Biblically, Jacobs’s life was even more affected when he spent a year following every rule in the Bible as closely as possible. At the time, Jacobs wrote for Entertainment Weekly and his coworkers tested his commitment by trying his ability to avoid lustful thoughts. “They assigned me all the profiles on hot women,” he says. A profile on actress Rosario Dawson proved especially troublesome. He rented the film Alexander in which Dawson spends a good section of her screen time fully or partially nude through a service he characterizes as, “Netflix for the very religious.” The service, which cuts out the objectionable parts in films, left little of Dawson’s performance intact. “I think she was in it,” he jokes, “I don’t know what she was doing, but she must have been doing something bad.”
Jacobs’s latest book The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment, released on September 8, continues in the tradition of his previous books. However, this time, Jacobs does nine different month long experiments that range in topic from outsourcing his entire life, including arguments with his wife, to companies in India to overcoming rational biases and making entirely rational decisions.
However, perhaps the most personal, and interesting, chapter in the book is the final one entitled “Whipped” in which Jacobs pays his wife, Julie, back for putting up with his experiments by spending a month doing whatever she asks. During the experiment Jacobs was surprised to learn that the division of labor within his household was comparable to that of the 19th century. By the end of the experiment, the division was a more equal split of 60/40 than the 80/20 split before it. The chapter was inspired by numerous readers who thought Julie deserved something for, as she puts it in her response to the experiment, “turning [her] into a character.” Indeed, Julie often plays the slightly annoyed, but ultimately accepting straight man to Jacobs’s goofy scientist. “With these experiments my wife says ‘you can do whatever you want, but I won’t do it,’” he explains.
Julie, with whom Jacobs has sons Jasper, 5, and twins Zane and Lucas, 3, has ultimate veto power over which experiments he does. He recently thought of communicating solely through the social networking site Facebook and spending a month or two without any face-to-face interaction. “But Julie, my wife, said that was not going to happen,” Jacobs explains. Julie used the same veto power on another popular reader suggestion: trying every position in the Kama Sutra. Though Jacobs says the experiment would be only fair after the “Whipped” experiment he says the physicality required for the experiment makes it a little daunting. “I’m not limber enough,” he jokes.
Joking aside, Jacobs does think about the effects the experiments have on his marriage. “I can only push her patience so far,” he says, “I think I’m lucky I have a very tolerant wife.” Despite her complaints, Jacobs believes Julie ultimately accepts the experiments because they help him improve. “I think switching it up is a way to make your life better,” he explains. For Jacobs, who encourages readers to try their own experiments, the self-improvement aspect is one of the things that most attracts him to the genre. “I try to make lives better, at least, my life’s better,” he says. With the experiments in The Guinea Pig Diaries finished, Jacobs is focusing on his latest self-improvement experiment: becoming the healthiest man in the world. Before the experiment is over, he still has nine months of regular exercise under the tutelage of his trainer, a former parole officer, and getting angry looks from waiters when he brings his own food to restaurants. While Jacobs has already lost four pounds on the diet, he isn’t entirely optimistic about the experiment. “My greatest fear is that I’ll die during the year, and that’ll be an embarrassment,” he jokes. Jacobs’s fans will just have to wait until the next book arrives to find out if he survives.
Rowing in the Big Apple
28 Sep 2009 1 Comment
in Class Assignments Tags: Floating the Apple, NYC
The Floating the Apple Boathouse on the Hudson River’s Pier 84 is not easy to find. Before visitors can even think about boarding a boat, there are a number of obstacles to overcome. First of all, numerous avenues separate the pier from the closest subway stops. Then there is the seemingly impossible feat of getting across the West Side Highway before the stoplights turn green and waves of cars come rushing from every direction. Even after making it to the pier, visitorts must walk past signs for Circle Line tours, past a surprisingly crowded restaurant, past an elaborate fountain devoid of water, past teenagers loitering in the park and finally into the gray metal boathouse in the shadow of the USS Intrepid. The boathouse is unmarked so people just venture into the open doors to discover a room full of wooden rowboats.
Not rowboats exactly, but Whitehall boats. Their design and name were inspired by one of the fastest rowing boats in 1819 called the American Star. It was steered by a fourteen-year-old coxswain during famous race, commemorated every December in the Hudson River, against the British that drew 50,000 spectators. The American Star is in France now in France after the Marquis de Lafayette received it during his visit to New York. However, the boats at the Floating the Apple boathouse carry on the tradition.
Adina Taylor heads the organization which, according to the mission statement on its website, works toward “introducing the public, especially young people, to the joys of rowing and sailing on the urban waters.” The organization relies on volunteers who do everything from directing visiting rowers as coxswains to building boats. Most of the volunteers are young students, including fourteen-year-old Troy who volunteers everyday from 3 pm to 5 pm. Troy, who also works at a hospital and is in the eighth grade, says his favorite part about volunteering is, “going out on the water.” He started volunteering last year after his brother’s girlfriend told him about the organization. During that time, he helped finish a green boat called the Kelvin Bowens that he and Taylor put into the water through a complicated pulley system. The boats take about two years to build and Taylor explains that each boat’s name “depends on who’s building it and who funded it.”
Most of the organization’s funding comes from, “foundations interested in the environment and the Hudson River,” Taylor said. The organization started in 1992 and is open year round. They only row when the water is above 50º so the winters are mostly for building. The man who oversees the boatbuilding does not come to the boathouse everyday so they often take a few years to build. On the workshop side of the boathouse sits the skeleton of an unfinished boat that was started in January 2009. “Most of the boats were built by Junior ROTC students,” Taylor said. Some schools also do a boat-building program through Floating the Apple.
Once Taylor and Troy finally put a boat into the water, they walk it over to a floating dock where life-jacketed visitors can finally board. The seats in the twenty-six-foot-long boats are wide enough to fit one or two people per oar and two oars on each side. Taylor acts as the coxswain while Troy usually mans one of the oars while he trains to become a coxswain. “Each time he comes out here, I try to make sure he rows so he continues to learn,” Taylor said. Taylor sets the rhythm for the rowers by telling them to dip the light graphite oars in the water when she says “catch” and remove them when she says, “release.” Since so many people row, the boats glide along the water with surprising ease and the physical activity, accompanied by Taylor’s soft, steady voice, is more relaxing than strenuous. The boats are not supposed to go past the pier where the current is stronger and Taylor’s directions keep everything going smoothly.
After Taylor directs the boat back to the dock, she and Troy hoist it back onto the deck and wash it down before putting it away. As they wash it, a man clearly on some mind altering substance, walks into the boathouse and begins to yell nonsense. Taylor directs him out by repeating, “Hi, can I help you?” and walking toward the door. “See what I mean? I have to be here,” she says before going back to cleaning the Kelvin Bowens. Incidents like this have happened before. There was once a drug bust on the pier just outside the boathouse. Another time, two people were under the influence while they rowed and were completely unable to use the oars. “People thought they didn’t speak English,” Taylor said.
Despite the occasional strange incident, Troy likes working at the boathouse. “It’s fun, but it’s hard work,” he says. Though Troy says he would be interested in working on a cruise ship, he would really like to be a scientist or maybe help abused animals. He has a lot of ideas, but for now he focuses on the boathouse and school. “Right now I’m trying to get my school to come out here and row,” he says. His experiences on the urban waters have made him want to share it with others.
Times Square is Money
20 Sep 2009 1 Comment
This here is a physical description piece of Times Square taking inspiration from a Joan Didion’s piece called “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream.” Enjoy
For any tourist coming to New York City for the first time, Times Square is a necessary part of the trip. They are drawn to it by a strange sense of obligation. They flood Times Square with their presence, walking slowly down the sidewalks and staring agape at the flashing ads covering every building. Signs with an explosion of bright colors and blinking lights that scream for attention are pasted on every open space. The visual clutter that covers every building overpowers the ability to move and many end up walking aimlessly. Their slow meandering never fails to aggravate the locals who work around Times Square who dart around them like a racecar dodges past its competition.
On every corner there is a vendor peddling some cheap keepsake with “NYC” written on it or “designer” handbags or airbrushed paintings of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Competing for the same corner space are the food carts selling hot dogs or kebabs, a stifling cloud of smoke surrounding the carts with open grills. The pungent smoke mingles with the exhaust of the cars that pass through the area at all hours of the day and night. The honking taxis and the tour buses that rumble through the square create a cacophony of noise that combines with the sounds of advertisements to constantly assault the eardrums. Beneath the noise of the cars and the advertisements there are snatches of music coming from performers working for tips. On one corner there is a pan flautist who accompanies a prerecorded track. On the next a jazz band led by a trumpeter whose confidence is evident in the flowing and playful way he manipulates the instrument.
Underneath all of Times Square’s activity is the sense that the desire for money drives it: the endless ads barraging the senses, the young people wearing sandwich boards passing out small paper advertisements that are immediately discarded by the recipients, everything. “It’s just a shrine to Capitalism,” says Emily Pike who wears a sandwich board for the Broadway show The 39 Steps. Pike only works in the square on Saturdays, usually the busiest day of the week. “It’s a little hectic and some people are rude, but some people smile,” she says of the area’s atmosphere. Though she does not like working in Times Square, Pike is sometimes awed by it. “You look around and there are so many lights and people everywhere” she says. “It’s kind of neat and kind of disgusting all at the same time.”
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