Intuition vs. Feeling
January 31, 2006 | Life | People & Society
From Boundaries of the Soul:
Intuition is the perceiving function that sees things whole, or in the broad context. It grasps the big picture and also sees the implications. When it looks at something, it imagines where it came from and how it arrived at this place. It looks for antecedents, for history, for broad general trends. It also speculates about the future, asking, where is this going? And perhaps, what is most important, intuition asks, what are the possibilities of what I am seeing?
Feeling is a judging process, but it operates quite differently from thinking to achieve its ends. Feeling depends upon a personal or subjective value system - there is something conscious or unconscious, against which objective reality is measured. Feeling operates with spontaneity, responding directly to a situation before analyzing its many aspects to determine its worth or usefulness. Feeling says, I like that, or, that will never do. [...] People with strong feeling functions base their responses to a situation on their sense of what is right or wrong, appropriate or inappropriate, urgent or not urgent, or any other criteria by which something may be judged.
- June Singer (1972, 1994)
Tear Up Notio!
January 31, 2006 | Life | Software
Grab the chainsaw, express your inner anger, and tear up Notio!
Love Requires Depth
January 31, 2006 | Life | People & Society
From The Love Problem of the Student:
Love requires depth and loyalty of feeling; without them it is not love but mere caprice. [...] Every true and deep love is a sacrifice. The lover sacrifices all possibilities, or rather, the illusion that such possibilities exist. If this sacrifice is not made, his illusions prevent the growth of any deep and responsible feeling, so that the very possibility of experiencing real love is denied. Love has more than one thing in common with religious faith. It demands unconditional trust and expects absolute surrender. Just as nobody but the believer who surrenders himself wholly to God can partake of divine grace, so love reveals its highest mysteries and its wonder only to those who are capable of unqualified devotion and loyalty of feeling. And because this is so difficult, few mortals can boast of such an achievement. But, precisely because the truest and most devoted love is also the most beautiful, let no man seek to make it easy. He is a sorry knight who shrinks from the difficulty of loving his lady. Love is like God: both give themselves only to their bravest knights.
Love is not cheap - let us therefore beware of cheapening it! All our bad qualities, our egotism, our cowardice, our worldly wisdom, our cupidity - all these would persuade us not to take love seriously. But love will reward us only when we do. I must even regard it as a misfortune that nowadays the sexual question is spoken of as something distinct from love. The two questions should not be separated, for when there is a sexual problem it can be solved only by love. Any other solution would be a harmful substitute. Sexuality dished out as sexuality is brutish; but sexuality as an expression of love is hallowed. Therefore, never ask what a man does, but how he does it. If he does it from love or in the spirit of love, then he serves a god; and whatever he may do is not ours to judge, for it is ennobled.
- C. G. Jung (1928)
What Google Knows
January 31, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Governance | People & Society | Technology
John Battelle, author of Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture, asked Google:
1) "Given a list of search terms, can Google produce a list of people who searched for that term, identified by IP address and/or Google cookie value?"
2) "Given an IP address or Google cookie value, can Google produce a list of the terms searched by the user of that IP address or cookie value?"
To its credit, it rapidly replied that the answer in both cases is "yes." Just FYI.
Good to know. The answer is likely the same for Yahoo, MSN, and AOL. Of course, if you are innocent in the eyes of the Administration, you have nothing to hide. If, like Martin Luther King, you have any issues with the strategy or tactics of the Administration, then you might want to turn off browser cookies, as a minimum measure.
Expressing Anger
January 31, 2006 | Life
Three of my women friends think I'm not expressing my anger. As a self-identified pacifist, this is somewhat amusing. It first came up a few years ago too, in a series of conversations that went something like this:
"You should express your anger more."
"Uh, could you re-phrase that as an 'I statement?'"
"I think you should express your anger more."
"I'm not angry."
"Everyone is angry."
"Well, learning to process anger without acting out and affecting others might be considered a positive step in human evolution."
"But you must be angry."
"Sometimes, but I try to avoid it."
"You shouldn't avoid feelings."
"I have lots of feelings, I just don't necessarily feel a need to amplify all of them."
"I think it would be good for our relationship if you were more able to express your anger."
"Um, I'm not sure I want a relationship where anger is a required amplification. I don't want to be walking around looking for ways to be angry all the time, especially as a way to validate that we have a 'good relationship.'"
"Well, you don't have to look for it, it's always there."
"Um, this is sounding like projection to me. Feel free to express your anger. But don't rely on me to express it for you."
"I'm not talking about me."
"I see that as the problem with this discussion."
"Why don't you want to express your anger."
"I'm not feeling angry, for starters."
"But you must have feelings."
"Yes, plenty, thanks. But I've been working for years to highlight positive reinforcement feelings - like love, for instance - and minimize negative reinforcement ones. The fact that I might express anger only occasionally, and do it without yelling, throwing things, or punching people is something I see as a benefit to both myself and humanity, thank you very much. Actually, this conversation is making me angry. Are we starting to meet your goals yet?"
"I don't see why you're angry at me. Anyway, it's not my goal, I just think it would be healthy."
"This is a really good song; do you mind if I crank this up?"
Clearly this is a deep topic, and I don't mean to trivialize it with the fictionalized dialogue above. But as a male raised in the '70s and in college during the '80s, you might forgive me if the culture at the time did not exactly take kindly to angry men. We were brought up to be sensitive, to be nice to people, to look for the good in others (despite my capital-J judgmental nature), and most of all - once we got to therapy in the '90s - to not "act out."
The result? Here are some ways I express anger: Tone of voice; modulating loudness of voice; tree cutting and brush clearing; playing loud music; shoveling snow; cleaning; intellectualizing; sulking; writing; meditating; yoga; exercising. There are probably some other ways that escape me in my insomnia.
I probably have more work to do in this area. But I find it ironic after all the cultural conditioning I've experienced that not being angry enough is viewed as a problem. One might think, given the state of the world - with road rage, bankrupting wars of choice, suicide bombers, heroin in the high schools, etc. - that a little quiet indignation would be appreciated as appropriate behavior.
Maybe what I need are a couple of tattoos and a roaring Harley-Davidson, to prove that I'm pissed.
Update: I'm looking for book citations on this topic, if you have any recommendations.
Webloging With MarsEdit
January 30, 2006 | Site Maintenance | Software
I mentioned this briefly back in October 2004, but if you are publishing a weblog and still using the browser for writing and editing, and you're on an OS X Mac, you should really check out MarsEdit. It's more like an email client, and provides lots of features - like a spell-checker, easy tagging, a Save button, etc. For $25, it's the way to go. Free 30-day demo. From the same people that make NetNewsWire.
It's a refreshing joy to use, especially if you spend some time on Windows for comparison.
Microsoft ftpd Madness
January 30, 2006 | Software | Technology
So, to transfer files between computers there's this protocol called FTP - File Transfer Protocol. It's been around forever, and on dozens of different Unix operating systems when you do a directory listing it looks something like this:
-rw-r--r-- 1 187 6358 Jul 18 2005 index.html
Then along comes Microsoft. For some reason, this return string format is not good enough for them, so they decide to do it like this, instead:
01-30-06 10:15AM 7064 index.html
Well, great if you use Internet Explorer as your FTP client! But if you're running automated publishing systems that rely on interoperability, this is broken. Granted, because the specification does not elaborate the directory listing return format, the Microsoft software is not officially out of line. But why the heck couldn't they do it like everyone else? Is this a good place to express your unique vision of how an ftp daemon should describe a directory listing? (With, BTW, far less information presented.) Couldn't they just try to fit in a bit, and go with the existing flow? Accept that perhaps the old way, utilized by hundreds of thousands if not millions of other servers, might just be good enough?
This is why people hate Microsoft. There was an existing de facto standard, and they made gratuitous changes that reduce interoperability with non-Microsoft systems. This is why Microsoft holds a 20% share of the web server market, while the open-source Apache has 67%. People who have to make technology systems work together are tired of this crap.
So here's the solution to several problems of this variety: Go visit the Apple Store, and pick yourself out a nice, new, powerful, Unix-based, easy-to-use Mac – laptop or desktop. When the transaction is complete, stand up, and open your office window. Unplug your existing Microsoft-OS computer, and disconnect it from the network. Pick it up, and carry it to the window. Say a short ritual prayer to the deities with which you resonate, and throw that piece of junk computer out the window. Hopefully it will fall several floors and smash to bits upon landing, or land in a snowbank or pond, so it will be unusable by anyone who finds it. Then take a few days vacation until your new Mac arrives. If everyone did this together many future wasted hours would be recovered and we could all ftp together again with joy, love, and happiness.
Rapport vs. Communication
January 30, 2006 | Life | People & Society
Good Marshall McLuhan quote from Richard Cavell's McLuhan In Space.
Communication, in the conventional sense, is difficult under any conditions. People prefer rapport through smoking or drinking together. There is more communication there than there ever is by verbal means. We can share environments, we can share weather, we can share all sorts of cultural factors together but communication takes place only inadequately and is very seldom understood. . . . There is a kind of illusion in the world we live in that communication is something that happens all the time, that it's normal . . . Actually, communication is an exceedingly difficult activity. In the sense of a mere point-to-point correspondence between what is said, done, and thought and felt between people--this is the rarest thing in the world. (qtd. 5)
Link via the always-interesting Long Sunday blog, which has some additional commentary.
This reminds me of the XTC song, Frivolous Tonight (excerpt):
Let us talk about some trivial things we like A bit of this and that Let's chew the fat
Pour ourselves a glass of stout And let our rael brook shirts hang out Nothing makes us more content To let us wallow in a bit of nonsense
We're all so frivolous tonight, tonight
It's on the Apple Venus Volume 1 disc, which I highly recommend for it's clever musical constructions and witty commentary on modern life.
Comments Back On
January 29, 2006 | Site Maintenance
I just went through 4,349 weblog comments here at Notio World Headquarters, and approximately 4,100 of them were junk. Then, after I hit the delete button, the cgi process at pair.com timed-out, crashing half-way through. So there are 2,166 left to go through again. Joy.
So I've temporarily turned off comments until I can figure out how to gain finer control over them. I did this in a brute-force way, so it might have broken something along the way. We'll see. In any case, I hope to fix this soon.
Update #1: Well, on the second try it crashed again, but now there are only 1,011 comments left. Once again, with feeling....
Update #2: I appear to have deleted the ~4,100 published spam comments. Then, I went to the "junk" comments, which are unpublished, and there are 5,438 of those! All this since November. Let's see how many tries this takes.... It's a bit easier since I'm not scanning these for valid comments, I'm just nuking them all.
Update #3: It took three tries. Comments are back on. I've set it to be very aggressive and automatically junk suspicious comments. For instance, junk it if there are more than three links in a comment, for starters. Let's see how it goes.
Update #4: While I was hacking, I switched from the file-based Berkeley DB to the modern MySQL database. That seems to have gone okay, but it's a major back-end change. Crossing fingers!
Exercise
January 29, 2006 | Life
I think I may have finally hit the tipping point on enjoying exercise. I'm not quite ready to declare victory, but there's been certain progress.
Since about 1980 I haven't considered myself a "natural exerciser." That is, it doesn't come naturally to me, I haven't really enjoyed it much, and I live mostly in my head and not my body. However, this isn't really the Truth. Historically, it's an untruth. For instance, growing up I was an expert downhill skier and could get down any black diamond slope in New England with dignity, if not grace. Moguls, steepness, narrow slopes, dodging ice and rocks, no problem. I have many memories of skiing down slopes under chair-lifts and having people cheer me on. (I also remember some spectacular wipeouts, all part of the fun.) Also, in the mid-1970's I rode my bicycle from Lebanon to Hanover a lot - nearly every day in the summer, and sometimes after school in the spring and fall. It's a six or seven mile one-way ride, depending on the route, and there is a pretty decent hill in between. I also enjoyed basic hiking, though I've never done any of the serious mountains around here.
Until I was 30 years old I had a 29 inch waist. At one point in elementary school my doctor thought I was too thin, and "prescribed" a diet of ice creme, milkshakes, grilled cheese sandwiches, and french fries - as much as I could eat. Imagine my glee coming home with a note from The Doctor encouraging this diet! College dormitory living did nothing to change my body shape, even with late-night munchie attacks added to the mix.
Then as my metabolism slowed the 29-inch waist started growing. I added about a half-inch a year and sometime after 32 inches I started to notice. By the time I started buying 33-inch slacks I knew I had to do something. When they started to get tight, I decided there was no way I was going to 34.
I was amazed at how much the Atkins Diet helped. It's a tough one to keep up for life though, and eventually I gained it all back. Then I read Body For Life, and that made a lot of sense. I especially appreciated the idea that adding muscle mass would increase metabolism and I would burn more calories even while sitting in a chair!
Last autumn I decided that in addition to losing some of the spare tire I could stand to be stronger too. In November I decided to go in for personal training, primarily to build up the habit of exercise. I signed up for 24 sessions, and I'm a little over halfway through. This is not the cheapest way to get fit, but I'm working on the mental programming as much as the physical body; having an encouraging teaching and training partner is helpful. I've noticed a definite increase in my balance, overall strength, and flexibility. I'm starting to see muscle tone. My massage therapists have noticed the difference. Recently I've started to try adding in three one-hour cardio sessions a week to kick in the after-burners and ditch the excess body fat.
Of course, no one who knows me thinks I'm overweight. Most people say, "Lose weight? You're thin enough already!" But that's because the American norm is so super-sized in comparison. The biggest change I've noticed, especially this week, is that I'm looking forward to exercising, and trying to squeeze it in when I can. The Big Sigh that came with trudging off to work out is gone, and, like many people said would happen, the soreness of my muscles has a certain aliveness and attention that is, at least, not un-pleasurable.
So today, after two days in a row of one-hour cardio sessions and half an hour each day of upper- or lower-body weight lifting, with virtually every one of my muscles "alive" (i.e. sore) I'm taking the day off from exercising. I know that my body needs time to regenerate muscle mass, and I need some time off in general to sit around and read or even, heaven forbid, do nothing, but I think I wish I were going. That's a big change. We'll see if my major goal is met, and the desire keeps up. Who knows, maybe this summer I'll be hiking and riding my bike again. I'm already keeping my eyes open for a day to play hooky and go skiing, and if it ever stays cold enough and snows again, it might just happen.
It Could Happen
January 29, 2006 | Governance | People & Society
It's really not so much of a stretch.
Upper Valley Community Band
January 29, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Life
Lynne and I had a dinner date last night and after eating at Three Tomatoes we spent $5 each to see the Upper Valley Community Band at the Opera House. It's hard to tell when a "band" ends and when an "orchestra" begins, but I'm pretty sure when you've got 65 people on stage, and a conductor, and they're reading sheet music, it's more like an orchestra.
The primary reason we attended is because my brother-in-law, whose has a day-job as the police chief of a nearby town, is at heart a composer who has written something like 400 pieces for jazz, big band, and orchestra. He was premiering a new piece written for this band, and was conducting it on stage.
There were a couple of hundred people there, and though we weren't the youngest, we didn't bring the average age down much. I think what impressed me most about the whole thing was the "just folks" nature of it. I really wish I had brought my camera, but imagine everyone on stage in their "Sunday best" with the result that "Sunday best" means a lot of different things to different people. Cotton country dresses, tweed sport coat, three piece suit, polyester slacks, velvet evening gown, etc. The diversity in background of the players was amazing; very much a community effort.
At the start of each piece, a Distinguished Gentleman came out from the wings and introduced the work, providing a bit of background and history. At the beginning of the concert he welcomed us, and invited us to "honor our country and our flag by rising to sing the Star Spangled Banner - the flag is right over there" pointing to stage right. Everyone stood, even me - why not, I thought, this isn't the time to make a stand against jingoistic excess - and faced the flag, and did our best to remember the words. I even put my hand over my heart the way the Distinguished Gentleman was modeling. I looked around and realized there were a lot of WW II, Korean War, and maybe even WW I vets in attendance, and they take this sort of thing seriously. Ironic detachment and post-modern multi-cultural "God loves all people" philosophy were in short supply.
Anyway, the band was pretty darn good. It's not the Vienna State Opera, but it wasn't a hack job either. Tim's piece was called the UVCB March, and it was strong and well-played. I think the band really likes having a resident composer and they seemed to work hard on his piece. They did a nice job on the ballad With Quiet Courage, and the Learner and Loewe musical medley brought fond memories of recognizable show tunes. Gershwin's An American in Paris is a jazz-based piece with more complexity, and they suitably satisfied my "reverie quotient." What's Up at the Symphony was a cartoon medley, and you'd have to get up pretty early Saturday morning to hear all these themes in one day. They played a Benny Goodman medley, and closed with another march. Unfortunately, they didn't play any Frank Zappa compositions.
Then the Distinguished Gentleman came out again and thanked us for coming, and said they'd like to play for us now, God Bless America. The band launched into it, and from above the stage a brightly lit American flag descended with much drama. They encouraged us to sing, which was quite amusing - other than the three title words, how many of those lyrics to you know? At the end, Lynne said, "And God bless everyone else too." Right on, sistah.
All in all, a great Northern New England community event.
Frank Zappa Listening Party, Week Three
January 28, 2006 | Arts & Culture
Frank Zappa has always been one of my favorite artists, and I've been on a real Zappa listening spree lately. Many people think of Zappa as some sort of weird offensive freak, which he is, but he is also a serious and prolific composer. With 75 albums, including many doubles and some triples, his catalog can be broken down in several ways, but for this post I consider the "classical" work and the "rock and roll" work. There's also an "early period" which I don't listen to much, and doesn't resonate with me in long sequences. Here is an official discography (pdf). iTunes has 56 of the 75 Zappa albums. (But the following inline links go to Amazon for CD purchases.) The official Zappa website is really "fun" but ultimately very lame - hard to navigate, and omits critical information such as what year the material originated.
The "serious" work:
The Yellow Shark, performed by Ensemble Modern, conducted by Frank Zappa and Peter Rundel. An excellent live performace of some of Frank's most complex pieces. The Ensemble was very dedicated to the work, and it shows in the music. If you're dipping your toe in the classical Zappa oeuvre, start here.
Civilization Phaze III. Frank's last release of new material, and his masterwork. Highly developed musical themes, performed on the Synclavier, and most unplayable by humans due to the layering and complexity, not to mention the odd tempos and rapid tempo changes. This double CD is a beautiful, lush, operatic, and cinematic work, but not for easy listening in the background. Prime track: N-Lite, an 18 minute stunner.
"Oh No! ... just another Frank Zappa Memorial Barbecue!" by Le Bocal. This is a French big band stretching the work in a radically new direction. It's very upbeat, with horns, scorching guitar, and an operatic interpretation of The Idiot Bastard Son which is LOL funny. This is a very exciting development in the elaboration of Frank's canon.
The Zappa Album, by Ensemble Ambrosius. Along with the Le Bocal above, a favorite of my recent listening. This is something of a Finish music school joke, superbly executed: Playing 20th century electronic music on 17th century baroque-era acoustic instruments. The styles are surprisingly well-suited, and Zappa's longtime arranger and Synclavier transcriber Ali N. Askin weighs in with liner notes expressing his bemused astonishment: "Would the music still have that uniqueness of being entertaining and heavy at the same time?" His answer: Yes!.
Ensemble Modern plays Frank Zappa: Greggery Peccary & Other Persuasiions. This work was originally envisioned as part of The Yellow Shark, but Franks's cancer prevented further participation. The dedicated Ensemble Modern turns in a serious disc.
Strictly Genteel. A "greatest hits" of Frank's classical work. It has many of the major themes. If you generally like and listen to modern art music (i.e. "classical" music) this is a good entry point to "Zappa The Composer".
The "rock 'n roll" work is perhaps best represented by the ill-fated 1988 tour, which yielded three excellent albums, Make A Jazz Noise Here, The Best Band You Never Heard In Your Life, and Broadway The Hard Way. Each is a fantastic, played-live-no-overdub tour de force of complex, driving, ensemble playing. All this stuff is excellent for iPodding at the gym. Stunt guitarist Mike Kneally has written a tour diary of his experiences, and it's riotously funny reading. Even funnier, really, is his story of auditioning for Zappa's band, which starts about halfway down his long-form bio page.
Jazz Noise includes some great political commentary on the then-current Jimmy Swaggart prostitution scandal, some moderne musique concrete in Star Wars Won't Work, some heavy-metal stomping in Stevie's Spanking, and a gorgeous rendition of Strictly Genteel.
Best Band is worth it just to hear this group take on Purple Haze, Sunshine of Your Love, and Stairway to Heaven. Also noteworthy is a reggae version of Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire.
Broadway is the most overt political and opinionated, destroying Jesse Jackson, Republican lies, and religious fanatics, among others. Includes a nice cameo by Sting, singing Murder by Numbers.
The definitive collection of live material is distributed across six double-discs, You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore, vol 1-6. It's hard to recommend one over the others; if you're buying these you're sort of in the club and will likely own them all. I suppose starting with vol 1 and vol 2 is as good as any entry point. They're all excellent.
Finally, the 1980 studio album, You Are What You Is provides a pretty solid overview of why people find Frank's lyrics offensive. Herein he offends most every segment of society including gays, women, Deadheads, dumb people, pro-military cheerleaders, nightclub goers, new age mystics, country music, truckers, drug addicts, televangelists, and suicide attempts. And a few others along the way. It's outrageously, sophomorically, Truthfully funny, and essentially Frank is using this style to promote the idea that we are what we is - don't get hung up about it. The thing is, he is emphasizing and punctuating his piercing commentary with subtle and dramatic musical reinforcement. When they drop into Harder Than Your Husband they play a perfect rendition of a country music song, but the lyrics savage the genre.
If you'd like a visual example of Zappa's live shows, check out the 60 minute Does Humor Belong In Music DVD, recorded August 26, 1984 at The Pier in New York City. (The soundtrack is also excellent, with a different song selection than the DVD.) The stage antics and personalities of the musicians really drive home how much fun they had playing this incredibly difficult musical material. Truly a talented ensemble led by a very gifted composer, whatever the style or genre.
I met Frank in October 1983 at the Audio Engineering Society convention at the NYC Hilton. He was near the elevators with his bodyguard (Frank was shorter than me [even!] and always had a bodyguard) and I approached to ask about recording The London Symphony Orchestra sessions. He had used only PZM microphones, very new at the time, and it was a radical technique. Frank decided not to get on the elevator, and lit another cigarette while we talked. He thought the technical aspects of the recording were excellent, but he was disappointed with the union musicians on the project. They didn't put their heart into it (later this would come to be known as "putting the eyebrows on"). They took too many breaks, and didn't rehearse until they arrived the first day. His music is way too difficult for that style of work. You have to be committed. He asked about why I was at the show - I had invented a psychoacoustic sound processor and was looking for sales or manufacturing partners - and he said, "Good luck; these motherf'kers never listen to new ideas. You'll fight tooth and nail every step of the way, only to give up in frustration. But it's worth trying. Don't let the bastards get you down." (Frank was right.) Around now the next elevator opened up, he said, "Nice talking to you," and got on. Just as the doors were closing he realized he still had a lit cigarette and stuck his arm out to me to take it from him, "Thanks." I took Frank's cigarette, the doors closed, and up he went. I looked at the lit Winston, and a woman next to me said, "You'll cherish it forever," and smiled. I laughed, crushed it in the ashtray, and went to look for my ride to Madison Square Garden. The next six hours deserve their own post someday - it was an extended series of synchronistic events and a Very Good Time (first St. Stephen in 4 years).
In writing this post I remembered a day in December 1993. I was at the Dartmouth Bookstore, browsing the CD section, just rummaging around, when I came across the new Zappa release, The Yellow Shark. I took one look at the cover and thought, "Right, Frank's really sick, I forgot, he has cancer, and it's been a while, this is probably his last release." The cover was so sad, I stared at it for a long time thinking about Frank. The show in Hanover when I was in high school. The show during my first semester at college. Listening to Shut Up And Play Your Guitar late, late, late into the night with my housemate. The cigarette and the elevator. The photo was so honest - he was worn down, tired, yet still working. It was about 4:20 in the afternoon. I bought the record, and listened to it when I got home. The next day, I found out Frank had died, the day before, in California at about 1:30 PM, just around the time I tuned into that wavelength. (A similar thing happened when Garcia died.) The Yellow Shark wasn't his last release - Civilization Phase III was complete but not yet in distribution - but it was a culmination of his ambition to have real musicians play real instruments so he could hear his work live. I miss Frank, and I'm glad that younger musicians are still interested in performing and interpreting his catalog of entertaining yet heavy music.
What Is Friendship?
January 28, 2006 | Life | People & Society
Dave Winer occasionally writes a good essay unrelated to technology, as he did today.
Friendship is not a state of mind, it’s an act. It’s something you do, it’s not about whether you’re good or not, it’s not a reflection of you, it’s a balanced relationship between people. That doesn’t mean it’s always balanced at every moment. Sometimes you “need a friend” and other times it’s the other way. It’s a trust that’s returned. When I was younger and thought I was in love, a friend said it’s not love unless it’s returned. Friendship and love are not quite the same thing, although there’s a lot of love around friendship. I learned that love isn’t even something about two people, it’s a state of being for one person. You aren’t in love, you are love. You are, whether you acknowledge it or not.
Amen, brother.
GTI Project Fast
January 26, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | Products & Opportunites
Volkswagen has launched what must be an online viral marketing campaign for the new GTI.
Dear Michael J.,You have been chosen by the Volkswagen GTI Mk V research and development team to take part in a nationwide research experiment exploring the psychological and social concept of "fast."
To take part, please visit:
http://e.vw.com/a/tBD2TOmAQU8iiAcPMnoAHVDnpah/fasturlNOTE: We ask that you please DO NOT share this link as it may skew the results of this experiment.
I can't believe they want to keep this secret! That is a guaranteed method to get the link passed around. Go check it out.
My brother is a Volkswagen GTI owner - the perfect car for commuting into Manhattan every day, apparently - and last year he got a call from a market research firm to participate in a study for the next-generation GTI. A couple of people showed up at his house one evening, and spent a couple of hours asking questions and showing various design studies for car shape, front grills, taillight designs, interior options, color selections, etc. I'd be interested to know how many of those study participants buy the new car because they feel they had a say in the design decisions. That's an expensive way to "buy customers," but television ads are very expensive, and if you took the total television budget and instead spent it on personal qualitative research, it just might be far more effective.
Political Bias as Addiction Response
January 26, 2006 | Governance | People & Society
This doesn't surprise me at all:
The test subjects on both sides of the political aisle reached totally biased conclusions by ignoring information that could not rationally be discounted, Westen and his colleagues say.
Then, with their minds made up, brain activity ceased in the areas that deal with negative emotions such as disgust. But activity spiked in the circuits involved in reward, a response similar to what addicts experience when they get a fix, Westen explained.
The study points to a total lack of reason in political decision-making.
"None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged," Westen said. "Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones."
So the question for civil society is, how do we reward serious thinking?
Circular Cluelessness
January 25, 2006 | Life | Site Maintenance
It must be time to go to sleep. I just surfed over to Notio, and wondered why it hadn't been updated today. Then I realized, duh, it's my blog, and I'm the only one who's going to post there. As they say in Maine, "Wicked." Maybe I'll post tomorrow.
Individuation
January 24, 2006 | Life | People & Society
I'll try not to bore my dozen readers by quoting from this book too much (pg 59):
The process of individuation is a process of inner growth to which one is attached; one cannot get away from it. If one says no to it and does not accept it, then, since you are not in it, it grows against you. If you refuse the growth, then it kills you, which means that if a person is completely infantile and has no other possibility, then not much will happen. But if the person has a greater personality within -- that is, a possibility of growth -- then a psychological disturbance will occur. That is why we always say that a neurosis is in a way a positive symptom. It shows that something wants to grow; it shows that that person is not right in his or her present state and if the growth is not accepted it grows against you, at your expense. The inner possibility of growth in a person is a dangerous thing because either you say yes to it and go ahead, or you are killed by it. There is no other choice. It is a destiny which has to be accepted.-- Marie-Louise von Franz, 1959.
Foolish, Dumb, or Both?
January 24, 2006 | Life
A mistake I made reminds me of the time I pulled the chair out from under my eighth-grade english teacher as she was sitting down in the break room. The slow motion change of expression as she passed through the plane where the seat should have been, the realization, too late, that she was going down, everyone looking at me like, "You're in deep shit now," and me a moment too late whishing I hadn't done that. The march to the principal's office was nothing compared to what I felt inside.
Update: All is forgiven. There is grace in the world.
Transparency and Decision-Making
January 23, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Governance | People & Society | SoL
On a long conference call today 19 of us were discussing group process in decision-making. Specifically, how to assign consultants to incoming work requests. The issue is fraught with flaws that undermine community. For instance, central decisions might be made too quickly, based on who knows whom, using old bios, overlooking a more qualified newcomer to the group. If you want to build a community of practice, a closed process will result in a metaphorical blue screen of death.
My contribution, which seemed to generate murmurs of agreement - hard to tell on a large multi-contient teleconference, with lots of people muted - was that if the process were transparent, then decision-making could be self-correcting. That is, focus on the transparency aspects, then when a decision has to be made quickly, or by a small team instead of the whole group, there is trust and openness and the occasional error can be addressed and used as a learning opportunity to tweak the process.
So, focus your initial effort on transparency, and implement the simplest decision-making process possible. It's easy to evolve an open decision process, but hard to make a closed process open.
Compare to the US President when he says, "I'm making good decisions!" but they are made in secrecy, and no records are released. Trust, but verify. That's what a transparent process provides.
The Drawback of Religious Education
January 22, 2006 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
Excerpt from The Problem of the Puer Aeternus:
As you know, Christ is the shepherd and we are the sheep. This is a paramount image in our religious tradition and one which has created something very destructive, namely, that because Christ is the shepherd and we are the sheep, we have been taught by the Church that we should not think or have our own opinions, but just believe. If we cannot believe in the resurrection of the body - such a mystery that nobody can understand it - then one must just accept it. Our whole religious tradition has worked in that direction, with the result that if now another system comes, say Communism or Nazism, we are taught that we should shut our eyes and not think for ourselves, that we should just believe the Fuhrer or Kruschev.
As long as the leader is a responsible person, or the leading ideal is something good, then it is okay. But the drawback of this religious education is now coming out very badly, for Western individuals of the Christian civilization are much more easily infected by mass beliefs that the Eastern. They are predisposed to believe in slogans, having always been told that there are many things they cannot understand and must just believe in order to be saved. So we are trained to be like sheep. That is a terrific shadow of the Christian education for which we are now paying.- Marie-Louise von Franz, 1959.
Birdsong
January 22, 2006 | Life
All I know she sang a little while
Logistically, you couldn't ask for a better day to move household stuff. Mid-30s, sunny, t-shirt and light jacket carrying boxes and bookcases and computer cables and cat hair. Clear crisp blue skies with bright yellow sunshine, where the stunning beauty of nature, or anything else, could make you cry in a heartbeat and the tears wouldn't freeze on your cheeks, even in mid-January. I nearly split a fingernail right down the middle, but I was able to clip it short and prevent the ripping.
Cleaning creates space, and more space can be disorienting. Not cleaning like, say, vacuuming, but cleaning out all the extra stuff you never use. For instance, how many coffee mugs does one need? Well, an everyday mug, maybe a second in case the favorite is dirty, and then perhaps enough more so that if you have a dinner table full of guests you can still serve tea. So call it eight. If you actually remove all the giveaway, tacky, gifted, worn, crappy mugs other than the anointed eight, you have a much emptier cabinet, and that takes some getting used to, even if rationally "enough is enough." If you haven't used something in four years, do you still need it? I have a basement which proposes this question writ large, and it will probably take four months or more to answer.
Another Opportunity for Weird Fear: Toxoplasma gondii
January 20, 2006 | People & Society | Science
Are brain parasites altering the personalities of three billion people?
The Oxford scientists knew that humans can be hosts to Toxoplasma, too. People can become infected by its eggs by handling soil or kitty litter. For most people, the infection causes no harm. Only if a person's immune system is weak does Toxoplasma grow uncontrollably. That's why pregnant women are advised not to handle kitty litter, and why toxoplasmosis is a serious risk for people with AIDS. Otherwise, the parasite lives quietly in people's bodies (and brains). It's estimated that about half of all people on Earth are infected with Toxoplasma.
Some scientists believe that Toxoplasma changes the personality of its human hosts, bringing different shifts to men and women. Those infected, he found, show a small, but statistically significant, tendency to be more self-reproaching and insecure. Paradoxically, infected women, on average, tend to be more outgoing and warmhearted than controls, while infected men tend to be more jealous and suspicious.
Thinking twice about the litter box....
Change vs. the Unresolved
January 19, 2006 | Life
I thrive on change. I count on change to create the new. I love the new. Puer aeternus, baby. I can even deal with "bad" change - because if you're counting on change, it means the current badness won't last long.
But what slows me down is the unresolved. Not ambiguity, something with which I'm comfortable, but the unresolved. Something specific, with a tension - creative or otherwise - that will go one of two ways, but not just yet. That is killer distracting.
How do I deal with it? A good personal example is when, in June of 1986, my partners and I decided to move our business from Syracuse NY to Dallas TX in September (for a lot of 20-20 hindsight stupid reasons). I was young, and my girlfriend was younger, and I told her that we should probably break up right away, so that we didn't get any closer and make the autumn separation more difficult. How dumb was that, huh? Talk about limiting your outcomes. In the end, she dropped out of school to move with me. (How dumb was that, heh?) This caused her dad to not speak to her while we were together. (More dumbness, natch.) I was privileging "difficult change now" over "unresolved issue later."
It's hard to say why I'm so comfortable with generalized ambiguity, but grounded by unresolved specificity. Worth pondering. But for now, back to work.
Update, two hours later: Introspection is a major buzz-kill for productivity. I should write this stuff at night.
Internet as Meme Machine
January 18, 2006 | Arts & Culture | People & Society
There are a few key websites to track if you want to find all the weird, unusual, cool, and bizarre links. Then people like me forward them to people who are not tracking the master-meta sites (as if I have time, heh). You can find pointers in my archive.
In the meantime, check out these two links, which somehow seem to summarize all of pop culture in an instantaneous way.
Paris Hilton Doesn't Change Facial Expressions
Lindsay Lohan Doesn't Change Facial Expressions
I'd like to see one with a homeless man and another one with Bush's smirks.
Bonus link: "Maria Dahvana [spent] one year responding positively to all flirting and saying yes to literally anyone who asked her out. The ensuing 150 dates included a homeless man, several non-English speakers, 10 taxi drivers, two lesbians and a mime." [As you might expect, she's written a book.]
You're a Big Girl Now
January 17, 2006 | Life
Time is a jet plane, it moves too fast.
Notio is going through a phase right now. I have a big project that's taking a lot of time, I have a lot of small projects or obligations that are swamping my free time, there are a lot of life changes afoot, and relevant songs are popping into my head at opportune times. I'm noting them here for my own future recollection.
Hannah asked about sub-texts – how do you tell a true story? Usually the lyric I quote is not the punch line, but if you read the whole song and pay attention to the line before or after the one I quote, or the specific verse, there is probably some thread that connects them. Music is one of the primary truths in my book, existing before language and communicating across cultures. That I can use a lyric (as a crutch?) to express a particular emotion, especially when combined with the chordal structure, melody, and rhythm of the song, means that I can use blogging for defining my sub-text, just as blogging about business helps me define my take on business.
I've often struggled with "What is Notio for, anyway?" These days, I've decided it's a personal blog, meaning that it has no overarching goal or purpose – more like a cultural artifact than a deliverable. My own personal cultural artifact, but what the heck, electrons are cheap, and narcissism is one of the grand traditions of blogging. As Rageboy would say, better unsubscribe now before you waste any more time.
Path Finder and Web Inspector
January 17, 2006 | Software | Technology
We interrupt this stream of musical sub-texts to recommend some Mac power-user software.
Path Finder 4 is a fantastic Finder replacement, providing a more intuitive and powerful file management and navigation application. For starters, tabs in the Finder window – how cool is that? If you want the gory details on what's wrong with the present OS X Finder, you can read John Siracusa's series of articles. Most people wish Apple would buy Path Finder and make it the "advanced Finder" mode, if not just ditch the Finder altogether.
If you're a web developer, this post by the Safari team has exciting news about their new "Web Inspector," an advanced DOM inspector. You can use WebKit just like Safari; download the latest build, an application called WebKit, and when launched it shows up as Safari, and acts just like Safari, but with the latest new features. The Web Inspector is pretty cool, and beats the heck out of anything else I've seen, though to be fair I only do this stuff occasionally.
Days Between
January 15, 2006 | Life
How much we'll never know.
So the temperature dropped from 49 to 9 overnight, the rain turned to snow, and the skiers rejoiced. The hundreds of northbound SUVs placed their bets and lucked out. We got around a foot of the fluffy stuff here, beautifying the deep-rutted dirt road and reminding us that winter still has eight to twelve weeks for surprises. Our plow man's brand new $35,000 Ford truck died today, so he was late plowing us out, and it screwed up our moving plans, bringing ripples of ambiguity to every corner of the house. I cleaned my desk, and organized my iPod music. Simultaneously critical and meaningless.
Looks Like Rain
January 14, 2006 | Life
Brave the storm to come.
It's January in northern New England, and it's 49 degrees (F) and pouring rain outside. The dirt road is having a mini-mud season, and we have stuff to move tomorrow. I've heard of January thaw, but come on! Yesterday I was in Boston (indoors all day) and when I left at 7 PM it was 53 degrees outside! I walked around in a sport coat like it was April. When I got home 120 miles north at 9:30 it was still 40 degrees. Comfortable, but weird.
Driving home the northbound traffic out of Boston on a Friday night was heavy all the way north. On Rt 89, between Exit 13 (when I first noticed) and Exit 16 (when I got off) there was a non-stop procession of Massachusetts SUVs headed to the ski areas. Literally, perhaps 200 sport tourists headed into the hills. Plus the usual assortment aggressive drivers who insist on tailgating and dodging lanes trying to get ahead, even if only one or two cars. Or the senior couples driving 50 mph in fear because the rain at 50 degrees might possibly maybe lead to black ice.
Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes
January 8, 2006 | Life
Big changes underway. Turn, and face the strain.
Energy Politics
January 6, 2006 | Governance | People & Society
Mitch Ratcliff speaks for me.
70 Years Ago Today
January 6, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Cooperatives | People & Society
Terry Appleby, General Manager of the Hanover Co-op, of which I am proud to be the current board president, wrote:
On January 6th, 1936, in the middle of the Great Depression, 17 families from Hanover, New Hampshire and Norwich, Vermont gathered to discuss the creation of a society of cooperation to meet their common needs. According to founding member Charles Bagley, "at the close of the meeting they signed the register, paid the initial fee of one dollar and became charter members." They thus formed the buying club that later in the year would be incorporated into the Hanover Consumer Cooperative Society, and joined with consumers in Berkeley, and Hyde Park in Chicago and many other places who were also inspired by the idea of the transforming power of cooperation.
One of the first purchases by the club was for fresh citrus fruit from Florida, scarce in Northern New England at the time. Hanover Co-op still celebrates that purchase with an annual citrus sale in January. Here's hoping you'll join in a symbolic toast (of orange juice!) to the visionaries at each of our co-ops who have kept alive this dream.
Cooperatives present an alternative model of providing goods and services. They are member-owned, and organize around serving member needs. Sometimes members are workers, sometimes the members are customers – sometimes they are both, thereby tying together the combined self-interests of producers and consumers. In an era of so-called "customer-focused organizations" with un-navigable voicemail menu systems, cooperatives provide an honest alternative to greed.
If you're interested in learning more, or even starting a new Co-op, there are some good resources listed in the "Cooperatives" topic on this weblog, particularly around July 2003.
Purpose of Therapy
January 6, 2006 | People & Society
Yesterday someone said, "The purpose of therapy is to turn mild anxiety into cold, hard, fear – so then you know what you're dealing with." Discuss.
Data Mining 101
January 5, 2006 | Governance | People & Society | Software
Finding Subversives with Amazon Wishlists by Tom Owad. A little geeky, but worth reading to see how authorities might infer intentions. About six years ago, I used similar techniques to scrape auto sites on the web to find inventory on a new VW Golf TDI diesel (indigo blue, standard shift) within 500 miles of my house. In one afternoon I had all the info I needed to negotiate and purchase the exact car I wanted, which I did the next day, at a dealer about 120 miles from my house. My local dealer said that there were no cars of that spec, and wanted to sell me one off the lot. Power to the people, or to the authorities, as the case may be.
I have intentionally used "authorities" to distinguish the Bush administration from what would normally be called the "government." There's not a lot of governance happening right now in the US, but plenty of authority assertion. Politics is a friggin' black hole for blogging; my apologies.
Crossing a Car with a Motorcycle
January 4, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Products & Opportunites
Volkswagen introduces the GX3 – the first new idea in cars or motorcycles in years, if not decades. A two-seater, three-wheeled "motorcycle" that drives like a high-performance car, and gets 46 mpg in the city. The photos are amazing. Seems to be designed for commuters. Not sure if you can get winter wheels for the thing, but it sure looks like fun!
Arrived
January 4, 2006 | Life
Arrived safely in Providence. That is, the city, not the state.
