January 30, 2003
Owl Eyes
Wow. Just outside my window a large owl flew up and perched on a nearby tree. It's nature day or something. Earlier 4 deer ran past the same window.
The owl is intently looking my direction.
He just flew around to a closer perch. Appears to be a Barred Owl.
Here's a semi-random pic via google:
January 29, 2003
Calling all Deconstructionists
"Freedom is not a gift America gives the world; it is a gift God gives humanity." -G.W. Bush, in today's State of the Union addressOkay, let's take this apart for the screaming propaganda it is.
Back in my lit crit pomo days this crap from Bush would be excellent fodder. Especially out of context like this.
God? Who or what is that? Humanity? Freedom? American? Bush (his speechwriters and handlers) throw around these sorts of terms as if the self-righteous, bull-headed meaning he has chosen is the same for everyone.
It's supposed to be fun to play deconstructionist but Bush takes all the fun out of it. He's just a pig. He makes me want to go back to playing with my groundhog puppet.
Yay for puppets
Somebody likes me (and I like her) and got me some lovely puppets. I'm actively seeking names, please help.
The chipmunk is a paw puppet: stick two fingers in the front legs, carry him around on the back of your hand, be cute. He's a small but chubby little number, about 4 inches high and 6 inches long, clearly a wily fellow.
The groundhog is a more traditional hand up the butt kind of puppet. I've long had a fascination with groundhogs, ever since discovering Queer Barney out back a workplace many years ago. This guy has nice soft fur and the look of a wise trickster, ready to give you the what for if you are smiling and the secret to recovery if you are frowning.
Images (and the puppets) from Stuffed Animal World.
I'm delighted. Thank you.
January 28, 2003
I won't be your father figure
If I recall correctly, Lacanian psychoanalysis posits a moment in youth when the child looks out to the world and seeks an individual or entity that provides the gateway to interaction with the external world. This individual or entity plants the seeds of language that structure understanding. In the usual model a graph is drawn of the development of the psyche. The child follows an arc from birth, traveling past identification with the mother to an encounter with the father that establishes the basis for values, truth, perception and integration with the rest of humanity.
If this goes smoothly the child ends up as a well integrated member of society and generally accepts the duties and obligations that are presented: get a job, get married, believe in established truths and get on with being a part of world that has some definition and thus exists.
If this doesn't go smoothly the child is left with a questing for meaning and truth that may or may not lead to "inappropriate" beliefs and values. Neurosis some might call it, or maybe narcissism. With externalities lacking substance, the already accepted truth of self gains status.
Setting aside for a moment that I could be completely misremembering Lacan and that he's privileging the role of the male, this model has some goodness-of-fit for my own behavior and why, in some ways, despite my reluctance, I'm relating to Chris/Alex McCandless in Into the Wild.
The going out to nature to find the real truth strikes me as an effort to replace the frustration and anxiety of interacting with a society that was never made fully real with a tangible, responsive existence. The heat of fire, the cold of ice, the need of hunger, these are all things that eventually cannot be denied. Much of what makes up society, without that early moment of "fatherly" gravitation, is ephemeral.
I think it is obvious that there are no simple answers--perception is the result of a complex of many influences--but at the same time teasing out each of the influences is a worthwhile pursuit. This paragraph brought to you by the department of forestalling people who like to say there are no simple answers, etc.
There's more to say on this.
Into The Wild
I’ve decided to start reading Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. I do this with some trepidation as large parts of my brain, soul, heart, spirit, mind, whatever you might like to call it, would like nothing more than to walk into the Alaskan wilderness and die. If I read this book, something might bend, then break, and off I'll trot to Alaska.
I spent a week or so in Alaska in the summer of 1995. I went on driving tour with my girlfriend at the time and her family. I was the lucky recipient of the boyfriend ticket. I remain immensely grateful to the Grahams for their generous hospitality.
When the plane landed at the Anchorage airport, when the wheels touched the ground, as I looked out the window, up came the thought, "Okay, I can die now." (That's either a remarkable spiritual moment or a perfect example of the kind of strident naivety that I fear may populate the journals and letters of Christopher McCandless excerpted in the book. Was the guy just dumb or had he transcended, something, somehow? We'll see what the book says.)
Later we took a bus from the eastern edge of Denali National Park to the Kantishna Roadhouse that lay in the interior, much closer to the mountain. The bus ride is an all day affair, along a very narrow dirt road, covering 80 or so miles of scenery that is at once the most beautiful and desolate I've ever experienced. 
While on the bus, I had an experience that later inspired me to write the following. We had seen moose, a surprising number of bears and some wolves. One group of wolves was off in the distance chasing and digging after a small animal in a dry riverbed. One particular wolf caught my eye and I borrowed some binoculars to get a better look:
As I raised the binoculars to my eyes the world closed down to just two things: there was the wolf and there was me. Everything else around me was abstracted out to the generic. I knew there were people around me but I could not distinguish one from another. Around us was a bus but I could not feel the seats and the walls.There was only the wolf and me. And it was calling to me: See? This. Your home. Come run with us. Come eat with us. Dance in the shadow of the great one.
I had been in Alaska for 5 days.
On the first day I marveled as the sun stayed up longer than I was able.
On the second day I leaned into a pure wind that raised my arms.
On the third day I floated in the sea with whales and climbed to the frozen top of the world.
On the fourth day I walked into a place more like home than I had ever known.
On the fifth day it was the wolf and it was me and I felt a yearning tearing down deep into my soul hunting for my secret, burning a path that said everything you have done to this point was to bring you to this. Now, you decide.
Reading this now, copying it here, is both affirming and embarrassing. In a very pure and simple way that's me and what I want, but on the other hand it sounds silly, strained, and naïve. Is naivety, then, just giving up?
The fourth day was an overnight stay at the Rock Creek Country Inn north of the park. The owners had collected together a variety of cabins, put very comfy beds within, invited people round for a visit, and settled in to handling their other business: training dogs for the Iditarod and other races. I was invited to stay the winter over and be what amounted to a dog handler intern. The dogs liked me. I liked the dogs. There was no phone. The electricity came from a generator that was used only some of the time. The average high temperature in January in that area is about 0 degrees Fahrenheit. That doesn't include the wind. I desperately wanted to stay but couldn't convince myself. Isn't coming "home", isn't that giving up?
(There are pictures of these five days. I should scan them or something. I've been promising myself an Alaska trip journal for years now.)
So now, here's this book, about a guy who did a different kind of giving up. He gave away everything he had, stepped out of society for two years, and then gave away his life.
I'll see what the book says.
(Thanks to Ding and Matt. Matt loaned Ding the book and Ding loaned it to me.)
January 27, 2003
Yay for Anne: polite peacemonger
Bells and Whistles: I Sent a Letter to the Government Today
I am a shameless peacemonger, as are many of the people I know. But what drove me to write, finally, was not only the threat of war but the relentless belligerence of the administration's rhetoric. I got mad, in short, because I don't like their tone. I don't like it, and I don't want to give the impression that it represents me.
Yes. Right on.
January 24, 2003
I have seen the religion
Navel-gazing from mike.whybark.com
Mike gazes at his navel, with the help of An Introvert's Lexicon, brought to him via Everything Burns.
I'm clearly an introvert. But I'm also sort of with Mike on this one: it is possible to be interested in talking and doing things with some people, to maintain that introvert style, and to still meet new and exciting folk. See, for example, "To go out" in the lexicon. The right hand side of that sounds pretty nice.
The rest of the site, aptly titled The Assertive Introvert Home Page, has some helpful social skills for the introverted, including some of the same strategies I've used.
I've been seeing the religion a lot lately, in lo it's many forms.
January 22, 2003
Yay for kitties
Same genes, but cloned kitty shows she's no copycat - JAN 23, 2003
Cloning is worth exploring, but this should cause people to pause a moment and question what they are trying to do. You can't replicate existence with cloning, you can only create a similar crucible. Who knows what might come out.
And that's good.
Thanks to the kitties.
Tuna and Ramen
Some years ago, way back in the dark recesses of solitary living, I ate a lot of ramen. Not because it was cheap or because I liked the taste but because I could put it in a bowl, add some water, stick the whole lot in the microwave and be sated some short number of minutes later with just the bowl and spoon to clean (not that I did).
Problem with this is that ramen is rather boring: Noodles and salt. I like salt plenty and noodles are okay, but there’s nothing happening there. I must have realized this the same day that I realized there wasn’t enough protein in my diet because I stuck some tuna in there.
And it was good.
I don’t mean it tasted good, at least not at first, but that it satisfied. It fixed what ailed me. It granted depth to my eating experience and returned meaning to my cooking.
Thus began a long series of experiments to see what could go with tuna and ramen to make it good. I started with soy sauce, various hot sauces and the like, but that wasn’t quite enough. First came canned peas. Then came a raw egg dropped into the water with everything else (it comes out cooked in the end). Or combinations thereof.
I mention tuna and ramen because the initial reaction from the public was one of disgust and dismay: "That stinks, how can you eat that? Gross!" As time went by, however, converts were made, brought around by the convenience and the satisfaction. Maybe you can be a convert too, or maybe you found this, or similar, path independently?
Since the early years, I’ve branched out to other forms of food in a bowl. For example, put tuna, peas, salt, pepper, hot sauce and sesame oil together in a bowl. Microwave for a bit. Stir. Enjoy. I’ve even been so bold as to sometimes use a plate. And every once and a while I’ll boil something on the stove or use the frying pan or a wok.
But I’ll always know that my own true cooking-tool love is the bowl.
Tonight’s creation in a bowl, the one that inspired this entry and creation of a new MT category, is new:
- Get a bowl.
- Put in a small amount of dashi concentrate. Do not overdo or suffer the fishy consequences.
- Add a reasonable amount of memmi by whatever definition of reasonable you find reasonable.
- Stir in a dollop of garlic red chili sauce.
- Dump in a small can of tuna.
- Nuke for a while.
- Drop in a handful of frozen veggie dumplings (gyoza sorts of things).
- Nuke a while longer.
- Eat.
Turned out surprisingly tasty. I made too much broth this time around so I’m going back for a second round of dumplings here in a bit to finish it off.
I’m home more often now. Maybe there will be more experiments.
January 21, 2003
Office of Global Propaganda
New White House Office Coordinates Global Communications
I've been trained. Everything the White House does these days my reaction is the same: I wonder "Don't these guys read? Don't they know that their actions are just the same as the evil fascists in the history books, and the fiction books, and the movies and on TV and, well, everywhere?"
It started for me with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Duh. Homeland. Racists and paranoid people have homelands.
And now, just looking around that website, I find the Citizen Preparedness Guide with self protection, reporting and shrubbery pruning advice all in lovely red, white and blue.
I realize I'm late entering the game here, but still...
Or maybe I'm just being naive, but I'm relatively certain that the naivety is what encourages striving for a better life and prevents me from closing and locking the doors, trimming the shrubs, and staring out the windows at my neighbors, wondering if that smoke is a barbeque or a bomb.
January 20, 2003
Blog Matchmaking
Seb's Open Research: matchmaking service
Seb says he can suggest blogs worth following based on a posting of interests mixed in with his experience and a dash of intuition. So here's my limited post of some limited interests; wouldn't want to give it all away.
Collaboration: Mostly of the asynchronous variety, of the sort we're supposed to be researching at Blue Oxen. Of late I'm becoming more and more interested in the political activism that may lie latent (intentional and unintentional) within "improvement activitivies" and "activity improvement".
Agile Methods: Patterns, extreme programming, unit testing, etc. are very appealing software development and design methods. I reckon the philosophical ideas that support it migth be good life development and design methods too.
Climbing: Not just a hobby and exercise: some degree of sanity maintenance with tangible, dirt-related, goals.
Books: 1920s short and long fiction always seems to tickle my fancy. I'm fairly certain that it has something to do with the underlying doubt ("Are we going to be okay or have we screwed the pooch?"). Same thing drives an interest in movies without happy endings.
Cognition, Augmentation, Craft: The Augury readings group from last summer fleshed out a lot of ideas and the connections between.
That should be a reasonable start.
Scientific Method and Knowledge
Tesugen.com: 20 January, 02003
Way down in the bottom of an entry on the creation of small world networks, Peter Lindberg comments on the creative problem solving and science:
Also, in the context of creativity, I find the problem solving strategies of scientists to be interesting. For example, how does a mathematician go about solving problems? I guess that it's a lot less rational than you'd expect.
I've had ongoing issues with the belief that science is dependent on rational behavior. Seems to me that the science that changes lives, that moves things ahead is the science that results from insight. Sure, confirmation is important but why do we need confirmation in the first place: it's because something interesting happened. Something different.
I think those differences come about in large part from knowledge access.
Getting rid of folders
0xDECAFBAD: I second that sacrilege
and
L.M. Orchard commits filesystem sacrilege
L.M. Orchard and Jon Udell talk about how hierarcy in file systems doesn't work for them. They want metadata rich datastores with persistable searches, and fast and dynamic interlinking.
This is the religion that drives KnownSpace. See some of it in Gregory Rawlins' orginal docs (a bit old), on the primary website, and as an application Helium (on which I happened to work).
KnownSpace suffers a bit from being more vision than action, but there's a lot there and the vision is good.
One of the major features planned in Helium (an email navigator) was persistable searches of the Pool. The Pool has no built in hierarchy, it is a collection of Entities, some of which happen to be the parts of email messages, some which could be saved searches which amount to very a general method of arbitrarily constraining the view of the Pool.
January 12, 2003
PurpleWiki databasing
Blue Oxen Associates: PurpleWiki
Made some small headway in the direction of changing PurpleWiki to use a database for storage rather than delimited text files. The default format is freaky to say the least and getting the code changed is something of a nightmare.
Nevermind that this version of the schema will be scrapped when we move to storing nodes instead of pages. But this is good. It is progress.
January 09, 2003
Helium + Advogato
I decided to post to advogato about Helium, citing my Helium Performance religious document. Exposure.
Gregory is nervous about exposure, I think that nervousness is misplaced. If you want things to grow they have to get out there in the sun. If people piss on them, that's still water.
