A Few Scribbles

Trippin'

2011-12-20T09:10:00.004-06:00

Gulf Breeze and the Pensacola Bay Bridge, which Desmond convinced me was in a perpetual state of near-collapse when I was younger, but later on in life saw me singing Devotchka's "We're Leaving" at the top of my lungs, windows down, spirits as high as the sun in the sky.

The tunnel under the Mobile River that always gives me a bit of a thrill, whether from terror when I was younger that the river above would come gushing in, or excitement like the time I went careening into it at night with Cut Copy's "Hearts on Fire" as the soundtrack.

The foundries near Pascagoula, with their giant smokestacks that have taken on new significance. They were his favorite on the trips to and from Florida.

The swamps, marshes, bayous and all the little bridges they require that start shortly after the foundries, but keep on coming, even after crossing that giant arch over the Pearl River.

Sunsets on the trips that start late, and the vaguest of memories of me and my brothers, in the car with Dad, wanting to know why we were going to Florida to see Grandpa on a school night.

I might not live there any longer, and I might be comfortable (as can be) in Washington, DC, but these things, these landmarks from the past, they still point the way home.

This is accurate

2011-11-15T18:42:00.001-06:00

“Over-seriousness is a warning sign for mediocrity and bureaucratic thinking. People who are seriously committed to mastery and high performance are secure enough to lighten up.”

Regarding a picture

2011-11-08T11:37:00.005-06:00

The anger-stoked passion play taking place over budget cuts and federal salaries for the people in our government is distracting from the real issue: whether fair or not, the people who have run our government previously promised too much without asking for the necessary sacrifices from everyone to pay for those promises. Cuts must be made, even if we were to give in and increase taxes (which I do not prefer), and there is no way to get around that. We need to approach those cuts rationally, and with some sense of what our priorities must be, and that is what our current debate is about.

You will hurt them

2011-10-03T14:27:00.005-05:00

You know you might have put it behind you, that you're ok, and that you have set aside the possibility of hating them, but you also know that you're going to hurt them, that what you do is going to drive the dagger deep; you'd have to be inhuman to not pause and reconsider. Your previous statements to the contrary, full of bravado, feigned disinterest in their well-being and coated in a coldly calculated varnish of malice, mean nothing, because it isn't right to give up on someone you think of as good inside, but misguided, unknowing, and young. To give up on people, to cast them aside, to pretend like you really know what produces growth and how loyalty is born, feels wrong, especially when you both feel and know, from experience, that with patience you can help them improve.

But then you cast those thoughts aside, because you realize you are not really over it, and you rationalize what you will do by saying that a shock is just what they need, that you are, ultimately, better anyway, and that they will either rationalize away their own failure, just like you have done, by blaming others, or you will have successfully short-circuited the process, and gotten them to grow without wasting too much of your patient, seemingly-endless time.

And at the end of the night, before you doze off, you will still feel like shit for what you have done, but you will also still sleep, because it is all you can do.

About someone

2011-09-13T11:22:00.001-05:00

It is a relationship built on trust rather than honesty.

Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

2011-09-13T10:08:00.005-05:00

The entire book is amazing and should be read, if you haven't heard of it already. It is also all eminently quotable, so much so that, while I started out trying to do the usual and take down particularly good snippets, I gave up halfway through the first story, just because I think each of them should be read and enjoyed in totum. I will, instead, recommend specific stories as my favorites, the first being the eponymous one "Stories of Your Life", the structure of which lends so much weight to the content of the story, which is incredible and moving in itself; "Hell is the Absence of God" concerns itself with the nature of faith and devotion by using the conceit of a world in which the existence of heaven, hell, angels and demons are known and provable, and in which the latter make regular visitations to Earth; then there's the first story of the book, "Tower of Babylon", which follows a miner as he first ascends the completed tower and then begins his attempts to open the vault of heaven. Despite my reticence to quote, however, there are three quotes I would like to share, just to give you a flavor of things.

The first is an incredibly beautiful image he commits to paper in "The Tower of Babylon", when the main character, Hillalum, is experiencing sunset after a few days climbing the tower:

Hillalum and Nanni looked down. At the base of the immense pillar, tiny Babylon was in shadow. Then the darkness climbed the tower, like a canopy unfurling upward. It moved slowly enough that Hillalum felt he could count the moments passing, but then it grew faster as it approached, until it raced past them faster than he could blink, and they were in twilight.
Hillalum rolled over and looked up, in time to see darkness rapidly ascend the rest of the tower. Gradually, the sky grew dimmer as the sun sank beneath the edge of the world, far away.
'Quite a sight, is it not?' said Kudda.
Hillalum said nothing. For the first time, he knew night for what it was: the shadow of the earth itself, cast against the sky."

The second is from "Hell is the Absence of God":

He understood how life was an undeserved bounty, how even the most virtuous were not worthy of the glories of the mortal plane.
For him, the mystery was solved, because he understood that everything in life is love, even pain, especially pain.

The last is from the "Story Notes" section at the back of the book, where he discusses the inspiration for each of the stories. A (typical, in a good way) Kurt Vonnegut quote from Slaughterhouse Five:

"Stephen Hawking...found it tantalizing that we could not remember the future. But remembering the future is child’s play for me now. I know what will become of my helpless, trusting babies because they are grown-ups now. I know how my closest friends will end up because so many of them are retired or dead now...To Stephen Hawking and all others younger than myself I say 'Be patient. Your future will come to you and lie down at your feet like a dog who knows and loves you no matter what you are.' "

Desmond

2011-08-10T10:47:00.000-05:00

"People pay for what they do and what they have allowed themselves to become, very simply, through the lives they lead"

-paraphrase from James Baldwin's No Name in the Street

No matter how many times you are told it wasn't your fault, and that you have to accept the decisions others have made for themselves, you cannot shake the idea that they are wrong, and you are, at the very least, partially responsible. Every February, for the last four years since I found it, I have read the same post by one of my favorite writers of philosophy, Eliezer Yudkowsky. I have always had a rough and tumble relationship with God and faith, and while I never agreed with his stances on things like the "singularity" and transhumanism, everything more human, especially his feelings about God in a time of dealing with death, has always felt spot on. There is now a new date that will find me returning to that post. Since it has passed, I have found myself zoning out, expecting the world to stop and take notice that one of us is gone, and it keeps not happening.

I never had the relationship with my middle brother that I did with my oldest. I presume it's just because the normally fractious nature of any sibling relationship (which, in our case, was sometimes much more fractious than normal) won out, and I failed to look beyond it. That doesn't lessen the fact that I loved, and continue to love him, and that, beyond reflecting on what my actions towards him say about myself, my thoughts have returned to the same bottom line: "My brother, Desmond, is dead, he took a piece of me with him, and it is my fault."

What I know for certain, if anything, is that my oldest brother was right. I have, for a very long time, been a selfish and self-centered person, who hasn't been the man he has wanted to be. This isn't a new revelation, by any means; with Desmond gone, though, the idea has been at the forefront, and it has served to focus what I've been feeling and thinking, thus far, into trying to be better. I hope this period of striving sticks, that I can continue with it and protect it from becoming buried under life's inuring constancy. It helps in doing that to feel, whatever others might say, that I was responsible for what happened to Desmond. I didn't treat him the way I should have, and provide him the support and love that someone should to their brother; in short, I wasn't any measure the family that my oldest brother and my sister-in-law were, when it came to Desmond.

He didn't see any way out, partially because I wasn't who I should have been, and I will be paying for the lesser man I was for the rest of my life.

Thought for the day

2011-06-24T11:07:00.001-05:00

From a friend:

"Don't corner something meaner than you."

Money quote

2011-06-06T12:53:00.000-05:00

the modern definition of happiness is, “A pleasurable sensation.” The old definition of happiness (as in, “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of”) was, “Living a life of integrity and worth.” I like the old one better.

from here

overheard quotes from a particular person pt. 1

2011-05-20T08:22:00.006-05:00

The first post of (hopefully) many, in which I record the greatest morsels of wisdom and observational humor that tumble forth from the mouth of someone I find imminently hilarious.

"Don't be a fool, wrap your tool."

(on dealing with withdrawl) "WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, got nothin' in mah system, but I.AM. DRUNK. Whose got a lip?!"

Also, not from the same person, but still hilarious:

"The Epoch of When Shit Got Real"

Grime

2011-04-25T23:18:00.002-05:00

Through the front door, down the stairs, past the laundrette, right up to the big red door marked "Boiler Room" with a prominent warning not to smoke.

Past the giant boiler and the buzzing a/c compressor, up some stairs and into the room with the compactor.

There it is.

A portable dust bin that janitors use, a worn out broom, one or two minutes of patience, all mixed with a contortion or two.

SUCCESS!

Down the steps, past the still buzzing a/c compressor and giant, now hissing, boiler; out the big red door marked "Boiler Room", passing again the laundrette ("Have you seen my card?"). Up the elevator (11th floor), into the apartment, off with the clothes, into the shower.

On dating

2011-02-26T13:26:00.000-06:00

"You get your shit together, and you find other people that have their shit together. If you're a needy co-dependent or an emotionally retarded tinman, then you'll find people who are all out of whack too."

-from here

Displaced on facebook

2011-01-18T15:23:00.000-06:00

"Everybody hates me because I'm so universally liked."

Not everything in a social conversation is funny

2010-11-17T10:03:00.004-06:00

and you don't need to laugh at every little cute story you tell. I wonder sometimes if you notice that you're the only one laughing.

Meditations in an Emergency by Frank O'Hara

2010-11-15T08:28:00.005-06:00

To the Film Industry in Crisis, pgs. 3-5

Les Etiquettes jaunes, pg. 9

I picked up a leaf
today from the sidewalk
This seems childish.

Leaf! you are so big!
How can you change your
color, then just fall!

As if there were no
such thing as integrity!

You are too relaxed
to answer me. I am too
frightened to insist.

Leaf! don't be neurotic
like the small chameleon.

For Grace, After a Party, pg. 17

You do not always know what I am feeling.
Last night in the warm spring air while I was
blazing my tirade against someone who doesn't
interest
me, it was love for you that set me
afire,
and isn't it odd? for in rooms full of
strangers my most tender feelings
writhe and
bear the fruit of screaming. Put out your hand,
isn't there
an ashtray, suddenly, there? beside
the bed? And someone you love enters the room
and says wouldn't
you like the eggs a little
different today?
And when they arrive they are
just plain scrambled eggs and the warm weather
is holding.

Mayakovsky, pgs. 50-52, is the poem quoted in the episode of Mad Men titled after this book.

And just so I don't seem too bourgie, here's what I've been listening to this morning.

Had a dream about you

2010-11-05T05:50:00.001-05:00

and when I woke up this morning, I rolled right over, hoping it wouldn't end.

Displaced from facebook

2010-11-02T14:05:00.001-05:00

"The threat is stronger than the execution."

Marching orders for politicos in the 21st century

2010-10-29T10:44:00.003-05:00

"His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it."

A paean to Jackass 3-D

2010-10-25T15:05:00.001-05:00

"I saw a midnight showing of Jackass and it was well worth it: a film this ridiculous is the one legitimate application of otherwise gimmicky and lame 3D projection technology. If you're going to make me wear polarized glasses in a theater, I want to see a kazoo inflated by a man's anus jump out at me in the third dimension.

To anyone who thinks Jackass heralds the end of western civilization... well, I have to disagree.

Fifty years ago a bunch of self-important tightwads feared that allowing us to see base obscenity played out on a screen would result in the moral decay of society... yet here we are, with almost no boundaries left to push, and we're OK. Our minds aren't that fragile, so we collectively decided not to act offended and outraged when we didn't actually feel that way. All we've done is finally and completely drop the pretense that people don't enjoy baseness and vulgarity.

You might say that we're all jaded husks of what people once were: shell-shocked zombies walking around being assaulted by vulgarity that would have been unthinkable five decades ago and committing acts of reckless violence and depravity on a daily basis... and yet we aren't. We work, we love, we feel: society functions well, better in fact than it did in any previous era, once you remove the rose-colored lenses of nostalgia and idealism.

I wouldn't even say we're jaded to the horrors of this movie: far from it, we laugh in disbelief, we cringe, we retch... call us jaded and numb when we can sit through this without being interested.

This movie is far less a threat to western civilization than the widespread banality and stupidity in most mainstream cinema and television. Not once did Jackass 3D insult my intelligence. Not once did it try to convince me that the main character's use of Pepsi is an integral plot point. Nor did it try to make me care about the petty and stupid reactions of inconsequential people to ridiculous events. It didn't misrepresent the laws of physics, it didn't feature ridiculous plot holes that require not just a suspension of disbelief but of all reasoning... I may not have emerged from the theater smarter, but I didn't come out angry or disappointed. Just entertained.

Jackass 3D was just goddamn awesome, and I'm pleased beyond words that it made far more money than whatever mediocre garbage was playing in the adjacent cinema."

-from here

"We are merely sprites that dance at the beck and call of our button-pressing overlord!"

2010-10-17T15:37:00.000-05:00

"Truly, birth doth draw wide the curtains"

A tongue-in-cheek response to something on facebook...

2010-10-07T08:18:00.002-05:00

that I, nevertheless, believe.

Damn straight it is. From the barren, snowy oilfields and tropical paradises available in Alaska and Hawaii, through the dysfunctional western seaboard and our voluminous and productive agricultural heartland, right to the center of our politics and culture along the Atlantic, we are all America, and we are all awesome.

Except maybe Houston. Houston I can do without.

No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre

2010-09-01T11:04:00.005-05:00

All in all, my favorite play. Inez is a massive bitch of a woman, but, for the most part, that's because she doesn't allow Estelle or Garcin even a moment of self-deception.

Pg. 32; on no longer having the ability to call someone your own:

Estelle: He belonged to me.
Inez: Nothing on earth belongs to you anymore.
Estelle: I tell you he was mine. All mine.
Inez: Yes, he was yours-once. But now- Try to make him hear, try to touch him.

Pg. 41; on the drive in certain women

Inez: That's right! That's right! Trust away! She wants a man- that far you can trust her - she wants a man's arm around her waist, a man's smell, a man's eyes glowing with desire. And that's all she wants. She'd assure you you were God Almighty if she thought it would give you pleasure.

Pg. 45
Inez on life and the effects of others on our self-conception

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

2010-08-26T10:30:00.006-05:00

As to be expected, I liked the style, although I think I would've enjoyed the book much more had I read it at a younger age. There were idiots, classless individuals, and racist country bumpkins abound, but, too often, I had difficulty accepting that there were so many good people who just happened to be arrayed around the main characters. I might just be a pessimist, though. Perhaps the good amongst us attract the good. I would prefer that to be my first thought, rather than the cynicism I've come to expect.

Pg. 85; On the presence of a certain family member in Scout's life

Had I ever harbored the mystical notions about mountains that seem to obsess lawyers and judges, Aunt Alexandria would have been analogous to Mount Everest: throughout my early childhood, she was cold and there.

Pg. 118; Atticus to Scout on words, and what they can do and say. My father used to say this to me.

"You aren't really a nigger-lover, then, are you?"

"I certainly am. I do my best to love everybody...I'm hard put, sometimes - baby, it's never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn't hurt you. So don't let Ms. Dubose get you down. She has enough troubles of her own."

Pg. 271 & 272; The Speech

Atonement by Ian McEwan

2010-08-16T14:26:00.007-05:00

I loved the movie this book was based on and, dare I say it, it compliments the book nicely, with the novel providing a great deal more depth to the character's actions while evoking some of the startling and wonderful imagery from the movie. It is probably also because I am a romantic-to-a-fault.

Pg. 74; On the birthmarks and scars Robbie sees on Cecilia

Another mole the size of a farthing on her thigh and something purplish on her calf - a strawberry mark, a scar. Not blemishes. Adornments.

Pg. 80

The exclamation mark was the first resort of those who shout to make themselves clearer.

Pg. 85; On Robbie seeing Cecilia so soon after their fight

The anticipation and dread he felt at seeing her was also a kind of sensual pleasure, and surrounding it, like an embrace, was a general elation - it might hurt, it was horribly inconvenient, no good might come of it, but he had found out for himself what it was to be in love, and it thrilled him.

Pg. 162; A description like something that used to show up in my writing quite a bit, the idea of a "sick litany"

How guilt refined the methods of self-torture, threading the beads of detail into an eternal loop, a rosary to be fingered for a lifetime.

Pg. 213; possibly my favorite quote from the book

He could become again the man who had once crossed a Surrey park at dusk in his best suit, swaggering on the promise of life, who had entered the house and with the clarity of passion made love to Cecilia...The story could resume, the one that he had been planning on that evening walk.

Pg. 227; On fatherhood

He wanted a father, and for the same reason, he wanted to be a father. It was common enough, to see so much death and want a child. Common, therefore human, and he wanted it all the more.

Pg. 342

It is quite impossible these days to assume anything about people's educational level from the way they talk or dress or from their taste in music. Safest to treat everyone you meet as a distinguished intellectual.

2010-08-07T21:23:00.006-05:00

Ἔρος δηὖτέ μ' ὀ λυσιμέλης δόνει,γλυκύπικρον ἀμάχανον ὄρπετον

— Sappho, LP, fr. 130, trans. Anne Carson; ht to The Epicurian Dealmaker

Ubik by Philip K. Dick

2010-07-19T06:55:00.002-05:00

Overall I liked the novel. It's the first PKD novel I've ever read and, while it was fairly unegagaing and (to me) slow to start, by the end I was incredibly excited to see how he would resolve everything. I was not disappointed, as a great deal of what happens in the novel is firmly rooted in philosophy I would've never expected to encounter in such a context, namely Plato's Theory of Forms:

Pg. 122

"Perhaps this weirdly verified a discarded ancient philosophy, that of Plato's idea objects, the universals which, in each class, were real. The form TV set had been a template imposed as a successor to the other templates, like the procession of frames in a movie sequence. Prior forms, he reflected, must carry on an invisible, residual life in every object. The past is latent, is submerged, but still there, capable of rising to the surface once the later imprinting unfortunately-and against ordinary experience-vanished. The man contains-not the boy-but earlier men, he thought. History began a long time ago.

The dehydrated remnants of Wendy. The procession of forms that normally takes place-that procession ceased. And the last form wore off, with nothing subsequent: no newer form, no next stage of what we see as growth, to take its place. This must be what we experience as old age; from this absence comes degeneration and senility.

I also liked the little twist on an old Latin saying when Joe Chip thinks he's about to die on page 127: "Mors certa et hora certa."

The most important thing left unsaid

2010-07-09T09:49:00.005-05:00

The essence of passionate love, what grants it the nobility that the others do not possess, is what Stendhal calls crystallization. Just as the naked branch of a tree will gather diamond-like crystals if it is dropped into a salt mine, a lover will gather perfections about the crooked timber of his beloved.

Words are especially dangerous. Not only must the “I love you” be indefinitely postponed, but a whole lot else as well. The love affair should be an escape from the everyday, from the routine of the discursive; whoever does not understand the importance of what is unsaid in love does not understand love at all.

Gridlock* by Randal O'Toole

2010-07-02T09:42:00.005-05:00

*- subtitle: Why we're stuck in traffic and what to do about it; 2009 edition

It was a Cato Institute book. Overall, I didn't like it, although that is more for stylistic reasons than argumentative. This is mainly the fact that it feels like a "statistics book", wherein the author throws an inordinately large number of, well, numbers at you in an effort to obfuscate the fact that their case isn't as slam dunk as they're making out to be.

Overall, I agreed with the main thrust of the book, that highways and automobiles are not inherently bad and that it would be easier and just as effective (in terms of reducing pollution and waste) to go after improving the efficiency of this method of travel, rather than rearranging cities and pushing people to wholesale change their behavior. Wholesale change their behavior again, I should say; the author makes a lot of hay out of the fact that city planners and their attempts at promoting New Urbanist environs centered around public transportation and passenger rail is an awkward attempt at changing people's behavior, and a waste of taxpayer dollars. He ignores the fact, though, that a great deal of both our original and currently existent roads were also subsidized by taxpayer dollars; that, in turn, had a major effect on the behavior of Americans and their ultimately choosing "to drive" over "to ride".

On the state of the highway infrastructure in the United States (pg. 29):

Bridge collapses due to poor maintenance are rare, and none have taken place in the United States in the last 20 years. Of 20 notable bridge collapses in the last 50 years, nearly half were caused by collisions with ships or barges, motor vehicles that caught fire, or - in one case - an airplane. Three resulted from earthquakes or tornado, two - including the Minnepolis bridge - resulted from design or construction flaws, and one was overloaded when someone drove a 90-ton vehicle on a bridge rated to hold 17.5 tons.

Recommended Reading:
The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs

Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank

2010-06-29T09:08:00.004-05:00

First Edition, copyright 1959

A quote from Woodrow Wilson (pg. 45):

"Small Nations, when treated as equals, become the firmest of allies."

A nice little description (pg. 53):

"...I've got to take the needle out of the groove for five minutes so the cubes - a cube is a square anyway you look at him, hah, hah - can get hip with what cooks around the sphere"

On natural selection prompted by the collapse of a bee farm in the novel (pg. 178):

"...this is only nature's way of protecting the race...The defective bee, unable to cope with it's environment, is rejected by nature before birth. I think this will be true of man. It is said that nature is cruel. I don't think so. Nature is just, and even merciful. By natural selection, nature will attempt to undo what man has done."

2010-06-16T09:33:00.001-05:00

"No matter that the constitution only allows the congress 'To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.' After all, 'authors and inventors' doesn’t really mean the people who created stuff, it actually means whatever corporation ended up owning the rights, because the SCOTUS tells us that corporations are people too, and in the context of a corporation’s unlimited lifespan, anything short of “forever” can reasonably be considered to be a 'limited time.'"

The Shape of Punk that's Passed

2010-06-09T07:01:00.006-05:00

I was reading the Pitchfork review of Refused's "The Shape of Punk to Come," and was reminded of how incredible an album it is. I'm just slightly embarrassed to admit that I originally came to it when I went searching for new tracks from, of all bands, Lostprophets; they'd had a brief flirtation with popularity after they released a track called "Shinobi vs. Dragon Ninja", coming as it did at the end of the nu-metal wave given wings by disaffected youths (myself included) that did nothing but watch anime and think about how ostracized and persecuted they were by mainstream society. I downloaded a track from Kazaa called "New Noise" that was improperly labeled as being by them and proceeded, after the overblown and ridiculous intro, to ask myself "What. the. fuck. is. this?!" I might not be a big hardcore punk fan, but that album is a goddamn masterpiece.

It had a bigger affect on my life beyond the immediate brush with awesomeness, though. I'd grown up listening to classical/baroque music, with a smattering of modern French (go Serge!), and a huge amount of jazz, and old country, all of which were mainstays in my father's record collection. After he died, though, the pressure to actually make friends beyond the one or two I had due to our mutual love of video games changed my listening habits (in addition to other things, of course). I began listening to more mainstream stuff so that, by the time I heard The Shape, my musical diet consisted mainly of what you would hear on a Top 40 or alt-rock station. The Shape is the first time that I can remember listening to something and hearing the distinction between its unadulterated, unfiltered form, and its counterparts provided in the mainstream, which take a given style and attenuate it before mixing'n'matching with other styles, so that some degree of novelty can be maintained. That sounds harsh, I know, and I don't want it to sound like the mainstream is a wasteland. There have been plenty of acts I've loved that get played on Top 40 stations (two of them, one recent, the other from the beginning of my musical journey, would be Lady Antebellum and 'N Sync). But what I'm trying to get at is that The Shape changed my perception of how music could be and make me feel. I liked it's rawness and the visceral feelings it provoked. It took a while longer (and another "big" band, The Mars Volta) to really derail me from the track I was on, but I eventually was, and I think my life is all the better for it.

On Treadmills

2010-05-25T13:20:00.006-05:00

I normally like to be outdoors when I run, just because I think it's more pleasant, challenging, and provides for a better workout. Nevertheless, I've been knocking out a quick mile and a half on a treadmill each day I go to the gym in order to warm up before I weight lift and I will say I do enjoy one thing about them: the feeling, after having finished and hopped off, that I am going SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUPER-FAST.

A guiding belief when I think of healthcare economics in the United States

2010-03-31T10:09:00.006-05:00

The fee-for-service model is broken, owing to the incentives and inherent asymmetrical information within the market, and its negative effects are only magnified and locked-in by the strict licensure requirements to provide medical care and the method of training doctors.

The Worldly Philosophers by Robert L Heilbroner

2010-03-26T09:33:00.013-05:00

From the Sixth Edition (1986) for quotes through that about Marx; all others from the Seventh Edition (1999)

All in all, an excellent book that provides a very good background on the history of economics. I'll probably end up recommending it to non-econ people in the future.

Pg. 47-48; A cheeky quote

A witty and even learned man, (Charles Townshend) was, in the words of Horace Walpole, "a man endowed with every great talent, who must have been the greatest man of his age, if only he had common sincerity, common steadiness, and common sense."

Pg. 116; A paean to hope

"Man is the creature of circumstances." And who makes the circumstances but man himself? The world is not inevitably good or bad but to the extent that we make it so. in that thought (Robert Owen) left behind him a philosophy of hope more powerful than all his fanciful notions about spades and plows or money or Villages of Cooperation.

Pg. 126; On the distinction between socialists and communists

The (Utopian Socialists)...were reformers of the heart rather than the head. This is one reason why we designate them as Utopian Socialists. The "utopia" was not merely a matter of idealistic ends; it was also a key to the means...The Communists talked to the masses and urged violence, if necessary, to encompass their ends; the Socialists appealed to their own kind- to the intelligentsia, the petit bourgeois, the freethinking middle-class citizen or the intellectually emancipated aristocrat- for adherents to their schemes.

Pg. 130

On the never ending question of equality

Pg. 162; on the Communist view of the state

...the materialist view of history told him that the state was only the political ruling organ of the economic rulers. The thought that it might act as a kind of referee, a third force balancing the claims of its conflicting members, would have seemed sheer wishful thinking. No, there was no escape from the inner logic, the dialectical development, of a system that would not only destroy itself but, in so doing, would give birth to its successor.

Pg. 168; on why Marx's correct and penetrating critique of capitalism(focusing on economic instability and the concentration of wealth and power) never took hold in the United States

Things moved differently in America during those years. We, too, had our share of reactionaries and revolutionaries. The economic history of the United States contains more than enough exploitation and ugliness. But capitalism here evolved in a land untouched by the dead hand of aristocratic lineage and age-old class attitudes. To some degree this resulted in a harsher social climate in America than in Europe, for here we clung to the credo of "rugged individualism" long after the individual had been hopelessly overwhelmed by the environment of massive industrialism, whereas in Europe a traditional nobleese oblige existed side by side with its unconcealed class divisions. Yet out of the American milieu came a certain pragmatism in dealing with power, private as well as public; and a general subscription to the ideals of democracy which steered the body politic safely past the rocks on which it foundered in so many nations abroad.

Pg. 202; on the changing nature of imperialism and how the United States has moved within it

Things have been somewhat different in the case of the United States. Here military force has been applies against underdeveloped nations many times since (World War II)...so that the United States has inherited the unenviable title of the main imperialist power in the world. But the motives that have prompted our imperialist adventures are not those that sent the Marines into the banana republic or the gunboats into China in the nineteenth century. It is not American property that we have been protecting, but American ideology. Rather like the English during the period of the French Revolution, until the Soviet debacle our government felt itself threatened by an immense revolutionary force-the force of worldwide communism, whose most likely recruits seemed to be the frail and unstable nations of the Third World. As a result, we have reacted to nearly every socialist tendency in those nations as if it were the entering wedge of a foreign-dominated Communist regime, and have supported every reactionary government...as part of the same struggle against communism.

Pg. 212; On the deficit of orthodox economics during the Victorian era, when Henry George (proponent of the land value tax as a single, all-encompassing tax), John Hobson (critic of British Imperialism as a method of finding markets to export an overabundance of domestic goods), and Francis Edgeworth (began the transition to quantitative economics) were generally ignored.

(The complacency of the official world) teaches us, in retrospect, that ideas, however heretical, cannot be safely ignored- least of all by those whose interests are, in the best sense of that word, conservative.

Pg. 267; On a subtle shift in thinking made by Keynes when discussing depressions in General Theory

...note meanwhile that this is a strange and passionless tug of war (Devon: between saving, consuming, and the mismatch between thrift and the desire by business to invest). Here are no greedy landlords, no avaricious capitalists. There are only perfectlty virtuous citizens prudently attempting to save some of their incomes, and perfectly virtuous businessmen who are just as prudently making up their minds whether the business situation warrants taking the risk of buying a new machine of building a new plant...if the decisions are out of joint...then the economy will have to adjust to the crimp of depression.

...

The vulnerability of our fate to the interplay of savings and investment is, in a sense, the price we pay for economic freedom. There was no such problem in Soviet Russia, nor was there such in the Egypt of the Pharaohs. For in economies of edict, both savings and investment are determined from above...

Pg. 326; From the recommended reading section

There is no use trying to read the Utopians

Further reading to look into
Economics by Paul A. Samuelson; since I've seen it recommended so many times.
Economic Theory in Retrospect by Mark Blaug; in-depth survey of economic theory and history
Economics and the Philosophy of Science by Deborah Redman; in reference to economics and its assumption of scientific practices
Truth versus Precision in Economics by Thomas Mayer; critique of modern economics

Moms

2010-03-25T13:38:00.001-05:00

Just called my mom about the car and the motorcycle. She’s ok with holding off until the 5th to pay her for the car, so I have money to fix the bike this weekend, and she’s ok with selling the car, too.

In other news, Desmond is still jobless, we’re both worried about him and think he’s depressed, she doesn’t like the healthcare bill for a plethora of conflicting reasons (Desmond won’t be covered, it already takes her a week and a half to see her GP), and, against all odds, she still loves me.

I don’t think I realized I was homesick until after I talked to her.

To a friend about foursquare and why they should use it

2010-03-10T09:35:00.002-06:00

You shouldn't, at least not for the benefits derived from surrendering your privacy to that degree, those benefits being, I presume, imaginary rewards logged in a database table somewhere and the vague possibility that you might be able to "socialize" with your "friends" more effectively, a task I'm told is incredibly difficult without the technological assistance rendered by foursquare and its ilk. Of course, it also serves as a signaling device so that people know you are wired (if I might use such an anachronistic term, since almost everything is wireless these days) and technologically hot-to-trot, both of which have historically been hallmarks of the geek culture; associating yourself with that culture, even to a slight degree, further signals certain things about you relating to intelligence (and, more importantly, intellectual methodology), taste (in the social sense), and deportment. I do not like the co-opting of said culture by more bourgie elements of society, especially since it has caused the original culture, one that I used to enjoy and count myself a part of, to go deeper down the rabbit hole in an effort to continue to maintain an identity distinct from that offered by the amalgamated shitheap of pseudo-mainstream popularity that originally absorbed it.

That is all slightly off-topic, though. Bottom Line™, as a rational individual, you are right to be confused.

Strange Life of Ivan Osokin by P.D. Uspenskii

2010-01-28T13:47:00.003-06:00

Pg. 14

“How terrible it is that quite without understanding or intention, when we are still too young to realize what the result may be, we can do things that affect our whole life and change our whole future.”

Pg. 59

“ He longs to tell his mother that he is going to be different, that he is going to work and change his whole life for her sake, so that she may live. He wants to believe that this is possible, that it really will be so. He tries to find some way of conveying this assurance to her, but cannot find the words; he does not know how to approach the subject. He is tormented by the gulf of misunderstanding which lies between him and his mother, a gulf which cannot possibly be bridged.”

Pg. 73

“It’s strange how quickly some impressions disappear from memory. They are preserved in the memory solely through repetition. If repetition stops, they disappear. I have a regular kaleidoscope of faces and events in my memory, but I’ve forgotten almost all names. “

Pg. 116

“At the same time, in the mysterious tomorrow, something flickers, something beckons, something inevitable and alluring is felt.”

Pg. 139

“ I envy your strength of character. I often feel myself that I cannot talk about everything with everyone, but I can’t always restrain myself.”

Pg. 142
The start of the massive paragraph on 142 until it’s end

Death

2010-01-22T09:48:00.003-06:00

a terror so deep and profound that most people can't even acknowledge it, even as they go ever so slowly insane trying to deal with it.

2010-01-20T16:47:00.002-06:00

A list of status-indicating behaviors

The stoic

2009-12-22T14:11:00.000-06:00

"Without an unambiguous villain, and one who can be destroyed, the decent man is stoical and dull to watch from the outside."

-from Daniel Klein and his defense of Star Wars

To a friend about a pen

2009-12-15T15:54:00.001-06:00

"Perhaps that iPhone IS more valuable than the fountain pen.

Too often, the things we own, especially for sentimental reasons, turn us towards things that weigh us down, rather than make us genuinely happier, and in the crush of objects that we think mean something, we lose our sense of what objects are really, truly important. That's why I think the “100 objects” concept is a good one, even if I never accomplished the goal in my attempts and wouldn’t stick to such an arbitrary goal if I tried to now. It forces us, presuming we don’t create ridiculous exclusions, to really judge the value of the objects we own, and apply some measure of rationality to something we almost never engage in except in an emotional fashion.

The memories and ideas represented by random objects will persist long after you've given away your books, burned the mementos, or sold your knick-knacks."

From an interview with Paul Samuelson

2009-12-15T15:53:00.000-06:00

On the real business cycle:

Equally troubling, Samuelson went on, were later elaborations of the rational expectations approach, particularly the “real business cycle” theory, which posited that the economy at large was in a continuous state of equilibrium, and that economic outcomes, including mass joblessness, were a product of voluntary choices. “If somebody says, as Friedrich Hayek said when one in four Germans were unemployed, that people are out of work because they are choosing to consume leisure, that, to my mind, is a ridiculous real-business cycle theory.”

In reference to how he reacted to the Reagan deficits, which rational expectations theory claims should cause individuals to save more today to offset anticipated higher tax rates tomorrow:

“I’m about as rational a person as you could get, but did I set up a sinking fund to pay off my taxes? No. Was I lazy and irrational? No...At bottom, I’m in the Herbert Simon camp of limited rationality. People are rational, but you are always doing things in a hurry and with limited information. The last thing you can do is a big optimization problem down to five decimal places.”

On macroeconomics in general:

“A lot of people think that macroeconomics is in a mess, and it is true. But the mess in macro is not that there are now inferior people going into the subject. The problem is that you are dealing with complex, intractable, and imponderable problems. I can, in three afternoons, think up a new puzzle in portfolio theory and work out its implications. But that doesn’t enable me to translate that knowledge into cleaning up the mess in macroeconomics. Macroeconomics is in a mess because we have made so much progress in the control of the old-fashioned business cycle. When macroeconomics was crucial, during the Great Depression, things were by no means as clear as they are now.”

All from the New Yorker.

This is what two and a half decades will do to you

2009-10-09T16:50:00.006-05:00

I went for a run today along the Potomac with Josh. The sun was shining, there was a smattering of clouds in the sky, and it was as warm as it's been since I've gotten here.

For a second, it almost felt like I was home again, in BR, and it felt great.

2009-09-11T12:16:00.003-05:00

Reading something today, I was finally able to put into words a nagging fear that I've never felt I could adequately describe without making it sound like I was just afraid of being emasculated. It goes deeper than that.

I am afraid that I have begun to, and will continue to, devolve into a self-absorbent, anesthetized, distant and inadequate man.

Yet another quote from Ars Technica

2009-08-14T10:58:00.004-05:00

"(Scaring the Soviets) alone fully justified (dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki).

Did you ever stop and consider what the course of history would have been after WW2 without the H-bomb? Every nation of mankind had been trying to conquer the world since the dawn of history, eventually progressing up to wars so large they labeled them World Wars. As quickly as World War One ended, World War Two began. And at the climax of that one, the players were already scrambling into positions to start the horrible dance all over again.

But this time something was different. The superpowers, with no lack of means or motivation, hesitated to attack one another. The cold war never went hot, purely for fear of the H-bomb. Weak minded fools fall all over themselves in self pity for having to live in fear of an atomic attack, but what kind of fear is that compared to actually fighting in World War 3? And that wouldn't have have even been the end of it. Lacking the assurance of mutually assured destruction, I have no doubt we'd be fighting in some horrible needless war with China today. God fucking bless the nuke and that time we proved we were willing to use them.

Probably the single most life-saving moment in the history of mankind."

-from here

Quote from Digital Barbarism

2009-08-14T10:48:00.002-05:00

From what I've seen quoted, the rest of the book isn't that great (downright trashy, actually), but this excerpt I enjoyed thoroughly, and it has the ring of truth to me:

"The world flows at increasingly faster and faster speeds. You must match them. When you were a child, it was not quite that way... You love the pace, the giddy, continual acceleration. Though what is new may not be beautiful, it is marvelously compelling. Your life is lived with the kind of excitement that your forebears knew only in battle, and with an ease of which they could only dream...
But you can't go back, you can't fall behind, you can't pass up an opportunity, and if you don't respond quickly at all times, someone else will beat you to it, even if you have no idea what it is."

Grass

2009-08-10T15:14:00.004-05:00

A couple of quotes, one from One Sentence, and the other from somewhere I cannot remember, but that is probably famous enough that it won't matter:

"The grass thus far is not proving to be greener, but I can sleep with my truth in the weeds."

and

"The grass is always greener because it's been fertilized with more shit."

and, as a bonus, one last sentence that I once taught to someone when, somehow, we found ourselves talking about a scene from a movie:

Я хочу в траве

Excerpts

2009-08-10T14:48:00.011-05:00

It starts with a simple thought: "I think I look like a mad man to my coworkers."

Over coffee, black (a first that follows a previous first, barely a week old): "It really is all just surfaces, masks, and parts-in-plays."

Seemingly unrelated: "Should I write any of this down?"

Then: "Does she write?"

Almost immediately: "Does asking show something I don't want her to see?"

A large boom bucket toddles down Highland, holding up traffic, the coffee almost finished; staring at a clock tower framed by blue sky and grayish cumulonimbus clouds: "I wonder if New Mexico is as nice as I think it is."

Walking along Highland, looking at the people in their cars: "Do I even like straight whiskey or black coffee?"

The walk back in, nearly done: "I've never written anything expecting no one to read it."

I finish my lunch break, and think about fourth grade, when my teacher, Mrs. Phillips, couldn't answer my poorly worded question about why, if the Earth was round, did it feel flat. The folly and tragedy of human perception.

I wonder if this was all pithy and pomo enough and, if so, who exactly was I trying to be those things for. Thinking about fourth grade and my questions makes me wonder about Isaac Newton. I spend the next ten minutes reading and rereading the Wikipedia page on universal gravitation.

Call and Response

2009-08-07T15:04:00.006-05:00

"(insert name) realized sometimes in life you meet people.sometimes those people become really good friends and you do all kinds of fun things with them.sometimes you even have near death experiences on the interstate with them.sometimes they forget about you.it sucks to know someone and have lots of awesome memories with them,then they become too good to even talk to you.they could at least say "fuck you" instead of being a bitch."

"I am not a bitch, and never have been.

I wouldn't say "fuck you" because that's not how I feel; I harbor no hatred or a feeling of superiority towards you. What does exist is a vague sense of sentimentality and residual happiness at what we did when we were close, accompanied by a sharper sense of guilt and regret for how it just faded away or fell apart; choose whichever phrasing feels more emotionally satisfying to you. The point being that you and I were subsumed by other things, and by the time we saw each other again, the awkwardness was palpable, and it was clear, at least to me, that what we had was gone.

I won't patronize you with any grand philosophies or lessons I think I have learned about life. I am sorry that we are not close friends anymore, but that's how it goes. Lastly, thank you for saving my life. I don't think I ever said that to you."

2009-07-29T11:08:00.004-05:00

An article from The American Conservative that discusses conservative talk radio. In particular, I liked this bit from the end:

'Their underlying metaphysic is the same as the liberals’: infinite human potential—Yes, we can!—if only we get society right. To the Left, getting society right involves shoveling us around like truckloads of concrete; to the Right, it means banging on about responsibility, God, and tax cuts while deficits balloon, Congress extrudes yet another social-engineering fiasco, and our armies guard the Fulda Gap. That human beings have limitations and that wise social policy ought to accept the fact—some problems insoluble, some Children Left Behind—is as unsayable on “Hannity” as it is on “All Things Considered.”'

I do not like their rah-rahing of conservatism, even if I agree with many of their points, including the main point regarding the co-opting of the movement by lowbrow commentators. I have never been comfortable with believing an ideology and then moving to defend it. Reason should come first and, if you identify yourself as a specific ideology, it should be because the views you rationally hold adhere to the ideology's core tenets. So, I am willing to forgo things I believe if I am provided convincing evidence, even if it makes me seem broadly inconsistent, intellectually. I believe this is perfectly acceptable as I have no horse in the race of whose-ideology-is-better.

Two weeks

2009-07-20T17:35:00.002-05:00

July 5th marks the beginning of the nicest two weeks I have experienced in some time. My hope is that such feelings last, and are reciprocated, through the end of this week, no matter what happens.

Since it has been displaced on facebook

2009-07-13T23:31:00.000-05:00

"We should often blush at our noblest deeds if the world were to see all their underlying motives."

-François de La Rochefoucauld

Ahhhhh, Louisiana...

2009-06-12T18:38:00.004-05:00

One of the nicer things about living here is that, after running, when I come home to a house that has the thermostat set to 78°F, it feels as if I'm walking into Antarctica.

Track list from the Decemberists show and my impression of Colin Meloy

2009-06-04T18:18:00.009-05:00

Obviously, this is only the second half of the show. The first half is composed of The Hazards of Love, from start to finish. Show took place at the Fillmore Auditorium; Denver, CO; May 26th, 2009.

Leslie Anne Levine
We Both Go Down Together
Yankee Bayonet
Billy Liar (sing along, don't think the left side is doing its part)
Dracula's Daughter (opening verse)
O Valencia
16 Military Wives
Cover: "Crazy On You" by Heart
Sons & Daughters

Charming and Affable

I will never forget this concert, or the trip. Much love for Katey, Chris and Steven, no matter where we might find ourselves in the future. We weren't always together as a group, but when we were, we always fired on all cylinders.

A reminder

2009-05-22T12:29:00.003-05:00

"I told you, man, you can't trust someone who knows so many secrets"

Things to keep from the Moleskine, in descending order of date

2009-05-08T08:24:00.014-05:00

I recently burned a moleskine that I had been given by my friend Nancy to write my thoughts in. It morphed into something that I ended up writing all kinds of things in, including what my friends' favorite things were, ruminations on a pair of relationships, quotes from larger pieces that made me think and words I was unfamiliar with. This is what I decided to write down and keep from it. I started writing in it, roughly, around August/September of 2008. If it reads like a quote and doesn't have quotation marks around it, I either don't remember where it came from, or I'm shamelessly taking credit for it.

Memory is fallible & reconstructed each time we recall. I don't trust my modern mind to recall my past self.

Wars of attrition and things lost in the pursuit of gold.

Siddartha & Empathy
- is it real?

- emotions and memories being fit into the boxes provided

- final chapter on words and meaning

"I almost always explain this type of thing by stating categorically that almost all human beings on Earth are unbelievable idiots that are barely worth keeping alive."

October 18, 2008 was incredible.
I am going to miss Katey and Chris.

A finality beyond my comprehension

Your happy heart brings joy and peace where there is none
Lucky Numbers: 13, 19, 23, 28, 35, 41

October 19, 2008

The picture and the note

Folie a Deux (plusieurs)
"A madness of two"

"Time is the school in which we learn
time is the fire in which we burn."

What's as reliably amusing as human tragedy and humiliation?

"There's no such thing as a human who doesn't commit sin. It's not like the world is divided into sinners & the innocent. There are only people who can and who cannot atone for their sins."

Sin as a lack of trust; Faith as atonement

12/30/08
"I sometimes think you're a very heartless person."

"I realized you're just numb."

Empty

"Everything passes through you"

"You don't hold anything back"
-"It used to be interesting when I wasn't being hurt by it"

"The environment exacts a price for survival of the fittest; it captures them."
-Bronowski, The Ascent of Man

"We have a saying: 'If Grandma had balls, she'd be Grandpa.'"
"I don't think you're in danger of that happening."
"Well, I meant to say that if you didn't have strong hands and balls, you would be a woman."

"Speak the truth, even if your voice trembles."
-Eliezer Yudkowsky

"That's always something that struck me as odd about humanity. Our first response to someone's bad news is 'I'm sorry,' as though someone should take responsibility for all the fucked up randomness that goes on in the universe."

"Grand catastrophe isn't necessary to destroy a will to live. The extended absence of hope leaves the same wreckage."

It was unrequited.

"The idea that the universe is inherently fuzzy is weird to me"
-Chris, 3/14/09

-experiencing something that causes them to spend the rest of their life convincing themselves that they are not.
-trying to convince themselves that they are something they typify as "respectable"

the sublime

Tension

2009-05-04T10:30:00.001-05:00

"It seems that one of humanity's strongest ideals is actually war, i.e., uncompromising conflict. In our culture we are supposed to oppose ordinary bloody war, preferring peace when possible there. But we do not generalize this lesson much to other sorts of conflicts. We celebrate those who take sides and win far more than we do peacemakers and compromisers."

from here

To a better future.

2009-04-28T23:57:00.007-05:00

All that made it out of high school other than the diploma was a picture of my Russian class, taken shortly after dad had died, with me in the center wearing a seemingly smug look on my face; the rest went to the flames. College fared only slightly better.

The past needs to be let go of. All of the failures, the few successes, the second guessing as to how I could've done certain things better, and, most of all, the regrets as to how I actually did do things.

I haven't been able to make it past the first track on the album

2009-03-21T12:38:00.001-05:00

"We are clouds, we are whispers like fawns and shape-shifters
Our edges can never be found out; no, our edges keep moving further out."

Primum non nocere

2009-03-16T10:26:00.002-05:00

I need to deal with this myself.

I need to handle the emotions that I'm experiencing and I need to just be focused on information, and what I need to find out to be satisfied and to stave off the worst of what my mind will do to me, if it gets the chance.

I need to endeavor not to hurt people in the process, just because I am hurt.

Milton Friedman on Greed

2009-03-03T20:57:00.000-06:00

having and eating

2009-02-24T17:03:00.001-06:00

Well, look at it this way: you can't both consume a cake and possess it. If you consume it, you will no longer possess it. And, so long as you intend to possess it, you cannot consume it. Thus, consuming a cake and possessing a cake are mutually exclusive conditions. That is, "you can't have your cake and eat it, too."

2009-02-19T18:05:00.000-06:00

"People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply by the lives they lead."

Run, run, run

2009-02-13T17:57:00.006-06:00

It looks like a little bit of will goes a long way.

8:38 per mile, today; presuming tomorrow is roughly the same, this means that Wednesday's time was not a fluke, and that I have shaved nearly 30 seconds off my previous per mile best in about two weeks. We'll see how well it holds up when I add a little more distance.

"Is being my friend demanding? would it be demanding for a woman I'm interested in?"

2009-02-12T10:34:00.001-06:00

Words from Chris:
-wellllllll i think you'd get attached very quickly
-and attachment usually means you're going to require a lot of time and energy
-moreover, your way of flirting and showing affection, and also your way of expressing guilt, is by being "mean"

I'm slowly centering in on what annoys me about her

2009-02-10T08:54:00.007-06:00

Rules, rules, rules; always with the rules and regulations. If anything ever differs, just a little bit, from what she expects, she thinks it's confusing, and that it's wrong. Heaven forbid something be wildly out-of-sync with what the rules say, then it's full stop and she can't do anything until she has that conflict resolved and the questions answered in her mind.

It'd be admirable trait in someone who could think faster or better, but she doesn't, and she's further burdened by clearly being the product of a very different time.

J.J. Grey and Mofro

2009-01-30T09:09:00.006-06:00

I won't say last night was incredible, but it definitely reminded me why it is good to get out with my friends and have a time of it.

J.J. Grey and Mofro were pretty good, even if the crowd that was in attendance was not my norm. As is usual with Katey and the Geology people, we had a few drinks, got a little loose and I definitely was bobbin' my head and tappin' my foot for most of the show.

I won't say I was dancing, but it might have crept into my movements once or twice.

Afterward, I had a beer and cheese fries with Josh, who will be moving on Saturday (and, thus, missing the Mardi Gras Ball I wanted him to go to with me), Katey and Josh's friend-who-is-a-girl (girlfriend?), Roxanne. Best damn fries and company a man can hope for. Josh dropped me off after that and then I crashed, getting some ZzZzZz's so I could burn some joules today.

Considering what Josh, Katey and I were talking about yesterday, it looks like this weekend will also be quite awesome.

Pieces and Pawns

2009-01-28T11:13:00.000-06:00

"Which piece on the chess board are you?," an omnipresent, clear voice asked me. I did not see the body this voice belonged to. I stood in a field of giant chess pieces. My viewpoint suddenly changed. I saw the board from afar.

"Well, I'm not a pawn," I replied calmly. "No one has bothered to move me. I'm rather insignificant in this game." I stopped to think for a moment, as my hand hovered over the board. "I'm not a knight. I'm not a gallant warrior, stepping out into the game early. I wait."

"Are you sure you're not a pawn?," the voice questioned.

"No, I may not be useful in the game, but I still have my moments." My eyes were on the board studying the pieces. They stood still upon the board in their beginning postions. "I'm not a bishop. I don't know why... Perhaps it's just because of the religious reference. I've never been much into religion."

"Are you sure you're not a pawn?"

"Yes, quite so. Perhaps I'm a rook, staying out of the game early, coming in the middle or end of the game." As I spoke some pieces disappeared, and the rook moved to castle. "But, I'm not one to move and protect the king. So I guess I'm not a rook."

"Are you sure you're not a pawn?"

I paused to consider their query. I was running out of pieces to be. "I can't be a king. I don't lead people, and I'm not the most important piece on the board. I can't be the queen, I don't hold that sort of power and influence."

"Are you sure you're not a pawn?," the voice struck inside my head. No one ever wants to admit that he is just a pawn in the game.

"I don't know."

from here

2009-01-28T09:11:00.002-06:00

"Those who take delight in their own might are merely pretenders to power. The true warrior of fate needs no adoration or fear, no tricks or overwhelming effort; he need not be stronger or smarter or innately more capable than everyone else; he need not even admit it to himself. All he needs to do is to stand there, at that moment when all hope is dead, and look upon the abyss without flinching."

I once read that hope is the tribute that reality pays to fantasy

2009-01-25T19:21:00.001-06:00

"I don't agree with buying lottery tickets, but I do think I understand why people do it. I remember the times in my life when I had more or less belief that things would improve - that they were heading up in the near-term or mid-term, close enough to anticipate. I'm having trouble describing how much of a difference it makes. Maybe I don't need to describe that difference, unless some of my readers have never had any light at the end of their tunnels, or some of my readers have never looked forward and seen darkness.

If existential angst comes from having at least one deep problem in your life that you aren't thinking about explicitly, so that the pain which comes from it seems like a natural permanent feature - then the very first question I'd ask, to identify a possible source of that problem, would be, "Do you expect your life to improve in the near or mid-term future?"

Sometimes I meet people who've been run over by life, in much the same way as being run over by a truck. Grand catastrophe isn't necessary to destroy a will to live. The extended absence of hope leaves the same sort of wreckage.

People need hope. I'm not the first to say it.

But I think that the importance of vague hope is underemphasized."

from here

2009-01-25T19:13:00.003-06:00

"What is the opposite of happiness? Sadness? No. Just as love and hate are two sides of the same coin, so are happiness and sadness. Crying out of happiness is a perfect illustration of this. The opposite of love is indifference, and the opposite of happiness is - here's the clincher - boredom...

The question you should be asking isn't 'What do I want?' or 'What are my goals?' but 'What would excite me?'

Remember - boredom is the enemy, not some abstract 'failure'."

2009-01-25T18:59:00.000-06:00

Both this post and this post at Overcoming Bias are worth reading in their entirety.

There is nothing more reliably entertaining than human tragedy and humiliation. Love is deeply intertwined with both of those states.

Forgive me for the spate of Overcoming Bias links. I'm clearing through a backlog at the moment and it is, usually, a very solid blog chock full of things to ponder.

2009-01-25T18:38:00.000-06:00

"A life in which equality of consequences is forcefully ensured, or in which little is at stake because all desires are instantly fulfilled without individual work - these likewise will appear as flawed Utopias of dispassion and angst. "Rich people with nothing to do" syndrome. A life of disconnected episodes and unimportant consequences is a life of weak passions, of emotional uninvolvement."

Best description and summation of that syndrome I've ever read.

"interpersonal emotions get more complex (and challenging) along with the people, which makes them an even richer source of future fun."

Who do people pursue?

from here

2009-01-25T18:35:00.000-06:00

It's the same core challenge either way: growing up is an adult problem. There are difficult ways out of this trap, but no easy ones; extra-ordinary solutions, but no ordinary ones. People ask me why I take all these difficulties upon myself. It's because all the easier ways, once you examine them in enough fine detail, turn out to be illusions, or contain just as much difficulty themselves - the same sort of hidden difficulty as "I'd like to try being the opposite sex for a week".

It seems to me that there is just an irreducible residue of very hard problems associated with an adult version of humankind ever coming into being.

And emotions would be among the most dangerous targets of meddling. Make the wrong shift, and you won't want to change back.

from here