The Company of Hedonists

States of Depravity

2012-01-02T13:25:00.003-06:00

In talking with friends last night, I caught a thread among different events and places from my life to date. I'm documenting the bits here so I don't forget them, but this post is only the opening of a conversation. Your welcome responses will be cherished.

Where I grew up, in southern Appalachia, a strong and deep-running ethic ties the rural communities together. I've touched the periphery of this subculture over the years, through friends of family and acquaintances, though I have no true, direct knowledge of it. As best I can discern, it grew up of necessity, rooted among the state boundaries in the region. The driving force was, for a while at least, shining work: the production (and distribution) of grain spirits — hooch. For various reasons, backwoods distilling isn't quite as bigtime anymore, but nothing has been forgotten. Some of that work has mutated to similar activities around other products, but mostly, the core values — self-sufficiency, quiet determination, etcetera — took root and persist independent of any specific activity, at this point.

So, in the best light, subversive actions may foster sustainable communities. But often, quite the opposite happens. What emerges in the latter cases are population centers, or geographic areas, bereft of any meaningful narrative. In these cases, it doesn't make sense to talk about 'communities' at all, since the ethics and activities which remain work quite explicitly against community building. A better name would look something like 'concentrations of disorder' or 'disunities'.

What came up last night, though, is how examples of these exist throughout the US and how distinct in character each is. Ignoring any tired generalities of extant nomenclature (e.g. red-neck), what interests me is the possibility that the various examples can be viewed in terms of their differences from each other and whether they could be shown to share common features in spite of the surface dissimilarities.

All of this, I assume, is well researched and documented among those who care. I'm just not familiar with any of that work yet. Most of my (mis)information comes from movies and such — a situation no doubt itself so common as to be trite — but the profusion of such examples that I could think of off-hand speaks quite clearly to that.

There's a fair bit more that I hoped to sketch out, but this much has already taken me several hours to draft. So without commentary, here are several links to apropos movies:

What most bewilders me is that so many instances can be found around the US alone. Each so well-defined and unlike the others. Nothing yet said of the sort beyond our national border. No question that the Indian continent, or central america, or Brazil hosts as many examples. Or that, for all that is clear and known about Somali over the past four decades, surely there exists such subcultures there, as well.

I'll end this note with one final example, that brought it all home in the conversation last night, but which I know the least about. A friend who grew up in Alaska related a while back the widespread and appalling disarray of remote population centers there, due variously to geographic isolation, loss of industry, federal policies, and so on. Without wanting to butcher the description I was given, the people living in those areas huff antifreeze for want of hooch and rewrite local laws as needed. I don't know of any representative work for this one, so please share what you have.

Relocation

2011-04-07T22:05:00.003-05:00

A quick note to our dear readers. The Company of Hedonists has relocated in cyberspace. Our updated domain hosts the new entries for this blog. Please update your linkages. Thanks for reading and take care.

The State of Purpose

2010-04-18T12:03:00.010-05:00

I need a recommendation. For a time, I've wanted to learn-- to come to understand-- U.S. history. Now we all know that a story is as much a part of the teller as it is of the subject. That one has to consider the source. So, instead of my grade-school textbook on American history, I thought I could go and just pick up A People's History, that it would fill in all the details and explain causes and movements. But Zinn's work apparently assumes that one has already learned U.S. history from somewhere and that we just need to re-learn it. He skims past topics like the Boston Tea Party quickly, without explaining what brought the event about or its context.

So the recommendation, then, is for a solid, thorough explanation of really any piece of history. U.S. history might be a logical place to start for me, but really and piece or bit would do just fine, if it's lucid and engaging. My paternal grandfather really keyed me into this interest years ago, when he would send family letters (by U.S. mail) describing the books he'd read, often on historical subjects. I realized, through those letters, that history-- despite what my public schooling did to dry it out-- was actually a deep and rich bed, out of which current and daily events have grown.

This all serves as background, really, to the engagement that I want to make with my immediate and future world, in a few specific ways. In one part, it stems from living in the mid-west, where the highly political water-cooler talk isn't so easy that I can just affirm and abide. Yet, my lack of background impairs my faculty for informed response.

In an altogether different regard, I want to understand the business and financial worlds well enough to answer various questions I pose to myself while planning for the next thirty odd years:

Would I be happy pursuing a PhD and subsequently working in research, or would an MBA be a rewarding career move? Will I have enough savings to retire, or will there even be such a thing in 35 years? What connection do I hold with my maternal homestead?

Answers to such questions require fairly well-informed thought and a fair amount of research. But it's alright to take a few years to answer then and well worth the time investment. I enjoy this part of growing up; it's what we do.

So please, share with me your reading lists. Let me know who awakens your intellect and grounds your discourse. Write me back into our community, for the arid plains are beginning to make me parch.

Bringing in the Spring

2010-04-03T20:26:00.003-05:00

How long has it been, dear friend? We profess we know not. Let us keep it thus. This is the way of things, slowly and without hesitation yet. Let us return. Let us bear ourselves forward, bare against the loneliness.

Yes, friend, it has been too long. But the changes take time. The bars are long and the measure slow. No matter: we have not been idle. The home warms us (at no small cost) and the garden returns itself presently. The business that provides surges forward, ever to challenge and reward. And further, we find ourselves back in the game of Capoeira, sweating the easy stuff, unfortunately.

Yet another check-in, pre-boarding before the journey proper. We'll try to give more timely updates, though the reception is poor at cruising altitude. We shall see.

In the stillness of exacting motion, a cessation of hiatus

2009-07-19T15:40:00.008-05:00

Remiss, derelict, just generally absent from this space lately. I've missed you, dear reader. I think about you frequently. But it takes a certain set of chops to navigate these strange and complex changes. I feel as though i've lost my greatest audience. Readership has dropped a unit of late.

Now i fear the rains are bleeding my ink.

It certainly is late: late summer, late afternoon, late to return home. But a certain home drives my thoughts and actions fast. For since the last missive, we have pressed forward with our intentions. An offer, a negotiation, a counter, and now it is written. Our stamps are stumped and the parties arrived. Dear friend, a home has been found. We do silly dances and sleep lightly.

This is just a mention, a check-in after the respite. Tomorrow i leave for PDX for the week. My employer needs me to check a few things there, make sure everything is working as it should. Should be a blast, though also a distraction at the moment of action.

Sometimes you must move quickly just to stay in place. Sometimes there is naught to do but wait and rest a few bars on the bridge. Trust that things will resolve in time. I test, trust, and rattle the keys. And hope that i'm reading the right pages, for i've not run through this one ever before.

A Home on the Range

2009-03-31T19:01:00.004-05:00

This is the moment. What better place to weather the Great Recession than where the Dust Bowl hit? More to the point, if I don't act now, I'll miss the moment. What moment? I'm going to buy a house.

I'm not sure what else to say.... I'm in the planning stages and only know it will be in the vicinity of KC, but I don't know what neighborhood or township yet. Put the word out, send me your comments, your emails, your advice, your spreadsheets. Anything you've got. I'm considering a 15-year mortgage, for instance, because it builds equity faster and costs a lot less in the end. It just depends on how much house you buy. New or old? Carpet or hardwood floors? Single or two-story? These are all big, tough questions.

I'm excited and dream about it. I plan and scheme it. I've been reading up and checking my credit report. I wonder how long it will take? All the rest is just details, but of course, it's all details.

The Death of a Writer

2009-03-04T17:04:00.008-06:00

Hearing on the radio today an interview with an author who is writing about David Foster Wallace's last, unfinished book and suicide reminded me of Spalding Grey. This comes late to the latter's death, but now works well for me. Are you available now?

There's a common sentiment that suicide is the most selfish of acts. Whether or not that holds, i always think of Grey's death in terms of his family (a wife, two boys, and a step-daughter). For some reason, his alleged suicide (his body was pulled from the East River) strikes me as most sad in light of the family of which he was part.

This post isn't about suicide, though. Rather, i thought smashingly of Grey and his monologues, so lament the loss of the artist. One could say something about the fire that burns so bright, but Grey's life wasn't exactly brief, so i'm not sure that holds.

Specifically, Grey was a storyteller, and spun his monologues with such craft that you forget you're listening to a man, sitting at a table, talk. You see instead the scenes he'd built up, just as good literature transports you past the medium and on into the message. Witness that you can rent Swimming to Cambodia or Monster in a Box-- that these are selling movies with repeat audiences.

But other forces were at work, as well. The dynamism of his monologues usually lofted into mania. His book Impossible Vacation painfully describes an individual struggling to exist. And it tells too of his family in detail.

So we have to look among ourselves. For i doubt there are many here who have not seen dementia, nor witnessed addiction, nor ever felt so feverishly elated as to be accused of unchecked exaltation. And we know that these conditions do not grow in a vacuum, that they have a persistent history. We grow up with them, around them, learning to abide and adapt.

I often think of my life and actions in terms of a trajectory, but there was no clear target at the outset here. Only that i miss Spalding Grey and had possibly forgotten to mention it. But i think i see from where this thread was borne now. Grey is gone. Our knowledge and memories of his influence weave together our own experiences. They bear a warp against the surface of our thoughts. Be well, at the falling of the light.

The breaking day

2009-02-14T06:41:00.004-06:00

I wake while others sleep, but do not wake slowly. Once i have fallen out of dreams, i am immediately, fully awake. Maybe there is a minute of sitting on the side of the bed, focusing my eyes, but it is only posturing.

When last we left, we were bound for Chicago on Thanksgiving vacation. Now, back at work, things are business as usual. My employer announced huge layoffs recently (in good company there, as employers everywhere are doing daily now). There is no certainty, only a bit of anhedonia at CoH.

Some unseasonably warm weather has blessed the locale. Warm winter days are possibly my favoritest season. You have beautiful, blistering vistas, but none of the pesky, biting bugs that mar the warm summer months. My hiking companion and i visited Knob Noster as well as more local spots which during the summer are almost inhabitable.

A deep forest trail is apparently the best place to spot a stealth bomber. They fly out of a miltary base adjacent the park, going, i guess, to iraq or afghanistan.

There is no particular theme here today. Just a general update before the world's alarm clock goes off.

Turn Your Radio On

2008-11-23T15:04:00.000-06:00

When you are out here, riding the infrastructure that stitches the nation to the corn and grass fields; when you have a cavalry of horses under your foot, pulling you forward; when you have left your loved one-- and your cat-- and you are flying against the jet stream to your last, true friends; when the job you may not have much longer, with a company that may not be much longer, provides not just the monies but also the modem you use to connect; when the light is falling fast and you are racing the jet liner that touches down at O'Hare; when this is your state among the union and this is your vacation; then there is naught to do but reign in the horses from their pasture and bridle them again beneath your feet to carry you on, into the night.

Paper Art

2008-09-04T06:58:00.002-05:00

About the closest I've come to any international exposure is my friend Phil who lives in Austria. After Mac OSX Leopard came out, Phil and I shared video across the pond just to test it out. He gave me a preview of a video his friend Susie Asado had made.

I'm excited to now be able to share it with you, as it's stunning in its craft. My German has fallen by the way, so I'm not sure what the site is all about, but it appears to be a competition between her and two other musicians. So after watching her video, review it by clicking the dots.

Optimization

2008-08-31T21:50:00.005-05:00

If you re-engineer someone's Perl code from scratch and your version takes 80% less lines, is more maintainable, but runs for twice as long, is it an improvement?

There's two reasons for an affirmative answer: maintainability is key-- especially when you have other engineers coming to you practically every day with different variations to try-- and computing power only increases with time, so runtime is less and less significant. This is essentially the point of Perl, after all.

When i get a little money...

2008-08-30T17:04:00.000-05:00

...i buy books. Unfortunately, reading them takes longer, so there's a bit of disconnect in my library. But it works well for reference. Having at last cataloged my hardcovers and paperbacks, there's always more to add.

LibraryThing handles online book cataloging well (allowing me to resort by Dewey or Rating or ISBN or alpha on the fly). Delicious Library for the Mac does it offline very well (and very similarly), but with a few differences. The latter allows for inclusion of music and other media and even reads in your iTunes library by default. Also, it can use your iSight camera to scan barcodes from media, making record entry trivial. It even has options for a barcode scanner, if you happen to have one.

As to reading, there's a lot of press (well, html publish actually) recently about the Amazon Kindle. And some libraries provide access to Safari Books Online. But i still prefer the physical manifestation of manuscript. I can use the index to find topics and flip to them quickly, keep my fingers on the different sections, access the book wherever i am, don't have to worry (much) about getting it wet.... There's many reasons to like books. They're solid and dense and smell awesome. Plus they look good on shelves! Now if you'll excuse me, i need to think about dinner and what to wear tonight.

Civilized 1, Bohemian 0

2008-08-23T15:46:00.007-05:00

After enduring due derision from essentially every vistor, I got myself a bit more civ'lized, home-stylewize. I found these structures, flanking the patio doors in the picture, which allow one to layer books on top of one another, thus maximizing storage capabilities of living quarters.

So, for example, those two 'chestnut' structures in the included figure just about precisely hold all the books that previously trimmed my primary living space. Now I suppose the next addition is a machine that sucks up dirt.... sort of creates a, how would you say, vacuum of air around the detritus about the perimeter.

Sunday Nature Walk

2008-08-10T16:56:00.004-05:00

Today was warm but not oppressive, so we went to Heritage Park in Olathe, KS, which turned out to be quite a good spot. We found a geocache that had previously eluded us, spotted turtles and what I have narrowed down to some sort of Heron, and discovered paddle boats that were, unfortunately, out of season.

A few highlights have been posted over at my flickr site. Definitive identification of the bird would be most welcome. Bonus points for the rather large spider, which was prepping it's meals for the next few days when we spotted her.

Kitty kitty

2008-08-03T12:05:00.007-05:00

Got a new member of the household. She's a six-year-old kitty named Kitty. She's a really big sweetie. After spending the first day under the bed, she has begun to come out on her own and snuggle like crazy.

I think she's nocturnal, but she's also house-trained, which is nice. The picture is a bit of a blur, which well represents her dynamism. Now i have to find a vet....

Cellular Sobriety

2008-06-30T19:11:00.003-05:00

Thought there was a patent in it, but somebody beat me to it (thanks, Krista).

shutterbug

2008-05-30T19:09:00.006-05:00

A few new photographs.

G Bomb

2008-05-24T19:58:00.004-05:00

To myself, i show up as the first result on google. Small acclaim. I've always wondered, are google searches location-specific? What do you get when you google 'company of hedonists'?

First Quarter Performance Report

2008-04-06T11:57:00.007-05:00

You're a writer, by one definition, if you're driven to write-- if you cannot but help it. This is not me. I enjoy writing and the symbolic communications, but can go for long stretches without any particular need to record my life in narrative. Other media and modalities draw me in at least equal measure.

So of late photography has resurfaced. You might know that I dabbled in the film medium for a bit, thanks to the generous hand-me-down of a SLR camera from my aunt Elizabeth and uncle Cary. And that, from those photographs, I would construct photomosaics in a crude manner.

That camera now lives on long-term loan with my sister, though. Besides, film and developing tend to get pricey after a spell. But this year, thanks to the generous gifts of tax refunds, I have gotten into digital photography, dusted off my knowledge of aperture and f-stop, and am learning a bit about the digital darkroom.

Which couples well with trips to state parks, such as Watkins Mill in Missouri. There we found a woolen mill (not the type that produces flour), an octagonal one-room school house, and a 3.8 mile path around an artificial lake. The first warm Saturday in '08 brought a generous number of bicycle riders out, along with the pedestrian narrator. The equestrian trail is separate, but one would suppose it was equally well utilized.

Still, other matters call. Sunday is the day of chores and I have a job search yet to mobilize. My list of books, both fictional and topical, grows and the nine-to-five never relents. So, friends, I shall have to close this chapter here. You can find me again in the produce section, looking over the tomatoes for the most red bunch and about the cheese counter fondling the goat's milks and seeking out ricotta scanta. The dishes are already washed and the last load of laundry is tumbling now. I leave you to puzzle out who is the sun and who the moon.

Walking the Haight

2008-01-21T14:30:00.002-06:00

This is the walking route I took through San Francisco. Just didn't get around to posting it after i got back from the west side.

West Siiide

2007-11-25T14:16:00.000-06:00

Finally got out of my bubble a bit. I'm back from a week on the west coast, based in Portland at my Brother's apartment-- a forgotten piece of rental property in southeast Portland (though soon to be rediscovered, as their water line needs immediate repair).

I'll pepper this post with ample pictures, but I've uploaded an album on facebook (where it's easy), so you should mosey over there and have a look, too.

I flew from Kansas City to Portland by way of Minneapolis the friday before last. The cheap flight had me up at 4 am, but that's actually when I woke. My alarm was set for five. Still, i kept nodding off on the plane. The whole Pacific Northwest was overcast for the first four days or so of my visit. I didn't get to see much on the flight out, except at one point where the clouds broke. It looked to be the Rockies below, but I had no real sense of geography, thirty-thousand feet up.

The warnings on flights to turn off all electronics are a bit bewildering. Surely airlines won't design a plane that could possibly crash if someone turns their cell phone on at some point. And my physics background tells me that it would be simple enough to shield all signals from the main cabin out. It occurred to me during this trip, though, that the precaution may be more about disallowing eavesdropping than about the safety of the aircraft. That is, a simple radio receiver might be able to pick up the pilots' communications with the airport. Incidentally, I did find my silly phone on at one point on the return flight. The power button must have gotten depressed while in my bag. I turned the phone off and we didn't crash.

Asheville, where I'm from, is semi-tropical rainforest. I like the rain and so it was sort of funny that Sprint's hiring manager used KC's high sunny-day count as a selling point. But I wanted to visit the north west US partly for this reason-- the famous mist and fog, that isn't exactly rain or humidity (at least not in the winter).

Portland, though, was uncharacteristically overcast until i got back from the bay area on wednesday, when things cleared up smashingly and my brother and I got some excellent views of the city by walking up Mount Tabor. But the drive to Seattle and the time while we visited Washington state was rather grey, so I don't have too many stunning pictures from the flight out or from Seattle. A highlight, though, was the red room in the Seattle library.

That library, in fact, is possibly the greatest I have ever visited, built inside a transplendent Koolhaus building. Maybe it's a reflection of a discussion my brother and I had. I've always thought we should have itemized taxes, so you could go down the list and check off military, education, but leave out The War on Drugs and prisons (or whatever). Zack pointed out, though, that this would probably result in a great divide: the libraries and schools of the coasts and the militia of the central states.

So, arrived Friday. Saturday we drove up to Seattle and walked around the downtown (library, Pike Public Market, several blocks in search of a dog park Zack remembered, and drove through Capitol Hill). Sunday we drove out to Astoria so I could for the first time in my life see the Pacific. Drove past the Goonies house, but I didn't particularly notice it. That evening, back in Portland, we went to a local bar and met up with my brother's friends. Monday I flew (at a leisurely hour) to Oakland, CA to spend a day and a half visiting san francisco and a friend of mine from Pinewoods. While there, a friend from high school found me on facebook, so I got to see a good friend I hadn't seen in eleven years.

Tuesday I took the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) into frisco proper and walked around town all day. I got off at the 24th St Bart stop, walked up Bernal Hill Park, as recommened by my friend's roommate, for spectastic views of the entire area in all directions. Then up Valencia through Mission (which has many murals),

taking 16th street west to Castro. After lunch at Blue, I walked up Market and took Fillmore to Haight, walking Haight several blocks west to Ashbury (where I checked my email and found my friend from high-school had added me). Despite my feets' complaints, they carried me on into the Golden Gate park past the de Young Museum (about a third the length of the park). On the north edge I caught the 29 bus up into the Presidio and got off to walk down to Baker Beach. Here is where I actually touched the Pacific for the first time. Also watched cargo ships coming into the bay (did not see any hit the Golden Gate). After a bit, walked back up the bluffs to the bay side of the Golden Gate Bridge, where i caught the 80 (Golden Gate Transit, express bus) back to the Civic Center BART stop and headed back out to Oakland. I considered taking the ferry across the bay, but it was already 5 or 6 pm and my feet. Oh, my feet.

The next morning i flew back to Portland, nearly missing the flight (the BART stopped in it's tracks a few times on the way there) and forfeiting my pocket knife in order to carry on a bag i was going to check. That was Wednesday. Thanksgiving day, my brother and I got our constitutional walking up Mount Tabor, which has a few good views of downtown Portland and one of Mount Hood. That evening, we joined Zack's friends for thanksgiving dinner, complete with turkey, two kinds of stuffing (one with pepperoni, I believe), two cranberry sauces, biscuits, gravy, beans, corn casserole, and wines. I supposed there were desserts, too, but I was well satiated by that point.

That's the rough outline of the trip. My brother and I had lots to talk over and covered probably a small percent of it. I could easily spend a month out west and not get bored, but one makes do. I loved every moment of it (except possibly the bits going through security in the airports) and am ready to pack up and head out there for goods. Below is a bit of the view that Bernal Hill affords.

Families of Generally Acyclic Directed Graphs in Three Dimensions

2007-10-13T09:58:00.001-05:00

Most family trees are planar, representing time or generations along the vertical axis and siblings and spouses both across the horizontal. For a while now, I've been working with the idea of separating the spousal and sibling relationships into two dimensions and building family trees in three. This lends well to large and extended families.

Originally I had imagined building these trees from the sort of dowels and styrofoam primitives you can get at hobby stores. But I knew the things wouldn't support themselves. It might still be possible with threaded metal rods-- something stronger and more rigid. Such a beast might even make a nice mobile.

Since the concept is already patented (in a distressingly convoluted presentation), there's no issue sharing with you the sketches that I've made (pay no attention to the symbolic modifiers). The image above shows a mock-up that I made using a fairly simple modelling program. Currently I'm researching more robust programs that can handle heredity and inheritance (of the model's physical traits) better. But i'm pretty happy with what is shown here already.

West Side

2007-09-09T15:23:00.000-05:00

How do I plan a trip along a specific route? Google maps should accept such things as "Portland, OR to san francisco, CA via Route 101". If i'm going to drive down the west coast for the first time in my life, i want to take the coastal highway.

What GM does feature, though, is the ability to drag waypoints into a route. With a few strategic alterations, I can get exactly what I wanted, without knowing the details about connecting roads and such.

True Names

2007-08-12T22:52:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, as i was driving to a friends house to help him move, a cardinal shot across the front of my car from the trees along the side of the road. I sometimes wonder whether squirrels and birds do this intentionally, thrill-seeking. It happens more than i would expect. Lightning, say, happens quite a lot, but i've never in my life had it strike within twenty feet. Birds, however, often fly in front of my speeding car.

But that aside, what occured to me as this particular bird passed a foot or so in front of the grill, was what i would say if it in fact collided with the car. 'I hit a bird yesterday'? I suppose, if one hits another human, it's enough (at first at least) to say, 'I hit a man the other day'. But later, you'd probably want to know what man i had hit, know his name.

So it passed through my thoughts as i drove on that, were we to afford all species proper respect, i would need to know this cardinal's name. But to have unique names for every bird, and squirrel, and dog would require a fair amount of specification.

In my current job, i'm often having to look up various people in a database. When they tell me their name, i take the more obscure of the first and last, since that will tend to return just their records. I despair a bit when it's a Bill Smith or Elizabeth Jones, because each of those four names will invariably return several pages of records.

So, to be fair, I suppose we already need finer indicators. Bill Smith with Vanguard Publishing, Elizabeth Jones of Thirty-two Terrace, Northwest. Likewise, pets often assume the family surname, though clearly your dog is not of your blood, so that's a bit loose.

But in the moments after this cardinal missed my windshield, i was struck by the idea of home many more names-- beyond the given and the sur-- we would need to name individuals across all species. Seemed like a cumbersome idea at the time.

Sábado e Domingo

2007-06-24T14:45:00.000-05:00

Chores and errands completed this weekend:

~~clean bathroom and kitchen~~
~~grocery shopping~~
~~make lunches~~
~~iron business clothes~~
~~TNCA newsletter~~
~~career: update resume~~
~~wash dishes~~

A bird on the deck

2007-06-03T22:57:00.000-05:00

A little while ago, i noticed a small bird flying up to the door sill going out onto my deck. I remarked upon it, but otherwise took little notice.

Well yesterday, when i stepped out in the morning to check the weather, this bird was inbound and, spotting me, bore towards me in flight carrying worms in her mouth. When i failed to flee, she abated and repaired to the tree of the north end of the deck.

Immediately I realized that this bird, which had for some days been alighting above my door, had the while been nesting and was now returning with food for her young hatchling. Indeed, while I stood at the south end of the deck and watched, a mere chick cried out, head just breaching the top of the nest, while his mother perched not five feet away, watching me instead to determine my intentions.

Seeing now this intruder upon her home, she left off her errand, instead crossing the porch to fly at me, only to turn and land on a step at ground level below. After a few more feints, hoping to scare me off, she returned to the tree still holding the worms. As i failed to relent, simply standing at the far end of the deck, she made a dash for the nest, dropping the serving straight down the chick's throat.

While i snuck back inside to retrieve my camera, she made another foray. I returned camera in hand and waited for her to come with more worms. What a racket the child made, in a rougher and more shrill cry than his family generally makes in song.

Perhaps my naturalist readers can educate me as to the manner of bird nesting here. I could only observe this summer ritual and record what i could with my amateur tools. The bird is brown-coated with a orange belly and yellow beak. They're very common in this area and are the size of a child's fist. I own i took more pictures than would easily be shown here. The rest can be found in an album i put onto facebook.

As a bonus for my patience, while the feathery mother was off hunting, a chipmunk passed just below, stopping on the retaining wall steps before jetting down a hole in the hillside.

O gato está adormecido. O bebê está acordado.

2007-05-23T23:17:00.000-05:00

Earlier, i said i'd tell you about capoeira. I think it's overdue.

More than ten years ago, while living in jamaica plain, my housemates and i crossed the highway down from our house on Saint Rose and walked into the Arnold Arboretum. At the top of a spiraling path, at i think the highest point on the property, my friend GR began explaining a performance she had seen. In it, several women were moving on their hands, twisting and returning with control and power. GR was hooked and started studying the form post haste. And then GR began to demonstrate it there in the grass, that day on the side of the hill. And i knew that this was what i wanted, this dance was the reason i have hands and feet and can move in three dimensions.

You can find extensive resources on capoeira. There is a good wikipedia article on it. You will find some good videos on youtube searching the word. There is probably a group that trains the form in your city and they probably perform from time to time, either downtown on weekends or at festivals in the area. I don't really need to tell you what it is or it's history and i can't demonstrate the movement here. But maybe i can explain why to me it's more like a drug than a martial art.

Whenever i tell someone i train capoeira, or that i play capoeira or practice it-- which comes up a fair bit because i'm always going off to my class or if you call i'm in class-- i get sort of embarassed. because it is a martial art, having attacks and defenses and sparring. But to say that conjures images of guys standing stick-straight with their fists out, jabbing out in bursts.

The resting position of capoeira is a back and forth movement. If you're not doing something else, you're in the ginga. And most of the time, you're doing something else, like rolling around your partner on your hands or spinning backwards on your head and elbows. So it's really more like a dance than anything you'd picture from the words 'martial art'.

And it is a holistic artform tied strongly to the culture from which it came. Capoeirista learn, concurrent with the movements, the songs and the instruments, the language and the history. The whole form is tied to the rhythms of the bermibau, the pandeiro, and the atabaque, which are playing any time we are. The different toques (rhythms) of the berimbau dictate the style of the game, whether open or closed, fast or slow, playful or aggressive.

I grew up contra dancing at the Old Farmer's Ball (before the roof collapsed) and waltzing at pinewoods, so these aspects of dance and song are simply as things must be. It's just a massive perk that i'm strenuously conditioning my entire body and learning something about self-defense also.

Besides, portuguese is a beautiful language. You might watch Orpheu Negro sometime if you've never listened to brazilian jazz or worked with the cooks in cambridge, ma.

There will never be enough days on earth to learn all that capoeira encompasses. First we'd start with how to cartwheel. Then how to control the cartwheel so as to stop at the apex and roll backwards, turning to face forward at the same time. After that, the rhythms of the berimbau, and the songs about great capoeiristas and their trickery. But to understand the songs, we have to know portuguese, so there's a bit of homework.

Eventually you begin to see the open game, the closed game, and the different styles of capoeira which are practiced. You learn to recognize the intent of the players and their individual patterns. Moving to the left is easier for certain people, for others, the foot turns out just before they throw that one kick. For every attack there is a response and each of those is itself one.

Tom Bombadil

2007-03-18T16:25:00.000-05:00

My dear friend LD and I were talking once about the Peter Jackson movie of the Fellowship of the Ring. She was disappointed by the movie because it left out her favorite character in the whole LOTR saga. There are many things that make the books far better than any trilogy of three-hour movies made of the stories (though Jackson's movies have some profound moments).

The most pervasive element not present in the movies is the language Tolkien uses. He develops a form, a kind of dialect of English, which represents the age and complexity of the world he is writing about. It's a sort of reflexive modifier on the actual content of the story.

And in content, indeed there is so much which was left out of the movies. I vaguely remember something about giants throwing rocks in the high frozen pass which, in the movie, the party must turn back from only because of a wizard-induced avalanche. Here, then, is an entire species of middle-earth which gets not even a nod in the celluloid casting.

Doubtless, thick tomes and entire dissertations and theses have been expounded on Tolkien's stories. I will content myself to say that the small party, just out from the Shire, is rescued from a sticky situation before they've hardly gotten their walking shoes on by a very old soul living peacefully aloof with his partner Goldberry in a small and ancient forest just across the Barrow Downs from Bree.

It might be nigh time to read the entire series again, but perhaps i will content myself with just chapters six and seven of book I. It is a more manageable piece and really i only need to see how old Tom looks at frodo when that foolish hobbit for the first time does something which later becomes so contested. It's such an idle, casual act while they're talking around the fire in the living room that you'd almost miss it. Indeed, Jackson completely missed it and, so doing, rewrote the history of middle earth in at least some small part. It puzzles me every time why this happen just so, unless it is to give us clear indication that old TB knows what he's about and chooses not to get involved in the ways of men and hobbits.

synesthesia

2007-02-25T20:10:00.000-06:00

slowly have i realized that i am blessed with a perceptual experience with interesting symptoms and no side effects. several years ago i noticed that, while i watched basketball through a window, my mind was creating noises to accompany the bouncing of the ball that i saw. at some point, i learned the word for this. i think it was when one of my sister's described how numbers have color, for her.

What i learned today is that the word synesthesia describes the class of conditions, of which my visual-aural and my sister's number-color experiences are distinct types. My favorite encyclopedia describes the latter as "Grapheme-color synesthesia" but doesn't have such a fancy name for my variant. That encyclopedia has interesting links at the end.

The bouncing ball will test whether you have my variant. I experience it a lot while using computers, because there are often visual events with no sound, either in the user interface or in banner-ads on web pages. Another instance is watching the turn-signal of the car in front of me at a stop light.

It's a pretty neat condition. And since it "runs strongly in families", i'm curious to know whether my other relatives have variants. feel free to post a comment or email me (even if you're not a relative...). Maybe at the next family reunion, we can have a volleyball match between the dyslexics and the synesthetes.

Have and Have Not

2007-02-10T15:08:00.000-06:00

Winter has come to Kansas. This is my first here and i find it amenable. We have a fair helping of cold, but nothing a good coat, a scarf, and a knit hat can't handle. And we get snow occasionally, snow thick as comforters-- not the thin 200 flake-count sheets that asheville gets. And not the six feet that i heard chicago has. I've always wanted to have so much snow that i could dig tunnels.

In these past months i have not been blogging. It's basically a journal and whenever i start a journal, things go well for a while but fall off after a bit. so expect another post within, oh, a halfyear.

instead, i have been finding various ways to keep myself occupied. books, movies, happy hours with other college hires from work, driving sabado on the namesake's day, and this week finally i have begun going to capoeira. there's a good group in KC, about 25 minutes from my house, that has classes four days a week. someday i'll tell you about capoeira, one of my passions. if you're curious now, though, search youtube for "capoeira".

Also, there are the chores. It's good my parents made me do them when i was a kid, so i know how and don't mind. it helps to make lists, so that when i'm done, i can cross them off-- that simple action is nearly enough reward. This weekend (sunday is my day for chores), i have a particularly large number, what with tax-filing and my shoes what want polishing.

The new and the ancient

2006-11-03T21:16:00.000-06:00

To put my life into perspective, I sometimes try to guess at what is new and what is ancient. By which i mean, what have humans been doing as long as they've been walking upright and what are the modern constructs that we usually take for granted.

For example, showers are probably pretty new. Bathing as we have it now might be a recent invention, but washing with fresh water could be very old. Soap, in fact, might be very old (one theory is that it formed when ashes from human immolation mixed with the human fat-- the two primary ingredients of soap being lye and lipids). So bathing might be open to debate, but i suspect that cleanliness, or the image of it, is as old as being human. By which i mean, the football star being interviewed on TV, or someone on the subway who has a detailed shave: these crafted styles could have been pulled off a thousand years ago, regardless of whether the person was actually clean (as in, free of bacteria and sanitized).

I imagine living in a medieval fief and, walking downtown, running into soap-box acts put on by dapper men with handle-bar mustaches, arresting me with eloquent serenades about their wares. Some aspects of our culture are clearly recent (short-wave radio), while others i can only wonder about.

It is an exercise in second-guessing: what do we assume is unique to our enlightened, modern way of life? It is not unlike what we assume is unique to being human (versus, say, being a dog). Certainly, we should expect that, as long as there have been 'humans', there has been a belief that we are modern and contemporary. Every age knows that they are the latest, greatest race to grace the face of the earth. So they act accordingly. They use all the extant vocabulary, they practice the most avant-garde fashions, and they view their historical predecessors as, perhaps, less developed. But, unless you make the case for evolution over millenia, we must assume that our ancestors were as witty and insightful as we are. Which is the piece i actively remind myself of: when i read about feudal kingdoms or ancient nomadic tribes, i have to drill down to the individual, who, without databases, sattelite-navigation, and soap, is stilll quick on his feet and could probably haggle me into a corner. Who, even caked in three months of dirt and road-worn, could wear a scarf and bowler just like the best derbyshire gentlman.

Nukes 2.0

2006-10-09T22:01:00.000-05:00

If you haven't heard, North Korea allegedly conducted a nuclear weapon test last weekend. The media response to this has been somewhat ambiguous. The problem, as i understand it, is that the test was underground, rather than, say, a missile test as had been anticipated. Since it was underground, of course, no one saw it, nor did satellites image it. The evidence comes from seismic readings that showed activity of a magnitude of 3.6 (or 4.2, depending on whom you ask) on the Richter scale at the time that North Korea said they would be conducting the test.

There's various things that i find interesting (and lots that is scary) about this. Prior to the time North Korea said they would test, news reports were questioning whether it would be a missile test. After the test time, we clearly knew it wasn't a missile test (presumably no missiles were observed), yet no one would acknowledge that it was indeed a nuclear weapon test. Instead it was alleged. The evidence was circumstantial; it could have perhaps been a convenient earthquake. Perhaps N. Korea fabricated the whole thing by simply pounding on the earth's mantle lightly at the right moment.

What's most distressing to me, though, is that we don't know. I mean, the civilian population. I've heard that the US has stations hard-wired to the earth's mantle to detect just such a thing and i don't doubt it. The idea that the US military would still, more than a few hours after the event, not know whether it was true, is just ludicrous. We started the nuclear age, so we should damn well be able to tell when another party is in the game.

Let's be clear about what sort of test it was. The (alleged) test was a nuclear explosion, the run-away nuclear reaction which is distinct from controlled nuclear burn that occurs in a power reactor. What N. Korea clearly did not do was to put the device, the nuclear bomb, onto the front of a missile and send the thing airborne. That would have been a missile test. It would certainly have been observed and, probably more importantly, would be perceived as much more threatening (where would the missile have been fired, for example). No matter, N. Korea conducted non-nuclear missile tests several years ago. It got everyone's panties in a wad at the time.

I'm pretty much the least well-informed person on matters of politics, nations, or history. You could probably find more data in fifteen minutes of googling, as i should be doing at this moment. But, having spoken today with someone who didn't know this occurred, i feel i must pass it along to anyone who happens to wind up here.

What my ignorance of world affairs leaves me most troubled about in regards to this whole things is simply what it means. Already the price of oil apparently will rise as a result. I don't understand why. But what are the long-term consequences? Pakistan already burst the nuclear bubble (so to speak) in 1998 and, so far, little has come of it. But i think this moves us into a new era in nuclear weapons. We're not in a cold war with one other super power. Instead, the super-powers have signed a Non-Proliferation Treaty, but the other guys just flat out disregard the rules. This is Nukes 2.0: the user makes the rules.

Move and Copy

2006-09-24T20:53:00.000-05:00

In the analogue, tactile world, the primary mode of translation is moving. When i want to give you a book i liked, i mail it to you. you get the very same book that i had and i no longer have the object. Copies are always inexact, if very close. We have lots of name for this: duplication, replicas, forgery, fascimile.

In the digital realm, precisely the converse holds. When i send you a file, you receive a duplicate. I retain the original, but the copy is exact. To move a file on a computer, a copy is first made at the destination, then the original is deleted. There is fundamentally no way to move the original, except to do this. In fact, a deletion usually only de-references the data. The information remains, until that space is over-written; it is as though you take the label off the file-cabinet drawer, but leave the papers inside until you need to put something else in that drawer.

This is the sort of thing that at times seems mundane, merely the state of things. Yet at other times, it fascinates me that the two realms in which we function daily are so inherently dissimilar.

Intermediate Civics

2006-09-12T20:51:00.001-05:00

Here's the results of my research. It's not too encouraging. The motivation is to lower my monthly payments. The idea was based on the two word-of-mouth assumptions, that cars lose a big part of their value the moment they're driven off the lot, and that Honda's don't deprecate quickly after that. Don't pay too much attention to the exact values, they're taken from the NAPA book, rather than Kelly's Blue Book, because that's what the library has. Of note is that the trend is similar for all the models considered. The point is that the trend is linear over the first five or so years, rather than the sharp initial drop and soft flattening out the two assumptions would lead you to suspect. Something like figure 2.

The motivation was that i could sell sabado in, say, three years, recover roughly the cost of the loan on it, and buy a cheaper honda (a prelude, say, or a model without a navigation system), thus reducing my monthly payments. In the big book of caleb's budget, car payments are the second-largest monthly expense (rent is the undisputed winner). This is a class of analysis (if you have a name for it, please volunteer), based on the idea that, of several factors, two or three will be by far the largest contributors. So, in this case, my Netflix subscription is just shy of 1% of my monthly expenses, whereas my rent is a solid 31%. Lots of other things can be looked at in this manner (process time of elements of a piece of software, say, or cooking times of parts of thanksgiving dinner).

I guess i'll be driving sabado for the next five years, at least. Mind you, i love the car. But optimization is my speshee-alitee. This is the life of the engineer.

First readings and Doing it Over

2006-09-11T22:44:00.000-05:00

I like to do things again. Like when i play video games, i usually blunder about at the outset, running down every little alley and looking for hidden packages and good views. Then, after i've run it out, i start over and do it all efficient. Somewhere in there i go look up the FAQs people have written and go find the things i missed the first time.

So it is with books, sometimes. Usually, i feel like what's in the story i can pretty much get just reading it through the first time. At least, that's how standard narrative fiction works. Textbooks and poetry are precisely different: they i have to read paragraphs or even sentences over five, six times at the get-go. But narrative fiction mostly is pretty on the level.

When the narrative breaks down, or there isn't one to begin with, that's when it gets tricky. The prototypes are Joyce's Ulysses and Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, neither of which i've gotten anywhere with. But my more moderate and topical example is Riddley Walker. Here is a book that one can read simply as a good story (assuming you can forget that the language is non-standard). Then Do It Over with a literary comb. Why does his journey over the wall, through to his meeting with Goodparley-- a solid 75-odd pages-- all occur in one night? And obviously everything's built on top of Canterbury, England, so there's all sorts to get from that. But don't tell me anything because i haven't even half finished the book.

But the whole idea is true everywhere else, too. It's why we make and cook the same meals over: to get better at it and try different things out. It applies everywhere. But what's troubling is the idea of the first attempt. There's some things that you can only do once, so you have to do them right the first time. Like a mission to the moon, or missile defense. You can practice similar things a lot, and run simulations, but the real run has to be right the first time, and every unique time afterwards, too. If we miss the moon, we could be off by hundreds of miles and left to drift, lost in space. If we miss the missile, well, there goes DC.

It's those right-the-first-time requirements that i think about when i restart the game for the twentieth time in half an hour. It's two fundamentally different ways of being. Planning and engineering, or trial and error. Each has it's place, i suppose.

Latch, buckle, clasp

2006-09-10T10:39:00.000-05:00

Flourbook, my laptop, has been kicking around with me for over three years now. The first thing to go was the latch that holds it closed. When you push the screen down to the keyboard, this little hook is supposed to pop out of the screen part and latch into the lower part (i think it's magnetic). But one day, the durn thing just up and broke. I actually still have the latch, in a little glass jar somewhere, but it has long been divorced from the computer.

After that, it was the battery. I can now get about five minutes of time on a full charge, though i don't know whether it's full or what, because it doesn't communicate that correctly to the battery display either. They have an inherent finite life. Also, the feet, such as they were, came off at various times (i got furniture feet from Bed Bath and Beyond and superglued them to the bottom-- works great). Finally, the `/~-key, the one just to the left of the number 1 key, fell off (i have that in the jar too). But this post is about the latch.

For a year or two-- well, i don't know what i did. You can still tap the thing down and it will go to sleep, as it's supposed to. But it doesn't fully close, just sort of stays ajar. If you try to put it in your shoulder bag, to go to the coffee shop, invariably it gets tapped again and wakes up, just as you ready to go.

At some point, i got the idea to construct a strap to go around the laptop and click closed, using the sort of plastic buckle your hiker's backpack might use. The two feet or so of fabric strap and the buckle i got from Piece Gardens, run by Amy Moore, a friend of the family. It works well, you close the computer, wrap the strap underneath and over the computer, careful not to tap it awake again, close the buckle, then sinch the strap tight. Works well, but it's a bit bulky and elaborate.

Last week, i got around to the idea that i could use a clasp. Since i've already superglued feet to the computer, why not add some more personalizations? The clasp i had in mind was the sort you can find at a crafts store for to go on little jewelry boxes or whatever. This time, it was Hobby Lobby which supplied the hardware, for 99 cents. It's small and unobtrusive, and now the computer stays firmly closed until un-clasped. I just don't know why i didn't think of this years ago.

New Digs

2006-09-01T22:02:00.000-05:00

Me mum wanted to see pictures of my new apartment. I thought i'd save her inbox and let you see, too. I think i'll start with the fireplace. Yes, my new apartment has an honest-to-god fireplace. it has a gas supply, but i can use it regular, too. but that means i have to buy firewood (or travel out of the city to collect it). What you see in figure one is the eastern half of my living room. the front door is on the left, followed by the fireplace (the butterfly is a kite from my sister's family, which i think would fly in a strong wind), then the door to a closet, and finishing with a goofy but comfortable chair.

As we turn to the right, we scan over the back door, leading to the deck, overlooking the pond (with ducks AND geese, and a fountain which i can't see but hear). Turning further, we pass over my essentially vacant living room. I happen to like having my books spread out so. a bookshelf would just confine them and be either rickety or too rich for my blood.

I'll just briefly mention the kitchen, which is functional if unassuming. I need'nt go into detail for want of an over-long post. but it does feature a counter open to the dining area (by which is meant a bit of extra space which really just extends the living room). if i had bar stools, they would go there. i find the placement of the kitchen sink in the middle of that counter to be an afront, but no matter.

I took more pictures than needed. Do you really want to see a picture of the bathtub? In fact, I took photo-documentation of the cleanliness of the entire apartment before i unpacked. Dirt build gradually and i forget what 'clean' is upon move-out. I even have a picture of the inside of the oven. Turning away from the bar, you enter the short hallway, passing the closet containing the half-height, stackable washer and dryer (if even a feature deserved a photo....). I do more, smaller loads of laundry now and can separate colors if i'm feeling domestic.

From there you either turn right into the bathroom or left into the one bedroom. And here we reach the heart of the madder. Lacking a sofa or coffee table or what-not, the bedroom is home to basically my entire existence. This is mainly due to the fact that this bedroom is larger than that of my former abode. Where my last apartment had 1000 sq. ft. spread over two bedrooms, with a large living room, this apartment, while only 600 sq. ft. has only one bedroom and a modest living room. As a result, my own bedroom (the only one i used) is larger.

So what do we find? as you enter, the walk-in (but don't-go-very-far) closet is to the hard left. on that, the western edge of the room, you see my bed-cum-couch, now that i bought a frame for it. The frame came in a very thin, narrow box, tightly packed, and is held together by 18 screws and as many wooden dowels. it was a pleasure to assemble, using the six-step visual instructions. but that is another story (which i unfortunately did not photo-document). The quilt on the bed was made by my sister (a Madam Seamstress, for want of the phrase-- she is not a Master, but a master quilter). It has seen a few years. If you will turn to the right, ignoring the south-facing window (excellent afternoon light), your eyes will come to rest at my office(space). Here you can see the desk from which i pay my bills, the pack-horse laptop, flourbook, and a few other items. The turntable on the left, and the box of LPs in the corner, is my on-going project to convert vinyl to digital (mp3 or mp4). If you send me your records, i will add them to the box, but know that i have set no delivery date for the whole project. On the right, please note the to-go coffee cup. coffee fuels our activities ever and anon. At the extreme right, you will notice the abundant light which the window allows.

That, dear reader, is the sum of my new home. I quite like it. The final note is of the landscape: Front of the building is entry-level. From the parking just outside we enter by way of secure foyer (the buzz-box for such as the pizza man i saw when returning this evening). Entering by key into the middle of the building, there is an atrium open to the floor below and to the balcony of the one above. The entrance to number six is off to the left and at the back of this entry-level. But the land outside slopes down from the parking at the front to the pond at the back, such that all windows of my apartment are a floor about the ground. Thus, i have the best of both worlds: ground-level entrance and second-floor windows (which allow for more light and less burglars, you see). Yes, i like my new home, but for the little ants that smell a bit of oranges when squished.

"Please wait while I connect you with a representative."

2006-08-10T21:07:00.000-05:00

You know the voice-activated, automated phone systems that are becoming popular? The ones i have in mind tell you the options and ask you to say your choice, rather than press a number corresponding to the choice. When you eventually speak your way through them to get to a Customer Service Representative (my inevitable destination), they always ask you to wait while they connect you (ie, drop you out of the automatic system and into a queue on a human's line).

After having spoken to the menu for the past five minues (often having to repeat myself with more enunciation), when they ask me to wait at that point, I always say, "Thank you." I will considered such systems to have finally evolved when they begin to respond with a "You're welcome."

Ten years in ten minutes.

2006-08-07T19:08:00.000-05:00

A friend from high school boiled the interim down to a paragraph. i didn't manage such a feat, but my reply does ok for itself. incase you were wondering, too, i'll copy you on it.

last ten years? hm. well in my senior year at ncsa i applied solely to conservatories (against the advice of my flute teacher, mr. dunigan, who i gathered has retired since). and when i got to the auditions (at manhattan, at juliard you know, i of course was hit with the understanding that i was out of my league... way out. so the next year i applied to colleges, but of course didn't have a safety school then either and didn't get accepted anywhere. in the meantime i lived in jamaica plain, boston (just the name is reason enough, right?) and worked as a cook at a breakfast/coffee shop (Coffee Cantata, owned and run by a meticulous man who plays classical piano, no less).

well in the third year oberlin decided i wasn't a total slouch (got wait-listed at unc-somewhere). by that time i had decide to become a scientist and was trying to decide between physics and engineering. i went with the more applied field and probably saved my GPA in so doing. now, oberlin doesn't have an engineering school (it's not a university, after all), so i enrolled in the dual-degree program. after three years at the OC, i transferred to washington university in st. louis (the school with the ridiculously long name that you have to use in entirety or everyone thinks you mean washington state U). five years of undergrad and i got two degrees, one from each school. kind of neat, though i don't think it really matters that i have a second.

if you count the year i got off (for good behavior) somewhere in there, that brings it up to (3+5+1=) 9. with the spread between graduating last may and not actually landing a job until this april, that pretty much makes ten. i guess i have a way of taking long routes about.

side projects include living in camden, ME for a while, working as a cook at a camp one summer, and falling in love (and then breaking up) with capoeira angola. living crept in through the cracks. fun fact: i applied to jobs in Defense, got several nice offers, and then was denied security clearance. but who wants to build WMDs anyway, right?

Civics 101

2006-08-06T12:25:00.001-05:00

Here's a bit of autoporn for the interested. It's a car I consider both sensible and sexy: it's one of the top ten cars of 2006 in fuel efficiency (though, in that line-up it is near the bottom), and it looks good. The dash is split, with the speedometer further forward and closer to the field of view than the less-immediate displays (tachometer, odometer). When i got to the dealer, they didn't have the color i had planned on (dark blue), so what i got was a combination of what they had and what i wanted (it wasn't a compromise because i'm quite happy with what i drove away with). In fact, i went with the intention of spending a certain amount on an Accord. The dealer talked me into the civic and as a result, i got a more fuel-efficient car with more features than the Accord for the same price i planned for.

Features this car has include the sun/moonroof-- what defines a moonroof? i thought it was window glass in the roof that doesn't open, but my coworkers think it is glass that opens part-way, to vent air, but doesn't fully retract-- alloy wheels (which i didn't understand until a few days after i got the car. this means there is no hub-cap, what you see is the wheel. now that i know about them, i see them a lot), and a in-dash navigation system. The nav system is very cool, but i will qualify that. It's cool because it's kept me from getting lost several times and because when i'm driving around and see a body of water, a park, or a road diverging and wonder where it leads, i can use the nav system to name the features or show me a map of what's over the hill.

The qualification is the source of the map information. There is a navigation DVD which holds the data. The DVD that my car came with is already a year or two out of date. Update DVDs can be purchased from Honda for about $200. What foolishness. There is a property in my hometown neighborhood that used to be a psychiatric hospital but has been renovated and made into upscale apartments. The nav-system still reports that it is Appalachian Hall Hospital, even though it hasn't borne that name for several years.

The real problem, though, is the DVD, which by nature will become outdated. The car has some way to communicate with the GPS network to get position and elevation data. The navigation information should be downloaded on the fly, like mapquest or google maps, so that it is always current. And while it would require a larger effort, highways and city streets should be color-coded to reflect congestion in real time. Then i could see that I-435 is at a stand-still all the way to Quivira and take an alternate route.

But I like my car all the same. It's pretty responsive (when the AC isn't on) and the handling is good. The stereo system is solid and has an auxiliary eighth-inch stereo input, so i can plug in my mp3 player or whatever else. I like the color, which i choose to call graphite. And now you've met Sabado.

Music in the Information Age

2006-08-04T19:57:00.000-05:00

I read an article a while ago about LaLa and quickly became a member. At the time, you had to be invited in order to get a membership, but they let you put in your email address in hopes that they would invite you later. It took a few days for my invitation to come. Now they seem to have done away with the invitations entirely and you can simply sign up from the main page. Which is too bad, because i had earned about 50 invitations and wanted to give them out. When i only had five invitations, i spent a lot of time thinking about whom to send them to.

It's a fabulous system, doing for music something like what Netflix does for DVD movies. It's predicated on the fact that CDs, sent in simple clamshells, are very cheap to mail. Like Netflix, which wouldn't be cost-feasible for VHS tapes but works well for DVDs in paper sleeves, LaLa is relatively cheap (possibly the cheapest way to get new music). There's probably other factors, like the survivability of DVDs over audio tapes and being able to skip around on CDs.

But LaLa and Netflix are not the same business model. Where Netflix sends you their DVDs (i've received DVDs printed with the Netflix logo, indicating that they've gained some rights to reproduce the DVDs themselves) and you return them to Netflix when you're done, LaLa provides a coordination service between owners of music. I list the CDs i want and the CDs i have. LaLa matches my Have (Want) collection with everyone else's Want (Have) collection and tells me when a CD of mine is requested. When I choose to send it (i can choose to keep any CD on my have list), in clamshells and mailing envelopes LaLa provides, LaLa provides me the address of the member who has requested it. As i build a credit of sent CDs, the CDs on my Have list come to me from other members. The CDs never go to a LaLa facility, as with Netflix. And you own the CDs you receive through trade.

There's a lot of strategy to this trading. My collection of Hip Hop CDs moves pretty quickly, but some of the more obscure albums (Jimmy Cliff or An Anthology of Big Band Swing) have never been requested. The Music in Twelve Parts (on three CDs) of Philip Glass did go out. There's a fine balance: some CDs are too obscure to ever be requested, while others (Eminem's The Eminem Show) are so popular that they are sent by another member between the time I look to see what is requested and click to actually send it. This has happened on several occasions. It leads me to wonder whether I'll ever be able to move the very popular CDs (which I often don't want anymore) and whether I'm amassing an un-tradable collection by requesting only obscure CDs (Marc Ribot Y Los Cubanos Postizos).

It's a very cool way to listen to a lot of new music. Anecdotally, the little thumbnails of album covers next to each item and the complete track list are very nice features. LaLa does charge for mailing, about $1.50 per trade which supposedly covers mailing cost and operating expenses. At first, I traded about ten CDs a month (both directions), as my have list was at about 50 and Want list about 30. Now it's slowed down because my Want list has shrunk. I'm holding out for several more obscure albums (live jazz recordings from the 60s and Gling-Glo). My Want list is current at 16, some of which have been there since I opened my account.

I recommend it to anyone with a lot of CDs that they aren't too attached to. Caveats are that you should have at least a few dozen CDs (which you're willing to trade) and they should be in good condition (no big visible scratches, no holes in the label through which light may shine). Without many CDs you won't get a lot of activity. With damaged CDs, the receiving member will mark it as received damaged and you'll lose the CD without getting trade credit for it.

Strategy which has occurred to me in writing this: BMG is the time-honored way to build a large CD collection. But BMG doesn't have most of what i want (Gling-Glo or Bob Willoughby). But i could order any number of popular CDs through BMG, with the intention of trading them through LaLa for CDs that i actually want....

I'm not going to touch the legality of CD trading. You can probably work it out yourself.

The success of Netflix and LaLa has impressed me. My plan is to start Bookflix (or Netbooks, or Netboox).

Weigh-in

2006-08-03T20:50:00.001-05:00

I have a running joke with myself, concerning my weight. i'm 5'7" and 165 pounds. this gives me a BMI of about 25.8. On a good day, i might be 160 lbs, which would be BMI= 25.05. Now, the CDC defines 'healthy' weight as a BMI of 18 to 25. So i'm just over the line into being 'overweight'.

The joke is, i like to think of myself as being on the Front Lines in the War against Obesity. After a while, though, it occurred to me there's all sorts of elaboration on this. Obviously, someone with a BMI of, say, 20, is Behind the front lines. But all the tubby people you see walking around are In Enemy Territory. Someone who is morbidly obese i consider to be a P.O.W. that just kills me.

I'm not sure where that leaves someone with a BMI of 18, or an anorexic. i haven't gone that far with the analogy, since fat people are mostly what i see. and really skinny people to me are just Painfully Thin. any ideas?