bento box

living with no past

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 00:37:01 -0600

I’ve been thinking a bit about all the accreted crap we all end up carting about as constant reminders that we did indeed have a life before this particular instant.

This came up as I did a vanity search recently for my name. We all do it, to see how far we have to scroll before we go hey! that’s me!. Most people want that distance to be small, I kinda want it to be large. Back when I blogged a lot and really was all over the new social media crap the first several results tended to be mine. Then I realized that it wasn’t stuff I wanted everyone to read. So I started taking my name off stuff, then I started just deleting stuff. I kept backups though.

Several computers later I realize the ephemeral nature of hard drives. Several moves later I recognize the ease in losing CDs of inscrutably labeled backups.

I really went digital when I tossed aside paper journaling for blogging back in the 00s, and putting photos online etc. etc. So having my computers explode and disappear has left me with virtually no record of the past decade.

As I move and clean I’ve slowly lost or thrown away much of the other stuff:

certificates of Youth Leadership, and my presence on the honor role (I had kept the one where I got honors in gym for a long time, but now that I look for it I find that it is gone) Certificates indicating my presence at computer camp — several years in a row.
my high school diploma. I can’t imagine throwing this out, but somehow it disappeared.
The scrapbook with pictures of me skydiving, bungee jumping, in my scuba gear, all that “look at me I’m adventurous” crap. No idea where that ended up.
I had a photo album with pictures of vacations from when I was a kid, with my first point-and-shoot camera. Hawaii, Jasper, probably other places. I remember taking the photos out and putting them in a box when the album got too beat up for words. I threw out the album and the photos disappeared.
All my old journals. I think I burned a few of the hilariously embarrassing teen-age angst ones. The one that I really liked, that was a scrap-book of all the places I went and things I did, just disappeared at some point.
All the old books of my formative years — the ones you grow up reading, handed down from friends and family. I kept these for so long, then — in a fit of minimalism — sent them off to the used book store to make space on my bookshelf for boring textbooks I’ll never read (but can’t part with because they were so bloody expensive)

So, to sum up: I have only the one frame of family photos my parents gave me last year, upon discovering that I have no pictures of my family. I have no papers, photos, etc. documenting my past besides a pile of tax returns and my university diploma — which I nearly threw out by accident once. Even my citizenship card is new.

If this was a spy novel I would obviously be living under a false identity.

If I ever become someone worth writing a biography for future biographers are going to scream and tear their hair out.

When my iBook died I lost all the pictures I had of old friends and exes. If I ever go senile I’ll have nothing to fall back on.

Then again I don’t have any documents detailing what I wanted to be when I grew up — and the memories of that are fading — so I won’t be spending any nights reading old journals and feeling like a failure. As I age I won’t look back at old photos and regret the things left unsaid, or the friendships lost to time, since I will have forgotten and there are no photos to remind me.

I can continue barging forward in life, blissfully unaware of my past.

Some graffiti I saw in the river valley

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 00:04:35 -0600

Some graffiti I saw in the river valley

my ever mercurial views on social networking

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 21:27:00 -0600

Ok, ok, ok. So I abandoned the FB, and then decided that it would be gauche to be completely socially isolated — on the internets at least. So then I went and plugged LinkedIn back in and re-added people (for what, the third time?).

One reason why I did this was the “networking!” argument getting lobbed at me from the career councilor folks at school. Apparently its teh thing now to look at people’s professional, networking, blah blah through the internet machine. Not only do potential employers now judge me on the content of my resume, they judge me on my “connections” to people, and stuff.

I’ve always kinda looked askance at the crazy that people who work in HR spew w.r.t resumés and whatever. It’s a heady mix of arbitrary rules and blatantly selling yourself like a cheap crack whore. I think of LinkedIn as rentboys.com for the rest of the business world.

Eventually, when I’m done school, some kindly gentleman will look me up on LinkedIn and hire me to “carry his luggage”.

(also: if you are on LinkedIn and you are foaming at the mouth for another connection, you can add me. As we’ve already established I’m a whore for social validation)

Great Lake Swimmers - River’s Edge (by Nir Ben Jacob)

Sun, 04 Jul 2010 22:01:25 -0600

Great Lake Swimmers - River’s Edge (by Nir Ben Jacob)

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Sat, 03 Jul 2010 17:27:39 -0600

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

The 24 Types of Libertarian — The Adventures of Accordion Guy in...

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 11:29:08 -0600

The 24 Types of Libertarian — The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

why I quit facebook -- again

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 17:20:18 -0600

so the ol’ fb and I have had a rocky relationship in the past. I have gone from over-share to complete hermitude, suspended my account and re-activated it. I finally got around to deleting it after I don’t-even-know how many years.

By delete of course I mean I registered it for deletion and just have to not use it for 10 more days before it is gone.

So why exactly have I committed social seppuku?

After the honeymoon was over I largely stuck around on fb out of a sense of social obligation: all my friends were there, used it, tagged things. After a while I cleaved it out of my life mostly, I just hung on for the events — if I wanted to be aware of things happening I needed to be in the fb-loop.

Finally I decided that all my real friends know my personal email address, they know my phone number. My real friends know my pseudonymous accounts on things we use together. At the end of the day I don’t need facebook to connect to my friends, facebook was just an artifice for projecting some highly cultivated image towards people I didn’t really know. While that probably serves a niche for some people, it was more effort than it was worth for me.

I think, also, facebook makes it easy to appear like you care about people without having to be mindful of them: It reminds you of people you haven’t talked to in a while. It presents you with constant updates (phatic communions I believe we’ve all agreed) for you to “like” or tack on some banal commentary. You can (and everyone does) invite everyone you know to every event. It makes it easy to make your friends feel included in your life without having to actually care about them or think about them.

Maybe by ditching the social network intermediary I will actually be more mindful of people I care about, and they will be of me. I will invite people to things because I actually think they might want to go, not because they are presented to me on a conveniently clickable list. Maybe I will make more of an effort to be a good friend without facebook to hold my hand, I will tell people what they mean to me instead of clicking a thumbs up, listening to what they really have to say instead of skimming their updates. Maybe.

(also I use twitter, and I like twitter more… ha!)

Wondermark » Archive » #634; Accomplishment measured...

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 10:46:08 -0600

Wondermark » Archive » #634; Accomplishment measured in Decibels

"In order for it to promote the values and skills Nussbaum describes, education must be considered as..."

Sat, 26 Jun 2010 18:36:14 -0600

“In order for it to promote the values and skills Nussbaum describes, education must be considered as a good thing in itself. And for this to be the case, the areas of understanding it takes for its subjects must also be considered as good in themselves. Without this, the whole edifice crumbles. And yet, in the arts at least, it is precisely this notion of the intrinsically good that has been auctioned off by academics, goaded by paymasters envious of the accountability and pseudo-objectivity of the social sciences. As Lodge saw so clearly in the 1970s, the criticism of art and literature - whether in academia or in the equally fraught arena of newspapers and magazines - should never be considered a mere explaining away of phenomena, a decoding of beguilingly gilded puzzles. Rather, it is a matter of helping to see for oneself, through the construction of narratives, perspectives and approaches that do not leave the artwork untouched, but instead touch it all the more deeply, drawing it into meaningful engagement with the wider culture. To ignore this is to embrace the infantile commodity fetishism overrunning us.”

- New Statesman - Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities

Something Left, Something Taken (by Tiny Inventions)

Sat, 19 Jun 2010 18:54:06 -0600

Something Left, Something Taken (by Tiny Inventions)

stuff no one told me: 15

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 07:50:13 -0600

stuff no one told me: 15

I really have no idea what I'm talking about.

Mon, 31 May 2010 15:43:00 -0600

Not long ago I ended up in a discussion on the biological origin of teh gays, in which I was expected to express a belief. Or to put it less stiffly, everyone seemed to hold a strong opinion while simultaneously knowing nearly nothing about, you know, biology. Me, I have no idea. I’ve heard a lot of arguments here and there, I hazily recall reading an issue of SEED magazine mostly on gay animals, but at the end of the day I know enough biology to know that I am utterly ignorant about biology.

What I mostly took away from the discussion was an interest in our collective interest in the question WHY? Not so much why we ask why, but why we seem to need to know why. Why it is so pressing to have an answer to why. Of course I don’t know why, I’m just musing about it.

§ I suppose one could say religion, science, and all that are expressions of our need to have an answer, even if it isn’t a very good answer.

§ More mundanely when people voice their opinions, they frequently need a reason why other people do not hold the same opinion. This reason is generally because that person is stupid or evil. It is simply unfathomable that someone could hold a different opinion for reasons you don’t know. Maybe they know something you don’t, or you know something they don’t, or maybe you are the stupid/evil person.

§ The need to answer the question w.r.t identity seems to be more pressing, especially for those who are different in some meaningful way (what is a meaningful way? I don’t know.). It suddenly becomes relevant to know where homosexuality came from when you are one, or to know why you are fat if you are fat, or where your fatal disease comes from if you have it. Maybe you are a nerd because you (think you have) Aspergers, or because everyone else is dumber than you. Whatever the case people need a reason.

I suppose lumping medical conditions into this category is unfair, as one might say a medical condition is some outside agent that takes an otherwise “normal” person and afflicts them with some abnormality. But then where does one draw the line? Are gays gay because of a gay gene, or just because that’s how they choose to be? If it’s the former then they are innocent victims afflicted by something they cannot control, if it’s the latter then it is a personal choice open to public scrutiy. Maybe the distinction is utterly irrelevant.

§ Working my way back to the original question, in a way, the answer is more about how society should frame its response than about any actual need to find an answer. I suppose the idea of a genetic origin to homosexuality is seen as being important to hold back those who would “de-gay” the gays, which is itself a hold-over from the time when the biological origin of homosexuality was some mental disorder (taking the hard-core materialist stance that psychological disorders are fundamentally problems of squishy brain bits). This latter response, I suppose, is better than imprisonment or execution — assuming homosexuality is a personal choice, which is itself a sin for poorly explained reasons.

Then again we (supposedly) live in an enlightened society in which personal choices are respected. So if we were to go full-circle: if homosexuality was a choice, should it not be respected in the same way that (say) religion or personal philosophy is respected? (i.e. religion is a choice, and it is vigorously defended)

Or to take a less clear-cut example: are my love-handles a reflection of a personal choice to not work-out enough, eat the right food, etc., or do I secretly have the love-handles gene, passed on from my rotund ancestors past? Should I blame my parents for this, or just shrug and say to myself “my actions have consequences, and if it comes down to chocolate cake or washboard abs, I chose cake”? For that matter why is it acceptable for society to judge my love of cake harshly, but not my possesion of genes that give me a fat belley (for example)?

§ Lastly, were people always so bent on such answers? Is our inability to live with ignorance a by-product of our modern age of abundant information? Maybe we have answers to so many questions that we have no patience for unanswered ones.

Maybe we want an answer to why because we have always been given one. Or maybe we judge people’s intelligence by their ability to answer why, and thus we all need to have an answer, just to prove to ourselves that we too are intelligent.

§ Feel free to ask why I wrote this post, though I may not give you a good answer.

Alain de Botton - On Pessimism (by The School of Life)

Tue, 18 May 2010 07:22:40 -0600

Alain de Botton - On Pessimism (by The School of Life)

Why Is Coffee Addictive?

Sat, 08 May 2010 22:00:15 -0600

fakescience:

People of class drink alcohol | Gene Expression | Discover...

Sat, 08 May 2010 20:45:06 -0600

People of class drink alcohol | Gene Expression | Discover Magazine

I just like this bar graph

Knife-Wielding Robot Performs Stabbing Tests

Sat, 08 May 2010 13:02:43 -0600

Knife-Wielding Robot Performs Stabbing Tests:

Researchers create a system to prevent robots from accidentally stabbing people.

This is how it starts people. First we teach the robots how to stab…

documerica: This Area Is Known as Gay Hill near Stockbridge,...

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 20:05:09 -0600

documerica:

This Area Is Known as Gay Hill near Stockbridge, Vermont. The Farm Was Originally Built in the 1800’s by Ephraim Twitchell, the Famous Vermont Bridge Builder, 1974

Photographer: Jane Cooper

flash, iPhones, the "bad old days" and other curmedgery

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 16:09:28 -0600

So I really don’t know anything about developing on the iPhone, or about programming in flash, but I am an opinionated nerd so:

¶ I don’t have an iPhone as I am cheap, and still on a contract (swapping phones -> cancelling contract -> $$$). What I do have is an old nokia. One of those first generation “smart phones”. There are a bunch of games and things on it that nokia provided, and a bunch of “apps” that came from 3rd party developers. The 3rd party apps are all in java and I haven’t used any since I got the phone (~3yrs ago), neither have I gone out and bought apps (which I could have at one point) to extend the functionality of my phone. Why? Java on my phone is soo sloooow. This is not because the hardware of my phone could not accomplish whatever task the app is supposed to provide (being a notepad, or world clock or whatever), it is because the hardware isn’t really up to running the jvm and the app. By the time a java app has loaded entire universes have been born and faded through entropic decay, whereas the built in apps load in a snap.

¶ Anyone remember how frothing at the mouth nuts people were back in the day for java and how it was supposed to revolutionize the web by making it interactive, blah blah? I remember bothering to make applets, and then bothering to take them off my site, since computers back then were fucking slow and applets took forever to load and ½ the time it was easier and faster to just use forms, javascript, and good old http GET/POST to do the work (and ‘lo along came AJAX and some other alphabet soup acronyms which is basically the crusty old days codified and better). Turns out open, in-browser, webby stuff is faster and easier to maintain and (shock) way more portable than flash will ever be (since all you need is a browser)

¶ A good sounding argument for keeping flash off the iPhone and other small devices might be: Small, portable, electronic devices of today are like those ancient desktops of >10yrs ago hardware wise, flash is like java. Apple should be foaming at the mouth at the idea of developers turning their shine iPhone into my wizened nokia.

I think people forget how fast our big-boy computers are. My laptop is a freaking supercomputer compared to my first pentium (the first thing I dragged onto the interwebs, it ran windows 95). We don’t notice the layers of abstraction between us in userland and the hardware because system resources now-a-days are downright excessive. (I notice since I cut my teeth on ancient computers and I still find myself staring at the system monitor screaming “why is this application using 1Gb of ram! In my day we didn’t even have 1Gb hard-drives!” It’s actually depressing how slow my computer is at doing basic tasks given the hardware and what I could accomplish on my old 1GHz AMD Athlon w/ 256Mb ram after I put gentoo on it, but that’s a whole ‘nother rant)

technological cynicism

Sat, 03 Apr 2010 20:12:55 -0600

Sitting back and watching the hysteria around the new iPad, I find I really don’t care that deeply. Here is a run down of my own feelings:

¶ It is a tablet, woo-hoo. This is neither new nor revolutionary in and of itself. Maybe Apple has some secret sauce that will make it unicorn jism, but I’m dubious. It is just a new shiny thing.

¶ Pinning the hopes of dead-tree media to it seems hilariously naïve in ways that have been explained in many ways over and over and over again.

¶ Maybe having a big attention grabbing tablet will finally get people thinking about fingers as an input device in general. I can’t really use the multi-touch on my current pc since:

(a) most programs don’t support multi-touch or gestures

(b) many controls and gui elements are too small for my chubby fingers to get working

In more general ways I’m finding that I’m getting more and more cynical of “AMAZING NEW TECHNOLOGY!1!!!one!” Not that new tech things don’t get adopted, aren’t cool, or whatever, just that I no longer see how these things fit into my life as anything but blinking-beeping nuisances (see: my lack of a smart phone)

Now get off my lawn!

So YOU WANT TO HAVE A Love Affair (Oct, 1965)

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:40:24 -0600

So YOU WANT TO HAVE A Love Affair (Oct, 1965)