March 2007
The Japanese Tradition — Sushi
The Japanese Tradition — Sushi:
Green Tea and Chopsticks are also things of beauty. (Japanese not required.)
Cash & Redemption
Cash & Redemption.
24. Las Vegas, NV 2003, Brian Ulrich: Notifbutwhen
(Click photo for large/original version.)
Man, I keep running across these things!
Man, I keep running across these things! Maybe the world is trying to tell me something?
To almost everyone except criminals, it seems an axiom that if you need money, you should get a job. Actually this tradition is not much more than a hundred years old. Before that, the default way to make a living was by farming. It’s a bad plan to treat something only a hundred years old as an axiom. By historical standards, that’s something that’s changing pretty rapidly.
We may be seeing another such change right now. I’ve read a lot of economic history, and I understand the startup world pretty well, and it now seems to me fairly likely that we’re seeing the beginning of a change like the one from farming to manufacturing.
And you know what? If you’d been around when that change began (around 1000 in Europe) it would have seemed to nearly everyone that running off to the city to make your fortune was a crazy thing to do.
— Paul Graham, Why to Not Not Start a Startup
More Thoreau
More Thoreau:
Those things which now most engage the attention of men, as politics and the daily routine, are, it is true, vital functions of human society, but should be unconsciously performed, like the corresponding functions of the physical body.
Thoreau on earning a living
Thoreau on earning a living:
Perhaps I am more than usually jealous with respect to my freedom. I feel that my connection with and obligation to society are still very slight and transient. Those slight labors which afford me a livelihood, and by which it is allowed that I am to some extent serviceable to my contemporaries, are as yet commonly a pleasure to me, and I am not often reminded that they are a necessity. So far I am successful. But I foresee that if my wants should be much increased, the labor required to supply them would become a drudgery. If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure that for me there would be nothing left worth living for. I trust that I shall never thus sell my birthright for a mess of pottage. I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.
— Henry David Thoreau in Life Without Principle
(via era)
Question
Question: Could the sciences and the arts—even writing itself—have appeared, and survive, without technology and ‘progress?’
Could disconnected hunter-gatherer tribes ever have formed common language, or common writings?
Would it be possible for a series of loosely connected, individually governed hunter-gatherer tribes to build and maintain any kind of shared technological infrastructure?
I am losing faith in progress
I am losing faith in progress. This was sparked, I think, by the realisation that my day-job is writing software for companies who work for other companies who try to sell people things they probably don’t need. That’s a mighty precarious place to be, right at the top of the house of cards.
I mean, most of the trappings of my day-to-day life have the purpose of either (a) helping me forget how boring my life is or (b) helping me fit in with what society expects me to do. A car? Occasionally useful, but I use it about twice a week, and don’t really travel distances walking couldn’t get me (apart from Timaru.) Nintendo Wii? If my life was more interesting/exciting/closer to the survival line, I doubt I’d have much desire for video games. TV? Ditto. Work? Surely, given the right environment, a few hours a day would allow me to collect enough food to survive on, after which time I could do whatever the hell I felt like. Even half of the books I read are just ‘simulations’ of less civilised and less comfortable lives.
I think I might be an Anarcho-primitivist, or maybe a (neo-) Luddite.
What benefits does progress actually have? Is there any purpose beyond short-term competitive advantage?
Today's Wikipedia reading
Today’s Wikipedia reading: Non-zero-sum systems—this is from the section “Complexity and non-zero-sum”:
The more complex societies get and the more complex the networks of interdependence within and beyond community and national borders get, the more people are forced in their own interests to find non-zero-sum solutions. That is, win-win solutions instead of win-lose solutions… Because we find as our interdependence increases that, on the whole, we do better when other people do better as well—so we have to find ways that we can all win, we have to accommodate each other.
— Bill Clinton, Wired interview, December 2000.
Related are abundance economics and post-scarcity, both of which I believe are no longer solely the realm of sci-fi.
On a different note, I like the map/territory relation:
In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guild drew a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, coinciding point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography saw the vast Map to be Useless and permitted it to decay and fray under the Sun and winters.
In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of the Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; and in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.
My Lives
My Lives: a short piece about, well… reincarnation, maybe?
My Lives
Once, I was a foot-soldier in the armies of Persia. I recall a charge across a vast plain, my comrades in a mass stretching away to either side, while our[…]
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#78
I would like to be able to look back on my life and say ‘I was alive when the world decided that war was no longer necessary.’ Depending on how the whole Islamist extremism things pans out (and who the US elects as their next president), it could even happen.
Science follows satire
The original video remix
Giant Enemy Crab is the new Golf-Cart Ass Face
Giant Enemy Crab is the new Golf-Cart Ass Face.
I am quite privileged
I am quite privileged. I have male privilege—I can act like a jerk and people will describe me as ‘manly’ and ‘assertive’ (humour me) rather than ‘bitchy,’ ‘catty,’ or ‘pushy.’ I have white privilege—I have pretty significant (and highly unfair) advantages in the justice system, educational and employment opportunities, and general societal stereotyping. I have english-speaking privilege—sure, I can learn to speak other languages, but I always have the safety net of being able to assume almost anyone I speak with speaks english, if I get stuck.
Partly as a result of the former privleges, I have wealth privilege—I’m in the 10% of the world (roughly, I think) who have clothing, shelter and know where their next meal is coming from. I’m in the 3% (I’d estimate) who can afford iPods, laptop computers, and cars.
I think I owe the world a fairly hefty debt.
Noise is bad, m'kay?
Noise is bad, m’kay? Email, IM, phone calls, people stopping by for a chat, Wikipedia, IMDB, the rest of the internet.
I am finding a mild liberation in leaving my IM offline evenings and weekends. It’d probably be more liberating if I could leave my computer altogether, but hey, I’m a child of the digital age.
“You don't get much chance to talk back”
“You don’t get much chance to talk back”:
In the Jesus scene, you don’t get much chance to talk back. People are preaching at you, you’re going to seminars, you’re going to conferences, you’re going to church, and someone’s always preaching at you. The only time you get to really digest stuff is if you’re in a home group, which—I think—is more church than church.
— Drew Marshall appearing on 100 Huntley Street (quote from Part 2)
