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A thing on if people can change.



I've definitely shown some inability to change, and its come to hurt me and some people I love. Though I guess with this video, I do want to point out that it's kind of taken for granted that the change can't be in what the person asking the other to change wants slash needs? It's taken for granted that the request for change is probably the right thing for both parties.

Like the video is right in pointing out people are who they are and do what they do for a complex bundle of reasons - so of course change is difficult because the request to change might be just one force factor among a myriad. (I mean sometimes the need to switch course is blatantly obvious, but other times it feels closer to making one self better for someone else.)

Some of forces that resist change are negative (though the video seem to imply that they're trauma informed, which isn't universally the case. Well, except for the fact that all life is full of the trauma of not being as good as we could imagine) but some are positive as well.

Sigh. I don't mean this to sound quite as defensive as it probably is.

I know one sticking point for me is not being proactively interested enough in others. Over the decades this has manifested from me seeming merely self-absorbed to a more relationship damning "just not that into you" - but for me, it's more like seeming rude to pry. Like to me it seems much safer and wiser to let people curate what they want to bring into the shared space, based on them judging their own needs to share, or what the other person would find interesting.

But not everyone has that knack for proactively sharing stuff. Maybe sometimes they don't think they're interesting enough? And especially they don't want to seem like a burden.

Ah well. Something to work on for me I guess, overcoming my midwestern urge not to pry, or my toxic masculinity-adjacent instinct to grapple with my own problems on my own, or my only-child willingness to share stuff that I hope other people will also find interesting (and assuming that more people join me in the last two categories)

But damn it's rough. Seems so easy to pry, or come across as too desperate and anxious to ask "what's wrong" when sometimes nothing is.

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Eddie Murphy imitates James Brown in front of James Brown.

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I was the other week years old when I noticed that Glass Joe - the typical first opponent in a "Punch-Out!" game - has a name that's probably a pun on "Glass Jaw".

(I have a theory that I have a "Glass Jaw" when I play Dr. Mario with my mom and aunt - I usually have an edge because my style is fast and opportunistic, but maybe not quite as defensive/responsive.)

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Tropical Storm Ophelia likely to bring heavy rain to Massachusetts...

Ophelia!
You're breakin' my heart
You're makin' this dane
Melancholy--
Oh Ophelia!
It's makin' me sick
like poor old Yorrick
who I knew, who I knew

Makin' love
in the afternoon
it's my uncle
in my mom's bedroom
and Ophelia
has come undone
handing out flowers
to most everyone

Ophelia!
It's changin' my tune
All the slings + arrows
of outrageous fortune
Ophelia
I'm worried a lot
about whether to be...
...or be not

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This photo of my bandmate Cathleen and her trombone via Cambridge Day
(Photo: Kate Wheatley)

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Never past your prime! 13 peaks we reach at 40 or later – from sex to running to self-esteem

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cool video on what's inside the clocktower of Big Ben What a delightful surprise on Tumblr, I was in the NES game Rollerblade Racer. must've been during my brief time wearing contacts.

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The more something is shared, the greater its value becomes.

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Lewis Hyde wonderfully illustrates this dissonance in his exploration of the "Indian giver." This expression, used negatively today as a pejorative for someone who gives something and then wants to have it back, actually derives from a fascinating cross-cultural misinterpretation between an indigenous culture operating in a gift economy and a colonial culture predicated on the concept of private property. When gifts were given to the settlers by the Native inhabitants, the recipients understood that they were valuable and were intended to be retained. Giving them away would have been an affront. But the indigenous people understood the value of the gift to be based in reciprocity and would be affronted if the gifts did not circulate back to them. Many of our ancient teachings counsel that whatever we have been given is supposed to be given away again. [...] In Western thinking, private land is understood to be a "bundle of rights," whereas in a gift economy property has a "bundle of responsibilities" attached.

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English is a nounbased language, somehow appropriate to a culture so obsessed with things.

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Ceremony focuses attention so that attention becomes intention. If you stand together and profess a thing before your community, it holds you accountable.

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Time as objective reality has never made much sense to me. It's what happens that matters. How can minutes and years, devices of our own creation, mean the same thing to gnats and to cedars? Two hundred years is young for the trees whose tops this morning are hung with mist. It's an eyeblink of time for the river and nothing at all for the rocks. The rocks and the river and these very same trees are likely to be here in another two hundred years, if we take good care.

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But it is not enough to weep for our lost landscapes; we have to put our hands in the earth to make ourselves whole again. Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy.

Besides, a sense at last of having some things in common with the other humans, the other wobbling bipeds--this, too, is one of the gifts of middle age. Good experience, bad experience, doesn't matter. Experience is what you share, the raw weight of it. The lines around the eyes. The bruising of the soul. The banging up against your own boundaries, your own limits.

via Cracked... yikes, what?
At work we had a reading group on Angela Duckworth's "Grit" - here's a thoughtful response to Duckworth's book -- Is Grit Overrated?

Betteridge's Law of Headlines ("Any headline that ends with a question mark can be answered by the word no.") not withstanding, I think it's a thoughtful article, pointing out that that kind of single minded perseverance might make pivots that much tougher - being able to change direction and developing a knack for finding the most promising, highest-reward-to-work ratios is important in a quickly changing environment.

The article also touches on something that came to me as I was reading the book, about the way we are biased towards respecting people who look like they're displaying natural aptitude vs "strivers" - it's not quite as mean or as irrational as it looks. There's a temporal element that gets left out when you assume people who don't prefer "strivers" are missing the point; these judgers intuitively know the hard work has already been done, the relevant selection process already applied, and now we are looking at the result.

I know some people like the message of "Grit" because of optimism - no matter how frustrated you are with your current achievements, all you have to do to achieve is just keep at it. And keeping at it is SO important - and people with "fixed mindset" might not understand that deeply enough. But being wise in choosing what you are "keeping at it "on is crucial as well - there's an almost Taoist principle of finding the natural course of things.

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Not that I'm very far along the spectrum, but I wonder if there could be a connection between the classic autistic difficulty with seeing other points of view and my homegrown intuitions that individual subjective views and preferences don't matter; that only the objective view really has meaning. The classic subject with autism has trouble recognizing that their view isn't the de facto objectively correct one - my variant knows that my view isn't complete, but that there is a objectively most correct one to be had, and confidence comes from consensus - or else you have to explain why your own view is more likely correct.

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My two current main problems with Marie Kondo and her famous method - and decluttering in general -
1. I kind of respect the Shintoism light aspect of it all, but throwing something in the garbage feels so disrespectful - yeah "thank it for its service", but then, into the trash? (And that whole justification of like "is this article really happy in some duty old drawer? Let it go!" Well - assuming it's not good donation fodder- I'm not sure if it's going to be happier in some dump.) And for something that truly carries personal energy, like an old photo... yikes!
2. So much clutter represents artifacts from my aspirational self, what I'd like to do or be given enough time and energy, and throwing that stuff away feels like murder of that future self. Or at least more firmly closing doors of potential that are hanging partially open.

Relevant quote:

For every yes there must be a no. Decisions are so expensive. They cost you everything else.

by carrie c

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I use HyperDock on Mac, my favorite feature is using option-cmd-arrow to toss around windows, make them either full-screen or half-screen, an easy way to neaten up the workspace plus I realize it feels a bit like a keyboard based version of all those hand-wavey gestures Tom Cruise uses in Minority Report or Tony Stark in Iron Man movies.

(That said I don't think I'd like actual hand wavey gestures all that much. It's easy enough to make mistakes and get startling behavior just with plain old touchpad gestures.)

The second redeeming feature (alongside Samantha Mathis' amazing purple-fading-into-white dress) of the widely reviled movie "Super Mario Bros." was that it had a good soundtrack, with Roxette, Divinyls, George Clinton - even US3's "Cantaloop". (Actually think there was a law in those times that every movie had to have that song - "Renaissance Man", "Sisters", "It Takes Two", etc.)

The oddest song, though, is Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch's "I Want You"... its mostly a goofy, bubblegum romance rap, but the funny part is how it starts with 45 seconds of slow piano and a woman sensually whispering and sighing "I want you..." -- interrupted by a full rap swagger "yeah baby, I want you too" and the drums kicking in - a kind of hilarious shifting of emotional gears.



The really weird thing is it wasn't on any of the lyrics sites. But... I have fixed that. No need to thank me, world.

(2018 followup: for some reason my lyrics there got rejected or otherwise didn't stick so here they are again, for your reading "pleasure")

Marky Mark "I Want You"

Ooh Baby-
[?] the things you to do to me
...yeah...
You make me feel so good...
Ooh baby...
I want you - I want you...

...Yeah Baby, I want you too

Aw yeah... c'mon c'mon c'mon
Uh uh uh uh
Yeah.
Gonna send this one out
to that special lady out there
Yo, She knows who she is
Peac

How do I want you?
Let me count the ways
'Cause when I'm with you girl
It's like I'm in a hot damn daze

And I just can't comprehend it
When I'm with my friends I just try to pretend it's
Just a temporary little love thing
But there's something about the way
You shake your thing

You got me wanting;
Even more than life itself
I've had many but I don't want anyone else.
So what's it gonnna be?
I want you, now tell me do you want me?
Because if you do then I'm gonna give it to ya
My lovin baby, y'know I wanna do ya

Early in the morning
When you just finish yawning
And then all night
'Cause I'm gonna make it feel right
And for your loving, on my knees girl I'll pray
And if you're with me this what I'll make you say
"Oooh"
Yeah and then I'll make you say
"Aiiiiii"
And then I'll make you say
"Oooh"
Yeah and then I'll make you say
"Aiiiiii"
And then the funk beat sayin'

(I want you)
Do you want me too?
(Love is true)
Girls you know it's true
(I want you)
But do you want me too?
(Love is true)

It's me, the M A R K Y baby why
Baby why do you gotta keep holding on when I'm holding on
The sweet tip, honey dip your grip
My insides to shreds
Promise not to spread
My love like butter on a bagel 'cause it's you
And only youthat I want to do the do to
I told you that you make say ooh and I mention
Expressing admiration girl for you I'm representing
I'm all about giving you my all and all
In the Spring Summer Fall, Marky Mark's the one to call

So what's a snap
And a chippy at your side
It's the man with the plan
No bluff- I got the right stuff
You know I'm hop-hop dip
But for you I'd flip
On the New Jack R+B Tip
So get with my program, I hope and pray
That you'll come my way, and if you do I'll make you say

"Oooh"
Yeah and then I'll make you say
"Aiiiiii"
Uh, And then I'll make you say
"Oooh"
And then I'll make you say
"Aiiiii"
And then the funk beat sayin'

(I want you)
Do you want me too?
(Love it's true)
Girls you know it's true, I said
(I want you)
But do you want me too?
(Love it's true)

Yeah baby.
When I'm alone at night, the only thought that ever comes to my mind
Is your beautiful face
And I want you to know
That you'll always have a man in me-
A man that'll treat you right
And love you all night

I want you my baby
I want you my baby
I-- want you
I need you baby
I want you baby
I love you
I need you
I want you

(I want you)
Do you want me too?
(Love is true)
Girls you know it's true, I said
(I want you)
Do you want me too?
(Love it's true)

(I want you)
Do you want me too?
(Love is true)
Girl you know it's true, I said
(I want you)
Do you want me too?
(Love it's true)
I don't want nobody but you (uh-huh)
Girl you know it's true
Yeah baby
I want you and only you

I don't want nobody but you (uh-huh)
Girl you know it's true
Yeah baby
I want you and only you

So sing...

Bayeeba
Bayeeba-
Bayeeba-
Bayeebaba
Bayeeba-
Hoohoohoohoo

Bayeeba
Bayeeba-
Bayeeba-
Bayeebaba
Bayeeba-
Bayeeba-
Dooaodoodododoladoodoo

Bayeeba
Bayeeba-
I want you
Bayeeba
I want you

Bayeeba
Bayeeba-
I want you
Oo oo oo oo

"When I play a game, I know if I have a few hours I will be rewarded. With a job, it's always been up in the air with the amount of work I put in and the reward."

That's from a WaPo piece on Why amazing video games could be causing a big problem for America:

Most of the blame for the struggle of male, less-educated workers has been attributed to lingering weakness in the economy, particularly in male-dominated industries such as manufacturing. Yet in the new research, economists from Princeton, the University of Rochester and the University of Chicago say that an additional reason many of these young men - who don't have college degrees -- are rejecting work is that they have a better alternative: living at home and enjoying video games. The decision may not even be completely conscious, but surveys suggest that young men are happier for it.

Wow, what a thought. I certainly understand that feeling of liking guaranteed effort to reward links; while my approval/attention seeking nature brings me to activities more likely to be publicly laudable, I've never been a challenge for challenge's sake, or "it's the journey" kind of guy.

(Though come to think of it, salaried jobs tend to have a bit of disconnect between effort put in on a day by day basis and reward, at least in the financial sense.)

But it feels like videogames are getting to the form of a rather concentrated drug! It's odd to be me because I'm still nostalgic for them and like them from time to time but have grown out of playing them regularly - just don't have/make the time for 'em, and many of the popular genres don't seem appealing. (The exception for me being goofy "wide open sandbox" games, ala GTA and Saints Row) In some way video games are a segment of my identity, but I'm pretty much limited to binge play of a new entry in a series once or twice a year. I still like the idea of people MAKING their own games, and I do a bit of that, but compared to these super-powered AAA titles, they're more like fun digital toys.

And man, video games are an astounding technology these days - sure, other technologies have made amazing strides - a communicator / camera / reference to giant chunks of the world's knowledge at any moment / digital map / huge music library in the palm of my hand is astounding - but if you look at the early square, colorful blobs when video games first went mainstream in the late-70s early-80s to a AAA title today; it's astounding. Too often the interaction is limited, but the look and feel and sound of these 3D worlds is nothing short of Holodeckian.

Besides the empowerment-fantasy realism, games have gotten so much smarter about online playing. My idea of multiplayer is still 3 or 4 people sitting on the same couch with a splitscreen, but between the rewarding character build grind of a World of Warcraft (or whatever MMORPG the kids are playing today) or the very smart match making of a shoot 'em up (or the physicsy fun of "Rocket League" (car soccer)) -- I would imagine finding your place in these online legions can be very appealing. (Though maybe that sense of competition goes against the grain of "guaranteed reward" of the leading quote?

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Get it right or let it alone.
The conclusion you jump to may be your own.

To him, all good things--trout as well as eternal salvation--come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/xtinehlee/i-had-a-stroke-at-33 Amazing "Momento"-like, or maybe "Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" story, but the insiders view.

I loved detailed, subjective accounts like this, and also thinking about the parts I can feel-- empathy(?) -- parallels with. Sometimes I feel like I can sense the faintest of faint "shadow syndromes" of a variety of conditions: Tourette syndrome, dyslexia, Asperger syndrome, etc. But I'm always aware I might be mistaken, or fooling myself, any seeming parallels might be absolutely surface, and certainly they're nothing to coddle myself about, because they're all absolutely manageable (to the extent that they're present at all.)

The homophones/typo thing -- a trait shared with the author of this story during her bad times -- really bugs me sometimes, though, and the swapping of "m" and "b".

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Partyism Now Trumps Racism - but some of my best friends are Republican!

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Thanks for everything. I had a wonderful time.

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2022 follow up: 22words has kind of dissolved into pop celebrity mess, but I think this is the comic in question, beautiful, about when it's time to bring the end to a pet:

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Dr. Bigelow: So you took a chance on being happy, even though you knew that later on you would be sad.

Louie: Yeah.

B: And now... you're sad.

L: Yeah.

B: So... what's the problem?

L: I'm too sad.... Look, I liked the feeling of being in love with her. I liked it. But now she's gone and I miss her and it sucks. And I didn't think it was going to be this bad, and I feel like, why even be happy if it's just going to lead to this, you know? It wasn't worth it.

B: You know, misery is wasted on the miserable.

L: What?

B: You know, I'm not entirely sure what your name is, but you are a classic idiot. You think spending time with her, kissing her, having fun with her, you think that's what it was all about? That was love?

L: Yeah.

B: THIS is love. Missing her, because she's gone. Wanting to die.... You're so lucky. You're like a walking poem. Would you rather be some kind of a fantasy? Some kind of a Disney ride? Is that what you want? Don't you see? This is the good part. This is what you've been digging for all this time. Now you finally have it in your hand, this sweet nugget of love, sweet, sad love, and you want to throw it away. You've got it all wrong.

L: I thought this was the bad part.

B: No! The bad part is when you forget her, when you don't care about her, when you don't care about anything. The bad part is coming, so enjoy the heartbreak while you can, for God's sakes. Pick up the dog poop, would you please? Lucky sonofabitch. I haven't had my heart broken since Marilyn walked out on me, since I was 35 years old. What I would give to have that feeling again.... You know, I'm not really sure what your name is, but you may be the single most boring person I have ever met. No offense. Give me my dog. Come here. You.... Don't fall down.

"Truly [the small-town residents] were the salt of the earth."
"And why does one salt the earth? To keep anything new from growing."

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By James Harvey
So I've decided its time for me to shift this blog once again, and indulge in some self-absorbed reflection...

I started keeping a "quote journal" in early 1997... it was a series of text notes on my Palm Pilot (loved that thing) and I called it KHftCEA, or "Kirk's Home for the Chronically Easily Amused". (It was never really meant to be public, but some time after letting a few close friends into its digital pages I decided to post the whole thing online.)

In late-2000/early-2001 I decided to start one of those new-fangled Weblog (or "'blog" for short) things. (For a few weeks I kept up both web and Palm, but then the Palm version seemed redundant, and I dropped it.) Pretty quickly the blog morphed into its regular format: a "clever" title, a general paragraph of chatter, then a series of "____ of the Moment" entries. And it was very important for me (I called it a secular spiritual practice) to put up something interesting every day, as well as act as a bit of a hub for some of my friends.

Meanwhile, Facebook happened. I think Facebook has had more of a change on how people socialize on the Internet than any other website, including Google (there were always search engines, just not as good) and Youtube (the scale of Youtube still astounds, and it was a new fun online activity, but not as social.) I'd say Facebook has drained away much of the importance of my site as a way of finding and sharing interesting stuff, since FB is more egalitarian, and has a much better comment and community sense. (I prefer to "blame" facebook for the shift away from people commenting on my site (as well as the decompression of Loveblender after some explosive growth) over thinking people just don't like me as much as they used to...)

Of course, Twitter also happened. Twitter also has a back-and-forth aspect that my site lacks, but I still like having kisrael as my "site of record" so in 2008 I established an "of the Moment" section to more easily mirror what I was twittering. Soon after that, I shifted the main part of each entry into a "one interesting thing a day" mode, often a video or big image from someone else, or a project I had worked on.

So now I'm thinking of getting rid of the "one big thing". I'll still post stuff as I find it, but I'll stop hoarding stuff away to post on a rainy day, and I hope the site will become more immediate, more in the moment like my early Palm stuff.

Again, I'm not sure how many people will even notice the change... I don't know how many folks come here for regular entertainment (In which case Facebook and 22 Words are probably better bets, with a little BoingBoing thrown in.) I'll still be posting interesting links and videos as I find them, and we can just take it from there...

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Tommy, Tommy, everything is connected and everything matters. There is not an atom in our bodies that has not been forged in the furnace of the sun -- now isn't that cool?

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http://www.walkscore.com/ - cool way of getting a feel for how walkable a neighborhood is.

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Someone is aiming to be geek daddy of the year:




I love how well paced (and cleverly animated) the video is... it really tells a sweet story.

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Xcode is so weirdly difficult. I want to add a new .js file to a phonegap project... put in anywhere but the project root? UNPOSSIBLE!

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Those one-piece metal bend/flex snap hair barrettes are great things to fidget with, like external knuckles to crack over and over.

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http://www.thisismyjam.com/kirkjerk - Yeah, co-opted an overplayed but "I Got You" is amazing

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Why should a man give a woman a useless diamond engagement ring when he could buy her a nice big potato, which she could at least eat?

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Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

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Man, I have never heard a whole stadium united in the a chant of "BULL-$#!7" Wacky calls both ways in the Pats/Ravens game.

I don't know what I see when I watch football. It must be something insane, because I should not enjoy it as much as I do. I must be seeing something so personal and universal that understanding this question would tell me everything I need to know about who I am, and maybe I don't want that to happen. But perhaps it is simply this: Football allows the intellectual part of my brain to evolve, but it allows the emotional part to remain unchanged. It has a liberal cerebellum and a reactionary heart. And this is all I want from everything, all the time, always.

Besides pointing out the inherit Marxism of the NFL (with its profit sharing and salary caps), his essay goes on about how football is a weird bit of extreme liberalism (in how quickly teams copycat and try to things) that considers itself extremely conservative.

--I'm bummed this didn't come out as pretty as Amber. Still I loved the apple appeal.

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The old jingle "Oh My Eskimo Pie". Funny name. Mildly racist? What's Eskimo Glass of Water, an ice cube? Eskimo Turkey- a Frozen Turkey?

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The noisiness of a Harley, rooted in engine inefficiency, makes it the exact parallel to the peacock's tail for burly bikers (though less attractive to normal humans.)

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Obama's "We can absorb a terrorist attack." is controversial?? He shoulda said "if they hit us again we're hosed"?? Hint: "We'll do everything we can to prevent it" immediately follows.

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http://beautifulpixels.com/iphone/10-simple-iphone-backgrounds/ - blueprints one is so clever

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From space, astronauts can see people making love as a tiny speck of light. Not light, exactly, but a glow that could be mistaken for light--a coital radiance that takes generations to pour like honey through the darkness to the astronaut's eyes.

In about one and a half centuries--after the lovers who made the glow will have long since been laid permanently on their backs--metropolises will be seen from space. They will glow all year. Smaller cities will also be seen, but with great difficulty. Shtetls will be virtually impossible to spot. Individual couples, invisible.

The glow is born from the sum of thousands of loves: newlyweds and teenagers who spark like lighters out of butane, pairs of men who burn fast and bright, pairs of women who illuminate for hours with soft multiple glows, orgies like rock and flint toys sold at festivals, couples trying unsuccessfully to have children who burn their frustrated image on the continent like the bloom a bright light leaves on the eye after you turn away from it.

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You've gotta choose people who aren't much more motivated than you are - but don't surround yourself with total narcissists. Otherwise, things start to be about something other than you.

So, it's a little cheesy, but I've started doing a lyric-a-day for my gtalk and facebook status, and then started echoing it as a Twitter entry.

I've been pleased at the response, generally a person a day was writing me about it, either to provide the next line, or to comment on the song, or on some tangent (especially if they thought it was my own thought.)

(Yesterday Sam thanked me sincerely for introducing him to Todd Snider, which is funny because I had no idea who he was talking about... turns out he's a cool musician who covered "Enjoy Yourself", the happy macabre song I knew from Woody Allen's "Everybody Says I Love You" but I guess Snider was higher in the search results for the lyrics I had quoted.)

I try to be open to suggestions from the Cosmos/the Tao/Fate whatever as my first choice of song, either something that's been rattling around my head, or that someone mentions. Failing that I look at the next 3 songs my iPhone would shuffle up and pick the quotable. (Too often the most emo, but hey.)

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Works of the Moment
Thinking about my own possibly-emo writing... From time to time I submit something to the Love Blender, sometimes my own stuff but most often something I've found. I have 2 accounts there, one personal, one for "official-business" and decided I wanted my personal author page to just have "my" stuff (or stuff by friends) and my Blender-Keeper page to have all the stuff by authors I don't know personally.

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Quote of the Moment

The creator of the universe works in mysterious ways. But he uses a base ten counting system and likes round numbers.

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"tangled up in our embrace / there's nothing I'd like better than to fall / but I fear I have nothing to give..."

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So sick of whiteboards that never get clean and stinky markers. Why don't they make whiteboard-sized MAGNA DOODLE? With built-in eraser bar!

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Holy cats, my gmail inbox is empty for the first time in over a year.

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GEEKGRIPE: Why I hate the Linux on my desktop: ctrl-shift-c for copy in a terminal window, ctrl-c everywhere else. I wish I was using Putty.

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The urban/suburban divide: unbidden thought before a Lego trip to Burlington Mall: "ahh, sweet, lots of parking there..." Miller and Kate joined me in going to see the Simpsons movie last night.

True confession time.

There are times when I'm worried that the Simpsons' "Ned Flanders" is overwriting memories of my dad.



It's mostly a cosmetic issue, glasses and mustaches. (I don't think the Pious Ned / Preacher Dad parallel enters into it so much.) But still. My memories of a hale and hearty dad end after sixth grade, when I'm about twelve or so, and it looks like Ned made his first appearance December 17, 1989, 18-odd years ago. And childhood memories aren't the most solid stuff. I suppose the movies theme of "Flanders being a better dad to Bart than Homer" didn't help.

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Article of the Moment

I hope everyone enjoys the new, resizeable, 'sweeper' program. And if when Vista finally comes out you see that it was renamed 'Microsoft Windows Vista Logic-based Hidden Item Seeking Game 2006 with Skins!', you will know why.

In short, there are parts of the world where landmines are a damn serious issue, and along with a visual makeover, the coders had to work to find a balance between what users were used to and humanistic concerns.

So I'm back, safe and relatively sound.

On my flight back I read an excellent book, "A History of the World in 6 Glasses" by Tom Standage, the impact on human culture by beer (where it came hand in hand with the harvesting of grains, and the birth of cities and civilization), wine (and the intellectual associations it still carries), hard liquor (where it had a role in the West's horrific slave trade, as well as spurring America to fight for its independence), coffee (where coffehouses were like the powerhouses of the age of enlightment), tea (almost the raison d'etre of the British Empire), and finally Coca-Cola (symbol of America's leadership role in the 20th Century.)

I hadn't realized how important coffehouses were in England and France. Standage portrays them as the websites of the age, because the various coffeehouses often had a particular "interest group" focus, from politics to philosophy, from stocks and investment to the theater. (In fact The Tatler used the coffeehouse names as captions for its own category division.)

I think, though, that my other favorite part of the book is the fact that at one point in my nation's history there was a lawsuit entitled United States v. Forty Barrels and Twenty Kegs of Coca-Cola. The idea of a big keg of sugary syrup mutely taking the witness stand is irresistible.

I also read about the "Tufts' Arctic Soda Water Apparatus". James W. Tufts lived around Boston in the late-1800s but I couldn't figure out if he was related to the family responsible for Tufts University.

Anyway, a very well-written and researched book with a great eye for the sweep of pretty much all human history.

Quote of the Moment

People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes.

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LinkDrink of the Moment
Thunderbird: The American Classic. A history of it and under "Wino" wines. Sadly, no mention of my personal ghetto favorite, Mad Dog 20/20. Still, "handing [Thunderbird] out to Native Americans who were just being released from jail" is rather evil.

The blog had some other interesting articles, including one about Valhalla. It mentioned it was a kind of training camp for Ragnarok, the "Fate of the Gods". EB (I think) once mentioned that Ragnarok was kind of a secret of the elite, not something the hoi polloi would know about, which I think is an intruiging idea (the motif of a religion with a deep dark downer of a secret that only the elite know about) but I can't find any confirmation that was the case for Norse mythology.

I also remember about reading about the conficts between Christianity and other religions in Europe, including one where a believer in Thor said that He wanted to challenge Jesus Christ to a one on one duel. I think I started some bad fan-fiction type stuff about the scenario in high school, but didn't take it past a few paragraphs.

Brainteaser of the Moment
Can you figure out Petals Around the Rose? You're allowed to know that the name of the game is significant, and that every answer is zero or an even number (and really, shouldn't zero be thought of as an easy number? I mean it's pinioned there between two odd numbers and all...but I digress.) And you can be told the answer for every individual throw of the dice. Here's how Bill Gates dealt with it.

If you figure it out, don't tell. That's part of the fun.

I remember figuring it out way back in the day, but I have to admit I slightly brute forced it by rolling and rolling without guessing very hard. But I had a handicap, see comments for that because it slightly gives something away.

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Ramble of the Moment
I went over to my mom's place after yoga last night...nice to have her around within easy driving distance (not to mention about 5 minutes away from the yoga class.) At one point, I opened a small bottle of creme soda, took a swig, pursed by lips and nodded aprovingly...my mom mentioned that I strongly resembled by dad doing that. (Hmm...genetic? Learned at an early age? I dunno!) It reminds me of that time Judy (Beau's Mom...and congrats on getting the rose puzzle Beau...) mentioned I strongly reminded her of Jim (my dad) with my stance as I stood with my back to her in the bandroom, looking at some sheet music. I'm always a little touched to hear stuff like that I think.

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Quote of the Moment

Since we can't by definition understand life and the world, we might as well choose a useful way of pretending to.

So I had a lucid dream last night, where I became aware I was dreaming. The story was sometihng random about being in this old schoolgrounds and auditorium. I was amazed at the level of detail in the dream, how I could see the little grey threads on the back of some guy's jacket. (Actually, that level of detail issue is kind of funny, I don't know at what level dreams plug into the brain. It seems as if you wouldn't get that kind of detail at the purely visual level, that the dream must be plugging in at a lower part of image identification, the one that would trigger recognition of a jacket with little grey threads on it.)

The cool thing about when that happens is you can take some measure of control of what happens in the dream, though usually it's not absolutely exactly what you "command". Also, my dream self has a terrible lack of imagination...I mostly fly and make peoples' clothes disappear.

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Passage of the Moment

"The thing to remember about love affairs," says Simone, "is that they are all like having raccoons in your chimney. ... We have raccoons sometimes in our chimney ... And once we tried to smoke them out. We lit a fire, knowing they were there, but we hoped that the smoke would cause them to scurry out the top and never come back. Instead, they caught on fire and came crashing down into our living room, all charred and in flames and running madly around until they dropped dead." Simone swallows some wine. "Love affairs are like that," she says. "They all are like that."

...seemed a bit too cynical of a quote to put in yesterday, but I find the imagery too good not to post.

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Links of the Moment
Slashdot posted about Phillip Greenspun arguing that Java is the SUV of programming languages. I don't completely agree (especially since a lot of his argument seems to be about JDBC binding variables) but it's a good thinking point with something to it. Anyway, I found some interesting stuff on his site, though most of it is about the web circa 3 or 4 years ago. Using the Internet to Pick up Babes and/or Hunks was amusing (and where I got today's passage) and his bookshelf page had an interesting starting photo, as well as amusing Perl ranting. (More of his nude photography here, I guess photo.net is his site.) Things I Learned the Hard Way made some points as well. Quote and Link of the Moment

The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world.

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Game of the Moment
Speaking of drugs, I've found a new form of digital crack. Man, this game is insanely addictive: Spybotics: The Nightfall Incident. It's a Lego promotional game, made by Ranjit's group gameLab. It's kind of a...puzzle game meets a simple wargame, I guess you'd say, with great music and some cool pseudo-corporate design. You go around this large network, and reclaim nodes by fighting battles with these little "hacker program" icons, kind of like small robots...you can buy different types as you get further along. It's a bit confusing at first, but once you get into it it's hard not to go ahead and try to finish it.

I like it because while you have to clever to finish many of the boards, there's usually more than one technique that'll win. It's a great game, and I didn't do much else on Saturday but play this game and watch football. (Football's pretty good background A/V. For anyone who cares, but not enough to look it up: Patriots came a toin coss away from losing a game they should've romped on, when it flipped their way and they got first possession in sudden-death overtime.) Image of the Moment

I've been scanning in my old photo album. This is one of my favorites, my dad and I on a public beach on St. Thomas (Virgin Islands) where my family lived for a year.

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Quote of the Moment

How many times must I tell you? Queens consume nectars and ambrosia, not hot dogs.