Have you ever focused on something so intently that it filtered how you viewed the world? When I used Photoshop intensely for a few weeks, I would have thoughts like "That's a nice gradient in the sky" or "That azalea bush is over-saturated." It's the visual equivalent of staring at a black-and-white spiral for 30 seconds, then looking away at a blank wall and seeing the wall spin.
Maybe you worked 12-hour days for a few weeks writing computer programs and started seeing human behavior in code: IF sign=walk, THEN move forward. Perhaps after a long pottery class lampposts look more like shaped clay than steel, the rivets spiraling up the post formed by hand, not machine.
I find this disturbing, in a way, how easily our way of processing the world can be affected by selectively focusing on one activity for a while. I can't quite put my finger on why it troubles me. Most of what makes people up is rigid and thus dependable. Our appearance, character, and manner of social interaction are slow to change.
But this other pillar of what makes us us, the way we look at the world, is flimsy. It changes all the time, sometimes in dramatic ways over a period of hours, just by doing an activity intensely.
Last night, I watched episodes of a television show (Heroes) for five hours non-stop. Part of the time I had a poker game running on the other background and occasionally pause and rewind the show when I had to play a hand. I remember seeing two players involved in a big hand out of the corner of my eye, and after pausing Heroes, my first instinct was to rewind the hand so I could watch it again, like I was watching another show.
A few other times I wanted to put a person I was talking to on pause, literally, so I could concentrate on something else for a moment. It's jolting to have two areas of my life bleed into each other like that. It's a brief glimpse into a warped reality, almost like a psychosis.
I wonder if there is any connection between this phenomenon and psychoses like delusion. If I saw a action movie where the hero was extremely paranoid, I would become a little paranoid too. What if instead of this feeling not being reinforced by my environment and fading away, it takes root through a small flaw of brain chemistry and starts reinforcing itself?
My thoughts are scattered, but I'm starting to wonder if the reason most psychoses exist is due to how easy it is to change how we look at the world. It's not as much the absence of a big block of neurotransmitters, but the fact that perception is so fragile that it takes little to set it off-kilter.
Maybe there should be a new field of therapy called "reality grounding" (if there isn't one already) that would help people recognize the influence of their actions on their thinking, especially during intense activity, and resist this influence when they want to.
Showing posts with label thought. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thought. Show all posts
October 26, 2007
October 19, 2007
Let's Waste Some Time
Check out Boomshine. It's an elegant and simple game. The object is to detonate as many of the multi-colored balls bouncing around the screen as you can in one shot.
This game made me wonder if it was also the perfect test of intuition, the ability to process vast amounts of information in a blink and come up with a course of action that is right without knowing why. Is this game blind luck, or is intuition at work, calculating hundreds of trajectories at once and sensing the right moment and place to to click to destroy as many balls at once? You'll understand what I mean when you play.
I felt I did worse when I let my analytical side take over and started thinking about where to click rather than clicking at the first spot that came into my head.
This game made me wonder if it was also the perfect test of intuition, the ability to process vast amounts of information in a blink and come up with a course of action that is right without knowing why. Is this game blind luck, or is intuition at work, calculating hundreds of trajectories at once and sensing the right moment and place to to click to destroy as many balls at once? You'll understand what I mean when you play.
I felt I did worse when I let my analytical side take over and started thinking about where to click rather than clicking at the first spot that came into my head.
July 21, 2005
GTA: God, Titties, and Asses
There's a wonderful episode of
Butters is near death, and the town is outraged...that their children saw another boy's naked penis.
The story reminds me of the current controversy with Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. In the game, you play a gang banger who can run over people, beat them up with almost every conceivable weapon, shoot cops, and...well, that’s all I know so far. I’m only on mission 4.
Recently, someone wrote a program that allowed players to unlock a special sex mission in the game. A few media watchdog groups and politicians, including Sen. Clinton, successfully pressured to have the game’s rating changed from Mature to Adult. Target, Best Buy, WalMart, and other retailers are taking it off the shelves.
GTA: San Andreas is an awesome game. But I wouldn’t want my kid to play it. It’s incredibly violent, crude, and could make younger teens less sensitive to the idea of inflicting pain upon others. Isn’t that worse than dirty, filthy sex? Sometimes this country seems absolutely loony.
January 13, 2005
Willy Wonka's Fantastical Crisis Machine
I will go on record now as saying that I think President Bush's proposal to privatize Social Security will turn out to be a political blunder (I'm assuming you know why it's bad on policy grounds). Two reasons, both relating to how he was able to convince many people that Iraq was an imminent threat to the United States.
One, people's fears over national security, influenced by 9/11, made them more open towards taking drastic actions. Essentially, many people accepted the administration's argument that it's better to be safe than sorry ("we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud").
Social Security doesn't tap into this primal fear of being hurt or killed that cuts across all age groups. It involves the fear of financial security, something less emotionally intense than personal security, and a fear that only affects a subset of the population, namely people receiving checks or about to receive them in the near future.
The lesser degree of fear, as compared to the overall mood invading Iraq, will make it harder for illogical or specious arguments to sway people.
The second reason why President Bush will find creating a false crisis much more difficult for Social Security than Iraq is that there is much more solid information available to Bush's opponents this time. Before the war, the state of Saddam Hussien's weapons programs were unknown. There were people claiming that we were vastly over-estimating the state of his weapons capabilities, but there was no convincing proof.
With Social Security, most of President Bush's statements can be fact-checked. The division between truth and deception is much more clear and it makes it easier for newspapers to say the truth without appearing biased and for people to evaluate the President's claims itself.
For example, take the President's claims that the Social Security system is in a crisis. Counter-answer: if we did absolutely nothing, and the economy did poorly, the trust fund would still pay 70% of benefits in 2042.
That's the type of simple, easily-understood response that was absent during what passed as the pre-war debate. Already, there is a sign that Bush is backing off the word "crisis" and switching to "problem" (search for "crisis problem", 2/3 down).
A multi-million dollar ad campaign financed by banking institutions plus intense lobbying can change a lot. But the initial indications is that Democrats are united, Republicans are wary of committing right now, and Bush's re-use of his successful "Create a Crisis" strategy may backfire as the trust it needs to pull off has eroded due to the aftermath of Iraq.
It can be done, especially with a Republican-controlled Congress, but it will take amazing political skills plus Democratic bungling to make it happen.
And everyone has permission of rubbing this in my face if I'm wrong.
One, people's fears over national security, influenced by 9/11, made them more open towards taking drastic actions. Essentially, many people accepted the administration's argument that it's better to be safe than sorry ("we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud").
Social Security doesn't tap into this primal fear of being hurt or killed that cuts across all age groups. It involves the fear of financial security, something less emotionally intense than personal security, and a fear that only affects a subset of the population, namely people receiving checks or about to receive them in the near future.
The lesser degree of fear, as compared to the overall mood invading Iraq, will make it harder for illogical or specious arguments to sway people.
The second reason why President Bush will find creating a false crisis much more difficult for Social Security than Iraq is that there is much more solid information available to Bush's opponents this time. Before the war, the state of Saddam Hussien's weapons programs were unknown. There were people claiming that we were vastly over-estimating the state of his weapons capabilities, but there was no convincing proof.
With Social Security, most of President Bush's statements can be fact-checked. The division between truth and deception is much more clear and it makes it easier for newspapers to say the truth without appearing biased and for people to evaluate the President's claims itself.
For example, take the President's claims that the Social Security system is in a crisis. Counter-answer: if we did absolutely nothing, and the economy did poorly, the trust fund would still pay 70% of benefits in 2042.
That's the type of simple, easily-understood response that was absent during what passed as the pre-war debate. Already, there is a sign that Bush is backing off the word "crisis" and switching to "problem" (search for "crisis problem", 2/3 down).
A multi-million dollar ad campaign financed by banking institutions plus intense lobbying can change a lot. But the initial indications is that Democrats are united, Republicans are wary of committing right now, and Bush's re-use of his successful "Create a Crisis" strategy may backfire as the trust it needs to pull off has eroded due to the aftermath of Iraq.
It can be done, especially with a Republican-controlled Congress, but it will take amazing political skills plus Democratic bungling to make it happen.
And everyone has permission of rubbing this in my face if I'm wrong.
December 31, 2004
The week after 9/11...
...lines for donating blood snaked out doors and down streets. Some people had to wait hours or were asked to come back another day.
People donated so much blood, in fact, that the Red Cross had to throw some of it away because the organization couldn't store it all.
What I learned from this is that good intentions isn't always enough. I give money to causes very rarely, but when I do I spend some time and thought beforehand so I can give as wisely as possible.
I mention all of this for two reasons.
One, I know many of you have either donated money to organizations helping the tsunami victims or would like to. There are many good organizations to give money to, but for what it's worth, I ended up going with the Red Cross after looking at a half dozen similar organizations. Primarily because the Red Cross president went on record to say that donations to the International Relief Fund would be used for the tsunami victims, along with a few smaller reasons I had. If you have a better suggestion, please post it in the comments. You can reach the Red Cross donation page here. (Update: Andrew recommends Doctors Without Borders. I've heard good things about them, and they are already mobilized in Banda Aceh.)
Two, and perhaps a more important point, it may be better to wait a few weeks before donating anything. By then, it will become more clear which organizations are best equipped to handle this disaster and you may be able to make your donation more effective.
My main motivation for donating now is so I could avoid feeling like a fraud while writing this post. Kind of like my roommate who will enter the kitchen, say something like "Wow, this floor is really dirty!" and then proceed to blissfully walk past the broom and lie on the couch by the TV, as if he just cast a magic spell that will animate his week-old baguette into a little boy that will sweep the entire kitchen floor and then throw himself into the trash can.
But I digress. And here's another digression. I have been thinking a lot recently about the gradients of good deeds, such as a poor person giving a food bank $5 versus a millionaire giving $50, or a person telling the truth who would feel guilty if he didn't versus a person telling the same truth who finds it very difficult. Are these actions equally moral, or are some better than others? What matters, the objective (e.g. the principle of telling the truth), the personal (the difficulty for you or I to tell the truth), or both?
To tie this into the original topic, most people find it easier to donate time or money immediately after a disaster rather than a month later, even though the need is usually at least as great at both times. For this type of person, is donating the money a month later "more good" than a few days after, when it is easier to act?
People donated so much blood, in fact, that the Red Cross had to throw some of it away because the organization couldn't store it all.
What I learned from this is that good intentions isn't always enough. I give money to causes very rarely, but when I do I spend some time and thought beforehand so I can give as wisely as possible.
I mention all of this for two reasons.
One, I know many of you have either donated money to organizations helping the tsunami victims or would like to. There are many good organizations to give money to, but for what it's worth, I ended up going with the Red Cross after looking at a half dozen similar organizations. Primarily because the Red Cross president went on record to say that donations to the International Relief Fund would be used for the tsunami victims, along with a few smaller reasons I had. If you have a better suggestion, please post it in the comments. You can reach the Red Cross donation page here. (Update: Andrew recommends Doctors Without Borders. I've heard good things about them, and they are already mobilized in Banda Aceh.)
Two, and perhaps a more important point, it may be better to wait a few weeks before donating anything. By then, it will become more clear which organizations are best equipped to handle this disaster and you may be able to make your donation more effective.
My main motivation for donating now is so I could avoid feeling like a fraud while writing this post. Kind of like my roommate who will enter the kitchen, say something like "Wow, this floor is really dirty!" and then proceed to blissfully walk past the broom and lie on the couch by the TV, as if he just cast a magic spell that will animate his week-old baguette into a little boy that will sweep the entire kitchen floor and then throw himself into the trash can.
But I digress. And here's another digression. I have been thinking a lot recently about the gradients of good deeds, such as a poor person giving a food bank $5 versus a millionaire giving $50, or a person telling the truth who would feel guilty if he didn't versus a person telling the same truth who finds it very difficult. Are these actions equally moral, or are some better than others? What matters, the objective (e.g. the principle of telling the truth), the personal (the difficulty for you or I to tell the truth), or both?
To tie this into the original topic, most people find it easier to donate time or money immediately after a disaster rather than a month later, even though the need is usually at least as great at both times. For this type of person, is donating the money a month later "more good" than a few days after, when it is easier to act?
August 13, 2004
The beauty and danger of the American political system is the rigidity of its structure. One of the country's greatest assets isn't the Constitution but the widely-shared belief that the Constitution is a revered document that should be rarely changed.
I find it amazing that in Constitutional law the pre-eminent question is still, "What did the founders intend?" rather than "Is this 217-year-old document still relevant today?" Advertising has created in many of us an almost visceral sense that "new is better," and it applies to everything except the structure of our government. It is the oldest and the shortest written constitution of any government in the world, and this is a source of pride, not embarrassment.
I'm not saying this is bad. Overall, it's been beautiful. The principle of checks and balances, the set-up of the Supreme Court, different term lengths for the House and Senate--they have all worked out well...for the most part.
But the danger inherent in our political system is that it makes long-term thinking, anything over 10 years, undesirable and often politically damaging. Not only because politicians have to run for re-election every six, four, and two years, but the system of checks and balances that serves us so well also makes it hard for a few political figures to "take one for the team", i.e. have enough power to make an unpopular but necessary decision that most people would oppose.
This hasn't been a problem until the past twenty years because we didn't have any looming long-term problems back then. The social security crisis was in its infancy. There was no threat of a worldwide oil shortage (as there is now, although the date ranges from the next five years to the next 50+). But the problem now is that these issues require a much earlier starting point to deal with successfully.
For example, the current system of waiting until the public considers an issue important and lowers the political penalty for acting on it would not give us enough time to respond to an energy crisis. There's no magic alternative fuel waiting in storage that the government or private sector can invest a ton of money into and bring to the market in a few years. My hypothesis is that this would take decades, not years.
And the sacrifice we'll have to pay to support the social security system in a decade is monumental by any account, but much more so if we wait until 2009 rather than 2004. But raising the gas tax by $0.50 a gallon or slashing Social Security benefits, even if absolutely necessary, would be political suicide today. Better to wait until the problem becomes really serious and the need for sacrifice is obvious.
In short, both human nature and our government's structure makes us excel at being retroactive, but horrible at being proactive. The fact that everything has worked out so far isn't because our politicians and our system is flexible to handle whatever issue is thrown at them--they're not--but because this is the first time in U.S. history that we have issues to deal with that the current system is ill-equipped to handle.
The Founders considered a lot, but I think one area they missed is long-term crisis management. We have provisions for immediate crises, like presidential powers for military actions, and succession of power in case of assassination. But how could the men who lived in the land of spacious skies and amber waves of grain predict the scarcity of a resource for a vehicle that wasn't invented for another 100 years? Or a troubled social security system for the elderly at a time when the life expectancy was 35 years?
I don't have a solution. I doubt it's even possible to create a political system that encourages long-term thinking without making sacrifices in other areas (like the balance of power between branches of government). But, then, what is to be done?
August 05, 2004
That Sleazy Flip-Flopper
The next time someone calls John Kerry a flip-flopper, ask them to do a Google search for Bush and "initially opposed."
Along those lines, this is from an AP article today, "McCain Condemns Ad Criticizing Kerry's Military Service":
It's a good article to read. It shows the fine line McCain has to walk between having integrity and working to re-elect Bush.
Sorry for the bitterness, but sometimes the Bush administration's chutzpah angers me. I know politicians spin issues, dodge hard questions, and try to present the best possible light on things, but can you think of any adminstration, Democrat or Republician, that does the exact opposite of what it says anywhere near the level of this one? Their modus operandi is to construct their own reality solely through rhetoric and repeat the rhetoric until their reality becomes the dominant one (i.e. unchallenged by most of the media and accepted by 50.1% of the public). Facts are inconveniences that can be overcome by convincing people to believe the opposite.
If someone at your workplace fought vigorously against an idea you suggested--protesting it at meetings, working behind the scenes to destroy it--and then, when circumstances forces the company to adopt your idea, says "I supported it all along," what would you think of that person? And why do many people refuse to see President Bush in the same way?
Along those lines, this is from an AP article today, "McCain Condemns Ad Criticizing Kerry's Military Service":
- "The president thought he got rid of this unregulated soft money when he signed the bipartisan campaign finance reform into law," McClellan said. A chief sponsor of that bill, which Bush initially opposed, was McCain.
It's a good article to read. It shows the fine line McCain has to walk between having integrity and working to re-elect Bush.
Sorry for the bitterness, but sometimes the Bush administration's chutzpah angers me. I know politicians spin issues, dodge hard questions, and try to present the best possible light on things, but can you think of any adminstration, Democrat or Republician, that does the exact opposite of what it says anywhere near the level of this one? Their modus operandi is to construct their own reality solely through rhetoric and repeat the rhetoric until their reality becomes the dominant one (i.e. unchallenged by most of the media and accepted by 50.1% of the public). Facts are inconveniences that can be overcome by convincing people to believe the opposite.
If someone at your workplace fought vigorously against an idea you suggested--protesting it at meetings, working behind the scenes to destroy it--and then, when circumstances forces the company to adopt your idea, says "I supported it all along," what would you think of that person? And why do many people refuse to see President Bush in the same way?
March 04, 2004
No Angels, Few Devils
I think that people with an intensely cynical outlook of politics and people have a warped view of the world. "Blood for oil" made me roll my eyes. Ditto for "The two parties are the same", i.e. it doesn't matter who is President, Senator, or member of Congress. And if someone had suggested that President Bush held off attacking a major terrorist because it would damage his case for war in Iraq, I would have been taken aback by that person's cynicism. But for the last claim, NBC news says this may have happened.
If this is true (and it is an if), I am not going to start assuming that every politician is acting on the worst motives. You remember when Wal-Mart was selling a DVD player for $29.99 and a woman got trampled by the crowd rushing into the store? Well, it didn't happen. The woman who made the claim is a con artist with a long history of personal injury cases against corporations. But it was easy to many people to believe, because aren't people so greedy that they would cripple a person for a cheap DVD player?
My point is that assuming the worst about people often assumes the wrong. But at the same time, not considering the worst is naive.
If this is true (and it is an if), I am not going to start assuming that every politician is acting on the worst motives. You remember when Wal-Mart was selling a DVD player for $29.99 and a woman got trampled by the crowd rushing into the store? Well, it didn't happen. The woman who made the claim is a con artist with a long history of personal injury cases against corporations. But it was easy to many people to believe, because aren't people so greedy that they would cripple a person for a cheap DVD player?
My point is that assuming the worst about people often assumes the wrong. But at the same time, not considering the worst is naive.
December 09, 2003
Remember When You Were a Kid And You Were Lost in a Store?
This is the first article I've read about false memories. I thought I read other articles on the subject, but after reading this one, I remembered the truth.
Wait a minute...
I hope the dependence on witness testimony in court cases is an artifact of the movies and not a practice in real-life. Sure, I'm aware that memory can be manipulated and fallible, but I don't live my life constantly questioning their accuracy or wondering if the few memories I have from childhood are true. I doubt anyone does. Life has enough doubt as it is. But (read this guardedly) most of us can remember a time when we or a friend of ours was positive this happened that way, or we definitely parked here, but it actually happened the other way, or we parked over there.
But occasionally I'll hear of a person wrongly imprisoned, usually based on the testimony of one or two people whose certainty in their false memories swayed a jury, and I wonder how often it happens. Is eyewitness testimony sufficiently doubted in today's judicial system? Should it be trusted at all?
There's no way I'm ending on such a pretentious note. This is one of the quotes from the article:
"In one study published last year, 50% of volunteers were persuaded they had taken a ride in a hot-air balloon when they had not. But when Kathy Pezdek of the Claremont Graduate University, California, tried to make people believe they had received a rectal enema, she met with almost universal resistance."
Wait a minute...
I hope the dependence on witness testimony in court cases is an artifact of the movies and not a practice in real-life. Sure, I'm aware that memory can be manipulated and fallible, but I don't live my life constantly questioning their accuracy or wondering if the few memories I have from childhood are true. I doubt anyone does. Life has enough doubt as it is. But (read this guardedly) most of us can remember a time when we or a friend of ours was positive this happened that way, or we definitely parked here, but it actually happened the other way, or we parked over there.
But occasionally I'll hear of a person wrongly imprisoned, usually based on the testimony of one or two people whose certainty in their false memories swayed a jury, and I wonder how often it happens. Is eyewitness testimony sufficiently doubted in today's judicial system? Should it be trusted at all?
There's no way I'm ending on such a pretentious note. This is one of the quotes from the article:
"In one study published last year, 50% of volunteers were persuaded they had taken a ride in a hot-air balloon when they had not. But when Kathy Pezdek of the Claremont Graduate University, California, tried to make people believe they had received a rectal enema, she met with almost universal resistance."
November 05, 2003
Matrix Revolutions
(no spoilers, but skip it if you want to avoid hearing what critics are saying about the movie)
Is there something unique to the post-Baby Boomer generation that drives us to lower our expectations to avoid being disappointed? I'm generalizing, maybe a lot, but I find myself feeling some gratitude to movie reviews that tank one of the three to four movies I look forward to each year.
"The Matrix Revolutions sucks."
-- Peter Travers, ROLLING STONE
That's one of the harshest reviews, but the new Matrix movie is getting panned by most critics. But after the letdown, I was glad I read the reviews. I sought them out. Because I'm still going to see the movie, and the Wachowski brothers are going to have to pull the "It was all a dream" end to crush my enjoyment of the series.
On the surface, lowering one's expectations is a win-win situation. If it's bad, you're not as disappointed. If it's good, you're pleasantly surprised. But what, if anything, is lost?
Is there something unique to the post-Baby Boomer generation that drives us to lower our expectations to avoid being disappointed? I'm generalizing, maybe a lot, but I find myself feeling some gratitude to movie reviews that tank one of the three to four movies I look forward to each year.
"The Matrix Revolutions sucks."
-- Peter Travers, ROLLING STONE
That's one of the harshest reviews, but the new Matrix movie is getting panned by most critics. But after the letdown, I was glad I read the reviews. I sought them out. Because I'm still going to see the movie, and the Wachowski brothers are going to have to pull the "It was all a dream" end to crush my enjoyment of the series.
On the surface, lowering one's expectations is a win-win situation. If it's bad, you're not as disappointed. If it's good, you're pleasantly surprised. But what, if anything, is lost?
October 10, 2003
That Crazy Hatch
Last July, when Arnold Schwarzenegger was considering whether to run for the California governership, Senator Orrin Hatch proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to allow anyone who has been a U.S. citizen for 20 years to run for President. Senator Kerry countered with his own proposed amendment that any Senator whose last name rhymes with 'patch' is a weenie.
Update: I thought of deleting this post, but I figured I'll just let my dumb-ass comments stay up. I assumed Hatch wanted to rewrite the Constitution just so Schwarzenegger 2008 would be a possibility. Even if this is his motivation, I'm starting to think an amendment like this is a good idea.
At first, I had a xenophobic reaction to the concept of a "foreigner" running the U.S.: "That would threaten the security of the country!" But how? If a secret Soviet agent named Alexi Brusnekv, cryogenically frozen for the past 20 years, runs for President and poisons our water with a mind-control substance that causes us to vote for him? We won't even vote for anyone who isn't a white, male, tall, decent-looking Protestant from an upper class family with a friendly first name. What's Al Queda going to do, send over Akbar Al-Hummas with $1,000, a pack of "Honk If You Love Hummas" bumper stickers, and an application for public financing and instruct him to infiltrate us from the inside?
This issue is more symbolic than anything, but if gathers momentum, I would probably support it. We will get few opportunities as painless as this one to nudge this country closer to the ideals many of us value.
Also, my Mom would make a great President.
(The Washington Post has a good editorial on this issue, which influenced my thinking a lot.)
Update: I thought of deleting this post, but I figured I'll just let my dumb-ass comments stay up. I assumed Hatch wanted to rewrite the Constitution just so Schwarzenegger 2008 would be a possibility. Even if this is his motivation, I'm starting to think an amendment like this is a good idea.
At first, I had a xenophobic reaction to the concept of a "foreigner" running the U.S.: "That would threaten the security of the country!" But how? If a secret Soviet agent named Alexi Brusnekv, cryogenically frozen for the past 20 years, runs for President and poisons our water with a mind-control substance that causes us to vote for him? We won't even vote for anyone who isn't a white, male, tall, decent-looking Protestant from an upper class family with a friendly first name. What's Al Queda going to do, send over Akbar Al-Hummas with $1,000, a pack of "Honk If You Love Hummas" bumper stickers, and an application for public financing and instruct him to infiltrate us from the inside?
This issue is more symbolic than anything, but if gathers momentum, I would probably support it. We will get few opportunities as painless as this one to nudge this country closer to the ideals many of us value.
Also, my Mom would make a great President.
(The Washington Post has a good editorial on this issue, which influenced my thinking a lot.)
September 26, 2003
Saruman and Crabs
Once, while eating in a crab restaurant, I remarked to a friend how leveling our wooden mallets against these creatures served in caskets of Old Bay was as close as we would come to the caveman. Felling a tiger with a spear has been replaced with bits of shell hitting our bibs and the floor where grass once lied underneath.
An insightful observation, I thought. A few seconds later, almost out of earshot, I heard a man make almost the same comment. He didn't overhear me. I realized what I said was an obvious observation, one that comes to most people who have eaten crabs and know the caveman archetype.
On that note, I searched for "saruman hamas leader" in Google. Six hundred hits.
An insightful observation, I thought. A few seconds later, almost out of earshot, I heard a man make almost the same comment. He didn't overhear me. I realized what I said was an obvious observation, one that comes to most people who have eaten crabs and know the caveman archetype.
On that note, I searched for "saruman hamas leader" in Google. Six hundred hits.
May 12, 2003
Mysterious People
Occasionally after I wake up in the morning and go back to sleep, I'll have an extremely vivid dream where I'm aware that I'm dreaming. Today, I watched several dozen people eat in a cafeteria. Every face was a new person: horn-rimmed glasses, a thin, brown mustache, a chin that curved outward like the moon. Every face was a stranger.
How does the mind conjure these faces? Do we secretly have near-photographic memories that absorb every new face in the mall, flag the details as trivial, and then dump them into a trashbin only accessible when we're dreaming and our mind needs to generate a crowd in a flash? Or can we generate faces at will, picking and choosing features from people we do know and assembling them into a new composite? Like if you want to generate a vaguely menacing old man, you'll pick the wrinkled brow from your grandpa, the narrow eyebrows of your physics teacher, and the jowl of Captain Kangaroo when he zones out and has a flashback to his days at Vietnam?
"Captain! I can't move! I can't make it over the minefield!"
"I won't leave you behind, soldier. Grab on. We'll jump over the mines together."
How does the mind conjure these faces? Do we secretly have near-photographic memories that absorb every new face in the mall, flag the details as trivial, and then dump them into a trashbin only accessible when we're dreaming and our mind needs to generate a crowd in a flash? Or can we generate faces at will, picking and choosing features from people we do know and assembling them into a new composite? Like if you want to generate a vaguely menacing old man, you'll pick the wrinkled brow from your grandpa, the narrow eyebrows of your physics teacher, and the jowl of Captain Kangaroo when he zones out and has a flashback to his days at Vietnam?
"Captain! I can't move! I can't make it over the minefield!"
"I won't leave you behind, soldier. Grab on. We'll jump over the mines together."
February 13, 2003
Ask Ellie
What if your whole life were recorded and you could ask an intelligent search engine questions about your past? The search icon could be Ask Ellie, an elephant in a suit.
“Ellie, show me the moments where I learned not to trust people.”
You could see the time where your best friend stole your Snake Eyes figure and shoved you into your locker at school, deal with the memory, and feel comfortable buying GI Joes again.
You could obsessively relieve happy moments during depressions, irrefutably prove to your roommate that you took the trash out the last seven times, and explain to your friend both why you have trouble calling him back and refuse to go to the circus with him. (Ellie, load “Tied with Phone Cord by Murderous Clown,” ages 6 and 8.)
Having some bohemian buddies over for dinner? “Ellie, cue the 1998 Phish concert on the screen.” Then, remembering your parents are coming over: “The edited version.”
MOM: “What was that jump? What were you doing then?”
YOU: “Calm down. I was going to the bathroom.”
DAD: “Four times in 15 minutes?
YOU: “I drank a lot of water. I was trying not to dehydrate.”
And you could learn how your character was formed, down to the finest details. “Ellie, show me the moments from my childhood that I was kind to other people. What? File not found? You stupid elephant."
“Ellie, show me the moments where I learned not to trust people.”
You could see the time where your best friend stole your Snake Eyes figure and shoved you into your locker at school, deal with the memory, and feel comfortable buying GI Joes again.
You could obsessively relieve happy moments during depressions, irrefutably prove to your roommate that you took the trash out the last seven times, and explain to your friend both why you have trouble calling him back and refuse to go to the circus with him. (Ellie, load “Tied with Phone Cord by Murderous Clown,” ages 6 and 8.)
Having some bohemian buddies over for dinner? “Ellie, cue the 1998 Phish concert on the screen.” Then, remembering your parents are coming over: “The edited version.”
MOM: “What was that jump? What were you doing then?”
YOU: “Calm down. I was going to the bathroom.”
DAD: “Four times in 15 minutes?
YOU: “I drank a lot of water. I was trying not to dehydrate.”
And you could learn how your character was formed, down to the finest details. “Ellie, show me the moments from my childhood that I was kind to other people. What? File not found? You stupid elephant."
January 28, 2003
Fairy Tales
In earlier centuries, one of the roles of children stories was to warn kids of child predators (Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel...) After I wrote Spider Songs (previous post), I felt like it was echoing a poem I read before, so I searched the web (Ha!).
Remember "The Spider and the Fly"? I think that's the poem that was influencing me. I completely missed the child predator subtext in it when I was a kid. It's a real treat to reread a childhood tale and realize it's more rich than when you first read it.
Remember "The Spider and the Fly"? I think that's the poem that was influencing me. I completely missed the child predator subtext in it when I was a kid. It's a real treat to reread a childhood tale and realize it's more rich than when you first read it.
January 14, 2003
What's New?
Moon people found three new moons orbiting Neptune. That, or they found one moon and copied the image three times.
It's heartening to know that there are still things to be discovered relatively close to home. A few hundred years ago, people could fantasize about stumbling upon wooly mammoths butting heads and dinosaurs eating ferns in an unexplored land. Today, we have to manufacture our own surprises.
If I win the lottery, I’m putting a cotton-candy tree in a forest.
It's heartening to know that there are still things to be discovered relatively close to home. A few hundred years ago, people could fantasize about stumbling upon wooly mammoths butting heads and dinosaurs eating ferns in an unexplored land. Today, we have to manufacture our own surprises.
If I win the lottery, I’m putting a cotton-candy tree in a forest.
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