A telescopic view →

Published January 17, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 17

It has been a difficult year — politically, personally. Through it all, I have found solace in taking a more telescopic view — not merely on the short human timescale of my own life, looking back on having lived through a Communist dictatorship and having seen poems composed and scientific advances made under such tyrannical circumstances, but on far vaster scales of space and time.

~ Maria Popova, from In Praise of the Telescopic Perspective

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Not sure what it is about this winter, but I’m finding it notably harder to knuckle-down and dig in to prepare for 2018. Normally, the dreary winter months are generally depressing, but it’s the sort of dreary that “cozy up with a good book by the fire (and maybe some good Scotch)” takes care of. But this winter. meh I’ve got a lot of sorting out to do yet for 2018.

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Decisions →

Published January 16, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 16

If you want to achieve a goal you’ve set, the most crucial part is to DECIDE to manifest it. It doesn’t matter if you feel it’s outside your control to do so. It doesn’t matter if you can’t yet see how you’ll get from A to B. Most of those resources will come online AFTER you’ve made the decision, not before.

~ Steve Pavlina, from Cause-Effect vs. Intention-Manifestation

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Reaching my goals does NOT happen simply by my wishing for it. However, making a decision and visualizing the goal DOES get me on my way there. The more I believe, the more I push the boundaries, the more I explore while reaching for the vision, and the harder I work… the luckier I get.

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The ideal day →

Published January 15, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 15  ·  

The ideal day is not one which is completely fixed — neither fixed-the-same every day, nor fixed-the-same week after week. The ideal day is one in which I know my goals at various levels– daily, weekly, yearly. etc.. A day where I feel no worry about making progress, because I know I’m making progress. A day where I am presented with challenges I feel that I have chosen. A day where I get to work on things which are interesting to me, and useful to others. A day where surprises are interesting and add value, (as opposed to causing me to react by feeling stress, panic and existential crises.)

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The King complex →

Published January 14, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 14  ·  

That’s the reason it’s difficult for many individuals to leave the internet — even for as little as a few hours in the evening, over a weekend, or on vacation. In short, the internet makes us feel like kings. It is the ultimate concierge.

~ Blake Snow, from Why the King Complex Makes the Internet So Hard to Put Down

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I’ve read a lot about how parts of the Internet are designed to hold your attention, how social media services are designed to beaddicting, and how using “game” theories can get everyone to want to interact more, and how all of that leads to a slippery slope. But this idea—thinking of how the Internet caters to your every whim, and why you then drool all over it to get more of that—this is a new twist I’d not seen before.

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Monarch →

Published January 13, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 13

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Prosperity →

Published January 12, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 12  ·  

Notice a subtle point here: Seneca isn’t saying that prosperity is not worth pursuing. It is, after all, a preferred indifferent. But it is preferred only insofar it doesn’t get in the way of conducting a virtuous life, as one gets the sense Lucilius was worrying about insofar his own pursuits were concerned. Which is why his friend reminds him that he is under no obligation at all to live in the fast lane.

~ Massimo Pigliucci, from Seneca to Lucilius

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Just yesterday, for the first time ever, I considered removing the rear-view mirror from the Jeep. (Instead, I twisted it upwards to view the roof.) Since the Jeep is slow and old, as am I, there is ALWAYS someone tail-gating me. I’ve narrowly avoided accidents, where watching the tail-gater behind me distracted me from the road ahead. I’m so much in the “slow lane”, I am literally being run over. Where, really, are you going?

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How many programmers does it take… →

Published January 11, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 11

Having to do everything turned out to be a real benefit later on, I was comfortable with such diverse things as communicating with customers, designing UI, identifying and tracking plans, architecture, and other non-programming tasks. With today’s roles unless you are in a startup environment (sometimes not even there) as a programmer you rarely get to do anything but write code. People even joke about programmers doing other things like designing.

~ Andrew Wulf from, How Many People Does It Take To Write Software

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I certainly didn’t do anywhere near everything. (Notably, it doesn’t seem I got very good at communicating via the years of my early experience.) But I agree with the general sentiment. It’s all the peripheral stuff that I had to sort out, figure out, build, do, etc. which I think turned out to be the keys to my later — dare I say it — “success”.

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The Great Depression was an energy crisis →

Published January 10, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 10

When I put together a chart of per capita energy consumption since 1820 for a post back in 2012, there was a strange “flat spot” in the period between 1920 and 1940. When we look at the underlying data, we see that coal production was starting to decline in some of the major coal producing parts of the world at that time. From the point of view of people living at the time, the situation might have looked very much like peak energy consumption, at least on a per capita basis.

~ Gail Tverberg from, The Depression of the 1930s Was an Energy Crisis

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One of my rules-of-thumb is to thoroughly read everything written my Gail Tverberg.

Years ago, I found a web site called The Oil Drum which was a collecton of superlative thinkers all writing about things related to petroleum. Actually, it still IS a superlative collection, because they’ve left it up as-is to be an archive.

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Music in human evolution? Aposematism?! →

Published January 9, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 9

… the goal of aposematism is to advertise that, as a piece of prey, you are decidedly unprofitable for the predator. If a predator can easily recognize you (and other members of your species), and remembers getting burned during past encounters, it will quickly learn to stop attacking you in the first place.

~ Kevin Simler from, Music in Human Evolution

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Long [long!] ago humans stood up (makes us easy to see),
moved into the open grasslands (makes us really easy to see),
lost our claws/protective-thick-skin/fangs (makes us soft and easy to kill),
did NOT have tools other than rocks we could pick up (makes us unable to defend ourselves),
started singing ON THE GROUND (makes us easy to hear and find, NO OTHER ANIMAL DOES THIS),

… and then we took over the planet.

AND we are the only animal that uses RHYTHM,
ALSO, all humans dance (ever have the urge to tap your foot or more your head to music?)…
Wait, also, why do we always — every society, every religion, every military — ALWAYS retrieve/prepare/handle/bury our dead?

APOSEMATISM !

Intrigued? Click that link… I’m a simple person, with a small brain, and I’m easily amused. This article. BLEW. MY. MIND.

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The cure for boredom →

Published January 8, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 8  ·  

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

~ Dorothy Parker

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