Samhain Winter Moon
An unsubtle irony. All those people bent over their phones, heads down, eyes focused on another world, the cyberworld, have become tiny islands, connected to seas not in evidence, influenced by information and persons not present. It is as if gatherings of people have become insular, the very islands which we were not supposed to able to be, at least among those to whom we are physically present, but functionally absent.
Samhain Winter Moon
Carlson Toyota. Getting the Rav4 oil changed and 30,000 mile diagnostics. It was a busy Friday afternoon, not as I had hoped. My reasoning went that if I got there before 3 pm I should be ahead of the after work crowd. The reasoning probably wasn’t wrong exactly, but the conclusion I’d drawn was. Other old folks were in there with their cars along with mothers with young children, all the folks that have available time in the afternoon like I do.
The crowd at Carlson has a much more diverse feel than its Anoka County location might suggest. Yes, we’re a pretty white county in a pretty white state, but Carlson employs many Hmong and Vietnamese as mechanics (technicians) and back office workers. When I spend time waiting for an oil change, it’s always clear that the customer base is 15-25% asian. Not all Hmong or Vietnamese either. A few Chinese and Koreans as well and today, in a beautifully colorful winter hat, I spied my first Tibetan there. African-Americans are less frequent, but they are there.
I watched one young African-American going over his bill, in detail, with a tall asian woman who looked Chinese. She had a full head of black falling curls and at first, from a distance, I thought she was African-American, but when the encounter finished she headed back to her office and her asian features were apparent. It is after all an asian car company and I suppose that has some influence.
Having a lot of time, an hour plus, much of which I spent reading Toppling Qaddafi, a change in behavior that everyone knows but goes little remarked was the shoulders slightly hunched, head bowed prayerfully, fingers flicking over the small hand held computer we insist on calling a phone. This behavior is so common that it seems ordinary yet even 5 years ago it would have been unusual to see almost all of the adults in the waiting area, maybe 30 people, at one point or another assuming this position.
Almost does not include a certain contingent of older white males who either had constraint or had not yet entered the smartphone era. Kate hasn’t. Below that strata though, everybody had their phone out at some point.
Though the screen of choice for me was my kindle paperwhite, I still dutifully checked my e-mail, the weather and my calendar. I rarely use the phone app, but I’m right there praying to the wireless gods to bring me good information, soon. Right now.
Oh. Yeah. Oil change. Multi-point inspection. Changing of air filters in the cabin. The cabin. When the did the front seat area become a cabin? Other various lubes, fluids and filling tires with air. $152. Worth it because a well-maintained Toyota is a thing of beauty forever. Well, maybe a thing of transportation for ever. Still a good deal.
Samhain Winter Moon
Space junkie? This virtual tour of the space shuttle discovery will amaze you.
Samhain Winter Moon
Reading a good book about memory, one that Mark Odegard, Ode, recommended, Moonwalking with Einstein. It’s an excursion into the world of memory champions, or Mental Athletes as they call themselves.
It has brought me back again to the notion of the memory palace. I first encountered this idea in The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci, a story about the first Jesuit in China by Jonathan Spence. It struck me then as important, worth pursuing, but I didn’t do it. Don’t recall why.
Now I’m thinking I may apply some of these techniques to Latin and poetry, two areas of great interest to me where memorization could make some difference.
In very brief a memory palace is any visual structure you use to “store” items you wish to remember. A memory coach in the book suggests spending several weeks developing your cache of palaces making them as gritty and as visual as you can.
In my case I chose first 419 N. Canal in Alexandria, where I lived from age 12 til age 17. I’ve gone on to recall First Methodist Church, the MIA, the Times-Tribune offices, our current home, the Walker, the streets of Alexandria, the Nicollet Mall, the Stevens Square Neighborhood and the West Bank. Any structure (doesn’t have to be a building) will work. Vegetable garden, orchard, mountains…all would work. 311 E. Monroe Street will be in there, too, as well as that neighborhood. I’ve not gotten very far along on this part, but I will.
Samhain Thanksgiving Moon
Today I needed to find a rack of lamb, something our local butcher at Festival Foods said she “…couldn’t get until the week before Christmas.” After assuring me that neither her suppliers nor any local grocers stocked such an exotic piece of meat, she concluded with sorry I couldn’t help you.
Well. I got on the web, went to the Byerly’s website, ordered a rack of lamb, 2 in fact, some italian sausage and a nice brie. Then I noticed they would deliver. I chose that option and will get those items plus a couple more delivered to our home on Saturday morning. Food, delivered. From a grocery store. I knew it was happening, but I’d never tried it before. We’ll see how it goes.
The whole process was over ten minutes after the Festival butcher said she couldn’t help. The problem for brick and mortar operations is their vulnerability to better service available with little or no friction on the part of the buyer. Who knows, I may buy food more often this way.
A trip over to Byerly’s in Maple Grove would take an hour to an hour and a half plus. This accomplishes the task with literally no travel on my part. That’s a good deal and worth money, both in time and car cost. Yes, there’s a delivery fee of $10, but that’s less than the trips cost to me.
Not sure I would ever want to buy groceries entirely on line, but I might. I’ve just never done it until now. Maybe it makes the most sense. The cyber links we have at our fingertips are changing the most mundane tasks in ways we couldn’t have predicted. Some good, some bad.
By that I mean some that make things work better for us, others make things work worse for us. The latter group includes, at a minimum, the invasive intelligence gathering carried out by not only the NSA but by corporate interests of all sorts, not just google.
Samhain Thanksgiving Moon
Some things need no words.
Samhain Thanksgiving Moon
Working through the revisions in Missing, having fun, surprising myself. About a third of the way into the manuscript, though the later chapters have more work than what I’ve done so far. Ways of knitting themes and character development with the narrative come more easily at this stage.
Got a new piece of software today, Dramatica Pro. I’m hoping it will help me deepen my work while making it more exciting. I’ll let you know how it goes. It’s supposed to take a long time to learn.
Five more verses of Ovid. These verses had a textual problem that had me digging around in the Oxford Classical Text’s version. It’s supposed to be the best manuscript available now. The Metamorphoses presents certain problems since it’s oldest manuscript dates from the 9th century, seven to eight hundred years after it was written. The Aeneid, for example, has some fourth century manuscripts, still within the time of the Roman Empire.
And finished up the next to last poet of ModPo. I’ll finish tomorrow and start on my assessments on Friday. Yeah.
Lughnasa Harvest Moon
Woolly meeting tonight. Kate baked a ground cherry pie and a raspberry pie. Big hits. “All hail, Kate!” There was applause near the end for the desert. Yin served her wonderful variations on Chinese originals, tonight a noodle and pork and vegetable dish.
Scott introduced the topic of the Singularity and we talked about technology and change for the rest of the evening. Mark Odegard brought up a good point about advances in technology contributing to a digital divide with digital haves and digital have nots. This divide will tend to reinforce class and racial divisions. He said this in reaction to me saying I wasn’t particularly worried about the Singularity. His point was that the rapid advances in technology can and will have unintended social consequences. He’s right.
In this argument I find myself on the conservative side, that is, I believe there are so many fundamental activities that make us human from painting to poetry, music to novels, athletics and theatre. They are not reducible to code nor products artificial intelligence can reasonably be expected to create. There are also the incredible complexities of life itself, human relationships, the intricate interlocking webs of ecology systems that will always, I believe, outstrip any technological advance.
And I love technology, gadgets, the new. Just don’t see them hanging out with me at a Woolly meeting as full participants. Ever.
Lughnasa Harvest Moon
The singularity is near. Can we prevent the takeover of the machines? Will technology devour us, turning the master-slave relationship upside down in Nietzschean irony? Life with intelligent machines has become a reality already. Are we too late, doomed to follow our lemming-like path of one more gadget to disaster?
Doubt it. First. Depictions of the apocalypse have been failing since the notion first muscled its way onto the human imaginal stage. We’re very good at predicting the end and equally talented at forgetting that it never happened. In the Hebrew scriptures there was only one way to tell a good prophesy from a bad one. Did it foretell events? If so, good prophecy. If not, bad prophecy. And prophecies of the end time have, so far at least, been wanting. As proof, I offer the fact that I’m writing about
them.
Second. Events do not occur in a vacuum. That is, even if a singularity event or its near cousin came to pass, it would have been preceded by other advances outside of its ambit and the fact of its occurrence itself would shift matters in ways unpredictable. These interacting variables would almost certainly create a less dire circumstance than techno-gloomy gusses anticipate.
Third. Remember Malthus? He had a simple idea about food production and the carrying capacity of the earth. He bet we would return to subsistence level agriculture once the population outstripped the food supply. Hasn’t happened. Why? Agriculture advances, logistical advances, economic advances. Simple ideas tend to leave out the complicated world in which we actually live.
Finally, will the end come? Yep. It will. There are astrophysical forces at play in the solar system that will finish off life on earth and after that earth itself will be absorbed as our chief ally, Sol, expands into a red giant. Will humanity have figured out how to live among the stars by then? My guess? Yes.
My sense is that we muddle along more often than anything else. And the singularity will be a curiosity of our era. Remember 2012?
Lughnasa Honey Moon
As I installed the CD changer and cleaned up the clutter of wires, I removed all the wires no longer needed. To my surprise among them was the coaxial cable linking our television to Comcast. Not necessary. We now get all of our television content from DVD, Netflix, Hulu or Amazon Video.
Until I set all those extra wires aside, I’d forgotten that the coax no longer hooked up to anything TV related. It looks lonely now. I might have to bring it a computer. Oh, wait. Wi-fi. Don’t need it for that either. Still need the one downstairs with the modem and the router though.