shikata ga nai [translation]

Wow, Tokyo is cool. I've never been to a big city like this before—Seattle has about one twentieth of the population of Tokyo, and it shows. Mass transit is awesome, and all the buildings are gloriously densely packed. (I wonder aloud about the steepness of stairs in houses, and G points out that as people get older, they tend to just stop going upstairs in their homes.)

Our first full day in Tokyo is a rush of impressions, and I have trouble remembering the order things happen in, so let's just go with a list of happenings and oddments:

Bicycles: They're everywhere! It's apparently illegal to lock a bicycle to a railing in public, so all the bikes have tiny little locks mounted on the frame that do nothing more than keep one wheel from spinning. I've yet to see a U-Lock.

But the sheer variety of bicycles! I'm filling up the digital camera with pictures of bicycles with cool logos, fancy shapes, and corporate sponsorships I'll never see in the United States (Chevrolet bicycles? Coca-Cola bicycles??). It's awesome.

Crosswalks: I was prepared for traffic flowing on the lefthand side, but the crosswalk lights completely blow me away. First I notice that the "go" light is green instead of white, then when it's about to turn red, instead of flashing red, the green light flashes! Then it hits me--in the United States, the little walking guy faces right, but here it faces left. I am truly in a foreign land.

Stores: I see an AM/PM. I'm annoyed by this. I expected McDonald's, and wasn't surprised by Starbucks, but AM/PM? Apparently there are 7/11's here as well. What's the point in flying for more than eight hours just to see the same convenience stores I see at home?

Persimmons: J and I are walking along after a delicious noodle lunch, and a guy comes up to us excitedly talking in Japanese. J translates—the guy wants to share his fruits with us. He tears open the bag with his teeth and gives both of us one of the fruits, encouraging us to eat up, eat up! I thank him profusely and am quite excited by this sudden munificence, but J is totally blase about it. I roll my eyes at his boredom and bite into the fruit.

I'm still not quite sure what kind of fruit it is, though J says it's some sort of persimmon. It's got an orange rind (J's not sure whether I'm supposed to eat it or peel it), and when I bit into it, it's quite firm and not at all juicy or powerful sweet like I'd expect from a United Statian fruit. I've almost finished it before I realize I hadn't taken a photo of it. This saddens me.

Cats: Cats look different here. So far the only one I've seen is being carried by a woman on the street. Its meowing sounds foreign. I wonder if maybe Japanese felines have a different lineage. I wonder if that woman thinks the cat actually enjoys being carried like that.

Toys: J takes me to a really cool toy store—six stories of way cool Japanese toys, each level a different genre. An entire floor devoted to railroad models, another for robots, one for guns. The guns thing surprises me—apparently firearms are illegal in Japan, but it's popular to collect nonfunctioning models of handguns and submachine guns. I take a picture.

Bathing: There are many things I like much better about Japan than the United States. The design of the baths is a good example—the bathtubs have taller walls than their United Statian counterparts, but are shorter to fit in the smaller room. But the entire room is a shower stall with a drain in the floor, so you use a handheld showerhead to rinse off, then lather up with the water turned off (thus conserving water), then rinse off the lather. There's no bar soap—everything is liquid soap, thus why it's so important to have a loofah-like bath towel, I suppose.

And the toilets never seem to be in the same room as the bath, which totally makes sense. It's the little things that really seem to stand out for me.

Gaijin: There are foreigners everywhere. I expected less racial diversity. J says it's just the areas we're checking out— there are apparently more homogenous neighborhoods in Tokyo. I just need to be patient, J says. I think I'm starting to annoy him.

Puppet museum: Apparently the Japanese word for "puppet" is the same as the word for "doll", thus explaining away the confluence of the two notions in Ghost in the Shell 2. E suggested I check out the puppet museum she'd heard about, so J and I head on over. We have a little trouble finding the place (there are no street numbers per se in this country—everything is done by numbered blocks and detailed maps); we finally locate the place, and it's amazing. As J says, sensei is there, and gives us a brief demonstration of the puppets' movement, as well as some of their features (female puppets have pins jutting from their mouths in order to hook their voluminous sleeves on, thus indicating emotional trauma to the audience).

Then J's cellphone rings, prematurely concluding the lecture. Argh!

Still, it's quite an enjoyable visit. Japanese puppeteers use a lot of the same construction methods I've seen United Statian puppeteers using. The artistry of the puppets and dolls at the museum is breathtaking, and the preponderance of lagomorphic idols leads us to the discovery of a tradition wherein you collect images of the opposing Chinese zodiac in order to foster success in your life. (Upon learning this, I start hoping that my fondness for dragons means that I'm draconically opposed, but it turns out I'm supposed to collect horses. Bleah. Even worse, J, who continually makes fun of my drake fetish, is opposed by the Dragon.) There is no justice in the Universe.

A little Universal justice: After a stupendously great experience at the doll museum, J drags me across numberless streets in search of a toy museum he's visited in the past. We're finally close to the right area of Tokyo, so J crosses the street to confer with a security guard standing in front of an empty lot. The security guard smiles, gestures to the recently-demolished building behind him and proceeds to entertain J with the story of the toy museum's recent destruction. This balances out the Dragon thing. Somewhat.

Max headroom: The top of my head is endangered by the low ceilings in this city. I fret for E, who is even taller and yearns to visit Japan someday.

Tissue handouts: I'd been warned by the excellent Tokyo guide Just In Tokyo, but I'm still surprised by how often I'm offered packages of disposable tissues wrapped in colorful advertising brochures.

Fun foods: Today I had duck with soba noodles for lunch. I don't think I've ever eaten duck before. For dinner we had a sampling of foods at some nice restaurant where I had by far the finest whiskey I've ever tasted, as well as horse sashimi. Horse tastes pretty good raw. Now I just need to find a place that sells whale dishes...

Random photos: Today I make sure to get the requisite shot of someone with a bit of architecture sprouting from their head. The adventure has definitely begun now. I also have a shot of Pikachu masks for sale near a Shinto Shrine ("It's SHinto SHrine, BuddhisT Temple," as J reminds me.), several more bicycle shots, a sampling of cute media images, ivy-covered architecture (I just didn't expect to see it here for some reason), some dragon iconography, and then nothing after 2pm, when the camera battery runs dry.

Vending machines: No, really, they're freaking everywhere over here!

Last updated by eric Sat Sep 11 05:29 2004 | deed/tokyo trip | link

senzeni na [translation]

It's a long flight.

I ask J how he'd like to be named in these entries, and he tells me that "the ol' duder" is the appropriate handle. I point out that it lacks the brevity of my usual initialization, but he is adamant. I then realize he probably won't ever read these entries, so there's no point asking his preference.

Did I mention it's a long flight? I'd worried that J and I might clash after more than ten hours hanging out with each other, but there's just enough to distract us, and then the flight concludes with a drunken lout getting out of his seat before we've reached the gate. He declares loudly that it's time to get up, everybody should get up, why isn't anybody standing, it's time to paaaaar-ty!

I'd feared that my first trip off American soil would bring me face-to-face with the rude American I surely must have inside me, but after this guy's performance, I'm not sure I could ever do worse.

Yep, my first trip off American soil. It's actually a homecoming of sorts, since my parents were living here when I was conceived. Here I am, "back" in Tokyo.

Right off the plane, I start pestering J with stupid comments and questions. "Why are there so few Japanese people? Why so many gaijin? Is this normal?" J's putting up with it for now, but kindly points out to me that it's probably a bad idea to take pictures while waiting in line for the passport check. Finally we cross over and head to the baggage claim, where I have my first moment of culture shock: a woman drops her suitcase near me and bows in apology, which totally throws me off. I'd better get used to the bowing, I think.

We get our bags with no problems, then pick up some rental cellphones to use while we're in Japan. J goes for the more affordable model, but I can't resist splurging on the internet-capable phone. Later we discover that J's has an English mode, while I—the one who doesn't speak any Japanese—am stuck with a Japanese-only phone. Still, it's way cool surfing the web on my cellphone for no extra charge.

We head for the train station—a train! Mass transit! I'm in heaven!—to make our way into Tokyo proper from Narita Airport. It's a little expensive, but for how quickly it'll get us into the city, it's totally worth it. J talks me into buying a soft drink before we board the train—not only do I have to buy a strangely-named drink, but I have to do it myself. J teaches me a new phrase that I instantly muck up and then forget, but I have made my first purchase in Japan! I take a photo once we're on the train, then complain to J about the group in our car who are speaking English. Don't they realize that I crave culture shock?

We zip quickly into Tokyo proper, then hop onto another train to get to the neighborhood where we'll be staying the first few nights. I see a McDonald's and take a quick photo that turns out badly—I'm going to have to learn how to take photos without letting J lose me.

We encounter J's friend G on the street, which makes it much easier to find his house. On the way "home", G helps me buy a bath towel to use while in Tokyo. I'm still reeling from all the spiffy bicycles I'm seeing, and car elevators, and schoolgirls in their uniforms late at night, and water bottles sitting on the street. G says the water bottles are for driving crows off, as well as keeping cats away. That's just too cool.

Only a few hours in the country, and my head's practically spinning off already. This is going to be great.

Weird thing: There's no recycling here, it seems. Vending machines everywhere, but the garbage is merely divided into combustible and non-combustible. Someone comments that Japan doesn't need to recycle aluminum because Australia provides so much cheap aluminum to Japan. (Sorry, I mean aluminium.) My mind boggles.

Last updated by eric Fri Sep 10 06:54 2004 | deed/tokyo trip | link

corpus delicti [translation]

Rolling Stone has published a fascinating history of Dick Cheney's involvement in the United Statian political arena. You should totally read it.

Last updated by eric Wed Sep 08 13:58 2004 | word | link

Hannibal ad portas [translation]

Jimmy Carter's been my favorite President for quite some time, but he's really shot to the top of the list with his letter to Zell Miller (via Boing Boing).

Last updated by eric Wed Sep 08 09:36 2004 | thought | link

vanitas vanitatum, omnis vanitas [translation]

Thanks to a recent episode of I Love the 90s, I've been questioning my use of the word as of late, but I think this could be seen as ironic considering the current efforts to recall the Monorail efforts in Seattle.

Last updated by eric Thu Jul 29 08:43 2004 | omission | link

non compos mentis [translation]

I'm not sure where I picked it up originally, but I have this odd phrase I use when asking for assistance in locating things: "If you were [noun], where would you be?" It often provokes smiles, and always gets results. Well, except for yesterday, when I was looking for snacks for the gathering:

Me: If you were nuts, where would you be?
Her: [blank stare]

Last updated by eric Sun Jul 11 11:49 2004 | deed | link

ignis aurum probat, miseriea fortes viros [translation]

I really like living in Ballard. Well, I did, up until I read this.

Last updated by eric Thu Jul 08 11:42 2004 | word | link

quaere verum [translation]

I've discovered recently how months of unemployment cause one to fill up free time with all sorts of interesting activities, to the point that each day is a full schedule of enrichment of some sort.

Then some small employment comes along. Not that I mind employment (and in fact appreciate it quite a bit, especially if any of my employers are reading this!), but I have to completely rearrange my schedule to accommodate it: maybe I can't go to the movies with friends as often as I was, or read online news with the same depth of research, or devour the number of books per month that I was churning through before.

So the scheduling can be challenging. There are some things, though, that make it a lot easier to triage, like when I have a chance to see Kim Stanley Robinson do a reading in Seattle.

University Bookstore was kind enough to invite KSR to read shortly after his Forty Signs of Rain was released. I've been a big fan of KSR for several years now, but had never been able to see him in person, so this was quite exciting (not to mention the excitement over a new book!). I bought the book, wolfed it down in a couple days (becoming quite disappointed toward the end as I realize that it's the first in a trilogy), then attended the reading.

I was struck dumb. The man is even more brilliant in person than I could have ever hoped, as inspiring an orator as he is a novelist. Some points stood out for me in his reading, including:

Americans tend to view taxation as a form of theft, taking away their hard-earned monies in exchange for social services that have no clear personal benefit. Yet there's another form of theft that goes completely unnoticed, as pointed out in a sampling of one of the passages KSR read from:

"What's the average income?" Edgardo asked. "Thirty thousand? [...] Call it thirty, and what's the average taxes paid?"

"About ten? Or is it less?"

Edgardo said, "Call it ten. So let's see. You work every day of the year, except for three lousy weeks. You make around a hundred thousand dollars. Your boss takes two thirds, and gives you one third, and you give a third of [your third] to the government. Your government uses what it takes to build all the roads and schools and police and pensions, and your boss takes his share and buys a mansion on an island somewhere. So naturally you complain about your bloated inefficient Big Brother of a government, and you always vote for the pro-owner party." He grinned at Frank and Anna. "How stupid is that?"

[...] "It's a matter of what you can see," [Frank] suggested. "You see your boss, you see your paycheck, it's given to you. You have it. Then you're forced to give some of it to the government. You never know about the surplus value you've created, because it was disappeared in the first place. Cooked in the books."

— Forty Signs of Rain pgs.74-75 (italics mine)

Both of KSR's books also discuss how scientific methods are a strange fit for a capitalist society--much work done for science is on a completely voluntary basis, such as work for a scientific journal which doesn't even offer a complimentary subscription to the journal in exchange for one's labor. As a result, science is practically at odds with capitalism, and KSR takes it one step further: science is actually the true power underlying government in our modern systems.

You'll have to read his books if you want to discover the structure of his argument on this point, but after thinking about his suggestion, I find a different light colors the current headlines about the Bush administration trying to quell scientific inquiry and process in their policies. It's a coup d'état occurring right before our eyes, and no one cares.

Last updated by eric Sun Jun 27 13:18 2004 | omission | link

nullum quod tetigit non ornavit [translation]

Okay, I admit it. The Stranger is too smart for me. I certainly enjoyed the recent feature which accurately detailed the unsafe design of the new downtown library, and I even picked up on the satirical tone of the article. But I totally missed out on the connection between the engineering organization that worked on the new library building (Arup and Magnusson Klemencic Associates, according to this article), and the engineer Jon Magnusson who was lambasting the safety features of the Seattle monorail a few weeks ago.

Even worse, I had this pointed out to me via J, who lives in Southern California's Inland Empire. So yeah, I'm out of touch, what can I say?

The Stranger is totally spot-on about the new library, though. I visited it briefly this past week to see what all the fuss is about, and the place does feel like a horrible death trap at all points where one tries to move throughout the building. The escalators drag you through claustrophobia-inducing passageways, the see-through railings near the elevators feel like they're going to give way at any moment, and the open feeling of all the glass walls inspries an agoraphobia that I don't even feel when wandering around downtown outside.

It sure is pretty, though.

Last updated by eric Fri Jun 11 10:59 2004 | omission | link

lis sub judice [translation]

Do you think the good people at asm.org are familiar with the concept of an "anagram"?

Last updated by eric Sat May 29 01:18 2004 | thought | link

vincit qui se vincit [translation]

Reminder to self:

My body just basically falls apart over the course of [eating McDonald's for a month]. [...] I start to get tired, I start to get headaches; my liver basically starts to fill up with fat because there's so much fat and sugar in this food. My blood sugar skyrockets, my cholesterol goes up off the charts, my blood pressure becomes completely unmanageable. The doctors were like, 'You have to stop.'

— The Way We Eat Now

Last updated by eric Thu May 27 09:53 2004 | deed | link

tangere ulcus [translation]

Is it "milk it for all it's worth" or "milk it of all its worth"?

Last updated by eric Sat May 15 11:09 2004 | word | link

nota bene [translation]

Congrats to the Fog of War website for its Webby win. The website is truly a great experience, even though I loathe Flash websites. If you're one of those empty souls who weren't able to see the movie in a theatre, at least visit the website for a modicum of the theatrical experience.

Last updated by eric Wed May 12 11:48 2004 | omission | link

nil sine numine [translation]

I've linked to Real Live Preacher over on the right for some time now, but I don't think enough of you are checking out his fine work. Every now and then he'll scribe a turn of phrase that pierces the gloom of my mind with a magnesic intensity, like yesterday's entry and this gem:

Small children are so busy cramming all the new things they experience into their very limited set of categories that they really don't have time to worry about clerical errors. With scores of new ideas pouring in every day, they just file them as quickly as possible. Later, when the incoming ideas have slowed to reasonable pace, there's time to organize and do a better job of sorting things out.

Thank God for the Real Live Preacher.

Last updated by eric Wed May 12 11:26 2004 | deed | link

parva leves capiunt animas [translation]

I admit it's possible that we're not smarter than the rest of you, but the survey says we Seattleites are definitely better-educated.

Last updated by eric Wed May 12 10:04 2004 | thought | link

abyssus abyssum invocat [translation]

My perpetual argument with H is that no job is worth wearing clothes I don't like. I generally will quote Thoreau in my head while making my point, though today I decided to look up the context of the quote before I mentioned it. After all, his "consistencies" line is often misquoted without the preceding "foolish", so maybe there's something more to his warning against "enterprises that require new clothes".

Turns out there is something more to it, since the full sentence is "I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes" (emphasis added). Beyond that, the problem isn't the enterprises, it's the new clothes, as the full context demonstrates:

A man who has at length found something to do will not need to get a new suit to do it in; for him the old will do, that has lain dusty in the garret for an indeterminate period. Old shoes will serve a hero longer than they have served his valet—if a hero ever has a valet—bare feet are older than shoes, and he can make them do. Only they who go to soires and legislative balls must have new coats, coats to change as often as the man changes in them. But if my jacket and trousers, my hat and shoes, are fit to worship God in, they will do; will they not? Who ever saw his old clothes—his old coat, actually worn out, resolved into its primitive elements, so that it was not a deed of charity to bestow it on some poor boy, by him perchance to be bestowed on some poorer still, or shall we say richer, who could do with less? I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes. All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be. Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives. The loon retires to solitary ponds to spend it. Thus also the snake casts its slough, and the caterpillar its wormy coat, by an internal industry and expansion; for clothes are but our outmost cuticle and mortal coil. Otherwise we shall be found sailing under false colors, and be inevitably cashiered at last by our own opinion, as well as that of mankind.

— Walden: "Economy"

Anyway, it's good to think about this further, if anything just to avoid considering the possibility that I'm merely præpilaphobic.

Last updated by eric Mon May 10 18:31 2004 | word | link

nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine [translation]

Ah, yes, that's partly why I left: "Riverside County had the nation's worst annual and short-term particle matter pollution" (159M Americans Live in High-Smog Regions).

When R moved to Seattle from Riverside (after several decades living there), he spent the first three months coughing. Leaving Riverside can be like giving up smoking, apparently.

The lack of decent public transit is distasteful, too.

But then I suppose the greatest ire is reserved for those we once loved most passionately.

Last updated by eric Fri Apr 30 12:11 2004 | omission | link

via trita, via tuta [translation]

D sends me notice of her "peeps", one of whom is apparently in charge of Fresh Yarn. I hit the site to check it out (it's the only URL she includes, does D think that email is actually effective for real world event communication? Silly girl), and am immediately drawn to the article about AD&D, mostly because it's got a picture of the babe from the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon attached to it.

So, good article and all, and written by the woman responsible for True Porn Clerk Stories, which I enjoyed immensely as well. So apparently this Ali Davis person is going somewhere if she's so capable of attracting my attention without me recognizing her name.

Ultimately, though, the reason I write this is to apologize in public to Ms. Davis: Upon reading the AD&D essay/personal ad, I mentally criticized you for using "whale" to mean "strike or hit vigorously". I'd been thinking lately it didn't mean that unless spelled as "wail". Turns out I'm wrong. How could I have ever doubted you, Ms. Davis? I am deficient for it.

As penance, I'll keep an eye out for Los Angeles gaming groups seeking members; if you're ever in Seattle, I can easily hook you up, though.

Last updated by eric Sun Apr 25 01:57 2004 | deed | link

vivere parvo [translation]

Via This Modern World, tales of bank procedures for processing debit card fraud, which leads to a good conclusion:

I understand the extra convenience debit cards can provide, but after working in that place, I swore them off for life. You have to jump through all sorts of hoops to get an ATM-only card these days, but it can be done, and I'd never do anything but. If you carry separate ATM and credit cards, it means hauling around more plastic—but when they're stolen, at least it's not *your money* that disappears when the thief goes on a spree—and in a worst-case scenario, if everything goes wrong and you get held responsible for $10,000 of someone else's charges, with a credit card at least you just owe $10,000 and can declare bankruptcy, instead of just having that money already gone forever.

— Debit cards are pure evil

Last updated by eric Sat Apr 24 11:23 2004 | word | link

argumentum ad rem [translation]

I wanted to attend Michael Schudson's reading at UW's Kane Hall yesterday, but had some scheduling conflicts and couldn't make it. It's unfortunate; the topic of the reading ("The Ideal of 'The Informed Citizen': Why the Founders Didn't Encourage It, Why the Progressive Era Did, and Why We Should Move Beyond It if We Dare") is tantalizing, and what little I've found on the web of these ideas is rather difficult to boil down, though this quote seems to get to the conclusion rather succinctly:

In some ways, monitorial citizenship is more demanding than informed citizenship, because it implies that one's peripheral vision should always have a political or civic dimension. But it does not imply that citizens should know all the issues all of the time. It implies that they should be informed enough and alert enough to identify danger to their personal good and danger to the public good. When such danger appears on the horizon, they should have the resources — in trusted relationships, in political parties and elected officials, in relationships to interest groups and other trustees of their concerns, in knowledge of and access to the courts as well as the electoral system, and in relevant information sources to jump into the political fray and make a lot of noise.

— "Good Citizens and Bad History"

You'd have to be half-dead not to worry about so many simultaneous threats to established cultural authority. It is widely agreed that "The Simpsons" is one of the best things on TV. It is also among the worst, and is especially troubling because it is so popular and so potent. I watch it through the eyes of my children. In some ways, it is just Ozzie and Harriet, of course, and my kids can see the parallels between Homer and me. But it also trades on what Stephen Elkin, in a different context, has called our "unearned knowingness." Young children, at least mine, today, know a lot in this unearned way. My children are ready to ridicule institutions and individuals long before they've had an opportunity to admire them. "Simpsons" knocks pretense off its pedestal; fine, but my children are much more familiar with iconoclasm than they are with icons, they know more about satire than they do about what kind of honor or achievement led someone or something to be in a position to be satirized in the first place. There has been cultural irreverence before — MAD magazine, for instance, in the l950s in its mass marketed form, or Lenny Bruce or Mort Sahl in a more esoteric version. But today, irreverence is not a rebellious choice but a cultural baseline. It is more current than it is undercurrent, and the consequences are untold.

— ibid.

Last updated by eric Sat Apr 24 06:12 2004 | thought | link

per angusta ad augusta [translation]

Last night I attended a meeting in Ballard ostensibly organized to discuss the pending Monorail, though it looked like it was intended to devolve into a Monorail lynching. I attended in the hopes of stumblingly responding to some poorly-supported accusations; fortunately the SMP folks who showed up know the game backwards and forwards, and were able to whup the detractors pretty well (the SMP people were the only Monorail supporters given ten minutes to speak; apparently no one from Friends of the Monorail was able to attend, though I think they likely weren't invited). I tried to show up with as open a mind as possible, willing to be swayed by well-thought-out arguments supported by solid facts and projections, but the histrionics put on display by the anti-monorail groups were difficult to follow at best, and utterly tangential at their worst (at one point when the security cameras on the trains were mentioned, the guy heading up the meeting took the floor to comment how often one's face is photographed in public in London, a non-sequitor that solicited a smattering of giggles from the audience).

There were some heated exchanges during the meeting, perhaps best represented by the verbal altercation between a kind lady and the tattooed Kenickie wannabe guarding the AV equipment at the front of the room. During the question session, each individual was given a chance to ask only one question, during which Kenickie stormed through two questions and was on his way to a third when a woman sitting near me stood up to rightly protest that he should be limited. Kenickie responded to the sweet lady by telling her to "sit down and shut up"; the gentleman in me fortunately was utterly overwhelmed with shock at his inappropriate remark, else I might have tried my best to beat the crap out of him.

Overall, the anti-monorail groups were sorely disorganized (a good sign, I think), had a few talking points they tried to hit repeatedly without any real supporting material for their cause (and they were all points well-hashed out in the media already; just by reading the Stranger, I was aware of all their reasonable arguments, so the SMP folks had no problem gracefully refuting every anti-remark), and some of the anti-arguments were downright funny; examples below, though a good example of their poor choices of words are represented by one woman's comment how they have nothing to suggest as an alternative to the Monorail--they're just trying to stop the Monorail via a political maneuver (getting City Council to refuse to allocate land for the project). I think that one hurt them hard--ultimately their job is going to be to convince any fencesitters that they're right, but without acknowledging the generally-recognized problems and suggesting alternatives (no matter how lame), I can't see them making much headway except by some underhanded political stonewalling (which admittedly seems somewhat doable if they're able to get their acts together at all).

The order of speakers was:

1. Brief intro by guy whose name I didn't catch, but appeared to be a member of some "Block Watch" group from the businesses on 15th Ave NW. (A friend commented how the Block Watch program has been scaled back, which makes me wonder if it's a government program, which might mean these people's use of the group as a springboard into a political entity might be useable to undermine their efforts--if they're using a government-based program to organize under, maybe they could be charged with some inappropriate use of funds or something?) The guy introduced the various city officials who'd shown up (Tom Rasmussen and Peter Steinbrueck, as well as Hugh Ewart from Jim Compton's office, none of whom spoke during the meeting), then the SMP group and the scattered anti-monorail folks (they were sitting all in different places in the room, which is nicely emblematic of their inability to present a coherent argument against the monorail; I hope this disorganization continues).
2. SMP's Joel Horn speaks. The dude's got great stage presence, especially compared to the stumbling efforts of all the anti's. He quickly addressed issues about parking and switches, which seemed to be the main issues on most people's minds later during the meeting. Given only ten minutes, he was able to adeptly anticipate the bulk of the questions that would be asked throughout the meeting, though most of the questions demonstrated that people were being hardheaded, weren't listening to what was being said, and asked questions that had already been answered (or maybe they showed up after Joel spoke?).
3. The first of the anti's gets up, apparently from Monorailrecall.com, and the beginning of my lack of knowledge how to spell their names: Tim Wulf speaks, demonstrating poor attendance at Toastmaster gatherings. He stumbles through his ideas, fails to present a clear argument, and at one point has a nice exchange with the audience--his comments regarding the supposed mismanagement of the project elicits a call-and-response of "criminal!" from the audience, which is happily greeted with giggles from others who forgot to drink the Kool-Aid.

   I must say, though, Tim's comments were the funniest--he started off with a great analysis of the situation that sounded like he was providing a plot synopsis from the Simpsons Monorail episode. He likened the SMP and their ilk to "slick salesmen" who were selling us an overly-expensive "lemon car". He brought up talking points without providing any information to substantiate them, and some of his points had already been refuted in the media--I was especially unimpressed with his attempt to equate the elevator/escalator issue with cost overruns, when Dan Savage had already covered that in the Stranger: "Putting escalators in monorail stations will require larger, more expensive stations. So it's been decided that the stations won't have escalators." (Since many of the complaints that night were about the size of the stations, it seemed odd to me to complain about elevators and station size.) Tim continued to hit the usual notes--parking, lane closures, building proximity, car depreciation, and two-tier tracks, but failed to show how any were relevant and reason enough to not go through with the project.

   Others from the same group spoke, though didn't really add much to the effort, mostly just parroting Tim's points (according to my notes, at least). Patricia Stambor spoke briefly, as well as Liv Finne, the treasurer of the group. Liv (whose name I'm likely misspelling) did mention that they need volunteers, which has me thinking I should volunteer with them just to help sow chaos throughout the organization, though I suppose they've shown a great capacity for sowing their own internal chaos.

4. Henry Aronson, the "Ramrod" for OnTrack, continued the general theme of unsubstantiated talking points and histrionic invective. He claimed that the Monorail is the biggest Seattle project ever, and is the biggest project in the United States currently up for bid, though he never explained how it's the "biggest", and also failed to explain why Seattle (known to many as a city that wants desperately to be "world-class") should be disgusted with such an ambitious project.

   I think it was Henry who pointed out that the taxpayers would still be footing the construction bill for the monorail for years after it was taken over by a private organization, which prompted me to lean over to my friend and comment, "Kinda like the stadiums we're buying for the sports teams?" Henry chose to not comment on the stadiums, though it might have been due to the proximity of Kenickie's muscle-filled Mariners t-shirt that discouraged him from that line of reasoning.

   Henry (like how I'm on first-name basis with all these folks?) went on to talk about how the project should be completely outlined and specified before any sort of voting should be performed on it, else the public wouldn't be approving what they think they're approving. This was easily disputed by SMP members (who pointed out that bidders for the project use different technologies that require some flexibility on our part if we're going to get the best deal possible), and on top of that the whole argument seems specious to me--isn't this very forum we're engaging in the way that the public comments on the project?

5. Pam James (I think that's her name, at least) from "Block Watch" spoke next. She commented on switches, single tracks ("not what we voted for!"), and made the most ridiculous comment of the evening, as far as I'm concerned, when she remarked that the monorail would make 15th NW unsafe for pedestrians. This is apparently one of the people out driving her car instead of walking along the avenue, else she would know that 15th is already completely pedestrian-unfriendly, and the addition of some rain-blocking switches would actually be a tremendous boon to the area, as far as walkers are concerned.

   This is really the problem I had with the main Block Watch people--if they're business owners, don't they recognize that the addition of the Monorail and the pedestrians it brings will cause an incredible boost in business? They completely failed to acknowledge this problem in their logic, which naturally makes me think they haven't thought it through completely.

   Pam (if that's her real name; I can't read my notes very well) further went on to deride the PR costs associated with the project, which continued to seem stupid to me--the main reason there are PR costs is because they have to assuage concerns brought up by such opposition. If they're so concerned about PR costs, then they should stop opposing it, right? Right.

   Pam finished off by saying that the groups aren't "opposed to progress", though they have no suggestions for how to progress if they stop the monorail from being built, and their poor vision of the future belies any support of progress they might try to dress themselves with.

I stopped taking notes once the Q&A occurred, so I can't really provide many details that I haven't already mentioned. Same thing for the comments, which were poorly-organized and ended up being more like another Q&A session. (I should point out that Kenickie was the final commenter, though at that point everyone in the room started filing out; apparently being rude to kindly ladies doesn't get you far in Ballard.) One comment that sticks out in my mind was mention of the car tabs expense, which totalled to under $100 for an entire year for the individual in question. Is the cost of a single movie ticket per month not worth the value of the Monorail, especially to Ballard homeowners, whose property values will likely rise more than enough to counter that cost?

Overall, I don't think these people are much of a threat to the monorail; I'm especially impressed that SMP is willing to attend such lynchings, which demonstrates their commitment to deliver the best system possible within the constraints of what the public wants, and I think will ultimately ensure the project goes through.

I'm glad I attended the meeting. It definitely convinced me that the monorail's the right thing to do--if so many incoherent and poorly-expressed arguments can be made against it, how could it be wrong? Plus, now that I have an idea of which businesses in Ballard are opposed to the Monorail, I know where not to shop for the next five years.

Last updated by eric Tue Apr 20 16:36 2004 | deed | link

causa causans [translation]

I've been arguing with myself over the current Bush-hating dialogue that's readily available lately. I couldn't decide where I sit on the issue--do I merely disagree with some of his policies, or is it something deeper than that? Is that appropriate?

Fortunately, the President was kind enough to point me in the right direction merely two sentences into his remarks before the news conference last night:

This has been tough weeks in [Iraq].

Last updated by eric Thu Apr 15 10:03 2004 | word | link

Domino optimo maximo [translation]

Via BBspot, a column describing Microsoft's potential arc into the future by way of their current delightfully brilliant practices:

A company wanted to hold off on upgrading Microsoft Office for a year in order to do other projects. So Microsoft gave a 'free' copy of the new Office to the CEO -- a copy that of course generated errors for anyone else in the firm reading his documents. The CEO got tired of getting the 'please re-send in XX format' so he ordered other projects put on hold and the office upgrade to be top priority.

Last updated by eric Thu Apr 15 10:03 2004 | omission | link

felis cattus [translation]

Most of my friends are cat lovers, it seems. I come across a great Ford commercial online at the Cult of Mac Blog, and I want to share it with friends, but they all write back, calling it "cruel", or "really, really mean", with way too many exclamation points.

So I guess I'll just have to break my silence here, and if you click on the link and don't like it, it's yer own goldurn fault.

Last updated by eric Wed Apr 07 17:25 2004 | deed | link

rulat caelum [translation]

I mentioned previously that there needs to be a graphical interface for searching images on the web because I couldn't figure out what a red state silhouette with a white stripe on it might mean.

Turns out that there are other great ways of hunting down information, like posting a quandary to your weblog and then getting responses from actual human beings who have a good idea what you might have seen.

Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Pharmazeutische Verfahrenstechnik was the first to point out a webpage that has similar imagery, so it turns out that the decal I saw was a likely proclamation of the SUV owner being a diver -- if they've got patches in the shape of Florida and Texas, why shouldn't there be a decal available in the shape of Washington state?

Next, RL (looks like I've already got an "R" mentioned in these pages) pointed out this page, which was quite handy: not only does it provide a clear etymology for that particular red-and-white icon of diver-osity, it also reminds me to not pilot my boat over the red-and-white flags. If I had a boat and a pilot's license, this would be good information to have. RL says he's "seen variants with the outline of Oregon as well, and it probably simply indicates the person is a diver. However, even knowing this, it took a couple of tries to find a good example."

So, ha! We still need a decent image search interface. But there are alternatives floating around, for those people who have some way of interacting with other people, at least.

Last updated by eric Wed Mar 17 12:29 2004 | thought | link

profanum vulgus [translation]

I find myself strangely entranced by the Maakies SNL shorts. I think it may have something to do with the word "Edgeworx".

Drinky Crow is definitely my favorite character, though.

Last updated by eric Tue Mar 16 12:04 2004 | word | link

rus in urbe [translation]

The bus passed by a parked vehicle; since I was already staring out the window, I passively caught a glimpse of a sticker in the rear window of the vehicle--it appeared to be an outline of Washington State infilled with red, with a white diagonal stripe travelling from the northeast to southwest corners of the state.

I was immediately intrigued. Is this some sort of state organization I should be familiar with? If so, how do I find out more information?

My usual process for informing myself is searching the internet, mostly through Google. But in this case I have no text whatsoever to search on, aside from a verbal description of the decal, which leads me to believe it's a sticker for Washington State University. I've not been able to find any images in the logo in question, though, so perhaps I'm leading myself astray.

This, combined with some recent ruminations on sale of images over the web, has me thinking that the Next Big Thing in web searches will be fancier image searching. Google already has a great image search feature, but it seems to be wholly dependent on text found near webpages' <img> tags. Without any relevant text, your image search will lead you nowhere, and in cases like mine where there's very little textual context, there's not much more of a chance to find relevant data.

Thus, what the world needs now is a way to search images by way of image input. There are already plenty of algorithms available for basic visual comparison based on optics research for robots, spammer research on bypassing image word verification features on various websites, and law enforcement pattern-matching for fingerprint databases. So then it's just a matter of coming up with the diskspace to store the relevant datapoints on all the web images that can be crawled, then developing a user interface that allows people to roughly sketch the image feature they're looking for, then letting the image recognition/comparison algorithms do all the work.

Sure, that last bit is a little challenging. The web doesn't have an easy input method for drawings like it does for text, and even if you slapped together a Java applet to allow users to draw something, there'd still be the issue of not being able to readily copy-and-paste pre-formed images. (My original inspiration is a good example of this--getting a Washington state outline, filling it with red and putting a white slash on it is fairly trivial in any decent graphics software, but how to input that to a webpage?)

I think eventually this will be an important battle in the search engine wars, but I don't know that anyone is working on it yet. I think it's gonna be way cool when it gets done, though for the present I wonder how much textual information is being readily "hidden" on the web right now. If some prognosticators' future visions of exclusively iconic communication are achieved, image search will likely be an integral part of it.

Plus, wouldn't it be great to be able to search for all instances and variations of yellow smiley faces on the web?

Last updated by eric Mon Mar 15 15:01 2004 | thought | link

silent leges enim inter arma [translation]

Apparently my suspicions were correct: There are too many non-targeted résumé submissions when it comes to internet job applications. But then I guess if I just hold out long enough, eventually someone will just come along and give me work to do.

Last updated by eric Mon Mar 15 14:54 2004 | deed | link

nam et ipsa scientia potestas est [translation]

It's odd sometimes how breaking news complements itself:

Diesel Prices Are Bringing Some Trucks to a Standstill, which will likely mean higher costs for any goods that have to be trucked on our nation's highways, yet Neil Young Tour Powered by Vegetable Oil:

"I have 17 diesel vehicles, and they're all running on vegetable oil farmed by American farmers," Young, one of the founders of the annual Farm Aid charity concerts, said in a recent interview with Reuters.

Last updated by eric Mon Mar 15 10:44 2004 | omission | link

varium et mutabile semper femina [translation]

Yet another missive delivered here to a woman: "I don't remember what it was like to love another. The grandeur of your presence blots out so many memories of past love, like Godzilla stomping through the cityscape of my mind, obscuring the bright sun of reason from warming my goosepimpled flesh."

Yeah, I definitely gotta work on coming up with these in person.

Last updated by eric Sat Mar 13 09:59 2004 | word | link

vox populi vox Dei [translation]

I was really pretty bummed when I realized that Kerry was going to win the Democratic Presidential nomination. But after reading Laura Blumenfeld's article about Kerry's decision-making process, I gotta say he seems like a pretty good choice:

Reaching out has been part of Kerry's philosophy since he was a young man. In a letter to a college roommate dated Oct. 15, 1968, Kerry wrote that President Lyndon B. Johnson was out of touch: "One of the most crucial things for good leadership once you reach the high echelon is to keep a channel open to the very roots of the country. . . . The leader needs some method of drawing from advice beyond his colleagues and the influential men who write columns."

[...]

Michael Dukakis, governor of Massachusetts when Kerry was lieutenant governor, recalled Kerry's loyalty to the written word: "Someone brought in the first batch of bills passed. I was signing bills and talking to him, without looking at the bills. John was looking at me wide-eyed, like -- you don't read the bills?"

Really, though, it's his storied devotion to words that I find most compelling:

...in his office at 2 a.m., Sen. Kerry hovered over a dictionary, torn between two words: "Is it 'venal'? Or 'venial'?" Hours before he would deliver his Senate floor statement on President Bill Clinton's impeachment, Kerry was stuck in the V's, trying to decide.

Last updated by eric Sun Mar 07 09:34 2004 | thought | link

licentia vatum [translation]

I ran across a showing of Steve Martin's L.A. Story this afternoon. It's such a great movie, totally captures what I love about the West Coast. Like:

Harris K. Telemacher: Ordinarily, I don't like to be around interesting people because it means I have to be interesting too.
Sara McDowel: Are you saying I'm interesting?
Harris K. Telemacher: All I'm saying is that, when I'm around you, I find myself showing off, which is the idiot's version of being interesting.

Trudi: Isn't that girl Sara awful? I mean, what's with that accent?
Harris K. Telemacher: She has an accent because she's English.
Trudi: Or maybe she's just trying to impress everybody.
Harris K. Telemacher: Oh, like that big phony, Winston Churchill.

Finally, Jane points out a good page on the meanings of the various license plates in the film; the plate "2GAT123" was close enough to my California license plate that I wondered what it was supposed to mean. According to the page, there are several possible meanings, though my favorite is really number five:

Artur Bagiñski surmised that:
"G stands for acceleration equal to earth gravity (9.8 m/sec²). So, the plate reads: - Two times the acceleration of 9.8 at 1(first), 2(second) and at 3(third) gear. At the time of the movie it was probobly impossible to achieve at least at 2nd and 3rd gear. To show you an example: -at 200 mph for a quarter mile at 5 sec, you get an average acceleration of 1.82 G."

[In Traffic,] Helena Ayala's license plate is 2GAT123. The same California license plate also appears in Beverly Hills Cop II (1987), L.A. Story (1991), Mulholland Dr. (2001), Pay It Forward (2000) and Crazy/Beautiful (2001).

Really, though, it all just reminds me that I need to write D and explain that the kids these days, with their strange capitalizations and letters for words and whatnot, it probably all started with license plates and Steve Martin's fine movie.

Last updated by eric Fri Mar 05 16:25 2004 | word | link

caput mundi [translation]

Seattle's Cinerama is doing a 2nd annual "Reel" Cinerama Film Festival starting tomorrow. Finally I'll be able to see Lawrence of Arabia in its 70mm glory on a really big screen. Not to mention Ghostbusters and Krull.

Have I mentioned lately that I freaking adore living in Seattle? I mean, Krull?? Too cool for words.

Last updated by eric Wed Mar 03 22:01 2004 | deed | link

vitam impendere vero [translation]

To the barista whose eyes I said were "like pools of moonlight": I was wrong. I misspoke. The dark eyes I lost myself in are pools of midnight. In the rush of excitement, my metaphor confused itself. I stumbled clumsily in the quiet darkness of your gaze.

Thank you for that.

Last updated by eric Wed Mar 03 21:52 2004 | omission | link

qui docet discit [translation]

SL: [...] We've got kind of a road movie set in ancient Greece.

O: What can you say about that one?

SL: Plato is a wrestling recruit at Athens University. He's supposed to wrestle for them in the Olympics. They've given him a chariot to wrestle there, because he's a big-time wrestler. He's failing his philosophy class, Basic Thought, so his school hires Socrates, who's a senior, to tutor him. Plato's a little thick, so he ends up cheating, and they end up road-tripping to Mount Olympus so he can wrestle in the Olympics. The Greek gods Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades are all wrestling fans, and they're betting on whether he'll make it, so it's kind of a big Greek epic.

-- Broken Lizard Interview

Well, I mean, you could say that, but you would be wrong.

Last updated by eric Tue Mar 02 22:12 2004 | word | link

pauca sed bona [translation]

As zombie is to brains, [blank] is to diamonds.

Last updated by eric Sun Feb 22 10:19 2004 | omission | link

nunc est bibendum [translation]

From this week's Stranger:

Finally, Arkham N.W. Productions is having an open casting call at the Capitol Hill Arts Center (1621 12th Ave) starting at 6:00 p.m. The movie is called Cthulhu, and it takes an H. P. Lovecraft novella and sets it in the Pacific Northwest. It's the story of a gay history professor drawn back to his hometown by his mother's death, where he discovers his father's ministry may have ties to old massacres and monsters. They're looking for men aged 13-70 and women aged 20-65; if you have any questions, e-mail Grant Cogswell at arkhamnw@yahoo.com.

Last updated by eric Thu Feb 12 11:59 2004 | deed | link

ab asino lanam [translation]

Jane writes about her recent experience with bloodletting:

...it was a shame that no one else was there to donate. If you're eligible, and not freaked out by needles or blood or iodine or juice or cookies, you should go.

• You've had a tattoo in the past year. (Folks, there's a lot of tattooing going on in this town.)
• You've had an unprofessional ear/body piercing within the last year. (Does Jane's experience count as an "unprofessional" body piercing?)
• You're pregnant or have been pregnant within the last six weeks.
• You're a gay male who's been sexually active at any point within the last 27 years. (I guess there aren't too many donations on Capitol Hill or whatever Seattle neighborhood is the current locus of gay culture for the city. The rule is even more restrictive than keeping out the bathhouse regulars: "Any male who has had sex with another male since 1977, even one time...[or] individuals who have had sex within the last 12 months, even once, with any [such] person [may not donate]." Not only are gay men left out, but bisexual men are left out, women who have recently had sex with bisexual men can't donate, wives of guys who have stories of "that one time in college" are left out, etc.)
• You've had sex for money or drugs since 1977, or "have had sex within the last 12 months, even once, with any [such] person." ("It doesn't say anything about him paying my rent, that totally doesn't count!")

It seems to me there are probably about four or five people in Seattle who can give blood. I gotta agree with Jane--if you're one of those people, there's a lot of demand for your blood; visit a donation center today!

Last updated by eric Mon Feb 09 12:19 2004 | omission | link

mea maxima culpa [translation]

From this week's issue of The Stranger, Howard Dean talks about the choices made recently that seem to have contributed to not placing first in some Democratic caucuses:

"I do not blame him for one thing that went wrong in the campaign," Dean says. "I want to know everything, and I want everything explained to me, and I sign off on all the final decisions. I have not one piece of ill will about spending too much money. I okayed every major strategic decision and you can put the blame at my feet for anything going wrong."

-- "An Underdog Again"

I think there might be other Presidential examples that could easily be contrasted with that sort of behavior.

Last updated by eric Wed Feb 04 22:46 2004 | thought | link

pro forma [translation]

Reminder to self: When applying for an Editorial position in an organization whose style guidelines you know to include the use of "e-mail" in preference to "email", make sure to change references to "email" in your résumé to "e-mail".

Unless it's too late, in which case you should just smack your forehead repeatedly and with great gusto.

Last updated by eric Wed Feb 04 15:38 2004 | omission | link

adversus solem ne loquitor [translation]

I have grandiose plans for someday writing an extended treatise on the wonders of Kim Stanley Robinson's stylistic feats, but the task is incredibly large. Not only is the macrolingual perspective of his work exceedingly engaging, but a close reading of short passages is similarly rewarding.

For example, today I'm reading "Green Mars", a short story in the collection The Martians. One short passage provides a glimpse of the travails of climbing Olympus Mons in excessive cold; it starts with a vivid image of how a character's "gloved fingers twist around the frigid jumar" (emphasis mine). Glancing over the next page, I spotted the word "frigid" near the passage's conclusion, and I thought to myself, "Ha, Mr. Robinson, you are not nearly as seductive with your diction as I think you are!"

Then I kept reading.

The passage starts with the image of a piece of climbing equipment lacking any warmth, then concludes describing how "the wind cuts through [him...]; cuts through the laminated outer suit, the thick bunting inner suit, his skin.... He brushes spindrift from his goggles with a frigid hand and heaves up after [the others]."

What seemed at first glance as nothing more than repetitive word choice instead is an especially evocative image of the excessive cold seeping from the character's environment into his body, if not his very soul.

That's some damn fine writing, and that's only two words out of thousands of pages written about this one world.

Last updated by eric Wed Feb 04 14:14 2004 | word | link

memento mori [translation]

I'm not sure how he does it, but von Hagens keeps whipping out some seriously sensationalist publicity. What I want to know is when an exhibit's coming to Seattle. Must I visit Europe to see one of the shows?

And while we're on the topic, who did the translation for the AP article? Von Hagens's words seem rather Germanic in their construction, which makes me wonder whether he was speaking in English for the quotes or someone translated them from his native German.

Last updated by eric Wed Feb 04 09:34 2004 | deed | link

vis inertiae [translation]

While doing research on prosthetic limbs, I started wondering about a "sixth sense" I'd heard about long ago, something like a "positional" sense, the way we can tell where our arm is even if our eyes are closed.

Google helps me find the official name for the term is "proprioception", and then points me to an informative write-up on the topic:

Proprioception, also often referred to as the sixth sense, was developed by the nervous system as a means to keep track of and control the different parts of the body. An example that enables one to best understand this sensory system is one showing what happens if this sensory system is no longer there. Ian Waterman lost his sixth sense along with the ability to feel light touch when a virus killed the necessary nerves. The man still had all the nerves to control muscle movement but had no feedback from the outside world about where his limbs were except that obtained by sight. A normal person is able to move a finger, knowing where and what the finger is doing, with little effort. The normal person could just volunteer the finger to move back and forth and proprioception would make this an easy task. Without proprioception, the brain cannot feel what the finger is doing, and the process must be carried out in more conscious and calculated steps. The person must use vision to compensate for the lost feedback on the progress of the finger. Then the I-function must voluntarily and consciously tell the finger what to do while watching the feedback.

-- "Proprioception: How and Why?"

Last updated by eric Thu Jan 29 13:11 2004 | deed | link

caeli enarrant gloriam Dei [translation]

Oh, Joy!

Last updated by eric Thu Jan 29 12:15 2004 | omission | link

quondam [translation]

A well-balanced article over at Wired investigating the issue of IT outsourcing and how American IT professionals are responding to it. I especially like the historical perspective of the article:

A century ago, 40 percent of Americans worked on farms. Today, the farm sector employs about 3 percent of our workforce. But our agriculture economy still outproduces all but two countries. Fifty years ago, most of the US labor force worked in factories. Today, only about 14 percent is in manufacturing. But we've still got the largest manufacturing economy in the world - worth about $1.9 trillion in 2002. We've seen this movie before - and it's always had a happy ending. The only difference this time is that the protagonists are forging pixels instead of steel. And accountants, financial analysts, and other number crunchers, prepare for your close-up. Your jobs are next. After all, to export sneakers or sweatshirts, companies need an intercontinental supply chain. To export software or spreadsheets, somebody just needs to hit Return.

"But isn't part of this country's vitality its ability to make these kinds of changes?" I counter. "We've done it before - going from farm to factory, from factory to knowledge work, and from knowledge work to whatever's next."

She looks at me. Then she says, "I'd like to know where you go from knowledge."

Now if only the government would do a better job of helping retrain people to fit into these new roles.

Of course, maybe that's a good idea for the right entrepreneur.

Last updated by eric Wed Jan 28 14:33 2004 | deed | link

quo vadis? [translation]

One of my favorite role-playing games is Shadowrun, a cyberpunk/fantasy amalgam based roughly sixty years in the future. One of the features of the game world is that computers connected to the "internet" need to have identification or else they can't operate on the network.

This always seemed kind of silly to me--do telephones need identification to use? Do I need to identify myself to a telephone before operating it? Why should computers be any different?

Apparently Governor Dean sees the reasoning behind such ideas:

Dean also suggested that computer makers such as Apple Computer, Dell, Gateway and Sony should be required to include an ID card reader in PCs--and Americans would have to insert their uniform IDs into the reader before they could log on. "One state's smart-card driver's license must be identifiable by another state's card reader," Dean said. "It must also be easily commercialized by the private sector and included in all PCs over time--making the Internet safer and more secure."

-- "Dean Should Come Clean on Privacy"

That's just going too far, I think. But then Governor Dean seems to understand what's needed for appropriate levels of safety and security: "Privacy is the new urban myth." (ibid.)

Last updated by eric Tue Jan 27 22:13 2004 | omission | link

de minimis non curat praetor [translation]

I'm researching neuro-mechanical linkages in the hopes of eventually churning out a short story for Futurismic. From the fine people at Betterhumans, I found http://www.wireheading.com/, which tells me:

...instead of being toxic, exotically enriched states of consciousness can be transformed into the everyday norm of mental health. When it's precision-engineered, hedonic enrichment needn't lead to unbridled orgasmic frenzy. Nor need it entail getting stuck in a wirehead rut. This is because in a naturalistic setting, even the crudest dopaminergic drugs tend to increase exploratory behaviour, will-power and the range of stimuli an organism finds rewarding. Dopaminergics aren't just euphoriants: they also enhance "incentive-motivation". Thus our future is likely to be more diverse, not less.

Last updated by eric Tue Jan 27 18:06 2004 | word | link

inter alios [translation]

Like many good things, this one comes via Boing Boing. Edmunds.com hired an investigative reporter to go undercover as a car salesman to get some insight into the inner workings of the industry. According to the article, the inner workings are fairly straightforward:

"Why do you want to work here?"

My first inclination was to say, hey, I'm a car freak. Always have been. I could explain cars, how they work, get people excited about the performance and the different features. But then I remembered my editor's advice.

I smiled at Dave, trying to convey the feeling that the answer was obvious.

"I want to make a lot of money," I said.

The effect on Dave was amazing. He smiled and relaxed, as if I had said the password to enter an exclusive club. If this had been a cartoon, dollar signs would have appeared in his eyes accompanied by a loud "Cha-ching!"

When we got to the dealership, we were greeted very quickly by a helpful guy. He made some chit-chat with us about our reasons for buying a car and then asked, "So when are you due?" I distinctly remember staring blankly at him, then glancing at my girlfriend, who shrugged. Eventually we figured out that he was under the impression that we were expecting a child, but by that time he'd already smoothly shifted us off to another salesman--apparently he was under the impression that mistakenly diagnosing pregnancy for a couple might make them less inclined to buy a car from him.

All I remember from the experience was a sense of surrealism--both my girlfriend and I had taken a psych course in college about non-verbal communication. The course included several discussions on sales techniques and other methods of getting people to do what you want them to without making them realize why they're following your lead. So to have all that in our heads and then see people trying to use similar tricks on us, it was strange.

Last updated by eric Tue Jan 27 14:31 2004 | deed | link

sub judice [translation]

An odd confluence of imagery:

From sixspace via Boing Boing, this image of a robot getting its block knocked off, appears to be by Martin Ontiveros.

From this week's Stranger, the cover looks quite similar, but is by Chico Gavacho.

I wonder if it's the same artist, just using different names.

Last updated by eric Fri Jan 23 13:24 2004 | deed | link

sanctum sanctorum [translation]

[Warning: the links mentioned in this entry are potentially disturbing, and probably not suitable for the very young or the very old. Or anyone with a weak stomach. Or anyone bothered by the word "fecal". Or the word "Googlify".]

Dan Savage is trying to re-Googlify the cultural context of the word "santorum" with his website devoted to the new meaning he and his readers concocted.

I wonder if he would have gotten better Google search results had the domain name been hyphenated--then Google would treat each word separately, "spreading santorum", instead of one word of "spreadingsantorum". Just a guess.

I really could have done without the graphic pun on the splash page, though.

Last updated by eric Tue Jan 13 22:27 2004 | omission | link

finem respice [translation]

Recently some bit of media encouraged me to look at the world and wonder why things are this way when they could conceivably be some other way, maybe even a better way.

MTV, in its quest to find topic matter only remotely connected to "music", came up with a pretty good show called "Cribs". I've watched a couple episodes now, and am always astonished at the wealth there is in this country when I know people who have trouble finding their next meal.

What really grabbed my attention, though, was an episode with some guys from their other successful show "Jackass" (which I haven't seen so often). They all presented homes that were quite humble, one of them even living out of his truck.

Living out of his truck. That, combined with a recent report on the demographic breakdowns of homelessness in the United States, got me thinking: Why is it cheaper to live in your car than to live without a car in the United States?

Cars are expensive--I've lived without a car for almost six years now, and whenever I think of buying one, I just can't stop thinking about all the associated expenses that would drain my monetary reserves. Insurance, maintenance, gasoline and actual purchase price make a car a pretty hefty investment. Yet at the same time, in so many places in this country, a car is a vital component of one's livelihood. Many jobs specifically require ownership of a vehicle, whereas the poor choices of public transportation in most cities make a vehicle utterly necessary for holding down any sort of job.

So if you're jobless and looking for work, but find yourself short on cash, are you going to ditch your apartment rent or your car costs? The logical choice is to ditch your apartment--generally home rentals will cost at least a few hundred dollars each month, plus utilities, when all it really provides is a roof, some walls, and a place to eat and clean up.

A car has the roof and walls thing covered. With plenty of free parking in this great nation, it's certainly cheaper to live in the car than in any sort of actual "home". Sure, you give up a refrigerator and stove, but those are easily replaced with food eaten as quickly as it's purchased. Bathing isn't completely necessary, and the occasional shower can be still be found at a friend's house, the YMCA/YWCA, or any number of other places. Restrooms are especially abundant, what with government-funded rest stops, camp sites, urban alleyways, and gas stations. Sure, it's not the poshest life one could live, but considering the budget...well, it actually might be the poshest life one could live and still be considered "American".

The problem I have with this is that so much of car occupation depends on government-funded infrastructure: rest stops, the paved roads allowing free parking, and poorly-structured cities that don't provide mixed commercial/residential zoning with affordable housing. It's a double bind for the underemployed--a home is too costly, as is living without a car. Yet the government pours money into fixing potholes and constructing new freeways instead of restructuring our cities to accomodate more affordable (and efficient) living.

This seems incredibly stupid to me. Why is housing so unaffordable? Why are cars so incredibly affordable in comparison? Shouldn't the greatness of a nation be measured on its remarkable efficiencies, not on its ability to paint itself into an especially horrific corner?

Yes, I'm devolving into histrionics, but I fear there's really no way out of this. How do you convince Americans that cars, minivans, SUVs, cheap gasoline, and ten-lane freeways are bad, when very few people could read The Gold Coast and realize it's a dystopia?

Well, I suppose if we have a long enough lack of work for people, there'll be enough anecdotal evidence regarding how annoying it is to live out of one's vehicle. That might help, unfortunately.

Last updated by eric Sun Jan 11 14:52 2004 | thought | link

a maximis ad minima [translation]

Yet another Thing the Internet Knows, but I Didn't: Bill Cosby's father on "The Cosby Show" and Panthro on "The Thundercats"--that's the same guy!!

Last updated by eric Tue Jan 06 18:01 2004 | omission | link

nihil obstat [translation]

Powell's City of Books, the best bookshop I've ever been in, is holding a contest for US$250 in books, and all you have to do is give them your email address before January 26th.

Last updated by eric Mon Jan 05 12:49 2004 | word | link

vis inertiae [translation]

Via Joel on Software, "For Best Results, Forget the Bonus". Interesting notion, that.

Last updated by eric Fri Jan 02 23:20 2004 | thought | link

res age, tute eris [translation]

Via Seattle Weblogs, the glories of child rearing are explored at Irony Central. My favorite excerpt so far:

There is a time when [the daughter] is always quiet, alert, happy, and ready with a smile, never fail. And that is when she is not wearing pants.

Whenever I've just put on a fresh diaper, before dressing her again, she is invariably happy. Blissed out. She kicks her legs up, and airs out her parts, and she couldn't be more pleased.

Oddly enough, when I try this, it doesn't work. After using the bathroom, I rubbed myself down thoroughly with moist towelettes, took off my pants, hopped into bed, and kicked my legs in the air. It really made me feel free and fresh, but not happy. I had my wife come in and rub my belly. No help. I had her moo at me. While this intrigued me in a way neither of us are comfortable with, no extra happiness. My legs hurt. My back hurt. While my kid can hold that position forever, I had to lower my legs. And, eventually, I put on pants.

-- Volume 8

Last updated by eric Fri Jan 02 20:58 2004 | word | link

qui scribit bis legit [translation]

Recently a friend mentioned sending a series of questions to a woman as a way of sussing her out in a potentially romantic way. I was intrigued by this notion of attempting to divine someone's personality by way of a series of questions, so when he mentioned that his questions were loosely based on the Proust Questionnaire, I decided to look it up and see what I could come up with for myself.

I don't really like a lot of the questions, though. Which I suppose is a major insight into my personality right there. Actually, I guess I don't dislike some of the questions, so much as my answers.

Anyway, let's go with the Vanity Fair version, as I located here, the version as answered by Annette Bening. My answers, however:

1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?
   Don't the Buddhists define that as an annulment of desire? I've been fond of that notion since I first ran across it. Kinda hard to reach, though. Especially since you're essentially desiring an annulment of desire.
2. What is your greatest fear?
   Falling freaks me out to no end.
3. Which historical figure do you most identify with?
   Tesla.
4. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
   Excessive humility.
5. What is your greatest extravagance?
   Excessive humility.
6. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
   Humility!
7. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
   "Humility".
8. What or who is the greatest love of your life?
   Elation. And tautologies.
9. When and where were you happiest?
   The other day, when I was outside? Clouds loped across the sky, the chill wind bit gently at my face, and it felt good.
10. What is your current state of mind?
    Washington state.
11. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
    Why wouldn't this just be "the trait [I] most deplore in [my]self"?
12. What do you consider your greatest achievement?
    Alternating current.
13. What is the quality you most like in a man?
    Excessive humility!
14. What is the quality you most like in a woman?
    So many witty comebacks, cannot pick.
15. Who are your favorite writers?
    Kim Stanley Robinson, Harper Lee, Walker Percy, Gardner Dozois, Thomas Pynchon, et al.
16. Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
    Atticus Finch.
17. Who are your heroes in real life?
    Teachers and parents.
18. What are your favorite names?
    Well, I only have three names: first, middle, and last. Unless you mean my favorite names, not my favorite names. In which case I'd have to go with Q-Bert and Simon. I'm not sure what it is about "Simon", but it sticks in my head for some reason. I've named my home computers after David Seville and the Chipmunks. (Oh, like, wow, three hours later I've realized that Simon is one of the Chipmunks. Heavy.)
19. What is it that you most dislike?
    This must be translated from French. "What is it that"?? People, people, people: just because it's "Qu'est-ce que vous" in the original, doesn't mean you have to translate it literally. Sheesh.
20. How would you like to die?
    Excessive humility.

1. What is your favorite word?
   Oh, gosh, so many