A Binmore Among The Nice People

It's been a couple of days since I've returned from Christmas in a wood cabin in the snowy wilderness of the Adirondacks and I nearly feel like myself again. As I think everyone who reads this is aware of the once-in-a-century snowstorm that hit Portland on the day we were living I won't go into the trials of the trip out there. Just start off with the understanding that the six days in the cabin started with me in a state of exhaustion.

The cabin is owned by my parents-in-law, two gentle, kind caring people who clearly love the place, who clearly love their family and whose greatest joy was to spend the holidays with their family. These are nice people. Not just nice people, but Nice People. They smile a lot, they like sweaters, gentle music, uplifting stories. They love where they are from and don't really feel the need to be anywhere else, they know what they like and are going to keep doing it for the rest of their lives. They volunteer, they give, they cause no harm, they care about the environment, they are highly educated, they have raised lovely daughters. These are the sort of people that the world needs.

My family argues. We have tempers. We are strong, independent characters, restless people. We have opinions, moods, flights of fancy and dark depressions. We discuss and debate philosophy, politics, love, and hate as a basic level of our beings. We need to hide from people in solitary caves, exhausted by other people and frightened of what we might do or say. In groups we tend to lead or rebel. When my family is together it is the most interesting thing going on in the vicinity, but we do not change, submit, or follow. It is hard to be with the members of my family.

The cabin is a two story structure, but open inside with a gorgeous spiral staircase wound tightly through the center. The dimensions are, at a guess fifty feet by thirty feet, and there are three doors inside the building, two bedrooms and the bathroom. There is no place within the building that a conversation above a whisper cannot be heard anywhere else in the building. Because of the small space there is a specific place for everything, cups, dishes, cleaning supplies. You name it and it's in that cabin in a specific place. Towels are rolled, not folded, and hung with washcloth. The water is on-demand electric heat and septic tank, so you can't take a shower and have dishes done, or wash your hands, or anything else at the same time. Dishes cannot be done with running water. Wood for the fire is stacked in a particular order to dry and fetched from the special shed with a bag, emptied into a box, placed in the stove in a particular fashion and completely burned. This provides temperatures of near 80 degrees until the stove is left for a while and the freezing air from outside leaks in. Clothing is flannel nightgowns, pajamas, wool sweaters, slippers or snow boots. Each person has their own glass (marked with a tag) their own napkin (marked with a napkin holder) throughout the week. Before supper hands are held around the table and grace is said (or even sung!). Outside are drifts of snow, winds, and no people, shops or bars within reach. Within this cabin were six adults and a baby.

What I'm trying to point out is that even niceness can be oppressive and exhausting when it is not your niceness. At every single moment I felt the pressure that every culture on the earth exerts to get people to conform. There is not a single group of people on the planet that does not unconsciously do things in a certain way without thinking why, and that reacts to otherness with a certain amount of distaste. There was a right way to do every single thing, and every single time it was not the way I would have done it, and every time I got something wrong I felt the discomfort. I also felt the discomfort at my discomfort. I gave myself a C, a passing grade, having only made a complete arse of myself on three or four occasions of which I am aware an not permanently ruining any relationships. My hosts certainly did better than I.

The people at the cabin all read this blog. I'm sure none of them would have written about this subject, but I'm home, on my blog and I'm free to do what I want again.

TFOE Update: The Hounds of Winter

There has been a delay in posting an update on The Face of Evil. I know he's watching me, and so I have to be very careful. The last time I tried to post on the Beast he ate my camera. But I have snuck off and got a new one, he's sleeping now so I think may be able to get this one in without him tearing me apart. If you read this, you know that I've been successful.



The Face of Evil's plan is still in the section of biding his time and gathering his strength. He's now the size of a wildebeest, with fangs that can crush bone and steel. Wait! He stirs! Keep very quiet.

An unnatural winter has descended upon Portland, coating the world in a silent blanket of death. Seeing TFOE in what can only be his natural habitat fills me with dread.



Immune to the cold he revels in theft, intimidation, frolicking in his power. It is clear that he is akin to the great timberwolves of the past, but with demonic powers and infinite cunning. I plan to escape on the holy day approaching, but hes always watching, always watching, and always hungry.....

Jesus is just alright with me, Jesus is just all right, yeah!

Just the words of Jesus.

http://www.billywray.com/WordsOfJesus.htm

Oh, by the way, here's a book that I consider slightly wiser than Jesus' words. It also has some special words for my wife, not necessarily a goal, but a role to consider,

When you realize where you come from,
you naturally become tolerant,
disinterested, amused,
kindhearted as a grandmother,
dignified as a king.

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/core9/phalsall/texts/taote-v3.html

Tooting my own Horn

One of the things about dogs is that, like almost all animals, at the core they are a tube in which stuff enters at one end and exits at another. In the modern culture of dog ownership it is considered correct to pick up this effluence and deposit in an appropriate receptacle. I thoroughly approve of this social agreement as although it is a relatively unpleasant duty, it is better than stepping in it, smelling it everywhere or having your dog roll enthusiastically in it and then lie on your couch. So I pick up my dog's crap in plastic bags and put them away.

Human beings have a behavior called, "Social loafing." In this behavior people who have a task as part of a group in which they are not directly evaluated do less than they would if directly evaluated or entirely responsible for the task. With dog owners this consists of not picking up your dog's poop when not observed by others. Sometimes you just miss that your dog has eliminated while you are talking or paying attention to something else. Sometimes in December in Portland it is pitch black outside and the poop becomes invisible, thus providing some cover stories for those unwilling to do their part. It is sometimes comic to see people's brains churning over whether they have been observed adequately for them to be poory evaluated in this duty.

As a result there is crap from other dogs lying around in parks. Since I'm against this I often pick up the cold, canine fecal-matter I see around on the ground. But that's far from the only reason I do it. I also do it so that I can feel morally superior to the unidentified culprit. I also do it to absolve myself of the guilt that might arise from not finding my dogs kaka in the dark of the night. But mostly I do it for the warm feeling that results from the adulation I imagine getting from humanity as a whole for being such a good person. Which is why I have written this post, so you now have the opportunity to adulate me for my awesome goodness.

You are being evaluated, so no social loafing with the adulation. ADULATE ME NOW!

Thoughts in the Dark of the Night.

The last few nights it has taken me a couple of hours to fall asleep. In the past this would have been an unpleasant experience, a time of frustration. That frustration would have been somewhat reasonable in the past because with the deadlines of work an hour to get to sleep is an hour less of sleep. An hour less of sleep means a noticeable increase in the unpleasant nature of the following day. But these last few nights I have just lain in a ridiculously comfortable bed, safe, secure, with no rush to do anything and just let the thoughts come and go. Here are some of them.

Why is the word "Word" pronounced werd, while what you would expect to be the pronunciation of the word "Word" is how you pronounce the word "Ward"? And this isn't a regional dialect issue, this wackiness seems essentially universal in the english language. The problem with these sort of thoughts is that you end up reading these sorts of web pages: www.fortunecity.com/victorian/vangogh/555/Spell/trublspl1.html


Does it matter whether you can remember something or not? Let's say you get so drunk that you black out and can't remember what happened. If you had a really good time that night, does it matter that you can't remember it? Is the good time simply a good time regardless of anything else? If it isn't, and that the memory of an action validates it, then this means that once you are dead all of your life means nothing, or as you get older, none of the experiences that you forget have any validity. So, I uess things are valid only for what they are. An experience is only valid as an experience and a memory is only valid as a memory. I often wake up from a good night sleep somehow aware that I have just had a very pleasant experience without any memory of what that pleasant experience might be.

Am I the same person that I was twenty years ago? How would I be able to tell?

Medical Non-Miracles

I am disappointed in the medical miracle guys. It just seems to me as though they should have got some things worked out by now.

Why can't you grow new teeth? These are just teeth, hardly the most complicated things in the world. These aren't giant organs of great complexity, they aren't even toes! Grow them in a vat and get them plugged in, should be a doddle.

Why can't you just get cartilage injected into your joints? Don't these miracle workers understand that if they don't get this worked out soon they'll be creaking down the hallway and predicting the weather in no time? Just squirt some junk into your knees, brand new cartilage. Not having this is an embarrassment.

By the way, nice job on the robot eyes. And cancer looks complicated, I'm not going to give anyone a hard time on that for a decade at least.

You Know I'd Be A Poor Man

But today I saw a bald eagle fly, It flapped slowly, and rather muscularly about thirty feet over my head. One of the greatest advantages of having a dog is that you go outside every day, and if you treat your dog properly, you go outside for hours every day. I've been enjoying sights such as flocks of geese coming out of the fog, volcanoes looming in the distance, shafts of winter light through rattling leaves.
I've had a fabulous couple of days, feeling comfortable in my own skin, feeling spontaneous. Sometimes I'm sad, but it's romantically sad, like Byron on a bender. Often I'm content, but mostly I've felt beautiful from the inside-out. Don't worry, I'm still a fat guy with no fashion sense and a bizarre, amish beard. what I mean is that the way I have felt over the last couple of days is like listening to a lovely piece of music, or seeing a lovely painting. The art of living, I suppose.
Yesterday while playing music with a group of sweet people, sitting around a coffee table singing songs and telling stories, our newest friend asked who wrote the song that we had just played. It was a nice thing to say, "I did" and have her reply, "really?"

And then the great thing is that in just a few hours the person who is most responsible for the way I have felt these last couple of days will come home for four days that we can spend in a quiet, restful cocoon. I love my wife, how great is that?
I also want to to tell my sister Emily and my father Ken that it was really special to talk to the two people in the world that really understand what's going on inside my head, because they have the same things going on inside theirs. The two of you were absolute delights on my trip home.

Adventure or Doom?

Christina was informed this week that her department is being transferred to Houston, Texas. Since money is still required to live this means that it is very likely that we will move to Houston. The question is whether this will result in adventure or a doom-filled litany of miseries.
I have never heard anything good about Houston, TX.
I have heard lots of warnings about never going to Houston TX. It will not be a pretty place to live and most of the people will be virulently different in their political and social beliefs. There will be not be the social amenities of mass transport, community organizations or even parks. The area that we are most likely to move to (Tomball) prides itself on being a place with good family values. For people like me "family values" are code words for bigotry and intolerance. I expect that almost everyone I meet will view my life-choices essentially with contempt.
On the other hand, if I view Houston as basically a new country then the possibilities of a great adventure unfold. I have never lived in a tropical climate, which is basically what Houston has. Perhaps the greatest thing for my personal development was coming to the United States, and there is little doubt that the differences between Salisbury and Ann Arbor, Michigan are greater than the differences between Portland and Houston. if I am to pride myself on tolerance then I must display it by being able to deal with people different than myself. If I am to have a life with adventure and excitement then I must go to places where I am not initially comfortable and try to adapt.
Finally, I think that people are people everywhere in the world, and that there will be good, kind, tolerant, funny, interesting people in Houston, if I make the effort to find them.

The Associative Squirt Theory of the Brain

After a long time of thinking about human brains I have come up with my theory of the brain which is entirely unoriginal, derivative, and a bit silly. It is, however, a useful way for people who otherwise would not think about how brains work to have someone give them a shortcut to understanding.

The brain comes with a basic system of squirts and anti-squirts. A squirt is a set of drugs pumped into your brain by glands within the brain that makes you feel "Good" subjectively, but mostly works in behavior by making you want to experience that squirt again. These drugs are dopamine, seratonin and norepinephrine, which are also neurotransmitters, the things that make your brain work. Basically the human brain likes doing stuff.

Everything you and everyone else have ever wanted to do is as a result of a squirt. Remember that is wanted, rather than ended up doing because otherwise things would be unpleasant. Wanting is the desire for a squirt, even if this is not conscious.
Anti-squirts are things that stop you from doing something, basically pain and anxiety (not necessarily two different things, and certainly interlinked.)

So, almost everyone is born with the capability to feel squirts and anti-squirts, but an important thing to remember is that these squirts and anti-squirts are in different amounts to different experiences because people are born as different from each other. So, if I take a drug the effect of it will be different in amount to others taking it. There are some people who get a huge squirt from nicotine and others that don't. The only reason I am not a smoker is because my brain doesn't give much of a squirt at all from nicotine. People's basic response to chemicals (even the ones their own brain produce) are different in extent (although I think not very different in quality).

But how does the vast array of human behavior and personality derive from basic squirts and anti-squirts? It is through the miracle of association. The human brain literally grows pathways of thought in response to situations. If you see a bunny rabbit and then someone stabs you in the leg, your brain will grow a pathway between the bit of the brain that represents bunny rabbit and pain. In the future a bunny rabbit will lead to the concept of pain (an anti-squirt) and therefore anxiety. The more intense the squirt or anti-squirt and the more often it happens the more powerful and immediate the association.

The important thing to remember is that associations can build upon each other into networks. These networks can be very complicated. Take jumping off a cliff into the Mediterranean. On one hand there will be lots of associations of falling off things and the pain resulting. But there will also be the feeling of the increased brain activity that results from the fear of the pain and exists beyond the point of the fear. Missing out on pain feels good because squirt chemicals last longer than pain chemicals. Jumping off the cliff will also be connected with the joy of telling stories about events, associated with beauty, with self-esteem and pride, with memories of other people having done it.
Standing on the side of a cliff over a clear blue sea will have a whole array of associations built upon associations all connected to the sensations of just a few chemicals in the brain. And those associations will be altered by the very experience of standing on the side of a cliff.

A wonderful illustration is the concept of phobias and the treatment known as flooding. Built into the human brain are some basic concepts, like fear of falling. In some people this connection between pain and falling is more powerful, and then some associations are built upon this that reinforce that association. In such cases standing in a high place, even when it is completely safe is directly connected to pain. People with phobias are in a form of agony when that phobia is triggered. Although I think it is ridiculous to be afraid of a one inch spider, I should remember that to the person with the phobia it feels as bad as being punched in the face.
Flooding is the treatment by which the phobia is confronted head-on in a completely safe environment. With heights you would put the person with a fear of heights in a high place that is absolutely safe. Everything that can be done to make that environment feel safe (that is to surround the person with things they associate with safety) is done, until new associations are grown between being in a high place and safety. Once enough associations are made with enough power the person is no longer afraid of heights.
But flooding often backfires because the power of the brain to associate things is astonishing. To a large extent the human brain cannot distinguish between an association and the real world. The association of fear and pain in a phobia is often as strong as actually feeling the consequences. The human brain has difficulty telling the difference between what it imagines and what is true. So, in many cases of phobia the experience of flooding is as bad as the actual event of which the person is afraid. Being in a high place for someone with a fear of heights can feel as bad as falling off the high place. In such cases flooding actually makes the phobia worse.

In summary, everyone wants to do things or avoids them simply based on squirts or anti-squirts. You can't do very much about your predispositions to squirts and anti-squirts. Built upon these basic responses are associations that are updated and developed throughout our lives, largely unconsciously. To a large extent the human brain experiences these associations as reality. If you associate green grass, a certain temperature of air and a certain light with a time of contentment in childhood, your brain will feel the same as you did in that situation. The sensation of the associations is the same as the sensation of the original feeling.

Why do I put this out? Because people don't use these concepts with regard to each other very much. People think heroin users do it because they are weak and stupid, rather than the real reason that for users heroin feels like the absolute most blissful time in your life. Could you voluntarily stop yourself from experiencing the top ten percent of the happiest times in your life? Like the moment you fell in love?
People think that other people are like themselves and that if they didn't do something why should someone else? The reason is that their brain set up and their associations that have been formed are such that their experience of such events is dramatically different. What seems to be the same situation is entirely different between individuals. I really enjoy going on a stage and performing. My wife is likely to throw up and pass out from the literal pain of the prospect. In reading this now she probably can literally feel the horror, (sorry sweetie). Our experience of the same event is entirely different.

So people don't do unpleasant things because they are trying to be bad people. And people don't do nice things out of some rational choice to be good. People do things simply because the associations they have developed produce a happy squirt or produce a painful anti-squirt. If you don't understand that basic concept, you don't understand people. If you want to change your behavior, or the behavior of someone else you have to work out what makes you or someone else have a squirt, and then find ways to associate the new behavior with that experience. If people want me to be less lazy, they have to make work feel better. Since my basic make-up does not provide huge squirts for conforming, or fitting in, or looking good in the eyes of others, or a job well done etc. but does get huge squirts from comfort, beauty, love, competition and booze, this makes things tricky.

Home.

What is home? Is it the place in which you live? Is it the place that you are from? Is it the place that you consider closest in nature to who you are as a person? For many people the question of what is one's home is not complicated, for it is all of the above. But increasingly there are people such as myself who live in one place, have come from somewhere else, and have become who we are through the effects of multiple places. What is home is complicated for me.



I have lived in Portland longer than in any other city in my life. I feel confident walking about the place. I understand the complex nature of the city, rapidly layered with different groups in different parts of the rapidly expanding and changing city. But every time I open my mouth it is clear that I am from somewhere else.

I am someone who is comfortable talking to absolute strangers, someone comfortable in places where I don't know the rules, someone who knows that the essential similarities between pople are greater than their differences. I know this from my nine years in Michigan, where I was transformed from a painfully shy introvert, with a tendency to mope, and a general disdain for people, into someone who enjoys being on stage, the most optimistic person I know, with a belief in the goodness of my fellow woman. This transfomation took place through a psychological process called "flooding". The constant interest, and outgoing friendliness of hundreds of mid-west americans over several years is the reason for this change. But I don't consider Michigan my home.

I just got back from ten days in England and Wales. The very look of it is comfortable to me. The greenest of fields surrounded by hedgerows, with a stone farmhouse under grey skies is what beauty means to me. The accents of the british countryside, particularly the rhythms of banter in a country pub, are the sounds about which I do not need to think. It is how I think, the method by which I prefer to converse, the atmosphere that soothes my spirit. But this environment is disappearing, replaced by the convenience of driving and the internet. Replaced by specialization, and international plane flights, and exotic cuisines.

A nice man who was once a friend of mine (taken away by the cult that is Alcoholics Anonymous, and the threats of his wife) once said that I was a man with no country, that I would never be home. He was right, and the places that are the closest are slowly dying under the tender care of the wealthy retirees of England. But there is still enough of it left for it to make me smile with its beauty, to wax wistfully of its charms, and to feel renewed and inspired by seeing it once again.

Time for a spot of tea.

Sport.

Months and months of incessant whinging have gone by and no mention of sport. Sport has played a major part in my life. I cannot remember not being able to kick a ball well enough to play soccerball. I have played soccerball, the rugby football, the tennis, basketball, cricket, ice hockey, ping pong (probably the best one, honestly), golf (a good tantrum ruined by peaceful scenery in my experience), even softball. There is just something I have liked about a competitive effort that is directly physical, a visceral intensity of attention and effort that truly makes you feel alive.

However, what I have spent more time doing is watching sport. I have watched enough sport to have a favorite aussie rules football team, to hate all teams wearing orange (except the netherlands soccerball team and the Cleveland Browns), and to have an opinion on which is more boring between baseball and cricket (both are very boring, but cricket lasts for days). I spend several hours a day watching grown men desperately try to get inflated sheep bladders from one place to another within the confines of arbitrary rules. I am fully aware that this is rather an odd activity.

Why do people watch sport? For those that don't watch sport this is a real question, because it is a really strange activity, no matter how popular. I watch sport because it is the essence of myth, improvised before our eyes. In myth there is good and evil in direct conflict, winner take all. Myth explains who we are, what group we are a part of and which group we are against. In almost all cases myth climaxes with a battle, a struggle on the field of battle between the two forces. This battle is the point of the basic stories of our cultures. The shining heroes of our hope line-up to do their utmost against the dark, evil horde, their colours proudly displayed, pennants fluttering in the wind.

Sport is this exact scenario. A battle, a struggle beween us and them. Once you have picked a side (a vital component of watching sport for me, not caring about the outcome means you don't care about the activity) then the emotions run riot. It is family, clan, tribe under assault from the enemy. Then there is the emotion of becoming part of the mob, with your colours displayed, yelling, chanting, screaming. It is a basic part of humanity to feel part of something. It ennervates the entire psyche, grabbing all of your attention to hope for your side to be triumphant, to give you the release of pure joy.

I want to get across the point that sport is a replacement for bloody war and violence, rather than an encouragement towards it. I have thoroughly enjoyed smashing my body into another (enough that my shoulders will never be the same) within the framework of a set of rules. The opponent voluntarily agrees to take part in this smashing, also enjoys it, and will stop upon the sound of a whistle. You will not find a more immediate human connection than between those who have competed against each other to the point of pain, and who join together afterwards in a soothing beverage and to laugh about the smashing.

Like a great play can get you to feel love, anguish, joy, and sadness, a great sporting event can get you to feel all of the same feelings, but every game is different, you know that the storyline has not been fixed for the audience, and the entire event is improvised. That's why I enjoy watching sport so much.

If this doesn't stir something in you then I've just been spouting nonsense: http://http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=BCn-8MB-v5U

The Ultimate Indignity

As a person with a liberal arts degree I have suffered the ultimate indignity. I have had my writing critiqued by an engineer. To further define my level of degradation the explanation for my failure to write properly is based on a psychological evaluation of my hemispheres. Here it is.

"Dan, you're overly logical left hemisphere has betrayed the right and made a binary decision. A lot more white space instead of some more white space. Instead of bullet points, perhaps artistic layout would help the reader. I presume your intent is to impart the content of what you write. Making your musing easy to read facilitates the transfer.

May I suggest you write as you always have. When your done, consider its layout. Perhaps a single space between paragraphs, on long posts perhaps grouping paragraphs with subtitles. Inserting an occasional enhancing graphic, etc.

Thinks of it as complementary parts of exposition. Verbal and visual. Distinct skill sets. The cleaver thing would be to integrate the pair.

...jgk"

Calumny!
Now, I feel I must defend myself against this vile calumny. For a start, the accusation that my left hemisphere is overly rational is quite hurtful. I mean, that's what that hemisphere is for. However, the notion that it has overidden my right hemisphere in making this a binary decision is actually the opposite of the truth. As laid out in my post the reason for my opposition to the advice (and therefore the sabotage of it through excess white space) is from my irrational hemisphere, a position based on emotional autonomy rather than ease of reading.

The second error on the part of my vicious attacker is in saying "Instead of bullet points," when my point is that restricting the size of paragraphs and spacing them out on the page creates bullet points. Smaller paragraphs reduces the amount you can say on a subject. Creating space between paragraphs distances the point of each paragraph from another. Increased white space automatically leads to an effect closer to bullet points, this is inescapable.

The next point is my intent. It is interesting to note that those in favor of a different layout have been a technical writer and an engineer. Those in favor of my normal wordiness have degrees in psychology, art and history. In engineering and techncal writing the intent is to as simply as possible convey information. In art the point of writing is very different. It is to be beautiful in and of itself. It is to convey a depth of multiple meanings. It is to create an emotional environment. A good technical manual has simple sentences, short paragraphs, spaces between those paagraphs. Anna Karenina has long, complex sentences. It has long, dense paragraphs filled with equivical meaning, the point of Anna Karenina only becomes apparent after tens of thousands of words. My intent is somewere between these two extremes.

Shocked!
The thing that has really shocked me about all this is the connection made between spaces between paragraphs and reading comprehension. Are people serious? Is it really true that people cannot understand the exact same information, with the same words, in the same order, without having headings or spaces between paragraphs? Have people become unable to read novels? I read a 600 page novel over the last couple of weeks that had white space only between chapters as per convention. Would people have had trouble understanding this novel as a result?

The Painful Truth
What I think has happened is a combination of two things. First, the internet now dominates daily reading. White space on the internet is free. In print is costs money. The denser the writing on paper the cheaper is the cost of providing it, with the internet it makes no difference. However, in print there is not really an immediate alternative for a reader who becomes bored with what they are reading, while on the internet any moment of boredom can result in the reader goin elsewhere. So people have become accustomed to small paragraphs, in a bullet point style, packing as much emotional content into as few words as possible, exactly in the manner of cable news.
Second, there is a convention that has sprung up as to how blogs should be written. There is literally no reason why different blogs should all look the same. Rather, it seems to me that blogs should represent the views, character, personality and interest of the person writing them.

Summary
If I change the way I write this blog, then it won't be me writing it. Do you really want me to be a different person? Am I not good enough for you, Jim?


Epilogue
If you couldn't tell, this entire post should be read with you tongue shoved firmly into your cheek.

Advice

This last weekend I received my first piece of advice on this blog, in person at a party. Coincidentally I received the first piece of advice in a comment section from someone named Mark, his first comment since April. Welcome back Mark.


The piece of advice at the party was from a good friend of mine, Dade, a highly intelligent man with excellent writing skills who has his own blog. Here's his post on the party in question, http://dadecariaga.blogspot.com/2008/10/jene-verrckte-deutsch.html


Clearly Dade Cariaga is an excellent writer, with a well presented blog which I take great pleasure in reading. His piece of advice was to use more "White space," to not have such long paragraphs and to have space between them for ease of viewing. Dade was clear that he thought this would be better even if none of the words were changed.


My initial reaction was what everyone who knows me might expect, I simply said I wouldn't. As I have said before in this blog (http://hopefulmuser.blogspot.com/2008/04/few-words-on-religion-and-childhood.html) "I think my natural personality abhors not having autonomy, being under the power of others, and that was present from a very early age." Even something as simple as changing a format of a blog on the advice of a fine writer feels like giving up autonomy, as if someone else has decided something for me.


Coincidentally (perhaps) the last time Mark commented on my blog was in that April post. "More white space" and "Incessant windbag" having more than a little in common, I have used this blog to try out this more-white-space approach.


My initial reaction is that I detest it. It fragments my thinking, grinding it down to the simplest possible statement, removing associative thoughts, paring down the subject matter to bullet points or a power-point presentation.

Doom and Gloom, how bad could it get?

Reading around things at the moment there is a ton of doom and gloom. I have read multiple reports of the end of America as we know it, an ongoing depression that will end society as we know it. The party is supposed to be over, we will never be this wealthy again. This is alarming to me, so I went and found out what is the truth.
It is generally accepted that the Great Depression of the 1930's is as bad an economic time as we have had in modern times. The combination of debt, iliquid assets, a drought, government incompetence, a worldwide plague less than a decade before produced a worldwide economic downturn that lasted a decade. It seems to me that this is the worst possible scenario, and unlikely to occur as the world's wealth is more equally distributed, less concentrated in one area, much more technologically advanced, and economic theory and practice is greatly improved. But let us take The Great Depression as our worst case scenario.
Gross Domestic Product, what we were producing as wealth in the USA declined from a peak in 1930 of $800 billion in adjusted 1999 dollars to a low of $600 billion in 1934. A quarter of the economy went away, an absolute disaster. However, this catastrophic low simply put the economy back to producing the same amount as in 1922, basically putting production back to levels of a decade before. By 1936 the GDP of the USA was back up to the same production levels as it was in 1929, when everything was hunky-dory.
Now, since 1950 the USA GNP per capita has just about tripled. The USA produces three times as much wealth per person as it did in the golden age of the american culture. By my calculations, if the worst possible scenario of the Great Depression happens, and a quarter of our economic production is lost in the next three years, we'll be producing wealth on average at about the same rate as we did in 1990. The worst case scenario is that on average we'll be forced into a position as horrendous as 1990.
Now, clearly things are not that simple, but the great doom and gloom fear should not be about whether the USA will collapse as a nation in terms of wealth production. We all managed quite readily to live in the conditions of 1990, and we could certainly manage to do so for the single year that things would be that bad in terms of wealth production. There will not be a shortage of wealth in the USA, even under the worst conditions.
Does this mean that I am blase about the situation? Certainly not, but it does mean that I think the doom and gloom, end of civilization stuff is just out of whack. What is the problem here is not whether there is going to be enough money, it's how that money is distributed. The top 1% of americans in terms of wealth own the same amount of stuff as the bottom 95%. The problem is the divide in wealth, the inequality of its distribution. A billionaire losing his job, his income and a quarter of his wealth is fabulously wealthy and never needs to work again in his life. Someone with half a million in assets who loses their job and a quarter of their income will struggle to keep what they have, will have to be less fabulously wealthy for a while Those struggling to make their payments right now might face bankruptcy, homelessness, hunger.
But this problem is not new. The gap between the poor and the rich has been growing for twenty years now. We have known that tens of thousands of americans die every year because they don't have health insurance or the care they need. I've seen them die myself. Americans have done sweet FA about this for fear of socialism or fear for their pocketbook. There is little to no help for the homeless, which is why we see them walking around our cities. We worry more about unscrupulous thieves getting government money than about whether making the process of getting disability money is too hard for ill people (if I told you how hard it was to get disability money, you wouldn't believe me, you simply wouldn't). The actual problems that this financial crisis will cause are not new problms, they are not insoluble problems, they are the same problems that progressive people have been talking about for years. We need to clothe, shelter, educate, protect and heal everyone in this culture, everyone. We don't just need to do it when it might be someone we know.

If we have another Great Depression we as a country will still be three times as wealthy per person as Costa Rica is right now, but Costa Rica has a higher literacy rate, a higher life expectancy, a lower infant mortality rate than the USA. In other words, it isn't a question of money, it's a question of whether you care about the poor or not, because it is possible to care about the poor more than we do, even if the worst possible situation happens in the USA.

If you are worried about yourself, and what might happen to you I'll point out one thing. At some point in your life you almost certainly lived on half the amount of money you have right now. As a college student I lived on a tenth of my present income. I did it before, I even lived a life with fun and excitement in it, I can do it again. Seriously, billions of people in the world would swap their best chances of financial gain with your worst possible scenario. Buck up people, show a little gumption.

Economic Crisis Analysed by an Ignorant Buffoon.

I have never taken a class in economics. I have never studied economics on my own. I have no public qualifications in economics, finance, banking or punditry. Clearly, I am completely unqualified to comment on the present financial "Crisis". However, my wife and my debt is in a low, fixed rate mortgage that probably amounts to about one third the amount of our assets, we are saving money and everything we have is insured. This is not a financial crisis for us, and the reason is that we appear to have made extremely sensible, responsible decisions that have resulted with us perhaps being poorer than an expert might have been, but also has meant that we have been free of risk. If you compare that to the experts on Wall Street, maybe I am qualified to comment after all.

There's lots of talk about what caused the crisis. It seems pretty simple to me, those who took the initial risks were, on the side of consumers, stupid and ignorant in that they took out loans that they could only afford when things went well. On the side of lenders, the original lenders were unconnected to the consequences of the risk (they sold on the mortgages to big banks), and the purchasers of these bad loans were relying on a stable economy (foreclosures and defaulters to be spread out evenly) and large scale to enable them to have enough money to keep up their monthly commitments. What happened was that there was an increase in the rate of defaulters and foreclosures (most often because there is no complete health care) and at the same time house prices shrank. So temporarily these loans were not worth much money, they had been gathered together in vast institutions rather than small institutions and so the failures were to major insttutions rather than small, badly-run institutions. So, over the next twenty years the owner of these mortgages are going to make money, it's just that this year these loans are not-sellable, and therefore almost worthless.

What should have happened is that there should have been universal health care to avoid 60% of the foreclosures. What should have happened is that mortgages should have remained with the lenders so that the risk of risky mortgages is shared between borrower AND lender (I think if you sell mortgages, they way you should make money is from the return from those mortgages, if you don't have the capitol to do ths, you don't have enough capitol to sell mortgages). This meant that even unscrupulous people selling mortgages would be less inclined to sell bad mortgages. What should have happened is that some basic education on how to manage money should be part of the basic education in the United States. It should be a simple, basic part of understanding of buying a house that you need to be able to make your payments ALWAYS, and that things go wrong!

But what should have happened isn't really the question at the moment. The question right now is whether there should be a massive bailout of huge companies that made dumb decisions. Regulation MUST follow (but it always does), but right now the question is whether a substantial portion of the financial sector that has failed should be allowed to receive the results of that failure. The knee-jerk reaction (and therefore the one held by the american public) is "Yes! Screw those guys, they're the ones who failed through greed and who wouldn't blink an eyelid if I lost everything I own." This is why today the vote in Congress failed. The standard Washington reaction is "Of course we need a bailout, we can't be the guys who let a depression happen." The problem seems to be that without the bailout there simply won't be enough capital to lend companies the money they need to grow. You might have a restaurant that is doing well, and a whole plan for a new location that would create wealth, jobs, revitalize a neighborhood etc.. That restaurant might have an almost fullproof plan to make money, but doesn't have the capital to start up the new restaurant, so the credit crunch slows the entire economy, people lose jobs, pay less taxes, spend less money, etc.. Other companies might need a short term loan to fix equipment, update equipment, compete in the global marketplace. So, it might be that $700 billion injected into the economy by the government might generate $700 billion or more as a result. It's also quite possible that the purchase of these junk mortgages might pay for itself as if their value increases over time, and the USA is willing to sell them in the manner of a private institution for profit, more money might actually come back to the government (it has happened before). So the bailout might well work out for the economy if done correctly.

But what this comes down to is that it will work if done by sober, capable professionals with a high moral code and without anything in it for themselves. But we know that rich people steal more than poor people. We know that generally when decisions are made in high finance and government that the rich get richer and the poor get screwed. When the rich commit crimes to get richer they receive less punishment than the poor committing crimes to be able to eat or get shelter. This is essentially a trust decision, if there was someone we could trust to do the best for working people and not for the financiers, then we would support that guy. But we don't trust anyone. The culture wars of the nineties are being replaced by the class wars in the USA, and I, for one, am quite pleased. The future is in Europe, with a free-market as the engine, but with the government as a regulator on that engine so it meets the needs of the driver of the car rather than simply producing the most amount of power it can. The future is in a society that measures things in terms of health and happiness rather than dollars. A free-market produces the most amount of wealth because of the greed inherent in humans. But a government provides for the needs of citizens far better than a free market because it cares about all the citizens.

This is a time in which the essential nature of the culture of the USA will change. The twentieth century was the century that fought about which was the better system, communism or capitalism. The answer has been found to be something of both, in the right amounts. Communism died first, but pure, free-market capitalism is not far behind it. Just like a sensible home-owner tries to make money but ensures that they will always have access to health-care and has enough in savings to get through a crisis, a sensible government makes sure its citizens have shelter, health-care, education and some protection from the extremes of a free market. But what do I know? I'm just an ignorant buffoon.

Presidential Debate Drinking Game

For those in foreign countries this topic may seem somewhat bizarre, but it has been a mainstay of american politics for at least as long as I can remember, so for certain since 2004. The reason for this is that presidential debates are very important and so should be watched, but the actions of those debating are so predictable that at times you feel like clawing your own eyes out. Add in the almost certainty that you have picked your guy, and the other guy is going to sound like a moron (yes, you liberal tree huggers, Obama sounds like a moron to right wingers) one needs some form of tranquilizing entertainment to enable you to perform your democratic duty. Hence the Presidential Debate Drinking Game.
On-line one can find many suggested rules, but these seem brutal to the point of actually being life-threatening. http://brainyjane22.wordpress.com/2008/09/25/the-presidential-debate-drinking-game/ for example has the insanely dangerous "10. If at any point, you find that you are replying to the debate (this includes yelling at the candidates) and are awaiting a rebuttal, slam back a martini. Then congratulate yourself for slamming back a drink that’s not often slammed." If I followed this rule I would die.
So, I'm suggesting a simpler method. Gather your alcohol in two forms, maintenance and brutal, with me it will be beer and quality bourbon whiskey. During each commercial each person in the room picks a word that if stated results in a drink of maintenance product. This allows for decisions about how quickly you wish to drink. If you feel like pounding beer then simply pick the words "Change, friends, look," and "I". The bourbon is for special situations when one of the candidates says something so outrageous that all of those watching in the room exclaim in disbelief/horror/outrage. Let us say that McCain says that the Iraq war has been a resounding success, for example, my wife and I will certainly scream obscenities at the television, thus requiring a shot of Knob Creek. If you are a republican you may have a similar reaction when Obama says he can deliver all his social programs without raising taxes.
If only we could actually have two people who talked like humans, rather than exchanging pre-polled talking points, we might not have to invent such methods to withstand our future leaders.

Follow-up from my last blog. McCain is now taking part in the debate, breaking his promise from before. This is entirely unsurprising since everyone could tell what he was up to. His presence on Capitol Hill did exactly nothing and the negotiations are still following essentially the points that Obama outlined early in the week and President Bush essentially followed word-for-word in his speech in mid-week. Meanwhile in the media, Harmad Karzai, the president of a country in which we are fighting a war, has been in the country this week. I have seen multiple reports of americans talking to Karzai but literally nothing about what he has to say about how the war is going. CNN literally cut him off at the start of what he was saying after Bush had stopped gibbering incoherently. Apparently it is vitally important to not hear the opinions of people anywhere else in the world, no matter whether we have troops fighting and dying in their country or not.

Bullshit vs. Bullshit?

There's just a ton of steaming piles to look at today, but which one will win? John McCain; who has just had his polling go from a neck-and-neck outcome to a historic drubbing based on the US public discovering that Sarah Palin is nuts AND incompetent, and an economic situation based on lack of regulation which McCain has been a proponent of for years, has ordered a suspension of his campaign and asked to postpone the debate on Friday.
The proposed reason for this is to get back to Washington and to hash out a bill to bail out the financial sector. Since John McCain and Barack Obama have never really been the big gurus in economics in the senate, and basically agree on what to do in this circumstances,their presence seems almost entirely superfluous to the circumstances, I think this is bullshit.
This is a power-play, a desperate attempt to suspend the losing campaign in order to get an issue that is horrible for McCain settled. It's an attempt to stop McCain getting hammered by an economic issue, while at the very same time it is an attempt to literally give $700 billion to rich people, no strings attached. I can understand a bailout to keep credit available in an emergency, but the plan of the Treasury Department is to literally give $700 billion for this plan and to have that money be unreviewable, and to have zero restrictions. Putting pressure on the democrats to agree to this absolutely ridiculous plan (dealing with a lack of regulation by simply giving money with no regulations to the people that screwed it up in the first place is simply nuts) by attempting to stop Obama's winning campaign until it gets done is the most disgusting piece of power politics since a war was started to help out McCain's polls about six weeks ago.

During a discussion on the Georgia nastiness I reminded people that Saddam Hssein was acually the most honest guy involved in the build up to the Iraq war. Last night Iran's President Ahmadinejad gave a speech to the UN General Assembly. Now, there was a fair amount of bullshit in his speech, stuff that looks crazy to many people, here's an example: "The Islamic Republic of Iran is the manifestation of true democracy in the region. The discourse of the Iranian nation is focused on respect for the rights of human beings and a quest for tranquillity, peace, justice and development for all through monotheism." This is bullshit, you can't respect the rights of all human beings and require monotheism, that's just obvious to sane people. However, this nutcase also outlined an understanding of foreign policy that was eloquent, rational, moral and true:

"How can we influence the future of the world? When and how will peace, tranquility and well-being for all come about? These are the fundamental questions before us.

"We believe that a sustainable order, nurturing and flourishing peace and tranquility, can only be realized on the two pillars of justice and spirituality. The more human society departs from justice and spirituality, the greater insecurity it will face, so much so that a relatively small crisis, such as a natural disaster, leads to various abnormalities and inhuman behavior.

"Unfortunately, the world is rife with discrimination and poverty.

Discrimination produces hatred, war and terrorism. They all share the common root of lack of spirituality coupled with injustice. Justice is about equal rights, the correct distribution of resources in the territories of different states, the equality of all before the law and respect for international agreements.

"Justice recognizes the right of every one to tranquility, peace and a dignified life. Justice rejects intimidation and double standards. As the eminent daughter of the Prophet of Islam has said, "justice brings tranquility and harmony to our hearts."
"Today, the world is longing for the establishment of such justice. If humanity heeds the call of its primordial nature with firm resolve, justice will emerge. This is what the Almighty has promised and all people of good will from all religions are waiting for. If the prevailing discourse of global relations becomes one of justice and spirituality, then durable peace will be guaranteed.

"Conversely, if international relations are defined without justice and spirituality and void of moral considerations, then the mechanisms for promoting confidence and peace will remain insufficient and ineffective.

"If some, relying on their superior military and economic might, attempt to expand their rights and privileges, they will be performing a great disservice to the cause of peace and in fact will fuel the arms race and spread insecurity, fear and deception. If global trends continue to serve the interests of small influential groups, even the interests of the citizens of powerful countries will be jeopardized, as was seen in the recent crises and the even natural disaster such as the recent tragic hurricane.

"Today, my nation calls on other nations and governments to "move forward to a durable tranquility and peace based on justice and spirituality."

If only all countries could say that and not be bullshitting us.

Emotional Economics in Dogs and People

The recent economic cafuffle with the Bush administration acting as more of a socialist government than I would like turned my thoughts to economic issues. One of these is the variation in the value of things based on the situation. A great illustration is a dog's thought of value. Dogs have values for things, put down a stick, a tennis ball or a bone, and the dog will go to the bone first, and probably the tennis ball next. But these values aren't stable. A tennis ball dramatically increases in value if it is in the mouth of another dog. In fact everything increases in value in the mouth of another dog. This is because to a large extent the value of an object to a dog is how much it illustrates the dog's power in comparison to another dog. The most valued object is an object taken from another dog that is then used to taunt the dog it was taken from. This is, of course, exactly the same reason why Hummers were actually sold to people despite being extremely impracticle vehicles.
I am not immune to variation in valuation. Christina got her bonus in May. Before that point I valued a dollar in our accounts emotionally much more than after receiving the bonus, simply because there was less money in our accounts, and I despise debt. Debt makes me feel basically as though I am (or more accurately now, Christina is) a slave for the amount of time until that debt is paid off. Therefore the risk of being in debt, even for a short time, gives me stress. Now, that bonus money was earmarked for the hot tub, it wasn't going to be used for anything else, so effectively we had no more money to live on than before. We didn't actually spend much more money to live during that process. But I felt much less stress, simply because the number in the account was so much larger. Recently we paid upfront for the hot tub and construction, and the number went down (and because the payment wasn't finalized until yesterday it was uncertain) and my stress about money went up. The overall plan had not changed at all, the dollars were still going to be used for the same things, could buy the same amount of stuff, but I felt differently about things. And finally, the hot tub was completed, the payments made and a concrete number remains in the bank account, and I feel better as a result. Financially nothing had changed from the plan that was made, and yet my valuation of the basic unit of economic exchange had gone up and down based on the path along that plan. Completely irrational behavior.
The valuation of things also changes based on experience. I remember the first house that I rented with three other students when I was twenty years old. It was a rather crappy house that I shared with several people who cleaned even less than I (which was quite a feat, my father still talks about the horros residing within that house). But I loved living in that house because it was freedom, it wasn't living under the rules of another, it was my house. Now that I live in a house I own with a lovely wife my valuation of living in a crappy, filthy house with several twenty year old males has dropped dramatically. It now seems like something to avoid like the plague. But there's no inherent reason why my valuation should have changed. Ideally I would be in seventh heaven at my present situation, and should I ever have to share a house with college students I should simply return to loving that situation. But habituation to luxury actually reduces the emotional value of luxury. This is why being actively grateful for what we have is so tightly linked to happiness. Something I try to work on is to try to value things as I did when I first had them, rather than as I am prone to do now. It's not easy.

Land of Wonder

Each day when I go out to a park with TFOE I see a snow capped mountain standing alone, towering in the distance. At one park it is the famous Mt. St. Helens, which was so impressed with my tenth birthday that it exploded, showering debris on Portland about 75 miles away. The very concept of being able to see a geological feature from 75 miles away is a magical thing for me. In Butterfurlong Farmhouse in England, where I spent my teenage years, you could look out on the biggest geological feature for miles, the chalk downs of Dean Hill and Pepperbox Hill, which I could walk up in twenty minutes. The shear size of things in the Pacific Northwest still astonishes me. I live in a place with mountains!

But the real wonder in this land of wonders is Mt. Hood. My fondest memory of my early childhood is of my father tucking me into bed at night and reading Tolkien's The Hobbit to me before I fell asleep (complete with voices). The quest of The Hobbit is to reach The Lonely Mountain and steal the dragon's hoard from under his nose. This story has bewitched me for my entire life, and I live in a place from which I can see the real Lonely Mountain. I've lived here for eleven years, and still regularly stop in awe to see a fantasy story from my childhood in undeniable, real existence. Something I will never cease to treasure.

Surreal Politik

Yesterday Russian Prime Minister/Dictatorial Overlord Vladimir Putin stated that the Ossetian conflict was started by the US in order to boost the chances of an unnamed presidential candidate being elected.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/08/28/europe/EU-Georgia-Russia-Putin.php

This, of course, is an outrageous allegation from a deeply evil person. However, being a deeply evil person doesn't mean that you aren't telling the truth. One of the most interesting things for me out of the whole lead-up to the Iraq war is that the person who was telling the truth the whole time was Saddam Hussein. He consistently stated that they had destroyed the weapons of mass destruction and that the UN inspectors were spying for the USA. Well, there were no WMD because they had been destroyed, and US officials admitted in 1999 that they had precisely spied on Iraq under cover of the UN. Given the news that the US bugged UN Security Council offices leading up the war it seems more than reasonable to think Saddam was right on this second point. Given the further information of the 935 false statements used to start an unnecessary war used by the Bush administration with Iraq ( http://projects.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/?gclid=COXYntnCs5UCFSAUagodfR5sQQ ) we know that not only will the Bush administration start an unnecessary war, but it will lie in order to do so, and that the reasons for such a war do not need to go much beyond access to oil.

Then we just need to look at the dates of the war, and the polling results in the US election to see if the assertion makes any sense. Georgia (armed and trained by the USA) invaded a province under the protection of a treaty and peacekeepers on 8/8/08. In the week leading up to that date Obama was ahead of McCain in every national poll, ranging between a 3 and 7% margin. 7% is a landslide victory, 3% is the margin by which Bush beat Kerry in 2004. The week after the invasion McCain lead in half of the polls, and was no worse than 5% behind in any of the polls, so essentialy something like a 5% swing in the polls, more than enough to change the outcome of an election. Since then the polls have swung somewhat back to Obama, but not fully to the extent they were before the invasion.

So, we know that being evil doesn't mean you lie. We know that Bush et al will lie and will start unnecessary wars. We know that Bush wants McCain to win. We know that the Bush administration (and the Clinton one before that) will use violence for political reasons. We know that McCain got a bump from this conflict. We know that the US has enormous military influence in Georgia. We know that the georgians initiated the conflict. I can't see any reason why the Georgians would otherwise invade a place under the protection of Russia, a country that could extinguish Georgia if it wanted to.

But what I want to get across is the surreal ridiculousness whereby it is entirely reasonable to think that sovereign nations can be ordered to fight wars IN WHICH PEOPLE DIE in order to boost poll ratings. Even more ridiculous is that this is commonplace, usual, in US politics. Clinton bombed Iraq whenever US domestic politics became unpleasant. Bush the First gave Saddam Hussein permission to attack Kuwait, before he then became outraged and staged a war that briefly boosted his popularity. There was no depth in foreign policy that Reagan wouldn't stoop to. The Gulf of Tomkin incident is notorious. Basically this outrageous accusation by Putin is simply stating something that has been standard policy for US presidents (with notable exceptions) for decades. Until killing people for political reasons becomes more news-worthy and less morally acceptable than cheating on your wife, this sort of surreal politik will surely continue. I wouldn't necessarily put this sort of stuff beyond Barak Obama either, but at least we don't know for certain that he would do such disgustingly evil things.

Unwrinkled Convention.

As I was folding laundry today, a statement that would astonish my parents, I thought upon a topic that as been with me throughout most of my life, what is wrong with wrinkled clothing. Cloth wrinkles unless you put effort into preventing it. Society has determined that wrinkled clothes "Look bad." Your clothing will look bad if you don't put effort into preventing it. But why do wrinkled clothes look bad? There isn't anything inherently ugly about wrinkles in clothes. We have no problems with pleats, which are simply rigidly ordered wrinkles. We have no problem with lines and shapes of all sorts of colors, of textures acros the spectrum from shiny man-made fibers to fuzzy woolen knots.
The reason why non-wrinkled clothes "Look good" is because it is a measure of your willingness to conform. Since it takes time and effort to clean, fold, iron clothes and the only purpose in doing so is to look good enough in the eyes of others, then all it amounts to is a public display of your willingness to do unnecessary things to fit in. The same goes for mowing the lawn, wearing ties or high heels, washing the car, painting your house, and a whole myriad of things we do WITHOUT THINKING WHY. Unless you are trying to get laid, why should what your hair looks like matter?

In victorian times it was considered attractive in England for women to have skin so pale that you could see the blue veins within the skin. In the 1970's it was considered attractive to have skin darkened by the skin to the maximum amount. Why was this? It was because in victorian times people made their living outside, they got dirty and sweaty and burnt by the sun if they had to make a living. But the wealthy could hide indoors all day, or walk around under parasols. It was harder to be pale than tanned, and it demonstrated wealth and power to be pale. In the 1970's women were beginning to have a large proportion of indoor jobs, juggling careers and children and housework, working all the time indoors. Therefore it was a more difficult proposition to lie around outside on sunny days for long enough to get burnt by the sun, hence it was considered more attractive.

Think how much time and effort you would save if it didn't matter what you wore, how it looked, what your house looked like, whether your car was clean, what your garden looked like, etc. other than how you actualy wanted it. Is that five hours a week for you? Do you spend five hours a week demonstrating your willingness to conform? I might.

Bipolar Follow-Up

I went to a doctor today and they agreed with me that I do probably have Bipolar II. Since they were a GP they rather sensibly suggested I see a psychiatrist. That sounds like a good idea, and really quite fun. In college my plan was to become a Clinical Psychologist, which is basically a psychiatrist who isn't also a medical doctor and therefore cannot prescribe medications. The reason that I didn't follow this path was a combination of my deep frustration with college (dumb people disinterested in teaching people, and actually much more interested in being told how clever they were in written form) and actually meeting Clinical Psychologists and discovering that they were almost all completely crazy. Then I spent seventeen years in social work counseling people very extensively in all sort of things that I'm not technically qualified to counsel people about. However, the people I counseled generally said I was better than their psychiatrists (if they had them) and better than nothing at all (which was most of them). So, I am very interested in having an appointment with a psychiatrist and seeing what it is like from the other side. A part of me feels very sorry for whoever gets the job of counseling me.

In a rational world the next step would be that the doctor refers me to a psychiatrist, who I would then go see. But the world doesn't work like that. What happens is I first contact my insurance provider to find out what is covered. Then I call a different number for the insurance company to find out precisely what the coverage is. Then I go to a web site to get a list of psychiatrists. I get a list of 233 psychiatrists within 15 miles who are supposed to take the insurance and are taking new patients. So far I have called fifteen numbers on the list. I have spoken to three humans, one a woman in a billing department, another receptionist who rudely informed me that they ae not taking new patients, and a third human who was very nice who informed me that the doctor was no longer taking that insurance. The other twelve numbers resulted in voice mails. The intimation being that I suppose I'm to leave a message and then wait for someone to call me back. So I've given up today, and I'm someone who is essentially well. I can't imagine what this process must be like for someone with schizophrenia.

Bipolar II Disorder

I have known for about 15 years that I am susceptible to episodes of major depression. I have had a couple of very severe times of depression and probably ten occasions of moserate depression. What is the difference? For me a good descriptor is that with moderate depression I can still taste food, while at its worse I have simply ingested fuel.
Last year for the first time in a situation of depression I went to a doctor (it was dumb for it to be my first time) and I was prescribed Lexapro a Selective Serotonin Re-Uptake Inhibitor (the same family of drugs as Prozac.) Within three hours of taking the first pill I felt an improvement, somehing I attributed to the placebo effect. However, as time went on my mood improved, I got more energy, I felt fantastic. Then, on the third day my energy increased so much that I couldn't sit still, my mind raced uncontrollably, and then I started getting panic attacks. So, I stopped taking it. The good news is that it seemed to bump me out of depression for a bit.
This weekend I stepped onto a scale, and was cruelly informed that lying around a lot and drinking beer will make you fat. I had put on about twelve pounds over the last year, mostly in the last couple of months. So, I started riding my bike more, even getting up in the deep, dark night to ride with my wife to her work and back. For some reason Don't Call Me Chrissy gets up before many people go to bed to go to work. I stopped drinking beer for a few days, drank water, glanced briefly at what was passing my lips before inhaling it like a rabid beast.
By the morning of the second day I felt great. Not just great, really great. The sort of great where you feel you have everything all figured out, you feel strong, healthy, intelligent, brave, and beautiful. I got a bunch of stuff done, made plans for the future, practiced the mandolin, I was happy and productive. By the morning of the third day I was up for the bike ride, then an hour walk with the dog, then a blog post, and faster, and faster, and faster. I became irritable, dogmatic, dismissive of others. I couldn't keep my hands still. I started about eight different projects, unable to get more than five minutes in to any of them. I couldn't decide what to eat, I ended up eating a bowl of cereal yesterday. I went to a bookstore to buy a book, usually the most relaxing thing I do. I left without a book as I was unable to make a decision. Suffice it to say, by the evening I was really hyperactive, literally bouncing up and down, talking rapidly and loudly. I was hypomanic.
Fortunately I drank a bunch of beer and didn't exercise today and I feel fine again. Anyway, from what I can tell I have Bipolar II Disorder, I may even see a doctor about it, because any medication with hangovers attached is far from ideal. There's a genetic component to this disease, so anyone genetically related tome who has some mood issues might want to check the following link out,

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/bipolar-disorder/complete-publication.shtml#pub4

The good news is that I lost five pounds in three days.

Ignorance.

Since I was 16 my major interest is how people think/feel/believe. As a result I studied psychology and worked with developmentally disabled and mentally ill people. Part of this was for self-preservation, I started off with wanting to know how people could be happy, and how to avoid being as unhappy as I perceived my father to be, while fully aware that of all the people in the world he is the person I am most like in terms of natural tendencies. I still find myself thinking in ways unique to my father, still find myself going through little mindless habits or idiosyncracies that are also his. While typing this I can almost see the hands of my father doing the same task, with the staccatto rhythm that he has, the small bursts of extreme energy followed by a tugging on my/his lip o stimulate the next thought.
At a time of impending personal crisis (faithless women and fickle friends) I then broadened this interest into religion and spirituality. I had been almost entirely devoid of spirituality or religion in a personal sense (I have sat through innumerable Church of England services, the sound of drudgery is an english congregation singing a hymn) and I thought that this massive area of human thought worth looking into. So I read works on religion, mostly eastern religion. I meditated, and I experienced a change in my person as a result which stopped oncoming depression. I even had the enlightenment experience, which as far as I can tell is the same thing that those who are born again in christianity experience.
Anyway, since then I have been interested in religion, and I go onto an internet forum to discuss religion. It has been an extremely interesting and useful experience. I now know far more than I would have expected about how people become religious, how they experience reliion, how it colors and effects people's lives.
One of the things that I have found out is how extraordinarily ignorant many people are about their own religion, many christians have almost no idea what Jesus said, and of all the great religions in the world finding out what the purported originator of christianity actually said is by far the easiest, as there are only a few hundred words.
The two most egregious examples I have found recently are: the belief that Jesus was not a pacifist despite him saying, "Blessed are the peacemakers. But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also" and the belief that Jesus was not against material things despite saying, 22When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still need to do one thing. Sell everything you have and give the money[p] to the destitute, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come back and follow me." and, "And he called unto him the twelve...And commanded them that they should take nothing for their journey, save a staff only; no scrip, no bread, no money in their purse: But be shod with sandals; and not put on two coats.

But then 20% of people in the USA and UK still think the sun goes around the earth. This is a useful statistic whenever you think that nobody could be that stupid, no matter how stupid 20% of people can manage it.

Dark, Wet and Grey

After weeks of warmth and bright sunshine we got a thunderstorm and rain today. Pattering moisture, scents rising from the earth, diffuse grey light nibbling at the edges of perception. It is the colour and environment of when and where I grew up, prone to reminding me of curling up in a bed with a book, alone, untouched by humanity. Solitary, quiet, still. Unconscious connections with the english culture, or perhaps an english culture, a state of mind without pain or pleasure, without excitement or misery. An unthinking existence, like a deep pool still and hidden away from sight.

The Serenity Prayer.

God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

This is called The Serenity Prayer, attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr in 1934. One of the more interesting things about this is how was it that nobody came up with this before 1934?
Another thing I find interesting is that if looked at closely it seems to have two sections, the first is an attitude, the second is about action.
"God, grant us the grace to accept with serenity", you could stop there. God simply grants you serenity, sounds like a good deal, story over. The second part seems to be a recipe for getting that serenity, despite it being explicitly asked for as a gift of grace from God. Accept what you cannot change (in buddhism, the source of pain is wishing things to be different than they are, so in that tradition one simply accepts) is simply common sense. However, it requires the ability of the last clause, being able to tell what you can or cannot change. The final clause for me to look at is "The courage to change the things that should be changed." Here is the rub, what should be changed? It depends on how much serenity you have, how much acceptance you have, and then how much courage you have in order to be able to change things, and then the same qualities for everyone else in the world. An example of the interconnected nature of reality.

Basically it is a request to be serene, wise, and courageous. Which are good qualities, but as with almost everything in life, the specifics of how to be these things are extremely complex.

The reason that I thought of this is the present situation in Georgia, in light of the ongoing idiocy in Iraq. I wish to be serene, and if there is a god and he makes me serene that would be great. Given what I think of the chances of that happening I must move on to the rest of the prayer. I think people in Georgia, russian, georgian, ossetian or whatever should not kill each other. But can I change that in any way? Perhaps if I dedicated myself and my life to stopping conflict, perhaps by chaining myself in the path of tanks in Georgia I might make a difference. That would take enormous amounts of courage, and would probably make zero difference, but it might make a huge difference just as Gandhi demonstrated. So, I should either serenely accept the situation and do nothing, or I should be outraged and do everything.
Perhaps the serenity prayer could be summed up with the following, "When it comes to life, shit or get off the pot." The worst thing you can do is care deeply about something so that it eats at you, but not be able to do anything about it. So, here's your question, are you going to do something about it, or are you going to be serene? Because if you aren't picking one or the other, you are screwing up.

Solitude and Rest.

I had most of a blog written about how important solitude and rest are to me. But then I realized it was complicated whining about not getting enough sleep and therefore being irritated. Again.
Basically, I cannot turn off the bit of my brain that pays attention to other people. So I have to be alone to get rest. The dog counts as people because he has feelings. So I am very tired and have been for months. I am never alone. This is a very boring blog, but I don't do anything interesting because I am too tired.

TFOE Pictures.

As requested by Emily, my sister-in-law rather than my sister, here are more pictures of The Face of Evil. I have put in a picture from when he first arrived here as well for an idea of the changes in four months, and because he used to be cute and evil, rather than just evil. Size is difficult to judge here, but by weight he's four times smaller in the first picture than the rest.

Larry likes swimming, particularly if the water is fetid, disease-ridden and green. What you can't get from a picture is the smell.Larry contemplates the possible flavor of cat. He often licks Canterbury which looks cute, but I firmly believe this is simply his version of an aperitif.Trying to take a picture of Larry when he is not in motion is like trying to understand teenagers, just when you think you've got it, something unexpected happens. These last couple of pictures illustrate this point by being the best I could do, and being crappy.

Breaking News!

Christina smashed her body into tiny bits! Well, OK, just one little bit. After a cycling incident she has a broken finger. The official state Christina news agency (Don't Call Me Chrissy!) reports that a complete imbecile was worried about the police doing cycling traffic stings at a junction and so slammed on the brakes thus smashing Christina's finger. Other reports that the express train that is Christina on a bicycle plowed through an innocent commuter are nothing but vicious lies and irresponsible scuttlebutt.

Bureaucracy Follow-Up

About a month ago I posted my frustrations about the silliness of excess bureacracy with regard to our plans to put a hot tub in a back yard to reward my wife for being fantastico! I outlined how the very process of rules based on fear rather than rules based on efficacy resulted in huge motivation to ignore the rules entirely. Here's the post, http://hopefulmuser.blogspot.com/2008/06/bureacracy.html
So, having now got a bid from a fully licensed contractor, with permits and the whole shebang, and a bid from a guy recommended by some friends I can tell you what the mark up is from bureacracy. The officially legitimate bid was almost exactly three times bigger than the illegitmate one (and more accurately met our needs, and took half as long to get, too).

Global Warming, I'm Not That Worried

The biggest threat to humanity is global warming, but I don't think it's that much of a threat. This is because I believe that the responses of humanity to situations of danger are far more capable, rational, and speedy than most people think they are. The projections that people make with regard to global warming are over the course of decades, but people do poorly is estimating the changes in people and technology over decades.
If people around the world continue to produce greenhouse gases at the same rate they are presently (and if technology does not change the numbers are likely to go up rather than down) then global warming will be a nightmare situation in fifty years. But this seems to me to be enormously unlikely because there is huge motivation for technological improvement. For technological advances to happen there needs to be basic materials and techniques available and motivation for scientists to achieve breakthroughs. Well, the basic theories and techniques to provide alternative energy sources abound. We have the prototype, beginning technology for wind power, wave power, and nuclear power. But the big thing we have is the biological ability to alter organisms to produce alternate fuels. For example, hydrogen is a readily available resource, the waste product of the fuel is water, and it works just fine in present day technology (you can run your SUV on hydrogen with minimal changes to the vehicle). The problem with hydrogen is that it is such an excellent fuel that it combines with oxygen whenever possible to produce water. The trick in making hydrogen fuel is to seperate hydrogen from oxygen using less power than is produced in burning the fuel. Plants do complicated stuff of this sort all the time in photosynthesis, using sunlight to trigger a process that produces oxygen from carbon dioxide (and everyone knows that you can burn carbon with oxygen, that's just wood burning). So, a genetically designed organism may be able to use sunlight to produce hydrogen. Our future energy plants may be vast shallow pools under glass in the desert, gently bubblng hydrogen.
The second thing we have is motivation. The first motivation is the safety of humanity (and of the rest of the animal kingdom) but this is a motivation at a distance. The real motivation is that a technology solution would make the inventor trillions of dollars. The inventors of such advances would become richer than oil companies. If there's one thing that will get people with lots of money to invest in research, it's the prospect of having much, much more money as a result. Before global warming became a reality there was not a motivation for alternate fuels, there were cheap, easily obtainable fuels (coal, natural gas and oil) with supplies to last the world until 2080 at the earliest (oil would go first, there's no shortage of coal or natural gas). People would work out alternatives sometime in the future, perhaps starting in 2050 or so. But now people will choose alternative fuels over oil, even if it is somewhat more expensive at first. The result is large investment in research for alternative fuels.
The next worry is whether these alternatives will be invented in time. In order to make a difference there's going to have to be a major change in actual used technology within thirty years (and by then Portland, Oregon is going to have a meditteranean climate and millions of species will have died). People think this is a serious concern, but I think people have no idea how quckly this modern world is producing new technology. Take computers, for instance. Thirty years ago, in 1978, computers were essentially room-sized counting machines. Now there is a world-wide network and about one billion computers in people's homes. This isn't simply a case of making a useful device and selling it, this involves investment on a monumental scale, and a whole new segment of infrastructure. There are now fiber-optic cables running around the world running from house to house. And the power of the machines would be beyond most people dreams in the 80's. Remember your 64k personal computer? That's a k at the end, we now measure in g's. That's a million times bigger. A million.
And then finally, the reason why I'm writing this today is because I read this article which shows that although I have had this impression all along, there's now some evidence that I might be right. http://www.newsweek.com/id/140066 Basically it seems likely that within five years there will be an organism that provides fossil fuels that we can just keep burning in our cars, but will use co2 in its' production. This possibly will make the net effect of driving cars a reduction in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In ten years it might actually be true that the best way to reduce global warming will be to drive your car as much as possible, so that companies will have to match demand by producing more fuel. It is conceivable that in thirty years the problem will be that the process of driving cars will be removing co2 at a dangerously high rate.
However, this doesn't mean that real problems aren't happening now. Species are disappearing, people are starving, we are losing things that we may never see again. So, I am very confident about this problem being solved, but until then I will keep doing what I'm doing. Our car has 70 miles on it this month, we drive less than 3,000 miles a year. We don't have an air conditioner, and we wear sweaters inside during the winter. An energy policy is the third most important factor in my voting decisions (the first two are not killing people, and healing everybody, usually called foreign policy and health care). So, do what you can now, but don't worry too much about the future, it'll be OK sooner than you expect.

Face of Evil Update.

It's three months since my last post about Larry, The Face of Evil. Larry is now seven months old and weighs nearly sixty pounds. Basically we are expecting him to end up as a small, black wolf. Larry is a pretty well trained wolf, he'll sit, stay, come, leave etc. as long as it is worth it to him, which seems to be most of the time. His general attitude is one of intense friendliness, he loves everyone immediately and unquestioningly, and he loves them intensely and physically. This is fine about 60% of the time, but I am collecting good data on the prevalence of dog phobia.

Larry now sleeps through the night, or at least doesn't bound through the house leaving a deafening racket of destruction in his wake. No, now Larry is generally quiet except for chewing on something quietly. If you have never tried to sleep with the sound of chewing somewhere in the dark, I don't recommend it. There's something about the sound of chewing in the dark that produces questions. "What is being chewed?" is a common one. "Why can't I stop listening?" is another. "Should I get up and check?" is the bad one as it leads to thought and debate. Then there's always the primitive ape portion of my brain that screams, "Something with big teeth is chewing on something somewhere out there!!"

I wondered three months ago if I would love Larry by now. The answer s "No." I feel responsible for him, I have some affection for him, he's a good dog. But love is not what I feel. Larry has increased my stress, my workload, certainly the amount of anger I feel. Often he is simply a living chore. But other times it is most pleasant to walk around in the sunshine with a dog scampering about at one's feet. It's getting better, the battle of wills in our conditioning of each other is going the right way (as far as I can tell, TFOE's schemes are deep and subtle) and in another two years Larry will probably be a great dog that I can really appreciate. Two years.