My Personal Blog

Showing compassion towards evil people

2011-12-24T08:44:00.000-08:00

I once sued a miserable, pernicious harridan named Cleatus for defamation of character, because in collusion with my old ex-wife, she falsely accused me to my employers of felonies I never even came close to committing, and I felt compelled to defend myself. Well defend my character in court I did, as there wasn't a stick of evidence of any crime. However this horrible woman hired the most expensive law team in LA at $750/hour and was able to take advantage of a "whistler blower" protection law not intended for the likes of her, but intended for people who actually need it, and so even though I was able to prove I was innocent of the crimes she falsely accused me of and that therefore there was grounds for defamation of character, she got off Scott free - worse than that actually, I had to pay her attorney's fees.

I walked away with my faith shaken in the legal system: It was not there to protect me against the proven crimes of others against me. I came away thinking that often the better lawyer does really win.

Well I found out this year that this poor, hateful old woman finally died. I discovered that before she died, she'd spewed forth on the Internet further hate speech about others, so in some way it was comforting to see that she was an equal opportunity hater. I wasn't just singled out.

One thing I did notice from this experience: Hateful people seem to attract other hateful people, and likewise loving people attract other loving people. It seemed Cleatus attracted other hateful people to her. I suspect this may be a valid generalization of hateful people.

I have to admit it, but I experienced a sense of elation when I learned of her passing. As far as I could see, this woman made the world a much worse place for others, and the world is better off for her passing.

Now I wonder if I would personally benefit from showing compassion towards this woman, learning how she suffered, and what drove her to do the horrible things she did. Perhaps I might even find the nice things she did and left behind.

I don't now how to embark on this process. How would I do that? Any thoughts?

Band Member

2011-03-23T22:43:00.000-07:00

Canyon Ranch in Tucson, Arizona

I was fortunate enough in the early 1980's to spend a week at Canyon Ranch, a luxurious health spa in Tucson, Arizona. They have a big steam room and one day I walked in and had the whole room to myself.

Until this guy walks in and sits down across the way. "How do you make this thing hotter?" he asks. So I show him how to crank the steam, and soon the room became mostly opaque.

"So what do you do?" asks the guy, as he tucks his long hair into a shower cap on his head, that made him look bald. I start telling him about my computer software company, what I'm working on. He's really interested in what I'm doing and asks a lot of questions. It's nice when someone, a complete stranger especially, takes a sincere and genuine interest in finding out who you are. After a while, I thought I should ask him what he did, and so I asked: "So what do you do?" Our conversation went something like this:

"I'm in a band," he says. I've been in a few bands too, and so I figure his band is currently touring in Tucson, and hanging out at this great spa between gigs.

So I ask, "Are you playing somewhere local here in Tucson? Maybe I can come out and see you?"

"No, we're getting ready to go on a big tour - collecting our strength, getting clean and sober, but still having fun.

"I used to play clarinet, flute, sax, and keyboard in some bands. Not in a band now though. What instrument do you play?"

"My voice - I'm the lead singer."

"Cool! What's the name of your band? Maybe I've heard of you?"

"Aerosmith."

"Wow, yeah I remember listening to you in high school. Love your stuff. You look pretty young for your age. How old are you?

"I'm 40."

"Wow, you look great for your age! You look a lot younger. What's your secret?"

He pauses for a moment, looks me right in the eyes, and with a serious expression says, "Plenty of pussy!"

And with that, he jumps up completely naked, while pulling his showercap down over his eyes, and then starts jumping around like a demented pogo stick. "Look! I'm a giant bouncing condom!" And then he starts singing a giant bouncing condom song, heads out of the steam room, and off into the distance, still singing the song.

Steven Tyler

2006 Clive Davis Pre-GRAMMY Awards Party
February 7, 2006 - Beverly Hills, CA

I liked Steven Tyler a lot during our one chance encounter, naked, in a steam room in Tucson, Arizona in the 1980's.

My moments of joy today

2011-03-01T17:44:00.000-08:00

We should all pay special attention to the things in life that bring us joy. So in this blog posting, I'm going to tell you about my day, and where the most joyful parts of it were. At the end, you'll see a pattern to the things that give me joy. If you've read earlier postings in this blog, you'll see that I earlier discovered that what gives me joys is being of service to other people. And sure enough, that's the number 1 joy for me today.

#1 Joy Today: Aikido! Yeeha!!! I was talking about martial arts with one of my friends, and ended up suggesting she try Aikido since I am a black belt in that art, and previously checkout out our local East Bay Aikido on a number of occasions before and really liked it, I also just happened to have one of their pamphlets with me and so I gave it to my friend.

Turns out she went last Saturday, liked it enough to come back a second time, and sure enough she loves it. So she came up to me to thank me for giving her that information. I hope she sticks with it. It would transform her life, as it has mine. +2 on joy today because I was able to be of service to another, and I know that's what brings me the most joy.

#2 Joy today: Figuring out what that funky digital looking sticker was on this bike rack. I found this near 23 Grant Street today, near Union Square, San Francisco. So I pointed my Android Google Goggles application at that and let's see what this is...

So, Goggles brought me to to a series of screens that asked me to sign a petition saying I'd properly recycle my mobile phone when I no longer needed it, and that when they received 10,000 signatures, they would plant 10,000 trees. Seemed harmless enough, so I signed up. Now I'm helping plant 10,000 trees. All started when I tried to lock my bike up and saw the weird digital sticker.

#3 Joy today was snapping this picture of myself after getting my first haircut in a year and a half and then sending it to someone. I think my hair is now 3-4 inches shorter than it just was, having grown for a 18 months without any cut.

#4 Joy today was continuing to make positive progress on my job search.

#5 Joy today was sailing the open seas on the good ship WATA across the Bay from the Ferry Building in San Francisco to Oakland, a 20 minute trip. You walk in and see the bar at the back of the boat and think maybe a white wine, or an IPA, or maybe even one of their surprisingly good bloody merry's would be right tasty about now. Go up to the top of the boat and sit in the sun and the wind and see scenes like this:

#6 Joy today was discovering the first truly bicycle friendly bit of BART I've ever seen:

My bike in BART

What do you think?

Even futher into the future

2011-02-05T00:29:00.000-08:00

If we look even further into the future, we're starting to get into the realm of quantum computing, where traditional computing assumptions break down because problems that used to be intractable are now solvable instantly. In particular, our U.S. government is most alarmed about this because it means that all our cryptographic secrets can no longer be kept secret. In case you didn't know, our government considers cryptography to be on a similar level as nuclear arms - secret information is a very powerful weapon!

So, wikileaks will seem like a leak in the bucket by comparison, when all encrypted information can be cracked. What will we find out then? Did we find aliens at Roswell?

But even more interesting than that, I believe that large scale quantum computing should assure in a new golden age of computer science, one that redefines what is possible. It's hard to even imagine what might be possible. When you combine nanotechnology and quantum computing together, you appear to bring about near god-like powers of creation. What are the limits really? Why isn't everyone in the world studying this? OK, I know the U.S., England, Israel, Russia, Japan, and China are. Something will explode out of this research.

Further into the future

2011-02-04T23:34:00.000-08:00

As we go further into that future, the glasses and headphones are somehow merged with our own sensory systems so that we don't perceive those as separate from our bodies. A surgical approach would call for embedding something that inputs the appropriate auditory and visual information directly into the brain. However, there may be non invasive approaches possible, that rely on transmitting information in other means. Those would have some advantages, and perhaps some disadvantages as well.

Another interesting question is whether we want to rely on our use of our eyelids as a way to shut out visual information. What if we project visual information directly to the optic nerve or directly to the visual cortex. At some point down the road, we'll be advanced enough to do this sort of thing (either that, or we'll have reverted to prehistoric monkeys, or something in between, I don't know.) If we bypass the eyelids, we'll need to give the operators a virtual eyelid switch to close their eyes and give their brains a chance to catch up.

And so imagine you were hiking up in the High Sierras, and your augmented reality visual input was somehow transmitting into your visual field, and so you saw a ghost image of another group in front of you. A text cloud over the group tells you they hiked this route 2 years before you. So you gesture out with your hand to try to contact any member of that group to get a live connection. A few rings later, a member of that group is now in front of you live, willing to talk with you about that hike you're on, willing to give you advice. They check out the weather systems, and with their expert knowledge route you around a pass to get the best hiking in for the day

The near future

2011-02-04T22:45:00.000-08:00

At some point in the near future, our mobile phones will evolve as follows:

Mobile phones will have sufficiently high speed bandwidth to support any application we'd want to imagine, including augmented reality applications that I'll get to later.
They will all be capable of recording unlimited audio, photos, and video, all tagged by your exact position on this planet, and storing that in the cloud.
They will support 3-factor authentication, including something like iris scan or thumb print to securely authenticate the identify of the holder of the device.
The will carry their own cash value, independent of any bank or country, but redeemable at any bank.
Of course you'll be able to use them to get into trains, BART, movie theaters, and what's next?
They will support interactive natural language voice conversations in your own native language with an artificially intelligent agent, who does your bidding on the net. "Make me an 8pm reservation at the best sushi restaurant you can find within 30 minutes driving distance. And don't forget to invite my wife!", and your restaurant reservation confirmation flows through your system message stream and your wife receives the invitation. But on your wife's mobile device, it routes the directions from her work place to the restaurant, so when she gets in her car she's all set to go. (Must pay homage to Steve Jobs and the Knowledge Navigator concept here.)
They will integrate with our smart TVs, which will really be nothing more than mobile phones with very large screens, and different user interfaces to take advantage of the greater distance and different interaction mechanisms. We'll probably carry our content rights in the cloud, authenticating with our mobile devices, able to project our content in a multitude of places like on walls, big screen TVs, entertainment systems, and of course, our 3D glasses.
Gestures not touching the display device directly will begin to play a larger part in our device interactions, coming first from the video gaming sector, but then moving on to smart televisions and eventually our mobile devices. You'll just point and grab at your phone without actually touching it to tell it to pick up a call. Or if it's ringing in your pocket, just tell it to "shush!"
The display screens will eventually be able to project on any wall surface, controlled by your mobile device. You'll see the Doppler weather projected on your wall, you'll see the lunar eclipse projected on your ceiling, and so on.
They will plug into all cars and be your entire GPS and entertainment system, though there will be quite a fierce battle for that throughout the decade and it will take a while for a good solution to emerge.
Wireless battery charging will become a phenomenon. For example, Starbucks might give you free wireless device battery charging along with free WIFI.
3D Interfaces will be common, and eventually without the need for special glasses. Real advances in 3D user interfaces won't be made until 2017 or 2018 though.
Augmented reality will continue to percolate on as an interesting discipline without gaining huge market value until perhaps closer to 2020, when inexpensive portable glasses and audio devices will be available that will project augmented 3D audio and spacial reality, mediated by our mobile devices. Then the value of this field will explode, and those with good position will be poised to take great advantage of the revolution. There will be applications to improve driving skills, find the best lane at the super market, GPS navigation will never be the same, help you play golf, and perhaps even teach you how to mambo.
A more cybernetic type of reality could emerge, because the reality our senses are constantly taking in, is literally being modified by computer software to enhance that reality with additional information our senses could never perceive, such as satellite imagery, ideal drive lines on the golf course, estimated wait times at each isle on the super market - the possibilities are endless. Can you think of a few?

Be Here Now

2010-12-13T13:30:00.000-08:00

Be here now.
For nothing is worth more
Than this day
We live today.

Do or do not. There is no try.

2010-12-08T09:33:00.000-08:00

"Do or do not. There is no try."

I keep trying to "just do" and not just to "try". Unfortunately, that's not working for me.

"Bring it on, Yoda"

When we try, we are actually doing something: We are rewiring our brains to do something new. This takes practice, also known as "trying". We're focused not only on the doing, but on the learning and rewiring process. Once we are done with the rewiring, the rewiring is done and we're just doing. Although, the learning will likely still continue.

We all start by trying though. You can't execute a round-off, backhand spring, back flip without trying a few times first. I mention that one because I can actually do that, at least I did the last time I, um, tried.

We can get attached to the trying part. We just need to remember that at some point, we stop trying and let all the practice take over. Then we're doing.

The Ideal Lovers

2010-11-15T21:27:00.000-08:00

"The ideal lovers could leave each other on any day. They choose to be with each other every day."

--David Levine, 1981

Nothing and No Things

2010-07-11T09:55:00.000-07:00

Over the last few months and years, I have slowly but surely been getting rid of nearly all of my stuff. I am now left with a small fraction of my previous possessions. At some point I realized that I was engaged in a spiritual quest to rid my life of meaningless clutter. I felt like I was dragging all this stuff around with me. Having stuff takes its toll: I had to pay for space to keep it, protect it from theft, clean it, repair it, look at it, organize it, think about it, look at it, and just have it take up my mental space. I so much more enjoy having a clean slate and empty space, filling it sparingly with just the most valuable possessions.

George has a really funny take on it:

A house is just a place for your stuff
--George Carlin

Annie Leanard's The Story of Stuff shows the dark, evil (yes evil) side of our corporate materialistic culture.

Nora Dunn's great article on How to get rid of all your crap comes pretty close to describing what I'm going through - many people have gone down this path before I can see.

I am finding that it's an intense spiritual quest, that mirrors and reflects itself in my personal life in many ways. Getting rid of stuff opens the way for possibilities in my life.

I recently read a talk given by Wade Davis, and in that talk he says that his favorite people to hang out with are the true nomads of this planet - living in some pretty remote parts of the world. He says that nomads can't afford to have much stuff in their life, because that would weigh them down. Wealth in such cultures is measured by the strength of your personal relationships, not by the things you've accumulated and drag around with you. There certainly is something to that.

There is also the issue of living rightly on this planet and sheparding her resources for the future, and having less stuff is part of a more sustainable culture. Our American culture - as perceived through the current official / governmental economic lens - is overly materialistic and can only thrive by destroying our world. We all know that this is wrong, and yet we struggle so mightily against a governmental and world wide culture of consumerism, materialism, and greed that threatens the health of this planet and of our very own lives. By having minimal stuff, I feel I'm setting a good example of how to live a more sustainable lifestyle on our spaceship Earth.

Integrating your relationships

2010-06-24T00:32:00.000-07:00

When two people develop a deep relationship, the character / essence / feeling that each has regarding the other is unique among all other relationships. It doesn't matter whether that is a platonic friend or romantic friend or a parent or child, the same concept holds: The way you feel with your friend Fred is different from the way you feel with your friend Sally because you do different things together, you have a different history, a different shared language. It's a unique finger print in our mind - the emotional and total feeling of what it feels like to be with a particular person.

So when you have two deep friends who have never met, and then meet, it is a collision and merging of worlds that causes a deeper integration of formerly separate parts of yourself into a more integrated whole. It also allows your friendships to deepen even further, as your friends become friends with each other (maybe), and learn more about you by meeting another close relationship of yours.

Recovering Joy

2010-04-17T09:08:00.000-07:00

When I was born, I knew nothing of this world. My developing brain contained built-in genetically programmed circuitry tuned to living on this planet with others of my species, and as I experienced the world, this circuitry became activated. I'm talking about circuits like Broca's area and Wernicke's area. It's the brain's ability to literally rewire itself at a sub-atomic level growing new neurons and new connections with existing neurons - nanotechnology and quantum physics - that's truly amazing. So my brain also began to grow new, un-pre-programmed circuitry in response to my early environment. As I matured, I chose more and more in what way I wanted my brain to develop. More recently, I am much more explicitly conscious of how I want my brain (substitute mind or soul or spirit if you like) to develop. See my blog posting below.

That type of description of the brain, in terms of how neurons rewire themselves, completely leaves out what it feels like to be a thinking, feeling human being - the phenomenological experience. Lets go back to the new born again, but approach it from the feeling side rather than the neuron side. Throughout history, people have speculated about the subjective phenomenological experience of the newborn infant. When all its needs are met, the newborn infant appears gentle, peaceful, and happy. When a newborn is hungry, it suffers and we care for it to relieve the suffering. If I try to reach back into my earliest memories, I believe that as a newborn infant, there is nothing in the way of experiencing full on joy, except having basic needs met like food, warmth, being held, and so on. Breast feeding is pleasurable to the newborn, but that's not the same thing as its underlying joy and happiness. And here's where I think we conflate pleasure and joy - we experience pleasure from, say breast feeding, and then the resulting lack of suffering allows us to experience the underlying joy.

As we mature, we learn how to care for ourselves by developing our own brain circuitry to obtain our own food, prepare it, have relationships, earn money, pay taxes, stay healthy, take care of children, and on and on. We become attached to things like good health and money because we spend so much time trying to achieve these things. When we don't have those things, we suffer due to our attachment to these things. We experience the lack of these things with some combination of fear, stress, sadness, anxiety, depression, and anger.

Then as an adult, we believe that achieving all these goals will restore our underlying joy. Unfortunately I don't think that's the case - all that achieving these things (food, money, etc.) brings us is momentary pleasure when we get what we want, and suffering when we don't. A problem with our culture is that we're focused more on fleeting pleasure than on stable joy, so we tend to ride a roller coaster of pleasure and displeasure, at the whim of our circumstances, and we forget that the pleasure we are seeking is not the same as the joy we were born with.

For some of us, at some point during our darkest hours, we discover that we've lost our joy, and this starts a spiritual quest that results in being "reborn" in the sense that we get in touch with the joy we were born with. This rebirth process requires shedding our attachments to the things we've been pursuing for pleasurable purposes. Once we do that, we can still experience the pleasure of those experiences, but we're not attached to them, so we don't suffer so much when we don't get what we want. "You can't always get what you wa-ant, and if you try sometime you find you get what you need."

Others of us do not require such a dark journey, and naturally develop the ability to have a deep and joyful life. It seems both paths lead to the same place.

If we're not careful, we can end up where we started after our "re-birth", unless we're practicing appropriate spiritual practices. There are many types of practices that work, but I think they all boil down to one simple underlying practice: Being grateful for each and every day we live, and loving those around us and lending them our spiritual eyes.

Growing neurons for joy

2010-04-10T14:17:00.000-07:00

When we focus our attention on something with enough energy and for long enough, our plastic brain grows new neurons and literally rewires itself in response to the growing information about the subject of our attention. This has been observed in functional MRI scans under experimental conditions (reference: http://en.scientificcommons.org/53402167).

What I'd like to know is, how do we decide what to focus our attention on? Is it too simple to answer in response to that "That which gives us happiness and joy?" If I do that, will I literally rewire my brain to experience more joy? I'm thinking the answer to that is "yes".

When you read this, you may think I'm talking about momentary pleasure that you might experience from good food, drugs, sex, money, and so on. That stuff is certainly pleasurable, and that stuff is good (in moderation, and in the right circumstances), but that's not what I'm talking about when I talk about happiness and joy. I'll have to blog about what I think happiness and joy really are at some point, but not now. (Update: I did here.)

So, in the morning, I spend a moment thinking about how I am going to further my personal joy and happiness this day, and then at the end of the day I see if I've done it. I know I get joy from being of service to others and loving others, so every day, I see how I can do that.

Once a week or so, I pray that I will find opportunities to love those around me.

I'm reading about it and writing about, and trying to live it. Hopefully I'm growing neurons for joy. I know it will take a life time and I have so much to learn.

Who am I really?

2010-04-05T14:35:00.000-07:00

Layers of an onion
That are pealed back one by one
The layers I present to you as time unfolds.

And then you've consumed a lovely onion
And you think to yourself,
"Self, that was a lovely onion."

But the onion is not me.
The onion was just the metaphor.

You look at my words and my actions,
and you think to yourself,
"Self, why is this that? What does that mean?"
But my words and my actions,
They are not me.

We intertwine our bodies
In most intimate ways
Feel mystical union with each other.

But my body is not me.

We engage with each other
In the dance of life
Touching each other's life purpose
Helping each other grow
In ways we can not do ourselves.

Yeah, that is me.

For the time being anyway.
For these are just words too.

Where would The Dali Lama go?

2010-03-22T08:34:00.000-07:00

His Holiness the Dali Lama, spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, understands that he reincarnates from body to body, life to life. Through practice and training, he learns how to navigate through the realms between one lifetime and the next. What I'd like to know, is if the Chinese or someone else somehow wiped out all the Tibetans, and with it all their language, writings, culture, art, and traditions - would the Dali Lama still have a place to go when he dies? Would he want to come back still?

Update: I asked an elder Native American, who regularly communicates with his ancestors, whether they would die out if all the Native American religion, art, culture, and language were wiped out. "Hell no!" was his reply.

I'll likely continue to ask this question of people that talk with their ancestors, to better understand this ontology.

Talking with my ancestors

2010-03-17T00:24:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been intrigued by the idea of some form of communication with my formerly living "ancestors". Here's how I see this happening.

I think about the kind of knowledge I have of the world, and how my culture shapes that knowledge. In the culture in which I find myself right now, it makes me very time based, and concerned about power, and things like money, houses, cars, and food. We're consumers and we're capitalistic. We have the benefit of a science that could land a man on the moon and drive robots around on Mars, and that is on the verge of doing so much more. We've got the Internet, all our books, all our approximately 7,000 spoken languages and all our art. I navigate through that ethnosphere as I live my life, and so internalize some parts of all that enormous encyclopedia that is the heritage of all of human knowledge, potentially accessible to me.

And where did all that stuff come from? Other people. Somehow I internalized all this stuff that was co-created by literally billions of other human beings that lived before me - my ancestors. How did I get all that stuff in my head and how is it passed on through the generations? It was communicated through various forms of language and the markings left by the paths of others. But ultimately, there must be something behind the language, that the language is actually referring to. The concepts themselves, in their pure form, stripped of any language. I didn't make those concepts up - they somehow came to me through our shared cultural heritage. Where did they exist before they came into my head?

The Tibetans have this concept they call a "Tulpa", which I find quite fascinating. It's a thought-form that takes on a life of its own - sometimes good, sometimes not so good - it can get out of control and cause havoc. I wonder if there are really thought forms that some how manage to "live" a life out there in the cultural strata that is co-created by us billions of people. Because these thought forms are, by definition, created by those around us and who died before us, maybe they can sometimes contain a "living" essence of those creators, our ancestors. Maybe we can communicate with these thought forms - that live out there in the living, evolving co-created cultural milieu.

Maybe that's what all the gods and demons and spirits of the various religious and mythologies are really referring to. In a way, they do have god-like power because they define our reality and live well beyond our own lives.

Do these things really exist and can we communicate with them? Can some essence of ourselves survive in such a medium?

So I wonder if I try to talk with my ancestors, maybe I'll understand a little more about all of this, one way or the other, whatever happens.

I can't remember what I forgot

2010-03-13T04:07:00.000-08:00

Did you ever remember something you forgot, and then forget it again?

Censorship

2010-03-12T08:51:00.000-08:00

China's top Internet official is Li Yizhong, and his official title is the "Minister of Industry and Information Technology". He was recently speaking at China's annual legislation session when he said the following:

"We need to preserve our nation's interest, our people's interest, we cannot be relaxed with any information that will cause harm to the stability of our society, to our system, and to the health of our under-age young people," he said.
"So, of course, what needs to be shut down will be shut down, what needs to be blocked will be blocked."

Here in the U.S., we do the same thing too - we just have different rules about what sites we shut down.

Blind spot

2010-03-12T06:59:00.000-08:00

Where the optic nerve enters the retina there is a blind spot, or portion of our visual field that we simply can not see. Our brain makes up for this blind spot by filling in what it expects to be there, so we never notice it. And we have two eyes, so each one helps fill in the gap for the other. We don't even know we're blind there.

It seems most of us have "spiritual blind spots" as I call them, or parts of our personal development that we are apparently "blind" to, in that we seem to be powerless to focus our attention on these areas for self improvement. We can't focus on these areas because there are blind spots in our on mind's eye blocking areas from view, just like in our real eyes.

Here is where I I think we can benefit from the love of those around us, being our spiritual eyes to see what we can not.

I wonder if these spiritual blind spots are inherent, or whether through sufficient practice these blind spots can be minimized or even eliminated.

Pinocchio says...

2010-03-11T16:44:00.000-08:00

I've been using that word attachment a lot lately. I guess I'm attached to it. Probably will be until I'm fully unattached, or die - whichever comes first. Perhaps I've been guilty of using that as a bit of magic fairy dust, to simplify my view of interacting with the world.

I think of attachment in very literal terms. If you're attached to something, then when it moves, you move too - because you're attached to it. You're attached to many things, so they pull you around like puppet strings. You're a dancing puppet, dancing to your attachments in the grand ballet of your life.

When you are unattached to the same thing, when it moves, you choose whether and how to move with it. You are now in control, defining your life by your own values - not getting jerked around like a puppet.

This doesn't at all mean a lack of empathy or full enjoyment of life. On the contrary - you can still feel the puppet strings moving, only you're not attached to them, so the path you make is truly your own.

Very truly yours,

Pinocchio

Boiling water experiment #2

2010-03-11T07:46:00.001-08:00

This morning I put a pot of water on the stove on high to boil, and this time I walked into my office to work while I waited, and this time the water came to a full boil. I wasn't watching it.

Boiling water

2010-03-10T06:48:00.001-08:00

This morning I put a pot of water on the stove on high to boil, and watched as it didn't boil. They're right. A watched pot doesn't boil. Why is that?

Facebook

2010-03-08T17:36:00.000-08:00

For the last few years I have been using Facebook, and exploring it's zeitgeist gestalt ethos. I built up a network of "friends" of well over a hundred people. I explored the top game Farmville, and I played Bejeweled. I sent hugs, good karma, and little green patches. I trimmed back and de-friended a few people. I tried to stay up to date with Facebook's ever-evolving privacy policy. I was part of a software development team that built a unique Facebook application called Mixee. I explored different styles of posting - personal observations, what I'm doing now, videos, pictures, and links. I responded to other people's postings. I used Facebook on my mobile phone, my XBox 360, and installed a Trillian Astra Facebook plugin. I followed DARPA's red balloon experiment, researched social media and Internet marketing using Facebook.

And in the midst of using Facebook, I realized that I no longer want to use it at all. So I changed my picture to a "lights out" image that looks all black in the small version, but it's actually a beautiful star field when you click on it to see the larger version. I'm kind of curious if anyone ever does that and sees the stars. Kind of a mini social experiment in my parting picture.

Perhaps I over-dosed on it. At most, I used it a few hours per week, so the over-dose theory doesn't hold that much water - hard to tell. Maybe it was the incessant advertising. Or not wanting to give yet some other company access to my very personal information. My "friends" list was too heterogeneous and chaotic. I started really not to care about my friend's status updates because it just takes too much time to follow.

In other words, the signal to noise ratio was too low to provide sufficient value for the time I put into it.

In terms of online communities, I prefer to engage in more focused communities organized around topics. Blogs, lucid dreaming groups, groups discussing topics I'm interesting in like a movie or a news story, discussion groups about cosmology and physics, shamanism, the groups I've started for the books I'm writing, technical and professional groups, and so on. I find the quality of interactions to generally be higher quality. I was making fun of that in another blog posting of mine when I talked about not wanting to hear that so and so "took a crap about 6 hours ago".

I'll still keep my Facebook account, but for two very specific reasons. First, if you have no other way to reach me, you can reach me this way. And also for professional reasons I must continue to have an intimate understanding of social media and for now, Facebook is king. So I'll still occasionally use Facebook for those reasons.

After death

2010-03-02T00:16:00.000-08:00

In this life, you will inevitably surround yourself with the memories, friends, and things that you will see on your death bed. Most spiritual traditions view death as the moment of opportunity to transcend or descend, based on however a person has lived their life. The Dali Lama is reincarnated. A good Christian goes to heaven, a bad Christian goes to hell. In many indigenous cultures, you become an 'ancestor'. These seem like best case scenarios to me, and perhaps even wishful thinking on our part to escape fully confronting the reality of death.

One thing is so obviously apparent that we don't say it, but I'll say it now and maybe shock some people: None of the things of this world come with you, including yourself. What happens to your body? Well, we could freeze it in liquid nitrogen upon the moment of death, and capture the brain at a molecular level with the hope that one day, one day, we can thaw this Popsicle out. That's the best we can do right now. It's either that, or your body is burnt to a crisp in a crematorium, or buried under the ground where it slowly decays and gets eaten by animals, insects, bacteria, and so on. Take your pick. It'll be one of those, or something in between.

Did you own a home and maybe some land? You were just taking care of that for the next generation. Your money? Yeah, transferred around to different accounts and dispersed amongst the living. Did you love those around you? You were just helping everyone be a better person. Were you president of the United States? You were just trying your best to lead this country to a better place. Perhaps you lived alone on the streets of a ghetto, unknown to anyone. Cancer, plane crash, car crash, it doesn't matter, for that's all left behind after death.

What has become crystal clear to me lately is how much our culture wants me to value the things of this world and become attached to them, losing my soul in the process. It's easy for me not to question my attachment to the things of this world - life is here to be enjoyed after all, for we are only here once. What I tend to forget, however, is that my sense of exactly how I should enjoy my life is to a large extent defined to me by the culture and society around me. Drive that fancy car, go out to that nice restaurant, buy that nice bottle of French wine, see the latest movie, take a vacation to Hawaii, get a nice house. All stuff that gets left behind.

And here's where the whole "meaning of life" question starts to rear its head, because I start to wonder, if society is filling my head with all these values, what would my life be like if I picked what I valued?

My answer to that question is: I value other people. In the end though, people are their own kind of "thing" in that it's all outside, part of the world - stuff that gets left behind when I die.

"It's all about love." Oh, yeah, that sounds good too. I like love. No, I *love* love. That gets left behind too.

Even if I'm really good at finding meaning in life, that meaning goes too when I die, because I give things meaning and I'm not there after death to give things meaning.

Oh, maybe life is one of those existentialist nihilistic realities where there is no meaning except what you make, or don't make.

No, no, it's not that - it's my soul or spirit that goes on to somewhere - a reincarnation, or heaven, or somewhere like that. It's a great big karmic circle, man, where I'm moving along the spiritual path. Yeah, that sounds good too.

Does my own viewpoint on any of this or what happens to me when I die in any way affect what actually happens to me when I die? If I'm a good atheist, will god still let me into heaven? And does the pope face eternal nothingness after death, as the atheists predict? If you don't worry about your Karma does it still hang on your back like a monkey as you travel through the bardos? And, one of the scariest of all questions: What if the afterlife you get is the afterlife you believe you're going to get?

As I delve into these issues, it helps me be non-attached to things as I move through this world towards my inevitable death when I part with all things, which in turn helps me more fully enjoy the world around me. How paradoxical it seems to me that an exploration of after-death helps me enjoy before-death more.

Red Words

2010-02-27T20:33:00.000-08:00

Red words hit me across the face,

Slide down my Chest,

And on to the ground.

There they lie around my feet,

Red words.

This is not that.

That is this.

Is is is.

--------------------

Soft sounds of showers

Hisss of tires

A door slams

The soda man ferries his cargo.

--------------------

Great spirits were once born.

They lived great lives.

Dead, they live, still, now.

--------------------

A tree

Does not need Man

To make a sound

When it falls.

It already knows

The sound of one hand clapping.

--------------------

Line of craggy live oak

Rides along the spine

Of the devil.

Ripping open the blue-gray sky

Spilling its guts

Of thick, swirling fog.

Seemingly seething

Such wisps of

Silence...

Self-actualization and destiny

2010-01-25T20:34:00.001-08:00

Does Maslow's self-actualization theory imply destiny, i.e. is there a life path, or life we're meant to live? What about the role of free will in self-actualization? This reminded me of multi-verse theories, and of the 10-dimensional theories people have been talking about lately. Not the string theory version of 10 spacial dimensions, but the multi-verse oriented theories that describe sets of multi-verses diverging from each instant in time, each one having a slightly different starting point from the other, arranged in a grand infinitely branching tree (or is that acyclic directed graph?) of possibilities.

OK, let's get real, with an example: Should you keep reading this blog posting of mine or not? Let's imagine a multiverse branch here with one branch for "yes, I'll keep reading" and another branch for "no, this is boring, I'm done now." That's just one decision - imagine a tree of multiverses with a branch for each possible decision you could make throughout your entire life. Now consider all the possible multiverses for your entire life. In which multiverses did you reach self-actualization? Let's call that set of best possible outcomes your "set of self-actualized multiverses".

But what does the phrase "best possible outcome" mean in this context? Who is to say that someone is self-actualized? And herein is another interesting sticky point in Maslow's theories, because "best" isn't a well-defined concept. Although this is a problematic area of his theory, let's leave that alone for the time being, and assume that a self-actualized life is a meaningful concept.

I think where we get into trouble is when we either ignore personal growth or presume to know what our self-actualized self (or set of self-actualized multiverses) looks like.

Self actualization

2010-01-24T11:16:00.000-08:00

Abraham Maslow listed some common traits amongst people who have reached self-actualization:

They embrace reality and facts rather than denying truth.
They are spontaneous.
They are interested in solving problems.
They are accepting of themselves and others and lack prejudice.

Love

2010-01-23T08:10:00.000-08:00

To love someone (parent, lover, partner, dog) simply means that you see the good in that person and you wish the best for them. This doesn't mean you ignore the bad - it just means you clearly appreciate the best in someone, and you don't let your own attachments get in the way of helping them be the best person they can be, or self actualizing.

The way I've defined it, "love" is not an emotion; it is a behavior of helping someone along their life path. The emotion comes into play because it feels great to love someone, and of course it should feel great to be loved by someone as well.

Our spiritual goal as humans is to literally love everyone.

Being loved by someone helps you be the best person you can be.

As two people love each other, each improves the other, each on their way towards being the best they can be. Part of improving personally is usually an improved ability to help the other person. So your love comes back to you in this way.

Love can be a tangible force that flows back and forth between two people.

Layer romantic love on top of that and you have a very powerful force.

That Russian comment on my post

2010-01-19T07:20:00.001-08:00

I got some Russian spam as a comment to one of my postings. I was going to delete it, but before doing so, I thought I'd run it through a free translator just to see what it might say. Here's the English translation (you can find the original Russian a few postings below as a comment). The little fragments of English are tantalizingly interesting. Inflatable Devkis sold in a sex shop in a blind village? Hmmm....And they even sell spare parts? Now, what's an inflatable Devki? Dare I google that?

INTIM lastele without СМС and all erundy ... http://www.pi7.ru Finder and you yourself partner. There are [URL = http://pi7.ru/menuid-44] partrerskaâ program [/url] and a small joke for reflection.

Returned peasant in a blind village from the capital. Händikäpp zaytsiamy gathered.
Seated, drink slowly.

Voyager says-was in such a store interesting "sex shop" is called! 30.9.2007 And shop, say I you!.. Devki inflatable sold!

Here the bojkaâ at the village of tëtka and asked:-and ch³opi inflatable?
Muzhik:-say honestly, I have not seen. Can not placed? But spare parts-to e # en ...

Gabriella

2010-01-18T20:43:00.001-08:00

Tonight I was intending to have a fancy work-related dinner in downtown San Francisco, but that got canceled on me at the last minute. So I found myself walking along Third street towards BART, and decided to grab dinner at a coffee shop on Third. I got my muffin and drink and sat down on a chair on the sidewalk, outside.

And that's when the beautiful Gabriella walked over to me and we just struck up a conversation. Right away I could see she had a lovely soul. After a while, I asked if I could buy her a drink or something, and I got her a small coffee. We talked about her days at Berkeley and the summer of love. An hour went by, during which she told me more about her life, and also some of the history of some of the buildings around us. Across the street, a cop started hassling a homeless man and it looked like there was going to be some commotion. Gabriella bolted up, ran over to the cop and got between the homeless man and the cop. Some how she seemed to calm things down, and then she and the homeless man walked into the night up Mission Street.

Gabriella is a 62 year old, gray haired, pretty fully bearded, over weight, homeless woman living on the streets of San Francisco. May she always find a warm, safe place to sleep at night.

Mandatory reading for anyone interested in Internet Marketing

2009-12-19T13:23:00.000-08:00

This is a seminal paper, in my view - mandatory reading for anyone interested in Internet marketing.

Call Me

2009-11-20T13:39:00.001-08:00

Every day you lose consciousness and hallucinate

2008-10-18T02:26:00.000-07:00

We're so used to this it's normal. Every day we lose consciousness and hallucinate. That our waking life so affects our sleeping life is obvious, but we do not allow our sleeping life to affect our waking life the way it ought.

When we lose someone we love, a part of ourselves dies with them

2008-09-18T22:12:00.001-07:00

When my Father, Ira Levine, died in 2002, it was hard for me to anticipate how this event would play out over my life in the long term. Listening to Chick Corea's version of Maiden Voyage tonight, I immediately thought of my father, and how much he really appreciated this music too. In fact, for me, I don't think there is anyone else who appreciated great jazz in quite the same was as my father. Once when I had the great pleasure of watching Cuban jazz legend Tito Puento play live in Salt Lake City in a small venue, I recognized that my father physically "heard" jazz the same way as Tito.

When my Dad and I listened to great jazz together, it created a shared feeling between us that is impossible to duplicate with anyone else. Now that he is six feet under, that tremendously enjoyable feeling of listening to great jazz is just as dead as he is. Sure I can still appreciate great jazz, and with other people as well, but not in the same way.

And in the same way, tremendous, mind blowing, great shared experiences can not be "re-shared" with anyone else. In fact, one should never even try. One should seek to create new great experiences with the living, rather than recreate the past experiences.

Every relationship we have is unique and special, the more so as we love the person more, whether that be agape or Eros. When parents die, a void is left that can never be filled. The same goes for a child's death, or the death of a lover.

Small memory senses such as smells, bits of music, or just plain old deja vue experiences, can remind one powerfully of the emptiness that forever exists when a loved one is forever gone.

There is only today, now

2008-09-08T20:24:00.001-07:00

All our yesterdays form the programming of your brain, all our tomorrows are but mere concepts, while now is always where you are. Now is your conscious mind, is what you experience, is your free will, your soul. Your subconscious mind is the way your brain has been programmed through your experiences, primarily your first five to seven years of life. This can change through great effort, it can change when "great" events happen to us, and it can change through subtle and small movements.

How to drive when two lanes merge into one

2008-09-04T07:50:00.001-07:00

You are driving along in the right-hand lane of a road somewhere with two lanes of traffic going your direction, when you pass a sign indicating that your lane will end in one mile. You are one of these two types of drivers:

Early Mergers - You merge into the left hand lane as soon as you can
Late Mergers - You stay in the right hand lane until the lane ends and then merge over

One of these types of driving will always result in the best traffic flow with the least amount of slow down. Do you know which one?

Late Merging is the right answer. The reason this results in the least delay is that it minimizes the backup in the left lane. Consequently, late merging will result in the best traffic flow for *all* drivers on average, not just the late merger drivers.

However, the interesting thing here is that early merger drivers get incredibly irate when they see late merger drivers, often going so far as to risk a serious accident and perhaps even serious injury in order to cut off late merger drivers and prevent them from merging. Throwing the finger, shaking the head, and swearing are also common reactions of early merger drivers.

I've noticed that some parts of the country are biased more towards late or early merging drivers. The greater Spokane area, for example, contains the most hard-core early merging drivers I have ever seen in my life. Often times I'll see one lane free, while the other lane has a backup of literally dozens to hundreds of cars. A late merger driver literally takes their life into their own hands when they drive in a late merging way.

Seattle, on the other hand, contains a more even balance of drivers, without the intense anger of the early merger drivers.

I wonder what deeper group psychological issue is going on here?p>

I know nothing

2008-09-03T21:52:00.000-07:00

"I know nothing!"

-- Famous line from Sargeant Schultz.

When we're born, we have zero experience with the world. It would be fair to say we're learning quite a bit during our first year. As we age, we *think* we know more and more, so we learn less and less.

In reality, when we are infants, we have much wisdom, that we forget as we grow older. Part of the challenge of aging is remembering or recovering the wisdom we had as children.

Learning and changing keeps you young. Always be ready to accept that you are wrong, always believe you have everything to learn, always understand that you know nothing.

How to call me

2008-08-28T15:46:00.001-07:00

My new blog: How To Live Well

2008-08-18T18:44:00.000-07:00

I started a new blog devoted to helping people live happier, more satisfying lives. Lately I've been thinking extensively about the concept of a "Personal Brand Identity" or PBI as I call it. This is an identity you assume to interact with a group of people.

In non-technical terms, we all have different sides of ourselves that we show to different groups of people. There's the "You" that you are to your spouse or lover, to your children, your parents, your co-workers, family, friends, and so on. These various "You's" that you have overlap and merge in interesting ways. Maybe you think you're the same person to everyone in the world? No. The pathological extreme here is the so-called Multiple Personal Disorder.

Extending this (non-pathelogical) concept into the online world, you have a "professional" personna, a personal personna, and so on. You have your Linked-In profile you share with professional colleages, but how many people do you show you silly FaceBook profile to? And if you're dating, I'll wager your online dating profile is somewhat different from your professional profile. So there you go: Personal Brand Identities in action.

So this blog is an attempt by me to create a new PBI - one oriented around helping others achieve grace, wisdom, if not a small, incremental increase in positive emotional affect.

How to make coffee with cream

2008-08-06T21:43:00.001-07:00

The basic idea here is: Put the cream in your mug first, then pour your coffee in. You don't need to mix it this way.

Has anyone else discovered this?

Update: The main problem with this approach is that you have to learn how much cream you like in your coffee just by staring at the cream at the bottom of your cup. This takes a few practice sessions and then you're good to go with this technique.

I'll have a flying dutchman and a double tall non-fat skinny extra-dry cappuccino

2008-08-05T06:27:00.000-07:00

Starbucks has a secret lingo of sorts you must learn. You can't just get a large coffee, no, you have to order a "venti brewed coffee with room for cream."

Then I head over to In & Out Burger and order a veggie burger. That's the secret code for "Hamburger, hold the meat". Huh?

The oldest man in the world

2008-07-31T19:51:00.000-07:00

Back in the mid 1980's, I met a man named Swami Bua Gi. Hinduism Today voted him the so-called "Hindu of the year" in 1999. Apparently he was 108 years old then. I talked with him by phone earlier this year, not even thinking he was about 118 years old and now the oldest man in the world. Being the something-est person in the world is always special.

But his age is really not important, as his greatness extends far beyond whatever age he may be. I had the rare privelege of helping this most wise man work on his autobiography, which started by me attempting to teach him how to use a Macintosh. Imagine trying to teach a 98 year old Indian yoga teacher how to use a Macintosh (that was the original Macintosh, 128K), while sitting cross-legged for hours on the floor. He has no chairs of course.

He would occasionally interrupt our sessions to eat pure silver, or pure gold, teach me some obscure aspect of meditation or hatha yoga, cook something delicious, or just see who had just walked into his apartment (his door was always literally open).

Well as I write this I realize there is so much more I have to say about my experiences with this man, that I'll save them for another blog posting.

My amazing lunar theories

2008-07-27T21:31:00.001-07:00

Hear are facts about our moon that I have observed by myself with just my own two eyes, and subsequently verified to be true. I've not found anyone else who has discovered all these facts for themselves yet. What about you - how many of these facts did you discover for yourself based on your own observations (versus having read about it somewhere)?

1. The apparent size of the sun and moon are nearly identical, yet they are vastly different sizes and distances from our planet. This is just a shear coincidence.

2. The full moon *always* rises just as the sun sets, and the full moon sets just as the sun is rising. Always.

3. The same side of the moon always faces the earth. In other words, the moon rotates at exactly the right speed to match its orbit around the Earth. This is called "tidal lock".

Now here are some facts that I did not discover by myself, but which I've learned about the moon:

1. The number of accidents and crimes increases on the night of the full moon.

2. A woman's menstrual cycle is exactly the same length as the lunar cycle.

3. When a group of women live together such as at a college dorm, their menstrual cycles gradually coincide to the exact same cycle.

Finally, putting all of these facts together, I have a theory about how these all relate:

In primitive cultures, women are all timed to be most fertile on the full moon. Men and women are genetically programmed to mate during the night of the full moon.

"Yeah, no" and "No, yeah"

2008-07-26T09:38:00.000-07:00

I think I missed the memo on this one. When did we all start beginning our sentences with "Yeah, no..." and "No, yeah..."?

"Open memo to the English speaking world: Starting today, you shall begin 10% of your sentences with "Yeah, no" or "No, yeah". This meaningless preamble shall be roughly equivalent to "Ummmm" in that it allows you to establish "the floor" and let others know you eventually intend to convey meaningful information. You can also use it as an opportunity to clear any phlegm that may have accumulated in your throat before you actually talk."

Microsoft Spaces Blogs

2008-05-29T19:34:00.000-07:00

As we all know, Microsoft is trying to play "me too" with Google (and Adobe and Amazon and Oracle and IBM and Sun and everyone else.) So they've come out with a free blogging system, which can now be integrated with Microsoft Office Live [Small Business], which in turn is based on SharePoint.

Anyway, I'm going to keep my personal ruminations here on this blog, of interest to an incredibly small population of perhaps 1 or less, and am going to put all my technical musings on the Microsoft blog. Separation of concerns, as they say in aspect oriented programs. Woops, I slipped in something technical... [Thanks Carl for the reminder to post the link to my professional blog!]

Some answers to my questions

2008-05-29T19:27:00.001-07:00

My Good friend and fellow mad scientist Gabriel DeWitt answered my unanswerable physics questions. Dr. Hammond also kindly answered the first three of my questions. (Search for my name - David Levine - on his web page to find his answers.) I think Dr. Hammond basically threw up his hands and said, "Great questions, I just don't know". Interesting that my friend Gabe had a little more to say about this than a world class physicist. Perhaps these weren't really physics questions?

6 Fascinating Questions for a Physicist

2008-05-27T17:50:00.000-07:00

Hearing an interview with Dr. Hammond, who recently wrote a new book entitled "The Unknown Universe", and checked out his website. So I decided to email him some questions I've been wondering about. Here are the questions - anyone got an answer?

Could the original “point” of mass from the big bang have been entangled (ala quantum entanglement) in such a way that we could effectively travel to any point in the universe, breaking the speed of light rule?

On a similar theme, could the concept of entanglement apply to time as well as space, and if so, could we use that to create a time machine?

What type of observer agent is necessary to collapse the wave function? Does the collapse of the wave function require a human observer?

Does is seem necessary that consciousness/intention/observation (as meant by Heisenberg and the Copenhagen quantum theory) emerged at some point in time in the history of the universe, after the big bang?

If so, did such an emergence fundamentally alter the universe, or does the universe now “depend” on an observer in order for the universe to exist as it does today?

Do you think there is something special about human consciousness that will require as yet undiscovered physics to completely explain?

Technorati Verification

2008-05-27T11:03:00.000-07:00

I finally signed up with Technorati. I would love to see a real-world, three-dimensional model of the World Live Web that I could fly through in a virtual reality manner.

Microsoft Interview Questions

2008-05-25T17:14:00.001-07:00

I interviewed for Microsoft and they gave me some really interesting programming challenges to solve. Here's the first problem:

A rational number is a number that that can be represented as a quotient of two integers, n/d (numerator /
denominator), e.g. 1/3, 5/2, -11/13. Integers are rational since an integer n can be represented as n/1.
1. Design a class Rational for representing rational numbers.
2. Define and implement +, -, *, and / operators.

I had a lot of fun implementing this. The first solution I actually sent within the time limit had a problem simplifying rational numbers with different denomentators. But just for fun I kept at it, and while I was at it took a deep dive into C# closures, ummuable types, and a bunch of other recent C# features. Here's the solution I finally came up with:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;

namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
struct Rational
{
public int n { get; private set; }
public int d { get; private set; }

public Rational(int numerator, int denomenator) : this()
{
if (denomenator == 0)
throw new Exception("Cannot have denominator of 0");
n = numerator;
d = denomenator;
}

public override string ToString()
{
return (d == 1) ? String.Format("{0}", n) : String.Format("[{0}/{1}]", n, d);
}

static void FindBestLCD(Rational r1, Rational r2)
{
if (r1.d != r2.d)
{
int newd = r1.d * r2.d;
int newn1 = r1.n * r2.d;
int newn2 = r1.d * r2.n;
r1.n = newn1;
r2.n = newn2;
r1.d = r2.d = newd;
}
}

public Rational Simplify()
{
int originalN;
do
{
originalN = n;
for (int i = 2; i <= d; i++)
{
if (n % i == 0 && d % i == 0)
{
n /= i;
d /= i;
continue;
}
}
} while (n != originalN);

return this;
}

public static Rational operator +(Rational r1, Rational r2)
{
Rational result = new Rational(0, 1);
if (r1.d != r2.d)
{
int newd = r1.d * r2.d;
int newn1 = r1.n * r2.d;
int newn2 = r1.d * r2.n;

result.n = newn1 + newn2;
result.d = newd;

result.Simplify();
}
else
{
result.n = r1.n + r2.n;
}

return result;
}

public static Rational operator -(Rational r)
{
return new Rational(-r.n, r.d);
}

public static Rational operator -(Rational r1, Rational r2)
{
return r1 + (-r2);
}

public static Rational operator *(Rational r1, Rational r2)
{
return new Rational(r1.n * r2.n, r1.d * r2.d).Simplify();
}

public static Rational operator /(Rational r1, Rational r2)
{
return r1 * new Rational(r2.d, r2.n);
}
}
}

Making Coffee

2008-05-14T05:40:00.000-07:00

This morning I forgot to put the filter in the coffee machine, and you know what? The coffee still tastes pretty good! Then again, I like strong coffee, but I thought I'd have to throw this out and start over. Instead, I'm happily drinking a strong brew.

Van Gogh's Ear

2008-04-26T14:32:00.001-07:00

Most people have that one hair that grows somewhere on their body, that that they keep plucking, only to grow back like a possessed evil weed in a month. Why one little hair would bother someone is a mystery. After all, our bodies are covered with about five million hairs (source http://yucky.discovery.com/flash/body/pg000148.html).

I think Van Gogh had one on his ear, and it just drove him nuts. After years of plucking that bugger, rather than excavate that follicle one more time, he just lopped off his ear and that was that.

What's next after bits?

2008-04-22T18:26:00.000-07:00

Supply of Bits is Limited

San Francisco, Calif, April 22, 2008 - Scientists recently discovered that the supply of digital bits is limited, and that we will eventually run out. Bits are the 1's and 0's that make all digital devices work. "We never saw this one coming," said Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft. "We're going to have to move to some alternative data source."

"This would be a disaster on the scale of Katrina," said Dan Brown, director of the Federal Home Security department. The entire Internet would grind to a halt.

There are only 10 to the 23 bits available on planet earth. After that, some scientists suggest mining our nearby moon for more bits. The bits could be shot from the moon to the earth by laser beam, where they would be received and inserted into the growing Internet.

But with the final space shuttle missions looming in the future, it looks like the U.S. will not have any means to build such hardware in time.

Meanwhile, should we run out of bits, people's sentences would get cut off right i

Anti-war songs

2008-04-18T11:10:00.000-07:00

If you happen to be a Yahoo IM/Music user, you can stream my anti-war play list. I searched through Vietnam Vet blogs and checked out their favorite anti-war songs, and made this playlist. There are some pretty rare tunes in here, bet there are some you've never heard of before.

Oh, I am eniveld on Yahoo if you want to search for me.

Lucid Dream of being an Eagle

2008-02-24T16:56:00.001-08:00

I had a really interesting lucid dream recently, where I became an eagle and was flying. This was the first time I can remember where I actually felt like another animal.

This was a very consciously chosen transformation. I am a former avid hang glider, and have had many dreams and lucid dreams including flying, but flying like superman. Somehow, it occurred to me that birds were really well designed to fly, whereas machines like jets, hangliders, and even superman were very primitive by comparison. So I had a lucid dream wherein I slowly became an eagle.

I started with my head, and eyes seeing great detail and seeing well in low light. Then my neck grew out from my head, and I reached around back to my tail feathers and checked them out. Then I grew wings, legs, and a body, and became a flying eagle.

I found an Eagle who tought me how to fly - using my wings, catching currents, and so on. This was a visceral sensation, where I felt the wind with my wings, and adjusted the shape and angle of my wings as needed to fly.

I found a good updraft and started soaring. I think having previous hang gliding experience was crucial to the sensation. However, I did not have a human body or form, I really felt a bird or eagle body.

So, I am know thinking what other kinds of animals might be interesting to try out in a lucid dream.

My LinkedIn Profile

2007-01-30T02:21:00.001-08:00

Here is my LinkedIn profile, through a web 2.0 style widget:

HighWired Test

2007-01-19T20:04:00.000-08:00

Create a mixxeeWIDGET

An Add-This button

2007-01-17T09:22:00.000-08:00

Click this Add-This button to add to your bookmarks:

That business don't mean a thing if it aint got that swing

2007-01-17T08:20:00.000-08:00

Several days ago, USA today released an interview with Wynton Marsalis.

"When you listen to great jazz musicians, you hear the respect they have for each other's abilities. During a performance, most of the musicians' time is spent listening to others. You see the trust they have for each other because they are always making adjustments and improvising based on what someone else does. I think (drummer) Elvin Jones articulated it best when he said, 'In order to play with somebody on a profound level, you have to be willing to die with them.' You might not like your colleagues that much, but that is jazz and that is feeling."

I think this entire interview is well worth reading for anyone in business.

Swiki Test

2007-01-15T10:22:00.000-08:00

Here is my Swiki on Web 2.0 Reviews:

check out the Web 2.0 Reviews swicki at eurekster.com

Songspot Test

2007-01-12T15:57:00.000-08:00

While I'm at it, I'd might as well try a Web 2.0 widget for a song:

Razzer Test

2007-01-12T14:50:00.000-08:00

Here is a Razzer test, what do you think?

Make your own Razz!

An accidental activist

2007-01-06T15:07:00.000-08:00

On my bike ride today along the Pacific Coast Highway, I saw a few thousand people standing in an odd looking way (from my perspective) on the beach, looking out at the ocean. There were helicopters flying overhead, news crews, and police, so naturally I had to see what was going on. I walked on to the beach and became part of the letter M. Maybe I'll see myself on the news tonight.

Here's a link to the event.

How many level of indirection is this?

2007-01-06T15:01:00.000-08:00

1. Some MS developers wrote this RPC over HTTP feature in Exchange.
2. It's so confusing to configure, Microsoft wrote a guide to help people configure it. (It's not all that helpful.)
3. Not content to stop there, someone wrote a knowledge base article to help people find the guide - apparently they thought the guide would be hard to find. (But wait a minute, if the guide is hard to find, then how do you find the KB article? But I digress.)
4. Hell, why stop there? Here's my own blog entry directing you to the informative KB arcticle at http://support.microsoft.com/Default.aspx?kbid=833401.
5. Maybe someone will link to this blog entry and the levels of indirection can continue?

Snapvine Test

2006-12-15T09:00:00.000-08:00

I created this test using snapvine for creating the embedable component, and HighWired to create the audio. Unfortunately, since there is no integration between the two, I had to play my highwired mix over my speakers and record into the telephone, resulting in abismal audio quality. Imagine how nice this might sound if it streamed high quality audio!

Get Your Own Voice Player

Manage

Kristallnacht II

2006-11-30T22:20:00.000-08:00

We spent a pleasant enough evening having dinner, until Kristallnacht II commenced. We sat down at a beautiful table, the four of us. Of particular note, the two hand-blown glass Tiffany candlestick holders on the table. The first gift ever given by one lover to the other, during the birth of their relationship, these objects held more meaning to each other than any outsider could possibly understand.

Just a few weeks ago, one of the candle sticks narrowly escaped doom, when one lover was adoringly cleaning a candle stick and broke it. Destroyed, he managed to superglue the pieces together, for now. And today the candle stick is proclaiming itself for all its warmth.

So there I am, with the cat on the chair next to me, and he jumps up on the table and sashays by the candle holder.

It fell down in slow motion, determined to break apart into pieces, demonstrating each individual break in all its glory. The candle singed the table cloth and wax gushed blood-like onto the linen tablecloth. Meanwhile, the guitly cat sculked away, "I didn't just do that..." he said. "I did not just do that. It fell by itself" proclaimed the cat, a little wider eyed than usual.

The lovers very first, most meaningful gift exchange lays shattered in shards across the table. "Oh please get that out of my site." The adoring spouse picks up the larger broken pieces and brings them into the other room, whereupon a great cacophony of broken glass is heard in the living room.

"I don't know how it fell out of my hands," he says. Now further ruined, or refined into smaller shards one might say, their first love exchange object lies like a wounded glass animal, dying, spilling out its last glass memories in a glorious memorial death dance. Both lovers crying, knowing looks into each other's eyes, remembering how much this piece of glass meant and still mean.

The death of a meaning, of a moment. Things are always breaking, breaking down, everything always in the process of dying. And being reborn.

What clearly must be examined is the karmic or psychic events that led to three different entities, each breaking the same piece of meaningful glass. What are the odds of that? Something of great meaning is to be discovered here, behind this terribly odd trifecta of broken glass events.

Are we too attached to physical objects? Do we get rid of the cats? Did something need to die in order to move on? Maybe we should get more sturdy candle stick holders?

Better to use the China, I always say.

The most hysterical voicemail I've ever gotten

2006-11-29T17:48:00.000-08:00

I got a new SkypeIn number and signed up for a voicemail account. I set my status to "SkypeMe", thinking that was the best way for people to reach me. Little did I know miscreants from around the world would start trying to contact me, so I very quickly changed my status.

But during that short time, someone named Zoran (that's their Skype handle), kept trying to call me, and finally left a one minute long voicemail. If you've seen the movie Borat, you may at first think this is a recording from the movie, but it is not. At the end, the guy mentions my name.

I can't imagine he was for real, but you never know, maybe he was. I was laughing my ass off, and am still chuckling over it.

Download the 3MB wave file from my server. I guarantee you will laugh.

The Art of Listing

2006-11-10T07:39:00.000-08:00

When I was in college, I created an art form I called listing. This is the art of selecting five things at random, and listing them out, for example:

1. The planet pluto
2. A plate of spaghetti
3. The color yellow
4. Abraham Lincoln
5. Kansas City

The art is in the entropy - that is, making sure there is absolutely no theme, no way these 5 things are connected. They can't be opposites, synonyms, types of food, all members of the same set. They can be imagined, real - they just need to be five things.

This is a much deeper exercise than it may appear to be at first glance, and requires a meditative approach. You will find your brain wanting to list things that are related. As a meditative experience, observe how your brain is trying to do this. If you just list the first five things that come to mind, you will most likely find some common thread or theme running through them.

No fair browsing through the internet, or thumbing through a dictionary. You must rely solely on your own brain. Just five things, can you come up with five things? Let's see how well the entropy in your brain works.

Words are meaningless

2006-05-11T08:01:00.000-07:00

I'm fed up with words because they are often meaningless. Let me give you a few of my favorite examples:

1. The word "not" is supposed to invert the meaning of a sentence, but often the word has no effect. For example, you could answer "Yes" to the question "Are you hungry?". But if I change the question to "Aren't you hungry?", you could still answer "Yes" even though I added the word "not".

2. The words "off" and "on" can be used interchangably. "The alarm went off" means you're hearing sirens. But "the alarm went on" means the same thing.

Arghhh...

2006-05-11T07:59:00.000-07:00

I jumped off the plane before it took off because it looked like it wasn't going to get off the ground. Now I'm watching it rattle down the runway...

2006-03-07T15:44:00.000-08:00

Once I was building a custom airplane with a group of other engineers, only we were in a huge hurry. We were designing a plane that could do tricks and fly faster than any other plane ever built. We were in such a hurry that were literally putting the finishing touches on the airplane as we were taxing to the runway.

"Wait a minute" said the tower. "You forgot to screw on a wing!" We didn't have time, so we just started screwing the wing on as we were taxiing. We got the wing on, and finally it was our turn to take off.

"The wind has switched direction," said the tower. So we had to taxi to the other side of the airport. On the way, we realized that we'd put the seats too close together, so we started spacing them out as were taxiing.

"The wind switched again"

"You need to add seat belts too. And you need a legal policy to cover crashes."

It was taking us a long time, and now we were running out of fuel. So we had to make an emergency stop by the fuel tanks, but there wasn't much fuel in the tanks, so we only got a little more fuel.

Finally we made it to the runway, and we gunned the engines. The new experimental plane was hurtling down the runway for all she was worth. At that point we realized that we'd added so much weight to the airplane, we weren't sure we could achieve takeoff speed before we hit the end of the runway.

We crossed our fingers and kept going faster and faster...

Software that can print out its own source code

2005-05-18T12:35:00.000-07:00

There's an easy way for any bit of softare to duplicate itself. Our chromosomes do this all the time: They just clone themselves. You can easily write a computer program to print out its own source code by opening up the source code for itself and printing this out.

This is not what I'm talking about here. What I'm talking about is writing a program that contains within it the ability to write out its own source code, without access to its own source code. When our chromosomes clone themselves, they just double everything - like copying a computer disk or video tape. I'm not talking about that.

Try to write a computer print to print itself out. Let's use BASIC since that's the computer language most people know. You'd start with something like this:

PRINT "PRINT"

Hmmm... If we execute that, we don't get the correct results. We just get this:
PRINT

We need to print twice. What about

PRINT "PRINT PRINT"

Then we get two PRINTs, but the source code actually has three. Still won't work. We need a loop of some sort.

FOR i = 1 TO 2 DO PRINT "FOR i=1 to 2 DO PRINT"

Well this gives us the following output:

FOR i=1 to 2 DO PRINT FOR i=1 to 2 DO PRINT

This is closer, but it's missing the double quotes. (And technically speaking, there could be a new line character that's missing). How to add the double quotes? Hmm... That starts the whole problem over again.

Well, is this possible to do at all in BASIC?

Let's switch to another programming language, the csh scripting language from UNIX:

repeat 2 echo repeat 2 echo

This gets really close too. If you were willing to ignore new line characters, it would even be correct. Here's what you get with csh:

repeat 2 echo
repeat 2 echo

Wow, it's almost like you need a language which just happens to have the right semantics to do this correctly.

Is all of this just some odd syntactic or semantic corner of language theory?

What does it mean to experience your own consciousness?

2005-05-16T16:29:00.000-07:00

In my previous posting I talked about how dualism and the "hard problem" of consciousness is brought on by the fact that our consciousness can not directly experience itself. I think this issue bares further exploration.

What does it mean for my consciousness to experience itself? Let's start by ruling out what I don't mean. Having a representation or reference of myself is not what I mean. So I can't get there just by thinking about myself, or by having any sort of model of myself. Only the real thing will do.

I am also ruling out any sensory input or feedback, so I can't there by my own senses, or by using technology to extend my senses. An image of myself is not myself.

A good friend of mine (Benny Pollack) and I were talking about the issue of whether a system can represent itself. This immediately reminded me of an exercise I've long been interested in, of writing a computer program to print out its own source code. This turns out to be a very interesting programming exercise about which I'll write a seperate blog entry at some point. In any event, as applied to consciousness, I can rule out the idea of my consciousness essentially enumerating its components in some way. That is not what I mean.

So what is left? I believe that consciousness is the ongoing state and changes of state of the neurons in our brain. So what I'm really talking about the ability for one set of neurons to be wired into the internal state of another set of neurons. The first set monitors the second set in such a way that it can understand the meaning of the consciousness in the second set, and at the same time (here's the key part) be able to perceive the states of those individual neurons (in the secon set) and understand how those individual states produce the consciousness being monitored.

In a way, our brains already do part of this. When I meditate, "I" (the first set of neurons) can passively observe the thoughts going on in other neurons. But what "I" can't do is track this back to the states of individual neurons.

By analogy, it's a bit like one computer program analyzing another running program by monitoring its ongoing state changes (memory), and simultaneously understanding what the purpose (meaning) of the other computer program is as well as understanding how the individual instructions in the other second contribute to the overal behavior of the second program.

2005-05-16T14:20:00.000-07:00

Casual Me
Photo by David Levine

The "hard" problem of consciousness

2005-05-16T11:18:00.000-07:00

In my view, consciousness is a continuous phenomenon rooted in physics that emerges from a type of complex, dynamic system, of which living brains are the only type we know. While I agree you can’t find consciousness through any type of reductionist approach, I also do not think it should be an axiom of a new system; that is tantamount to giving up. Our experience of consciousness is fundamentally dualistic simply because we can not directly experience our neurons directly as we are conscious. However, if we could do so, the whole dualism problem collapses and there would be no hard problem of consciousness.

Because consciousness is cut off from direct physical contact with the world and hence itself, it is also cut off from other consciousnesses. Hence we have all kinds of approaches (definitional, operational, behavioral, mathematical, etc.) to deal with this fundamental limitation, and for predicting or determining whether something else is conscious.

It's a rat hole to ask "what is consciousness?" because of these problems. What we really want to do is have direct experience of our own consciousness, and that of others. Note that it will not suffice to have a representation or symbol stand in for the direct experience itself because you get into an infinite loop problem, and you're back to dualism.

Once we can have a direct experience of our our thinking apperatus, then the whole issue goes away. This is not possible with the current physical make up of our brains. In theory, the only way to achieve this would be with a radical rewiring of our brains that permitted direct exerpience of itself and that of others.

Some people say that consciousness is a basic property of matter. This is bogus. A dead brain is not conscious. Only a living brain gives rise to consciousness.

As to why consciousness arrises at all, or why it seems "special", this is another bogus question on a par with "What is consciousness".

Consciousness must exist as a process expressed through matter developing over time. Asking why consciousness arrises is like asking why any other physical process expresses the qualities that it has. Ultimately it all falls back into the particular rules and configuration of the universe in which we find ourselves, and what happens when bits of matter and energy interact in particular ways. However there is a discontinuity in our ability to understand as we progress from the smallest possible scale to the largest possible scale, unified field theory notwithstanding. Because of this discontinuity, and because we can not (yet) explain why our universe possesses the characteristics of gravity, mass, energy, time, etc., we can not (yet) explain why consciousness is the way it is.

The Mirror Problem

2005-03-23T14:14:00.000-08:00

Another problem that's been bugging me for a while is the "Mirror Problem", which goes like this: Why is it that when you view things in a mirror, they are reversed left-right but not top-down? For example, if you write the letters A and E on a piece of paper and then view that in the mirror, the letter A will still look fine while the letter E is reversed. The letter A looks fine because it is symmetric about it's up-down axis, while the letter E is not symmetric. If thing's were the other way (left-right was the same but up-down was reversed), then A would look upside down while E would looks fine. Why are these two axes different?

This is another one about which I've read tons of explanations, and I always get stuck with them, so I figured out my own explanation. I don't know if it's 100% right, but it makes sense to me.

My answer is that mirrors do not reverse anything. After you write "A E" on the paper, you must flip it around to view it in the mirror. There are only two ways to flip the paper around: reverse up-down or left-right. How you flip it around is the key: If you flip it about the up-down axis, you reverse left and right. If you flip it about the left-right axis then everything is upside down.

Now imagine that you're writing on cellaphane, or something else that's invisible, so you don't have to flip the paper around to see it. Take your clear piece of paper with A E on it to the mirror, without flipping it around, and you'll notice that everything looks just fine, and nothing is reversed.

We reverse things when we flip the paper around to see it's reflection.

The Monty Hall Problem

2005-03-23T07:46:00.000-08:00

I just read about this in The curious incident of the Dog in the NightTime. Here's a great introduction to the problem if you've never seen it before: http://www.stat.sc.edu/~west/javahtml/LetsMakeaDeal.html.

Despite reading numerous explanations, the real answer to this problem still didn't seem intuitive to me, so I set about thinking about the problem until I could make sense of it. And now I can offer my explanation to this problem in case you're still trying to figure this one out.

Let's start by changing the experiment: Suppose you did not get a chance to change your door. And also suppose you always pick door number 1. You would have to agree that on average, you would get the car 1/3 times, which means you would get the goats 2/3 times. So far this makes sense.

Now let's go back to the original problem, but you still always pick door number 1. I find it helps for this experiment if you pretend you're Monty Hall, so you know what's behind each door. You pick door number 1 (because that's what you always pick), and Monty Hall shows you a goat behind door number 2 or door number 3.

Remembering the first, simpler experiement, let's focus in on the 2/3 times you would get the goat by picking door 1. Because we're focusing in on the 2/3 time you would get the goat, you know that the goat is behind door 1 (because this is one of those 2/3 times), and we know that the second goat is behind door 2 or 3 (because he just showed us). Now you know where the two goats are (one behind door 1 and one behind the door he opened). I hope it's obvious that you should switch to the one door he didn't show you, because you know where the two goats are.

But that's only for the 2/3 times when the goat is behind door 1. The othe 1/3 of the time the car is behind door 1, so if you switch, you'll get the goat.

So for the 2/3 of the times when the goat is behind door one and you switch, you're guaranteed to get the car. And for the 1/3 times when the car is behind door 1 and you switch, you're guaranteed to get a goat.

In this thought experiment, you might argue that this isn't valid because in the real game show you don't know whether the goat really is behind door 1. Yes, that's a valid point - but my answer is that it doesn't matter - you should switch doors because you know what your chances are.

It should also be untuitive that it doesn't matter what door you pick to start with - I used door 1 just to simplify things, but the reasoning hold for any initial door that you pick.

My Personal Blog

Showing compassion towards evil people

Band Member

My moments of joy today

Even futher into the future

Further into the future

The near future

Be Here Now

Do or do not. There is no try.

The Ideal Lovers

Nothing and No Things

Integrating your relationships

Recovering Joy

Growing neurons for joy

Who am I really?

Where would The Dali Lama go?

Talking with my ancestors

I can't remember what I forgot

Censorship

Blind spot

Pinocchio says...

Boiling water experiment #2

Boiling water

Facebook

After death

Red Words

Self-actualization and destiny

Self actualization

Love

That Russian comment on my post

Gabriella

Mandatory reading for anyone interested in Internet Marketing

Call Me

Every day you lose consciousness and hallucinate

When we lose someone we love, a part of ourselves dies with them

There is only today, now

How to drive when two lanes merge into one

I know nothing

How to call me

My new blog: How To Live Well

How to make coffee with cream

I'll have a flying dutchman and a double tall non-fat skinny extra-dry cappuccino

The oldest man in the world

My amazing lunar theories

"Yeah, no" and "No, yeah"

Microsoft Spaces Blogs

Some answers to my questions

6 Fascinating Questions for a Physicist

Technorati Verification

Microsoft Interview Questions

Making Coffee

Van Gogh's Ear

What's next after bits?

Anti-war songs

Lucid Dream of being an Eagle

My LinkedIn Profile

HighWired Test

An Add-This button

That business don't mean a thing if it aint got that swing

Swiki Test

Songspot Test

Razzer Test

An accidental activist

How many level of indirection is this?

Snapvine Test

Kristallnacht II

The most hysterical voicemail I've ever gotten

The Art of Listing

Words are meaningless

Software that can print out its own source code

What does it mean to experience your own consciousness?

The "hard" problem of consciousness

More on the Mirror Problem

The Mirror Problem

The Monty Hall Problem