A poem I like: Grown Up Was it for this I uttered prayers, And sobbed and cursed and kicked the stairs, That now, domestic as a plate, I should retire at half-past eight?  ¶ 7/29/2001 02:39:00 PM 0 comments links to this post

The other day I saw a billboard that asked me to "honk if you love progress." I mean who doesn't love progress. Problem is that I don't know what the ad was for. I guess that I like to believe that the ad was really just in favor of progress. I haven't seen the billboard since. What does trouble me is that I didn't honk. Social convention got the better of me. Maybe I need more progress.  ¶ 7/27/2001 12:31:00 PM 0 comments links to this post

If economic wellness is determined solely by production (and therefore consumption), then all a recession really amounts to is diminished consumption. People don't eat out so much. People slow down their conspicuous money spending. People aren't as convinced by the ads that tell them Volvo's are cool and must be purchased. Really, during an economic slow down, people just become slightly less manipulated by the advertising industry and slightly more buddhist. In fact, the "recession" is really just a religious awakening.  ¶ 7/26/2001 03:37:00 AM 0 comments links to this post

Is Europe a continent? I mean really a continent? Sure, I can see the delineation pretty well between North and South America, Africa and Asia (Australia and Antartica go without saying). But Europe? NO. I think the delineation between Europe and Asia is obscure at best, imaginary at worst. Europe is simply a peninsula of Asia, and I don't think I can be convinced of the contrary.   ¶ 7/25/2001 03:27:00 PM 0 comments links to this post

I'm in a plane again. Cramped. getting carpal tunnel syndrome trying to type. I think I need to learn more about clouds. I'm in the middle of them all the time. Not a bad desk really - this is my desk basically. An airplane seat. portal window. There are two kids next to me and a mother trying to care for them. She knows all sorts of stuff about raising children. Feeding the little one noodles with chopsticks with one arm holding her and the other arm holding the noodles. The sitting position is perfect. Efficient. These are the kinds of things I would see every day if I lived in Africa, with my extended family. As it is, when I have kids, it will take me three months to stumble across that nice, ideal sitting position. I'll be trying to hold the cup with one hand, have the kid facing me and fumbling with a fork. It will be a disaster, and for three months I'll have drool and partially spit out food all over me. All because I didn't spend any time with real parents before I had kids on my own.  ¶ 7/24/2001 12:17:00 AM 0 comments links to this post

I figured out my baggage this week. I was at the airport, gracefully sweeping the laptop case off my shoulder, through the air, onto the ground. Leaning against the wall with the strap strategically positioned on the top. Perfect. A minor twist of the wrist, a slight kick of the bag or a finger looped around the strap. This "setting down the bag" process used to take me four seconds. Six sometimes. And oh the humiliation of a bag flopped over, luggage wheels rolling over bystander feet, bumping into things. Now the process is one second. My bags move with me, an elegant extension of Brian Carroll. These are the efficiency tweaks! Stealing precious minutes from the abyss. Hording time to my breast like a greedy child with his toys.   ¶ 7/22/2001 04:49:00 AM 0 comments links to this post

All of my practice is finally paying off. I am getting paid to smoke. At some point I realized that I would not be able to get another job in the time that I have left before going to Prague. My plane ticket is bought and paid for but I have been faced with the delimma of not having any money to actually go stay in Prague. This caused much stress, and it ultimately caused me to submit to scientific testing. It's good work if you can get it. For "testing" cigarrettes I am going to get paid $200 for a total of 7 1/2 hours worth of "work." They are going to monitor my heart rate, my skin temperature, and my psychology. After not smoking for twelve hours, I will go into the lab and face a computer that will pose questions to me in the form of statements, to which I must respond according to one of those agree/disagree ranges. "I would do anything for a cigarrette right now." "A cigarrette would make me feel less depressed now." "I could concentrate on these questions better if I had a cigarrette." "I will smoke at the first possible opportunity." "A cigarrette is the most important thing in the world right now." Etc, etc. Then I will smoke the cigarrettes that they provide (I think it is a new kind of low tar cigarrette that they want to market) and answer several questions on the computer, smoke more, and so on for 3 sessions of 2 1/2 hours. In late summer, I'm going to participate in another smoking related survey. I hear that they have several others scheduled throughout the fall. Perhaps I should build a resume and do this professionally. Smoke. Read in the down time. Watch my heart rate and skin temperature. Let the computer rack my brain. Ken Kesey guinea-pigged his way through Stanford. Hospital stays, the whole bit. All the while he was writing One Flew Over a Cuccoo's Nest. He was dedicated. In his spare time he even paid for all sorts of drugs, with which to test his body and mind. *** I feel like I have been scamming a lot lately, no, not scamming, hustling. I don't think I've risen to the level of the Scam yet. I've done nothing illegal or seriously illegal. I've just been trying to make a quick buck. First off, I filled out paper work to collect unemployment. I really didn't want to do this, but desperate times, measures, the correlation between them, etc. Meanwhile I'm getting under-the-table-work. And I'm selling off things. My dad's old records. CD's I no longer care for. Today, I sold this First-Day-Issue (stamp) collection that once belonged to my grandmother. The dealer was a piece of work. He was someone who knows the meaning of scam. Pooh-poohing the collection that it was nothing new. Nothing he hadn't seen before, right? Artcraft cachets are, of course, the most common. They're not worth much. This? I am not convinced that this is authentic. I mean, the lettering, someone could have added that later and resealed it to look like it was original. OH, these Wildlife stamps from around the world. They're worthless. They convinced EVERYONE that they would be a good investment. No one wants them. Do I want them? Of course. Step into my side office. We'll deal. We did. In collectibles, knowledge is power. The initiate of the market has Authority. The outsider, just a cheap sucker. The companies that make the price guides, the dealers, they are the creators and destroyers of value. When you buy, what you are buying is unique and valuable-- who would buy a price guide that says that their collection isn't valuable? When you sell, these things are common, of little worth. The value is completely attributed to them-- stamps, once affixed, have no other use except to be admired. Value in such things is shadowy and unstable to the unintiated. Perhaps to the dealer, too, but he has the face of knowledge and of authority. What can you do? Just hope that, though cruel, the dealer can be kind. ** I'm hooked on Umberto Eco. Too bad that there is only one more novel of his that I haven't read. The Island of the Day Before. I just started it today. I read today that Blake (artist-poet) was probably a Mason like most engravers in England around that time. It might explain some of his obsession with the mystic. Maybe he knew the secret of the Templars.   ¶ 7/17/2001 10:44:00 PM 0 comments links to this post

I think there should be a branch of psychology called "temporal psychology." The founding premise would be as follows: our perception of time determines our behavior. If we perceive that the world moves slowly, we choose careful, gradual decisions. If the world seems to move quickly, our lives are short and we step up the pace of activity accordingly. "What would you do if today was your last day on earth?" I think we've all been asked this question before. The typical response is not: "I'd punch the clock at work, sit through rush hour and then go home and watch TV." Usually we'd talk about spending spree's, bungy jumping and casual sex. The reason this question is so provocative is that it asks us to imagine time speeding up. The rest of your life is now 24 hours, how does that alter your behavior? Now picture the same in old people: one year might be 1/60th of their total lifespan. Waiting a year to achieve an objective is not a terrible price to pay. For a 15 year old, however, one year is 1/15th their lifespan - a relative eternity. Hence young people perceive the world changing rapidly, and naturally take impulsive, self-centered actions. For those that perceive time moving slowly, life slows down. The years tick off, but not much seems to change. These perceptions are both valid and also highly individual. We should develop a discipline that examines it more closely.  ¶ 7/15/2001 10:09:00 PM 0 comments links to this post

I don't believe that "crazy" is quite the right word for the revolutionary spirit. Restless feels more like it. Agitated with a vision of the better world. I suspect the revolutionaries are never quite happy. They're edgy and raw. And when they succeed in effectuating change, they're still not happy. They bite off more than they can chew and then chew like hell. Over, and over again. I don't know that's it comfortable, but there's a certain nobility to it.   ¶ 7/15/2001 03:50:00 PM 0 comments links to this post

I think part of the problem that I have with writing in the last year has been that writing is something that I am now required to do on a regular basis. Doing legal work seems to require a lot of writing. Let me give you an example of something I wrote just today. "The scope of the exclusionary provision contained in 9 U.S.C. §1 was the issue in Circuit City v. Adams. The Court construed the language excluding the "contracts of employment of seamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce" narrowly. Invoking the judicial canon of ejusdem generis which stands for the idea that "'where general words follow specific words in a statutory enumeration, the general words are construed to embrace only objects similar in nature to the objects enumerated by the preceding specific words.'" Circuit City v. Adams 121 S. Ct. 1302, 1307 (2001) (citation omitted). Therefore, the court held that the exemption only applies to seaman, railroad workers, and other employees engaged in transportation." I just picked a paragraph and not to emphasize how obtuse it is. (I mean I'd like to think it is a clear paragraph in the context of a larger legal memo.) I also didn't pick a paragraph because I somehow am especially proud of it. (Although perhaps in a way I am, at least that I can write paragraphs like that much more quickly than I could a year ago.) In fact, as far as it goes it may not even be that great of a paragraph. The reason I did was to point out that doing that kind of writing all the time really tires one of writing. I think the reason it is so tiring is because I become so ruthlessly self-conscious of my writing. In legal writing, I get the impression that each sentence, each word is supposed to be carefully chosen and mulled over. So, now as I write I become very self conscious. I look for logical inconsistencies (even in describing simply what my own thoughts are or even how I feel about something.) I used to not be this way. I was once a must more avid journal writer, used to be continually working on short storjes or even plays. Now I find writing to be tiring. I look at it like it is work. Onto Wesley's comments. I do want to read Foucault's Pendulum. I have made up my mind to read that before I begin my project to start reading Henry James. Last night Wesley and I were taking about revolution. I think this ties into Brian's goal of coming up with "original ideas." Anyway a theme that we noticed is that at the heart of "revolutions" are people who are entirely crazy. Think about the founding fathers. I mean Patrick Henry shouting "Give me Liberty or Give me Death" when really he is complaining about a raise in taxes? (Taxes which were lower in the colonies than in England) I mean you have to be a little crazy to get so worked up about something like that. Or even the "Minutemen." I mean these were guys who were ready to start shooting and killing as long as you gave them one minute's notice. Just Holler and they'll come out of the house guns a blazing. I mean do you know anyone like that? Would you want to? Wesley was telling me that Jefferson meticulously cut all the miracles out of his Bible. He didn't believe in miracles (deism and all), so he didn't think they should be in the bible. So, it could be to be truly original you have to be crazy. I mean like grab-your-gun-in-one-minute- 'cuz-there's-Brits-to-kill crazy. (Nevermind that you yourself are british or that you could settle this tax-scuffle politically rather than kill people).   ¶ 7/12/2001 05:39:00 PM 0 comments links to this post

I think I should put some thoughts down so that Brian does not have to single-handedly bear the burden. I finished The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco today. Despite its length, it is a quick read, and I highly recommend it. It is an intriguing mystery, a meditation on Catholic theology and the future implications of science (post-Bacon), and a historical novel all wrapped into one. In subject matter and in disposition, Eco is reminiscent of such writers as Borges and Italo Calvino-- two writers that I have read widely. I enjoyed it so much that I began his next novel, Foucault's Pendulum. I am only about 50 pages into it and it is already dealing with the Cabbalah and computers. It seems to take place in the late 70's/ early 80's, though the narrator hasn't pinpointed the exact date yet. Earlier, I came to a stopping point where the narrator is in a museum looking at this mirror display, and there is some line about mirror-images always condemned to shave left-handed. That image stuck out to me a bit, and I thought about my roommate Karl Runge who is left handed and how he plays the violin as a right hander (are there left handed violins? probably) and how he plays guitar as a right hander, and I thought how useless my weak handed side (the left side like most people) is in comparison to his weak handed side. It's funny, of the left handers I have known, most of them are more ambidextrous than right-handers in general. My dad, for example, (and his twin brother, both left handers) excelled in baseball in high school as switch hitters. When I first started playing tennis in middle school, I remember my father never hitting a backhand. The racquet would fluidly go from his right to his left-- forehands on each side. He told me that as a child he was forced to write with his right for the first year or so. They thought he was learning disabled, at first, until they allowed him to hold the pencil in the other hand. I have two brothers and one sister, and my uncle has two children. We are all righties. I think about my left hand, and how lately I have been trying to train it in basketball. You see, when approaching the basket from the left side there is a little bit of an advantage when you go to lay it up with the left hand. Not that it matters that much with the weekend-warrior-type games that me and Karl's indie rock friends have been playing lately. But, from what I learned in the one year that I played J.V. basketball in high school, shooting with the left is a necessary skill. So I have been practicing. I am much more confident playing basketball now than I ever was in high school. In fact, I played poorly in high school. I should have been cut from the team, but the coach made a point (unfortunately, loudly and often to my peers) of keeping me because of my work ethic- that I tried hard, that I never was late or skipped practice, that I always listened in earnest. Actually, I was pretty good whenever I played school-yard ball, but there was something about the pressure of being on the team, that team. You see, I went to this magnet public school that shared a building and sports team with a high school that was basically an inner-city school. There was a lot of tension especially during that first year between the "normal," mostly-black high school and the "special," significantly-white high school, and honestly I was intimidated. "Naturally," you might say, "since you came from upper-middle class white neighborhoods." However, the ridiculous thing is that I didn't. I grew up in an environment that was directly the opposite of this. Before high school, almost all of my neighborhood friends were black. But there was something about being identified as part of the "other" group out there on Thomas Jefferson's J.V. Basketball Team that trumped anything of my past or personal identity. No matter what exactly the group dynamics were, it got to me. But I am getting at something. There was this guy who stood shorter than me ( I was too short for basketball, really) but was about as twice as thick. He was black and bald. He was rough on the court, a bull, a beast, sometimes loved, sometimes feared by all. He was loud and dumb. His name was Mike, but had been dubbed "crazy Mike," you know the sort. He was the kind of guy that would only show up to practice 3 days out of the week, and who, in the showers, would threaten people not to drop the soap. He really meant it. Anyway, once, at the end of practice we were playing 2 team against 3 team as the 1 team studied and drilled the finer points (we had a huge team and we only won something like 2 games out of the twenty-odd that season). I was paired against crazy Mike, but I don't remember much from the game except for the final seconds. Everyone else in the gymnasium had stopped what they were doing to watch how the game would wrap up. When coming down the court, it was observed that I had an open lane and the guard passed it to me, and 3-2-1, I was driving to the basket, to the left of the basket. Mike was in a zone and saw that I had somehow sneaked by, and he came barreling from the other side of the court, a locomotive, a bear. Rapidly he was upon me. I faked. He jumped. He flew by. I was underneath the basket and as if to add the insult I laid it in cleanly---- with my left!! Buzzer. Cheers. The way to the locker room was crowded with sweaty, pungent teenagers. I knew I had to hurry. They were shaming crazy Mike that such a Titan could be unseated by a weak-looking, small white-kid. This could not go unredeemed. I changed as fast as I could, I forewent the shower ( as I often did-- crazy Mike had insinuated things to me before). Other kids who probably didn't even know my name, black kids from that other high school, were giving me high-fives with only some irony. I was too scared to know that they probably feared Mike, too. I had my backpack and was leaving just as he came in. He had a scowl on his face and he got close to me and he made a fist and raised it and I flinched badly. But then he stopped and smiled like to say he could fake me out, too, and then he offered his open palm in high-five. I slapped his hand half-heartedly with the same hand with which I had bested him, and he looked at me like he knew that, ultimately, he had won. I was rattled and quickly left. That was ten years ago. Now on Sundays, in much friendlier games, I'm working on my left hand again. But it is so untrained, so tense and weak. Like I was.   ¶ 7/11/2001 02:45:00 AM 0 comments links to this post

I've decided rap is racist. Isn't it a strange coincidence that gansta rap just happens to portray black people as violent, sex-crazed thug types? They're not very educated, they're from the "ghetto," they drink 40's, smoke weed and occasionally shoot people. Who's really making this image? And who's buying it? I know the middle class suburban kids just eat this crap up, but it's the same image we've had for years - from 1950's black-face characters to the pimps and ho's of 1970's blaxploitation films. Hollywood is still trying to shove this image of black people down our throats (and succeeding apparently). I know the music industry is not the most ethical of organizations, but really - doesn't anyone notice?  ¶ 7/10/2001 03:36:00 AM 0 comments links to this post

perhaps being in a bar trying to meet people is a bit like being a tuning fork, in a room full of other tuning forks. Each of these tuning forks have different resonant frequencies, some of which are the same as your own. You wander around the bar, humming your frequency and searching for the other forks, with whom you will harmonize. and isn't it great to hum together . . .  ¶ 7/08/2001 05:29:00 AM 0 comments links to this post

Ahhhh - and Mr. King has joined us. Very good. Very, very good. Perhaps I shall kick things off by describing a vision, a veritable manifest destiny for this wee blogger. My vision is as follows: at least once per day, I plan to have an original thought - just one mind you - and to write a blog describing that thought. If I write well, that very same thought will appear in your head, in a form mostly similar to what was in my head. Hence, that same day, you too will have an original thought. Now, along comes a second person who also writes down one of their own original thoughts. We both read that thought, and have a net sum of two, yes TWO brand new original thoughts in our heads. Once the third and fourth person come along, the chords of inspiration will be humming around our heads at all times - an intellectual cacophony just awakening genius at every turn. New thoughts all over the place. Soon this blog will be famous as a breeding ground of innovation and philosophy (or narcotic induced rambling, which also can be good). other visions?   ¶ 7/06/2001 01:40:00 AM 0 comments links to this post

Brian, Andy- I originally wrote a longer post but the damn thing timed me out. It's a shame for it would have dazzled you, turned all your preconceived notions onto their metaphorical heads. I leave it to your imaginations. For now, I have to go see a man about a short story. I'll write more later.   ¶ 7/05/2001 09:18:00 PM 0 comments links to this post

A good ACLU-type quote: "A policeman's job is easy only in a police state."   ¶ 7/05/2001 08:32:00 PM 0 comments links to this post

Brian - The problem is too much choice? Exactly what are the harms of too much choice? What are the impacts? Instead, I think the problem is that you are slipping into nihilism or maybe fatalism. You don't think it matters what job you have or whom you marry. As a result you don't feel like you can make these decisions because you don't think these are the important things. What then are the important things? Just from knowing you I find it odd to hear you talking about the "responsibility of affluence". What does that mean? A responsibility to whom? To do what? Again it sounds less like altruism and more like nihilism. It sounds like you can never live up to this "responsibility" because you cannot define it. It is impossible to live up to a shadow notion that is always morphing and never allows for accomplishment. Finally, I would like to respond to your thoughts about "generations." It is only a dark mind that can look back nostaglically on world wars, depressions, the Vietnam war and the like. Now we don't have to waste our energy on that horror. If that means that people spend less time worrying about world affairs in order to play frisbee or even nintendo well then is that so bad? or wrong? Isn't the goal of having peace to allow people time for themselves? So my final question to you Brian is why all the nihilism?   ¶ 7/03/2001 02:16:00 PM 0 comments links to this post

Now this is good stuff: Interior desecrators  ¶ 7/02/2001 08:28:00 PM 0 comments links to this post

Law Zero A robot may not injure humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm Law One A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm, unless this would violate a higher-order Law Law Two (a) A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with a higher-order Law (b) A robot must obey orders given it by superordinate robots, except where such orders would conflict with a higher-order Law Law Three (a) A robot must protect the existence of a superordinate robot as long as such protection does not conflict with a higher-order Law (b) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with a higher-order Law Law Four A robot must perform the duties for which it has been programmed, except where that would conflict with a higher-order law __________ The Procreation Law A robot may not take any part in the design or manufacture of a robot unless the new robot's actions are subject to the Laws of Robotics  ¶ 7/02/2001 12:33:00 PM 0 comments links to this post

Just watched the movie "A.I." last night. Terrible movie. Seriously don't see that thing. One interesting thought occurred to me though: Could a robot obeying the dictate "do not harm humans" develop a more perfect moral code than we currently have? It could crunch thousands of scenarios per second. "I tell the wife about the adultery, which renders a 15% chance of this outcome, a 10% chance of this outcome . . ." Like big blue playing chess, it could create moral decisions by brute force calculation. Our robots could be our ultimate utilitarianism philosophers. . .   ¶ 7/02/2001 12:20:00 PM 0 comments links to this post

Just finished reading Generation X today. An interesting book from a bunch of different perspectives - the most salient of which was probably the "less is more" theme. Living in a consumerism saturated culture as we do, it's hard not to occasionally look around and think "am I just being manipulated by a bunch of 5th avenue corporate vulture types?" And if so, what are the implications in terms of how I'm living? A veritable downsizing mandate is upon us! I think I missed being in the "X generation" by a couple years - generation Y (the one that adores boy bands) is my official category. But I think the problem unique to both our groups is this: too much choice. My parents and their parents had wars and long-standing cultural traditions to structure their choices. Family business. Marry well. Blah blah. My generation is waffling because there's just too much to take in. Should I stay in academia? Business all my life? Maybe move to a small town? Get married, change religions, switch countries, work a McJob, be a yuppie? Who knows? All the choices are there, where to start? Anyway, the point is: growing up privileged carries an implicit responsibility not to squander your advantages. Thus choosing which path to start down is a daunting task and not to be embarked upon lightly. I like to think we're doing some scout work before we commit.   ¶ 7/02/2001 04:12:00 AM 0 comments links to this post

And here's where I got the Blogger: blogger.com  ¶ 7/01/2001 07:36:00 PM 0 comments links to this post

Why, oh why, would I start ranting on a regular basis online? Well, the story proceeds something along these lines: Someone once told me that the average person thinks 12,000 thoughts every day, of which, 11,000 thoughts were the same thoughts as he had yesterday. This being the case, the question is not then, "will I lead an examined life?" Undoubtably I will be thinking and examining all the time. The question is: will my 12,000 thoughts be repetitive or cumulative? Thinking is not the issue - progressing is. I need a frame work for recording thoughts so I needn't revisit them so often. Hence, the Blogger is born. Eureka!  ¶ 7/01/2001 07:14:00 PM 0 comments links to this post

This is my first blog. How interesting is that?  ¶ 7/01/2001 06:59:00 PM 0 comments links to this post