Here are drops of thought, scattering and scurrying across the sands
- Pogue’s Morality Divide
One of the few writers on the web I routinely check out is David Pogue, a reviewer and technology columnist for the New York Times. With his easy, conversational style and his evident love for all that the world of consumer gadgetry has to offer, it’s little wonder that he works for the newspaper of record. Add to that the fact that he’s a musician, and I find myself cheering him on and “aw-right!”-ing most of his more philosophical pieces. He challenges the obsessiveness with which parents video or photograph everything their children do, while gleefully admitting that his children are the subjects of most every gadget he tests. When wading into the Mac vs. PC fray, he eloquently and …
- On Awareness
Typically, I blather on here about subjects on which I have fairly strong opinions. Really. I can hear your shock. But I’ve been thinking lately about awareness, my thoughts rattling around after reading about the brave new world of Facebook and Twitter et al. (I’m clearly not the only one sent a-twitter about it, which is interesting.) It’s a great article, and it comes right on the heels of my (dare I say, prescient?) attempt to strike open a conversation on the subject with Pam’s help.
I suppose the wording of my question was a bit too blatantly one-sided to be fair. But for me, it’s an honest perception that there’s a limit to the usefulness …
- Thinking Magical Thinking
Growing up in a household dominated by an engineer father and a mother who topped her class in computer programming in 1969 was an exercise in the myth of American Rationalism. Everything that we did, I was made to understand, we did because it made the most sense. In a neat little bit of logical reductivism, we followed the most clearly thought-out path primarily because we had thought it out, and therefore it was the best. Not only that, but we had an intense pride in our rationality. For me, it was a tremendous comfort to know that nothing was out of our reach; we could explain anything about the world if we applied our minds to it. And when …
- The Unguarded Moment
I take the T to work every day, and for as many gigs as possible. Basically, I hate driving (and parking) in the city, and when there’s a highly functional subway and bus system, it makes no sense to drive if I don’t have to. But more than that, riding the T and walking is a uniquely uplifting experience for me.
Many people, okay, most people I talk to about the fact that I commute using public transit say one of two things: “Oh, I could never do that, I hate the subway,” and, “Good for you,” as if I’m volunteering at a meth clinic. Which is ironic, because when I explain that I am singularly not …
- Loving Hypocracy
For a long time I have felt a certain falseness from certain friends of mine, but haven’t been able to articulate the why of it. Some months ago I even told someone quite directly that I felt she was being hypocritical, but when pressed, failed to deliver a response, even to myself. The fact that I was making such an accusation in such a way certainly didn’t sit right, but I found that I was even more uncomfortable not respecting my own feelings and speaking up.
- Those Dern Jena 6
It has come to my attention, albeit somewhat belatedly, that there’s some sort of controversy going on about an incident in Louisiana. I learned about this when I started seeing “Free the Jena 6” in various venues, and then a whole passel of cryptic editorial cartoons that made it clear that there was some racist nefariousness going on down south.
- Synchronicity
Today, I ran into no less than seven people I know on the street. More than that, they are seven people I like a lot and haven’t seen in a while, ranging from several weeks to several months.
Cool.
Since seven is such an interesting number, I thought it’d be fun to try to map the seven people I met to, say, the seven chakras. Hm… for the protection of the innocent, I won’t go into the details, but a fairly reasonable map emerges. A couple people can safely represent a couple different chakras, which helps.
How about the Seven Valleys? Again, not a bad lineup! Or how about the Seven Signs of Celtic Wisdom? Manageable. The …
- Original Sin
O SON OF SPIRIT! Noble have I created thee, yet thou hast abased thyself. Rise then unto that for which thou wast created.
There seems to be a darkness in each of us, a shadow at our cores. A dangerous mix of desires and deceptions that has no source other than our common heritage of humanity continually haunts us, goads us. Occasionally, it consumes us entirely, and we find ourselves possessed by some demon, unable to divine our way out of the trap. At this extreme, exorcism and phychopharmacology play equal partner in dispelling the spirits. For we know that our co-equal inheritance, the Light, has been forced into abeyance at these moments, and we struggle almost desperately to regain it. …
- What’s in your cognition box?
When Duncan Idaho unearths the memories of all his past incarnations, including those who left no genetic trace, we know that something truly remarkable is going on. Up to then, we’d met characters who could tap into their genetic history, bringing into consciousness the lives and experiences of their entire ancestry. But Duncan was a ghola, a clone, a manufactured human. He was touching something beyond his design specification.
- What is Government, Anyway? (part 1)
I work in a regulated industry. As in, everything we do, insofar as it pertains to final product, has some line of the Code of Federal Regulations (the CFR) that we are obliged to obey. Not only that, but we have to be able to prove, at a moment’s notice, that we did, indeed, obey the law. Imagine you had to write a paper when you drove your car, documenting that you had your seatbelt on, that you stopped at all the stop signs (with data to prove that you actually stopped), and included detailed speed readings for your entire trip. Every time. That’s something like what we have to do.
