Specieal Insanity

Most new parents hope that their children are beautiful geniuses who grow up to be tall and healthy. These are things that society values. But without adversity humans often/usually grow up to be character-free drones, lacking in inspiration and motivation - c.f. ‘Beautiful People Syndrome’.

Some people us BPS in a different way than I do. I am talking about being spoiled by an easy “high percentile” life where everything you want falls in your lap and people queue to cater to your needs. There is nothing more poisonous to the development of a soul than this. Some quick evidence – the most badass intellectuals and revolutionaries in history come up in the toughest places. Russia – need I say more?

So back to the point – if you want your kids to grow up to be happy, healthy, and INTERESTING, where is the balance? How do you check the parental instinct to provide and protect against the reality that adversity creates really cool people? Why don’t we ask questions like this? I believe that our society is becoming poisoned by risk aversion. We live in a country where people consider you irresponsible for not taking your pet for annual preventative doctor visits.

As more and more countries enter the club of developed nations, we as humans grow less and less connected with the context in which we evolved – a daily struggle for survival. We retain our instincts to survive, but in the absence of real danger we map them to the compulsions for improved fireproof pajamas, sanitized spinach, and cars that make it impossible to accidentally hurt yourself. It doesn’t really matter to us what we pay for these tiny marginal improvements, in either monetary or spiritual terms. Our instinct to focus on dying slower is what drives us, and the safer our lives become the more ridiculous the expression of that instinct becomes. We are losing our sense of adventure and our tolerance of failure. We accept no responsibility.

When I look forward and follow this trend to its logical extension, it could be described as insanity. With primary instincts that have become obsolete in the context of our “civilized” environment, we have no purpose. I think that to fill this void mankind needs a mission statement. Something that we can learn to focus on – a great collective dream. Interstellar travel would do nicely. So would World War III I suppose. If you have a preference remember to vote.

Awesome Quote - "Small feet can lead to unsoundness."

Someone else wrote this, but I don't think they ever considered its meaning out of context. What do you think? I love it...it's like a Zen pun.

I found it a couple of years ago when I was researching God knows what for God knows why. Here is the original context: http://www.horseinfo.com/info/faqs/faqconformQ6.html

Man in a Box

I was standing in the center of a large, dark box. I thought the sides were close, but I couldn't see them. It was just a feeling. I knew I was standing in the center and wanted to find the sides. I started to explore, but for every step I took the walls moved away from me as quickly as I walked. This scared me, but when I moved back towards where I started, the walls didn't shrink again. Just by exploring I had made my box larger. I had a tough decision to make. I was either going to be bored and stuck in a small box, or I could try to explore and make the box grow.

I made this up as an analogy to how we collectively approach science. The problem is that there are many of us, and those of us that go exploring grow the box for everybody. If you are afraid of infinity the last thing you want is the people around you constantly reducing your importance.

We (the people I like and am like) are used to thinking of knowledge as a shared resource that benefits everyone. From another perspective (albeit one that makes me want to get into a barfight) ignorance is also a shared resource, and one that cannot be regained once lost.

Poeticization of Me? Only this once and it's all her fault.

I wrote this poem for my wife on Valentine's Day. If you don't like it, keep in mind that I'm not much of a poet and my wife is so amazing that she inspired a non-poet to poeticize. If you do like it, she gets all the credit.

before i met you

footprints behind me, on the beach
were all the places that i'd been
in every place i thought the same
on different sands I was alone

one day i found another's tracks
i thought, but i had not found that
instead i'd walked the world around
and found my own footprints again

i thought i'd walk until i died
an empty man with empty tracks
staring ahead with stubborn hope
and measuring my life in laps

and then one day there you were
walking towards me on my beach
you'd been walking on it too
making circles on the earth

you took my hand and smiled at me
alive and warm i felt your glow
and for the first time in my life
i knew some things i could not prove

that you love me and i love you
that fate has blessed us both with this
that we will never be alone
and that this place was worth the walk.

Things That Stand Out

At age 4,
In the basement as a child I thought a robot would assemble itself from parts, and it wouldn’t be friendly.

At age 6,
Four boys in my class beat the tar out of a new kid in the bathroom. He vomited pink. For the rest of elementary school those 4 boys were the popular ones. I realized that mobs have power, and that they are bad. I also realized that I don’t like most people very much.

At age 11,
I had a crush on a little girl and rode 5 miles twice a week to watch her practice little league. I would follow her home on my bike afterwards. One day she hid under a car, and I knew she was there but I didn’t look because I knew it would be awkward. I rode home and never followed her again. They didn’t have the world stalking yet.

At age 12,
I made an obscene phone call to the operator and she called me back to tell me boys can go to jail for that. I waited for the police to come.

At age 12,
I started a chemical fire when I was alone at home. It flamed 3' high in a glass cup while I ran to take it outside. It burned my hand and sooted the ceiling. I thought the house would burn.

At age 13,
One of the only kids that was friendly to me found a nice crystal in the playground. I was jealous and I stole it. I never gave it back but I felt great guilt and I knew it was a mistake.

At age 14,
A redneck gang leader beat my friend while I watched. It happened fast and I was afraid to help. I swore I would always protect my friends after that even if it meant taking a beating.

At age 14,
In 9th grade I stole potassium ferrocyanide from the chemistry lab. I thought it was toxic and I accidentally spilled it outside. Panic.

At age 15,
I took a shower with one of the dumbest girls I have ever met. I was afraid I got her pregnant even though the sperm would have needed space suits.

At age 16,
I accidentally boiled mercury. Don’t ask. I wondered if and when it would catch up to me.

At age 17,
My girlfriend got Chlamydia and before I learned it was curable or what it was she told me I might have it too. When the doctor was testing for it he inserted the biggest q-tip I have ever seen into my penis. Do not enter. I didn’t have it, but they gave me the treatment anyway in case of false negatives. I still wonder why the fuck they q-tiped me if I was going to get the antibiotics anyway. Satan doctor.

At age 17,
I accidentally electrocuted myself alone at home, and my heart stopped for 15 seconds

At age 19,
I found out that my girlfriend had just been raped by her boss. I felt the deepest rage and humiliation.

At age 20,
I barely had the will to prevent myself from killing a man. I was consumed by a hatred so strong that I forgot who I was.

At age 21,
I saw my father in a hospital bed, weakened and suffering and on morphine.

At age 22,
I wrecked a scooter in the middle of nowhere in Taiwan and my shoulder was torn apart. The police thought it was funny. They didn’t help. I had to hitchhike to a hospital but my friend and a local couple helped me.

At age 22,
I hid in the bathtub when the lover of my date came to visit. He was armed police and she said he was her brother. I stood in the tub while he urinated, watching him through the curtain and thinking what a good story this was.

At age 22,
I was trapped in the streets of Taipei during a Typhoon. There were live power lines in the street, and big pieces of signs flying through the air at 60 miles an hour. Clay tiles were falling off of roofs everywhere, and all I could do was run to find shelter. That was the most alive I have ever felt.

At age 27,
My cat Buttkiss ripped my eyelid in half, bit into my scalp, and pierced my cheek. When blood gets in your eye it isn’t red – it is like Vaseline. I drove myself to the hospital. A little girl in the emergency room cried when she looked at me. The police came to interview me at the hospital and told me they knew I was protecting my friend. They wanted me to tell who really did that to me. "If someone beat me up," I said, "don't you think I could come up with a less embarassing cover story than that my housecat did this to me?" Buttkiss was declawed several days later. I wonder how many people have had the experience of cleaning their own blood off of the ceiling.

At age 27,
Venture capitalists funded my startup. I was proud and excited.

At age 29,
I had sex with a woman I didn’t know and she stayed the night at my hotel. In the morning she told me she was HIV positive. Then she asked me if I wanted to go to breakfast. I had worn a condom but it shook me and made me think about my life. I stopped having sex for 6 months until I passed my test. I was strong and I am proud of that.

At age 29,
After 13 years of searching I still hadn't found the woman I would marry. I was doubting.

At age 30,
I am older than I could ever imagine myself being when I was a child. I wasn't sure I would make it this far. I didn't know what I would become as I aged but now that I am here I understand. It takes a lot of experience to look forward but looking backwards is always easy.

At age 31,
Two guys were beating an unconscious man on Mao Ming Lu in Shanghai. I rushed in screaming and I was ready to fight. My friend and I chased them away. You shouldn’t stomp on unconscious people’s heads.

At age 34,
I am married to a wonderful woman. We love each other, and I am happy. This surprises me every day.

A few people close to me have passed away – I didn’t mention these because they seem both too personal and universal. My parents were the biggest positive force in my life and they gave unselfishly to their children. I didn’t talk about this because it is too big and too blankety.

The Art of Life

You are painting. Your images are everywhere in the room - on the walls, floor, and canvas. You are working slowly now, but you remember making some of them in a feverish burst. The room has your smell. You feel like there is someone watching you work. You don't know how you got here or why but you feel the need to create. You want to make something beautiful right now, and sometimes you want to make other things. You remember watching others paint, in a room with familiar smells. They are gone now and you don't know where they were or where they are. Maybe you painted over their work. You can remember looking at it and making a stroke. You remember a sense of loss and of excitement. That feeling comes out in the expression on the face of the child as your fingers dance on the canvas. As you draw her eyes you feel that she is watching you. You remember opening your eyes and looking up. There was color everywhere. You are in the moment of your work.

For all of the rules that we make and for all of our ego and self-importance, we will never know anything. When we are bored, this makes us feel particularly lonely and we make up stories to keep ourselves company. Time changes the meaning of stories, and like children we are easily distracted.

The very simple truth is that we are inspired by the things we see around us, and we in turn re-form what is around us by our reactions to this inspiration. Our reformations in turn inspire those that come next. In a cosmic sense life is art. In our human gallery there are dark periods and light ones, and some bright threads that connect them all. From the the first spark of life until the end of the universe, it is one great mosaic of continuous performances. Perhaps it is not meaningful, but it is our exhibition and you are part of it. Part of why we long for God is the great desire for someone to appreciate this, our collective masterpiece.

Ars Gratia Partis?

Someone asked me today if I was aware that China was trying to open up an international market for tiger parts. Not being a crunchy lunatic, my answer was no. Being a top 100 man myself, I asked him why he was so obsessed with the 12,834th scariest thing that China is doing. As long as people are being abused and there are flagrant human rights problems, I have a hard time breaking out the "stop farming tigers now" placard.

Know why you've heard of tree-huggers but not tiger-huggers? Trees don't eat or kill people. Now if you are a hippie-type I know what you are going to say - tigers to don't kill or eat people. That is what Roy (of Siegfried and Roy) says too.

Caring about things like this must happen in the same part of the brain that handles art appreciation. Speaking of art - have you been to a big metropolitan museum recently? They are wasting a LOT of prime office space on displaying art and stuff. SAVE THE TIGERS!

What Is the Market Value of a Sympathy F***?

I need to know for tax purposes. Just kidding of course - I do love my hooks. I do want to talk about charitable giving though. See look where your mind is now. Gives new meaning to "I gave at the office", doesn't it?

Anyway, my family is thinking about setting up a charitable trust. Until now we have all given independently, and we are trying to reach agreement on a theme. . We have spent a great deal of time thinking about what we want to accomplish and how to most optimally reach our goals.
There were many different opinions, but the overall consensus mission statement is "Do the most good for the most people".

Most of us believe that healthcare is not the best way to accomplish this. Helping sick people survive or preventing illness only increases the number of poor sick people. It feels and sounds good, but the long term effects are probably negative in many cases. I think people often give to charity because it makes them feel good.

For me, charity is not about feeling good, but about making the world a better place. Every dollar that I donate or help raise goes to helping to educate bright poor students who have no access to financial aid. My wife and I focus on China because we have family there so it is easy to find candidates. There are parents working 80 hours a week at dangerous and terrible jobs to pay for their kids to go to public elemenary school! Tuition is not free at any level in China.

We search for and sponsor children directly. We make sure they know that the help is not free. We expect them to use their education to help improve living conditions in their hometowns. Some want to be doctors, businesspeople, engineers - all want to give back. What do you think?

Waste of Space?

Someone asked me if I thought Simonyi was extravagantly wasteful or a visionary pioneer for spending $25M to visit space. This gave me the chance to do one of my favorite things: reject the premise of the question.

It is a little understood fact that while you can waste money from your own point of view (meaning you could have used it in a way that made you happier), you can't actually waste money. It is not a resource - it is a store of value. You can waste energy by using it unproductively, and you can destroy order unproductively. But when you spend money you are simply transferring it to someone else. Then it is theirs to spend as they see fit.

I think you can only look at it as wasteful if you transfer it to someone that will use it to destry more resources unproductively with it than you would have. NASA does not fit into this category. At any rate, by my quick estimate at most 10% of the fee went to fuel and single use hardware. Not much waste there.

Of course you also cannot call someone a pioneer for buying a ticket. No matter how long the ride or how expensive the seat, many people went before him and the technology is robust at this point. It was probably less dangerous than visiting Baghdad and certainly less dangerous than living there.

In conclusion, I think the categories into which the fellow could be fairly placed include space-geek and rich tourist, but not wasteful or pioneer. Rock(et) on!

God Said, "Let There Be WHAT?"

I have often wondered why someone from China would choose to be Christian, or why a Californian would become a Buddhist. I have strong and well established views on religion, so I'll sidestep that part of this discussion. I want to discuss how we choose religions, and how we choose to practice the ones that we choose.

I have spent several years living in Asia, in Taiwan and China. I have known people of many faiths there, and in other countries as well including the U.S., Mexico, and Brazil. Something that strikes me over and over is that practicing the same religion in a different place inevitably changes the culture of the religion itself. Or perhaps more accurately, the way a religion is followed will be different when it is followed in different cultures, even though the source texts may be near identical.

For example, Chinese Buddhists often feel that the religion is part of their history, their family, their traditions. But an American who is intellectually drawn to Buddhism (or drawn for other reasons) is intentionally seeking a religion that is foreign to her own culture. Inevitably, part of the appeal is the exotic nature. Futhermore, in the vast majority of cases, the collective character of people who choose to follow a religion is different from those who are taught as children to follow it.

Most practitioners of religion would object to what I am about to say, but in almost every way organized religion operates as a business. It requires money to create its infrastructure - a place to worship, operation capabilities, etc. Member donors by definition have great power of the way in which the religion is taught and practiced locally.

Practicing a religion (as opposed to a philosophy) essentially involves a leap of faith. Faith is the act of accepting a body of formal teachings that cannot be proven. But to practice a religion publicly, you will learn/practice in the context of the way that the religion manifests in your local culture. The practice of Daoism in a group in Manhattan may be similar to a group in San Diego, but they will likely have substantial differences.

Seventy years ago it was common for white southern preachers of Christianity to publicly claim that people with dark skin were not the equals of their white counterparts. This seems ridiculous in hindsight and would be scandalous today - but it illustrates the point. Because religious texts offer contradictory teachings that are open to arbitrary interpretation, the way in which any religion is practiced takes on the character of the practitioners.

I strongly believe that even without making any assumption as to the existence of a higher power, it can be clearly argued that the way we choose to map the teachings in historical religious texts to our society is largely a reflection of that society at a given place and time. The way in which we practice is fluid and is simply an instrument of our subconscious. "We" use it to promote whatever behavior we believe will best suit us, and "we" is a wealth/power weighted average of the self-identifying group in question. I

f you don't believe me ask someone in the American Anglican church about homosexuality. Or the Mormons that practice polygamy about the ones that don't. Or a baptist in Dallas about a gay baptist in San Francisco. Just as a species diverges when it is divided into geographically separted groups, so does a religion diverge when a cultural barrier separates its practitioners.

Shouldn't '...life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' include the right to keep my deodorant?

So when you check-in at an airport now, you have to put your "liquids and gels" in a baggy. The bag isn't to contain your deodorant specifically, but to define the maximum volume of allowable liquid/gel carryons. But the whole process is grotesquely stupid. I can think of a dozen ways to get around it, and so can anyone that isn't stupid. For God's sake, you can buy a bottle of 100 proof vodka...alcohol is kind of flammable. But constantly creating and revising arbitrary rules serves several purposes: it keeps people afriad, it helps people feel that someone is doing something (even if it won't help at all), and it provides jobs for government employees.

The way the DHS has handled travel rules is a good example of something that is deeply wrong with our country. We are willing to spend billions of dollars and cause significant inconvenience to millions of people for the illusion of protection. A bad person hellbent on doing a bad thing will always find a way to do it. No silly bureacratic rules will stop it - they will only pile up until they make a mess of everyone's lives.

Can we stop living in fear and just deal with the fact that every time we travel there is one chance in 500,000 that something bad will happen? Wait a week and watch what the repercussions from the Virginia Tech shootings. There will be ten thousand school administrators and psychologists creating new screening protocols, and it will not help anything. The same thing happened after Columbine and that didn't prevent this. Bad people that want to do bad things will succeed. The good news is that it is not likely that will affect you. STOP BEING AFRAID.

A guy walks into a bar...

and he says, "There is much talk about reinventing the education model to cater more for creativity in the arts, etc. But can this really ever work in modern society?" I reply "Heck no. Art is what people do when they are too dumb to understand math and science. Focusing on art to improve education is like raising the limbo stick to 6' high because some people can't limbo. Now focusing on creativity in general makes a great deal of sense. You can be creative with regard to ideas and reasoning I hope you know I am half kidding. Or maybe 33%."

He replies, "I like your sense of humour. So how do we teach creativity within the current education model?"

I take a quick look around to make sure I didn't accidentally sit down at a gay bar. Looks okay so I guess he isn't hitting on me. So this is how I respond:

I think that Socrates had the optimal approach to teaching creativity - teach by asking students problems that they have almost enough knowledge to answer, thus encouraging thought and discussion. The focus of education should be on learning to solve problems and learning not to fear research and collaboration.

The problem is that this approach requires more intelligent and highly skilled teachers, and the current educational system in the U.S. is almost completely incapable of attracting these people. I did the coursework for a M.A. in Teaching and by my last semester and practicuum it has become obvious to me that I could not survive and flourish in the repressive intellectual and political environment that is the U.S. public school system. I was in a top 10 graduate education program and literally every intelligent student had dropped out by the 5th year - leaving the dregs.

I have discussed this problem at length with many teachers and academics, and there is a consensus that if salaries for teachers and administrators were doubled and then kept current with professional salaries (engineering, nursing, accounting, etc) that the educational system would attract better people and would over time become quite professional. It would take 20 years though.

No one seems to have the stomach to do this. Until the 60s, teaching was the only real job a smart woman could have, and this "captive audience" meant that the profession could pay poorly and still attract good people. Now that women have the same options as men, no one smart and creative stays in teaching. Paying teachers poorly was sexist to begin with, and now it is a relic.