There’s a little human in there, making her will known.

Man, I’ve gotta stop saying things like “shit just got real”; both because she might repeat it, and because people who are allowed to use lingo like that don’t use semicolons in sentences. Nor the word “lingo”.

I like the idea that it’s sunset for 12 hours a day. Absolutely true, that. Basically it’s golden hour all day — which is probably why it looks gorgeous to me all the time.

We do have some cloud-cover where we are right now (Issaquah, about 20 minutes East of Seattle), but we’re far enough away from the coast and into the foothills that I think our area misses a lot of it. Either that or global warming is burning it all off.

It’s pretty much perfect here. I may get kicked out for saying that.

I have a Galaxy Tab for work, and it too has issues. Also a Samsung. I love the opportunities provided by the environment, but I hate that all the vendors dick with it. Using Android devices feels like buying a tradeshow PC in the mid-90s: you get decent bang for your buck, but then you bring it home and the W95 install is cluttered with free Prodigy/AOL installations and 500M of crappy shareware. Also it was built by a front for the Russian mafia*.

This Captivate, while an excellent device, has been an issue because of the company. It was released with promises of an imminent upgrade to Froyo. The declared date loomed and passed and eventually I received an upgrade about 9 months after the fact. Fixing some serious bugs, mind you. Such as the GPS just not working. “Here’s this device, by the way sometimes it doesn’t work but don’t worry we’ll give you an update to fix it soon. Also we’re lying about that last part.”

And then Samsung announced they weren’t putting the latest version of Android on my phone because they couldn’t fit it as well as their crappy bloated software on the phone at the same time. Put another way, it’s as if you can’t upgrade your 1 year old Sony laptop to Windows 7 because Sony can’t find a way to make their crappy mouse software work with it. People would be livid about that, but this is just how Android manufacturers are.

That last Samsung announcement basically made me swear off another Samsung device. It also freed me to get around and mod the thing and put Android 4 on it myself. If Samsung won’t, I’ll just take over and do it. My plan was to upgrade the phone and then explore something like winphone, such as the HTC Titan, when my contract was up.

Here’s the thing: ICS (Android 4) works perfectly on my phone, even though the version available from the modding community is effectively alpha software. This device is faster and more responsive than it ever has been, and it makes me happy to use it every time I pick it up. It used to be I’d go between iOS interfaces and Android interfaces and feel kind of claustrophobic. Totally gone now, this is an amazing experience.

And Samsung screwed it up for me. They’ve since backtracked on their statement about No Ice Cream Sandwich for Galaxy S and they’re “looking into it”, but they’ve lost me as a customer. Their business decisions seem to be from the standpoint of “accept whatever the elders give you, even if they are capricious”. Homie don’t play that.

I still want to love the Android environment. It fits my personality better and I feel freer using the OS than I do the ipad or my wife’s iphone. But the companies really make it hard for me. So we’ll see.

And if you’re feeling spunky, the two things I needed to do to flash my device were

1. Use a Windows machine with Heimdall to flash ClockworkMod Recovery onto the phone, by following these instructions
2. Subsequently use the ROM posted here. As of this writing I am using build 12 and it is excellent.

Also use a decent USB cable, such as the one that comes with a Kindle. The one Samsung ships is a piece of crap.

Your mileage may vary, and be warned that you can destroy your phone if you do it wrong — because this is kind of technical crap the manufacturer should be doing for you.

—

* That happened to my parents, back in ’97. True story.

I need to shake it up a bit, so here’s a video I shot today. My wife and I signed up for Amazon Fresh, which is online grocery delivery. Only Seattle-area so far, so I guess we’re lucky on that count.

But the bonus is you get dry-ice with the cold stuff.

I didn’t end up learning a hell of a lot of French this past month. Je suis desole. I think I need a little more structure for learning something like a language. I’m starting an online class at uncollege.org for human computer interaction, next month; perhaps when that’s done I can explore an online French class.

My wife and I are moving yet again, in a month. This time to a swankier new place in an area built up by Microsoft, not too far from here. Super excited by it… Fiber to the house! Tankless water heater! The former equals gigabit internet and the latter equals Infinite Shower. Huzzah!

Anyway, I know the new year is an arbitrary point, but I still enjoy observing it. It’s fun, and even if a thing is artifice you can still get something out of it. At the very least you can use it as a flag planted in time to make observations. With that in mind, here at the Death of the Year I’d like to offer up something I’ve learned across the past 12 months.

You can have resolutions, or you can avoid them. You can enjoy Valentine’s Day, or you can skip it. You can be happy for someone’s fortune, or you can be indifferent. There’s a term I ran across the other day: “compersion“. It’s kind of a made-up term that basically translates to, “I am happy to see that you are happy despite it having nothing to do with me.” It actually has romantic connotations, because the word comes from the polyamorous community.

I like a more general sense of it, though. Other people’s happiness does not depend on you at all. Your friend got a promotion? Excellent! Sister is excited about an upcoming wedding? Good for her! Seems pretty reasonable right? There’s no real reason not to share in someone else’s joy. Translating for the nerds: Happiness is not zero-sum.

It’s really not as obvious as it sounds. Have you ever made fun of someone’s New Year resolutions? Have you ever been depressed that someone was dating while you were single? Ever been bitter at a wedding? Hell, have you ever been jealous? Have you ever told someone, “Dude, that link was going around months ago! Old.”

All of that is the exact opposite of compersion. At best you’re just feeling superior, at worst you’re belittling someone’s joy. It’s a pretty hard habit to break if you’re human. I’m still working on it — it’s bites me in the butt to this day.

So that’s my New Year’s wish for you and me. May we all be a little more compassionate to each other, a little more understanding, and a little less narcissistic.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Say you go up to La Conner and you have lunch in a greasy spoon. Waitress is sort of weathered, like smoker grandma. Gunsmoke on the television. Dirty burber carpet. A guy in Carharts is eating his over-easy breakfast food while sitting next to a guy who looks like Old Man and the Sea. Feels like a maritime version of any down-home diner from the midwest.

Next thing you now, the guy in Carharts pulls out his smartphone to look something up the seafarer next to him said about a thing he read on the internet. Rather than an uneducated drawl, the diction is crisp and precise. The waitress offers erudite alternatives to the conclusions the old man declaimed. A thoughtful silence falls across the room as they ponder life’s mysteries.

Or you drive around the boonies of the western peninsula. Heavily forested, thinly populated. Logging trucks and Ford F150s abound. It feels a lot like Michigan and you expect a rural, fairly simple set of amenities when you spot a town down the road.

And then you drive down the main drag and there’s an espresso hut, there’s a Japanese bistro, there’s an organic grocery. Right next to the townie bar with the Coors signs that has an assortment of Chevys pickups and Subaru Foresters out front. Along the highway instead of signs about Jesus Saves and/or eternal damnation, there are billboards about protecting the waterways or saving the air.

It’s a little bit of a culture shock. There’s such a mix of different people, cultures, and interests it even extends into the boonies.

I really like it here. I feel like I fit in everywhere and could talk about any subject with any person here and not be made to feel an outsider. I could go up to the guy in Carharts and talk about Japanese culture, or the dudes in the rural townie bar about tablet computing.

Maybe it’s just that most people we’ve met by and large try to get along with everyone else. Maybe it’s just that the overriding culture here fits who we are right now, better. Maybe it’s a honeymoon phase.

But I’ll tell you, this is what makes it and typifies our experience thus far. The greasy spoon didn’t have any per se vegetarian food, so my wife improvised. The fact that the lady came back to our table later with some ideas how to make my wife’s meal a little fuller goes a long way. That’s more than any waitress at any diner ever did back in Indiana.

That’s what makes this place a keeper.

For example, it seems like politics are more fraught with peril. While there’s a general trend to commercialization and punditry, I think this has probably always been the case. At the very least you can look at archived news quotes and see e.g. people weren’t so up in arms about things like religion or abortion in the 50s. The “issues” change, I’m not sure if the discourse necessarily has.

But family drama is another matter entirely. You think you have a contiguous history in your mind, but really it’s modified through the remembering. That’s demonstrable — though right now I can’t find the experiments supporting that statement, alas.

Was there always an undercurrent of angst at family gatherings? Were our parents always at odds with their folks? How about their parents’ parents? I could see it, because parenting hasn’t changed a whole lot, as far as kids being pissed at their elders and elders being exasperated at their kids goes.

But then I can also see it as a general cultural progression, where it’s more and more likely that a child will both acknowledge and point out the flaws in a parent’s life-choices. But the parent will be incapable of understanding what the child is even talking about. I’m fearful of the day that happens to me, but I think it’s inevitable.

My Christmas was good. I got out of it what I wanted — I set my expectations for enjoyment around things I could control: providing food for people, setting a comfy home as far as possible, enjoying what conversation was there to be had. I was particularly excited to give my wife her gifts, and to see if my daughter enjoyed the toy piano we got her.

There were some stressors to be sure, but my recipe for happiness lately has been to only use the ingredients that I can provide.

Not to take the metaphor too far, but don’t go to your mom to make sugar cookies if all she can provide is salt.

My natural reaction as a geek is to point out ways that someone might be wrong, or point out edge cases. It’s just how programmer minds tend to work. “Sure, but have you considered this option?” “Perhaps you are projecting your own feelings onto them.” Other people tend to jump into those kinds of conversations with different motives; however, the core driver is the same: someone else is dicking with your world view and you need to fix it.

Facts and reproducibility of experience aside, everyone constructs a worldview based on things they’ve experience or that “they just know”. You learn that the earth is round once and then you don’t go testing it each time. No, you just learn it and that becomes a model of reality. Pluto is a planet and that’s that. You learn that a savior was born Christmas dah and that becomes fact in your mind as truly as gravity. When someone challenges that, it’s like a slap in your face.

What does it really matter if none of those things are true? What does it matter if a friend believes this is the time when god dies so that he can be reborn again in spring? What does it matter if someone is irate at Christians wishing him well? I have personal beliefs about each of those and how they’re misguided, but their maintenance of belief is no skin off my nose.

Furthermore, if this is a firmly held worldview, any argument I make will never be believed. I can never, ever convince anyone that something they know is true is actually incorrect. Put another way, anything I say will be interpreted in the same way as me telling you that girls have penises and boys have vaginas. I can argue as much as I want and give you sound reasoning, but everything you know and have experienced tells you otherwise.

So my friend is angry and just as he’d love to teach the people irritating him that his model is the correct one, I’d love to teach him it’s not so bad and there’s no need to be so angry. But that’s not my job, and I couldn’t do it if it were my job. My practice has been to just let go of the idea that I need to convey my difference of opinion.

Only then do I respond if I still have something to say. It’s basically the “who asked you?” principle. I’m acknowledging that they didn’t ask to have their mind changed.

You know what? it’s really kind of freeing to let go of trying to convince people.

That is all, and it’s my gift to you. Merry Christmas.

Right now I just want to say how happy I am to have a short trip to work.

It’s been about 6 years since I worked more than 5 minutes away from my employer. Driving from Issaquah up to Kirkland and back, through traffic, is one of the crappiest ways to start your day. It sets you on edge, there’s inherent danger. The only mitigating factor is you can see the sunrise and the morning fog, which is quite beautiful.

But really, entering your day unstressed is so much more conducive to productive work. I don’t think I ever want to go back to that.

I’m enjoying my pajama pants, right now.

A year ago you were born. You popped out as a wrinkly little post-fetus, wet and crying (but not too much), and now here you are all plump and walking and beginning to communicate. You started off as an alert, albeit dopey, little baby — you’re now an alert, engaging little girl with a winning smile. It’s been amazing to watch you grow over the past year. I am such a lucky daddy.

I want you to know that I tried to go into parenthood without too many expectations how to make you turn out. My overarching goal has been to follow your lead and try not to get in your way. I want to support you and give you reassurance when you need it, but I don’t want to make you be any particular person or try to mold you somehow.

It’s so wonderful to watch your mind work and develop! The other day I watched you playing with a block; suddenly you stopped and peered intently at the sides because you just realized that there were tiny shapes printed on them. You pointed at it, looked at me, and said “ki-tee” in astonishment. I concurred that there were indeed kitties on the side of the block. That was your discovery, I didn’t force it on you to learn. I want life be like that for you.

I know you’ll look to your mom and me to learn how to react, what to think about things, how to live life; my hope is that I can teach you how to figure those things out for yourself. I don’t want to hover over every fall you take or stubbed toe, screaming “oh my God”; I don’t want you to fear pain or failure. But that’s probably the most difficult part of being your parent — each scratch you get hurts me, each time you bonk your head my heart wrenches in pain.

You’re such a tenacious girl, though, that I think I’ll have to work pretty hard to make you fearful of failure. You try so hard at everything! If you fall over, you laugh. If you hurt your hand you might cry, but then you realize it wasn’t so bad and try things again. You’re stubborn just like your mom and dad. No scratch that, you’re stubborn like yourself.

Your engagement with the world is so neat. You’ve said, “Hi” (well, “ha”) for quite a few months now; it’s your general statement of acknowledgement, in fact. Sometimes you say it to things and I suspect it’s that you’re recognizing other items within or on the larger thing. A star on a tree. A kitty on the shirt a stuffed animal is wearing. Leaves and flowers on plants or bushes. Kittens on the side of a block.

I’m glad that in the past year you have soaked up life and keep looking for more. I hope that your mom and I can help you grow that wonder. I hope that we can illustrate, not tell. I hope we don’t get in your way too much. If we do, it is accidental and I am sorry.

I hope I don’t go too far in the other direction and come across as reticent. You are a well-loved little girl and I want you to always know that, dear-heart.

I love you very much, my daughter. I’m glad to be your daddy. Happy Birthday.

Just finished a launch for a project I’ve been working on for quite awhile. A little tired for a post so I’ll just put this here.

Anyway, you should read this adaptation of a talk given at Stanford. It resonates with me because it reminds me of something I was told a lot growing up: You must have a lot of time on your hands.

Radiolab has a new episode up talking about a guy who catalogues minutiae and tells stories about the things that you don’t notice. In the very beginning he makes a statement that goes something like, “Every corner of every building, every join of a seam represents a conscious decision by someone, and there are a whole sequence of stories supporting those decisions.” I really like that idea.

Think about it, someone sat down and planned the pattern of the fabric that makes up your clothing. Or didn’t; perhaps they just got lucky and a random attempt turned out stylish. There’s a pattern and an apparent reason behind everything you interact with.

Or at least that’s what we tell ourselves. I doubt that’s true, personally.

Do you ever think about things you’ve learned in life and how you got there? I do, quite a lot. And I think about things I wish the previous generation were capable of learning, but they just don’t have the sheer time to do it. Realizing that someone is probably incapable of growth is one of the saddest things, and is one of the only fears for my own future that I have. I hope I’m always able to change and adapt, but the statistics seem stacked against me on that one.

But it makes me ponder the narrative behind that. “Are you living up to your potential?” And I think: What if you aren’t? What if you have the skills to be an artist, but you never ever act on them? What if you have talents to write, but you never write anything. Is it a waste? What is “it” that you are wasting?

Why is that so bad? Why is there such antagonism to people who, for example, get humanities degree? Why does science have to be justified with practical applications? Why is it called selfish, indulgent, or even irresponsible to want to do something that makes you happy?

I feel like there’s a subtle obligation that you have to use whatever skills you might have, but only in a practical way. Steady hands? Gotta be a surgeon. Perfect pitch? Practice the piano every day then get thee to a symphony. Never mind if you don’t actually like whatever it is that you’re talented at.

Which brings me to the linked article in the beginning. It basically is a talk to some freshmen saying, “Look, you’re here for a lot of reasons. Are they your own?” It goes on in detail what that actually means, and the comments show that a lot of people miss the point.

Simply, if you’re in Stanford, ensure it’s because you want to be in Stanford. If you’re on the path to be a lawyer, ensure it’s something you really want to do and not because people kept telling you, “You must have a lot of time on your hands” whenever you showed them a piece of art you created, or an interesting bug you found in the field.

It’s like there’s a tacit story. Your talents become a proxy and evidence of how the story is supposed to go — if you don’t follow the script you’re breaking the rules. And then people say you’re being irresponsible.

Let me tell you: There is no overarching story to your life. You aren’t ruining fate if you don’t pursue medicine, regardless of how much skill you have at remembering the bones of the body. You are the captain of a destiny that is recreated every single moment. Thinking there’s something you are “meant” to do or that something is “meant to be” is just you abdicating your choice.

It took me 30 years to figure that one out. I am much happier for the knowing.

And I dearly hope I never tell my daughter she has too much time on her hands. It would be a dishonesty: she has as much time as she wants.

Does that happen to you? You get a gift card, or something free but consumable and suddenly you have this brain freeze. “How shall I spend it???” I mean, I purchased a particular decal for a particular purpose. They sent me a couple extra and suddenly I’m afraid to put one somewhere because I might “waste it”.

It’s funny, because they were free! What does it matter? It’s the same exact thing with a gift card. I agonize over what to spend the funds on, when it really doesn’t matter. Get something that costs $20 if it’s a $20 card. Get something that’s $10! It’s just new money, don’t worry about it!

For example if you had already decided to buy a CD and then discovered you had an extra $20 in your pocket, you’d use it. But as soon as the free thing comes first, such as a gift card that you need to spend, it’s super difficult to decide what to do. I had a hard time even buying this decal in the first place because I was using a surprise gift card. “Is a decal the right thing to spend this on?”

There seem to be two different things at play that cause this. The first is Loss Aversion. You hate to lose things, everyone does. It’s a rare person who really doesn’t care about having something. Money, relationships, things, ideas, attribution — something in that list is important to you. Someone steals your thunder and you feel bad because of Loss Aversion.

The second thing is people love free things. Like, exorbitantly so. In the book Predictably Irrational
Dan Ariely talks about an experiment with expensive chocolates and Hershey’s Kisses highlighting this fact.

He set up a table with quality chocolate and cheap chocolate. The expensive chocolate was heavily discounted, the Kisses were for the same price. People saw the value of the expensive chocolate, so they predominantly preferred the paying a little more for it. However, when he changed the Kisses price to free, no one wanted the better quality chocolate. Everyone went for the Kisses. Same location, same food, the quality chocolate had the same discount. But the valuation of the two items went from quality based to price, simply because one was free.

So this is the problem with free stickers: suddenly you have this thing that you can only use once. You got it for free, so you have a huge valuation on the item. And you don’t want to lose things you value.

It’s both interesting and maddening when your mind runs away with you. I should just stick these on my phone and be done with it.

French is coming along so-so, Je voudrais dire vous que c’est facile, mais non c’est.. Though I did just type that, ad hoc and google translate seems to think it’s right; so I guess that’s progress! My French friends can tell me if it’s correct, I guess.

Since I’m a little buzzed, maybe I’ll just share some photos I’ve collected on m phone. Enjoy!

No, YOU pick them, jerk

Santa's Merkin

I'm not sure who they're targeting with this imagery

NO THANK YOU

Know Where to Run

 

And lastly, some fortunes:

Pithy

This one's kind of meta

Perhaps you've been too passive aggressive

I don't even know

Action with a brain! Happy Friday night!

Part of this is attempting to analyze and deconstruct what I think is happening. Don’t treat this as canon — Your Mileage May Vary.

I guess to hedge my bets I could just say, “Maybe this only happens to me.”

I was thinking about the phrase “man-up” and the corollary phrases, “nut-up”, “grow a pair”, etc. I’ve used them. They’re kind of fun to say. But they really bother me. They bother me because they’re both symptom and cause of a constant scenario I see and also find myself in.

Here’s a typical situation, part of the gestalt of our society: Woman makes self-deprecating statement. Man makes joke in line with woman’s statement. Woman’s feelings are hurt because the self-deprecating statement represents an actual sensitivity. Suddenly someone’s an asshole because they’re making fun of an insecurity or they’re being too sensitive.

Here’s why ‘man-up’ is the problem, and to be clear everyone is guilty of this, it’s cultural.

1. Telling somone to man-up is an admonition that one is not acting like a (grown) man
2. the admonition is frequently applied in situations where one is expressing feelings
3. the implication is that one should act like a man instead of how one is acting right now. That’s how admonitions work
4. the further implication: if you’re not acting like a man, you’re acting like a woman

Whether you’re a man or a woman, when you tell someone else to “grow a pair”, you’re perpetuating the following ideas: men shouldn’t express feelings, women express their feelings too much, and being like a man is the desirable state to be.

That ultimately leads to my scenario described above. If you’re not allowed to express your feelings, the only recourse is depression or laugh about them — that’s how male feelings are supposed to work, according to culture. That also leads to the woman masking her real feelings (because everyone is supposed to man-up), and sending the wrong signals to the man — that this is a joking matter rather than a serious matter, thus a self-deprecating comment.

Basically this ultimately leads to a thing called “gaslighting“, where someone gets defensive and says someone is too sensitive; all because there’s a cycle of poorly sent and poorly understood cues; and all of that is wrapped in a culture of emotional denial so you can’t even identify what the core problem is. It really sucks.

“It’s just joking” is the defense, but that’s what I’m talking about. “It’s just joking” is equivalent to “you’re too sensitive”. I guarantee you that if you are saying that to me then you are in its grip and unaware of your emotional impotence.

Furthermore, jokes are actually the worst form of admonition because they’re so subtle. You don’t realize how they affect you as they’re affecting you. It’s easy to ignore someone who tells you straight up you’re not acting like a man. You can say “Screw ‘em”. However, if someone jokes with you, you take it to heart because it slips under the radar; it’s the same way a backhanded compliment works. You can’t get angry and stubborn when someone isn’t obviously aggressive at you.

Anyway, I don’t really have a good solution for this problem, aside from trying to stop saying things like “grow some balls”. Maybe awareness of the problem is enough.

It’s too bad, though… I really enjoy making statements involving testicles.

The first thing I did, yesterday, was switch my phone over to Francais mode. It’s a good thing I’m both fairly familiar with the interface and know a lot of cognates in a few languages, so I can guess what things mean.

Versailles ca. '09

One thing I didn’t expect was the modified keyboard. I was trying to respond to a text from my mom and I kept hitting the wrong key. Turns out the French keyboard layout is different. You’d think I would know something like that.

I also didn’t think about the fact that text correction would keep trying to turn my words into the closest French spelling. I had to keep tapping the greyed “this is what you typed” to prevent it from autocorrecting to some random word. Eventually it started asking me to add words like “think” to the French dictionary. Probably not the best.

Fortunately you can set the android keyboard to switch languages. You can set the space bar so that if you swipe it will go to a different language. Really handy!

Aside from that, I listened to a little of Pimsleur Unit 1 and downloaded a free flash card app. Unfortunately the free version gives me lessons 1, 15, and 25 of the paid. So if I go through all of it I’ll start with vocab such as le pomme, and une fille then immediately jump to really complicated phrases like Il y a une chat sur le fille avec deux pommes.

Oh yeah, I just typed that from memory. I think it’s mostly grammatically correct, though somewhat ridiculous.

I’m currently looking for the Berlitz book that we had, but I think it’s buried in one of the several unpacked book boxes in the office. Dreading going through there.

Wish me luck, and if you have language tips send them my way!

But she can’t say the words very well, so as we see her applying labels to things it’s really evident that she’s grasped the concept or idea of a thing. But it also illustrates to me how words largely serve to make us unhappy.

I ran across an article about a year ago about a scientist with an interesting take on lef-brain/right-brain function*. The way he saw it, the left side of the brain is identical to the right side, except it’s brain-damaged. The stuff that the left side does well, analytics, language, etc, can also be done by the right. His contention is that the left side is hyperfocused on analytics and pattern matching, and kind of took over humanity because that turned out to be a pretty useful adaptation.

Furthermore, everything in our culture and society is designed around, because of, and in support of the analytical side of the brain rather than the right — a more holistic and experiential side of the brain. Up to and including the statement I just made. If you’re constructing a story or a narrative out of events, you’re validating the left side.

This guy’s take is that you don’t actually need that hyperfocus, you can actually do it all in a non-linear, creative fashion on the right side; furthermore, you’ll probably be a happier person because you’re seeing reality as it really is and not how the damaged, analytical side sees it. And he has some experimental data that looks as if it backs his claims.

Whether or not there’s a true left/right antagonism, the core concept really resonates with me. Lately I’ve realized that most of the conflicts I have and see are all about narrative. It’s the same raw data, but the story that different people construct around it complicates matters. Everyone sees their own pattern in the same data, but their own pattern is truly their own.

So, for example, it’s not that members of two religions want different things out of life, and it isn’t really about their beliefs even. It’s that their beliefs inform their story about how the world works, but each story is a slap in the face of the other story. The overarching story is that the world is internally self-consistent. I.e. gravity isn’t backwards for you. So if my story doesn’t go with yours, that’s a serious problem.

I think about this as Adelaide develops language, because what she’s doing right now (and this is verifiable with brain imaging) is letting her two hemispheres fight it out. Sooner or later the left will win, cause that’s what happens. But in the meantime, I see her going from an experiential mode of observing and cataloging, to a stage where she’s applying labels to things and categorizing them.

Here’s a thought experiment for you: Think about some animal that doesn’t have language (so far as we know), such as a wolf. You can put an assortment of objects in front of him but he doesn’t have a context or concept of “this is a thing called a book. there are lots of others like it in the same general shape.” My daughter had that a few months ago, but now she knows that this shape is a book, and even this is the book with Elmo in it. This book is like that one because it has a golden spine. She has labels for concepts and so can differentiate them — which opens the door for preference.

I’m minded of a constant trope in fantasy, that “Names Have Power”. If you know the name of something you can control it. There’s also the idea of just knowing the right words and you can do magic. I think this reflects a fundamental assumption about language. You can get more and more specific and as soon as you have the right word to call something, you know what it is and can hold its destiny in your mind.

There’s a Richard Feynman video I watched recently in which he recounted his father’s teaching method. One of the anecdotes boiled down to this: you can know all the names in all the languages for a sparrow, but you won’t know anything at all aside from human language concerning that sparrow. He then went on to use that in support of learning in a more scientific sense, e.g. describing that bird’s properties. My point in all of this is that you’re still using language, and your fundamental assumption is wrong.

Here’s where your left brain is going to disagree with me.

Pointing at a sparrow and describing it is just as flawed, because that entity is unique enough that it should be the only thing to be called sparrow. It is not the same thing as the sparrow sitting next to it. The sparrow sitting next to it is constructed of different atoms, has a different path through ife. Though it looks the same and maybe is a nest-mate, that being should be called sparrow-2. The name is a label, but it isn’t the essence.

I posit that a wolf looks at a sparrow and sees a thing that flies, that it is similar to but a totally different being from another thing that flies. So it couldn’t possibly have the same name. And everything is like that. Each tree, hill, rock, and other wolf. Each thing is a thing unto itself.

Your mind might balk at that idea simply for the sheer number of words one would need, and because you really want to say “look, they’re all birds at least” — but that’s the thing, why do you even need the words? Why do you feel so strongly about it grouping them together? What purpose does categorizing serve you that when I challenge it you have such a strong reaction?

Ultimately, calling something by a name is simply about control. It’s about being able to feel as if you have an understanding or at least knowing of any particular object. Unknown shape on the movie screen is scarier if they don’t tell you it’s a ghost or a man or a dog. Dealing with bad people is more manageable if you can say it’s because of Evil.

Look around the room you’re in. Everything you see and acknowledge is a placeholder. That wall is a fundamentally different object from the one it adjoins. Each individual thread of carpet is its own object in space. You call it carpet or threads, but each one is uniquely constructed of distinct atoms. There’s thread-1, thread-2, thread-3 and so on. I’m not saying it’s alive or has a being, but that you see it as all the same when each is its own object.

Remember what I said about stories? A story is just a huge Name. A story is a placeholder so you can collect other names. This is the one about the guy who is a jerk and loses his girlfriend, then amends his ways and gets her back. This is the one about the prodigal son. This is the one describing how a sparrow works.

So I look at Adelaide learning language and I’m both excited and also a little sad. I’m glad that I’ll be able to communicate with her, but I also regret that she’s losing her experiential wonder at the world. She’s slowly leaving paradise.

It’s like the story of the Garden of Eden, except the conventional telling is wrong. I don’t think they left Eden after eating from the Tree of Knowledge. I think it happened before.

I think they left Eden when they started naming things.

* I’ve looked and cannot find the original article. However there are lots of related posts. He was doing experiments with transcranial magnetic stimulation to disable the left side of the brain. Really cool stuff!

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If you’ve read here before you know that this statement is probably a little disingenuous, or as I like to call it, “funny”. But it’s sort of the truth, as well. My practical knowledge of constructing music is minimal and self-taught, and my practical knowledge of controlling any instrument — such as that Stratocaster sitting in my office right now — is practically nonexistent. I’d like to take this opportunity to lay down a history of my brief musical career.

In high school I was very much on the music track. I was in choir. I went to All-State and sang solos. I was even in a program called Meistersingers. Yes, I was in Swing Choir and danced on stage. I got around the rural Iowa vocal scene.

When I was 15 I begged my mom to buy me an electric guitar — eventually she relented. I got a Squier Stratocaster because I didn’t know anything about guitars, but I recognized the name. It was cream colored, only single pickups so it buzzed around fluorescent lights. And it just felt right in my hands. I loved that thing. Before I got an actual amp I used to run it into the phono jack on the back of my stereo. Probably a bad move.

I had this dream of coming up with a rock arrangement for Ode to Joy and playing it for Swing Show (the school’s variety show) with a bassist and some vocalist friends. There would be lights, there would be awesome rocking. Maybe even a smoke machine! In my head I pictured the audience going nuts over the awesome performance.

But first I had to learn how to rock. Fortunately, I got two free lessons with the purchase of my guitar, so twice I met with a stringy-haired, rocker-looking dude at the music store. I was intimidated by him because he looked pretty metal, and could obviously manipulate the guitar in ways I’d only seen on Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. He also wore Lennon glasses which was seemed a bit incongruous, but only because I was unfamiliar with Ozzie.

So I went to my free lessons. The first one he taught me how to take care of and clean my guitar as well as some finger exercises; the second one he taught me how to do power chords — the musician’s standby. He showed me two methods for that: the right way, and the way that looks like you’re flipping off the audience. I giggled uncomfortably at that because I was a dork and didn’t know what I was doing.

I missed the subsequent lesson. I was late to arrive, and when I got there he’d already left so I couldn’t reschedule. Then on the way home I threw a rod on my Mustang so I had no transportation to get to the music shop. It was just as well, I thought to myself, because I was super self-conscious about my lack of coolness. At the time I thought the stringy-haired rocker was judging me. In retrospect, I really shouldn’t have been intimidated because I think he may also have been the guy who DJ’ed the roller rink we used to visit.

So I contented myself with practicing fifth chords at home, and trying to learn how to finger pick. I could actually muddle through and play a few memorized bits, but to this day I can’t just pick it up and wail as you’d expect from anyone who owns a guitar. It’s a little embarrassing.

That didn’t stop me from starting a “band” with my friend Trevor. We used to hang out at his place, talking about crap, and recording sort of experimental music with my mom’s Singalodeon. We called ourselves the Silent Ventriloquists and didn’t really make music so much as put lots of sounds together. There were two really neat atmospheric things we did that I still wish I had copies of. And there was one where we did kind of taiko drums in the band room. All of that is lost though. Only the name and a fond memory.

My senior year I joined an abortive attempt at a garage band. We came up with 3 or 4 songs, one of which was a cover for Henry the 8th and one of which was a Green Day cover. We were a pretty terrible band — the drummer was passable, the bassist listened to a lot of Rush, the vocalist was okay if the song was only screaming, the lead guitarist pretty much only listened to Metallica, and there was me. My claim to fame was a wah wah pedal. Protip: You can always mask inability by adding effects.

Amazingly, a college station in Lansing played a recording of us on the radio. Also amazingly, someone wanted us to play at their party. I was a little hesitant about that because we didn’t have any equipment really. The vocalist was singing through my amp (a blessing, because when he yelled it would cut out my guitar so you couldn’t hear me sucking). Most of the time you couldn’t hear the bassist. The drummer frequently dropped the beat in inappropriate places.

Still, we had a gig.

Alas, the gig fell through the day before the event when we found out that the bassist, who had been unavailable for a week, had moved to Florida. On a whim. I still don’t know what to make of that. That event marked the end of the band. We never really had a name for ourselves. I still think “Butter” would have been a good one.

College brought me new friends, one of whom had been making music with real instruments and his PC for a little while. He went by the name Cult of Jester and I loved his electronic music. It blew my mind that you could fully produce your own music with just yourself and a computer. I proceded to run a cord directly from my guitar into the soundcard and get to work.

I constructed a bunch of songs under the name Prealpha, almost all of them crap. There were a handful that were enjoyable though. One of them, “Tetris Groove“, was pretty popular in fact. Back when mp3.com was a site for artists, it became so popular I attracted the notice of a UK radio station.

I still remember getting an email one Saturday morning asking for permission and promo photos from some strange UK address. I quickly grabbed some clothes, the webcam, and sent some ridiculous photos their way. Fame! Then the song was taken down for copyright, because really it was just the Tetris music with some drum programming and a bit of production done to it. It was fun while it lasted though!

The face of Prealpha

And that brings me to today. Sometimes I run across the old files from Prealpha, or I think about the bands I was in. I still love music but I haven’t done more than sing in the shower. I’ve got Garage Band here so I could conceivably start producing again. But I’ve got this baby, and I’ve got work, and I’ve got all sorts of writing in the evening.

And I still don’t know how to play guitar.

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This is the last song I ever made: Still Breathing

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Well, I guess it’s Schadenfreude Monday all over again.

I’ll say it’s a common situation. I will recount some fond memory from my childhood. I wax nostalgic, a faraway look in my eyes. I finish the story and Nicole says, “That’s the saddest story I’ve ever heard.” I suppose she’s right, but I enjoy the slice-of-life aspect — I really don’t feel that sad about them as I recount the events. But really, they are kind of depressing.

What’s funny is I have a hard time listening to stories just like that on This American Life for that exact reason: even when This American Life stories are kind of uplifting they’re also filled with such sadness I just feel really bummed in the end.

I’ll let you gauge them. Maybe this post I’ll go for maudlin.

The Deflated Bouncy Ball
I remember my folks once brought home some of those cheap, inflated rubber balls for my sister, Michelle, and me. You know the ones — about 12″, probably cost a dollar a-piece. At the time I don’t think my brother was in the picture, so I would have been 3 probably.

I remember noticing that there was a little hole in one end, and I wondered if that’s how air got into it. I sort of had the idea that you could inflate things with a pump, because I do remember thinking you could inflate the ball with the bike pump in the garage. Not sure how I got that idea; I might have seen dad doing something like that. Perhaps, I posited to myself, you could let some of the air out by pressing on it.

Which is why I thought it might be interesting to shove a needle into the hole to see if it would let the air out. Destroying my sister’s ball in the process. I remember getting in a lot of trouble, and I remember trying to explain that you could just reinflate the thing and I really didn’t mean to destroy it. But I was three and you can’t really communicate when you’re three, let alone with a speech impediment. So Michelle got my ball. It felt terribly unfair, but I had to give mine to my sister. I never got a replacement ball.

Can’t Hold the New Brother
Another of my earliest memories is a photo-shoot with my new baby brother, Daniel. There is a photo floating around of my sister holding my baby brother, about 7 months old, at the time. There is also a photo of just my sister holding Daniel. Lastly, there is a photo of me with red eyes and Daniel sitting next to me with my arm sort of on him, and you can see someone’s hand coming in off the frame, holding him up.

I really wanted to hold Daniel by myself. I suspect I wanted this both because he was my brother but also because Michelle got to hold him unaided. I do remember there was a small argument between mom and dad about this, whether or not they thought it was safe. Eventually the compromise was that they would take the photo very quickly, but Daniel couldn’t be on my lap. I cried a bit about not being able to hold him unaided.

I still think I totally could have held him and kept him from falling off.

The Dry Slip ‘n’ Slide
When I was in 1st grade, my brother, sister, and I begged and begged our parents for a slip ‘n slide. It looked like so much fun! Eventually our parents relented and got one for us.

We took it outside, unrolled it, and then ran back into the house to askfor assistance hooking up the hose.

“Why does it need to be hooked up to the hose?” asked our dad.
“Because that’s how it works! Water runs across it so you can slide like a water slide!”
“Well you can’t run the water, that’ll cost a fortune! You can spray it down and turn it off. Take turns.”

So we just didn’t use it. Cause that would have been a giant pain in the ass.

The Sad Train
My fifth Christmas I received a train set from my parents. They also got me a long piece of fiber board, maybe six feet by four feet. The idea was dad and I would construct an elaborate diorama on that board, together. Green hills, little houses, the whole thing. A model railroad.

I ended up carting that board around with us across five moves, completely unfinished. In fact, barely started. The most that ever happened was I nailed down some tracks. We started with a general layout, ran into an issue getting the tracks aligned, and then held off to purchase some piece or something. And then something always came up, preventing us building it out or going forward. Perhaps my folks did a little looking and found out how expensive it can be to have a model train set. It really is a racket, those tiny houses are exorbitantly priced.

There was also a standing rule that I wasn’t allowed to operate it by myself The tracks were connected to a big, scary, blue box that powered the tracks with the word “power transformer” on it. Though it wasn’t really a danger, that terrified my parents. So the train became a thing that I couldn’t play with by myself, and couldn’t finish by myself.

Years later, after 5 houses and one divorce, I got a wild hair and tried to finish it sometime in early highschool. But everything was 10 years old at that point, slightly rusted from moves across two states, and really it was just an oval on bare wood. I didn’t have money for it, and it really is expensive to have a model train set. The scary blue box with the word “power transformer” on it didn’t really work anymore. I gave up and leaned the board in the corner of my room. Eventually the cats peed on it. Then I threw it away, tracks and all.

I’m curious what happened to those train cars. I kind of remember that first Christmas, the tain cars and the shiny red and silver locomotive. We set up a small loop on the carpet and I got to play with the train for a little while. I remember I used to just look at that thing and think it was so neat looking. It said “Santa Fe” on the side.

Epilogue
I told my wife that story once and that was the one she remarked as “the saddest story, ever”. My next birthday she bought me a train set. Once we have space for it, I’m totally setting that thing up. I don’t even care if there aren’t any little houses or terrain.

Maybe this summer I’ll get a slip ‘n slide.

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“I’ve now had this conversation about 100 times:

Person who’s lived in Seattle longer than me: It RAINS here. You’re going to HATE it. Waaahhhh, RAIN! So much RAIN. It will eat your soul and dismember your family! *sobs* Why did you leave the paradise of northern Indiana to subject yourself to the horrible, life-destroying RAIN?
Me: Why do you live here?
Seattleite: I LOVE it here!
Me: o.O”

There’s a story that has circulated on the internet for a little while. Basically a story about an experiment with monkeys in a cage and a bunch of bananas. Each time the monkeys go for the bananas, they’re sprayed with cold water. This happens enough that they stop going for them. Then a new monkey is introduced and an old monkey removed. The new monkey goes for the bananas and is attacked by the angry, wet, and scared monkeys. Eventually that monkey stops going for the bananas.

New monkeys are introduced and old ones removed until eventually none of the monkeys has gotten hit by the hose, but they all avoid those bananas and prevent others from going for them. Typically the moral of the story is something about group think, or “that’s the way it’s always been done here.”* Actions sometimes become divorced from their meaning. The participants don’t really know why they’re doing what they’re doing.

When my wife posted the opening quote, one of her friends (who had lived in Seattle for about 15 years) responded with the following:

“When we were living there, one of the newspaper columnists started an organization called Lesser Seattle, which existed solely to discourage the then-hated Californians from moving into town.

One of the recommended techniques was to bitch about the “horribly depressing interminable rain” whenever on long distance with anyone who didn’t know better. Extra credit was awarded if you could work a mention of slugs into the conversation as well.”

I was curious so I looked it up. Lesser Seattle was actually a fictitious organization started by a columnist. Basically it was an attempt at parodying the latent xenophobia amongst Puget Sounders and people in the Seattle area. So the Lesser Seattle thing wasn’t “real” as an organization, but it did represent a real flavor of the times. Namely, if you can joke about it, it’s a known thing. There must be actual antagonism in the air for people to get the humor — meaning that xenophobia was a real thing.

There’s a complicating factor to that: satire is viewed as reinforcement by those that are satired against. There was a recent study that looked at Archie Bunker’s bigotry — it suggested that bigoted viewers laughed because his bigotry was confirming their bigotry. They didn’t see racist comments as a ridiculous farce, they saw it as him speaking the truth. I suspect there was the same effect with Lesser Seattle.

Culture follows evolutionary paths. If an aspect of culture is bad (survival-wise) for the people practicing it, the aspect or the people will die out. If it is neither good nor bad, it will probably just keep on keeping on. Sometimes it will self-reinforce. I think the rain comments fall into the latter category.

I’d estimate this area is populated over halfway with expatriates, the rest natives. It really doesn’t feel as if anyone we meet is from here. I would posit that there is a latent xenophobia, but that it is learned. The people who move here are from somewhere else. The people who stay are the ones who are willing to accept the subtle rebuffment, the casual “this place is terrible” comments. Maybe even misanthropes who just don’t like other people.

I suspect that the Lesser Seattle movement became a real gestalt thing; I suspect the local culture became “we really don’t want outsiders to move to the area, screwing it up”.

So people talk about the rain, or the depression, or the cloudy skies. In this case, Xenophobia becomes self-reinforcing as a cultural aspect because it only allows in people who are immune to it or are accomodating and/or assimilatable.

This is a working hypothesis here, and I’ve formulated it to keep from yelling at people. My solution to prevent myself from assimilation is to just ignore or challenge people’s comments and keep telling the truth: that the area actually isn’t bad, it’s quite beautiful. The midwest has far worse weather. Of course the downside is that I will forever be an outsider. We’ll see how long I can hold out.

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–
I love footnotes.

* Alas, the monkey experiment appears apocryphal The closest I can find is a reference to an experiment at wikianswers. It’s far simpler and basically has pairs of monkeys. A trained monkey restrained an untrained monkey operating a pain-causing device, and then later the untrained monkey showed restraint operating that same device when on his own.

It’s not quite the same flavor as the first story. However, my suspicion is that you could perform the apocryphal experiment and get the described results. People do operate that way, I’ve experienced it a lot. Just because a story is fake doesn’t mean it’s not a good parable.

So it’s been 10 years since my last real dental appointment, I suppose a lot has changed since then. Maybe they’ve learned new techniques. I’m a different person certainly, and a large part of pain is your perception of it, not just the physical sensation. I’m better able to put pain into perspective than when I was, say, 14.

But something else contributed even more to poor dentist experiences in my childhood. There was a lot of shame involved with visits to the dentist, and I think that’s institutionalized in culture, down to how kids are taught about hygiene.

I remember we used to have a kind of Dental Day in elementary school. A dentist and a dental hygienist would come in and show proper technique. The big message I got from these events was, “it’s up to you to prevent cavities” which is fine, but the subtext was, “if you don’t you’re not doing things right”. It was guilt-based teaching.

And that was carried through at home. If I had cavities, it was a failure on my part for not brushing or doing it right. (This beside the fact that even if you brush and floss every day you can still get cavities.) And then it became a financial thing because fixing them cost the family money.

Why do you hate Mr. Chompers?

Shame is a terrible, terrible motivator. It doesn’t make you want to do something different, it just makes you feel bad about yourself. And my method for dealing with that is to just avoid it. And so I did for 10 years. If you think about the emotional math that goes on in that situation, it makes a lot of sense. I can either feel guilty three times (guilt from the dentist, guilt from the family, guilt over money), or I can feel guilty once (guilt over not going to the dentist).

I’m resolving not to raise my kid that way. Given the above epiphany my method is going to be 1) if/when she has cavities, not discuss the financial aspect around her, 2) also try to describe it as something that happens, that you can do some things to prevent, 3) if she has cavities, she’s not a bad person and it’s not her fault.

I hope we’re successful.

And I’m finally developing a good attitude towards dentistry — really, just going and getting cleanings goes a long way towards keeping your teeth. But you have to actually go.

Who knows, maybe my mouth will no longer be a wretched hive of scum and villainy.*

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* Oddly enough, that shame I describe has made me think my mouth was a terrible place. But wonder of wonders it’s not that bad, after all. I do actually brush and floss, so while my teeth are affected from the years of smoking and coffee-binges, they’re overall pretty healthy. It’s kind of amazing what that’s done for my self-image, lately.

I’m glad the Germans have a word for that, and it is my gift to you. Three unfortunate things about my past that are kind of amusing if you think about it.

The first thing is that I was a bad student. I was a little bit of a daydreamer when I was in 1st and 2nd grade. I know this both because of my memories and scoldings, and also because my mother saved all of my report cards. Ever. At some point I received a thick folder stuffed with meticulously organized papers representing my scholastic career. The earliest notes of which bear remarks along the lines of, “Jonathan is a joy to have in class but needs to learn how to pay attention”. Also “his handwriting still needs work”.

I used to get sidetracked and think about lots of different things, as I recall. My mind would go off on tangents thinking about birds or drawing or Transformers. Consequently my grades weren’t the best. Also I refused to do memory work, and stubbornly resisted doing my homework.

In fact I remember faking falling asleep doing a worksheet at home one night just so I could get out of it. “They’ll think I was really studying if I fell asleep while doing it!” Probably got the idea from television. I heard my mother come down the stairs to the family room where I was ostensibly mathing it up. My head lolled back, mouth slightly agape. I may have even affected a slight snore. I think she shook my shoulder and told me to just go to bed. We both won in that situation.

The second unfortunate thing is that I was tongue-tied until about the age of 18. There’s a piece of skin called a “lingual frenulum” that attaches one’s tongue to the floor of one’s mouth. Mine attached at the tip of my tongue. Look at yours in the mirror, it probably only goes halfway. The effect of this is I had a little difficulty talking. I had some difficulty saying “th” and “r” sounds. “Thumb” was more like “fumb”. “Wrinkle” came out more like “yrenkle”. I had a bit of a speech impediment, in other words.

So it was probably the combination of these two things that led to the third unfortunate thing: they put me in Special Ed during 2nd Grade.

I remember when I was told this I said something like, “Special? Because I’m smart? Because special is special right?” Not actually, I found out. I got to spend an hour or two in the afternoon with Mrs. Matthias, Kevin who didn’t do math and was kind of a bully, and Brent who had Tourette’s I think. Kevin got out before I did, but then he’d been in longer too.

My dad was livid, as I recall. I was just confused. My impression at the time was that it was a little like punishment. 2nd grade prison or the like. I’d like to say that it was similar to that scene in 3′oclock high where the “bad student” is called up for cheating and then shows on the blackboard that he really does know calculus after all. Truly, I just hadn’t been paying attention and really didn’t know how to add.

In my defense, when I asked the teacher to explain how it worked I did ace the problems and got out of Special Ed. They made me stay an extra session to make sure it “took”, which was maddening. However I proved my worth.

On the downside, in the school’s eyes I went from being special needs to just a lazy student. So you’ll have that. It’s like a reverse Gift of the Magi or something. Where.. I’m the gift? That joke sounded better in my head. I’ll rethink that and get back to you.

Anyway, I do remember that when Mrs. Matthias told me I could go back to class with the Normals, I felt a certain relief and elation. As I closed the door behind me I glanced back sadly at Brent, still in Special Ed, still hunched over his work. He was like a brother in arms. I felt a kind of kinship with him and I think I gave him a half-hearted wave. Later on I thought better of associating with him. You don’t befriend the kid with Tourette’s.

There isn’t a real silver-lining to this story. I didn’t suddenly learn the value of studying and go on to be an A-student. In fact, subsequently there was a day I came to class and we had a test on reading analog clocks — I couldn’t for the life of me remember ever having learned it. I had to sort of figure it out as we went along and use deduction. Thank God it was multiple-choice.

Much, much later I did get my tongue fixed and stopped talking like a stroke victim. My folks got me the surgery in my late teens while I was under their insurance and because, as my dad put it, “you’ll probably want your tongue to work for your wife”. Pretty sure he was talking about kissing there.

Pretty sure.

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Another thing is with a baby running around, I have to steal time for writing. Adelaide has gotten way more interactive. And while she’s still happy to play and self-entertain, frequently she’ll come over to engage one or both of us in play. It kind of breaks the flow a little.

Writing every day is really hard! It’s basically like coming up with a new story every single day. I’ve started a list in Evernote to help me keep on top of things, but my idea list is still pretty short right now. Fortunately, once I find an idea that I’m interested in discussing, the words sort of flow. Woah. I just now, right this minute, put it together that the icon for Evernote is an elephant because an elephant never forgets. Classy.

Anyway, I think when the month is out I’ll switch to a Monday/Wednesday/Friday thing because that seems more doable and realistic. Additionally, the task I’ve set for myself in December is to learn some Japanese. I’ll be doing that every night. Perhaps I’ll blog about it!

In other news, our geek meetup is coming along. We’ve appointed some assistant organizers because it’s really a little daunting how many people are involved. I really like the people we’re meeting, it’s the organization and bureaucracy that’s tricky. And you have to keep the ball rolling. I don’t think I ever ran or managed a club aside from Boy Scouts. I can be a leader if I have to, but it’s difficult.

Oh, one neat thing coming from the meetup is that the lady who started Offbeat Bride and Offbeat Mama joined our meetup. That blows my mind! Nicole and I have followed her work for several years, bought her book, and now she’s joining our shindig. Crazy!

It’s a really neat feeling when it feels like synergy is happening.

Lastly, I just wanted to let you know that I took a nap this afternoon and woke up thinking about people I haven’t known for quite awhile — one of them my single highschool girlfriend, Monica. Monica had a show poodle, but she neutered it, which means she couldn’t show it. I used to find that sort of odd and amusing. But that’s not what I wanted to point out.

I only wanted to say I spent a good portion of the afternoon thinking how I could phrase the poodle-neutering story in iambic pentameter. That’s just how I roll.

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Perhaps it’s a list of students attending your class. So you call the list “Roster” and put that in bold letters at the top. Except the list expands and now it also has seating information, and you’ve added student contact information. So now you change the title to something like, “Student Information”. And then you realize you also need to correlate the students’ grade histories. So you add that for each student on your sheet.

Suddenly “Student Information” is way too vague. So you call it something like, “Student History”, because you’ve added historical data. That doesn’t quite capture the use of the list though, so you end up calling it “Student Trajectory”, since it’s describing all of the pertinent information for any particular student as they go through school.

And then before you hand the list to the substitute teacher, you add historical information about the class as a whole to the list, at the very bottom. Because this list is for your use in your particular class, after all.

The flaw I’d like to point out is the substitute teacher looks at this “Student Trajectory” and has to decide what that really means in order to understand all the information presented. You have personal information, you have historical information, you have information that applies to particular data points and you have information that applies to the list as a whole. This is the naming problem I’m describing.

But the real problem isn’t necessarily that it’s hard to find a name for things. No, the really hard problem is finding a name that doesn’t just seem right because you found something clever. I blame dopamine.

Dopamine is a wonderful thing. It helps us learn, it functions in eating food. It feels pretty good, and we get a jolt of it when we do something that helps us such as eating, or learning language, or figuring out how to stand up without falling over. It’s one of our many chemical rewards that basically keeps humans from dying out. That good feeling becomes a proxy for knowing if something is the right answer. That’s just biology and how we learn things.

One of the problems, however, is that it’s not that we feel good when we learn something beneficial in particular — there’s no value judgement at all. What that means is we get a hit whether it’s learning that breastmilk makes us not-hungry or when that annoying kid with glasses gives us his lunch money after we punch them.

Thus, we make a new connection between this vexing list of correlated student information and a term that seems like it might fit — “Ah ha! ‘Trajectory’!” — we feel good.*

And then the downside is that it just seems like the right term because we think we’ve learned something or we think we’ve figured something out. The substitute teacher sees “trajectory” and really only knows about projectiles or missiles or airplanes. It’s not immediately obvious how it applies to kids. The poorly chosen term ends up hindering understanding versus just calling it “Student Information”.

So my point, after all of this, is that it’s extremely important to pay attention to how you’re learning things and pay attention to when you have those, “ah ha!” moments. Sometimes you just think you’ve learned something; sometimes you’ve just found a way to put two things together; sometimes it just sounds better in your head.

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* It’s a similar problem to making a decision about something, and then assuming you’re right. Making an active decision feels pretty good, but a side effect is you can think you’re right simply because you’ve decided on something.

Another thing I noticed was increased hair growth after my daughter was born. I just got hairier more quickly. That seems to have tapered off, though I have finally sprouted chestular hair. The whispy tuft peeking out from my shirt collar is kind of embarrassing, actually.

I really wonder if there’s any benefit to these physical changes. Perhaps it’s vestigial, or maybe it’s one of those no harm no foul modifications that neither help nor hinder us as a species.

Perhaps they’re side effects of chemical changes, in fact. I’ve mentioned before about surprising oxytocin-induced moods I experienced. Basically, perceived threats to my daughter prompted sort of animalistic antagonism that I had to quickly tamp down, though just the other day when some jackass woke and scared my daughter by honking at us, I said to my wife, “I want to knife that guy”. That’s really not me talking. In fact that kind of talk sort of scares me. I suppose the difference between me and an animal is I know enough to identify such talk as dangerous and wrong, and suppress it.

On a more positive note, chemically, I distinctly remember a quite interesting sensation I experienced the day Adelaide was born. I was on the phone talking to my sister and trying to describe to her what I was feeling; it seemed exactly as if there was this mechanism in my brain that was slowly whirring to life. Kind of like a machine of gears and valves that had just been lying dormant for a good while but now had reason to fire up. Burners warming, pistons slowly driving wheels, all with the sensation that things were setting up and starting to get in motion for further changes.

It was quite surreal. I can still recall that with perfect clarity. Comparing that sensation with how I feel now, it seems as if the mechanism is running and the cascade of systems that were supposed to be started are now chugging along. I may not have mentioned it before, but I suffer a little from synaesthesia.

I’m trying to think of other life-changes that also had physical changes, but aside from puberty I can’t think of any. You know, pagans like to talk about Maiden/Mother/Crone and Warrior/Father/Sage — I think those are really apt models for understanding life. I think those folks can get a little hung up on the symbolism as something in and of itself, but as a reference or framework to help understand life, I do find it particularly apropos for topics like this.

I think I’ve strayed from my point a little bit.

In any event, I’m looking forward to my new, greyer hair. Silverbacks for the win!

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