mengwong

In the Evolution of God, Robert Wright claims that our social moral sense, designed by evolution for hunter-gatherer tribal conditions, "misfires" when larger polities fail to recognize non-zero-sum relationships with one another, so they end up making war, not love.

(BTW, I would like to see all evolutionary texts globally replace "designed" with "optimized", please, for the avoidance of doubt.)

Wright suggests a number of reasons for this misfiring.

First, we have technology. Television emphasizes conflict, so the baddest of the bad guys get disproportionate airtime. 99% of Muslims are quite happy to live and let live and go home for dinner and put the kids to bed, but that would make for pretty boring television. (Children of Heaven is one exception.)

Second, in the old days, it was possible to pack up one's marbles and leave. If conflict within hunter-gatherers became too intense, the communities would simply fission, like a swarming beehive, or Jerry Maguire. But nowadays the world is full and there's nowhere else to go.

I have a comment on the second point, and I want to propose a third.

I don't think belligerence is a misfiring. We invented law partly because it became hard to pack up and leave; disputes had to be settled locally. But I would argue that back in hunter-gatherer days, a certain degree of unmitigatable pique was adaptive: it encouraged propagation, exploration, colonization. Peace-loving societies with highly evolved altruistic, cooperative cultures weren't prone to jumping on a boat and discovering new worlds.

Just as the Puppeteers drove Kzin evolution toward pacifism, a maxed-out planet will drive us toward universal post-national social organization. I just hope we don't become so peaceful we give up on space travel. Discovering strange new worlds might be something we rationally talk ourselves into, but I have my money on simpler motivations: can't deal with the in-laws, time to move out of town! In a fair fraction of interstellar sci fi, seedships are organized along national and religious lines. The Sunnis sponsor a colony ship in one direction, and the Shi'ites sponsor another. If we eliminated all capacity for dudgeon those colony ships might never leave!

You know, the great thing about evolutionary psychology is that you can use it to explain anything. It has almost the same degree of explanatory power as blaming things on God. It reminds me of the Zen koan "Maybe": one can always shed new light on past events.

A third reason we misfire is because we have literacy. In a sense this is related to the first – after all, both TV and printed books are information technology. We can't blame TV without also blaming books.

In a hunter-gatherer environment, oral histories were mentally taxing: passing on intimate details about the local flora and fauna was a full-time job, and besides, if all strangers were bad, there wasn't much point in keeping track of which strangers were especially bad.

That changed with literacy. The great irony of being Peoples of the Book is that The Book records old wrongs to inflame each generation anew: what the Sun is to the Olympic flame, the Bible and the Koran are to interreligious conflict. When you memorize the Koran, you memorize all kinds of mean allegations against people who are long dead, but whose descendants live on. That's enough to keep revenge memes alive in a vicious cycle.

For Melissa, for my nieces and nephews, and for anyone who's still not yet free from school...

http://theconversation.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/advice-for-high-school-graduates/

http://philip.greenspun.com/teaching/universities-and-economic-growth

Yesterday at lunch Joi Ito gently mocked founders who have trouble hiring talent.

"Where do we find engineers?" distressed entrepreneurs would ask. "The job boards are no good."

"Maybe start with IRC," Joi said. "You want Ruby programmers, try the #ruby channel, duh."

This made total sense. IRC was my entrée to the Perl community, the Unix community, the opensource community, the startup community. To me, Josh Schachter isn't the guy who started Delicious; he's FMH from #memepool. IRC is how I know Vipul (Cloudmark) and Nat (O'Reilly) and Rael (Stikkit, Twitter) and nocarrier (Napster) and coral (Topsy). I've been on IRC since 1992. Lots of friends know me by my IRC nickname.

But some people are afraid of IRC. If the docs say "for more information, join freenode and go on #ruby" they will say, "oh, god, not another technology. I don't want to go to the trouble of researching IRC, downloading a client, learning a new vocabulary, figuring out how to join and leave channels and set a nickname. It takes too much time. Isn't there something easier?"

At TEDxKL one of the talks emphasized that good leaders are good at learning new things: not just declarative knowledge but procedural. In other words, they're good at transforming themselves and learning whatever skills are needed to rise to the occasion. If the job requires that they learn IRC, they do it. It's not a big deal.

But for some people, learning new things is a big deal. For most people, in fact, years of school has taught them that they're stupid, that learning new things is fraught with failure, potentially painful, best avoided. Or maybe they just don't like doing hard things. Maybe they lack motivation.

These people may be very intelligent – like a battery with high voltage – but they also have high internal resistance.



Po Bronson explored this paradox, that intelligent people are often more afraid of new challenges.

What's your internal resistance to learning new things?

6:24pm James: hi
6:24pm Meng: hi
6:24pm James: how are you doing?
6:24pm Meng: ok, you?
6:24pm James: i am not fine
6:25pm Meng: oh?
Meng: H1N1?
6:25pm James: did i tell you about my travel to London
6:25pm Meng: no
6:26pm James: so sorry about that
6:26pm Meng: hmm?
6:26pm James: please i want you to know that i have a problem
James: and i need your help right away
6:26pm Meng: mmhm
6:27pm James: i was mugged at a gun point last night
6:27pm Meng: oh
Meng: and?
6:28pm James: now i need to get back home so i need your help
6:28pm Meng: right, go on
Meng: brb
6:29pm James: I'm stranded in London because i got robbed at a park in Kentish town,it was a brutal experience, all cash i had on me were stolen and my credit card was collected too now i'm left with no money here.I need help out of here.
James: are you there
James: ?
James: k
6:35pm James: are you back...please i need your help right now
6:43pm Meng: go on then, give me some instructions
6:43pm James: are you there
James: ?
6:43pm Meng: hi
6:44pm James: so i need your help
6:44pm Meng: what do you want me to do?
6:44pm James: i want you to loan me some money
James: so i can get myself back home
James: please i will pay back
6:45pm Meng: okay, go on
6:46pm James: please i want you to get it wired to me here
6:46pm Meng: ok
Meng: go on
6:47pm James: how much can you help me with
James: ?
James: are you there
James: please i have no time to waste
6:48pm Meng: where are you now, then?
6:48pm James: London
James: You can have it done online (www.westernunion.com) or you can go to any nearest bank or amazon booklet..and send me the money here in London
6:49pm Meng: and what's the routing information, then?
6:50pm James: you don't need my bank details
James: all you need is my full name and my present location which is United Kingdom
6:52pm James: are you there
6:52pm Meng: yes, hi
Meng: how much do you need?
Meng: are you in some sort of cybercafe now?
6:52pm James: $500
6:53pm James: so can i send my name and location to now
6:54pm Meng: yeah, send me your exact location, please, so i can direct it appropriately
6:54pm James: Name: James Kao - Location: Kentish Town
James: Address: 256 Kentish Town Road, London, NW5 2AA
James: are you going to send the money right away
James: so i can wait for you for the details of the payment
6:56pm Meng: what's the easiest way for me to do it from within my browser?
Meng: tell me about this amazon booklet thing.
6:57pm James: i think you can even do it online
James: check www.westernunion.com
6:59pm James: are you on the webpage?
6:59pm Meng: are you sure $500 will be enough?
6:59pm James: $800 is all i need right now
James: i was think maybe you could loan me the whole $800
James: i will definitely refund you as soon as i get back home.
6:59pm Meng: you need to buy yourself a plane ticket home?
7:00pm James: no
James: my return flight leaves in some few hours but having troubles with the hotel bills
James: so wondering if you could loan me till i get back home.
7:01pm Meng: which hotel are you at?
7:02pm James: Perry Hilton Hotel
James: are you on the webpage now?
7:05pm James: are you there
7:05pm Meng: oh, right, sorry
Meng: i was just trying to get through to westernunion.com
Meng: what were you up to in london, anyway?
7:05pm James: ok
7:07pm James: vacation
7:07pm Meng: with Jen?
7:08pm James: yes
James: are you no the webpage
James: please i have no time to waste
7:10pm Meng: hey, westernunion.com redirected me to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/20/AR2009012003062.html
7:11pm James: how
7:11pm Meng: isn't that weird?
7:12pm James: I'm not sure of that
7:13pm Meng: you're not sure of what?
7:14pm James: i did not see anythin there
James: ?
7:14pm Meng: does that link not work for you?
7:14pm James: if you have transfer the found there be a details of confirmation
James: yes
7:14pm Meng: wait wait wait, not so fast, you should see this link
7:15pm James: is like you think i'm joking here right
James: ?
7:16pm Meng: wait, look at this link. http://mengwong.com/photography/20040520-rourkejen/dsc_1962.html



41.191.108.130 - - [15/Jun/2009:04:16:31 -0700] "GET /photography/20040520-rourkejen/dsc_1962.html HTTP/1.1" 200 1160 "http://www.meebo.com/" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.6) Gecko/2009011913 YFF3 Firefox/3.0.6"


Host name: 41.191.108.130
IP address: 41.191.108.130
Location: NIGERIA




7:16pm James: are you there
James: don't you want to help me out of here
James: why all this
James: talk to me
James: let me know ok
7:17pm Meng: :)
Meng: hey, can i ask you a question about 419 scams?

You don't have permission to chat with this person.

05:25 < coral> it was so cute, i was in walgreens yesterday
05:26 < coral> and this kid says to her mom I HATE YOU
05:26 < coral> mom looks at kid
05:26 < coral> kid says in rapid-fire voice "when i say that i mean that i hate the circumstance and i still love you and i'm frustrated"
05:26 < coral> or something to that effect
05:26 < coral> you could clearly hear that the kid had learned the rote phrase from the mom precisely
05:26 < Mithril> hah
05:26 < coral> it was hilarious
05:26 < Mithril> 6 year old?
05:28 < coral> or so
05:29 < Mithril> yeah, that sounds about right
05:29 < Mithril> Very cute.
05:31 < dngor> I don't hate you. I hate how youre raising me.
05:37 < Mithril> "Why can't you keep me in the manner to which I would like to become accustomed?"

You can't really have a conversation like this over Twitter. IRC rules.

Helen, this is for you, because I know you're a fan of The Happiness Project.

One of the best classes I took in school talked about the linguistic construction of reality: one of our texts was Metaphors We Live By by Lakoff and Johnson. And we're all familiar with the Sapir-Whorf Eskimo example. more here.

Now, the Declaration of Independence specifies "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness".

The linguist in me says, "ah, what is the metaphor here? Happiness as something to be pursued, eh?"

Linguists are trained to analyze utterances that way. "Falling in love" is a favourite example: unpack it and certain assumptions emerge. When you're falling, you're out of control; something happened to you; maybe you tripped, and now you're having a blissful zero-gravity experience, which you can enjoy until you hit bottom.



Maybe there are mountainous cultures that use the phrase "climbing in love." Maybe for them, you set our sights on a peak, and you choose a belaying buddy, and you take turns on lead, and the route is tough but manageable if you are fit and give it your full concentration, and you have to trust your buddy to catch you when you fall; and after a long, hard climb, you get to the peak, and then you go back down and pick a different peak.



I am delighted that we have the Internets nowadays. The Internets has really put the "search" into "research". I Googled for lakoff "metaphors we live by" "pursuit of happiness" and found a couple of great scholarly pieces:

The Semantic Structure of Gross National Happiness: A View From Conceptual Metaphor Theory by Carl Polley looks at Bhutan and mentions:

The Western concept of "the pursuit of happiness" situates wellbeing within the
metaphorical framework of PURPOSES ARE DESTINATIONS, such that happiness is
understood as a purpose for development within society. In Bhutan, however, the
corresponding metaphors function as expressions of a strategy to increase Gross National
Happiness, as introduced in 1972 by His Majesty King Jigme Singye Wangchuck. Gross
National Happiness establishes qualitatively different metaphorical mappings from those
associated with "the pursuit of happiness," in that the former links wellbeing not only
with the goal of development but also with its means and source. Thus, discussions of
Gross National Happiness in Bhutan highlight social wellbeing in terms of a quantifiable
national or social resource, a substance apparently both within and outside the bodies of
individual citizens.

The Conceptual Structure of Happiness by Zoltán Kövecses says:

• […] It exists separately from you and is outside you.
  
• It is not readily available; it either requires effort to achieve it or comes to you
  
• from external sources.
  
• It takes a long time to achieve it.
  

This is the kind of happiness that comes closest to the one represented by the
phrase “the pursuit of happiness”, which can also be taken as a linguistic example
of the happiness is a desired hidden object conceptual metaphor.

In other words, you are a hunter, and you go on a chase, and your quarry, this beast called Happiness, tries to escape you, and if you're good, you catch it, and bring it back to your village, where you eat it, and later you wear the pelt.



Maybe other societies use a different metaphor: one where you change, and grow, and provide a receptive environment, and happiness rises within you, like leavening in bread.

Oops. Maybe some readers are now saying, "eww, gross, I want nothing to do with yeast growing in me!"

Aren't metaphors fun?

CS Lewis said of Susan: She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now, and she'll waste all the rest of her life trying to stay that age. Her whole idea is to race on to the silliest time of one's life as quick as she can and then stop there as long as she can.

And now Elizabeth Wurtzel has said it about herself.



Put her down as having suffered through a few of the Classic Mistakes that the New Religion 2.0 will try to pre-empt.

Just as schizoid man is the natural product of technological man (Rollo May), depression is the natural product of anomie.

In short: it's not about length; it's about girth.

Let us begin with the user requirements, which are complex.

When the dress shirt is worn without a jacket: Flusser prescribes that the cuff should end just below the wrist and not ride up the arm, even through a full range of motion. No portion of the forearm above the wrist should ever be exposed.

Most unenlightened shirtmakers will measure you standing straight, with arms down, in front of the mirror. Lacking extra sleeve length, a shirt constructed along these principles will fail the Flusser requirement. When you cross your arms, or reach forward to the steering wheel, the cuff will ride up and fall short.

The solution requires several inches of buffer in the sleeve length.

"But," the shirtmaker protests, "if we make the sleeve too long, then the cuffs will fall down your hand, down to your thumb!"

This is only true if the cuff has the wrong girth. When buttoned or linked shut, a shirtcuff should not permit your hand to pass through. Most cuffs are made too loose. The inside circumference of the shirtcuff snugs the cuff to the hand: because the cuff is narrow while the hand widens from wrist to thumb, the cuff is naturally prevented from falling down the hand.

The inside circumference of the shirtcuff is determined by the placement of the buttonholes. To increase the snugness, place the buttonholes farther away from the edge of the cuff.

(I assume link cuffs that kiss, not button cuffs on a barrel.)

When the dress shirt is worn with a jacket, however: the requirements change. The dress shirt should always extend beyond the jacket. The amount of linen shown should be no less than one quarter inch, and no greater than the entire length of the cuff – especially with French cuffs.

In the dandiest case, the extension of shirtcuff beyond jacket cuff should be constant, fixed at one half inch, never varying. It is acceptable to display forearm.

How may this be accomplished? Unlike the shirtsleeve, the jacket sleeve will ride up the arm. This is inevitable unless the jacket has a high scye and a Neapolitan shoulder; but that style is rare.

If the shirtsleeve has a generous length and the cuff pegs to the hand, then stretching the arms out might expose excess cuff.

The solution is to enlarge the outer circumference of the shirtcuff, so that it snugs against the inside of the jacket sleeve.

One fine-tunes the outside circumference by measuring fabric to match the jacket; one fine-tunes the inside circumference by placing the buttonholes to match the hand.

These design requirements demand a linked cuff. The barrel button cuff is simply an inferior design, because it does not permit independent adjustment of inside vs outside girth.

Men ask: "what do women want?"

The answer is lolzen: Women want a man who doesn't ask what women want.

Some men don't ask because they already know.

Some men don't ask because they don't care.

Women tend to end up with the second type – the bad boys – because they outnumber the first.

See also David Deida.

Investors ask "painkiller or vitamin?"

But sometimes it's candy. Sometimes it's crack.

I'm watching Seth Godin's Tribes TEDtalk, and I'm thinking about Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, and about my alumni gazette that tells me what my classmates are up to, and ...

Wouldn't it be cool to have a social network that grouped all the people around the world who were born at the same hour, at the same minute, or even (if enough people sign up) at the same second?

Voyeurism, plus keeping-up-with-the-Joneses, is enough to drive it.

Yes, you could do this already with some existing social network, but a new one, customized to just this purpose, might arise anyway.

Why?

In theory, Amazon is a strict superset of Zappos.

In theory, Facebook provides a strict superset of Twitter.

But the emacs vs vi pattern endures. The Unix Philosophy says: do one thing, and do it well.

First, buy Perfumes: the Guide and read its introductory chapters.

Second, basic sensory appreciation. Wine courses start this way.

In wine, you learn the mechanics of taste: take a decent-sized sip, breathe in through the lips, passing air over the wine, then out through your nose: that's when you smell it.

I have observed that with perfume, if you inhale at different rates -- a light sniff versus a sharp inhalation drawing the scent farther back -- you will smell different aspects of the perfume.

Wine and perfume both change with time: wine needs to breathe; perfumes have top, heart, base notes.

Third, learn to recognize the major perfume notes. Lemon. Bergamot. Amber. Vanilla. Sandalwood. Cedar. Vetiver. Civet. Incense. Lavender. Oakmoss. Rose. Chocolate. Jasmine. Iris. Lily. Leather. Calone. Patchouli. Coumarin. Anise-Licorice. Melon. Tea. These basic notes are perfumery's palette, its primary colours. I will elaborate this section in the future and identify which widely available perfumes have which easily identifiable notes.

Fourth, learn the major families and accords. Chypres. Fougeres. Orientals. Florals.

Fifth, orient yourself with respect to the landmarks. Some perfumes spawned a host of imitators. Smell Angel first and Flowerbomb second. Smell Cool Water. Smell Chanel's Cologne.

Sixth, explore the family trees. Start chronologically with Jicky and see how that conversational thread expanded over the next hundred years. Learn to smell the delta between two related perfumes. Explore the brands: Guerlain for the past, Dior and Chanel and Hermès for the present, and the niche houses for the future.

Seven, appreciate the masterpieces. Mitsouko.

Eight, learn to recognize everything. In the same way that wine geeks can taste a glass and tell you what it is, you should be able to recognize and identify the fifty most common fragrances sold in stores.

Nine, pairings. Associate perfumes with moods, emotions, feelings, occasions. What perfume would be appropriate for what event? With what outfit? With what meal?


I remember reading that some art lecturer once gave a talk to a bunch of photography students. He spent an hour talking about music and ended with "oh, and everything I just said applies to photography, too."

Everything I just said applies equally to typography.

With a tip of the hat to Eric Berne, I humbly submit a new game that people play with themselves.

I call it Agitated Depression, or Addicted to Crisis.

Pattern: Subject is unhappy in some existential way. The subject is not living the life they want to live, and is prevented from doing so by some past or present, real or imagined, injustice; speaking metaphorically, one might say that their chi is blocked.

But the subject does not meet the criteria for a diagnosis of major depression. They do not spend much time ruminating on their unhappiness. Instead they are agitated: they do go on with life. They are high-functioning depressives.

But they do not go on with all of life: the pleasurable parts they deny themselves. Why? Because there is always some major crisis going on. Every day is an emergency. They have to devote all their energy to the crisis. In fact, they way they spend their time could be described as responsive: events occur, and they react, but they do not lead the plot.

This rushing from one crisis to another is a way of distracting oneself from the depression, of not processing the underlying trauma that inflamed the self in the first place.

Let me draw an analogy. Some procrastinators excuse themselves by saying "I perform better under pressure." The week before an assignment is due, they hide under the covers and watch TV. The day it's due, they stay up 24 hours straight, fueled by caffeine and adrenaline, and get a huge rush out of turning in the work with seven seconds to spare.

To be sure, there are plenty of important causes in the world. The climate crisis is a crisis. The situation in Darfur is a crisis. And there are good men and women who are devoting every waking moment to these crises. I do not mean to imply that they are being escapist.

I'm speaking, rather, of the news junkie, the activist addict, who stays up late surfing for news of crises around the world, feeling alternately outraged, inspired, and overwhelmed. I think of it as a one-person play, in which a single actor plays all three roles of the Karpman drama triangle.



Why do they persist in picking at the scab, as it were? Could it be because feeling outraged about someone else is better than feeling sad about yourself?

During the hours when Mother Teresa was not busy saving others, was she a pleasant person to be around, or did she have an irritable disposition? I ask merely for information.

One problem I see in beginner activists is that they take the spoon allegory of heaven and hell a little too seriously.

Sure, in heaven they're all feeding one another. Great. But on this earth, you get to feed yourself. And you should.

Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, it's at the end of your arm, as you get older, remember you have another hand: The first is to help yourself, the second is to help others.
-- Audrey Hepburn

Sometimes beginner activists make the mistake of using both their hands to help others. Eventually they end up needing help themselves. The model doesn't scale.

Last month I brought my camera to a conference and took pictures. As usual, a number of women hid from the lens. This was not unusual: plenty of people don't like to be photographed.

Later, when chatting with one of the liveliest avoiders, I found out that she used to be a photojournalist herself. "I hate having my picture taken," she said. But she used to take plenty of pictures of other people, I pointed out. "Yup. It's okay when I'm taking the picture. I'd rather be behind the camera than in front of it."

I have found three major reasons to fear the camera.

Objection One: Your SLR Looks Like A Gun. A matte black SLR with a massive lens looks like a weapon. It's the same kind of visceral response that gets war photographers shot. A tiny pink point and shoot, on the other hand, resembles a vibrator.

Objection Two: You Have the Power to Make Me Look Bad. When primitive peoples first encountered photography, they said that the camera could steal your soul, and they refused to be photographed. Guess what? It only took a couple generations of paparazzi to prove them right. When an unflattering picture of someone gets published, it's like character assassination on the cheap: a bad picture is worth a thousand nasty words.

Objection Three: I'm not Photogenic. Most laypeople who are not professional models have only ever had pictures taken of them by other laypeople who know very little about portraiture. Most lay pictures are snapshots using direct on-camera flash; and as every photographer knows, front flash is the most unflattering light there is. So most laypeople are conditioned to think that they look bad in pictures, that they're not photogenic, whatever that means. They don't think about the fact that pictures in women's magazines involve professional models who have posed for hours, under professional lighting, with the assistance of professional makeup and hair experts, for hundreds, if not thousands, of pictures, which were later carefully culled and Photoshopped.

Some people respond to any picture of themselves with horror. Everybody around them could be saying "hey, that's a great picture of you" and they'll say "oh my God, I look fat/ugly/imperfect/unhappy/weird, delete it, delete it, delete it." Is there a name for this phenomenon? Surely there must be.


Yet some people seem quite immune to photography. They do not fear the camera. They are preternaturally self-possessed. They really don't care what other people think of them. They have come to terms with their self-image and have given up trying to control it. They know that looking bad in pictures doesn't mean they're a bad person. False assumptions, mean-spirited criticisms, and inaccurate impressions do not concern them. They are water off a duck's back. They meet Paul Graham's test of adulthood: they respond to challenges not with defensiveness but with composure. In Status Anxiety Alain de Botton refers to this as the shield of reason in response to criticism. Some people, when criticized, raise an eyebrow and say, "is that justified?" Other people bare their breasts to every wound.

Your reaction to having a camera pointed at you shows what you think of yourself.

The camera is a reliable barometer of confidence, maturity, self-esteem.



Each of the above objections can be answered rationally.

Yes, an SLR looks like a gun. But a 200mm lens with good bokeh is much more likely to take a good, professional-looking, frame-filling portrait than a point-and-shoot that's fixed at 28mm.

Yes, you might look stupid, and I just might take your head and photoshop a naked body onto it, and if you were a teenager, had low self-esteem, and were at the mercy of the poisonous opinion of your equally insecure peers, then you might be afraid that your classmates might giggle and you might feel dreadful, but actually, that has nothing to do with my camera and everything to do with the fact that you're fifteen.

Yes, you might not think you are photogenic, but that is because you have had fewer pictures taken of you, in your entire life, than a professional model has taken of her in a single day. Nine out of every ten pictures will be crap. That doesn't mean you shouldn't take any pictures at all. That means you should take a hundred, hoping to get ten good ones. It's like investing: you have to diversify, spread the risk, get the numbers working for you and not against you.

The reason I take so many pictures of you, the reason I rip film, the reason I spray-and-pray, is because I'm after the best picture of a hundred, not the worst. I'm on your side. That vicious brat you know who thinks it's funny to take bad pictures of you? I'm not him.

When people take my picture, I hope they take more pictures, not fewer.



I must confess I share many of the same instinctual misgivings when somebody takes my picture. I once yelled at a photojournalist for taking a picture of me in a public place. The next year, when I became a photojournalist myself, I learned better.

Now, half a million exposures later, I am an experienced photojournalist and portraitist. I can point my camera at most people and produce an image that secretly delights them. I know this because, about a week later, I see that they've changed their profile pic and I say with pleasure "hey, I took that picture!"

But, at the end of the day, if somebody doesn't want me to photograph her, I will accede. There's no profit in reminding someone that she is not the woman she wants to be.

I propose a subtle social metric.

Complicit Authoritarianism (a term I hereby claim to coin, since Google shows only 3 hits) is defined as the likelihood that an official authority figure will, when summoned, take the side of an unofficial authority figure, with no reason other than default bias.


Example One. A fortnight ago, I was standing outside a mall, in the rain, under an umbrella, with a camera. Joe McNally wanted me to take pictures in bad weather: and so I did.



The mall security guard started shouting at me. "No taking pictures! Not allowed!"

I was standing on the sidewalk, in a public space, taking pictures of a public space, so I ignored him. After all, this was Singapore, a liberarian city-state, not the the dystopian homeland of George Orwell where cops themselves stop tourists from photographing the iconic London buses.

Eventually I moved on. But I wonder: if the security guard had called the cops, and if the cops had showed up, would they have asked me to please stop bothering the guard and move along?


Example Two. On my walk to work today I encountered a set of TensaBarriers (you know, the retractable belt barriers they use to fold queues at airports). These barriers had been set up to block a driveway, preventing cars from entering; reasonable enough, as it was a weekend and the building was shut. But the barriers were also blocking the sidewalk: they were in the way of pedestrians.

I unhooked the belt, so that I could pass through.

If a security guard had seen me do this, and if that security guard had called the cops, I wonder if the cops would have wanted the public sidewalk open or closed.


Let me take it to the logical extreme. In Singapore, as in most cities, gentlemen no longer wear hats. If I were to wear a silk top hat around town, thereby offending some conservative, and if that conservative started shouting at me to take off the hat, and if I refused, and if the police were summoned, I wonder if the police would tell them to piss off, or if they would ask me to take off the hat and stop causing trouble.

(Yes, I chose the top hat for a reason, lol.)

Thank God there are still some places like New York and San Francisco and Black Rock City where you're allowed to be weird.

Luca Turin's Perfumes: The Guide calls Chanel's Eau de Cologne "an object lesson to every perfumer since the 1750s."

There is a special pleasure to witnessing tired classics dusted off and played properly—for example, Carlos Kleiber's fresh-as-paint interpretation of Strauss's "Blue Danube" at his Vienna New Year concert. The cologne is perfumery's waltz and, like its musical equivalent, needs sweep, snap, and a touch of naughtiness to work properly. The recipe for cologne has been in the public domain for two hundred years, and I was very curious to see what Chanel would bring to this equation. Luxury versions of simple things often bring to mind Constant Lambert's quip "The trouble with a folk song is that once you have played it through there is nothing much to do except play it over again and play it rather louder." No such thing here, no doubld strings, no massed bands. Chanel has worked on the two ends of the fragrance. The lemon top note is given extra zing by a deliciously bright green-herbaceous note in the manner of Eau de Guerlain but lss obvious, while the drydown uses an el-expensivo animalic musk (I'd guess Firmenich's Muscone) that harks back to pre-World War I masculines. All in all, simply the best cologne on earth. LT

Personally, it reminds me of Singapore Airlines's hot towels, in the 1980s, but apparently that scent is actually Tuscan Soul.

I picked up a sample of 31 Rue Cambon as well.

31 Rue Cambon (Chanel) floral ambery
I cannot remember the last time, if ever, a perfume gave me such an instantaneous impression of ravishing beauty at first sniff. There is an affecting softness, a gentle grace to 31 that beggars belief. Such a classical masterpiece must, by definition, be standing on the shoulders of giants, and identifying them can be a compelling game. At times 31 brings to mind the old Chant d'Arômes, before Guerlain messed with it. There is also a touch of the first Dioressence, that overripe, blowsy milky-fruity note of lactones that Gucci Rush took to its logical extreme. But Chant d'Arômes was demure, Dioressence come-hither, and Rush a monochrome. Chanel's 31 does not play games, try to seduce, or attempt to be modern. Perhaps the real precursor of 31 is that flawed masterpiece, Yves Saint Laurent's Champagne. Champagne too was a soft, fruity chypre, but its brassy, plangent treatment of the theme suggested the decadence of a once-great lineage. By contrast, 31 shows that in the higher reaches of art, time is suspended. One of the ten greats of all time, and precious proof that perfumery is not yet dead. LT

in the press pack for 31 Rue Cambon, Chanel boasts of having composed a chypre fragrance without the sine qua non: oakmoss, a resin extracted from a lacy lichen that looks something like frisée and grows mainly on oak trees in Eastern Europe. When cooked into usable form, it becomes a thick goo with a medieval fairy-tale smell of smoke, ink, and forest mulch, which gives the rich and sweet chypre idea its bitter backbone. So what is a chypre without oakmoss? An exercise in illusion via allusion. By arranging a series of familiar cues, 31 Rue Cambon calls to mind other great fragrances, older and recent, and makes you imagine the missing element. That rich iris beginning, substituting a nose-ticklingly dry pepper for the leather, promises Chanel's own Cuir de Russie; floating in and out of focus is the jasmine heart of Diorella, fizzy and bright as cold 7UP; you find a lemon-custard moment that maks you think briefly of Shalimar Light, among others; and oh, that big, singing amber, didn't you met it in Guerlain's Guet-Apens? This fragrance was designed to claim a great inheritance, and it fits in the family portrait perfectly. … TS

Startups spend a lot of time figuring out business models.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/05/thinking-about-business-models.html

Has someone published a comprehensive directory of business model patterns, the same way Christopher Alexander published patterns for architecture, and the gang of four published patterns for software? The Cookbook pattern is versatile. Could we apply it to business models?

Such a compendium could list:

- recurring revenue
- razors and razorblades
- advertising
- simple subscription
- multi-tier price discrimination based on features
- t-shirt merchandising
- professional services consulting
- free product, commercial support / SLA
- metered utility
- taxation / tithing
- membership fees
- attendance fees
- charging for tests
- charging for restricted content
- etc

I believe I was recommended The Profit Zone. Any others?

“People have a very weird perception of large numbers,” he said. “If you have 2,000 cases of flu in a country of 300 million, most people think they’re going to be one of the 2,000, not one of the 299,998,000.” - New York Times

Pandemic status has more to do with transmission rate. We're still waiting on the CFR (case fatality rate). If it's bad … then panic.

Meanwhile, at least two weeks of food and water at home, everyone, I told you this last time round.

I have an 18 year old niece in Australia, just graduated high school, now contemplating university.

I fear she has not been given a good map of the territory. "What's an MBA?" she asked. "What's an MFA?"

Even if grad school is several years away, it's still a good idea to get a sense of things early.

Has anyone produced a visual guide to higher education? Showing the difference between a diploma and a Bachelor's, between a Bachelor's and a Master's? Showing the different routes one may take to become a lawyer, doctor, accountant, and how systems differ across countries? In some systems you go to med school or law school when you're 18. In some systems when you're 22. Personally I think 22 is better.

Her family has certain expectations of her. Turnabout would show her what educations her family have themselves received.

To solve this problem generally, I think a high-school class on Education would be very handy. Students have been in it so long, it seems only fair to give them a look behind the scenes, and show them how they, the sausages, were made. It would be incredibly eye-opening to learn that there are alternatives. The curriculum could include readings like Newman's The Idea of a University and Postman's The End of Education.

Anyway, I ended up writing my niece a letter extolling the benefits of a liberal arts education. I might buy her Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton – a wonderful introduction.



more ... download full text Advice to a Young Lady on the Choice of a Major

I once fell in love with a girl because she was so darned curious.

Sure, she was smart: she could take two ideas, cross 'em, and come up with a third.

And she was pretty.

But most of all what turned me on was the way she would go look up things she didn't know.

In my day, they called that "research skills."

Nowadays they just call it "Google".

One of the unwritten rules of geek culture is this: never ask a human something that you could look up yourself. Geeks hate being interrupted. As a matter of etiquette, they avoid interrupting others except when absolutely necessary. Asynchronous media FTW!

A bunch of geeks hang out on an IRC channel I know. Between posting BoingBoing URLs and complaining about the mysteries of the opposite sex, bursts of highbrow chatter would sometimes occur.

One of the guys on the channel tended to slow things down. If someone used a word he didn't know, he'd plaintively ask, "what does ______ mean?" He'd expect it to be explained to him.

It eventually got too much for the others. One of them snapped and said, quite directly, "dude, is your google broken? wtf."

This girl that I was madly in love with, OTOH, would just go off quietly and look things up and come back, instantly educated by Wikipedia. She was delighted when I showed her the Googlepedia plugin.

Remember the scene in the Matrix where Neo needs to learn to fly a helicopter, fast? And Tank just downloads it into his brain? Learning new things fast is a superhero trait.

She was like that. She was like that about everything. She had an amazing appetite for ideas. So sexy.

Especially in today's world where knowing things is so darned useful, and learning things so darned easy, a lack of curiosity bespeaks a certain abjectness of spirit. I can think of only three reasons which might get in the way of someone going off to learn all about something that they're interested in.

A fear of appearing ignorant. Someone once mentioned that the difference between jocks and geeks is that geeks embrace curiosity whereas jocks defensively disdain it.

A lack of confidence in one's intellectual competence. If, over the years, you've acquired the conviction that your intuition or your reasoning is reliably faulty, you'll give up trying. I blame science education for this. The impulse behind scientific enquiry is to identify and explore every counterintuitive fact that nature presents. The impulse is admirable. But in school, it can appear inadvertently mean: "As with most materials, water expands when heated, and contracts when cooled," goes the physics teacher. "So if you took a beaker of water at 100C, and cooled it to 50C, it would become denser, right? And it would keep doing that through 40C and 30C and 20C, right? But guess what! At 4C it expands! And when it freezes, it expands even more! Ice floats! Gotcha!" A confident geek would say, "oh, that's interesting; I wonder why." But most people, after enough of those gotchas, get the message that the world is baffling and their intuition is no good.

Laziness. Some people just haven't got the capacity: they might lack the bandwidth, or the CPU, through no fault of their own. Okay, so maybe "laziness" is the wrong word. Maybe they didn't get enough iodine growing up. But maybe they just lack the motivation, because they've never experienced the pleasure of finding things out, as Feynman might say. Maybe they have better things to do. But if watching TV is the better thing, maybe "laziness" is the right word after all.

Curiosity is so important. Suppose your 4 month old baby got sick on a Friday evening, while you were out of town. What would you rather hear from your spouse:
- "the doctor's office is closed, I'll call them first thing Monday", or
- "I may not be a doctor, but I'm going to go online, do some research, and try to diagnose this"?

Curiosity killed the cat, but we aren't cats, eh?