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stray bits...

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I will post this.  Although it may ramble, be warned - this morning I have given myself permission to simply write, a sort of private-public diary, to try to tease one noodle out of the bowl, or to follow one twisted path of thoughts up to the root.

Reading Virginia Woolf helped, I think.  Though it also made me discontent again in the routine I have accepted, the one where most of my life and day goes into work for something that I don't fundamentally care deeply about, that is not core to me.  How did that happen - something to do with rent, bills, children I think.  Yet it also has a benefit, this discipline, I have learned valuable patterns from it.  The question is, can I find time to apply those patterns to what is core to me, before my mind becomes more fuzzy than it already is?

I have found, this past year, some threads that do feel deeply central, some possible solutions to the world that I want to try, that can be tried by a single person or a small group, that I believe can grow and live and combat some of the cancers that

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3 min read

Sense and Cents

The power of making sense...

The positive side of capitalism is a free flowing distribution of efforts and resources

Downside is that it is subject to both parasites and cancers

The real thing is the flow of information, effort and fixed resources.  And this flow is more interesting if one starts with information rather than an anonymized proxy for resources.  So information about what efforts are going on, how one can contribute, and what the intended outcome will be, allows people to optimize their contributions.  trust networks, transparency and long term voluntary relationships minimize parasitism and cancers.

This is sort of a draft, will polish this later...

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1 min read

and a book review - The Night Listener

I may not be judging this book fairly as a work of fiction - I wanted to read it because I had originally read the Rock and a Hard Place, the book published by "Pete", when I was about twelve, and had really gotten into it. I'd felt a bit betrayed when I found out it was a hoax, and remembered the note from "Dad" assuring readers that "Pete" was real. So I wanted the story behind that, how Maupin had been hoaxed too.

The Night Listener felt like yet another hoax, unfortunately, a lie about how a lie came to be. Because it didn't account for how the boy's book _was_ published, with a long foreward from Maupin assuring readers that it was real. Why did the real Maupin do that? Did he have doubts at that time, was he trying to help the boy, or did he know it was false and it was some sort of coldhearted calculation in this strange world of elephants? I feel a bit more let down at the end, that this book was again some fantasy for suckers, and nothing to do with whatever the real motivations were in the real story

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1 min read

when is an argument logical? and why that requires an intimacy

Not in the sense of correct or incorrect conclusions, but in the sense of when is an argument or discussion between two people actually a logical argument?  Only if it takes place in a single axiomatic space.  (which is rarely the case!)  In order to actually have a logical argument, both people have to agree on a single space, or set of initial assumptions.  Given the real world of complex inner spaces, this probably means that one person must enter the other's space to explore it and look for inconsistencies and bring up real world data to explain.  Which is why this sort of real argument is necessarily very intimate.

But the type that often occurs, where each person is talking from within their own space, is both illogical and frustrating.

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1 min read

Raw Comforts

For work, I've been put up in 400/night, fancy hotels with player pianos and gleaming artwork, in suites with jacuzzi tubs with views of Hollywood Hills or right in the middle of Mardi Gras.  And I appreciate it.  But, for some reason its comforting getting takeout on the street from the Flying Falafel, whose motto is 'your balls are in good hands', hearing the workers off-color joking in Spanish 'CHING-a tu madre'.  The way that San Francisco is gentle with its homeless, with the crazy people on the street, is also comforting; maybe because it makes me feel that I could be real too, that if I felt a bit crazy or had something not quite expected to say, that no one would raise an eyebrow.

What I find oppressive is the fast food chains that force every worker to say the same words hundreds of times a day.   I'd rather live in a world where people can be themselves, even if its messy and raw.

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1 min read

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