Love for Love's Sake

Great poetry goes well with chocolate... this gem from Elizabeth Barret Browning was printed on the inside wrapper of my most recent chocolate bar!

If thou must love me, let it be for nought

Except for love's sake only. Do not say

I love her for her smile--her look--her way

Of speaking gently,--for a trick of thought

That falls in well with mine, and certes brought

A sense of ease on such a day--

For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may

Be changed, or change for thee,--and love, so wrought,

May be unwrought so. Neither love me for

Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheek dry,--

A creature might forget to weep, who bore

Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!

But love me for love's sake, that evermore

Thou may'st love on, through love's eternity.

How to Lose Weight

Look, as a human being, here is what you need, in order: air, sleep, water, food, shelter, clothing, love. Wanna maximize your life? Breathe the freshest air you can. Sleep in a comfortable place. Drink pure water. Eat the best you can (the topic of this post). Make your home (cave) comfortable. Dress first for function, then form. Love freely. I promise... you do these things and everything else in your life will improve!

Eating properly:

• Know and keep to proper portions for your food/meals
  Most people eat way too much. Go visit the sick or elderly in the hospital and note the food portions of their meals. You'll do some good in the process too!
  
  
• Control your urges
  If you're not already eating healthy, just accept the fact that you don't need sweets or desserts but once a day. Get your sugar buzz from nature's natural foods.
  
  
• Know what is good food
  Veggies are good, fruit is good... they don't need butter or salt, learn to enjoy the taste of pure food... once you get used to it, you'll find it's better than processed.
  
  
• Knowledge of BAD food
  You are what you eat! Literally! (You're also what you watch on TV, but that's another post!) Avoid high-fructose corn syrup, chemicals (eat organic), and anything that you don't know what it is. Hint... if it contains stuff that isn't a pure food (like MSG) don't eat it.)
  
  
• Walking (exercise). Walk to work. If you don't live close enough to do this, move or get a new job. (I hear you laughing, I'm 100% serious.) Your body (and the environment) will thank you.
  

How to Be Happy

Remember, it feels good to be alive! If it doesn't, you're doing something wrong! Fix it!

Stress feels bad, yes you can feel PRESSURE!

Tips for coping with a bad day
- already have a clean house (or clean it)
- shower (hopefully you're already groomed)
- scent (purfume, aroma therapy)
- comfort (fabrics, foods, friends)
- properly meditate (organics over synthetics)
- properly medicate (organics over synthetics)
- enjoy (repeat as necessary)

Back home again, in Indiana...

Back home again, in Indiana,
and it seems, that I can see ...

Um... lots of things. I've left California for now (more on that later) and have just arrived to the land of my birth. I was picked up at the airport by my uncle, who offered to take me out to dinner... bonus!

He wanted to go to Cracker Barrel, where they don't practice equal rights and where they put animal bits in the veggies just to piss off the vegetarians. (Seriously, check out the menu; lard (animal fat) in the carrots, bacon in the green beans, chicken stock in the soup & rice, etc., and who knows what they put into cornbread that makes it non-vegetarian.)

I politely declined, and I was able to talk him into Max & Erma's instead (it was the best I could do). How quickly I forget that this is the land of fat people and bad food. For example, I tried to order (from the menu) steamed broccoli, only to be informed that there is no way they can prepare it (or the other steamed veggie menu item) without butter. No way to do it!?!? WTF? I know healthy choices are not chosen here, but they can't steam veggies without drowing them in butter? Good greif, Charlie Brown!

My uncle teased me that there wouldn't hardly be any butter on them, and when they came, he offered up a floret. I chose one tiny piece and I felt like I was drinking melted butter from the tap ala Homer Simpson. Yuck! He could barely taste the butter, but then again, the restaurant put 1/2 a stick on his baked potato, so I guess after that, you wouldn't, would you?

I then looked around and noticed the percentage of obsese (not overweight, obese) folks around me, and I pitied them. Here they are, like my uncle, thinking they are doing the right thing by ordering broiled fish (broiled in butter) and eating veggies, but no... they might as well be eating a Snickers. Sigh.

On the inspiring side, it is wonderfuly warm and humid, such a welcome change from the comfortable, arid California air with it's freshly washed air from the Pacific. It is beautiful here, though not in a Big Sur kind of way, but in a "boy, the corn sure is 7ft tall" kind of way.

Visions from the Pacific

A good friend of mine suggested I take a drive down the Pacific Coast Highway from Monterey to Big Sur before I left California. (And you didn't know I was even out there, eh?) The scenery was so moving, she composed a list of the form "It is so beautiful ..." and in that spirt, I'd like to do the same for my trip, so here goes.

It was so foggy ...

1. Carmel should have been named White Chocolate.
   
2. I felt like I was inside the world's biggest bong hit.
3. I couldn't see myself holding my picture of a polar bear in a snowstorm.
4. If I closed my eyes, I could almost see the ocean.
5. Foggy 'ol London-town seemed like San Jose by comparison.
6. Why are all those dogs barking and where did the come from?
7. Big Sur could have been a her.

Since I'm from the MidWest, where the weather comes from, I wasn't going to let a little fog ruin my trip. Perhaps I was in such a good mood because of the little roadster I was driving. I felt like I was in a car commercial... the faster I went around those mountainside curves, the more the car hugged the road. It was like driving sex. I felt bad for not having bought the mountain dinner beforehand.

So in my post-asphalt glow, I hiked down the side of the mountain and sat and meditated. I focused on the barks of the otters. I became the barks. I contemplated my existence and my future, and found it to be reflected in the fog surrounding me. Then, as the clouds parted and I could for the first time see the oceans and animals below, I went back to the car and took a photo (shown above).

About the photo... the one posted here doesn't do justice to the original one I created. it's 20,000 pixels by 6,000 pixels and for you to experience it as I designed it, you would need to stack 5 monitors on top of each other, and then replicate that 16 times to the right. (!) Cutting-edge technology is like Sesame Street to me... anyone want to fund my artistic endeavors and research? :)

Oh, if you're curious how I could memorize such an innane little list about my experience that has nothing to do with reality... I used a memory palace. The palace I used was London, outside my flat, and here's the image I created which helped me remember the list:

A polar bear smoking from a Roor (brand of bong) outside my flat with a dog barking at it, held by a dude in a dress eating carmel candies with his eyes closed.

Neat, huh?

Introduction to Drugs, Part II

Here are two articles on a recent scientific study on the effects of our friend, psylocybin (the 'magic' in 'Magic Mushrooms').

• Wall Street Journal, Go Ask Alice
• Forbes, M&M Drug Study

(In general, I don't read news sites with advertising, but that's the topic of another post. These links were sent to me by a trusted friend, so I'll just move on...)

Make what you will from the articles, for the claims are true, but I want to address a few things.

#1: "Two-thirds described the effects of the drug, called psilocybin, as among the five most meaningful experiences of their lives."

Yeah, that happens. Ask me though, and getting high in a lab wouldn't be up there... getting high with friends at home, in a club, in the woods, in the city, I.E., doing something... yah, those can be great times! They are only the most meaningful experiences until you actually do the things that you realized while tripping... then those experiences become the most meaningful things. Get it?

#2: "But in 30% of the cases, the drug provoked harrowing experiences dominated by fear and paranoia. Two participants likened the episodes to being in a war."

Yeah, that happens... until the responsible tripper tells them... "Hey... you're just tripping on a bad thought... everything's okay, we're having a great time," and then... they do. Tripping in an unfamiliar, sterile place like a lab is a recipe for a bad trip! I'm surprised only 30% had one!

#3: The method employed... First off, they selected people with no prior hallucinagenic drug experiences, and gave them no training. OMG!

And finally, the sad part, couched in the amazing part:

It was widespread abuse in the 1960s that led to hallucinogens becoming illegal, effectively shutting down then-burgeoning corporate and academic research programs that had suggested the agents might be valuable research and therapeutic tools. One of the last influential studies was the Good Friday Experiment in 1962 in which 20 seminary students were given either psilocybin or nicotinic acid during a religious service. The 10 who got psilocybin reported intense spiritual experiences with positive benefits; one follow-up study suggested those effects lasted 25 years.

Entheogen literally means (from ancient Greek) "that which generates God (or godly inspiration) within a person."

Not all drugs are bad... not all people who use them are evil dealers, and not all uses of them are perverse, some are even holy!

The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades

It's sunny in California!

Plants regulate their activity (blooming, fruiting, etc.) based not on temperature, but instead on the number of hours of light in a day.

So do people!

I'm staying in a house of glass, in California, in the summer.

Did I mention it's sunny out here? It's impossible to block out the sun in this house.

That means my normal routine of going to bed at 7am and waking up at 1pm isn't feasible. Instead (thanks to timezone change) I now go to bed at 4am and am up around 7am.

You'd think that would make a girl sleepy... but apparently not, as I've been doing this for a couple of weeks now!

I love the west coast!

Experience Apple

I just recently applied to Apple for several openings for user interface engineers, usability experts, and software engineers. As you would expect from such a sophisticated computer company, their job application process begins with the web, at http://jobs.apple.com.

The first thing a potential employee needs to do is create an account. Actually, you don't need to create an account to search for jobs, and this is cool. So, I searched through the listings and started to make note of some potential good fits. After a while, I noticed that the site provided a mechanism for storing the details of jobs of interest. Bonus! So, I start adding jobs to my 'job list.'

But this process is time-consuming, and the way they have their system setup is - I kid you not - about the least efficient way of searching for jobs. So alas, my session times out, I have to re-log in, and guess what... my job list is completely erased.

Bastards! So, I create an account. I search for jobs again. I start to get annoyed that I can't press the 'back' button without resubmitting my search critera, and if I do, the server resets my page position back to the top (searching through a list of 509 jobs... keeping the same place is important!)

The alternative is to manually resubmit search critera (instead of having the browser do it) and that just yields the same results, except with more effort.

Interestingly, if I search for jobs in London, I get *MORE* jobs than if I search for the UK. Undeterred, I keep saving potential jobs to my list and begin to create my online resume for Apple (they won't accept PDFs of CVs like every other rational technology company does).

I start to create the resume. I avoid the temptation of the 'cut and paste' option; surely it will look better if I fill in their forms, right? Erm... I get strange errors trying to avoid the timeout issue... double postings of information... most forms handle, but some create problems... like adding schools. Bah!

I keep going and I keep getting timeout messages and finally, it ignores my request and times me out anyway. I lose my saved job list.

$@#@$^*%^$#$@#$^#&*$^%#$@#@%^&*(*&^%$#$%^&*(*&^%$#

...

I refine my online CV; it keeps treating it like I've created a new one and notifiying apple of the changes. (ick!)

...

You can send applications to multiple jobs in your job list at once; I plan to do in two batches, one for the software engineering job, one for the usability jobs. After doing one, the system deletes the saved jobs that I didn't apply for, so I have to add them AGAIN!!!

...

A friend of mine who works for Apple as a head engineer once proudly told me how all of Apple only has like 20 engineers. They should have spared one for their application system. Apple would be blessed to have someone like me working for them, and GOD AS MY WITNESS, I TRIED, but dammit, Janet!

In the end, I withdrew everything after seeing Apple HQ in Cupertino and having lunch there. Do you remember high school? That's *exactly* what it felt like. I repeat, I have not felt like I have been in high school that much except for the time I was actually in high school. Yeah, funk this, I hated high school, the last thing I want to do is work at a place like that.

Funny, cause I would have thought it would have been more like a college.

Apple? iGlad iNot

Fried Yellow Worms

Fried Yellow Worms

a
haiku
by
PrettyGetter

Why, hello birdie!
Why are you staring at me?
You must be hungry!

Would you like some food?
Would you like a strawberry?
Birds eat berries, right?

Huh? You don't want it?
You are turning down good food?
What is it you want?

Wait; this is Mc'Ds
I bet you want a french fry!
(How sad, if is true!)

Reaching in the sack,
Finding a fried yellow worm,
Tossing to the ground.

Look at birdie eat!
Faster than I imagined,
Fries over berries!

If you feed the birds,
remember, no strawberries,
but fried yellow worms.

Does Not Compute... part II

In an earlier post, I complained about the 'tests' us humans have to go through to prove designers that we are really humans. It seems I was a bit rash...

Hotcaptcha is a mash-up 'are you a human' test which uses photos from HotOrNot to determine if a user on the other end of the net is a human or a person. Here's a sample:

You can vote on just boyz, just girlz, or a mix of both.

It's really kind of a creepy experience... looking at 6 people who statistically rank as 3 or lower and 3 people who rank as 8 or higher. You don't normally see that kind of thing in a club in real life. I mean, you see ugly people all the time, (say, at Wal-Mart, or anywhere in Midwest America) but you don't normally find dispersed among them in a 1-to-3 ratio extremely hot people... and this is a good thing (for most people) because it creates the 'office pretty' effect and the 'sacred cow' phenomenon!

We've all felt the effects of the 'office pretty' person... that individual who is empirically, not that attractive, but when you place hir in a room with even less attractive people, over time, sie becomes more and more attractive. Given enough time in a job, a 5 can become a 9, in other words.

You can also see the 'sacred cow' effect when ordinary girls go to an engineering school dominated by boys. All of a sudden, with the lack of competition, they are magicially tranformed to the state of goddess. Their sense of entitlement is almost cute. I imagine this happens to boys in say, Elementary Education and Nursing courses too, though presumably both take place inside the larger liberal arts system where attractive boys can be found.

But I digress... anyway, to date, this is the most amusing (and at the same time, appalling) !Turing Test I've come across. What's a !Turing Test? Why, it's the opposite of a Turing Test, of course! What's a Turing Test? Put simply, it's a test imagined by Alan Turing in a paper he wrote in 1950 (you can read it here) which has come to be the foundation of the philosophy of artificial intelligence.

Because I'm too lazy to type this fresh, allow me to quote from the book of Wikipedia:

The test was inspired by a party game known as the "Imitation Game", in which a man and a woman go into separate rooms, and guests try to tell them apart by writing a series of questions and reading the typewritten answers sent back. In this game, both the man and the woman aim to convince the guests that they are the woman. Turing proposed a test employing the imitation game as follows: "We now ask the question, 'What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?' Will the interrogator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman? These questions replace our original, 'Can machines think?'" (Turing 1950) Later in the paper he suggested an "equivalent" alternate formulation involving a judge conversing only with a computer and a man.

Turing originally proposed the test in order to replace the emotionally charged and (for him) meaningless question "Can machines think?" with a more well-defined one. The advantage of the new question, he said, was that it "drew a fairly sharp line between the physical and intellectual capacities of a man." (Turing 1950)

And thus, we see how the history of computing, artificial intelligence, and HotOrNot is linked to boys trying to pass as girls.

Now that we're up to speed, I'd like to suggest that the real question should be can the system of man+machine be considered to think? For this, the judge is your consciousness (pause on that for a moment)... the 'man' is your physical body, and the 'machine' is whatever you are interfacing with on the other side of your computer screen. Will your consciousness decide that the combination of your body plus machine be considered to think?

Once you grok this, you'll probably come to the same conclusion as Alan Turing, that the original quesitons of 'can machines think' is fairly meaningless, and misses the point entirely, kinda like this mashup of HotOrNot.

This Day In Herstory... July 7, 2005

It's been a rough year. Personally, I've met with tremendous growth opportunities (read: pain) and my work has been intense, but very productive.

And so I suppose it's never convenient to get robbed. It just plain sucks. You come home and everything seems normal (because they picked your locks) and the first thing you notice is that your first view into the flat, which is always the same... is somehow different. The room is not like you last left it, which is impossible for someone who lives alone. The you notice your projector is missing. WTF? The mind reels for an explanation and you emotionally attach to the first thing that pops into your head. "Why would my landlord come in here and borrow it without even asking me first? He doesn't even know how to use it!"

Then you notice open drawers in the bedroom and the awful reality begins to sink in... YOU HAVE BEEN ROBBED!

You run to your stash of currencies in five different countries... well hidden, but now... gone. How smart of you to avoid needlessly paying currancy conversion fees by keeping a wad of cash hidden in your bedroom. Yeah, you were ready to fly to any given country on a whim (and you did), but now you're $20K poorer. You've gone from buying gifts for friends 'just because' to not being able to buy groceries in just 3 short hours.

You look around, in shock. What else is gone? Credit cards? A great tinge of panic... no, they left them... they were only looking for things they could sell quickly. My computers!!! My terabytes of data!!! No, they left them... too bulky. The thought of losing so much personal data makes you woosey, you sit on the floor. My jewlery? Gone. Now you realize the memories attached with them are now just that ... memories. Gut-wrentching pangs. Slowly, this turns to anger and action. You rush downstairs to view the CCTV of the shop below you, knowing that the perp would be captured on the screen. After 15 minutes of searching... you've found him. Now you rush out onto the street, frantically searching for that bastard.

Hours later, you come home exhausted, spent, and miserable. But in the end, what's missing? You still have your health, your experience, your friends, you ... it doesn't work. Fact is, your life savings is gone and so is a $4,000 projector, which was also your main source of entertainment, information, and relaxation. Heh, but you can forget about relaxing now. How about getting exponentially more paranoid for every hour you are away from home. How about doing an inventory check everytime you return to your flat? How about going out of your way to hide things you would normally have displayed?

Weeks go by, and then, finally, one day, you find yourself not looking longingly at the blank spaces where your stuff used to live. You find yourself enjoying being out again. You have come to believe that yes, you have passed some cosmic Taoist test about attaching yourself to your material possesions. And then, one ordinary Sunday afternoon, you come home to find your front door in two pieces.

Now add in loads of stress and aggrivation from living and working in a foreign country and being separated from your friends, family, and comforts, put yourself in a competitive publish or perish environment, and throw in, just for fun, a good measure of gender dysphoria. Welcome to my July 5, 2005. It's pretty fuct, I know... and then ... not just two days later...


Bombs in my backyard! I live at the left part of the #4 circle. From my home, I can walk to the bus blast in 4 minutes and the Russell Square blast 6 mins... that should give you an idea of how close I am. What in distance to Americans might just be the width of a mall can cover two small inner London towns here, so while the blasts were physically close to me, they were literally in another city from my eyes… I walk everywhere, my physical world is small.

However, the blasts occurred where many students and locals work and live, right on the fringes of UCL's campus. The bus blast occurred just outside where UCLIC (and my old office) was based.

My first reaction was to phone home and let family know I'm fine. I've never heard my mother in more of a fit of despair, fear, and panic. Somehow, she seemed to know before it happened. Meanwhile, the local reaction was much more of what you'd expect from a people who had World War II on their door step... people in London worked. Most high street stores closed early (because there was not much interest in shopping), but city services were near normal. Kids were not told of the event while at school… at then end of the day, they were told ‘a security event has occurred’ and they left it to the parents to explain what happened. Now that's slick.

For most people, getting OUT of central London was trickier than normal, but not impossible.

I wasn't able to sort my mind before the explosions, but that didn't seem to matter as my mind was focused on the things that really mattered. Since then, I have been helping friends, and also walking around the city, talking to strangers in need, helping them, and taking photos of this beautiful and calm city so you all back home can know I continue to be safe and happy. Many people just need to talk about it, and have someone listen. I guess I'm no different.

I don’t know what the media coverage of this event is like in America… I feel most Americans do not get unbiased news reported to them, even those that think they do.

So 7/7 is going on, the UK's 9/11... I'm walking around the streets of London just hours after the attacks, and what do I see?

As an American living in the REAL world, I am frequently asked to explain people like this to the rest of people also living in the real the world.

The statement he chose to make…

Why he chose to make it…

The time he chose to make it…

Visions from the Dead

Tomorrow

is
the
anniversary
the
July 7,
2005
terrorist
attacks
on
London.

9/11 occured 1,000 miles from where I lived. 7/7 (and the subsequent failed attack two weeks later) occured just a few blocks from where I lived. The iconic bus explosion - as horrific to England as are to Americans the images of planes crashing into the World Trade Center - occured just one block away from my old office.

My home was at the intersection of the two diagonal red 'blast lines' just below the fourth explosion, and just to the left of the second one.

It's hard not to feel affected by this 'anniversary.' And on the eve of this dreadful day... a video showing London Tube bomber Shehzad Tanweer has been aired on al-Jazeera television. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/5154714.stm)

This is the second time one of the suicide bombers from 7/7 has come back from the dead to leave a message. (The first time was Mohammad Sidique Khan -- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4206708.stm)

Each time, the message has been simple, clear, and consise, and each time the message has been misunderstood by the West. Put simply, it has always been "leave us alone and we'll leave you alone." Anyone who has read the Koran knows that they are obligated by Allah to follow this rule (they are basically quoting scripture to us). Even Bin Laden says this in his latest message addressed to the US:

“Your salvation will only come in your withdrawal from our land, in stopping the robbing of our oil and resources, and in stopping your support for the corrupt and corrupting leaders.”

Whatever your stance is, I think those are pretty reasonable requests as a first step toward creating a peaceful coexistence through non-violent, diplomatic means, but I do not wish to enter that debate... especially not with Americans. Whatever the consequences to following these actions are, no other actions will bring peace (short of total destruction) until these basic requests are met; it's right there in the Koran, check it out.

The Bigger Picture

What I do want to discuss is the bigger picture of it all... what hath technology enabled?

Just 150 years ago, if a person from the dead had reappeard to a group of people, can you imagine what the reaction would be? Recall that there was no TV, no radio, no recordings, no photos, almost no media as we know it. There was only one way to see and hear a person who was already dead... so I suspect it would be the similar as to what happened 2,000 years ago - that person would have been elevated to the status of a god, prophet, buddha, or super-natural being. Whether or not the 'vision' would have been interactive is beside the point, any message delivered would have been a message that would have been listened to. Q&A afterward optional.

Now, thanks to technology, with $100 and a nearby Wal-Mart, any mere mortal can do the same. Don't have $100? Well, that's just a week of washing dishes to achieve a form of life after death. Hopefully, your message won't start out, "Hi. If you are watching this, then I am dead and I bet you all are pretty bummed."

You are either awed by this revelation, or numb to it, but such is the progress of technology - and just one example at that!

Of course, society has moved on too. It seems we are no longer impressed with messages from the dead, even those who give their lives for the chance to obtain an audience hear it. What technology giveth, society taketh away.

But not quite... now think about what services like tribe allow... think hard about the nature of consciousness and what one can do with the ability to reach and interact with millions of voices. The tower of Babel has been climbed, for sure, but that is just the tip of the iceberg!

Consciousness has been freed from the temporal and spatial limitations of its host body and is free to join and merge with others. The human is no longer what will survive, but instead, the ideas created by them... especially as ideas form that are not of one single mind, but rather are the result of many. We are merely ants moving memes from one format to another; simply instruments of their creation, evolution, and preservation.

Our bodies, our DNA, our history is just one ginormous external memory system, and taken together with all the other life on this planet, represents the sum total of what has been learned over the billions of years of evolution. Kinda cool, huh?

Now consider that technology, first through verbal language, then books, now with computers and media, is enabling us to accelerate the pace of knowledge by storing it outside of our DNA (the domain of instincts). No longer do ideas survive purely by natural selection. Unnatural selection is upon us!

Our ideas survive, but we cannot.

To quote from 'Jerry Springer, The Opera':
"Hopefully, what will survive of us, is love."

Zen and the Art of ... Gourmet Pretzels?

I recently have taken flight on AirTrain airways. Cheap, simple, low-budget airlines. Of course, if you really want cheap fares, live in London, use RyanAir, and take £0.99 flights! But I digress...

On this Airtran flight, I was served a little packet of "Gourmet Pretzels." Dunno about the gourmet part, (I never ate them) but they seemed to realize that there would be loads of people just sitting there with nothing to do but to eat this little pack of pretzels and read the back of the packet in much the same way people read the back of cereal boxes while eating breakfast. I say this because on the back of the packet were directions for eating them!

Normally, I'm with Douglas Adams concerning the inclusion of instructions for seemingly obvious things... it's a sign that the inmates are running the asylum. For example, on a cup of coffee there's the brain-dead, 'caution! contents are hot!' Doug's personal favourite seemed to be instructions for use on a the side of a box of toothpicks. I agree with Wonko the Sane from Doug's book, HHGTTG, that any society which requires instructions for toothpicks is a society I would rather not be in.

Normally, I'd view instructions for eating a bag of peanuts in the same way, but this particular set of instructions was cheeky and did not take itself seriously; yet, it was filled with profound wisdom. (These two things often run hand in hand.)

The instructions were, as I saw it, simple and practical advice for meditation. Not what you'd expect from your average pretzel! They read:

1. Think about our wonderful low fairs as you open packet.
2. Place pretzel in mouth. With each crunch, be reminded of our low fares.
3. As you swallow, remember again, just how low the fares are.
4. Repeat until the pretzel packet is empty.
5. Keep empty packet to remind yourself to book with us again.

Yeah, okay, so there's an advertisement snuck in there. They were free pretzels, after all, I guess it's their right.

But there in the instructions is a practical guide to meditation which is how to experience the moment of living ... in this case, eating pretzels.

Personally, I try to experience the hardness, the saltiness, the browness, the quality of wheat, the shape, the time it takes to dissolve in my mouth, the feeling of this process, the taste, the aftertaste, etc., however you can also simply lose yourself in thought by focusing on an object - in this case, not the pretzel itself, but the low fares which lead to your enjoyment of said pretzels. (Presumably they don't want you thinking about how if you spent a few extra bucks, you'd be enjoying free wine and a decent meal!)

Also present in the instructions are two key ideas related to meditation: the idea of creating a ritual out of everyday life (by always doing the same set of actions), habitualizing that ritual (repeat until empty), and keeping always present with you the calmness found from meditation (keeping the packet).

If a million monkeys with a million typewriters would eventually rediscover Macbeth, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised if some stuffy airline execs eventually come across such profound insights for everyday living.

Now ... where'd my monkeys run off to?

Autobiography in Five Chapters

I recently came across this poem while reading "The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying." I know, light reading. The book begins by saying that the way to best live life is to know and understand death. It goes on to say that most Western folk go out of their way to avoid thinking of death, or even talking about it. This well predicts the reactions on peoples faces when they see what I'm reading.

Why am I reading it? Dunno. Why do we do anything? :) I bought it in London, never had time to read, now I have time, so I guess it's time.

Well, that, and I'm all into Buddhism and Toaism and meditation and such. I'm continually amazed at how the raw fringes of cutting-edge science is uncovering truths long taught by the Eastern mystics - but I'm tangeting...

Anyway, given that tomorrow I embark on a new journey - the start of the rest of my life, I think it's appropriate to repost here.

---

Autobiography in Five Chapters
(author unknown (to me))

1) I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost . . . I am hopeless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

2) I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
But it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

3) I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in . . . it's a habit.
My eyes are open
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

4) I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

5) I walk down another street.

Leap of Faith

I've been preoccupied lately, mostly with trying to fight the rotting away of my soul in this spirit-sucking swamp, all the while slowly biologically dying on the inside. I fear it's a losing battle. Please bear with me while I seek higher ground.

My only joy comes from playing an old digital piano. It doesn't sound like a real piano, or even a cool digital one, and it makes me miss the one I left behind in London, but it's all I got and I play it for hours on end. Recently, as I started to compile all the songs I've written, I came across one that I had nearly forgotten about, "Leap of Faith."

I wrote it at the end of a three semester-long humanities course in college. In that class, we read - I kid you not - a stack of books 6 feet tall ranging from the oldest known human texts, to standard religious and political texts, and also the works of notable scientists and philosophers... as well as your basic world literature. No doubt it was the beginning of my consciousness, taking a small town hick mind and exposing it to the greatest minds of Western history. Thank you, Dr. Jennings.

Anyway, at the end of this course, we had to write a long dissertation - a what we learned kind of thing - and at the time, I was less fond of writing and typing and more prone to composing music. So, this being a new-agey kind of class, I got permission (commisioned?) to write three songs - one for each semester - summarizing my experiences in lieu of a (mere) 20-page paper.

Leap of Faith was one of those songs, and represented that tipping point in human history where man dared to say, "God is dead," but before (Western) man had developed any alternative philosophies to choose from. In other words, the song represents man's struggle to find meaning in the darkness he just created. (At 19, my world-view did not yet encompass pagan and Eastern philosophies, so experientially, for me, it was also a period of spiritual darkness.)

As I look over the words I wrote oh so long ago, and as my fingers remember thousands of notes and rhythms they once knew, I am forced to wonder, "Have I discovered another timely message to my future self from my former self?" I mean, I don't care who you are, 6 months of bible-thumping believers holding hands and praying before every meal will get to you ... eventually.

I'm reminded of that young mind who wrote the song, obsessed with nothing but getting the fuck out of dodge. And here I am, nearly 15 years later, back where I started.

Here's the original recording featuring a good friend of mine, David Hines on vocals.

Leap of Faith

words and music by Clio
vocals by D. Hines

(verse A)
Poor little man, someone's
Taken you by the hand,
Told you nothing you could ever do
Would make a difference at all.

But don't you know that
Soon we all must go?
And the world will go on existing
As though you never did.

(verse B)
So now you fear that every
Thing you hold so dear is gone,
And you won't let go of them.

Well I guess
From the looks of your mess,
That they won't let go of you.

(bridge)
Can you make another day,
Or do you have to stay home and pray
That the world will make some sense to you somehow?
Can you take the leap of faith?

(chorus)
If you don't know you'll be safe
In a world that makes no sense to you at all?

We just have to start anew,
Redefine what is true,
and take nothing for granted anymore.

(verse A)
Oh I heard you shout,
You had to let it all out,
"How can I go on when every thing
I ever knew is no longer true?"

Hey little man,
You have to understand
That faith is not logic
And knowledge is not faith.

(verse B)
Did you run and hide and scream
From inside your fortress
When you heard that God was dead?

Your soul is free,
Why don't you let Him be
From the thanks for your daily bread?

(bridge)
But will you help your fellow friend,
And will it matter in the End,
When we're ashes to ashes and dust to dust.
What's the point in tryin' at all

(chorus)
When everyone is building walls
With signs on them that say, "Go Away from me."

(piano solo, repeat 1st chorus, end)

Thoughts On Media Programming Languages

I've been preoccupied lately. You see, I've been trying to see if I could develop applications in Flash the same way I do in Java. That is to say, I wanted to be able to build complete Flash programs from simple text files, without using fancy GUIs. I wanted to see how flexible Flash really was.

You see, Flash is great for a few things, most notably for making web commercials and prototyping user interfaces. But what most people don't realize, is that Flash is a very powerful media programming language. Want to write a program that plays three mp3s at once set to nine simultaneously playing video clips? What about a program that 'samples' video clips to let you create new videos from pieces of old ones? Well, I've put a lot of work into similar programs in Java and C++ and it's not easy, but for Flash, these kinds of things are child's play.

So, as a future computing researcher, I hoped I could use flash to build some crazy interfaces I've been wanting to play with. The trick, though, was to determine if I could develop in Flash the way I do in Java and C++. Specifically, I wanted to be able to create 'classes' or 'objects' that were general and reusable, and most importantly, I wanted to deal with text files; not GUI editors.

Well, this week I've figured it all out! I've created a template for building applications in Flash that mirrors building media applications in Java. Sweet. I've written two applications, starting both with only a blank text editor; one is a dynamic slideshow application (complete with cross-fades and panning and zooming), and the other is a dynamic mp3 player. Both applications are impressively short in terms of lines of code (< 50). Even better, the language allows the simple elegance of the program's design to show through. (It would be obfuscated if written in Java.)

It's times like this I wish I had my computers and websites online so I could post that code. Anyway, these 'modules' will go into an Electronic Press Kit I'm building for my friend, the Jazz Singer.

In other events, I started creating a post called "12 Genders," but what I thought would be a few paragraphs has turned into a 16 (!) page paper, and I'm still writing. I'm now up to 192 genders. I guess I have a lot to say about that subject, huh?

Well... stay tuned!

Their Eyes Closed

It's a shame we never really see people how they really are, choosing instead to see them as we want them to be, or as we remember them. And, when that happens, we prevent their growth; we hold them back, we stifle them. We do it because we encourage them to be what we know; what we are comfortable with - usually, at a great discomfort to them.

I have tried many times, in many ways, to merge friends from one world of mine to another... failing always. For it seems from where there was one, there cannot be two. Les jeux, ils sont faits.

Those who think they know me can never accept the real person inside; it is impossible for me to express her to them ... they simply refuse to see anything but what they already know. My friends live with their eyes closed.

As such, they will never know who I am or the gifts I bring. I don't blame them for that... and I don't fault them for it. It must just be too hard, too complicated, or too uncomfortable.

I am, however, finished with the pain of this life, and finished with trying to build a bridge between the two ... for it is a gap that cannot be crossed unless taken down through the valley, and it is clear that I walk it alone.

I know I am not unique to continue to have evolved my consciousness for 33 years; to have continually made myself a better person in every way I am aware of through diet, exercise, knowledge, and self-examination... to me, that's the point of being alive.

"An unexamined life is not worth living." - Socrates

It seems that to most people though, the person you are at 16 is the person you are at 60. Such people are doomed to never reach wisdom.

I have thought long and deep about this and with every train of thought, the tracks always come to the same conclusion:

You can never know the real person I am as long as you keep alive the memory of the one I was.

My friends have failed to keep up with the person I am, and I can no longer be the person they remember, so I say farewell to the normals.

I hardly knew ye; but ye hardly knew me.

Ascent into the 3rd Standard Deviation

Here's a fun chart about IQ, borrowed from here:

Practical Significance of IQ

IQ Range	Frequency	Cumulative Frequency	Typical Educability	Employment Options
Below 30	>1%	>1% below 30	Illiterate	Unemployable. Institutionalized.
30 to 50	>1%?	>1% below 50	1st-Grade to 3rd-Grade	Simple, non-critical household chores.
50 to 60	~1%?	1.5% below 60	3rd-Grade to 6th-grade	Very simple tasks, close supervision.
60 to 74	3.5%?	5% below 74	6th-Grade to 8th-Grade	"Slow, simple, supervised."
74 to 89	20%	25% below 89	8th-Grade to 12th-Grade	Assembler, food service, nurse's aide
89 to 100	25%	50% below 100	8th-Grade to 1-2 years of College.	Clerk, teller, Walmart
100 to 111	50%	1 in 2 above 100	12th-Grade to College Degree	Police officer, machinist, sales
111 to 120	15%	1 in 4 above 111	College to Master's Level	Manager, teacher, accountant
120 to 125	5%	11 in 10above 120	College to Non-Technical Ph. D.'s.	Manager, professor, accountant
125 to 132	3%	1 in 20 above 125	Any Ph. D. at 3rd-Tier Schools	Attorney, editor, executive.
132 to 137	1%	1 in 50 above 132	No limitations.	Eminent professor, editor
137 to 150	0.9%	1 in 100 above 137	No limitations.	Leading math, physics professor
150 to 160	0.1%	1 in 1,100 above 150	No limitations	Lincoln, Copernicus, Jefferson
160 to 174	0.01%	1 in 11,000 above 160	No limitations	Descartes, Einstein, Spinoza
174 to 200	0.0099%	1 in 1,000,000 above 174	No limitations	Shakespeare, Goethe, Newton

The earlier link uses the normal distribution to break down your average consumer at Wal-Mart. It's either funny or scary, depending on your perspective!

The thing that makes a 'normal' distribution interesting is that 99.73002039367% of the population (nearly everyone) is within three standard deviations of the average. In other words, if you know the average IQ and the standard deviation from that average, than you can be 99.73% sure that anyone you meet at Wal-Mart has an IQ higher than the average - (3 * STD) and less than the average + (3 * STD).

But not everyone you meet will fall into that range! In fact, 0.13% of them won't! Welcome to the top 10% of the top 10% of the top 10% (if you believe in IQ tests)! I'm not just talking about me; there are many friends here, and chances are, (against statistical odds) you're probably one of them! Let's get together and create statistical aberrations! :)

Big Night Out

I wonder if we are all aware of the impact we have on others. I wonder if I underestimated my impact on a nice young man tonight, call him, Pad A. Wan. Paddy was to my left in a poker game, and he and his buddy (Mr. Shane E. Head, 1 seat to his left) were out having a break from their local games. By talking to him and observing his play, I determined Paddy and Shane probably outclassed their peers back in the home game. This was their big night out. These guys had no idea what they were getting into.

Peception of reality warning #1: To me, it's just a dumpy little tournament, in a dumpy little bar, in a quiet little town, filled with mostly regulars who play just well enough to not go broke quickly. To others, it is a big night out to swim with the regional sharks.

To be fair, the poker games are run by two guys who have the best tables (literally) in the tri-county area and I wish them luck, but it's an outrageously steep rake and not nearly as glamourous as it thinks it is. I only go because a) usually, I'm the prettiest one there, and b) my friend likes to go, and c) it's 8 minutes away.

Anyway, Shane was drunk and winning heavily for a very simple reason, in two parts. The first part is that he was betting big on every hand. The second part is that people were folding. If they had been watching his play, they'd know Shane+Budwiser would go all in with Jack-three offsuit. Maybe they would stop folding then.

But, as it was, only me and my friend noticed.

Next hand, I have Ace deuce in the big blind. Paddy calls, Shane raises 2 1/2 times my blind bet and everyone else folds. At this stage in the tournament, it was not wise to play recklessly, so I didn't put the drunk all in, but of course, I called, and Paddy calls. I figure Shane on trash, and Paddy, perhaps with two high cards, but not one of them being an Ace (he would have raised with an Ace).

Flop comes something, I don't know, it didn't matter. What matters is that it was obvious to me that the flop didn't help either of my two adversaries. I'm first to act however, so I check to verify what's going on. Checks all around. Further proof.

Turn comes something that continues to not help. I'm starting to think my Ax is going to be the best hand. Now, if I bet and they don't have anything, they will fold and I can win a small pot. Looking toward that final table, however, I want more chips. Instead, I play on my belly, hoping to trap Shane into betting because he thinks we're all weak. So, I check meekly, trying to encourage his rash bet, and when he does, I'll put him for a decision for all of his chips and he'll fold and I'll win a nice pot. Paddy checks; he doesn't have any of the board. Shane CHECKS.

Wow, he's flat too - and playing more straightforward now that he's in a three handed pot with his buddy.

Looks like I should have bet!

River comes worthless and yet ... did I just see tension in Shane? I act like I'm thinking about betting and watch Shane through peripheral vision. I reticently check, Paddy checks, and Shane makes a perfect-sized bet. Big enough to think he was bluffing, small enough to want to sherrif it. The pot was worth calling the bet (even with just Ace high), but if I was wrong, and that tension meant he did have a pair, I'd be crippled in the tournament.

Clearly, I needed more information from Shane before I could call. So, I put on my acting hat, and narrate, "that was a big bet for a little card!" I look him square in the eye, and say, "But you didn't know I had THIS!" As I say the word, "this," I flick up with an audible 'SNAP!' one of my down cards (the Ace of spades)

His face fills with tension as he considers that I'm saying this because I have a very stong hand. He looks down to see my card, reads it's an ace, and the tension disappears.

Shoot, I should have bet the turn; he caught the river. Okay, so I fold. Paddy folds, Shane takes down the chips. Yeah, I played cautiously, but ya gotta play carefully with drunks.

Now, this play, some may call it ... immoral ... provoked a minor stir (I knew it would). The dealer certainly didn't like it (I didn't anticipate that), and I don't think anyone else at the table appreciated the show, save my friend. But if the table didn't take well to my play, Paddy liked it even less. Accusations of cheating and "that not being legal" fly toward me like bullets fired from untrained insurgents. I let them fly.

After a few awkward moments of grumbling, Paddy insists on wanting some explanation for me doing what I did. I explained (politely) the reasoning that you now know. It went something like "blah blah blah ... i knew you were going to fold, so ... blah blah blah"

After about 2 minutes of steaming (I didn't notice; I was watching the game), he leans over and whispers, almost petulantly to me, "you didn't *know* I was going to fold!"

I was in the middle of a hand, so I leant over, smiled, and looked at him square in the eyes and asked, almost dismissively, "what did you do?" before returning to the game to make a bet. He starts to say something and then stops. then stammers... then ... silence. At that moment, he is called to another table.

I didn't think much of this interaction until my friend told me how badly I rattled Paddy with that move. Now that I think about it, I probably ruined his night. He steamed away over at another table - shaken that he was so read by me - and not long after, h e exited the tourney.

My friend took care of Shane the next few hands, releaving him of the responsibility of protecting his chips.

I know I'm supposed to be encouraging players like this to come play poker.

I guess that's why I don't want to do it for a living.

The Tao Of Poker

Poker is really just a metaphor for life. I've learned that the lessons learned on the green felt are almost always applicable to the situations that occur in everyday life. Successful poker players are often successful in life not because of their knowledge of poker, but rather, because their outlook on life carries over to the way they play their chips.

Lately, I've been experimenting with developing a solid technique for winning massively multiplayer poker tournaments (900+ players). I have been playing poker for over 15 years, I've played with the best players (the ones you see on TV) and I've read dozens of books on technique, strategy, mathematics, and psychology of poker. I've even written computer programs to aid my play dynamically. I've become obsessed with finding THE winning strategy for this game of skill.

And it's working! In the last month, I've placed 2nd, 14th, 41st, 71st, 7th, 3rd, 40th, and just last night, 22nd. (Usually the payout starts at 110th place, and gets progressivley larger as you move to 1st.)

Last night I lost a hand that if I won, I would have more than likely won the tournament. It was textbook. I had pocket AA with a board of KQ5 and my opponents pushing all their chips in with AK and K8. There was only one card (of 43) that could lose the game for me. The turn was a 2, making me a 99% favorite to win ... until the case K fell on the river. I only won 12x my entry fee. ;)

Now, I've also been trying to advise a friend on how he can better play in these tournaments ... with poor results. You see, his style of play --- in my viewpoint --- is reckless, relies on luck, and is succeptible to large deviations. It's a fantastic style of play ... when the game is right ... but without "changing gears," I deem it too costly. By contrast, --- in his viewpoint --- he might say of my style that it is too conservative, predictable, and not prone to win big. And we'd both be right!

However, to prove a point, I adopted his strategy for a few tournaments and recorded my results. What emerged was that, all things being equal, I was extremely unlucky. I lost big. So last night, I played my game and came up with a play-by-play rationale for every move, thinking of course, of how I might finally open my friend's eyes and get him to the final tables.

Then I realized that he too loses big when he adopts my style of play. I was so lost in the belief that there is (as suggested by the pros) ONE style of play which in the long run, wins the most chips, that I forgot that most people don't play for "the long run."

So as each person's path to enlightenment is uniquely their own, so too it seems is each person's style of poker. My friend wins big when he plays instinctively, but loses when he tries to play "with the percentages." I win big when I play smart, and lose when I get reckless. I continue to believe (for me) that there is an optimal winning style of play, and I endeavor to play it, but I'm no longer worried about my friend's style of play; he'll figure it out eventually ... and why would I want to deny him the pleasure of finding things out?

This is such a hard lesson to learn.

Besides, as long as the "long run" and the "short run" go along the same path (at least momentarily), why not just enjoy the company?

[HCI] Does not compute...

I was challenged today, by a computer, to prove that I was a human. Not challenged to confirm my identity, but instead challenged to show that I was merely a human.

We interact with dozens, perhaps hundreds of machines each day and yet most of us aren't even aware of our interactions with them other than a vague feeling of a program or device being "easy to use" or -- worse -- "impossible to understand." Truth is, there are a LOT of bad designs and interfaces out there, but ironcially, it's not the designer's fault! I know this because I teach these people to build better interfaces.

The designer is the person who ultimately is responsible for building the machine code which will interprate your interactions as input, and conversely, the machine's representation of data into something that is recognizable to your eyes and ears. That is to say, the designer handles all of the Human-Computer Interactions. Problem is ... those very people who are best apt to build such things are often more likely to see things from the computer's point of view ... rather than the Humans! It's the 21st century version of a greek tragedy.

The result of this are interfaces that make perfect sense to technophobes, yet remain uncomprehensible to the masses.

Occasionally however, even geeks can get stumped... Can you figure out what the middle character is?




Sometimes a computer needs to check there really is a human on the other end of the internet. The current vogue is for the computer to take some letters, distort them a bit, and ask the person (or another computer!) on the other end to TYPE them back. The computer knows what to expect, so if you get it wrong, it assumes you can't read and type and therefore, are not human.

To understand fully the reasons why this is easy for a human and complicated for a computer would involve a computer science course on computer vision, which would itself rely on a strong background in college-level mathematics and computer science; ie, "it's really complicated and not that interesting." Suffice it to say then, that for the moment, the ability to write such a program has not yet been found among the pool of eligible people who might profit from doing so. In other words, it's not a fool-proof test.

And sometimes, it's just foolish.

Introduction to Drugs♦

Disclaimer:

I want to make it perfectly clear that I do NOT condone the use of drugs! Not because drugs are bad per se, (they aren't) but because the overwhelming majority of people I've encountered simply are not ready for them (because their mind is too troubled) and/or cannot control them (because they can't control themselves).

So I repeat: "do not try this at home!" If you are going to ignore my warnings, at least have the common sense to experiment in the presence of seasoned, skilled guide or shaman. If you do not have the patience or willpower to do this simple thing, it is proof you are not yet ready (in the eyes of this urban shaman).

That said, I think drugs are great! They give us perspective, enlightenment (albeit premature), attitude adjustments, and enhanced powers such as self-awareness, empathy, and egolessness. They are great for 'partying' with friends on special occasions, for spiritual questing when seeking God, and for obtaining inspiration from your muses.

I find it amusing that most of the people I meet who are anti-drugs also find admirable in me, those very qualities I've discovered through using them.

Unfortunately, most people only think drugs are for two things: losing inhibitions, or partying, and running away (or taking a break) from reality (versus getting a new perspective on reality).

In this introduction, and in posts to follow, I would like to clearly explain the effects of the many drugs (some of them illicit in some countries) I've sampled and how to obtain maximum benefit and enjoyment from them. If you are an American, it's okay to freak out. Our culture has bred us to immediately shut down and say, "Drugs are bad, m'kay?" Mix in a healthy does of fear-based lifestyles with a lack of self-control and you have a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Drugs are powerful, m'kay? You need a clear head, a healthy body, and a relaxed, comfortable environment to take them. If you think "drugs are bad" (they aren't) or if you have unresolved psychological issues, you should not be taking drugs! I'm mostly talking about hallucinogens and entheogens, but the same argument can be said for marijuana and alcohol - it's just times 100 for hallucinogens and entheogens.

Unfortunately, the plain fact is that most people simply cannot handle drugs. I cite as evidence for this the millions of people addicted to drugs that they don't even consider drugs. Everyone who needs their morning cup of coffee -- you're an addict! Everyone tokin' on those fags -- you're an addict! (For the Americans, fags are cigarettes.) Everyone eating when their body isn't hungry -- you're an addict.

And I haven't even gotten to what most people consider drugs yet! Yes, I put alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, sugar, aspirin, and the like squarely in the category of 'drugs' which also include psylocybin (magic mushrooms), Cocaine, THC (marijuana, hash, kif), LSD & other hallucinogens, etc.

Whatever the substance, be it chemical, natural, or produced in our bodies (like adrenaline) people seek it for the changes it produces in our bodies and minds. Alcohol makes us feel invincible. Aspirin makes us feel numb. Pot makes us feel relaxed. MDMA (X, E, ecstasy) makes us feel love. Cocaine makes us feel power. Caffeine makes us feel energy. Psylocybin makes us feel god. Yes... GOD!

This is all well and good as long as one maintains a healthy dose of "the right time and place." Problem is, like the dog who eats everything put in front of it, people have a tenancy to overdo a good thing.

This is a shame, because it has earned all drugs a bad reputation -- a misconception that I hope to correct. You see, I think drugs are a great way to enhance life, experience levels of consciousness we could never attain on our own, and break down barriers to happiness. But I do drugs, so of course I would say that.

I *do* drugs, I don't *use* drugs. Don't get me wrong, when I party, my body is a machine and together, we go through -- safely, and only after significant experiments -- we go through vast amounts of substances which leave lesser mortals lying on the kitchen floor, twitching in ecstasy. (You know who you are! ;) At least they are having a good time!

I miss all my friends, but I miss those friends the most. It's not everyone you can, on a whim, jet off to Amsterdam for a weekend of inner enlightenment and fun. Wherever you are, I dedicate this joint to your memory. Party on!

A journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single click!

Welcome to my blog! Since this is my first entry, I'll provide the basics and move on to the advanced stuff in later postings.

Ingredients: (Topics to be discussed)

• Enlightenment
• Religion (ancient, pagan, Eastern, Western, modern)
  
• Sex
• Gender
• Fetishes (branching away from "vanilla" sex)
  
• Drugs (tools of the Urban Shaman)
  
• Music
• Poker
  
• Happiness
  
• Success
• Work
  
• Family
  
• World Affairs
• Politics
• History
• Memes
• The Collective Unconcious
• Randomness (as in, non-predictability)
• Intelligent technological consumption
  
• Great Theories from Great Thinkers

... all this and more!!! Should be fun! :) I also plan to include postings on "Things all enlightened creatures should know." These special postings (complete with video and powerpoint!) will be my contribution to all of the souls that have made possible my existence. If you don't know me, think of them as my gift to you.

Who Am I?

Well, that will be fleshed out in many more postings, but let's get a few things out of the way. I was born and raised in the MidWest of America. By the time I was 30, I had a Ph.D. in computer science, a luxury car and home, yet I was not happy. Realizing there was no future for me here, I decided to give up everything (and I do mean everything that Americans come to enjoy and cherish) and move to London, England on a 3-year vision quest for enlightenment. There, my eyes opened.

To put it another way, I embarked on a search for the ulitmate question to life, the universe, and everything. I was the shaolin monk; I had learned everything I could in this land and school system and it was time for me to proceed on to other realms of existence and consciousness.

Now, as Plato has written of Socrates, it is time for me to return to the cave and illuminate the shadows. Of course, I realize that one person's path to enlightenment is just that ... ONE person's path, uniquely my own. However, I hope that by sharing the stories of my life, my friends, my quest, and my ongoing struggles with life in the valley of the masses, you too will find the resources needed to climb your mountain (and find your way back down again!).

Guide to the Guide

If you are of the persuasion to read these entries in chronological order, then you will be happy to learn that I will be writing them in the same way! However, you should also realize that time and space being relative, what I write will not necessarily comply with temporal (or spatial) restrictions. So read front-to-back, back-to-front, or just skip around. I'll try to be friendly to both kinds of readers.

... and writers!!! Please feel free to leave your comments! As we are all in this together, from time to time, I hope to sollicit ideas from you, dear reader, to guide the collective journey.

Discliamer: the names of the innocent will be changed to protect them. No promises for the guilty. ;)