commonplace book

A wonderful postmodern joke

commonplace book / /

A postmodern joke from Disinfotainment:

How many deconstructionists does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Even the framing of this question makes a grid of patriarchal assumptions that reveals a slavish devotion to phallocentric ideas – such as, technical accomplishment has inherent value, knowledge can be attained and quantities of labor can be determined empirically, all of which makes a discourse which further marginalizes the already disenfranchised.

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A beautiful Indian song

commonplace book / /

Beautiful poem of the day: I was reading a lot of Native American myths in preparation for a class I was teaching at Washington University several years ago, when I ran across this song by the Popago people. I really liked it, and I hope you do too.

Song for the Puberty Rite of a Girl Named Cowaka

A poor man takes the songs in his hand
And drops them near the place where the sun sets.
See, Cowaka, run to them and take them in your hand,
And place them under the sunset.

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Ben contemplates fatherhood

commonplace book / /

From Ben Jones’ Benblog, February 2003:

I was also thinking it strange, the idea of being a businessman. How, when I have children, and people ask what their daddy does, they’ll say, “Oh, he’s a businessperson.”

Maybe I’ll wait until I retire for little ones, just so they can say, “Oh, he gardens. And writes. And draws stories for us. And cooks. And sings. And plays harmonica. And makes up songs on the piano. And saves beautiful wood. And makes mommy laugh. And make other strange happy yummy noises when their door is closed. And dances. And paints with paint he grinds himself sometimes. And cooks. And camps. And photographs. And plays sports. And reads. And other stuff. Sometimes, all dressed up. But mostly, he just hangs out with us, doing the stuff we want to do.”

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Ben Jones sands his floors

commonplace book, on writing / /

From Ben Jones’ Benblog, February 2003:

Prepare. Sand down the roughest parts. Vacuum. Gaze. Gaze again. Sand a level finer, starting to expose more of the grain, slowly in parts, lightly. Stopping frequently, when the machine is strained. Changing the pad. Vacuum. Clean. Assess. Gaze. Gaze again.

This time is the first touch.

There are some rough spots. Some you know you can’t get out. But it’s beautiful still, all the same. More so even, with character I didn’t know was there before.

And then another round. This time is not so rough, not so much dust. On some spots, the sander seems to polish more than cut. Wait for what dust there is to settle again. The pads don’t need to be changed so much now. I know where the sander will catch.

I’ve made some gouges here and there, impatient with rough spots, stains. I’m more careful, more accepting now of the others I find. They will come out with a finer hand, or they will stay, part of the wood’s character, that I’m growing to love even more.

Vacuum. Clean. Assess. Gaze. Gaze again.

This time I stroke, grasping the wood as fully as I can. Knowing the rough spots especially.

And then once again, now the 100 grit. Smooth now, with enough teeth to hold a polishing coat. To last a while. Shining through. With a touch up here and there.

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Great Freudian slip story

commonplace book, overheard / /

From Plastic:

When my son was about 4, I took him to the swimming pool at the local YMCA. In the locker room was a one-legged man getting dressed. He was sitting right next to where my locker was so we had to share the bench.

My son was naturally curious about his missing leg and kept staring at the man. My son’s curiosity made me nervous. The man might not like being scrutinized so closely (though, in hindsight, it was probably no big deal and he might have even enjoyed the wonder in the eyes of a 4-year old).

To distract my son I started chattering away with him as I was dialing the combination to open my lock. The lock was old and cranky and it wouldn’t open on the first try. With absolutely no planning or intention, I blurted out, ‘This lock is on its last leg.’

I could have sank though the floor.

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Love those pamphlet titles

commonplace book, history / /

From “American Jezebel by Eve LaPlante“, a review of a biography of Anne Hutchinson, in Salon:

If [Anne] Hutchinson had been born a man, some historians argue, she might have found a place in her society as a minister. She might have carved out a life like that of John Cotton, the unorthodox founder of Congregationalism, Hutchinson’s teacher and the man her family had followed to Boston when he was forced to leave England. On the other hand, she might have turned out like the renegade Rev. Roger Williams, another early settler of Rhode Island, who was driven out of Boston for voicing a variety of objectionable views, most notably the belief that the English had no right to claim Indian lands or subject Native Americans to forced conversions. Williams conducted a pamphlet feud with Cotton, set off when he published ‘The Bloody Tenet of Persecution,’ a tract in support of religious freedom. Cotton then put out ‘The Bloody Tenet Washed and Made White in the Blood of the Lamb.’ Williams responded with ‘The Bloody Tenet Made Yet More Bloody by Mr. Cotton’s Endeavor to Wash It White in the Blood of the Lamb.

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The social perils of immortality

commonplace book, science, technology / /

From John Shirley:

Immortality? Maybe. There’s one company …: “There’s that UCSF scientist who keeps cropping up with roundworms. Now and then you hear something new about her and her program: Cynthia Kenyon. She’s started a company called Elixir. She’s working on ways to tweak a gene called daf-2 which controls how well cells repair themselves over time. This gene gets shut off somehow–she’s trying to turn it back on, I take it…She did it in roundworms first. Now she’s done it in mice, vastly extending their lifespans. Daf-2 apparently controls a host of proteins and hormones that repair cells, eliminate free radicals, destroy bacteria and so on. All this may be far more complex in humans than in animals though…

If it works, chances are that it’ll be so expensive that it won’t appreciably add to overpopulation. Only a few people will be able to afford it. The rich will become semi-immortal. The poor may be kept in ignorance about how this is done, lest revolution demand everyone gets relative immortality. This partial suppression of the relevant biotech can be justified, perhaps: not only for reasons of space and sufficient resources in an overpopulated Earth, but for reasons of encouraging genetic diversity–mortality is motivation for reproducing. The human race seems to need death…

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CNN’s innovations & insights

business, commonplace book, technology / /

From Joel Kurtzman, Interview with Gary Hamel, Strategy & Business (4th Qtr 1997):

One of the most interesting cases of all is CNN, which “saw at least three things that had already changed in our world that others had not yet put together”: technology changes produced small satellite uplinks that made it possible to report from virtually anywhere; lifestyle changes meant we don’t all get home in time for the six o’clock network news; and regulatory changes allowed cable operators to undermine the monopoly of regional broadcasters.

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Serial killer apps

commonplace book, technology / /

From “Andreessen singles out consumers as key to Web future“, in InfoWorld (26 May 1999):

[Mark Andreessen] then switched gears and talked about the “serial killer apps” on the Internet. A serial killer app, as opposed to a killer app, just keeps getting more useful and more killer as people keep coming online, according to Andreessen.

Andreessen listed the five serial killer apps as: e-mail, the Web, instant messaging, online calendaring, and auctions. …

Andreessen said serial killer apps are the reasons people get online, but once online they are not limited to these five arenas.

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4 kinds of eductional institutions

commonplace book, education / /

From EDUCAUSE Review, February 2000:

There are 3,700 institutions and 15 million students in the United States today facing the challenge of integrating the past with the present, questioning how to mold the traditional model of higher education into a form that will not become obsolete in a world awash in an information explosion driven by electronic technology. There now exist four different types of educational institutions instead of the single, virtually unaltered model followed for the past 250 years of formal education in America. The first type comprises the traditional notion of a college. The second includes “corporate universities,” on-site training programs developed by individual companies to improve the skills and knowledge of employees. The third category contains mega-universities that recognize no national boundaries, combine the high-tech with the historical, and bridge the gap between the educational experience and the job market. The fourth types are virtual educators that operate nearly entirely online and offer the opportunity for practically anybody to become a teacher or a student.

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The value of learned experience

commonplace book / /

From Robert E. Kelley’s Consulting: The Complete Guide to a Profitable Career:

… a loud knocking pipe created turmoil at a large nuclear plant. No one could figure out what was making the noise or how to stop it. Finally one of the engineers suggested contacting Charlie, the retired maintenance man. Charlie listened to the knocking pipe. He then followed the pipe’s course throughout the plan. After fifteen tense minutes, Charlie located a pipe connection. He asked for a large monkey wrench. Instead of using the rench to turn the pipe, he hit the pipe connection four times with the wrench. At that point, the knocking stopped. Quite relieved, the management thanked Charlie profusely. In addition, they told hime to send a bill for his services. When they received the bill, however, they were quite upset. It merely said, “For services rendered–$1,000.” They complained that the fee was exorbinant for fifteen minutes’ work. Charlie offered to send an itemized bill if they wanted one. They did. It read:

    For 15 minutes' work      $  25.00
    For knowing where to hit  $ 975.00
    TOTAL                     $1000.00

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Get rid of high schools

commonplace book, education / /

From Stephen L. Talbott’s “Is High School Dispensable?”, in 19 August 1999 issue of NetFuture (#93):

Sensible words can show up in strange places — in this case, People Magazine. Bard College President Leon Botstein is interviewed in the July 12, 1999 issue, and he says bluntly that we should get rid of high schools. After tenth grade, students should move on to higher education, job training, or some form of national service.

This makes eminent sense if the only alternative is high school as we now have it — a ghetto walled off from the larger society and from the world of adult work, and, all too often, with no meaningful family life for the student to fall back on. Isolate kids from the grounding potentials of a stable community embedded in a real landscape and pursuing real work, and they will create their own society with its own, very likely warped values.

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Learning drops quickly over time

commonplace book, education / /

From “Building Better Bosses” in Workforce Magazine, May 2000:

Research shows that 30 minutes after adults hear new information, they will remember only about 8% of it. A day or two later, recall drops to 2%. But if people learn a little bit of information and practice it right away, retention balloons to 90% immediately and deflates to as much as 50% to 60% over time.

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TV changes a society … in its image

commonplace book / /

From “Bhutan and Fiji: The Elusive Influences of Television” in NetFuture #93, quoting The New York Times of 20 May 1999:

Meanwhile, a widely reported study by researchers at the Harvard Medical School documents some changes in Fiji associated with the 1995 introduction of television. These changes have to do with young women’s eating habits and ideals of beauty.

It is traditional in Fiji to compliment someone by saying “you’ve gained weight”. As a New York Times story puts it:

“‘Skinny legs’ is a major insult. And ‘going thin’, the Fijian term for losing a noticeable amount of weight, is considered a worrisome condition.”

But in just the three years from 1995 to 1998, according to the Harvard study, the number of secondary school girls reporting that they had induced vomiting to control weight rose from three percent to twenty-nine percent. In a country where dieting was hardly known and calories were a foreign concept, it now appears that more teenage girls go on diets than in America. “Young girls”, writes the Times reporter, Erica Goode, “dream of looking not like their mothers and aunts, but like the wasp- waisted stars of `Melrose Place’ and `Beverly Hills 90210′”.

“One girl said that her friends ‘change their mood, their hairstyles, so that they can be like those characters’. ‘So in order to be like them, I have to work on myself, exercising, and my eating habits should change.'”

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A museum I definitely want to visit

commonplace book, cool stuff / /

From Best Undiscovered Museum of Americana:

It’s hard to imagine how anything so big could be such a well-kept secret, but there are only two kinds of people in the world: those who haven’t heard of the Shelburne Museum , and those who rave about it. I’m one of the latter.

Situated on 45 acres outside Burlington, Vermont, the Shelburne has been called the “Smithsonian of New England.” It was founded by Electra Havemeyer Webb, heiress to sugar and railroad fortunes. An avid collector of Americana, Webb built the Shelburne and left an active foundation in place to keep it running and growing. It now encompasses 37 exhibits and buildings, some of them nearly incomprehensible in scope. They built a railroad, for instance, to bring the steamship Ticonderoga to the site. A curved building a quarter of a mile long covers a Lilliputian circus parade, each figure, animal, and cart hand-carved — by one person. The figures are only inches tall, and no two are alike.

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15 fundamental desires and values

commonplace book / /

From ABC News:

Curiosity: desire to learn

Food: desire to eat

Honor: (morality) desire to behave in accordance with a code of conduct

Rejection: fear of social rejection

Sex: desire for sexual behavior and fantasies

Physical exercise: desire for physical activity

Order: desired amount of organization in daily life

Independence: desire to make own decisions

Vengeance: desire to retaliate when offended

Social contact: desire to be in the company of others

Family: desire to spend time with own family

Social prestige: desire for prestige and positive attention

Aversive sensations: aversion to pain and anxiety

Citizenship: desire for public service and social justice

Power: desire to influence people

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