stray passage

one of the nice elements of my current job is the Russian guy who periodically walks all around the hallways chattering in Russian on the phone. I have no idea who he's talking to or what he's saying, but I do enjoy overhearing him as he passes by. Language is a beautiful thing.

my google interview revisited

when i did interview at google several years ago, i was asked nothing but questions about the C programming language, even though I indicated, and was even interviewd because, I had about ten years of Java programming experience. Needless to say, I was not offered a job. I hadn't even thought about C in a decade!!

Now from a chronicle story today:

One of the interesting things we've found, when trying to predict how well somebody we've hired is going to perform when we evaluate them a year or two later, is one of the best indicators of success within the company was getting the worst possible score on one of your interviews. We rank people from one to four, and if you got a one on one of your interviews, that was a really good indicator of success.

That's a pretty big problem for Google, considering:

Ninety-nine percent of the people who got a one in one of their interviews we didn't hire. But the rest of them, in order for us to hire them somebody else had to be so passionate that they pounded on the table and said, "I have to hire this person because I see something in him..."

hmm. been there and done that!

does a post post?

if a post does a post, is it a post?

scourers

every day at least one person downloads at least one episode of each of my audio books (and many days many episodes) via itunes or podiobooks.com. i have no idea how they find them other than scouring podcasts->literature->podiobooks for every friggin' audio book they list, because i could hardly find them myself and i was trying to!

The return of God, or 'how can we miss You if You won't go away?'

In this otherwise interesting article by Karen Armstrong via The Daily Dish, contemporary atheists are accused of being "wrong" about God because, hey, people still believe in God and people will always believe in God. Once again, defenders of faith conflate the existence of something with people's belief in it. Atheists merely do not believe in God. They don't disbelieve that other people do believe. It's such a silly argument.

On the other hand, it is true that belief in God is not the root of all evil, a conflation of facts that some atheists assert. Holy wars are like all wars, political. Oppression of women is enhanced by religion but religion is not its source. Religion is often used as a window dressing for power. Doing away with religion would hardly change that fundamental fact of human societies, as attempts to do just that have indicated.

People are pack animals. Packs have hierarchies and leaders and therefore power struggles. Why drag more fictions into this equation than necessary? Does it help to outsource ultimate power to a fiction? Perhaps it does, but it ought to be admitted that this is what we do.

In some early societies, the leader was the same as God (Pharoah, Inca), which made it difficult to have political transitions. The idea of removing God one level allowed for usurpers, who could always claim to have God on their side, and therefore, political power could change without disturbing the God-thing. This turned out to be much more practical in the long run. Of course there have been other societies that attempted more benevolent styles of pack leadership and were successful for long periods of stability. Most of these were wiped out by the not-so-benevolent ones.

There is another aspect of religion, the "spiritual" side of the question, where believers ask, what about Who Created Everything and What is the Meaning of Life? I've always wondered why people expect and settle for simple answers to difficult questions, but it could be that a simple, but different, answer suffices for the first question. Someday through science we will one day understand that the definition of "Life" is "what happens on planets", that on all the gazillions of planets in the universe there is some of it in some form. As for meaning, it is what you make it. That's what meaning "means", after all.

pre civil war poll numbers

Obama favorability Oct 2009

(substitute Lincoln/1860 for Obama/2009)

Fav Unfav

All 55 37

South 27 68
NE 82 7
Midwest 62 30
West 59 32

the bilj bjurnjurd story

that's my working title. i have no working subject yet ... possibly a "people watcher mystery" - our guy is a people watcher who starts out merely listing characters (made up names, real outfits, made up life stories) who somehow gets carried away, perhaps, and gets involved in something he shouldn't have ... and where it goes from there.

another possibility is that he is a rather aimless sort, easily impressionable and lurching from one vague obsession to another (today there was "a body found" at devil's slide and another "body found" on a muni bus. bilj might take those two stories in one day as a sign and go out looking to see if he too might find a body lying around somewhere ...)

a series of such vignettes

his random half assed interests

alien signals in the night? or girlfriend's electric toothbrush recharging ...

note to self - verizon wireless ringtone

so here is how i finally made my ringtone out of Sabali by Amadou and Mariam

1. rip the song from the CD (Windows Media Player)

2. Import into Cool Edit Pro

3. Edit the desired section (must be less than 30 seconds)

4. F11 to convert the sample rate - downsample to 22050KHz
(F11, fer chrissakes! why not a menu option!)

5. save as mp3

6. email as attachment to @vzwpix.com

7. open the message when received on the phone

8. options - save audio attachment as ringtone, set now ... etc

the power of imagination

we live in a time where the idea of "the power of the imagination" is practically an object of worship. You can be whatever you want. Dream it and you can do it. We love our dazzling special effects. We adore every hero and set our sights high. There are no limits, especially no limits to the power of the imagination.

By contrast, I felt a little bit of a shock when I read, in Joseph Conrad's "Lord Jim", these words: Imagination, the enemy of men. What could he mean by that?

The entire sentence seems to indicate one thing, but the novel as a whole points to something different:

The fear grows shadowy; and Imagination, the enemy of men, the father of all terrors, unstimulated, sinks to rest in the dulness of exhausted emotion.

Ah, Imagination, the father of all terrors - we imagine terrible things, and so we are afraid, and this is bad. Fear is only in the mind, and the imagination only serves to exaggerate, to cloud our minds, to make us more afraid than we need to be. True.

But Jim's problem is not the imagination of terror, but the imagination of glory, of heroics, of great deeds and the great man he could become if only ... if only he had the opportunity! And so he sets out to find it and when it comes, that opportunity, it takes him by surprise, he is not prepared, and he blows it. This is his everlasting regret.

He thought he was ready because he had daydreamed so much for so long about his own heroic capacity. He had played in his mind over and over again scenes of his strength and steadfastness and courage and competence. Never mind that in real life he had never really been challenged by anything at all, that the one time there had been an opportunity to do something, to help a ship in distress in a storm, he had merely stood by and watched, while all the time imagining how he would have done a great job if only he had been allowed to by someone.

He is no hero. He is not great. He cannot simply be whatever he wants to be. Wishing does not make it so. Dreaming it is not the same as doing it.

Today in the news the dominant story is about the father who wanted to have a Reality TV show so badly that he pretended his six year old son had taken off in a helium balloon and was floating somewhere over Colorado. He is a fraud, and is now facing charges. His disgrace will not be as thorough as that felt by "Lord" Jim at his inquiry, because his actions are almost justified by the ever-scheming nature of the entertainment business. We are reminded that there is nothing 'real' about Reality TV.

It is all about the power of the Imagination, its seductive power to make you think you can have whatever it is they want you to believe you want to have.

Jim wanted to be a hero.

It ought to be enough to be alive.

Si Yo Fuera Maradona

curse of the talking point

two cases today:

Red Sox vs Angels, top of the 9th, 2 outs, nobody on ...

"Jonathan Papelbon has never been charged with a run in 27 innings of postseason appearances"

and then he gives up 3 runs and loses the game AND the series ...

Forty Niners vs Falcons

"San Francisco has an elite defense"

which promptly got torched for five touchdowns in the first half ...

recent influences

what goes in ... this past week

Book: Shadow Country, Peter Matthiessen
Movie: The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Werner Herzog
Music: Welcome to Mali, Amadou and Mariam
TV: nothing
Dogs: the Bernese Mountain Puppy, Ginny
People: Johnny and Andres, best friends

CFS update

the virus responsible for CFS (chronic fatigue syndrome) may have finally been identified

characters

what if they don't "come to life" in a novel? and why should they have to? how many characters you encounter in your every day life, on the sidewalk, on the bus, at your job, actually "come to life" so you really know who they are? probably not that many, nor would you want them to. enemies come to life, vividly enough, in threatening ways. loved ones and friends come to life and that's what you want. everybody else, eh ... let 'em remain as they are - there but not too there!

even a prize winning thousand page book like Shadow Country didn't really bring most of the characters "to life", it seemed to me. a lot of them were fairly interchangeable, especially in the dialect portions of the novel. i could barely tell a Storter from a House from a Harden from a Smallwood from a Jenkins from a Thompson, nor was it really necessary. Even Watson did not feel terribly consistent in his own part of the book. Less might have been more. There were an awful lot of episodes and encounters to thrash out, north and south, back and forth, wives and kids. a real life is perhaps too much to grapple with in its entirety.

someone told me that in my 'squatter' they could not keep up with all the stream of characters. i told him to let them go, you don't HAVE to keep up. it's not required :}

they are like the people you see on the street in some big city. you notice something about them for a moment, then they're gone, and you will never see them again. move along ...

Nobel Troop Prize?

It will be interesting to see how Obama - surprise winner of the Nobel Peace Prize - will announce the increase of troops to Afghanistan, coupled with intent on negotiating some kind of agreement with the Taleban ... which seems to be the only rational way to proceed: buy off the enemy (increase the size of the carrot) while increasing the size of the stick!

wow! this has got to be the WORST thing that has ever happened in the history of the world (yes, that's pretty much what I heard on FOX news this morning). gol darn commies, who do they think they are, approving of our president? why heck, we reserve the right to hate him even when he tries to get us some Olympic games!

validate my validation

religion is essentially a form of social organization, so it should be no surprise that the social aspects of the brain get involved! the whole 'spiritual' side of the question is kind of a sleight-of-mind magic trick (look over there while we're controlling you here) (imho)

How To Lose Without Losing

This is the problem facing the U.S. in Afghanistan. Ultimately, there is no victory here. The military wants to secure the cities ("counter-insurgency") which abandons the countryside to the "enemy" (tribes and taliban) - it's a strategy of deliberate seige disguised as a surge. In the long run, it makes no sense. Al-Qaeda had not established its bases in the cities there, but in the same countryside we are now willing to cede. The original plan ("win all over") proved to be impossible. The proposed alternative (abandon the cities as well as the countryside and just worry about Al-Qaeda along the border with Pakistan) is a non-starter, politically as well as militarily. It didn't work for Clinton and it won't work now.

Obama has only one choice, politically and militarily, but he is making it look like he is considering others (as if they existed!), so he looks thoughtful and rational, but he is in a box. The West will eventually lose in Afghanistan, so the problem is how to lose without losing. He will, after this period of pseudo-deliberation, go with the military approach, so as not to be perceived as weak on defense, an appeaser, or a loser of wars. They will hole up in the cities and try to keep (American) casualties to a minimum. They will claim successes along the way, while they string this out for at least three years.

If Obama is voted out in 2012, it will no longer be his problem. If he is re-elected, well, he'll just have to deal with the "situation on the ground" at that time. In the meantime, his only option is to look tough (but thoughtful), act tough (if ineffectively), and talk tough. Can he do that? Yes he can.

In reality, the Al-Qaeda threat is as overblown as the Communist hysteria of the fifties and sixties. The all-out war in Afghanistan should never have taken place - an invasion force to wipe out Al-Qaeda was as far as it should have gone. We should never have tried to do anything more.

titles

along the lines of The Time Traveler's Wife I have in mind some others:
The BootLicker's Daughter
The DockWatcher's Niece
The FlySwatter's Cousin Twice Removed
The BoneBreaker's Hamster
and so on

for the people

so with all this outrageous talk of socialism, marxism, terrorism, capitalism and nazism, i got to thinking that social organization throughout history has come down to only a variation on a theme - them in power being rather more or rather less generous to them that are not. you can talk benevolent or malevolent dictatorships, you can talk King Richard versus Prince John, you can talk about Roosevelt versus Reagan, Pharoahs of Egypt and Senators of Athens - always it is those in power and how they either give a feast for their subjects, or they don't. I'm in favor of the more generous as opposed to the less. Don't see much more in it to talk about!

posted

new audio books on itunes and podiobooks.com should be up within a couple of weeks ... i was shocked to discover that my earlier ones have now garnered more than 37,000 downloads since their release a year and a half ago. I thought it was only 1,700.

the yahoo group, by the way for pbauthors

Startup Scalp Hunting

Took my bike out on the road collecting stupid startup names here in Sunnyvale and did not come home empty handed. Just within a few miles of my office I collected these (some of the slogans are mine, some are actually theirs)

ENDEVCO - "We Try"
(providing the highest quality sensing solutions. worldwide)
ELIXIR MEDICAL - "Old and Phony Remedies for Today's Gullible Public"

ARCOT SYSTEMS - "It's What We Sleep On"
(the industry's largest cloud-based authentication system)

MBLOX - "If You Can Build It, Good For You!"
(the world's largest mobile transaction network)

ANAGRAN - "No Matter How You ReArrange It, We Are Still Us"
(total bandwidth management)

SENSORY - "Can You Feel It?"

SPINAL KINETICS - "That's Got To Hurt"

TOTAL PHASE - "Not Just a Phase and Not Total, It's Both"

MAXI SCALE - "To Infinity And Beyond"

ENPLAS - "Not Just En, En PLAS"
(the spirit of challenge)

AOSENSE - "A OK"
(Gravity & Inertial Sensors )

ACTIONTEC - "Too Busy For a Final H"
(creative solutions for the digital life)

QUALITAU - "Quality With a Tau"

HEADSTRONG - "We Don't Care What They Say"

ETHICAL NATURALS - "What's Not To Like?"
(Nature Verified by Science)

INSULECTRO - "We're In This Thing"
(a leading North American supplier of materials used to manufacture Printed Circuit Boards)

STRATIFY - "Know What You Have"
(taking it to the next level since 1979)

(now also a quiz on facebook)