What?!?!

Posted on March 29, 2009 by nat

It’s a deep down feeling. It’s the sort of thing that is irreducible. I found myself looking around, confused. Looking for the source of this consternation I became overwhelmed when I found it. I realized I had seen it the first time but was so dazed that I put myself into a state of vertigo just to avoid looking at it. But there it was I couldn’t deny it.

With all of the sick voyeuristic tendencies that I have from years of internet trolling I still wasn’t prepared to review the facebook profiles of everyone who I went to high school with. It was just so bloody unnecessary.

With no one else to blame I find my mind reeling from the terror of two paragraphs in which every sentence ends with an exclamation point! I remember this person being particularly peppy but seriously no one is that excited about everything they have to say.

There is a saying in go “If you want to become strong study joseki, if you want to become weak memorize it.” Now I’m assuming that pretty much everybody reading this doesn’t know what that means so let me rephrase it for the poetry crowd; if you want to understand language play with it, if you want to become incomprehensible learn big words.

I used to rail against people who didn’t submit themselves to standard written English. I put them in the same category as people who think kittens aren’t cute and pedophiles. Then one day I had a realization. Language, whether written or vocalized, is for communication. As with all communication each message is meant for a particular person or persons. The method/mode must reflect the audience. In short, you can’t talk to everybody the same because everybody is different. In sociology this is referred to as code switching and it happens in all cultures.

It’s OK for me to use lots of slang and vulgar terms with my friends but I wouldn’t talk that way to my grandmother, that’s code switching.

In light of all this. In light of knowing that everybody communicates differently. In light of knowing that as long as the message received is the message was received that success has been achieved. I still can’t fathom the message of 20 exclamation points. No one is that excited except infomercial hosts, crank addicts, and very young children in the presence of adults in fuzzy outfits.

Posted in Pondering | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

In which I write about decision making

Posted on March 8, 2009 by nat
Huh? Probably not a MENSA candidate

Huh? Probably not a MENSA candidate

Mellisa Williamson one time, and possibly current, resident of Roanoke, VA is featured in the photo above. For those of you not able to make out the finer points of detail in the photo she is a very pregnant woman smoking a cigarette. While that in and of itself is rather deplorable what makes the photo so priceless is that she states her apparent concern over the jackhammers used to work on the road in front of her house. What’s a person to do? The demand for civil works has been wielded in such a way to thwart this pregnant woman’s baby’s health; for shame.

Dripping sarcasm aside the photo does raise a lot of interesting questions (to me at least). Among them, is it of reasonable interest of society, and by extension the state, to intervene in the existence of an as yet born child? When? I can already hear the choirs of pro-choice advocates screaming about privacy and “Our bodies, our rights.” Sure, but to the same end then is it wrong for a bartender not to serve a third term pregnant woman? Sure this isn’t apples to apples but what is? I’d argue nothing.

The reason I argue that nothing is apples to apples is that context is everything. Take the following examples which I’ve lifted from Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert:

In 1887, Adolph Fischer, an American union leader, was hanged for inciting a riot. As he stood on the scaffold, he turned to an understandably surprised hangman and declared, ‘This is the happiest day of my life.’ 50 years later, George Eastman, inventor of the Kodak camera and one of the richest men in the world, sat down one evening, composed a brief note that read, ‘My work is done. Why wait?’ and blew his brains out.

What?!?! How could it be? Well as I alluded to earlier it’s all a matter of context. Fischer was an immigrant and framed. What he knew was that his work must be meaningful if they, “the man,” saw fit to frame him for something he clearly didn’t do. Which is to say he was having an impact in a world that here-to-fore had marginalized him.

Conversely Eastman had been a very active outdoorsman and was diagnosed with a degenerative disease that kept him indoors. This to him  seemed to make a mockery of his life up and to that point.

Now their actions seem clearer. Now there is context. And so while I continue to judge Ms. Williamson I readily and quickly acknowledge, if only to myself, that is the wrong course of action. I’ve given up on relativism. What I am a proponent of though is getting the facts. Facts however turn out to be hard to come by. So does truth. But I do happen to have a store house of memories. I also do have things that I’ve obliged myself to that require me to move through the world everyday.

And so it is with that knowledge that I sit comfortably in my modest dwelling writing about Ms. Williamson. I suspect she is a less than stellar mother who works real hard to do right by her kids and still doesn’t manage to do it. WHAT? Weeeeeelll dear reader lets get a little more context. Ms. Williamson said in an interview “If people don’t like it, that’s their opinion. They’ve got theirs and I’ve got mine.” Fabulous.

And now dear reader I put the question to you who are we to judge? When do we say enough is enough? I struggle with this regularly. Mostly because as I medidate more I find less and less gets to me, really. Things just don’t bother me as much. That’s not to say I’ve overcome all emotion. By now means I still get frustrated, happy, and all the other wonderful emotions but it’s just not as often that I get mad. Totally incensed about the way things are. After all that’s the way they are. This point I’d refer you to glass houses, rocks, and all that.

In the mean time this is from one of my favorite albums right now check this out:

Posted in Pondering | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Tonights songs

Posted on March 3, 2009 by nat

I’m at school. I press the “random album” button on my mp3 player. Sure enough Leonard Cohen comes up. This time it’s his “Various Positions” album. The opening track is one of my favorites. Check it out

It wasn’t until writing this that I ended up coming across the orgin of this song, rather disturbing. In an interview Leonard explained:

… it’s curious how songs begin because the origin of the song, every song, has a kind of grain or seed that somebody hands you or the world hands you and that’s why the process is so mysterious about writing a song. But that came from just hearing or reading or knowing that in the death camps, beside the crematoria, in certain of the death camps, a string quartet was pressed into performance while this horror was going on, those were the people whose fate was this horror also. And they would be playing classical music while their fellow prisoners were being killed and burnt. So, that music, “Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin,” meaning the beauty there of being the consummation of life, the end of this existence and of the passionate element in that consummation. But, it is the same language that we use for surrender to the beloved, so that the song — it’s not important that anybody knows the genesis of it, because if the language comes from that passionate resource, it will be able to embrace all passionate activity.

I don’t know about all that. What I do know is that despite the kind of cheesy synth I really love this song.

Posted in random stuff | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Three thoughts

Posted on February 25, 2009 by nat

On the days that I have school I walk home. It’s about a mile and I take it a leisurely pace. On this evenings stroll I found myself listening to “New Skin for Old Ceremony” for the umpteenth time. I don’t know if it was the music, a friend of mine losing her job today, another friend of mine moving away, or just my generally morbid mind that put these things together but here they are dear readers. The three things that stuck with me from my walk.

1) Main character walks in on an acquiantence disemboweling themselves and pulling out their own innards. In the few seconds before dying expresses that he’s finally getting at all those nagging problems that have been trapped inside. The rest of the story is establishing what would’ve lead to this person getting to that point.

2) I want to run a series of bulletin board ads with totally confusing and possible disturbing messages against otherwise normal advertising images. For example a man in a suit in some office, in big letters next to him “I eat food out of dumpsters.” Another one that occured to me was, a homeless man on a street, sitting, surrounded by trash, big letters “Maybe eugenics isn’t a bad idea.”

and last but not least

3) I pondered a statement from a co-worker which seems obvious. She said “You’re in charge of your own career.” I recognize that I’m in fact responsible for the decisions in my life and if I don’t like my job it’s up to me to find another one. For some reason though that statement coalesced everything that I know about career trajectories, networking, and general business knoweldge. It was a “OH! Right, I’m responsible for this and if I don’t like it, it’s up to me to fix it,” moment.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

OH god! Make it stop. My sides, oh, my sides

Posted on February 22, 2009 by nat


Sony Releases New Stupid Piece Of Shit That Doesn’t Fucking Work

The Onion never ceases to make me laugh. Even if it predictable sometimes it’s always worth the wait for the solid gold.

Posted in random stuff | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Snowshoeing madness!

Posted on January 16, 2009 by nat

My friend Kirk and I went snowshoeing and man was it a blast. Unfortunately these photo’s don’t capture all of the beautiful sites we saw but…

A view from Granite Mountain

A view from Granite Mountain

 

Kirk taking a picture

Kirk taking a picture

Nat at a post indicating directions

Nat at a post indicating directions

Posted in Adventures | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Resolution

Posted on January 7, 2009 by nat

Happy New Year everybody!

My resolution includes posting here once a week.

What really drove me here though was terribly missing my friends in Japan whom I love dearly. For those of you who haven’t been here’s a video that captures a lot of the feeling for me

Posted in Pondering | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Holiday snow, the fear

Posted on December 26, 2008 by nat

I initially wrote the following in December. I still haven’t finished writing the conclusion but wanted to get some feedback.

There has been snow in the greater Seattle area for a little over a week now. In the years I’ve lived here I’ve never seen this much snow, nor have I seen it last so long. To my recollection in the average winter we get snow once or twice it shuts everything down for a day or two and that is that.

As interesting as it is to read about weather that’s already occurred let me get to the heart of the matter, and the more interesting part; what happened before the snow. It was Tuesday night and all news sources were indicating that it would snow the next day. People were so certain of this that schools were preemptively announcing that they’d be closed. Similarly I had a great number of coworkers email in to say that they’d be unable to make it in.

Of course there was no snow. It would be another 24 hours before we saw any. My favorite headline for the day was “Seattle shuts down at chance of snow.” I felt that summed it up well. A city shuts down because it’s afraid of the boogey-man.

My thinking on this is that conflicted. Fear is a natural and healthy response to a great number of things (for an example see this article about snakes). Additionally some fear is so deeply ingrained that it is in fact not possible to respond. It is important to point out that we also learn to fear. As creatures that learn we have a not too unique ability to teach other to fear things, even things that don’t exist. Conversely we can learn not to fear.

Given these facts the question that springs to my mind is: What do we do? In the relatively harmless example of the snow the only thing that was lost was some productivity and a day in child’s education. Neither of these are likely to incite widespread violence, famine, or anything else particularly horrible. Clearly to fear that which doesn’t exist long term could lead to far more exaggerated behaviors.

In the case of my own upbringing, my parents and the church they belong to taught children to fear all of society. The effect for those of us who were responsive to their teachings was to develop a world view that reflected that. Specifically, to attend public school was dangerous because we were outside of our flock. I bring this up to illustrate that while in my case there was in fact no danger in attending public school. However, the perception of danger resulted in long term passive stress and subsequently absurd behavior.

Posted in Pondering | 4 Comments

Thinking about techonology

Posted on December 5, 2008 by nat

The following is a speech I gave at Toastmasters

A well designed website could save your life. OK that may be an exaggeration; having said that though it is the intention of this speech to provide you with a framework to understand the importance of thoughtful design. That framework is built by understanding the fundamentals of the World Wide Web.

Every webpage you have ever visited is dependent upon an infrastructure that is and has been largely the purview of the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C for short. The W3C may not be a name you’re familiar with their work is of utmost importance in establishing standards for the web. These standards are to ensure that people everywhere can access websites and address issues of scalability.

Since the W3C’s inception in 1994 their mission has been quote “To lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web.” This is accomplished through developing compliance standards for web related technologies. These standards are compiled as needed and released as “recommendations.” Perhaps the most significant impact of this has been that there is a common parlance for development. Much like a dictionary the recommendations developed by the W3C allow authors of web pages to know that they are “speaking” the same language.

When people are speaking the same language, to continue the analogy, they will not only understand each other but have perfect grammar to boot. Additionally, to verify that you are speaking properly is easy to do using free online tools offered by the W3C.

While the W3C doesn’t have legal power not following their recommendations can result in legal problems. The Americans with Disabilities Act requires that commercial websites provide equal access to all persons. One recent case that has brought this to light is National Federation for the Blind v. Target Corporation, in which the NFB filed suit against Target for having a website that was inaccessible to browsers which translate websites to Braille or speech. The result was an October 2, 2007 decision in which it was ruled Target had to make their site accessible to all people. Had they simply gone to the W3C website and followed the recommendations they could have saved themselves more than $6 million in fines, a number which doesn’t include the legal fees.

Now you may be saying to yourself “That is all well and good but what does that have to do with me?” Let me offer some examples from my life Well far more than you might suspect. My grandfather, an octogenarian, loves surfing the web! To do that effectively he requires visual assistance from a browser plug-in. Similarly, my cousin who relies upon the World Wide Web to do research for her job has macular degeneration and is functionally blind. She has a special web browser that allows her to adjust the way each web site is viewed.

It is a well known fact that as we get older our site tends to go. This is something considering your own future. Wouldn’t it be nice to still be able to send and receive email to your family and friends when you can’t see so well?

To accomplish all of this the W3C has recommended that all websites separate their content from their design. This is done by using two different languages. XHTML is meant to be used expressly for developing content structure. This is what non-visual web-browsers read. Cascading Style Sheets (AKA CSS) are what make the web-pages look the way they do. Websites that effectively use CSS will look good wherever they appear, something that is of growing importance given the increasing number of people who are accessing the internet from mobile devices like blackberry’s and iPhones.

According to internetworldstats.com since the year 2000 the number of people accessing the world wide web has risen from 360,985,492 users to 1,463,632,361 users. That is a more than 300% growth in usage. That growth trend isn’t slowing down. As the number of users rises so too do the types of technology that are being used to access web. With that ever increasing number of users on the world wide web the need for a communual language will rise. No, I’m not suggesting IT workers everywhere rush out to learn Esperanto but rather that compliance to the international standards will in the long run save costly redevelopment and result in a more accessible website. After all the whole point of having a website is for to put your message out there.

Posted in Informative | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

The U.S. supplies drugs to it’s own citizens or something like that

Posted on November 21, 2008 by nat
by Jeff Stein
accessed 11/20/08 from
http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/spytalk/2008/11/cia-coverup-should-prompt-reop.html

Revelations that the CIA misled Congress and the Justice Department about the 2001 downing of a Peruvian plane carrying American missionaries could shake loose still-secret details about another crash in the area two years earlier.

On  July 23, 1999, a U.S. Army surveillance plane went down under mysterious circumstances in the mountains of Colombia near the Ecuador border.

The Defense Department’s official investigation said that Army pilot Jennifer Odom lost her way in the darkness amid the high Andes.  But in the weeks leading up to her doomed flight, Odom had confided to her husband, an Army colonel, that she and the crew of intelligence technicians in the back of her plane, who were supposedly eavesdropping on narcotraffickers, had been “lit up” by radar missiles in the jungle.

As I wrote for Salon.com in July 2000, that led the couple to suspect that the intelligence crew were not targeting drug kingpins, as she had been led to believe, but Marxist guerrillas fighting the Colombia government.  Over time, the two became indistinguishable.

But the reason for covering up important details about her death, her husband, Col. Chuck Odom, told me, was that the U.S. was far more deeply involved in Colombia’s civil war than publicly acknowledged, with “hundreds of Special Forces people running all over the country.”

And there were other sinister factors in the mystery: Jennifer Odom reported to Col. James Hiett, the top U.S. counter-narcotics official in Colombia.

It would later emerge that Hiett and his wife had been corrupted by the drug lords. He was helping her launder the proceeds of her cocaine smuggling through the U.S. embassy with the help of his chauffeur.

All this was unknown to Jennifer Odom, who had been planning her surveillance flights with Hiett.

Hiett was under investigation, but according to later reports he was being tipped off by the investigators. Until then-U.S. Customs Director Ray Kelly (now chief of the NYPD) blew the whistle, the Army was planning to dispose of the case quietly.

Their arrest five months after Odom’s death left her family wondering whether Hiett or other U.S. officials responsible for sensitive drug interdiction missions could be trusted.

“Jennifer briefed Hiett on her mission on July 14,” her grief-stricken mother, Janie Shafer, told me. “Nine days later the crew was dead.”

Chuck Odom, who has struggled to get to the bottom of the case for almost a decade, could not be reached for comment Thursday.

In the Peru case highlighted today by Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., the CIA recklessly downed at least 10 aircraft suspected of carrying narcotics over the South American country.

The Washington Post’s Joby Warrick reported:

“As part of a joint U.S.-Peruvian anti-drug program that began in the mid-1990s, CIA officers helped Peruvian air force pilots identify aircraft suspected of carrying illegal drugs through the country’s airspace. The program had succeeded in bringing down numerous suspected planes when, in April 2001, a Peruvian pilot mistakenly shot into a small plane carrying U.S. missionaries. Two of the Americans on board, Veronica ‘Roni’ Bowers and her infant daughter, Charity, were struck by bullets and killed. The pilot, although wounded, managed to land the plane. Bowers’s husband and their 6-year-old son were not injured.”

According to the agency’s inspector general, CIA managers covered up the problems and knowingly gave false accounts to government officials investigating whether agency employees committed crimes, Hoekstra said.

“These are the most serious and substantial allegations of wrongdoing I’ve seen in my time on the committee,” said Hoekstra, whose western Michigan district was home to two of the Americans killed in the 2001 incident.

A CIA spokesman said agency director Michael V. Hayden is looking into the matter.

Posted in News | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments