Right and wrong

Alright, I'll say it. The Tao is Silent is a delightful book. There. I said it.

That's not exactly the preface that this deserves but I'm not of a mind to worry about matters such as that at the moment.

The this is this:

If you want to get at the plain truth,
Forget about right and wrong.
For the conflict between right and wrong,
Is the sickness of the human mind.

I'm not sure if this is Lao Tse quoted in an Alan Watts book, or Watts himself. Must be the former.
~~~

Incidentally, the neighbour(s) across the way have had a penchant of late to repeat certain songs repeatedly. Sex on Fire by Kings Of leon and I'm Alone With You (Tonight) by.. who's that by again? Perhaps strangely, this repetition doesn't bother me (yet).

Having a baby and tiredness

I know I should be going to bed earlier. After all, little one could wake up at any moment. The earlier you're in bed, the more sleep you get, and the healthier and happier you are. But I *can't* go to bed earlier. I'm too weak. I want to stay up and drink tea and surf the innernet. I need to decompress after an easy day at the office.

What does it matter, what does it all mean?

A few thoughts on this. I've just started reading The Tao Is Silent, by Smullyan. In it, he talks about the difference between allowing oneself to sleep when one is sleepy, and forcing oneself to sleep because it's sleepytime. So i'm sadly in the latter category at the moment. I don't know what kind of life I'd have if I allowed myself to sleep when sleepy - if I could even do it. I'd probably get fired for starters, plus go to sleep around 7pm. Can you believe my eyelids start getting heavy around 7 or 8? I have well and truly bade farewell to my old late night self. And yet - an even later self has emerged, nappy in hand, somewhere between 12:30 and 1:30 recently.

But let me now backtrack and say that I feel lucky. Little Miss Hammertime has caused us very few problems. My health is fine, despite occasionally interrupted sleep. From my straw poll of other parents, I think we're pretty darn lucky. The devil of sleeplessness and concomitant insanity and rage and desperate resignation has not bedevilled us, nope, not at all.

My new goal, as of this sentence, is to get in a nap - hang on, not to nap, but to allow myself to sleep when sleepy at some point this weekend. I am going to Canberra for the wedding of a close friend - maybe too close. No, not too close after all.

Canberra, where I'll allow myself to sleep when sleepy. I'm excited!

I am still

unable to judge your present feelings, as to past events. I am a widow. I just feel so goddanged inspired. That's why I'm letting it all hang out - so to speak - for the very first time. I love. I sing. I dance, often while wearing clothes inside out. Have you ever ironed your clothes inside out? It hurts! Now that that's been said and done, we can all breathe easily. Pomegranate, Mr Neville? Do you love? Can you smell my whole life? I have been tricked, hoodwinked and I cannot believe it! A cautionary tale indeed.
~~~
There once was a man named Begbagda
he always poke his mind
and wished that he'd be wined
that's why they called him DeChauncey Begbagda
~~~
day in day out
i smile not pout
cause you're inside my brain
a vision splendy
you are trendy
quite unlike john wayne
what a hottie
yummy body
the most lovely face
how is it
that this here twit
is even in the race?
tell me that you like me
and i'll sigh a deeply smile
tell me that you love me
and i'll name our first son Gile-
s

Finding joy in a moments

It's amazing how relaxed a man can be after a single glass of wine. These days I not only don't drink much, I don't desire to drink much. It's not a frustrated feeling, just an acknowledgment of the reality of having a supercute three and a bit month old baby. But tonight, it's the end of the week, a big week, and the wife and I are having a glass of wine.

From time to time I wonder about the good life, or the good moment. I'm enjoying this one now, even though I didn't plan or predict it, or maybe because of that. Once again, I get the feeling that the minute you start searching - and hoping to find - you're lost (searching for the pleasure of it is a different thing).

Here's to calling the search off.

By the way, I keep getting the urge to let fly with some massive cursewords at inappropriate times. As above, not out of frustration, just my own silly sense of humour.

public transport observations

1. there's an inexhaustible supply of ineligible L-bus hailers
2. there's an inexhaustible supply of heartless bus drivers
3. you can count on seeing someone run for the bus/train before too long
4. you can never quite tell which emotions will be invoked by seeing someone run and miss. sometimes schadenfreude, sometimes bellylaughter, sometimes deep sadness, sometimes frustration.
5. you can count on someone unnecessarily running at strathfield train station. i find this both amusing and incredible frustrating. no, there's no train there, so you don't need to push past everyone and sprint faster than you've ever done in your life and if you just poked your head up you wouldn't need to sprint all the way to the platform before realising all of this. i do understand the anxiety induced by having your view of the platforms obstructed by going underground from one platform to the next.
   
6. the space dimensions of a train will always make it a different ride compared to a bus. you got levels, you got places to hide and hide trash, you got multiple carriages separated by flirt with death. trains are much more likely to be dreamt of than buses for these reasons and others.
   
7. sometimes i understand why people sit at the edge of a vacant seat, but mostly i loathe folk like that
8. very rarely i understand why people don't move down the back of the bus, but pretty much all the time i shake my head at people like that.
9. many people are so anxious about missing their stop.
10. people never talk to each other on public transport
    

The only way is to experiment and act inventively and exuberantly via diverse adventures in living

Buzz Holling paraphrased on ecosystem and social collapse

I like it!

Definitionism

The tendency to excessively define (and occasionally thereby create) things, so as to bring them under control and demonstrate one's superior understanding of the world.

With apologies to D Coupland.

Imaginary wages

Imaginary wages war. Real wages. Fantasy land on downtime. 9 to 5 he said. He told me. Cody. Imaginary wages war. There for all to see, and them to ignore. Still there some thirty years on. The moment I was born, I never thought I'd live to see 30. Still don't. Fenestration collapse, two more to follow. Seed funds. Take it to the bank. Drift Floaters. Everyone's throwing this expression around and I don't even know what it means, though it sounds good. Wait for it. Foam.

Marketing

"The industry's regular task is to create uninformed consumers who will make irrational choices, thus undermining market theories."

Noam Chomsky, you've done it again.

1000 snuggles deep

When I first met him it was funny, because I was his daughter. But I was still admittedly nervous. We went upstairs for coffee. Things began to ravel from there, much as they always do when one refuses to relax the sphinctre of life. Sceptre of death. He's just a snappy dresser.

I grew up wearing suits. I tried jeans but I never felt comfortable as my testes often got caught in the back pocket. Go figure. Everybody knows that the good guys lost, by the way. Stoudemire, Bosh and Davis.

Winning through number crunching

In this day and age, it’s become almost passe for journalists, fans and players alike to be able to analyse in-depth the statistics from theirs and other players’ games. We take this for granted, yet this information and sophisticated analysis just wasn’t possible a few short years ago.

I guess it’s just slowly dawning on me now the enormous potential out there, if the tools are right. Check out the brilliant resultsfromtennis.com.

I’ve just done a fairly basic run, from the perspective of a commentator preparing for a big grand slam match.

And the results, allowing me to appear quite the well prepared commentating genius:

rage against the commentators

Well it certainly was a fairytale performance from Jelena Dokic at the Australian Open. She won our hearts and took us on a rollercoaster ride of emotions. It's fair to say that there hasn't been an Open this full of drama and intrigue since last year.

God I hate some of the crap that commentators come up with. First off is Alicia Molik, who is putting on a truly awful audition for a long term commentary position. Lucky for her she's only competing against Johanna Griggs, Tracy Austin and Casey Bevilaqua. Did you see her post-match interview of Dinara Safina?

Molik: How many off seasons have you had?
Safina: [blank look]
Molik: How many off seasons have you had?
Safina: What?
Molik:[thinking to herself: god, i'm asking her a supremely incisive question, that demonstrates my ability as a commentator, and she can't speak english]
Molik: [tugging collar] what i'm trying to say is.. er...ah geez... you look great, i mean when i played you, you were a fat piece of shit. What's your secret?
Safina: Shut the fuck up

The other thing I hate is when an Australian player loses and their performance is called 'brave'. This is especially reserved for really bad players, really bad losses and women players. Oh my fuck, that Jelena Dokic is so brave! If I had to go into the forest at night I'd want her with me. Did you see how she made 45 unforced errors? She's so brave. Can you imagine if Lleyton Hewitt's loss to Fernando Gonzalez was referred to as brave? Or Pat Rafter's loss to Ivanisevic in the Wimbledon final? C'mon, what is that?! Let's all try to use brave far more frequently and inappropriately. By the way, I thought Del Potro's loss to Federer was very brave.

Lastly (for now) I hate it that tennis commentators, more than cricket or league or football commentators, always give advice to the losing players. Dokic really needs to stop going for the lines. She needs controlled aggression. If I was her, that's what I'd do, and it would make me win and beat Safina. I don't know why she's not doing it. Just call the game, give us a little bit of insight due to your years on the tour, and leave it at that. BASTARDS!

Dokic should have won

A tribute to Philip Glass

Gosper Motion at its best

well i've ixhumed some fine, fine science writing and had my buddy Artful Science post it at his blog. If you want to read it, please read it
- Cure cancer? Sure can sir!
- Rethinking health promotion
- Response to green genes

~~~

We all know that Channel Nine's exciting infrared HotSpot technology allows us to detect cricketers with boners. But have they ever used Snickometer to discover the sound a ball makes when it strikes the batsman's box?

My idea of a good time

But first - shock! - there's a new post o'er at artful science. It concerns my strange and enlightening journey on the path to newborn vitamin k administration.

But second - my idea of a good time!

I have in my smoking hot beautiful hands the following books from the UNSW library

Metamagical themas: questing for the essence of mind and pattern
Perhaps my favourite work of Hofstadter's. It contains a real mix of essays and articles, covering nuclear armageddon, superrationality, analogy as the crux of creativity, nonsense (Arthur a grammar!) and many, many more. I'll own this one day.

Schrodinger's kittens and the search for reality
Physics populariser extraordinaire John Gribbin writes about light, and quantum theory, transactions and reality. If time slows down as you speed up, and if it approaches zero as you approach the speed of light, what would it be like to travel at the speed of light? Time wouldn't pass, right? So there's essentially zero time (and zero distance) between the source and receiver of a photon, even if the source is a quasar 13 billion years from your eye.

The origins of the future: ten questions for the next ten years
Gribbin again, I was hoping for more of his magic but, crucially, updated. I lost interest after the first chapter, which was actually a great introduction to the state of quantum theory/matter/waves/particles as it stands today. It's pretty fucking weird, but utterly fascinating.

Quantum psychology: how brain software programs you and your world
I picked this because it was the only title by Robert Anton Wilson they had. It's not bad, I've come across many of these ideas in Cosmic Trigger and Illuminati, plus I've realised that a lot of what he says is strange common sense (to my mind anyway), yet he phrases it in a very distinctive style, one many would call new age or oddball or dissenting or something like that. Well, the fact that he feels compelled to use the word quantum shows you what I mean. For example, perception is not a passive process of signal receipt, but active interpretation of signals based on current (and past) brain/mind states. We don't 'see reality', we weave it, and he ties this to ideas from quantum theory.

Consider a spherical cow: a course in environmental problem solving
I originally looked up a separate ecological statistics book, but this one looked far more interesting. I needed it for a small project I'm working on at the moment. A bit deluded to think I could catch up on my mostly forgotten maths, but damn it I don't care.

Ecological data
Same project as above. This caught my eye because of it's good overview of methods in ecology, including metadata and geographical information systems.

A primer of statistics: data analysis, probability, inference
My textbook from first year statistics. Great little book, starting with box plots and working up to chi square tests and some nifty algebra.

Regional climate change and variability: impacts and responses
This one could be the key to my little project, but I haven't gotten past the introduction!

Climate change 2007: the physical science basis: contribution of Working Group 1 to the Fourth Ass
Who ever heard of so many colons?! Otherwise known as the IPCC report, I'd like to check out some of the nittier grittier parts of this. Slick production. Weighty tome. Tome.

Subjective probability: the real thing
Title appealed to me, sadly the real thing hasn't corresponded to my hopes, yay my dreams. Guy writes with flair, but it ain't no good.

Ice, mud and blood: lessons from climates past
Popular science type entry for my mini-project, the first few chapters go into some interesting ideas about what the planet was like in the past. Dere was some big ice ages (Snowball earth) and some hot, hot times. Not quite sure why I put it down.

Climate code red: the case for emergency action
I saw one of the authors speak last year, and he was convinced we need to assume a war footing. Forget this 0.01% of the economy spent on climate change, we need to spend 30 or 40 or 50%. He was particularly grim about the fate of the arctic.

It's all for sale: the control of global resources
Without having read it, I reckon this is the type of book that should be compulsory reading in, say late high school. A rundown of all the natural resources that are exploited - by whom, for whom, how much etc.

Alternative lyrics - christina aguilera's fighter

Makes me that much harder
Probably last a little bit longer
Makes my schlong much wider
Thanks for giving me Viagra

Thanks to Channel Ten for endlessly playing part of this song as they promote their programme 'a smallest winner'

Contraction all around me

The ominous forces gathering out there will defeat these efforts and everyday life will reorganize itself some other way consistent with the single greatest trend: the force of contraction.

JRK, Clusterfuck Nation

Happy post #200, Hammertime's Brog!!

On time

there are some who say time doesn't exist - that there is no flow of time. they say that the case for a flow of time has been convincingly demolished (for instance by Deutsch in Fabric of Reality). Yet they don't deny existence. They assert many states of the world; and that time is inferred from each state - states exist, movement between them is nonsensical; at least it doesn't occur. it stands to reason from this terrible introduction that two similar states, even if separated by a lot of 'time' in real life, can have a weird and strong connection. to wit, third time hanging out 10 or so identicalish white cloth nappies, and those little pink microfleece inserts, transports me back in time, or to the same place in time each time. odd feeling indeed.

Blowout

Most people don't know that the original title of Fellini's Blow Up was actually Blowout - he'd been watching a lot of daytime TV at the time and was inspired by these two simple words. It was only when he tried to register the trademark in English that he was sued for copyright infringement by the creators of Burners, Blowouts and Boobs. Poor Fellini.

***

I was walking along Stanmore Rd the other day when I heard a plastic metal tinkle. I looked around and - lo and behold - there was a two dollar coin, ending its roll and coming to a stop, but not before doing that immensely satisfying increasing frequency half roll on the spot thing. Man, I love that sound. Well I looked around and I'll be damned if there was no one else around. There were a few cars passing by but I didn't believe for a second that the coin had emerged from one of them. It was one of those curious things that might have gotten some people thinking, might have gotten them freaked out even. Well not me. I picked up the little sucker and walked home.

A week later, also coming home from goddamned work, I noticed a shiny golden metal shine on the footpath. I bent over, exposing my buttcrack, and picked it up. I remembered those cruel people who glue coins to the ground and watch as others pathetically try to pick them up. Now I knew something funny was afoot. I stayed perched down there for half a second and then did a big squirm and spin around. Someone had shoved something into my butt crack. There was a couple of guys walking in the other direction that must have done it, but why the hell I'd no idea. I felt in and pulled out another two dollar coin. That was three in a week, and two in a few seconds.

I think you know where this is going, but before you get ahead of yourself, let me fill you in on a little secret. I once stole a seal from the zoo - double bagged it and walked right out. Well I'm just itching to tell you more about what happened next, but that'll have to wait for another day.