goatee

i am not a crook

° 02.11.25.mo | Despite Everything

Despite the prospect of nowhere to stay and a useless cell phone, Dan and I enjoyed ourselves. While I failed to connect with Larisa, I did manage to meet up with David and Anders. I failed to find Al Burian's Burn Collector, but I did find Cometbus' Omnibus: Despite Everything — now selling for $42 on Amazon! And while the Big Apple Hostel gave our beds away, we found them again at a hostel on the Upper West Side, a few blocks from where I lived six years ago.

One of the redeeming qualities of any hostel is that despite sharing a room with ten other people, one can fall asleep fairly easily; when I think of a hostel, I think of being very tired. This time I had a top bunk and wondered if I might roll over and off! I haven't fallen out of bed since I was a kid, but another aspect of being dog tired is how quickly the waves of sleep get under me. I actually enjoyed the moment of lucid somnolence as I looked at the ceiling four feet from my nose and felt my body twitch and fall as I lost consciousness.

° 02.11.20.we | Shaking the Trees

A week ago I mentioned to Nora that I had been startled by the deafening chatter of a dark cloud of sparrows over head. On Friday Nora noted that a tree in the playground that had a few days ago provided a gilded canopy was now nude.

Nature thrills us because it floods the senses and challenges the mind. Even within the urban confines of alleyways and curbs, I marvel: arriving home from work one evening I encountered a possum in the driveway who nonchalantly considered me and my bicycle, turned, and waddled away. Or, the smell of skunk on a summer night, feathers falling onto the busy sidewalk as a hawk finishes its meal of pigeon, flashes of lightening, carpets of snow, and low clouds skimming the tops of trees and stealing the top floors of Boston sky-scrapers, I still pause in wonderment despite the daily bustle.

On Saturday Nora called me to the window over-looking the playground: a flock of sparrows was attacking the trees. Viciously twittering dots would burst, swirl, and alight upon a tree or bush and vibrate in frantic agitation. Darts of feather would drop to the earth to frolic in the detritus before returning to the swarm which would then bolt and attack again.

I stood transfixed betwixt the swarm's beauty of organic chaos and the puzzle of what on earth were these little creatures doing?

° 02.11.19.tu | How Metaphors Work

"Metaphor: The transference of the relation between one set of objects to another set for the purpose of brief explanation;"

Metaphors are extremely powerful tools for understanding and communication. They take advantage of two cognitive strategies: to place an abstract problem in more concrete terms and to "carry over" a set of understood relationships from a well known scenario to a less understood one. The evolutionary psychologists Cosmides and Toby theorize that the brain has cognitive modules adapted to pragmatic social problems such as detecting cheating; they've shown that people are better at solving a logical puzzle of selection when it is placed in the context of figuring out which of those in a bar should be asked about their beverage or age (i.e., someone drinking beer, someone drinking coke, a 25 year old, or a 16 year old). And when I wrote Genetics for the Computer Scientist I was taking relationships I've learned in computer science and finding correspondences in biology.

Today I was discussing with a colleague the problem of explaining in layman's terms why "deep linking" should not be precluded. For those used to the Web, deep linking is the intuitive and integral practice of linking to Web pages other than a site's entry (home) page. Unfortunately, ill-conceived web sites and a particularly misguided Dutch court argue such links should be prohibited. My colleague and I disagreed on which metaphor would most aptly communicate the issue. He felt that a Web link is a citation, for a court to outlaw hyper-textual references would be like precluding citations in a bibliography! While this scenario captures our joint incredulity, it fails with respect to three other characteristics. First, opponents of linking do not want to prohibit the existence of a Web site address (URL) as if printed on a page, they are concerned about its use in the context of access resulting from that URL in a link. Second, the deep linking scenario arises because some sites rely upon views of advertising on their home page to offset the costs of producing and serving the content on the rest of the site. A citation does not engender unrestricted access to a resource without recompense. (If anything, it might lead to the book being purchased.) Third, law should not take where technology provides. As I described in Idiot Boards, I redirect some links to images on my site to a small "bandwidth smack-down" page. I do not require permission to link to my site, and I certainly don't want a court to preclude it!

Consequently, I felt a metaphor of a building with multiple street entrances was more apt. One wouldn't want to outlaw the mechanism of addressing the entrances (e.g., "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, North Entrance") nor even the ability to knock on the door! Residents of the building have the ability to lock the doors, check the identity of entrants or redirect them to the South Entrance, just as we do on a Web site! The only thing a court should concern itself is methods of circumvention such as breaking in through a window or a stolen password.

Hence, when one proffers a metaphor one must attempt to:

° 02.11.11.mo | Why Consensus Is Important

I don't hold romantic notions about democracy: it's a pretty word for "mob rule", prone to mass hysteria and opportunistic demagogues. Granted, it might be the best worst case we have, but my loyalty is to the constitutional constraints that provide checks and balances, limits avarice, and protects civil liberties.

I work in a context in which consensus is the goal for coming to a decision. This too can have it's problems but it also has a benefit. One of the most important precepts of negotiation theory is that one should argue from interest, not position. A common example is of two children arguing over an orange. One child wants to eat the fruit, the other wants the rind for a science experiment and so they each take the position of exclusive possession. Had they disclosed their interests they might have found a win-win solution.

I've recently seen two institutions working towards agreement in their own ways: one arrives at a decision via Robert's Rule of Order and much voting, the other tries to craft a consensus. In both cases, each process often fails to achieve a perfectly satisfiable solution to everyone. However, while those that were governed by Robert's Rules were stacking the committee for the next vote; the latter institution was undertaking the painful but rewarding conversation of finding a shared vocabulary to discuss their unique and joint interests.

° 02.11.05.tu | Two Years Ago

This time two years ago I was excited to vote for a proposal that would fund drug abuse treatment, curb the criminalization of drug use and the seizure of property without due process by the state. Instead, my fellow citizens voted to disenfranchise those in jail: a capricious act that seems to ensure those in jail are further alienated from civil society.

This year there isn't anything progressive to be excited about. Instead, we will have to yet again direct our State House that, yes we want want clean elections! (As reported by Bill Moyers, state legislatures are not eager to implement clean elections. In Massachusetts we had the surreal scenario of a Court ordering the seizure of State furniture and vehicles because the legislature refused to release the clean election funds to candidates!)

[Update: I'm once again disappointed.]

° 02.11.04.mo | Stencil Conversations

29-andre.jpg While riding to work from J.P. this morning I noted this amusing stencil along the Southwest Corridor Park's bike path. Like the printing press image below, this stencil is part of a larger conversation. It is a parody of a parody: re-appropriating the blunt command of Andre's Posse, "OBEY" (a critique of conformist culture), back to Bush's crude political discourse.

As a photographic bonus, I like the texture of the wall and the color of the leaves creeping up-wards as if they wish to subsume an evil.

° 02.11.04.mo | You Are What You Read

"The golden rule is to act fearlessly upon what one believes to be right." Gandhi.

"Non-cooperation is a measure of discipline and sacrifice, and it demands respect for the opposite views."° Gandhi.

One of the most interesting scenes of Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine is his discussion with John Nichols, brother to Terry Nichols and friend of Timothy McVeigh. Nichols makes a cogent argument for protecting individual liberty from tyrannical government via the exercise of the right to bear arms. When Moore asks him why not use the non-violent means that Gandhi employed to defeat the British Empire, Nichol's rant sputters to a stop, he pauses, and says, "I'm not familiar with that."

If you surround yourself with gun toting "patriots", spend your evenings in bed reading about the (genuine) abuses at Ruby Ridge and Waco and your weekends at the gun show, it's not surprising your views will reflect that environment.

I believe Nichol's rant and beliefs are cogent and internally consistent within the world he moves. He's not crazy, neither was McVeigh nor bin Laden from what I can tell. Instead, they are men acting with passionate consistency in a world view so narrow it squelches self-doubt and fuels their (self) righteous (self) satisfaction.

I laud those with passion and consistency, these are integral to my ethic; but this is also why I place a tension within the ethic: to always challenge and in this case never trust a single view point — even my own — until I've at least tried to sympathetically consider others.

° 02.11.01.fr | Statistics

Some interesting figures and requests from the past week:

° 02.11.01.fr | Andre's Posse

Central Square is a hot bed of Andre's Posse activity. In the 90's I'd photograph the occasional stencil. A few years ago I happily noted the arrival of the first huge mural poster on the abandoned gas station at the corner of Main and Mass. Now, I'm seeing a new design every few months! I don't know if Shepard Fairey is visiting Cambridge much, but whoever it is, keep it up!

Independent web sites should reach for what good stencil art achieves: a pseudonymous stab in the dark of the passing public perception, provoking, challenging, and beating the swords of marketing in our public spaces into the plowshares of civic consideration. The following is a selection from my collection of sticker and stencil art from around the world:

15-andre-adorned.jpg29-nyc-andre-giant.jpg29-nyc-andre-spock.jpg../photo/web/1999/11/29-nyc-andre-star.jpg14-weird-face.jpg 3-nice-graffiti-liberation.jpg28-tech-fear.jpg29-central-sq-night-obey-nixon.jpg 11-sydney-graffiti.jpg 27-andre-press.jpg 29-andre.jpg

The last two images are particularly intriguing to me. The first, an old style printing press, is a deliciously self-referential jibe at its own production. The second is of interest because I simply don't know who the fellow is. (If you do, email me!)

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