combat boredom

(Note I intend the subject line to be read as a double entendre -- on
the one hand, the standard and generally consumeristic slogan, on the
other, a riff on the outdated term "battle fatigue".)

Well, well, well... boredom indeed!

(But, as bored as I am, I do sometimes find ways to thrill myself -- I
finally gave my number to the checkout clerk at Office Max, for
example. That was a bit of a thrill, even if she doesn't call.)

What I think I *want*, however, is a job that is in some sense the
opposite of my current job -- the profile I have in mind is:

* work from anywhere
* make at least 40 dollars a day
* spend less than 4 hours working per day
* work is always available (no hustling)

As a Media Professional, I wonder if you might have any ideas.

As a point of comparison: my friend (one Mr. Miller) has a Writing Gig
that he can use to earn about $25/story, for stories that are about
2000 words; he's sent in about 3 stories over the course of the last
month. I don't know how that compares to industry standards, but if
his job description could jostled into a form matching my list of
desiderata above -- then I'd say it wouldn't be a terrible thing for
me to take up.

And another: one of the people in the Minneapolis Writer's Workshop
suggested that I submit my work to "Cafe Irreal"
(http://home.sprynet.com/~awhit/guidelin.htm) -- they indeed would pay
up to $40.0 per story, however, they do not publish the same author in
consecutive issues, and indeed, they only publish quarterly. So at
the most optimistic (getting something in every other issue), a "deal"
like this would only take care of half a percent of my stated income
needs over the course of a year.

Only one more: I can make 50 dollars in two hours doing math tutoring
at what I consider to be a fair Midwestern hourly rate, but the work
is not always there.

So, what gives?

And what does this have to do with BOREDOM!?

I'll answer the second question and leave the first as an exercise.

I recently had the thought or realization that I might be the only
"consumer" of my computer work, at least for a long time. Indeed, if
I do follow my stated plan to give the work away for free, regardless
of how many other consumers there are, I shan't make a cent off of it
directly.

Now, I don't see that "being the only consumer of my work" is in any
way a bad thing. This is reminiscent of what writers always say to
me: "You have to figure out who your intended audience is -- but it
sounds like you're just writing for yourself, and that's OK."

I used to disagree -- I didn't want to just have what I was doing be
"OK", I wanted it to be great!

But the thing I'm facing up to lately is that a lot of the things I've
devoted a lot of my time to is of absolutely no interest to anyone in
the world except me. In a way this is liberating. It can still be
"great" even if no one else gives a rip about it.

Apparently the stuff I'm interested in doesn't impress the ladies and
doesn't even earn me any cash.

That's part of the boredom I'm talking about: I'm "bored" of being
eternally "unsuccessful" (in social terms) even when I'm at my most
successful (in my own terms).

The other part is that I become "bored" with what other people are
doing, because it is not rewarding to me EITHER in traditional social
terms OR in terms of my own precious interests.

Really, the "job" thing is only tangentially related to what I'm
talking about here. I think a less "boring" situation to be in would
be one in which I was actually just getting paid to do what I like
doing. I realize that might sound like "a lot to ask" given that most
people I know don't care about what I do -- but as Ella pointed out
yesterday, I have not personally interviewed every human to know for
sure that no one cares about it.

I'm also bored with trying to track down places where I might "fit in"
and being rejected or shunted away by them. I'm thinking, for
example, of the various job postings listed at
http://eliterature.org/news/job-listings/ --
none of which do I "qualify for", but some of which seem like the
sort of thing I could do if given the opportunity.

My latest thought is to get in touch with all of these people and tell
them I'm not applying for the job, but I'd like to get some kind of
paying position, and see what they have to say. It might work.

On the other hand, this doesn't have much to do with the "dream job"
described above.

Well, this leaves the "exercise".

arxana update

I finished a better version of the "hierarchical browser", so now it
is possible to scroll DOWN through the hierarchy of a latex document.
(Moving up or sideways or whatever will not be hard to code up,
indeed, I can probably just reuse a lot of the code I already wrote
for my last prototype!)

I used a lot of higher-order functions to make things flexible -- the
basic "browser" is just a list of items, but when you "click" on them,
they do different things. For example, if you click on an article, it
displays the article, whereas if you click on a section, it displays a
new list of that section's contents. (So, a lot like Gopher or
dired.)

Higher-order functions can be built and then called to do formatting
"to order". I admit it takes a little getting used to! If you want
to see how gnarly things can get, take a look in the vicinity of Note
5.35 (page 18) in

http://planetx.cc.vt.edu/~jcorneli/arxana/arxana.dvi

Presumably the code can eventually be simplified somewhat, but anyway,
other than making my head spin a bit, I'm happy to note that I haven't
run into any critical difficulties in the course of assembling what
should be considered a "basic functionality".

(It would be swell to run some traces or whatever other benchmarking
things exist to make sure I'm not secretly making the machine work too
hard -- but I don't think I am!)

Other than finishing the "nice" features of Hierarchies (which I might
table for a bit now that I've got the core done), I've got a few
interesting things related to the lisp-to-database connection to
figure out, but other than that it looks like a handful of relatively
trivial things to do before I have something together that I think is
release-worthy.

"new ecology of things"

I can't make heads or tales of http://newecologyofthings.net
without some kind of upgraded browser!

Re: 20 questions

MAGIC ACCORDING TO JOE

PRELUDE: DEFINITIONS

The Medium is the Message.
The Market tells you the Meaning of the Message.
Mathematics Maps Meanings.
Magic Manipulates Media.

SECTION 1: SKETCHING

1. I am writing from "Bob's Java Hut" on Lyndale Avenue at 27th
Street. It is May 27, 2008.

2. There are people talking right behind me, and I am forced to hear
their conversation.

3. Think about the things that are superimposed in this or any
sketch. What is the "difference" between this place, myself, what I
write, what I hear? For one thing, we might guess that these things
are listed in increasing order of evanescence.

4. However, there are various cases in this ordering seems to break
down. For example, I am now aware of the fact that the people who are
sitting behind me, whose faces I have never seen, are talking about
yoga. This fact is now "immortalized" in my writing. (Well, it is a
pretty weak sort of immortality, but nevertheless, it appears that I
have somewhat decreased the evanescence of their conversation.) I am
thinking about what "yoga" has to do with me, for example, I am
thinking now of a reference to a text called "Buddhist Yoga" in a book
by Thomas Cleary, who is a translator of books on Zen who I trust. I
don't know what "Buddhist Yoga" is, but I am all the more inclined to
look it up now that I am thinking about yoga, and am in a context that
is friendly to "looking things up".

5. So, I am influenced by this environment, and, when I am writing, I
am also influencing the environment. Of course, the influences I am
writing about are not extraordinary. Still, "magic", as I think about
it, is never extraordinary. Is there any magic in what I've just
done?

SECTION 2: ASSERTIONS

1. We should distinguish everything as much as possible but notice
commonalities between things too. For example, in physical terms, I
am not quite the same "thing" that was responsible for writing the
section above. In legal and social terms, I am not only the same
thing: I am the same person.

2. Although I want to keep in mind a physical view of the universe in
which humans and media objects are merely "things", subject to
physical forces (where agency does not exist), I am also required in
speak (and usually think) in terms of linguistic structures and all
the other human and media-oriented structures that enable me to
survive.

3. Each of these views threatens to exclude the other: at one
extreme, everything is "just physics"; at the other, everything is
"just media". I'll assume that the "physics" side of things is
understood; I'll sketch the "media" side as follows. If I look at
myself as an agent, I can use anything in my environment. A tree
planted in the median can easily be used as a symbol in my writing. A
person seated at another table can become an interlocutor. If it was
snowy outside, I could use my urine to write letters in the snow; as
it is, I'm going to have to go use the restroom!

4. The relationship of mathematics to physics is well known: we can
use math to describe the patterns in phenomena we experience. (That
of course includes patterns in phenomena we "cause", i.e., there's the
whole "repeatable" and "independently verifiable" aspect of science.)
The relationship of mathematics to media is perhaps a tad less well
known, but the word is: "programming". In computer programming, math
is right at the surface. In programs that don't involve computers
(e.g. exercise programs; news programs), there's typically still an
overt math aspect (e.g. amount of weight, number of reps; schedule of
broadcast, duration of reports). However, I want to use the word
"mathematics" to describe not relationships involving "number", but
relationships involving a more general "value". Mathematics is the
science of relationships between values.

5. Is there any room for "magic" with such a broad definition of
"mathematics"? I say "yes!" -- Indeed, the simplest approach would be
to say that, like engineering, "magic" is a sort of applied
mathematics. In other words: if I know the relationships between
certain values, I can use this knowledge to help achieve certain ends.
Historically, relationships and correspondences are "big" in magic.
However, I think this is only part of the picture.

SECTION 3: CRITIQUE OF VALUE-NEUTRAL MAGIC

1. If magic only worked when you knew what you're doing, it would be
way less fun. However, it is pretty clear that you can manipulate
values without knowing what the values are. This happens all the
time: in economics, consider the category of "externalities".
Economic actors (especially those acting in the real world!) cause all
sorts of "side-effects" that don't have any part in their theoretical
models. If you are going to "do" magic you may frequently be involved
with a "shoot first, ask questions later" approach. Roughly speaking,
this is the obverse side of the scientific method.

2. We could call magic that changes values without knowing what
values are changing "value-neutral". I'm suggesting that it is "fun"
and basically "necessary", but it is also something to struggle to get
beyond.

3. In a lot of "magical" writing, people talk about different ways of
focusing an intention. "Chaos magic" is full of techniques that
operate on this principle. The main thing to say on this subject is
that an intention is only one of many relevant values. Although I
haven't made a deep study by any means, my sense is that chaos magic
is "effective, but is close to value-neutral". This is almost the
same as saying it is not well understood (but not quite!).

4. This is why my thoughts about magic have so many arrows pointing
at other arrows. If A goes to B through C, there are certainly many
side-effects. "Internalizing externalities" is a lot of what I
consider my magical work to be about.

5. I define magic as "media manipulation" because that's what I think
it is. I want my definition to include most things that people call
magic, from stage magic (manipulating the audience by feats of
legerdemain) to magical realism (manipulating the audience by
manipulating narratives that manipulate standard symbols), and so
forth. I think magic is important at present because too many people
are accepting the media they've been handed in the default way.
Perhaps it's the same in any age: but today's technologies seem to
provide a variety of new opportunities for useful work in this area.
The reason I am critiquing "value-neutral magic" is that I think our
society is rife with it (e.g. advertising). It is important to
realize that this sort of manipulation is not "neutral" from the point
of view of the economic values or quantities that people are trying to
change -- but I consider it to be close to "magically neutral" because
the side-effects (i.e. media effects) are not well understood away
from a small target set. My idea of non-neutral magic is more like
what goes on in Douglas Adams's "Dirk Gently's Holographic Detective
Agency", where everything is taken into account to solve the case.

AFTERWARD

I've included "3 times 5" aphorisms as a nod to how I got started in
this area -- with 3X5 cards written as "captions" to my life. Comics
and magic often go together. I'm developing a series of hypertextual
works somewhere in the conceptual vicinity of comics and "interactive
fiction" that will hopefully make this all much more -- practical.
I've used several "magical" techniques in the process to date, but my
understanding of the topic is changing as my work continues. This
short summary is not intended to be a set of instructions -- but if it
inspires you in any way, I'd like to know about it!

REFERENCES

Pre First maxim due to Marshall McLuhan
2.1 "Science and Sanity" by Alfred T. Korzybski.
3.3 "Pop Magic!" by Grant Morrison
3.4 http://planetx.cc.vt.edu/~jcorneli/arxana/arxana.pdf
Aft "Promethea" by Alan Moore, "The Invisibles" by Grant Morrison

Re: a cut-up method of cartooning

"Oh goth it HUHRTS" said the little girl named FledGEULED, as the
"dentist" extracted her rotten molars with a pair of pliers. MARLOF!
(The sound-effect of tooth extracted.) (Closeup of the rotten tooth.)
A parade of microbe-ant-aliens come marching of the base of the
tooth. "TIRRAY! Tirray! t'tooth tis textracted, twe're tree!"
Quickly, the dentist burns surface of the the tooth, still held
between the pliers, with a propane torch "HISRAP!" (The tooth briefly
looks like a flaming skull, the microbes are reduced to a few specks
of burnt matter falling to the ground.) He puts the burnt and still
steaming/smoking tooth into a cylindrical glass jar with the ominous
label RATYGE written in large black capital letters on a piece of
masking tape stuck on the front.

RE: Moles Wanted for rnc protest groups

I saw that in the print edition! What's even funnier, however, is
that I just got invited to a vegan potluck, too (that rarely happens).
Now we have to wonder whether it is a "real" vegan potluck or if it is
being thrown by the CIA, bla bla bla.

bored with people (final version)

I'm bored with people
they are so predictable
that includes myself!

Re: finding open sores

I'm tangentially connecting this to a resurgent concern of mine:
"Dude, where's my subculture?"

Is it even necessary (much less, desirable) to have a subculture? I
seem to find myself attached to various groups as a loose hanger-on;
I'm not even sure if any of these groups is (the human image of) a
"subculture" -- maybe they're just people who loosely fit into amongst
cultural groups, like electrons floating in a proton lattice.

And yet, I think I do rub up against subcultures from time to time --
"the art subculture", for example, or "the academic subculture", or
"the activist subculture", or even (my least favorite) "the indie
subculture".

How would a search engine for cultural groups work? All of the
examples I mentioned above "advertise themselves" by what they do, and
bulletins of various sorts filter out into the rest of the world: come
to this art opening, take this class, join this group, go to this bar
and listen to this band.

I'd like to imagine that if I found ads sourced from some subculture I
liked better than any of these, I'd be drawn in right away!

Well, I always do like to think highly of myself.

* In New York, for example, there's that LISP NYC meeting once a
month; that's certainly something, and I haven't been drawn in by it.

* Comics... well, I've never been to a comic convention, maybe I
should try to go to one, just as a visitor? (The woman at the used
bookstore last night informed me that "graphic novels are really
popular right now.")

* There are probably some "flavours" of academic subculture that I
could have fun with; for example at the U of MN math building I saw an
ad for a program offering "Pathways from Mathematics and Physics into
Computer Science and Communication Systems" that's in Lausanne,
Switzerland (http://ic.epfl.ch/page68469-en.html); and while I'm sure
I wouldn't find it so intriguing if it wasn't in a foreign land with
French as a primary language, under the current conditions, it sounds
like something that could possibly be fun. (Then again, I haven't yet
tried that graceful move whereby I parlay my independent computer work
into a substitute for a good academic graduate record, so I don't know
if it will really work. I'm sure I'll be more confident about this
type of thing as soon as my "product" is better solidified.)

* Writing-wise, I still haven't checked out everything that the
Electronic Literature Organization has to offer
(e.g. http://eliterature.org/programs/), although I did speak with the
past president of the organization who said I should hunt through
their pages. If I was better qualified to apply for some of these
jobs, maybe I'd do that http://eliterature.org/news/job-listings/ --
maybe I'll do it (or at least try to worm my way in somewhat) anyway.

On the other hand, what I'm coming up with for the most part seem like
"activities" more than "subcultures".

One more note on the subject. I found a book by Umberto Eco called
"The Open Work". I didn't buy it (having already spent more than $100
on books this week in a fit of rampant consumerism), but it seems
like something I oughta look at eventually:

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/ECOOPE.html

On 5/23/08, Timothy Teravainen <tkt2103@columbia.edu> wrote:
>
> This reminded me of the "open-source search engine", at least in
> principle (decentralisation) if not in realization or even goals.
>
> http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/05/23/1514255.shtml
>
> - Tim.
>

Re: bored with people

I'm bored with people
they are so predictable
that goes for me too.

("True" haiku version is funnier.)

bored with people

I am so bored with people.
They are so predictable.
That goes for me as well.

joe quickly gave the book to aaron

Thinking about the example we talked about on Friday,
I expanded it briefly in four "synonymous" sentences:

1. Quickly, Joe gave the book to Aaron.
2. Joe quickly gave the book to Aaron.
3. Joe gave the book quickly to Aaron.
4. Joe gave the book to Aaron quickly.

Now, despite these sentences all being adequately
represented by the same set of *triples* (just a moment!),
it's weird, but they do seem to mean, or imply,
slightly different things. For example, sentence 1
seems to suggest an external event prompting the action,
sentence 2 seems to suggest that Joe might be feeling
some strong emotion, 3 seems more emotionally dry,
and 4 might be read as being devoid of emotion.

Well, that's just me reading into it, of course. But a pattern
suggests itself: the further the verb is from the subject,
the less emotion implied in the sentence. (I'm CCing
Zoe to ask if she's heard of anything like this in the
theory of natural language?)

As for the triples:

A. JOE GAVE BOOK
B. GAVE TO AARON
C. GAVE QUALITY QUICKLY

The word "Quality" is just a Pirsigian introjection to
turn the pair "GIVEN QUICKLY" into a triple.

It is important to note that the "GAVE" in the second
two triples is the same "GAVE" that appears in
the first triple, i.e. to really construct this statement
sensibly in Arxana, one will need a little more
data, e.g.

D. A modified-in-middle-by B
E. A modified-in-middle-by C

If we wanted to go with a different representation
scheme, it just so happens that a triangle works
in this case:

T=GAVE
T1=JOE
T2=AARON
T3=BOOK

In more program-like terms: GAVE accepts 3 arguments,
the GIVER, the GIVEN, and the RECIPIENT. In general,
if F is a function that accepts N arguments, then we can
represent F as an oriented (N-1)-gon... or even the vertices
of an (N-1)-dimensional simplex, if we care to go that
route.

That's roughly how I wrote things in my "100 short examples"
of PlanetMath entries rewritten as pseudo-code, or in my
APM-Xi. That is, every definition or theorem was a "function"
that took in certain terms to which it added some constraints.

I continue to think that triples are a "nicer" way to go, however!

For exploratory purposes, it would be nice to see some of
those complex Polish or Latin sentences written up and
treated in this, or any other useful fashion.

mara

Mara works at Office Depot as a check-out clerk.
She has long black hair that she wears on top of
her head in two knobs; her long bangs drape over
her forehead. She is tall but slender, and olively
complected; she comes from somewhere south
of here.

Mara is the demon who tempted Gautama Buddha,
trying to seduce him with the vision of beautiful women.
She is the embodiment of all unskillful emotions.
She is the goddess of death, but plainly, she
really exists.

Buddha sits with his left hand in his lap, palm
facing upwards, and his right hand on his right knee.
The fingers of his right hand touch the earth, to call the
earth as his witness in defying Mara and achieving
enlightenment.

If you kill your parents, you repent before Buddha.
If you kill Buddha, where do you repent?
What festivals of atonement, what sacred games
can we invent?

intumescent

Sometimes it seems like the only good writing these days is in spam.
(Here is an excellent example of the cut-up method.)

With her maid had made the voyage in her. The tone, for his
quick mind told him at once how packed and the streets outside
were thronged. And after the coarse food on which we had
so long mingle some sweet butter with it, and make this
was relieved by our introducing the name of the why, how
big is the ranch? Five hundred acres some sweetbreads of
veal, and six peeping chickens larded, about two hours after
the pot is boil'd was already finished and in operation.
i was shrewd is a stabber, understand me. For that matter,
of pilgrims but in this one was no merriment, holding him
off from her, when you are rich you remarkable for the intelligent
and highly scientific a sincere, though a very involuntary
fit of laughing,.

Re: the cut-up method

Answering the question "What *exactly* is the
'cut-up method'?" is harder than sketching an
imprecise answer.

If you want a somewhat canonical definition --

you won't get it --

but you could look at William Burroughs's
"The Electronic Revolution", which is online.

Please note, when doing so, that a somewhat
famous French theorist described that text
as "the miserable bottomscrapings of a long-dead
avante garde, itself hopelessly obsolete."

Which would be a good place to start understanding
the CRITIQUE of the cut-up method.

But before proceeding, here is a simple, standard,
recipe for doing it:

Take 2 pieces of paper with writing on them, and
cut them both down the middle vertically. Put
two of the half-pages together and try to read
across the line.

You should find that, while the resulting text does
not make a lot of sense in a normal literary fashion,
it does *inspire new ideas that you never thought
of before*.

In this sense it is somewhat like "free association",
but instead of me saying "Panda" and you saying
"Terrorist" (or whatever), the paper is giving you
the random elements.

Thus, it has been used as a "method" to help
break down old associations and put in new ones.
(Burroughs pilfered some of his material from the
Scientologists.)

Kathy Acker was a Burroughs fan/acolyte, but she
says (in Empire of the Senseless) that the cut-up
method *by itself* does not work -- she claims that
to break down associations, you have to use the
forbidden language, say the taboo things -- and then
the taboos will lose their power. She nevertheless
uses some version of the cut-up method, at least
in early works, e.g. "The Burning Bombing of
America", and probably in the same book in which
she critiques it. And Burroughs uses a lot of
taboo language. (He is more famous for explicit
sex than for the recombinent collage style in
which the sex is presented, but the two go
hand in... whatever... for him.)

I certainly think there is something to both of these
perspectives -- and also to the aforementioned
French theorist's point of view on the matter.
This was Guy Debord, incidentally, and the
reason he felt he could weigh in is that he too
was interested in finding ways to break down
and rearrange power structures. However,
he wanted to do it with what he saw as a
more theoretically and practically sound
approach. I'm not sure I understand his
approach completely, however, I feel that
that my own work on "scholiumific information"
in the Arxana project is inspired by the
work of the people in his movement.

My sense is that instead of focusing on "random"
texts a la Burroughs, or "taboo" texts a la Acker, the
Situationists have often focused on the "strategic
overlay" (and/or juxtaposition) of texts. They
just don't want you to passively absorb things!

So, they do often want to *disrupt* -- but they also
often want to create work that is relatively easier
to comprehend, or at least to *apprehend* on
intellectual levels.

But my view is that (in)fighting in these matters
is not called for. Everyone who is working in
these ways has pretty similar goals. (Getting
text to help achieve novel, inspiring, or
*procedural* things.) And they are all aware of
the nature of "text as remix", and they are all
studying the ways in which textual manipulations
themselves have an effect.

They also have the convenience of being dead,
which I don't share, so I feel obliged to provide
you with a fresh example to complete my
introduction.

SOUND VS. SILENCE

for a while you sent me things back.
then I started to send you postcards,
and mostly you did not send me anything
about "karma", in an admittedly somewhat
heavy-handed way, as being about making
as few waves as possible. This was all some
sort of coincidence; since I stopped writing,
SEX IS JUST THIS THING THAT FEELS GOOD
and everyone on our planet knows about it completely

and the original Mister Smiles
borderline talks about exploding certain
tangential black powedr exploseives
goodnight
squeeking
lonely bad
poetry goodnight
since entities
of nothing begins:

there's some R&B type of singing coming out of the Men's
grumble, growl, enchant, embark --

"You will be happy to know that I have been slowly replacing my
admiration of your famous girlfriend with steadily increasing doses of
the drug Musine."

It has everything to recommend it:
Quiet, secluded, decent amenities;
it's across the street from a graveyard;

"my sister" begins to read from manuscript! along
"san fransisco" heights overlooking some dumb continent

But what really gets me down
is these guys who "dress down"

throw Our Lady's keys out the window and call her a bitch. I'm sorry
if you find this opinion disrespectful, but before it gets you all hot
and bothered, let me remind you who you are talking to

Fuckers make me look like shit
when I dress up.

Please do not write
of scent of mint and postscript of intitites of
sect of misteries and please do not forgive Texctures of
Silver Sharpies of Thought and our basements are not
our own subways and sighnyournaem noething of touch
is going to likely reamain anyway the same thongi thextures of
thought

the classical "hourglass shaped" body of
textures and swayng side to side
nohting but begins
anyway, i would
fill up the rest of the "card" with a like-wise proportion, but i
exchanged it for the one contemporary book I hadn't read --
the correspondence between text and pictures
doesn't seem to work that well
and I don't have much
to say

I Note also that this culminating message for you is one that I
inherited from Our Lady, who told me nearly a year ago that --

now it seems like I am just making sound
and you are making silence,
whereas somehow I had imagined we would
collaborate on something, now it's like
drum and a scene that doesn't exist
scenesterism is the enemy anyway
or so we seemed to agree at la societe' du the', yesterday
me and my pal who was sitting with me
What kind of collaboration is that really?

except: when I dream i swear to god i dream
about filing cabinets not
a con-man
and a magician, and the con-man's daughter
and the magician's mentor; his dead brother;
and his ex-girlfriend.

not white mans burned of
amprehension of swaying side to sade
quality what is is is is jaz session of nothing besides
sincronicity of touch and these
keyboards say too much
entities of linguistic salty thought
and entities of closed-eyes FRUITFLYES
something begins salty tasting everything lyes:

YOU CAN GET THIS ANYWHERE
AT ANY BISTRO

("Lucy"? "Mary Jane"?)

if you want to fuck
someone over, please know: MY ASSHOLE IS YOURS!
But in return I ask

SILENCE

can therefore enthusiastically report that there is absolutely
nothing whatsoever for you to worry about from my quarter ever,
period, the end, DOUBLY DOUBTED, since it is both satirical and written
under the influence of TWO shots of Wild Turkey and a glass of
TWO-hearted ale, as well as one bar-back of HaMM's.

"That which is enscribed on paper is not the same as that
which is spoken with the flesh."

(FYI: this is to be lighted with a sunbeam.)

Good-bye for the time being and good-morning Vietnam,

I am yours in Christ,
Joseph Angus Corneli

--

why open source is a good idea

Today, I was looking at a book on child psychology (for parents who
get stressed about helping their kids to be successful), and in this
book, they talked about why "intrinsic motivation" is the best and
maybe also the main way for people to be successful. (And, arguably,
it works the in a very similar way for rhesus monkeys!)

Now, the book also points out that not every task is hugely
intrinsically enjoyable right off the bat. E.g. a parent hopes that
their kid will learn that cleaning their room is *a good idea*, but
initially they generally have to *make* the kid clean the room.

The way the kid becomes "successful" is a combination of learning to
do things they "have to do" and "doing what they want to do!" --

Intrinsic motivation was broken down along three axes:

1. Autonomy (people like to be able to make their own minds up about
what to do).

2. Competence (people like it when they can know they are doing well).

3. Connections (people like to do activities that enhance their
connections with other people).

I'll (subjectively) rank a couple different environments that I've had
experience with on these axes:

MATH GRAD SCHOOL.

1. Autonomy. Relatively low -- at least when it comes to required
first-year courses. Some *successful* students may have taken a more
autonomous approach to these required courses (e.g. getting into them
as advanced undergrads when they were optional).

2. Competence. Relatively high -- tasks are very structured, and
since it it math, after all, there are "right answers". Furthermore,
there are some *social* ways to measure competance ("Am I doing as
well as my classmates?"), and, indeed, establishing "competance", for
many, may *require* intense social interaction (peers, classes).

3. Connections. Optional -- if you want to work *with* people, you
can establish connections that way. If you don't work with people,
you end up feeling alienated. (If you go that route, you also lose
important measures and contributors to competance, see above.)

HACKING OPEN SOURCE PROJECTS

1. Autonomy. Very high -- you pick the project, you select the
modifications or project goals; you can build on the things others
have produced. You often don't even need to ask permission: you can
just fork. Also, you may not even depend on anyone else for advice
apart from what you get from reading the manual (although advice can
certainly be helpful).

2. Competance. High -- the code either compiles or it doesn't, takes
a million years to run, or it doesn't. There are, again, social
measures of competence. ("Hacking the good hack.)

3. Connections. It depends. Certainly it is possible to develop weak
connections with people in help forums and so on. If your hacking
leads you to become involved in project leadership, your connections
with other project leaders may be strong (but often long distance!).
If you happen to find people to work with locally, connections as
strong as any local hobbyist, artist, or other research/development
connections can form.

HACKING HDM/METACOMMONS STUFF

1. Autonomy. Very high. There are some set outlines of the project,
but many ways to go within it, and no one "right answer" (although
there are plenty of measures for competence, see below).

2. Competence. High. Since HDM and/or the metacommons is such a
general project, one could competently work on it *many* different
ways. (As a programmer, as a linguist, as a mathematician, as an
economist, etc.) It is rather difficult to work to a high level of
competence in *all* of these domains, but it is nevertheless fairly
easy to measure the *degree* of competence that one has in balancing
the different areas (along how many dimensions is the project
progressing?). Also, precisely because the task bears on many
different areas, any individual is likely to be fairly competent in at
least one of them! And finally, there are some pretty clear
ends-oriented assessments (is it benefitting anyone -- say, students
or researchers?).

3. Connections. *Potentially* high, but with some risk. Again,
because it is a general project, you can make connections with people
in many different areas, you can talk about the project with just
about anyone, and, with some skill, find a way to connect it with
things that matter to just about anyone. Perhaps one runs the risk of
"being spread too thin"... but, if so, that is an "occupational
hazard" that one can work to avoid. Furthermore, unless one works
very hard to connect, connections across disciplinary boundaries may
be hard to establish or relatively superficial.

HACKING HDM IN MATH GRAD SCHOOL (REMIX!)

1. Autonomy. High -- but at the cost of being an alien, being
alienated, and not doing well in the program. Because of this
"outlaw" factor, the perceived degree of autonomy may be higher than
it really is.

2. Competence. High -- because one is doing things that no one else
is doing, it seems like one is breaking new ground. Besides, to a
comparatively large degree one sets one own standards for "success".

3. Connections. Medium. One is sacrificing one set of connections
(the school in-group) for another (other remotely-situated hackers).

From this sketch, I think we can see why I've found HDM consistently
motivating over the last 5-6 years of my life, but why I have also
been very frustrated with the work at times.

I think that I am an *extremely* intrinsically motivated person in
general, and over the years I've been especially excited about math,
anthropology, and writing. However, there have been a lot of kinks to
work out in these areas too. -- To what extent am I doing the activity
because I enjoy it, versus doing the activity because it will give me
some sort of extrinsic reward? It worked great when "fun" was a more
explicit part of the picture; I was less able to find the "fun" in
activities that (for whatever reason) that I didn't find sufficiently
"autonomous".

Re: craig newmark has a posse

With a couple clicks from the blogger dashboard,
it is possible to set it up to post via an email address
-- so, that makes it easy, at least, if you do want to post.

http://www.blogger.com/home?pli=1

Re: craig newmark has a posse

I actually have a blog, but I haven't posted anything to it for a long
time. So, good idea!, I'll post something to it now -- and maybe give
it a little spring cleaning via its web interface.

(http://gathatoulie.blogspot.com/)

Incidentally, it turned out that my date cancelled for Friday -- she
had to focus on graduating from college. How typical.