what is ei?

"Emotional intelligence matters in surprising places such as computer
programming, where the top 10% of performers exceeded average
performers in producing effective programs by 320%, and the
superstars at the 1% level produced an amazing 1,272%
more than average. Assessments of these top performers revealed
that they were better at such things as teamwork, staying late to finish
a project and sharing shortcuts with coworkers. In short, the best
performers didn't compete -- they collaborated."

they only did it cause of fame

"joe corneli"... About 5,370 results.

For comparison:

"cory doctorow"... About 457,000 results

interestingly enough:

"joseph corneli" -gerlach -valkenburg -maastricht... About 1,140 results

(I tend to use "joseph" only in professional communications.)

But my favorites are the "legitimate false positives" and other weird shit:

BOY DIES IN GIRL'S HOME.; Hoboken Youth Believed to Have Taken Carbolic Acid.
http://bit.ly/b2lbto

Comprehension of Requisite Variety for Sustainable Psychosocial Dynamics
Transforming a matrix classification onto intertwined tori
http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/musings/torus.php
(They actually cite a paper I co-authored.)

a book by Joseph B. Corneli -- !!
Mit Kindern die Natur erleben
http://www.amazon.de/gp/offer-listing/3884030094?tag=toggenbunatur-21&camp=1410&creative=6378&linkCode=am1&creativeASIN=3884030094&adid=05RKR0T1X27HQX57Y4YX&

leaving las vegas (review)

Preamble

In case you haven't seen the film you can save yourself some time by
just listening
to this track by the (almost unrecognizable Young Tom Waits):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMIObyJLtuU
http://www.tomwaitslibrary.com/lyrics/miscellaneous/gettingdrunkonabottle.html

Review

What does 'sobriety' mean when drugs/alcohol aren't necessarily
involved in answering the question or in creating the conditions that
lead one to ask the question?

How do I know if I'm thinking clear-headedly or not? Maybe the times
when I think I'm thinking clear-headedly are when I'm most
deluded/delusive?

On the other hand, maybe I *need* to be somewhat delusiatory or
perhaps even deleuzian to generate certain questions -- perhaps I am
at my most "creative" when I'm thinking the *least* clearly? (Cf.
Bloom's Taxonomy:
http://web.uct.ac.za/projects/cbe/mcqman/mcqappc.html).

To finish this off, we turn to
http://www4.hmc.edu:8001/humanities/Beckman/Nietzsche/Genealogy.htm :

The Third (and final) Essay [in Genealogy of Morals] questions the
meaning of what Nietzsche calls "the ascetic ideal" --- that is, the
ideal of rigorous self-discipline, austerity, or self-denial and
abstinence. The opening complaint about Wagner's Parisfal is, of
course, prompted by Wagner's "adaptation of the myth to an orthodox
Christian austerity in contrast to Wagner's own life, which was
scarcely either austere or self-disciplined. The conclusion that there
is probably little meaning to an artist's asceticism (because artist's
are just functioning at the will of their publics) is a bit harsh and
of little general value.

Nietzsche moves on to philosophers and suggests, as a first
approximation, that the philosopher "wants to gain release from a
torture." (III, #6) Proceeding onward, he declares, "there
unquestionably exists a peculiar philosphers' irritation at and rancor
against sensuality." In view of this, "the philosopher abhors
marriage. . . A married philosopher belongs in comedy." (III, #7) The
torture, then, is everyday life, life in detail, as it were; the
philosopher sees the ascetic ideal as the "optimum condition for the
highest and boldest spirituality." Nietzsche makes it clear that the
philosopher's relation to the ascetic ideal is not out of any hatred
of life but, rather, it is purely out of a love of life, the
philosopher's own life. The philosopher, indeed, is possessed by a
"maternal" mission, a "pregnancy," that requires full attention. But
why have philosophers adopted the ascetic ideal as such in order to
secure attention on their spiritual "children"? According to
Nietzsche, the philosophical spirit has always been despised by the
majority of men. And is it now different? Thus, philosophers were
always forced "to use as a mask and cocoon the previously established
types of the contemplative man --- priest, sorcerer, soothsayer, and
in any case a religious type --- in order to be able to exist at all."
(III, #10) Philosophers are no more advocates of asceticism than are
artists, then; their embrace of asceticism is purely pragmatic.

(end quote; but it's well worth a longer look via the link above.)

4 out of 5 stars

who cares?

"To approach the most biasless state of death is to pursue a course of
rational self-destruction through a rigorous elimination of biases
towards life." -- Mitchell Heisman, "suicide note" p. 1836

"Who cares? I don't care!
A horse's ass is better than yours!" -- Cibo Matto, "Beef Jerky" on
"Viva! La Woman"

"In many cases, just having a sympathetic 'sounding board' for a student who feels isolated at a distance can help the student to know that they are not alone," Mr. Schroeder says in an e-mail to Wired Campus. "Without that connection, an isolated, distant student may simply drop out." -- Marc Parry, "Preventing Online Dropouts: Does Anything Work?" (http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Preventing-Online-Dropouts-/27108)

"Nock and his colleagues found that participants with strong associations between self and death/suicide were six times more likely to attempt suicide in the next six months as those holding stronger associations between self and life. [...] These findings suggest that a person’s implicit cognition may guide which behavior he or she chooses to cope with extreme distress." -- Steve Bradt, "Inklings of Suicide" (http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/07/inklings-of-suicide/)

flows

I don't know why my existence feels so threatened at times.
(Heidegger said: "Fear is the feeling one feels when one's
life is threatened. Anxiety is the feeling one feels when one's
existence is threatened.") I think it helps a bit to have some
of the flows which would otherwise circulate in my mind go
out, either linearly or "over the network".

I've found that it is fairly effective (as popular wisdom has
expressed) to "hook" one activity into another to create new
habits. The latest example I have in mind is to actually
write something about each of several projects that I *think*
about so often -- I made a page for that.

http://metameso.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl/joe%27s_alt_research

This is part of my philosophy of writing in general. If I'm
going to be thinking in words, the idea goes, I might as
well write those words down. Maybe after a while (thanks
to Grice's maxim or otherwise) I'll start thinking some new
words.

all donne, all the time

And new philosophy calls all in doubt,
The element of fire is quite put out,
The sun is lost, and th'earth, and no man's wit
Can well direct him where to look for it.
And freely men confess that this world's spent,
When in the planets and the firmament
They seek so many new; they see that this
Is crumbled out again to his atomies.
'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone,
All just supply, and all relation;
Prince, subject, father, son, are things forgot,
For every man alone thinks he hath got
To be a phoenix, and that then can be
None of that kind, of which he is, but he.
-- http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/643.html

Naw, jus' kidding -- here's a quote from Alan Moore:

"I'm a great believer in the theory that the more work the audience
has to actually do, the more they enjoy it 'cos the more they've
invested." -- http://www.laurahird.com/newreview/alanmooreinterview.html

more spaceships

"To the degree that education is about the transfer of the known
between generations, it can be digitized, analyzed, optimized and
bottled or posted on Twitter. To the degree that education is about
the self-invention of the human race, the gargantuan process of
steering billions of brains into unforeseeable states and
configurations in the future, it can continue only if each brain
learns to invent itself. [...] Roughly speaking, there are two ways to
use computers in the classroom. You can have them measure and
represent the students and the teachers, or you can have the class
build a virtual spaceship. Right now the first way is ubiquitous, but
the virtual spaceships are being built only by tenacious oddballs in
unusual circumstances. More spaceships, please."
-- Jaron Lanier,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/magazine/19fob-essay-t.html?ref=magazine

elsewhere

War is what happens to other people, different people, people not like
us, and it really isn't our business (even though we are often
paying for it). -- Deborah Ellis interviewed by Aline Pereira

efficacy

"The lives of innovators and social reformers driven by unshakable
efficacy are not easy ones. They are often the objects of derision,
condemnation, and persecution, even though societies eventually
benefit from their persevering efforts. Many people who gain
recognition and fame shape their lives by overcoming seemingly
insurmountable obstacles only to be catapulted to new social realities
over which they have lesser control. Indeed, the annals of the famed
and infamous are strewn with individuals who were both architects and
victims of their destinies." -- A. Bandura, "Exercise of personal and
collective efficacy in changing societies"

summary statements

uneasily coaxing myself into calm
attention to happiness
at the push of a button
i feel like this all the time
a chance that by chaining
a place at the table
stepping on snail shells
pain
clarity of the characters
coming by after the show
to be useful
waiting for a train
angrily and violently bored
better things to do, how to remember?
the thirst for confirmation
tired enough to doubt how this works
things are so simple
not creating further disappointments

ok

"We're sorry things didn't work out.
But don't give up hope…" --Staff Robot, OKCupid

"Eighty percent of new products fail - as is appropriate,
considering the general ineptitude governing their conception and
marketing." --http://www.suck.com/daily/96/02/14/

"The tragedy of OK Soda, though, wasn't that it didn't resonate,
but that it resonated too well. It was too perfect. " -- ibid.

neitzschian time

"And mankind reckons time from the dies nefastus when this fatality
befell--from the first day of Christianity!--Why not rather from its
last?--From today?--The transvaluation of all values! ..."
--Nietzsche, "The Antichrist" (end), http://www.fns.org.uk/ac.htm

yet another effort

"If, for the vainglory of establishing your principles outside your
country, you neglect to care for your own felicity at home, despotism,
which is no more than asleep, will awake, you will be rent by
intestine disorder, you will have exhausted your monies and your
soldiers, and all that, all that to return to kiss the manacles, that
the tyrants, who will have subjugated you during your absence, will
impose upon you; all you desire may be wrought without leaving your
home: let other people observe you happy, and they will rush to
happiness by the same road you have traced for them." -- de Sade

reduced to vandalism

Video games and web pages such as Chatroulette.com, Facebook.com, and
Youtube.com all provide the end user a different experience in their
attempt to cure boredom.[22] *The unfortunate irony is that many of
these sites are themselves fairly boring.*
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Boredom

(My thoughtful comment was reverted seconds after I made it. Damn them!)

annie hall moment

So the thing that these people don't seem to
understand about my work is that we can
*exactly* understand "motivation" by looking
at attention, i.e., by looking at what people do
over a period of time and in aggregate. OK,
we can't necessarily understand their deepest
reasons for it (e.g. maybe they fight crime because
their parents were gunned down in the street -- or
maybe they do it because it's the best cure for
ennui)... but we can definitely begin to see patterns,
like,

A, B, C <quit>
A, B, D, E <quit>
A, B, D, E, F, G <quit>
A, B, C <quit>

etc.

Maybe I'm using the word "motivation" in a nonstandard
way? In any case, I think my work is about understanding
and responding to motivation... I don't know what else
there is to say about it, really.

on being left awake at my desk all night

no worries, I finished reading my suspense novel and massively updated
my OKCupid profile, had beans and toast at berrill, and several teas, and
am feeling as fresh as eggs and am generally entirely ready to look at my
probation report from a new angle today, which is actually necessary, because,
despite the magnificent proportions that this particular sentence has already
grown to and indeed will grow beyond ere long (as I'm sure you can see quite
plainly in the first instance and moreover, intuit in the second or
possibly greater
instances, whether with a sense of foreboding or incipient pleasure I know not)
and despite, also, the semi-analogous prolixity with which I have hithertofore
enunciated my somewhat, shall we say, scientistic strategems and made known
to those concerned in the matter my various scholarly ambitions (always with
some slight reservations as to just how scholarly they really are -- perhaps too
scholarly in some respects and not enough in others), what's really needed now
is a rather different (although not, if you think about it, an
altogether unrelated)
writerly manoeuver which will, I hope, ensure the general cogency and
dare I say,
fluidity, of my rhetorical argument in the other, aforementioned, semi-formal
research-related document, as it coalesces into its final form, by infusing it
throughout with the radiant energies of a certain
mystico-philosophical principle,
namely, that of pure creativity as the sensation associated with engagement
within a libidinal economy; which, in short, is exactly what I feel
prepared to deliver
in my present frame of mind, if only I can find the words with which
to express it --
perhaps simply put it would be something along the lines of "it feels
good to do stuff",
which sentiment one might readily adduce to what is called either wakefulness or
fatigue, as two now predictably different names for activity within an
inhomogeneous
field seeking to further differentiate itself within itself.

falsely attributed...

It's quite interesting that the quote

"Everything is rational in capitalism, except capital or capitalism
itself. [...]"

at http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?tid=8858&ttype=2
*appears* to be a quote from Guattari, but it actually isn't. In fact, unless
it has been re-translated, the quote itself appears to be mis-quoted. In
my copy of the book it goes like this:

"Everything is rational in capitalism, except capital or capitalism
itself. The stock market is certainly rational; one can understand it,
study it, the capitalists know how to use it, and yet it is completely
delirious, it's mad. It is in this sense that we say: the rational is
always the rationality of an irrational. Something that hasn't been
adequately discussed about Marx's Capital is the extent to which
he is fascinated by capitalist mechanisms, precisely because the
system is demented, yet works very well at the same time. So
what is rational in a society? It is -- the interests being defined in the
framework of this society -- the way people pursue those interests,
their realization. But down below, there are desires, investments
of desire that cannot be confused with the investments of interest,
and on which interests depend in their determination and
distribution: an enormous flux, all kinds of libidinal-unconscious
flows that make up the delirium of this society. The true history
is the history of desire." -- Gilles Deleuze, in interview with Felix
Guattari (presumably the interview was conducted by
one of Michel-Antoine Burnier, Patrick Rambaud, Jean-François Bizot, Graine Philippe,  Anne Berger and/or Michel Moret, but I'm not sure who) in "Chaosophy", p. 36, originally in  "C'Est Demain La Veille".

There is another translation of the entire interview here:
http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpdeleuze7.htm
Anyway, I "irrationally" attributed the quote to Guattari in a preprint,
I hope they will let me fix it later...