anamnesis

While snarfing some nachos I flipped on the TV and accidentally landed in the low channel ranges. That scary neighborhood with american idol reruns and big blocks of no man's land labeled "local listings" where all your town's used car salesmen hang out with their unbeatable deals and volume amped vanity commercials. And, of course, the local news, which I caught 5 minutes of. Probably the 2nd time in 6 months. But in those 5 minutes I discovered that Boulder, CO is rated as America's smartest city by Forbes magazine ---which was more national news--- but the local kickers soon followed. An interview with a resident on the Pearl street mall kind of deflated the news-PR-enthusiasm: Newscaster: "What do you think about Boulder being called the smartest city in America?!!" Resident: "Depends on who is saying that. And why. And how can you call a city smart?" The newscast went on to sports, reporting a disappointing loss of Colorado to Nebraska in...

So this is a story about hidden treasure (see the post before this one.) Not. But sometimes I am curious about what runs through people's heads during the day. I usually enjoy it when they give me a glimpse, like gerbeans. And while gerbean's head is probably the most alien terrain within light-years of planet earth, I don't have much luck with others' headspaces either. Maybe my sample population is skewed. Here is a snapshot from my own stream, for entertainment purposes only. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. Ask your doctor if you should be reading what follows. Few days past we had a one of those warm dinners out with old friends, joined by another friend, a Japanese monk who has been living out in LA trying to get a temple in order there. He asked about Sonic and Mew and we talked about them for a while, over indian curries, okra, creamed spinach and endless refills of chai. They all had known the munchkins since they were wee. The monk lives a ...

I enjoyed reading gerbean's post with my morning(?) coffee. It inspired me to try something similar, sort of a slice of what's bouncing around in my head. Might post that later today. But it also reminded me of one of Jack Handley's "Deep Thoughts" on SNL: Once when I was in Hawaii, on the island of Kauai, I met a mysterious old stranger. He said he was about to die and wanted to tell someone about the treasure. I said, "Okay, as long as it's not a long story. Some of us have a plane to catch, you know." He started telling his story, about the treasure and his life and all, and I thought: "This story isn't too long." But then, he kept going, and I started thinking, "Uh-oh, this story is getting long." But then the story was over, and I said to myself: "You know, that story wasn't too long after all." I forget what the story was about, but there was a good movie on the plane. It was a little lon...

that I like... There's something happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear. But that rabbit kind of creeps me out. Dance of Information, A day at work :-) This reminds me of the thought-stream of one of my workdays. Time Flows Just Like My Dreams. Notice the multiple time-streams, running at different speeds.

Have you played with Google Suggest ? It's just like the google search box, except as you start to type in words it suggests phrases based on millions of searches from others. It may or may not be helpful for searching, but it certainly is revealing in a voyeuristic-entertainment-stalker kind of way. Here are some probes I made into the social-psyche... See what YOU come up with :-)

. by Rainer Maria Rilke I can tell by the way the trees beat, after so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes that a storm is coming, and I hear the far-off fields say things I can't bear without a friend, I can't love without a sister The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on across the woods and across time, and the world looks as if it had no age: the landscape like a line in the psalm book, is seriousness and weight and eternity. What we choose to fight is so tiny! What fights us is so great! If only we would let ourselves be dominated as things do by some immense storm, we would become strong too, and not need names. When we win it's with small things, and the triumph itself makes us small. What is extraordinary and eternal does not want to be bent by us. I mean the Angel who appeared to the wrestlers of the Old Testament: when the wrestler's sinews grew long like metal strings, he felt them un...

I was troubled for a while there. A whole industry of law factories sprang up the last several years to make money off ideas. Not __their__ ideas, mind you, but ideas no one had jumped through the $25,000+ patent hoops to claim. In other words, ideas ripe for the picking. And while Palo Alto Research Center created almost everything in the current interface world—the concept of a GUI, the mouse, the window, and a whole lot more, they didn't patent any of it. Imagine if they did. Both the Mac *and* PC would be screwed. As well as linux. Since those days of actual discovery, we've had a rash of patents for things like clicking on a button to buy something; factories of lawyers chasing dollar signs churning out the most ridiculous stuff. They figured they'd gold-rush the fields of intellectual capital for speculative claims. If they could score a patent on the smiley face, or better yet, emoticons in general, they could sell common sense ideas back to all the companies alread...