Relationships are 2/3 made, 1/3 found.

Think about your favorite songs. I'd venture to guess that the reason you like them is not really the content of the song so much (although that is part of it), but the associations you have with them. A friend's recommendation, the first time you heard it, the general life context around when you heard it. It's not that the specific notes resonate with some inherent thing inside you, but rather that you decide you're going to like the song for whatever reason, and then you do.

Now think about your friends. There is certainly an element that you want to find certain people, people with certain characteristics, but really the reason your closest friends are your closest friends is largely because of the experiences you've had together.

I don't know what the exact fraction is, but it's certainly more "made" than "found."

Which leads to the question (of course this had to get back to technology at some point): why do online dating sites treat dating as a search problem? And if you were starting a new one, how could you get around that?

Here's an idea: you sign up on a site, they require a $100 deposit, then they assign you to do a certain (hopefully-fun) thing at a certain place/time. (with someone else, or with N other people.) If you don't show up, they keep your $100. So you show up, with the other people, and you all have an excuse to be there, and then you've started doing a thing with other people, which starts building these relationships.

It's like "forcing you to go on good dates" whether or not you have enough time, knowledge, or imagination to create good dates. (side note: coffee or food is generally not a good date.)

(also related: I've been reading So Good They Can't Ignore You. Your work is more made than found too.)

Sometimes I'm not sure if I'll ever have a spare minute again

Things I've learned recently:

My mood depends (at least in part) on my productivity. If I feel like I'm getting things done, I feel like I'm kind of swimming at work, and I feel good. If not, I feel like I'm totally drowning. (This is new. On the upside, I'm never bored. On the downside, I feel like a heroin addict; addicts display increased rates of hyperbolic discounting, meaning they can't reason rationally about the future because they're so fixated on the next day or the next hour.)

My ability to work depends (at least in part) on my mood. Also, my mood is my mood; it is nice to be in a good one.
Therefore, it feels helpful to insert tasks that I can make progress on, to keep my mood up, between other tasks that are frustrating and difficult.
This is weird. It's like I've got a little homunculus in my head who controls whether my mind and body will be working right, and I've got to keep feeding him little productivity nuggets. Also, it's nice to do a little reality check if I feel drowney, realize that I won't always feel this way, and realize that maybe I just need a bit of sleep.

Curating a party playlist

For the last ... three hours? I've lost track of time. This is a blast. I get so jazzed from:

1. listening to music in general

2. reminiscing about whatever memories come up when I listen to music

3. selecting a bunch of tracks that will completely impress and delight my friends

I ought to get into DJing. Then I could learn how to make a list of songs that actually sound good together.

Of course you're interested, so the list is below. Comments welcome, especially "I am impressed and delighted!"

(I should also mention that if you're looking for more ways to admire my vast decade of musical knowledge you can also find me on This Is My Jam or my music lists blog.)

Artist, Name, Album

The Books, IDKT, The Way Out

The Books, I Didn't Know That, The Way Out

The Books, Free Translator, The Way Out

Beirut, Brandenburg, Gulag Orkestar

Beirut, Postcards From Italy, Gulag Orkestar

Beirut, Mount Wroclai (Idle Days), Gulag Orkestar

Alexis Gideon, Liophant, Flight of the Liophant

Shugo Tokumaru, Parachute, Exit

Röyksopp, Happy Up Here, Junior

Orbital, Otono, The Middle Of Nowhere

Charlotte Gainsbourg, Master's Hands, IRM

Maritime, Adios, Glass Floor

Bobby Birdman, Victory At Sea, New Moods

David Byrne and Brian Eno, Strange Overtones, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today

Jens Lekman, A Sweet Summer's Night on Hammer Hill, Oh You're So Silent Jens

Stars, This Charming Man, Nightsongs

Architecture In Helsinki, Maybe You Can Owe Me, In Case We Die

Architecture In Helsinki, Do The Whirlwind, In Case We Die

William Shatner, Common People, Has Been

The Rapture, Get Myself Into It, Pieces Of The People We Love

The Rapture, I Need Your Love, DJ Kicks: Erlend Øye

Uusi Fantasia, Lattialla Taas / Venus [Acapella], DJ Kicks: Erlend Øye

Justus Kohncke, 2 After 909 / Intergalactic Autobahn [Acapella], DJ Kicks: Erlend Øye

Erlend Øye, The Black Keys Work [Phonique Rmx], DJ Kicks: Erlend Øye

Holy Fuck, Red Lights, Latin

The Human League, Do Or Die, Dare

Jupiter, Saké, Juicy Lucy

Jupiter, Avalon, Juicy Lucy

Calvin Harris, Stars Come Out, Ready For The Weekend

Justice, Canon (Primo), "Audio, Video, Disco"

Justice, Canon, "Audio, Video, Disco"

Gui Boratto, Colors, Take My Breath Away

Air, Cherry Blossom Girl, Talkie Walkie

Junior Boys, In the Morning, So This Is Goodbye

Hot Chip, One Pure Thought, Made In The Dark

Talking Heads, Genius Of Love (Tom Tom Club), Stop Making Sense (Special New Edition)

Talking Heads, Girlfriend Is Better, Stop Making Sense (Special New Edition)

The Go! Team, Panther Dash, "Thunder, Lightning, Strike"

The Go! Team, Ladyflash, "Thunder, Lightning, Strike"

U.S.E, Look At The City, Loveworld

Junior Senior, Move Your Feet, D-D-Don't Don't Stop The Beat

TV On The Radio, Dancing Choose, Dear Science (Deluxe Edition)

Broken Social Scene, 7/4 (Shoreline), Broken Social Scene

Andrew Bird, Fake Palindromes, Andrew Bird & The Mysterious Production Of Eggs

YACHT, Summer Song, See Mystery Lights

Cansei De Ser Sexy, Let's Make Love And Listen To Death From Above, Cansei De Ser Sexy

Grand Buffet, Things That Go Hump in the Night (Ultimate Remix), Five Years of Fireworks

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, Bright Lit Blue Skies, Before Today

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, Round and Round, Before Today

Air France, No Excuses, No Way Down

Metronomy, Everything Goes My Way, The English Riviera

Stars, Elevator Love Letter, Heart

Metric, Sick Muse, Fantasies

Metric, Satellite Mind, Fantasies

Hercules and Love Affair, Blind, Hercules and Love Affair

Mylo, Drop The Pressure, Destroy Rock & Roll

Mylo, In My Arms, Destroy Rock & Roll

Midnight Juggernauts, Road to Recovery, Dystopia

Blondie, Heart of Glass, Parallel Lines

Madness, Our House, Madness

Robyn, Dancing On My Own, Body Talk

Metronomy, Corinne, The English Riviera

Tarkan, Dilli Düdük, Turkish Hits Vol. 1

Blockhead, Grape Nuts and Chalk Sauce, Uncle Tony's Coloring Book

Janelle Monáe, Dance Or Die (Feat. Saul Williams), The ArchAndroid

Janelle Monáe, Faster, The ArchAndroid

Janelle Monáe, Locked Inside, The ArchAndroid

Yeasayer, ONE, Odd Blood

Balkan Beat Box, Sunday Arak (Featuring Dana Leong), Balkan Beat Box

Spoon, Don't You Evah, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

Foster the People, Call It What You Want, Torches

My Dear Disco, Amsterdam, Dancethink LP

Dismemberment Plan, The Other Side, Change

Bat for Lashes, Pearl's Dream, Two Suns

Massive Attack, Man Next Door, Mezzanine

The Earlies, Burn The Liars, The Enemy Chorus

The Flaming Lips, The W.A.N.D. (The Will Always Negates Defeat), At War With the Mystics

DJ Shadow, The Number Song, Endtroducing.....

Republica, Ready To Go (Album Mix), Ready To Go (Single)

Gnarls Barkley, Run (I'm a Natural Disaster), The Odd Couple

Gary Numan, Cars, The Pleasure Principle

Crystal Castles, Courtship Dating, Crystal Castles

The Prodigy, Girls, Their Law: The Singles 1990/2005

Friendly Fires, Skeleton Boy, Friendly Fires

Crystal Castles, Not In Love, Crystal Castles ( II )

Grand Buffet, Born In The USA, King Vision

The Police, Can't Stand Losing You, Outlandos d'Amour

Scissor Sisters, Comfortably Numb, Scissor Sisters

Ratatat, Falcon Jab, LP3

Barbara Morgenstern, Der Augenblick, Fjorden

Banco De Gaia, Farewell Ferengistan, Songs From The Silk Road

Beach House, Master Of None, Beach House

DJ Shadow, Changeling / Transmission 1, Endtroducing.....

Wealth equals richness minus worry

I am not sure if there is anything to this, but bear with me for a minute:

Wealth = richness - worry.

"Richness" is pretty self-explanatory. Traveling in a private jet is richer than traveling in a Greyhound bus.

Eating artisan chocolate is richer than eating Hershey's. Eating fine steak is richer than eating burgers. But eating asparagus can be richer than eating a steak (if you really like asparagus or dislike steak) and eating a Starburst could theoretically be richer than either.
Living in a fancy house is richer than living in a shack. But living in a small house in a city can be richer than living in a big house in the suburbs, and living in a closet in NYC can be richer still.
An hour with a close friend is (usually) richer than an hour with a stranger. An hour with a close friend is usually richer than an hour playing computer games. Playing World of Warcraft is richer than playing Angry Birds. Playing chess (assuming you're actually thinking about it and digging it) is richer than playing crazy eights.

Richness (here synonymous with meaning) happens when your life matches your values.

"Worry" is also self-explanatory, but a little subtler. Worry is anything that makes you think about anything that's not richness.

Money causes worry. This is obvious. When you have to think about money, you are not thinking about the richness in your life.
Transportation causes worry. The fact that you have to get from point A to point B. (there can be richness in your transportation, like if you're riding a bike and you like biking, but the fact that you must do it is a worry.)
Your bank sending you paper statements causes (a tiny bit of) worry, because you have to think about them. Grocery store reward cards cause worry. Policies like "20% off on Tuesdays" cause worry by introducing mental complexity into your model of shopping.

Worry happens when you're forced to expend attention on anything that's not your values.

Corollary: Technology (or indeed, anything) adds wealth to your life if it increases richness or decreases worry.

Cloud storage, for example, is a great technology, because I no longer have to think about which computer I left my files on, or if they're backed up. mp3s are great because music increases richness in my life. Fitbit adds some richness (I love looking at data) and a little worry (I might forget it); so far, it's a net positive.

Corollary #2: False abstractions are plentiful; beware of them, and don't underestimate the worry they cause!

ATMs are great. They work worldwide. However, while I was in Poland, due to my bank getting bought out and them shipping me a new card, I got stranded pretty hard. Not that we have much of a choice to avoid ATMs these days, and the balance is still positive, but a couple days of frustration and inconvenience is not nothing.

Corollary #3: Maybe instead of "wealth", I mean "flourishing" or "happiness" or "the good life?" Which makes this either more or less profound. In a sense, it feels like I've really unlocked something smart here, an evaluation for anything: does this increase richness and/or decrease worry? However, maybe this is a tautology; maybe I've just said "Goodness equals good things minus bad things."

Things That Are Good

Less interesting-things, more my-life-journaling. If you want interesting things, see what research I'm thinking about. Here are some things that are good in my life now:

1. The HCII. The people are amazing. The students, the faculty, and the staff. It's a community (especially the PhD students) that will hang out outside work, that all cares about each other, that just sort of accepts that everyone is friends and everyone supports everyone else. And everyone I've met (I'm doing a mental check right now but I think, yep, everyone) is very good at what they do.

2. Being in grad school in general. I love the freedom to do what you're excited about. I love feeling "in the club" and invested in something that I care about.

3. Having some easy tasks and some difficult tasks to do. We just finished an interactive projected directory in the HCII lobby; a difficult task (and one that took much more weekend time than we had) but we pulled it off, and how! We demoed it to the cofounder of Adobe, who happened to be around, so that was neat. Anyway, that task helped me feel somewhat competent, but I'm also busy at things I'm much less competent at, so that'll keep me busy.

4. My old CMU friends (who are more and more not-from-CMU), my new CMU friends, and my roommates' friends. Making interesting friends just happens here, I guess.

5. Bikes and no sugar. I feel physically great. The only downside is that sometimes I'm not sleeping enough because I'm just too wired.

6. Pour-over coffee. I've started making my own. It's not as good as at Commonplace Coffee yet, but I'm on the way.

7. Pittsburgh! Love this place.

HCII week two: uh, equally manic?

Weird. I feel like a different person here. The kind of person who has all the energy to do all those things that I wish I could do if I had all that energy. The kind of person who can do all those things I wish I could do if I were good at doing things. I'm sure the honeymoon will wear off eventually. In the meantime, it's still a lot of fun.

In other news:
Hunter-gatherers don't expend a lot more calories than us; the reason obesity is widespread is that we eat more than they.
Becoming an expert: a lot of these tips (but not all of them) seem to be summarized by "beginner's mind." Stay humble and eager!
Here's one person's advice on managing work. I want to round up a dozen super effective people in my field and ask them how they work on a day-to-day basis. There's probably not a huge amount that they do similarly, but there may be some telling common threads.

HCII week one: manic.

Man! I've been zipping this whole week! A few reasons:
- our intro project in the HCII has been an interactive projector to display a department directory. This is the kind of quick-results programming that gets me zipping.
- meeting a lot of new friends and professors. The atmosphere is great. Everyone wants everyone else to succeed. (I've never visited a department where people wanted each other to fail, but I've seen places where people just kind of do their own thing and don't support each other so much.)
- hearing a lot of interesting research, and getting the chance to talk with lots of professors and decide what we want to work on.
- lots of stuff going on all the time!
I like this. It's exciting.

Inbox zero, enjoy it while it lasts...

Tomorrow I start grad school. Well.

I'm excited to meet my new classmates and professors, moderately worried that I don't have The Right Stuff, proud to be officially in the club of researchers, afraid that I won't sleep enough, psyched to have careerish purpose, refreshed by a couple weeks with good friends and family, and itching to start building something again. Here goes!

Regularly scheduled cool-or-humorous-research blast

Interesting: Open plan offices are bad. I thought this debate was still open. Maybe the issue is that totally-open (as in the picture here) offices are bad, but the Microsoft room-with-door and the Google half-walled desks are both reasonable choices.

Lol: Fast cars actually do turn women on. I mean, seriously? It can't be the "successful guy who brings home the bacon" circuit firing, because they were just playing clips of engine roar, not mentioning anything about the price.

Interesting: Oxytocin makes you better able to detect emotional states. I'd love to have a before-and-after test with some labeled faces to try it out. Also, could that lead to improved empathy- the ability to feel other people's emotional states? And wouldn't that be incredibly revolutionary?

Lol: wearing blurry glasses just in case you might accidentally catch a glimpse of an attractive woman. But why stop there? Why not just blind yourself? You'd have to deafen yourself too, and cut off your nose, because you wouldn't want to catch a whiff of perfume. Technology tie-in: in the future, no doubt there'll be a Google Glass app that will use computer vision to find the women and just blur them. (of course, you'd have to switch back to all-blurred non-electronic glasses on the Sabbath.) WEIRD.

Interesting: Working out a lot doesn't make you sleep better. Thinking you worked out a lot makes you sleep better. That's... um, surprising. Counter-arguments: one two three.

Cool: Runner's high is real. Opioids!

Lol: I want to try a few days in a world where punishments are doled out in physical pain on the spot. You say something dumb at work, your boss punches you in the arm. You learn your lesson and it doesn't embarrass you forever or haunt you. Interesting: I guess that's Singapore?

No refined sugar

I don't* knowingly** eat refined or added sugar*** except on Saturdays.****

* I say "don't" instead of "can't" because it provides a different outlook. This is a lifestyle choice, not a restriction or ascetic self-denial. It's more effective that way.

** it's mostly easy to avoid sugars, but not entirely. After eating Chinese food, I realized that the sauce was probably half sugar. Same with baked beans. Luckily I can just laugh them off; it's not an allergy or anything.

*** basically I just want to quit refined sugar. But I don't mean I'm switching to honey or agave or something. Given a choice, I'd go with one of these over white sugar or HFCS, but generally, added sugars in all forms are out.

**** cheat days. Tim Ferriss's book is big on them, and I've talked to a couple people who have followed his diet who say that they really help. In my case, I didn't want to lose stuff like ice cream or biscotti for the rest of my life; this provides an easy outlet, while still cutting my sugar way down.

Why quit sugar? Because it's a clear win. I want a lot of years in my life, and I want a lot of health in those years. And sugar is (maybe after tobacco) probably the worst thing that modern Americans routinely put in our bodies.

Will it work? I think so. I've been doing this for a week and a half now. It's not really that hard. I've had to refuse a cookie once and ice cream twice.

Why now? Because I'm finally in a pretty stable form of life where I can relatively reliably control what food I eat. Because I'll be this way for 5-6 years, so any changes I make now will work over a pretty long timespan.

Whining is unattractive.

I went to an ATM. They wanted a $4 fee. I felt outraged! Four dollars just to get MY money?! But (and this is so simple but we forget it) it's a free market. PNC Bank is allowed to charge whatever they want for me to use the service that they provide (keeping my dollars safe and giving them to me anywhere I want). If I don't like it, I can go somewhere else.

I drove to Philadelphia on highway 76, paying about $35 in tolls on the way. Yow! Now, I can complain about the terribly unjust highway system, but they're the ones building the roads, and if our tax dollars aren't enough to cover the cost, well hey, it's an extra tax for the people who use the road. In a way, it's more fair than paying for roads with taxes.

At least under our current mostly-free market. You can argue that that should be changed; maybe you can argue that all banks should be forced to let any customer from any bank use their ATMs for free. Then you'd have to figure out how it's fair for us to force them to absorb this cost. You can argue that there are some fat cats in the system getting rich off the usurious tolls, but that requires more assumptions than "roads cost a lot to build" and so the burden of proof is on you.

If you're claiming moral indignation about something that's within the bounds of our market, and you don't have a better solution or a valid reason that it shouldn't be this way, you might just be whining.

(and if you go "what about media piracy?" I say read this; in short, downloading is the better solution.)

Habits, in one blog post

There is a lot of information out there about habits. You can read it for days instead of starting a new habit. Your time is probably better spent actually working on your habits. So here's a guy who's been working with habits for a while, distilling all he's learned into one list. Seems at least largely in the right direction, and relatively concise and easy to read.

Making friends as an adult

This article talks about how people make fewer friends as they get older. It mostly sounds depressing: parents who make friends only when their kids do, busy people who deduct points from friends if they're late, retirees who find themselves totally friendless.

More interestingly, though:

"...the three conditions that sociologists since the 1950s have considered crucial to making close friends: proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other..."

Seems simple enough. Why not create that environment after college too?

I hope artisan food is a sign of things to come

I don't know what to think after reading this bit about Mast Brothers Chocolate. It's artisan chocolate, hand-made, perfectly controlled and sourced and decorated etc. And they're doing well. As the article argues, this is how large portions of the economy will go: the stuff that can get mass-produced and automated will, while the stuff that people will pay for because it's handmade will be handmade. McDonald's will be in a vending machine, and artisan chocolate will stil cost $8 a bar, and both will survive.

It sounds great, really: once McDonald's automates all its workers away, there'll be more workers available. Maybe they can work on artisan chocolate. Or maybe artisan furniture, if they prefer, or paintings or whatever. Then all we need people to do is buy artisan _____. This is the sticky part of the argument: how can you expect people to buy artisan _____ when they don't now? I don't know, but personal experience in suburban Cleveland shows me that if you open a small business selling high-quality gelato, bread, or olive oil (to name only the businesses within a couple blocks), people who have some money will buy it.

But then, this is based on experiences in suburban Cleveland and doesn't really give a view across classes. I wonder what our many people working for minimum wage think.

Which candidate do you actually agree with most?

I Side With: hopefully the only thing I'll post about this year's presidential election. Huh, I'm with Jill Stein. Too bad we don't have a good voting system, or I'd vote for her.

The one thing that's reassuring to know is that I actually agree with Barack a lot and disagree with Mitt a lot. This is reassuring if I am to talk politics ever (which I hope I don't); it reassures me that I'm actually voting for what I believe in, and not just going along with everyone in my demographic. Anyway, this site is great and everyone should be forced to take a quiz like this before voting. (kidding, but only a little bit.)

My probably temporary descent into Diablo 3

I don't get into most big-budget AAA computer games. Last game I really loved was probably Super Crate Box. I got into Braid too. But the last big game I really really liked was Diablo 2.

In Diablo 2, you kill monsters and gain levels and find magical items. When you gain levels you get better at killing bigger monsters and finding fancier items (which in turn make you better at killing monsters). It might be hard to explain to non-gamers why this is so fun. I guess it's challenges with clear parameters and units of progression as well as unpredictable rewards. I can't think of a real world example.

from the super weird but wonderful ebbits

Diablo 3 is just like Diablo 2 except that the parts that used to be crummy are now great. Trading used to be one-to-one, currencyless, and inefficient; now there's an auction house. When you played with friends, you used to have to fight to grab the loot dropped by a monster; now everyone gets his own. You used to have to chug potions, now you can only depend on one every 30 seconds. You used to have to choose all your skills once, now you can change them constantly. I could go on.

This is wonderful; I am glad to see them take this pretty-good game and refine it until it's super-good. I am glad to see anyone take anything and improve it relentlessly, for a decade or more, until it's the most user-friendly frictionless thing it can be.

This is also potentially terrible, because it's like refining a drug. (interesting side note: meth sends your dopamine levels 3-4x higher than cocaine or orgasms. can't imagine what the heck that feels like. am curious. won't try it, don't worry.) So of course I'm kind of addicted. But I know I've got about two weeks of down time in Cleveland before I move to Pittsburgh and start life over again, and I'm prepared to quit cold turkey when I move because that'll be much more exciting.

(also prepared to keep D3 as a sometimes hobby, because it really fires me up to play it. might be nice to have something I can do for an hour here or there to keep me in that active mindset. we'll see.)

Drugs, getting old, and terrorists

What is the most harmful drug? Not cocaine or heroin, but alcohol. (when you take into account the damage to society as well as damage to the user.) This article was written based on a 1-day workshop held by a bunch of drug experts. In open discussions, they divided all drug harms into 16 types, weighted them, and rated each drug on each type of harm.
Interesting numbers (100 is the most harmful):
Alcohol: 72
Heroin: 55
Crack: 54
Crystal Meth: 33
Cocaine: 27
Tobacco: 26
Speed: 23
Cannabis: 20
Ecstasy: 9
LSD: 7
Mushrooms: 5

I'm surprised alcohol is as high as it is, of course. I wonder how much of that is because it's so widely used. That is, if it were as illegal and taboo as say cocaine, would its rating be in the 20's also? (I'm sure the authors addressed this, and I would love to know, but the article is paywalled.)
I'm surprised cocaine and speed are as low as they are. I thought speed was meth; shows what I know. I'm surprised cannabis is as high as it is; I thought it was virtually harmless. And check out where all the hallucinogens are! (Well, the Dutch could have told you that. Also, I wonder if they've taken into account the benefits of mushrooms.)

It should be noted for my dad's sake that the authors did not consider the conscription risks of mushrooms.

When do we stop being interested in new things? For new foods, 39. For new experiences, twenty-three. Aw hell. For new music, about 20. So 2004 might always be the best year in music. (I'm basing this solely off Blueberry Boat, the Moon and Antarctica, and Funeral. Correct me if I'm wrong.)

How many people do terrorists kill? In the UK, less than bathtub drownings, and as many as bee stings.  In the US, as many as are crushed to death by furniture. The moral of the story is, watch out for your furniture.

Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn

I finally read this thing. It's about a gorilla and a guy who discuss how the world/environment got to be this way, and how we can save it.

In short: At the time of the agricultural revolution, people became able to decide which animals live and which die. And we developed external morality, which let us say "we *should* live and they *should* die." We're stuck in this pattern of living, running the planet into the ground, but that's our story and so we're going to stick to it. You can't just say "we're not going to do this", you have to replace it with something you ARE going to do.

Interesting. A couple questions I'm left with:
- is non-agricultural life really as nice as he says? You're really at nature's mercy. But I guess if that's woven into your culture, you're more okay with it, as opposed to us who fight death and disease tooth and claw.
- are you sure there's no actual goal that our civilization can achieve? For example, if there was some ultimate external good that came from Pogs, then the whole agricultural thing would be totally justified and great because it would be the best way for us to make a ton of Pogs. Less comically, maybe we post-agricultural "civilized" humans will achieve the Singularity, upload ourselves, and live a really utopian life. I'm not sure if we could get there without going through a few thousand years of miserable agricultural life first.
- he argues that we've taken ourselves out of evolution, and that really a lot of species are evolving towards self-consciousness if we'd just let them live. I hate when people say that we've taken ourselves out of evolution! Evolution just works differently now.

I kind of gave up on improving the whole world a few years ago, figuring I ought to improve myself first. Sometimes that (and my questions above) feel sort of like cop-outs.

At any rate, read this book! I quite enjoyed it. Quick read, too.

A couple thoughts from watching Dexter

(I'll only talk vaguely. I don't think reading this will make you enjoy the show less, but some might consider this post to contain mild spoilers. Consider yourself warned. I just finished Season 2. No spoilers from you either.)

It really feels like TV shows and movies have a contract with the audience. Especially in a morally-charged show like Dexter. (quick recap: our hero is a serial killer named Dexter. He's got these uncontrollable urges to kill, but he channels them into killing only murderers. He's also a cop.) Before any episode, I know that Dexter will not get killed, and I know that he will not get caught, and I know that he will not do anything ethically questionable (if you're okay with the premise in the first place).

I guess this comes from three places:
1. I know there are future episodes that I haven't seen yet, so the show can't end.
2. They go over the top to explain the "code" that Dexter follows. It seems like a pretty okay code ("only kill murderers") and he adheres to it ardently, so we're more comfortable accepting him as the hero.
3. ...?

I don't know what source 3 is, but I feel like there is something preventing the creators of the show from ever turning him into a villain, or even an ethically-questionable mostly-hero, or getting him caught by the FBI, or whatever. And I'd feel cheated if they did. Weird. I wonder if it's cultural, as we in America love a happy ending. And I wonder if anyone's consciously pandering to me. But I do like it.

Zen retreat thoughts

Mostly for posterity, so I can remember what I'm thinking at this point in my life.

1. I need to work on concentration first. (As opposed to insight/wisdom.) I read this from Daniel Ingram, got the same idea from S.N. Goenka (days 1-3 of the 10-day course are just concentration training), and now Niko at the Zen Center in Amsterdam agreed with what I was thinking there too.

I'm not sure how well I need to work on concentration, but I'm guessing that I should at least be able to follow my breath for an entire sit with not a huge effort.

There are two reasons I want to develop concentration: first, because I have to get good at that in order to work on insight; second, because I hear it's really pleasant once you get good at it; and third, because a couple of mental fireworks would convince me I'm not wasting my time.

I'm not sure what is the best way to develop concentration. Just trying again and again is about all I've got.

2. There are relative and ultimate benefits to meditation. Relative ones are the day-to-day things, like feeling less stressed. Ultimate benefits are things like "seeing reality as it truly is" and "becoming one with everything" that you can't really explain in words. I'm interested in both types of benefits. Lots of people are only interested in the relative ones. This is also fine.

However, I wish I could easily scan potential retreat/sitting groups by asking "are you interested in getting enlightened, or are you only interested in community and stress reduction and all the other relative benefits?" And I wish I could do this non-judgmentally. Hell, I'm now approaching 3 years of meditating daily or near-daily, with few mental fireworks to show for it, so I'm in no place to claim to be right about anything. It's possible that most people are slacking, but it's also possible that I'm a tad overenthusiastic and just following a bunch of nonsense anyway.


3. That said, I don't think I am. I think I've derived good relative benefits, and maybe I'll make more progress when life calms down a bit. When I hit some quantifiable benefits or mental fireworks, dear blog, I'll make sure to write them down.


4. Also with that said, props to the Zen Center in Amsterdam for letting me join them and making me feel welcome even though I don't do zen regularly.


5. Soto Zen does seem less strict than Rinzai Zen (like the Seattle Zen temple I went to a few times). Still a bit too much ceremony for my taste. But hell, ringing a bell is too much ceremony for my taste.


6. Sitting for 25 minutes, walking for 5 minutes, and repeating is easier than sitting for say an hour. I wonder if there are downsides. I was hoping to increase my daily practice to an hour, and maybe adding some walking would be a good way.