Makin' T-shirts

... is surprisingly easy.
1. print your design.
2. tape it to a non-corrugated cardboard. Tape a sheet of acetate (or "Dura-lar" - another plastic sheet thing) on top of it. Cut it out with an exacto knife.
3. tape the plastic sheet to a shirt. Paint on it with fabric paint.

Things to watch for:
- you might need some sticky-tack to stick the plastic to the shirt so it doesn't lift up.
- dab with the paintbrush, don't brush. Spongey brushes work pretty well.
- make sure your design works as a stencil. You might have to add some "bridges". Also, try to stay away from anything super-intricate
- if you cut some letters freehand, they'll look super jagged and sort of violent. This may or may not be what you're going for.

Without further ado, shirts 1 and 2:

 

(there is no punchline to this one.)

(this one is only punchline.)

Everything is broken and can never be fixed?

I got to talking with a friend about, uh, the state of the world, and she asked at one point, what's my take? At this point, it's something like pessimism. Here's why (and I'll constrain this mostly to the US here, just to make the conversation manageable, but of course many of these are worldwide).

We have a lot of huge problems. Environmental problems: global warming, water shortage, deforestation, extinction, smog, fracking, Pacific trash islands. Economic problems: shrinking middle class, unaffordability of school, constant unemployment, whatever. Health problems: obesity, diabetes, Alzheimer's, cancer. Political insanity, the war on drugs, the current US war-of-the-week against some country where the people are a different color and maybe have oil or communism, widespread creationism, same old crime, racism, misogyny, bee colony collapse. Oh, and now PRISM!

We don't have tools to deal with them. How do we deal with big problems?
- Technology. The smallpox vaccine stopped smallpox.
- Economics. Let the markets solve it! We've made things more efficient; affluent US people can now buy food and ipods.
- Laws. Now there are no laws against black people voting; there will hopefully soon be no laws against gay people marrying.
- Social action. MLK or Gandhi.

None of these work against threats that are complicated, slow, and devastating. Let's narrow the conversation even further to global warming (not because it's our only problem, but just so I'm not ranting for days). I guess renewable energy cheaper than coal would be a partial technological cure, but we're not there yet and I don't know if we will be before the temperatures rise catastrophically. Economic cures lead to nonsense like carbon offsets; does anyone trust "the invisible hand" to magically stop global warming too? Our laws are toothless (Kyoto etc) and there's no crucial moment that we'll all band together, no enemy to fight against, no one leader who will persuade us to do anything until it's too late.

The recommendations that we get fall ridiculously short. Apparently, if everyone lived my lifestyle, it'd take 4.81 earths to support us. If I recycle all my tin cans, carpool whenever possible, and buy organic food, maybe it'd get down to 4.7. People! This is not going to cut it! It's going to take technology, economics, laws, AND social action if we want to get down to 1 earth, and I don't see us using any of them.

I don't mean to just rant, but rather to ask: how do we live our lives and deal with this? The best answer I've come to is to do the little fixes, recycle my tin cans and carpool, and otherwise ignore it all. Enjoy the results of the life lottery that made me an upper middle class white male. Is there an answer that's less asinine or grim?

Home distilling

I like rakia/schnapps/slivovitz/fruit brandy. I thought it'd be fun to make some.

However, turns out it's illegal. Which means that you can't really have an above-the-board operation, which means dependable information is harder to find.

However, you can buy a still kit, which is not a still, so it's not illegal.

However, that requires some heavy soldering or a plumber's torch.

(This guy seems to have useful info too.)

Making fruit wine (or even just beer) would probably be fun too, but the end product is not as exciting, so maybe I won't for now. Still (NPI), maybe these links would be useful to other would-be home distillers. Or, more likely, to me in the future.

SF inequality, time overestimation, Soylent, sending money

"In California, there isn't a conflict between being a capitalist and a liberal." "The companies here are more than just playgrounds, they’re enclaves." I more or less agree with this.

How people spend their time. This is so interesting because we never get this data. The only data we get is data about how we feel like we're spending our time. "how we think we spend our time has little to do with reality. We wildly overestimate time devoted to housework. We underestimate time devoted to sleep."
"people who claimed their “usual” workweeks were longer than 75 hours were off, on average, by about 25 hours. You can guess in which direction. Those who claimed that a “usual” workweek was 65-74 hours were off by close to 20 hours. Those claiming a 55-64 hour workweek were still about 10 hours north of the truth. Subtracting these errors, you can see that most people top out at fewer than 60 work hours per week."
So, ignore the workaholics, reject stress culture, work 40 hours. 50 if you must.

Soylent discussions remain fun. (quick recap: guy makes smoothie full of vitamins, eats nothing else for 3 months, says it's awesome.) At first glance it sounds terrible, but hear him out; I think he reasons pretty well about all the weirdness involved. I tried to make it once, felt like I'd eaten a rock all morning, haven't tried again yet. But you can order some official Soylent from these folks on their kickstarter. Of course I did.

Send money with Gmail. Is Google finally bringing payments into the future? Where I can send you some money for free? I think so. (Also try Venmo, which works too.) If you want to get in on the gmail-send-money beta, let me know, I'll send you a penny.

Ireland reminds me of New Zealand

It's beautiful and humble. I spent a couple days at a Buddhist center, thinking I'd get some sort of concentration or mental clarity; can't say for sure that I came away with either of those, but I had a relaxing couple of days. Nice folks.

Then I spent a little over a day in Dublin. Like Wellington, NZ, it's compact and walkable, doesn't have a ton of huge attractions, but has a lot of great places to drink liquid drugs. (infrequent readers of this blog: I mean coffee and beer.) It feels like it's really trying to redevelop itself as both a friendly place to visit and a new techy city. I mean this in a good way; to my eyes, as a humble visitor, it's working.

A real live panopticon!

Howth cliffs, nearby.

More photos here!

Small town and big city England

I've been in Oxford with my friends Daniel and Killian for the past week. It's been pretty low key. Yesterday, for example, I read a book in a coffeeshop and then we went to a pub for dinner. Earlier, I took a final exam for one of my classes on my laptop sitting in Radcliffe Camera. If you're looking for great adventures, perhaps you should look up past Dan. (or future Dan.) Present Dan is happy to take a bit of relaxation time with good friends.

We've had some small adventures. Oxford punting:

London bridging:

(Can I just point out that I'm still jealous of Londoners for getting to live in London? We got to hang out in Hoxton/Shoreditch a little bit, which was relatively rad, and hit up all the bookstores/comic shops/spots I've enjoyed before, which was also rad; a taste of cool neighborhoods that we immediately have to turn around and leave! Argh! I'd move there for the bikes/coffee/bikes and coffee culture alone.)

Pointing at potholes:

Hanging out in shady places:

Next week I'm staying at this retreat center in Ireland. I'll be out of contact Saturday night until Wednesday. (as if I need to head to rural Ireland to go a few days without internet!)

Went to Paris.

I was there for the past week. Mostly for a conference (CHI 2013, which I will likely post about soon on my research blog), but also some sightseeing. Here are some thoughts.

Everything is six stories tall.

View from our AirBnB

This is nice. It gives you the density of a world capital, without imposing skyscraper districts where everything is lobbies.

The bakeries are generally all they're cracked up to be. I'm not sure on the over/under of what percent of food I ate was pastries. 50%?

I hadn't scoffed at this thing yet. Good thing I got a chance.

Found some good coffee. Coutume is a favorite. Black Market's also solid.

Exactly what it sounds like

Uh, it actually is a good place to go with an SO? Things are generally rather pretty, the restaurants we went to had good atmospheres, dudes played accordions in the subways, etc. We saw people making out in public more than in most places.

Okay, I'm in Oxford, England now, will be there a week, and then go somewhere else. 

Empathy and stress

My friend Ram writes a great bit about the weird paradox where three Americans dying is a catastrophe, but dozens of (innocent) Afghanis dying due to drone strikes is business as usual. Is it weird that this is my first reaction, not only to Boston but also to Newtown? (that, and that we should stop reading the news at all.) Ram points at a need to increase our sense of empathy somehow. It's like the old proverb about someone throwing babies in the stream to drown, and how we're downstream fishing babies out instead of stopping the thrower. Except we're not even fishing them out, we're just kind of seeing dead babies and gnashing our teeth over and over.

"It's very, very difficult to be a dick to someone when you understand that you are dealing with a thinking, feeling being with little wishes and big miseries much like yours."

On the other hand, it's been unfortunately easy for me to be a dick to everyone recently, and I blame it on stress. I realize that's a little like saying the air is polluted because it's full of pollutants. That's how it feels; I'm under a little haze and can't really be myself because I'm trying to breathe a lot.

What stresses us? Especially, what stresses us that I might be able to do a damn thing about? (and here I'm drawing on a lot of recent posts from Alex Soojung-Kim Pang; his blog has resonated a lot recently)
Words With Friends - interesting post from Amy Bruckman
Texting - I guess increased stress as well as antisocialness
Imperfect abstractions - yes indeed
And what can we do about it? Mildly intrigued by continuing reports of using heart rate variability to detect (and thereby provide feedback and lower) stress.

Expansive and narrow time

I've noticed two very distinct feelings. One is the "expansive" feeling: "the world is out before me, I can do anything I want, the day is mine, and I'm relaxed." One is the "narrow" feeling: "there's a deadline coming up, I'm head down, chugging through whatever I'm doing." This is not a post about how expansive time is good and narrow time is bad. They're both kind of fun, in different ways. Narrow time has the benefit of feeling more focused and more adrenaline-driven. I often feel "flow"y in narrow time.

But it seems like they should be more balanced! Some time to feel crunched and making progress, some time to feel relaxed and thinking of ideas. Seems like it'd make me both a better researcher, and a better and happier human being. My April challenge (only check email twice a day) is pointed in this direction. And meditation helps a little, I think.

I wonder how else we can create more expansive time in our lives. Any ideas?

April plan: just check email twice a day

I sort of missed March in terms of monthly goals. As a look back, here's how they're going now:
Oct/Nov: don't snap at people. 100% integrated into my life. I feel pretty good about this.
Dec: draw something every day. Drew 24/31 days in December. I have not drawn something since December. Fun exercise, not a new habit.
Jan: Meditate: I meditated 29/31 days in January. Has it become a habit? Well, I'm still trying at it. I'm about 50% these days. It is really hard to convince myself that I should spend 20 minutes doing that. My life feels too full again. How can we get back those Seattle weekends where I had nothing planned, or taking off work and forgetting about it?
Feb/Mar: Paleo eating: Successfully completed this one for 28 days, plus a week, and then figured it wasn't worth it (see recent blog posts). It was probably a beneficial change overall; paleo is not totally wrong, just not totally right either. Some things have stuck with me. "Breakfast salads" is one, and I think I eat less grains overall now, which is good.
Also, unrelated to paleo, somewhere in here I got in the habit of eating no added sugar except Saturday. Still doing well with that one. Okay, let's call that "February" and say paleo is March. Whatever. Either way, it's a pretty good one.

For April I was thinking something about the "checking" habit. I feel like I'm always just "getting things done", always sprinting, always rushing toward another deadline. This is silly; my deadlines are not that many. I need to do something to calm this impulse and let me feel more expansive.
Also, from RescueTime, I know that my weekly time spent on email has ranged between 8-11 hours per week over the last few weeks. That's a bit nuts.
So I'm thinking the plan for April is: just check email twice a day. It's concrete and measurable, it's simple, and it would probably be helpful. (so if you want to reach me with a quick turnaround, call or text me.)

(if this post seems annoyingly self-congratulatory, sorry about that. hey, this is the internet, where we constantly curate our image by presenting the best versions of ourselves, right?)

Paleo Stats

I computed some stats. To be fair, I did a bunch of statistical hooey that went like this: I recorded a 1-5 value whenever I felt like it for my stomach, energy, and mood. Then I basically averaged them together to get an average value for the day, then I averaged all the days together. (comparing a month of eating paleo to a month of eating whatever.) ZQ values are Zeo-computed "sleep efficiency" or some such (more hooey); at least "minutes sleep" is a real value.

p-values are for independent samples t-tests (statistical hooey x3); non-reported ones are unremarkable.

stomach with paleo: mean = 3.26
stomach non-paleo: mean = 3.08
p = 0.07

energy with paleo: mean = 2.90
energy non-paleo: mean = 2.90

mood with paleo: mean = 3.04
mood non-paleo: mean = 3.29
p = 0.08

ZQ with paleo: mean = 82.32
ZQ non-paleo: mean = 86.46

minutes sleep with paleo: mean = 455.45
minutes sleep non-paleo: mean = 445.23

Another big non-result! Add to my just-thinking-about-it non-results. Also add a few awkward questions that I still have with paleo folks:

- how do you know 10,000 years isn't long enough to evolve?

- I mean, if we evolved the "digesting milk" gene, for example, how is it fair to say that we're "not evolved" to drink milk?

- a paleo diet would include carrots and kale and rutabagas and coconuts and chicken and buffalo and salmon and seal fat. There is no caveman who ever ate all of that.

- the guy who wrote Wheat Belly is nuts.

- how do you know it's not just that paleo causes people to snack less, or eat less, or eat fewer carbs, or eat less sugar, or eat less processed food?

- if we should "eat what our ancestors eat", why do we pick the 10k-200k-years-ago people, and not the million-years-ago people? Why not eat like monkeys?

So there seems to be no good reason to continue to mess around with eating paleo. Except that it does cause a lot of good long-term health shifts: less processed food, less sugar, less white flour, even less (I am sorry to say this word) carbs. I'll probably keep some variation of it in my diet (like my ongoing "no added sugar except Saturdays") but drop the nitty gritty particulars of Paleo and the story behind it.

Paleo'd

Done with that! Spent four solid weeks paleo eating, and here's what I can say just from the ever-unreliable introspection:
- it didn't make my life wayyyy better
- it didn't make my life wayyyy worse
- I had to cook a lot more, and particularly I had to cook a lot more meat. This was difficult for me, but a fun learning experience. I discovered things like short ribs, lamb shanks, chicken thighs, flank steak, pork shoulder; braising, casserole roasting, broiling; interesting stuff!
- I did feel a little healthier after eating a meal without grains, mostly because everything is real nutritious food. It's all some vegetable or meat, no filler. So I ate as much as I want (which is a lot) and didn't really feel overstuffed like I do sometimes with grains.
- eating out was not really that hard; most places have something that you can make paleo. Sometimes you have to be a little creative and order two appetizers instead of a dinner, say.
- special occasions were hard. I couldn't really invite friends out for a beer, or an ice cream, or a waffle, or really any celebratory consumable. I started drinking the occasional liquor (under the flimsy argument that "I mean, the grain's all fermented away anyway") for social situations when I couldn't really opt for a wine.
- uh, I was kind of depressed a month ago and am not now. But I don't think that's because of the food.

Stats to follow! Sometime. Going to Cleveland and Miami in the next couple days. I am not trying to avoid grains or dairy or beans or anything there.

February: let's try Paleo.

As wonderful as most of the recent months have been, I've got to say, I could trade in this past January. I don't know if it's the weather or what, but it was a bit blah. Well, it's over. And the January challenge was to meditate daily, and I meditated 20 minutes every day except two. Nice.

For February, I'm finally getting around to a real paleo-diet experiment. Reading Ishmael, hanging out with Bay Area Quantified-Selfers, reading Josh Whiton, talking with a good friend's cousin who's an archaeologist and knows things about hunter-gatherers, picking up the Four-Hour Chef... these things have all combined to make me want to start eating like people before agriculture.

This involves cutting out grains, beans, dairy, and processed food. (This seems pretty close to what I am and am not eating.) The reasons for cutting out processed food are kind of obvious; nobody's going to argue about that.

Why not eat grains and dairy?
- Last time I tried it, it worked pretty well.
- It's good to eat more leaves and fewer seeds; fix your omega-3 to omega-6 fat ratio. (Michael Pollan essay; the omega-3 stuff is toward the bottom, but it's all worth a read)
- Carbs are not particularly good for us. I railed against the low-carb "fad" for most of the 2000's, figuring it was just the next fad after the low-fat 90's, but it looks like the low-carb thing might be right. (or, put another way, the 1950-2000 high-carb thing was a bad fad.) On my reading list: Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. When you eat carbs, blood sugar rises, insulin rises, and while this is all fine short term, long term it leads to insulin resistance and diabetes.
- Wheat and gluten might or might not be particularly bad. Trying to process all these competing arguments makes my head hurt. One thing that seems true: some small but significant percentage of the population (5-10%) has some kind of mild undiagnosed wheat sensitivity. (beyond the less than 1% that has celiac disease.)
- Fat is good for us. Even saturated fat. And cholesterol. Here's a long talk about it by Peter Attia.
- Even if grains aren't harmful, they're filler at best. Nobody (besides the US Grains Council or the FDA) says "eat more grains."

Tracking the changes: I've still got nothing besides my little handmade phone app where I rate 1-5 scales of mood, energy, and how my stomach feels, whenever I remember it. This is not a great scale, but it's still all I've got. (plus, I've got a lot of baseline data to compare against.) I do welcome other ideas to track this.

Side benefit: I'm cooking a lot of meat (from DJ's Butcher Block, highly recommended) and a lot of Korean food. I feel my skills growing. This is exciting.

Exponential displays of information

We spend a lot of time processing information, yes? It strikes me that I often want exponentially-increasing levels of information, at approximately powers of 3 or 4.

Example 1: academic papers. There's the title, which is about one sentence. Then there's the abstract, a one-paragraph summary. Then you can read the intro and conclusion, which is about a page or two total. Then you can read the whole paper. It's not explicitly set up for this (beyond the abstract) but it feels like that's what they're getting at.

Example 2: music. I think the best possible recommendation you can give me is: a band name, one song, 3-4 songs, one album (9-16 songs), and 3-4 albums. (or if one of these levels doesn't apply, say so, and say why. examples: "one-hit wonder, just listen to this one song" or "it's a concept album, you have to listen to the whole thing.") That way, I can keep digging as long as I'm interested, but know that I'm not super missing out if I stop.

Example 3: ... good question! Trailers for movies maybe, but there's no level between 2 minutes and 2 hours.

I guess I'm saying I want this in all domains. It'd be so good to say "I want to learn... statistics!" and then have the one-paragraph, one-page, 3 pages, chapter, short book, long book, etc. versions of stats. I'd love to get news in tweet, paragraph, web-news-article, and in-depth-article forms.

When I say "happiness isn't good enough", is "meaning" the other half?

I've written about happiness at least a few times. I often get frustrated because "happiness" becomes a catch-all term for anything good. The Atlantic awakens this old itch. They toss out "meaning" as the foil to "happiness": "happiness" is what feels good, "meaning" is this other amorphous blob of stuff you need to have a good life.

I guess Martin Seligman would agree; "meaning" is one of the 5 things he suggested to have a flourishing life. (The others are positive emotion (aka happiness), engagement/flow, relationships, and accomplishment.) Indeed, that feels like a more complete picture than just hammering on about meaning and slagging on happiness. But whether it's 1/2 or 1/5 of a good life, meaning is worth pursuing. But how do you find it?

The Atlantic article notes that many people find meaning through their kids. But that just feels like punting! Like deciding we don't really know what to do on this planet, so let's lovingly create a new generation and let them figure it out. (meanwhile contributing to overcrowding and pretty much every problem.) (again, *sigh*, hi Mom and Dad, yes, I'm still mostly glad you had kids. your generation did punt a lot of junk to us, though.)

The other examples of meaning they give are mostly the typical Mother-Theresa stuff: helping others, giving not taking, resigning yourself to life in a concentration camp so you can help your parents. I guess. The problem with finding goodness in suffering is that there's a lot of suffering that is just bad, and if you go on seeking suffering, or just being neutral about suffering, you'll probably stumble into a lot of meaningless suffering that is just bad.

Can you search for meaning and happiness at the same time? Or search for meaning without forsaking happiness? After all, happiness at least helps productivity.

Is my drinking water unsafe?

Or, "should I get a Brita?"

I found the 2011 Pittsburgh Water Report. Looks like our water is better than the EPA standards in all categories.

I'd like all categories to beat the MCLG (minimum contaminant level goal; the value below which it is totally safe), not just the MCL (EPA guideline.) I guess the MCLG is 0 in Lead, Uranium, Radium, and Beta Photon Emitters. (there are also 5 categories where MCLG is unavailable.)
In particular, lead was on my mind for some reason, and Pittsburgh water 90th percentile is 10ppb. So 90% of the water in Pittsburgh is under 10ppb. And this site says rivers have 3-30ppb (parts per billion) lead. So unless the other 10% is crazy high, I'm still in the "as safe as rivers" zone.
For uranium, well, looks like the WHO is stricter, but their MCL is 15 micrograms/liter (EPA is 30), and Pittsburgh's level is 1.77. Also, looks like anion exchange and reverse osmosis are the only ways to remove it. This is more than a Brita, which means more maintenance than I really want to deal with. So I'm okay on the uranium too.
Can't find good info quickly on radium or beta photon emitters, and this is an hour more than I meant to spend already!

So, in conclusion: no. Should you get a Brita? Beats me, check your local water report, but if you're in Pittsburgh you should be okay without one. Or, at least, if you're arguing pro-Brita for health reasons, the burden of proof is on you.

EDIT: It was pointed out to me that the EWG gives a more complete picture of stuff in our water. Based on that, haloacetic acids and trihalomethanes seem to be mildly problematic (in both we're between the one-in-a-million lifetime cancer risk and the one-in-ten-thousand; well below all non-cancer risk rates). Let's average it and say that by drinking these I'm adding about a 1-in-100,000 risk of getting cancer. Not great; however, given the additional complexity and cost I'd introduce by adding a pitcher or tap filter to my life, replacing the filters, etc, I'll take the 1-in-100,000 risk instead. (Also, I don't know if a Brita even removes those things from our water!) So I still say don't get a Brita, but for slightly different reasons.

Happy new b'ak'tun!

(or, I looked up stuff on Wikipedia to jazz up our "end of the world" conversations and party a bit)

I'm in Cleveland for the holidays and it is nice. My feeling mildly out of place here in Cleveland serves only as a counterpoint to how well I am settling into place in Pittsburgh. How well is everything firing on all cylinders? My job, fellow students, advisor, professors, house, roommates, new friends, old friends, and lady friend are all wonderful. It's been a whirlwind, but I don't think I could have hoped that it would all turn out this well.

And dang, it's gone so fast I am afraid I will forget it all. This semester, I (and I mean this in the spirit of reminiscence and not boasting):

- laser tagged like a champ

- looked at birds

- been told not to look at birds

- worn a garbage can

- danced much more frequently than previously

- DJed for expert crepe makers

- passed a test to DJ on the radio again

- went to Ubicomp in Pittsburgh, Quantified Self in Palo Alto, UIST in Boston

- struggled through helping make, then demonstrated to the founder of Adobe, a faceboard

- made a website

- made so much Indian food my roommates got sick of it

- made a bunch of Friendship Drinks

- threw furniture into a fire in our backyard

- got yellow carded for "verbally intimidating" soccer opponents

Whah! Among others. It's been a good end of the b'ak'tun. Here's hoping that you're settling in equally well, wherever you are; and if not, here's another bit of hope that if you've not yet found a good niche, you will eventually. Thank you for everything, I have no complaints whatsoever.

A lot of links that've caught my eye

I can't say it better myself: "Cities: Rather Than Patronizing Young People, Give Them What They Ask For." The city in question is Cleveland. Cleveland, I love you, and you're taking baby steps... but you're also taking backwards steps, and just not taking some steps. I love the part about "... the myth that Cleveland is a great place to live — better than other places even — and that our real problem is not one of the many obvious shortcomings frequently mentioned in the national press, but a woeful and incorrect 'image problem.'"

A few hits of Barking Up The Wrong Tree: The words you use, do what really makes you happy (it is similar to what you are an expert at!)
Recently I've felt like I've got school under control enough to start doing hobbies again. This is neat. I sometimes worry that "hobby" is a depressing word because I'll start to get boring and quietly tend a garden until I die. But I think the word just has a bad rap; I am starting to do things I like, besides riding bikes and drinking coffee. I've been drawing cartoons and I'll be a DJ at WRCT soon enough. Keep life busy and multifaceted. Never stop growing.

College Students Want Quiet Space, Can't Find It. Argh argh yes! First, it's hard to take a nap. Second, it's hard to find a goddamn quiet place to work! Third, it's hard to make phone calls. Fourth, it's hard to find a quiet place to work when your officemate is making phone calls. Etc. Another thing we were spoiled with at Google. And when I say "spoiled at Google", I usually mean "Google was doing it right and most other work environments are varying degrees of broken."

Similarly: CMU and "stress culture." It's better now than as an undergrad (I think) but still, my classmates (and sometimes I) work too much.
If someone says "I worked 60 hours last week", the unstated response should be "you're inefficient", not "you're a hard worker." If someone says "I don't think I can do it", the response should be "let me help you do it." If someone says "I'm stressed and it's affecting my health or my happiness", there should be at least adequate professionals, as well as peer support networks, that can help them handle that. It's hard to get out of our Industrial-Revolution Victorian Puritan Stiff-Upper-Lip mindset, but if we want to be alive, healthy, and happy/fulfilled/flourishing in the future, we've got to get better at it.

The fall-back plan develops

Apparently it's common among grad students that you have to have a fantasy fall-back plan when the whole PhD thing doesn't work out. You dream of the simplicity: "If I just started a restaurant, it'd be hard work, but it'd be simple. You make food, you bring it to people, they give you money." Never mind the fact that owning a restaurant probably involves more stress and work than a PhD; remember: this is a fantasy plan.

Anyway, I'm working on two. One is a dream cafe: you can go take a nap. Then depending on what kind of dream you'd like (peaceful, interesting, exciting, scary) we can pipe in certain music/smells/etc. We could even have all sorts of tricks to help you get lucid, if you're into that. Even better: we could study how well it works for people!

Whatever. Backup plan two is, of course, a coffee roastery and shop. I don't know many of the details, but it'd probably involve a lot of friggin' awesome coffees, as well as a lot of wood and metal, standing desks, long hours, great music, and public cuppings (coffee tastings). (A lot of Victrola and Commonplace influences here, for sure.)

But I've been wondering: I'd want it to be super coffee-geeky, but I don't want to be mean or exclusive. I know a lot of people who just want "a regular cup of coffee, dammit!" or even "a triple nonfat caramel latte blahblah". I disagree with them, particularly the latter, but there are two good reasons to offer both of those choices:

1. People come to expect both of those options from a coffeeshop, and they'd be pretty easy to provide. Especially in the age of Google Maps and "hmm, I just want some coffee, where does my smartphone say they have coffee around here", I'd hate people who didn't know the store to be disappointed or confused.

2. People come to coffeeshops with friends. If your friends are coffee geeks and you're not, I'd hate for you to feel snobbed. Furthermore, if your friends are not coffee geeks, I don't want them to veto meeting up at my shop because I don't serve a triple caramel blahblah.

But I still want to be coffee geeky! So, talking with another coffee geek last night, we came up with the perfect compromise. Based on the TSA, of all places, and skiing: green circle, blue square, and black diamond. Different lines and different menus. Green circle if you're expecting Starbucks, blue square if you're interested to learn a little more, and black diamond for coffee geeks. Green circle line and you want a triple caramel blahblah? Coming right up! Black diamond line and you want to try our finest new single origin espresso? Sure thing! Cream and sugar? If you're in the green circle line, no problem, but don't try that in the black diamond. You like coffee but are interested to know what makes our pour over Rwanda better than the office sludge? Blue square line, we'll tell you all about it, no attitude.

Someday. When I quit all this computery nonsense.

Agriculture Considered Harmful?

Disclaimer: I wouldn't say I wholesale believe this yet. I'd like to hear more on both sides.

The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race, by Jared Diamond. It's agriculture. Using evidence from current hunter-gathering tribes and studying skeletons, they found that after humans adopted agriculture, they started getting nutritional deficiencies, their average height decreased by six inches, diseases became epidemics, weather changes caused famines, and the ability to stockpile led to greed, class divisions, and gender inequalities. Why did agriculture spread, then? Because it could support more people, so they could push the hunter-gatherers out. See also: Ishmael. (it is an easy and interesting read. I recommend it.)

Interesting side note: The Most Spectacular Mutation in Recent Human History, by Benjamin Phelan. It's the ability to drink milk. Around agriculture-time, we also became able to drink milk without fermenting it first. Nobody seems sure why that was such a big evolutionary advantage.