I was at a dinner party last night and had a great time. It was a good mix of people, with good conversation ranging over a variety of topics. Afterwards, my friend and I were discussing what made for a good conversation. I’ve pondered this before, because I really like good conversations, and I previously […]
Month: June 2005
Enlightened Selfishness
Picking up on yesterday’s anarchy post, I was thinking about what it takes for anarchy (or even capitalism) to work as a society. I was talking with some other friends last week about the concept of enlightened selfishness, and I think that is one of the keys. What do I mean by enlightened selfishness? It’s […]
Anarchy is Progress!
A friend of mine pointed me at this email, where a reader of Gizmodo criticizes them for having the temerity to insult the Queen of England. In particular, he says: Some institutions in the world, like the church, must stay intact or it causes a breakdown in civilization. There must be a counterbalance that allows […]
Ultimate photo
I was checking the website of the league I play in today, and noticed a link to some pictures a photographer had taken of some league games. Intrigued, I went and glanced through them, and sure enough, there are a couple of me. Check out these action shots, one of me having been beat on […]
Cubicle Zen
A little while ago, a friend of mine was complaining over IM about their stupid coworkers. In a moment of levity, I replied “Welcome to the world, young grasshopper. You must bend with the stupidity as the reeds bend with the wind. Stupidity is an unstoppable force – it can only be diverted, not ignored […]
Silent but still kicking
So I last posted a week ago Saturday. Sunday afternoon was another concert, Monday evening was ultimate, Tuesday was a much-needed night off, Wednesday through Saturday evenings were concerts. Through all of this, I was telling myself, “I just need to make it through Saturday and everything will be fine.” My body apparently took me […]
Beethoven’s Ninth
We’re in the middle of doing a seven performance run of Beethoven’s Ninth in the chorus. Reviews and stuff, if you’re interested.
Context, cognitive subroutines, and collectives
In my last post, I mentioned that I wanted to think about how to connect the ideas in this post, where I describe how we have different groups of people in different contexts and often find them difficult to identify them outside of the context in which we know them, and this post, where I […]
Identification and context
I just had an amusing incident. I was on BART on my way to work, and was lounging in a seat reading my Economist with my music playing. Somebody taps my leg as they’re walking by. I look up, see a guy smiling at me, and I know I recognize him, but I have no […]
Mental models as tools
After the disjointedness of my last post, it’s probably worth going to check out the comments, because I think I clarified some of what I was thinking with the help of my commenters. What I want to talk about today is how we use classification systems, and more broadly, mental models. Let’s start with the […]
