Archive for 2010

I found this waiting for me when I went to compose another blog entry today. I wrote it back in October..

Ah to finish every thought I’ve had!

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So, today is my first annual 29th birthday.

I’m finding myself at an interesting point in life. I’m opening up a bunch of doors without closing very many others. While this does make me long for a 96 hour day,

I say witty pithy things to the cats when I leave the apartment. Usually they’re not memorable, but I felt a need to write this one down.

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Part of love is that it’s ephemeral
One of you will lose the other
And I will lose one of you
Then the other

I’m doing a bit of cleaning out of those entries that I started but never finished… Here is one titled Marriage etc. As I remember it was a response to a Facebook discussion, or something along those lines. The file date on it is December 21, 2008.

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Interesting idea to think about: The Salvation Army (a church) is in favor of not having Christmas be recognized as a federal holiday. Why? Because having the government recognize such a special day diminishes the experience.

I don’t like the fact that some religions can and have chosen to recognize gay marriages, but because of other church’s beliefs they are unable to bestow the same legal rights on gay couples as they do on straight couples. This is clearly an infringement of freedom of speech/religion. So by banning gay marriage you are actually infringing on freedom of religion.

I know ministers who will not sign marriage licenses for this very reason.

Jared, I’m reminded of the scene in Jurassic Park (the book, not the movie) where they’re amazed that they discover the dinosaurs are breeding because the computer system they’ve set up to track them only checks for the preset number that it expects to there to be. They’re only looking to make sure they’re not losing dinosaur…

Another entry that has been sitting around for a while, this one dated February 20, 2010 at 8:15 am

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This blog entry has been percolating in my head for many months, although this is the first time it has met text.

One of the things that I think has been sadly lost in our society is celebrating what we share. Too often in our daily lives we jump to identifying what is different and what divides us from others. This is useful in our daily lives, but it is also hurtful. Too often when we’re identifying our differences we often approach identifying what divides us as a search to identify where we will have our battles.

I read Ted Olson’s Conservative Defense of Gay Marriage and I cried. Notwithstanding its exceptional eloquence I was moved that someone who on first glance should be one of my staunchest political enemies was espousing a stance which I wholeheartedly agreed with, but one which also came from a place of true honesty within his beliefs and values.

Yet another blog entry that has been started, but wasn’t finished. This one dated June 16, 2009 at 10:58 AM

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I had an interesting discussion with a friend of mine who has 160 gigabytes of music, thats several weeks. I wonder what do you do with 160 gigabytes of music? I can understand if you’re DJing regularly or something along those lines, but he doesn’t. Last I checked he hasn’t even listened to most of it. Its a matter of collecting to collect.

I do that to. I have a box below my bed of a collection of cards, not greeting cards, cards that would go in your wallet and the like. I’ve got a bunch of starbucks cards and some other ones. Its nice having the collection, its small and compact.

Another Entry that I’m cleaning out.. I may revisit this one and post an updated version later.

This was dated June 16, 2009 at 10:58 AM

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So when I heard GM has filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy I was relieved.

Honestly, I’ve never been a fan of GM. I used to live in a GM town (the one where they used to make those gas guzzling SUVs), I’ve driven GM cars (both on rentals, and long term ownership), and I’ve had friends who worked for GM.

So if I’ve had so many ties to GM, why then was I relieved? Because the management of GM has finally been forced to face reality that their business model is broken, that they are no longer, nor will likely ever be again the market leader that they once were.

I watch companies like they’re people. (Yes, I know they are not people, but they’re made of and led by people, just a lot of them, which can lead to schizophrenic behavior at times if you consider the company to be one person.) GM has been like the older uncle who is old and stuck in his ways but he’s hurting himself, everyone in the family knows what he’s doing for himself isn’t good, but we can’t force him to change.

So let me dispel one quick myth: GM failed because of the credit crisis. Now I don’t doubt that the credit crisis was a contributing factor to its failure, but if someone is walking on the top of and a strong gust of wind blows them off…

I’m a member of the Growing Washington CSA, and its been a good experience overall.

The past week was a bit rough. The food box that we should’ve gotten for the Monday before Thanksgiving never came, because the roads just weren’t safe. This Monday’s box came, and it was a little thinner than past weeks.

The farm manager had let us know the week of the huge amount of snow that “there will be fallout from this weather to be sure, though we won’t know the full effects of this storm until the snow melts later in the week. Expect options to be limited as we are receiving e-mails from all the farms in the area saying they all got hit hard too.”

I know weather is a pain when it comes to produce, I’ve dealt with all sorts of weather problems when I used to work for Chiquita, but we almost always got our produce through. Grapes, Melons, Pineapples, and Bananas all year round to our customers just like clockwork.

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When I started with the CSA I had two goals:

1. Eat more produce.
2. Eat locally.

Mind you the weekly box that I get is a “size small” but sometimes its a bit like eating produce from a fire hose, and more of the items than I’d like go to creating high quality dirt, but thats part of using the box. I’ve gained some wonderful knowledge about myself and cooking. I love Kale, I think eggplant should be banned, and carrots are a great snack. I’ve made progress in cooking all of this stuff, and its great to put your hands on raw unprocessed produce.

But all of those things aren’t what I value most. Its the fact that I’ve got a connection back to the plants and the earth. Most of my normal life is spent practically disconnected from the earth. Sure, I see the weather, and put on an extra coat. There are nice little planted shrubs around my apartment. But those things are not really nature. I once listened to either Greg Nickels or
Ron Sims on the radio and he said that the biggest clear cut area in the State of Washington is the City of Seattle.

So the produce box that I didn’t get last week, as well as the thiner one that I received this week is the point. Its a larger manifestation of my meager connection to the earth and the greater world. Its a small connection, but its one that I cherish and celebrate.

So I’ve been moving my online world back to twitter, and realizing why I prefer it much better than Facebook. The main driver getting me back to twitter is that its more open than Facebook.

The one thing that I really prefer is twitter’s way for you to say that you like a tweet: you retweet it. The thing that is important about this is its a big gesture. Retweeting something says “I enjoyed this enough that I want everyone who reads my twitter feed to see it.” Its a much larger request of your audience than clicking the like button on Facebook.

It is easy to like something on Facebook, far too easy actually. Because there is no commitment or resources consumed by clicking the like button. When I retweet something, I’m taking a limited resource, my twitter feed and the attention of my reader and saying, “this is worth reading.” Newspapers and news websites don’t just publish the AP and Reuter’s feed, they select which articles they believe are worth their readers time. This is why despite the open availability of the AP and Reuter’s feed newspapers and editors have continued to be valuable resource on the internet.

Liking something on Facebook on the other hand is using an unlimited resource, and not forcing people to make an economic decision on the scarcity of their audience’s attention. I think clicking the like button would work much better if Facebook gave everyone say twenty free likes, and sold the ability to like something for a dollar per twenty items you could like. You’d be free to unlike something at anytime and replace it with another thing that you like, but you’d have to make that tradeoff.

Lets say that I clicked like on Facebook for every movie that I moderately enjoyed. It’d be meaningless since many movies that I moderately enjoyed aren’t ones that I would take my limited time to watch again, and I might not recommend that my friends watch. There are movies that I have (and will) watch again that are worth my time. By making like really easy to click it makes it pointless. I do realize that likes on Facebook aren’t just about what you suggest people should read, eat, or go see, but I’ve not seen any evidence that Facebook has harnessed this in the same way that say Netflix harnesses users ratings to suggest movies.

If someone clicks like on Facebook they haven’t expended significant amount of resources. If someone retweets something they’ve spent a slightly scarcer resource. If they copy and paste it and place it into an email, they’ve spent an even scarcer resource. If they print it out, and track you down in person, they’ve expended an exceptionally scarce resource! You know implicitly if someone puts the effort to find you in person to share something with you that they think its valuable and something that you should read.

Facebook as made likes exceptionally abundant which means they’re worthless. Scarcity is good and important.