November 21, 2003
Spring Sunset
I walked south out the front door of work to this. (1SL)
I bought my camera to have it with me at all times, for these moments. I've been forgetting, of late, to have it. I hate to carry things around. (1SM)
It's nearly six o'clock in this picture. It's a warm Spring day in November. (1SN)
Last night I watched 28 days later. Then I watched the alternate endings, then I watched the deleted scenes. Then I watched those things with commentary turned on. Then I watched the movie again with commentary turned on. Then it was past 4 am and I was due up at 8:30 to take the car for some scheduled maintenance. (1SO)
My car has come up lame. It has some stuck brake calipers. I hope for warranty coverage. (1SP)
If my car were in 28 days later, it would be lonely. The alternate ending where Jimmy dies and the women walk off down the hall is the best. "Too depressing", thought the directors, "we need to give them a glimmer of hope". The movies where everyone dies by the end, these are the good ones. Art imitating life. In the movie of my life I will be dead at the end. So will you, in yours. You have no warranty. (1SQ)
So the moments of pinkified fluffy clouds, each one, a memory worth having. (1SR)
I dropped off the car, walked downtown for a tasty bagel and some coffee, served to me by a man of unassuming friendliness whose demeanor reminded me of another. (1SS)
I was at the Bakehouse. I left there for the environs of the Bakehouse's opposite, Soma, near to where that other man, Tom Donohue, used to operate his record store, TD's CDs and LPs. Tom has passed away, and is remembered by many. In my memory he is the demonstration of a simple but important truth that is good to know--it is his homily with humor--the lesson I've learned in the face of the myriad confusions and uncertainties of life: some folk are nice. I hope to keep this with me. (1ST)
When he and I learned to talk to one another in his store I mistakenly thought he was being nice to my friends--who all knew him better and longer--through me. No, I realized, he was being nice, to me, because he is nice. That is a memory worth having. It is fuel for more than just a glimmer of hope. (1SU)
November 18, 2003
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military's code...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military's code name for a crackdown on resistance in Iraq was also used by the Nazis for an aborted operation to damage the Soviet power grid during World War II. "Operation Iron Hammer" this week... die puny humans (1RP)
Yet another in a series of "we forgot to be literate and thus named things like the enemy does in the books" mistakes. (1RQ)
Homeland Security. Total Information Awareness. Ministry of Information. (1RR)
etc etc etc (1RS)
I'm sure there are plenty more that I'm not remembering, help me out. (1RT)
Heartbroken. (1RU)
Less is More
An article in Fast Company about Wal-Mart's impact on the economy is getting a fair amount of discussion. I found comments at How to Save the World and Teledyn (where I found the article) interesting. (1QX)
Over the past several years I have developed a bizarre fascination with toothbrush technology. I am not a religious toothbrusher. I'm lucky to have no cavities but this comes from genes rather than brush. I admit, sometimes I forget, sometimes I have stinky mouth. (1QY)
Initially my fascination eschewed fancy electric or ultrasonic models. I sought out the toothbrush section of my local retailers to review the complex manipulation of plastic. Manipulations seeking, I thought, the fundamental form of the toothbrush. The ideal. The perfect tooth cleaning device. I sought these things not because I wanted perfect cleanliness but because I admire the union of form and function (and you should too!). (1QZ)
Of late the shelves have teemed with a multiplicity of devices (say it like Zappa), more than a body could possibly need. Many are powered. I recently saw and heard one of these powered devices in the mouth of a friend. I resisted for several days but now, I too have a whirring, spinning, gyrating device. Without the instructions and packaging I wouldn't know whether to put it in my mouth or up my butt. (1R0)
These toothbrushes are not cheap throwaways. The battery operated ones are up over seven bucks. Meanwhile, the fancier non-powered items are two to three dollars. (1R1)
As the years have passed what was once my pleasant fancy has now turned to ennui. Something is wrong in the toothbrush biz, and it's wrong elsewhere. (1R2)
(A momentary aside. It's curious to note the changes in definition of "ennui". Webster's 1913 edition: (1R3)
A feeling of weariness and disgust; dullness and languor of spirits, arising from satiety or want of interest; tedium. (1R4)
Wordnet (modern): (1R5)
n : the feeling of being bored by something tedious [syn: boredom, tedium] (1R6)
It's the weariness and disgust I want to imply here. With a liberal dash of despair and unwilling resignation.) (1R7)
The Fast Company article has some explanations: (1R8)
There has been an explosion of "innovation" in toothbrushes and toothpastes in the past five years, for instance; but a pickle is a pickle is a pickle. (1R9)
Why the square quotes on innovation? Well, it turns out that in order to maintain any profits in the face of the Wal-Mart machine, a manufacturer has to make new stuff for which Wal-Mart has no historical data (which they leverage in negotiations): (1RA)
The way to avoid being trapped in a spiral of growing business and shrinking profits, says Carey, is to innovate. "You need to bring Wal-Mart new products--products consumers need. Because with those, Wal-Mart doesn't have benchmarks to drive you down in price. They don't have historical data, you don't have competitors, they haven't bid the products out to private-label makers. That's how you can have higher prices and higher margins." (1RB)
Carey enters into mushy territory by saying "products consumers need". It would be more accurate to say products for which manufacturers are able to generate apparent need through marketing. A couple of paragraphs down the article: (1RC)
Bain's other critical discovery is that consumers are often more loyal to product companies than to Wal-Mart. With strongly branded items people develop a preference for--things like toothpaste or laundry detergent--Wal-Mart rarely forces shoppers to switch to a second choice. It would simply punish itself by seeing sales fall, and it won't put up with that for long. (1RD)
(Bain is Carey's employer) (1RE)
So, what have we got here? To survive, manufacturers have to do three things: (1RF)
- Cut costs as much as possible. Much of the time this means moving manufacturing offshore. (1RG)
- Continuously create need for new "innovative" products, through marketing and diversification. (1RH)
- Constantly maintain brand loyalty through marketing. (1RI)
More shiny useless advertising for more shiny useless products. A growing cycle of emptiness. (1RJ)
(Emptiness that pervades. A world that floats around on sound bites and colorful pictures. What's holding this stuff up? It's becoming increasingly difficult to participate.) (1RK)
Dave Pollard suggests some solutions, mostly revolving around sanctions and tariffs to maintain prices. I don't think this is enough and besides it's based in the belief that some nation is better than some other: it is retaliatory and thus subject to escalation. (1RL)
The real issue is the stock market. When a company is solely responsible to its shareholders and the vast majority of shareholders are operating at a distance (through mutual funds and other instruments) corporate responsibility is inappropriately directed and valued through inappropriate measurements. Dave says: (1RM)
And the answer is not to blame Wal-Mart either: They're doing what their corporate charter dictates, using their immense buying power (they sell a quarter trillion dollars worth of goods each year) to increase earnings per share, and in the process they have introduced some unarguably beneficial innovations into their, and their suppliers', business processes. (1RN)
Perhaps we shouldn't blame Wal-Mart, but we should blame their corporate charter. Earnings per share is a false requirement, created to support an artificial system, much like my guilty new toothbrush. (1RO)
November 16, 2003
Testing NetNewsWire
On Eric's advice I've shelled out the cash for NetNewsWire. This is a test of its blog posting functionality. (1QS)
Good stuff this stuff. (1QT)
November 02, 2003
Mountains
While reading Mountains of the Mind, a book by Robert Macfarlane that attempts to explain why mountains are special, I dropped in little pieces of paper whenever I stumbled across an especially salient bit. It's been several weeks since I finished the book, but those marks are still there. I'll now attempt to remember what I marked and why. (1OW)
Yet, despite these multiple discomforts, Burnet is happy. For here, among the mountains, he has discovered somewhere utterly unlike anywhere else: a place that has for the instant stalled his powers of comparison (23). (1OY)
Yes. (1OZ)
The mountains, the desert, the oceans, the other, the alien; that which is not in the backyard has the power to halt, if only briefly, our thinking, our power to compare, our only real power. We are left with pure sensing. This is the ecstasy of erasure; the knowing it's all really very big out there. And we, tiny and mortal, are able to see it and see it as new. (1P0)
Yet, there is is also something curiously exhilarating about the contemplation of deep time. True, you learn yourself to be a blip in the larger projects of the universe. But you are also rewarded with the realization that you do exist -- as unlikely as it may seem, you do exist (44). (1P2)
In high school I found myself for reasons unclear now and then at a weekend retreat with the church youthgroup attended by some friends. Freaked out by all the (I now know to be quite lightweight and entirely not strident, in comparison) church going on around me I retreated at night to an open field. There, lying on my back, I stared up into the stars and watched what was revealed. As I looked, more arrived. As they impressed their millions upon me I receded from that moment in time, that place in space, and was unable to find myself. Disconnected I wandered, lost, around a nearby lake until I stumbled back into the retreat where friends and church officials expressed concern that I might kill myself. I was not suicidal, but I was care free: I was but one small mote of dust, how could I possibly matter? How could I possibly be arrogant enough to choose to matter? (1P3)
Yet here I am, still. (1P4)
The mountain-top became a ubiquitous symbol of emancipation for the city-bound spirit, a crystallization of the Romantic-pastoral desire to escape the atomized, socially dissolute city. You could be lonely in a city crowd, but you could find solitude on a mountain top. (1P5)
I wandered lonely through the tunnels of the metro in Paris; along the streets of Munich, Copenhagen and Amsterdam; over the legs of the homeless and puking on Seattle's Broadway. But I sat alone at peace by the Pacific; in the shadow of Denali; above the White Horse on the Ridgeway; by the tall trees near my home. (1P6)
The mountains tell no lies, they are alien without excuse. The people, wandering in their streets, they are you and me, and we, together, make me and you aliens. (1P7)
Experience was unpredictable, more immediate and more authentic in the mountains. The upper world was an environment which affected both the mind and the body in ways the cities or the plains never did -- in the mountains, you were a different you (213). (1P8)
The mountains are pornography. They are illicit sex. They are the chaotic spirit that breeds religions, ruined by codification. People go to the mountains for the same reasons they might seek a pro-dom: alter my perceptions, of the world, of me; push my edges. (1P9)
The mountains describe a giant piece of space and time. The closer you get, the described edge pushes into you, opening up a little space and time within. (1PA)
